Welcome to the UFO Think Tank Craigier with your host Alejandrol ro Kan. Some
mysterious music starts us off every week. It's great stuff from a guy named
well, a group I guess named Systematics. And this was a guy who
was a listener of the original UFO Think Tank before it became Open Minds and
then went back to UFO Think Tank. And I thank him so much for
his wonderful music. It is great. There have been several people to ask
where did you get that music? It's really cool, and I've sent them
to a couple places, although Systematics has been hard to find lately, so
I guess he's not making music anymore. But thank goodness for the music he
shared with me, because I really like it, just like I really like
you. Hello, and welcome to UFO Think Tank Radio, where we bring
you UFO news and excellent interviews regarding the UFO phenomena and all of the surrounding
topics, including alien abduction. And that's what we're talking about today with a
gentleman named Mike clelland Mike is I would call him an alien abduction blogger,
and he's a gentleman who kind of started this blog because he kind of had
his own experiences. He also was interested in the phenomena. I've seen him
for several years now at the UFO Congress and he's a really great guy,
and he's done a lot of research and he's found some similarities between abductees that
he wanted to talk about and I thought it sounded really interesting, and so
we talked to him today. So he's got a lot of very interesting things
to say. He's an illustrator by trade. And so if you go visit
his website, which I hope that you do, and in fact, that's
in the episode info if you're on the blog talk but it's called Hidden Experience
dot blog top alright, I'm sorry, Hidden experience dot blogspot dot com.
We're on blogtop radio. He's on blogspot dot com and we'll talk about this
you arel a little more later. But he has these wonderful illustrations of some
of his experiences. So how wonderful would it be to be an illustrator where
you can illustrate some of your strange experiences, especially after they happen. And
so we'll talk about those and you'll be able to go to the website and
see the pictures and see what he's talking about. And I think you will
thoroughly enjoy this discussion with Mike Clellan. I know I did. We really
just interviewed him the other day. As you may know, our interviews are
pre recorded typically most of the time, just because it's easier to do that,
you know, to get people together and I can make sure and edit
out if someone makes mistakes, fall out of their chair or something like that,
and then I can ensure that the audio quality is superior because only the
best. For UFO Think Tank listeners. Speaking of only the best, I
am getting so excited, and I keep teasing this, and I'm just gonna
tease it just for a second here. This conference that I'm cooking up for
the first weekend of October in lovely Las Vegas at the amazing Tropicana Hotel,
which has all been redone. It's like a club med in the middle of
Las Vegas, right there on the strip to have these giant pools with this
courtyard with palm trees, and you know, there's fabulous glamorous people in bikinis
and otherwise hanging out. And then of course over the palm trees you can
see the Luxore and the Mirage and the MGM. How exciting is this,
Well, this is where we're going to have I think one of the most
significant conferences in this field in a very long time. It's Cosmic Exploration Conferences
the name and I've already got like four or five PhDs lined up, I
have mainstream media. Yeah, we're going to have just an incredible time.
And we're also going to have people who are into the conventional sciences, so
for instance EXO, well exoplanets talking about these new planets that are emerging that
may house life. Also you know SETI and what they're up to, the
search for extraterrestrial intelligence, as well as just space, commercial space, a
lot of really cool space related things with UFOs involved. In fact, the
subtitle is Space, UFOs and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. In fact,
we talked about this not too long ago about the Atomic Testing Museum in Las
Vegas. I've talked with them, we're working together. They recently put up
a display about Area fifty one, and most of this display is really a
history of UFOs. So it's great if you're going to be there, and
of course you will in October, so you'll need to pass by and check
that out. We've got discounted rooms and actually this conference is going to be
much less than you're used to paying, because I want to make it.
The whole point is to try to get as many people to come in,
converse and network and meet with these conventional scientists as well as mainstream science and
media to move this whole thing forward, because there are certainly media palatable information
and events. What I mean by that is very credible stuff that even Anderson
Cooper will not be able to bulk, you know, very substantial information,
including psychic spies and extraterrestrials. What am I talking about? Actually, this
isn't something that's going to be in the conference. I'm moving on here.
This is something that is in the news, and I wrote a story on
this in the Huffington Post and you can actually find a longer piece on ufodaily
news dot com. And this is which some of you already know about remote
viewing, but what you may not know, or at least may not have
seen altogether, is the history of remote viewing and the integral or very important
part that UFOs and extraterrestrials played, meaning that remote viewers actually looked at this
sort of thing. Some of you may be lost, what the heck is
a remote viewer. Well, essentially the story, the impetus for this story
is at recently the Stanford Research Institute, which actually is now just SRII International,
their nonprofit organization, no longer affiliated with Stanford. They were affiliated with
Stanford in the seventies. However, you know, during the Vietnam protests,
SRI I was doing defense work and the student at Stanford didn't appreciate that,
I suppose, and so SRAY decided to go off on its own soon after
that. And actually about during this time, there was a scientist, a
physicist working on lasers and such. His name was Harold put Off, and
he decided to look into psychic phenomena, mostly because he read this book about
psychic phenomena in Russia. And he had a friend named Cleeve Baxter who did
some work in this arena end and there's a lot of history, oh man,
there's so much to all of this, but this is just a little
tidbit. And he was working with a gentleman named Ingo Swann who worked for
him and seemed to have some very real powerful psychic abilities. They brought him
to Sri. Harold put Off and then his partner Russell Targa at SRI,
another scientist, they started doing some experiments. Well, these experiments seemed to
be going well, and they invented this thing. Ingo Swan, I guess
coined the word remote viewing. And what this was was just sitting there and
using their psychic abilities to actually go see objects and people and places far away.
You know, that sounds pretty wild, but these SRI scientists were able
to prove to themselves that this was a real phenomena. Mister Swan was accurate
enough that something real was going on here. So the CIA got interested.
And why did they get interested because they had read the same book that Harold
put Off had read about Russia and them the Russian government getting involved with psychic
research. So they decided, well, we don't want to be behind the
gun. They started watching what Russia was doing, and then they came to
SRI to check out what they were doing. The CIA liked what they saw.
They thought NGO really did exhibit some real ability. So eventually years later,
the Army Intelligence was kind of the group that the formal group where they
decided to train some officers to learn remote viewing so that they could remote view
things for different intelligence agencies. So they did this. You actually, if
you're a listener to this show, you're more informed than most because I had
Joe mcmonagle on the show not too long well actually it's probably almost a year
ago now. But anyway, he told us all about this, and why
would he know anything about it because he was the first guy trained in the
Army to be a remote viewer. He was remote viewer zero zero one,
and so he's the guy to know, right, So he told us all
about that. Put some of the quotes from him in the story, talking
about remote viewing a UFO and one of the projects he was working with in
the Air Force. And then he talked about, you know, remote viewing
ets. He felt that he had successfully remote viewed ets and told us things
about, you know, the aliens wearing suits, that those their eyes are
not really big and black. Those are like big old glasses that are part
of this advanced suit that protects him, almost like a super advanced skin suit,
perhaps similar to something we'll wear in the future in space or elsewhere or
just at the club, you know, just to be cool. So this
is really cool. So I wrote this up because I thought it was important
for the public to know, as I'm sure some of you. Ingo Swan,
by the way, wrote a book is Autobiography, and he talked about
how he remote viewed the dark side of the Moon and saw structures and aliens
and things there as well. So I wrote about this, and I wrote
it up for the Huffington Posts, and then I wrote a little longer piece
with some pictures and put that on ufodailynews dot com because really they like the
Huffington Post box to be short and concise, to really, you know,
because there's so much information. Some people say, oh, everybody's add I
don't know about that, maybe a little bit, but it's also a I
think one of the big factors is that there's a lot of information being thrown
at us constantly, and it's hard to keep up with all that information.
