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Speaker 3: Thanks in beating all right over here, I know you're
Speaker 3: short on time. I'll just get right to it. Can
Speaker 3: you paint a picture for me? Starting with that first night?
Speaker 2: I will do it.
Speaker 4: December the twenty sixth, nineteen eighty five. I had a
Speaker 4: nice day with my family, went to bed, and in
Speaker 4: the middle of the night, became aware of the fact
Speaker 4: that there were noises around me. Felt like I was
Speaker 4: in a room full of people and I was supposed
Speaker 4: to be in my bedroom alone.
Speaker 5: With my wife.
Speaker 2: It was just something wrong.
Speaker 4: I couldn't get up, couldn't rise off the bed, and
Speaker 4: then I realized I'm not on my bed. I saw
Speaker 4: these big black eyes peering at me from about two
Speaker 4: feet away.
Speaker 2: I remembered those faces, and they weren't human.
Speaker 1: This morning, I woke up, grabbed my phone before my
Speaker 1: eyes were even open. Notifications, texts alert, I should just
Speaker 1: go back to sleep, but I don't. Weather app says
Speaker 1: we're fine. The news app says we're doomed. Calendar app
Speaker 1: is already mad at me. Internal reminder, stand up, drink
Speaker 1: some water inhil for five seconds. Baks sale for seven.
Speaker 1: I need some coffee twenty three dollars to get it delivered.
Speaker 2: Sure, why not? Time to shower. Business on top, sweatpants
Speaker 2: on the bottom.
Speaker 1: I went to my office, which is also my house,
Speaker 1: which is also just my laptop. Now Zoom calls one
Speaker 1: with cameras on, one with cameras off. A few emails,
Speaker 1: a few written by me, a few written by machines.
Speaker 1: Auto reply Instagram TikTok nah, back to Instagram, Hey chat?
Speaker 1: Does this sound insane? Someone's launching a podcast, someone's quitting
Speaker 1: social media?
Speaker 2: Me too.
Speaker 1: I'll be back in an hour. Does she see my story?
Speaker 1: My iPhone tells me my screen time is concerning. Do
Speaker 1: not disturb stays on twenty four to seven. I'm in
Speaker 1: control of my own destiny. Lunchtime, nothing in the fridge.
Speaker 1: I'll just eat a big dinner. Pause to apply to
Speaker 1: a message, I'll forget the second I send it. Scroll again. Lol,
Speaker 1: is so funny. My algorithm is getting weird? Is anyone
Speaker 1: checking this stuff?
Speaker 6: Back to work?
Speaker 1: I have more tabs open than my brak and handle.
Speaker 1: I should really clean my desktop. This meeting should have
Speaker 1: been an email. This email should have been a thought.
Speaker 1: You kept to yourself, left the office which was my couch,
Speaker 1: picked up some dinner. Time for a phone call. That
Speaker 1: bartender does make a good Manhattan though. I'll have one
Speaker 1: time to go to sleep? Or should I browse Netflix
Speaker 1: for an hour? First started a movie, stopped at twelve
Speaker 1: minutes in. Now I'm annoyed and fully awake. How is
Speaker 1: it only Tuesday? I really need to go to sleep
Speaker 1: for real this time?
Speaker 6: Good night.
Speaker 1: We all have a version of this, A routine, a pattern,
Speaker 1: a loop if you're not careful, a hamster wheel with
Speaker 1: better WiFi, work, relationships, money, health, politics, algorithms deciding what
Speaker 1: we should care about today. But I do my own research,
Speaker 1: now you don't. There's always something filling the space, always, Noise, always, motion,
Speaker 1: always something new and always the same old thing. We're
Speaker 1: being told something insane. That the universe is massive, maybe
Speaker 1: even infinite, That there's planets like ours everywhere, that intelligent
Speaker 1: life elsewhere is statistically a fact. That pilots are seeing
Speaker 1: things they can't explain. That the government studies UFOs, it
Speaker 1: calls them UAPs.
Speaker 2: Now I like the first one better.
Speaker 1: That they don't know what they are, but they know
Speaker 1: they're not aliens. Wait, what disclosure didn't happen? It got
Speaker 1: pushed notifications instead, And somehow we're just bored now, one
Speaker 1: more headline, just another scroll.
Speaker 2: It's not that the question isn't big enough.
