Gabe Lenners: They say that you have to learn from the past
Gabe Lenners: to prepare for the future. That's never been more true
Gabe Lenners: than now. Sightings of unidentified aircraft are on the rise,
Gabe Lenners: with new eyewitness accounts, congressional hearings, and US fighter pilots
Gabe Lenners: taking down four high altitude flying objects under strange circumstances.
Gabe Lenners: The quest for answers has never been greater. Tensions escalated
Gabe Lenners: in late twenty twenty four when unexplained drones began appearing
Gabe Lenners: in the New Jersey skies, sparking rumors in questions that
Gabe Lenners: no one could answer. But in late twenty nineteen, an
Gabe Lenners: equally bizarre phenomenon started unfolding over Colorado. In Nebraska, she.
Interviewee 1: Said that there were three drones that camp beside her.
Interviewee 1: One was to the right, one was directly above her,
Interviewee 1: and one was to her left, and they followed her
Interviewee 1: roughly about nine or ten miles. I think in the
Interviewee 1: movie with Tom whatever his name is, Tom Cruise with
Interviewee 1: all the.
Interviewee 1: Aliens, the world a war or whatever it is, and.
Interviewee 1: Yet it just feels like you're being locked buy these machines.
Interviewee 3: Authorities are calling it a mobile command vehicle with antennas,
Interviewee 3: And this morning there was a very active search.
Gabe Lenners: For there's one right over the top of me right now.
Gabe Lenners: It has to be about three hundred feet in the air.
Gabe Lenners: It could be looking at me.
Gabe Lenners: When they first arrived that night in late December, hovering
Gabe Lenners: over farms, I didn't know what would transpire, how it
Gabe Lenners: would all end, or if the end was actually the
Gabe Lenners: beginning of a much bigger story. My name is Gabe
Gabe Lenners: Lenners and this is OBSCURUM: Invasion of the Drones. Chapter one, Phillips County. It
Gabe Lenners: was late twenty nineteen, just days before Christmas. I was
Gabe Lenners: at the Burbank Airport ready to fly home for the holidays.
Gabe Lenners: I had originally gone to college to be a meteorologist,
Gabe Lenners: and I still love to report on a good storm. However,
Gabe Lenners: an unexpected summer job shifted my path, leading me into
Gabe Lenners: a broadcasting career as a host and producer in Los Angeles,
Gabe Lenners: working with companies like Radio Disney, ABC News in CMT.
Gabe Lenners: Like many people who moved to the city, I'm from
Gabe Lenners: somewhere else, one of those no stoplight towns you see
Gabe Lenners: from the sky while munching on pretzels or waiting for
Gabe Lenners: the flight attendant to bring you a drink. It's in
Gabe Lenners: Nebraska and called Imperial. There are two grocery stores, one
Gabe Lenners: coffee shop, and no MacDonald's. It's a place where agriculture
Gabe Lenners: drives livelihoods and people talk more about the local weather
Gabe Lenners: than the latest fashion. Dia is the closest major airport
Gabe Lenners: to western Nebraska, so when I flew in, my parents
Gabe Lenners: picked me up in Denver and we drove east. In
Gabe Lenners: this part of Colorado, there are no mountains, ski resorts,
Gabe Lenners: or cities. Instead, the area is flat with fields and
Gabe Lenners: rolling grasslands, but that time of year, everything was frozen.
Gabe Lenners: Once we traveled a couple hours in the car, we
Gabe Lenners: eventually crossed the state line. It was a couple nights
Gabe Lenners: before New Year's Eve. We were sitting in the living
Gabe Lenners: room after eating one of my mom's home cooked meals
Gabe Lenners: when we heard a knock at the door. Through the
Gabe Lenners: living room window, I could see a uniform with a
Gabe Lenners: radio flashlight and gun holstered to one side. I turned
Gabe Lenners: the porch light on and immediately recognized who it was.
Gabe Lenners: The cop has a family friend, and whenever I'm in town,
Gabe Lenners: he'll drop by and tell a funny story or crack
Gabe Lenners: a joke. He's your typical laid back small town cop.
Gabe Lenners: But that night. He stopped by late. It was after
Gabe Lenners: ten PM, and there was concern in his eyes. He
Gabe Lenners: began telling us about giant drones lighting up the night
Gabe Lenners: sky and wanted to see if we'd noticed anything weird
Gabe Lenners: near our home.
Interviewee 2: I had when I believed you had over or ya.
