September 19, 2025 • 67 mins
In December of 1978, New Zealand's Kaikōura mountain ranges gained international attention as a series of unidentified glowing objects appeared to follow multiple planes in the area. Pilots, journalists, radar techs and air traffic control all confirmed the events -- along with numerous witnesses on the ground. Almost fifty years after the initial sightings, people still can't explain the Kaikōura Lights... and every December, locals look to the sky, just in case the lights return. Join Ben, Matt and Noel as they dive into one of the most bizarre UFO stories in New Zealand history.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. Previously, on Stuff they
don't want you to know, in our weekly listener mail program,
(00:50):
which informs a lot of our future episodes, we were
contacted by our fellow conspiracy realist Uncle Benny. And guys,
I don't know if we all remember this, but it was, uh,
it was late July this year when Uncle Benny hipped
us to one of the most bizarre UFO stories in
(01:10):
modern history. With full disclosure, none of us have been
to New Zealand, is that correct?
Speaker 4 (01:18):
No, but y'all have been practicing your Kiwi accents and
I can't wait to hear your roll them out. And
do you like the Michael Caine off of Kiwi accents?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well, I think it's gonna come out accidentally as we're
saying like names.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Accent is how we Yeah, I only just got the
hang of narr as well? Or is that just exclusively ausy.
I mean, it's a big country, It's true. I'm sure
there's someone.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
A lot of sheep apparently a lot of yes, yes,
a lot of works to watch.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Out for them.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Everything I know came from them. What we do in
the Shadows, Out of the Concords tv SO.
Speaker 5 (02:02):
And Lord of the Rings come on, you're leaving out?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah, but like they didn't have New Zealand accents.
Speaker 5 (02:08):
It wasn't New Zealand is set in Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Right right, right, Although that would be great, give us
your head cannon, give us your fandom of Lord of
the Rings being New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
A remake with accents us.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Make entirely with accents, right we maybe some bits. We'll
get to that and that's yeah, we'll chount for the beats.
Uh So, levels, folks, levels, we're doing levels tonight. We
also want to, of course, as we're affectionately describing here,
(02:43):
we want to point out that we do not have
anything other than painfully American accents. When we may mispronounce
or cartoonishly pronounce a thing. It is for comedic value.
It is with great respect to our friends in New Zealand,
(03:04):
especially our friends on New Zealand's South Island.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
So that was a mouthful, man, I could feel it
rolling around in there.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Well yeah, like an anzac biscuit exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I'd love to do a quick shout out here to
a TV show that I think we've mentioned once or
twice before, because a lot of us know what we
do in the shadows, A lot of us know the
Concords right. Not many of us, I think, know about
Wellington Paranormal.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Oh yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, fantastic show and fantastic
in this episode, we're headed to Wellington. We're headed to Wellington.
We also want to shout out our good friends at
Hanti Donna and can I also shout out a podcast
that is kind of nerd culture stuff from some lovely
(03:50):
dudes called The Weekly Planet, and they seem to be
friends with the Aunty Donna guys.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
So if you like their shenanigans and you're into nerd
culture stuff, highly recommend the Weekly Planet podcast.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
And to be clear, our friends at Auntie Donna are Australian.
Will get into this. But let us shinan together, folks.
Tonight's episode takes us on a journey through time and
earthly space to the final days of December nineteen seventy
eight on New Zealand's South Island. We're gonna pause for
(04:22):
a word from our sponsors. Here are the facts. Let's
start by kicking some geography. Okay, So, since not everybody
has a world map directly behind their monitor or directly
(04:42):
in front of them while they're listening, New Zealand is
not Australia. New Zealand is very close to Australia. It's
often been called the Canada of Australia. And by often called,
we mean specifically by us on this show.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Oh okay, god, okay, who's saying that fighting words always
have a specific source?
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yes? But also it is pretty far away. There's a
whole sea in between, right, And it's not like the
Black Sea or some of the smaller seas out there.
This is at it's pretty much ocean, y'all. But but
it is close, right, But it's but it's not so
close that you can just take a quick flight over
(05:25):
the way you can, you know, in the UK and
to a lot of other places in Europe.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
It's right remote, right, I mean it's it certainly still
feels that way, at least looking at it on the map.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
It has an outsized global impression on culture. It's also
most famous for a lot of non Aussi conspiracy realist
or non Kiwi conspiracy realist by being a place where
the world's current billionaires are bunkering up. And so you
(05:57):
may hear it mentioned often in that reg guard in
shows of a similar milieu.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
And when you're looking at this place from above right
to the southeast of mainland Australia, there you're going to
see two primary large islands. Essentially, I'm thinking a little
bit of a comparison to Japan with the way it's
set up there perhaps, And we are talking, as you said, Ben,
(06:25):
about the south of those two islands.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Yeah, by far the largest of the two islands. In fact,
the South Island is technically the twelfth largest island on
the planet. And if you're looking at the map overhead
right you're getting sat NAV or something. This may not
look Titanic from your perspective, but it's important to remember
(06:50):
it's a big place and for most of human history
it was very sparsely populated, but it's home to stunning
geography and natural wonders. True story, folks, the South Island
is home to something called the Southern Alps. That's how
amazing the mountains are. That's why to your earlier point.
(07:10):
Now they filmed Lord of the Rings there lush, you
can get it.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
You can get a bit of a sense of it
from the map. But like of that mountain range, but
it is not. It doesn't look like that. It looks
like Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Yeah, especially because of the plains surrounding the mountains. That
that's why it becomes so majestic. Our story tonight takes
place in a curious area called the Kaikoura Mountain Ranges.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
This is spelled k a I k o u r A. Again,
we're not doing the accents unless it's for comedy. Uh.
And it's These mountains are named after a small coastal
town also called Kaikoura. Uh. It's an interesting thing because
the ranges here, the Paikoura Ranges, are two parallel groups
(08:04):
of mountains and they're in the northeast of the South Island.
Speaker 6 (08:08):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
They are so big because they're surrounded by plains. Right
and rolling hills. They're so big that you can see
them from the south of the smaller, much more populous
North Island. And here we have a cameo from our
pow James Cook. Captain James Cook. Excuse me who originally
(08:30):
when he was one of the Captain Cook the yes
of the of the Captain Cook famu to be confused
with James Kirk. This is different. This is right explorer
and not to be confused with Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad,
which I just rewatched. I was watching it last night too.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Was the episode where they're kind of weighing whether or
not to execute that that crazy.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Spoilers. I didn't say whether they did. Internet guys, we've
said it in the past, just twenty years old at
this point that I think we've reached.
Speaker 5 (09:09):
The statute of limitations on okay, well the Internet.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Here's the thing, we've discussed it on the show in
the past. Breaking Bad is essentially car stuff but with
meth hmmm, got to get that pseudo getting that pseudo, Sorry, Captain,
I'm sorry. He puts the chili pee.
Speaker 5 (09:35):
In the in the yes, Breaking Bad coded right.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Now, So this has uh these pop culture references are
hopefully valuable to someone and thank you for tuning in
the The The thing is, the ranges themselves are still
pretty rural. As of some of the most up to
date information from the New New Zealand Census, there are
(10:02):
a little less than two thousand people living there day
to day.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Yeah, yeah, crazy, and these ranges are really important. Not
many people there. There are two towns that we have
to focus in on, Wellington and christ Church. Wellington is
on the very southern tip of that the more northern island,
the smaller island, a heavily populated place, lots of air
(10:30):
traffic control going on there, lots of radar, lots of
checking out what's going on.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
And you may recognize the name christ Church, which the
same way that I did. It was the site of
a really awful terrorist attack back in twenty nineteen at
two mosques and it was a huge deal because it
was a horrible situation, but also just things like that
just don't happen there and it's such a you know,
rural very like you said, kind of what's the word
(10:55):
adyllic kind of you know place part of the world
that it was just really shock.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
To hear about something like that coming. But we're talking
about two big cities. So christ Church has a population
of over three hundred and fifty thousand or so, and
that makes it the third largest city in the country. Uh.
The first one is Auckland and the second is as
we mentioned, Wellington. They have a lot of toys that
(11:23):
are going to be important for tonight's exploration exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
And because they have a lot of toys and they're
on that more populous island up there in the north,
there are regular standard flights, huge cargo plains that travel
from Wellington with a bunch of stuff to christ Church
and they land and then they turn around and they
go back to Wellington and Kaikura. This mountain range we're
talking about is kind of smack dab in between these
(11:48):
two christ Church by the way, on that southern island
past Kaikoura.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
In the mount you have to traverse the mountains right, yes,
you have to find the mountain pass.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Or essentially go right over the ocean there right next
to them.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Or skirt skirt. Yeah. So the issue here is that
most locals, most New Zealand nationals know of these mountains
to one degree or another, but they gain national attention on.
You know, I was thinking of the way to say it.
Kaikora Mountain Ranges. For a lot of people pre nineteen
(12:27):
seventy eight in New Zealand, they were like the Grand
Canyon in the United States. They were a wonder you
knew about. Right. You might know about the Adirondacks, but
you never visit, right because maybe I haven't at the time.
Speaker 5 (12:42):
Yeah, the chairs are mega uncomfortable, right, they're.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
No AAMS chairs. I agree. It's late in the evening,
about eleven pm local time on December twentieth, nineteen seventy eight,
when a guy named Ian Ulfindel of the New Zealand
RAF Royal Air Force reports unusual lights in the sky
(13:08):
and he says, I can do the voice. He says,
three objects. There's one big one and there are two
smaller things like orbes well lighty boys, and they're making
controlled movement and they're flying in some sort of pattern together.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
And this immediately, you know, has credence to it the
way like the tic Tac stories did, because of who
it's coming from. It's not just some like crackpot, you know,
stargazing and seeing some weird and they're telescope. It's like
someone who is used to monitoring these types of situations
and is absolutely qualified to say this is a little.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Weird, right, yeah, yeah, and he adds they're not aircraft.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Well yeah, at least they don't seem like it, right.
And the craziest thing is that the person he's talking
to when he is reporting this stuff is the person
who's manning the radar, and that person is also seeing
stuff out there. So it's not like some of those
UFO sightings that we've heard about in the past, where hey,
(14:11):
we're not getting anything on radar, but there are weird lights.
There's something physically out there.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
It's pinging on the radar. And this is when we
fast forward to the part of the lore that may
be most familiar, or the origin story that's most familiar
to ufologists. It's December twenty, first wee hours, nineteen seventy eight.
A small crew is flying cargo plane in Argacy, this
(14:38):
type of plane and the company they're flying for is
called Safe Air Limited. Weirdly enough, they're delivering creates of
newspapers and they're flying and they start clocking strange objects
that seem to be bird dogging their craft, and they say,
you can hear the clips from the and the crew
(15:00):
themselves where they're saying, look, this is they're calling atc
air Traffic Control and they're saying, look, these there are
things around us, these strange orbs in the sky. They're
not uniform in size. One is as large as a house,
and they are tracking us, and then they're disappearing, and
(15:21):
then they're inexplicably appearing somewhere else minutes later, and they're saying,
these are blowing red or orange orbs. Some of them
are pulsing like white beacons. And it kind of goes
back to what you were saying there earlier, NOL. It's
oddly not that unusual for isolated groups of people, even
(15:41):
aviation experts, to witness aerial phenomena they can't immediately explain.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah, but it is pretty striking that this is all
occurring on the same night. All of this is happening.
So we've got an officer at a base seeing something
that he thinks are just planes. Oh wait, those aren't
just planes, but they are on radar. And then you've
got actual human beings in a flight over these mountains
seeing the stuff. Pretty nuts.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah, that's one of the primary reasons so there are
three big reasons why the Kaikora lights are different from
most reports. First, as you said, Matt, they're clocked by
air traffic Control, they're out of Wellington. The argasy crew
naturally calls in the event and ATC is able to
(16:31):
confirm something is there, which means something was material enough
to ping on a radar. They show up on the
aircraft radar as well.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Yeah, and you also have all of these human beings
who saw all this stuff later gave interviews where they
said directly into a camera and microphone exactly what they saw.
So Ian Uffindel, John Cordy, the guy who was in
the radar control room, they're in Wellington.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Sure they're pilots, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Vern Powell and Ian Pierre Peiri, I think is how
you say his name. They all will talk about it openly.
It's not like this thing that everybody's nervous about, because
we've seen that before as well, right with UFO reports.
People are nervous to talk about it, or they feel
as though they might be shunned or looked at differently
for seeing something like this and then saying it out loud.