And we want to we want to know what's going on, and we want
info, info, info, infost So you can't always spend a whole lot
of time on one piece. So that's why I think we need a lot
of information. You got to keep those things short, and people appreciate the
shorter, concise things, and if they want to see more, they can
go to Ufodailynews dot com. So anyway, that's what that's all about.
So hopefully that'll make a little bit of a buzz and you'll see that around.
So that's some fun news. Also in the news, Robert Kolb,
who I told you about, the great new writer for UFO Daily News,
he wrote a little beast on the Sun and the SOHO imager. It's just
seeing NASA has to observe the Sun and there was kind of this little streak
in there and that kind of made the news people thinking that perhaps that with
the UFO some people are saying and the NASA experts are saying that it's just
a camera artifact, that this has previously happened when cosmic rays strike the camera,
and you know, I don't know, it kind of looks like that.
It doesn't look like a structure, but who knows. I could be
wrong. Anyway, Robert Cole wrote a little bit about that with a link
to some other stories. You could see that. Also. I think I
talked about this, but I wrote a little piece up so you can get
more on this. But the UFOs examined on US News and World Report exactly
what we're trying to do with this conference. Talk about space, talk about
space science, and fit UFOs into this because that's where it belongs and it
belongs to be taken serious. If they can take Steddi serious, they can
take this serious because there are serious people with great research, as we know,
examining the UFO mystery. This UFO or this US News and World Report
special edition is called Mysteries of Space and it talks about UFOs. My good
friend Leslie Kane was interviewed and she's in here. She's the one who wrote
the book UFOs. Generals, pilots and government officials go on the record.
Wouldn't it be cool to see her at that conference with all of these other
people she is. She's gonna be there, So that's one of the people
who's going to be speaking, along with a these other scientists and such.
This is going to be great, guys. I'm just so excited. I
hope to see you there because it's going to be a lot of fun.
I put a lot of work into it. This place is beautiful anyway.
How cool is this that the US News and World Report took the subject serious?
In fact, on the front cover they have in this red little peki
sect sticks out, you know when you have it in the Iraq. Says
why UFOs are dangerous because people say, you know that there's no defense interest
when it comes to UFOs, that there's no danger posed. And some people
such as Nick Pope Poo investigated UFOs for the Ministry of Defense, disagree.
If we've got things flying around in the sky, we don't know what they
are, they're flying fast here and there, doesn't that pose some sort of
danger at least shouldn't that be something that we look seriously into. Of course,
the argument is and perhaps, and I think some people argue that,
well, the Air Force knows about them. They believe they're there, but
they haven't heard anybody, so that's why they're not concerned. Granted, okay,
that could be. However, still isn't it something that we should keep
an eye on, especially because it's something we don't control and we don't know
what could happen. So that's the angle that's approached Usually there not necessarily that
we need to fear an invasion, although of course there's people who believe that
as well. Other stories that are out there. I'm going to write one
and you can see it a little bit out here about these UFOs over Cyprus,
and there's a video out there of these lights over Cyprus. Actually,
Robert Cole, this great writer for UFA Daily News dot com, he wrote
a story about Cyprus and sightings that have happened over there recently. So I'm
gonna be posting that tomorrow. That's really cool. You'll want to check that
out tomorrow. However, remember you can see these stories in the UFO news
feed on the website, and you can go and see this video and see
what you think just kind of these white lights over Cyprus. There's another story
on did a UFO land on Canuck Chase in Staffordshire. Of course, this
is across the waters in England. And this is a case that supposedly happened
in nineteen sixty four. It was written in a book recently where a USO
Navy third class Petty Officer Brannigan said that he saw a UFO crash and some
bodies be collected from there, and this was written in a book. There's
another witness. He says he took a picture of this incident, but his
camera was then taken away and so a mystery. Did this really happen?
Who knows? So I guess allegedly this a triangular shaped craft. So you
can read more about that was that was in the Sunday Mercury, an English
paper, the Daily Mail. You know those guys, they're always up to
something. Lithuania. They had posted a story with some pictures of a ufo.
Really it's just a light in the skies and they say, you know,
it looks like a cop car and the sky a police car and the
sky with the lights all changing and flickering. Not a whole lot about the
sighting is in here, just that it lasted four minutes and these people were
really shocked by it. But short story. Then it goes into the Soho
Sun story mostly, but that's in the Daily Mail also the Huffington Post.
Huffington Post rocks. I gotta tell you how awesome these guys are, and
how awesome Lee Spiegel is. And he's got another story about triangle shaped UFOs
over the United States, England and Australia, and so he's of course these
are made a big hit and they were called Dorito shaped objects. But he
wrote a story about some triangular UFOs that have been spotted and were filmed lately,
including one over London in April, a couple of them actually in April,
one in Missouri, another one in Australia. So he's got a story
on the Huffington Post all about these sightings. And speaking of Lee, everybody's
heard of or may remember Ripley's believe it or not. Lee actually is on
their radio show quite a bit, and they have this website because they're still
around. You can check out their website just Ripley's dot com. But they
wrote a story about Lee Spiegel winning UFO Researcher of the Year at the UFO
Congress. How cool is that? So they had that on their page with
the picture of Lee. And so that's some of what's going on in the
news. Remember you can always keep up with the latest and greatest in UFO
news at Ufodailynews dot com and the UFO newsfeed area, which is actually also
the Twitter feed. If you want to be updated throughout the day, you
know, you can join the Twitter and be updated. I also have the
Paranormal Reporter one that's a Twitter feed with all paranormal news, and then the
UFO Daily News. We mostly are strictly UFO News. So that's some of
what's going on out there, exciting stuff people. But without further ado,
I really want to get into this interview with Mike Clellan because he's got a
lot of really interesting things to say. Hello. I'm very happy to have
Mike Clellan on the line with me. Hello Mike, Hello, Elandra,
how are you great? And you know you contacted me recently and we have
been conversing, but I certainly do remember you from the UFO Congress is the
last few years? Good good, you know it's I've made an effort to
go to that that conference in particular, mostly just because the length of time.
It's one of the longer conferences. And I just find that just interacting
with the people on a day to day basis, you know, less so
sitting in the audience and listening to the speakers give a presentation, but more
so interacting with the people who attend. I just find that really rewarding.
I get a lot out from that. I get a lot back from that.
I got to do a lot of networking and getting to talk to people
one on one. It's nice to meet people maybe you've talked to online or
I have heard about and at the same time, it's nice to meet people
who are, you know, there for the same reasons that they just need
that, uh, I guess sort of kinship in a way. And uh
and so yeah, so I definitely benefit greatly from from my uh my week
long pilgrimage every year down there. Yeah, well, one day, one
time, I hope to one day just be kind of a someone to go
and experience a conference instead of having to work. I'm I don't think I've
been to one where I haven't had to really work a lot, and so
they're usually pretty busy and hectic for me. So one day, yes,
And and when you're an attendee, one of the nice things you can do,
and I did it more than once, is I just went out under
the lawn there and I laid down on the grass and and you know,
took a short nap. So that was very nice, you know, coming
from I was coming from Idaho, where you can't quite do that. In
February mm hmm. All right, So getting into your interests in all of
this, you, before you began sharing your experiences, which you do now,
and we'll certainly get into that, you began to kind of be interested
in abductions and reading that material, and you've really kind of been able to
see some similarities in people's experiences. Well, the abduction lore is what has
fascinated me over the last oh, I will say, over twenty years now,
since you know, just shortly after the publication of Communion. Now,
that book did not resonate with me initially when I first saw it. I
did remember thinking it was very curious that on every single page of that book
it did say a true story, which I did notice that I didn't read
the book until I don't think nineteen ninety two. But yeah, I had
some experiences in my youth that I could always tell about. I could tell
them, you know, around campfire, around at dinner table, and I
could tell them in sort of a way that that I could just say,
Oh, isn't this interesting. Here's a funny story I have, And I
felt like I was telling them honestly, but at the same time, I
didn't trust the implications of the stories. I just told them as sort of
a funny little you know, a little part of a conversation in a way.
