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October 14, 2025 58 mins
Author, longtime UFO blogger and researcher Charles Lear joins Martin Willis to discuss his deep dive into UFO history. Lear shares how he first became fascinated by UFOs, what drives his meticulous research, and why he believes healthy skepticism keeps the field honest and grounded. Together, Martin and Charles explore some of the most intriguing historical UFO incidents, uncovering how cultural context and government attitudes shaped public perception. Lear also opens up about what he enjoys most about writing on this mysterious subject and how past cases still echo in today’s UAP discussions. Join us for an insightful, balanced conversation between two passionate voices in UFO research — bridging open-minded inquiry with historical perspective.
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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Hello, and welcome to the show. I'm Martin Willis your host,
and this is a pre recorded show. I do all
my shows like live shows. I just whether they're live
or pre recorded. I don't edit them because I'm lazy.
That's just the way it is. But anyway, I have
a great guest. He's always fun to have on the show,
Charles Lear, and he's going to be talking about his
new updated book and so much more. We're going to

(00:36):
be talking about the well basically UFO history, and I'm
going to let him it's MB in Mexico is the
blog he wrote this week. But I'm gonna let him
talk a little bit about that when I bring him
in in just a minute. So as you are watching this,
I am in the air and I'm going to be
landing after this show is done on the night going

(01:00):
to the Sedona Actually, I'll be on my way to
Sedona for the Fires Skyfire Summit twenty twenty five, Travis
Walton's fiftieth anniversary with some great speakers out there, I
get some good interviews. I'm not really one hundred percent
sure yet if I can do this. I'm going to
try to do this on Thursday, evening some type of

(01:21):
a live show from there. Again, I don't have it.
There's a lot of moving parts, so I don't have
anything definitely set up, but I will attempt to do
something there. If not, then we will have some pre
recorded interviews that I will get while I'm out there.
So anyway, really looking forward to that beautiful area out
there in Sedona. And I think Charles told me to

(01:44):
watch out for the vor Texas, so I will do
that indeed. But so thank you everyone that supports the show.
Thank you all that I'll listen to the show and
have been for a long time. You know, sometimes I
have to say I get a little bit discouraged because
it seems like there's not as much activity on YouTube
as it was. But it's probably just a face at

(02:04):
this point or whatever. It is. Still a lot of
people are active in the audio part of it, and
thank you all for listening in that way. And so
I know, I guess I sound like an airline when
I say this, So I know you have a lot
of choices. There's definitely a lot of choices. When I
first started doing podcasting, there was only like four or

(02:25):
five of us, and I can't think of anyone that
has consistently gone as long as when I started back
in twenty eleven. But there are still some great people
out there. You know Micah Hanks, but he does other things.
He was out there before me, Greg Bishop, There's a
few others. But anyway, it's a real pleasure. I still

(02:49):
love doing this show. I have no plans on ever stopping.
And so I think I've talked plenty and it's time
I bring in our guest tonight, Charles Lear. Welcome, Charles.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Hello, Martin, how are you, my friend?

Speaker 1 (03:03):
I'm doing great, And thank you for all your years
of doing such wonderful blogging for me. And yeah, I
mean it's it's such a pleasure a weekly blog. I mean,
that is so much work. And I know you you
have a very active life and you do a lot
of different things in New York, and so I really

(03:25):
thank you for you taking the time and doing research
every single week and putting out these wonderful blogs.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Well, you know, I just it's a pleasure. Martin, thank
you very much. And I just want to let the
listeners know I have the answer to the UFO mystery.
If you stay and watch the entire video, I'll tell
you at the very end.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Okay, but don't skip ahead because you know it doesn't
work that way. Yes, very funny. Yeah, yeah, so you
know how I always tell people like, if someone tells
you they know what's going on, then run run.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Absolutely. Yeah, since you're going to Sedona. I have a
good story.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
A friend of mine, a coworker, her daughter got interested
in UFOs. She bought my book for her daughter. They
read it together and they ended up going to Sedona
and went on a UFO tour and listened to the
lady speak, and the lady was telling them all about

(04:32):
this wonderful researcher doctor Frank Strangers. Oh yeah, yeah, well
they're still out there, yes, doctor Frank Strangers. For those
of you who do not know wrote the book, I
think it was Visitor at the White House about Valiant
Thor and.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Oh that one, yes, yes, I know he is.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, yeah, he's an absolutely wonderful crazy character who actually
got busted smuggling trying to smuggle a lot of marijuana
when his plane couldn't get off the ground because it
was too many bales of marijuana on it. Oh well, anyway.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
But yeah, I mean there's that's funny if anyone does
any research, if you look up Valiant Thor at the
White House, you'll see pictures of this guy and they
say he's the alien. Wasn't that the story there? He
was saying that he was like an alien that came
to visit Earth.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Then yeah, and he was trying to advise him at
the White House, and the strangers says he didn't listen,
that they wouldn't listen to him.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yeah, I wonder why.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
But and he claimed that he got access he was
unable to speak to him himself.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
So oh, all good stuff. Yeah, I mean I love
the Sedona areas, just so beautiful there.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
And I'll tell you, we were coming down off the
plateau because it's like just down off the Colorado Plateau.
And when we were coming down, uh uh I mean
the girls uh out on a trip and uh the
car coming down off the plateau, we were literally going wow.