Speaker 1: It's that our brains are exhausted, even if aliens exist,
Speaker 1: even if we're not alone, even if the universe is
Speaker 1: crawling with something we can't see. Either way, my alarm
Speaker 1: set for tomorrow morning. And either way, I still have
Speaker 1: shit to do. This season isn't about asking you for
Speaker 1: a while, that questions tired and the answers are boring
Speaker 1: at this point. This season is about something bigger and stranger.
Speaker 2: It's about why one.
Speaker 1: Of the biggest revelations in human history lands like an
Speaker 1: item on a grocery list, A shrug a big whoopedee
Speaker 1: do because maybe the strangest thing now isn't what's out there,
Speaker 1: it's us.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's do this.
Speaker 1: Welcome to season two of High Strange.
Speaker 7: The US Navy is finally acknowledged that video is appearing
Speaker 7: to show UFOs flying through the air Are real? Videos
Speaker 7: are talking about? Were recording years ago by fighter pilots.
Speaker 7: Then in twenty seventeen they were made public by The
Speaker 7: New York Times.
Speaker 1: While refreshing our feeds. Something loud happened. Actually a lot
Speaker 1: of loud things happened.
Speaker 8: Images of that rotating thing captured by US Navy aircraft
Speaker 8: sensors locking in on the target like a forty foot
Speaker 8: long tic tac, maneuvering rapidly and changing direction.
Speaker 9: I never thought I'd get to the place where in now.
Speaker 9: I never thought twenty seventeen would ever happen. Then I'd
Speaker 9: be part of it? Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1: This is Leslie keen Ja helped break the big New
Speaker 1: York Time story in twenty seventeen. That was nine years ago.
Speaker 1: This interview is from twenty twenty two. At the time,
Speaker 1: it almost sounded like she was getting ahead of herself,
Speaker 1: like she was talking things up. Listening back now, it's
Speaker 1: clear she wasn't predicting things. She was tracking it.
Speaker 9: Nothing really shifting, and then all of a sudden, major
Speaker 9: shift happens. I'm waiting for the moment where they would
Speaker 9: be willing to say it's not from planet Earth, it's
Speaker 9: not made by human hands. They have not been willing
Speaker 9: to shut that door, tell the world that this is
Speaker 9: something not made by humans, which they know. They're not
Speaker 9: saying it like that. I mean, that might sound pretty
Speaker 9: weird to people, but I've been setting it for twenty
Speaker 9: two years, and I've watched the whole evolution what people
Speaker 9: are saying but they're not saying. I've gotten access to
Speaker 9: a lot of insiders. Legislation that's about to pass giving
Speaker 9: protection by the Congress two whistleblowers to be able to
Speaker 9: go before Congress and tell them what they know.
Speaker 6: Protection is for people.
Speaker 9: If there is going to be something released regarding materials
Speaker 9: that they might have parts of a crashed saucer or
Speaker 9: who knows what. These people now can reveal things that
Speaker 9: they've had to keep secret in the past.
Speaker 1: In the years that followed, everything she hinted at all
Speaker 1: started happening. Legal protections were passed, whistleblowers were cleared to testify.
Speaker 10: I don't have any evidence or proof the government has
Speaker 10: some UFO materials in their custody.
Speaker 2: But enough people from that world the.
Speaker 10: Pentagon intelligence agencies say they've heard.
Speaker 6: About this stuff.
Speaker 1: This is Brian Bender, who also helped break the massive
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen UFO story.
Speaker 10: I even asked the question in a Pentagon briefing. Some
Speaker 10: of US reporters were brought in, and my question was,
Speaker 10: are you also looking to see whether there might have
Speaker 10: been secret programs in the past, multiple layers of secrecy
Speaker 10: that might reveal things about UFOs crash materials that even
Speaker 10: people in the Pentagon today might not have any idea about.
Speaker 9: I'm just really interested in seeing what happens. I just
Speaker 9: want to watch it all happen.
Speaker 6: These are questions worth asking.
Speaker 2: And then something crazy happened.
Speaker 1: A public Congressional hearing on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.
Speaker 11: The Subcommittee Hearing on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or UAPs will
Speaker 11: come to order, welcome everyone without objection.
Speaker 2: The share may declare a recess at any time. I
Speaker 2: flew to the Capitol and was there in person.