And I found that starting probably about nineteen ninety I started reading books on
the abduction subject. And then that's almost exclusively what I read was, you
know, I'll say things on the I read a lot of channel books and
a lot of paranormal books, and a lot of books on consciousness as well
as UFO books and specifically the abduction subject. So that was, you know,
that has continued until this day. I get this sense that at the
beginning you were skeptical of the abduction stories or scenario. Is that true,
Well, not so much skeptical, but I would I have always kept an
open mind as far as like what the actual reality was. You know,
the very simplistic conclusion would be that their metal spaceships from another planet that have
a little scientists on them that are landing here and doing some sort of study,
some sort of scientific study, just like we would fly in on a
helicopter into Yellowstone National Park and then study the grizzly bear. I recognized that
what that was was sort of anthropomorphizing, like we were seeing the phenomena in
totally terms that we can wrap our mind around, like basically that's us.
And I thought that was simplistic. And I remember reading the trilogy of Jacques
Frola books, and that had a very profound impact on the way I have
framed the phenomena. So so I've always been very aware that something profound is
going on, though I'm cautious to give it the label that that, you
know, the easy label you know that very well might be exactly what's happening,
though I I just want to remain open minded to what the what the
uh the source of the phenomena is. Now, you have read a lot,
You've met a lot of people and heard their stories, and have you
been able then to see similarities in these stories that perhaps aren't typically written about
things that you what's hit you and given you in a perhaps something that's a
little different than what's out there. It sounds like you kind of have seen
stuff that isn't as popularly written about or in the mythology, you know.
I think that the there's a there's a you know, a bookshelf, you
know, in any good bookstore that has you know, abduction UFO stories on
it. And if you pick up those books, they are you know,
written by researchers, or they're written by people who claim the first person experience.
And I found that the researchers sort of tell one story and then the
people who have the first person experience tell another story. The researchers are very
understandably and they're not doing anything wrong in a way, but they're understandably very
cautious to you know, to tell every bizarre, strange story that that is
that's part of the phenomena. And the you know, the person who's having
the experience themselves will often you know, have outlining strange experiences, you know,
experiences of high strangeness that that don't often get reported in the mainstream literature.
And I mean, for one example is just synchronicity is something that I
ask people about when I talk to them, I say, you know,
you know, what's what's what do you think of synchronicity in And people who
claim the abduction experience will literally you know, I remember one woman just kind
of like laughing, just she kind of threw, you know, kind of
slapped her knee and kind of laughed out loud. She says, oh,
my gosh, my synchronicities are off the charts there over the top. And
you know, a synchronicity, I mean, it's a coincidence. It's a
coincidence that has a profound meeting meaning to the person at the receiving end of
the synchronicity. But you know, they're very mystical experiences, and mystical in
a way that that you know, where is that event emerging from? You
know, I don't think that the grizzly bears, after being released by the
nice scientists who who darted them and did a little medical exam on them in
Yellowstone National Park then you know, walk away from their experience and have synchronicities.
So something is going on that is very real, that is very much
a pattern and gets reported consistently by people at the receiving end of of the
abduction experience. I think you've said some interesting things there, especially in seeing
the different difference between what the researchers rights as opposed to the first person accounts.
I think that's great because you're right, and I can sympathize with the
researchers who are kind of framing looking for answers. But Valet is an example
of someone who identified there's a lot of stuff that's being shoved to the site
that just because it's uncomfortable, but it's got to be a part of this
phenomena, even if it points to things we can't understand yet in your case
synchronicities. I think of Leo Sprinkle, who you know and have interviewed.
I know, at least he used to talk about what he found fascinating as
the vast number of abductees who after their experiences were experiencers, as he called
them, believed in reincarnation. There was just this huge shift in their beliefs
where so many believed in reincarnation, and that was kind of something that's kind
of shoved under the carpet, but it's something he was able to stistically show
was a significant change in a lot of these people. Yeah, and when
I and I've worked with doctor Sprinkle, he's tried to hypnotize me at one
point. I've spoken with him a bunch of times on the phone as well
as in person. I live in Idaho and he lives in Wyoming, so
by Western standards were actually pretty close. And he has been doing the same
survey, the same questionnaire for over fifty years now. He started in nineteen
sixty one with this questionnaire when who's a professor I think at that time at
the University of Wyoming, And since then he's basically been using the same set
of questions so he has fifty years of data, which is excuse me,
now, fifty one years of data. And if I'm not mistaken, he
says that the uh, the belief in reincarnation is at at one hundred percent
you know where where. That seems extremely strange. I think you're right,
yeah, or if not one hundred percent, you know close enough statistically to
you know, imply one hundred percent. So that's yeah, I agree,
that's fascinating. And one of the things that you know, I worked with
Bud Hopkins a little bit, and I had lived in New York for a
long time, so I was visiting New York so and I spoke with him,
and he I think he was He's an incredibly hind sweet man. And
it's a loss to the not just the UFO field, but the art field
and just you know, just our fellow humans that he's no longer with us.
But you know, in his work, in his research, I you
know, I can say that he was very cautious how he presented the information,
and I think he was extremely self aware of the role he was playing
as the mouthpiece, like the the the go to person about the abduction phenomena.
So he you know, because I basically asked him, I said,
oh my god, I'm having these synchronicities. And then he would sort of
say, you know, don't look too much into that synchronicity stuff, and
you know, well, I you know that, you know why, I
hear what you're saying, and then he would almost dismiss it. But at
the same time, he would then follow up with a story of one of
his patients that would have had a very profound synchronicity. So he was very
aware of it. And you know, he did that with the if I
don't know, if you've read his final book on UFOs, which was called
Sight Unseen, where he definitely dives pretty deep into the really weird stuff.
So and I can't you know, I can use as an example of someone
who is cautious of how he presented his data. At the same time,
in his final book, Boy, he shared some of the strangest stories that
I've ever read, and that was sort of the premise of the book,
that something is going on that can create these events of high strangeness. So
getting into the synchronicities, I guess I just so people can understand what you
mean by that, and maybe some examples oh, well, the term synchronicity
was coined by Carl Jung, who was a contemporary of Freud, and he
was noticing in his work that like profound coincidences were showing up, and that
these coincidences would manifest in a way that were extremely relevant to either himself or
to his patience. And so I'm not sure exactly what the how he let
me just I might have a little dictionary definition here of the term synchronicity.
Yeah, so it's the simultaneous occurrence of events that appear significantly related but have
no discernible, discernible causal connection. So and I guess we can all say
that we've had the funny thing where you know, the phone rings and you
think, oh, that must be Joe, and you pick it up,
and sure enough it's Joe. You know that, on one level, would
would be a synchronousy that would be very easily dismissed by anyone experiencing it as
just a coincidence. In order to tell a really profound synchronosy, yet I
would probably need to share a story that happened to me in nineteen seventy four.
Should I just go ahead and do that? Go for it? Okay.
In nineteen seventy four, I was twelve years old. I'm just about
fifty now, and I was living in the suburbs of Detroit, and I
went to a high school football game near my house, and that was with
a friend of mine and his name, I'm just gonna use a pseudonym.
I'm gonna call him Mike Lewis. And there was a television show that started
at ten o'clock at night, and I knew I wanted to be home in
time for that television show, so I left the football game with plenty of
time to see the football game, excuse me to see the television show that
was on at ten o'clock. And that was a television show. Anyone my
age will probably remember it. It's called Coleshak The Nightstalker. And I am
you know, I should have been home to my house, which was just
a little bit less than a half mile from the football stadium or for the
football field there at the high school. I should have been home at about
nine to thirty. And what happened was I was walking down the street and
there was a girl who lived just down the street and around the corner from
me, and her name is Cindy Gale, and that's also a pseudonym.
