Speaker 1: This is Nick Redfern and you're listening to Unknown Origins Radio.
Speaker 2: We live in a world filled with the unknown.
Speaker 3: You can't handle the truth.
Speaker 1: I'm as glad as hell.
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna take this anymore.
Speaker 1: We will not go quietly into the night.
Speaker 5: We will not vanish without a fight.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Unkown orgin Freedia.
Speaker 1: And good evening everybody. Welcome to another edition of Unknown
Origins Radio here on the Dark Matter Radio Network. I'm
your host, Mark Johnson, and unfortunately, once again, our co
host Bruce Pearson. He's really caught up on an assignment
right now, so he can't join us for this evening.
He sends his regards, so Bruce, we will definitely catch
you next week. In the meantime, once again, I'm very
pleased to welcome back our very own executive producer here
on Unknown Origins Radio, and my co director along with
me of Glanet Tie Media and Publishing, missus, Irene Alan Block.
Are you tonight, Irene?
Speaker 6: I'm fine, Mark, how are you?
Speaker 1: It's going on one o'clock in the morning. There isn't
it it is, So I'm going to keep you up
till almost till the edge of dawn.
Speaker 4: While we do tonight's show.
Speaker 1: Okay, just if I hear any snoring in the background,
I'll just you know, I'll just tap the mic to
signal you to wake back up. Yeah, you do that. Okay, Now,
got a great show tonight. Got very excited to introduce
our guests. And before we get to that, I do
have a couple of our usual announcements. So once again
coming up in just wow, only a month away. Now,
we have Phenomenology one oh seven. It's going to be
uh this year in York, Pennsylvania. And for those of
you who may not have heard about Phenomenology before, it
is one of the largest paranormal conferences and events on
the West coast, East coast, I'll edit that out on
the East coast, and traditionally they've been in Gettysburg every year.
This year there they've just a few miles away over
in York, Pennsylvania, and there's they as usual. They have
a whole lot of great guests, lots of people involved
with the paranormal. You have Bill Bean is going to
be there this year, Chris Fleming, paranormal cop, Stacy Jones,
Dave Giuliano from The ghost Hunter Store, Extreme Haunting, survivors
Steven la Chance, Carmen Reid from the Haunting in Connecticut House.
You have Deborah and Tony Pickman from the Sallyse Haunting,
keep Thrams from the Deep South Paranormal, and Travis Walton
from the Famous Fire in the Sky UFOK. So a
lot of great people are going to be at this
event now again, it's going to be June eighteenth through
the twenty first in New York, Pennsylvania. And be sure
you can get your tickets on their website at Phenom
Events dot com. That's Phenom P H E n O
M Events dot com. Now, I do have to make
an announcement. Normally I go to Phenom. I'm there. I've
been there every year for the last three years, have
a great time, really enjoy it. But you know, things
have kind of changed this year. I've got a lot
going on, so unfortunately I won't be at Phenomenology this year.
So for those fans of the show who want to
who are hoping to come by and meet us, sorry,
you know, we'll try to make it next year, but
for at this point in time, we just got a
lot going on. But hey, don't let that starck A
lot of great people are going to be there.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: They even have Andrea Perone from She was part of
the family that they made the movie The Conjuring and
Chris Quarantino, best known as Christopher Lutz, one of the
original Amityville horror Children, will also be there again. So
many people are going to be at this event. You
don't want to miss it, so again June eighteenth, the
twenty first at and go do Phenom events dot com
for more information and tickets. Have a great time, everybody,
because I'm going to miss it this year. So on
that note, I think we're gonna get right into our
show tonight. We have a great guest. We're very excited
to have him on, and I'm also excited to the
fact that we're the first to have him on, because
you're going to be hearing a lot of this gentleman
coming up in the next few months, and we're really
excited and proud to be associated with him. He is
a fifth generation Texas the US Marine Corps veteran. He's
also forty two year member of MENSA and is a
retired former owner and principal of a regional Texas investment firm.
He's was the former Texas State Director from Moufon for
over ten years, and he is also the founder and
president of Epic Extraordinary Phenomenon Investigations Council, which continues to
investigate the UFO phenomenon down there in Texas. He's got
a brand new book that is coming out next week
on May twenty seventh and called Mark Slade Investigates the
Stevenville UFO. So we want to welcome Ken Cherry to
the program tonight. How are you tonight, Ken?
Speaker 2: Great, Hi, Irene him Mark, I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 1: Thank you well, Ken, Well, thank you for coming on.
So you know, I think I just really gave a
brief snippet of your biography for the listening audience, But
I was wondering if you can go in a little
bit more detail to let our audience know just who
you are and what brought you into this field, and
then we'll get into discussing your book.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that is a long story. I first was
exposed to this question of the UFOs and eats as
a youngster about eight years old. I actually had a
UFO signing of my own that really at that age
I didn't quite understand. I knew it was something significant,
but anyway, it made a lasting impression upon me. I
don't know if you want me to go into that
right now, but over the years I just seemed to
sort of gravitate toward the subject, and a number of
people who really have played a key role in my
life ended up making some pretty astounding revelations to me
about the true nature of the UFO program and ETS
and our experience with them, and I at one point,
you know, when you're a young person, you're married, you
have children, and you have obligations. You tend to put
those things away, except you know what relates to family
and family time. And so it wasn't until later in life,
when I was owned my own business that I had
some free time and funds to pursue my interest and
passion in life. And that was really did investigate the
UFO phenomenon, and I became involved with MUFFAN. We had
at one point here in the state of Texas, an
organization that I had built basically from the ground up.
When I took over as state director with about twenty
twenty five active members to over one hundred and fifty,
we had forty one investigators. I believe throughout the state
at one time. So we actually had the largest state
organization within mouf On, which was the oldest and largest
organization for the scientific study of UFOs in existence at
that time. So I had a lot of reports coming
in from all over the state over a long period
of time, and I just was fortunate enough to be
the state director when the two thousand and eight well,
let's see Stephenville event took place. I guess some people
have in mind that it was a one off event
where a couple of folks reported this huge, amazing UFO,
but actually it was a wave of UFOs that visited
the area there for many months.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that. This book is based on
this series of events that took place in two thousand
and eight in Stephenville, Texas. Was it only within this
town or was it also the surrounding area?
Speaker 2: No, it was within the surrounding area. We have approximately
two hundred and forty counties in the state of Texas,
and about December of two thousand seven, we started to
notice a big uptick and reported sidings in and around
Erath County, I mean unusually so, so we were already
alerted to the fact that there was some sort of
increased activity around the area, but it was really about
a four county area that we were receiving reports from
on an unusual level, you know. So it was with
the breaking of the story by the paper there in
Stephenville that you know that it first went public, I
suppose you would say, but we were already involved in
looking into the many sighting reports that had come in
from other sources.
Speaker 1: Now at that time, you said you were the state
director for Moufon during these whole events. That's right, okay,
So when Mofon when you went into this area, were
you sent in by by Moufon itself or did you
make the decision You got those reports and you decided
to investigate it.
Speaker 2: Oh, that was my call, although headquarters took an immediate
interest in it because the high level of reports that
were coming in through their case management system, and it
alerted a lot of people were alerted by that fact.
So actually I was called on the morning of the
tenth I believe it was of January two thousand and
eight by an AP reporter, Angela Brown, who had asked
me about my feelings about the paper. The story that
had appeared in the Steamville Empire Tribune, and I told
her that we were already planning to send investigators to
the area and that yes, there had been quite a
number of reports, so, you know, I verified pretty much
what she wanted to know. And really it was Angela's
story from my interview that went out on the AP
wires that took the story worldwide. And from that it
was just utter chaos. But once the news articles appeared
in the papers in and around Texas, my phone just
ring continuously. It's almost impossible to convey what had what happened.
It was just an amazing thing. I could barely put
the phone down without ringing again. And from reporters and
news stations all over the world, you know, wanting to
know what had happened. So the AP story going out
on the wires is really what It generated so much interest.
But it also gave a personal point of contact for
people who wanted someone to talk to about what they
had seen, because of course, not everybody was familiar with
moufon or the case management system where they could go
online and a place of report. I think I stopped
counting a hunt. Well, I think I did stop counting
it at about one hundred and fifty calls folks who
told me they had an experience, saw something that sort
of thing.
Speaker 1: You know, there have been a lot of UFO waves
of sightings in the country, and you know, I remember
back in the early eighties here in the Northeast they
had the Hudson Valley UFO flap where sightings were seen
for almost a couple of years. Now, the Stephenville event.
How long did that event last in general or are
they still having sightings today?