(06:16):
I mean just yeah, it is so beautiful out there, and.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
Some strange things going on. I have, Yes, Yeah, there's
there's a lot of you know, they there's a lot
of stories. There's a lot of people have seen things
there and uh, you know, I have a friend that
visited out there and he was all excited and uh,
this was a couple of years ago and ended up

(06:44):
being starlink because he thought he finally had something. Oh yeah,
tell me about in a film to show me.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
You know, it's such a problem with UFO researched these days.
There's so many things up there that look weird.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
Yeah, and like I.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Saw this thing on it's really cool looking V shaped
UFO picture and it looked really good. Wow, And then
you know, I'm searching, I'm searching. I'm thinking I might
write about it. It turns out to be a kite.
So they make kites with LEDs on them. So what

(07:21):
are you going to do? You know what I mean? Yeah,
it was a party. You know. You look at the
picture of the kite and you look at the picture
of the UFO and it was a perfect match.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
Oh my goodness. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
Yes, And you know anything can also automaticmatically be explained
as a drone, and so you know, what are you
going to do? It's it's brutal for us folks out
here right.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
Well, there was that hang glider that had lights that
people were I don't know if you ever saw that.
I didn't catch We're thinking that was a UFO too
for you know, I mean that was I don't know,
maybe five or six years ago. But you know, something
I've never asked you, Charles, what was what sparked your
first interest in the UFO topic.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
To begin with, I grew up in the seventies. There's
no way to avoid not becoming interested in UFOs. And
you know, I think the very first book I bought
was that I remember was The Bermuda Triangle by Charles Burlitz.

(08:26):
But yeah, as soon as I think, you know, as
soon as videotape became big and I was able to
get UFO documentaries, I would say in the eighties and nineties,
my interests, I'd say, yeah, more like the mid eighties,

(08:49):
my interest got deeper and I started watching every UFO
documentary I could get, and after a while, the name
of the researchers and this cases became more and more familiar.
And then I found myself wanting to be able to
actually keep in mind dates and you know, be specific

(09:14):
about the cases and you know, not be so passive
about it. But you know, when I started writing for
you is when I got really down with the research.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
And you know, found my niche you did and it's uh,
you know, basically historic cases. That's what you do, you know,
most of your work, not always, but a lot of a.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
Lot of really really would like to write about stuff
that's going on now that you know. Unfortunately, every time
I try to do a search with UFO news or
UFO witnesses or UFO sightings, the only thing I get
is what's going on in Congress or you know, the

(10:05):
latest posting on Reddit which has or wherever on social media,
which is almost always anonymous, and even if it's not,
there's very little follow up because there are no you know,
there are no zines out anymore other than mouf on.
So you know, finding a witness interviewed by a researcher

(10:34):
and finding witness testimony, which is the nuts and bolts
of this whole phenomenon, is next to impossible. I very occasionally,
I just was thankful Stan Gordon still out there, but
you know, he's been around since, you know, nineteen sixty five.

(10:55):
He's still doing it, thank God. But you know, it'd
be really nice to see younger people coming up and
you know, who's going to take a stands place when
he goes. You know, yeah, it's kind of I look
really healthy, by the way, that please don't go soon.
But yeah, but I saw a wonderful case that he
had up on his website about a woman who was

(11:19):
going out gardening was literally stopped by an orb I
think about the size of basketball, and it wasn't letting
her go to her garden. And she said, I think
she actually had a little contact with it, and said
it felt really cold, like a refrigerator, kind of metallic.

(11:41):
So it wasn't just some weird light phenomenon, at least
according to her. But you know, it was a wonderful
report and just to you know, and her testimony was
all over the report. I mean that was and she
was actually interviewed by a friend of Stanley, I believe.