And the event took place in front of her house. I feel confidently I
could go back there with a piece of chalk and put an X on the
sidewalk to the inch where it happened. And what I experienced with my friend
Mike was a bright orange flash in the sky and it felt like and this
was a calm, beautiful autumn evening in the Midwest, and I the way
I perceived it, it felt like God flipped the light switch. The sky
was lit up bright, iridescent orange for one second, and then God flipped
the light switch off. It was totally silent. It was very jarring at
the time. I remember when me and my friend Mike, you talked about
meteors, We talked about lightning, We talked about could have been an explosion
like over the horizon a little bit. None of those things made sense.
It was far stranger than that. When I got home, I walked into
the house and my parents were angry at me, and that took me completely
by surprise. And I was like, well, what are you angry at
me for? And they were very adamant. They said, you are out
too late. You're too young to be out this late. And I was
like, well, it's only nine thirty. This is the time I told
you i'd be home. And they pointed to the clock and they said,
no, it's getting close to eleven thirty and the and I remember very clearly
that the eleven o'clock news was ending at that time, and at the time
I thought nothing of it. I was just bummed out that I didn't get
to see that television show. So let's fast forward. Well, I'll also
add that the next Monday in school that the football games were on Friday night.
The next Monday in school, I was sitting with a bunch of friends,
including Mike Lewis, and I said, hey, you know, something
odd happened on Friday night. And then Mike Lewis just chimed in and he
said, yeah, we saw UFO with lights and everything. And I remember
at the time thinking, wait a minute, now, I didn't see UFO
and he must be lying. He's obviously exaggerating. He's he's exaggerating just to
show off in front of our friends. And I dropped it and I never
brought it up with him again. So shortly after this event, like I
think it was somewhere while I was still in junior high school. Cindy Gale
moved from that house and I started a blog. I'll also add under curiously
synchronistic circumstances in March of two thousand and nine. So so my blog,
my website is just a little over three years old now, and I I
had a bunch of really nice synchronistic stories to tell. Initially, you know,
I have a bunch of us, some funny ones that are cute and
kind of have a They make perfect blog posts, you know, they're short,
they have a little punchline. But there came a day when I realized
I had to post the story I just told you, the Missing Time story.
Now, I had read enough UFO books by two thousand and nine to
know exactly what that implied. That story I just shared with you, and
in putting it online and using my real name, I was in essence saying
to the world, I'm insane, if you know what I mean. So
I was very nervous. So I went to put it on the blog,
and there's a very simple format. You cut and paste and drop the dialogue
in and drop the text in. And along with this, I had an
image taken from Google Earth of Cindy Gale's house and I took a yellow you
know, used Photoshop and just put a yellow X that image. So I
was looking at Cindy Gale's house and I was sitting there getting ready to complete
the blog post, right, you know, I just push a button and
you say, you know, put online, and my hands were above the
keyboard, and I was a coward. I just I just said it to
myself. I said, I'm not brave enough. And at that moment,
there was a little ping from the from my email account, and I said,
oh, I'm just gonna just just a great Now I can just avoid,
you know, doing this thing that's making me nervous. And I'll just
check my email. And the email that that that I received said Cynthia Gail
wants to be your friend on Facebook. Wow. And I hadn't talked to
her in thirty I think it was thirty six years. I should figure that
out. So flipped out. So I flipped out, I kind of I
it was you know, what it reminded me of was like, you know,
when the beginning of the Wonderful World of Disney, when Tinker Belts kind
of zaps or magic wand and the sparkles go everywhere. Yeah, so I
was kind of it felt like there was disney dust kind of like floating in
my you know, as I was sitting in front of the computer. It
was absolutely magical. Now, let me just I'm gona add one more story
to this. Now. Later that summer in two thousand and nine, I
was feeling pretty anxious, so I did something that I that I do sometimes
just to chill out, and I went hiking alone in the mountains. I
live right near Grand Teton National Park, So I went out hiking alone and
I slept out under the stars. And this would have been in July.
I could figure out the date exactly. But and I carry a little voice
recorder with me because sometimes when I sleep outside, I have very profound dreams.
And I remember before going to bed, I did something that was unusual.
I said into the voice recorder. I said, listen, I'm tired.
I can't take this anymore. I cannot take this not knowing anymore.
It's fatiguing me, and I just need some confirmation that this is real.
On one level, I guess I was sort of asking the universe to like
have a flying saucer land in front of me, and just you know,
prove it once and for all. I went to bed that night. You
can hear me on the voice recording, which I've posted on my blog,
that I say it is a little bit before ten o'clock. I think that's
what I say. And then it was a beautiful night, and I sort
of explained where I was lying down. And the next morning I woke up
nothing, no dreams, know nothing. I walked back to the house.
It was a perfectly lovely walk through the trails in the mountains. And I
get back to my house and I check my email, and at nine forty
eight pm the night before, a little before ten o'clock, I got an
email that said Mike Lewis wants to be your friend on Facebook. And I
hadn't talked to him since nineteen eighty since high school graduation, So that was
twenty nine years before. Wow, when was the last time you had talked
to Cindy. The last time I had talked to Cindy was probably in junior
high school in nineteen seventy five. Wow, and just get this Facebook thing.
So yes, So those synchronicities, what they did in essence was.
They allowed the doubts about that event to melt away, and I felt like
I could more, I could trust them. I basically had such profoundly shocking
mystical experience that it was like being slapped upside the head in one sense that
I was forced to pay very close attention to that experience in nineteen seventy four,
the missing time experience, and I was forced to trust it that,
you know, because I had so many doubts about that experience. Obviously,
you know, memory thirty some odd years later is is is flawed and and
I didn't know quite what to think of that memory. But now, after
having those two very profound synchronistic experiences, I, you know, I feel
much more confident saying that something extremely strange and out of the out of the
norm happened that night. And what, as you speculate, do you think
happened? How did this happen? Well, I mean, obviously I've read
enough UFO books to say that you know, this was a UFO abduction scenario,
But I don't have the direct memory. I've attempted hypnosis a few times
with no results. So but until I can have that that memory or have
some sort of memory that feels honest. I just can't say. You know,
I can speculate all you know whatever, I mean, you know,
parallel dimensions and whatnot. But I mean, it's certainly the implication is certainly
that that U that it was a some sort of UFO event that involved in
abduction. I am very hesitant to say that just because I don't have the
director right. It just doesn't feel honest in my gut to say that,
Well, what about the synchronicity? What do you think that was? What
is that? How did that? What did you think that? Was it
just that very curious, mystical type of experience or did you read anything else
into it? Oh? I read exact I read. I read what I
read into it that it was a confirmation that my doubts about that experience,
you know, that I should I should dismiss those doubts, and that I
should trust that something very strange happened that night, you know, so that
you know, I guess I'm repeating myself. But the but the the synchronicity
was saying that there's something more at play here, you know than the late
night television documentary which I think we've all seen, where they have the scary
music, and it's only a half hour long, so they can't really tell
the story completely, but they have a you know that they tell the story
of a UFO abduction, but they tell it so simplistically that we the audience
has just left to conclude that it's you know, aliens from some other planet
here visiting us there, and they're just playing the role of scientists, just
like we would play. What I was left to conclude was something more mysterious
is at work here with that synchronicity. Do you have any idea behind the
genesis? For example, do you think it was or do you speculate or
do you even feel like you just don't know? It had a reaction,
it created a reaction in you, but do you know have any idea if
it had a source or what that source might be. I mean, the
source is mysterious? Is the source? God is the source? Like as
a guardian angel is the source like some alien on the flying saucer, just
you know, pushing the synchronicity button. You know, I I have speculated,
you know, all around the block and then you know, around again
on what it might be. And uh, and I'm just left as perplexed
as I was the night that you know that the you know, tinker bell
dust kind of zapped me there in front of the computer. I all I
can say is that you know that I have to pay attention to these synchronicities,
and that they are real. And I've I've spoken a lot about synchronicities
and studied them and talk to people about them. And you know, I
used to say, they're They're like a little guidepost along the trail. Right,
there's a fork in the trail of life in your own and and you
have to choose am I going to go right or left? And then you
let the synchronicity guide you. Another person said that the synchronicity is like a
compass on the ocean. Right on the ocean, there's no way to tell
where anything is. You need the compass, and so it's giving you a
bearing on how to proceed forward. So in essence, I'm just using those
to proceed forward. And the written work that I've done online is a direct
result of those synchronicities, where it's forced me to be more introspective. It's
forced me to be more honest than I think I would have been if I
was examining these memories without the whack and the head from the synchronicity two by
four. It's interesting and I love the topic of synchronicity because it is something
I actually think of or at least experience and except. But it was perplexing
to me when I felt like I've had these in the past, and then
I've looked into the different wayhilosophies. And I love your definition because that's kind
of how I take it. Okay, you know, it's showing me I'm
either on the path or help guiding me to a path, and I really
take it as that, and I follow these things, and so I do
find it fascinating that you I guess my question would be to you, do
you feel that these experiencers who you've talked to and they said, wow,
you know it's synchronicities is a part of my life. It's something I've recognized.
