WEBVTT - Missing Time It Was 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:02.240 One of the great pleasures of doing sound, Light and 0:00:02.279 --> 0:00:05.520 Frequency is that no two episodes are ever alike. We 0:00:05.600 --> 0:00:08.240 go where the stories go. Sometimes that means a deep 0:00:08.320 --> 0:00:11.520 dive into a movie or a TV series, and sometimes 0:00:11.560 --> 0:00:15.560 it means discovering halfway through our preparation that the episode 0:00:15.560 --> 0:00:18.240 that we thought we were going to do has quietly 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:20.880 turned into something else. Now, the good news is that 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:23.680 we're constantly learning as we're doing this. Every time we 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:27.240 put one of these episodes together, we find new connections 0:00:27.280 --> 0:00:32.040 between films and TV, but also UFO cases and UAP history, 0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:36.480 government secrecy, cultural memory, and all the weird little places 0:00:36.520 --> 0:00:39.879 that those things intersect. Now, Originally we thought that we 0:00:39.960 --> 0:00:43.360 might do an entire episode today about alien abductions and 0:00:43.400 --> 0:00:46.600 how they've been treated in movies and television. But once 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:49.440 we started laying that one out, it became obvious that's 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:52.640 not really an episode. It was more like a graduate seminar. 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:56.520 People have written entire books about this, So we decided 0:00:56.760 --> 0:01:00.040 we might narrow our focus and ask a better question. So, 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:02.520 what happens if we take two of the most famous 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:06.840 abduction cases in history and lay them out chronologically and 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:10.720 then look at them through the POV of Hollywood, and 0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:12.840 that is what brought us to the Betty and Barney 0:01:12.920 --> 0:01:15.920 Hill case from nineteen sixty one and the Travis Walton 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:19.760 case from nineteen seventy five, because these are two of 0:01:19.800 --> 0:01:24.080 the best known cases of alien abduction in American culture, 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:27.520 probably the two best known. There are also two cases 0:01:27.760 --> 0:01:31.040 that have compelled me, both personally and professionally for most 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:33.920 of my life. Honestly to the point where to say 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:37.200 that I was interested in them doesn't really do justice. 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:41.000 Obsession is probably a better and more accurate way to 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:44.000 put it. I've written about the Hills, I've dramatized them. 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:46.800 My wife Jackie, and I have even developed their story 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:49.800 as both a feature film and a limited TV series. 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:53.880 I've also studied Travis Walton's case for decades, going back 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:57.400 to actually covering it when I was a young radio 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:00.760 guy in Eugene, Oregon. A few years ago. I even 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:03.880 appeared as an on camera subject matter expert on the 0:02:03.920 --> 0:02:07.680 Discovery Channel when they did documentaries on both cases. And 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:11.639 you know what I learned is, even after two separate 0:02:11.800 --> 0:02:16.080 two hour documentaries, there were still important pieces of those 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:20.760 stories that never got explored, mainly because the executives at 0:02:20.800 --> 0:02:23.600 the network said that they didn't really belong in there. 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:27.000 They were wrong. In today's episode, we are going to 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:30.680 ask what was happening in film and television when Betty 0:02:30.720 --> 0:02:34.320 and Barney and Travis Walton were claiming what had happened 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:37.200 to them? And the one question we keep coming back 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:40.480 to on sound, light and Frequency is this this Hollywood 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:44.120 simply reflect the UFO phenomenon or does it help shape 0:02:44.120 --> 0:02:47.600 the way that we experience and remember it, Which brings 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:51.480 me to another thing about our show, the detours. Sometimes 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:55.079 these detours look like we're wandering off the road, but 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:57.120 more often than not, they bring us back to the 0:02:57.160 --> 0:03:01.160 subject in an even more interesting direction. Today, we're just 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:03.840 going to start with one of those detours because we 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:06.760 like where it takes us. And so the detour is this. 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:10.160 Have you ever found yourself comparing notes with friends about 0:03:10.200 --> 0:03:13.519 where you were when some huge event occurs? People have 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:16.720 been doing that for generations. I remember my grandparents used 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:19.640 to talk about what they were doing when Pearl Harbor happened. 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:23.680 These moments become personal timestamps for us. They're not just 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:27.360 history anymore. They become part of your own story. So, 0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:30.240 now as I bring in my co host, Brent Friedman 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:32.760 from Washington State. Brent, I'm just going to go out 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:35.600 on a limb here and say that neither of us 0:03:35.680 --> 0:03:39.840 have a Pearl Harbor memory to start with, because I 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:41.000 don't think we were alive. 0:03:41.480 --> 0:03:44.160 I was definitely not alive. I thought you were alive 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:44.880 though at the time. 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:48.120 Thank you very much for that. Thank you very much. Good. 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:51.720 I gave you one there. Listen. The first historical memory 0:03:51.760 --> 0:03:53.640 that I think we could talk about would be the 0:03:53.760 --> 0:03:57.160 JFK assassination. Let's do a lightning round of these big ones, 0:03:57.200 --> 0:03:59.680 because they're going to take us someplace interesting, So I'll 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:05.880 give you JFK Go barely conscious. That's exactly right. That's 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:09.320 all I was at the time. I was, I believe, 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:13.600 a fourth grader, and I remember sitting at lunch when 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:16.440 my teacher, Missus Braden, who was a tough task master 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:19.000 that always made us eat our food, did not make 0:04:19.080 --> 0:04:21.840 us eat the broccoli they served that day, and instead 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:24.400 she sat at the table and cry. So that's what 0:04:24.480 --> 0:04:25.920 I was doing on that day. 0:04:26.240 --> 0:04:27.360 That's a stark memory. 0:04:27.720 --> 0:04:30.200 Yeah. They rolled a TV set in and everything, and 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:33.560 we watched Missus Braden cry and then they let us 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:35.920 go home early and then we watched our parents cry. 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:39.440 So that was JFK. I guess the other big one though, 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:42.520 after that, that you probably do have a conscious memory of, 0:04:42.600 --> 0:04:45.240 would be what you were doing when you learned about 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:48.039 John Lennon's murder in New York City in nineteen eighty. 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:49.640 So I heard about that. 0:04:49.960 --> 0:04:52.320 I was in high school at the time, and I 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:56.240 remember being out in kind of the quad area of 0:04:56.279 --> 0:05:01.160 the school and seeing people all huddling together like wildfire. 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:03.880 The news spread across the lawns. Someone had heard it, 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:06.560 and people were telling each other, and I remember being 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:09.080 at the far end of that wave, going what is 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:12.320 everyone talking about? When it got to me, I didn't 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:15.360 think it was real. And then I started seeing around 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:18.240 me some people crying, and it suddenly sunk in and 0:05:18.400 --> 0:05:20.880 I felt sick to my stomach. It just didn't make 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:23.359 any sense. It was of course, it raised that question, 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:25.400 why would someone kill John Lennon. 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:28.320 I still ask myself that. Of course, I'm a few 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:30.960 years older than you. So I actually was working. I 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:34.800 had just started working at CNN as the Los Angeles correspondent, 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:37.640 so I wasn't covering the main story, which was being 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:40.160 covered by the other some other network people but in 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:42.719 Los Angeles, I think they sent me out to talk 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:44.560 to people at a high school, so I could have 0:05:44.640 --> 0:05:47.960 been the guy interviewing people at your high school about 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:50.560 what they thought. And I have one interesting memory though. 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:52.840 I called my brother as soon as I heard the 0:05:52.880 --> 0:05:56.320 news that the night before when it happened. I said, Alan, 0:05:56.440 --> 0:05:59.840 John Lennon's been murdered, and he goes, what's your problem? Was? 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:02.400 Are you calling me? And I was so offended I 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:05.680 just hung up right. The phone rings three minutes later 0:06:05.720 --> 0:06:07.440 and he goes, I don't know what I was thinking. 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:10.760 I'm sorry. I apologize. That's a huge thing. So in 0:06:10.760 --> 0:06:14.560 other words, that delayed reaction where you're like, Okay, now 0:06:14.600 --> 0:06:16.840 I get it, and that's what he had. And then, 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:20.880 of course, I guess after Lennon, another big one for 0:06:21.040 --> 0:06:23.320 us would of course, what we were doing on that 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.040 terrible morning when the towers came down for nine to eleven. 0:06:26.440 --> 0:06:29.400 So I remember getting a phone call from my mother 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:31.840 saying what's happening? 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:32.960 And I was. 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:34.920 Barely awake at the time. 0:06:35.080 --> 0:06:37.080 I think I'd been working late the night before, and 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:39.000 I was like, I don't know what is happening, and 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:42.320 she'd go turn on the television, and so that was 0:06:42.400 --> 0:06:47.640 my indoctrination into the whole situation, and again that it 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:50.799 seemed very surreal, like I felt, am I still dreaming? 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:56.280 Is this really happening? It seemed impossible. It still seems impossible, Listen. 0:06:56.400 --> 0:06:59.040 I was out running. I was a runner at the time, 0:06:59.120 --> 0:07:01.200 and I'd gone run in the morning with a friend 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:04.240 and my wife ended up driving down and finding us 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:06.640 and saying, get in the car. We got to go home. 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:09.479 We've got to be home. So she took me home 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:13.440 and dropped my friend off. But then what was historically 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:15.720 weird to me was that I had just been elected 0:07:15.800 --> 0:07:18.520 chairman of the TV Academy and the Emmys were on 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:22.400 September sixteenth of that year, so of course nobody wanted 0:07:22.440 --> 0:07:24.920 to go to Emmy's five days after nine to eleven. 