(12:01):
But you know it occasionally I'll come upon that and
I literally would prefer to write about that. Well, I
mean I like writing about that. I would like to
write about more contemporary cases as well as the historic cases.
But the historic cases, I mean I keep finding them
things I hadn't heard about there more and more and more.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
So yeah, you know, I was on a drive the
other day, a two hour drive was I think it
was just yesterday, and I pulled up on Luckily Donna,
my producer and better half with me. We both like
watching UFO stuff. Of course I keep my eyes on
the road, but I pulled up Eyes on Cinema and

(12:46):
they have some amazing, you know, old interviews that you
never see anywhere else, just on YouTube, and you know,
like I listened to, well, hey, I want to hear
Travis Walton is very first interview in nineteen seventy five. Enough,
there it is, and happy to say there's not a
lot of change. I mean, everything is pretty, you know,

(13:06):
much the same as it was. Well, I want to say,
almost every detail is exactly the same of what it
was back in nineteen seventy five. So that's always it's
always great. But I mean I love the historic cases.
And one thing, if you go on Ice on Cinema,
you can see these cases I've never even heard about,

(13:29):
and some of them are fantastic, you know, with a
policeman or pilots, you know, they have these encounters. There
was I can't remember the guy's name in the when
it happened exactly, maybe in the nineteen fifties, but it
was a shoot him down situation. He had twenty four
arm whatever his missiles were or whatever. He had twenty

(13:52):
four right, and they told him to shoot basically fire
on it and nothing happened when he locked on it,
and nothing happened, and the thing ended up taking off.
But you know, first hand testimony like that. I love these,
I love the historic ones, and I love hearing ones
I've never heard before. And that's what your blogs bring.
And by the way, I mentioned in the beginning when

(14:12):
I started this that you'd explain a little bit about
the MiB in Mexico blog this week. So yeah, what
is that?

Speaker 2 (14:20):
Oh, I It's strange how I happen upon things.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
This one.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
I was one of my go to sites is archives
for the Unexplained Swedish site, and they have probably the
world's largest physical archives. And I'm going through the magazine
section and I'm researching a new book, the UFO Investigators.

(14:54):
About two thirds through. This has been taking forever because
my life is been crashing in on me. But I
had to move recently. Dog got really sick. I spent
thousands of dollars saving them.

Speaker 1 (15:12):
Oh that was your dog.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
Yeah, yeah, I kind of. I'm not on social media,
so I s there was a go fund me I
sent out to everybody on every one of my lists.
But anyway, yeah, so, yeah, I was looking for stuff
on crop circles. Where did they come from? And of

(15:40):
course you go to before for that, and before I
put out a lot of publications much like q FOS did,
and you can find so I found a thing on
crop circles. But as I'm looking, I saw all this
thing on an m IB report, a Men in Black report,

(16:05):
and oh I got to look at this and the
it was written by Robert Boy It's titled Men in Black,
a Preliminary Report, and it spent a huge amount of
time on the Albert K. Bender thing, the origin of

(16:27):
the Men in Black, And more than likely Albert K.
Bender invented the story because he was a little overwhelmed
by the fact that his UFO organization went international and
got too big too fast, and he probably wasn't able
to handle it. That was kind of an assessment by

(16:50):
one of his contemporaries, Jim Moseley, who interviewed him. And
Mosley ran a Saucer Saucers and Celestial Events Celestial Events
Research Society for probably the longest running UFO organization ever,

(17:11):
and put out saucer smear and interviewed Bender in that way.
His conclusion was that Bender made up the story. But anyway,
after this publication gets through the whole Bender thing, they
bring up some other cases and all the other So
the Bender I think got something like maybe fifteen pages,

(17:32):
and then every other case gets about two pages. And
so there's a famous one, the doctor Hopkins case, which
is it sounds so good and oh god, you really
want to believe it's true. He talks about a couple,

(17:54):
a male and female in black, came to his house
to talk about a case he was researching, and he
said they were fondeling each other and actually asked if
it was all right and if they're doing it right,
said the woman's legs didn't appear to be attached to

(18:17):
her hips correctly, and just it's a totally bizarre story.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah, I consumer that would be a problem.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
It turns out I think his nephew wrote that uncle.
I think his name is Albert Hopkins. But anyway, good
old uncle Albert, I like to drink heavily, and I'd
like to make stories up. And this is probably a

(18:47):
combination of a lot of alcohol and a lot of bs.
But anyway, right after that is this great story about
a Mexican pilot nineteen seventy four. I believe he was
flying a I think a Piper Aztec was a brand

(19:11):
of the name brand of the plane, and he he
was above the clouds. He was flying really high for
a private you know, for a little plane that was
didn't have a pressurized cabin. He was up at around
fifteen plus.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
Yeah, you don't want to go higher than that. Mess out.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
And he came down to check on a lake to
see where he was, and he couldn't see the lake,
but all of a sudden, he saw to his left
there was this three meter classic saucer with a couple
on top what looked like a window and an antenna
on his left, and then he looked at his right

(19:56):
there was another one over the wing to his right
pretty much equid. And then he got really upset when
he saw something coming right towards him. Another craft, just
like the other two, came under He felt heard a
scraping noise under his plane, and it's kind of like

(20:16):
this thing was underneath him, and it seemed like these
things were controlling the plane. He tried to bank to
knock the left one off. It didn't go off. I mean,
he couldn't even turn. His controls weren't working. He also
tried to lower his landing gear to get rid of
the saucer beneath him, and nothing happened. His landing gear

(20:39):
wasn't working, so he called the tower. So he get
a transcript from the tower conversation that was provided by APRON.
Aero Phenomenon Research organization covered this story. It's the front
page story I think the August nineteen seventy five APRO bulletin.

