Pudsonriverradio dot Com. This is Travis Walton and you are listening to UFO Headquarters,
beautiful Headquarters, and good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever
on the globe UAB. This is Michael Warden with Linda Zimmerman and I am
back, Linda. I am here. It is good to see you again.
You too, and we have a very exciting show. I've been looking
forward to this one now, but I know that you have a few things
you want to cover before we get to our guest. Yeah. I just
want to acknowledge I really appreciate when people get in touch with us and tell
us they actually enjoy listening to the show, which is nice. And we've
got a very nice message from I hope I get this somewhat right, Yoka
Risen of Finland. I hope I did not repay his kindness by horribly mutilating
his name. So I know you were happy to hear this, Mike,
because Finland is your happy place. It's my happy place. Yes, So
thank you so much. We really do appreciate that. And I got a
message from someone in aust from Andrew in Australia, a description of a recent
I believe it was a recent sighting, and he thought he was standing there
staring at Jupiter, just hanging in the sky, nice and bright, until
it started blinking and took off. And uh so it's it's good to see
things are still jumping around the world. So I think I think Project Blue
Book would call that swamp gas. Yes, Australian swamp gas. It's a
special swamp gas down under. Yes. So you know, you and I.
When we first started the show, we decided to kind of limit guests
because we were going to talk about cases mostly, so when we actually have
a guest back for the second time, it means we really like it.
So tonight we want to welcome back Charles Lear with his second book, let
Me get this name correct, Crashed Saucers and Malevolent Aliens. The emergence of
popular modern UFO mythos in the late twentieth century. Wow, Charles, welcome
back. Hello, good be back, Michael, good to be back.
So what prompted this book? Oh? What prompted this book? I had
actually written two five part blogs, one about abductions and one about UFO cover
Up Live. What was behind it? It seemed to me that UFO cover
Up Live in particular seemed to be a showcase for all the really stupid things
that were going on in eufology in the nineteen eighties, and I thought I
could pretty easily expand the both of those into a book. It turned out
took a lot more research because I I didn't have enough time to go as
deeply as I wanted to. And I thought it was really necessary to go
very deeply into these because I was basically finding a lot of very revered people
in eufology finding out that their their reputations got quite a bit tarnished throughout the
years, but it's not really very well known, so I covered it in
this book. My main purpose in the book, which I stayed in the
introduction, was to really see where the popular idea of gray aliens from Zata
reticuli coming here in nuts and bolts craft to abduct us, experiment with us,
combine our DNA, possibly with cattle, and create hybrids, and you
know do they started out as space brothers trying to help us come to grips
with our new recent discovery of how to split the atom and keep us from
blowing ourselves up, and then they ended up becoming these nasty little gray creatures.
So how did that happen? How you read the book? I know,
I know, yeah, but you definitely do expose the dirty underbelly of
uphology. In fact, enough dirty bellies to stretch from here to Zata Reticulie.
So it really is eye opening. To use one of Brian's favorite words,
the shenanigans that went on. It's it's stunning, and I think it's
something that needs to be told because so many people just believe everything. Yeah,
it's out there for anybody to find. And this was a journey for
me as I learned a lot just writing this, and that's pretty much as
I write. I don't come in as somebody who already knows this. I'm
an expert and now I'm going to pass on my wisdom to the reader.
It's a journey for me. And along the way, I cited all my
sources in the text because this is something that really requires the reader to remain
focused because it's a very convoluted story, a lot of twists and turns,
especially when we get into I mean, we were dealing with Richard Dody right
in the middle of all this, who was a self proclaimed CIA disinformation agent.
It turns out he was perhaps not quite as high up in the ranks
as he would like people to believe, and in any case, he threw
a lot of monkey wrenches into eufology. And it was also a period.
The first book I wrote was Flying Saucer Investigators, and that starts really in
the nineteen fifties with the first private UFO investigation organizations. These people tended to
stay out of the way of the story, the early apro and NICAP and
they weren't the they weren't the big story. The investigators themselves, the cases
were the stories. And what happened in the eighties seems to be the investigators
went out and got the spotlight. And not only that, they started to
tell their readers and listeners when they lectured, you know, basically, trust
me, I've been doing this a long time and coming off as experts and
quite literally saying that. So a lot of ego got in the way and
a lot of really tall tales got told, and basically I was starting with
the Roswell story. I grew you know, basically grew up with that eighties.