Speaker 2: Well, I've left to move on from for five years now,
so I'm not aware, and I don't keep up with
their sighting reports their case management system, but I do
know that we continue to get a high level of
reports throughout two thousand and eight and again in two
thousand and nine. Unknown to most people, there was a
large cluster of reportings of reported sightings in October that
year of two thousand and eight, and we did our
best to keep the keep it out of the news
because it turned into such a carnival atmosphere in the
January instance, that we wanted to keep it out of
the media as much as possible. But we did obtain
a radar study of the area that for that for
the evening in question in October of that year and
found an even higher correlation between the witness reports and
the object on the radar than we had even in
the January siding. So I think we had something like
an eighty seven percent correlation between witnesses saying, you know,
I saw this craft. They would describe it and they
you know, in such and such location, and then we
would confirm that on the radar study that there was
a craft. It wasn't you know, it didn't it wasn't responding,
and you know it was at the time that the
witness had reported it, and so on. So it was
the witnesses were it proved to be highly reliable in
reporting the facts. You know.
Speaker 1: Well, let's let's talk about what they were seeing. I've
heard of them called the Stephenville lights, of course, the
Stephenville UFOs. But were people actually were they seeing just
lights in the sky or were they actually seeing craft
with definition?
Speaker 2: They were seeing two different types of UFOs. Frankly, there
was one craft was dubbed by the press and many
of the witnesses as a type of mothership. Of course
we did not use that description, but that is the
way that a lot of people did describe it. They
would say this had to be some sort of a
mothership because it was so huge, and we had a
bear in mind. Stephenville is a small community. I think
the population there's about thirty thousand folks, and of course
it's a farming community. Their main activity is dairy farming,
and even though there is a college there, we really
received very few witness reports from young people. For the
most part, the gathering was gray haired folks. I mean,
you know, they were fifties, forty five, fifty and up,
you know, seventy eighty, and so these are not your
regular late night sci fi you know consumer Uh. These
are folks who typically you know, keep farmers ours country
folks hours. They go to bed at early recently, you know,
relatively early, and get up very early, do their chores
around their dairy farms. And most people have other jobs.
You know that they had a day job, if you will.
So these are very down to earth people. But one
thing that we found that there were a lot of
very educated professional folks. Perhaps they'd gone off and the military,
served their country, or they had a career doing something
and they came back that's where they were from. That's
where their roots were, and they would return there and
into this life of you know, raisen cows or chickens
or whatever. So these are these are not city folks,
let's put it that way. But they were very down
to earth. So, you know, these are the type of
witnesses that we had primarily very credible, and I didn't
find any of them to be you know, they were
just very matter of fact. They just would say, here's
what I saw. I wanted to you know, they were curious.
I want to know what it was. But anyway, back
to your question. Consistently people described as craft as being
bigger than a battleship and this one person said, you know,
I was on a battleship and aircraft carrier or other things.
I know how big they are. This thing was huge.
I mean it was several times that size. I think
one witness said that it was a mile long and
a half and a quarter mile wide or something, and
another described it as being much bigger than a super Walmart.
I was on NBC's Dateline and they had the top
ten UFO cases that they were highlighting. I believe they
they ranked Stephenville as number three. But at any rate,
when I mentioned, you know, one of the witnesses had
said the thing was bigger than a super Walmart. Of
course they had to have little graphic in the background
showing a Walmart, you know, with thrustbusters shooting up off
the ground to make you know, to make it comical.
But these people were doing the best they could to
describe how big it was, and that was the images
that they used to convey.
Speaker 1: That our media to add the snicker factor to.
Speaker 2: The snicker factor. Yeah, yeah, that's what That's what was
amazing about the whole affair initially was that the people,
the witnesses were the sober ones. The witnesses were you know,
the down to earth, matter of fact and no nonsense individuals.
It was the media and the outside factor the forces.
When we had a big meeting of the Witnes this
is in the area, there were people who traveled from
Austin and from Dallas, I mean from all over the
state to this little town where we had held a
meeting that were tenfoil hats, and they dressed up their
dogs like little aliens, and I mean they just it
was almost like they're making fun of these simple townfolk,
or they're trying to make light of this entire question,
where frankly it was quite serious. I mean, this was
quite an event that occurred, and yet I think for them,
for a large part, the media made it into a
tabloid type of story. And you know, one thing I
could get off on is that it was almost like disinformation,
a way to hide the importance of what had happened,
there by making it seem like a bunch of nonsense.
Speaker 1: I was going to make a comment on that, because
when these the crazies come in from the outside, you know,
my gut reaction these days, and I've gotten really cynical
in my old age, is the fact that you know,
are these crazies really the crazies coming in going oh well, yeah,
aliens have got my tanfoil hat on? Or are they
being planted there to purposely diminish the event, make it
seem like a circus, to make people just dismiss it
out of hand and go on with their lives.
Speaker 2: Well, for example, and I don't want to get off
to this too far, but it's it's been proven that
there are people who've been busted in from the outside
into some of these riots that have occurred recently, and
as several major incidents, and you know they are there
to you know, to make I started to use the
word in cindiary, which is unfortunate as it usually ends
up in stores burning. But yes, I do think that
they're professionals who you know, that's their job is partly
is to if you can't hide it, if the story
is too big, then you know, let's discredit it. But anyway,
back to your question, So that was the that was
the main that was the the enormous craft that was cited.
And I might say we had quite a few law
enforcement officers that witnessed this thing, and as you might imagine,
some of them were reluctant to make to go public
or to give us to go on the record with
mouf On in other words, give us a written report.
So we did take their statements and we were you know,
you have to listen when you have a trained observer there.
But one incident that occurred that really, you know, sticks
in my mind is that there were three law enforcement
officers will call them, but let's I'll make clear of
the fact that there were police officers, sheriff deputies and
a constable who all witnessed. You know, these crafts. But
these three particular law enforcement officers were out on patrol
in different areas of the of the of the county,
and when they returned to the station, they began to
speak to one another and found out, oh my god,
all three of us saw the same thing, and we're
in different parts of the county. And so they drew.
They collaborated with the I guess an architectural or drafts program,
and made a drawing of this UFO that they saw
and it was, you know, they all agreed on it
and it was huge, and I have it somewhere. I
could you know, provide it later. But they they made
that those you know, the different views of at the
top to side, whatever each one of them saw. So
one of the officers had his radar on, you know,
he was at a I won't call it a speed trap,
but he was monitoring for speeders. So he had his
radar active and he looked up and he said, everything
just went quiet, and so he looked up. He was
scanning around. He looked up and there's this enormous craft
just hovering above him, and he's he was just awestruck.
So he was sitting in his car. He didn't get out,
but he held the gun up, you know, in the
direction of his craft, and he said the first tick
on it was like, I forget, I think it was
seventeen miles an hour, and then the next one, in
a blink of an eye, was it was gone. So
you know, if you heard that story from one policeman,
you'd say, you know, the guy who was dozing or
tippling or something. You know, there's some you know, he
was just mistaken. But you have three separate police officers,
three different places who did not, you know, and then
they all agree that that's what they saw. So anyway,
that was probably the height of the of the sighting.
I mean, you don't get any better than that. I mean,
once you have multiple sightings of the same craft by
numbers of people in different places, you know, in a
short period of time, you have a very very significant event. Now,
the next type of craft that was seen where these
orbs brilliantly bright lights. One gentleman described the light as
as intense as a welding torch. Now, these were variously
described as gold, blue, white, yellow, so that case you
would say they were like ornaments on a Christmas tree.
They came to different colors, but they never said that
there were different colors together. They just said, you know,
but they were seen in sort of formation and and
or together and then dividing into three different or if
you get my meaning. So these were dubbed by the
media and by some of the witnesses, you know, as
sort of the scouts from the mother ship or something.
So well, you know, those are the two main types
of sidings we had.
Speaker 1: Okay, definitely interesting craft. Irene, I think you had a comment.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Ken, Is it correct that eight months later it
appeared over top of a football stadium.
Speaker 2: Uh, Actually, that story has gotten twisted around a little bit.
It was a baseball diamond. The uh it was a
sand lot baseball Uh a lot, and there were a
group of people on the bleacher watching, you know, the
neighborhood kids, you know, playing the uh baseball, and the
craft appeared in Uh. There were you know, so there
were a good many witnesses. I mean it stopped the game.
Everybody stopped and looked at it. So yeah, that's it.
That was Sorry.
Speaker 6: Were you able to interview any of those witnesses?
Speaker 2: Well, yes, I mean we got some of their statements.
There's a whole long story that goes with that particular case,
that there were a series of sightings by various people
at that time. As I mentioned in October, there were
more verified sightings then than in January, but by then
there were complications within my own organization that kind of
put a stranglehold on some of our efforts. And so
without going into all of that, I'll just say there
was video of it that was a grainy I guess,
you know, the typical bouncy, grainy light thing that someone
was able to capture on their phone that was given
to a local TV station and so, you know, out
of a group of people that was it. There were
two girls, I think at two young ladies who had
taken this video, and we were told that one point
to back off, that they were going to bring in
this super duper special Star Team investigator and move on.
