Author Charles Lear

Author Charles Lear talks about some of the sketchy cases in Ufology history from his new book, "Crashed Saucers and Malevolent Aliens: The Emergence of the Popular Modern UFO Mythos in the Late 20th Century."

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
Pudsonriverradio dot Com. This is TravisWalton and you are listening to UFO Headquarters,
beautiful Headquarters, and good evening,good morning, good afternoon, wherever

(00:23):
on the globe UAB. This isMichael Warden with Linda Zimmerman and I am
back, Linda. I am here. It is good to see you again.
You too, and we have avery exciting show. I've been looking
forward to this one now, butI know that you have a few things
you want to cover before we getto our guest. Yeah. I just

(00:44):
want to acknowledge I really appreciate whenpeople get in touch with us and tell
us they actually enjoy listening to theshow, which is nice. And we've
got a very nice message from Ihope I get this somewhat right, Yoka
Risen of Finland. I hope Idid not repay his kindness by horribly mutilating

(01:07):
his name. So I know youwere happy to hear this, Mike,
because Finland is your happy place.It's my happy place. Yes, So
thank you so much. We reallydo appreciate that. And I got a
message from someone in aust from Andrewin Australia, a description of a recent

(01:30):
I believe it was a recent sighting, and he thought he was standing there
staring at Jupiter, just hanging inthe sky, nice and bright, until
it started blinking and took off.And uh so it's it's good to see
things are still jumping around the world. So I think I think Project Blue

(01:53):
Book would call that swamp gas.Yes, Australian swamp gas. It's a
special swamp gas down under. Yes. So you know, you and I.
When we first started the show,we decided to kind of limit guests
because we were going to talk aboutcases mostly, so when we actually have

(02:15):
a guest back for the second time, it means we really like it.
So tonight we want to welcome backCharles Lear with his second book, let
Me get this name correct, CrashedSaucers and Malevolent Aliens. The emergence of
popular modern UFO mythos in the latetwentieth century. Wow, Charles, welcome

(02:40):
back. Hello, good be back, Michael, good to be back.
So what prompted this book? Oh? What prompted this book? I had
actually written two five part blogs,one about abductions and one about UFO cover

(03:05):
Up Live. What was behind it? It seemed to me that UFO cover
Up Live in particular seemed to bea showcase for all the really stupid things
that were going on in eufology inthe nineteen eighties, and I thought I
could pretty easily expand the both ofthose into a book. It turned out

(03:29):
took a lot more research because II didn't have enough time to go as
deeply as I wanted to. AndI thought it was really necessary to go
very deeply into these because I wasbasically finding a lot of very revered people

(03:52):
in eufology finding out that their theirreputations got quite a bit tarnished throughout the
years, but it's not really verywell known, so I covered it in
this book. My main purpose inthe book, which I stayed in the

(04:15):
introduction, was to really see wherethe popular idea of gray aliens from Zata
reticuli coming here in nuts and boltscraft to abduct us, experiment with us,
combine our DNA, possibly with cattle, and create hybrids, and you

(04:35):
know do they started out as spacebrothers trying to help us come to grips
with our new recent discovery of howto split the atom and keep us from
blowing ourselves up, and then theyended up becoming these nasty little gray creatures.

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So how did that happen? Howyou read the book? I know,
I know, yeah, but youdefinitely do expose the dirty underbelly of
uphology. In fact, enough dirtybellies to stretch from here to Zata Reticulie.
So it really is eye opening.To use one of Brian's favorite words,

(05:25):
the shenanigans that went on. It'sit's stunning, and I think it's
something that needs to be told becauseso many people just believe everything. Yeah,
it's out there for anybody to find. And this was a journey for
me as I learned a lot justwriting this, and that's pretty much as

(05:49):
I write. I don't come inas somebody who already knows this. I'm
an expert and now I'm going topass on my wisdom to the reader.
It's a journey for me. Andalong the way, I cited all my
sources in the text because this issomething that really requires the reader to remain
focused because it's a very convoluted story, a lot of twists and turns,

(06:14):
especially when we get into I mean, we were dealing with Richard Dody right
in the middle of all this,who was a self proclaimed CIA disinformation agent.
It turns out he was perhaps notquite as high up in the ranks
as he would like people to believe, and in any case, he threw

(06:38):
a lot of monkey wrenches into eufology. And it was also a period.
The first book I wrote was FlyingSaucer Investigators, and that starts really in
the nineteen fifties with the first privateUFO investigation organizations. These people tended to

(07:00):
stay out of the way of thestory, the early apro and NICAP and
they weren't the they weren't the bigstory. The investigators themselves, the cases
were the stories. And what happenedin the eighties seems to be the investigators
went out and got the spotlight.And not only that, they started to