(21:00):
Check my blog you can find the actual link. But
he so their field investigator from Mexico provided them with
the transcript, and so you hear the whole thing between
the tower operator and the pilot. But the aproa bulletin

(21:24):
only has you know this story. And eventually what happened
is the pilot flew into managed to the tower put
him in touch with his uncle, who was actually an
aviation expert quote unquote, and he must have given him

(21:49):
the proper advice because it said this guy, Carlos montell
is his name, circled the airport eight times while working
on the steering column with the screwdriver, trying to get
the landing gear to go down. He eventually got it
to go down and he landed, and then he was

(22:12):
tested for drugs and alcohol tested negative, and two days
later they did tests to see if flying at that
altitude made him hallucinate, and the doctor determined that his
high it's low blood sugar because he skipped breakfast, was
probably the cost of his hallucination quote unquote. So that's

(22:38):
all you get in the Apro story. So it's a
great UFO story. But then there's the Men in Black
story afterwards, and the Men in Black story shows up
in the beuforea publication, which is where I came upon
it first, and then I can usually, you know, if
I find a date, Apro is a great place to go.

(23:02):
And by the way, David Marler has the APRO collection
in his archives finally after many years. But anyway, April
is a great place to go to because they were
in existence from nineteen fifty two to nineteen eighty eight,
I believe, and put out a regular publication, I mean,

(23:24):
which is rare with a lot of organizations. So whenever
I see a date within that time period, I'll go
to the APRO bulletin because they'll probably have something on it.
And sure enough they did. But it was interesting was
that it didn't include the men in black. So then
since it all started the before a publication, I go

(23:47):
back and do that. And then I look at the
reference in the before a publication and it says Timothy
green Beckley's book The UFO Silencers. And Timothy green Beckley
was quite a character himself, called himself mister UFO. He
is also known as mister Creepo because he put out

(24:07):
soft court porn. But he he can you can kind
of trust him on a certain level. But what he
basically what's cool is he interviewed Jayalen. Heine got involved

(24:29):
with this whole thing because he was in Mexico two
months afterwards and he got in touch with Carlos Montel
and said, hey, you know, can you come to my
hotel and talk about this? And he agreed, and well,

(24:52):
he first had an encounter when he was going to
Montile had an m IB encounter, according to before publication,
on his way to do a television interview, reluctantly quote unquote,
and he saw a black Ford galaxy in front of him.

(25:17):
It pulled up in front of him and then he
looked in his mirror and not identical. Ford Galaxy was
in the back of him, both described as limousines and
brand new, and they forced him to pull over and
he was going to get out of his car when
he sold four men in black come out of the

(25:37):
cars and come towards him. One came to his door,
put his hand on it and prevented him from coming out,
and that man told him, you know, basically, don't talk
about what you've seen if you care about your family.
And he was intimidated enough that he turned around and

(26:02):
skid out and went back home and didn't do the interview.
He did end up the television host reached out to him.
They got in touch and that Carlos told his story

(26:23):
about the men in black, and the television host that, oh,
I've heard this from other witnesses, and he did. He
managed to convince Mantel to go and actually do an interview,
and he did without incident. And then two months later
Jalen Heinich in Mexico contacted him and invited him to

(26:50):
come talk to him. He went to go to Heinech's
hotel and as he was walking up the steps, one
of the men men in black came up to him
and pushed him back sharply several feet and threatened him

(27:12):
and his family if he talked about it. And once
again Montel decided to go home. And then, but what's
funny is once again Heinik contacted and said, hey, you know,
I'm sorry about the men in black? Do you want
to still come talk to me? He said, okay, and
he did so he interviewed him for two hours. So

(27:33):
apparently the men in black, I'll talk in no action.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
So that's funny.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
But he but then Heinich invited him for breakfast. He
talked to him on a Saturday, invited him for breakfast
on a Monday, and he didn't show. And then he
contacted Heinich and said, yeah, that guy showed up again,

(28:03):
told me not to come, so I didn't. But you know,
so that story, this, all the stuff about Heinich comes
from Timothy Green Beckley who interviewed Heinich and yeah, has
Heinich's statement, you know, verbatim in his book. But it

(28:23):
was really funny, is it afterwards? Not funny? But weird
is that afterwards he has Heinich telling him a story
about I think a couple who encountered men in black
and then they got into their car and then their
car as it was driving disappeared. And this is Heinich talking.