When I said, I'm saying me and my team were
told to back off on it, and you know, I
objected vocally. I'm not any sort of wilting flower, so
I you know, but I agreed in this particular case
to or So the state director is supposed to agree
to allow a Star Team investigator who's supposed to be
among the elite to come into his state, and so
I reluctantly agreed because I thought, you know, we've been
handling this now for ten months and we've done a
fine job, so whatever, what do we need this Anyway,
it was completely bungled by the Star team. We lined
up three different witnesses with video, and he was unable
to convince any of them to give them the video.
I guess, you know, but that's I really don't want
to get off too far into those weeds. That's a
whole nother story.
Speaker 1: Well, I know, in general, moof On has had a
lot of controversy surrounding it over the years. A lot
of people look to move On as being, you know,
one of the the cutting edge pure scientific research groups,
very reliable and trustworthy, and yet there's a lot of
people who who don't trust Moufon anymore. That there's a
lot of claims against it that it may have been
infiltrated and it may actually be used for to spread disinformation.
So you know, I know you were part of Muffon
there for a while and then you left the organization.
I what are your thoughts on something like that? Okay?
Speaker 4: Did I just like really.
Speaker 2: You know, my I guess a lot of my thoughts
are in my book Mark uh. You know, I give
an example of a very well known uh UFO investigation
group that was completely and utterly uh you know, infiltrated
by alphabet types. And you know, my hero in the
in the story, Mark Slade, was a UH was a
Texas State uh director for his organization called AQUA. And
all I can say is that, you know, after he
had served faithfully for years, that Mark found, you know,
he was being thwarted in his efforts for this major
UFO uh uh story or incident that occurred, and thwarted
by his organization. And what he found with in trying
to determine why is that first of all, his his
his organization was established shortly after Blue Book was closed,
and that there were a large influx of people. One
of the founders of the AQUA his brother was a
CIA agent, and that over the years the board was
made up of various alphabet type folks, I mean military intelligence,
and that their their primary consultants were CIA or an
NSA and d O D and FBI and you know,
all these sort of things. So you know, he in
his case, he thought this cannot be coincidence. I mean,
there's so it looked like for all the world an
effort really to let's let's uh, let's expose the minor
cases and hide the what would be considered national security.
And you know that's the main purpose, just as in
Blue Book. Uh, all of the top cases of Blue
Book were mark national security. And even though they told
the public that they were making them available in the
archives there, they were not. They were not. So you know,
that's that's all I can say, is I can you know,
I go into some other actual, real life examples of
you know, other organizations as well that were infiltrated. So
I guess that's one of the main points I want
to get across to people is before you before you
dedicate yourself, your loyalty, your time, your effort, your energy
into a cause that you think is worthy, that you
really really need to do some investigation. I mean, when
you're putting your own self on the line for fourteen
sixteen years in my case, that's a meaningful contribution. Not
to mention financially, what I put into developing an organization.
I got it as an aside. I'll tell you this,
you know, I was a registered and investment advisor and
an investment professional for over thirty four years, almost thirty
five years, and I kept my activities into investigating UFOs,
you know, separated from my business life because you know,
I had I had, I had millionaires, you know, people
who are the pillars of the community and you know,
giants of industry. Ye'd like to think, you know, some
important people as clients that they spill their guts to
me about their personal lives, their finances and everything. And
I didn't. I thought that it was unwise for me
to let them know, you know, here's they might question
whether they should have their trust in me, you know,
as in my activities as an investigator of UFOs. So
when the Stevenville case occurred in two thousand and eight
and I was in the papers constantly, I was amazed
at the reaction of some of the clients that I
had concerned myself about. The most would call up. Yeah,
you know, they were really kind of congratulatory. They thought
that I was just a very conservative number cruncher, you
know that was always serious. They just really delighted in
the fact that you know, here here, I'd led this
double life. So I guess perhaps I worried about it
too long, or maybe it had been long late enough
in my career that people that I dealt with knew
me well enough to know, you know, I was still
to be trusted with their money. But at least early
on when I began with Moufon, it could have had
a significant impact of my career, and it was. It
meant a lot to me. But you know, I'll just
give an example for our listeners. Many charitable organizations, well
you know, they're they're well sink of time and money,
and you think you're doing something to help deprive children
or disaster the victims or something, and then when you
dig deeply into the organization, you find that they spend
ninety percent of every dollar they bring in. You know,
very little gets to the people that you think that
you're helping. So, you know, it's just that's just a
life lesson that.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: Once I determined that I was not really serving the
cause that I thought I was serving, I decided it
was better to move on and let me.
Speaker 1: Ask let me, let me ask you a question about that, Ken,
Because you did devote fourteen years to this organization.
Speaker 2: Was it only.
Speaker 1: Until that that period of time when you finally parted ways,
that you really started to feel like that, you know,
they were no longer serving you know, the interest that
you you had signed up for, or were you seeing
warning signs over a period of time.
Speaker 2: Actually, the decision to leave did not was not the
the the road the roadblocks and complications that occurred with
the two thousand and eight investigation were not the They
weren't the culminating factor my decision to leave. There were
things that happened in the next year that really solidified
my decision that you know, it was time to part ways,
and that that was their their announced intention to partner
with bass uh, the Bigelow Aeronautic folks, and that when
I started digging, I found really there there were they're
just well as just a very deep well and uh
and we'd have to devote another program to it. And
I don't know that I really want to get into that.
Speaker 1: But we're not We're not here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, mister Bigelow is you know, it's it's known or
rumored that he has he is a front for the
c i A. And you know, just the idea that
he was going to pay a move on for cases
that his people alone would study or that as an
elect elite group of movef on people were going to
investigate and he may or may not turn over or
the results or evidence or artifacts or whatever. Really just
drove home the point that you know, I was just
in the wrong place.
Speaker 1: Well, he certainly didn't do that with the Skinwalker ranch investigation.
He held on to that like uh, like I don't know,
he just you know, not to change the subject for
another case. But it just shows, you know, when it
when a private entrepreneur like that goes into a case,
he's not beholden to anybody and can hold onto the
information to do with it what he wants. The Skinwalker case,
they've owned that ranch for years and you only hear
trickles from people who work there, and and the and
the investigations that George knap din on what really went
on there. But let me let me change the subject
back a little bit more steers back towards, you know,
with the Stephenville case. And it seemed to me that
there was that period of time the uh anywhere from
the mid two thousands, mid to later two thousands where
we had several big UFO flag apps or cases, you know,
especially around in the American Southwest. You had you know,
the Phoenix lights in the early two thousands. Uh, and
you know they I've heard that they just recently reappeared
again too, and people saw them again. You had Marfa,
Texas and Aurora, Texas. Is this the first time that
there was any type of activity reported around the Stephenville vicinity.
Speaker 2: Well, that's an interesting question because we a bit more
about some of the people who called me, the witnesses
that came forward. I had probably the first time this happened.
I had an elderly couple on the line and they said,
you know, they were calling because they had read the
newspaper and that, you know, they wanted to know if
I was the man who is investigative student. Oh, yes,
And they said, well, we live in the countryside there
in Erath County, and we've lived there. These people were
about eighty years old and they've lived there most of
their lives and they had a small farm there. And
they said, about thirty years ago, Uh, we we had
we were coming back one evening from our weekly run
into town for supplies and the movie whatever, and they
said that the country road naturally didn't have lighting or
anything on it. Back in those days, it were just
these are dark country roads, uh colleche or you know,
dirt whatever. And they said the the entrance to their
place was lined along the road with these tall trees,
and then there's an opening for the driveway and as
they turned into the driveway, there is this glowing orb
just above the height of the car right there at
the at the at the driveway entrance. And he said,
we were just absolutely stunned. But if we had the
strangest feeling, we didn't know, you know, if this thing
was trying to communicate with us, if there was some
intelligent you know, someone intelligent that was directing this thing
or what. But he said, we sat there for a moment,
and he said, next thing we knew, it shot down
the driveway to our house about a quarter a mile
away and just hovered over the house. And you know,
we began driving that way again. And as it hovered
for a minute, and then it shot off at a
right angle from the direction that had been going over
to another distant tree line, and then when they got
through the tree line, shot straight up in the air. Now,
these are people, you know, about eighty years old. And
they said, We were afraid to tell anybody because you know,
they would have laughed at us. Everybody tell them, I
thought We're nuts, So we kept it to ourselfs And
you know, I had many many such stories, the people
coming forward to tell me that they had been seeing
things there for years and they kept it themselves. And
only now when the media and everybody in town was
talking about it and it seemed like they would just
be one of one of many voices, did they have
the courage to come forward. And I had another instance,
I'll tell you had a lady called me and said
she was the elderly. Obviously, she said, my husband is uh,
he's dying of cancer and he wants to see you
before he dies. He was a scientist with Luckey. And
I went, uh, where are you all come to see you?