Speaker 1: Security was tight, phones were checked, badges everywhere.
Speaker 2: The whole vibe of the room felt heavier than it
Speaker 2: should have do. I absolutely the UFOs are.
Speaker 11: Good morning and welcome to the most exciting subcommittee in
Speaker 11: Congress this week, the Subcommittee on National Security of the
Speaker 11: Border in Foreign Affairs for discussion of Unidentified Anomalist Phenomenon.
Speaker 11: I like to thank the witnesses on the panel today
Speaker 11: for sharing their stories on how they've engaged UAPs, which
Speaker 11: has brought attention to this matter.
Speaker 12: Mister Chairman, Ranking members and Congressmen, thank you. I'm happy
Speaker 12: to be here. This is an important issue and I'm
Speaker 12: grateful for your time. My name is David Charles Grush.
Speaker 1: Entered David Grush. This is when the tone took a
Speaker 1: sharp turn. This wasn't a podcaster, This wasn't some guide
Speaker 1: chasing attention.
Speaker 12: I was an intelligence officer for fourteen years. I was
Speaker 12: my agency's co lead and Unidentified Anomalist Phenomena trans Medium
Speaker 12: Object Analysis, as well as reporting to the UAP Task
Speaker 12: Force through a PPD nineteen Urgent Concern filing. I became
Speaker 12: a whistleblower following concerning reports from multiple esteems and credential
Speaker 12: current and former military and Intelligence community individuals that the
Speaker 12: US government is operating with secrecy above congressional oversights with
Speaker 12: regards to UAPs. My testimony is based on information I've
Speaker 12: been given by individuals with a long standing track record
Speaker 12: of legitimacy and service to this country.
Speaker 13: A whistleblower who formerly worked on the Defense Department's UAP
Speaker 13: Task Force, David Grutch, claims he has denied access to
Speaker 13: information on a government UFO crash retrieval program.
Speaker 12: I was informed in the course of my official duties
Speaker 12: of a multi decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program.
Speaker 5: Mister Grist, do you believe that our government is in
Speaker 5: possession of UAPs?
Speaker 12: Absolutely? Based on interviewing over forty witnesses over.
Speaker 14: Four years, did you have any personal knowledge if people
Speaker 14: had been harmed or injured in efforts to cover up
Speaker 14: or conceal these extraterrestrial technology.
Speaker 12: Yes, personally, it was very brutal and very unfortunate some
Speaker 12: of the tactics they used to hurt me, both professionally
Speaker 12: and personally.
Speaker 15: To be quite frank, have anyone been murdered that you
Speaker 15: know of or have heard of? I have to be
Speaker 15: careful asking that question. I directed people with that knowledge
Speaker 15: to the appropriate authorities. In the last couple of years,
Speaker 15: have you had incidences that have caused you to be
Speaker 15: in fear for your life for addressing these issues?
Speaker 12: Yes, personally, Okay, I just.
Speaker 10: Want everyone to note that he's coming forward in fear
Speaker 10: of his life.
Speaker 9: To put in perspective if they were really not scared
Speaker 9: about this information coming out, why would someone be intimidated
Speaker 9: like that?
Speaker 14: As a yes, government become aware of actual evidence of
Speaker 14: extra dress or otherwise unexplained forms of intelligence, And if so,
Speaker 14: when do you think this first occurred.
Speaker 12: I'll like to use the term non human outlate to
Speaker 12: denote origin, certainly previously in nineteen thirties.
Speaker 16: I'm pretty skeptical. I don't trust anything in this town,
Speaker 16: and I think that's because I'm from Missouri.
Speaker 5: You've got to show me.
Speaker 16: With that being said, there's been a lot of things
Speaker 16: that have been said, and so I want to get
Speaker 16: down to some specifics. At one point, you had said
Speaker 16: that there has been harmful activity or progressive activity. Has
Speaker 16: any of the activity been aggressive and hostile?
Speaker 12: I know of multiple colleagues of mine that got physically injured.
Speaker 16: By UAPs or by people within the federal gop cove. Okay,
Speaker 16: so there has been activity by alien or non human
Speaker 16: technology and or beings that has caused harm to humans.
Speaker 12: I can't get into the specifics in an open environment,
Speaker 12: at least the activity that I personally witnessed not to
Speaker 12: be very careful here, what I personally witnessed myself and
Speaker 12: my wife is very disturbing.