(28:44):
So anyway, so I'll probably right about that later.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
Wow. Now this is one of the things that when
I was listening to you tell talk about the encounter,
the purported encounter, how much are reminded me of the
Frederick Valentich incident and that happened in nineteen seventy eight.
But it's there is a lot of similarities to these encounters.

Speaker 3 (29:11):
Yeah, there is actually now that you mention it, and
there's that noise except you know, I mean, yeah, the
scraping was saying that that was the last thing they heard,
supposedly and him's you know, kind of screaming.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
It's it's not an airplane, you know that that type
of situation. So this this guy whatever, I mean. It's
so it's four years apart and a very similar story.
Very yeah, definitely again one I've never heard of. So
I want to talk about this this blog because this
was more of a contemporary blog that you wrote, and

(29:47):
that was basically another problematic report UFO report originating on
social media. And the reason I'm bringing this up too.
First of all, it's one of your contemporary blogs that
you wrote. And the other thing is, you know, we
really do have We're in an age right now where

(30:08):
there is it's so hard to trust information and when
it comes to not just social media, but you know
what I mean, I have to tell you that I
saw the new Sora, which is you know, the AI

(30:29):
the Sora too and what you can text in there.
And first of all, you watch the video of that,
and it says in the very beginning, it says, this
is all made through Sora, the whole thing, and you're
looking at people that are so realistic, you know, for
every little you know, like maybe a pimple on the
head or everything is like so like a human being.

(30:51):
And it's all AI all the way through telling you
about its capabilities and what I'm getting at. It's not
just social media, but you know, there's so many things
on social media that are fake and people are buying
it for one hundred percent, and it's going to get
a lot worse when people start using that AI.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
Well, I mean, there are people going into mental hospitals
because they had cheap.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
Do you mean, because are you talking about because of
the companions and things like that that.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
They're there are people like you know, texting you know,
who is God, you know, and asking all these spiritual
questions and getting answers and believing them, and they're going nuts.
And yeah, there's a lot of people ending up in
mental hospitals. Okay, at least according to what I've seen

(31:42):
on the internet. So yeah, I haven't done proper research
on that, folks. So but I've seen this on Daily Grail.
I tend to trust them. And one of the comments
I saw was that, you know, if anything else had
been introduced into the world that caused this many people

(32:03):
to go into mental hospitals, it would have been banned something.
But you know, uh, something to consider. But yeah, like
I said it, I mean, it's really difficult these days.
But what what I think in this blog? What's I do?

(32:26):
Go to metabunk a lot, uh for contemporary cases, and
you know, I think it's really good that we have
people looking out for this kind of stuff. I you know,
and the title of the site metabunk, you know, as

(32:47):
in de bunkers. I I've heard the argument that, you know,
there's a difference between the skeptic and a debunker, whereas
a debunker has already believes this is real, and it's
just going to look for anything to prove it's not real,
as opposed to a skeptic who's you know, got an

(33:08):
eye out for hoaxes.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
And I think that's important.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
You know.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
The thing, a lot of people can't stand Metabunk and
Mickwest and all that, but you know, he he does
get some things wrong, but he's actually, like you said,
there's there's there's enough really interesting, fascinating things out there
that you know, we need to know what the real

(33:34):
stuff is compared to the stuff that, oh, well this is.
You know, it's disappointing. Yes, sometimes you find out an
answer to something. You know, we want to hold on
to our beliefs. But when we find out an answer
to some really good case that we've thought was really
solid and we find out, oh, well here's the real answer,
and it's very very disappointing.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
Well it keeps us honest. And you know what, actually,
I I'll counter that you're you're the idea that it's
disappointing what I find that something so hoax. At least
I've got an answer, Yeah, you know what I mean.
And I'll often find the hoaxes. You know, they're at

(34:16):
least often funny. You know, you got to have a
sense of humor with this stuff, where you're going to
go nuts, you know. But yeah, and and and then
and another thing, you know is that the danger of

(34:36):
this becoming a religion, you know, is is always present.
And a good example is the Linna Napolitano case. All right,
oh yeah, that case is ridiculous. I don't care what
anybody says, and I'll stick my neck out on this. Okay,

(34:58):
it's a soap uh a UFO abduction, soap opera, the
with no witnesses. The only witnesses were on tape and mail.
Bud Hopkins never met the policeman who said they witnessed this. Okay,

(35:18):
he never met the person on the Brooklyn Bridge who
said she witnessed, you know, Linna Napolitano being dragged out
of her twelfth floor apartment into a UFO over the
East River.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
And what about the diplomat there was some diplomat.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah, well he's never said that he saw anything, and
he was just named. He denied it as a matter
of fact, I believe. But you know, a big thing
is that Hanson, I forget his first name. He wrote
the Trickster in the Paranormal George Hanson, I believe. But