Do you think after their experiences they're more open to recognizing these synchronicities.
Do you feel or do you feel that perhaps they have them more because of
their experiences? You know, I spoke with my girlfriend about this. She's
she's been at the receiving end of like every experience I've ever had in the
sense that I've talked her ear off, but I and I said, you
know, you know, the synchronicity thing is somehow interwoven with this abduction phenomena.
And then she kind of rolled her eyes and she said, anyone on
a spiritual journey will have synchronicities. So that that made me well, and
she was right. You know, I suspect that the person who sits in
the lotus position on a mountain in Tibet will have synchronicities, and I suspect
the person who's had a near death experience will not. Suspect. I know,
having talked to some folks that have had near death experiences, say that
that has changed the number of experiences synchronistic experiences in their life. So what
she said was correct. You know, people on a spiritual journey will have
more synchronicities. That implies that the UFO abduction phenomena can be seen as a
spiritual journey, which which I absolutely feel is accurate having talked to so many
people. The people that have these experiences and talk about them are you know,
are forced to be deep thinkers. You know that it's you know,
they are they're forced to to look at something in a profound way or you
know, a profound experience, and you know, and forced to ask really
challenging, hard questions about what is at the source of it all. So
the uh, the people who who have you know that I talk to who
have the abduction experience. You know, one person, I mean, actually,
excuse me, more than one person has actually said synchronicity is the language
which with which they communicate. And I have that direct quote from more than
one person who's been at the receiving end of the both synchronicities and the UFO
abduction phenomena. That's really interesting and one of the when I look at this
step. I'm really into psychology, Carl Jung and all of this, and
so I love his perspectives on these because it's sort of a secular spirituality,
which I think we seem to be moving into. Whereas science has a difficult
time with spirituality. You want to often remove that from the data in order
to examine it closer. I think that's one great thing that like Yung did.
He was a scientist essentially, but he's trying to explain these things.
Kind of this secular spiritualism and like you said, and like we talked about
earlier, with the SPRINKLEO sprinkle, there's this new vision of reincarnation and fitting
that into their lives. And he even said, some of these people they
didn't change their religion, but they added this component to or these other components
to their religion and it helped. It was something that was added to their
lives. So it's difficult, if not impossible, to separate this spiritual aspect
to these experiences. You know. I would have these Sunday morning conversations with
the buddy of mine and he he meditates, and he's gone to like spiritual
retreats and has had a guru in his life and things, and uh,
and we would get into these kind of back and forth, you know,
one upmanships are sort of tit for tat little arguments and and let's say,
conversations discussions and uh. And he would listen to me and he would kind
of he could just he could just he would just kind of bat his head
and he would go like, I can't believe you don't meditate. And then
I would just back at him. I was like, I can't believe you
don't read UFO books because there's something about the phenomena that it doesn't take too
long. You know, you get two people who are thoughtful and talk about
the phenomena. You know, within minutes they're talking about the really big questions.
You know, what is God? Why are we here? What is
the meaning of reality? How do you define consciousness? I mean, all
these unanswerable questions are forced into your lap, you know, because of this
phenomena. It's really kind of ironic because in the one hand, it's often
seen in uh mainstream or by the populace it's something silly. On the other
hand, it's also something that's extremely existential and is at the root of our
very being as serious as it gets, and you have this weird dichotomy,
and I think that is why people get so frustrated and it being made fun
of this whole looking into this area when it at the very least is like
space science or like astrobiology, and that it's making you look at these really
profound questions. Yeah, I think if the macro or the micro I mean,
the person who looks through the electron microscope must be forced to to contemplate
the divine, and the person who looks at the you know, through the
Hubble telescope must be forced to contemplate the divine. You know, there's there's
a transformative core to this experience, and you know that is one of the
things that that I'm struggling with in a way. You know that I just
realize, Oh, I'm playing the role of someone who's been at the receiving
end of of what would be a UFO abduction, though I I just don't
like that term, you know. So so you know, I hear myself
talking right now, and and I'm almost using I'm talking in the first person
as if I was the UFO abductee, even though I'm I'm so hesitant to
actually verbally say it. What are the concepts or perhaps the emotions that you
feel when you think of the word abduction that you feel resistant to. Well,
the thing that just feels that I'm resistant to it just doesn't feel honest
because I don't have the direct memory of you know, like I mean,
there's I've talked to people who have the whole gambit of the you know,
lying on the table and the evil doctors and the you know, watching the
apocalyptic three D virtual reality experiences, and I don't have those experiences. I
have what I refer to as like the puzzle pieces, right, so each
one of these little experiences and synchronicities would be a puzzle piece, right.
So the picture is emerging on the table, you know, it seems like
most of the pieces are there, and there's holes in the picture, so
there's enough puzzle pieces down I can perceive what the giant picture is, even
though there are blank spots there. But it just doesn't feel honest. It
just feels like it would be dishonest if I said that about the term abduction
and myself. So it's less about that term, and it's just about my
ability to to have that direct memory or that direct experience the fact, which
I think is fine. And one of the things that's happened is that there
are people who have found my written work on my blog and have contacted me
through the blog and that basically say to me, you know, they'll say
in a very heartfelt way, it's very moving for me. They'll say thank
you for articulating what I'm experiencing. Like they'll say, you know, like,
oh, I'm you know, like I think, and I can't come
forward with this stuff, so thank you for saying what I'm feeling, right,
So that's actually a very you know, it gives It makes me feel
good at the end of the day that I've you know, tried to do
what I've been doing on this blog in those kind of letters. Now,
we've talked about some of those puzzle pieces, some of your experiences, but
there's more puzzle pieces out there, and so I guess let's get into some
of your experiences. And I don't know you could tell me if this is
the best place to start, unless you think there's something prior to this to
get into. But you also had in nineteen seventy four a sighting. I
had a very vivid night time sighting. As best as I can remember,
it was nineteen seventy four. And I say that because the friend moved in
nineteen seventy four, and it was I was a twelve year old boy,
and I went to visit his new house, which was just a few miles
away. My dad drove me there and so and he was going to a
different school at that time. His name is Kenny. And we were in
his upstairs bedroom and if I remember correctly, we walked into the bedroom and
the lights were off. It was it was like the weekend, so it
was either Saturday or Friday night, and either him or I, I had
no memory of who it would have been, basically pointed out the window and
said look, and we ran to the window and kind of pushed our faces
up against the glass, and we saw something that was a coffee can shape
and it had a pencil sticking out the top of it. It was it
was It could not have been a helicopter. It was at a very odd
angle, and it wasn't moving like a like a helicopter a plane. And
it was very clear in the nighttime sky. If it was if it was
huge, could have been a half mile away. If it was small,
it could have been a few hundred yards away. So I don't have any
good idea about its size or its distance, but it felt like it was
very clear to see. It was metallic, a little bit reflective in the
nighttime sky, had lights on it, and it was rotating in a smooth,
controlled way, and we watched it for I'm going to say less than
a minute, and then it just blinked, you know, snap my fingers,
it just disappeared. And do you remember this was prior to or after
the Orange flash. My best guess is that was before and that's just a
guess. I don't know exactly, but my best guess is that it was
before. Yeah, interesting sighting. So then I guess your next experience wasn't
for a while. But in the meantime you had gotten into UFOs and started
reading book books to come across Whitley Streeaver's book, Kevin Randall's book UFO Casebook,
and we actually had them on just a few weeks ago. So you
had an interest that you bangan to explore. Well, yeah, and to
be So this the event you're talking about, took place in the winter of
nineteen ninety three February, either January or February of nineteen ninety three. And
this one is this one is tough for me to to articulate because it has
such a strange quality to it. It has such a hyperreal quality to it.