I was, yeah, I was in my early twenties in the eighties
and got all my information pretty much from documentaries. I never bothered to read
the Roswell book. I read the Roswell Book by Charles Berlitz and Bill Moore
in order to you know, really look at its start, and I was
shocked at out just juvenile the book really is. And Charles Burlitz too is
he's responsible for putting the Bermuda Triangle, the Philadelphia Experiment, and the Roswell
thing all into the American mythos, the Triple Crown of tuphology, and they're
all ridiculous, I mean, the books themselves. He didn't. I was
so focused on more that I actually didn't take the time to research Charles Burlitz.
And I actually just recently did that. And it's an article in Skeptic
magazine. But basically the author of the article. Writer of the article points
out that Berlitz in the Bermuda Triangle would do things like if a plane was
on its way to Bermuda and crashed in Canada, it still counted its the
Bermuda Triangle. He said, the minority of his reports were actually in the
Bermuda Triangle. U and in the Philadelphia Experiment. Uh, there was actually
a fictional story with a character called doctor Reinhardt, who was supposed to be
a scientist in seclusion because he knew too much about secret government of electromagnetic research
that could make boats disappear, for instance, and the Philadelphia experiment. In
chapter nine, More supposedly meets an actual doctor Reinhurt, and it's the same
guy from the fictional book. And it's the same scenario from the fictional book.
So that's the start. So you know, when people say Bill Moore's
deal with the devil was with Dodie, it really seems to have been with
Charles Burlitz. So when they got into he had a real story with the
Roswell story, it seemed when Stanton Freeman got ahold of Jesse Marcel and heard
the story from him, it's intriguing. The guy was there and he was
put together. He brought the story to Berlitz, and he and Friedman did
the research for litzt in most of the writing. But then you get into
the book and you know, More should have run if he wanted to be
considered a serious hephologist, or you know, if he had any he had
any integrity, I mean, he should have just gotten far away from that
book. As far as I'm concerned, I mean that they cited sources for
crash I think a saucery hidden away well, for the idea that there are
crashed saucers in the possession of the government. His sources, he cites Desmond
Leslie, who was a co author with Georgia Dansky of Flying Saucers Have Landed,
George Hunt Williamson, who was a contactee who also called himself professor just
like Georgia Danski. And Gray Barker, who is a notorious prankster folklorist.
You know, I love Gray Barker, but he's not exactly what you would
call a credible source. So those are in the book. And then when
you go to the original reports, the original reports from Brasel interviewed very soon
after I think the July ninth Roswell Daily Record, Brasel is describing a bundle
of rubber I think three feet long, about seven inches thick, and a
bundle of sticks, paper, foil and tape that was about I think roughly
eighteen inches long and about seven eight inches thick. And you know, the
story is that the government got to him. But in any case, the
story is as in it it's really flimsy, and it's unbelievable to me that
it went on so long and got so convoluted and bodies were added in any
case this that that's the beginning of the craziness. And then what happened was
the Roswell story just sucked everybody's attention away from everything else. So while that
was going on, a lot of things were going, you know, falling
through the cracks anyway. I've gone, well, I have questions. I
think you made a really valid point, which I didn't quite look at it
this way. Before that, the whole field went from these you know,
apro nightcap investigating the cases to look at me. I'm the star of eufology.
And of course now we have which will remain nameless. You know,
these traveling groups of eufologists who you know, they're the main attraction. And
it's a shame, and it was one of the reasons why I think Mike
and I decided to not have so many guests, because we just want to
focus on cases, because to me, that's where that's where the importance of
this field lies. With the data, with the with the personal accounts.
