Hello, and welcome to Open Mind UFO Radio. I am your host,
Alejandro Rojas, and I am with Martin Spaceman Willis Spacey or Spaceman Spaceman.
That's I'll take that. It's space talk about the eclipse. It's more accurate
today. I think it's pretty fitting. Actually. Yeah, so the eclipse,
at least in many places as we speak, has either just peaked or
is just about to. I think it already did out here in Arizona,
which isn't saying much because we couldn't really see a lot of it a bit,
you know, when I did see some, uh, and I got
kind of an interesting photo on my phone with it. But yeah, I
was just watching in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, where there's a huge they're calling it
Eclipsville there. There's a huge group of people camping out there and it just
peaked there where they were completely dark. They you know, they were in
the path of where they could see the whole thing. Any Kelly Hopkinsville situation
going on in the dark there, no that Yeah, well, yeah,
there are lots of people outside having fun. But yes, that is where
and it's in my lecture in fact, Well, yeah, you could go
see it at UFO Congress Videos dot com. But you can see my lecture
on Strange Alien Cases, and I talk about the Chilly Hopkinsville case, a
very important case in the fifty where fifties where it essentially made the Little Green
Men saying more prominent and famous. And I'm gonna be talking about that also
at Devil's Tower next month. Oh wow, you know that's one of my
cases that are really I'm fascinated by that case by Kelly the incident. You
know that they were up on the roof and they were shooting at him and
oh it was just really case, quite amazing. They were horrified too.
Yeah, I'll be talking about that at the Devil's Tower Rendezvous, which is
gonna be at Devil's Tower in honor of the fortieth anniversary of Close Encounters.
I'm really excited about this. It's gonna be in Hewlett, Wyoming, and
you can go to Devil's Tower UFO Rendezvous dot com to see more about it.
But Janharzan Mark D'Antonio told me about that. Well, I don't think
I told the listeners though. Debbie Ziegelmeyer, Chuck Ukowski, Travis Walton,
and Richard beckwith will all be there speaking. I'm excited because I'm gonna be
talking about Spilberg and so I'll be talking about the Kelly Hopkinsville event because that
inspired Spilberg many of his movies. Wow, I don't know if I knew
that. That's interesting if you would have saw my lecture, but I don't
think you made it to the conference. You should see the lecture because if
you're interested in that, you would love it. Otherwise, maybe this one
will get recorded and I'll be able to to upload that or something. But
yeah, yeah, right, So what's the date on that September fourteenth through
the sixteenth. And yeah, I'm a big spill Brick fan and I've been
following all of his UFO interests, so I've accumulated a lot of information and
videos of him talking about UFOs. So yeah, I'm excited for the opportunity.
Right. Great, But speaking back to the eclipse, like, can
you see a lot of it? I mean, is it really cool where
you are? Well? I downloaded the iPhone app that Jeffrey Bennett, the
astrophysicist that you and I both know, he created the app and it shows
that as we speak right now, it's peaked in my area in the state
of Maine. It peaks at two forty three, and that's about when we're
talking right now. So I just went looked at it and did the pinhole
thing, and I can see most of the sun, but it does look
you know, the sky looks like it's really cloudy. You know, it's
kind of dim looking. Is that what you saw to kind of? But
the pin hole thing, the best thing is to get the glasses at by
far so you could see something, because otherwise the pinhole thing, which is
kind of what I did, is boring. I've done that before. But
really, unless you're like really close, it's it's kind of just like any
other, you know, eclipse. But what's amazing about this? And I
do regret it not going to somewhere where I could be with the full eclipse.
And I know I'm going to regret this for a long time, but
hopefully I can. Maybe I'll have to go to another country to get that
opportunity sometime. Yeah, I know. It's it's funny how it just did
a swath right across the country and people are gathering, you know, had
you know, they're from Salem, Oregon all the way across the country.
Mm hmmm. Cool cool stuff. Now, Also, what's cool about this
if you go to the Google search, of course they're featuring just Google dot
com. They're featuring the eclipse on their little thing on the top, as
they usually do, you know, the little graphic they feature what's going on.
So the eclipse is huge, so of course they're featuring that. But
what's funny is aliens are involved. So if you go look at the Google
graphic, it's super cool. It's essentially aliens bouncing the moon back and forth.
Little green man and there too. Hm hmm. Pretty cool. So
what's funny about this too is, of course there are a lot of conspiracy
theories about the moon and the moon being artificial and being brought here by aliens
and that sort of thing, and largely because of this extraordinary phenomena that the
moon. So the Sun is four hundred times larger than the moon. How
Ever, the Sun is four hundred times further away than the moon, and
that's awfully coincidental, because that's what that's what makes this opportunity of what's happening
today be possible, is that coincidentally, those two factors make it so this
small object can pass in front of this humongous object and appear to be the
exact same size. Isn't that something? So you know, eventually, I
say, the moon moves away a little bit, so we't, well,
this, this type of eclipse isn't going to happen for a long time,
right again, Well it will, but not I guess in the United States.
What was unique about this one is that it the epicenter, you know,
the place where it's completely covered, swept through the United States and only
the United States. And that's what made it really unique. Wow. I
didn't know that. Wow. That's and a great opportunity for those in this
country to go get off our butts and not get mucked up in daily life
like you and I did and missed. Yeah, what the hell? But
this is really funny too. Another coincidence that you brought up, Jeffrey Bennett.
Okay, and here's why. So the twenty fourteen videos we have not
uploaded because they haven't been ready to our video on demand. So we have
almost every other year and almost all of them for every other year, but
we haven't don't have twenty fourteen. So I started working on that and literally
or as Rob Low says in Parks and Rex. Literally literally right before I
came over here to get on the phone with you, I began uploading Jeffrey
Bennett's talk at the UFO Congress in twenty fourteen. Wow, that's pretty spooky.
That is kind of weird. And then you bring him up. I
know, wow, WHOA he was great too. I loved his talk.