So what happened was I was living alone in a house in ur Main
and I was in bed. I have no idea what time it was,
and I sat up in bed and said, there was just there was a
bright light coming through the window and the way the bed was pushed up,
it was right against the window. I've drawn a picture of this on the
on the blog, which I think you've seen it right. It's the definitely,
And I should mention you are an illustrator by trade and you have a
picture of the sighting we just talked about and this event and your illustrations are
wonderful, so people can see that at Hidden Experience dot blogspot dot com.
Yeah, yeah, thank you. The the It was interesting when I drew
this event that I'm going to talk about. This is a I drew it
with a with a with the foresight, knowing that I only had one chance
to get it right, because what was going to happen was after I did
the drawing, my memory would warp a little bit and I would then be
remembering the drawing and saying that and saying that I feel like I did a
pretty good job, Like I feel like I captured it pretty closely. So
I sat up in bed, bright light shining through the window. The bed
is pushed right up against the window. I could literally like put my elbow
on the window still if I wanted to, and I look out the window
in a little bit out the window and visually just off to my left were
five what we would call classic cray aliens, big black eyes, big bald
heads, skinny, little spindly bodies. And the way I drew it there
so they were all standing. I tried to draw them walking, and it
just looked like they were doing a little dance or something like that. So
I just it just it seemed a little less silly to just draw them standing
there. But they were. Actually my memory was they were walking towards the
house, and which is a scary image. And my immediate thought was I
and I this was very clear. It was like a very clear verbal thing
in my head, and it said, now is the time to put your
head on the pillow and shut down. That's exactly what I did. I
was seeing something that was creepy. I should have, you know, ran
and locked the doors and got in a baseball bat, and I didn't.
I put my head on the pillow and went to sleep. And but what
I will say, now, here's something that that I have asked a lot
of people in like UFO abduction support groups about the experience of that of what
I was seeing was somehow warped, it was somehow hyper vivid. It was
it was quieter than what would be like normal waking reality, so I could
easily dismiss this as being a dream and to quite honestly, I was reading
Bud Hopkins book Intruders at the time, so that was like on the nightstand
right next to me when this happened, so I could very easily conclude that
my mind was just filled with thoughts of thefos and you know, aliens and
scary nighttime visitations, which is all in that book. But that feeling,
that hyper real, quiet, hyper focused feeling was very real. And I
asked about this feeling when I go to like, for instance, Laughlin or
now just out of Phoenix at the at the Open Minds conference where they have
a support group, I'll ask people, you know, have you experienced this,
I'll describe it, and you know, some people will raise their hand,
and then oftentimes after the meeting is over, people will grab me in
the hall and say, oh my gosh, you know that that feeling.
I know exactly what you're talking about. So you know, I am I'm
skeptical. I'm skeptical of a lot of things, and the one thing I'm
most skeptical of in a way is my own set of experiences. So but
that that you know that experience in nineteen ninety three is hard for me to
trust completely because it has that veneer of this kind of altered dream like reality
now in ninety three. And do you prefer the the I guess experience or
over abductee. You know, I use them all interchangeably. You know,
I wish there was a better term. Yeah, when I understand you know
the reason for experiencer, and I understand the reason for abductee and stuff.
So yeah, I mean, I just wish there was another term, you
know, experience. This would be fine for me and just make some term
up. So I guess prior to this event you were reading Intruders. But
did you, prior to this event, Bill, you were one of an
experiencer? You know, I would have to say, no, it's and
I will actually have to say after that experience, I still didn't. I
just wrote it off as a dream. I wrote it off as as you
know, just a hyper vivid dream that was based on having that book.
I could have so easily walked out the door and just looked at the snow
and seen if there were footprints. And I never even bothered to do that,
So you know, that wasn't the confirmation in a weird way. The
confirmation was strangely enough, when Chris Carter. I watched the very first X
Files episode on VHS, and at the end of it it sort of had
you know, after the pilot, they said, and now a word from
the you know, producer and director of The X Files, Chris Carter,
and he said. One of the first things out of his mouth was he
said, you know, I loved this TV show as a little kid,
and I wanted to make a TV show that would match that TV show was
spooky and scary and fun and exciting. And the TV show is called coal
Shack The night Stalker, and that was the TV show I was going to
see wanted to see that night in nineteen seventy four that I was walking home
and for some strange reason, hearing Chris Carter say the words Coleshak the night
Stalker just freaked me out. And I realized then that something very real had
happened, and that probably didn't happen until like probably nineteen ninety oh, maybe
in two thousand, like maybe two thousand and two or something like that.
So here again another synchronicity, not as I think mind blowing, as the
other one, but still a pretty decent synchronicity that that made this profound change
for you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So were there other confirmations that
came across or other events, I guess that add to that puzzle in now
here's one that this is. This is in twenty and ten. I was
with a friend of mine and her name is Natasha, and I was we
were driving around the southwest. We're camping in and around of southern Utah and
northern Arizona, and I had car trouble and this was it would have been
in Dolores, Colorado, which is right in the four Corners area, right
near mas Verde I think is the Maceverdi National Park. So took the car,
my little Subaru, into the little local mechanic there, and he came
out of the back with a little rag, you know, wiping his hands
off, and he said to me, so like, listen, I can't
let you take this car out of the you know, legally, I can't
let you take the car out of the out of the shop here because you'll
die. And he said, the breaks are just about to fall apart,
and we have to wait four days for or five days for a part.
So there we were stuck in this cute little town in southern Colorado, and
we rented a car, which was easy to do and inexpensive in a small
town like that. And so that night we Natasha and I, because it
ate up a lot of time, we just asked someone in town, like,
where's a good spot to camp tonight? And this young woman said,
oh, here's a great spot. She kind of, you know, drew
it on a napkin and said, this is out at the edge of town.
It's a nice forest, no one's out there. It'll be it'll be
great. So we went out. There was totally secluded, and we camped
in a pretty forest. And and that night and Natasha was very uneas earlier
in the evening. But that night I woke up and Natasha was screaming wow.
And I sat up and I screamed like I've never screamed before. I
have never in my life experienced anything like that. It was like I was
so scared. I was so terrified. It felt like it was synthetic.
That's the only way to describe it. It was like off the charts.
It. I don't even have a way to articulate it. I teach camping
for a living. I've been I've spent you know, more than three years
of my life in a tent in the mountains, and you know, I've
dealt with you know, moose and bears and porcupines and stuff like that,
you know, getting into the tent and and the uh. I've never experienced
anything like this. So it lasted a few minutes and then you know,
poof, we both went to sleep. And before I went to sleep,
I asked Natasha, like, what did you see? What's wrong? And
she said, I saw a face. That's all I got out of her.