(17:22):
We don't see that happening with this case, we don't
see a lot of the telltale things that make more
skeptically minded of us think, oh, well, this is probably
a hoax, or this isn't real, or you know, the
way those people are talking, it doesn't seem right. We're
not seeing that here.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Yeah. And the second of these three things is that
these lights eventually are cited by hundreds of other people,
not on the specific planes. And we're using the word
planes as a plural on purpose because the third big
thing that differentiates this event is that it is a
(17:59):
series of events. There are multiple instances of these lights
being observed over the next few days, with all of
the doodads we just mentioned, so.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Maybe we get into film cameras.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
The second most famous sighting, which is December thirtieth, same year.
Just a few days later, it's almost nineteen seventy nine,
there's an Australian television crew recording a similar event, also
a board of cargo aircraft. This one is flying between
you guessed it, folks, Wellington and christ Church. This is
where we introduce a three person team, reporter Quentin Fogerty,
(18:38):
a cameraman named David Crockett, and Nigher Crockett. The audio
tech who is also David Crockett's wife. They are literally
on the plane because get this, they're shooting b roll
for a TV show about the earlier sightings, and lo
and behold, they witness their own Kaikora lights at the time.
(19:02):
This time they're able to film on sixty millimeter from
the plane in color and this is again confirmed by
Wellington Air Traffic Control. It's being observed by numerous witnesses.
Do we want to play a clip of Fogerty talking
about this. I've been on the edge of my seat
waiting for it.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Yeah, we have several clips here, and let's go ahead
and cite the source. We found these on a YouTube
channel called Marlborough Video Vault. The video is titled the
Kaikora UFOs Dash nineteen seventy eight and at least according
to attribution on the description there, it was written and
produced by Paul Davidson. So thank you Paul for doing this.
(19:44):
The actual clips here are from nineteen seventy eight, there
in late December, and this is nuts. So this first
one we're just going to hear from Quentin Fogerty, who
is there. I've seen him cited as being a Channel
zero or Channel O Reporter, but also for TV one
also News at six, so.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Change their name a couple times over the decades as well.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Yeah. So, to my understanding, it was recorded as part
of a television news broadcast after they had heard of
this original sighting.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Yer twenty first is the one the public knew about. Yeah.
Speaker 7 (20:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
The producer there, Leonard Lee, got got permission to go
up on one of these flights, on one of these
Argacy flights. So let's jump to this. This is Quentin Fogerty,
just during the initial trip, describing what they're seeing through
the windows of the Argusy cockpit. Oh, this is one
of the pieces of information we need to know. This
(20:43):
is a cargo plane, so it's not like maybe a
plane you've flown in where you've got windows all down
the sides and stuff. This is imagine just a big
metal tube and then you can see out the front
of it.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Does that make sense, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
So everything they're seeing is the cockpit through the windows
that the pilots are using to fly the plane in
real time. Yes, So here we go.
Speaker 6 (21:08):
The very first thing we saw was these sort of
falls of light that would just appear in the sky,
and I mean it was really just looking through small
windows at a very very black sky and seeing pulsating
lights that started usually as a very very small pinprick
of light and then would go into like a great
globe of light.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Now, that's the so we originally said, the real time report.
That is Fogerty looking back and recalling in an interview
where a documentary we saw. But if you check out
this thing, which is freely available any anywhere you want
to look online, you will see the lights that he
(21:48):
is describing, and he appears to be describing those with accuracy.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yeah, you can hear kind of in the moment him
describing it, but it's just not as eloquent. It's just,
you know, he as even states in those later interviews,
he's kind of he's a bit flum mixed experiencing this
whole thing and just trying to describe it in real
time there, but he's just not doing a great job.
There are several pieces of that you can here though,
(22:14):
mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Yeah. And here's the kicker, folks, here's the badger in
the bag. They land the plane and we'll get into
more of this as we continue. They land the plane,
and in this instance, one of the objects, these inexplicable orbs,
appears to follow the plane right up until it lands.
(22:37):
And when they land, their camera guy is reloading his
film right, he's getting better film stock. We're working live.
The plane takes off once more and now it's followed
by a quote orb like object for another fifteen minutes,
also caught on film.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Oh yeah, and we have one more clip. You don't mind, guys,
of that moment, because this is one of the actual
film clips from nineteen seventy eight. It's the moment that
they're in the radar room in christ Church and they're
getting word from Wellington that the lights are still out there.
And in this moment, you have to imagine what's going
through the minds of you know, these pilots and this
film crew in this moment, they are kind of terrified
(23:19):
because of this thing. We have to mention here that
happened very recently to the moment. This is happening in
December nineteen seventy eight. What happened to Frederick Valentich in
October of nineteen seventy eight, And this has happened in Australia,
so not very far from them. As we said, where
a pilot. There's a lot of scuttle but a lot
(23:40):
of rumors about this pilot that radioed in that he
was seeing something that was metal and not an aircraft
right before he disappeared. So these pilots were aware of this,
This news crew was aware of this, and now they're
up there seeing these lights and interacting with them. They
imagined that perhaps they might meet the same fate that
(24:04):
Frederick met right just disappearing plane and all.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Yeah, nineteen seventy eight. Checkout our episode from twenty twenty three,
the disappearance of Frederick Valentich.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Absolutely absolutely so. Here is a quick clip of that
moment right before they took off for the second time.
Speaker 8 (24:22):
We're now on the radar room at christ Church Airport.
It's about quarter to two, and in about another twenty
minutes we intend to take off again in the agacy
and retrace the route we took only a few moments earlier.
We've just heard from Wellington Radar that there are still
targets in the kai Kura area, So this time we're
hoping to get at a film than we did last time.
(24:43):
And all I can say is we'll see what happens.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
There we go and so you can almost hear the
nerves there and it was such a heroing experience that
the sound record is Gary Krockett, the wife of David Krogett,
the cameraon chose not to go back on the return flight.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Yeah, and again they're a freelance team, uh, not expecting
this double tap. These are b roll They're there for
b roll in interviews, you know, in situ in the moment.
So we've got to applaud crocket there for being for
being the person who said, look, I'm here in a
professional capacity and I don't want to be one of
(25:22):
those suckers in the first act of a possible horror film,
you know what I mean?
Speaker 5 (25:26):
Can we also just acknowledge that it's badass that his
name is Davy Crockett.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
I just can't. Sorry, Well, I think we were all
working it more impressive to us. Maybe maybe probably he
was a little sick of hearing about it.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Dave noted that there's some weird stuff when they got
off the plane the first time, where he states that
the exterior the exterior of the plane seemed to be
magnetized or energized in some way, and like he it
just felt weird.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
He says this after the fact.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
He does say it out after the fact, but he
says he noted getting out of the plane and even
was talking to his spouse at the time about how
weird even the plane felt after experiencing that stuff.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Right, was something too close to the craft. So from here,
the case Garner's international attention and the December thirtieth incident
is really responding to a spate of multiple instances that
have been reported on some level from the twenty first
(26:31):
to the thirtieth. The authorities feel they have to respond,
and so the local police, the Carter Observatory out in
Wellington again, the town with all the toys, the Royal
New Zealand Air Force, the Ministry of Defense. It's like
our Department of Defense here, or excuse me, kaugh cough,
Department of War cough cough. And so they all get involved.
(26:57):
And then this is in addition to scads of amit
to our ufologists, established scientific experts with a lot of
bona fides and related fields. The New Zealand Air Force
literally puts a Skyhawk on standby in case we need
somebody to scoop scoop for further sightings and half a
world away, our friends at the company are analyzing later
(27:20):
reports from a Lackey P three Orion, a real spoopy
doop ship that was sent to monitor the area. Those
two things, the Skyhawk and the Ariot, those occur away
from the public eye. And right now as we're recording
these lights, whatever they may be, they get sighted or
(27:41):
reported every now and again in the year sense, often
toward the end of the year, with sub reports being
as recent as twenty to fifty makes you wonder makes
first question would be, is this due to a recurrent
meteorological condition, right that happens around that time of year,
(28:02):
or something like.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
That ghost lights type situation or like swamp gas not that,
but like that, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
I mean this news report went out to the public,
so people got to see the actual filmed footage of
UFOs in nineteen seventy eight above this area. So you
have to imagine that's increasing traffic maybe to look for things,
more eyes on the skies as it were.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
It's it's priming interest.
Speaker 5 (28:30):
It's priming interest, but it could also be priming perception.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
You know, there could be same thing, right, right, And
it also reminds me of the drone situation where we
had a Jersey I believe, where there were drones sighted
and these weird lights sighted and it was determined to
be like an array of drones or whatever. But by
virtue of all the reporting, more amateur dronists got their
drones out there and just added to the situation, therefore
(28:56):
upping the number of people citing them.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
It's just like kind of a self feeding system. Yes,
it's a social dynamic. It's related to It's actually one
of the primary reasons law enforcement never likes to say
a serial murderer unless it's unavoidable. So we have a
mystery afoot here or a sky if you like, dude, awesome,
that worked out. We can keep that part that So
(29:21):
there's While there has been to date new material evidence
recovered or at least publicly disclosed, this case checks all
of the other boxes for a good UFO instance. We
have multiple occurrences, we have a contained region, we have
multiple witnesses, some of whom are aviation or radar experts.
(29:44):
We have electronic confirmation, you name it. We've got everything
but the physical evidence. And so it must be no
surprise that almost half a century after that initial December twentieth,
nineteen seventy eight clocking. People around the world are still asking,
what on or off earth happened? Can we explain that
(30:06):
Kaikora lights?
Speaker 5 (30:09):
Maybe we'll try, after I ward from my sponsor.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Here's where it gets crazy. I thought it was already crazy.
Ben thought it's been crazy this whole time.
Speaker 8 (30:25):
Just now.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
It's where we get to the explanation. Fair for uphold,
and so often the well we have a soul to uphold.
So often the uh, the conspiracies are found in the
attempts to cover up things, right, not the original act.
So uh yeah, it depends upon whom you ask. If
we want to be technical, we'll get to the official
(30:49):
conclusions and why experts still question those, But maybe we
spend some more time on the primary source information about
the sightings. The first person to visibly clock those lights, Yeah,
that would be Bill Startup. That's his name.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
That's his name, Bill started We got Davy Crockett and
Bill start old Billy Startup. But he was not a
tech bro. In fact, when Bill and the crew first
reported the lights, he was at a loss for what
this thing might be. He did not have words to
describe it. So he was left a bit flummoxed, much
like the fellow in that clip we heard, and so
(31:29):
he said, what it was?
Speaker 3 (31:31):
We do not know? That's all I wish I knew.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
He's one of the pilots, along with Bob guard right, who.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Was in the clip though, Matt, did we hear from
this guy?
Speaker 6 (31:43):
We have not heard of.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
We haven't heard from Bill startup? Bill Bill startups. The
pilot who has to who has to call this in
and it has to say, as you as you do, Oh,
what it was? We don't know?
Speaker 5 (31:57):
I had to say, we do not know.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
It's so intense. I wish I do.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Yeah, well, yeah, it's so interesting to see those guys
in interviews after a long time and recalling it and
just saying, dang, I really wish we knew what the
heck that was, Like, yeah, that would be awesome if
we knew what that was.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
They're not pissed, they're professionals. They're not wing nuts. They
are people trying to do their job. And when you're
doing when you are working in aviation, your least favorite
thing is an unanswered question. That's that's the issue, because
if you know what a problem is, if you can
(32:35):
identify what's happening. Then you you are on third base
to the home run of figuring out how to fix
it right. But if it's inexplicable, then you don't know
which questions to begin asking. So let's go to John
Cordy briefly mentioned earlier. This is the radio operator out
of Wellington on the first night of the sightings, and
(32:55):
he had a bit of humor about the strange event
because atc guys are so cool man, so stressed out,
but you gotta let stress roll off your back like
water off a duck. So this guy says, we saw
some little targets on a radar just Dowt off of Blenheim.
(33:16):
Part of my pronunciation Cape Campbell Way. And we joked
there was Father Christmas having a practice run with Rudolph
in the front because it was just before Christmas. And
I was like, oh, come on, man, you're cool. I
was that always does this.
Speaker 5 (33:34):
Live updates, stand up there having a laugh, Give.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
Me a break, it's amazing. He continues in a more
serious tone too, after he does the Father Christmas bit,
which again, nice one, John, He says, this target then
moved toward the argacy. Let's remember that's our cargo plane
carrying the newspaper crates. The target quote turned with it.