(07:24):
tell their readers and listeners when theylectured, you know, basically, trust
me, I've been doing this along time and coming off as experts and
quite literally saying that. So alot of ego got in the way and

(07:47):
a lot of really tall tales gottold, and basically I was starting with
the Roswell story. I grew youknow, basically grew up with that eighties.
I was, yeah, I wasin my early twenties in the eighties
and got all my information pretty muchfrom documentaries. I never bothered to read

(08:11):
the Roswell book. I read theRoswell Book by Charles Berlitz and Bill Moore
in order to you know, reallylook at its start, and I was
shocked at out just juvenile the bookreally is. And Charles Burlitz too is

(08:35):
he's responsible for putting the Bermuda Triangle, the Philadelphia Experiment, and the Roswell
thing all into the American mythos,the Triple Crown of tuphology, and they're
all ridiculous, I mean, thebooks themselves. He didn't. I was

(09:01):
so focused on more that I actuallydidn't take the time to research Charles Burlitz.
And I actually just recently did that. And it's an article in Skeptic
magazine. But basically the author ofthe article. Writer of the article points
out that Berlitz in the Bermuda Trianglewould do things like if a plane was

(09:26):
on its way to Bermuda and crashedin Canada, it still counted its the
Bermuda Triangle. He said, theminority of his reports were actually in the
Bermuda Triangle. U and in thePhiladelphia Experiment. Uh, there was actually

(09:46):
a fictional story with a character calleddoctor Reinhardt, who was supposed to be
a scientist in seclusion because he knewtoo much about secret government of electromagnetic research
that could make boats disappear, forinstance, and the Philadelphia experiment. In

(10:13):
chapter nine, More supposedly meets anactual doctor Reinhurt, and it's the same
guy from the fictional book. Andit's the same scenario from the fictional book.
So that's the start. So youknow, when people say Bill Moore's
deal with the devil was with Dodie, it really seems to have been with

(10:35):
Charles Burlitz. So when they gotinto he had a real story with the
Roswell story, it seemed when StantonFreeman got ahold of Jesse Marcel and heard
the story from him, it's intriguing. The guy was there and he was

(10:56):
put together. He brought the storyto Berlitz, and he and Friedman did
the research for litzt in most ofthe writing. But then you get into
the book and you know, Moreshould have run if he wanted to be
considered a serious hephologist, or youknow, if he had any he had

(11:20):
any integrity, I mean, heshould have just gotten far away from that
book. As far as I'm concerned, I mean that they cited sources for
crash I think a saucery hidden awaywell, for the idea that there are

(11:41):
crashed saucers in the possession of thegovernment. His sources, he cites Desmond
Leslie, who was a co authorwith Georgia Dansky of Flying Saucers Have Landed,
George Hunt Williamson, who was acontactee who also called himself professor just
like Georgia Danski. And Gray Barker, who is a notorious prankster folklorist.

(12:07):
You know, I love Gray Barker, but he's not exactly what you would
call a credible source. So thoseare in the book. And then when
you go to the original reports,the original reports from Brasel interviewed very soon
after I think the July ninth RoswellDaily Record, Brasel is describing a bundle

(12:33):
of rubber I think three feet long, about seven inches thick, and a
bundle of sticks, paper, foiland tape that was about I think roughly
eighteen inches long and about seven eightinches thick. And you know, the

(12:54):
story is that the government got tohim. But in any case, the
story is as in it it's reallyflimsy, and it's unbelievable to me that
it went on so long and gotso convoluted and bodies were added in any
case this that that's the beginning ofthe craziness. And then what happened was

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the Roswell story just sucked everybody's attentionaway from everything else. So while that
was going on, a lot ofthings were going, you know, falling
through the cracks anyway. I've gone, well, I have questions. I
think you made a really valid point, which I didn't quite look at it

(13:37):
this way. Before that, thewhole field went from these you know,
apro nightcap investigating the cases to lookat me. I'm the star of eufology.
And of course now we have whichwill remain nameless. You know,
these traveling groups of eufologists who youknow, they're the main attraction. And

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it's a shame, and it wasone of the reasons why I think Mike
and I decided to not have somany guests, because we just want to
focus on cases, because to me, that's where that's where the importance of
this field lies. With the data, with the with the personal accounts.

