Speaker 1: Be sure to listen until the very end of this
Speaker 1: final season one episode. We have a special announcement. You
Speaker 1: won't want to miss it. Last time on OBSCURUM: Invasion
Speaker 1: of the Drones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I can confirm that the drone sightings were
Speaker 2: not related to f you, Warren or the Air Force
Speaker 2: in anyway. So that would include you know, contractors or
Speaker 2: one other you know, third parties.
Speaker 3: That might be gentlemen. But a vivid n ran the
Speaker 3: electric line in he nicked the communications cable and it's
Speaker 3: pressurized and I think they said twelve minutes of the Chumberber.
Speaker 3: This all falls back on the federal government who refused
Speaker 3: to do anything.
Speaker 4: There's a narrative and it's an fa narative and as
Speaker 4: if they know everything, they're in the face. I mean,
Speaker 4: this is the way it works.
Speaker 5: A story that a UFO or UAP was in.
Speaker 6: It's not something they want to do with.
Speaker 1: There are many nights.
Speaker 7: I just wonder.
Speaker 1: Where will this story lead.
Speaker 7: I'm anxious, but.
Speaker 1: I can't worry about what might happen or the consequences
Speaker 1: of revealing the truth. My curiosity into looking for a
Speaker 1: connection between the strange sightings that occurred in Arizona in
Speaker 1: September of twenty nineteen, and the objects that began appearing
Speaker 1: over my hometown a couple months later led me to
Speaker 1: uncover a string of unexplainable encounters which seemed too related
Speaker 1: to actually be a coincidence. I was able to confirm
Speaker 1: that in the same thirty day timeframe of December twentieth,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen to January twentieth, twenty twenty, shortly after the
Speaker 1: craft first arrived in Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas, clusters of
Speaker 1: unknown objects began popping up at night in large numbers
Speaker 1: and other remote areas of the country. In the FAA
Speaker 1: was aware of it, Chapter seventeen, What's out There.
Speaker 3: My name is Marc Colotti.
Speaker 6: Last name is spelled Hla d y. I'm the sergeant
Speaker 6: with the Rice County Sheriff's Office. I've been doing this
Speaker 6: twenty eight and a half years with this department. Race
Speaker 6: County is mainly rural. We do have two towns of
Speaker 6: about twenty four thousand apiece. Northfield is in the north
Speaker 6: end of the county and ferebl Minnesota's in the central
Speaker 6: the south end of the county. I thirty five split
Speaker 6: us right and a half.
Speaker 1: In Minnesota, Sergeant Halaate of the Rice County Sheriff's Office
Speaker 1: witnessed a wild spectacle in the night sky on New
Speaker 1: Year's Eve of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 6: It was New Year's Eve, excuse me, so about six
Speaker 6: point thirty pm, dispatch gave out a report of several drones.
Speaker 6: There's a small town, a very small town, unincorporated, basically
Speaker 6: just northeast of Fairball called Cannon City, and some reports
Speaker 6: started to come in between Cannon City and Fairbell that
Speaker 6: there were several drones flying over the area.
Speaker 3: I got out to the Cannon City area.
Speaker 6: They would hover, they would move, then one of them
Speaker 6: literally went right over my head, very very slowly, and
Speaker 6: it was probably eighty to one hundred feet up, but
Speaker 6: it literally went right over the top of my head
Speaker 6: about eighty ninety feet. I was standing outside of my
Speaker 6: squad car and a small church parking lot and looking
Speaker 6: straight up. I went north on the road from this
Speaker 6: small town, straight north, and it accelerated from forty to
Speaker 6: fifty miles an hour up to oh, I bet it
Speaker 6: was eighty was outrunning me and I was doing fifty
Speaker 6: five to sixty at most.
Speaker 8: They did appear to you that these were aware that
Speaker 8: you were there, that you were doing that.
Speaker 6: One, there's no reason to be doing twenty thirty miles
Speaker 6: an hour flying around eastern Fairbau and all of a
Speaker 6: sudden slowed down to five miles an hour to pass
Speaker 6: directly over me. It was very obvious from the beginning
Speaker 6: that these drones were not being flown by line of sight,
Speaker 6: and it was obvious that these drones were being flown
Speaker 6: most likely over a cell service to receive the signals
Speaker 6: because these drones were going twenty to five, ten, fifteen miles.
