May 21, 2025 • 52 mins
GUEST INFO
Nick Gold is a media and information technologist based in Baltimore, Maryland. He’s worked with major broadcasters, studios, government agencies, and biotech startups. He has been a contributing member of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies and Harvard University's Galileo Project, and is the founder of Declassify UAP, an organization that helps US voters advocate for government transparency around the UAP subject, and that has so far driven over 25,000 calls and letters to Washington DC. You can find out more about that work, or voice your own support for UAP transparency at DeclassifyUAP.org.
TOPICS
We discuss a very condensed version of Nick's own UAP encounter, and some of the uniquely synchronistic elements that set it apart from most UAP encounters. If you enjoy this discussion, and want to hear the deep-dive conversation, look for the full length version, which will be the very next episode.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:22):
Welcome to The Anomalous Review,the official podcast of the
Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies.
My name is Michael Glawson. I'm a philosopher of science and
technology and the host of the show.
This conversation is part of a special series on the anomalous
review that we're calling the UAP Witness series.
Let me tell you a bit about it. In this series, I interview SCU
(00:43):
members who've had their own personal encounters with truly
anomalous phenomena. These conversations are a new
format for us as an organization.
SCU leans toward a hard science approach to studying UAP.
That means using quantitative data that fits into
spreadsheets, and they can be analyzed with consistent
statistical methods. Things like the size, shape,
(01:05):
acoustical and kinetic properties of UAP.
That's the kind of data that SCUspecializes in.
Now, that's partly because of our skill set.
Most of our members are working scientists and engineers, so
we're used to using that kind ofdata and those sorts of
analytical tools. But this approach also serves as
a kind of hedge that keeps soberdiscussions about UAP from
(01:29):
falling into unstructured or even unreasonable speculation.
You probably know the kind of conversations that I mean.
We like structured investigations that employ the
tools that we're familiar with. But it would be a mistake to
think that we in SU focus on thehard data points simply because
we think that that's all there is to these phenomena.
(01:52):
Every one of those data points, after all, comes from an
encounter that was deeply and uniquely personal.
And these encounters are far richer, stranger, and more
complex than the numbers in the spreadsheet might ever suggest.
The tools of quantitative analysis just aren't great for
analysing those unique experiential dimensions, though.
(02:12):
So for our analytic work at SCU,we usually just set the rich
elements of those stories aside.But shortly after we launched
this podcast, SCU leaders told me that there are several SCU
members who'd had their own encounters with UAP.
And after a few conversations, we decided let's invite those
members to tell their stories just as they experienced them,
(02:34):
along with all the questions andideas that those encounters gave
rise to. Encounters like these are, after
all, the source of our hard datapoints.
And inviting people to tell their stories here is a way of
showing what's on the other sideof the spreadsheets, the unique,
complex, deeply strange and often unsettling experiences
that push us to ask questions that data-driven analytical
(02:56):
methods aren't always fit to tackle.
But let me just say this clearlyacknowledging the strangeness of
these encounters and giving people space to tell them as
they live them is in no way a departure from SUS data-driven
scientific mission. But it's meant to complement
that mission by acknowledging the very elements of our source
(03:16):
material that often compelled usto want to do the scientific
work in the 1st place. This is an expression of the
conviction that doing good science means holding on to
intellectual humility before a reality that's under no
obligations to conform to our expectations or to our tools.
And that means facing reality asit comes, even and especially
(03:39):
when it challenges our frameworks.
We're putting out two versions of each interview.
There's a full length conversation and then a short
partial edit. For those who may not have time
to commit to the full conversation just yet, this is a
short version. In it, you'll get a quick
outline of the guests experiencealong with the taste of the
(03:59):
deeper discussion that we had inthe full conversation.
These encounters are full of strange, fascinating detail, and
if this version grabs you even alittle, we really encourage you
to check out the full interview.But since the full versions go
really deep, we wanted to make these shorter ones available
too. Mick Gold is a media and
(04:19):
information technologist based in Baltimore, MD.
He's worked with major broadcasters, studios,
government agencies, and biotechstart-ups.
He's been a contributing member of the Scientific Coalition for
UAP Studies and Harvard University's Galileo Project,
and he's the founder of Declassify UAP, an organization
(04:41):
that's helped US voters advocatefor government transparency
around the UAP subject and that has so far driven over 25,000
calls and letters to Washington,DC.
You can find out more about Network or voice your own
support for uaptransparency@declassifyuap.org.
Nick is a stunningly smart thinker.
(05:03):
Then our conversations weave together his interests in
philosophy, the nature of mind, synchronicity, and the political
dimensions of the UAP phenomena.That was a treat for me because
those are all subjects that I also want to bring into the
general discourse around UAP. So we really get to stretch our
legs in these conversations. I hope you enjoy that.
(05:24):
Remember, there are two different versions of each of
these UAP Witness interviews. There's a condensed conversation
that just covers some details ofthe encounter.
And there's a full length deep dive conversation that goes into
all of the details and where I ask lots of questions.
This is the condensed version. If you like it, look for the
(05:44):
full length version. Here now is my conversation with
Nick Gold. Thanks for joining us.
And we have Nick Gold here. Nick and I recorded a very
thorough version of this conversation a few weeks ago.
And SEU has decided we want to have both long and short
versions of these conversations,these stories of SEU members
(06:06):
who've had their own encounters with the anomalous.
But I don't think it's my place to edit down other people's
stories. So what we've decided to do is
record a second, shorter, sort of Cliff Notes version of the
conversation for people who don't have more than an hour to
devote to the long version. Right now though, I think that
once you listen to this, you will want to listen to the long
(06:29):
version because we go into a lotof the relevant details and
interesting questions that inevitably arise whenever you
hear somebody talking about an experience that falls so far
outside of the range of normal day-to-day.
So thank you, Nick for being here.
And I just want to let you take it away and tell us about the
your history of experiences withthe anomalous.
(06:51):
Well, thank you so much for having me, Michael.
And it's it's kind of fun to tell the story.
I've told it, you know, many times to different people,
friends, family, some SEU members, other people just I've
met through kind of UAP world, UFO world.
And it's a strange 1. You know, I'll just I'll tell it
as it occurred. I think, you know, for folks who
(07:12):
are interested in kind of how I interpreted it a little more
fully listening to that longer version will be useful because
there was literally like 42 years of life context that kind
of was an important aspect of how I viewed that experience.
So we'll save that. And you know, folks can kind of
go there, but I will now tell you exactly what happened.
(07:34):
It's also kind of easy to tell this story in some ways because
I was literally sitting in the exact seat I'm sitting in right
now. I live in Baltimore, MD.
I'm in the city and then in the northern part of Baltimore, a
few minutes walk from from a Johns Hopkins Homewood campus.
It's a little to the West of me.I have a little Baltimore row
home, one of the smaller ones. These are the connected houses
(07:54):
that kind of fill a block. Mine is just two floors.
It's about 13 feet wide and 40 something feet deep.
I've got 3 windows that I'm looking at right now that just
look over the Baltimore City sky.
Again, not high rises or anything, but I have a parking
lot across the street from me. So instead of like buildings
right up against me across the street, I have like a really
(08:14):
kind of nice view of just kind of the eastern and then if I
look at an angle, the southeastern or northeastern
Baltimore sky. And, you know, I've been an
airplane buff for my entire lifeor aircraft buff.
I see tons of aircraft out here.You know, I have police
helicopters, medevac helicopters.
And this is like an everyday occurrence because I have a
(08:35):
hospital right, a couple blocks from me that helicopters are
landing on all the time. Police helicopters are very
active both in Baltimore generally and sometimes in my
neighborhood. It's, it's a good neighborhood,
but still there's, there's some action.
And, you know, we've had all sorts of aircraft and this is an
important part of the context because like seeing aircraft out
of these windows is an everyday kind of a thing.
(08:57):
Like as an aircraft buff, I'll pay attention if there's a
helicopter kind of nearby, especially if it's really close
or it's circling or doing whatever.
But we've had everything. I see flights coming in and out
of BWI airport. I have all sorts of traffic
that, you know, sometimes just goes right over my house that's
not even coming into the Baltimore airport, but it's just
like going over the city. And I seem to be on kind of a
(09:19):
flight path, you know, so I can see those jets going, you know,
over my house or near. I see weird things like we had a
pilot project of a spy plane in Baltimore a number of years ago.
It was using like a military sensor on a small aircraft that
would just circled for hours andhours and hours over Baltimore.
And the sensor could see like a third of the city or whatever.
(09:40):
And you know, everyone's a. Little surveillance things it
takes. Yes, it was a surveillance
project and you know, they didn't end up continue doing it.
But you know, the pilot was to kind of see if they could solve
crimes. You know, even if people are
dots and, you know, cars or a little grain of rice, if you
know where a crime occurred and you know that that was probably
the car involved in a carjacking, you can follow it
(10:01):
across the city and see exactly where it went and things like
that. Back in time and see where it
came. From so that aircraft used to
circle over and you would hear it whining on days where there
was like cloud cover and it had to fly a little lower.
And then like one of the weirderthings was years ago there was a
Navy, another sensor project, but this one was looking out
over the East Coast, I believe. I think it was the J Lens
(10:23):
project. And Navy had a couple of giant
airships that were, were moored near Aberdeen Proving Ground.
And like one of them, I think you could see out of my window
and it was like for like a year or whatever and like.
A blimp, right? Yeah, And they had two of these.
One of them got away and like went over to like the the
(10:44):
Maryland, Pennsylvania line. Some police force, I think was
shooting it with like shotguns at one point to bring it down
like. So I've just seen all sorts of
weird stuff out of my windows for the now, I've been here 18
years. This incident happened five
years ago. So I would have been here for 13
years at that point or roughly. And again, it's like air traffic
is just so regular and so common.
(11:06):
Nothing really tends to distractvery much.
So that's that's important context.
So let's rewind. It is Sunday, August 2nd, 2020.
I'm sitting in this chair. My television is is on one wall.
The three windows are kind of caddy cornered to it.
So I was on my laptop. I was pivoted kind of looking at
(11:28):
my TVI had done. I'm I'm part of a meditation and
spiritual community in Baltimore.
They're called awake yoga meditation.
This was, you know, COVID year, so we were still doing our
Sunday services on zoom. That starts at 11.
It wrapped up a few minutes after noon.
I had my laptop on my lap and I was like, OK, it's a beautiful
(11:49):
summer day. I'm going to go take a walk.
It's perfectly clear and sunny out, really nice day.
I'm going to go outside. And then what I noticed, you
know, maybe just checking the web or whatever, I saw that the
SpaceX Crew Dragon was a couple hours from splashing down.
Now, it had gone up a couple months earlier.
People might remember the two space dads.