She was just, you know, couldn't even get the words out of
her. And then poof. I went to sleep. And I don't know
how long after this was. And it felt very similar to the dream state
that I described earlier. And I felt myself rising out of the rising up
in the tent, like floating like they had that elevator up feeling. And
then I looked to my left and I saw what looked like a mandala,
like a pizza pan size glowing circle. And I continued floating and I suddenly
felt like I was in a white realm. I did not see a room.
It felt like it was a realm. It felt like it was like
an altered dimensional reality. I know this sounds corny, but I don't know
the way to say it. And then I remember saying to myself, I
have to remember this. I have to remember this. I have to remember
this. And then I said, am I on a table? Am I
on a table? On a table? And then Natasha said, Mike,
you're floating. And then I was back down in bed next to her.
And I don't really remember waking up. I just remember like sort of whis
being zipped back down there. So I don't know quite what to make of
this now. The next morning I asked Natasha, like, what happened last
night? And she said, oh, my gosh, I saw something.
I said, you have to explain what it was. She said it was
a face and she said, no, you have to do better than that.
I want to know what it was. And I thought it was right
above her face and she said, well, you know what actually looked like
is just a circle, and she kind of described a little bit, and
I used a reference of a drawing I had done, and that was what
it reminded me of. Is this drawing I had done, which will take
another fifteen minutes for me to tell that long thing. But so and I
asked where was it, and she pointed to the exact same spot in the
corner of the tent where I saw that glowing mandala circle. Now went to
a sweat lodge the next day, and uh, you know, in you
know, you take, I took my shirt off, and typical of what
we'd been doing in car camp and you're all grubby and you live out of
the back of the car and stuff. So I probably had just left my
sweatshirt on and had been on for a couple of days. When I took
my sweatshirt off to go into the sweat lodge, there was a big scratch,
like a big giant scratch from my left shoulder to my belly button.
And it looked when you looked at it, it looked like a scratch from
like a cat claw or maybe a single rose thorn. But when you really
looked at it closely, it was it was very strange. It was like
tiny little blisters, like like less than a millimeter in size, all in
a little row, little teeny fluid filled blisters that made like kind of a
red line kind of intermittent, but it was you know, you can see
where it started, you see where it ended. Strange, yes, And
so Natasha and I both sort of pretend to be, you know, want
to be UFO researchers, and we kind so this is strange. And then
it healed up very quickly, and a few days later I took a shower
and washed it off and it was totally gone. And as soon as it
was gone, both Natasha and I kind of kind of said, almost simultaneously,
like, oh my god, we didn't we didn't uh didn't take a
picture of it. And so, you know, so there's a here's an
experience that begins with the car mechanic saying you can't leave this town or you'll
die, and then it ends with a sweat lodge, which is sort of
a metaphoric traditional experience of the death, you know, of a death and
resurrection. You know, I cannot separate those those experiences, you know,
the beginning and end, the sweat lodge, and the mechanic from the entirety
of this experience. Did you change afterwards? Did you feel different somehow?
You know, at this point I had already been writing and blogging, but
this this that experience made it really hard for me to to to sort of
hold my ground and say that, you know, like, I'm still not
sure what's going on. That said, you know, like I don't have
any memories of being on a ship or anything like that. I do remember
saying, am I on a table? Obviously I know exactly what that implies,
but you know, without the direct memory, you know, it would
just feel dishonest. So yeah, that was that was really that one was
that sort of was one of the things that I just got pushed even that
much farther down the rabbit hole. So and so when were you, assuming
you did come to this, when were you down the hall? When down
the hole? Well, it's interesting. Two thousand and nine was a hard
year for me. That was the year that I had both those experiences where
the two people that were you know kind of at the at the site of
that nineteen seventy four experience, you know, found me on Facebook in that
those odd synchronistic ways, you know. Two thousand and nine was a challenging
year for me. I was really emotionally fragile because of all this. So
there's a genesis of this whole thing where on one level, I think I
just got bored of being all freaked out, and and it's just easier to
proceed it with life, you know, just recognizing that I'm somehow intertwined with
a mystery, as opposed to being so shook up by it. You know,
I mean, everything that was happening, every bit of you know,
synchronistic feedback I was getting was you know, was telling me something diametrically opposite
than what mother culture is telling me. You know, mother culture, if
you read the New York Times, tells you you know, this is the
you know reality is this just this one way and it does not stray from
this and and and the topic of UFO abductions is the stuff of lunacy.
So you know that that was that was the challenge, was dealing with my
own identity. I guess I think that you know, it's funny because a
couple of things come to my first of all, at the time, by
twenty ten, I'm fairly certain because you had been to the congress that and
I remember Natasha and you at least seeing you and saying hi a couple of
times at the conference. Because in the Laughlin Conference, I think even two
thousand and eight, by then I was at least helping out with the conferences
and some of the work in there and stuff I think, but prior to
that even and it's just makes me think of, you know, at these
conferences, you know, they're a blur. You meet so many people,
there's so many people walking by, But how fascinating you know the experiences of
all of these people are, and the different people coming and going, and
that you know, even after even though we haven't really talked until recently,
you're experiencing all of this stuff, you know, and this is going on.
I don't know. It just makes me think of how fascinating all the
people's stories are. And like you said, there's a New York Times reality,
but then there's a reality that people are really living out there that unfortunately
a lot of not everyone, and I think people don't understand there are communities
that people out there who are experiencing They really don't have a voice I think
in the mainstream so much, but that are living this alternate and it may
be an r view more real life, that are not afraid to voice and
recognize and remember and not dismiss the experiences they have that they can't explain.
You know, one thing that's happening now, which I find fascinating is a
lot of these people are have blogs, and some people will do their blog
under a pseudonym, and I totally understand that and respect that others will use
their real name. But what happened if you just turn the clock back a
decade ago, if you wanted to study this stuff, you would have to
go to the bookstore, or you would have to read some article on a
magazine. You would have to, you know, the book. In order
for the book to get published. It would have to you know, it's
a big job to write a book. It would have to have an editor,
it would have to you know, it's expensive to get them, so
there's a chance it would never get published. And then when you read the
book, you know, the the text would say, you know, well
here's something that happened to me ten years ago, because you know, that
might have been the beginning of the experience and the process of getting the book
out. What happens now is you can, you know, click on a
blog and have someone say I had an experience last night, and you can
read it completely unedited, without any sort of editorializing from time or editorializing because
it's being retold, let's say, by a researcher. So we are in
a place right now where these first person experiences are being shared in a very
public way. I mean, if someone can make it to your podcast here,
then someone can make it to those to those first person stories from experiencers.
And I just am left to conclude that that, you know, it's
a one way road. We're only going to have more people having the willingness
to share these stories. And quite honestly, I haven't really had that much
backlash. You know, I worked as an illustrator for a job, so
I am you know, like I don't am not like I'm not president of
the bank, let me put it that way. So I've had very little
backlash, you know, a few little things come up, but for the
most part, and I've been very open with this stuff lately. And uh
and and that would not have been the case twenty years ago. Do you
feel that it's enhanced your life to come to terms with, at least accepting
that you've had enigmatic, unexplainable experiences. Was it difficult? Do you think
it caused maybe some undue stress on you prior to you really coming out and
being more free with your stories. Well, I certainly. I mean,
it's still stressful, to be honest, and it's still it's like a it's
a verb, you know what I mean. It's not like it's it's not
like I've I'm at you know. Still it seems like I'm in the act
of coming to terms with it rather than actually gotcha like a verb. It
feels like and it feels it, and I am not I am not exaggerating.