Like my my favorite cases are a witness and a reporter, a reporter who
is just straight up trying to get the story and that really has no background
in eupology. And right, actually, a really good case is you're familiar
with the Zamfreta case with the Italian uh is a concilia like an Italian police
guy, security guard. Right, Yeah, we did a we did an
episode on that. Yeah. Yeah, and you know that. What I
really love about that case is it was written, the book was written about
and investigated by a journalist with no back running euthology whatsoever. So he approached
it as a journalist. And right, and all the Italian police who were
were there, you know, witnessing the aftermath, and yeah, that that
is an excellent that is an excellent case. So again, that's what that's
what we try to do, is you know, here's what people saw,
here's what they said. You make up your own mind. But Mike,
did you have some what was your topic she wanted to bring up? Yeah
a lot. Let me let me pull up a c No, first of
all, I just want to compliment the research that went into it. I
mean, knowing how how much research, how much time it takes up an
almost twenty page bibliography. I mean I flipped to the back of the book
first. I'm like, yes, well researched because I appreciate that, because
you approached it very you know, from a scholarly point of view. You
weren't afraid to call out sort of the sacred cows, the elephants in the
room, so to speak. You know, you you call out some of
these well known ufologists who are making who've been on TV for for dozens of
years, maybe who have shady credentials if any you know, claim to have
degrees from various universities or maybe top secret super duper level clearances with no record
of employments, and and people eagerly seem to latch onto these without questioning.
Linda and I, without naming names, had our own encounter with one such
popular UFO entertainer who's over. I do won't say his name, but you
know over over expands upon his experience in life, and that doesn't help.
I mean, what's your take on all of that, and how do you
think it is in the field? Ah? Well, an interesting thing about
this this field is a common thing you find well, for instance, Richard
Doty Okay, there's a lot of role play in this field. And when
you get the intelligence community involved, it gets really blown out of proportion.
So a lot of these guys that were in the Aviary, for instance,
how put off John Alexander, and the Aviary, by the way, was
not a real organization. They were bird names given to Bill Moore's informants by
Bill Moore so and Jamie Chanderray, which they say they state, so that
that's a whole nother mythos is that there's this group of intelligence community insiders who
are actually have this organized group called the Aviary, and that's not the case.
But in any case, the guys who are on this list are like
John Alexander, helped put off Kick Green, Jacques Valais in there, Bruce
mccabee. So these are all people that oh, if I can pause right
there, Bruce McCabe passed away yesterday, So I did want to mention that
quite a great loss. He really brought a lot of science to the study
of uphology. So sorry to interrupt, but just found out the news.
Yeah. Wow. So one one of the more loose cannons in this group
was is Robert Collins, who was condor there in UFO cover Up Live.
They had two it was basically a lead up to two government insiders who were
going to tell the truth about the crash, saucers and the aliens that were
housed by the government. And it's almost certainly and they were in shadow with
their voices disguise, and it almost certainly was Richard Dody and Robert Collins.
Robert Collins was reportedly arrested inside the Manzeta weapons storage area in New Mexico,
saying he was there to meet the president. Uh So, that the role
playing among these guys, that there seems the idea that they felt they had
inside information on UFOs and that it was something real and that they were privy
to it, I'm sure helped puff their egos up a bit. And it's
the basic human needs are identity and recognition, and doing this kind of role
playing seems to feed those needs. So Richard Dody, for instance, pretty
much demons. If you look at his military records, this is a guy
who wanted to be more than he was. He was always taking he was
taking courses, he was ambitious, and he kept climbing the ranks. Well,
this is a common trait in the military. So you've got a lot
of military guys that will they've they've been in exemplary, they have an exemplary
military career, but then all of a sudden, you know they want to
be more than that and to become a military guy who knows about UFOs boom,
that makes you extra special. So that seems to be a common factor
in all this. But the weird thing that happened with to really get the
mythos going with the whole idea that we had aliens being held in underground bases
and recovered crash saucers. It seems to have been a big feedback loop between
the eufologists investigating this and the intelligence insiders who were giving them information and also
seeking information themselves. So they would tell the euthologists something, the eupologists would
tell them something, I heard something here, I've heard something from him,
and these rumors would start circulating. Now, one of the weirdest things is
that you had the remote viewing program going on at the time, Project Stargates,
for instance, in seventy nine. What mccaby wrote about in Hawktails,
which is a book he wrote about meetings with Ernie Keller Strauss. He doesn't
name him by name, but his aviary name was Hawk and maccaby talked about
remote viewers claiming to get in touch with the Saucer people and if this was
In order to verify that they were actually that this was actually something real,
they needed to know more about UFOs, so they reached out to the UFO
community to try and find out if UFOs are real in order to verify what
these remote viewers were seeing. So mcabee actually wrote there was like an unwanted
connection between remote viewing and eupology. So that's like, you know, one
of the whack air things that was happening. Also what was happening at the
time. That's just where all these wild, crazy stories came from and why
everything up so blown out of proportion. Another crazy thing that was happening in
the eighties was a whole First or Earth Battalion movement with Jim Channon. That's
where the men who Steric Goats came from. And that was a real thing.