(12:11):
And it was sort of an interesting Space Flight because
it was the first kind of privateflight that was going to take
actual astronauts up to the ISS.And I had tried to watch that
launch, but it got weather delayed.
And I never ended up seeing themgo up a few days later whenever
they ended up launching. So like, here I am on my laptop.
I'm about to go outside, but I'mlike, oh, they're a couple hours
(12:33):
from coming back. I'm going to watch.
I'm going to watch the return. I saw that SpaceX and NASA,
we're doing a stream. You know, I was like, I'll take
a walk a little later in the afternoon.
I really wanted to see them makeit back.
I really wanted to see them go up and I missed that.
So I was like, OK, this is this is cool.
I'm going to have this going andsurf the web for a couple hours,
etcetera. So I put the stream up, the NASA
(12:54):
stream on my TV. It's on, you know, going on my
Apple TV box, you know, 65 inch TV.
So it's kind of big and I kind of have it in the background and
you know, they were still like alittle over 2 hours away from
coming down from splashdown whenI kind of tuned in.
So what am I doing? I've got my laptop on my lap,
(13:14):
Dorking around on the Internet, got the stream up on my TV.
I've, you know, chatting with mymom and my brother a little bit
on messages, like just doing some web surfing and like
2:00-ish plus hours goes by and I'm just kind of doing that the
whole time. And here we are.
It's like down to the wire. This is they were coming down
(13:36):
into the Gulf of Mexico. You know, it was a water landing
or splashdown. You know, we were at the point
where they had gone through thatperiod of re entry where they
lose radio contact. I guess that's when they start
hitting the atmosphere and like turns into a fireball and like
the, the radio comms are down. So then like, they get through
that, and they're back on radio and you're like, yeah.
(13:57):
And, you know, it's proceeding. They're like chasing away, you
know, And again, I'm just watching the stream of this, but
they're like chasing away private boats that had
congregated, kind of realizing that something interesting was
like, you have to go away. A spaceship is about to splash
down here. And, you know, that was going on
and here we are. And I'm like, you know, I've
always been interested in spaceflight as well as
aeronautics. And like, you know, I was like
(14:19):
kind of on the edge of my sea, the little emotional.
And this was kind of kind of a palpable interesting moment in
human spaceflight because it waskind of shifting to this more
private endeavour. And, you know, that was a cool
thing to to watch. And it seemed felt a little
historic, like maybe a new era of of human just access to space
or just, you know, in general. So it's about a minute from
(14:40):
splashdown. The module has spouted its its
parachutes. They have switched from an
aircraft based zoomed in camera view to a shipboard camera view,
which was a slightly clearer video.
And we're seeing this thing and it's, it's about, you know, T -,
1 minute to splash down or whatever.
(15:02):
And here I am and I'm, I'm, I'm watching my TV and I can have
these, these windows looking over the Eastern Baltimore sky
kind of in just my peripheral vision when I'm watching my
television because, you know, they're at a right angle, right?
And like all of my attention forhours has been building up to
this, this moment, this like last minute of watching them
splash down successfully and getting out.
(15:24):
And then I can take my walk and it's a beautiful day.
And I kind of want to do that. But I'm also really, you know,
riveted by this, this, this event.
And like, the parachutes are out.
You know, they switched the camera view.
As I said, they're, they're really like within a minute.
And I see something through one of my windows, in my peripheral
(15:44):
vision, in the actual Baltimore sky outside of my house, that
started to distract me right in like the one minute that this
has all been building up to. Within seconds of.
Like, and like, as I was saying that, you know, part of the
context, we're talking about allthe aircraft I see.
It's like, things don't tend to distract me, especially if I'm
(16:05):
really riveted on what I'm watching on my television.
Like an aircraft flying by wouldn't catch my attention.
Even a helicopter wouldn't catchmy attention, but there was
something about whatever I was seeing out of my left eye kind
of in my peripheral vision that was like kind of demanding my
attention is the way I put it. Like it was something that was
(16:25):
like distracting me from from even being able to concentrate
fully on the last minute of of the spacecraft coming down.
So I had to make this like splitsecond decision.
Am I going to like distract any of my attention from the TV and
like actually figure out why this thing in the sky outside of
my house is distracting me? And I was like, OK, I'm going to
look. I'm going to look.
(16:46):
So I kind of like am getting closer to the TV as I walk, you
know, the 8 feet to my window here from the side of the room.
I'm kind of like trying to pay attention to the TV.
It's like the spacecraft is returning and saying all the
typical things you would expect of a spacecraft coming back to
Earth. It's got the announcers and
everything. And they're, they're talking
about here's the spacecraft and all of that.
(17:10):
And I look out of my window and this thing that I saw was unlike
any other thing I have ever seenin the sky before or since.
It was a lenticular shiny metallic silver ellipsoid.
I would say it to me it looked like seeing a disc from the
(17:33):
side. Now it clearly had like kind of,
you know, a height to it. So it wasn't like sliver thin it
it really looked like an ellipsoid from or, you know,
lenticular shape from the angle I was seeing it.
I don't remember it having it like sharp edges at the ends.
It like might have rounded out alittle.
(17:54):
Again, for people watching the video, maybe this kind of an
aspect ratio like a 3 1/2 to 1, you know, with from end to end
to height as close as like closeaircraft that I see going over
my house. So, you know, probably a few
1000 feet away when it was at its closest and it was at its
closest when I first saw it. So the TV is saying things about
(18:18):
the spaceship and I'd look out and I see this thing.
And I've been a lifelong UFO enthusiast since I was at least
8 and saw Flight of the Navigator.
I mean, if not even younger thanthat, I'm sure I saw ET before
that. So I mean pretty much a lifer at
this, you know, and I see the shiny silver disc like thing.
No, no appendages, no wings, no little bubble on top.
(18:41):
It was just a perfectly shiny silver metallic object.
And you know, I couldn't fully make out whether it was a disc
way to being seen from the side because it was so highly
reflective. Like you could really just kind
of see it as shiny and metallic.It was also making and it made
this light, well, I'll explain it more in a second, but I saw
(19:06):
this light associated with it the entire time of the sighting.
It might have been part of what distracted me.
I can't say that for sure, but it might have been part of why
it got my attention when it was in the window.
So from the upper right hand corner quadrant, as I was
looking at it, not quite on the edge of the object, like not
right on the edge of it, but like down a little bit from
(19:27):
there, it was making what I'll call a glimmering glint.
So in a regularly brightly flashing, but glint like light
that like I could almost see like the rays off of it was like
like the the IT felt like it wasflashing at me.
And for the first probably 1015 seconds.
(19:49):
First of all, I'm so discombobulated by the TV kind
of a providing a semi appropriate soundtrack.
Like here comes the spaceship. I the glint was distracting,
like it was literally kind of mesmerizing and it was ongoing
it again, it wasn't on off. It was this irregular glimmering
glint. And for the 1st 1015 seconds I'm
(20:10):
like, is that a reflection of the sun or is it making that
light? And like my thinking was sort of
caught up on that very particular dynamic.
And then I sort of like snapped to it, if you will, And I was
like, huh? And I'm.
Distracted by the TV talking about the spacecraft returning,
(20:31):
I definitely remember looking away from the window and back a
few times to like make sure it was still there.
And it was. It was like a consistent object
in the sky. I think I even pinched myself at
one point almost like jokingly and I started to almost go into
this like goofy mode like ha ha ha ha ha ha.
(20:52):
Like I can't believe out of a lifetime of waiting to see
something in the sky, I'm in my living room.
I'm watching ATV broadcast of a spacecraft returning to Earth.
I've been waiting for over 2 hours to watch this thing splash
down and just in the perfect minute before it comes down, I'm
having what I can only think of.This must be a UFO sighting.
(21:13):
Like I'm, I'm, I'm even like thinking about it that way.
I'm like, this must be what those people who see UFOs are
seeing. Like it was this very
discombobulating experience and,and funny and absurd.
I, it felt humorous to me that it was occurring in those
circumstances. Like it kind of felt like a
little bit of a, a prank or a cosmic joke.
(21:37):
And I had this thing from the moment I got to the window and
kind of it went away like it wasgoing to the Northeast.
Perfectly clear day again. I could resolve this thing quite
well. It just was like hard to tell
what it was. No wings or structures that
would make it look anything likean air like an airplane or
whatever. It really just was like this
shiny silver metallic lozenge looking thing making this really
(22:00):
weird glinting light. The light was actually the last
of it I saw. Again.
The sighting was probably, if I had to guess, 40 seconds to a
minute ish tops. And the last I saw of this thing
going to the northeast was the glimmering glint like in the
middle of the afternoon. Very bright.
Like it never stopped making this weird irregularly flashing
(22:22):
light or or reflecting the sun if that's what it was.
I can't tell you what the light source actually was.
But even as it was going off into the distance and the last
thing I saw that was like this twinkling star in the sky in the
middle of the afternoon, I was like, it's got to be making that
light. There's no way it could have be,
could be reflecting the sun so much.
(22:43):
The whole time I'm seeing this, I've never seen a glint off of
an aircraft happen that way. Like you see them briefly like
for a moment and then. Be so sustained.
This was totally sustained despite its irregularity, but
again, ongoingly kind of glinting, flashing and it to the
point where like it looked like a twinkling star before it
(23:04):
disappeared into the distance. I was like, it had to have been
making that flash so you know, it it, it went away.
I immediately and I have recordsof this stuff.
I texted my mom like a minute later 'cause we had been
chatting even a few minutes earlier.
In fact, I went back to the message chat.
UFOs had even been a topic of conversation and yes, that is
(23:25):
something I talk to my mom aboutsemi regularly.
But like we had even been hitting it on the UFO topic not
too many minutes before and I'm like, I really think I just saw
a UFO out of my window. In fact, if you give me two
seconds, I can tell you what theexact words I I used were
because I have a little folder of my data associated with the
(23:46):
sighting. If I can find it here.
I thought I had it. Oh, there it is, August 2020 UAP
sighting. So here is the text with mom and
I have time stamps on it too. So the splashdown, according to
(24:08):
records, was 248. And I said something to her at
2:46. I said so cool to watch it
coming down at 2:46. And then my mom said she was
watching the stream too. Once I told her about it from
her house in Massachusetts, I was like she said space dads
love it. Now we have to wait an hour
before they emerge and she's referring to them coming out of
(24:28):
the capsule. And then at 2:51 I responded to
her and I said I just saw something very weird fly by
outside just as they landed. It was very strange.
And then my next message at alsoat 2:51, it looked like a UFO
and then like emoji I I added. And then she responded with the
(24:51):
emoji with the star eyes and I said it looked very shiny and
metallic. She says I wish I saw it.