And she says, no, he's a proud man. He wants
he wants to come see you. And I said, okay,
you know, so we set up a meeting place and
I'm sitting there and uh, this elderly gentleman who's bent over.
He is walking with a cane and he has a younger,
younger man, you know, in his late fifties. It turns
out as his son in law or something like that.
His son said in law helping him along. And he
had a brief He was caring a briefcase the old
old gentleman. At any rate, they lived there, he lived
there with the old scientist, lived there with his wife
in Nereth County. And he opened this case and had
all these drawings of Oh it was his son, that's right,
that's right. Anyway, had these drawings that were so precise
with angles, and I mean this this incident that occurred,
he said, when his son was a boy. The three
he and his wife and his son were in the
car the round in the lonely road, and this UFO
came down right in front of his car and just
hovered there in front of them, and they just stopped.
They were terrified. But anyway, with this engineer's mind that
he had, he captured, you know, every last detail of
it and gave me a picture of it. I mean
it was just you know, like a blueprint or something.
He had the you know, the size of it, you know,
relative to how big it was to the moon and
this and that and everything. And he said, I will
tell you something. I worked on black buds or programs.
It was not ours, he said, but I could not
report it because I would have lost all my clearances
and never been able to work again. And you know,
we we talked for a bit longer, and he said,
I never saw it again. His son, you know, confirmed it,
the wife confirmed it, and so you know, this was
a story. I don't know how long it went back,
but uh the uh, I guess the oldest report we found.
I knew Joyce Murphy who had an organization called Beyond Boundaries,
and so when we went to Dublin, I met her
son who lived there in Dublin, was on the city council.
His name was Mark Murphy, and he got to know him.
We reminisced about you know, i'd seen him when he
was a younger man and so forth and so on,
and he was he had witnessed this UFO and he
sent me later and at that he found in their
little hesitate to call it a library, but a type
of library where they had it was a microfish of
an old calendar. I guess back in the early nineteen hundreds.
You know they used paper, they don't, they didn't they
fully used it like you know, not like today, it's
just you just toss it away if you make a mistake.
But any rate, on this calendar, they had, you know,
stories about the weatherness and that and everything. But there
was an account of and it quoted the newspaper that
it had been originally in Dublin. It was in I
believe it was eighteen ninety six, but it was an
account by a number of the townspeople there in Dublin
had witnessed what they said appeared like a burning bale
of hay. Now, if you think about somebody in eighteen
ninety six, they've never seen anything flying back in those days.
You know, back in Dublin, Texas, it's only about three
thousand people now, so you know, it's just a few
hundred back then, I suppose. But anyway, sound like a
perfect description of this glowing orb type of thing. However,
they said that it crashed into some building there and
they did find debris, and in it they found parchment,
strange looking parchment with hieroglyphics on it. They who the
writer said it? You know, they only thing they could
relate to was like Egyptian hieroglyphic. Now, what happened to that?
What happened to the debris. You know, it's lost in antiquity,
But that, that and some other instances we found indicate
that there have been UFO activity in and around there
for a very long time, over one hundred years. And
I don't want to give way anything about my book,
but I asked, if you see bees in an area
over a long period of time, you keep seeing these
honey bees, that tells you something. You know right right?
Speaker 1: You have a question mhm.
Speaker 6: What I wanted to know cameas how much attention did
it get in Europe or anywhere else other than America?
Speaker 2: Oh, good deal, I had one.
Speaker 6: Was there a lot of attention from US?
Speaker 2: I believe?
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 6: The sorry is because I've been naughty today and I
did dip into something in the government and saw that
there was a real increase in sightings in two thousand
and eight and two thousand I mean aside a big yeah.
Speaker 2: And you know, I try to I try to explain
that in my book. I'll make a comment here during
the height of that frenzy about the two thousand and
eight Stephenville thing. Doctor Greer, Stephen Greer, who's been heading
up the disclosure project. Now for any number of years
was interviewed on Coast to coast and UH for another manner,
for not about Stephenville, but it was of such interest
that the it wasn't George Norri. It'll come to me
who it was. But anyway, the interviewer said, what do
you think about this, uh, a Stephenville event, And Stephen
Geer thought the moment he said, I believe it's a
watershed event. And I personally think that that's one of
the best descriptions of what happened. And for the reasons
that I go into in the book why it was
such a monumentally bent and so yes, there was a
reason that two thousand and eight was a big year
for UFO signings all over and it seemed to instantly
catch on with the public everywhere. I mean, I had
calls from Australia, from the UK, from Japan. I mean,
we have reporters here day and night, and you know,
not to make fun of the Japanese, but I had
to go. One of the people called me there the
Japanese pep be crazy crazy about UFOs, you know, and
you know, but every every I had an inquiry. A
newspaper man asked me that same question. You know, where
were some of the places I'd heard from? And I said, well,
I got an inquiry from a military paper in Afghanistan
and this guy said from our guys, and I said, no,
the Taliban Times. They got a chuckle from the audience there,
you know, he kind of he left his job. Yeah, yeah, No.
It turns out that you know, one of the you know,
there were folks in Afghanistans serving that were from the Stephenville,
Dublin area, and they heard about it and they wanted
to know, you know, what's going on. You know, they
want to put it in their little paper there. So uh, yeah,
I would say probably just about every place you know
had an interest in South America, you name it. So,
I mean how much Obviously it didn't get the kind
of press that got here. I was in I don't know,
hundreds of interviews, hundreds. I mean one time I had
three TV vans out front of my house from different networks.
So yeah, there was it was just extraordinary interest in it.
So and uh, I think that most of the coverage
was h balanced, pretty good uh coverage, but uh, some
of it I would identify as absolutely as disinformation. Whether
it was knowingly or unwittingly. Uh, there were several reporters
I think were actually used. There were dupes to try to, uh,
you know, gloss over the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But any rate, we will gloss it over or again
do the snicker factor and diminish it. And I see
that so often. I mean there's some legitimate even still today,
there's a lot of fairly legitimate and UFO activity that
people catch and it's broadcast on the news. And I
say UFO in the truest sense of the word. There's
something in the sky. You cannot identify it. And yet
the news media, instead of treating it that way, saying, Okay,
we don't know what this is, they always have to
start playing the X Files music and you know, kind
of giving each other smirks and you know, winks to
the camera that and they don't take it seriously, and
it just continues to diminish the phenomenon to the rest
of the public, who maybe have not made up their
mind or they would have been more open to hearing
and debating a very serious subject. I mean, let's face it,
the idea that this planet may be visited by other
beings who are not human we're regardless of where they're from,
from another planet, another dimension, who knows, is earth shattering,
and yet we get away, it gets away with sting
into the shadows because the media, especially and our government
government denial and media, you know, snickering at it and
not taking it seriously, and so that makes the rest
of the public not take it seriously.
Speaker 2: Right well, there is absolutely censorship, at least on the
three major networks. A good friend of mine said that
he worked in the newsroom of a well known national
reporter years ago that any there were two types of
stories that if they came in over the wires, that
they had to run by their censorship department. One was
terrorist axe and the other was UFO stories. And he said,
you know, terrorists, I can understand, because we had to
censor those so that we don't give away critical information
to the terrorists. You know, we don't there's things that
may need to be kept out. So that said, I
could buy that, and he says, usually you know those
who come back and you know, slightly rewritten or whatever.
But he said UFO stories never once did I see
them get approved, and so ABC, NBCCBS, have you ever
seen a UFO story on there well, the local affiliates
here in the Dallas area, which is a a big
metropolitan area. I don't know where it ranks and statistical
marketing areas, but it's in the top ten anyway, probably
seven eight nine million people. I don't know what it is.
The local stations carried it, but nationally I don't know.
So things things have changed a little bit now so
that some of the networks will carry it on their
local broadcasts. But I know we we were called myself
and other people involve the cases.
Speaker 1: We're gonna I'm gonna poss you right there. I'm sorry
to interrupt you. We are coming up on our commercial break,
so we're gonna take a quick break, and when we
come back, we're gonna talk more with Ken Cherry about
his book. His brand new book, Mark Slade investigates the
Stephenville UFO. So don't go away, we'll be right back.
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Speaker 8: Skywatchers Radio, What's up Town, America?
Speaker 1: Heavy?
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Speaker 1: And welcome back everyone to Unknown Origins Radio. Here on
the Dark Matter Radio Network. I'm Mark Johnson along with
our guest co host Tonight, Irene Allen Block, and we're
talking with our guest author, Ken Sherry about his brand
new book, Mark Slade Investigates the Stevenville UFO. And just
before I went to break, Ken, we were talking a
little bit about the news media and how they handled
these situations. You mentioned that the news media were contacting you.