They were trying to develop super secret psychic soldiers, and you know,
it was real a lot of New Age New Age influence in that whole.
See, it was seen that there were a lot of people in the army
who were let's just say, very open minded and the idea of spoon bending
parties, for instance, attended by military personnel was actually it's commonly talked about.
In fact, in James James Lakowski's book skin Walker at the Pentagon,
he actually talks about Loue Alzando talking about saving his troops using his remote viewing
capabilities. So you know, that's a lot of what I write about in
the book, with a lot more specific examples. I think I'm concerned about
the reader the listener, because if the listener doesn't know more that, I'm
sure the listener could be extremely lost. Right now, Well, we have
a lot of savvy listeners, and yes, we need, we need a
break right now. So why don't we take that and come right back?
Okay. Hudson River Radio dot com Hudson River Radio dot com subsidiary of Glacier
Entertainment ALC. Blasting the competition in New York's Hudson Valley. And when we're
back with our excellent guest Charles Lear, one of the few that's made a
second appearance on this show, if I can just ask another question really quick,
because you you write quite a bit about a case which I think for
many is a holy grail event, so to speak. And that's the Betty
and Barney hillcase. And like most people, you know, I've read the
original book, The Interrupted Journey, I've read Captured. We've had Kathleen Martin
on the on the program. What you really delve into the intricacies in a
way that I've never seen it explored before, very very succinctly to where's what's
your take on the on the Betty and Barney Hill in the role that it
has in upology. I think something definitely strange happened. What I really like
about the case is I went right to Walter Webb, who was the NYCAP
investigator and who looked at it and wrote a report. And that report's available
so you can see it. And what's wonderful about it is it's all conscious
recall in there's two reports. The first one is just pre hypnosis. They
didn't go. They did not submit to hypnosis until I think a couple of
years afterwards. I think Barney's psychiatrist in particular, I recommended against it,
if I remember correctly, But in any case, it wasn't. It was
quite a while after the event that they actually underwent hypnosis. So most of
the story is conscious recall, and you can find that in Waterweb's report,
which is wonderful. And then he does an update after the hypnosis and talks
about the hypnosis sessions. And what's interesting is Betty Hill wrote about her dreams.
She was having a series of dreams where she saw the men she called
the men and talks about them two in the front, two in the back,
around her, two in front of Barney, two and back of Barney,
and then Barney being unconscious and being on the ship, and all the
stories of Betty's the whole thing with the needle into the to her navel for
a pregnancy test which was amniocentesis, which was not at all common and most
people didn't know about it back then, and them tugging at some one of
the creatures coming in and tugging at Betty's teeth and wondering why they didn't come
out like Barney's did, and her explaining that she had false teeth, and
these are all dream recalls. And what's interesting is in the hypnosis session,
she does not describe the creatures at all. She just describes the events,
and whereas Barney does describe them, but they do not fit the gray description
of the Grays. Actually, I think no, Betty did describe them I
think in a well, yeah, Betty described them as Yeah, she described
as having Jimmy Durante style noses. Actually, I'm sorry about that. Yeah,
and that like really threw investigators off because there's so much one of them
to be Grays. And it's actually I think the Wikipedia entry says that that
was the first mention of Grayce was the Benny and Barney Hill experience, and
that is not the case if you read the water webs report on it.
Do you mean there's misinformation on Wikipedia? Stop the presses. Yes, it's
so. Yeah, Well, I'm sorry, go ahead, no, go
ahead. No, I was going to say when I when I very first
started writing, I found myself going to Wikipedia. That was my discipline,
was to go anywhere else. But actually, one good thing about Wikipedia is
you can find a good source information. If you go to their follow their
footnotes, you can, right sometimes you can you can zero in and find
the original source of the story. Right. Well. One of the stories
that I have liked for years is the nineteen seventy six Kentucky one with Smith,
Stafford and Thomas, The Three Ladies who. I believe they went out
for dinner and got a little more than they bargained for. Oh yeah,
I mean, if you want to go over that case quickly, Uh yeah,
let me look it up. So and at least have some guardrails here.