I think it is so good. Jeffrey Bennett is an astrophysicist. He's a
mainstream science guy. However, he's open, he's into he likes the topic
of UFOs. He's open to the possibility of ET visitation, as he says,
and I think the panel from twenty fourteen he was asked that specifically,
and I can't remember if he did it in his talk. However, what
is interesting about his talk is a lot of theoretical, a lot of you
know, kind of theorizing or pondering exists what extraterrestrial civilizations might be like from
a scientific perspective, and looking at ourselves and technology, and a big question
is are we even going to make it? You know, to write how
long are we going to be able to survive? So some really it was
an amazing talk, one of my favorite talks of that year. So that's
getting up and that's going to be in the video on demand soon. You
know. One of my favorite sayings of Jefferies is he was also a visiting
scientist at NASA too as well. One of my favorite sayings is that he
and some colleagues have talked, you know, quietly about this situation that they
think that if any intelligence can get through the bottleneck of technology without blowing themselves
up, they will indeed be traveling the stars. Yeah. Yeah, well
it's a really cool concept and he kind of talks about that at length on
this lecture. M h, really cool stuff. Yeah, he's great.
So there was another coincidence. Oh no, there wasn't another coincidence. But
I have another update. Okay, ready for this one. Yeah, I'm
moving on from the eclipse, which is cool stuff. And of course people
are hoping to see some UFOs and stuff. And I'm sure some people will
claim to you whether they not are truly anomalous or not, that we'll find
out, I guess. But so I guess where I'm going to be in
a week from today, let's see, that would be near the end of
August. I have no idea Mars. I knew it. It was right
on the tip of my tongue. No, sir, So what do you
mean did you really think you thought I was going to be on Mars?
Not really. Yeah, these wild claims you know of people going to Mars.
I'll be able to confirm them or not next week. No, actually
I will be on Mars. But it's actually the set of Mars. But
although I'm not traveling all the way to Mars, it is far. It
is Budapest. Are you serious. Yeah, so you'd be traveling to Budapest
for like three days or not even that. The traveling will be two of
those three days to go to the set of Mars. So, you know,
the Science Channel has had this Mars series going and really cool series,
and they're starting to shoot for the second season, and so I've been invited
to come out for that to check it out, do some social media kind
of fun stuff, and then write some stuff online. And so, yeah,
the set of Mars for the Mars TV show in Budapest. Amazing.
You know, you have the greatest life, you really do. I don't
know, Well, you get to do some amazing things. I do,
get to do some fun stuff, and you know what, what's funny is
a lot of this stuff it's and I guess it's it's this is journalism and
people. I think this is one thing people should understand about journalism and doing
all this sort of thing is that it doesn't pay. It's fun, but
it doesn't pay. So a lot of journalists or a lot of people like
a friend of mine, Aaron Sager's, he does the coolest stuff. He's
hanging out with you know, stars, and he mostly does He's spoken at
the twenty fourteen UFO Congress also, but he does all of these like conferences
where he does panels for sci fi conferences and comic book conferences and stuff like
that. So yeah, sometimes you get to do our Ben Hansen, for
example, he gets to do lots of fun stuff, but it's not like
at pays, which is a big struggle for him because he's trying to start
a family. But it is fun stuff, but there's a sacrifice. So
it just means, you know, you got to be able to willing to
do some of this kind of stuff without compensation, essentially, but for the
adventure of it. And I'm all four of that. Yeah, oh yeah,
I mean you really got to You know, when you have a family,
you know you have priorities. You know that I can understand the struggling,
but also the independence and to be able to to do exciting things is
very alluring, very hard to say no to. Awesome. Who's the guest
today? Oh, good question. That's a wonderful question. It's probably something
I should have started off with, but such exciting stuff with the eclipse and
everything. Richard Hoffman is my guest today. Oh yeah, yeah. I've
had him on before and he's part of the Scientific Coalition for Euphrology, which
is an organization that was created actually to investigate that Puerto Rico Ufo case.
So I've had him on before to talk about that case, which is pretty
exciting. However, what we're going to be talking about today is an article
that some of you might have seen on Openminds dot tv talking about the Spooklights
of Cloverdale. So there's a place in Alabama which is where he, until
recently was this eight director of Moufon. He's actually been in Moufon since it
started, literally, but he resigned recently because he's wanted He's very into the
scientific kind of aspect. Any move on's moved a little bit away from that,
so he's decided to invest more time in the See You and on some
of these other cool projects that he's working on. So that's what we're talking
about here, Just this phenomena kind of like the Marpha Lights or the Hestelen
lights, where there are these balls of lights, except this is in Alabama,
right, Yeah, And I know I've seen some images of that,
you know, like the streaking streaking across the sky. Now, as far
as I know, Richard has not ever done any streaking. Well that'll be
I hope you brought that up. I didn't, so we'll have to save
that for next time. Yeah, or maybe you can have him on podcast
UFO and ask him about that. Yeah, he's been on before. He's
really good. I really enjoy talking to him. Yeah, so that's the
show today. Doesn't he always wear a bow time? Or I think against
someone else? I know he does often wear a bow tie when he dresses
up or when he does lectures and stuff like that. Right, right,
that's the guy, fancy fella. Mm hmmm. So yeah, are we
ready for a little news? Oh yeah, let's talk some news, all
right. I'll start off this This is interesting because you see this quite often.
And that's up and it's the title of it, and was did Fox
News catch a UFO buzzing the US capital? Written by Alejandro Rojas recently.
So I I suggest anyone you know check this video out. I've watched it
two or three times. It's uh, it's it's really interesting because my first
thought is it's a bird, you know, going by, But then I
look really closely. There's absolutely no flapping of wings. Would would be fine
if it was going straight, you know, horizontal across the screen or or
actually down, but it's it's on an incline, so there's absolutely no flapping
that you can see. And it's sort of a yellow tinge to it.
I don't know if you notice that I did. Yeah, yeah, So
I've looked at it, like I said, three or four times. It's
really hard to figure out what this is now. I know at the bottom
of your article you wrote that could be something like a frisbee or something like
that, which you know is possible. It doesn't really it seems like you'd
see the shape of a frisbee, you know, going past the screen.
I don't know. You don't have to do some tests with it. Has
have you shown this? I know this was presented to move On by someone
who you know, did a video and screenshot of it, but did you
show this to Mark dy Antonio or anyone like that to get his opinion.
No, as far as I know, Mark has not seen it yet.
Now move On does its own investigation, So I was gonna kind of see
where they'll go with this, and we'll see the leading theory is a frisbee,
and I can definitely see that. In fact, there's a lot of
people who were upset about me posting it, and like those are the frisbee.