You had vans in front of your front lawn trying
to get information, and it sounded like a media circus.
I remember you said you were talking about your local
CBS affiliate might have aired something on it. And during
this time there seemed to be a lot in the news.
I remember ABC, and tell me if you saw this.
Peter Jennings did a whole special about UFOs and it was,
in my opinion, a master hit piece, coming in pretending
to be all scientific and you know, thoughtful and whatnot.
But in the end they came out and said it
was all bunk. Do you remember that program.
Speaker 2: I don't remember seeing it, but I've heard the same
conclusion that that you've given as that it was a setup.
People tuned in thinking that they were going to get
some useful, valuable information about the UFO, uh, you know,
incidents that have occurred, and then it turned out to
be that there it was a complete debunking of it.
So I don't no, I didn't really see it, but
I'm not surprised there, you know. Uh. When when I
was asked to be on Numero programs, I did go
on NBC's Dateline because they have a history of doing
serious news programs. I went on Larry King. I was
asked by Roaldo Rivera and Bill O'Reilly to be on
their shows, and again I didn't think they were going
to do a serious take on it, and so I
decided to go on Larry King. And of course if
you've gone Larry King, and there's a competition between among
the networks, and if you've go on Larry King, then
Fox doesn't launcher, you know. And I didn't want to
go on Bill O'Reilly's anyway. But you know, Larry's done
some serious coverage of the UFO phenomena. There are a
few folks out there who've really tried to uncover this,
I mean, get the public awareness of it out there.
And I think, you know, so there are a few
folks have done a great job of it.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, when I saw that piece with Peter
Jennings at that period of time, and I wasn't a
super a big nightly news watcher, but you know, I
was like Peter Jennings and I always thought he was
one of those newscasters that you can you know, it's
like a Walter Cronkite. Almost. When Walter spoke, everybody listened
and you took everything he said as gospel. And when
he said the Vietnam War was over, so much of
America believe that right off the bat, and American support dwindled.
Yet we are in this age now where Peter Jennings
doing this kind of piece, and it was an obvious
hit piece from the very beginning. And then you have nowadays,
you have Brian Williams, who was one of the most
respected newscasters out there, and now this whole scandal that
how much he's been making up and faking all this time,
he has no credibility left. So you have to question
just because you see it on the news doesn't mean
it's real, and just because they tell you something is
not real doesn't make it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, absolutely, I felt that I was fortunate to
be in a position I was in to be able
to have i think probably the greatest insight into the
Stephenville incident of anyone else except perhaps some of the
actual insiders that whose story will never be told publicly.
Speaker 1: So well, let me ask you about that, Ken, not
to interrupt you, because I think one thing that's very
important that people should know about your book. Okay, you
researched the Stephenville case for over almost a year, and
you had a lot of top researchers with you. So
the question that I'm sure a lot of our listeners
will have when they pick up the book is we
do stress the fact that the book is written as
a novel, so it's a fictionalized account of the real
actual events that went on in Stevenville. So the question
I guess that people are going to ask is why
did you choose to write it in a fictional narrative
rather than just state all the facts?
Speaker 2: Lawsuits, fear of personal injury. I don't know, pick one.
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you.
Speaker 2: I actually did write the book four separate times before
I finally decided to make it a novel. And in
the beginning, I was so infuriated about some of the
lies that were being told of the public, some of
the misinformation is being put out, some of the some
of the facts that are being hidden from the public,
that I wanted to write a tell all. And I
had names by his stage times, and I would send, uh,
you know, excerpts to publishers. But you know, I found
I had several that backed off when they saw some
of the people and some of the backgrounds that I
named that they had, and they just said, Hey, we
don't want to tangle these folks. You know it's you.
We're here to sell books, you know. So and I
did sit down and take the advice of several uh,
friends who have a lot of experience in as writers,
and you know, that's what they suggested I do, is
just take the novel and put and take the information,
put it in a novel form, and then I you know, honestly,
I don't spend a lot of time reading books anymore.
You still have three of them going at a time.
But now I just find that life is just so
full of things that I'm you know, busy constantly. I
don't really read the Wish and I want, I would
like to anymore. But I understand that there are any
number of very popular authors out there who write about
things that they know from intelligence agencies they've worked for,
have connections with that they can't possibly write it, you know,
as nonfiction. So this seemed like the most likely vehicle. Plus,
you know, I think that the way I presented the
information there, it's going to be obvious to most readers.
What is the fictional part that's there for sheer entertainment
and what what's real? You know, I'd say that the
majority of the book is based on real characters, real situations.
Speaker 1: Well, Irean, that sounds very familiar, doesn't it. We have
a lot of in your book there are a lot
of interesting characters, and because that it is a fictional book,
I wanted to focus on a couple of the characters
and situations in the book compare it to what the
real case was. Now, in the opening chapter, you start
with a rancher by the name of Frank Carter and
having a very strange experience. Now, was this case based
on any actual events?
Speaker 2: Yes, And I'm glad you mentioned that, because, uh, first,
the first thing that I wanted to do for the
reader was dispel the notion that this is a story
about Steve Allen and Officer Gayton's sightings, because those are
the two witnesses that were most publicly, you know, interviewed
and cited, and with all of the programs that I
was involved in, whether it's the UFO Hunter's and the
Learning Channel, various other people who did chasing UFOs, everybody
came at this from the same direction. They sat down
and interviewed Steve Allen and Leroy Gayton, and the reporter there,
Angelia Joiner, and a couple of other folks maybe, and
that's really not even the tip of the iceberg. And
so right off the bat, I want the reader to
realize that this is a story that's much greater than
you know, the one that they've already heard. So if
you're expecting that, if you're expecting that you know what's
written about or what's going to be said, then they're
going to be surprised right off the bat. Now back
to your question, Yes, this was an actual case. This
gentleman was a dairy farmer, as many people there in
the Urath County are, and he came to me and
told me this story that was just incredible. He went
out to feed his to check on his cows. I
don't know what dairy farmers do at nine o'clock at night,
but you know, at some point in the evening he
went out to uh to check on his on his cows.
He had a small dairy herd, had a daytime job
like a lot of these folks do, so he had
He wasn't a big dairy man. Maybe he had a
dozen cows, I don't know. And he was opening the
gate to go into the barnyard and boom, next thing
he knows, it's midnight and he's still standing there at
the gate. And so he had these memories come back
of being abducted, and uh, you know this this notion
that went through his head of you know, my cows.
You know, the biggest fear in his mind was not
what had happened to me for three hours, that were
my cows, you know, because it represented a big percentage
of his income, you know. And uh, that's the one
I wanted to lead off with. But again, you know,
I can't confirm how many cows he had before this incident.
He didn't say he had any marks, strange marks on
him or anything like that. So without proof, which in
most of these witness reports can't be proved, you know.
That's the way we you know, I sus to portray
it in the novel is you know what in novel
form that is. I can't stay absolutely one hundred percent
that it's a fact. So but I found it most interesting.
I did have, unknown to the public, many many interesting
witness reports that you know, just were not ever made public.
So and frankly quite a few that people did not
want to have publicized or published or on the record.
You know, they wanted to tell me about them, but
they were afraid to do anything about it. There was
a I remember one case there was a country western
singer who had a gig in Abilene, which is west
of this area, north and west of this area, and
they were returning from Abilene. Uh he had a tour
bus for his musicians and he and his manager someone
were in a car. And there's a particular area out
there on the highway called Ranger Hill, which is, you know,
a big hill by mountain standards. But at any rate,
this this orb hovered over their bus right front of
the destruct. They were afraid they're going to go off
the side of the hill, and then that changed positions
and went in front of the car and they all
so that they stopped both vehicles and it again, it's unlit,
starry night out there, you know, in the middle of nowhere,
and the thing shot, you know, just sort of dropped
down the side of the hill. And this man got
out and with his thirty eight he's got to go
confront this UFO. And bear in mind, now this is
a bust full of musicians and his road manager. And
I forget his particular song. I'm not a big country
Western fan, but I've heard of, you know, his his song,
and I think that was their one main claim to fame. Anyway,
by the time he got down and approached the orb
there it was sort of hanging in the trees. Its
shot up and then headed in east toward for Worth.
They got to the next little town and there was
a state trooper there and they said they pulled in
the gas station. They thought about going on to talk to
the trooper, and then they said, nah, you know, cop
a bus full of musicians, they're just going to think
we were on weed or something, you know, and we
don't want them ransacking the bus. So because they probably
did have some meat in there. But you know, this
is a gentleman who had He was an older guy.