(14:24):
Like my my favorite cases are awitness and a reporter, a reporter who
is just straight up trying to getthe story and that really has no background
in eupology. And right, actually, a really good case is you're familiar
with the Zamfreta case with the Italianuh is a concilia like an Italian police

(14:48):
guy, security guard. Right,Yeah, we did a we did an
episode on that. Yeah. Yeah, and you know that. What I
really love about that case is itwas written, the book was written about
and investigated by a journalist with noback running euthology whatsoever. So he approached

(15:11):
it as a journalist. And right, and all the Italian police who were
were there, you know, witnessingthe aftermath, and yeah, that that
is an excellent that is an excellentcase. So again, that's what that's
what we try to do, isyou know, here's what people saw,

(15:33):
here's what they said. You makeup your own mind. But Mike,
did you have some what was yourtopic she wanted to bring up? Yeah
a lot. Let me let mepull up a c No, first of
all, I just want to complimentthe research that went into it. I
mean, knowing how how much research, how much time it takes up an

(15:54):
almost twenty page bibliography. I meanI flipped to the back of the book
first. I'm like, yes,well researched because I appreciate that, because
you approached it very you know,from a scholarly point of view. You
weren't afraid to call out sort ofthe sacred cows, the elephants in the

(16:15):
room, so to speak. Youknow, you you call out some of
these well known ufologists who are makingwho've been on TV for for dozens of
years, maybe who have shady credentialsif any you know, claim to have
degrees from various universities or maybe topsecret super duper level clearances with no record

(16:37):
of employments, and and people eagerlyseem to latch onto these without questioning.
Linda and I, without naming names, had our own encounter with one such
popular UFO entertainer who's over. Ido won't say his name, but you
know over over expands upon his experiencein life, and that doesn't help.

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I mean, what's your take onall of that, and how do you
think it is in the field?Ah? Well, an interesting thing about
this this field is a common thingyou find well, for instance, Richard
Doty Okay, there's a lot ofrole play in this field. And when

(17:30):
you get the intelligence community involved,it gets really blown out of proportion.
So a lot of these guys thatwere in the Aviary, for instance,
how put off John Alexander, andthe Aviary, by the way, was
not a real organization. They werebird names given to Bill Moore's informants by

(17:52):
Bill Moore so and Jamie Chanderray,which they say they state, so that
that's a whole nother mythos is thatthere's this group of intelligence community insiders who
are actually have this organized group calledthe Aviary, and that's not the case.

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But in any case, the guyswho are on this list are like
John Alexander, helped put off KickGreen, Jacques Valais in there, Bruce
mccabee. So these are all peoplethat oh, if I can pause right
there, Bruce McCabe passed away yesterday, So I did want to mention that

(18:37):
quite a great loss. He reallybrought a lot of science to the study
of uphology. So sorry to interrupt, but just found out the news.
Yeah. Wow. So one oneof the more loose cannons in this group
was is Robert Collins, who wascondor there in UFO cover Up Live.

(19:07):
They had two it was basically alead up to two government insiders who were
going to tell the truth about thecrash, saucers and the aliens that were
housed by the government. And it'salmost certainly and they were in shadow with
their voices disguise, and it almostcertainly was Richard Dody and Robert Collins.

(19:30):
Robert Collins was reportedly arrested inside theManzeta weapons storage area in New Mexico,
saying he was there to meet thepresident. Uh So, that the role
playing among these guys, that thereseems the idea that they felt they had

(20:00):
inside information on UFOs and that itwas something real and that they were privy
to it, I'm sure helped pufftheir egos up a bit. And it's
the basic human needs are identity andrecognition, and doing this kind of role

(20:27):
playing seems to feed those needs.So Richard Dody, for instance, pretty
much demons. If you look athis military records, this is a guy
who wanted to be more than hewas. He was always taking he was
taking courses, he was ambitious,and he kept climbing the ranks. Well,

(20:49):
this is a common trait in themilitary. So you've got a lot
of military guys that will they've they'vebeen in exemplary, they have an exemplary
military career, but then all ofa sudden, you know they want to
be more than that and to becomea military guy who knows about UFOs boom,

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that makes you extra special. Sothat seems to be a common factor
in all this. But the weirdthing that happened with to really get the
mythos going with the whole idea thatwe had aliens being held in underground bases

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and recovered crash saucers. It seemsto have been a big feedback loop between
the eufologists investigating this and the intelligenceinsiders who were giving them information and also

(21:52):
seeking information themselves. So they wouldtell the euthologists something, the eupologists would
tell them something, I heard somethinghere, I've heard something from him,
and these rumors would start circulating.Now, one of the weirdest things is
that you had the remote viewing programgoing on at the time, Project Stargates,
for instance, in seventy nine.What mccaby wrote about in Hawktails,

(22:21):
which is a book he wrote aboutmeetings with Ernie Keller Strauss. He doesn't
name him by name, but hisaviary name was Hawk and maccaby talked about
remote viewers claiming to get in touchwith the Saucer people and if this was

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In order to verify that they wereactually that this was actually something real,
they needed to know more about UFOs, so they reached out to the UFO
community to try and find out ifUFOs are real in order to verify what
these remote viewers were seeing. Somcabee actually wrote there was like an unwanted

(23:07):
connection between remote viewing and eupology.So that's like, you know, one
of the whack air things that washappening. Also what was happening at the
time. That's just where all thesewild, crazy stories came from and why
everything up so blown out of proportion. Another crazy thing that was happening in
the eighties was a whole First orEarth Battalion movement with Jim Channon. That's

(23:33):
where the men who Steric Goats camefrom. And that was a real thing.
They were trying to develop super secretpsychic soldiers, and you know,
it was real a lot of NewAge New Age influence in that whole.