The argacy then quote tracked it with it for a
(33:58):
good twenty to thirty min files. The target and the
aircraft were at ninety degrees to each other the whole time,
and Vern Powell's aircraft said that they could see a
big red light that was definitely airborne, and we got
to hit that factor real quick. There was another aircraft
that was close enough to observe this as well. So
(34:21):
now we don't just have one group of people in
the skies. We have two planes in the sky.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Yeah, Vern Powell and Ian Peiri, they were the first
plane that saw this. Those are the fellows right that
were actually hanging out with John Cordy in the very beginning,
having that communication. Then those other two officers startup and guard.
They are pilots. When the news crew went up on
(34:48):
the thirtieth and.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
I think we have another quote da ling. Yeah, fast
forward to the thirtieth. We mentioned that TV crew on
the plane. We mentioned one of them, the journalists, Quentin Fogerty,
and he is like everybody else on the craft, he
is watching in alle bewilderment and no small degree of
(35:10):
helplessness as these lights are. And I keep using this term, guys,
it's just perfect for it. The lights are bird dogging
their craft like Foo fighters in World War Two. Totally.
Speaker 5 (35:20):
And we do have a quote from Fogerty where he
says the word pin pricks.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
I think again, And I'm sorry, guys if I didn't
clock the audio of that, because that, to me is
the classic test of a Kiwi accent. But here he
says on the flight down, I'm not going to do
the voice as well. What we basically saw were pin
pricks of light that turned into great globes of light.
We did hear him talking about globes of light earlier,
and they were airborne and they were between us and
(35:48):
the coast because we could see the coast and we
could see the sea and we could see these things
shining down. There's a lot of seas there.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
And then we have another sound clip we'd like to
play from you from again to some of the footage
we were referencing earlier.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yeah, you can find this on the Kai Kora UFOs
Dash in nineteen seventy eight, written and produced by Paul Davidson.
Find it on YouTube. Here is a clip of these fellows.
I think it's a couple of different people describing what
they were seeing on that return flight from christ Church
to Wellington.
Speaker 7 (36:22):
They were brilliant white, silvery white starbus.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Was unusual that they were going vertically up and down
at a rate that, in my view, precluded.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Them from being any thing that I've known about, like
helicopters already.
Speaker 7 (36:35):
I'm now looking over towards the right of the aircraft
and we have an object inferred by Weddings Breda. It's
been following us quite a while. It's about four miles
away and it looks like the very faith start. But
then it's a very bright, white, brillant light.
Speaker 6 (36:54):
I said, this is just a little bit fine.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Then there we go.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Mmm. Yeah. So again we're hearing different instances of people
reporting very similar experiences.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Yeah, the first voice you heard was Bob Guard, who's
one of the pilots on that flight. And then you
hear Quentin Fogerty replying with exactly what he's seeing doing
the reporter in situ thing.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
And so now we have people with firsthand experience speaking
with specific knowledge and specific description of what they witnessed.
The witnesses here all report seeing similar things. They're not
changing or really embellishing their stories, and it doesn't sound
like they had time to work together right and hatch
(37:42):
some sort of universal narrative. They all are saying there
are large, brightly lit things that are moving to high speeds,
that are making sudden turns which would be impossible for
physical human made craft at the time type stuff.
Speaker 4 (37:59):
They're behaving in ways that science cannot fully explain. The
speed with which they go from the water to the air,
and then this, you know, the speed, the way they're
maneuvering exactly.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Where they appear to and they're explained from their perspective rights.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Yeah, it should be noted that many of the witnesses
saw one larger bright light and then several at least
two smaller lights. Yes, that were they're seeing at the
same time, and those three lights would come together, and
sometimes they would shoot off into different directions and then
return back together.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Very strange.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
That's like that's close encounters type vibes, or like that's
the way we've seen UFOs depict.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
I think there was an episode of The X Files too,
where there were those kids that were.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
Kind of spying on the site where there were these
like spinny light things kind of moving around, and then.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
I forget exactly how that episode went. But well, the
idea too is we're telling you the most consistent stuff.
So the number does change based on the eyewitness accounts.
We're not even counting the hundreds of folks on the
ground who confirm sightings multiple sites around the same time.
It's definitely not counting the count I can't believe here
(39:05):
with that. It's not counting the countless other folks, including
experts who later analyze the film footage from the plane
from the ground, especially after so many people are primed
to expect this right, are turning their eyes to the
night sky and wondering if they two, we'll see something incomprehensible. So, riddle,
(39:27):
is this, what do the authorities say after it gets
after it gets past a certain threshold of attention, you
as the government do have to make some kind of response,
even if you just say, nah, it's a windy house,
no ghost here.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Yeah, you saw what your eyes thought were UFO, but
really it was an illusion.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Michael David blamed them, Yeah, David blained and David blamed
them because the Ministry of Defense publicly initially said, Hey,
these sightings are merely optical illusions, perhaps the result of
atmospheric phenomena. How many of you are meteorologists, bump bump up.
(40:16):
But witnesses who are involved, especially our primary aviators, are
protagonists to the story. They're not having it. They feel
if we're being honest, they feel there's an attempt at gaslighting,
and they're professionally offended. Yes they should be.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Well, somebody came over and said, you've forgotten about the
radar You.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
Exactly exactly, I mean Startup in particular, just for that,
I just love the name. Startup in Particular went on record,
and you can hear him. We're jumping around time a
little bit, but you can hear him listening out various
proposed explanations. He's like, Oh, they said it was v
(41:00):
they said it was Jupiter, they said it was harbor
lights or squid boats. But I saw these lights doing
like one hundred and forty knots, and harbor lights don't
do that. Usually they're stationary if they're built the way
they're supposed to be built.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Oh, you know, and that explanation in particular, calling out
other planetary bodies. That's something that came into play with
Frederick Valentich over in Australia. The primary explanations of that
early on were that he got really confused when he
saw some of the planet lights. He thought they were
following him, and then he put his plane into basically
(41:40):
a downward spiral as he's watching these lights that are
now reflected off the ocean. But you know, come on,
that just seems I mean, I get it that people
are looking in this instance, the mod Ministry, defense, whoever
that's looking at this stuff is trying to find an
explanation that makes right. It doesn't have to be anything weird, guys,
(42:03):
it could be this, but it just seems so insulting
to anybody who can fly a plane like that, right.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
Right, and again, if you listen to our episode on Valentich,
you will see similar proposed explanations for what occurred in
that tragedy. His body has yet to be recovered, by
the way, here in twenty twenty five as we record.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It was the exact same
explanations given just a couple of months before this thing
went down.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
Yeah, and the idea here is battle of narratives. Perhaps again,
please do check out that episode on Valentich. I agreed,
there's an eerie parallel which makes us worth a re listen.
We also know that, as we're going to learn after
our break here, the official initial conclusion of the Ministry
(42:59):
of Defense was not entirely true, very Emily Dickinson style,
tell the truth, but tell it slants, because you see,
the whole time they were saying this to the public,
New Zealand and a few other groups, few other friend
groups were intensely interested in figuring out what the heck
was going on, and so away from the press, they
(43:23):
launched that inquiry we mentioned earlier. We'll take a break
for a word from our sponsors and tell you what
they found. We're back first theories, squid votes, all right,
just the bubble here real quick, because I don't know
about you guys. I was really excited in the very
(43:45):
downtrodden when I learned that they did not mean squids
piloting squid made craft. I know I was thinking that too.
It was a fun image. Though that's a cool We
always have that moment where we thought we will always
have that moment. Well, squid boats are cool, though sure, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(44:07):
they're a big part of the maritime economy. There's that
Oh my gosh, we're trying to be cool dads, all right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Well, let's talk about why they thought maybe that was it. Yeah,
squid boats use big old lights shining down into the
water to try and attract squid. So you can imagine
that if there's some kind of reflection in glass. If
there's some that's usually one of the proposals. Right, The
pilot sees light that's actually on the water reflecting off
(44:40):
their glass, and it appears to be moving around if
the plane changes course in any way, it's like, oh wow,
it's moving across my screen.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
There, or reflecting off cloud cover. M you know what
I mean. This is the thing I do with with
my cats. You know, you take a shiny mirror or
reflect light and they chase the image of the light
the way they chase a red dot or something like that.
So the explanation is similar there, and we can see
why that would be offensive to some professional aviators and
(45:13):
the other thing. Okay, so this inquiry doesn't end in
a specific, ironclad conclusion. It ends in something like a
pitch meeting. So they say, oh, you don't like the
squid boat explanation, Well, what about this? What if they're
like unburned meteors.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Ah, now we're getting somewhere, because that would clock radar, right,
unlike the squid boat reflection. We don't get radar from that. Okay.
And there was a meteor shower around that time in
that area.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
Yeah, yeah, okay, sure, big swing. Getting closer as far
as explanations go. And then they said something, you know,
very similar to the squid boat idea. They said, this
could have been lights from trains or other earthly vehicles,
atmospheric shenanigans, cloud physics. You guys know about planes. About
(46:12):
how much do you know about astrophysics?
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Huh, cold, cold, they are right.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
And then they said, or what if it was light
from planets like Venus and Jupiter. And at this point
the pilots are going, I hate you guys. Why are
you like this?
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Why aren't you do this? Can it just be we
saw something crazy that we don't know about yet?
Speaker 3 (46:33):
Yeah, right exactly, which would be the Okham's razor of it.
Governmental institutions generally do not like admitting they cannot explain
a thing, right, So by this point there's the mass
of the public. The Hoi polloi right, the vox popular.
The Kaikoro lights have become a cultural phenomenon. So from
(46:58):
the eighteen nineteen eighties, sorry I'm dating myself the nineteen
eighties to now, even the most skeptical of locals in
Kiwi communities will occasionally look up into the night sky
around December and they'll say, hey, maybe it'll happen again,
Maybe I'll see some UFOs visit at the end of
(47:19):
the earthly year. Before we go, though, we do have
to give a shout out to, of course, various researchers
who have analyzed the footage. Countless people have done this.
You can see it all over the internet. One of
the most prominent is a moufon guy scientist named doctor
Bruce mccabee.
Speaker 4 (47:40):
That's right, doctor Bruce maccabee, American scientists and ufologist with
an MS and PhD in physics. Got some bona fides there,
who's also just you know, as a little bonus an
optical data processing expert.
Speaker 3 (47:57):
He concluded that the footage had.
Speaker 4 (47:59):
Captured the images and movements of the genuine article UFO.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
H yeah, and we've got quotes from him you can
again read these or see them in various documentaries. He
notes some of the same stuff we're saying that a
big differentiator here is that radar plays a role in
these sightings, So unlike a lot, here's what you get.
(48:28):
Often you will often get UFO reports that are radar
only right, so there's an ATC somewhere, or there's a
totally legitimate thing abroad for some reason that gets a
little pupupew on its radar and there's no eyewitness accounts
(48:50):
because it happens in a place where people don't usually
hang out.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Yes, and you know who has really good radar technology, militaries,
So it's often a military that goes, hey, what the
heck is that over there, as in the instance in
nineteen fifty three with Felix Monclaw where there was a
radar blip in an area where there shouldn't be a
radar blip because it's controlled airspace. So you send out
(49:15):
a pilot to go check out what's going on, and
in Felix's case, he and his plane disappeared. But that's
beside the point. The whole point is the radar sightings
occur a crazy number of times that we will never
hear about.
Speaker 3 (49:30):
Right, because they're internal and there as a result, they're
something that would maybe not be helpful to report to
the public because in doing so, you're revealing your surveillance capability,
your collection methods, all your fun stuff. Going back to maccabee,
(49:50):
the next thing he reports is that it is more
interesting to see. So we've got two things, right. Our
only identification often internal for governments, and we've got visual
only identification, often associated with civilians or non aviation experts.
And when they are reporting something, there's often not a
(50:14):
lot of instrumentation. We're not dismissing, we're just saying there's
often not a lot of instrumentation that would confirm what
they were saying happened at that time. So this means
that we've got a golden goose here. We've got a
ven diagram of a radar visual case. Witnesses are reporting
something going in the same direction, obeying the same dynamics,
(50:38):
the same trajectory and path as a target identified or
a thing identified on radar. This is winning the lottery twice.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
Yeah, man, because that's why this one is so exciting.