It's obvious, but of course, just like any video, people are
fighting about it, arguing over what it might be, because a lot of
people are saying there's no way it's a frisbee because of it shoots up,
you know, in this other direction. And if it's a frisbee, it
might be a yellow and white one because the leading edge seems to be light
in color and I can't see anything. It doesn't look like it's rotating spinning,
So although maybe you wouldn't be able to see that spinning, I think
what we'd have to do is throw a frisbee, fling of frisbee. Fly
a frisbee because it's smooth, so I mean it's flying, and see what
happens there is of course, this is Washington, d C. The Capitol,
and there is a a park of course in front of the Capitol,
so it's it's possible it's a frisbee. In fact, that's that's probably most
likely. But some people are debating that and claiming it's not a frisbee.
And there is something weird that happens when it gets in front of the Capitol.
It seems to fade out, which made me think maybe it's a hoax.
Maybe uh, it was. It was a hoaxed video because the person
who submitted the video, all they did was submit this little clip and that
was it. They didn't even describe it. All they said was something like
this is what their report said. It flew in front of the Capitol building
while I was watching Fox News. That's all they wrote with this this video
clip. So so there's no way to even check when this supposedly happens.
Yeah, you could look at the news stories and then probably determined from there.
I haven't taken the time to do that, but I did take the
video and slow it down and blow it up and so, and then put
it on YouTube slowed down greatly so that people can kind of analyze it.
And of course it's gotten a ton of hits and so, and it kind
of as usual when it comes to social media. Some good comments, but
a lot of really people like to be me. Yeah, I know that.
Wow. You know, you can see it talks about people killed in
Acapolco, Yesico resort, so you can kind of see when that aired and
try to figure that out, because yeah, of course it is possible that
he might have the person who's that submitted it might have done something cgi and
here it senate. That story looks like it was on August thirteenth end or
fourteenth, so that was just about a week ago. Yeah, you know,
it's funny though. You do see a lot of things in news casts
come up, and some of them are you know, faked, but also
you know, after the fact, but some of them are most likely like
birds or bugs or something like that. Yeah. Well, they have their
cameras on all the time, so and there's only one case and I can't
even remember when and where it was where they were filming news where they actually
did stop and film what was in the sky? Do you remember what I'm
talking about? Did you see that? Well, I'm not sure if I'm
thinking of the same one you are, But there was a case in Colorado
where they were actually going out there to film a UFO story and they captured
one of the objects on video a little bit there, and so that was
pretty interesting. They were white orbs, I know, like rich Hoffman was
felt strongly it was a Google balloon and they were the pheno. The whole
flap out there that was happening were Google balloons, and there were Google balloons
flowing in the area. However, I'm not so sure about that because the
Google balloons, at least for that period of time, had or at least
most of them, and according to Google, they have tracking devices on them.
And as many people and I linked to some of these some of the
people who looked into it found you can go to those airplane like flight tracker
sites. I think one's called flight tracker, and you can track those Google
balloons, so you could see what's in the area, and some people were
able to see where the Google balloons were at the time, and so yeah,
so it's pretty interesting all part of investigating. Another interesting story we have
that I would like to point people to otherwise I think we're about out of
time is a story from Linda Zimmerman. So Linda Zimmerman did the Hudson Valley
UFO yeh book. She wrote that, and she wrote a story for US
or an article called the UFOs Flying Dark. And it's a really great idea
because you know, there's all this controversy why would UFOs have lights? You
know, why are UFOs all lights in the sky. And she wanted to
make the point that there are objects seen that don't have lights on them.
And so that's the article she wrote about mostly triangles seen at night without lights
on them. So some really interesting sightings. Well, yeah, you don't
hear that is funny you say that because I have heard people talk about wrangles
without lights, but not any others. Really. I mean, the one,
you know, amazing sighting I had had no lights on it, you
know, but it wasn't really dark either, you know, it was you
know, twilight. Wow. So dis yours was a disc My uncle had
one like that that was a large rectangular object in Aspen, Colorado. Mm
hmm. Wow, that's a great. You know, she thinks of great
topics. The last one was on UFOs and dogs, yeah, which was
awesome, and pets. She's just a great thinker. I love Linda Zimmermann's
Wonderf's wonderful. Yep. Absolutely. All right, Well I think we're out
of time. All right, Well, thank you. We're gonna go ahead
and take a break and we'll be right back with Rich Hoffman. I am
happy to welcome back to the show Rich Hoffman. Hello, Hey, how
you doing al good? It's great to talk to you again. How have
you been well, I've been busy between work and family life and then everything
else that's been It's been hectic, but it's been great. This is a
good summer. I'm looking forward to my vacation next week at the Hilton Head.
So there you go. Oh that sounds fun. So things have changed
a bit since we've last talked to you. So you're no longer a state
director with move On. Yeah, I basically resigned my position as State director
as well as the director of Strategic Projects. I'm basically now just a lifetime
member because I was a benefactor prior to that separation, and so that's pretty
much it. H plan. Oh there was a weird noise. Did you
hear that? Yeah, I sure did. That was very strange. I
wonder if the listeners could hear that too. That was really weird. But
anyway, yet, so you're not with move On anymore, but you're still
doing UFOs. I sure am, I'm I'm I'm not gonna just turn away
after fifty two years of studying them, and I'm going to keep on investigating
and and that's that's what I like to do and and I probably will do
as long as I'm still upright and above the ground. You were with move
On for a long time, though, right where didn't you join in what
was it nineteen sixty nine when they started or something like that, you got
it. I'm one of the I think I joined right right in seventy nineteen
seventy. They had started it in May, I guess they incorporated it,
let's put it that way, and they were the Midwest UFO network at the
time. And I announcement about them coming into existence and immediately sent in my
interest. And so yeah, I've been with them for a long time.