(23:55):
See, it was seen that therewere a lot of people in the army
who were let's just say, veryopen minded and the idea of spoon bending
parties, for instance, attended bymilitary personnel was actually it's commonly talked about.
In fact, in James James Lakowski'sbook skin Walker at the Pentagon,

(24:23):
he actually talks about Loue Alzando talkingabout saving his troops using his remote viewing
capabilities. So you know, that'sa lot of what I write about in
the book, with a lot morespecific examples. I think I'm concerned about

(24:45):
the reader the listener, because ifthe listener doesn't know more that, I'm
sure the listener could be extremely lost. Right now, Well, we have
a lot of savvy listeners, andyes, we need, we need a
break right now. So why don'twe take that and come right back?
Okay. Hudson River Radio dot comHudson River Radio dot com subsidiary of Glacier

(25:14):
Entertainment ALC. Blasting the competition inNew York's Hudson Valley. And when we're
back with our excellent guest Charles Lear, one of the few that's made a
second appearance on this show, ifI can just ask another question really quick,
because you you write quite a bitabout a case which I think for

(25:37):
many is a holy grail event,so to speak. And that's the Betty
and Barney hillcase. And like mostpeople, you know, I've read the
original book, The Interrupted Journey,I've read Captured. We've had Kathleen Martin
on the on the program. Whatyou really delve into the intricacies in a

(25:59):
way that I've never seen it exploredbefore, very very succinctly to where's what's
your take on the on the Bettyand Barney Hill in the role that it
has in upology. I think somethingdefinitely strange happened. What I really like
about the case is I went rightto Walter Webb, who was the NYCAP

(26:23):
investigator and who looked at it andwrote a report. And that report's available
so you can see it. Andwhat's wonderful about it is it's all conscious
recall in there's two reports. Thefirst one is just pre hypnosis. They
didn't go. They did not submitto hypnosis until I think a couple of

(26:48):
years afterwards. I think Barney's psychiatristin particular, I recommended against it,
if I remember correctly, But inany case, it wasn't. It was
quite a while after the event thatthey actually underwent hypnosis. So most of

(27:08):
the story is conscious recall, andyou can find that in Waterweb's report,
which is wonderful. And then hedoes an update after the hypnosis and talks
about the hypnosis sessions. And what'sinteresting is Betty Hill wrote about her dreams.
She was having a series of dreamswhere she saw the men she called

(27:33):
the men and talks about them twoin the front, two in the back,
around her, two in front ofBarney, two and back of Barney,
and then Barney being unconscious and beingon the ship, and all the
stories of Betty's the whole thing withthe needle into the to her navel for

(27:56):
a pregnancy test which was amniocentesis,which was not at all common and most
people didn't know about it back then, and them tugging at some one of
the creatures coming in and tugging atBetty's teeth and wondering why they didn't come

(28:17):
out like Barney's did, and herexplaining that she had false teeth, and
these are all dream recalls. Andwhat's interesting is in the hypnosis session,
she does not describe the creatures atall. She just describes the events,
and whereas Barney does describe them,but they do not fit the gray description

(28:42):
of the Grays. Actually, Ithink no, Betty did describe them I
think in a well, yeah,Betty described them as Yeah, she described
as having Jimmy Durante style noses.Actually, I'm sorry about that. Yeah,

(29:03):
and that like really threw investigators offbecause there's so much one of them
to be Grays. And it's actuallyI think the Wikipedia entry says that that
was the first mention of Grayce wasthe Benny and Barney Hill experience, and
that is not the case if youread the water webs report on it.

(29:26):
Do you mean there's misinformation on Wikipedia? Stop the presses. Yes, it's
so. Yeah, Well, I'msorry, go ahead, no, go
ahead. No, I was goingto say when I when I very first
started writing, I found myself goingto Wikipedia. That was my discipline,

(29:48):
was to go anywhere else. Butactually, one good thing about Wikipedia is
you can find a good source information. If you go to their follow their
footnotes, you can, right sometimesyou can you can zero in and find
the original source of the story.Right. Well. One of the stories
that I have liked for years isthe nineteen seventy six Kentucky one with Smith,

(30:15):
Stafford and Thomas, The Three Ladieswho. I believe they went out
for dinner and got a little morethan they bargained for. Oh yeah,
I mean, if you want togo over that case quickly, Uh yeah,
let me look it up. Soand at least have some guardrails here.