So then you've got this amazing person, Macabe who's looking
at the film footage that this camera person, Davy Crockett,
Dave he saw and filmed again with a handheld film
camera in a cockpit that's you know, in an airplane
(51:08):
that's in flight. And if you're serious, like a sixteen
millimeters yes, insane, So imagine the heft and weight of
this huge film canister above the lens.
Speaker 3 (51:20):
And he's.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
Yeah, yes, and he's leaning over people and through instrumentation
to try and get footage. And when you look at
the footage, it looks like that what you're imagining, crazy jumpy. Uh,
you do see objects as he's trying to get focus
in the black sky with a tiny little thing.
Speaker 4 (51:40):
When you're bouncing around like that and you're filming items
that are way off in the horizon, you're gonna get
all kinds of.
Speaker 3 (51:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
So that's why it's massively important and incredible that we
have the words here of mister maccabee, who is a
specialist in checking out that kind of stuf. Knowing, Okay,
is the is that a lensing effect, is that the
movement of the camera, Is that the actual shape of
the object or is it out of focus? He's he's
looking at all of this stuff. And he continues with
(52:13):
a quote saying.
Speaker 4 (52:14):
These New Zealand sightings may be the most quote unquote instrumented.
What's unpack that in civilian ufology with multiple witnesses, two
independent tape recordings made during the sightings, color movie film,
and ground and air radar instrue.
Speaker 5 (52:33):
I guess he's just referring to like.
Speaker 4 (52:34):
All of the cross check kind of like you know,
parallels and and verifiable data points.
Speaker 3 (52:40):
Objective non qualitative confirmation that.
Speaker 4 (52:45):
Line up, and that there's like a timeline that can
be confirmed for that is a big doub I'm shocked,
guys that I'd not heard of this outside of this discussion.
Speaker 3 (52:53):
This is seems like it would be a bigger deal that, Yeah,
the radar has has one opinion, yes this is here
or no this is not. It's not going to give
you some sort of laborious interview process about how it
felt when a clock to a thing going from a
(53:14):
to his head exactly exactly.
Speaker 4 (53:15):
And frankly, I mean the reports from these guys are
pretty dispassionate too.
Speaker 3 (53:19):
We're not seeing a.
Speaker 5 (53:20):
Whole lot of like hyperbolic kind of talk.
Speaker 4 (53:23):
They seem real, steadfast, and they're you know, reporting their observations.
Speaker 3 (53:28):
You got to keep it together, ye crying. Crying is
for when you land.
Speaker 2 (53:33):
Yeah, well, and you see a real desire to know
what the heck happened. In later interviews, several of the
pilots were approached by Maccabee with you know, his findings
after he analyzed the footage, and these pilots had given
initial estimates of like how large they think the object
is in the moment, how far away they think it is,
(53:54):
and how fast it's traveling. One of the pilots comes
forward and says, Maccabee told him that the object was
around five miles away from your plane and it was
probably as big as a two story building. After he's
analyzed the optics, which again you have to take an
expert's you know, viewpoint and say, Okay, that expert knows
(54:15):
what they're talking about, knows what they're seeing. You also
are taking into account the pilot's you know, vision and
their estimates based on knowledge and wisdom. But at the
same time it does make you realize, in the moment,
when a human being, any of us, is experiencing something
like this, we're trusting our eyes and our ears and
all of our senses, but they may be a little
(54:36):
off right, and you may also remember it a little off.
But having a piece of footage and that radar like
that let somebody even out of space and time observe
it and say, oh my god, I think it was
this because of you know, X, Y and Z.
Speaker 3 (54:53):
Yeah. And we also, as we mentioned with his bona fides,
doctor mccabee is a as a career long member and
champion and move on. So that might put some folks
in the crowd automatically off, but we can tell you
his findings. And he wrote a ton of stuff, by
the way, not just about this but about other dodgy
(55:16):
cases of UFO observations. And he was publicly ignored by
the government of New Zealand. So you could say, hey,
this is a cultural moment like Mothman out in Point Pleasant,
West Virginia. You could say that, except that in twenty ten,
the New Zealand military released a treasure their own Project
(55:40):
Blue Book, really a treasure trove of previously classified reports
that dated from two thousand and nine all the way
back to nineteen fifty four, which means it naturally includes
the Kakolites, and was released due to the Official Records Act,
which is sort of the New Zealand version of FOYIA,
(56:00):
the Freedom of Information Act. It's heavily redacted. Everybody got
a deal on black highlighters right when they made these laws,
so that you won't see a lot of specific names
or other sensitive material. But we're talking two thousand pages
of documents, most of which involves weird stuff in the sky,
(56:22):
weird lights of the sky. And we found a we
found a funny moment from from just prior to the
release of this from the Royal Air Force themselves, and
they were trying to get in front of it so
hard we can we do the quote.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
Air Force Squadron leader Cave Tamriiki said the Defense Force
did not have the resources to investigate UFO sightings and
would not be commenting on the files contents.
Speaker 3 (56:50):
Mike, come on, come on, I hate when people do that,
right Like, Hey, I'm gonna tell you something and that's
it and no more questions. So speaking to the dominion Post,
Tamriki notes, quote, this is understandable, all right, I'm being
a jerk. This is understandable. Quote. We've just been a
(57:12):
collection point for the information. We don't investigate or make reports.
We haven't substantiated anything.
Speaker 2 (57:20):
In them, but here you go.
Speaker 3 (57:23):
But here it is. So we're not in charge of this.
We have no comment. But you asked, have we complied?
You can see why they wanted to get in front
of it. The documents have a lot of wild stuff,
again none of which is co signed by the Air Force.
Alleged examples of alien writing, drawing, draw it, yeah, I know,
(57:47):
drawings of flying saucers. And then here's one for the
stargate fans in the crowd, in depth descriptions of extraterrestrials
wearing Pharaoh mask.
Speaker 2 (57:57):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (57:59):
Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing. It's a good story from
what the Air Force is telling us here. They for
decades they got these reports and then they just put
them here. Let me get one. They put them in
a file folder. You know what I mean. I'm holding
up a file folder, all right. That one's about cattle.
Speaker 8 (58:22):
So the U.
Speaker 3 (58:26):
So any agency, of course, is going to take pains
to say, look, we just got what came in because
we drew the short straw right and we didn't verify anything.
But they also spend a lot of time in these
documents on kai Kora specifically, on Kaikora specifically. The evidence
(58:48):
gives lie to the original story. Guys. The original story
is that New Zealand said stop panicking over weather phenomena.
The real story is that internally they lost their bag
over this. You know, they launched this inquiry because they
were concerned. And I love the point of context we're
bringing up here. It's still Cold War, right, They're concerned
(59:10):
that there might be some vaguely described intruders. They don't
define the intruders. They just say intruders, sort of like
when your dog barks, it just says stranger.
Speaker 5 (59:24):
And anytime someone comes into my house, whether it's my
kid or to Frida, I.
Speaker 3 (59:27):
Just go intruder, show yourself. You know, that's do you really?
Speaker 2 (59:32):
I do.
Speaker 3 (59:32):
It's sort of a bit. It's a joke. That's why
I'm so paranoid.
Speaker 6 (59:38):
Man.
Speaker 3 (59:38):
We used to hang out. I would. I would get
in front of your house and then text you to
let out. You know, I was there before I touched
the At.
Speaker 5 (59:45):
Least I didn't have one of those like paint cannon things.
Speaker 4 (59:48):
You remember those security cameras that would like pelt like
intruders with paintballs.
Speaker 3 (59:54):
That's kind of cool. Oh, we talked about it. It
was a really bad idea. It was like some strange
news thing we talked about. Well, mack, cool idea. Well,
depending on which side of the door you're on, So
the inquiry here does make some Again, they end with
a bunch of pitches laying well, maybe it's blah blah
blahor moybees blah blah blah have you thought about blah
(01:00:16):
blah blah. But their inquiry reaches one interesting thing. They
eventually say, okay, we'll play if then. So the if
then game. If the objects did exist, and if the
multiple observations of those objects are correct, if they are accurate,
(01:00:38):
then those objects logically have to be traveling at around
ten eight hundred miles per hour, which for anybody playing
along at home, is pretty fast.
Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
Yes, maybe too fast for a lot of the stuff.
You know, we were going to bring in stuff about
drone technology that we talked about that was in full
effect in the eighties and they're been tests on like
radio controlled drone like things since World War Two. So
like there's all kinds of weird stuff that could be
up there that maybe some other governments operating and testing. Sure,
(01:01:13):
sure would be weird to be testing it that close
New Zealand if you're another country.
Speaker 3 (01:01:17):
But you know, I don't know. I mean, if it's
Cold War, right, and it's the Allies against the Axis,
you know, just think.
Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
Again, nineteen seventy eight is like high time there.
Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
For some of that stuff. Maybe it takes a village
later later Nole's friends at the company, the CIA will
do you like I just three, I mean the US there.
That's so they they analyzed this stuff on their own
and they said, similar to what doctor mcabee said, who
(01:01:54):
I suspect may have had some conversations, they said the
quote large amount of docum minary evidence includes the recollection
of seven witnesses to tape recordings made during the sightings,
the detection of some unusual ground and airplane radar targets,
and a sixteen millimeter color movie. So while they reached
(01:02:16):
similar conclusions to those of New Zealand, the case is
still out there. There's a curious wrinkle because we're telling
you about this now declassified report as of twenty ten,
or anthology of reports, but the documents, the original documents
those reports are based on, are currently sealed up, still
(01:02:40):
classified in New Zealand's national archive. Unless something changes, some
of these original reports are not going to be released
until twenty eighty. Are we still going to be making
the show in twenty eighty? Guys? What are we? What's
our situation?
Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Who are we?
Speaker 7 (01:02:59):
Man?
Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
What is this?
Speaker 3 (01:03:01):
What even are we?
Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
Well, we've got less than two thousand days until the singularity,
according to some, So you know, we'll see what happens there.
Speaker 3 (01:03:10):
Whenever we say some we meet according to us in
an earlier episode of our show.
Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Well all those billionaires hanging out on
New Zealand might get a real close encounter. We'll see
what happens with all of that stuff. I do want
to point really quickly just to that original broadcast that
happened in nineteen seventy eight. I couldn't find an actual
clip of that recording or an archived version of that.
(01:03:40):
Did you guys locate that anywhere? Just a full stop.
This is holding in one video.
Speaker 3 (01:03:45):
It's been You can find clips of it in larger things.
I think that's what we both found.
Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
We are looking for the original one. We're not sure
if it is titled UFO The Closest Encounter, if that
was the original broadcast or if that was like a
rebroadcast right as we talked about, this footage was shown
many many a time. If you can gain access to that,
or you find it, please send it our way. We'll
tell you how to contact us in a minute. But
(01:04:10):
we want to see the full thing.
Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
Yeah, and for now, we'd love to ask for some
help from our Kei week Conspiracy Realist spelled with ks.
Do people in your neck of the Global woods still
think of the Kaikoro Lights? How do people typically explain it?
Is there anybody on the South Island who you know? Pops,
(01:04:34):
open some wine or get some coffee as December waxes
on and spend some time looking at the night sky?
Why are certain things still classified? Was there at least
some point stuff New Zealand didn't want you to know.
We can't wait to your thoughts. You can always send
(01:04:56):
us an email, especially if you want a random fact.
You can call us on a telephone. You can find
us on the line.
Speaker 4 (01:05:04):
Do find us in all of those places first and foremost,
not necessarily foremost, but first at least all on the
lines at the handle conspiracy stuff where we exist on
Facebook with our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy
on x FKA, Twitter and on YouTube with video content
galore for YouTube peruse and hopefully enjoy on Instagram and TikTok. However,
we're conspiracy stuff show.
Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
Yes, one tiny little piece of information we forgot to
add into this thing. There was a moment when these
pilots with the journalists were flying and they're attempting to
capture these lights. There's a moment when Wellington Radar told them, hey, guys,
just heads up one of the lights. One of the
(01:05:44):
objects is immediately behind you now so you can't physically
see it, and it's doubled in size, so you know,
get home safe.
Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
Do with that information?
Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
Yeah, just imagine call us, tell us how you would
feel in that moment. That would be amazing. Call one
eight three three st d WYTK. When you call in,
it's a voicemail system. You've got three minutes. Give yourself
a cool nickname and let us know within the message
if we can use your name and message on the air.
If you want to send us an email, you can
do that.
Speaker 3 (01:06:17):
We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
we receive before we get to the rest of that.
We have talked about the official inquiry some of those documents.