And then I said it was almost flashing.
So that was kind of in the moment, my like within a minute
of this occurring, you know, didI go and walk the 8 feet to pick
(25:11):
up my smartphone and take pictures of this?
No, I was totally mesmerized by the experience, especially after
like kind of waiting a lifetime and looking up for a lifetime
and then said, and you know, it's funny because I had this
calculus. I think it briefly flashed
through my head flash. I think I thought, should I go
grab my phone? And I think there was like, I
(25:33):
can't miss this. There's always a chance it's
just not there. If I turn away for a few seconds
and I have to take this in. It was a very strong feeling I
had. I need to pay attention with all
of my senses, and I need to really take this in.
And if I was trying to look at ascreen, and I hate people at
concerts who are like staring atthe screen.
(25:55):
And so, like, I'm very wired to not be that guy anyway.
And I'm like, this is probably the most interesting thing I've
ever seen in my life. I don't want to be looking at a
screen. I want to take it in.
So I I think I probably did makethe calculus very quickly to
like just put my focus on the experience and not taking photos
of it or trying to rummage for my camera.
(26:17):
And, you know, I in retrospect, I wondered, you know, maybe
that's why we don't see more photos and videos of these
things, especially the like close thing that's like looks
like a UFOA few 1000 feet away. Because it's like, yeah, that's
that's something you have not seen before.
And it is very distracting. And it does not seem kind of
(26:39):
like right or normal, like there's something very odd.
Still trying to process it you you haven't.
Absolutely. I don't remember any sounds
either. And normally I would hear the
sounds of an aircraft and I haveno recall of any sound
associated with this thing. And granted the TV was on, but I
don't think it like I would heara helicopter very loudly at that
(26:59):
distance. I would hear an airplane at that
distance. I don't remember any sound with
this thing. So maybe that even
subconsciously was like part of the weirdness of seeing
something in the sky that's a clearly a physical object.
So I'll, I'll give a little morecontext and that, you know, I'm
going to say this. I don't always add this element,
but you know, for for fullness sake, I suppose when it was the
(27:24):
last few moments and it's heading out and you know, it's
only a little sparkle at this point.
I had this like really the senselike I should try to like send
it a thought. I don't know why I had that
feeling or that urge, but I was like, what do I do in this last
few moments of seeing a freaking, you know, thing I can
(27:47):
only describe as a unidentified flying object or, you know,
unidentified anomalous phenomenain the sky out of my window.
Very clearly, you know, in this weird synchronistic moment of
the spacecraft returning, that Iwas, you know, you know,
watching on the TV stream. And I was like, I'll just send
it a mental message. I see you.
I see you. And then it went away.
(28:11):
And I was then I texted my mom. I walked back to my seat.
I sat down and sent the texts that I just I read you.
So you had left quite an impression after a lifetime of
being fixated on the UFO subject, especially with the
like, what do they call it? Not just the synchronicity, but
the the high strangeness factor that a lot of people talk about
(28:33):
in their UFO sightings. Not universal, but a lot of the
time there's these. I felt the urge to get up and
look out the window or somethingsynchronistic was occurring.
So I had that element, at least from my subjective experience,
From my perspective, it was a highly synchronistic moment.
And considering synchronicity is100% about your subjective
experience, I can say it was there was synchronicity
(28:55):
involved. And so I was obviously thinking
about this for the days afterwards.
I think one thought that came into my head, I don't know, it
was probably about a week later.I think I was taking a walk.
Maybe it was even just days later.
But I remember reading at one point that like one of one of
many phrases that ancient cultures have used for like the
(29:18):
cosmic beings is the Shining Ones.
And that was funny because shinywas sort of the main word that
stood out to me about this thing.
Not only was the the skin of it shiny in this metallic way, but
then it was like shining this light like it was, it was as
shiny as shiny can be. Like it was shiny.
(29:39):
And I was like the shining ones,a you know, so that was just a
thought that went through my head.
Then a few days after that, I think it was, I had this other
thought and I was actually stimulated to think this by
having watched the movie UFO. This was a dramatic movie came,
I don't know, it's probably 7-8,nine years old now.
(30:01):
It's Gillian Anderson. It's totally a good UFO movie,
like a fictional movie loosely based on the Chicago O'Hare
discoid sighting from early early 2000s.
It was like 2002. Three, four.
Something, I think it was six, yeah.
Yeah. So they made a dramatic movie
that was very loosely inspired by those events.
(30:21):
But one of the plot lines in themovie was that they got
recordings of air traffic, you know, between a pilot and, like,
the air traffic tower. And that was just like kind of a
plot in the movie that having gotten that audio from the
Internet. And I was like, I wonder if air
traffic logs are on the Internet.
It's 2020. Maybe that's a thing these days
(30:42):
because I was, you know, I, I wanted to also approach this as
a ufologist, right? Like I have to do the basics.
I have to kind of do the research, break it down.
And I think I had previously, years earlier had heard about
ADSB, but like kind of had forgotten it and did a couple
Google searches and was like, oh, that whole system came
(31:03):
online and is absolutely a thing.
So I went to Flight Radar 24, which I found within moments, I
knew the exact couple minute window of my sighting because of
its contemporaneousness with thesplashdown and even the text
messages that I had. So I know the two-minute window.
I mean, it was, you know, 246 tolet's even call it 250 or
(31:25):
whatever. You, you somewhere in that, that
range splashdown was 248. I think it was really about 2:47
to 2:48-ish. I was seeing this thing so you
can go and you can go to an exact moment in time and do it.
And you know, you have to, you convert, you know, daylight
savings, Eastern daylight savings to UTC, which all of
these sites use. I must have done the conversion
(31:46):
like 20 times to make sure I hadit right.
And there was, there was nothing.
There was like a very, very distant plane going the other
direction that at, at a distancethat would have been a speck in
the sky 'cause I know what thoselook like.
And you know, in the years sinceI used Flight Radar 24 and ADSB.
What is ADSB Exchange? So I've like looked at hundreds,
(32:07):
if not thousands probably of aircraft even out my windows,
but just out and about in general on those apps in the
years since. And it allows me to kind of
safely say, I think at the closest part of the sighting it
was probably 2500 to 3500 feet from my eyeballs because that is
about how clearly I can resolve other smaller aircraft.
(32:29):
And you know, I have a now this,this basis of comparison of
normal aircraft, none of which which looked like this thing or
you know, in any way behaved like it or the glint or any of
it. So it was interesting to see
sort of confirmed in the ADSB data.
And I've since gone back to ADSBExchange as well 'cause it's a
little bit of a fuller data set.They don't filter out as much of
(32:50):
the military traffic. I have noticed that sometimes
Flight Rider 24 filters out military flights and stuff.
So even on ADSB Exchange, there's, there's just nothing in
the region that this was in any way, shape or form.
Nothing. In fact, it was like almost
weirdly the empty airspace, you know, for miles.
And so so I was like, OK, doesn't seem like it was an
(33:13):
airplane that for some reason looked like a UFO for a minute.
So I got that piece of data. And again, it was just really
nice that I knew the exact couple of minutes of this thing
and I, you know, went a few minutes on either side and it
was nothing. And then some months, if not
even a year or two later, I looked up, you know, I wanted to
know what the wind speed was andthe direction, you know, because
balloons and land, it's a balloon or whatever.
(33:35):
And I did find that in hourly increments for Baltimore.
And while the wind was going, this object was going
northeasterly. The wind was going
northeasterly, but this object had to have been like well over
100 miles an hour. Like at the distance it
traversed the sky, it was, you know, helicopter speed or small
plane speed. So it was like much faster than
(33:56):
I think the like 7:00-ish miles an hour that the wind was.
So it wasn't some kind of dirigible being powered by the
wind or whatever, right, or moved by the wind.
Here's another funny aspect of the story.
I have like a decent camera set up, including a nice Tele zoom
lens, you know, Nikon and after this thing, this experience of
(34:17):
seeing this thing, I decided to set up a tripod.
I have AI, have a gimbal head. I, you know, a lens, a zoom, a
nice Nikon camera and I was likeready for the next one.
Like like I was like just, you know, eventually I ended up
taking it down because I think Iliterally overheard someone
walking by like talking about the camera up in my window.
(34:37):
And I was like, oh, this is thisis way like someone actually
even asked me at one point if I was a narc or something.
I was like, OK, I can't have a fancy see camera out out of my
window anymore. But I did have it for like
probably a month hanging out there.
And it's funny, several weeks after this sighting, I actually
saw a Mylar balloon go by in roughly the same kind of general
(35:00):
flight path and it looked totally different.
It was much smaller. It was bouncing a bit in the
wind. It wasn't like this smooth,
clearly under its own power kindof thing.
It was, you know, get much smaller.
The thing that I saw on August 2nd was clearly like small
airplane size. I even ended up going to a
little calculator app on some web page where you know, if you,
(35:22):
if you know the angular size of something, the distance to it,
you can calculate the diameter or whatever.
And you know, I played with all of the parameters and I kind of
you, you created handles on all of them.
Like I think it looked like an object of about this size.
And I think it was about this distance and it, and I think I,
(35:44):
you know, I could kind of remember about what the angular
size was, but I played with a few different calculations and
every possible permutation of the math I did kind of came to
the typical, I'll call it 10 to,you know, like 30m diameter from
(36:08):
tip to tip of this thing. So it was like, you know, UFO
size for most of these things, like, you know, 30-40, fifty
feet tip to tip and you're probably yeah, and like probably
a few 1000 feet away. And again, that's kind of since
been confirmed by watching just hundreds and hundreds of
(36:30):
aircraft and looking at the app and kind of, you know,
remembering what it looked like.And I'm, I'm glad I took it in
so viscerally because it's pretty easy to remember.
And I will say this too, I can'tvouch for the photos.
The guy, his entire history of posting many weird UFO photos
and videos, but there's a guy inMexico who goes by Juanito 1 and
(36:53):
he captures all sorts of stuff where he claims 2.
And there's one set of images, Ithink he took three images of
this purported object that he saw near where he lives in
Mexico that looked just like what I remember my object
looking like. It's just this perfectly shiny
silver ellipsoid, kind of looks like a disc from the side, but
(37:15):
you know, it's a little vague because it's so shiny.
His pictures were on a much moreovercast day and it looks a
little darker than I remember the thing that I saw 'cause it
was a very bright light day, butit looked like very similar,
like a shiny metallic ellipsoid looking thing that has no
discernible features. You know, what's funny to me
(37:36):
about you saying that is that the people who who who say,
well, one, either one could be hoaxing his photographs by, you
know, taking hubcaps and throwing them up in the sky.
It's so interesting that you know for a fact that yours was
not a hubcap in the sky because its behavior couldn't have
possibly be accounted for in that way.