(30:37):
But yeah, so, yes,this case was a report in the
nineteen seventy six APRO bulletin. Itwas also made the papers made the Kentucky
County Press. And this is anotherconscious recall case. And they saw UFO

(31:07):
while driving and it seemed it camelit up the inside of the car.
It came in from behind, litup the inside of the car. They
thought it was a police car,but then they realized it was the UFO
that they had seen before, andit had circled around behind them. That

(31:27):
seemed to be taking control of thecar, and the car started pulling to
the left. Smith yelled to Staffordto help her control it. The women
are Louise Smith, Mona Stafford,and the Lane Thomas. So the car
accelerated the eighty five miles per hourand Stafford and Thomas yelled at Smith to

(31:52):
slow down. Smith responded by holdingup her foot to show them that it
wasn't her doing the accelerating, staffgrabbed the wheel tried to gain control,
and they felt a burning sensation anda pain that seemed to come down from
the tops of their heads. Itseemed as if the car was being pulled

(32:12):
backward and they were going over somebumps. They saw a strange rode in
front of them. In any case, they it seemed they seemed like they
were going at high speed all ofa sudden that they found themselves coming into

(32:32):
Houstonville, eight miles away from wherethey'd encountered the object. So like bang,
all of a sudden, there's somewherecompletely different. And they lost about
an hour and twenty five minutes,so they also But yeah, another weird

(32:55):
moment is Smith took off her watchput it on a sake in the hands
were moving faster than normal, withthe minute hand moving at the speed of
the second hand. And all threehad marks like fresh burns in the backs
of their necks, and Stafford's wason the left, just behind her ear.

(33:15):
So yeah, that's an amazing case. Yeah, and conscious recall this
is not from hypnosis, right,And I think there was some weight loss
in one of them, and anxiety. They had some PTSD there after the
yeah, they were in the actualserious physical distress. David Marler actually show

(33:39):
sent me the file on these guys. Oh okay, and yeah they were
investigated by mouf On Nycap and noexcuse me, Moufon QFOS. So I'm
sure David sent me the QFOS file. He just recently acquired the APRO files

(34:00):
which have been missing forever right wellin private hands. But in any case,
yeah, so he sent me theKUPHOS file. But yeah, QFOS
Center for UFO Studies, Jail andHeinez group, Uh, Moufon and April
all investigated this. But what happenedis they all gotten with squabble. So
this is where the egos are startingto come up. They were all squabbling

(34:22):
and they really cocked up the case. They influenced the witnesses and the hypnotists.
Later said that there was no waythat he could determine whether how much
the investigators had influenced what the womenwere. Ye know, what was coming
out of the women in terms ofthe creatures, because they started the scenario

(34:45):
that came out during the hypnosis sessionswas a whole being put on the table
and examined by creatures. They stillweren't the graves though at this point even
but you know, that's so thecases in there moving, you know,
trying to get towards the grays wherethey just start coming out, and they

(35:07):
really just seemed to come out thatthey were locked into the mythos with Whitley
Streeber's book Communion with the cover inparticular. But you know, it's interesting.
I I was looking at a goodReads and I was shocked to see
that the book was reviewed, becauseI hadn't been promoting it at all,

(35:30):
and I just checked out one threestar review to make sure that it wasn't
because of the quality of the book, And it was basically said that I
didn't like the tone of the bookbecause it made it seem as the general
tone seemed to be as if therewas nothing to this, and this case

(35:52):
right there, it's like, well, did you read that case? Yeah,
I adore that case. I thinkit's amazing, and it really,
you know, speaks to there beingsomething to this and really, you know,
the it's yeah, it's if theinvestigators would get out of the way

(36:19):
exactly. Yeah, some of thesecases, Mike, what other burning question
do you have? How is itthat the Grays really sort of come out
on top as the pre eminent extraterrestrialsthat were visited by you know, you
hear people throw out the Nordics,the Reptilians, and who knows else,

(36:40):
But it seems like everybody always goesback to the graves. How did they
sort of climb that hierarchy and becomeking of the King of the Alien Hill
here? Yeah, maybe it's becausethey look really good in gift shops.
I mean, uh yeah, becausethere are all kinds of critters, you

(37:00):
know that. I do a wholechapter devoted to the variety of creatures,
especially the seventies, which is thenext book I'm going to write about older
you heard it here. First,what I really you know, because the
idea was to follow up on FlyingSaucer Investigators with a book called The UFO

(37:23):
Investigators. But then I realized whata mess everything turned into in the eighties,
and the period I really want towrite about is like just after Project
Blue Book and just before Roswell.So you know, Oh, another thing
I wanted to point as I waswriting the book, I realized, I