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:28.120 So I ended up canceling them once. And I've told 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:31.120 this before, but we set them for October seventh, and 0:07:31.200 --> 0:07:34.520 on that day we attacked Afghanistan, so we had to 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:36.679 cancel them a second time. So the Emmys went forty 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:40.240 nine years, never canceled before, and I had to oversee 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:43.880 that twice. Anyway, we probably do an episode about just 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:46.600 where we're one of those, we wouldn't have anything to 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:47.960 do with UFOs per se. 0:07:48.200 --> 0:07:50.840 And that's kind of my point. We all remember what 0:07:51.000 --> 0:07:55.200 we were doing for those huge events, and yet there 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:59.480 are some events that most people don't pay any attention 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:03.720 to that in the UFO world are kind of major events. 0:08:04.160 --> 0:08:07.280 And I think the one that people now talk to 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:10.920 each other about a little bit was what they were doing, 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:14.520 what they were thinking when the whole UFO topic seemed 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:17.960 to change. And that was the night of December sixteenth, 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:22.360 twenty seventeen, when an online story was broken by The 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:26.360 New York Times, and the morning of December seventeenth, twenty seventeen, 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:29.720 when the actual paper came out and this story spread 0:08:29.880 --> 0:08:31.920 like wildfire. Do you remember that day? 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:36.440 I do, And that was interesting because again I was 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:40.120 unaware of the breaking news, but my phone started blowing 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:42.480 up with texts from people saying did you see it? 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:45.000 Did you see it? What do you think? I'm like, what, 0:08:45.000 --> 0:08:45.640 what's going on? 0:08:45.880 --> 0:08:48.920 By the time I finally caught up, I remember sitting 0:08:48.960 --> 0:08:52.040 down and just reading the whole article, just inhaling it, 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:55.760 and my thought was, Okay, so they've dropped this Knimtz 0:08:55.800 --> 0:08:58.679 case on the world, and it felt like the first 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:03.160 drip of real closure, and I thought to myself, it's happening. 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:07.200 Here we go now looking back on it now, Literally 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:10.800 it was just a drip, but it felt like the 0:09:10.840 --> 0:09:13.560 world was changing, or it had changed overnight when I 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:15.080 read that article, What about you? 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:16.400 Where were you in the worlds? 0:09:16.640 --> 0:09:19.600 Sure did. What's interesting, My family and I have always 0:09:19.600 --> 0:09:23.000 practiced what we call parachute vacations. We just drop into 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:26.079 a city that we know nothing about, and we get 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:28.400 on our cell phones since cell phones have been out, 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:30.880 and we start looking around to see what should we do, 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:33.480 Where can we go? That kind of thing. So we 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:37.040 had just air dropped into New Orleans at that time, 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:39.720 and so we were in New Orleans for a couple 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:41.960 of reasons, just because we'd never been there, and we 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:44.600 thought the kids would enjoy that, and they did. Everybody 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:48.400 was enjoying it. And that morning I was at the 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:52.720 World War Two Museum in New Orleans because my wife, Jackie, 0:09:52.720 --> 0:09:54.559 and I have a World War Two movie called The 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:57.360 Last Battle that is supposed to be shooting this year, 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:00.120 and so we were doing some research for it, and 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:03.439 one of the big things of the New Orleans Museum 0:10:03.760 --> 0:10:06.720 World War Two Museum is that they have a film 0:10:06.760 --> 0:10:09.880 that is narrated and hosted by Tom Hanks. So that's 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:12.080 the big one. You crowd into the theater and you 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:15.760 watch Time Next talk about World War Two. And I 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:19.640 noticed that my phone had started ringing during this thing, 0:10:19.720 --> 0:10:22.040 but I didn't be My family's looking at me like 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:25.360 glaring daggers at me. Is so are people in the theater, 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:27.720 Like turn your phone off? So I turned my phone 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:30.800 off right And then as I was leaving, I open 0:10:30.880 --> 0:10:33.480 up my phone and I turn it on and the 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:35.760 first thing that pops up is that I have a 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:38.560 phone message and this listen. We're going to get into 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:41.240 this deeper as we go into the show because it 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:44.840 will pay off in other ways. But it's such a 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:49.199 crazy memory for me because it's December seventeenth, twenty seventeen, 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:52.080 and when I turn my phone on, there is a 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:55.000 message there from I feel like, if we can put 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:57.920 a drum roll into this, we should put we should 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:01.319 do that because the message is from Dan Akroyd. 0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:07.600 Dan Akroyd of Ghostbusters and Live and many other amazing movies, of. 0:11:07.559 --> 0:11:11.640 Course, is an extremely well known guy in the UFO world. 0:11:12.000 --> 0:11:15.720 And just to clarify things, I had met him the 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:18.599 month before because, like I said, I was chairman of 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:20.880 the TV Academy, and so I went to all their events, 0:11:20.920 --> 0:11:24.480 and I'd gone to the Emmy and induction of the 0:11:24.640 --> 0:11:28.480 Hall of Fame for all the Saturday Night Live original characters, 0:11:28.720 --> 0:11:31.640 and Dan was one of them. And what was interesting 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:35.640 is at that exact moment that night, he was standing 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:39.720 by himself. And that's kind of wild because all the 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:43.760 original cast was there, Jevy Chase was there, everybody. He 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:46.360 was wild and I was thrilled to be there. But 0:11:46.480 --> 0:11:48.040 I said to my wife, I go, I'm going to 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:51.760 go talk to Akroyd about UFOs, And she's like, you 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:53.880 really think you should? And I went, I don't know, 0:11:54.000 --> 0:11:56.760 probably not, But I went and I introduced myself and 0:11:56.800 --> 0:11:59.560 I said that there were probably only two people in 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:03.560 this higher party that knew as much about UFOs as 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:05.880 he and I did. And he looks at me and 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:08.000 he goes, so, what do you think of the Todd 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:13.120 Ces case, which frankly is deep cut. That's a deep 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:17.800 cut of eufology, right, Okay. But I had just talked 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:20.360 to somebody on the phone about it, like a couple 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:23.480 of weeks previous, and I said, that's the guy who 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:25.840 disappeared and they couldn't find it, but they found his 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:28.360 shoes up in the tree. And I may even be 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:30.840 getting it wrong now, I had it more in my 0:12:31.240 --> 0:12:35.160 wheelhouse at the time, right, and so that he was like, Okay, 0:12:35.440 --> 0:12:37.600 this guy does know. So we started. We had a 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:40.959 really nice conversation, kind of an extended one at that moment, 0:12:41.200 --> 0:12:47.000 and we were passing things back and forth at the time. Afterwards, Okay, 0:12:47.120 --> 0:12:50.880 we had created emails and all that, and I had 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:54.120 a movie at the time about Betty and Barney Hill. 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:58.320 You see how this is all kind of how this 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:02.120 all going, you see behind this thing. So he and 0:13:02.200 --> 0:13:05.520 I had been exchanging emails about the Betty and Barney 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:07.600 Hill script and he had asked to read it that 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:10.319 kind of thing. But that's not why. That's not what 0:13:10.679 --> 0:13:15.720 he said per se in this phone call. And Brent, 0:13:16.280 --> 0:13:19.360 I've never done this before because the truth is, I 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:23.320 don't save people's phone messages. But the truth is I 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:26.720 just could never get rid of Dan Aykroyd's phone message. 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:29.560 It just seems if there's a historical moment, I would 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:32.240 probably save it anyway, because hey, it's Dan Ackroyd. He 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:35.240 was a tremendous guy. I really liked him and do 0:13:35.440 --> 0:13:42.079 like him, but I also thought, wow, this is for ufology. 0:13:42.480 --> 0:13:46.520 This is the Pearl Harbor, the JFK, the lenin the 0:13:46.960 --> 0:13:50.840 nine to eleven. This is a big deal, right, So. 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:52.440 You're talking about the Nimetz. 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:55.560 Yeah, the New York about Nimets and the fact that 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:59.280 the government admits in this story that they have actually 0:13:59.360 --> 0:14:03.080 been paying good money I think twenty two million dollars 0:14:03.120 --> 0:14:05.600 in that case to study UFOs when they've been telling 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:10.199 everybody they don't. Okay, so tend not to play these things, 0:14:10.200 --> 0:14:13.000 but it's been nine years, so I'm gonna play it. 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:15.679 I don't think Dan would probably mind. Let's hear it, 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:17.400 and so let's just play this thing. 0:14:18.360 --> 0:14:24.720 Yeah, Front page, December seventeenth, New York Times, Real UFOs kentagone. 0:14:24.720 --> 0:14:27.520 You have tried to know Ralph Bloomenthal wrote it. He 0:14:27.560 --> 0:14:30.080 wrote that great piece of Vanity Fair about Bonnie and Betty. 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:33.440 Do you know Ralse He's great, just great. You should 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:36.760 get to know him. If you don't, don't know why 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:40.200 Spielberg wouldn't want to produce that big time. If you've 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:43.240 got the rights, you're very wise. There's Zach Royd here 0:14:43.240 --> 0:14:48.160 of course, and John Simon, how old was he when 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:53.480 that'd be a good part for me? And then James 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:57.120 Peas was the you know you could get I don't know, 0:14:57.320 --> 0:15:00.880 q Zach or Timberlake. He was the younger Air Force officer, 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:04.400 but that he kind of confided in. But here we are, 0:15:04.480 --> 0:15:10.640 Front Page December seventeen to two seventeen. It's just wait, 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:13.000 what's coming? Man? Just wait? What's coming to this planet? 0:15:13.040 --> 0:15:13.280 The boy? 0:15:14.040 --> 0:15:15.760 All right? I had a fun start talking to him, 0:15:16.000 --> 0:15:17.560 see each other again. I'll tell you about the car. 0:15:17.640 --> 0:15:19.000 They may disappear in front of me. 0:15:19.320 --> 0:15:27.360 By wow, just wow. I don't know else to respond. 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:29.520 I'm not even sure, you know, as we like to say, 0:15:29.560 --> 0:15:32.600 sometimes there's a lot to unpack. There so many things. 