Gabe Lenners: Knowing I work in the entertainment industry, he thought this
Gabe Lenners: wild story may interest me as well. It had to
Gabe Lenners: be a hoax, but living in has taught me that
Gabe Lenners: fact is almost always stranger than fiction. So I grabbed
Gabe Lenners: my phone, hopped in the pickup, and headed out to investigate.
Gabe Lenners: It was eleven PM when I started to see what
Gabe Lenners: all the fuss was about. I'm canning at least one, two, three, four, five,
Gabe Lenners: six seven.
Gabe Lenners: The brightest light that looks the biggest is load to
Gabe Lenners: the ground. In access on these remote country roads could
Gabe Lenners: be a challenge, but I'm going to see how close
Gabe Lenners: I can get. I saw more lights in the sky
Gabe Lenners: than I could have imagined.
Gabe Lenners: This was no hoax. I wasn't sure what I'd seen
Gabe Lenners: that night, but I had to find out. I started
Gabe Lenners: making calls to neighbors and was told the objects were
Gabe Lenners: first spotted in Phillips County, Colorado, just over the Nebraska
Gabe Lenners: border or some aircraft were I had to be as
Gabe Lenners: big as small cars.
Interviewee 3: We've a got in the country, so lots of empty fields.
Interviewee 3: We actually lived fourteen fifteen miles from town.
Gabe Lenners: This is Sarah. She and her husband Chris were a
Gabe Lenners: couple of the first people to report these aircraft. It
Gabe Lenners: took a bit of hometown charm to get them to
Gabe Lenners: talk about what they witnessed. I've changed their names at
Gabe Lenners: their request.
Gabe Lenners: What do you remember happening on that night of December sixteenth.
Interviewee 3: My son and I were at his band concert, so
Interviewee 3: we were coming home. I would say it was probably
Interviewee 3: about nine point thirty and we were coming up our driveway,
Interviewee 3: which we have our driveways about three quarters of a
Interviewee 3: mile to our house. It's a private driveway. We were
Interviewee 3: driving up at and as we got closer to the house,
Interviewee 3: I noticed that there was a drone flying right above
Interviewee 3: the porch, the front porch. Then it actually rotated around
Interviewee 3: our house, almost looking as if it was peering in
Interviewee 3: each window of our home.
Gabe Lenners: Wow, gosh, it's so crazy.
Interviewee 3: Yeah, when it's in your window, it's different. When they
Interviewee 3: were all flying high up in the sky, that that's
Interviewee 3: one thing. But when they're intruding on your home. It's
Interviewee 3: completely different. It flew for a very long time. It
Interviewee 3: was a very high tech machine.
Gabe Lenners: What happens next to your husband gets in in his
Gabe Lenners: separate vehicles in and continues to pursue the drone.
Interviewee 3: Yeah, so he he got in his pickup when he
Interviewee 3: just followed the drone and it continued west. We just
Interviewee 3: stayed in contact with him.
Interviewee 4: So then that's when I took off chasing. And there
Interviewee 4: were several times where I was going ninety five to
Interviewee 4: one hundred and five appreciated I'd be a mile even
Interviewee 4: two miles behind this and it blew me away how
Interviewee 4: fast it could move. All of a sudden, there was
Interviewee 4: a there were two drones flying in perfect unison, probably
Interviewee 4: fifty feet apart from each other, one just a little
Interviewee 4: bit higher than the other.
Gabe Lenners: How big do you think this run was that you saw?
Interviewee 4: It had to be at least a five foot wingspan?
Gabe Lenners: You know when you talked to law enforcement, what did
Gabe Lenners: they think?
Interviewee 4: They were a ways behind me or ways of way?
Interviewee 4: And they just told me to just try to stay
Interviewee 4: with it until it landed. You know, I had a
Interviewee 4: quarter tank and I pick up and I soak off
Interviewee 4: and I'd just about use it all up, so I
Interviewee 4: just part and ship my life off and my sad
Interviewee 4: there for probably twenty minutes, waiting to see if I
Interviewee 4: saw any vehicles any were around, and never did see anybody.
Gabe Lenners: After talking with Chris, I had way more questions than answers.
Gabe Lenners: I had no idea how strange the story was going
Gabe Lenners: to become. In all honesty, strange doesn't even begin to
Gabe Lenners: describe what I was about to discover Chapter two. Their
Gabe Lenners: rumor mil All right, let's go in there DJ's bar
Gabe Lenners: and grill. The morning after first seeing the objects, I
Gabe Lenners: was restless. I'd spent most of the night scrolling through
Gabe Lenners: social media to see who else spotted the aircraft.