If you'd like to read more on your own, you
can find by emailing us directly. We'll give you the link,
which is awkward to just announce on the air because
it's government stuff. But if you yourself want to engage
(01:06:42):
with the Official Information Act Request of New Zealand, just
go to FYI dot org dot NZ and while you're online,
hit us up for random fact here in the dark
conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. Previously, on Stuff they
don't want you to know, in our weekly listener mail program,
(00:50):
which informs a lot of our future episodes, we were
contacted by our fellow conspiracy realist Uncle Benny. And guys,
I don't know if we all remember this, but it was, uh,
it was late July this year when Uncle Benny hipped
us to one of the most bizarre UFO stories in
(01:10):
modern history. With full disclosure, none of us have been
to New Zealand, is that correct?
Speaker 4 (01:18):
No, but y'all have been practicing your Kiwi accents and
I can't wait to hear your roll them out. And
do you like the Michael Caine off of Kiwi accents?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Well, I think it's gonna come out accidentally as we're
saying like names.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Accent is how we Yeah, I only just got the
hang of narr as well? Or is that just exclusively ausy.
I mean, it's a big country, It's true. I'm sure
there's someone.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
A lot of sheep apparently a lot of yes, yes,
a lot of works to watch.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Out for them.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Everything I know came from them. What we do in
the Shadows, Out of the Concords tv SO.
Speaker 5 (02:02):
And Lord of the Rings come on, you're leaving out?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah, but like they didn't have New Zealand accents.
Speaker 5 (02:08):
It wasn't New Zealand is set in Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Right right, right, Although that would be great, give us
your head cannon, give us your fandom of Lord of
the Rings being New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
A remake with accents us.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Make entirely with accents, right we maybe some bits. We'll
get to that and that's yeah, we'll chount for the beats.
Uh So, levels, folks, levels, we're doing levels tonight. We
also want to, of course, as we're affectionately describing here,
(02:43):
we want to point out that we do not have
anything other than painfully American accents. When we may mispronounce
or cartoonishly pronounce a thing. It is for comedic value.
It is with great respect to our friends in New Zealand,
(03:04):
especially our friends on New Zealand's South Island.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
So that was a mouthful, man, I could feel it
rolling around in there.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Well yeah, like an anzac biscuit exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I'd love to do a quick shout out here to
a TV show that I think we've mentioned once or
twice before, because a lot of us know what we
do in the shadows, A lot of us know the
Concords right. Not many of us, I think, know about
Wellington Paranormal.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Oh yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, fantastic show and fantastic
in this episode, we're headed to Wellington. We're headed to Wellington.
We also want to shout out our good friends at
Hanti Donna and can I also shout out a podcast
that is kind of nerd culture stuff from some lovely
(03:50):
dudes called The Weekly Planet, and they seem to be
friends with the Aunty Donna guys.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
So if you like their shenanigans and you're into nerd
culture stuff, highly recommend the Weekly Planet podcast.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
And to be clear, our friends at Auntie Donna are Australian.
Will get into this. But let us shinan together, folks.
Tonight's episode takes us on a journey through time and
earthly space to the final days of December nineteen seventy
eight on New Zealand's South Island. We're gonna pause for
(04:22):
a word from our sponsors. Here are the facts. Let's
start by kicking some geography. Okay, So, since not everybody
has a world map directly behind their monitor or directly
(04:42):
in front of them while they're listening, New Zealand is
not Australia. New Zealand is very close to Australia. It's
often been called the Canada of Australia. And by often called,
we mean specifically by us on this show.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Oh okay, god, okay, who's saying that fighting words always
have a specific source?
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yes? But also it is pretty far away. There's a
whole sea in between, right, And it's not like the
Black Sea or some of the smaller seas out there.
This is at it's pretty much ocean, y'all. But but
it is close, right, But it's but it's not so
close that you can just take a quick flight over
(05:25):
the way you can, you know, in the UK and
to a lot of other places in Europe.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
It's right remote, right, I mean it's it certainly still
feels that way, at least looking at it on the map.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
It has an outsized global impression on culture. It's also
most famous for a lot of non Aussi conspiracy realist
or non Kiwi conspiracy realist by being a place where
the world's current billionaires are bunkering up. And so you
(05:57):
may hear it mentioned often in that reg guard in
shows of a similar milieu.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
And when you're looking at this place from above right
to the southeast of mainland Australia, there you're going to
see two primary large islands. Essentially, I'm thinking a little
bit of a comparison to Japan with the way it's
set up there perhaps, And we are talking, as you said, Ben,
(06:25):
about the south of those two islands.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Yeah, by far the largest of the two islands. In fact,
the South Island is technically the twelfth largest island on
the planet. And if you're looking at the map overhead
right you're getting sat NAV or something. This may not
look Titanic from your perspective, but it's important to remember
(06:50):
it's a big place and for most of human history
it was very sparsely populated, but it's home to stunning
geography and natural wonders. True story, folks, the South Island
is home to something called the Southern Alps. That's how
amazing the mountains are. That's why to your earlier point.
(07:10):
Now they filmed Lord of the Rings there lush, you
can get it.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
You can get a bit of a sense of it
from the map. But like of that mountain range, but
it is not. It doesn't look like that. It looks
like Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Yeah, especially because of the plains surrounding the mountains. That
that's why it becomes so majestic. Our story tonight takes
place in a curious area called the Kaikoura Mountain Ranges.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
This is spelled k a I k o u r A. Again,
we're not doing the accents unless it's for comedy. Uh.
And it's These mountains are named after a small coastal
town also called Kaikoura. Uh. It's an interesting thing because
the ranges here, the Paikoura Ranges, are two parallel groups
(08:04):
of mountains and they're in the northeast of the South Island.
Speaker 6 (08:08):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
They are so big because they're surrounded by plains. Right
and rolling hills. They're so big that you can see
them from the south of the smaller, much more populous
North Island. And here we have a cameo from our
pow James Cook. Captain James Cook. Excuse me who originally
(08:30):
when he was one of the Captain Cook the yes
of the of the Captain Cook famu to be confused
with James Kirk. This is different. This is right explorer
and not to be confused with Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad,
which I just rewatched. I was watching it last night too.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Was the episode where they're kind of weighing whether or
not to execute that that crazy.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Spoilers. I didn't say whether they did. Internet guys, we've
said it in the past, just twenty years old at
this point that I think we've reached.
Speaker 5 (09:09):
The statute of limitations on okay, well the Internet.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Here's the thing, we've discussed it on the show in
the past. Breaking Bad is essentially car stuff but with
meth hmmm, got to get that pseudo getting that pseudo, Sorry, Captain,
I'm sorry. He puts the chili pee.
Speaker 5 (09:35):
In the in the yes, Breaking Bad coded right.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Now, So this has uh these pop culture references are
hopefully valuable to someone and thank you for tuning in
the The The thing is, the ranges themselves are still
pretty rural. As of some of the most up to
date information from the New New Zealand Census, there are
(10:02):
a little less than two thousand people living there day
to day.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Yeah, yeah, crazy, and these ranges are really important. Not
many people there. There are two towns that we have
to focus in on, Wellington and christ Church. Wellington is
on the very southern tip of that the more northern island,
the smaller island, a heavily populated place, lots of air
(10:30):
traffic control going on there, lots of radar, lots of
checking out what's going on.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
And you may recognize the name christ Church, which the
same way that I did. It was the site of
a really awful terrorist attack back in twenty nineteen at
two mosques and it was a huge deal because it
was a horrible situation, but also just things like that
just don't happen there and it's such a you know,
rural very like you said, kind of what's the word
(10:55):
adyllic kind of you know place part of the world
that it was just really shock.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
To hear about something like that coming. But we're talking
about two big cities. So christ Church has a population
of over three hundred and fifty thousand or so, and
that makes it the third largest city in the country. Uh.
The first one is Auckland and the second is as
we mentioned, Wellington. They have a lot of toys that
(11:23):
are going to be important for tonight's exploration exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
And because they have a lot of toys and they're
on that more populous island up there in the north,
there are regular standard flights, huge cargo plains that travel
from Wellington with a bunch of stuff to christ Church
and they land and then they turn around and they
go back to Wellington and Kaikura. This mountain range we're
talking about is kind of smack dab in between these
(11:48):
two christ Church by the way, on that southern island
past Kaikoura.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
In the mount you have to traverse the mountains right, yes,
you have to find the mountain pass.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Or essentially go right over the ocean there right next
to them.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Or skirt skirt. Yeah. So the issue here is that
most locals, most New Zealand nationals know of these mountains
to one degree or another, but they gain national attention on.
You know, I was thinking of the way to say it.
Kaikora Mountain Ranges. For a lot of people pre nineteen
(12:27):
seventy eight in New Zealand, they were like the Grand
Canyon in the United States. They were a wonder you
knew about. Right. You might know about the Adirondacks, but
you never visit, right because maybe I haven't at the time.
Speaker 5 (12:42):
Yeah, the chairs are mega uncomfortable, right, they're.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
No AAMS chairs. I agree. It's late in the evening,
about eleven pm local time on December twentieth, nineteen seventy eight,
when a guy named Ian Ulfindel of the New Zealand
RAF Royal Air Force reports unusual lights in the sky
(13:08):
and he says, I can do the voice. He says,
three objects. There's one big one and there are two
smaller things like orbes well lighty boys, and they're making
controlled movement and they're flying in some sort of pattern together.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
And this immediately, you know, has credence to it the
way like the tic Tac stories did, because of who
it's coming from. It's not just some like crackpot, you know,
stargazing and seeing some weird and they're telescope. It's like
someone who is used to monitoring these types of situations
and is absolutely qualified to say this is a little.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Weird, right, yeah, yeah, and he adds they're not aircraft.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Well yeah, at least they don't seem like it, right.
And the craziest thing is that the person he's talking
to when he is reporting this stuff is the person
who's manning the radar, and that person is also seeing
stuff out there. So it's not like some of those
UFO sightings that we've heard about in the past, where hey,
(14:11):
we're not getting anything on radar, but there are weird lights.
There's something physically out there.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
It's pinging on the radar. And this is when we
fast forward to the part of the lore that may
be most familiar, or the origin story that's most familiar
to ufologists. It's December twenty, first wee hours, nineteen seventy eight.
A small crew is flying cargo plane in Argacy, this
(14:38):
type of plane and the company they're flying for is
called Safe Air Limited. Weirdly enough, they're delivering creates of
newspapers and they're flying and they start clocking strange objects
that seem to be bird dogging their craft, and they say,
you can hear the clips from the and the crew
(15:00):
themselves where they're saying, look, this is they're calling atc
air Traffic Control and they're saying, look, these there are
things around us, these strange orbs in the sky. They're
not uniform in size. One is as large as a house,
and they are tracking us, and then they're disappearing, and
(15:21):
then they're inexplicably appearing somewhere else minutes later, and they're saying,
these are blowing red or orange orbs. Some of them
are pulsing like white beacons. And it kind of goes
back to what you were saying there earlier, NOL. It's
oddly not that unusual for isolated groups of people, even
(15:41):
aviation experts, to witness aerial phenomena they can't immediately explain.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah, but it is pretty striking that this is all
occurring on the same night. All of this is happening.
So we've got an officer at a base seeing something
that he thinks are just planes. Oh wait, those aren't
just planes, but they are on radar. And then you've
got actual human beings in a flight over these mountains
seeing the stuff. Pretty nuts.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah, that's one of the primary reasons so there are
three big reasons why the Kaikora lights are different from
most reports. First, as you said, Matt, they're clocked by
air traffic Control, they're out of Wellington. The argasy crew
naturally calls in the event and ATC is able to
(16:31):
confirm something is there, which means something was material enough
to ping on a radar. They show up on the
aircraft radar as well.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Yeah, and you also have all of these human beings
who saw all this stuff later gave interviews where they
said directly into a camera and microphone exactly what they saw.
So Ian Uffindel, John Cordy, the guy who was in
the radar control room, they're in Wellington.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Sure they're pilots, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Vern Powell and Ian Pierre Peiri, I think is how
you say his name. They all will talk about it openly.
It's not like this thing that everybody's nervous about, because
we've seen that before as well, right with UFO reports.
People are nervous to talk about it, or they feel
as though they might be shunned or looked at differently
for seeing something like this and then saying it out loud.