0:15:32.720 --> 0:15:35.200 First of all, by the way, I loved his enthusiasm 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:37.680 for the movie. There are a couple of things not 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:41.400 quite accurate in there for people who are Officionado's. He 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:44.000 was suggesting he might want to play the part of 0:15:44.280 --> 0:15:48.960 doctor Benjamin Simon, who was the person who hypnotized Betty 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:52.040 and Barney and regressed them. And I believe the young 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:54.800 guy that he was talking about was at Peace Air 0:15:54.840 --> 0:16:00.520 Force Base b EA sse but his name was I 0:16:00.560 --> 0:16:02.280 had it on the tip of my tongue. I've lost 0:16:02.280 --> 0:16:05.280 it myself right now anyway. But the Brent, the one 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:08.960 thought that I thought was holy crap. He ends by 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:11.720 saying a car that they made disappear in front of me. 0:16:12.200 --> 0:16:13.920 What did you make of that one? Do you have 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:15.000 any clue on that? 0:16:15.720 --> 0:16:17.760 I don't know. I just know he knows how to 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:18.680 write a cliffhanger. 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:23.200 He sure does. Listen. I didn't know at the time. 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:26.440 It turns out, I can't say that he was confiding 0:16:26.520 --> 0:16:30.240 a story that he'd never told before at that particular moment, 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:33.760 because this is twenty seventeen. I believe as early as 0:16:33.800 --> 0:16:36.960 two thousand and two, in an interview, he had said 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:39.840 he was shooting a sci fi channel show called out 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:43.320 There in New York, and he had just interviewed Stephen Greer, 0:16:43.480 --> 0:16:47.120 was about to interview Steve Bassett, and he went out 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:50.120 at forty second and eighth Street for a cigarette. This 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:52.120 is the story that apparently he told. He didn't tell 0:16:52.120 --> 0:16:54.120 it to me, And he says he saw a black 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:58.480 Ford with two tall men. The plate looked pixelated to him, 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:00.960 and then this part he's just he took a call 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:04.160 from Britney Spears, who gets to say that. I'm excited 0:17:04.200 --> 0:17:08.080 to say dan Akroyd called me. He's talking to Britney Spears, okay, 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:10.199 And he looks back and the car and the men 0:17:10.280 --> 0:17:13.800 are gone within seconds, all right. And he goes back 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:17.000 inside and the producer of the show that he's doing 0:17:17.040 --> 0:17:18.600 tells him his show has been canceled. 0:17:20.840 --> 0:17:23.760 That's an eventful two minutes or whatever that was. 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:26.439 Yeah. Wow, can he described these guys as men in 0:17:26.520 --> 0:17:30.160 black kind of guys? Speculated the vehicle may have been cloaked, 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:34.320 So yeah, a lot of connections in there. 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:38.760 Okay, it seems dan Akroyd has hijacked our episode and 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:42.639 is trying to keep us from investigating Betty and Barney 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:43.960 Hill and Travis Walton. 0:17:44.400 --> 0:17:46.679 But he's not going to get away with it. Listen, 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:49.120 the reason I had to play this is if not now, 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:53.400 when And also I would imagine about ninety nine point 0:17:53.520 --> 0:17:56.320 nine percent of the people in our audience, whether they're 0:17:56.320 --> 0:18:00.679 listening or viewing, have great affection for dan Akroyd and 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:05.600 who doesn't. Yeah, exactly. But in addition to affection respect 0:18:06.240 --> 0:18:11.760 because he was outspoken on this topic before outspoken was acceptable. 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:13.240 Yeah, right, very true. 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:15.639 It was true. It was fringe when he was doing 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:19.199 those things, and so good for him anyway. We're going 0:18:19.280 --> 0:18:21.240 to unpack more of that in just a few minutes. 0:18:39.920 --> 0:18:43.320 I'm Bryce's able. Sometimes there's a secret connection between the 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:45.199 UFO issue and Hollywood. 0:18:45.359 --> 0:18:47.880 I'm Brent Friedman, and that's what we talk about on Sound, 0:18:47.960 --> 0:18:49.280 Light and Frequency today. 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:52.280 We're asking if there's a feedback loop between movies and 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:55.920 TV and what's really going on, especially when it comes 0:18:55.920 --> 0:18:56.800 to abductions. 0:18:57.080 --> 0:18:59.040 We're going to break it all down on this episode 0:18:59.119 --> 0:19:00.200 and we'll be right back back. 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:20.480 One of the things when we were trying to lay 0:19:20.520 --> 0:19:23.320 this out, we thought we could make it based on 0:19:23.680 --> 0:19:26.439 topics and that kind of thing. We thought that's going 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:29.320 to be confusing, that could be a little tough. So instead, 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:32.480 what we're going to do is walk through this storyline 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:36.239 that combines Betty and Barney and Travis, and we're going 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:39.080 to do it chronologically. And as we do this, I 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:42.720 think you'll see where there are some intersections that maybe 0:19:42.760 --> 0:19:46.240 you didn't see coming. So let's talk Betty and Barney first, 0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:49.840 because they kicked this thing off. The date that you 0:19:49.880 --> 0:19:55.000 want to remember is September nineteenth, nineteen sixty one, and 0:19:55.119 --> 0:19:58.080 that means that we are coming up on the sixty 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:02.520 fifth anniversary of Betty and Barney Hill abduction, and Brent 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:06.040 the thing that has always compelled me and why I 0:20:06.080 --> 0:20:09.280 believe Betty and Barney are such an important story just 0:20:09.359 --> 0:20:13.520 for ufology, but also just because they were the first, 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:16.720 and that's what makes it exciting. So many firsts. It 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:20.240 is a time where they were the first alien abduction 0:20:20.640 --> 0:20:23.480 to ever be claimed in the United States. There had 0:20:23.560 --> 0:20:27.440 been an abduction claim in nineteen fifty seven in Brazil 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:31.800 Antonio vs. Boaz, but we're not talking about We're talking 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:34.960 about Betty and Barney first one in the US. It 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:38.479 was the first reported case of missing time. It was 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:42.360 the first use of hypnotic regression to recover abduction memories. 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:45.800 It was the first public description of what we now 0:20:45.880 --> 0:20:48.600 know is the Grays, and it was the first time 0:20:48.640 --> 0:20:53.240 a couple that ever experienced a simultaneous abduction. So this 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:56.439 one had it all very compelling. Now, the thing about 0:20:56.440 --> 0:20:59.399 it that I think Bear's emphasis at this point is 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:02.840 it's not like this was covered in the newspapers, all right. 0:21:02.880 --> 0:21:07.360 September twenty first, nineteen sixty one is when it happened 0:21:07.400 --> 0:21:10.560 to them, but it's not when it became public, which 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:13.600 we'll get to. But first let's talk a little bit 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:16.359 about what happened to them. There's two parts to the 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:19.639 Betty and Barney story. It's like what they knew happened 0:21:19.640 --> 0:21:23.280 to them when they came home that night, and then 0:21:23.560 --> 0:21:26.720 there's a part that happens later when they have the 0:21:26.800 --> 0:21:30.640 hypnotic progression. I realize you're not an obsessed, a hill 0:21:30.760 --> 0:21:34.440 obsessive like myself. What do you remember about their story? 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:37.000 If you think about it, what's your takeaway? 0:21:37.359 --> 0:21:37.960 It's funny. 0:21:38.119 --> 0:21:41.320 I really didn't know much about the case until we 0:21:41.400 --> 0:21:46.600 started writing Dark Skies, and that became the first actual 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:50.360 case that Lowengard went and investigated in our Dark Sky's pilot, 0:21:50.920 --> 0:21:53.440 And it was through that research that I even came 0:21:53.480 --> 0:21:56.080 to know about the case. I think that the big 0:21:56.119 --> 0:21:59.920 takeaway for me was the concept of missing time, that 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:04.520 they both had this experience together, and that one of 0:22:04.560 --> 0:22:09.280 the possible explanations was this idea of shared amnesia that 0:22:09.320 --> 0:22:13.960 they had both forgotten. Was it two weeks or no, 0:22:14.000 --> 0:22:16.360 I'm sorry, two hours of their lives? 0:22:17.200 --> 0:22:19.560 I think we should actually go back to the beginning, 0:22:19.640 --> 0:22:24.520 beginning then, because on September twenty first, nineteen sixty one, 0:22:24.600 --> 0:22:28.240 September nineteenth, rather, I believe yees September nineteenth, Betty and 0:22:28.280 --> 0:22:31.760 Barney had been married for a year. They're an interracial couple, 0:22:32.160 --> 0:22:34.600 all right. Yes, Barney is a black man married to 0:22:34.640 --> 0:22:38.160 a white woman in nineteen sixty one in New Hampshire 0:22:38.160 --> 0:22:40.399 where there's not a lot of black people anyway, but 0:22:40.440 --> 0:22:44.560 he was still involved with the NAACP. He had been married, 0:22:44.960 --> 0:22:48.760 she had been married. Before their marriage is ended, they 0:22:48.760 --> 0:22:52.000 got together, they got married. A year goes by. They're 0:22:52.000 --> 0:22:54.040 living in New Hampshire and they decide they should have 0:22:54.040 --> 0:22:58.000 a much delayed honeymoon, all right, So they go for 0:22:58.080 --> 0:23:01.280 the weekend to Montreal. That's their plan to go to 0:23:01.359 --> 0:23:05.000 Montreal and have a honeymoon. And they decide. While they're 0:23:05.040 --> 0:23:08.040 in Montreal, they hear news that there's going to be 0:23:08.200 --> 0:23:12.280 a weather disturbance. There might be some serious problems on 0:23:12.359 --> 0:23:15.040 the way back, so they decide to leave home early. 0:23:15.520 --> 0:23:18.320 So they're leaving the night of the nineteenth, of course, 0:23:18.760 --> 0:23:21.560 and they stop and have something to eat on the 0:23:21.600 --> 0:23:24.960 way down, and then they try to push on. They're 0:23:24.960 --> 0:23:27.479 going to push on from ten o'clock on. They're going 0:23:27.480 --> 0:23:31.480 to push on to home, and as they're driving along 0:23:31.560 --> 0:23:34.760 near Indian Head in the White Mountains, they see something 0:23:35.400 --> 0:23:39.200 and at first they think maybe it's a satellite, and 0:23:39.240 --> 0:23:43.160 then they or it's just lights. And then Betty, I think, 0:23:43.280 --> 0:23:47.200 is famously saying do satellites go backwards? Because this thing 0:23:47.280 --> 0:23:50.160 isn't doing what it's supposed to be doing. And they 0:23:50.200 --> 0:23:52.560 stop in the middle of the road because they want 0:23:52.560 --> 0:23:54.960 to look at this thing, and they get out binoculars 0:23:55.000 --> 0:23:59.320 that Barney had, and this is all conscious memory. None 0:23:59.320 --> 0:24:02.520 of this is miss time yet this is what they're experiencing. 0:24:03.119 --> 0:24:06.560 They see a flying saucer and it has a double 0:24:06.680 --> 0:24:10.760 row of windows, so they're seeing this now. Barney with 0:24:10.880 --> 0:24:13.679 his binoculars, puts it up and he's looking at this 0:24:13.760 --> 0:24:17.960 double row of windows and he sees beings looking back 0:24:17.960 --> 0:24:22.240 at him. Yes, okay, And that's even in our scene 0:24:22.440 --> 0:24:25.679 in Dark Skies where he says, I see beings looking 0:24:25.800 --> 0:24:29.360 back at me and it's crazy, Okay. Then they hear 0:24:29.400 --> 0:24:33.240 a buzzing sound, beep beep. That's my impersonation of it. 0:24:33.280 --> 0:24:36.840 I'm sure it was creepier and scarier, but that's where 0:24:36.880 --> 0:24:41.600 the thing happens. Now They find themselves after this beeping 0:24:41.680 --> 0:24:44.720 sound like thirty five miles away, I want to say, 0:24:45.040 --> 0:24:47.800 and a couple of hours have gone on by have 0:24:47.880 --> 0:24:51.560 gone hours, two hours of missing time. Think about that, 0:24:52.240 --> 0:24:55.280 but they don't really. They're like, did we fall asleep? 0:24:55.720 --> 0:24:58.760 They're just not quite sure what's gone on. So they 0:24:58.760 --> 0:25:01.720 press on and they get back to their home in Portsmouth, 0:25:01.720 --> 0:25:05.240 New Hampshire, and they get back later than they're comfortable with. 0:25:05.359 --> 0:25:08.119 They thought that they would have been there earlier. And 0:25:08.400 --> 0:25:12.760 they realize that Betty's new dress is torn. That's weird. 0:25:13.280 --> 0:25:17.360 They realize that Barney's brand new shoes are scuffed terribly 0:25:17.440 --> 0:25:20.880 on the top of them. That's weird. They both feel 0:25:20.960 --> 0:25:24.800 kind of clammy and violated. I believe. They take showers. 