I wish them well, I certainly do. I think that well. My
separation was based around some of the movements I saw that were kind of like
away from science, and certainly the last Symposium, in my estimation, wasn't
really helping to support science. So I decided that I was going to move
on and go towards more of a scientific bent. And that's pretty much where
I'm at now. You know what, I want to take a minute to
talk about that, not move on? Really, I think you explained that
well enough, and of course I've talked about the symposium, but I mean
the importance of science, because I don't know, I guess it does get
a little bit concerning, I know for you and some of our colleagues when
larger organizations or people in general kind of move away from it. And I
guess, what are the sentiments you hear out there? Why do you think
it happened that people move away? It seems that I want to get your
opinion on this. Science is hard, it's rigorous, and a lot of
people seem to get like kind of disappointed or impatient. Yeah, and that's
very, very true. I think that my take on the whole thing,
after my fifty two years of watching it, has been that well, I
mean, overall, we have a culture, you know, have shifted kind
of like away from science as being something that the everyday person has an interest
in, although I will sit and say that there's still a good number of
people who like astronomy, who liked meteorology, there's there are people who are
engineering, but even you know, in a lot of these professions, the
number of yes people are not going to some of those things. And the
UFO field, I mean if early in the early days was I mean,
it was all about science. It was about you know, what can we
do to collect evidence? How do we do what we do and what was
it? And so that was our primary focus. And we didn't have all
these other distractions, like you know, I guess exopolitics, and we didn't
have all the other kinds of things that come up with UFOs now, and
we didn't have a YouTube that was promoting fake videos or any of that stuff.
So to me, it was more like, you know, if you
got into this, you know you were going to be appl it to the
best of your ability. And you know, we were always challenged because we
had a you know, if you go with a volunteer base kind of approach.
Uh, well, I mean a lot of people lost. I mean,
you know, at the Condom Report closed out Project Bluebook, and then
you know, the National Academy of Scientists did their little stick on it,
and then you started to see that they had basically said, well, it's
no longer a credible subject, you know. And so there was all the
promotion that was within the mainstream science to be able to say, you know,
hey, look, don't don't even don't even go into the UFO thing.
Jokingly, I saw a thing where I was like on a site where
I was going to look at how do I write scientific articles? And on
the front page of that was don't do anything on UFOs. And I'm going
like, okay, well there's a message right up front, don't bother to
do anything like a journal or anything like on the CUFO subject. So I
guess what I'm trying to say to you is that there's this there seems to
be a rise in the level of these younger people to be very naive and
gullible. Uh there. I think I've talked about this in the past,
but there's a lack of critical thinking skills that we see. I was in
the training development profession and we were alerted to the fact that we didn't see
students and younger people at the time and this is like years and years ago
that I was doing this, but that we were we were seeing that thinking
critical thinking was a major concern for students, that we had to change our
way we were doing things. And it has written at the top. But
then coupled that with all the social media that's out there, that that gives
you just erroneous information and very bad information, and pretty soon you know you're
off under lalla land and you accept lalla land as being the norm. Uh.
And so when somebody comes in and tries to apply a very scientific approach
or something like that and use that rigor that you're trying to talk about that
you have in science, it just doesn't seem to rise to the level of
being of interest. And you know, I'll say this much I think that
you know, move on is was attempting to try to put you know,
and then do its best to be able to create science and Jan was also
working with me to be able to get technology and put in place. But
the struggle that we continued to have was that again we're getting like, you
know, maybe an ex witness might sign up to say that I want to
be an investigator, and that doesn't mean that they're necessarily good at it,
right, And it doesn't I mean, despite the fact you offer training,
it doesn't suddenly make them start thinking in a scientific way, you know,
And so you run into problems there. You know, even if you hand
it out technology to people, would they even understand what that particular technology does
or how how to use it in the field. Uh. And so there's
there's those challenges, and we just haven't seen a whole lot of like scientific
minded people that are coming into the the field. Uh and uh the only
thing that I've seen, and I'm very encouraged by that, by way.
But there's a number of like small projects that that people are doing from you
know, people who have been in it for a long time, like Mark
Roddicker is doing with UFO data uh that ronalds was doing out in California with
putting together his uh technical package. Uh. Shalon Holt is doing something with
you know, basically getting some data and and and I'm and then you had
Mark and Mark D'Antonio and Doug Trumbull that were looking at you FUTOG. So
there are these like little projects and because technology has definitely come down and cost.
They are trying to assemble devices that would be able to beneficial and getting
data. And that's what this phenomenon has needed all along. It is not
another report from someonetness to say I saw a light in the sky twenty years
ago. I mean, that's not going to get at us anywhere. And
we're not even hitting the other parts of the spectrum, you know, I
mean we only see like photos from cameras and and what about the infrared,
what about ultra violet? What about you know, you know, all these
other kinds of things that we can get from that electromagnetic spectrum. So we
need if we attack it in a very broad way and then look at this,
we might be able to do something where we might actually be able to
get some results that are meaningful and some helpful data. But it's not the
collection of just testimonies from people that said that they saw these objects. That
that's not going to get us anyway. Seventy thousand cases and movement that have
we made any convincing strides towards producing evidence. No, We've got a lot
of good cases that seem to be rather unexplainable, But yet we still struggle
with the fact that we can't provide anything that makes a dent. And as
close as we've come so far, I might be the ugly dea case in
the sense that you do get something that's kind of interesting in the sense that
it's an infrared kind of video, but anyway, were lacking those kind of
other kinds of like you know, tools being applied. And again it's more
scientific mindedness and a definite specific approach that has to be taken, and that
means we need to get those kinds of people who think that way together.
Yeah, and you know what I'm saying, and that's that's the critical thing
we've got to be able to come up with. Yeah, and I understand
move On's movement and the intense pressure because when I was doing PR you know,
we get so many people why don't you do this, why don't you
do that? And I used to always say, well, we can't do
everything for everybody. There's other groups doing some of those sort of things.
We've got to focus on what other people aren't doing, which is our mission
statement, which is the science. But you know, some people get disappointed
with that, and so it's always a struggle. But It's great that there
because my heart, even though I cover everything in this field and I try
to cover, you know, what's going on out there to share with people,
my heart is in the science area. So I've always try to keep
an eye and grease the wheels and keep that sort of thing happening. It
always makes me think of that JFK and let's see if I could do a
good impression. It always makes me think of his quote, we chose to
go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they
are easy, but because they are hard. Wow, you did that very
well. Did you like it that I do? Okay, you did a
great job. All Wow, I think you could be the next next movie
and that would be great and you can play it apart. That would be
fun do that. But yeah, exactly, I think to me, it's
like one of those things where it's like and that's precisely it's hard, but
it's also doing it smartly. So I think that, you know, if
we focus our efforts on going after like what we can and tackling the best
cases we can come up with and going into greater detail for example, you
know, I mean, we couldn't figure out what the Aguadia thing is.