But yeah, so, yes, this case was a report in the
nineteen seventy six APRO bulletin. It was also made the papers made the Kentucky
County Press. And this is another conscious recall case. And they saw UFO
while driving and it seemed it came lit up the inside of the car.
It came in from behind, lit up the inside of the car. They
thought it was a police car, but then they realized it was the UFO
that they had seen before, and it had circled around behind them. That
seemed to be taking control of the car, and the car started pulling to
the left. Smith yelled to Stafford to help her control it. The women
are Louise Smith, Mona Stafford, and the Lane Thomas. So the car
accelerated the eighty five miles per hour and Stafford and Thomas yelled at Smith to
slow down. Smith responded by holding up her foot to show them that it
wasn't her doing the accelerating, staff grabbed the wheel tried to gain control,
and they felt a burning sensation and a pain that seemed to come down from
the tops of their heads. It seemed as if the car was being pulled
backward and they were going over some bumps. They saw a strange rode in
front of them. In any case, they it seemed they seemed like they
were going at high speed all of a sudden that they found themselves coming into
Houstonville, eight miles away from where they'd encountered the object. So like bang,
all of a sudden, there's somewhere completely different. And they lost about
an hour and twenty five minutes, so they also But yeah, another weird
moment is Smith took off her watch put it on a sake in the hands
were moving faster than normal, with the minute hand moving at the speed of
the second hand. And all three had marks like fresh burns in the backs
of their necks, and Stafford's was on the left, just behind her ear.
So yeah, that's an amazing case. Yeah, and conscious recall this
is not from hypnosis, right, And I think there was some weight loss
in one of them, and anxiety. They had some PTSD there after the
yeah, they were in the actual serious physical distress. David Marler actually show
sent me the file on these guys. Oh okay, and yeah they were
investigated by mouf On Nycap and no excuse me, Moufon QFOS. So I'm
sure David sent me the QFOS file. He just recently acquired the APRO files
which have been missing forever right well in private hands. But in any case,
yeah, so he sent me the KUPHOS file. But yeah, QFOS
Center for UFO Studies, Jail and Heinez group, Uh, Moufon and April
all investigated this. But what happened is they all gotten with squabble. So
this is where the egos are starting to come up. They were all squabbling
and they really cocked up the case. They influenced the witnesses and the hypnotists.
Later said that there was no way that he could determine whether how much
the investigators had influenced what the women were. Ye know, what was coming
out of the women in terms of the creatures, because they started the scenario
that came out during the hypnosis sessions was a whole being put on the table
and examined by creatures. They still weren't the graves though at this point even
but you know, that's so the cases in there moving, you know,
trying to get towards the grays where they just start coming out, and they
really just seemed to come out that they were locked into the mythos with Whitley
Streeber's book Communion with the cover in particular. But you know, it's interesting.
I I was looking at a good Reads and I was shocked to see
that the book was reviewed, because I hadn't been promoting it at all,
and I just checked out one three star review to make sure that it wasn't
because of the quality of the book, And it was basically said that I
didn't like the tone of the book because it made it seem as the general
tone seemed to be as if there was nothing to this, and this case
right there, it's like, well, did you read that case? Yeah,
I adore that case. I think it's amazing, and it really,
you know, speaks to there being something to this and really, you know,
the it's yeah, it's if the investigators would get out of the way
exactly. Yeah, some of these cases, Mike, what other burning question
do you have? How is it that the Grays really sort of come out
on top as the pre eminent extraterrestrials that were visited by you know, you
hear people throw out the Nordics, the Reptilians, and who knows else,
But it seems like everybody always goes back to the graves. How did they
sort of climb that hierarchy and become king of the King of the Alien Hill
here? Yeah, maybe it's because they look really good in gift shops.
I mean, uh yeah, because there are all kinds of critters, you
know that. I do a whole chapter devoted to the variety of creatures,
especially the seventies, which is the next book I'm going to write about older
you heard it here. First, what I really you know, because the
idea was to follow up on Flying Saucer Investigators with a book called The UFO
Investigators. But then I realized what a mess everything turned into in the eighties,
and the period I really want to write about is like just after Project
Blue Book and just before Roswell. So you know, Oh, another thing
I wanted to point as I was writing the book, I realized, I
guess where it seems you followed? You really got crazy when what invention.
What thing that everybody now takes for cell phone, the the old internet?