Speaker 16: My view has been that we are billions of light
Speaker 16: years away from any other system, and the concept that
Speaker 16: an alien species that's technologically advanced enough to travel billions
Speaker 16: of the light years gets here and somehow is incompetent
Speaker 16: enough to not survive Earth or crashes is something that
Speaker 16: I find a little bit far fetched. You have mentioned
Speaker 16: that there's interdimensional the potential. Could you expeand on that.
Speaker 12: I answer your first question, and young, here is a fact.
Speaker 12: What is an expert? But I will give you a
Speaker 12: theoretical framework and WEAST will work off regardless of you
Speaker 12: know your level of sentience right, you know, planes crash,
Speaker 12: cars crash, and number of sorties however high a small
Speaker 12: percentage you're going to end and you know mission failure fool,
Speaker 12: as we say in the Air Force. And then in
Speaker 12: terms of multi dimensionality, that kind of thing. The framework
Speaker 12: that I'm familiar with, for example, is something called the
Speaker 12: holographic principle. It derives itself from general relativity and Swan mechanics.
Speaker 12: If you want to imagine three objects such as yourself
Speaker 12: casting a shadow onto a two surface, that's the holographic principle.
Speaker 12: So you can be projected quasi projected from higher dimensional space.
Speaker 17: Things showing up at certain areas and disabling our capabilities,
Speaker 17: which is disheartening.
Speaker 12: And for us.
Speaker 17: I mean, like I said, it completely disabled to rate
Speaker 17: OAR in the aircraft when I try to do and
Speaker 17: the only way we could see it as passively, which
Speaker 17: is how you got that image. So I think that's
Speaker 17: a concern on what are these doing, not only how
Speaker 17: they operate, but their capabilities inside to do things like this.
Speaker 14: You've said that the.
Speaker 2: Government is a possession of potentially non human.
Speaker 18: Spacecraft based on your experience and extensive conversations with experts,
Speaker 18: do you believe our government has made contact with intelligent extraterrestrials.
Speaker 12: Something I can't discuss a bublbic setting. And do you
Speaker 12: believe we have crashed craft?
Speaker 18: Do we have the bodies of the pilots who piloted
Speaker 18: this craft.
Speaker 12: As I've stated publicly already in my New Station interview,
Speaker 12: biologics came with some of these recoveries.
Speaker 3: Yeah, where they I guess human or non human?
Speaker 5: Biologics non human.
Speaker 12: And that was the assessment of people with rect knowledge
Speaker 12: on the program I talk to that are currently still
Speaker 12: in program.
Speaker 1: This was a former intelligence officer speaking under penalty of
Speaker 1: law information was being hidden above Congressional oversight. When he
Speaker 1: said the words crash retrieval program, the room went quiet,
Speaker 1: and the questions shifted not just about what these things are,
Speaker 1: but whether people have been hurt.
Speaker 9: Congress's job is going to be to see what it
Speaker 9: can do with the information and what it can verify
Speaker 9: a lot of these raight sensitive programs. There's no paper
Speaker 9: trail over the next year or two. How is that
Speaker 9: going to play out? How many people will come forward?
Speaker 9: And will there be repercussions against them for coming forward?
Speaker 9: Under the law they're protected. You know, you just don't
Speaker 9: know what might happen to them, because certainly there are
Speaker 9: some people within the defense world who don't want people
Speaker 9: to talk about this. One of the witnesses hate trying
Speaker 9: to keep this secret. Right to have to sit on
Speaker 9: this for years and years and years, and it's changed
Speaker 9: your life, and it's caused tension and problems for you
Speaker 9: and some people have nightmares or PTSD.
Speaker 6: And just hope it works out.
Speaker 2: The government is notorious for reinventing the wheel.
Speaker 10: I've been a reporter long enough to come across a
Speaker 10: lot of stories where I'm like, why does this sound familiar?
Speaker 10: Where there might have been a program, there might have
Speaker 10: been a report, there might have been something, but it
Speaker 10: was twenty thirty years ago. It's because they tried the
Speaker 10: same damn thing twenty thirty years ago. You know, you
Speaker 10: can't discount some of that in this topic too. The
Speaker 10: guy who was in charge of that retired and didn't
Speaker 10: pass it along to the next guy or gal.