(35:59):
he went out and actually did some research on this
whole thing. He found that the guys who claimed to
be cops bringing the diplomat, they claimed to be bringing
the diplomat to a helicopter at a certain time in
the morning. I think it was really early morning. And

(36:22):
George Hansen found that the helicopters didn't there, didn't operate
at that time. He also found that nobody at the
apartment building saw anything. There was a twenty four hour
security guard there. I also found that Hopkins, Bud Hopkins,
was this was his starcase for quite a while. Hopkins,

(36:47):
apparently a guy matching hopkins description was described by the
security guard. There is coming down and you know, asking
some questions. Yeah it is George Hansen, excellent. So and
not only that, Hanson found that Hopkins didn't know what

(37:10):
the weather was and a lot of really basic questions
that you know, anybody reading a UFO Investigator's manual would know.
Hopkins didn't answer any of these questions. So ask any
of the ask any of the those didn't know, like

(37:33):
basic stuff like what was the weather and what was this?
What was that? But anyway, a big thing in this
case also was that Napolitano claimed to have been abducted
by one of these policemen and the other guy reportedly
went to save her. And the big thing that you know,

(37:53):
makes you just go get the f out of here
is that one of the guys, the police officers, claimed
that he and paul A Tano had a relationship that
only was on the spaceships and that he was the
father of her children. And you know she was married

(38:16):
at the time, so you just go, Okay, you know,
this is effing ridiculous. But Hanson h went to wald Andres. Okay,
so Hopkins was a member of Moufon. Wald Andres was
the director of Moufon, and Hopkins went to Andrews and

(38:38):
you know, I was like, hey, you know that that
they had to sit down and said, there are a
lot of problems with this case. There's this, there's this,
there's this or this, And he actually wrote a paper.
So you can find the paper by George Hansen about
this whole thing and get the facts, like probably much

(39:00):
better than I'm espousing him now from the top of
my head. But a big thing was that they didn't
want to rock the boat. This was Hopkins's starcase. It
was like, this is a case that I'll really turn
the public around. Man'll make them believers. And that's the thing,

(39:25):
you know, wanting to make believers, and that that's also
a thing you find in a lot of UFO books
and a lot of documentaries is UFO evangelists. And I
think that's what I was going for when I said
danger of becoming a religion. It's more like UFO evangelists.
You know, these people want to convince people. This is
real man. You should take it seriously. And you know what,

(39:50):
unless somebody's really experienced something they're they're not going to
believe it. No matter what you say to him, they'll
probably be I mean, I'll backtrack on that. Maybe you
can get them interested, intrigued, but ultimately to make people believers,

(40:15):
I think that people have to experience with them for themselves.
But in any case, what George Hansen's thing really brought
up was there is this element in ufology of UFO
evangelism and people not wanting anything that you know, puts

(40:39):
a black mark on U will believed to come through.
And I think you got to look at You've got
to look at everything, and you got to look at people.
Oh his name isn't coming to me. He was a
guy after Don Mental Donald, Donald Menzel was a big

(41:03):
vote debunker.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
I think it was Harvard.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
Yeah, who was the guy after him who put out
the skeptics Philip Class Philip Class. Yes, yeah, And you
know what a lot of people are like, Philip Class
is like, you know, evil. But I've read a lot
of his stuff, and a lot of his stuff is
on point, you know, a lot of it is. He

(41:29):
did a lot of terrible things too, like he tried
to I think he tried to.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
Bribe uh Stephen from Travis Walton.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so you know he yeah, he definitely
and he also really came down on James McDonald as well.

Speaker 1 (41:45):
It was a wonderful researcher.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
Yeah. Yeah, and and uh so you know, he did
some terrible things, but he actually did write some very
poignant things too, and he definitely gave insight into some
very iffy UFO cases. So, you know, I think it's
really important not to become, you know, a believer at

(42:10):
all costs. You know.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
Yeah, Well, I think San Freeman used to say something
like have an open mind, but not so open that
your brain falls out of your head or something like that. Yeah,
some type of saying like that, which I think was
was pretty funny and and pretty good. And so I
do think that we do need we do need some
balance that, you know, when something can be explained. I

(42:34):
think it's I think you're right to your point you said.
I think it's good that we have an answer, you know,
for whatever can be answered, But there's still plenty of
unknowns that will you know, are just big, huge puzzles
that are just amazing and not not our current technology,
you know. I think of all the big cases, and
one of them I don't really talk about enough is

(42:58):
the j J A. Well, I can't remember the case
j L sixteen twenty five or something like that.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
I think there's sevens in that. I know you're talking
about that, the Japanese plane. Yeah, so that one in particular,
very important mission too. I think they were had a
cargo full of.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
Oh is that really? Is that right? Yeah? So that
was a terror, terre gucci terror something like that.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
Yeah, that's an amazing case.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
Yes, yeah, I mean so there and these are things
that were, you know, seeing multiple witnesses radar all that.
I mean, there's really really a lot of weird things
going on. But I want to get back to this
case in particular, because when I started talking kind of going,
I went off on a rant. And so what was

(43:54):
the social media's issue?