Gabe Lenners: How's it going?
Gabe Lenners: How are you good? I'm gonna get some coffee too.
Gabe Lenners: I'm gonna do a little.
Interviewee 2: Cream in there.
Gabe Lenners: There was one local farmer in particular I wanted to
Gabe Lenners: visit with, but before I did, I needed caffeine and
Gabe Lenners: stop by a bar to grab a cup of coffee.
Gabe Lenners: You could probably guess what the topic of conversation was about.
Interviewee 5: I think the funnest one is the fact that they
Interviewee 5: were missing a nuclear warhead.
Interviewee 6: I like that one is that what they're saying now too.
Interviewee 5: There's a few individuals that have said, well, like them
Interviewee 5: down into the yard or looked them in their house.
Interviewee 5: Someone has to be automatically or manually excuse me taking
Interviewee 5: over that control that uav for to do that.
Gabe Lenners: I hadn't heard about warheads or aliens, but I wasn't
Gabe Lenners: surprised to hear there were more wild rumors. I quickly
Gabe Lenners: grabbed my coffee, hopped in the truck, and took the
Gabe Lenners: back roads out of town. It's freezing out here today,
Gabe Lenners: literally out here in the middle of nowhere. I have
Gabe Lenners: no cell service. There's this county road and a small
Gabe Lenners: farmhouse right next to these fields, supposed to be meeting
Gabe Lenners: this guy named Tim. I'm kind of like thinking about
Gabe Lenners: how this reminds me of that movie Signs with Mel Gibson.
Gabe Lenners: If I was by myself right here at night, there's
Gabe Lenners: no lights, this could get creepy.
Gabe Lenners: O good, how are you doing?
Gabe Lenners: When I pulled up to Tim's house, I didn't know much,
Gabe Lenners: just that he and his wife may have experienced a
Gabe Lenners: few close range encounters west of Imperial. You could tell
Gabe Lenners: Tim's a family man. There were toys around the house,
Gabe Lenners: and the farm dog greeted me right when I stepped
Gabe Lenners: out of the truck. How does that make you feel
Gabe Lenners: that someone could be watching early servying what's going on?
Interviewee 6: Drug or sex trafficking and all that kind of stuff
Interviewee 6: has kind of been big news locally recently, and so we're,
Interviewee 6: you know, with kids, we don't have you know, we
Interviewee 6: don't have the police driving by every twenty minutes or anything.
Interviewee 6: And you shoot, I don't even know if I've ever
Interviewee 6: seen this sheriff drive by out here. That's that's just
Interviewee 6: the rural Nebraska that we live in.
Gabe Lenners: When Tim's wife saw the aircraft, she was worried.
Interviewee 6: Yeah, she was a lot more concern. And in case
Interviewee 6: they're trying to find people and find kids to nab,
Interviewee 6: like sex traffickers have gone extremely high tech. And the
Interviewee 6: numbers of drones, I mean, the first one reports we
Interviewee 6: heard was like, you know, six to ten, Then we
Interviewee 6: heard sixteen. Now we've heard twenty to thirty. A friend
Interviewee 6: of mine he had he said two nights ago he
Interviewee 6: had twenty flying over his house. And you know, we
Interviewee 6: had four over our house a couple of nights before that.
Gabe Lenners: Tim was now the third person Night spoken to who'd
Gabe Lenners: confirmed these drones as he described them, were flying really
Gabe Lenners: low to nearby homes.
Interviewee 6: Yeah, they were about two probably three to four hundred
Interviewee 6: feet is probably where they were. My dad flies ultra
Interviewee 6: light airplanes. They're a small aircraft, but it's you know,
Interviewee 6: a thirty foot wingspan, and it was about the same
Interviewee 6: height that Dad flies when he comes over to see
Interviewee 6: the grandkids. As they were just over the trees, about
Interviewee 6: one hundred feet over here, and it was you know,
Interviewee 6: they were up there. I mean Dad's airplanes. They're gas powered.
Interviewee 6: You can barely hear them when he's flying putting along
Interviewee 6: and those drones. Yeah, it was silent. You couldn't you
Interviewee 6: couldn't hear anything. You just saw the lights basically, and
Interviewee 6: saw them as they were headed west basically.
Gabe Lenners: Champion, Nebraska resident Dallas Baney recalled a similar description.
Interviewee 7: Well, they're quiet, but they had definite two like spotlights
Interviewee 7: coming out of the bottom of them. It was hard
Interviewee 7: to tell the shape of them because it was dark,
Interviewee 7: but you could definitely see the two spotlights coming out
Interviewee 7: of each side. And I actually started seeing several of
Interviewee 7: them just everywhere. Even the close one I could barely
Interviewee 7: make it out. But you just remember the lights and
Interviewee 7: it's not an airplane.