0:25:25.040 --> 0:25:27.919 The next day, they get out a compass and go 0:25:28.040 --> 0:25:30.520 over their car and over the trunk. The compass is 0:25:30.560 --> 0:25:33.760 going wild, and there are marks half dollar sized round 0:25:33.760 --> 0:25:37.160 spots on the trunk. The car clock and their own 0:25:37.240 --> 0:25:41.000 watches have stopped. This is all what they're experiencing. They 0:25:41.040 --> 0:25:43.440 try to do the responsible thing. They call the peace 0:25:43.520 --> 0:25:47.320 Air Force base and report it and they I think 0:25:47.359 --> 0:25:51.000 it's Henderson. It's a Henderson who takes their report young guy. 0:25:51.640 --> 0:25:54.639 They also report it to the National Investigations Committee for 0:25:54.680 --> 0:25:58.920 Aerial Phenomenon. So that basically is what happens. And over 0:25:58.960 --> 0:26:02.040 the course of time after that, Betty is having dreams. 0:26:02.720 --> 0:26:04.879 She's waking up in the middle of the night, and 0:26:04.920 --> 0:26:10.159 her dreams are odd dreams, but they are basically describing 0:26:10.240 --> 0:26:13.440 something that is a sort of riff on the abduction thing, 0:26:13.760 --> 0:26:17.080 but their dreams. Yes, they put up with this for 0:26:17.119 --> 0:26:19.159 a while. And in fact that the thing I always 0:26:19.160 --> 0:26:22.439 found was profound is that Barney, who was a postal worker, 0:26:22.800 --> 0:26:26.040 is so disturbed by whatever happened to them that he 0:26:26.119 --> 0:26:29.680 ends up getting paid leave for his health well. 0:26:29.720 --> 0:26:33.320 Quite a while, like I think months, almost yeah, yeah, 0:26:33.359 --> 0:26:35.760 And I found it interesting too, and I think it's 0:26:35.800 --> 0:26:39.720 a significant part of ultimately the story. And what then 0:26:39.880 --> 0:26:42.800 finds its way into the movie was that Betty wrote 0:26:42.920 --> 0:26:45.240 down all of her dreams, almost like in a dream 0:26:45.320 --> 0:26:48.359 journal or something. So that was all something that was 0:26:48.359 --> 0:26:50.680 being referenced later, and. 0:26:50.600 --> 0:26:54.240 They drew pictures of what they saw separately and then 0:26:54.359 --> 0:26:58.359 compared them. They were disturbed. They told, of course Betty's 0:26:58.600 --> 0:27:02.120 sister about it, and so some people knew about it anyway. 0:27:02.320 --> 0:27:04.520 So this goes on for a while, and we're going 0:27:04.600 --> 0:27:06.679 to come back to another piece of that story. But 0:27:07.920 --> 0:27:11.880 if you move forward in the actual key story, it's 0:27:12.080 --> 0:27:16.520 February twenty second of nineteen sixty four, all right now 0:27:16.560 --> 0:27:20.239 that remember from September of sixty one to February of 0:27:20.640 --> 0:27:23.440 that's a little over two years, two years and four 0:27:23.480 --> 0:27:27.240 months or something like that. And at this point they 0:27:27.240 --> 0:27:30.600 are so disturbed that they have sought help and they 0:27:30.600 --> 0:27:33.520 have founded doctor Benjamin Simon, who is the guy that 0:27:33.560 --> 0:27:36.240 Acroyd wanted to play in this movie I had written. Okay, 0:27:36.840 --> 0:27:40.000 and they are hypnotized, and for people that have heard 0:27:40.040 --> 0:27:45.399 the hypnosis tapes, they are harrowing. Barney is screaming, Betty 0:27:45.520 --> 0:27:49.160 is crying, and they report a story that is now 0:27:49.200 --> 0:27:53.800 pretty well known, which is their cargets stopped. The beings 0:27:53.960 --> 0:27:57.159 walk them on to a landed craft. They get on. 0:27:57.760 --> 0:28:00.320 They are and it's not the purpose of this show, 0:28:00.359 --> 0:28:02.280 by the way, to go into the deep details. There 0:28:02.280 --> 0:28:05.040 are books out and there are lots of documentaries things 0:28:05.080 --> 0:28:06.879 like that for people that want to know more, but 0:28:06.960 --> 0:28:09.679 in essence print they go on board the craft and 0:28:09.720 --> 0:28:13.480 they're separated. Barney goes into one room, Betty goes into 0:28:13.520 --> 0:28:17.679 another room. Barney is a little more constrained. He is, 0:28:17.760 --> 0:28:21.479 actually the joke is not a joke to him. He 0:28:21.560 --> 0:28:26.080 has a rectal exam, he or some device of some kind. 0:28:26.359 --> 0:28:30.160 He also has some device placed over his junk and 0:28:30.440 --> 0:28:33.840 takes some kind of sample from that. Betty gets it 0:28:33.880 --> 0:28:36.919 a little bit better, although in a frightening way. She 0:28:37.040 --> 0:28:40.120 gets a needle that she describes as about yay long 0:28:40.920 --> 0:28:44.920 put through her belly button, which one of these creatures, 0:28:44.960 --> 0:28:48.200 these are the sort of the gray Light creatures, describes 0:28:48.280 --> 0:28:52.520 as being a pregnancy test, which, frankly, they did start 0:28:52.560 --> 0:28:56.600 doing pregnancy test am neocentesis through the belly, but not 0:28:56.680 --> 0:28:59.200 till the seventies, so nobody he'd never heard of this. 0:29:00.320 --> 0:29:02.760 A couple things to jump in here on a detail 0:29:02.880 --> 0:29:05.760 that when we were researching this for this episode that 0:29:05.840 --> 0:29:09.640 I wasn't aware of is I thought that Whitley Strieber 0:29:09.800 --> 0:29:12.120 was the first one to ever have the rectal exam, 0:29:12.360 --> 0:29:17.200 and it turns out no, it's Barney. Also, yes, they 0:29:17.200 --> 0:29:20.120 put something on his junk and then he had genital 0:29:20.160 --> 0:29:25.840 wartz yes for a while after that. So something happened 0:29:26.280 --> 0:29:30.520 clearly to them physically, mentally, emotionally, and it's one of 0:29:30.560 --> 0:29:33.880 the ironies that I find about the whole story is 0:29:34.560 --> 0:29:38.480 their reluctance to talk about it because UFOs were taboo, 0:29:38.640 --> 0:29:42.959 and yet they're an interracial couple, right right, And somehow 0:29:43.080 --> 0:29:46.160 UFOs were more taboo than being an interracial couple. 0:29:46.760 --> 0:29:50.000 So true. And now is where we get into the sound, 0:29:50.040 --> 0:29:53.880 light and frequency part of this little story, okay, because 0:29:54.000 --> 0:29:57.320 over the years skeptics have bent over backwards to try 0:29:57.320 --> 0:30:00.120 to figure out, how can we undermine this story, and 0:30:00.160 --> 0:30:03.280 they've come up with one and it has been floated 0:30:03.440 --> 0:30:05.720 several times over the years, and it goes back to 0:30:05.760 --> 0:30:09.640 Outer Limits, the TV show that was the compatriot to 0:30:09.720 --> 0:30:13.160 the Twilight Zone, only the Outer Limits had more aliens 0:30:13.320 --> 0:30:18.120 and was less metaphoric and less preachy, but was about 0:30:18.680 --> 0:30:24.040 scary monsters from outer space in many cases. Okay, and okay, 0:30:24.120 --> 0:30:27.720 I said, February twenty second, sixty four is when they 0:30:27.760 --> 0:30:30.400 first get regressed, and that goes on. But it was 0:30:30.400 --> 0:30:32.840 February twenty second. I guess what happened, And this is 0:30:32.880 --> 0:30:35.600 what people point out. On February tenth of sixty four, 0:30:35.760 --> 0:30:39.880 which is twelve days earlier, Outer Limits airs a show 0:30:39.920 --> 0:30:43.760 called The Balero Shield and the story tells something about 0:30:43.800 --> 0:30:47.440 a power hungry woman who traps a benevolent non human 0:30:47.520 --> 0:30:52.320 alien to steal his impenetrable force field. I tried to 0:30:52.400 --> 0:30:55.560 watch it the other night for this. Okay, yes, there 0:30:55.600 --> 0:30:58.080 is an alien that has some kind of wrap around eyes, 0:30:58.120 --> 0:31:00.560 but doesn't look like any gray I've seen it pretty bad. 0:31:00.600 --> 0:31:03.720 Have you ever tried to watch these Twilight Zones in 0:31:03.960 --> 0:31:06.960 recent time Outer Limits? Yeah? 0:31:07.480 --> 0:31:10.960 Yes, I think interestingly, Twilight Zone holds up a little 0:31:11.000 --> 0:31:14.480 better because they were parables, and this felt like these 0:31:14.480 --> 0:31:17.080 were trying to be like cutting edge science fiction of 0:31:17.120 --> 0:31:20.920 the day. So yeah, particularly the alien part of this 0:31:21.000 --> 0:31:24.320 did not age well. Look, I found the whole thing, 0:31:24.840 --> 0:31:28.560 the whole story bizarre to begin with. It was interesting 0:31:28.600 --> 0:31:32.680 to me that the alien was depicted as benevolent and 0:31:32.720 --> 0:31:36.440 that the woman was the insane one, the one who 0:31:36.520 --> 0:31:39.280 ruined everything, and that her whole goal was trying to 0:31:39.320 --> 0:31:43.000 steal the alien technology because she was ambitious and she 0:31:43.240 --> 0:31:45.040 wanted to give it to her husband so that he 0:31:45.080 --> 0:31:48.160 could impress his father and make lots of money. And 0:31:48.200 --> 0:31:51.320 that set all of the events into motion. In terms 0:31:51.360 --> 0:31:55.040 of how the alien looked, I think if you showed 0:31:55.040 --> 0:31:56.760 it to me, now and you said, what does this 0:31:56.800 --> 0:31:58.520 look like, I'd say it looks like some sort of 0:31:58.880 --> 0:32:01.720 nuclear bomb mute and it did not look at all 0:32:01.800 --> 0:32:04.120 to me like an alien. And yet that's how it 0:32:04.160 --> 0:32:06.160 was depicted at the time. And you mentioned the wrap 0:32:06.200 --> 0:32:09.880 around eyes, and that's the connective tissue between the I 0:32:09.880 --> 0:32:12.760 think what people point to is the connective tissue is 0:32:13.040 --> 0:32:15.920 those wrap around eyes were part of how Betty and 0:32:16.000 --> 0:32:19.240 Barney described the aliens that they saw. 0:32:20.080 --> 0:32:22.880 So people are then trying to you know, the skeptics 0:32:22.880 --> 0:32:26.240 are saying, see, they must have got that. And in fact, 0:32:26.280 --> 0:32:29.320 just to complete the turn here, on February seventeenth, a 0:32:29.360 --> 0:32:32.960 week after the Balero Shield aired, there was one air 0:32:33.320 --> 0:32:36.960 called The Children of Spider County, which also has aliens 0:32:37.000 --> 0:32:39.600 in it. And so the skeptics would like you to 0:32:39.640 --> 0:32:44.800 believe that Barney and Betty somehow watched this Outer Limits, 0:32:44.800 --> 0:32:47.240 which they deny having seen. But let's say that they 0:32:47.280 --> 0:32:52.280 did and they didn't remember it, or their denial is wrong, whatever, 0:32:53.000 --> 0:32:55.120 I guess the question would be. Brent, let me just 0:32:55.160 --> 0:32:57.800 ask you this hypothetically. If I made you watch a 0:32:57.840 --> 0:33:01.040 couple of movies about serial killers and some TV series 0:33:01.080 --> 0:33:04.400 about serial killers, you think you'd go murder somebody. Do 0:33:04.440 --> 0:33:06.880 you think you'd talk about murdering somebody that you hadn't 0:33:06.960 --> 0:33:08.600 murdered while you were hypnotized. 0:33:09.760 --> 0:33:12.680 Considering how many movies I've seen about people getting murdered, 0:33:12.840 --> 0:33:14.760 I'm proud of the fact I have murdered no one. 0:33:14.840 --> 0:33:16.440 Yet I'm even more proud. 0:33:17.080 --> 0:33:20.120 Yes, thank you, I know. But your point is well taken. 0:33:20.360 --> 0:33:23.920 I think just because maybe you did see an episode 0:33:24.000 --> 0:33:27.560 does not mean that in particular, I think the context 0:33:27.600 --> 0:33:30.600 is important here. You're an interracial couple, You're trying to 0:33:30.640 --> 0:33:33.640 fly below the radar. You're just trying to be happy 0:33:33.680 --> 0:33:37.800 and in love your newlyweds. Why on earth would you 0:33:38.000 --> 0:33:42.920 go and invent a story that brings so much negative 0:33:43.000 --> 0:33:46.680 attention to you? It just makes no sense. And that 0:33:46.760 --> 0:33:51.960 this would all possibly be spurred by consciously or subconsciously 0:33:52.080 --> 0:33:56.080 seeing an Outer Limits episode. Think about how ridiculous that 0:33:56.160 --> 0:33:57.240 sounds as I'm saying the. 0:33:57.200 --> 0:34:01.240 Words, and yet people have literally tried to make that connection. Okay, 0:34:01.640 --> 0:34:04.320 moving forward then, so we're just trying to say though 0:34:04.400 --> 0:34:07.200 there's an interrelationship, or at least people have tried to 0:34:07.520 --> 0:34:12.360 interrelate this. It's the UFO version of Chicken in the egg. Yes, right, okay, 0:34:12.640 --> 0:34:17.720 So bouncing forward over a year, the Boston Traveler, which 0:34:17.760 --> 0:34:21.359 is a newspaper in the Boston area, obviously, is the 0:34:21.400 --> 0:34:24.640 first to ever report the Betty and Barney case. This 0:34:24.680 --> 0:34:27.920 happens in October twenty fifth and twenty sixth of nineteen 0:34:28.040 --> 0:34:31.880 sixty five. All right, Now, the guy who wrote those articles, 0:34:31.960 --> 0:34:34.799 he's a guy named John Latrelle, and he was an investigative 0:34:34.800 --> 0:34:37.400 reporter and a damn good one. He had won awards, 0:34:37.520 --> 0:34:41.239 he had broken big stories, and he heard about the 0:34:41.280 --> 0:34:44.880 Betty in Barney Hills story. He chased the story like 0:34:44.920 --> 0:34:49.120 a good investigative reporter would, and they published that in 0:34:49.239 --> 0:34:52.400 late nineteen sixty five. But guess what, he's the forgotten 0:34:52.440 --> 0:34:55.520 man in this story, because what everybody else says is, 0:34:55.800 --> 0:34:59.480 oh no, it's that book, the Interrupted Journey, that is 0:34:59.560 --> 0:35:03.000 the one that's where their story went public. That happened 0:35:03.040 --> 0:35:05.319 a full year later. So I think one of the 0:35:05.360 --> 0:35:07.239 things that we can do here on this show is 0:35:07.320 --> 0:35:12.000 pay service and tribute to John Lattrell because he's the 0:35:12.040 --> 0:35:16.759 guy that broke the story. And in fact, my advocacy 0:35:16.800 --> 0:35:19.080 of John Lttrell goes back to I wrote a series 0:35:19.120 --> 0:35:23.000 of medium articles during the pandemic called the Lost Honeymoon 0:35:23.280 --> 0:35:25.640 by sort of investigation in the Betty and Barney thing. 