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Was this?

Speaker 1 (43:57):
Was this a Reddit thing that that started the whole
situation or can you kind of explain what happened here
and this and what the case was in particular, this
was only I don't know, six seven months ago or
last year in December trying to see yeah it was December. Wow,

(44:21):
when you wrote the blog was December?

Speaker 2 (44:22):
What's the name of the blog? I'm going to have
to bring it up.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Another problematic UFO report originating on social media. And really
what I wanted to talk to you about is how
these things can get carried away and you know when
people read things and you know, fiction becomes truth. This
was at the Manchester Airport, was it al? Yes, it's

(44:48):
a blue orb and it happened November twenty four supposedly.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
Okay, I'm searching for it because yeah, I mean, you
know what's funny is I know, I'm just throwing this
at you yeah, okay, so what do you want to
know about it?

Speaker 1 (45:06):
No, I'm just saying, here's a situation where we really
have to watch the future because you know, there's so much.
I mean, every day there's I get people send me
stuff all day long, a few different people that are
longtime listeners of the show, and there's so much on
social media. But there's so many things today that are

(45:26):
it's clickbait and you know, trying to get you to believe. Like,
you know, there's the on Facebook. For instance, there's the
James Webb Telescope Facebook site and it just showed pictures
of a flying saucer with lighted windows everything, and saying
that the James Webb Telescope just took this picture. You know,

(45:49):
so someone put up puts up at bogus James web
Telescope site on Facebook. They get away with it and
they start posting that and that it's going to crash
on Earth and you know all this crazy.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
Yeah, yeah, I think I know. One thing I I
wrote about this is the most obvious problem with this
report and most others that have social media as their origin,
is that the source is unnamed.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
Yeah, you know, what do you do with that?

Speaker 2 (46:20):
You need, you need somebody to follow up on it.
Interview the source, Where were you? Who are you? You know,
are you credible? And you know, talk to people that
know them. I mean, that's a typical UFO report from
you know, back in the day, you know, the you know,

(46:41):
like a Heinich with Joe Simonton and the freaking pancakes,
you know. Yeah, he claimed that a saucer landed in
his driveway and he have to see who they were
and saw four swore the guys like Italians, and one

(47:04):
of them asked, made gestures like he wanted a drink
of water. So Simon Tan went and got him water.
And he sees one guy cooking what looked like pancakes,
and the guy he gave the water too, looked at him,
looked at the pancakes and said, okay here and gave
him four pancakes. And then the saucer took off. And

(47:25):
that's this guy's story. And this went out to NICAP,
but the the Air Force, Robert Friend was directing Project
Blue Book at the time, and he was worried that
Nightcap was going to accuse the Aircraft Force of neglecting

(47:49):
the stories. So he said, you better get down or
jaleen Inik and Jaleenik took two of his graduate students down.
And the pictures are adorable. It's actually my book, The
Flying Saucer Investigators, second edition. But and the pictures, the
picture that there, it's adorable. These guys like on Simonton's

(48:10):
farm and checking things out. But Heinig interviewed Simonton and
then but when he was out at a restaurant with Simonton,
went to the bar and talked to the guys at
the bar, Hey, what do you know about this Joe
Simonton guy, and found out you know, hey, if he

(48:33):
says he saw it, he saw it. You know, basically
got an assessment of his character. But you know, the
witness is named you can go down there hello Joe
and Martin showing me a picture of Joe with his pancake,
which is pretty nasty looking thing looks more like a.

Speaker 1 (48:51):
Uherries in it or something.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
Right, Yeah, but anyway, uh, but yeah, it's not only
investigated by Heinech, it was investigated by APRO and yeah, anyway,
and the FDA got involved as well thanks to Heinich.
So there is an FDA report on what was on
a pancakes and it was basically what you'd find in

(49:17):
a buckwheat pancake. But you know, my point is, at
least they went and interviewed the witness.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
Yea, And.