So it would be really unusual ifsomebody could produce the same
(37:58):
sort of very strange observational, you know, results
from a from a hoax. And you know, it's funny, there
are some toys. In fact, I even got a few in the
wake of this because I wanted tohave objects that that in some
way resemble this. And give me two seconds, I'll go
grab the two that I, I found. The first thing I found, The
(38:18):
first thing I found I was, I think I was looking Googling or
on Amazon, I was looking for like shiny metallic ellipsoid.
And the first thing I found is this very interesting toy, which
is literally a shiny metallic ellipsoid.
I don't think the dimensions arequite right.
The one I saw was not quite thisratio.
In fact, this is the golden meanand this is actually a top.
(38:40):
It's a very interesting toy I found when I looked up shiny
metallic ellipsoid. And this is a toy where if you
spin it at a quick enough rate of turn of spin, it will
actually stand up on its end andthen enter a very controlled
spin on its tip. And I'll see if I can still do
it. That wasn't a good one.
(39:05):
Well, I can usually still do it.I'm not doing it really well.
So anyway, then there's these other things that a lot of
people probably be familiar with.
They come in pairs and they're magnets and you can kind of like
they make this funny sound when you throw them up and it, you
know, zings together. So like this also kind of looks
like it. But I'd say maybe this is almost
a little too elongated. So if you think of something
(39:28):
that's a little closer to the brighter one in color, maybe a
little longer like the magnet, but this is sort of the family
of of object and what it looked like.
And it's like, you know, someonecould fake that or whatever.
But here's what I can say. As you just said, I know that
sometimes people see aircraft size objects that look like
(39:52):
those shiny metallic ellipsoid toys, tops, magnets, or
whatever. For real.
They're not hubcaps. They're not toys thrown in the
air. They might have other strange
effects, like strange light effects like like the glinting
glimmering thing that I saw. They sometimes are seen at
moments of high synchronicity, you know, like like when I saw
(40:14):
the one I saw. So you know, I can't, again, I
can't vouch for Juanita one, butI can tell you that that thing
looks just like what I saw. So if people go and find his
photo and it just looks like a very shiny metallic ellipsoid
and it's like 3 and you see likea shack over the across the
street that it's above. That's just more or less what,
(40:35):
what the one I saw looked like. So, you know, I, I analyzed it,
I looked at it. I haven't seen anything like
that since. But that was my sighting.
And it made me, you know, I was pretty sure that UFOs were real.
I've been researching this sinceI was a kid.
But like, it was funny to have that palpable experience of
(40:56):
seeing one and then being able to kind of research my own
sighting as a ufologist and, and, you know, frankly, it only
becoming more mysterious throughthat process.
So, you know, that's that was myexciting story.
I don't know what to say. I still kind of get a little
giddy and weird thinking about it.
(41:16):
And I'll just end with this if I'll answer any questions you
might have. But like I look out of these
windows every day. This happened in my living room.
Like I'm on the. 2nd, unfamiliarobservational conditions like
you were in your home. Well, and not just that though.
It's like I wanted to see one ofthese my whole life.
And I didn't even have to leave the seat I sit in most of the
(41:39):
time. And like, I didn't even have to
change my gaze. Like it came into my peripheral
vision as I was watching TV. Like I didn't have to go
anywhere to see a UFO, even though, like, you know, you
would think I'm going to see this taking a hike in the woods.
I'll see something weird somedayor wherever.
(42:02):
No, like my UFO sighting was sitting at home in the chair I
sit in most of the time and it like entered my peripheral
vision. Came to you.
That's so as I've been doing these interviews, I don't want
to drag the conversation too long because I do want people to
to listen to the longer version,which goes into much more detail
about all the questions you might have.
(42:24):
But as I've been doing this interviews, I've gotten to sort
of compare and contrast people'sexperiences.
And yours is in so many ways like a totally contrasting to a
guy named Mike Pritchard to who I've also interviewed who's an
SCU member. Because you both saw these sort
of shiny objects that are just seem like purely geometric and
(42:45):
don't have any features on them.But while you were absorbed in
the experience and felt like youwanted to kind of stay with it
and didn't feel like you wanted to knock yourself out of that
mode and take a picture of it orwhatever, his was exactly
opposite. He immediately had this sense of
urgency that like, I can't be here.
I have something important to do.
(43:06):
And he had absolutely nothing important to do.
And they like drove him away from the experience.
And those, it's like they're these we, we get frustrated when
people say, well, I saw it, but I didn't take a picture of it.
But we have to recognize that there's like a sort of depth of
mode of experience that you're in when you encounter something
that's so far out of the range of like normal content of
(43:32):
experience that you have. It's not just like a visual
visually strange thing. It's strange in all sorts of
ways. And your mind is like trying to
integrate it. And then it seems like they're
effects that these things can have on you, whether it's
directional, whether it's intentional or not.
But the effects can be so deep and and strange and lasting that
it's, it's really striking to me.
(43:54):
Yeah, it was a very surreal experience to see something
that, again, in a backdrop that you're very familiar with,
especially when it has some meaning to you.
And then it's there and it's just kind of silently doing its
thing and making a weird light. And you know, again, the
synchronicity it, you know, whenpeople say these are more like
religious experiences or or somesurreal thing or like a dream
(44:16):
like it, it very much is more like those things than a typical
day-to-day experience. You're not in a normal mindset
because it catches you so off guard, especially if you're not
expecting it. Who who's expecting this?
So, you know, I understand why there aren't more pictures even
just through that component alone of people being very
(44:39):
wrapped up in the experience andnot responding in a way that
they normally would staring or again, wondering like, where am
I? What's going on right now?
So those are very real, you know, and reasonable, I think
responses to having a totally surreal experience.
And a person couldn't be more wired to expect, you know, to to
(45:00):
be have a UFO and then be like, oh, here's a UFO and like I am
that guy. And yet I was completely caught
up in it and just in awe, just like anyone else would be who
sees something really strange. And, you know, I did put in
MUFON cases and a NU 4 case. There are no others from that
day. And that that's a whole other
(45:21):
set of questions, obviously. And people like, oh, do you
think anyone else saw it? And it's like, how am I supposed
to know? First of all, no one, really, no
one other than weird UFO geeks knows that there's things like
MUFON and New Fork. This is Baltimore where there's
like police helicopters overheadall the time.
And most people are not looking up at air traffic.
You know, it was for a Sunday afternoon, it was pretty quiet.
(45:41):
There weren't a ton of people out, even though it was a nice
day and not, you know, obviouslyI'm not in a position to say
whether anyone else saw this thing, but there were no other
reports that I'm aware of, so itis what it is.
You're pretty sure it was a physical object.
Yeah, yeah. It was just entirely consistent
with how I would see physical objects in the sky, how I do see
(46:05):
physical objects again, I think that's part of the reason why I
did the little like reality check tests a few times of
looking away from the window andback and you know, it moved in a
very consistent way. It it, it wasn't zigging or
zagging or doing any erratic movement.
There's a small chance that it was closer to a hover when it
was in the position where I was distracted by it initially.
(46:28):
I can't say that for sure, but Ijust feel like, you know, I I
can't say for sure whether it had the same velocity the entire
time I saw it. It could have changed the rate
of travel, but I. Didn't mean to ask if it was
physical in in order to doubt your experience so that I may
have the sense of like it did. It just seem like the surface
was so perfect that it had no features in the way that maybe.
(46:53):
I mean, I think that's what madeit so strange was it's other
than being shiny metallic and making that glinting, flashing
light like it clearly did not look like.
I mean, I've seen blimps at close distances many times.
Like, in fact, I'm kind of a blimp geek in addition to UFO
and aircraft geek. I've even flown a helicopter.
I used to take helicopter lessons for a little while and
(47:14):
happened to be at an airfield where there was the Goodyear
blimp once. And I'm like really within
proximity of the giant, you know, Goodyear blimp flying
around in a little Robinson R22 helicopter.
So I've been around airships andblimps and dirigibles and like
this didn't look like any of those in any way, shape or form.
But you know, just because it's perfect and, and, you know, it
(47:35):
had a very metallic sense to it.And whatever this light was,
whether it was generating it, whether it was a glint, whether
it's a plasma effect, I can't comment on any of that.
I, I just know what it looked like to me.
It was very real and palpable and, and, and physical in the
sense that light is is a property of physics.
So I have every reason to feel there was a physical object of
(48:00):
some sort in the sky. You know, it looked like the
kind of thing that if it was landed in the parking lot across
the street, you could walk up toand knock on.
There was nothing dreamy about the object.
There was nothing translucent. I mean, it looked like a very
clear, like shiny, like those old World War 2 bombers and some
(48:25):
of them had the shiny metallic, you know, steel surface.
Like it looked like that but without seams or anything.
It looked very perfect. But like it looked like metal on
the side. It didn't look like plasma,
although I don't know what that would look like as an aircraft
'cause that's not a human thing we do.
But it definitely looked like a palpable physical thing going
(48:48):
through the sky but not making any noise and, you know, doing
it's UFO thing. Fascinating.
Thank you so much for telling the story.
But I encourage everybody to listen to the much longer
version of our conversation where we get to ask very
detailed questions about what itmight have been and the the sort
of context of ideas in which youinterpret your experience, which
I think is the part that I want to focus on in these in this
(49:12):
series, or at least in the longer version of these
interviews. Because the hard and fast like
MUFON and new fork reports pair down experiences to a few data
points. And that's not the, that's not
the character of these experiences.
They're very strange and very rich and personal and laden with
ideas and significance. And so thanks for being open and
(49:35):
willing to explore those questions with us.
Well, it's a pleasure. And again, I, I want to be
really clear, like I can't tell anyone listening to this what
that thing was. Some people get very vehement
about it was this or that or whether they're talking about
their own experiences or someoneelse's experience.
Oh, that was definitely the Pleiadians and blah, blah.
It's like I have no interest in,in taking a stand.
(49:57):
I saw what I saw. It was very abnormal.
It didn't look like any human constructed object I've ever
seen. I can't think of any reason why
on a sunny Sunday afternoon flying over the middle of
Baltimore City, you'd have some top secret experimental
aircraft. And it's like, again, I can't
tell you that this was the case.But subjectively, and that's
(50:18):
what these experiences seem to be about, emphasizing the
subjective first person experience of those who have
them, it kind of felt like it was for me.
I'm not saying it was, but from my point of view, how could I
not have that experience being alifelong UFO enthusiast and
watching the spacecraft return on TV and then this thing out
(50:39):
the window And it like, it felt staged.
And, you know, maybe there's something about the subjective
experience itself we need to delve into with these things.
And I know it's tempting to wantto have more objective
scientific data, and I think that would be great.