0:35:25.800 --> 0:35:27.800 And the one thing I tried to do is write 0:35:27.880 --> 0:35:31.480 the history and make it clear that John Lttrell did this. 0:35:31.880 --> 0:35:35.160 And what's so interesting is because I started getting into that, Brent, 0:35:35.280 --> 0:35:38.719 there is a historical marker in New Hampshire on the 0:35:38.800 --> 0:35:42.399 Highway about Betty and Barney that I found had two 0:35:43.120 --> 0:35:46.520 fact errors in it because of my research and the 0:35:46.600 --> 0:35:49.359 Highway Department after I told him, I said, we're going 0:35:49.400 --> 0:35:51.520 to change the marker. Now I don't think they've changed 0:35:51.520 --> 0:35:54.240 it yet, but let me tell you what it does say. 0:35:54.320 --> 0:35:57.680 It says Betty and Barney Hill Incident. On the night 0:35:57.680 --> 0:36:01.319 of September nineteen to twenty, nineteen sixty one, Portsmouth, New 0:36:01.320 --> 0:36:04.920 Hampshire couple Betty and Barney Hill experienced a close encounter 0:36:05.000 --> 0:36:08.880 with an unidentified flying object and two hours of lost 0:36:08.920 --> 0:36:12.480 time while driving south on Route three near Lincoln. They 0:36:12.520 --> 0:36:15.920 filed an official Air Force Project Blue Book report of 0:36:15.960 --> 0:36:19.000 our brightly lit cigar shaped craft the next day, but 0:36:19.120 --> 0:36:22.080 were not public with their story until it was leaked 0:36:22.080 --> 0:36:25.719 in The Boston Traveler in nineteen sixty five. This was 0:36:25.760 --> 0:36:29.800 the first widely reported UF abduction report in the United States. 0:36:30.080 --> 0:36:33.160 Here are the two factors. Fact are number one, the 0:36:33.239 --> 0:36:35.880 idea that Betty and Barney Hill were not public with 0:36:35.960 --> 0:36:39.160 their story. It's just not true. How else would Jonathan 0:36:39.280 --> 0:36:43.920 Latrell have found it? Okay, they did not actively seek publicity, 0:36:44.080 --> 0:36:46.319 but that the idea that they were not public with 0:36:46.360 --> 0:36:49.720 their story is something that people with an interest in 0:36:49.800 --> 0:36:53.840 making Betty and Barney victims have conveniently ignored. But the 0:36:53.880 --> 0:36:56.799 truth is they told their story to numerous individuals as 0:36:56.840 --> 0:37:00.319 I would, frankly, if I'd been abducted, and if you'd 0:37:00.320 --> 0:37:02.359 been at you probably tell a few people about it. 0:37:02.360 --> 0:37:05.920 They told friends, They told their family, They told some 0:37:05.960 --> 0:37:09.200 of their neighbors. They had renters who were renting above them, 0:37:09.239 --> 0:37:12.120 they told them. They told a whole bunch of their 0:37:12.200 --> 0:37:15.279 church members where they were going to church about it. 0:37:15.560 --> 0:37:18.480 They told co workers. Betty she was a caseworker for 0:37:18.520 --> 0:37:21.359 the Welfare department, Barney was at the post office. They 0:37:21.400 --> 0:37:25.120 told people about it. Plus they filed two reports as 0:37:25.120 --> 0:37:29.120 we mentioned earlier, the US Air Force and Nightcap. They 0:37:29.120 --> 0:37:32.680 were certainly out there with their story. It was ripe 0:37:32.719 --> 0:37:35.600 for the picking for a reporter. So it wasn't like, 0:37:36.080 --> 0:37:39.000 as they said, they were not public with their story. 0:37:39.200 --> 0:37:42.920 Define public, okay. In fact Air number two, it says 0:37:43.080 --> 0:37:47.400 here their story was leaked in the Boston Traveler. The 0:37:47.440 --> 0:37:50.640 Boston Traveler did not leak the story of Betty and 0:37:50.719 --> 0:37:55.960 Barney Hill. The newspaper reported it. People leaked the newspapers. 0:37:56.239 --> 0:37:58.520 They'll call up a reporter and say, hey, I got 0:37:58.520 --> 0:38:01.200 some stuff that I'm going to leak to you. But 0:38:01.280 --> 0:38:06.000 newspapers don't leak. That's not what reporters do. They report. 0:38:06.160 --> 0:38:09.320 And there was nothing untoward about what this guy had done. 0:38:09.400 --> 0:38:12.759 So anyway, I pointed that out to this state of 0:38:12.840 --> 0:38:14.799 New Hampshire and they said they're going to change the 0:38:14.840 --> 0:38:17.440 thing because of it. So I don't know, I feel done, 0:38:17.640 --> 0:38:20.360 so thank you. There are so few things, and I 0:38:20.400 --> 0:38:22.160 hope they do change it, because I do think those 0:38:22.200 --> 0:38:24.279 two things are not accurate, and if we're going to 0:38:24.320 --> 0:38:27.760 be transparent about things, we've got to be transparent about 0:38:27.880 --> 0:38:31.799 Betty and Barney. And then, of course that takes us 0:38:31.960 --> 0:38:34.919 to the big book, The Interrupted Journey, which does come 0:38:34.960 --> 0:38:39.799 out a year after Latrell's work in October of sixty six, 0:38:40.440 --> 0:38:43.520 and it becomes the definitive public text of the case, 0:38:43.880 --> 0:38:47.040 and it is based heavily on these hypnosis tapes and 0:38:47.200 --> 0:38:49.399 interviews with the two of them, so allowed to bring 0:38:49.440 --> 0:38:52.040 this all together in October of sixty six. This is 0:38:52.080 --> 0:38:55.720 all happening, and this is important because the Interrupted Journey 0:38:55.800 --> 0:38:59.480 is going to become optioned as a movie. So this 0:38:59.600 --> 0:39:02.120 is all going to be part of that story and 0:39:02.200 --> 0:39:05.600 it becomes a gigantic story in the United States. Not 0:39:05.800 --> 0:39:09.040 because of that book. First, although the book was huge 0:39:09.760 --> 0:39:12.800 because it was excerpted in Look magazine at the time, 0:39:13.400 --> 0:39:17.319 right in October fourth, October eighteenth book Club. It was 0:39:17.360 --> 0:39:20.600 in the magazine a board of Flying Saucer. I remember this, 0:39:20.920 --> 0:39:24.200 to be honest with you, print because my mother read 0:39:24.239 --> 0:39:26.399 them and she turned to me and she was like, 0:39:26.600 --> 0:39:30.759 this is very strange because suddenly again this crossed over 0:39:30.800 --> 0:39:33.839 into the mainstream. Look and life couldn't be more mainstream, 0:39:34.120 --> 0:39:37.520 right and now, because we're talking about media, this one's 0:39:37.600 --> 0:39:40.799 kind of cool. Two months after those excerpts in Look 0:39:40.880 --> 0:39:46.399 magazine and the book coming out, Barney Hill appears on 0:39:46.440 --> 0:39:50.839 to tell the truth. This is a great moment in 0:39:50.920 --> 0:39:54.440 media history. Yes, you were such a young pup, you 0:39:54.520 --> 0:39:58.239 probably had no idea about the no idea. Here's how 0:39:58.280 --> 0:40:02.200 the it's a game show. They had a celebrity panel 0:40:02.640 --> 0:40:04.919 and they would bring three people out, and they did 0:40:04.960 --> 0:40:07.120 on this one. And in fact, if people want to 0:40:07.160 --> 0:40:10.160 see it, you can go to hollywoodufos dot com, which 0:40:10.200 --> 0:40:12.480 is our site, and you can go actually look at it. 0:40:12.520 --> 0:40:15.319 But three guys come out. Another guy is black, another 0:40:15.360 --> 0:40:17.480 guy is white, and all three of them go, my 0:40:17.640 --> 0:40:20.719 name is Barney Hill. My name is Barney Hill. My 0:40:20.920 --> 0:40:23.120 name is Barney Hill. So you got to three guys 0:40:23.160 --> 0:40:26.360 stand of Barney Hill. The celebrity people ask them questions 0:40:26.640 --> 0:40:29.120 and then they vote on who they think is Barney Hill. 0:40:29.480 --> 0:40:32.440 And then at the end of it, the host says, 0:40:32.480 --> 0:40:35.560 with a real Barney Hill, please stand up. Barney Hill 0:40:35.960 --> 0:40:39.040 was picked. They said, we think he's Barney Hill. They 0:40:39.040 --> 0:40:41.439 got it right. The real Barney Hill stood up because 0:40:41.440 --> 0:40:43.239 there was an authenticity to the guy. 0:40:43.640 --> 0:40:47.720 Talk about an interrupted journey. They went from being newlyweds 0:40:47.840 --> 0:40:51.480 to having the most like you said, probably the seminal 0:40:51.520 --> 0:40:55.319 abduction case at least in this country, happened to them 0:40:55.360 --> 0:40:58.120 and play out and go over years. I think one 0:40:58.120 --> 0:41:00.000 point I want to go back to for a second 0:41:00.080 --> 0:41:02.319 and correct me if I'm wrong. But when you were 0:41:02.320 --> 0:41:04.640 making the point that they shared the story with a 0:41:04.680 --> 0:41:07.200 lot of people, the story still had a two. 0:41:07.040 --> 0:41:07.920 Hour gap in it. 0:41:08.280 --> 0:41:11.640 They remembered what had happened up until this missing time, 0:41:11.760 --> 0:41:15.000 and they remembered what had happened after. But that was 0:41:15.040 --> 0:41:17.920 the thing, the piece that It wasn't until the hypnotic 0:41:18.000 --> 0:41:22.680 regressions years later that they started to really the whole 0:41:22.719 --> 0:41:24.439 story started to bloom as it were. 0:41:24.480 --> 0:41:26.200 Well, this is another place where you got to give 0:41:26.239 --> 0:41:31.400 Jonathan Latrell his props. Okay, Boston Traveler reporter Jonathan Latrell 0:41:31.520 --> 0:41:34.960 got hold of the tapes or the transcript of the tape. 0:41:35.000 --> 0:41:38.480 Now he knew about him, and they're in his report. 0:41:38.640 --> 0:41:42.160 Oh somebody, if anybody leaked anything, it was the tapes 0:41:42.480 --> 0:41:45.560 that were leaking, and it was who knows. I don't 0:41:45.600 --> 0:41:49.160 think we know. I don't have a knowledge personally of 0:41:49.160 --> 0:41:51.480 that right now, but I know that it's in the 0:41:51.520 --> 0:41:55.120 Boston Traveler thing. So in fact, and like I said, 0:41:55.160 --> 0:41:56.440 have you ever heard those tapes? 0:41:56.600 --> 0:41:57.000 I have not. 0:41:57.560 --> 0:42:01.160 They're frightening as all f I'm sure you're a fine actor, 0:42:01.200 --> 0:42:03.880 having gone been a theater student and all that, you 0:42:03.880 --> 0:42:08.200 couldn't have faked him. They're so good. Betty's hysterically crying, 0:42:08.280 --> 0:42:12.680 He's screaming in fear. Whatever. Okay, so now we've walked 0:42:12.680 --> 0:42:16.759 this through and here comes our pivot point that in 0:42:16.840 --> 0:42:19.800 this lovely little story that's going to pivot us into 0:42:19.880 --> 0:42:22.880 the Travis Walton case. All right, to tell the truth 0:42:22.920 --> 0:42:26.960 happens in December of sixty six. Okay, nine years later 0:42:27.440 --> 0:42:30.760 they make a movie about it and air it. Okay. 0:42:31.200 --> 0:42:34.759 The movie is called The UFO Incident. It's based on 0:42:34.880 --> 0:42:37.960 optioning the book. So again Latrelle gets screwed. He should 0:42:37.960 --> 0:42:40.319 have had he was the original guy. They should have 0:42:40.600 --> 0:42:43.760 optioned his book or somebody else should, I mean, his articles. 0:42:43.920 --> 0:42:47.760 But what's interesting about this is that Barney is played 0:42:47.760 --> 0:42:52.560 by James Earl Jones, right, And James Earl Jones was 0:42:52.600 --> 0:42:56.280 the guy that became fascinated with the case and fought 0:42:56.600 --> 0:42:59.279 and he had to fight some people off to get 0:42:59.320 --> 0:43:02.200 the rights to the book. He wanted to play Barney 0:43:02.280 --> 0:43:03.520 Hill and so. 0:43:03.400 --> 0:43:05.239 He does an amazing job. 0:43:05.280 --> 0:43:09.040 He does, and Estill Parsons is Betty. And all I 0:43:09.080 --> 0:43:12.319 would say about this is, Okay, they didn't have any 0:43:12.360 --> 0:43:15.759 money for this thing. They had the rights everything inside 0:43:15.760 --> 0:43:19.360 the ship is dark by design because they had a 0:43:19.360 --> 0:43:25.759 pretty flensy set. The aliens look pretty bad, right, But 0:43:25.840 --> 0:43:29.120 what's good, as you point out, is James Earl Jones 0:43:29.160 --> 0:43:31.920 and is still Parsons are pretty good. Honestly. I watched 0:43:31.960 --> 0:43:34.919 it again a couple of nights ago, Brent. It could 0:43:34.920 --> 0:43:37.400 be a stage play. Yes. To me. 0:43:37.520 --> 0:43:41.080 The big takeaway was yes, as a riveting piece of 0:43:41.239 --> 0:43:44.759 UFO cinema, it doesn't quite hold up. I think the 0:43:44.800 --> 0:43:49.879 performances are the standouts here, But you tell me the 0:43:49.920 --> 0:43:52.560 regression scenes, which are the heart and soul of the 0:43:52.600 --> 0:43:55.480 whole movie, where they keep coming cutting in and out 0:43:55.520 --> 0:43:57.640 of those as they're trying to tell the whole story. 0:43:57.920 --> 0:44:01.480 They were using the transcripts from the actual regressions, right, 0:44:01.480 --> 0:44:04.800 That's what was being re enacted, and those, like you said, 0:44:04.840 --> 0:44:09.040 were quite harrowing, but quite well performed. Those performances were 0:44:09.160 --> 0:44:14.880 very powerful. That's the reason I would recommend the movie. 0:44:16.600 --> 0:44:20.239 And again, hollywoodufos dot com, we'll take you to a 0:44:20.320 --> 0:44:22.920 link that allows you to watch it if you want. 0:44:23.000 --> 0:44:26.520 But here's where it gets interesting, and I love this 0:44:26.560 --> 0:44:33.040 little connection. The UFO Incident airs on NBC on October twentieth, 0:44:33.239 --> 0:44:38.400 nineteen seventy five. It's a TV movie, it's not a feature. Now, 0:44:38.920 --> 0:44:42.520 in nineteen seventy five, there are only three networks. There's 0:44:42.520 --> 0:44:47.440 not even Fox. You have ABC, NBC, and CBS. So 0:44:47.560 --> 0:44:51.600 when you're watching TV at night, back in nineteen seventy five, Brint, 0:44:52.239 --> 0:44:54.840 it didn't have a lot of options. You really watched, 0:44:55.400 --> 0:44:59.000 as I've always said, the least objectionable programming. You looked 0:44:59.000 --> 0:45:01.399 at the three things that were on, and the one 0:45:01.440 --> 0:45:04.640 that sucked the least is what you watched. So even 0:45:04.680 --> 0:45:07.680 something that people didn't like got a pretty healthy number. 0:45:07.760 --> 0:45:10.879 The number for something that was shunned by America would 0:45:10.920 --> 0:45:14.360 still be bigger than most shows today. Okay, but this 0:45:14.600 --> 0:45:19.840 was popular, so many Americans saw this movie on October 0:45:19.840 --> 0:45:25.799 twentieth at nineteen seventy five. Guess what. Travis Walton is 0:45:25.880 --> 0:45:31.279 abducted on November fifth, nineteen seventy five, and if you're 0:45:31.320 --> 0:45:37.000 doing the math, that is two weeks later. Okay, Now 0:45:37.640 --> 0:45:44.960 it raises questions because back then, to just refresh everybody's memory, 0:45:45.080 --> 0:45:49.120 Travis Walton was a woodcutter, okay, and he was working 0:45:49.120 --> 0:45:51.480 on a crew I believe of six people in the 0:45:51.680 --> 0:45:56.000 Pache Sitgreaves National Forest near Hebrew, Arizona, and they would 0:45:56.040 --> 0:45:58.840 go out and I believe they were thinning wood. And 0:45:58.920 --> 0:46:01.680 one night on the way home, they see a reddish 0:46:01.760 --> 0:46:05.319 light and they go over to investigate because they're in 0:46:05.320 --> 0:46:08.000 the middle of freaking nowhere. Okay, that's how they spent 0:46:08.080 --> 0:46:12.480 their days. And there's a there's no doubt about what 0:46:12.520 --> 0:46:15.600 they say they saw. They saw a craft, a giant 0:46:15.960 --> 0:46:21.920 metallic craft hovering and Travis Walton gets out of the 0:46:21.920 --> 0:46:24.360 car to get a better look. And he goes to 0:46:24.360 --> 0:46:25.000 look at this thing. 