Oh oh yes, when was the UFO BBS paraanet Actually, Jim Spicer wanted
to create a paranormal bulletin board service, which is how people used to communicate
and post and you know, exchange news back in the ancient dinosaur days.
And that's where Bill Cooper and John Lear just inserted themselves into the UFO community
with just absolute craziness that based on absolutely no research, that sounds like the
Internet exactly exactly we should. Yeah, you can finish your thought, but
then we'll take our next break. Yeah, I was just going to say,
it's it's a good example of how the Internet makes people crazy. Yeah,
it does. And with that, why don't we take our second break.
This is Hudson River Radio dot com, your local Rockland County station.
This is Hudson River Radio dot com and we are back with our awesome guest
here. And I just wanted to add a quick follow up on the Grays.
Whitley Strieber's book was my first introduction to to the Grays and really as
a child that you know, growing up, I was always interested in you
fos, but it was really that book and that cover in particular. I
think that really drew me in and and captivated me and still does. Every
time I see that book cover, it's sort of one of those events in
life. It's like, wow, you know, you read his book and
that covers just ingrained mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, I'm not I'm not
saying that the Grays aren't like a thing, and there are people seem to
experience that consciously, you know, without encountered them, and can talk about
it through conscious recall. But you know, I'm just anyway, well,
if we can go back a little bit before the Grays, you you had
mentioned the tall Blondes, and I loved the term the Etherians, but it
was interesting because they were supposed to be early interdimensional beings, and now we
seem to be coming full circle back to interdimensional seems to be the current buzzword.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's come around. I mean, I
was a nuts and bolt sky back in the day, but you know,
I was very much though a passive consumer, like you know, basically I
watched UFO documentaries on VHS, and you know that's pretty much where I got
all my information, and I swallowed it all on I l n autopsy absolutely.
Yeah, look he peeled that thing right off his eye. That was
a great effect. Yeah, but you know, I was a sucker.
What's interesting When I look at it, though, I was like, well,
you know, did I really believe it or was it kind of a
suspension of belief? Because if I really believe that, that's pretty staggering to
say that something like that is actually real. Or did I just kind of
take it as part entertainment And I'm still not too sure about that. But
yeah, I really did buy into eighties nuts and bolts uphology for quite some
time. And I actually remember reading Passport to Magonia, Jacques Valat's book,
and it kind of twisted my brain a little bit that that's basically the whole
interdimensional theory kind of he ties it to fairy lore another mythost like that.
But yeah, but in terms of you know, me believing nuts and bolts
or interdimensional I just have to say, you know what I somebody asked me,
or UFO is real? I say, UFO reports are real. So
that's what I write about. Yeah, well it can be all of the
above. Yeah, I'm open to that. Yeah, I have no problem
one one person who's irked me for decades. Uh, Heimi Massan comment,
how is this guy still making money and sucking people in? I don't know,
it's just you know, same reason ancient Aliens is so popular. You
know, Oh, don't say anything bad about ancient Aliens. Half our audience
they're going to they're pulling. But yeah, for those who don't know,
himI Massan is the Mexican journalist and I use that term lately who just seems
to perpetrate hoax after hoax and pull in some big names with him along the
way, and people love it. And he keeps going and going. Yeah,
like the it's the Roswell slides thing with the god the mummy underglass and
this is not a mummy. And he you know, he had a who
was with am Anthony Bergalia and Richard Dolan and he almost sucked in Kevin Randall
who ran the other way fortunately. But yeah, he put on a big
presentation down in Mexico and I think of Mexico City, I believe, and
was charging up to two hundred bucks ahead for people to see the alien slides.