Speaker 6: Was a drone I watched when when it out ran me,
Speaker 6: I stopped on the top of the hill and parked
Speaker 6: in a field entrance and I watched this drone and
Speaker 6: then it stopped and it was a ways out, but
Speaker 6: I had my binoculars and it was flashing white.
Speaker 3: And then it started to go up.
Speaker 6: And what was odd is it when it started to
Speaker 6: go up, it started.
Speaker 3: To go up slowly, but it.
Speaker 6: Kept doing it for five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. This
Speaker 6: this thing ended up being thousands of feet in the air,
Speaker 6: still flashing green and white, and I just I couldn't
Speaker 6: I couldn't figure it out. But one to two hours
Speaker 6: after the drones left our area, they showed up, or
Speaker 6: most likely the same group we don't know, showed up
Speaker 6: in Goodhue and Wabasha Counties along the Mississippi River, and
Speaker 6: they were being chased around by deputies down there, to
Speaker 6: the point where the state Patrol even sent I believe
Speaker 6: it was a helicopter down in that area, but they
Speaker 6: never even never found anything, and the drones just up
Speaker 6: and disappeared.
Speaker 1: As a seasoned investigator, Sergeant Haladi knew what needed to
Speaker 1: be done.
Speaker 6: Next, I called the FAA and Air Traffic Control, and
Speaker 6: air traffic Control took the message, and then I had
Speaker 6: an FA supervisor from Texas somewhere call me and questioned
Speaker 6: me about this. And it was interesting because I kind
Speaker 6: of got the idea that he wanted to blame it on.
Speaker 6: It was that these were planes, and I'm like, these
Speaker 6: were not planes. They were not moving the way planes move.
Speaker 6: And I told him, I said I heard one they
Speaker 6: went right over the top of me at five miles
Speaker 6: an hour. He goes, well, we don't have any record
Speaker 6: of anything. I'm like, okay, I'm just letting you know.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 6: I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm not saying they were
Speaker 6: buying to me or you know, maybe they didn't know either,
Speaker 6: but it's odd.
Speaker 3: That's all I can say.
Speaker 8: When you talked to the FAA official, did you feel
Speaker 8: like they were gonna, you know, do follow up on
Speaker 8: this and figure out what was actually going on? Oh?
Speaker 3: Absolutely not.
Speaker 6: I kind of got the idea that he wanted to
Speaker 6: be able to put these were planes so he didn't
Speaker 6: have to file a report. That is the god's honest
Speaker 6: truth of what I after getting off the phone with
Speaker 6: some I'm Mike, I think I have perturbed him more than.
Speaker 3: It was informative.
Speaker 6: What he was trying to get me to say is
Speaker 6: they were down at five hundred feet. I'm like, no,
Speaker 6: they're a hell of a lot higher than five hundred feet.
Speaker 6: I think maybe he would have had to file a
Speaker 6: report if something was above a certain point, so he
Speaker 6: wanted to get me to say it was lower.
Speaker 3: And he's like, yeah, the distance gets can make it
Speaker 3: look higher.
Speaker 6: And I'm like, okay, I've got twenty twenty vision at
Speaker 6: fifty some years old, I know what I'm looking at,
Speaker 6: and I can tell you I've watched this thing go
Speaker 6: up for twenty minutes and it's a lot higher than
Speaker 6: you're thinking it is.
Speaker 8: He never even, like you know, months later, no one
Speaker 8: ever called you to say, hey, did you ever figure
Speaker 8: that out? Or nothing at all? You had no follow up.
Speaker 3: No follow up none.
Speaker 6: I started reading about on the news about all these
Speaker 6: drones in northeastern Colorado and western Nebraska.
Speaker 3: I'm like, well, sumpthing's up? What's out there?
Speaker 2: Thank you for calling City of Algians for one to
Speaker 2: one after hours.
Speaker 5: If this is an emergency, please hang up and down nine.
Speaker 6: To one to one.
Speaker 1: After leaving a few messages, I was tipped off about
Speaker 1: a separate incident in a neighboring state.
Speaker 9: I'm a sergeant Anthony Regano and that's rig A n O.
Speaker 9: So I'm you can just go with Tony. I'm a
Speaker 9: sergeant with the Elgin Police Department in Elgin, Illinois, which
Speaker 9: is halfway between Rockford and Chicago.