0:46:25.239 --> 0:46:27.920 Only one he's the only one that gets Everyone else. 0:46:27.760 --> 0:46:29.920 Is in the car going, holy shit, look at this 0:46:30.480 --> 0:46:33.279 and they're all afraid. But Travis goes out to look 0:46:33.320 --> 0:46:37.319 at this thing and he gets blasted by something when 0:46:37.400 --> 0:46:40.120 he looks, and then he tries to run back to 0:46:40.160 --> 0:46:42.680 the car, but he gets blasted in the chest by 0:46:42.719 --> 0:46:45.759 something from this craft that knocks him back. According to 0:46:45.800 --> 0:46:49.480 these guys, ten to twenty feet that's a pretty healthy blast. 0:46:49.960 --> 0:46:51.480 And you know what the guys in the car do. 0:46:52.040 --> 0:46:56.040 They split, they take off. They're freaking out. They think 0:46:56.080 --> 0:46:58.120 he's dead and they're going to be dead next so 0:46:58.160 --> 0:47:01.239 they take off. They get a little ways down the road, 0:47:01.640 --> 0:47:04.040 and one of the guys on the crew says, we 0:47:04.040 --> 0:47:06.160 can't leave Travis there. We've got to go back and 0:47:06.160 --> 0:47:08.360 get him. They go back to get him and he 0:47:08.400 --> 0:47:12.840 ain't there. He's not there, And for five days, Travis 0:47:12.840 --> 0:47:18.000 Walton is missing. He's gone, and the authorities believe these 0:47:18.080 --> 0:47:22.839 five guys have killed him. They're murder suspects. It's a 0:47:22.880 --> 0:47:25.080 great freaking story. And the reason I know it's a 0:47:25.080 --> 0:47:29.720 great freaking story is I was a extremely young radio 0:47:29.840 --> 0:47:34.800 reporter on the morning show at KZLFM in Eugene, Okay, where, 0:47:35.680 --> 0:47:38.200 to be honest with it was a hippie station, and 0:47:38.800 --> 0:47:41.840 I saw this stuff coming over the Zodiac News service 0:47:42.080 --> 0:47:44.759 and I started reading it. I wasn't there to cover it, 0:47:44.800 --> 0:47:47.600 but I started reading it, and I got so much 0:47:47.920 --> 0:47:50.279 interest from people who were like, oh my, you got 0:47:50.280 --> 0:47:53.040 to tell us more about that case. Everybody was following 0:47:53.040 --> 0:47:55.560 that case because it looked like a murder case. And 0:47:55.600 --> 0:47:59.520 in the middle of this murder case, they put everybody 0:47:59.520 --> 0:48:03.040 on light it detectors. And guess what those guys passed 0:48:03.080 --> 0:48:04.239 the light detector tests. 0:48:05.280 --> 0:48:08.160 Think yes, one of them was inconclusive. 0:48:08.520 --> 0:48:11.400 Well, because that guy had a criminal record apparently, and 0:48:11.440 --> 0:48:14.880 he wasn't eager to be light detected about much of anything, 0:48:15.080 --> 0:48:18.440 but in general, they all passed light detectors christ correct. 0:48:18.880 --> 0:48:24.239 Five days later, Travis Walton shows up at least, but 0:48:24.400 --> 0:48:26.200 in the movie he's naked. I don't think he was 0:48:26.440 --> 0:48:28.200 completely naked in real life. 0:48:28.400 --> 0:48:30.279 He had lost a lot of his clothes. I think 0:48:30.280 --> 0:48:31.120 in real life though. 0:48:31.160 --> 0:48:34.279 Okay, well, well that can happen when you're abducted. So 0:48:34.760 --> 0:48:38.600 what's fascinating about this story then, and why it fits 0:48:38.600 --> 0:48:42.680 into this chicken and Egg UFO thing is why because 0:48:42.960 --> 0:48:47.520 here's a guy that disappears, and yet his friends say 0:48:47.600 --> 0:48:51.479 there was a UFO that blasted him twenty feet back, 0:48:51.520 --> 0:48:54.160 and then he disappeared, but then he shows up again. 0:48:54.640 --> 0:48:57.800 All right, Travis and his friends all said, we never 0:48:57.880 --> 0:49:01.600 saw the UFO incident. We knew nothing about that. And look, 0:49:01.680 --> 0:49:04.319 I happen to believe Travis Walton's telling the Stone truth 0:49:04.360 --> 0:49:06.520 about what happened to him, because they passed the light 0:49:06.560 --> 0:49:10.680 detector tests and Travis passed them when you see back. Okay, 0:49:10.880 --> 0:49:14.200 so that's a pretty strong thing. Plus, you got even 0:49:14.200 --> 0:49:16.480 if Travis hadn't been abducted, you would have had this 0:49:16.640 --> 0:49:19.200 many people having a sighting of a UFO at the 0:49:19.280 --> 0:49:21.480 same time, all of who passed light to it. That 0:49:21.480 --> 0:49:23.479 would have made it a great sighting on its own 0:49:23.760 --> 0:49:27.440 if he hadn't been abducted. But skeptics will say, and 0:49:27.480 --> 0:49:29.239 I have to say, I think they might have a 0:49:29.239 --> 0:49:33.520 point here, which is, at that time, you got six 0:49:33.600 --> 0:49:35.879 guys going out to cut wood all day, They're having 0:49:35.920 --> 0:49:39.600 lunch together, they're driving up together, they're driving home together. 0:49:39.920 --> 0:49:44.120 There's only three networks in America. The UFO incident is 0:49:44.160 --> 0:49:47.560 two weeks earlier. I don't believe that they never spoke 0:49:47.600 --> 0:49:50.840 about that. I'm sure that they did. It just seems 0:49:50.880 --> 0:49:53.399 logical that out of six guys, one of them saw 0:49:53.440 --> 0:49:56.320 the UFO incident. And if you're out there cutting wood, 0:49:56.360 --> 0:49:57.799 you're going to talk about it now. I don't know, 0:49:57.920 --> 0:50:00.040 do you buy that or what is your take on. 0:50:00.560 --> 0:50:03.560 The way that I think about this group of guys. 0:50:04.760 --> 0:50:08.759 I could imagine that they it wouldn't have been on 0:50:08.800 --> 0:50:12.160 their radar. They would have treated it as ridiculous, I mean, 0:50:12.200 --> 0:50:16.640 like it was just Hollywood nonsense. So I think the 0:50:16.680 --> 0:50:19.160 other side of this argument is the one that's harder 0:50:19.200 --> 0:50:22.200 to imagine, which is, if you take all of the 0:50:22.239 --> 0:50:26.200 facts that you just laid out. Then you have to say, okay, 0:50:26.280 --> 0:50:30.840 so what happened was I think in actuality it was 0:50:30.920 --> 0:50:33.440 seven guys and in the movie they reduced it to five. 0:50:34.200 --> 0:50:38.799 So anyway, but Travis and his logger friends are out 0:50:38.840 --> 0:50:42.040 there and they come something happens, and they come up 0:50:42.040 --> 0:50:45.160 with a story that they all agree on and have 0:50:45.360 --> 0:50:48.399 enough of the facts correct that they can pass all 0:50:48.440 --> 0:50:51.239 of each of them lie detector tests. That is going 0:50:51.320 --> 0:50:56.320 to then when Travis comes back, he articulates the exact 0:50:56.320 --> 0:50:59.440 same story, so that they would have worked all of 0:50:59.440 --> 0:51:02.799 this out, would have put themselves through five days of 0:51:02.840 --> 0:51:05.560 misery where they are being accused of murder or at 0:51:05.640 --> 0:51:09.759 least investigated for murder, their friends and their family or 0:51:10.000 --> 0:51:13.759 everyone in town is looking at them like villains, and 0:51:13.800 --> 0:51:17.000 that this was all something they decided to bring upon 0:51:17.080 --> 0:51:22.319 themselves to create this hoax. It just it's a lot, 0:51:22.800 --> 0:51:26.960 a lot, Like it's a lot to imagine that I 0:51:27.040 --> 0:51:29.720 have a lot of guy friends. You put us all together, 0:51:29.800 --> 0:51:32.520 we can't agree on what bar to go to, right, 0:51:32.640 --> 0:51:35.919 So the idea that you could construct this whole elaborate 0:51:36.520 --> 0:51:39.719 story and stick to all the details when there was 0:51:39.840 --> 0:51:43.120 no apparent reason, like what's the positive outcome of this. 0:51:43.600 --> 0:51:46.880 The only positive that's ever been speculated about is the 0:51:46.920 --> 0:51:51.040 fact that they were behind on their contract to clear 0:51:51.120 --> 0:51:55.160 this wood, and because they were about to default on 0:51:55.200 --> 0:51:57.800 their contract. And again I don't I'm not an expert 0:51:57.840 --> 0:52:02.200 on these specific pieces, but the theory of the skeptics 0:52:02.360 --> 0:52:05.000 was so they made up this thing so that it 0:52:05.040 --> 0:52:07.239 was an act of God that got them out of 0:52:07.280 --> 0:52:08.880 their contract situation. 0:52:08.920 --> 0:52:12.440 So on that point, when we were researching this episode, 0:52:13.040 --> 0:52:15.840 I watched an interview with Travis Walton where they talked 0:52:15.840 --> 0:52:19.720 about the discrepancies between his experience and what's in the movie. 0:52:20.360 --> 0:52:23.600 And apparently they made a much bigger point in the 0:52:23.600 --> 0:52:27.160 movie about this idea that they were behind and they 0:52:27.160 --> 0:52:29.120 were going to lose their contract. He said, no, they 0:52:29.160 --> 0:52:32.200 were doing their work, and ultimately when all of this 0:52:32.280 --> 0:52:35.080 went down, someone else was brought in to do the work. 0:52:35.120 --> 0:52:40.440 It wasn't the big dramatic reason or motivation that people 0:52:40.480 --> 0:52:42.400 have made it out to be. So I think a 0:52:42.440 --> 0:52:45.319 lot of what people are basing that theory on is 0:52:45.360 --> 0:52:47.960 the movie, not the actual experience. 0:52:47.960 --> 0:52:50.000 Well let's get to that movie. One thing I just 0:52:50.040 --> 0:52:52.279 want to say, if you're the kind of person that 0:52:52.320 --> 0:52:55.640 wants to look somebody in the eyes and see if 0:52:55.680 --> 0:52:58.480 you think they're telling the truth or not. There's a 0:52:58.520 --> 0:53:02.000 brand new documentary out called The Experience. There's full disclosure 0:53:02.080 --> 0:53:05.160 by a friend of the show, Dean Alioto, who directed 0:53:05.160 --> 0:53:07.920 it and produced it, and it covers both. It's a 0:53:07.920 --> 0:53:10.439 great refresher course on both the Betty and Barney Hill 0:53:10.480 --> 0:53:13.560 case but also the Travis Walton case. And Travis is 0:53:13.560 --> 0:53:18.840 interviewed on camera, nice clean, clear shot recent Travis tells 0:53:18.920 --> 0:53:21.160 his story. You can look him in the eyes in 0:53:21.400 --> 0:53:25.200 HD and you can assess what you think. Now. I've 0:53:25.239 --> 0:53:28.839 met Travis multiple times, I've met him at UFO conferences, 0:53:28.880 --> 0:53:32.120 I've seen him interviewed again. I'm going to go with 0:53:32.320 --> 0:53:34.600 I believe him. But now let's get to this movie. 0:53:34.680 --> 0:53:37.840 Because the movie. Let's also just put a pin in this. 0:53:37.840 --> 0:53:42.880 This is a really interesting handoff. Not often does a 0:53:43.000 --> 0:53:47.400 movie that represents an earlier abduction get made two weeks 0:53:47.480 --> 0:53:52.239 before a second abduction happens. And granted, this could all 0:53:52.280 --> 0:53:55.560 be coincidence, it could all be synchronicity, it could all 0:53:55.560 --> 0:53:59.279 be the phenomenon playing with our minds. So I'm not 0:53:59.640 --> 0:54:02.000 making excuses one way or the other. But i am 0:54:02.040 --> 0:54:05.160 pointing it out. This is the strongest case that you 0:54:05.160 --> 0:54:08.719 could imagine for people wanting I don't buy the outer 0:54:08.840 --> 0:54:13.160 limits giving Betty and Barney any idea of what that 0:54:13.200 --> 0:54:17.000 would not cause them to have their hypnotic regressions that way, 0:54:17.280 --> 0:54:21.320 But I could buy the Travis thing. Okay, now let's 0:54:21.320 --> 0:54:24.839 be clear, he's not reporting just a gray aliens take. 0:54:24.880 --> 0:54:27.400 He does report some gray aliens, but then he gets 0:54:27.400 --> 0:54:30.319 away and he ends up in a hangar where he 0:54:30.360 --> 0:54:34.440 basically sets what looks like Nordic's Yes. Right, So this 0:54:34.520 --> 0:54:38.040 isn't going to be an important thing. After this UFO 0:54:38.120 --> 0:54:41.080 incident airs a couple of quick things. A couple of 0:54:41.120 --> 0:54:44.719 years later, Close Encounters gets released, and remember that's got 0:54:44.760 --> 0:54:49.200 a great abduction in it of the kid buried Guilder. 0:54:50.080 --> 0:54:53.359 I think something like that, yes, yeah, and so that's 0:54:53.360 --> 0:54:57.160 a harrowing abduction. In nineteen eighty one, Missing Time by 0:54:57.160 --> 0:54:59.920 Bud Hopkins gets released as a book, which is a 0:55:00.080 --> 0:55:03.840 fascinating book. Travis Walton writes his own book in nineteen 0:55:03.920 --> 0:55:07.920 seventy eight, the Walton Experience that gets published. Communion, as 0:55:07.960 --> 0:55:11.279 you mentioned, is published about ten years later. That's the 0:55:11.320 --> 0:55:14.240 one where Whitley Strieber puts the picture of the gray 0:55:14.640 --> 0:55:17.960 on the cover. That gets half a million people writing 0:55:18.000 --> 0:55:21.480 him saying I've seen that too. Communion gets released as 0:55:21.480 --> 0:55:25.960 a film in nineteen eighty nine. In nineteen ninety two, 0:55:26.120 --> 0:55:30.360 CBS has a limited series called Intruders that is based 0:55:30.400 --> 0:55:35.239 on another Bud Hopkins book. So my point is, abductions 0:55:35.239 --> 0:55:38.239 are out there in the zeitgeist at this point. People 0:55:38.320 --> 0:55:40.919 are talking about these two cases that might be real, 0:55:40.960 --> 0:55:44.279 but there's also movies going around at this point, and 0:55:44.320 --> 0:55:46.120 in fact, by the way, I wrote one of them, 0:55:46.280 --> 0:55:49.480 which we've talked about in previous things. Official Denial has 0:55:49.680 --> 0:55:52.520 abductions in it. That comes out in ninety three. The 0:55:52.560 --> 0:55:54.960 other thing, though, that comes out in ninety three is 0:55:55.000 --> 0:55:58.880 a movie called Fire in the Sky, and Fire in 0:55:58.880 --> 0:56:03.239 the Sky is the story of Travis Walton. Now you've 0:56:03.280 --> 0:56:06.400 seen the movie, how would you describe the film. 0:56:06.719 --> 0:56:11.960 It's a psychological thriller. It has certainly a science fiction 0:56:12.200 --> 0:56:15.160 component to it, but just in terms of the overall 0:56:15.280 --> 0:56:18.759 feel of it, it's a psychological thriller that's more like 0:56:18.760 --> 0:56:21.120 a small town crime drama. 0:56:21.440 --> 0:56:23.080 Because that's the bulk of the movie. 0:56:23.960 --> 0:56:28.840 And so it does have that section where Travis remembers 0:56:28.960 --> 0:56:31.479 what happened to him because he has a missing time 0:56:32.000 --> 0:56:35.319 circumstance as well, and then something triggers in all of 0:56:35.320 --> 0:56:37.919 his memories of what happened up on the ship during 0:56:37.960 --> 0:56:41.040 his abduction come back. But that's actually a very small, 0:56:41.120 --> 0:56:44.320 from a minute standpoint part of the film, so everything 0:56:44.320 --> 0:56:48.040 else feels very grounded in this small town murder investigation. 0:56:48.640 --> 0:56:53.319 James Garner is the sheriff that thinks they're all murdering live. 0:56:53.440 --> 0:56:55.600 It's a great cast, by the way, talk to nice, 0:56:55.880 --> 0:57:00.240 very nice. Robert Patrick plays really it becomes his story. 