I mean, his career probably peaked twenty years earlier, but
they were still out making a few bucks. So you know,
he he did not want to go on the record,
but you know, he had numerous a number of other
witnesses with him. And you know, this is one of
the accounts that was never made public, and there's quite
a few others that were equally interesting. But any rate,
I just felt that folks ought to hear some of
the other voices that went unheard.
Speaker 1: Now, you had several other very interesting characters in the book,
and you know, there's a lot in the book I'm
gonna also say this right now for our listeners. The
whole story that's in the book, we're not going to
cover that tonight, because ideally you need to buy the
book because there's some really earth shattering information in there
that's going to really open a lot of people's eyes
and make them do a double take actually when they learn,
you know, a lot of what you had discovered was
going on in that area for this UFO flap. But
let me ask you some questions based on some of
the characters that you had in the book. Now, in
one one segment, you had an elderly lady who warned
Mark Slade about a plan or an intrigue reaching the
highest levels of government and other organizations. You know that,
and it offered a pretty frightening scenario. Now, was this
based on an actual person?
Speaker 2: Yes, it was. I would say most of the characters
in the book are based on real people. She was
a very interesting lady, brilliant woman. Had She was working
on her master's thesis when she was approached by the CIA.
They recruited her and promised to pay for her PhD dissertation.
This is going into her early career years ago, back
in the seventies. But she said she worked officially for
Bell Labs in a work area that was so secret,
had no windows in the place, and they were not
allowed to even tell anyone where they parked their cars.
That's how secret it was. But that she helped develop
the cell phones, which she said that we're used for
many years by our intelligence agencies before they were even
made public. So it gives you some idea of her background.
At one point, when she was working on her PhD dissertation,
she was in the in an exchange program. Somehow she
went to to Russia. I guess it was still a
Soviet Union at that time, but anyway, this was apparently
in the seventies, and she said that things were pretty
open then. They you know, the KGB routinely followed everybody.
They they assumed everyone was a spy. And she actually
sat down with the officer that was assigned to her
and he brought out a Manila folder, you know, I
had a chief of papers in it, which she said,
this is your file. And she said, I was shocked,
you know, there was that much information available about me,
and but they they knew everything about her, including the
fact that she had She said it not me that
she was a lesbian, you know, And so she said, gosh,
you know, she hadn't really flooded that, and she was
a she was petite, sweet, pretty lady. I don't know
one would just assume from her parents. But anyway, just
some background on her. And uh, she said, even though
she was on the H organizational chart there at Bill Labs,
she had a boss supposedly there that he knew not
to ask questions if she was she wasn't then, and
that she really reported to somebody else. So she said,
she was making the point that this uh information about UFO,
S E T S, this back engineering base, uh, you know,
alien technology, all of this is so compartmentalized that various
uh intelligence agencies spy on each other.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well they do that anyway, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they spy on each other, you know, because this
is so value to this information, you know. But anyway,
she received a call, a communication from her superior with
the CIA what and they he gave her the exact
coordinance to be a precise time, and she drove there,
which was a couple of states away. And at the
point in time she was sitting there and she didn't
know what do we expect, you know, and she said
the suddenly, at just about the right time, this large
silent craft just came down and hovered, and then out
of nowhere these men in some sort of uniform appeared
with this big cart black thing that was raised up
into this vehicle. I mean, it was way ahead of
time of anything we have for supposedly for the you know,
for any you know, anything that she was describing was
not They didn't have it back in the seventies, at
least publicly anyway, It's very quiet. Anyway, it turns out.
Speaker 1: That the little was Dulci Dulce in New Mexico. Yes, oh, yes,
that's a fascinating area.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, you know, there's this raging controversy, you know,
among your fologists and debunkers and whatnot about is there
really a secret underground base there Dulcie. You know, all
of the things that are supposed to have occurred. Are
there aliens there or there this or that or whatever.
But this woman is telling me this very significant information
here that a not only is there a secret base
there and they have some way of you know, coming
up you know, that there was they are in contact
with these crafts back in the seventies. That so any rate,
that was her purpose there. And I mean, I don't
know what her purpose was. If it was just to
witness this or if her bosses wanted to know if
their source of information was reliable. Well who knows what
the whole purpose was now, but I thought the information
was significant. And then yes, we did get into all
this about you know, this big competition among agencies for
anything technology and alien related.
Speaker 1: Now, how did she reach out to you or how
did you meet her?
Speaker 2: Well that I can't really reveal, but we did become friends.
And I didn't know her for a number of years,
and so even so I would say that it took
She was retired when I met her, and I guess
I could just tell you I met her at a
conference and then we got to talking and so forth,
and and that was, you know, sort of the initial
basis of it. And I think she realized that I
was a serious individual. I wasn't, you know, just there
for the you know that to participate in some sort
of a car arnival or something, you know, some big party.
And so we got to know each other. And one
thing Mark as an investment advisor for thirty four or
five years. One of the things I was told when
at first that came into the business was that people,
once they trust you with their money, they'll trust you
with every detail of their life, you know, because they
said they will tell you things they would tell their spouses,
their lawyers, their CPAs, their doctor or whatever. Once you
know about their money, they'll trust you with everything. So
I guess I have found that you learn more with
your mouth shut than with their mouth flapping. So she
wanted to talk. I think she was at that stage
of her life, and I you know, it was an intelligent,
sympathetic ear or so. But you know, any number of
these other sources that I had or they are the
same kind of folks. I mean, they're just solid, substantial,
totally credible, and uh, you know, I have no I
have no doubt that you're telling me the truth and
that they would want me to put for the information
in this manner. And one thing you did say was
that we conducted the investigation for a year. I would
say that was the official investigation. My my investigation into
it was over a period of years, and so you know, personally,
I put years into this, and some of my contacts
have been developed over years, and you don't you don't
gain those kind of confidences in one or two meetings.
You know, it takes time. I did have a few
calls from people out of the blue that offered some
pretty pretty stounding information, but they're really substantial folks that
they don't open up that easy.
Speaker 1: Now, you also had a couple of other interesting characters
in the book, and you one there was the older gentleman,
gentleman who assisted the main character advocating for disclosure. Now,
with some of these main characters, were they like this
older gentleman. Was it based on a real person or
did you use what some writers sometimes do. They'll take
a conglomerate of people and put them into one character
to be able to, you know, for ease of the
narrative and ease for getting the information out.
Speaker 2: Well, this character is actually based on a real person,
and he is probably one of the most and earliest
significant and most significant and earliest of my contacts. I
may have along the way put a few words in
his mouth. You know that came from other sources that
you just weren't as significant. I mean, there's significant information,
but not enough to make a whole character. So you know,
to that degree. I probably did combine him with some
but I'd say eighty five ninety percent of him as him.
I must say one thing. This particular character that you're
referring to in the story. He is a trim, seventy
ish sort of a very deadly, surprisingly deadly old man.
He's kind of a David Carradine type of person, with
the hair pulled back on a ponytail. He's still lost
hippie generation you know where, and wear's expensive suits and
you could tell he's very powerful. The real character is
almost the antithesis of that antithesis. You can say it,
I can't. But anyway, gentleman was what we used to,
oh politely called portly, not like real beast, but you know,
just he carried his weight well, but he was heavyweight.
He was retired very there was there's an old movie
character played Topper or something and a bunch of movies
back in the fifties. Anyway, he parted his hair in
the middle. He had a little pencil thin mustache.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 2: He smoked his cigarettes and a filter. He would sit
there and just drive me nuts, meticulously putting, you know,
inserting his unfiltered cigarettes into this cigarette holder. I'm thinking,
why don't you just buy filtered cigarettes? And you know,
he wore this enormous ring on his finger. I'm sure
was some ivy League school signet ring or something, but
big gold ring. I got to know this man, and
I don't I knew his son, and his son was
a very it was a there do well. I mean,
you know, good grief into all kinds of things. But
at any rate, I think that this gentleman viewed me
as the kind of son that he wishes, I mean,
like his son, but more likely what he wishes he had.
And I recall one conversation we had, and I knew
that he spent a lot of time in Washington, d C.
I didn't really know what he did. He came back
to his hometown during I gotta be careful, I'll put this, uh,
during Christmas breaks and things, and so you know, that's
really when I saw him. And when we were just
here during those breaks and one evening, just he and
I sitting there and the other members of the house.
God taught to some country club to play bingo or something,
and anyway, ask him, we were just I don't know
how we got into this but I wanted to know
what he did, you know, I was curious, and he
was in a strange mood. He kind of looked off wistfully,
like he was looking through the wall, and said that
he was one of a three man committee that approved
the final Black budgets disbursements. And I wasn't really completely
clear at that stage of my life what that meant.
But I didn't say a word. I was just listening intently,
and he said this the first year, he's one year.