Speaker 2 (49:27):
Yeah, you don't. I guess move On's doing it. I
don't presently have a move On subscription, so I haven't
been reading their magazine lately, so I imagine they're still
out there doing it. But you know, it'd be nice
to see more organizations come up and younger people coming

(49:50):
up that are willing to go out and do something.
I'm sure there are people out there doing field work. Yeah,
but nobody's putting anything out that I can find. And
if any buddy is, please let me know. Yeah, find
me a sacerologist at gmail dot com. I would love
to hear from you, man. I would love to write

(50:11):
about contemporary reports, but you know, the history and as
an historian though, it's I I don't have to worry
about belief, I don't have to worry about finding an answer,
and I get to relate a good story.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
That's right. You just put it out there and people
can make up their own mind. You know, that's basically it.
And I think I personally think, you know, when we
talk about the pancakes, I personally think that the really
weird stories, a lot of them have a lot of credibility,
almost like the weirder the better.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
Yeah, I'm totally down with that. I mean, especially the
Simonton case. I love that. Yeah. But but I mean,
you know, it's far as you go. I mean, you know,
one thing that really attracted me to your show to
begin with. And by the way, folks, Martin is the

(51:11):
guy who gave me the first place to write, and
also the guy who hooked me up with my first publisher,
Philip Glass. So no Mantle Mantle, God, I said Glass
and not class Philip Mantle. Yeah, but anyway, thank you Martin.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
But you know, I was always attracted your show because
you managed to stay neutral, you know, and and just
listen to your guests. And you've got a range from
who to nuts and bolts, and you managed to listen

(51:57):
to them all. And there's only been a couple of
occasions where you've kicked people off, which was amazing, when
they just got too much and it was just like,
you know, I can't take this anymore. You've got to go.
But you know, You've got a really open mind and

(52:17):
a wide range, and you know that's that's too much appreciated,
and that's what attracted me to your show. And you
know it's I I think, you know, you're part of
a breed of podcasters that you know includes like it's

(52:47):
kind of a legacy of Greg Bishop with the excluded
middle kind of idea, you know, where you know you
can hang in the middle and just listen to all
points of view and can say all points of view.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
And hey, if I'm put in the same category as
Greg Bishop, I think that's a total honor because I
think a great deal of great Greg Bishop.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
Oh good, yeah, yeah, he's he He's been a major
influence on like what's going on now? You know, it's funny.
I was listening to it interview on where did the
Road Go? I forget the guy's name, but he wrote
a book called The Rabbit Hole Experience I believe it

(53:34):
was called. But he's talking about the subject of nuts
and bolts. UFOs came up. He actually said, well, I
believe that's fallen out of favor. I thought that was
pretty funny.

Speaker 1 (53:53):
That is, that's hilarious, falling out of favor.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
Okay, uh, you know, I think is still an open question.
But yeah, but you know it's but the idea that
it might not be is definitely I think gaining popularity.

(54:22):
But at the same time, you know, I know you
love to go to these congressional things, the UFO hearings,
and I can understand. I mean, it's historical, it's got
to be exciting. But I mean, you know, what's your
take on it? You know, do you think we're going
to get disclosure.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
Or yeah, And we've only got a couple of minutes left,
just let you know. And I'm putting your book up here,
and your book, The Flying Sauces Investigators second Edition here
is going to be linked in this podcast, So you know,
I have I have mixed feelings.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
You know.

Speaker 1 (55:03):
I thought the last hearing was very good and I
was not able to attend that one, and I think
it's really important that this information gets out there, there's
more awareness of it. I think that's all very important.
I did feel like it was the first one was
very felt very historical, you know that it felt like

(55:24):
I mean, I felt like I was so glad to
be there and all that. But I don't think that
we're going to see us move right into like a disclosure.
You know, I don't think that's I think there's just
my personal thoughts are is that how can they disclose
something that they don't know everything about? And someone might

(55:46):
argue with me that, you know, they I do believe
that maybe some parts of the government or some parts
of some type of association to the government, knows a
lot more than we do, but not the full picture.
That's my that's my belief. Whether it's right or wrong,
it's an opinion. Yeah, So I think because of that,

(56:06):
because of that, we can't really get the full picture.
We can't get disclosure until we have you know, some
people call it what do they call it? A forced
disclosure or a critical disclosure? I can't remember what they
call it. When something is like forced upon us, like
like one of those movies where the UFO show up
all over the world, you know, or something like that.

(56:28):
You know, I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
But yeah, I'm of the same opinion. I actually, you know,
I I think the UFO researchers know more than the government,
quite frankly, because they've been looking at it seriously for
a lot longer. And yeah, for instance, David Marler's archive. Yeah,
you can find an amazing amount of data.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
Well, it's amazing. When I had this conversation, we're really
out of time. But when I had the conversation, I
had the conversation with him the other day, talked about
the D O D and the DJ very interested in
looking at.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
The what you should be that's pretty important. That's where
most of the data is as far as I'm concerned,
that's my opinion. But anyway, Martin, it's always a pleasure
to talk to.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
You very much.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
Yes, and I hope to see you in the flash
one of these days soon again. Yes, if we're going
to go to Fine Bush, yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
Again, I will be Yeah. All right everyone, Okay, thank you,
and we have to close out the show and look
for our show hopefully this Thursday, but I'm not really
sure if it's going to happen from Sedona, but I'll
be back next week and remember to keep your eyes
to the sky.

Speaker 2 (58:02):
W
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