But I mean we spent two years looking at that. But I mean there
are cases like that that you need to spend a lot of time, you
know, and you really need to do the digging, and you need to
have scientific minded people approaching it. It's not just like let me fill out
a report form and have it done within a ninety day window. So I
think that, you know, there are some cases that want to the fact
that you spend a lot more time on it, and you should put to
a full court press. And especially when you get like evidence that comes out,
like you know, in the form of maybe a video, a very
good video clip with a lot of references, but and maybe it's an infrared
that's something relatively new to us. We just need to take the time to
look at it, analyze it, get smart about it, and find out
what we can do. And so I think that that's you know, we
need to do scientific approaches to it and to really think things through. And
that's kind of like what I've done with this Cloverdale project. Mm hmm.
Yeah. So Agua Dan, for those who don't remember, we've talked about
it so much and last time you were on the show, we talked about
it quite a bit, but the homeland security case that was handled outside of
Muffin, it was actually handled with a group you and others form called the
Scientific Coalidal Coalition for Eufology, which now you know I'm involved with. Also
that we're getting some more movement around it to have it one of hopefully a
bastion of scientific thought and work towards this field. But this new case is
exciting because you know, we've talked a lot about the Hesdelen Lights on the
show, because that's exciting where they have these light phenomena that happens in Denmark,
but Cloverdale essentially is something similar right in your neck of the witch.
Maybe you can explain what this phenomena is and how far observations of it have
gone back. Sure well as a being I live in Huntsville, which is
if you look at it, it's like maybe fifteen minutes south of the Tennessee
state line and it's in the middle part of that northern section of the state.
I had monthly move on meetings. I still have these meetings. We
just don't call them move on. But I mean I got these people that
are that are meeting and all along while I've been here in the Huntsville area
that I've had people, you know, make occasional mentions of ball lightning or
ball lights that they call them, that were over and they would call them
orbs, they call them, all different kinds of things that were flying around
this area just north of Florence, which if you look at Florence, Alabama,
it's pretty much over near the Mississippi state line. But anyway, I
would get people telling me about these like lots of lights that are being seen
over there, and I kind of like, okay, well, lights,
you know, and then I wou occasionally get a move on reports from people
of Vicinity who would be describing these orbs that were moving around and doing some
interesting things, and so I, you know, I would check them out,
you know, and typically I didn't see that there was like a repeatable
phenomena. Could have been an aircraft, could have been could all these different
kinds of things. Well, uh, I got a hold actually I was
contacted by a gentleman by the name of Wyatt Cox. Uh. In fact,
he contacted me several years ago and mentioned something about these lights that were
over in an area of Cloverdale and and then we just recently got back into
touch with each other. And of course now I'm I'm I've got a lot
more time because I'm not doing the move on stuff, but I've got I
said, well, let's focus on that. Let's see what it is.
So basically what I did is, I uh, He's published a book.
It's called Uh I Believe the Cloverdale Spook Lights and anyway, it's and he
had him and another friend of his that I guess they were living in the
Florence area, became aware of this and these lights that were moving around people's
farms that are up in that area. And they, I mean they were
saying that they would see lights that would that would be rather large, that
would be moving around and in fact they would be you know, going up
near trees or in between trees, and then they would get up to a
certain altitude. And anyway, these things were being reported by the residents,
but nobody or they would talk about it, and it's kind of like,
oh, there's those lights again, you know, I mean, they didn't
report it, and so consequently it's like, you know, turns out a
lot of residents over there know about this. Thing. Well, he became
aware of it, and him and his friend spent from roughly right around like
this is right around the nineteen seventy three time period, and basically they were
starting to see the reports. Just like you know, nineteen seventy three was
up very hot year for UFO reports in general, as you very well know,
that's a major flat year. But it seemed as though that there were
these lights that were being seen around the Florence and north of that Florence area.
And so him his friend would go out and they would try to see
what they could find, and they were got permission to be able to go
on people's farms and some clearing kind of areas, and they would they started
to document the fact that there were these lights that were out there. In
fact, basically he came up with some sort of a way of classifying them,
and he talks about in his book where you have and then it's kind
of by color. So you have a white light, you'll have a blue
light, and then you'll have kind of like an orange or yellow orange kind
of like light that and those three primary colors tend to be the most common.
The sizes were interesting in the sense that the white and the blue tend
to be roughly two to four feet in diameter, while the yellow orange tend
to be about eight foot in diameter. And they started noticing that and again
as these things are moving around, like a good example of how they came
up with the eight foot in diameter, with the fact that this thing was
above a railroad track and so you could actually get an estimate and you knew
the size of the railroad track and so on. Anyway, they talk about
this in their book, and it seems that those colors have an association pretty
much with the time of year that you look at these things. So during
the summer months they tend to be more whitish, as the days gets cooler
and the nights gets cooler, and for the fall they tend to be more
in this yellow orange. The blue ones kind of like you know, are
popping up here, there and everywhere in terms of the time period, at
least as far as I could see from or what I've learned so far.
But the definitely and the cooler nights from a period of like about October through
maybe like you know, about March or something of that nature, or April,
you could go into this area and they tended to be that large variety
and the frequency of them could be that you're seeing many of these things,
and they generally are after just after sundown and up to maybe like about midnight,
that's when they were out there. And so you could on some nights
you'd be able to go out there and see as many as three or four
of these things. Wow. And the other thing is that they don't seem
to be impacted at all by wind. So you've got these lights that apparently
they said that they seemingly moved up from the ground and they start rising and
then they're moving in a straight line. They tend to go east and west
or west to east, and they are basically, you know, like I
said, not impacted by wind. They've they tend to be these balls of
if you would like a like a plasma or something like a ball plasma.
Uh. You had a situation on one particular case, and this was in
the newspaper articles for the Florence paper over there. They spoke of a woman
who saw an object and then a short time after that, feathers came flying
out of the sky. Well that that indicates maybe a bird went into one,
you know, and was immediately zapped or something you have. But I
mean again, so this repeatable phenomenon you can actually go take a look at.