(17:22):
We don't see that happening with this case, we don't
see a lot of the telltale things that make more
skeptically minded of us think, oh, well, this is probably
a hoax, or this isn't real, or you know, the
way those people are talking, it doesn't seem right. We're
not seeing that here.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Yeah. And the second of these three things is that
these lights eventually are cited by hundreds of other people,
not on the specific planes. And we're using the word
planes as a plural on purpose because the third big
thing that differentiates this event is that it is a
(17:59):
series of events. There are multiple instances of these lights
being observed over the next few days, with all of
the doodads we just mentioned, so.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Maybe we get into film cameras.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
The second most famous sighting, which is December thirtieth, same year.
Just a few days later, it's almost nineteen seventy nine,
there's an Australian television crew recording a similar event, also
a board of cargo aircraft. This one is flying between
you guessed it, folks, Wellington and christ Church. This is
where we introduce a three person team, reporter Quentin Fogerty,
(18:38):
a cameraman named David Crockett, and Nigher Crockett. The audio
tech who is also David Crockett's wife. They are literally
on the plane because get this, they're shooting b roll
for a TV show about the earlier sightings, and lo
and behold, they witness their own Kaikora lights at the time.
(19:02):
This time they're able to film on sixty millimeter from
the plane in color and this is again confirmed by
Wellington Air Traffic Control. It's being observed by numerous witnesses.
Do we want to play a clip of Fogerty talking
about this. I've been on the edge of my seat
waiting for it.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Yeah, we have several clips here, and let's go ahead
and cite the source. We found these on a YouTube
channel called Marlborough Video Vault. The video is titled the
Kaikora UFOs Dash nineteen seventy eight and at least according
to attribution on the description there, it was written and
produced by Paul Davidson. So thank you Paul for doing this.
(19:44):
The actual clips here are from nineteen seventy eight, there
in late December, and this is nuts. So this first
one we're just going to hear from Quentin Fogerty, who
is there. I've seen him cited as being a Channel
zero or Channel O Reporter, but also for TV one
also News at six, so.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Change their name a couple times over the decades as well.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Yeah. So, to my understanding, it was recorded as part
of a television news broadcast after they had heard of
this original sighting.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Yer twenty first is the one the public knew about. Yeah.
Speaker 7 (20:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
The producer there, Leonard Lee, got got permission to go
up on one of these flights, on one of these
Argacy flights. So let's jump to this. This is Quentin Fogerty,
just during the initial trip, describing what they're seeing through
the windows of the Argusy cockpit. Oh, this is one
of the pieces of information we need to know. This
(20:43):
is a cargo plane, so it's not like maybe a
plane you've flown in where you've got windows all down
the sides and stuff. This is imagine just a big
metal tube and then you can see out the front
of it.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Does that make sense, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
So everything they're seeing is the cockpit through the windows
that the pilots are using to fly the plane in
real time. Yes, So here we go.
Speaker 6 (21:08):
The very first thing we saw was these sort of
falls of light that would just appear in the sky,
and I mean it was really just looking through small
windows at a very very black sky and seeing pulsating
lights that started usually as a very very small pinprick
of light and then would go into like a great
globe of light.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Now, that's the so we originally said, the real time report.
That is Fogerty looking back and recalling in an interview
where a documentary we saw. But if you check out
this thing, which is freely available any anywhere you want
to look online, you will see the lights that he
(21:48):
is describing, and he appears to be describing those with accuracy.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yeah, you can hear kind of in the moment him
describing it, but it's just not as eloquent. It's just,
you know, he as even states in those later interviews,
he's kind of he's a bit flum mixed experiencing this
whole thing and just trying to describe it in real
time there, but he's just not doing a great job.
There are several pieces of that you can here though,
(22:14):
mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Yeah. And here's the kicker, folks, here's the badger in
the bag. They land the plane and we'll get into
more of this as we continue. They land the plane,
and in this instance, one of the objects, these inexplicable orbs,
appears to follow the plane right up until it lands.
(22:37):
And when they land, their camera guy is reloading his
film right, he's getting better film stock. We're working live.
The plane takes off once more and now it's followed
by a quote orb like object for another fifteen minutes,
also caught on film.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Oh yeah, and we have one more clip. You don't mind, guys,
of that moment, because this is one of the actual
film clips from nineteen seventy eight. It's the moment that
they're in the radar room in christ Church and they're
getting word from Wellington that the lights are still out there.
And in this moment, you have to imagine what's going
through the minds of you know, these pilots and this
film crew in this moment, they are kind of terrified
(23:19):
because of this thing. We have to mention here that
happened very recently to the moment. This is happening in
December nineteen seventy eight. What happened to Frederick Valentich in
October of nineteen seventy eight, And this has happened in Australia,
so not very far from them. As we said, where
a pilot. There's a lot of scuttle but a lot
(23:40):
of rumors about this pilot that radioed in that he
was seeing something that was metal and not an aircraft
right before he disappeared. So these pilots were aware of this,
This news crew was aware of this, and now they're
up there seeing these lights and interacting with them. They
imagined that perhaps they might meet the same fate that
(24:04):
Frederick met right just disappearing plane and all.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Yeah, nineteen seventy eight. Checkout our episode from twenty twenty three,
the disappearance of Frederick Valentich.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Absolutely absolutely so. Here is a quick clip of that
moment right before they took off for the second time.
Speaker 8 (24:22):
We're now on the radar room at christ Church Airport.
It's about quarter to two, and in about another twenty
minutes we intend to take off again in the agacy
and retrace the route we took only a few moments earlier.
We've just heard from Wellington Radar that there are still
targets in the kai Kura area, So this time we're
hoping to get at a film than we did last time.
(24:43):
And all I can say is we'll see what happens.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
There we go and so you can almost hear the
nerves there and it was such a heroing experience that
the sound record is Gary Krockett, the wife of David Krogett,
the cameraon chose not to go back on the return flight.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Yeah, and again they're a freelance team, uh, not expecting
this double tap. These are b roll They're there for
b roll in interviews, you know, in situ in the moment.
So we've got to applaud crocket there for being for
being the person who said, look, I'm here in a
professional capacity and I don't want to be one of
(25:22):
those suckers in the first act of a possible horror film,
you know what I mean?
Speaker 5 (25:26):
Can we also just acknowledge that it's badass that his
name is Davy Crockett.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
I just can't. Sorry, Well, I think we were all
working it more impressive to us. Maybe maybe probably he
was a little sick of hearing about it.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Dave noted that there's some weird stuff when they got
off the plane the first time, where he states that
the exterior the exterior of the plane seemed to be
magnetized or energized in some way, and like he it
just felt weird.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
He says this after the fact.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
He does say it out after the fact, but he
says he noted getting out of the plane and even
was talking to his spouse at the time about how
weird even the plane felt after experiencing that stuff.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Right, was something too close to the craft. So from here,
the case Garner's international attention and the December thirtieth incident
is really responding to a spate of multiple instances that
have been reported on some level from the twenty first
(26:31):
to the thirtieth. The authorities feel they have to respond,
and so the local police, the Carter Observatory out in
Wellington again, the town with all the toys, the Royal
New Zealand Air Force, the Ministry of Defense. It's like
our Department of Defense here, or excuse me, kaugh cough,
Department of War cough cough. And so they all get involved.
(26:57):
And then this is in addition to scads of amit
to our ufologists, established scientific experts with a lot of
bona fides and related fields. The New Zealand Air Force
literally puts a Skyhawk on standby in case we need
somebody to scoop scoop for further sightings and half a
world away, our friends at the company are analyzing later
(27:20):
reports from a Lackey P three Orion, a real spoopy
doop ship that was sent to monitor the area. Those
two things, the Skyhawk and the Ariot, those occur away
from the public eye. And right now as we're recording
these lights, whatever they may be, they get sighted or
(27:41):
reported every now and again in the year sense, often
toward the end of the year, with sub reports being
as recent as twenty to fifty makes you wonder makes
first question would be, is this due to a recurrent
meteorological condition, right that happens around that time of year,
(28:02):
or something like.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
That ghost lights type situation or like swamp gas not that,
but like that, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
I mean this news report went out to the public,
so people got to see the actual filmed footage of
UFOs in nineteen seventy eight above this area. So you
have to imagine that's increasing traffic maybe to look for things,
more eyes on the skies as it were.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
It's it's priming interest.
Speaker 5 (28:30):
It's priming interest, but it could also be priming perception.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
You know, there could be same thing, right, right, And
it also reminds me of the drone situation where we
had a Jersey I believe, where there were drones sighted
and these weird lights sighted and it was determined to
be like an array of drones or whatever. But by
virtue of all the reporting, more amateur dronists got their
drones out there and just added to the situation, therefore
(28:56):
upping the number of people citing them.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
It's just like kind of a self feeding system. Yes,
it's a social dynamic. It's related to It's actually one
of the primary reasons law enforcement never likes to say
a serial murderer unless it's unavoidable. So we have a
mystery afoot here or a sky if you like, dude, awesome,
that worked out. We can keep that part that So
(29:21):
there's While there has been to date new material evidence
recovered or at least publicly disclosed, this case checks all
of the other boxes for a good UFO instance. We
have multiple occurrences, we have a contained region, we have
multiple witnesses, some of whom are aviation or radar experts.
(29:44):
We have electronic confirmation, you name it. We've got everything
but the physical evidence. And so it must be no
surprise that almost half a century after that initial December twentieth,
nineteen seventy eight clocking. People around the world are still asking,
what on or off earth happened? Can we explain that
(30:06):
Kaikora lights?
Speaker 5 (30:09):
Maybe we'll try, after I ward from my sponsor.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Here's where it gets crazy. I thought it was already crazy.
Ben thought it's been crazy this whole time.
Speaker 8 (30:25):
Just now.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
It's where we get to the explanation. Fair for uphold,
and so often the well we have a soul to uphold.
So often the uh, the conspiracies are found in the
attempts to cover up things, right, not the original act.
So uh yeah, it depends upon whom you ask. If
we want to be technical, we'll get to the official
(30:49):
conclusions and why experts still question those, But maybe we
spend some more time on the primary source information about
the sightings. The first person to visibly clock those lights, Yeah,
that would be Bill Startup. That's his name.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
That's his name, Bill started We got Davy Crockett and
Bill start old Billy Startup. But he was not a
tech bro. In fact, when Bill and the crew first
reported the lights, he was at a loss for what
this thing might be. He did not have words to
describe it. So he was left a bit flummoxed, much
like the fellow in that clip we heard, and so
(31:29):
he said, what it was?
Speaker 3 (31:31):
We do not know? That's all I wish I knew.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
He's one of the pilots, along with Bob guard right, who.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Was in the clip though, Matt, did we hear from
this guy?
Speaker 6 (31:43):
We have not heard of.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
We haven't heard from Bill startup? Bill Bill startups. The
pilot who has to who has to call this in
and it has to say, as you as you do, Oh,
what it was? We don't know?
Speaker 5 (31:57):
I had to say, we do not know.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
It's so intense. I wish I do.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Yeah, well, yeah, it's so interesting to see those guys
in interviews after a long time and recalling it and
just saying, dang, I really wish we knew what the
heck that was, Like, yeah, that would be awesome if
we knew what that was.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
They're not pissed, they're professionals. They're not wing nuts. They
are people trying to do their job. And when you're
doing when you are working in aviation, your least favorite
thing is an unanswered question. That's that's the issue, because
if you know what a problem is, if you can
(32:35):
identify what's happening. Then you you are on third base
to the home run of figuring out how to fix
it right. But if it's inexplicable, then you don't know
which questions to begin asking. So let's go to John
Cordy briefly mentioned earlier. This is the radio operator out
of Wellington on the first night of the sightings, and
(32:55):
he had a bit of humor about the strange event
because atc guys are so cool man, so stressed out,
but you gotta let stress roll off your back like
water off a duck. So this guy says, we saw
some little targets on a radar just Dowt off of Blenheim.
(33:16):
Part of my pronunciation Cape Campbell Way. And we joked
there was Father Christmas having a practice run with Rudolph
in the front because it was just before Christmas. And
I was like, oh, come on, man, you're cool. I
was that always does this.
Speaker 5 (33:34):
Live updates, stand up there having a laugh, Give.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
Me a break, it's amazing. He continues in a more
serious tone too, after he does the Father Christmas bit,
which again, nice one, John, He says, this target then
moved toward the argacy. Let's remember that's our cargo plane
carrying the newspaper crates. The target quote turned with it.