Speaker 6: It doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 10: It's going to be really hard for anyone in the
Speaker 10: government to hide the stuff anymore.
Speaker 11: In Washington, ghost like objects darted across the radar screen
Speaker 11: at the CAAA Traffic Controls and Dirett National Airport for
Speaker 11: several hours.
Speaker 2: General Sandford, Air Force Intelligence.
Speaker 11: Director confirms of the objects are not secret American weapons
Speaker 11: and reiterates the Air Force's obligation to investigate.
Speaker 2: Incredible observers of relatively incredible thing.
Speaker 1: Even if you remove aliens altogether and just look at
Speaker 1: this objectively, if even a fraction of this is true,
Speaker 1: then something unknown is interacting with humans and causing actual harm.
Speaker 1: Under oath, David Grush claimed people were physically injured, intimidated,
Speaker 1: feared for their lives. This for me, is when the
Speaker 1: whole thing stops being a belief debate. That's not a
Speaker 1: conspiracy question. That's a science problem. And science is exactly
Speaker 1: where I went next.
Speaker 2: Flying saucers have in dated off planet. The whole world
Speaker 2: is under attack, Hannant survived.
Speaker 19: I knew from the moment I was thinking anything that
Speaker 19: I wanted to be a scientists before, I guess I
Speaker 19: evenknew what a scientist was.
Speaker 2: This is Gary Nolan. He's not a UFO guy.
Speaker 1: He's a data guy, a real scientist who lives in results,
Speaker 1: measurements and what can and cannot be explained, being able.
Speaker 19: To take things and put them together in ways that
Speaker 19: people hadn't thought of before and make something new. I
Speaker 19: look for a need, I say, okay, well that's what
Speaker 19: we can't do today, and that's what we want to do.
Speaker 19: You see this, and you see that and you put
Speaker 19: it together and go, oh, I can make this tinkering
Speaker 19: Today retrospect, I generally call it the inevitable. If I
Speaker 19: were to take your blood, there's neutrophils, macrophages, and K cells.
Speaker 2: T cells, B cells.
Speaker 19: You could only look at a few cell types at
Speaker 19: a time. So the field was crying out for an
Speaker 19: ability to do more data. This guy at the University
Speaker 19: of Toronto had invented this instrument called CyTOF.
Speaker 2: His name was Scott Tanner.
Speaker 19: He was a developer of an instrument but didn't know
Speaker 19: exactly how to apply it. He came to me and said, look,
Speaker 19: I know that you're good at turning ideas into reality.
Speaker 19: Can you help me turn this into a tool for immunologists.
Speaker 19: That instrument still sits at the top of the food chain,
Speaker 19: reading multiple events per sell. But even then I was
Speaker 19: already thinking, maybe there's another way I can do something
Speaker 19: get more data. So what I had done was found
Speaker 19: a way to scale up the numbers of things you
Speaker 19: can measure and tag at the same time. Hundreds of
Speaker 19: proteins and thousands of genes at a time. Was literally
Speaker 19: a patent idea. I remember just freezing and going where
Speaker 19: the fuck, did that idea just come from boom? Like
Speaker 19: the whole idea, it felt like, was just like downloaded
Speaker 19: into my head. I mean, honest to God, who and
Speaker 19: what you think you are is a very thin sheen
Speaker 19: of consciousness across your brain, you know, the so called
Speaker 19: executive function of what you are. Meanwhile, there's all these
Speaker 19: things going on inside of your brain. They're actually running
Speaker 19: the show as a scientist. The argument is never about
Speaker 19: the conclusion. The argument is about is that data reel
Speaker 19: and was it collected correctly?
Speaker 1: When he talks about the brain, he's not speculating. One day,
Speaker 1: many years ago, Gary's life and career would take a
Speaker 1: very bizarre turn.
Speaker 19: I'm sitting in my office to a knock on the door,
Speaker 19: and I opened the door and he shook guys. There
Speaker 19: were men, guys in suits and ties, military personnel. One
Speaker 19: of them presented his credentials and said, hey, we're with
Speaker 19: the CIA, and we have a whole bunch patients that
Speaker 19: are having some problems in my office. They laid out
Speaker 19: all of these MRIs and they wanted to know whether
Speaker 19: or not I could detect in the blood any evidence
Speaker 19: of the inflammatory events.