Speaker 1: I sent in a Freedom of Information Act request with
Speaker 1: the department. Then I was granted access to a report
Speaker 1: Sergeant Rigano filled out.
Speaker 7: Take me back to that day, January eighth, twenty twenty.
Speaker 7: What was that day like for you?
Speaker 9: So at the time, I was a patrol sergeant, So
Speaker 9: I was a sergeant on the afternoon shift, which is
Speaker 9: about basically three pm to eleven pm. We had had
Speaker 9: a call earlier in the day. I remember it was
Speaker 9: a very cold day and it had been relatively busy.
Speaker 9: A caller said there was drones in the air over
Speaker 9: Elgin High School. As the day progressed, maybe fast forward
Speaker 9: about twenty thirty minutes, our dispatchers will routinely ask us
Speaker 9: to call up to their communications division when they have
Speaker 9: a question, or they have a call that they're not
Speaker 9: sure if they should dispatch, or they have just general questions.
Speaker 9: So I called upstairs and spoke with dispatch, and they said, hey,
Speaker 9: we have more callers in a different area now, saying
Speaker 9: that there's at least thirty drones up in the air
Speaker 9: over the area of the water treatment facility, which is
Speaker 9: kind of north of the police department, not by very much.
Speaker 5: I said, don't dispatch the call. I'll just go check
Speaker 5: on it myself.
Speaker 9: So I drove out of the police station and I
Speaker 9: went up to kind of check. Now, it was a
Speaker 9: very cold day, and we have our own drone unit
Speaker 9: here at the police department, so I'm relatively I'm not
Speaker 9: on the drone unit, but I'm relatively familiar with them.
Speaker 9: I know in cold weather they don't really fly for
Speaker 9: that long, at least not the ones. We have some
Speaker 9: cold weather batteries, and they still really don't stay up
Speaker 9: for that long. So I was kind of surprised that
Speaker 9: they were up in a different area that far away
Speaker 9: from the first dispatch.
Speaker 5: So when I got out there, there were a lot.
Speaker 9: Of them, and they were all kind of moving at
Speaker 9: the same speed in kind of in unison, and some
Speaker 9: of them were huge. I'd never personally seen a drone
Speaker 9: that big. There was probably I would say twenty of
Speaker 9: them at least that were I would estimate about.
Speaker 5: Six feet from like tip to tip.
Speaker 9: Those were kind of strange because again I don't really
Speaker 9: haven't seen anything that big before as far as a
Speaker 9: drone that's just being flown for you know, fun. And
Speaker 9: so I drove back to the police station and a
Speaker 9: couple of them broke off from the formation, flying southeast
Speaker 9: and stopped over the police station. It was kind of
Speaker 9: at that point that I reached out to the FAA.
Speaker 9: I had our dispatchers called the FAA because we have
Speaker 9: it an FAA building in Elgince.
Speaker 5: So I thought, well, maybe they know about whatever this is.
Speaker 9: And our local FAA said, we don't know anything about that.
Speaker 9: We don't show any scheduled flights, we don't show anything
Speaker 9: on our radar, we don't show anything in the air.
Speaker 9: Kind of being a police officer, my mind started to
Speaker 9: spin a little bit, and I said, well, why don't
Speaker 9: you get a hold of somebody who might be able
Speaker 9: to tell me what's going on with this?
Speaker 5: Because this is not normal.
Speaker 9: I thought, what are some high target areas in our town?
Speaker 9: So I started to kind of go to some different areas.
Speaker 9: I mean, it started at the school, a large high
Speaker 9: school in the area. Then it moved up to the
Speaker 9: water treatment facility, and then they started moving to the
Speaker 9: southeast side of town, over this huge salvage yard junkyard.
Speaker 9: There were probably thirty of them by my estimation.
Speaker 5: Just hovering.
Speaker 9: I got on the phone with a guy from the FAA,
Speaker 9: actually ironically out of Nebraska, and he was apparently the
Speaker 9: point person for this, so I spoke with him. So
Speaker 9: he said, well, see if you can drive and see
Speaker 9: if you can catch up with them. So I ended
Speaker 9: up actually following some of them into the town just
Speaker 9: east of us, which is Bartlet and I was driving
Speaker 9: about thirty thirty five miles an hour, and they were
Speaker 9: pulling away from me.