(37:46):
guess where it seems you followed?You really got crazy when what invention.
What thing that everybody now takes forcell phone, the the old internet?
Oh oh yes, when was theUFO BBS paraanet Actually, Jim Spicer wanted

(38:13):
to create a paranormal bulletin board service, which is how people used to communicate
and post and you know, exchangenews back in the ancient dinosaur days.
And that's where Bill Cooper and JohnLear just inserted themselves into the UFO community

(38:37):
with just absolute craziness that based onabsolutely no research, that sounds like the
Internet exactly exactly we should. Yeah, you can finish your thought, but
then we'll take our next break.Yeah, I was just going to say,

(38:58):
it's it's a good example of howthe Internet makes people crazy. Yeah,
it does. And with that,why don't we take our second break.
This is Hudson River Radio dot com, your local Rockland County station.

(39:22):
This is Hudson River Radio dot comand we are back with our awesome guest
here. And I just wanted toadd a quick follow up on the Grays.
Whitley Strieber's book was my first introductionto to the Grays and really as

(39:44):
a child that you know, growingup, I was always interested in you
fos, but it was really thatbook and that cover in particular. I
think that really drew me in andand captivated me and still does. Every
time I see that book cover,it's sort of one of those events in
life. It's like, wow,you know, you read his book and
that covers just ingrained mm hmm.Yeah, yeah, I'm not I'm not

(40:06):
saying that the Grays aren't like athing, and there are people seem to
experience that consciously, you know,without encountered them, and can talk about
it through conscious recall. But youknow, I'm just anyway, well,

(40:32):
if we can go back a littlebit before the Grays, you you had
mentioned the tall Blondes, and Iloved the term the Etherians, but it
was interesting because they were supposed tobe early interdimensional beings, and now we
seem to be coming full circle backto interdimensional seems to be the current buzzword.

(40:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it'scome around. I mean, I
was a nuts and bolt sky backin the day, but you know,
I was very much though a passiveconsumer, like you know, basically I
watched UFO documentaries on VHS, andyou know that's pretty much where I got

(41:20):
all my information, and I swallowedit all on I l n autopsy absolutely.
Yeah, look he peeled that thingright off his eye. That was
a great effect. Yeah, butyou know, I was a sucker.
What's interesting When I look at it, though, I was like, well,

(41:43):
you know, did I really believeit or was it kind of a
suspension of belief? Because if Ireally believe that, that's pretty staggering to
say that something like that is actuallyreal. Or did I just kind of
take it as part entertainment And I'mstill not too sure about that. But

(42:05):
yeah, I really did buy intoeighties nuts and bolts uphology for quite some
time. And I actually remember readingPassport to Magonia, Jacques Valat's book,
and it kind of twisted my braina little bit that that's basically the whole

(42:29):
interdimensional theory kind of he ties itto fairy lore another mythost like that.
But yeah, but in terms ofyou know, me believing nuts and bolts
or interdimensional I just have to say, you know what I somebody asked me,

(42:53):
or UFO is real? I say, UFO reports are real. So
that's what I write about. Yeah, well it can be all of the
above. Yeah, I'm open tothat. Yeah, I have no problem
one one person who's irked me fordecades. Uh, Heimi Massan comment,

(43:17):
how is this guy still making moneyand sucking people in? I don't know,
it's just you know, same reasonancient Aliens is so popular. You
know, Oh, don't say anythingbad about ancient Aliens. Half our audience

(43:37):
they're going to they're pulling. Butyeah, for those who don't know,
himI Massan is the Mexican journalist andI use that term lately who just seems
to perpetrate hoax after hoax and pullin some big names with him along the

(44:00):
way, and people love it.And he keeps going and going. Yeah,
like the it's the Roswell slides thingwith the god the mummy underglass and
this is not a mummy. Andhe you know, he had a who
was with am Anthony Bergalia and RichardDolan and he almost sucked in Kevin Randall

(44:29):
who ran the other way fortunately.But yeah, he put on a big
presentation down in Mexico and I thinkof Mexico City, I believe, and
was charging up to two hundred bucksahead for people to see the alien slides.
Uh. And then they were debunkedand shown very clearly to be there's

(44:52):
a card right next to Yeah,all they had to do was read the
little card if they sharpened it,and it was a mummy in a museum
with somebody's travel slots. Yeah,three year old boy and they made a
fortune. It's yeah. I saw, I saw somebody did a list of
just a string of ookum that Uhhimimissan left behind it. It's like a

(45:19):
long one. Yeah, well overtwenty incidents. Yeah. I think the
first time I saw him on television, somebody had taken a real flying saucer
photo and it took a photo analystabout three seconds to show the square cropping
of taking the saucerer and put inlike, look, here's the pixels of