The budget was so huge that he said, there's this
and I believe it was a four star general or
someone sitting there in front of the committee and they said,
look this, this budget request is so enormous and there's
no oversight. We're just we're not going to prove it
until we know where the money's going. And so he said.
They took them, meeting him and the other two men,
to this hangar and they opened it up and in
it were all these what he called flying saucers, all
different sizes, and the general said, that's where the money's going.
And so this was back in the early sixties. Mark,
we have had a secret space program since at least
the early sixties.
Speaker 1: Oh, I believe that. I believe, you know, if you
look at it, it's a I look at it personally,
that it's criminal. How what assa? NASA just seems to
be a front these days. They throw a little bit
of science out there to keep pacify some people, but
the winter, the moon, and then that's it. They lost
all interest. And that just doesn't make sense to me,
because there's so much rich potential of leaving this planet
and going elsewhere. But it seems like a diversion for
the public to make them think nobody's really interested in anymore.
Seems like we in the sixties we took huge steps forward,
and then after that we took major steps backwards. But yeah,
I'm sure you have a lot of thoughts on that
as well.
Speaker 2: Well. I do. I mean, I think that these were
high paid jobs that are will make work programs, government,
you know, appearing to show an interest in space exploration,
and each president that's come in has gotten some glimpse
of what our real capabilities are and say, you know,
there's a budget that I can cut right there for
my own pet projects, whether it be welfare spending or
you know, building a bridge and a constituent'sy hometown or whatever.
I mean, Uh, they they know the true nature of
our capabilities, and you know, I think that's another reason
for probably our military has been slashed so much and
uh so uh you know, unfortunately the public isn't aware
of of it. And and and of course that's that's
really one of the reasons that I wanted to get
my book out there is uh, you know, it's you know,
to do whatever I can do to help alert the
public that there are folks that are dead set against
disclosure and that they want to keep us in the dark.
As I mean, there are earth shattering technologies that are
available and I mean that almost literally, but I mean
that's a little dramatic, but I mean things that would
just completely change life on this planet that they're hiding
from us for the benefit of the elite. I mean,
there's just so much power that it's you know, this
enormous struggle to keep it in a few hands. So well,
it would also mean on switch side's going to win.
But I think that was one of the reasons I
read the book.
Speaker 1: Well, it would also seem to me that if they
have been able to capture technology through some of these crashes.
Of course Rosbell being one of the famous ones, but
there's lots of other different crashes, some more famous than others.
So if they've collected all this, these flying saucers, and
they've back engineered technology, then what would we need the
modern space program for. So I can understand that how
that's more of like a front and it covers what
the real space program.
Speaker 4: Is going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: We've we're probably on the moon right now, and we
as the public downer about it. And further, you know,
Mars Mars beyond. I mean, if they're able to crack
the technology that allows interstellar or interdimensional travel, then you know,
the sky's the limit and it's only a few people
in the government or even the shadow governments that have
access to it.
Speaker 2: A friend of mine attended a speech by ben Rich,
and ben Rich was the head of the Skunk Works,
which did you know, uh did a lot of the
black budget projects for the government. It was one of
the main for them, Lockey out of Luckey Bright. He
is also known as the father of stealth. At any rate,
ben Rich, before he died, said we have the technology
to take et home and it wouldn't take light years
Einstein was wrong. So there's if you don't listen to
that guy. I mean, he's one of the few people
on the planet that knows, and he's not I don't
think he was prone to making frivolous comments. He made
that statement in front of one of the top move
on people, who is a nuclear physicist, in a conference,
and so, I mean, he didn't do it to get
a laugh, I'm sure. So how many people have to
come out and say, you know, substantial people and say,
we've seen these things flying around in our atmosphere, we've
seen them land, we've we've touched them whatever. I mean. So,
but I'm not completely unsympathetic to the idea that it
would be very difficult for people to deal with. One
of the things that you asked me about earlier was
the media and they're handling got the Stevenville story. Initially,
I thought the handling of the story was pretty good,
pretty balanced. But unfortunately people when they let's say, you
sell lots of newspapers, a record number of newspapers, and
you say, my god, you know this is a big story,
then you go out and start looking for more reports.
Even if and some of those folks that were reported
in the newspaper clearly fabricated their stories in my opinion,
and I won't go into which ones of them, but
there were some that were trotted out time and time again.
I reiterate Steve Allen and Officer Gayton are very solid people,
and I'm not talking about them but other folks. But
any rate, numbers of stories continued to appear until it
became a tabloid type of reporting. And one of the
things that we noticed, and I'm saying we meet my
team and doctor Bruce mcabee and doctor Bill Burns and
a number of other people they're involved with us in
our investigation, was that every time a story came out,
there were more and more sightings and people became so there.
Maccabee is the first one to mention it. He said,
I've seen this before, and the media is creating this
mass hysteria so that people became hyper sensitive to anything
that they saw in the sky that they didn't understand,
whereas maybe they never never paid attention to the evening
sky before they would see the and and they would think, well,
it's part of this string of UFOs. And of course
there were always people who wanted their name in the paper,
the who wanted the notoriety. So there was no end
of so called witnesses who came forward with these fantastic stories.
And you know, I was accused of being a skeptic
when I've had my own experiences and I'm not a skeptic.
I just want the facts, that's all. And so most
of these later stories were not thoroughly vetted, or when
I say thoroughly, I mean vetted at all. So it
created an air of hysteria and carnival like like atmosphere.
And so I could see how if suddenly everything were
revealed as being true. You know that they're ET's visiting us,
there's there's you know, they come from various places where
there's other dimensions or other galaxies, other planets, whatever. You know,
the news coverage would be relentless. And I mean I've
already had some experience with that, and I do think
that there would be a lot of people who couldn't
handle it.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, well, especially with people being I hate to say
it like this brainwashed and conditioned since childhood to be
skeptical and to believe in certain ways instead of having
an open mind to certain possibilities. I mean, our Western
culture and society, I feel is probably one of the
most closed minded there is in the planet, because you're
taught a certain way and what to believes in childhood,
and you stick to it. Anything that's outside of the
norm you poo poo. And when those beliefs are become challenged,
when reality rears its head and we see that the
universe is not the way we think it is, then
of course, yes, there's going to be a lot of
people who will not be able to handle the cycle
logical trauma of being faced with reality.
Speaker 2: Ye. So, but I think in spite of everything that
could happen, and obviously I think there could be enormous
ramifications that first of all, it would be for the
long run benefit of mankind. And secondly, as I sort
of animated my book, ultimately I think the decision is
going to be taken out of our hands. And so
Irene kind of alluded to this earlier that back in
two thousand and eight, there were a large number of
sightings all over the world, and so you know, I'm
reminded of an idea that anthropologists used to discover various
tribes that had never been exposed to the white man
or to you know, civilized culture, and they would just
go storming in and you know, they ended up wrecking
their their culture, and you know, the people died of
diseases and what not and so forth. So they learned that.
And I think there was even a movie made to
this effect. It was about a Coca Cola can that
falls out of an aircraft that's flying over this tribe
in a remote area of Borneo or something.
Speaker 1: And actually in Africa, the gods must be crazy, Yes,
I remember that one.
Speaker 2: Something like that, right, I think that's it. But any rate,
Anthropausis have found that the way to do it is
introduced yourselves slowly. You know, at first you leave these
bread crumbs and a coca cola can that pardon, maybe
a bit of cloth on a or a shirt or
you know, just different things. But escalate and escalate, and
finally you kind of hide behind the weeds there and
you wave at them and so forth, and slowly reveal
yourself to them so that you you don't go into
they don't go into culture shock. Well, what we appear
to be going through is this long term conditioning. Just
think about all of the science fiction movies and programs
that have been on for the last thirty forty years,
you know, Star Trek and every other it's spinoff type
of program and all of the big name movies and
even The Men in Black and you know, so it's
popularized that to some degree, and I think it's been
shown that a number of the Hollywood producers are It's
widely rumored, let me put it that way, that a
number of these Hollywood producers have been given confidential information
about you know, the UFOs and the ets and so
forth that they've used in their shows so that they
it's realistic looking. And there are more and more sightings
and people attributed well, there's more cell phones, there's more video,
you know, this, that and everything. I think there's an
absolute uptick in daylight sightings that ultimately will lead to
undeniable presence that you know, won't rely upon governments to
come forward. And of course, their their time frame is
different than ours. Obviously, they've been visiting us for tens
of thousands of years apparently, and so who knows, you know,
when it will finally be decided, Hey, now's the time
to expose our selves. You know, they're ready, But I
think that's part of my thesis in my book, and
you know, I give some other hints about that as well.
Speaker 1: So Irene, did you have a question.
Speaker 6: I wanted to know whether Candida had a UFO or
et experienced himself.