0:57:00.280 --> 0:57:03.920 He's the leader of the crew since Travis Walton is missing, 0:57:03.960 --> 0:57:09.960 played by dB Sweeney. dB Sweeney, Right, okay, however, Hollywood 0:57:10.000 --> 0:57:13.680 is about to come in and create another situation where 0:57:13.719 --> 0:57:16.680 you could say, chicken and egg. Why do we believe 0:57:16.920 --> 0:57:20.560 this instead of that? All right, you are so correct. 0:57:20.840 --> 0:57:23.280 Most of the film is just a good thriller. It's 0:57:23.400 --> 0:57:26.840 very nice, okay, But at some point dB Sweeney playing 0:57:26.880 --> 0:57:31.240 Travis Walton, remembers what happened to him. He's not regressed 0:57:31.320 --> 0:57:35.440 or anything, he just remembers it. And admittedly it's not 0:57:35.520 --> 0:57:37.920 the longest thing around, but it's about a five minute 0:57:37.960 --> 0:57:42.360 sequence all right on board the ship, and it is 0:57:42.400 --> 0:57:47.120 the most harrowing abduction I anybody that wants to see 0:57:47.120 --> 0:57:50.560 that just by itself, it is a great piece of filmmaking. 0:57:50.680 --> 0:57:54.000 It's so freaking scary. He wakes up and he's got 0:57:54.000 --> 0:57:56.920 this stuff around him. He's on this ship and it's dirty, 0:57:57.240 --> 0:58:01.440 and these evil, malicious gray are pulling him through the 0:58:01.440 --> 0:58:04.200 hallway and then they put him on a table and 0:58:04.280 --> 0:58:08.320 these doctors are just nasty ass They got they don't 0:58:08.360 --> 0:58:11.840 care what he's going through. They hold him down so 0:58:11.840 --> 0:58:16.520 that with some wrapping paper weirdness, and they've got just 0:58:16.600 --> 0:58:19.600 one of his eyes open. It's very similar to that 0:58:19.680 --> 0:58:23.400 Disclosure Day. The eye and Disclosure Day. It's frightening. Okay, 0:58:23.560 --> 0:58:27.960 here's the problem. It didn't happen that way. Yeah, and 0:58:28.520 --> 0:58:30.880 I know it didn't happen that way, and so is 0:58:30.920 --> 0:58:35.960 everybody now. But here's what really happened. We told you 0:58:36.040 --> 0:58:39.480 that Travis had a much different experience. He was not 0:58:39.520 --> 0:58:42.800 being dragged through dirty hallways. He was in a clean 0:58:42.920 --> 0:58:48.040 ship basically that had some Nordics and some other saucers 0:58:48.080 --> 0:58:52.160 in it, and he had an experience. But then that 0:58:52.360 --> 0:58:57.600 was that. Okay, Tracy Tormae is the screenwriter of it was. 0:58:58.240 --> 0:59:02.080 He was passionate about this, he wrote it. I knew 0:59:02.120 --> 0:59:05.280 Tracy for years. He's passed on a few years back. 0:59:05.680 --> 0:59:10.000 Tracy a passionate guy about this topic, etc. And he 0:59:10.080 --> 0:59:12.520 tried to get it right. He hung out with Travis. 0:59:12.840 --> 0:59:16.400 They spent a lot of time together. Tracy wrote a 0:59:16.520 --> 0:59:21.120 first draft that has the abduction sequence exactly as Travis 0:59:21.200 --> 0:59:27.120 remembered it. And guess what the executives said, Yeah, I 0:59:27.360 --> 0:59:30.880 just I don't think that's going to work. That's not 0:59:31.000 --> 0:59:34.560 quite right. It's got to be scarier. And Tracy told me, 0:59:34.680 --> 0:59:38.320 and he's said this in other instances as well, that 0:59:38.400 --> 0:59:42.720 what happened is he was presented Brent with a choice. Yeah, 0:59:42.840 --> 0:59:45.040 you can refuse to do it and stand on your 0:59:45.160 --> 0:59:49.480 higher ground and morality, or will fire you and will 0:59:49.480 --> 0:59:52.480 fire you, or you can do it. And so Tracy 0:59:53.240 --> 0:59:57.400 wrote that harrowing scene. It's a brilliant piece of filmmaking, 0:59:57.440 --> 1:00:01.920 but it ain't what happened. Now. The problem I think 1:00:02.080 --> 1:00:05.480 that this reveals is there are so many movies that 1:00:05.560 --> 1:00:07.600 have been made about abductions over the years, and like 1:00:07.640 --> 1:00:10.120 I said at the beginning, we could go do an 1:00:10.240 --> 1:00:12.720 entire show and still not cover all of them. There's 1:00:12.760 --> 1:00:15.160 so many. There's found footage business that the other thing. 1:00:15.560 --> 1:00:21.000 But this is a great example of adaptation changes things 1:00:21.200 --> 1:00:24.000 when you're adapting real things, and it doesn't apply only 1:00:24.040 --> 1:00:27.440 to UFO movies. You have to adapt, you have to 1:00:27.480 --> 1:00:30.160 make a better movie out of it. The movie that 1:00:30.240 --> 1:00:33.000 I'm behind right now, the Last Battle of the World 1:00:33.040 --> 1:00:36.160 War two movie is based on a New York Times bestseller, 1:00:36.320 --> 1:00:39.280 but I've had to adapt it. And so when people 1:00:39.280 --> 1:00:41.800 see that movie in the theaters and say, but that's 1:00:41.840 --> 1:00:44.240 not exactly what happened, I'm going to say, read the 1:00:44.280 --> 1:00:47.240 book if you want to know exactly what happened. And 1:00:47.320 --> 1:00:50.240 I guess that was paramount I believe made it. That 1:00:50.360 --> 1:00:53.480 was their point of view. But it really shows because now, 1:00:53.840 --> 1:00:57.200 of course there's a whole generation of people who never 1:00:57.240 --> 1:01:01.040 heard about Travis Walton's statements, never been to a conference, 1:01:01.440 --> 1:01:04.840 never saw a documentary where he told his story, only 1:01:04.880 --> 1:01:07.200 saw fire in the sky, and they think that's what 1:01:07.320 --> 1:01:10.320 happened to him. And so my question is does that 1:01:10.440 --> 1:01:16.800 then impact other people about either faking or misremembering their 1:01:16.840 --> 1:01:18.360 own abduction experiences. 1:01:18.560 --> 1:01:21.360 I don't know what's your take, It goes back to 1:01:21.440 --> 1:01:24.880 this recurring question chicken or an egg. You think about 1:01:24.960 --> 1:01:27.600 how many people did see Fire in the Sky when 1:01:27.600 --> 1:01:30.040 it first came out or on cable since then. The 1:01:30.080 --> 1:01:33.640 movie does have a reputation, And if that's what people 1:01:33.720 --> 1:01:38.720 think an abduction experience is, then how many people have 1:01:38.840 --> 1:01:43.120 reported some version of that abduction experience in the wake 1:01:43.160 --> 1:01:44.040 of that film. 1:01:44.240 --> 1:01:45.120 Probably a lot. 1:01:45.640 --> 1:01:48.720 And yet I would argue too that there's a lot 1:01:48.720 --> 1:01:52.480 of people that have very different abduction experiences. That it's 1:01:52.480 --> 1:01:55.760 a little bit like people reporting near death experiences. 1:01:55.840 --> 1:01:56.960 They're all over the place. 1:01:57.400 --> 1:02:02.320 But I think most people's perception of abduction experiences are negative. 1:02:02.400 --> 1:02:06.120 They're scary, you're treated like an animal, you're violated. All 1:02:06.160 --> 1:02:08.280 of those things I think are the keywords that you 1:02:08.360 --> 1:02:11.080 would have for abductions. One thing that came up that 1:02:11.200 --> 1:02:15.120 I was fascinated by ask myself how many real life stories? 1:02:15.160 --> 1:02:18.400 And granted I'm maybe taking some liberties there, but Travis 1:02:18.440 --> 1:02:21.480 presented in his telling of the story, this is what happened, 1:02:21.560 --> 1:02:23.920 and as you said, lie detector tests were passed, So 1:02:24.000 --> 1:02:25.720 let's take it at face value and say it was 1:02:25.760 --> 1:02:29.560 a real life story. How many real life abduction stories 1:02:30.800 --> 1:02:33.400 after Fire in the Sky have been made into movies. 1:02:34.360 --> 1:02:37.800 I think you'll find the number is almost none, And 1:02:37.920 --> 1:02:41.840 so it raises this interesting question. The only other abduction 1:02:41.960 --> 1:02:45.480 sequence that I think most people could remember is, as 1:02:45.520 --> 1:02:47.880 you said, going back to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1:02:48.480 --> 1:02:50.640 in the context of that movie, when you're watching it 1:02:50.680 --> 1:02:53.120 and that little boy is being abducted and the mother 1:02:53.240 --> 1:02:55.440 is from her point of view, you're trying to stop 1:02:55.480 --> 1:02:58.760 these things from getting in and taking your child. It's harrowing, 1:02:59.240 --> 1:03:01.480 but at the end of the day, they're just benevolent 1:03:01.520 --> 1:03:03.640 space brothers and they bring the kid back. 1:03:03.760 --> 1:03:03.960 Right. 1:03:04.000 --> 1:03:07.800 So that's a scary abduction story, But in the bigger picture, 1:03:07.960 --> 1:03:08.520 it's okay. 1:03:09.040 --> 1:03:13.760 With a lot of abduction things made for TV and film, 1:03:14.120 --> 1:03:16.880 but they weren't based on true things. So, for example, 1:03:17.040 --> 1:03:19.400 you and I did a TV series Dark Skies based 1:03:19.440 --> 1:03:23.400 on abductions. There's abductions in my official denial, there's abductions 1:03:23.440 --> 1:03:28.400 on X Files, there's abductions in Taken, the series Spielberg did. 1:03:28.520 --> 1:03:31.120 There's a lot of abductions. There's a lot of movies 1:03:31.160 --> 1:03:35.760 about abductions as well. But again, my passion has been 1:03:36.520 --> 1:03:41.920 I believe if we are entering a disclosure world right now, 1:03:42.440 --> 1:03:46.120 that the hunger for people is going to be to 1:03:46.240 --> 1:03:52.040 see less made up stories, more stories pulled out of history, 1:03:52.320 --> 1:03:54.600 which is my point. I'm so passionate about this. 1:03:54.920 --> 1:03:57.400 Yeah, yeah, no, And that's and I think a story 1:03:57.440 --> 1:04:00.400 that has truth to it. Like you said, you watch 1:04:00.440 --> 1:04:04.600 Travis tell his story, and for me, I just I 1:04:04.640 --> 1:04:07.760 take him at face value. Maybe all of the details 1:04:07.800 --> 1:04:10.400 have gotten fuzzy over the years, but I've also seen 1:04:10.480 --> 1:04:13.280 things where over the years he's kept pretty close to 1:04:13.360 --> 1:04:16.840 his story. Being an experiencer myself, I know that when 1:04:16.920 --> 1:04:20.680 you have these details that're burned into your memory because 1:04:20.880 --> 1:04:22.640 it's in fact, you wish that you could get rid 1:04:22.640 --> 1:04:25.920 of them sometimes and you can't. So the fact that 1:04:26.120 --> 1:04:29.360 was one of the last, if not the last true 1:04:29.520 --> 1:04:33.320 story being presented to the public as an abduction. There's 1:04:33.360 --> 1:04:36.840 been many abduction cases that have come and gone since then, 1:04:37.240 --> 1:04:41.640 some very interesting and compelling, but Hollywood has not found 1:04:42.480 --> 1:04:45.160 the interest to tell any of those stories. Now, to 1:04:45.200 --> 1:04:48.480 Hollywood's defense, Fire in the Sky was not a huge success. 1:04:49.040 --> 1:04:51.600 Maybe in fact, it was too harrowing for people. Maybe 1:04:51.640 --> 1:04:54.280 that's a story people don't want to tell or don't 1:04:54.320 --> 1:04:55.240 want to experience. 1:04:55.320 --> 1:04:55.800 I don't know. 1:05:01.680 --> 1:05:03.840 Before we wrap this up, some of you may be 1:05:04.000 --> 1:05:06.960 wondering whatever happened to that Betty and Barney Hill movie 1:05:06.960 --> 1:05:10.200 that dan Aykroyd called me about in that phone message 1:05:10.240 --> 1:05:13.080 we played at the beginning of this show. Okay, it's 1:05:13.120 --> 1:05:17.240 a long story. Here's the short, short version. To start with, 1:05:17.760 --> 1:05:21.080 there was a screenplay I wrote immediately after leaving my 1:05:21.160 --> 1:05:24.920 gig as CEO of the Television Academy. And you should 1:05:24.960 --> 1:05:28.200 know that my wife Jackie helps me run my production company, 1:05:28.240 --> 1:05:31.840 Stellar Production. So she and I took that screenplay out 1:05:32.080 --> 1:05:34.760 and we found a very high level management team that 1:05:34.800 --> 1:05:38.400 wanted to produce it, all of which sounded promising until 1:05:38.440 --> 1:05:41.280 about a year into that relationship when they offered me 1:05:41.320 --> 1:05:44.280 a trade off. One of their producing clients would take 1:05:44.320 --> 1:05:46.480 it on and they were going to start with a 1:05:46.560 --> 1:05:50.200 new writer who would completely rewrite my script and probably 1:05:50.240 --> 1:05:53.840 without much input from me at all. So Jackie and 1:05:53.840 --> 1:05:57.120 I parted company with that team, and we turned down 1:05:57.160 --> 1:06:00.680 their very generous offer to fire myself from my own project. 1:06:01.400 --> 1:06:03.600 Instead of giving up, though, Jackie and I went to 1:06:03.760 --> 1:06:07.040 New Hampshire. We went to the locations in the White 1:06:07.040 --> 1:06:10.720 Mountains where the Hills had been abducted. We visited Betty 1:06:10.760 --> 1:06:13.680 and Barney's home in Portsmouth, a lot of things like that, 1:06:14.000 --> 1:06:17.200 and that's when I wrote this three part investigative series 1:06:17.480 --> 1:06:21.840 on medium called The Lost Honeymoon of Betty and Barney Hill. 1:06:21.920 --> 1:06:24.280 And at that point we were armed with the piece 1:06:24.320 --> 1:06:27.720 of IP or intellectual property, and the fact that we 1:06:27.800 --> 1:06:30.600 actually controlled it seemed like a good thing. So we 1:06:30.680 --> 1:06:33.200 made another run for it. And in the middle of 1:06:33.240 --> 1:06:36.120 all this, Dan Ackroyd and I met. He read the script, 1:06:36.360 --> 1:06:38.760 he loved it. He even wrote me a letter of 1:06:38.800 --> 1:06:42.320 intent stating that he would be very pleased to play 1:06:42.360 --> 1:06:45.160 the part of doctor Benjamin Simon. After that, we had 1:06:45.160 --> 1:06:48.720 a brief flirtation with another manager, this time an Australian 1:06:48.760 --> 1:06:52.120 who had just relocated to the US. She wanted to 1:06:52.160 --> 1:06:55.680 represent the project, but only if we changed the script 1:06:55.720 --> 1:06:58.520 in dramatic ways that would fit the way she felt 1:06:58.560 --> 1:07:01.800 about alien abductions. So, in other words, she wasn't a 1:07:01.840 --> 1:07:04.760 producer who could make it, and she wasn't a studio 1:07:04.960 --> 1:07:07.360 or a network who could buy it. But before she 1:07:07.440 --> 1:07:09.400 could even try to set it up or sell it, 1:07:09.680 --> 1:07:12.040 we would have to spend about three months doing her 1:07:12.120 --> 1:07:16.080 voluminous notes that we didn't even agree with another three 1:07:16.160 --> 1:07:19.640 second pass there. Eventually we made a new alliance with 1:07:19.760 --> 1:07:22.880 a different producer who was a very cool guy who 1:07:22.920 --> 1:07:25.920 worked his heart out. His biggest success, though, was finding 1:07:25.920 --> 1:07:29.400 a very high profile TV producer and I mean very 1:07:29.440 --> 1:07:32.200 eye profile who wanted to do it, and a buyer, 1:07:32.520 --> 1:07:35.680 a major, huge studio who wanted to make it. This 1:07:35.880 --> 1:07:39.800 felt very good to us, but they had only one 1:07:39.800 --> 1:07:43.360 condition before making an offer in order to move ahead. 