Now for the most part, we believe, I mean, I think
we're all pretty much in agreement that they are a natural phenomena. And especially
when you look at other you know that the fact that there seems to be
these areas where you have those kind of multiple things. So if you look
at it, like you know, doctor Harley Rutlich talked about the Piedmont sightings
in nineteen seventy three that were going on, and these lights that we're moving
around. You have the Marphall lights, You've got the Brown Mountain lights.
And by the way, I just we just basically looked at Joshua pier Warren's
presentation that he gave several years ago for you on the Brown Mountain lights,
and in fact, we took a look at that video and a lot of
his descriptions and things like you said, you know, and him and I
have been in conversation with each other, are very very similar. I mean,
going back to the time of the year and the fact that it's cooler
and that seems to make the lights of different color and more frequent, and
you know, he was looking at it from the standpoint that it might have
some sort of relationship to what they called K waves and the it's like space
weather if you look at some sort of space weather relationship that there showed that.
Plus you the Brown Mountain area, you've got a large number of you
know, fault lines that are ruping along this mountain chain if you would where
if you go look at for the geophysical kind of like maps for the area
that we're talking about, you'll see that there's maybe like one fault that's going
north to south, but it's a very small one. And we've got to
take a quick break and then we'll talk some more about that aspect of it.
But you mentioned nineteen seventy three was actually the year I was born,
and I suspect, you know, there's a video out there that relates to
how I believe I came to this planet. It's called rocket by Baby.
It's a Bugs Bunny the Looney tune. So google Looney Tunes Rocket by Baby
if you want to see my origin story, Do you remember that video?
I sure do. Yeah, that's a great one. All right, So
we're gonna take a quick break for kg r A. Of course, podcast
listeners will be right back. But for kg r A, you're gonna hear
a lot of great commercials, so definitely patronize the commercials that you hear here.
But we'll be back in just a minute with Open Minds Radio. All
right, we are back with Rich Hoffman talking about the Cloverdale spook lights is
what they used to be called, or at least the researchers you meant mentioned
Wyatt Cox had a book called Spook Lights about these lights. Now you were
talking about some of the other light phenomena like Marpha lights. I had mentioned
Hesdelin before, but in the Hesdelin Lights, what was surprising he said this
that, you know, I don't know what's his name, Eric, you're
talking about Errand erling Strand. Yeah. At the move On symposium that you
and I both spoke at, and then at our UFO congress last year,
he has been investigating those lights with a lot of different devices and things like
that. He had mentioned that, you know, a lot of people out
there believe them to be some sort of uh, you know, natural phenomena,
but he disagreed. He felt there was some sort of intelligence behind these
objects. You mentioned earlier that you feel that the lights here in Alabama and
possibly the Marpha lights and others do have a natural uh an answer that may
lie in like some sort of natural phenomena you think, Yeah, I think
that we all tend to seemingly agree that they're not there, that they they
tend to be some sort of a ball plasma of some sort of nature.
And you know, I mean it's like anything that we we I think,
you know, going back to whether or not these have I mean some sort
of sentience and can think, and some I mean they don't. I mean,
for example, these move in a straight line, and they may disappear
and they then suddenly they'll come back and appear, but they eventually they go
out, they h and at least the ones over in Cloverdale now they're they're
moving in pretty much a straight line path, uh and where you might and
you see others that have a little bit more deviation to them in terms of
their flight path or the path that they take. And I and I would
only cautions that that you know, we as humans tend to be answerpomorphic and
we want to be able to turn anything we see and make patterns out of
it, and our minds would interpret something and say, oh, it looks
like it looks like it's got intelligence. And I've heard that commonly. I've
heard that applied to these types of ball lights that that people see that will
move around and they'll kind of like move maybe even move around to person.
And I've also seen reports where for example, you know, oh, here's
something interesting. So I remember even a move on case where you had a
red orbed light that was that was moving toward a car that was actually heading
at about sixty five miles an hour, and the object came over next to
that and and stayed up with that same speed of the vehicle from one side
and then kind of like went over to the other side. And you had,
you know, the food fighter phenomenons kind of like that, you know,
in a sense that they kind of came up near a plane and they
might move around the plane like there's some sort of an intelligence there. Well,
here you had this case in the Cloverdale where there's an instance where they
see the light above the track and the train comes and at that point where
that the train comes, it now kind of like attaches itself and is following
along with the train. Now to me, if you look at all those
kind of instances right there, what do you see? You see an object
that is next to a metallic object. Okay, these are moving vehicles,
these are moving aircraft, and in what do we know? I mean there's
probably a you know, well, there's batteries and everything else associated with it.
So I think that what happens is there's they have some sort of electromagnetic
connection or magnetic connection to that object, which is why they suddenly trail with
the birth of the plane, the train and you know and everything else.
So I think that we might say, oh, well, that seems like
it's pretty intelligent because it was doing that. But maybe it's just the fact
that again there's a connection to it being near metallic object. Yeah, that's
interesting. And you know, you also mentioned that they mostly move east west,
which is also interesting. Yeah, and it's interesting in that sense that
there's this repeatable pattern. And so you know, that's what's curious about it
for me is like, are there you know, and any underground water,
uh maybe like kinds of rivers if you would, are they trailing that?
And so are they are there anything? Is there a magnetic kind of effect
that's going on that makes it want to trail that way. And so part
of what we want to do with the project is actually get some baselines and
go up and find measurement, do measurements, find out what we can to
see if there's any kind of you know, thing like that that may be
coming into play. I mean, why do they go east to west?