The blog and the written essays and the you know, I've been doing
some audio interviews. That is therapy for me. That is therapy for me
to try to make sense of my own set of experiences. It is me
wrestling with these big questions, and I, in a funny sort of way,
I as like almost like a sociological experiment. I decided that I was
going to share publicly, you know, right on a blog format, about
my attempts to come to terms with this. So if you scroll back and
look at the posts from two thousand and nine, I mean, you're you
it. I mean, it's not hidden. I was fragile and shaky and
freaked out, and it is. It's right there presently. I'm a little
more at peace, and it's allowed me a little bit better to play the
role of researcher, where I've been looking into other stories and writing about other
you know, what would be current events in this in this phenomena. So,
yeah, it's a verb. I don't know where I'm going to be
next week or how I'll feel, but you know, overall, it's it's
my definition of reality has certainly changed. There's nothing else. I mean,
I could certainly say I don't know whether it's good. I don't know whether
it's bad. I don't know whether I'm compulsive. I don't know whether you
know, there's like a like a grander purpose behind the curtain for all of
this. I don't have any answers to that, but I do recognize that
that reality is far far different than I once thought it was. And so
what's next for you in your journey to come to terms? You know I've
been I don't know, I mean maybe just I just foresee continuing writing.
I have like kind of scratched my head. Oh you know what. Actually,
I have been working on a graphic novel. I've just put it aside.
I have another deadline, so I had to push that off the desk.
I have been working on a graphic novel and my illustration skills dovetail very
nicely to the format of a graphic novel. And it is a fictionalizing of
a set of events that are a little bit tied into my events at the
same time, not really and just and just trying to articulate using fiction.
Uh, some of the more challenging and bizarre things that get reported in this.
And you know from talking to people who've had the first hand experience,
and your goal with this is it to do to is it purely therapeutic or
is it also to like you said, articulate maybe and help others understand what
it might be like to to be going through this well you know a little.
I mean, I recognize I have an audience out there. And actually,
and I will say this, I met a woman at the conference in
Scottsdale, and she saw my name tag and came up and talked to me,
and and she had been dealing with her own set of experiences that were
in a way similar to mine, where they were open ended enough that there
were all kinds of doubts in her in her set of experiences, I could
not give her an answer to what you know, may or may not be
happening with her. Though, I realized what I was doing on the blog
and in my written work was giving uh uh, sort of articulating some of
the frustrations and the confusion that that she was was experiencing. And I and
she said as much. So I'm not I'm not putting words into her mouth,
but so you know, that feeling of having an audience is a way.
Oh, it's just a framework, I guess when I you know what
I'm aiming for now, which has changed since since beginning the blog. It
feels a little less like therapy now and feels a little more or like oh
like like there's a reason for it, Like there's a you know, mott
teeny Niche is having you know, a benefit to it. May only be
a few people, but you know, hopefully it's having a you know,
they're they're finding some solace in my my struggles and quandaries. And although your
goal seemed to sounds to be more therapeutic, now that you have an audience,
it's a small audience. I don't get them any small audience, but
still does it give you comfort? You know what it does is. It
gives me. It makes me feel like I'm stepping into the role of researcher.
You know, I met someone at a difference and he's you know,
sort of you know, you strike up a conversation in the line for the
drinking fountain and he said, oh, so, what brings you here?
And I said, oh, I guess I'm doing research, which felt honest.
And he said, oh, what are you researching? I mean,
I didn't really know. I had to think for a second. I get
them researching. So I'm researching myself and that felt honest. And uh so
it feels like I'm I'm easing my way more into the role of the researcher
now, so you know, and part of that just comes from the fact
that I have made a very real effort to reach out and talk to people,
uh with this experience as well as you know, either through direct telephone
calls I've had I don't know how many hundred cell phone calls I've had in
the last three years where people will contact me and I said, well,
let's talk on the phone and then and then I'll listen to their story.
So which has been it feels like I'm pretty well versed in some of the
oddities that that are part of this phenomenon now and it has just given me
a different definition of the of the of the bigger framework. Well, this
has been fascinating. I mean, in researching yourself, you're also researching the
field, and I think we've touched on a lot of really profound and interesting
stuff. But I guess, before we're done, as the researcher, is
there something you've discovered or insight you made that you want to share before we
wrap up here. You know, there's a few things. One of them
is that there's a pattern where people sort of talked about an awakening experience between
about two thousand and six and two thousand and eight, which matches my self
exactly. There were folks that there's one guy who has a similar set of
experiences and he started his blog on the very same day as I did.
Wow, and he he's exactly the same age. His first name is Michael,
and we went down the checklist and figured out a bunch of things that
we had in common. So he started his blog on the same well less
than twenty four hours after I started mine. So there is you know,
I'm very cautious to say, like, oh, I sense, you know,
I I'm seeing a pattern. I don't know whether it'll pan out,
but I sense that there are people coming forward right now in a way that
seems you've only have a few minutes left. It'll be hard to articulate this,
but you know that comes almost from an outside source. It seems like
there's some organized, methodical process taking place, and I am perhaps I am
unwittingly playing a role in it, but I do see it as a pattern.
So the pattern would be the things I've seen is that there are people
doing something almost exactly like I'm doing, and they're doing it independently of me.
You know, they started it on their own about the same time.
And you know, a bunch of things are happening right so it's easier to
start a blog than it would have been. I mean, there's you know,
even five years ago, there was very little knowledge of how to start
a blog, and now it's very easy. And then, you know,
so there's this little snowball effect where it's a little easier for someone experiencing this
to come forward and share their experiences than it would have been several decades ago.
So it's converging right now, and I recognize that it's having an impact
overall to these people individually and hopefully to the collective. Well, and I
think it's great because we don't have to wait. And that's one thing that
why I like to go and do because we don't have to wait. I
don't think ever for anybody else to come and validate our experiences or what we're
interested in or what we're looking into. And a lot of people feel that's
necessary for some reason, the mainstream has to come validate what I'm doing,
or else it's not worth doing, or it's embarrassing or I'm strange for it.
But you know, everybody has some sort of what would be perceived as
odd interest or an interest that is a little off from mainstream. But that's
okay. We're all individuals and I think that's what's wonderful where people are more
and more feeling enabled. Well, you know what, I'm tired of waiting.
I'm just going to go out and do, which is I think a
big key because once people start doing, then it becomes the norm. It
becomes something that people do. Yeah, And I feel like that that that
there's a there's a snowballing acceleration in that too, you know, you know,
like I, I had permission in a way to well, I had
to give myself permission to do it, you know what I mean. I
had to leap for me to come forward. And and that was that one
synchronicity, you know, that was of when Cindy Gale, you know,
sent me that email. Then that was the that was by far the most
profound experience of all in a way, you know, her connecting to me
at that moment. It was all tied into the blog. It was into
that event of nineteen seventy four. It was tied into my own struggles trying
to make sense of this, my own fears, and it gave me permission
to go ahead. I trusted the synchronicity and just you know, jumped off
the cliff in essence, you know, just abandoned myself to this journey which
has been challenging and at the same time very very interesting and rewarding. Well,
this has been an interesting and rewarding talk for me. Of course,
we could go on and talk, but we are out of time. But
I do want to thank you so much for doing this interview with me.
I think it's going to be wonderful, and I want to remind people Hidden
Experience dot blogspot dot com is where they can go read your blog and also
see the timeline of events. Great, and I've also done a handful of
well I've probably got over sixty hours of audio down there too, So a
great long list of interviews here. Yeah, those we're all very personal.
I don't have any agenda when I start those, So I mean agenda in
the sense that I don't have a weekly schedule, I don't have a time
frame. So some of them are short, some of them are three hours
long. So all right, great, what were you gonna say? No,
they just they just came from a place of you know, like those
are the people I wanted to talk to. You know. It wasn't like
still a weekly slot or anything like that. Very organic. Yes, well,
thank you so much for being on the show. You're very welcome.
All right. For more information about Mike, you can visit his website at
Hiddenexperience dot blogspot dot com. We are out of time, don't forget to
check ufodailynews dot com for the latest UFO news, including all those really cool
stories we talked about. Don't forget to look at my thank xpi's Huffington Post
story. And I want to thank more than just Pablo for this closed music,
but the whole group two Earthmnute, Two Earthmnutes created this great close music.
Thank you all for listening. We will talk to you next week.
Are you a smooth ators