And I think it's like, you know,I'm probably could have taken a
(51:00):
picture of this thing, although I wonder if the glinting might
have messed with auto focus. Who knows?
But, you know, the subjectivity of these experiences seems like
almost is being emphasized by the nature of the.
Experiences. You know, the lack of objective
(51:21):
data. There is objective data about
UFOs, but the fact that it's notoverwhelming at this point, it's
almost like, but we do have overwhelming subjective
experiences around these things.And maybe, maybe there's
something to that. Yeah, maybe we're being guided
to that. I don't know.
But thank you for giving me thisopportunity to share my strange
experience. Absolutely.
(51:42):
Thank you for being here, Nick. The Anomalous Review is a
project of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies.
It's hosted and produced by me, Michael Blossom, and edited by
Kelly Mishfeld. Our theme song is written and
performed by Telma Chrisanti. Communication and PR work is by
Preston Dykes. Our advisory team includes
Jennifer Roach, Robert Powell, Richard Hoffman, Joshua Pearson
(52:03):
and Larry Hancock. To find out more about SU, check
out Explorer scu.org.
Welcome to The Anomalous Review,the official podcast of the
Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies.
My name is Michael Glawson. I'm a philosopher of science and
technology and the host of the show.
This conversation is part of a special series on the anomalous
review that we're calling the UAP Witness series.
Let me tell you a bit about it. In this series, I interview SCU
(00:43):
members who've had their own personal encounters with truly
anomalous phenomena. These conversations are a new
format for us as an organization.
SCU leans toward a hard science approach to studying UAP.
That means using quantitative data that fits into
spreadsheets, and they can be analyzed with consistent
statistical methods. Things like the size, shape,
(01:05):
acoustical and kinetic properties of UAP.
That's the kind of data that SCUspecializes in.
Now, that's partly because of our skill set.
Most of our members are working scientists and engineers, so
we're used to using that kind ofdata and those sorts of
analytical tools. But this approach also serves as
a kind of hedge that keeps soberdiscussions about UAP from
(01:29):
falling into unstructured or even unreasonable speculation.
You probably know the kind of conversations that I mean.
We like structured investigations that employ the
tools that we're familiar with. But it would be a mistake to
think that we in SU focus on thehard data points simply because
we think that that's all there is to these phenomena.
(01:52):
Every one of those data points, after all, comes from an
encounter that was deeply and uniquely personal.
And these encounters are far richer, stranger, and more
complex than the numbers in the spreadsheet might ever suggest.
The tools of quantitative analysis just aren't great for
analysing those unique experiential dimensions, though.
(02:12):
So for our analytic work at SCU,we usually just set the rich
elements of those stories aside.But shortly after we launched
this podcast, SCU leaders told me that there are several SCU
members who'd had their own encounters with UAP.
And after a few conversations, we decided let's invite those
members to tell their stories just as they experienced them,
(02:34):
along with all the questions andideas that those encounters gave
rise to. Encounters like these are, after
all, the source of our hard datapoints.
And inviting people to tell their stories here is a way of
showing what's on the other sideof the spreadsheets, the unique,
complex, deeply strange and often unsettling experiences
that push us to ask questions that data-driven analytical
(02:56):
methods aren't always fit to tackle.
But let me just say this clearlyacknowledging the strangeness of
these encounters and giving people space to tell them as
they live them is in no way a departure from SUS data-driven
scientific mission. But it's meant to complement
that mission by acknowledging the very elements of our source
(03:16):
material that often compelled usto want to do the scientific
work in the 1st place. This is an expression of the
conviction that doing good science means holding on to
intellectual humility before a reality that's under no
obligations to conform to our expectations or to our tools.
And that means facing reality asit comes, even and especially
(03:39):
when it challenges our frameworks.
We're putting out two versions of each interview.
There's a full length conversation and then a short
partial edit. For those who may not have time
to commit to the full conversation just yet, this is a
short version. In it, you'll get a quick
outline of the guests experiencealong with the taste of the
(03:59):
deeper discussion that we had inthe full conversation.
These encounters are full of strange, fascinating detail, and
if this version grabs you even alittle, we really encourage you
to check out the full interview.But since the full versions go
really deep, we wanted to make these shorter ones available
too. Mick Gold is a media and
(04:19):
information technologist based in Baltimore, MD.
He's worked with major broadcasters, studios,
government agencies, and biotechstart-ups.
He's been a contributing member of the Scientific Coalition for
UAP Studies and Harvard University's Galileo Project,
and he's the founder of Declassify UAP, an organization
(04:41):
that's helped US voters advocatefor government transparency
around the UAP subject and that has so far driven over 25,000
calls and letters to Washington,DC.
You can find out more about Network or voice your own
support for uaptransparency@declassifyuap.org.
Nick is a stunningly smart thinker.
(05:03):
Then our conversations weave together his interests in
philosophy, the nature of mind, synchronicity, and the political
dimensions of the UAP phenomena.That was a treat for me because
those are all subjects that I also want to bring into the
general discourse around UAP. So we really get to stretch our
legs in these conversations. I hope you enjoy that.
(05:24):
Remember, there are two different versions of each of
these UAP Witness interviews. There's a condensed conversation
that just covers some details ofthe encounter.
And there's a full length deep dive conversation that goes into
all of the details and where I ask lots of questions.
This is the condensed version. If you like it, look for the
(05:44):
full length version. Here now is my conversation with
Nick Gold. Thanks for joining us.
And we have Nick Gold here. Nick and I recorded a very
thorough version of this conversation a few weeks ago.
And SEU has decided we want to have both long and short
versions of these conversations,these stories of SEU members
(06:06):
who've had their own encounters with the anomalous.
But I don't think it's my place to edit down other people's
stories. So what we've decided to do is
record a second, shorter, sort of Cliff Notes version of the
conversation for people who don't have more than an hour to
devote to the long version. Right now though, I think that
once you listen to this, you will want to listen to the long
(06:29):
version because we go into a lotof the relevant details and
interesting questions that inevitably arise whenever you
hear somebody talking about an experience that falls so far
outside of the range of normal day-to-day.
So thank you, Nick for being here.
And I just want to let you take it away and tell us about the
your history of experiences withthe anomalous.
(06:51):
Well, thank you so much for having me, Michael.
And it's it's kind of fun to tell the story.
I've told it, you know, many times to different people,
friends, family, some SEU members, other people just I've
met through kind of UAP world, UFO world.
And it's a strange 1. You know, I'll just I'll tell it
as it occurred. I think, you know, for folks who
(07:12):
are interested in kind of how I interpreted it a little more
fully listening to that longer version will be useful because
there was literally like 42 years of life context that kind
of was an important aspect of how I viewed that experience.
So we'll save that. And you know, folks can kind of
go there, but I will now tell you exactly what happened.
(07:34):
It's also kind of easy to tell this story in some ways because
I was literally sitting in the exact seat I'm sitting in right
now. I live in Baltimore, MD.
I'm in the city and then in the northern part of Baltimore, a
few minutes walk from from a Johns Hopkins Homewood campus.
It's a little to the West of me.I have a little Baltimore row
home, one of the smaller ones. These are the connected houses
(07:54):
that kind of fill a block. Mine is just two floors.
It's about 13 feet wide and 40 something feet deep.
I've got 3 windows that I'm looking at right now that just
look over the Baltimore City sky.
Again, not high rises or anything, but I have a parking
lot across the street from me. So instead of like buildings
right up against me across the street, I have like a really
(08:14):
kind of nice view of just kind of the eastern and then if I
look at an angle, the southeastern or northeastern
Baltimore sky. And, you know, I've been an
airplane buff for my entire lifeor aircraft buff.
I see tons of aircraft out here.You know, I have police
helicopters, medevac helicopters.
And this is like an everyday occurrence because I have a
(08:35):
hospital right, a couple blocks from me that helicopters are
landing on all the time. Police helicopters are very
active both in Baltimore generally and sometimes in my
neighborhood. It's, it's a good neighborhood,
but still there's, there's some action.
And, you know, we've had all sorts of aircraft and this is an
important part of the context because like seeing aircraft out
of these windows is an everyday kind of a thing.
(08:57):
Like as an aircraft buff, I'll pay attention if there's a
helicopter kind of nearby, especially if it's really close
or it's circling or doing whatever.
But we've had everything. I see flights coming in and out
of BWI airport. I have all sorts of traffic
that, you know, sometimes just goes right over my house that's
not even coming into the Baltimore airport, but it's just
like going over the city. And I seem to be on kind of a
(09:19):
flight path, you know, so I can see those jets going, you know,
over my house or near. I see weird things like we had a
pilot project of a spy plane in Baltimore a number of years ago.
It was using like a military sensor on a small aircraft that
would just circled for hours andhours and hours over Baltimore.
And the sensor could see like a third of the city or whatever.
(09:40):
And you know, everyone's a. Little surveillance things it
takes. Yes, it was a surveillance
project and you know, they didn't end up continue doing it.
But you know, the pilot was to kind of see if they could solve
crimes. You know, even if people are
dots and, you know, cars or a little grain of rice, if you
know where a crime occurred and you know that that was probably
the car involved in a carjacking, you can follow it
(10:01):
across the city and see exactly where it went and things like
that. Back in time and see where it
came. From so that aircraft used to
circle over and you would hear it whining on days where there
was like cloud cover and it had to fly a little lower.
And then like one of the weirderthings was years ago there was a
Navy, another sensor project, but this one was looking out
over the East Coast, I believe. I think it was the J Lens
(10:23):
project. And Navy had a couple of giant
airships that were, were moored near Aberdeen Proving Ground.
And like one of them, I think you could see out of my window
and it was like for like a year or whatever and like.
A blimp, right? Yeah, And they had two of these.
One of them got away and like went over to like the the
(10:44):
Maryland, Pennsylvania line. Some police force, I think was
shooting it with like shotguns at one point to bring it down
like. So I've just seen all sorts of
weird stuff out of my windows for the now, I've been here 18
years. This incident happened five
years ago. So I would have been here for 13
years at that point or roughly. And again, it's like air traffic
is just so regular and so common.
(11:06):
Nothing really tends to distractvery much.
So that's that's important context.
So let's rewind. It is Sunday, August 2nd, 2020.
I'm sitting in this chair. My television is is on one wall.
The three windows are kind of caddy cornered to it.
So I was on my laptop. I was pivoted kind of looking at
(11:28):
my TVI had done. I'm I'm part of a meditation and
spiritual community in Baltimore.
They're called awake yoga meditation.
This was, you know, COVID year, so we were still doing our
Sunday services on zoom. That starts at 11.
It wrapped up a few minutes after noon.
I had my laptop on my lap and I was like, OK, it's a beautiful
(11:49):
summer day. I'm going to go take a walk.