Why out? I mean or west to east and in that direction? Uh,
And from what I've seen in terms of the geological studies and stuff like
that that I've got, uh, you don't really see anything that sticks out
like this is what would be causing it? Mm hmm. And that I
mean that would be big for uphology too. And that's what's exciting about these
projects, even when it comes to these balls of light, is that if
it can be proven there is a phenomena of balls of light that you know,
move around, you know, they can be visible at night. I
mean, that would be a big deal for euthology. And that sure,
some people may be bummed, and I think a lot of people don't want
to know if something like that exists, But that way it helps us to
know what's really unusual. Yeah, to me, you're absolutely right, And
to me, al, I mean, you know it as well as I
do. The vast majority of the UFO cases that we get are typically if
out there are explainable phenomena, right, So it's when we get down into
some of these things because science doesn't have an answer to what these orbs are,
these like these types of like you know, lights or luminous phenomena,
I think that we would benefit our uthology by being able to understand these so
that we could clearly eliminate them from being the uf UP. You know what
I'm saying. So let's let's get to know this this phenomena that keeps getting
reported that we can't explain and they end up being thrown into the UFO category
when indeed they have an explanation as being high fos so and I think that
this helps us out from a standpoint of understanding atmospheric physics and so so to
me, I think that there's benefit in doing this, uh and for us
to get smarter about the things that we know and UH And because these things,
like I said, are relatively unknown and we are trying to figure them
out, let's let's get an answer to them and we can eliminate them from
the UFO equation, so m h. And also, yeah, they're not
tied to jumps. They're not tied just to these areas, is what I'm
also is that whatever phenomena is creating this thing, whether it be you know,
whether it be a pah ol electric type of thing from a fault zone
or whatever like that, or some people suggest that it might be a gas
that somehow ignites the fact that it goes into a plasma state which is extremely
hot by the way I mean, and it does what it does, we
ought to understand the physics of how that thing happens and it would help us
out in a lot of different ways. Sorry. Yeah, I think it
also helps legitimize the field of UFO study, because you know, when the
definition of a UFO is something that we haven't identified yet, if we begin
to identify and especially come up with more prosaic answers, but something that's unknown
and that adds to science, I think that really legitimizes the field and the
research. I can't agree with you more. And the fact that we can
now get technology pretty inexpensively we can go out and get some readings on this.
We can might be able to get some sort of like indications. I
intend to go out there with an and fly it as close as I can
without but again going back to want to be able to film it up close
learn from it. That way, we're going to be looking at and I've
actually got Shallon Halt that is going to be providing me some of his devices
and we're going to be putting those out into farming areas and seeing if that
will help register anything. And I'm looking for other people who are interested,
by the way, and some of your listeners who would be interested in the
We're looking around the late fall and maybe early winter time frame of this year,
but to actually go out and we're looking to be able to set up
our gear and stuff like that where and you might have they might have gear
that we'd like to be able to test and to do anything to gather data
that we can. So that's kind of like where I'm hoping to go.
And I've been building a project plan, looking at the types of things and
trying to set up, you know, different times of experiments that we can
do. I've got people that are I've already talked to a couple of colleges
and they're going to get back to me with some whether they're going to have
some support. But cool, there you go, Yeah, that's really cool.
So yeah, that's kind of the future of what you're doing here is
that you know, you want to take it to that next level. So
I guess what you're going to be doing is kind of similar to some of
those projects you had mentioned earlier has done being one of them, but like
the uphotog project or UFO data where they're putting together kind of these viewing stations
right where they can film and get other types of telemetry on these objects.
Yeah, and I exactly, And what we lack is throughout this whole you
know UFO phenomena is good data and that you're going back to the point where
I think a lot of people feel that that's you know, the scientific study
of UFOs has been a way it has. I'm giving us anything, right,
but we've never had these tools before until now, and we didn't have
people that were willing to go out and to do this kind of like level
of grunt work and rigor and so I mean I've always said, you know
that we have for the longest period of time, I mean, in in
the UFO history of the United States, on the known side. We have
had little scientific study of this phenomenon. Mm hmm. We've had scientists who
sat there read reports. But what I'm saying is engaging and putting equipment out
and and there's there's very few of that. You have people that like Ray
Stanford had projects starlighted international years and years ago that that I was impressed with,
where he actually had some equipment, And there's been maybe a few others,
but not it's not been you know, uh done from a broader standpoint,
and we've not attacked and we're just now getting started with that. So
I think that we might be able to get more scientific data now than we
could in the past. Why do you think that hasn't happened in the past.
I well, I think that, you know, I think it's a
matter of that the technology wasn't there. I mean, who had a computer
in the nineteen you know, before nineteen eighty, you know, I mean
who had that? You know when I did my investigations back in the early
days of sixty four and after that, I didn't have any equipment. I
didn't have anything that I could really do it. The pair of binoculars I
had maybe a Geiger counter I had. That's about it, you know.
I mean I had accomplished I could have walked around with, but I didn't
have any you know, and no funding to be able to do it.
So it was all just me walking around the fields trying to do what I
could do and going investigating cases. And you know that didn't really amount to
much. And then you'd hear about maybe some people that said, well,
we ought to do this, but we just you know, the cost of
technology was too great. I mean, now you can you know, your
smartphone is way more capable of doing all different kinds of things. It's got
a grab a meter, it's it's got uh the all types of other kinds
of things associated with it, the accelerometers. So my cell phone alone can
become a tool. I I just bought the other day a way that I
can get a diffraction grading attached to my my phone and I can get a
spectral image. Now, so I mean that's that's unheard of. I mean,
you know, you can use your smartphone to be able to record radiation.
They've got a little attached bustle they help you to do that. So
I you know, you're you have Tesla meter which there's a little app that
allows you to be able to do uh, two different different things like that
with the magnetic relationship. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that
the tools are out there now, they're they're getting down to the root level,
and now the time to be able to attack it. And I think
that that's why it wasn't done in the past. They just didn't have tools,
they couldn't get money for yeah, resources, I mean the few groups
like well, and not only that, people seem not as excited unfortunately with
some of those findings. I guess it's always kind of the case with science.
I just got done watching the whole mini series on Einstein Genius from National
Geographic, which was great, and he had sort of the same problem.
For some reason, he became famous, mostly probably because of his hair,
but unfortunately people didn't care about the details of things he was excited about.
Often because even France, for example, they've been able to spend some resources
and they have discovered some cases in which there was a physical effect on electro
magnetic effect in particular in a couple of cases, and they're really excited about
that. And that has actually even though through old cases inspired them to continue
investigating UFOs to this day. So there is a little bit of science that's
been done out there, but it takes a lot of resources and time and
money and equipment that just so far, you know, that billion researchers haven't
been able to afford exactly exactly. So I'm encouraged. I think that the
future is wide open in the form of science and technology being applied to UFOs
because it's getting affordable. And you know, if you have those people around
the country that are interested in science and want to apply it, we're all
game for that. I mean, that's applaud the effort. I mean,
but we need to also do the rigor of winding up our reports and getting
them into scientific journals and having them peer reviewed, all those things that you
would expect. And I say that because you just don't want to have make
articles sent out to the world and then it all gets criticalized, you know,
and everybody's going to be critical of it. Well, it's not science.