Uh. And then they were debunked and shown very clearly to be there's
a card right next to Yeah, all they had to do was read the
little card if they sharpened it, and it was a mummy in a museum
with somebody's travel slots. Yeah, three year old boy and they made a
fortune. It's yeah. I saw, I saw somebody did a list of
just a string of ookum that Uhhimi missan left behind it. It's like a
long one. Yeah, well over twenty incidents. Yeah. I think the
first time I saw him on television, somebody had taken a real flying saucer
photo and it took a photo analyst about three seconds to show the square cropping
of taking the saucerer and put in like, look, here's the pixels of
where he dropped it. Oh no, no, I'm like, okay,
I can never believe anything any word out of this man's mouth. And he
has proven time and time again to uphold that low standard. But he obviously
made a career out of nonsense. Mm hmm. Yeah, it's unfortunately,
it seems to be the way of things, is it people? Is it
people suspending? I mean, I know people want to believe in this topic,
they want to believe in UFOs, but do they permanently suspend their belief
because any other field, if your credibility is shot once, no one's ever
going to take you seriously again. But how is it, it seems in
the paranormal field in general, but specifically with UFOs, you can be pointed
out, like in this case, outright faking things, but yet still remain
popular in the field, still drawing people in, still making money. And
I don't I don't understand it. Yeah, I think it's it's because it's
I guess I'll call us a hardcore. People are are really into this.
We're kind of we're a minority. That's not a big group of people.
It's small enough that I can pretty much reach out to just about anybody and
get a response. You know, I've reached out the Berry Greenwood, who
was you know, been in this field for years and highly respected, and
he actually responds to me. And so it's a small community. The people
who are consuming the who are enjoying the UFO hotels, the stories, are
interested in the cases. The audience, I guess is the best way to
put it. The audience. You know, new people come into it all
the time, so they're into the stories. And if you ask them who
the people are telling the stories. Most of the time, they couldn't tell
you the names. You know, this happens to me all the time with
my coworkers. They'll come up to me and say, hey, do you
hear about this UFO story? And I'll say, oh, you mean the
one told by so and so, like you know, oh, like uh,
I'm trying to just pull the name out of the air. But oh,
you mean the Stephen Grier documentary. Oh, who's he? You know,
they don't know him, but they know the story he's telling. You
know, I asked us flat out, you know, oh, oh yeah,
somebody was telling me about something louell Asondo said at one point, and
I said, oh, you mean louel Azondo. Who's he? I literally
did not know who Louis Asando was. And this is somebody who liked the
UFO subject. So, you know, like I said, they they they
hear the tales, but they don't really pay attention to so much to who's
telling them until he's you know, somebody like Stanon Freeman, who was all
over the place. After a while, you get to know Stanon Freedman's name
absolutely. And there are certain people, Yeah, they're going to know their
names, but there are a lot of people anyway. That's my take on
it is that they're more interested in the UFOs than in the people. That
makes sense. Yeah, well you mentioned David Marler, and for those who
don't know him, he has an incredible library and it's constantly growing. He's
one of the good guys in eufology. He has an amazing I think he's
going to eventually, was it Arizona State or something. He's going to try
to University of New Mexico. University of New Mexico. Okay, he's going
to have it there. But right now he has a private building right on
his own own property, funding it and just he's very helpful and he's he's
just an amazing archivist, researcher and doing what everyone else should be doing,
concentrating on the material, not you know, promoting himself in that sense like
that. I really have to go back to that. That's just a great
point. When when did that, you know, when was that tipping point
when the ufologist became more important than the UFO cases or seemingly so in a
lot of people's eyes. But what what do you see as some of the
shining points of ufology. In this book, the heroes, we have a
lot of villains. Who would you see as the give me a hero from
the book, anybody you know? I would say the community in general,
because in the midst of all this hocum there was a lot of peer review
and a lot of people were called out by fellow youthologists or you know,
the Lindon Napolitano case, for instance, was George Hanson and I think Richard
Stefula, I forget the third person. But they really looked into the Linden
Napolitano story, which was also known as the brooklyn Bridge abduction, which was
supposedly witnessed by two policemen and the Secretary General of the United Nations, and
they looked into it, you know, and Bud Hopkins was investigating it and
she was a subject of his, and they looked into it and found that
he had only ever communicated with the witnesses who claimed to be policemen, and
they only got in touch with him fourteen months after the incident, and only
communicated by letter and on tape. He also supposedly had a third witness that
was a fourth witness that was on the brooklyn Bridge claimed she saw it.
He never looked into her background. But anyway, they wrote a very comprehensive
paper which I referenced in the book, pointing out all the flaws in this
investigation. So that's peer review right there. So I would say the heroes
are you know, people in the UFO community not willing to turn a blind
eye just because somebody is a revered figure in the community and you know it.