(45:42):
where he dropped it. Oh no, no, I'm like, okay,
I can never believe anything any wordout of this man's mouth. And he
has proven time and time again touphold that low standard. But he obviously
made a career out of nonsense.Mm hmm. Yeah, it's unfortunately,

(46:07):
it seems to be the way ofthings, is it people? Is it
people suspending? I mean, Iknow people want to believe in this topic,
they want to believe in UFOs,but do they permanently suspend their belief
because any other field, if yourcredibility is shot once, no one's ever

(46:27):
going to take you seriously again.But how is it, it seems in
the paranormal field in general, butspecifically with UFOs, you can be pointed
out, like in this case,outright faking things, but yet still remain
popular in the field, still drawingpeople in, still making money. And
I don't I don't understand it.Yeah, I think it's it's because it's

(46:54):
I guess I'll call us a hardcore. People are are really into this.
We're kind of we're a minority.That's not a big group of people.
It's small enough that I can prettymuch reach out to just about anybody and
get a response. You know,I've reached out the Berry Greenwood, who

(47:19):
was you know, been in thisfield for years and highly respected, and
he actually responds to me. Andso it's a small community. The people
who are consuming the who are enjoyingthe UFO hotels, the stories, are

(47:44):
interested in the cases. The audience, I guess is the best way to
put it. The audience. Youknow, new people come into it all
the time, so they're into thestories. And if you ask them who
the people are telling the stories.Most of the time, they couldn't tell
you the names. You know,this happens to me all the time with

(48:05):
my coworkers. They'll come up tome and say, hey, do you
hear about this UFO story? AndI'll say, oh, you mean the
one told by so and so,like you know, oh, like uh,
I'm trying to just pull the nameout of the air. But oh,
you mean the Stephen Grier documentary.Oh, who's he? You know,
they don't know him, but theyknow the story he's telling. You

(48:29):
know, I asked us flat out, you know, oh, oh yeah,
somebody was telling me about something louellAsondo said at one point, and
I said, oh, you meanlouel Azondo. Who's he? I literally
did not know who Louis Asando was. And this is somebody who liked the
UFO subject. So, you know, like I said, they they they

(48:50):
hear the tales, but they don'treally pay attention to so much to who's
telling them until he's you know,somebody like Stanon Freeman, who was all
over the place. After a while, you get to know Stanon Freedman's name
absolutely. And there are certain people, Yeah, they're going to know their
names, but there are a lotof people anyway. That's my take on
it is that they're more interested inthe UFOs than in the people. That

(49:16):
makes sense. Yeah, well youmentioned David Marler, and for those who
don't know him, he has anincredible library and it's constantly growing. He's
one of the good guys in eufology. He has an amazing I think he's

(49:37):
going to eventually, was it ArizonaState or something. He's going to try
to University of New Mexico. Universityof New Mexico. Okay, he's going
to have it there. But rightnow he has a private building right on
his own own property, funding itand just he's very helpful and he's he's

(50:01):
just an amazing archivist, researcher anddoing what everyone else should be doing,
concentrating on the material, not youknow, promoting himself in that sense like
that. I really have to goback to that. That's just a great

(50:22):
point. When when did that,you know, when was that tipping point
when the ufologist became more important thanthe UFO cases or seemingly so in a
lot of people's eyes. But whatwhat do you see as some of the

(50:42):
shining points of ufology. In thisbook, the heroes, we have a
lot of villains. Who would yousee as the give me a hero from
the book, anybody you know?I would say the community in general,
because in the midst of all thishocum there was a lot of peer review

(51:07):
and a lot of people were calledout by fellow youthologists or you know,
the Lindon Napolitano case, for instance, was George Hanson and I think Richard
Stefula, I forget the third person. But they really looked into the Linden

(51:32):
Napolitano story, which was also knownas the brooklyn Bridge abduction, which was
supposedly witnessed by two policemen and theSecretary General of the United Nations, and
they looked into it, you know, and Bud Hopkins was investigating it and

(51:54):
she was a subject of his,and they looked into it and found that
he had only ever communicated with thewitnesses who claimed to be policemen, and
they only got in touch with himfourteen months after the incident, and only

(52:15):
communicated by letter and on tape.He also supposedly had a third witness that
was a fourth witness that was onthe brooklyn Bridge claimed she saw it.
He never looked into her background.But anyway, they wrote a very comprehensive
paper which I referenced in the book, pointing out all the flaws in this

(52:39):
investigation. So that's peer review rightthere. So I would say the heroes
are you know, people in theUFO community not willing to turn a blind
eye just because somebody is a reveredfigure in the community and you know it.