The argacy then quote tracked it with it for a
(33:58):
good twenty to thirty min files. The target and the
aircraft were at ninety degrees to each other the whole time,
and Vern Powell's aircraft said that they could see a
big red light that was definitely airborne, and we got
to hit that factor real quick. There was another aircraft
that was close enough to observe this as well. So
(34:21):
now we don't just have one group of people in
the skies. We have two planes in the sky.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Yeah, Vern Powell and Ian Peiri, they were the first
plane that saw this. Those are the fellows right that
were actually hanging out with John Cordy in the very beginning,
having that communication. Then those other two officers startup and guard.
They are pilots. When the news crew went up on
(34:48):
the thirtieth and.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
I think we have another quote da ling. Yeah, fast
forward to the thirtieth. We mentioned that TV crew on
the plane. We mentioned one of them, the journalists, Quentin Fogerty,
and he is like everybody else on the craft, he
is watching in alle bewilderment and no small degree of
(35:10):
helplessness as these lights are. And I keep using this term, guys,
it's just perfect for it. The lights are bird dogging
their craft like Foo fighters in World War Two. Totally.
Speaker 5 (35:20):
And we do have a quote from Fogerty where he
says the word pin pricks.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
I think again, And I'm sorry, guys if I didn't
clock the audio of that, because that, to me is
the classic test of a Kiwi accent. But here he
says on the flight down, I'm not going to do
the voice as well. What we basically saw were pin
pricks of light that turned into great globes of light.
We did hear him talking about globes of light earlier,
and they were airborne and they were between us and
(35:48):
the coast because we could see the coast and we
could see the sea and we could see these things
shining down. There's a lot of seas there.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
And then we have another sound clip we'd like to
play from you from again to some of the footage
we were referencing earlier.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yeah, you can find this on the Kai Kora UFOs
Dash in nineteen seventy eight, written and produced by Paul Davidson.
Find it on YouTube. Here is a clip of these fellows.
I think it's a couple of different people describing what
they were seeing on that return flight from christ Church
to Wellington.
Speaker 7 (36:22):
They were brilliant white, silvery white starbus.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Was unusual that they were going vertically up and down
at a rate that, in my view, precluded.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Them from being any thing that I've known about, like
helicopters already.
Speaker 7 (36:35):
I'm now looking over towards the right of the aircraft
and we have an object inferred by Weddings Breda. It's
been following us quite a while. It's about four miles
away and it looks like the very faith start. But
then it's a very bright, white, brillant light.
Speaker 6 (36:54):
I said, this is just a little bit fine.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Then there we go.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Mmm. Yeah. So again we're hearing different instances of people
reporting very similar experiences.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Yeah, the first voice you heard was Bob Guard, who's
one of the pilots on that flight. And then you
hear Quentin Fogerty replying with exactly what he's seeing doing
the reporter in situ thing.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
And so now we have people with firsthand experience speaking
with specific knowledge and specific description of what they witnessed.
The witnesses here all report seeing similar things. They're not
changing or really embellishing their stories, and it doesn't sound
like they had time to work together right and hatch
(37:42):
some sort of universal narrative. They all are saying there
are large, brightly lit things that are moving to high speeds,
that are making sudden turns which would be impossible for
physical human made craft at the time type stuff.
Speaker 4 (37:59):
They're behaving in ways that science cannot fully explain. The
speed with which they go from the water to the air,
and then this, you know, the speed, the way they're
maneuvering exactly.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Where they appear to and they're explained from their perspective rights.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Yeah, it should be noted that many of the witnesses
saw one larger bright light and then several at least
two smaller lights. Yes, that were they're seeing at the
same time, and those three lights would come together, and
sometimes they would shoot off into different directions and then
return back together.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Very strange.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
That's like that's close encounters type vibes, or like that's
the way we've seen UFOs depict.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
I think there was an episode of The X Files too,
where there were those kids that were.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
Kind of spying on the site where there were these
like spinny light things kind of moving around, and then.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
I forget exactly how that episode went. But well, the
idea too is we're telling you the most consistent stuff.
So the number does change based on the eyewitness accounts.
We're not even counting the hundreds of folks on the
ground who confirm sightings multiple sites around the same time.
It's definitely not counting the count I can't believe here
(39:05):
with that. It's not counting the countless other folks, including
experts who later analyze the film footage from the plane
from the ground, especially after so many people are primed
to expect this right, are turning their eyes to the
night sky and wondering if they two, we'll see something incomprehensible. So, riddle,
(39:27):
is this, what do the authorities say after it gets
after it gets past a certain threshold of attention, you
as the government do have to make some kind of response,
even if you just say, nah, it's a windy house,
no ghost here.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Yeah, you saw what your eyes thought were UFO, but
really it was an illusion.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Michael David blamed them, Yeah, David blained and David blamed
them because the Ministry of Defense publicly initially said, Hey,
these sightings are merely optical illusions, perhaps the result of
atmospheric phenomena. How many of you are meteorologists, bump bump up.
(40:16):
But witnesses who are involved, especially our primary aviators, are
protagonists to the story. They're not having it. They feel
if we're being honest, they feel there's an attempt at gaslighting,
and they're professionally offended. Yes they should be.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Well, somebody came over and said, you've forgotten about the
radar You.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
Exactly exactly, I mean Startup in particular, just for that,
I just love the name. Startup in Particular went on record,
and you can hear him. We're jumping around time a
little bit, but you can hear him listening out various
proposed explanations. He's like, Oh, they said it was v
(41:00):
they said it was Jupiter, they said it was harbor
lights or squid boats. But I saw these lights doing
like one hundred and forty knots, and harbor lights don't
do that. Usually they're stationary if they're built the way
they're supposed to be built.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Oh, you know, and that explanation in particular, calling out
other planetary bodies. That's something that came into play with
Frederick Valentich over in Australia. The primary explanations of that
early on were that he got really confused when he
saw some of the planet lights. He thought they were
following him, and then he put his plane into basically
(41:40):
a downward spiral as he's watching these lights that are
now reflected off the ocean. But you know, come on,
that just seems I mean, I get it that people
are looking in this instance, the mod Ministry, defense, whoever
that's looking at this stuff is trying to find an
explanation that makes right. It doesn't have to be anything weird, guys,
(42:03):
it could be this, but it just seems so insulting
to anybody who can fly a plane like that, right.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
Right, and again, if you listen to our episode on Valentich,
you will see similar proposed explanations for what occurred in
that tragedy. His body has yet to be recovered, by
the way, here in twenty twenty five as we record.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It was the exact same
explanations given just a couple of months before this thing
went down.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
Yeah, and the idea here is battle of narratives. Perhaps again,
please do check out that episode on Valentich. I agreed,
there's an eerie parallel which makes us worth a re listen.
We also know that, as we're going to learn after
our break here, the official initial conclusion of the Ministry
(42:59):
of Defense was not entirely true, very Emily Dickinson style,
tell the truth, but tell it slants, because you see,
the whole time they were saying this to the public,
New Zealand and a few other groups, few other friend
groups were intensely interested in figuring out what the heck
was going on, and so away from the press, they
(43:23):
launched that inquiry we mentioned earlier. We'll take a break
for a word from our sponsors and tell you what
they found. We're back first theories, squid votes, all right,
just the bubble here real quick, because I don't know
about you guys. I was really excited in the very
(43:45):
downtrodden when I learned that they did not mean squids
piloting squid made craft. I know I was thinking that too.
It was a fun image. Though that's a cool We
always have that moment where we thought we will always
have that moment. Well, squid boats are cool, though sure, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(44:07):
they're a big part of the maritime economy. There's that
Oh my gosh, we're trying to be cool dads, all right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Well, let's talk about why they thought maybe that was it. Yeah,
squid boats use big old lights shining down into the
water to try and attract squid. So you can imagine
that if there's some kind of reflection in glass. If
there's some that's usually one of the proposals. Right, The
pilot sees light that's actually on the water reflecting off
(44:40):
their glass, and it appears to be moving around if
the plane changes course in any way, it's like, oh wow,
it's moving across my screen.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
There, or reflecting off cloud cover. M you know what
I mean. This is the thing I do with with
my cats. You know, you take a shiny mirror or
reflect light and they chase the image of the light
the way they chase a red dot or something like that.
So the explanation is similar there, and we can see
why that would be offensive to some professional aviators and
(45:13):
the other thing. Okay, so this inquiry doesn't end in
a specific, ironclad conclusion. It ends in something like a
pitch meeting. So they say, oh, you don't like the
squid boat explanation, Well, what about this? What if they're
like unburned meteors.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Ah, now we're getting somewhere, because that would clock radar, right,
unlike the squid boat reflection. We don't get radar from that. Okay.
And there was a meteor shower around that time in
that area.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
Yeah, yeah, okay, sure, big swing. Getting closer as far
as explanations go. And then they said something, you know,
very similar to the squid boat idea. They said, this
could have been lights from trains or other earthly vehicles,
atmospheric shenanigans, cloud physics. You guys know about planes. About
(46:12):
how much do you know about astrophysics?
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Huh, cold, cold, they are right.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
And then they said, or what if it was light
from planets like Venus and Jupiter. And at this point
the pilots are going, I hate you guys. Why are
you like this?
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Why aren't you do this? Can it just be we
saw something crazy that we don't know about yet?
Speaker 3 (46:33):
Yeah, right exactly, which would be the Okham's razor of it.
Governmental institutions generally do not like admitting they cannot explain
a thing, right, So by this point there's the mass
of the public. The Hoi polloi right, the vox popular.
The Kaikoro lights have become a cultural phenomenon. So from
(46:58):
the eighteen nineteen eighties, sorry I'm dating myself the nineteen
eighties to now, even the most skeptical of locals in
Kiwi communities will occasionally look up into the night sky
around December and they'll say, hey, maybe it'll happen again,
Maybe I'll see some UFOs visit at the end of
(47:19):
the earthly year. Before we go, though, we do have
to give a shout out to, of course, various researchers
who have analyzed the footage. Countless people have done this.
You can see it all over the internet. One of
the most prominent is a moufon guy scientist named doctor
Bruce mccabee.
Speaker 4 (47:40):
That's right, doctor Bruce maccabee, American scientists and ufologist with
an MS and PhD in physics. Got some bona fides there,
who's also just you know, as a little bonus an
optical data processing expert.
Speaker 3 (47:57):
He concluded that the footage had.
Speaker 4 (47:59):
Captured the images and movements of the genuine article UFO.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
H yeah, and we've got quotes from him you can
again read these or see them in various documentaries. He
notes some of the same stuff we're saying that a
big differentiator here is that radar plays a role in
these sightings, So unlike a lot, here's what you get.
(48:28):
Often you will often get UFO reports that are radar
only right, so there's an ATC somewhere, or there's a
totally legitimate thing abroad for some reason that gets a
little pupupew on its radar and there's no eyewitness accounts
(48:50):
because it happens in a place where people don't usually
hang out.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Yes, and you know who has really good radar technology, militaries,
So it's often a military that goes, hey, what the
heck is that over there, as in the instance in
nineteen fifty three with Felix Monclaw where there was a
radar blip in an area where there shouldn't be a
radar blip because it's controlled airspace. So you send out
(49:15):
a pilot to go check out what's going on, and
in Felix's case, he and his plane disappeared. But that's
beside the point. The whole point is the radar sightings
occur a crazy number of times that we will never
hear about.
Speaker 3 (49:30):
Right, because they're internal and there as a result, they're
something that would maybe not be helpful to report to
the public because in doing so, you're revealing your surveillance capability,
your collection methods, all your fun stuff. Going back to maccabee,
(49:50):
the next thing he reports is that it is more
interesting to see. So we've got two things, right. Our
only identification often internal for governments, and we've got visual
only identification, often associated with civilians or non aviation experts.
And when they are reporting something, there's often not a
(50:14):
lot of instrumentation. We're not dismissing, we're just saying there's
often not a lot of instrumentation that would confirm what
they were saying happened at that time. So this means
that we've got a golden goose here. We've got a
ven diagram of a radar visual case. Witnesses are reporting
something going in the same direction, obeying the same dynamics,
(50:38):
the same trajectory and path as a target identified or
a thing identified on radar. This is winning the lottery twice.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
Yeah, man, because that's why this one is so exciting.
So then you've got this amazing person, Macabe who's looking
at the film footage that this camera person, Davy Crockett,
Dave he saw and filmed again with a handheld film
camera in a cockpit that's you know, in an airplane
(51:08):
that's in flight. And if you're serious, like a sixteen
millimeters yes, insane, So imagine the heft and weight of
this huge film canister above the lens.