Speaker 1: He's describing damage the MRIs didn't lie in the timelines,
Speaker 1: didn't make sense. These injuries, whatever they were, should not
Speaker 1: exist the way they do.
Speaker 19: They had white matter disease in the brain. Inarguable, they
Speaker 19: didn't have it one day, two weeks later they did
Speaker 19: something like multiple sclerosis develops over years to get to
Speaker 19: the level of what I was seeing.
Speaker 2: They didn't have it. One day, two weeks later they did.
Speaker 19: What had happened was across the military these medical events.
Speaker 19: The Army is pretty organized and the services are pretty
Speaker 19: well organized. Despite what some people often think. There is
Speaker 19: a channel for unexplained events that go up the chain
Speaker 19: for review. There are analysts who said, okay, well this
Speaker 19: is weird. We don't know what it is. And it
Speaker 19: went over into what was they called the guys who
Speaker 19: came into my office.
Speaker 6: The weird bucket.
Speaker 19: When enough things in the weird bucket started adding up,
Speaker 19: actually showing similarities, that's where I got involved. They laid
Speaker 19: out all of these MRIs. They said, some of these
Speaker 19: people said that they'd gotten close to UFOs, that they
Speaker 19: got close to a UFO.
Speaker 2: So where they told you this? Did they literally say
Speaker 2: like they came in contact with the UFO.
Speaker 19: They said, They said some of these people said that
Speaker 19: they got close to a UFO and that something about
Speaker 19: the energy general by the object had harmed them. I
Speaker 19: literally looked around. I thought, this is candid camera. What's
Speaker 19: going on?
Speaker 2: For him?
Speaker 1: It wasn't the fantastical stories. It was the actual data
Speaker 1: that's what hooked them. And once you accept that the
Speaker 1: injuries are real, even if you don't know the cause,
Speaker 1: you're forced to widen the lens. If something like this
Speaker 1: is happening, now, whatever it is, how long has it
Speaker 1: been happening.
Speaker 19: Some of the stories were pretty spectacular. I said, before
Speaker 19: I get involved, you're going to have to fly me
Speaker 19: out to meet these people face to face. I need
Speaker 19: to see their body language. I need to read what
Speaker 19: they're saying. Here's how they explained it. The harm that
Speaker 19: had come to the vast majority of them, the ones
Speaker 19: who said that they'd been close to UFOs or beings
Speaker 19: or things, the UFO events energy generate by the object
Speaker 19: had harmed them. They hooked me with the data of
Speaker 19: all of now, the probably hundreds of people that I've
Speaker 19: spoken to, including so called experiencers and even weirder things.
Speaker 6: There's a story here.
Speaker 2: That all seems to make sense.
Speaker 19: But the other thing that is pretty clear is that
Speaker 19: it's probably not one thing. There's something here that needs
Speaker 19: to be explained, and that there's a level of reality
Speaker 19: we don't appreciate. People use the word paranormal, but then
Speaker 19: you immediately think of ghosts. Immediately, yes, And I think
Speaker 19: if paranormal, all science is paranormal explained. There's something here
Speaker 19: that is interacting with us. That's my belief.
Speaker 1: Albert Einstein once said, the most important decision we make
Speaker 1: is whether we believe the universe is hostile or friendly.
Speaker 1: If you believe the universe is hostile, you move through
Speaker 1: it bracing for impact. You assume friction means danger. You
Speaker 1: read uncertainty as a warning. You protect yourself first and
Speaker 1: explain it later. If you believe the universe is friendly,
Speaker 1: you don't become naive. You become grounded. You assume that
Speaker 1: challenges are part of the terrain, not proof that you're
Speaker 1: off course. You stay open longer, you recover faster. It's
Speaker 1: not about optimism, it's about posture. A hostile universe requires
Speaker 1: constant defaul A friendly one requires responsibility. If the universe
Speaker 1: is friendly, then what you do matters. How you show
Speaker 1: up matters the way you treat people matters, not because
Speaker 1: you'll be rewarded, because you're participating in something that responds.
Speaker 1: I'd like to choose the friendly universe, not because it's comforting,
Speaker 1: but because it demands more from me. It means that
Speaker 1: when something breaks, I don't immediately assume I'm being punished.