Speaker 1: I think you mentioned that at the beginning of the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think I think I began talking about
that at some point and then got sidetracked, as I
very often do. But it was as a kiddo about
seven or eight years old and lived on a ranch
outside of Dallas. It's it's it's hard for probably people
around here to believe that back in those days it
was ranch land and now it's just you know, all
middle and upper middle class homes. Anyway, the place was Duncanville,
and I was out. You know, back in my day,
kids didn't see their parents, and parents didn't see their
kids for a whole day at a time. I mean,
you know, maybe they left in the morning, when they
came back in at night. We were pretty independent back then.
But I saw this strange craft going across the guyline there,
and I wasn't really familiar with what I was in
the air at that time, the youngster. But the next
thing I saw was this jet aircraft diving down toward it,
and then something happened. I don't know if it was
a glint off of the first draft or what, you know,
but it seemed to hit the jet. The next thing
I know, the pilot ejected. Just had to be around
nineteen fifty four something like that, and he came down
and this was all scrub trees around this ranch here,
and the pilot ended up in a tree, and the
only thing that people talked about was, you know, retrieving
this pilot out of the trees. You know, I had
never heard anybody else remarking about this so called what
I later as a UFO, So that was probably that
was my first occasion, and you know, as a kid,
I didn't really understand the significance of what I'd seen,
but I've read and heard later that at one point,
I think it was initiated by Truman an order to
shoot down UFOs if they refused to, you know, to land.
And I forget the Time magazine or whatever. It was
one of the top generals back in the day that
was interviewed in the early fifties said that we were
losing an aircraft day worldwide. In the pursuit of these UFOs,
you know, trying to trying to make them land, I think,
and then finally that order was resented. I don't know.
I don't think it was Truman that did it, but
later President, so you know, apparently the jet I saw
was trying to make this thing land.
Speaker 1: Good time, Well, let me ask you a question. We
got about ten minutes left in the program here. With
what you have learned about not only the government involvement
with covering this up, people trying to force disclosure, it
seems like a lot of disinformation, a lot of societal
conditioning is going on, and even the Stephenville event itself,
which you know I won't go into detail on, but
for people who need to read the book to find
out what that event may really be indicative of, is
where do you see this going in? Where do you
think we will be in ten years from now? Do
you think that it will still be where we are now,
the non disclosure people just going on about their lives,
or do you see that there's something coming, There's some
kind of reckoning or awakening or something that's going to
come that's going to shake up our society.
Speaker 2: Well that's a loaded question. Because my background as an
economist tells me that we're going to have some sort
of financial reckoning somewhere in the not too distant future. Anyway, Now,
one of the occupants of the White House, at least
the chief of staff, I believe, said you should never
let a crisis go to waste, you know, So whatever
crisis comes about or that needs a cover story or
whether some other forces, yeah at precipitate disclosure. I think
there will be some sort of event that will that
will make it happen some time in the next few years,
you know, certainly within a ten year time frame. I
just think that that people now are there many of
my sources, when they were young and they were pledged
to the confidentiality, would have given their lives to keep
the secrets that they've told me. But I think now,
especially my generation and I'm sixty eight, realizes that this
is too important of a story to be kept from
the world forever. And there you know, I've been a
number of deathbed confessions already. Unfortunately, one of someone I
really like, Boyd bush Miller, has been discredited. But you know, Bushman,
pardon me, he was he was an actual physicist. I
mean a engineer that worked on back engineering u ET technology. Anyway,
I got off the subject there a bit, but uh,
the point being, I think there's enough people with enough
knowledge that will you know, give up the secrecy of
it and divulge into the world. And also it does
seem to me that there are more and more of
these type of daylight sightings that are going to become
impossible for the governments to ignore and not explain to
the people. So I believe, you know, it's going to happen.
I wish it would be sooner rather than later. But
whichever way it goes, there will be fallout. I mean,
just think they're over four hundred million of bustion engines
in the world that may become you know, obsolete.
Speaker 1: Which of course, you know, the oil company would not
be happy about because then they don't make money anymore.
Speaker 2: That's right. And think of think of the Middle East.
One of the few things that they have to generate
revenues to feed the masses, to quail the you know,
the uprisings, is the revenue from their oil. And what
if that stuff became suddenly worthless or nearly worthless, It's
not going to happen overnight, but the demand would fall
every time you know, some new aircraft carrier or some
you know, new aircraft, or you know, a train or
bus or something was rolled off the assembly line. One
less thing that used the oil would decrease demand pretty quickly. So, uh,
you know, there would be a big transition, and of
course it would attack a lot of people's belief systems. Fortunately,
the Vaticans already come out and said there's nothing inconsistent
with life on other you know, on other planets.
Speaker 1: Well, I always felt like that was another way of
trying to prepare the public. That was a calculated move
on the Vatican's part exactly.
Speaker 2: And you know, there have been people have asked me,
you would do you think the Pope's going to reveal
it when he comes here, you know, for his visit,
and it says, I have no clue what the Pope's
going to say, But this does seem like a pope
that would he would do something of that nature.
Speaker 1: So, but it also seems like the people in power
it would behoove them to continue this this secrecy because
if it comes out and you get, whether they like
it or not, full disclosure, heads are going to roll
the public is going to be outraged by the amount
of secrecy and as we mentioned earlier in the program,
amount of money that our taxes are going towards these
black budget programs that are in no way, shape or
form helping the average American citizen at all.
Speaker 2: You know, you know all of the cost overruns for many,
many authorized programs. They have also not only the authorized
budgets for the black budget programs, but a lot of
the cost overruns for legitimate projects have been siphoned off.
That was why there were overruns. And so you know,
the amounts of money that have gone into this stuff
is in the trillions. There's just no question about it.
As matter of fact, I think that this I can't
swear to you. I think I heard it, but that
the Pentagon can't account for a couple of trillion dollars
and their budgets over the last many years, you know,
when they tried to do an accounting of it. So
you can just bet where a lot of that went.
But no, I mean, I think immediately people would say,
why should I pay taxes? You can't you can't protect us.
You think you can't control the skies? Uh, you know,
we're not at the top of the food chain. I mean,
it would just disrupt everything until.
Speaker 6: That.
Speaker 2: I mean, I can't tell you the number of rumors
and things that I get from people, and I think, oh,
jade Helm is to take over, you know, the martial law.
When the pope discloses the UFOs, they're going to lock
everything down because people will go nuts and whatnot. So
you know, Uh, anyway, Look, I hate to get off
in the weeds like this because it's a very serious
subject and I could have written another one hundred and
fifty pages easily. But I think the message that I've
that I deliver is in a entertaining and educational form.
I think that veteran eufologists and people who just love
a good good conspiracy story, a good adventure story, good
detective story, I think they'll find it enjoyable aside from,
you know, any aspects of the Stephenville event. And I
think that's what really finally prompted me to, you know,
put it all in writing, is that I think it's
something that everybody will like and enjoy. Unfortunately, we've gotten
some good plugs from Whitley Strieber, Texas Monthly magazine, Jim
Mars Doctor Rita Louise. Anyone who has reviewed it as
has really enjoyed it. And I must say, I think
one of the biggest impediments to your fologists buying it
is they're going to think, oh, I already know that story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's the tagline we came up on the advertising.
You think you know the story, Think again.
Speaker 2: Think again, because it doesn't even start out the way
you would think.
Speaker 1: And so well, we are running up on a hard
the end of the hour here. So Ken, I want
to thank you for coming on the show. We just
want to mention that Ken's book, Mark Slade Investigates The
Stevenville UFO will be launched next week next Wednesday, March
twenty seventh, and it will be available on online on
Amazon dot com, on our Glanettie website at Glanettie dot
com and will very soon be hopefully we're working to
get that in Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and wh Smiths
in the UK and other major bookstores around the country.
So keep a look out for it, and we are
taking pre sale copies of it right now.
Speaker 2: So, hey, Mark, I'd like to plug my own website.
We're going to have a few books available there for
autograph copies at epic voyagers dot com. That's E P
I C B O Y A G E R S
dot com, so a few autograph copies will be available there.
And I appreciate the interview tonight, Mark, I enjoyed it well.
Speaker 1: Thank you for very much for coming on the program.
Good luck with the book, hope it really sells well
for you and everybody. I do encourage you to get
this book. It really is not only just very entertaining
to read, but I'm very eye opening as well. Ken.
Thank you very much for your time tonight, and we'll
have to have you back on sometime.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, Irene, thank you Mark. Yeah, thank
you Ken. It's something so.
Speaker 1: Thank you everybody for listen. Listening to another edition of
Unknown Origins Radio Tune in next Thursday night at eight
pm Eastern Standard Time here on the Dark Matter Radio Network.
Have a great week. We'll catch you all next time.