(53:01):
You know, it was atle bitdifficult for me actually to write about
it. You know, some ofthe write about some of these people and
find you know, the flaws intheir work because they were genuinely revered for
quite some time. And well,which doesn't mean you can discount all of

(53:28):
their work, but clearly it bringsa lot into question and you need to
look with a more critical eye.Yeah, and a lot of cases they
were in genuine you know, theywere in earnest and you know, you
get to get into the human psychology, which is a big part of this,
and you know just well, youknow, wanting it to be true

(53:52):
or you know, really having alot in vested in it. Not to
mention a book you want to sell. It's easy to well, trying to
look the other way occasionally. Yeah, And a lot of these people,
you know, this was their ownmoney and time going into the research,
and uh, you know you cankind of see, hey, I can

(54:14):
make money on a book and fundmy fund my future research. But but
if you devoted your whole life toone line of research or one case in
the yeah, that's well, youknow, it's hard to let that go.
Yeah, so you know I candefinitely I can cut them some slack.
You know, I have empathy forthese people. I don't look at

(54:37):
them as all these you know,these nasty villains of equality. They're they're
human beings and flawed human beings,right right, All right, Mike,
do you have any other questions ortopics? I guess just more to your
own personal opinion. You mentioned JockFla. I'm a big fan of John

(54:58):
Keel in the theory of the ultraterrestrials. Where do you find your own
personal Now? Are you the nutsand bolts? Are you leaning towards?
Is there something more? Are youkind of is it a mixed bag?
Well? I I definitely am moretowards the ultraterrestrial idea that there's something interacting

(55:22):
with us, that it's maybe thesame thing that or the gods of your
you know, so I tend moretowards that, And but I can't discount

(55:45):
the nuts and bolts thing either,because you know, the Hudson Valley wave
is just that's pretty mind blowing.There's still triangles being seen recently in Canada.
And yeah, so you know,I all of the above, but
I think very strongly there's there's something. Ah, there's something to the whole

(56:12):
idea of a paranormal unifying, unifyingtheory of paranormality. I like that.
And yes, I'm I'm a bigfan of John Kiel too, but he's
a tricky fellow too, and heone thing I noticed Keel did was he

(56:34):
would, you know, show youhow smart he is and and string along,
you know, a lot of youknow, a lot of scientific facts
and throw them at you and thensay something and not back it up and
kind of expect you to take whathe just said on faith because of all
the science he just bamboozled you with. Uh. So, you know,

(56:57):
he he did. He himself admittedthat he he was more of a writer
than anything else. But you know, he's definitely a deep thinker and an
also in genuine earnest and really seemto have experienced things firsthand himself. So
I am a big Keel fan.All right, Well, I have many

(57:21):
other things, but I think wedon't want to give your entire book away.
Any anything else you want to sayabout the book that you think people
should know, other than it's onAmazon and you should buy it. Well,
hopefully it's entertaining. I definitely keepa sense of humor about the whole

(57:43):
thing. Your great cover, bythe way, I haven't seen it.
Who did the cover that? MiguelRomero was also known as red Pill Junkie.
He was It's funny. I wantedto publish it through a company I
knew he did covers for. Thatcompany turned the book down. But then

(58:04):
I saw a Daily Grail, whichhe writes for. He posted that he
was looking for work, and Icontacted him and made arrangements to have him
do the cover. And it feltreally good, in these days of AI,
to give a human being the jobinstead of AI. Made it amen

(58:27):
to that you God a fabulous jobwith it. I'm so happy with it.
So again the name is crashed saucersand Malevolent Aliens. The emergence of
the popular modern Ufo mythos in thelate twentieth century. So other than Amazon,
do you sell them directly? Oh, it's all Amazon. Okay.

(58:49):
Do you plan on being at thePine Bush event? Do you have a
table there? I don't have atable there, but I think I will
be visiting. Okay, would yoube interested in possibly speaking at the museum?
I think I can talk to Lanceabout that. That's something you would
do, give a presentation? Whatduring the Oh no, no, no,
it's crazy day on a fair day. But some other time, not

(59:15):
at this point now, Okay,I don't Trent, I ride a bike.
Bikey that's a little far from whereyou are to mind Bush. Yeah,
yeah, okay, so yeah,but thank you for the offer.
Okay, Well, anything else,Mike bring us out? Well? Thank
you Charles for being a wonderful guestagain, and we look forward to having

(59:39):
you on a third time when thenext book comes out, and we could
definitely talk to you for hours,I think on this topic. And we
want to thank all of our listeners, whether you're new, you've been with
us for the last six, sevenor eight years. If you're new,
you can binge listen to us onyour favorite streaming platform. And your join.

(01:00:00):
If you're in Finland, I mightbe there this summer if it all
works out. So shoot me ashoot me a hello, and we will
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