It's perfectly clear and sunny out, really nice day.
I'm going to go outside. And then what I noticed, you
know, maybe just checking the web or whatever, I saw that the
SpaceX Crew Dragon was a couple hours from splashing down.
Now, it had gone up a couple months earlier.
People might remember the two space dads.
(12:11):
And it was sort of an interesting Space Flight because
it was the first kind of privateflight that was going to take
actual astronauts up to the ISS.And I had tried to watch that
launch, but it got weather delayed.
And I never ended up seeing themgo up a few days later whenever
they ended up launching. So like, here I am on my laptop.
I'm about to go outside, but I'mlike, oh, they're a couple hours
(12:33):
from coming back. I'm going to watch.
I'm going to watch the return. I saw that SpaceX and NASA,
we're doing a stream. You know, I was like, I'll take
a walk a little later in the afternoon.
I really wanted to see them makeit back.
I really wanted to see them go up and I missed that.
So I was like, OK, this is this is cool.
I'm going to have this going andsurf the web for a couple hours,
etcetera. So I put the stream up, the NASA
(12:54):
stream on my TV. It's on, you know, going on my
Apple TV box, you know, 65 inch TV.
So it's kind of big and I kind of have it in the background and
you know, they were still like alittle over 2 hours away from
coming down from splashdown whenI kind of tuned in.
So what am I doing? I've got my laptop on my lap,
(13:14):
Dorking around on the Internet, got the stream up on my TV.
I've, you know, chatting with mymom and my brother a little bit
on messages, like just doing some web surfing and like
2:00-ish plus hours goes by and I'm just kind of doing that the
whole time. And here we are.
It's like down to the wire. This is they were coming down
(13:36):
into the Gulf of Mexico. You know, it was a water landing
or splashdown. You know, we were at the point
where they had gone through thatperiod of re entry where they
lose radio contact. I guess that's when they start
hitting the atmosphere and like turns into a fireball and like
the, the radio comms are down. So then like, they get through
that, and they're back on radio and you're like, yeah.
(13:57):
And, you know, it's proceeding. They're like chasing away, you
know, And again, I'm just watching the stream of this, but
they're like chasing away private boats that had
congregated, kind of realizing that something interesting was
like, you have to go away. A spaceship is about to splash
down here. And, you know, that was going on
and here we are. And I'm like, you know, I've
always been interested in spaceflight as well as
aeronautics. And like, you know, I was like
(14:19):
kind of on the edge of my sea, the little emotional.
And this was kind of kind of a palpable interesting moment in
human spaceflight because it waskind of shifting to this more
private endeavour. And, you know, that was a cool
thing to to watch. And it seemed felt a little
historic, like maybe a new era of of human just access to space
or just, you know, in general. So it's about a minute from
(14:40):
splashdown. The module has spouted its its
parachutes. They have switched from an
aircraft based zoomed in camera view to a shipboard camera view,
which was a slightly clearer video.
And we're seeing this thing and it's, it's about, you know, T -,
1 minute to splash down or whatever.
(15:02):
And here I am and I'm, I'm, I'm watching my TV and I can have
these, these windows looking over the Eastern Baltimore sky
kind of in just my peripheral vision when I'm watching my
television because, you know, they're at a right angle, right?
And like all of my attention forhours has been building up to
this, this moment, this like last minute of watching them
splash down successfully and getting out.
(15:24):
And then I can take my walk and it's a beautiful day.
And I kind of want to do that. But I'm also really, you know,
riveted by this, this, this event.
And like, the parachutes are out.
You know, they switched the camera view.
As I said, they're, they're really like within a minute.
And I see something through one of my windows, in my peripheral
(15:44):
vision, in the actual Baltimore sky outside of my house, that
started to distract me right in like the one minute that this
has all been building up to. Within seconds of.
Like, and like, as I was saying that, you know, part of the
context, we're talking about allthe aircraft I see.
It's like, things don't tend to distract me, especially if I'm
(16:05):
really riveted on what I'm watching on my television.
Like an aircraft flying by wouldn't catch my attention.
Even a helicopter wouldn't catchmy attention, but there was
something about whatever I was seeing out of my left eye kind
of in my peripheral vision that was like kind of demanding my
attention is the way I put it. Like it was something that was
(16:25):
like distracting me from from even being able to concentrate
fully on the last minute of of the spacecraft coming down.
So I had to make this like splitsecond decision.
Am I going to like distract any of my attention from the TV and
like actually figure out why this thing in the sky outside of
my house is distracting me? And I was like, OK, I'm going to
look. I'm going to look.
(16:46):
So I kind of like am getting closer to the TV as I walk, you
know, the 8 feet to my window here from the side of the room.
I'm kind of like trying to pay attention to the TV.
It's like the spacecraft is returning and saying all the
typical things you would expect of a spacecraft coming back to
Earth. It's got the announcers and
everything. And they're, they're talking
about here's the spacecraft and all of that.
(17:10):
And I look out of my window and this thing that I saw was unlike
any other thing I have ever seenin the sky before or since.
It was a lenticular shiny metallic silver ellipsoid.
I would say it to me it looked like seeing a disc from the
(17:33):
side. Now it clearly had like kind of,
you know, a height to it. So it wasn't like sliver thin it
it really looked like an ellipsoid from or, you know,
lenticular shape from the angle I was seeing it.
I don't remember it having it like sharp edges at the ends.
It like might have rounded out alittle.
(17:54):
Again, for people watching the video, maybe this kind of an
aspect ratio like a 3 1/2 to 1, you know, with from end to end
to height as close as like closeaircraft that I see going over
my house. So, you know, probably a few
1000 feet away when it was at its closest and it was at its
closest when I first saw it. So the TV is saying things about
(18:18):
the spaceship and I'd look out and I see this thing.
And I've been a lifelong UFO enthusiast since I was at least
8 and saw Flight of the Navigator.
I mean, if not even younger thanthat, I'm sure I saw ET before
that. So I mean pretty much a lifer at
this, you know, and I see the shiny silver disc like thing.
No, no appendages, no wings, no little bubble on top.
(18:41):
It was just a perfectly shiny silver metallic object.
And you know, I couldn't fully make out whether it was a disc
way to being seen from the side because it was so highly
reflective. Like you could really just kind
of see it as shiny and metallic.It was also making and it made
this light, well, I'll explain it more in a second, but I saw
(19:06):
this light associated with it the entire time of the sighting.
It might have been part of what distracted me.
I can't say that for sure, but it might have been part of why
it got my attention when it was in the window.
So from the upper right hand corner quadrant, as I was
looking at it, not quite on the edge of the object, like not
right on the edge of it, but like down a little bit from
(19:27):
there, it was making what I'll call a glimmering glint.
So in a regularly brightly flashing, but glint like light
that like I could almost see like the rays off of it was like
like the the IT felt like it wasflashing at me.
And for the first probably 1015 seconds.
(19:49):
First of all, I'm so discombobulated by the TV kind
of a providing a semi appropriate soundtrack.
Like here comes the spaceship. I the glint was distracting,
like it was literally kind of mesmerizing and it was ongoing
it again, it wasn't on off. It was this irregular glimmering
glint. And for the 1st 1015 seconds I'm
(20:10):
like, is that a reflection of the sun or is it making that
light? And like my thinking was sort of
caught up on that very particular dynamic.
And then I sort of like snapped to it, if you will, And I was
like, huh? And I'm.
Distracted by the TV talking about the spacecraft returning,
(20:31):
I definitely remember looking away from the window and back a
few times to like make sure it was still there.
And it was. It was like a consistent object
in the sky. I think I even pinched myself at
one point almost like jokingly and I started to almost go into
this like goofy mode like ha ha ha ha ha ha.
(20:52):
Like I can't believe out of a lifetime of waiting to see
something in the sky, I'm in my living room.
I'm watching ATV broadcast of a spacecraft returning to Earth.
I've been waiting for over 2 hours to watch this thing splash
down and just in the perfect minute before it comes down, I'm
having what I can only think of.This must be a UFO sighting.
(21:13):
Like I'm, I'm, I'm even like thinking about it that way.
I'm like, this must be what those people who see UFOs are
seeing. Like it was this very
discombobulating experience and,and funny and absurd.
I, it felt humorous to me that it was occurring in those
circumstances. Like it kind of felt like a
little bit of a, a prank or a cosmic joke.
(21:37):
And I had this thing from the moment I got to the window and
kind of it went away like it wasgoing to the Northeast.
Perfectly clear day again. I could resolve this thing quite
well. It just was like hard to tell
what it was. No wings or structures that
would make it look anything likean air like an airplane or
whatever. It really just was like this
shiny silver metallic lozenge looking thing making this really
(22:00):
weird glinting light. The light was actually the last
of it I saw. Again.
The sighting was probably, if I had to guess, 40 seconds to a
minute ish tops. And the last I saw of this thing
going to the northeast was the glimmering glint like in the
middle of the afternoon. Very bright.
Like it never stopped making this weird irregularly flashing
(22:22):
light or or reflecting the sun if that's what it was.
I can't tell you what the light source actually was.
But even as it was going off into the distance and the last
thing I saw that was like this twinkling star in the sky in the
middle of the afternoon, I was like, it's got to be making that
light. There's no way it could have be,
could be reflecting the sun so much.
(22:43):
The whole time I'm seeing this, I've never seen a glint off of
an aircraft happen that way. Like you see them briefly like
for a moment and then. Be so sustained.
This was totally sustained despite its irregularity, but
again, ongoingly kind of glinting, flashing and it to the
point where like it looked like a twinkling star before it
(23:04):
disappeared into the distance. I was like, it had to have been
making that flash so you know, it it, it went away.
I immediately and I have recordsof this stuff.
I texted my mom like a minute later 'cause we had been
chatting even a few minutes earlier.
In fact, I went back to the message chat.
UFOs had even been a topic of conversation and yes, that is
(23:25):
something I talk to my mom aboutsemi regularly.
But like we had even been hitting it on the UFO topic not
too many minutes before and I'm like, I really think I just saw
a UFO out of my window. In fact, if you give me two
seconds, I can tell you what theexact words I I used were
because I have a little folder of my data associated with the
(23:46):
sighting. If I can find it here.
I thought I had it. Oh, there it is, August 2020 UAP
sighting. So here is the text with mom and
I have time stamps on it too. So the splashdown, according to
(24:08):
records, was 248. And I said something to her at
2:46. I said so cool to watch it
coming down at 2:46. And then my mom said she was
watching the stream too. Once I told her about it from
her house in Massachusetts, I was like she said space dads
love it. Now we have to wait an hour
before they emerge and she's referring to them coming out of
(24:28):
the capsule. And then at 2:51 I responded to
her and I said I just saw something very weird fly by
outside just as they landed. It was very strange.