Speaker 1: I assume there's something to learn. When things don't go
Speaker 1: my way, I don't default to blame. I look for leverage.
Speaker 1: This belief does not guarantee good outcomes, but it keeps
Speaker 1: me in the game in the future that's getting faster, louder,
Speaker 1: and more automated by the day. Staying in the game
Speaker 1: might be the most powerful choice we have left after
Speaker 1: making Season one of High Strange.
Speaker 2: I've heard some weird stories.
Speaker 1: Some people have been telling their story for decades, never changed,
Speaker 1: never backed down, stuck with the same script for nearly
Speaker 1: fifty years. Whitley Strieber has been telling this story since
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, not once, not twice, for the rest
Speaker 1: of his life. Whatever you end up thinking about his experience,
Speaker 1: the consistency is impossible to ignore. What makes his story
Speaker 1: different isn't what he claims happened. It's how physically real.
Speaker 1: It actually was.
Speaker 3: Nice to me right over here. I know you're short
Speaker 3: on time. I'll just get right to it. Can you
Speaker 3: paint a picture for me starting with that first night?
Speaker 6: I will do it.
Speaker 4: December the twenty sixth, nineteen eighty five, I had a nice.
Speaker 6: Day with my family.
Speaker 4: It was me, my wife, and our son, who was
Speaker 4: then six. Beautiful afternoon, right after Christmas. We'd had a
Speaker 4: wonderful Christmas little country house we'd bought a year before.
Speaker 6: Went to bed.
Speaker 4: And in the middle of the night became aware of
Speaker 4: the fact that there were noises around me, movement, felt
Speaker 4: like I was in a room full of people and
Speaker 4: I was supposed to be in my bedroom alone with
Speaker 4: my wife.
Speaker 6: It was just something wrong.
Speaker 2: Finally I woke up, opened my eyes.
Speaker 4: I couldn't get up, couldn't rise off the bed, Alice,
Speaker 4: I'm not wrong in my bed, I mean somewhere else.
Speaker 2: This room with an arch door and a little black
Speaker 2: window in it. It was really weird.
Speaker 9: How the hell is that?
Speaker 5: Just do somebody.
Speaker 9: Such?
Speaker 12: Somebody?
Speaker 6: I don't think I like that.
Speaker 4: I saw these big black eyes peering at me from
Speaker 4: about two feet away.
Speaker 5: It looks.
Speaker 6: It's got eyes of two eyes.
Speaker 2: With sod eyes.
Speaker 4: I found myself in a room full of what looked
Speaker 4: like gigantic insects.
Speaker 2: It was horrifying.
Speaker 19: I saw something that looked like it had a hood
Speaker 19: on it near the corner, and I am deadrew.
Speaker 2: I don't want it to be that.
Speaker 4: The head of the New York State Department of Psychiatry,
Speaker 4: doctor Donald Lyne, who he had solved many criminal cases
Speaker 4: with hypnosis, the world's best forensic hypnotist. He was the
Speaker 4: real deal.
Speaker 2: The memory began to come back under hypnosis.
Speaker 5: Pete comfortable the last state, so paying attention to my voice,
Speaker 5: but you remain the strate, the comfort Baker state.
Speaker 4: They would move very slowly and then very quickly. They
Speaker 4: were not of this world at all. That was when
Speaker 4: I thought, I'm having a nightmare.
Speaker 8: I don't want.
Speaker 4: They didn't go away, Thinking God, this is real, I
Speaker 4: became crazed. I was on a little hot and I
Speaker 4: couldn't get off of it. I couldn't move, and I
Speaker 4: kept trying to imagine my bed. I couldn't do that either.
Speaker 4: We're so vivid. It was like real life. I remembered
Speaker 4: those faces and they weren't human.
Speaker 12: It was sticking into my mind.
Speaker 6: It would make a noise like a voice.
Speaker 4: I don't know where it came from, but it was
Speaker 4: a mechanical voice clearly, and it would repeat.
Speaker 2: What can we do to help you stop screaming?
Speaker 6: I'm hearing this voice. What can we do to help
Speaker 6: you stop screaming?
Speaker 2: I can help me? Oh shit, I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: Gigantic insects very scary. They were not silly looking at all.
Speaker 2: Ever, when you were a kid, maybe watch a praying madness.
Speaker 2: How it creeps so gracefully and smoothly.