You know, it was atle bit difficult for me actually to write about
it. You know, some of the write about some of these people and
find you know, the flaws in their work because they were genuinely revered for
quite some time. And well, which doesn't mean you can discount all of
their work, but clearly it brings a lot into question and you need to
look with a more critical eye. Yeah, and a lot of cases they
were in genuine you know, they were in earnest and you know, you
get to get into the human psychology, which is a big part of this,
and you know just well, you know, wanting it to be true
or you know, really having a lot in vested in it. Not to
mention a book you want to sell. It's easy to well, trying to
look the other way occasionally. Yeah, And a lot of these people,
you know, this was their own money and time going into the research,
and uh, you know you can kind of see, hey, I can
make money on a book and fund my fund my future research. But but
if you devoted your whole life to one line of research or one case in
the yeah, that's well, you know, it's hard to let that go.
Yeah, so you know I can definitely I can cut them some slack.
You know, I have empathy for these people. I don't look at
them as all these you know, these nasty villains of equality. They're they're
human beings and flawed human beings, right right, All right, Mike,
do you have any other questions or topics? I guess just more to your
own personal opinion. You mentioned Jock Fla. I'm a big fan of John
Keel in the theory of the ultra terrestrials. Where do you find your own
personal Now? Are you the nuts and bolts? Are you leaning towards?
Is there something more? Are you kind of is it a mixed bag?
Well? I I definitely am more towards the ultraterrestrial idea that there's something interacting
with us, that it's maybe the same thing that or the gods of your
you know, so I tend more towards that, And but I can't discount
the nuts and bolts thing either, because you know, the Hudson Valley wave
is just that's pretty mind blowing. There's still triangles being seen recently in Canada.
And yeah, so you know, I all of the above, but
I think very strongly there's there's something. Ah, there's something to the whole
idea of a paranormal unifying, unifying theory of paranormality. I like that.
And yes, I'm I'm a big fan of John Kiel too, but he's
a tricky fellow too, and he one thing I noticed Keel did was he
would, you know, show you how smart he is and and string along,
you know, a lot of you know, a lot of scientific facts
and throw them at you and then say something and not back it up and
kind of expect you to take what he just said on faith because of all
the science he just bamboozled you with. Uh. So, you know,
he he did. He himself admitted that he he was more of a writer
than anything else. But you know, he's definitely a deep thinker and an
also in genuine earnest and really seem to have experienced things firsthand himself. So
I am a big Keel fan. All right, Well, I have many
other things, but I think we don't want to give your entire book away.
Any anything else you want to say about the book that you think people
should know, other than it's on Amazon and you should buy it. Well,
hopefully it's entertaining. I definitely keep a sense of humor about the whole
thing. Your great cover, by the way, I haven't seen it.
Who did the cover that? Miguel Romero was also known as red Pill Junkie.
He was It's funny. I wanted to publish it through a company I
knew he did covers for. That company turned the book down. But then
I saw a Daily Grail, which he writes for. He posted that he
was looking for work, and I contacted him and made arrangements to have him
do the cover. And it felt really good, in these days of AI,
to give a human being the job instead of AI. Made it amen
to that you God a fabulous job with it. I'm so happy with it.
So again the name is crashed saucers and Malevolent Aliens. The emergence of
the popular modern Ufo mythos in the late twentieth century. So other than Amazon,
do you sell them directly? Oh, it's all Amazon. Okay.
Do you plan on being at the Pine Bush event? Do you have a
table there? I don't have a table there, but I think I will
be visiting. Okay, would you be interested in possibly speaking at the museum?
I think I can talk to Lance about that. That's something you would
do, give a presentation? What during the Oh no, no, no,
it's crazy day on a fair day. But some other time, not
at this point now, Okay, I don't Trent, I ride a bike.
Bikey that's a little far from where you are to mind Bush. Yeah,
yeah, okay, so yeah, but thank you for the offer.
Okay, Well, anything else, Mike bring us out? Well? Thank
you Charles for being a wonderful guest again, and we look forward to having
you on a third time when the next book comes out, and we could
definitely talk to you for hours, I think on this topic. And we
want to thank all of our listeners, whether you're new, you've been with
us for the last six, seven or eight years. If you're new,
you can binge listen to us on your favorite streaming platform. And your join.
If you're in Finland, I might be there this summer if it all
works out. So shoot me a shoot me a hello, and we will
see you next time. Keep your eyes up out of the sky. Hudson
River Radio dot com a favorite among shut ins and dogs.