And then my next message at alsoat 2:51, it looked like a UFO
and then like emoji I I added. And then she responded with the
(24:51):
emoji with the star eyes and I said it looked very shiny and
metallic. She says I wish I saw it.
And then I said it was almost flashing.
So that was kind of in the moment, my like within a minute
of this occurring, you know, didI go and walk the 8 feet to pick
(25:11):
up my smartphone and take pictures of this?
No, I was totally mesmerized by the experience, especially after
like kind of waiting a lifetime and looking up for a lifetime
and then said, and you know, it's funny because I had this
calculus. I think it briefly flashed
through my head flash. I think I thought, should I go
grab my phone? And I think there was like, I
(25:33):
can't miss this. There's always a chance it's
just not there. If I turn away for a few seconds
and I have to take this in. It was a very strong feeling I
had. I need to pay attention with all
of my senses, and I need to really take this in.
And if I was trying to look at ascreen, and I hate people at
concerts who are like staring atthe screen.
(25:55):
And so, like, I'm very wired to not be that guy anyway.
And I'm like, this is probably the most interesting thing I've
ever seen in my life. I don't want to be looking at a
screen. I want to take it in.
So I I think I probably did makethe calculus very quickly to
like just put my focus on the experience and not taking photos
of it or trying to rummage for my camera.
(26:17):
And, you know, I in retrospect, I wondered, you know, maybe
that's why we don't see more photos and videos of these
things, especially the like close thing that's like looks
like a UFOA few 1000 feet away. Because it's like, yeah, that's
that's something you have not seen before.
And it is very distracting. And it does not seem kind of
(26:39):
like right or normal, like there's something very odd.
Still trying to process it you you haven't.
Absolutely. I don't remember any sounds
either. And normally I would hear the
sounds of an aircraft and I haveno recall of any sound
associated with this thing. And granted the TV was on, but I
don't think it like I would heara helicopter very loudly at that
(26:59):
distance. I would hear an airplane at that
distance. I don't remember any sound with
this thing. So maybe that even
subconsciously was like part of the weirdness of seeing
something in the sky that's a clearly a physical object.
So I'll, I'll give a little morecontext and that, you know, I'm
going to say this. I don't always add this element,
but you know, for for fullness sake, I suppose when it was the
(27:24):
last few moments and it's heading out and you know, it's
only a little sparkle at this point.
I had this like really the senselike I should try to like send
it a thought. I don't know why I had that
feeling or that urge, but I was like, what do I do in this last
few moments of seeing a freaking, you know, thing I can
(27:47):
only describe as a unidentified flying object or, you know,
unidentified anomalous phenomenain the sky out of my window.
Very clearly, you know, in this weird synchronistic moment of
the spacecraft returning, that Iwas, you know, you know,
watching on the TV stream. And I was like, I'll just send
it a mental message. I see you.
I see you. And then it went away.
(28:11):
And I was then I texted my mom. I walked back to my seat.
I sat down and sent the texts that I just I read you.
So you had left quite an impression after a lifetime of
being fixated on the UFO subject, especially with the
like, what do they call it? Not just the synchronicity, but
the the high strangeness factor that a lot of people talk about
(28:33):
in their UFO sightings. Not universal, but a lot of the
time there's these. I felt the urge to get up and
look out the window or somethingsynchronistic was occurring.
So I had that element, at least from my subjective experience,
From my perspective, it was a highly synchronistic moment.
And considering synchronicity is100% about your subjective
experience, I can say it was there was synchronicity
(28:55):
involved. And so I was obviously thinking
about this for the days afterwards.
I think one thought that came into my head, I don't know, it
was probably about a week later.I think I was taking a walk.
Maybe it was even just days later.
But I remember reading at one point that like one of one of
many phrases that ancient cultures have used for like the
(29:18):
cosmic beings is the Shining Ones.
And that was funny because shinywas sort of the main word that
stood out to me about this thing.
Not only was the the skin of it shiny in this metallic way, but
then it was like shining this light like it was, it was as
shiny as shiny can be. Like it was shiny.
(29:39):
And I was like the shining ones,a you know, so that was just a
thought that went through my head.
Then a few days after that, I think it was, I had this other
thought and I was actually stimulated to think this by
having watched the movie UFO. This was a dramatic movie came,
I don't know, it's probably 7-8,nine years old now.
(30:01):
It's Gillian Anderson. It's totally a good UFO movie,
like a fictional movie loosely based on the Chicago O'Hare
discoid sighting from early early 2000s.
It was like 2002. Three, four.
Something, I think it was six, yeah.
Yeah. So they made a dramatic movie
that was very loosely inspired by those events.
(30:21):
But one of the plot lines in themovie was that they got
recordings of air traffic, you know, between a pilot and, like,
the air traffic tower. And that was just like kind of a
plot in the movie that having gotten that audio from the
Internet. And I was like, I wonder if air
traffic logs are on the Internet.
It's 2020. Maybe that's a thing these days
(30:42):
because I was, you know, I, I wanted to also approach this as
a ufologist, right? Like I have to do the basics.
I have to kind of do the research, break it down.
And I think I had previously, years earlier had heard about
ADSB, but like kind of had forgotten it and did a couple
Google searches and was like, oh, that whole system came
(31:03):
online and is absolutely a thing.
So I went to Flight Radar 24, which I found within moments, I
knew the exact couple minute window of my sighting because of
its contemporaneousness with thesplashdown and even the text
messages that I had. So I know the two-minute window.
I mean, it was, you know, 246 tolet's even call it 250 or
(31:25):
whatever. You, you somewhere in that, that
range splashdown was 248. I think it was really about 2:47
to 2:48-ish. I was seeing this thing so you
can go and you can go to an exact moment in time and do it.
And you know, you have to, you convert, you know, daylight
savings, Eastern daylight savings to UTC, which all of
these sites use. I must have done the conversion
(31:46):
like 20 times to make sure I hadit right.
And there was, there was nothing.
There was like a very, very distant plane going the other
direction that at, at a distancethat would have been a speck in
the sky 'cause I know what thoselook like.
And you know, in the years sinceI used Flight Radar 24 and ADSB.
What is ADSB Exchange? So I've like looked at hundreds,
(32:07):
if not thousands probably of aircraft even out my windows,
but just out and about in general on those apps in the
years since. And it allows me to kind of
safely say, I think at the closest part of the sighting it
was probably 2500 to 3500 feet from my eyeballs because that is
about how clearly I can resolve other smaller aircraft.
(32:29):
And you know, I have a now this,this basis of comparison of
normal aircraft, none of which which looked like this thing or
you know, in any way behaved like it or the glint or any of
it. So it was interesting to see
sort of confirmed in the ADSB data.
And I've since gone back to ADSBExchange as well 'cause it's a
little bit of a fuller data set.They don't filter out as much of
(32:50):
the military traffic. I have noticed that sometimes
Flight Rider 24 filters out military flights and stuff.
So even on ADSB Exchange, there's, there's just nothing in
the region that this was in any way, shape or form.
Nothing. In fact, it was like almost
weirdly the empty airspace, you know, for miles.
And so so I was like, OK, doesn't seem like it was an
(33:13):
airplane that for some reason looked like a UFO for a minute.
So I got that piece of data. And again, it was just really
nice that I knew the exact couple of minutes of this thing
and I, you know, went a few minutes on either side and it
was nothing. And then some months, if not
even a year or two later, I looked up, you know, I wanted to
know what the wind speed was andthe direction, you know, because
balloons and land, it's a balloon or whatever.
(33:35):
And I did find that in hourly increments for Baltimore.
And while the wind was going, this object was going
northeasterly. The wind was going
northeasterly, but this object had to have been like well over
100 miles an hour. Like at the distance it
traversed the sky, it was, you know, helicopter speed or small
plane speed. So it was like much faster than
(33:56):
I think the like 7:00-ish miles an hour that the wind was.
So it wasn't some kind of dirigible being powered by the
wind or whatever, right, or moved by the wind.
Here's another funny aspect of the story.
I have like a decent camera set up, including a nice Tele zoom
lens, you know, Nikon and after this thing, this experience of
(34:17):
seeing this thing, I decided to set up a tripod.
I have AI, have a gimbal head. I, you know, a lens, a zoom, a
nice Nikon camera and I was likeready for the next one.
Like like I was like just, you know, eventually I ended up
taking it down because I think Iliterally overheard someone
walking by like talking about the camera up in my window.
(34:37):
And I was like, oh, this is thisis way like someone actually
even asked me at one point if I was a narc or something.
I was like, OK, I can't have a fancy see camera out out of my
window anymore. But I did have it for like
probably a month hanging out there.
And it's funny, several weeks after this sighting, I actually
saw a Mylar balloon go by in roughly the same kind of general
(35:00):
flight path and it looked totally different.
It was much smaller. It was bouncing a bit in the
wind. It wasn't like this smooth,
clearly under its own power kindof thing.
It was, you know, get much smaller.
The thing that I saw on August 2nd was clearly like small
airplane size. I even ended up going to a
little calculator app on some web page where you know, if you,
(35:22):
if you know the angular size of something, the distance to it,
you can calculate the diameter or whatever.
And you know, I played with all of the parameters and I kind of
you, you created handles on all of them.
Like I think it looked like an object of about this size.
And I think it was about this distance and it, and I think I,
(35:44):
you know, I could kind of remember about what the angular
size was, but I played with a few different calculations and
every possible permutation of the math I did kind of came to
the typical, I'll call it 10 to,you know, like 30m diameter from
(36:08):
tip to tip of this thing. So it was like, you know, UFO
size for most of these things, like, you know, 30-40, fifty
feet tip to tip and you're probably yeah, and like probably
a few 1000 feet away. And again, that's kind of since
been confirmed by watching just hundreds and hundreds of
(36:30):
aircraft and looking at the app and kind of, you know,
remembering what it looked like.And I'm, I'm glad I took it in
so viscerally because it's pretty easy to remember.
And I will say this too, I can'tvouch for the photos.
The guy, his entire history of posting many weird UFO photos
and videos, but there's a guy inMexico who goes by Juanito 1 and
(36:53):
he captures all sorts of stuff where he claims 2.
And there's one set of images, Ithink he took three images of
this purported object that he saw near where he lives in
Mexico that looked just like what I remember my object
looking like. It's just this perfectly shiny
silver ellipsoid, kind of looks like a disc from the side, but
(37:15):
you know, it's a little vague because it's so shiny.
His pictures were on a much moreovercast day and it looks a
little darker than I remember the thing that I saw 'cause it
was a very bright light day, butit looked like very similar,
like a shiny metallic ellipsoid looking thing that has no
discernible features. You know, what's funny to me
(37:36):
about you saying that is that the people who who who say,
well, one, either one could be hoaxing his photographs by, you
know, taking hubcaps and throwing them up in the sky.