Speaker 4: Along, and then that gets a little little flyer that's after.
Speaker 4: That's how they moved. One of them was about five
Speaker 4: feet tall, the others were all very small.
Speaker 6: That showed me a needle. They're going to put it
Speaker 6: in the side of my head.
Speaker 18: To explain it.
Speaker 6: I realized then this was physical.
Speaker 5: Relax you to stay the last man.
Speaker 4: I don't remember it ending. I don't remember when it ended.
Speaker 4: I remember waking up in the morning. I thought I'd
Speaker 4: been assaulted criminally. I was sure I had been assaulted.
Speaker 4: As this became more clear in my mind, I was thinking,
Speaker 4: you're crazy, You've had some kind of psychotic break.
Speaker 6: I woke up, I felt awful. I wake up and
Speaker 6: I felt like I'd been beaten up.
Speaker 2: Tired.
Speaker 4: I was unbelievably tired. I felt dirty. I took a shower,
Speaker 4: went downstairs. My wife told me that I was acting strangely.
Speaker 4: Over the course of the next week, I really struggled
Speaker 4: with it. The memory began to come back. The more
Speaker 4: I remembered, the weirder it got. Went to my doctor.
Speaker 4: I described what I remembered. He says, what you're telling me,
Speaker 4: you think you were taking aboard a flying saucer by
Speaker 4: little men. And I thought, holy fuck, that is what
Speaker 4: I'm saying. I've gone crazy. He said, well, why aren't
Speaker 4: we do an MRI on your brain? Then we're going
Speaker 4: to do a battery of psychological tests and see where
Speaker 4: we are. By the time another week or so had passed,
Speaker 4: the pain was very significant.
Speaker 6: I want to figure out what's going on. I went
Speaker 6: back to him. That was when he said I had
Speaker 6: a rectal tear. Someone did this. I was scared to death.
Speaker 4: It was really painful. It was a very bad tear.
Speaker 4: Something has physically happened to me. Stuck this thing inside me,
Speaker 4: and I fought so much. It tore my internals. Who
Speaker 4: would be creeping into my house in the middle of
Speaker 4: the night, grabbing me and doing that. The MRI scan
Speaker 4: showed that I was under a lot of stress, but
Speaker 4: I was a normal person. It was not a haad
Speaker 4: trip at all. It was very physical. The physical injuries
Speaker 4: were real. I didn't tell anyone about this. I don't
Speaker 4: know what he thought. What do you think he thought, Well,
Speaker 4: I think he might have thought I had done some
Speaker 4: kind of hallucinogens. Something has physically happened to me.
Speaker 1: I'd like to believe we live in a friendly universe,
Speaker 1: not a safe one, not a gentle one, just friendly,
Speaker 1: because darkness, hostility, and fear are all very real. And
Speaker 1: some encounters don't leave when the night ends. They follow you,
Speaker 1: they change you, and they stay forever.
Speaker 4: About a year later, one of my neighbors came over
Speaker 4: to the house. He was a retired state trooper. He
Speaker 4: shows up and he says, Huddle, I saw that happen,
Speaker 4: and I nearly dropped my teeth. He said to me,
Speaker 4: I'm just so embarrassed, ashamed the fact that I ran.
Speaker 4: And I said to him, if you tried to help me,
Speaker 4: god knows what would have happened to you.
Speaker 14: Hi.
Speaker 1: Strange is a production by Tenderfoot TV in association with
Speaker 1: my Heart Podcasts, created, hosted, and edited by myself, Payne
Speaker 1: Lindsay executive producers or myself in Donald Albright, Editing by Mike,
Speaker 1: Cooper Skinner and myself. Original scorer by Makeup and Vanity Set,
Speaker 1: Sound design, mixing.
Speaker 2: And mastering by Cooper Skinner.
Speaker 1: Additional production by Mike Rooney, Dylan Harrington, Eric Quintana, Sean Nurney,
Speaker 1: and Meredith Steadman. Our cover art is by Polygon Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Orrin Rosenbaum and the whole team at UTA,
Speaker 1: the Nord Group, Station sixteen, and Beck Media and Marketing.
Speaker 2: Check out the show's website.
Speaker 1: At Highstrange dot com and if you're enjoying the show,
Speaker 1: please help us out by rating and reviewing the podcast
Speaker 1: and share it with your friends.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.