1:07:43.640 --> 1:07:45.800 They said that a writer would have to take over 1:07:45.840 --> 1:07:50.360 the project and be guaranteed sole credit for the script. Now, 1:07:50.640 --> 1:07:54.840 I have always supported representation in the entertainment business, so 1:07:55.280 --> 1:07:58.880 I support people having access, but this just seemed like 1:07:58.960 --> 1:08:02.320 the wrong creative direction for a project about something as 1:08:02.360 --> 1:08:05.800 controversial as alien abduction. We had to pass on that. 1:08:06.200 --> 1:08:09.960 Jackie and I then cross developed the project from the 1:08:10.000 --> 1:08:13.400 feature version to also be a ten part limited series 1:08:13.640 --> 1:08:16.599 so that we had both our bases covered film and TV. 1:08:17.280 --> 1:08:19.800 And then we went on and attached new agents and 1:08:19.920 --> 1:08:23.600 managers and a director and a new very experienced producer 1:08:23.680 --> 1:08:26.920 to this sales effort. Things were looking good, and then 1:08:27.000 --> 1:08:30.800 because the universe apparently is a very strange place with 1:08:30.880 --> 1:08:34.439 a very strange sense of Humor. Two other high profile 1:08:34.520 --> 1:08:38.120 Betty and Barney Hill projects surfaced in the Hollywood trades, 1:08:38.200 --> 1:08:40.640 one right after the other. Now I'm not going to 1:08:40.720 --> 1:08:43.080 name these other projects, and I haven't read their scripts, 1:08:43.280 --> 1:08:45.920 but from what was written about them, it sounded like 1:08:45.960 --> 1:08:48.160 the way that they saw the Betty and Barney Hill 1:08:48.240 --> 1:08:52.360 story was very different than our own take. Those projects 1:08:52.360 --> 1:08:55.240 appeared to be skeptical, and as time has passed, I 1:08:55.240 --> 1:08:58.360 should point out nobody's made a Betty and Barney Hill 1:08:58.439 --> 1:09:03.120 movie yet, includes us, but also any other projects. So 1:09:03.240 --> 1:09:05.200 Jackie and I haven't given up, and in fact, we 1:09:05.280 --> 1:09:08.559 have new energy because our vision of the story is 1:09:08.560 --> 1:09:12.000 that Betty and Barney Hill were abducted period. We don't 1:09:12.040 --> 1:09:15.400 think they were victims of a psychological fugue state where 1:09:15.400 --> 1:09:19.160 they got their dreams confused during hypnosis. In fact, I 1:09:19.200 --> 1:09:22.320 would say, listen to those hypnosis tapes that you can 1:09:22.479 --> 1:09:26.120 find on the Internet and in documentaries, and they're enough 1:09:26.120 --> 1:09:30.680 for us that happened. And also, certainly Steven Spielberg's disclosure 1:09:30.760 --> 1:09:34.200 Day has put alien abduction back into the mainstream conversation. 1:09:34.439 --> 1:09:37.719 So I think there is room for a good, based 1:09:37.720 --> 1:09:42.080 on truth alien abduction story. So if Jackie and I 1:09:42.200 --> 1:09:45.200 are lucky enough to win the race to production. I 1:09:45.240 --> 1:09:47.599 would tell our new partners that there's one call I 1:09:47.640 --> 1:09:49.680 wanted to make right away, and it would be to 1:09:49.800 --> 1:09:52.559 Dan Ackroyd. I would want to tell him, Hey, Dan, 1:09:52.960 --> 1:09:55.760 I'm sending you the latest script and we want you 1:09:56.120 --> 1:10:01.200 to play the part of doctor Benjamin Simon. Brent. That's 1:10:01.280 --> 1:10:04.080 my Hollywood story. In brief back to. 1:10:04.080 --> 1:10:06.960 You, I think I would make the exact same creative 1:10:07.040 --> 1:10:10.000 choice that you've made. I think just being definitive, taking 1:10:10.080 --> 1:10:14.840 a stance is a completely legitimate way to tell a story. Interestingly, 1:10:15.160 --> 1:10:18.120 my belief in both of these cases comes from my 1:10:18.200 --> 1:10:21.920 own personal experience, and I think you look at the 1:10:21.960 --> 1:10:26.080 commonalities between their cases and mine. I told this on 1:10:26.120 --> 1:10:29.880 an earlier episode, but I had my own missing time gap, 1:10:30.400 --> 1:10:33.599 and it came in the wake of when John Harrington 1:10:33.640 --> 1:10:38.640 disclosed to me. And what's really fascinating about it is 1:10:38.680 --> 1:10:41.679 that I didn't realize I had a missing time gap 1:10:42.120 --> 1:10:44.719 until only a couple of years ago. And if you remember, 1:10:44.760 --> 1:10:48.000 the John Harrington story happened in nineteen eighty one, and 1:10:48.760 --> 1:10:52.720 when we were prepping for this podcast, someone said, what's 1:10:52.760 --> 1:10:55.360 it about? And I told them and I gave them 1:10:55.360 --> 1:10:58.640 a little snapshot of the John Harrington story, and at 1:10:58.640 --> 1:11:01.160 the end of it, they asked me question no one 1:11:01.200 --> 1:11:04.600 had ever asked before, which was, so, how was the 1:11:04.640 --> 1:11:05.800 rest of your trip in DC? 1:11:08.160 --> 1:11:09.000 Nothing? Zero? 1:11:09.360 --> 1:11:12.320 I don't remember one thing. I remember the night that 1:11:12.360 --> 1:11:15.040 I laid in bed after I was disclosed to and 1:11:15.080 --> 1:11:18.920 then I remember being home and going on a graduation 1:11:19.080 --> 1:11:23.280 trip that summer with vivid details, and I asked my family, 1:11:23.439 --> 1:11:27.800 and apparently we never really talked about it. Everything that 1:11:27.880 --> 1:11:30.559 I know about the trip I heard through my mom, 1:11:30.680 --> 1:11:33.600 through John's wife talking about all the great things that 1:11:33.640 --> 1:11:35.519 we did, and I just took it at face value. 1:11:36.439 --> 1:11:40.240 And now I'm as we've gone back and looked at 1:11:40.240 --> 1:11:43.360 the Betty and Barney Hill case, I'm actually sitting here 1:11:43.400 --> 1:11:47.280 thinking maybe I need to do a hypnotic regression, something 1:11:47.320 --> 1:11:50.559 that I never would have considered, to see if I 1:11:50.560 --> 1:11:54.599 can unearth that week or ten days or whatever it 1:11:54.720 --> 1:11:58.000 was that I spent in DC, and the idea and 1:11:58.040 --> 1:12:01.320 the frustration and the fact that I know it's possible 1:12:01.400 --> 1:12:04.599 to have a missing time gap when something traumatic happens 1:12:04.640 --> 1:12:07.439 to you. That's where I tend to look at both 1:12:07.479 --> 1:12:11.120 of these cases and say, something happened to them. People 1:12:11.200 --> 1:12:16.200 don't experience that level of trauma just out of their 1:12:16.240 --> 1:12:20.200 sheer imagination. Right, that would imply that I have a 1:12:20.360 --> 1:12:23.800 really scary dream and I'm traumatized to the point of 1:12:24.000 --> 1:12:27.000 not being able to work for months. Really, I've never 1:12:27.040 --> 1:12:29.640 really heard that happening before. So if it's just a 1:12:29.640 --> 1:12:33.800 product of my mind, I don't think it's that that 1:12:34.040 --> 1:12:37.320 severe that it would cause such disruption in people's lives. 1:12:37.840 --> 1:12:42.639 And both these cases, people's lives were greatly disrupted, turned 1:12:42.720 --> 1:12:46.920 upside down, lots of negative attention. And to go through 1:12:46.960 --> 1:12:50.040 that just because you invented it, I just don't buy it. 1:12:50.439 --> 1:12:53.960 And it either, although it raises a question about your 1:12:54.000 --> 1:12:56.280 missing time, which by the way, we should note would 1:12:56.280 --> 1:12:59.840 be longer than Travis Walton's five days. But it wasn't 1:13:00.360 --> 1:13:04.000 time though where you felt it and have on Earth. 1:13:04.080 --> 1:13:08.759 You weren't abducted into no craft. You just lost memory, 1:13:08.880 --> 1:13:11.000 which is a whole different kind of missing time too. 1:13:11.000 --> 1:13:13.240 It's almost like, I don't know, maybe MK ultra got 1:13:13.280 --> 1:13:15.240 hold of you and wiped your memory. I don't know. 1:13:15.400 --> 1:13:17.599 I think that with both with the Betty and Barney 1:13:17.760 --> 1:13:21.080 Hill case, that if you look at it exclusively there 1:13:21.160 --> 1:13:24.960 was based on the hypnotic regression, it seemed that the 1:13:25.000 --> 1:13:28.320 aliens did not want them to remember, right, That was 1:13:28.360 --> 1:13:32.400 actually discussed. But the idea being is that something that's 1:13:32.439 --> 1:13:36.880 so traumatic happens to you, your brain just closes it off. 1:13:36.960 --> 1:13:39.360 It doesn't allow you to remember it. That's what seemed 1:13:39.439 --> 1:13:41.840 like what happened to Travis Walton when he came back. 1:13:41.880 --> 1:13:46.080 He didn't remember what happened until something spurred his memory 1:13:46.120 --> 1:13:50.320 and all of those the remembrances came flooding back into 1:13:50.360 --> 1:13:53.760 his mind. That's what I'm talking about is, yes, I 1:13:53.880 --> 1:13:57.280 was not abducted, but something so traumatic happened to me 1:13:58.000 --> 1:14:01.640 that I shut down. My brain just stopped remembering for 1:14:01.720 --> 1:14:05.479 a period of time for no reason whatsoever. And unlike 1:14:05.560 --> 1:14:08.920 both of these stories where eventually they got their memories back, 1:14:09.040 --> 1:14:09.679 I still. 1:14:09.479 --> 1:14:10.880 Don't have those memories back. 1:14:11.520 --> 1:14:14.400 That's why I'm saying now I have to actually consider 1:14:14.439 --> 1:14:18.400 what Betty and Barney did was go and have hypnotic 1:14:18.439 --> 1:14:21.519 regression and see if I can exhume any of that 1:14:21.760 --> 1:14:23.080 time that I spent in DC. 1:14:23.920 --> 1:14:27.400 Yeah, it's anomalous. I like your conclusion that because you 1:14:27.439 --> 1:14:32.160 are an experiencer, you are certainly more open to believing 1:14:32.479 --> 1:14:34.840 the stories of an experiencer. I'm going to put a 1:14:34.880 --> 1:14:38.120 slightly different twist on it, because that's all yours, and 1:14:38.360 --> 1:14:40.760 I can't comment on that because I'm not an experiencer. 1:14:41.200 --> 1:14:43.560 I've experienced the cover up, I have not experienced the 1:14:43.600 --> 1:14:48.360 phenomenia in that respect. Okay, here's the thing we've discussed, 1:14:48.720 --> 1:14:52.160 how Fire in the Sky presents an abduction thing that 1:14:52.280 --> 1:14:59.040 is harrowing, specific, and horrific. Okay, that happened, millions of 1:14:59.080 --> 1:15:04.960 people have seen it. However, people continually report abductions and 1:15:05.080 --> 1:15:09.320 experiences right now, and to the best of my knowledge, 1:15:09.439 --> 1:15:13.800 almost none of them, almost none of them report a 1:15:13.920 --> 1:15:18.559 Travis Walton fire in the Sky kind of situation. They 1:15:18.600 --> 1:15:22.639 report something else, but they don't report being dragged through 1:15:22.680 --> 1:15:26.680 dirty spaceships and wrapped in alien saran wrap. They do 1:15:26.760 --> 1:15:29.760 not report that, to the best of my knowledge. And 1:15:30.040 --> 1:15:32.080 I think it does go back to the whole serial 1:15:32.160 --> 1:15:35.840 killer thing. Just because you've seen something doesn't make you 1:15:36.120 --> 1:15:39.839 adapt and adopt if you will, that into your psyche 1:15:40.200 --> 1:15:45.320 and then spew it back out in harrowing hypnotic sessions. 1:15:45.439 --> 1:15:48.000 That's not the way things seem to have worked at 1:15:48.000 --> 1:15:50.880 the end of the day, Betty and Barney Hill were 1:15:50.920 --> 1:15:54.400 the first people to be abducted. It really happened to them. 1:15:54.600 --> 1:15:57.000 That's why the name of my film is Missing Time. 1:15:57.040 --> 1:15:59.400 That's why I want to tell their story, and because 1:15:59.439 --> 1:16:02.280 I believe it's true. But I also believe Travis Walton 1:16:02.400 --> 1:16:05.120 is telling the truth. And I will just say a 1:16:05.200 --> 1:16:08.559 kind word about Tracy Tormey, who's not with us any longer. 1:16:08.600 --> 1:16:14.759 But this man was thorough. He understood the Travis Walton case. 1:16:15.040 --> 1:16:18.719 He talked to everybody, he spent years of his life 1:16:18.760 --> 1:16:22.040 looking into it. And Tracy was not a guy that 1:16:22.200 --> 1:16:25.840 believed everything. You could tell Tracy a story and Tracy 1:16:25.840 --> 1:16:27.439 would take me aside and go, I don't think you 1:16:27.479 --> 1:16:31.439 can believe that because blah blah blah. He would investigate things. 1:16:31.880 --> 1:16:35.479 He investigated Travis Walton. He believed him. And if my 1:16:35.560 --> 1:16:38.960 buddy Tracy believed him, I believe him. So I think 1:16:39.000 --> 1:16:42.800 these are two great cases. And if you're studying the 1:16:43.120 --> 1:16:49.000 experiencer situation today, they are the trailhead that's where we 1:16:49.160 --> 1:16:51.960 really get this thing going. And if they happened, Brent, 1:16:52.439 --> 1:16:55.439 you have to ask yourself, what does that mean. If 1:16:55.439 --> 1:16:59.120 they were the first when things were just kicking off. 1:17:00.160 --> 1:17:03.599 Where are we now? It's been sixty five years since 1:17:03.600 --> 1:17:07.680 Betty and Barney whoever was taking people and appears to 1:17:07.760 --> 1:17:10.479 still be doing it to a certain extent. What are 1:17:10.520 --> 1:17:13.280 they up to? Shouldn't they be done by now? What 1:17:13.320 --> 1:17:13.880 are they doing? 1:17:13.960 --> 1:17:16.719 Those are great questions you're asking, and I can only 1:17:16.760 --> 1:17:19.599 hope that's going to be part of this disclosure we've 1:17:19.640 --> 1:17:21.280 been promised by the administration. 1:17:22.040 --> 1:17:24.720 All Right, look, let's say good night, but also tip 1:17:24.760 --> 1:17:27.439 of the hat to Dan Ackroyd. Dan, thank you for 1:17:27.560 --> 1:17:30.839 your good graciousness and letting us play the phone message 1:17:30.840 --> 1:17:33.439 because it gives everybody a smile on their face and 1:17:33.479 --> 1:17:37.000 we appreciate everything that you have done to move this 1:17:37.080 --> 1:17:39.599 story forward. So thank you, dan Ackroyd. 1:17:40.040 --> 1:17:43.519 Yes, thank you Dan. All Right, Watch this, guys, everybody. 1:17:48.400 --> 1:17:51.519 Sound, Light and Frequency is an iHeart podcast produced by 1:17:51.560 --> 1:17:55.320 Stellar Productions. It's executive produced by Nick Johnson and for 1:17:55.400 --> 1:17:58.759 Stellar Jackie's Abel. Our show's music was written by Anna 1:17:58.800 --> 1:18:01.479 Stumf and Hamilton Life eight Houser and your hosts and 1:18:01.520 --> 1:18:05.200 executive producers are Bryce Able. That's me and Brent Friedman. 1:18:05.520 --> 1:19:00.200 Watch the Skies