Speaker 5: That's also something I'm not really used to. I didn't know.
Speaker 9: I know drones do do that, because I actually do
Speaker 9: know somebody in my personal life who does drone racing,
Speaker 9: but those are not large drones six feet wide. The
Speaker 9: FAA guy that I was speaking to from Nebraska, he
Speaker 9: actually told me to see if I could shine my.
Speaker 5: Spotlight on one of the smaller ones.
Speaker 9: So I did at his direction, and when I did so,
Speaker 9: the lights turned off completely and it flew away.
Speaker 1: If the FAA had told police to spotlight drones, I
Speaker 1: was unaware of it.
Speaker 9: At one point, as I was leaving Bartlett, I had
Speaker 9: to stop at a two way stop sign to cross
Speaker 9: the street, and one of the drones it stopped moving
Speaker 9: and then elevated and then it lowered itself behind a tree.
Speaker 5: That's the one part that really kind of messed with
Speaker 5: me a little bit. That was a part that was
Speaker 5: the most.
Speaker 9: Responsive, I guess, other than the spotlighting, where it just
Speaker 9: kind of it was clearly why else did it stop?
Speaker 9: It knew I was, you know, it might I guess.
Speaker 9: I guess apparently must have noticed I was following it.
Speaker 9: For every one small one, there were two of the
Speaker 9: larger ones.
Speaker 5: Did you ever have any follow up from the FAA.
Speaker 7: Were they able to help you conclusively, like gather more
Speaker 7: information about this? No, I did have contact with another agent,
Speaker 7: and I did forward my report to them, and as
Speaker 7: well as the two callers I think that called it in.
Speaker 7: They said they were going to follow up and talk
Speaker 7: to them and see if they saw anything further. I
Speaker 7: certainly went on the internet and saw started reading some
Speaker 7: of the stuff about the task force forming out in
Speaker 7: Colorado and Nebraska, and some people theorizing, you know, what
Speaker 7: it may or may not be from. But no, I
Speaker 7: never got any further interactions so to speak with the
Speaker 7: FAA in regard to what it was or.
Speaker 9: Nor have I and I you know, I check every
Speaker 9: once in a while out of curiosity to see if
Speaker 9: I can google and get any answers, and to my knowledge,
Speaker 9: I have yet to see anything that really explains it.
Speaker 9: The impression I got was they said that these are
Speaker 9: very consistent sightings that were getting into these various different areas,
Speaker 9: and you know, their stance at that point was that
Speaker 9: they were just waiting any day that the military was
Speaker 9: going to tell them, Hey, that was us, don't worry
Speaker 9: about it.
Speaker 5: But they said that, you.
Speaker 9: Know, in times past where we have some strange sightings,
Speaker 9: the government's pretty quick to confirm, yeah, that was us,
Speaker 9: you know, because they don't really obviously, if they're dealing
Speaker 9: with some type of technology they don't want out there,
Speaker 9: they're not going to want it to become some big article.
Speaker 9: So I you know, he kind of seemed surprised. I
Speaker 9: would say that they have not gotten a phone call
Speaker 9: to that point indicating it was it was done. I
Speaker 9: guess the overall sense I got from them as well,
Speaker 9: we hope we just get a phone call that explains this,
Speaker 9: and to that point, we don't really know what else
Speaker 9: to point a finger at to say what it could
Speaker 9: even be.
Speaker 1: What Sergeant Ragano didn't tell me about his report was
Speaker 1: just as compelling as what he did. In the last line,
Speaker 1: he wrote that the investigations into these drones in Elgin
Speaker 1: were not even carried over to the next shift because
Speaker 1: they were dismissed by the Police Department iss UFO sidings.
Speaker 1: To my knowledge, there wasn't another agency that played a
Speaker 1: larger role in the investigation than the FAA agent Ragano's
Speaker 1: account solidified that there was high FAA confidence the sidings
Speaker 1: were not related to covert military operations. An off the
Speaker 1: cuff interview comment by then United States Transportation Secretary Elaine
Speaker 1: Chow further echoed that stance.
Speaker 10: We heard recently that there was the these covees of
Speaker 10: drones flying at night over in Nebraska, in Colorado. We
Speaker 10: don't know who they are, we don't know who they
Speaker 10: belong to, we don't know who's operating them. To this day,
Speaker 10: we do not.