Gabe Lenners: Dallas is as real as they come. He's one of
Gabe Lenners: those guys you just want to go have a beer with.
Gabe Lenners: We talked in his garage, which he's converted to a
Gabe Lenners: lounge area with a hot tub and flat screen on
Gabe Lenners: the wall. When was the first time you started to
Gabe Lenners: see things appear in the sky.
Interviewee 7: Well, I was going out to actually flip Hamburgers on
Interviewee 7: the barbecue and I just looked up and I was like,
Interviewee 7: holy cow. So I'm yelling for the guys to get
Interviewee 7: out here. So I did at least have a few
Interviewee 7: people witness it with me, So I wasn't, you know,
Interviewee 7: people thinking I'm crazy. But I had some of the neighbors,
Interviewee 7: you know, they came out and they were like wow,
Interviewee 7: you know they by the time they got over there,
Interviewee 7: it was just going over the lake. The geese were
Interviewee 7: just going crazy.
Interviewee 7: They freaked out.
Interviewee 7: I mean, it just brings up more suspicion. You wonder
Interviewee 7: what these drones are doing here and why if they're
Interviewee 7: thermal imaging or I seen something the other day on
Interviewee 7: the news where a drone could actually take someone's temperature
Interviewee 7: flying over and I was just like, wow, you know,
Interviewee 7: who knows what they're doing or why they're here, but
Interviewee 7: to be that size would cost probably millions of dollars,
Interviewee 7: So it's I don't think it's someone definitely has some
Interviewee 7: money that's back in this. To me, it seemed like
Interviewee 7: they were looking for something.
Gabe Lenners: If these unidentified aircraft were searching for something and hovering
Gabe Lenners: outside the windows of folks I'd grown up with, let
Gabe Lenners: it go. One thing was for sure. There were many
Gabe Lenners: theories about what was happening in the skies over Colorado
Gabe Lenners: in Nebraska, theories that prompted more questions. Why would someone
Gabe Lenners: be flying groups of drones at night and why would
Gabe Lenners: they choose to do it here. I was driving down
Gabe Lenners: the road processing all of this when my phone rang hello,
Gabe Lenners: making a voice note. I just talked to one of
Gabe Lenners: the local authorities. He did not want to be named
Gabe Lenners: as a source, but he told me that someone on
Gabe Lenners: his team talked to the FBI, and the FBI instructed
Gabe Lenners: them to shoot one of these objects out of the
Gabe Lenners: sky if they got the chance. Coming up on Obscure
Gabe Lenners: Invasion of the drones, we were testing the ability to
Gabe Lenners: be able to tie remotely piloted vehicles to a mothership,
Gabe Lenners: and that was.
Interviewee 7: In the late ages.
Interviewee 1: We've heard that there's a missing nuke and that they're
Interviewee 1: looking for that.
Interviewee 6: With the green stuff.
Interviewee 6: I'm a little you know, I'm like, oh, what if
Interviewee 6: it's something like dangerous?
Gabe Lenners: If you have any information surrounding the events detailed in
Gabe Lenners: this podcast, or have your own similar account, please visit
Gabe Lenners: our website at obscurumseries.com and share your story. You'll also
Gabe Lenners: find exclusive behind the scenes content on the side. To
Gabe Lenners: connect with us on social media, you can follow @obscurum_series
Gabe Lenners: and @gabelenners on all social platforms. OBSCURUM is produced by
Gabe Lenners: Imagine and Lenners Entertainment for iHeartMedia. This series is written, hosted,
Gabe Lenners: and produced by Me Gabe Lenners. It's executive produced by
Gabe Lenners: Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Carl Welker, Nathan Kloke, Nicki Etour
Gabe Lenners: and Me. Additional production by Jacob Plough. Music and sound
Gabe Lenners: effects courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Brand management and digital design
Gabe Lenners: by Labyrinth Brand Co. Video editing by Alex Semikopenko. This
Gabe Lenners: project was mixed and mastered by Jacob Plough. Special thanks
Gabe Lenners: to Dan Bodansky, Josh Hiller, Keeton Storts, Bryson Keyes, Ailey Birchfield,
Gabe Lenners: David Wasserman, Katrina Norvel and my family. OBSCURUM: Invasion of
Gabe Lenners: the Drones is available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Gabe Lenners: or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Follow now.