Speaker 3 (51:20):
And he's.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
Yeah, yes, and he's leaning over people and through instrumentation
to try and get footage. And when you look at
the footage, it looks like that what you're imagining, crazy jumpy. Uh,
you do see objects as he's trying to get focus
in the black sky with a tiny little thing.
Speaker 4 (51:40):
When you're bouncing around like that and you're filming items
that are way off in the horizon, you're gonna get
all kinds of.
Speaker 3 (51:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
So that's why it's massively important and incredible that we
have the words here of mister maccabee, who is a
specialist in checking out that kind of stuf. Knowing, Okay,
is the is that a lensing effect, is that the
movement of the camera, Is that the actual shape of
the object or is it out of focus? He's he's
looking at all of this stuff. And he continues with
(52:13):
a quote saying.
Speaker 4 (52:14):
These New Zealand sightings may be the most quote unquote instrumented.
What's unpack that in civilian ufology with multiple witnesses, two
independent tape recordings made during the sightings, color movie film,
and ground and air radar instrue.
Speaker 5 (52:33):
I guess he's just referring to like.
Speaker 4 (52:34):
All of the cross check kind of like you know,
parallels and and verifiable data points.
Speaker 3 (52:40):
Objective non qualitative confirmation that.
Speaker 4 (52:45):
Line up, and that there's like a timeline that can
be confirmed for that is a big doub I'm shocked,
guys that I'd not heard of this outside of this discussion.
Speaker 3 (52:53):
This is seems like it would be a bigger deal that, Yeah,
the radar has has one opinion, yes this is here
or no this is not. It's not going to give
you some sort of laborious interview process about how it
felt when a clock to a thing going from a
(53:14):
to his head exactly exactly.
Speaker 4 (53:15):
And frankly, I mean the reports from these guys are
pretty dispassionate too.
Speaker 3 (53:19):
We're not seeing a.
Speaker 5 (53:20):
Whole lot of like hyperbolic kind of talk.
Speaker 4 (53:23):
They seem real, steadfast, and they're you know, reporting their observations.
Speaker 3 (53:28):
You got to keep it together, ye crying. Crying is
for when you land.
Speaker 2 (53:33):
Yeah, well, and you see a real desire to know
what the heck happened. In later interviews, several of the
pilots were approached by Maccabee with you know, his findings
after he analyzed the footage, and these pilots had given
initial estimates of like how large they think the object
is in the moment, how far away they think it is,
(53:54):
and how fast it's traveling. One of the pilots comes
forward and says, Maccabee told him that the object was
around five miles away from your plane and it was
probably as big as a two story building. After he's
analyzed the optics, which again you have to take an
expert's you know, viewpoint and say, Okay, that expert knows
(54:15):
what they're talking about, knows what they're seeing. You also
are taking into account the pilot's you know, vision and
their estimates based on knowledge and wisdom. But at the
same time it does make you realize, in the moment,
when a human being, any of us, is experiencing something
like this, we're trusting our eyes and our ears and
all of our senses, but they may be a little
(54:36):
off right, and you may also remember it a little off.
But having a piece of footage and that radar like
that let somebody even out of space and time observe
it and say, oh my god, I think it was
this because of you know, X, Y and Z.
Speaker 3 (54:53):
Yeah. And we also, as we mentioned with his bona fides,
doctor mccabee is a as a career long member and
champion and move on. So that might put some folks
in the crowd automatically off, but we can tell you
his findings. And he wrote a ton of stuff, by
the way, not just about this but about other dodgy
(55:16):
cases of UFO observations. And he was publicly ignored by
the government of New Zealand. So you could say, hey,
this is a cultural moment like Mothman out in Point Pleasant,
West Virginia. You could say that, except that in twenty ten,
the New Zealand military released a treasure their own Project
(55:40):
Blue Book, really a treasure trove of previously classified reports
that dated from two thousand and nine all the way
back to nineteen fifty four, which means it naturally includes
the Kakolites, and was released due to the Official Records Act,
which is sort of the New Zealand version of FOYIA,
(56:00):
the Freedom of Information Act. It's heavily redacted. Everybody got
a deal on black highlighters right when they made these laws,
so that you won't see a lot of specific names
or other sensitive material. But we're talking two thousand pages
of documents, most of which involves weird stuff in the sky,
(56:22):
weird lights of the sky. And we found a we
found a funny moment from from just prior to the
release of this from the Royal Air Force themselves, and
they were trying to get in front of it so
hard we can we do the quote.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
Air Force Squadron leader Cave Tamriiki said the Defense Force
did not have the resources to investigate UFO sightings and
would not be commenting on the files contents.
Speaker 3 (56:50):
Mike, come on, come on, I hate when people do that,
right Like, Hey, I'm gonna tell you something and that's
it and no more questions. So speaking to the dominion Post,
Tamriki notes, quote, this is understandable, all right, I'm being
a jerk. This is understandable. Quote. We've just been a
(57:12):
collection point for the information. We don't investigate or make reports.
We haven't substantiated anything.
Speaker 2 (57:20):
In them, but here you go.
Speaker 3 (57:23):
But here it is. So we're not in charge of this.
We have no comment. But you asked, have we complied?
You can see why they wanted to get in front
of it. The documents have a lot of wild stuff,
again none of which is co signed by the Air Force.
Alleged examples of alien writing, drawing, draw it, yeah, I know,
(57:47):
drawings of flying saucers. And then here's one for the
stargate fans in the crowd, in depth descriptions of extraterrestrials
wearing Pharaoh mask.
Speaker 2 (57:57):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (57:59):
Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing. It's a good story from
what the Air Force is telling us here. They for
decades they got these reports and then they just put
them here. Let me get one. They put them in
a file folder. You know what I mean. I'm holding
up a file folder, all right. That one's about cattle.
Speaker 8 (58:22):
So the U.
Speaker 3 (58:26):
So any agency, of course, is going to take pains
to say, look, we just got what came in because
we drew the short straw right and we didn't verify anything.
But they also spend a lot of time in these
documents on kai Kora specifically, on Kaikora specifically. The evidence
(58:48):
gives lie to the original story. Guys. The original story
is that New Zealand said stop panicking over weather phenomena.
The real story is that internally they lost their bag
over this. You know, they launched this inquiry because they
were concerned. And I love the point of context we're
bringing up here. It's still Cold War, right, They're concerned
(59:10):
that there might be some vaguely described intruders. They don't
define the intruders. They just say intruders, sort of like
when your dog barks, it just says stranger.
Speaker 5 (59:24):
And anytime someone comes into my house, whether it's my
kid or to Frida, I.
Speaker 3 (59:27):
Just go intruder, show yourself. You know, that's do you really?
Speaker 2 (59:32):
I do.
Speaker 3 (59:32):
It's sort of a bit. It's a joke. That's why
I'm so paranoid.
Speaker 6 (59:38):
Man.
Speaker 3 (59:38):
We used to hang out. I would. I would get
in front of your house and then text you to
let out. You know, I was there before I touched
the At.
Speaker 5 (59:45):
Least I didn't have one of those like paint cannon things.
Speaker 4 (59:48):
You remember those security cameras that would like pelt like
intruders with paintballs.
Speaker 3 (59:54):
That's kind of cool. Oh, we talked about it. It
was a really bad idea. It was like some strange
news thing we talked about. Well, mack, cool idea. Well,
depending on which side of the door you're on, So
the inquiry here does make some Again, they end with
a bunch of pitches laying well, maybe it's blah blah
blahor moybees blah blah blah have you thought about blah
(01:00:16):
blah blah. But their inquiry reaches one interesting thing. They
eventually say, okay, we'll play if then. So the if
then game. If the objects did exist, and if the
multiple observations of those objects are correct, if they are accurate,
(01:00:38):
then those objects logically have to be traveling at around
ten eight hundred miles per hour, which for anybody playing
along at home, is pretty fast.
Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
Yes, maybe too fast for a lot of the stuff.
You know, we were going to bring in stuff about
drone technology that we talked about that was in full
effect in the eighties and they're been tests on like
radio controlled drone like things since World War Two. So
like there's all kinds of weird stuff that could be
up there that maybe some other governments operating and testing. Sure,
(01:01:13):
sure would be weird to be testing it that close
New Zealand if you're another country.
Speaker 3 (01:01:17):
But you know, I don't know. I mean, if it's
Cold War, right, and it's the Allies against the Axis,
you know, just think.
Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
Again, nineteen seventy eight is like high time there.
Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
For some of that stuff. Maybe it takes a village
later later Nole's friends at the company, the CIA will
do you like I just three, I mean the US there.
That's so they they analyzed this stuff on their own
and they said, similar to what doctor mcabee said, who
(01:01:54):
I suspect may have had some conversations, they said the
quote large amount of docum minary evidence includes the recollection
of seven witnesses to tape recordings made during the sightings,
the detection of some unusual ground and airplane radar targets,
and a sixteen millimeter color movie. So while they reached
(01:02:16):
similar conclusions to those of New Zealand, the case is
still out there. There's a curious wrinkle because we're telling
you about this now declassified report as of twenty ten,
or anthology of reports, but the documents, the original documents
those reports are based on, are currently sealed up, still
(01:02:40):
classified in New Zealand's national archive. Unless something changes, some
of these original reports are not going to be released
until twenty eighty. Are we still going to be making
the show in twenty eighty? Guys? What are we? What's
our situation?
Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Who are we?
Speaker 7 (01:02:59):
Man?
Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
What is this?
Speaker 3 (01:03:01):
What even are we?
Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
Well, we've got less than two thousand days until the singularity,
according to some, So you know, we'll see what happens there.
Speaker 3 (01:03:10):
Whenever we say some we meet according to us in
an earlier episode of our show.
Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Well all those billionaires hanging out on
New Zealand might get a real close encounter. We'll see
what happens with all of that stuff. I do want
to point really quickly just to that original broadcast that
happened in nineteen seventy eight. I couldn't find an actual
clip of that recording or an archived version of that.
(01:03:40):
Did you guys locate that anywhere? Just a full stop.
This is holding in one video.
Speaker 3 (01:03:45):
It's been You can find clips of it in larger things.
I think that's what we both found.
Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
We are looking for the original one. We're not sure
if it is titled UFO The Closest Encounter, if that
was the original broadcast or if that was like a
rebroadcast right as we talked about, this footage was shown
many many a time. If you can gain access to that,
or you find it, please send it our way. We'll
tell you how to contact us in a minute. But
(01:04:10):
we want to see the full thing.
Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
Yeah, and for now, we'd love to ask for some
help from our Kei week Conspiracy Realist spelled with ks.
Do people in your neck of the Global woods still
think of the Kaikoro Lights? How do people typically explain it?
Is there anybody on the South Island who you know? Pops,
(01:04:34):
open some wine or get some coffee as December waxes
on and spend some time looking at the night sky?
Why are certain things still classified? Was there at least
some point stuff New Zealand didn't want you to know.
We can't wait to your thoughts. You can always send
(01:04:56):
us an email, especially if you want a random fact.
You can call us on a telephone. You can find
us on the line.
Speaker 4 (01:05:04):
Do find us in all of those places first and foremost,
not necessarily foremost, but first at least all on the
lines at the handle conspiracy stuff where we exist on
Facebook with our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy
on x FKA, Twitter and on YouTube with video content
galore for YouTube peruse and hopefully enjoy on Instagram and TikTok. However,
we're conspiracy stuff show.
Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
Yes, one tiny little piece of information we forgot to
add into this thing. There was a moment when these
pilots with the journalists were flying and they're attempting to
capture these lights. There's a moment when Wellington Radar told them, hey, guys,
just heads up one of the lights. One of the
(01:05:44):
objects is immediately behind you now so you can't physically
see it, and it's doubled in size, so you know,
get home safe.
Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
Do with that information?
Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
Yeah, just imagine call us, tell us how you would
feel in that moment. That would be amazing. Call one
eight three three st d WYTK. When you call in,
it's a voicemail system. You've got three minutes. Give yourself
a cool nickname and let us know within the message
if we can use your name and message on the air.
If you want to send us an email, you can
do that.
Speaker 3 (01:06:17):
We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
we receive before we get to the rest of that.
We have talked about the official inquiry some of those documents.
If you'd like to read more on your own, you
can find by emailing us directly. We'll give you the link,
which is awkward to just announce on the air because
it's government stuff. But if you yourself want to engage
(01:06:42):
with the Official Information Act Request of New Zealand, just
go to FYI dot org dot NZ and while you're online,
hit us up for random fact here in the dark
conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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