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 10: The law enforce the local law enforcement initiates the action.
Speaker 10: We're very lucky nothing happened. So the local law enforcements
Speaker 10: have have stepped down, so we're not we're not actively
Speaker 10: uh investigating that because the local law enforcements stood dead.
Speaker 1: It's been over five years since I began looking into
Speaker 1: this story. With the government shooting down weird objects and
Speaker 1: the sky, Congressional UAP hearings in reports of an agency
Speaker 1: harboring and reverse engineering alien aircraft, interest in strange sightings
Speaker 1: has never been higher. I continually look to the sky,
Speaker 1: but on the ground, I've been left with a revealing
Speaker 1: web of theories, lies, and shocking truths. I'm frustrated, but
Speaker 1: hungrier than ever to connect the dots. When I travel
Speaker 1: to my hometown, I still hear accounts from locals who
Speaker 1: may be out in the tractor late one night, are
Speaker 1: coming home from a high school football game, and see
Speaker 1: lights in the sky that aren't supposed to be there,
Speaker 1: sometimes following them ever so slowly before going dark. The
Speaker 1: first few episodes of this podcast have been released, and
Speaker 1: I'm back in LA figuring out my next steps. I'm
Speaker 1: reminded of the stark differences between southern California mountains and
Speaker 1: prairies in Middle America. I'm turning right towards a beach
Speaker 1: in Malibu. It's humid but mild. The water is glistening
Speaker 1: in the sunlight. Pausing workout.
Speaker 4: Hello, Hey, Gabe, how's it going good?
Speaker 8: How are you doing?
Speaker 4: I'm doing okay, doing okay. You know, I've been listening
Speaker 4: to the podcast. I think it's great, really interesting. But
Speaker 4: I actually have something you may want to look into.
Speaker 4: You know my background, well, you know my background and
Speaker 4: covering national security for a lot of years, and I've
Speaker 4: been talking to some of my friends who are sources
Speaker 4: and who are sources and who are off the grid.
Speaker 4: You'll never hear from these people in person, but you
Speaker 4: know these aircraft or drones or whatever the hell they
Speaker 4: are that you're looking at. I can't share any more
Speaker 4: with you right now on it. I'm going to try
Speaker 4: to get some more on this, but it could be
Speaker 4: a problem. This whole thing is just crazy. This could
Speaker 4: be a real national security threat.
Speaker 1: That call in your many tips have opened new doors.
Speaker 1: The team and I are actively chasing fresh leads to
Speaker 1: document how this story continues to evolve. Reports of unidentified
Speaker 1: aircraft or popping up in other areas of the country.
Speaker 1: In late twenty twenty four, mysterious drones began appearing in
Speaker 1: the Northeast. We were on the ground investigating possible connections
Speaker 1: between those sidings and what occurred over the Midwest five
Speaker 1: years earlier, Which brings me to our special announcement. Next Tuesday,
Speaker 1: We're dropping a raw teaser of what we first experienced
Speaker 1: in New Jersey. Is the Chaos Unfolded right here on
Speaker 1: our podcast feed. Stay tuned. If you have any information
Speaker 1: surrounding the events detailed in this podcast, or have your
Speaker 1: own similar account, please visit our website at obscurumseries.com and
Speaker 1: share your story. You'll also find exclusive behind the scenes
Speaker 1: content on the site. To connect with us on social media,
Speaker 1: you can follow @obscurum_series and @gabelenners on all social platforms.
Speaker 1: OBSCURUM is produced by Imagine Entertainment and Lenners Entertainment for iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1: This series is written, hosted, and produced by Me Gabe Lenners.
Speaker 1: It's executive produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Kara Welker,
Speaker 1: Nathan Kloke, Nicki Etour and Me. Additional production by Jacob Plough.
Speaker 1: Music and sound effects courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Brand management
Speaker 1: and digital design by Labyrinth Brand Co. Video editing by
Speaker 1: Alex Semikopenko. This project was mixed and mastered by Jacob Plough.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Dan Bodanski, Josh Hiller, Keeton Storts, Bryson, Keyes,
Speaker 1: Ailey Birchfield, David Wasserman, Katrina Norvell and my family. OBSCURUM:
Speaker 1: Invasion of the Drones is available on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Speaker 1: Follow now.