And even scientists when they put together their papers and they try to get
them peer reviewed, go through a very lot of abuse and a lot of
time and effort from other scientists, you know, so I guess what I'm
trying to say is we've got to figure this out, and how can we
do it, and how can we work jointly with I'll say this right now,
between even skeptics and debunkers and everything else, if you apply scientists to
it, I think that you find a less resistance. But they seem to
want to go after the fact that we didn't do our homework, that we
weren't disciplined, and we weren't this and if you have facts and data that
can stand up on their own and expert opinion, and often it's hard to
get these experts when you aren't a credible organization or you're not doing things in
a way that they recognize as credible. So that's really important too. Yeah,
So we for those of us who have an interest in the UFO phenomena
wanting to solve it or to explain it or come up with answers and stuff
like that, we really have to become more disciplined and more objective, and
we have to ditch all these crazy ideas about you know, the secret space
programs and all other stuff like that and start to really focus on the study
of the phenomena as it stands right now. Yeah, I mean, and
go ahead. I was just getting excited about that comment because it's like,
yeah, you can have you can have anecdotal information all day long, and
of course those have us in this field receive that anecdotal information all day long.
Extraordinary claims. But as Carl say, you can said, you know,
extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which sets our bar really high, but
you know, it's it's worth the effort. By the way, I like
what Stanton Freeman says, extraordinary extra extordinary claims requires extraordinary investigation. Ah,
that's a really good one too, which yeah, he's put in some really
hard work in the past, no doubt about that. Well, we're pretty
much out of time, but I am really excited. And that's what's fun
bringing people like you on because there are people, and I know a lot
of our listeners who get kind of bummed, you know, with when they
see a lot of groups organizations moving towards the fringe. Not that it's you
know, everybody has a right to do what they want, but it's scary
to see people move away from some of the harder stuff that I think it's
going to be more fruitful, especially with getting the mainstream involved with all of
this, and so it's great to see people like you that are continuing to
just kind of roll up your sleeves and get at it. And I'm looking
for more people that want to do that too. So yeah, by all
means, that's that's what we need, and thank you for helping us to
get the word out to people that this is what we need to do as
well. For sure. All right, well, thank you so much for
coming on the show again. The time flew. Oh my gosh, it
felt like a couple of minutes instead of you know, forty five minutes or
so. So thanks for coming on again, and I'm sure we'll be talking
again in the future. All right, now, you have a nice one
night summer, by the way, Yeah you too. Thank you so much
to Rich Hoffman for being on the show. Really exciting stuff. It's so
cool that you know there is science being done out there, and that there
are people doing the hard, hard work to try to investigate some of this
phenomena in a more scientific way. I know it's a lot of hard work,
but it's so doing in my humble opinion, and I'm very happy that
people like Rich are doing this now. He talked about the Scientific Coalition for
Ufology and they are the group that investigated the Puerto Rico case that you know,
we've had Robert Powell on, We've had Morgan Biel on or bell on,
and we've had rich On talking about that. You can see that report
at the Scientific Coalition for Ufology website which is explore SCU dot org. Explore
SCU dot org. You can see the video and get the full report.
Also, you might see it online, especially like at the open Mind UFO
news Facebook group. People battling and kind of having ideas about what is in
that video, and the SCU is taking a look at that, and they
do take people very seriously. In fact, I think that they really do
a lot of work and bend over backwards for the critics out there, because
you know, they invite criticism, actually constructive, credible criticism, So they
are trying to answer those questions. And you can see that at that website
explore SEU dot org. So we'll see what happens with that as time goes
on. Will they discover this to be something mundane or will it be discovered
that it is something much much more mysterious. Stay tuned so you could check
that out. Also, as we said earlier, you know, the SEU
is going to be doing more and more exciting stuff now that rich is freed
up time because he's not doing the move on thing. I know he and
others are going to be spending more time doing some really cool research and you
know, getting to bet together people who are interested in the science of things.
Otherwise, thank you so much for joining us. You can go to
open Minds doat TV to find out about any of the stuff that we talked
about, all of those stories that Martin and I talked about Open Minds dot
TV. Of course, like I say, go to my Facebook and my
my Twitter account so you can follow some of my adventures coming up in next
week. And my Facebook you can just find Alejandro t Rojas and you'll see
in parentheses open Minds for that account, and then also for Twitter, it's
just Alejandro t Rojas, So please go check that out. I would love
for you to join me on my trips. On my journey to Mars,
I ought to be a lot of fun or boodha pest. I don't know
why, but I really when I see the word buddapest and I'd like to
say pest. I don't know if that's a real accent that people say,
and I got that from television, but I just boo that pest. It
just sounds fun to do that, and that's how I like to say the
name of that town. And it's interesting that I'll actually be there. But
otherwise, UFO Congress lots of new stuff going on there. You can go,
there's getting there's new videos up on the video on demand, including my
video and what Ryan Sprague We've got up there, and I've got more of
that. It'll be coming up next week. So also ufocongress dot com and
you can see some of the speakers that we've listed. In fact, one
of the people we're going to have is Anne Druffels. Some of you that
know her will know how exciting that is because she hasn't been around for a
while and she's been a researcher for many, many years. So that's going
to be a lot of fun. And yeah, just go to ufocongress dot
com to see more. Because I'm running out of time and I want to
say thank you. I want to say thank you to Caleb Hanks for the
opening end close music. I want to say thank you to Systematics who created
that bumper music for me. I also want to thank kg R for hosting
open Minds Now. I hope you KGr A listeners are enjoying us. And
then I also want to thank Martin Martin Willis from podcast UFO for joining me
with the news. He's always a lot of fun. He is a goofy
fella. So thank you to everybody, and of course, as usual,
thank you to you the listener. I am so happy that you listen.
Go check out the Devil's Tower thing, because again I love to see listeners
and it's always fun to see people who listen to the show and say hey
and see what you look like, and all of that good stuff happens at
every conference and it's a lot of fun. But anyway, you can find
out more about that Devil's Tower rendezvous at UFO at open Minds dot tv on
the event page or google the Devil's Tower UFO rendezvous. That is all time
is up until next time. Audios moves