It's so interesting that you know for a fact that yours was
not a hubcap in the sky because its behavior couldn't have
possibly be accounted for in that way.
So it would be really unusual ifsomebody could produce the same
(37:58):
sort of very strange observational, you know, results
from a from a hoax. And you know, it's funny, there
are some toys. In fact, I even got a few in the
wake of this because I wanted tohave objects that that in some
way resemble this. And give me two seconds, I'll go
grab the two that I, I found. The first thing I found, The
(38:18):
first thing I found I was, I think I was looking Googling or
on Amazon, I was looking for like shiny metallic ellipsoid.
And the first thing I found is this very interesting toy, which
is literally a shiny metallic ellipsoid.
I don't think the dimensions arequite right.
The one I saw was not quite thisratio.
In fact, this is the golden meanand this is actually a top.
(38:40):
It's a very interesting toy I found when I looked up shiny
metallic ellipsoid. And this is a toy where if you
spin it at a quick enough rate of turn of spin, it will
actually stand up on its end andthen enter a very controlled
spin on its tip. And I'll see if I can still do
it. That wasn't a good one.
(39:05):
Well, I can usually still do it.I'm not doing it really well.
So anyway, then there's these other things that a lot of
people probably be familiar with.
They come in pairs and they're magnets and you can kind of like
they make this funny sound when you throw them up and it, you
know, zings together. So like this also kind of looks
like it. But I'd say maybe this is almost
a little too elongated. So if you think of something
(39:28):
that's a little closer to the brighter one in color, maybe a
little longer like the magnet, but this is sort of the family
of of object and what it looked like.
And it's like, you know, someonecould fake that or whatever.
But here's what I can say. As you just said, I know that
sometimes people see aircraft size objects that look like
(39:52):
those shiny metallic ellipsoid toys, tops, magnets, or
whatever. For real.
They're not hubcaps. They're not toys thrown in the
air. They might have other strange
effects, like strange light effects like like the glinting
glimmering thing that I saw. They sometimes are seen at
moments of high synchronicity, you know, like like when I saw
(40:14):
the one I saw. So you know, I can't, again, I
can't vouch for Juanita one, butI can tell you that that thing
looks just like what I saw. So if people go and find his
photo and it just looks like a very shiny metallic ellipsoid
and it's like 3 and you see likea shack over the across the
street that it's above. That's just more or less what,
(40:35):
what the one I saw looked like. So, you know, I, I analyzed it,
I looked at it. I haven't seen anything like
that since. But that was my sighting.
And it made me, you know, I was pretty sure that UFOs were real.
I've been researching this sinceI was a kid.
But like, it was funny to have that palpable experience of
(40:56):
seeing one and then being able to kind of research my own
sighting as a ufologist and, and, you know, frankly, it only
becoming more mysterious throughthat process.
So, you know, that's that was myexciting story.
I don't know what to say. I still kind of get a little
giddy and weird thinking about it.
(41:16):
And I'll just end with this if I'll answer any questions you
might have. But like I look out of these
windows every day. This happened in my living room.
Like I'm on the. 2nd, unfamiliarobservational conditions like
you were in your home. Well, and not just that though.
It's like I wanted to see one ofthese my whole life.
And I didn't even have to leave the seat I sit in most of the
(41:39):
time. And like, I didn't even have to
change my gaze. Like it came into my peripheral
vision as I was watching TV. Like I didn't have to go
anywhere to see a UFO, even though, like, you know, you
would think I'm going to see this taking a hike in the woods.
I'll see something weird somedayor wherever.
(42:02):
No, like my UFO sighting was sitting at home in the chair I
sit in most of the time and it like entered my peripheral
vision. Came to you.
That's so as I've been doing these interviews, I don't want
to drag the conversation too long because I do want people to
to listen to the longer version,which goes into much more detail
about all the questions you might have.
(42:24):
But as I've been doing this interviews, I've gotten to sort
of compare and contrast people'sexperiences.
And yours is in so many ways like a totally contrasting to a
guy named Mike Pritchard to who I've also interviewed who's an
SCU member. Because you both saw these sort
of shiny objects that are just seem like purely geometric and
(42:45):
don't have any features on them.But while you were absorbed in
the experience and felt like youwanted to kind of stay with it
and didn't feel like you wanted to knock yourself out of that
mode and take a picture of it orwhatever, his was exactly
opposite. He immediately had this sense of
urgency that like, I can't be here.
I have something important to do.
(43:06):
And he had absolutely nothing important to do.
And they like drove him away from the experience.
And those, it's like they're these we, we get frustrated when
people say, well, I saw it, but I didn't take a picture of it.
But we have to recognize that there's like a sort of depth of
mode of experience that you're in when you encounter something
that's so far out of the range of like normal content of
(43:32):
experience that you have. It's not just like a visual
visually strange thing. It's strange in all sorts of
ways. And your mind is like trying to
integrate it. And then it seems like they're
effects that these things can have on you, whether it's
directional, whether it's intentional or not.
But the effects can be so deep and and strange and lasting that
it's, it's really striking to me.
(43:54):
Yeah, it was a very surreal experience to see something
that, again, in a backdrop that you're very familiar with,
especially when it has some meaning to you.
And then it's there and it's just kind of silently doing its
thing and making a weird light. And you know, again, the
synchronicity it, you know, whenpeople say these are more like
religious experiences or or somesurreal thing or like a dream
(44:16):
like it, it very much is more like those things than a typical
day-to-day experience. You're not in a normal mindset
because it catches you so off guard, especially if you're not
expecting it. Who who's expecting this?
So, you know, I understand why there aren't more pictures even
just through that component alone of people being very
(44:39):
wrapped up in the experience andnot responding in a way that
they normally would staring or again, wondering like, where am
I? What's going on right now?
So those are very real, you know, and reasonable, I think
responses to having a totally surreal experience.
And a person couldn't be more wired to expect, you know, to to
(45:00):
be have a UFO and then be like, oh, here's a UFO and like I am
that guy. And yet I was completely caught
up in it and just in awe, just like anyone else would be who
sees something really strange. And, you know, I did put in
MUFON cases and a NU 4 case. There are no others from that
day. And that that's a whole other
(45:21):
set of questions, obviously. And people like, oh, do you
think anyone else saw it? And it's like, how am I supposed
to know? First of all, no one, really, no
one other than weird UFO geeks knows that there's things like
MUFON and New Fork. This is Baltimore where there's
like police helicopters overheadall the time.
And most people are not looking up at air traffic.
You know, it was for a Sunday afternoon, it was pretty quiet.
(45:41):
There weren't a ton of people out, even though it was a nice
day and not, you know, obviouslyI'm not in a position to say
whether anyone else saw this thing, but there were no other
reports that I'm aware of, so itis what it is.
You're pretty sure it was a physical object.
Yeah, yeah. It was just entirely consistent
with how I would see physical objects in the sky, how I do see
(46:05):
physical objects again, I think that's part of the reason why I
did the little like reality check tests a few times of
looking away from the window andback and you know, it moved in a
very consistent way. It it, it wasn't zigging or
zagging or doing any erratic movement.
There's a small chance that it was closer to a hover when it
was in the position where I was distracted by it initially.
(46:28):
I can't say that for sure, but Ijust feel like, you know, I I
can't say for sure whether it had the same velocity the entire
time I saw it. It could have changed the rate
of travel, but I. Didn't mean to ask if it was
physical in in order to doubt your experience so that I may
have the sense of like it did. It just seem like the surface
was so perfect that it had no features in the way that maybe.
(46:53):
I mean, I think that's what madeit so strange was it's other
than being shiny metallic and making that glinting, flashing
light like it clearly did not look like.
I mean, I've seen blimps at close distances many times.
Like, in fact, I'm kind of a blimp geek in addition to UFO
and aircraft geek. I've even flown a helicopter.
I used to take helicopter lessons for a little while and
(47:14):
happened to be at an airfield where there was the Goodyear
blimp once. And I'm like really within
proximity of the giant, you know, Goodyear blimp flying
around in a little Robinson R22 helicopter.
So I've been around airships andblimps and dirigibles and like
this didn't look like any of those in any way, shape or form.
But you know, just because it's perfect and, and, you know, it
(47:35):
had a very metallic sense to it.And whatever this light was,
whether it was generating it, whether it was a glint, whether
it's a plasma effect, I can't comment on any of that.
I, I just know what it looked like to me.
It was very real and palpable and, and, and physical in the
sense that light is is a property of physics.
So I have every reason to feel there was a physical object of
(48:00):
some sort in the sky. You know, it looked like the
kind of thing that if it was landed in the parking lot across
the street, you could walk up toand knock on.
There was nothing dreamy about the object.
There was nothing translucent. I mean, it looked like a very
clear, like shiny, like those old World War 2 bombers and some
(48:25):
of them had the shiny metallic, you know, steel surface.
Like it looked like that but without seams or anything.
It looked very perfect. But like it looked like metal on
the side. It didn't look like plasma,
although I don't know what that would look like as an aircraft
'cause that's not a human thing we do.
But it definitely looked like a palpable physical thing going
(48:48):
through the sky but not making any noise and, you know, doing
it's UFO thing. Fascinating.
Thank you so much for telling the story.
But I encourage everybody to listen to the much longer
version of our conversation where we get to ask very
detailed questions about what itmight have been and the the sort
of context of ideas in which youinterpret your experience, which
I think is the part that I want to focus on in these in this
(49:12):
series, or at least in the longer version of these
interviews. Because the hard and fast like
MUFON and new fork reports pair down experiences to a few data
points. And that's not the, that's not
the character of these experiences.
They're very strange and very rich and personal and laden with
ideas and significance. And so thanks for being open and
(49:35):
willing to explore those questions with us.
Well, it's a pleasure. And again, I, I want to be
really clear, like I can't tell anyone listening to this what
that thing was. Some people get very vehement
about it was this or that or whether they're talking about
their own experiences or someoneelse's experience.
Oh, that was definitely the Pleiadians and blah, blah.
It's like I have no interest in,in taking a stand.
(49:57):
I saw what I saw. It was very abnormal.
It didn't look like any human constructed object I've ever
seen. I can't think of any reason why
on a sunny Sunday afternoon flying over the middle of
Baltimore City, you'd have some top secret experimental
aircraft. And it's like, again, I can't
tell you that this was the case.But subjectively, and that's
(50:18):
what these experiences seem to be about, emphasizing the
subjective first person experience of those who have
them, it kind of felt like it was for me.
I'm not saying it was, but from my point of view, how could I
not have that experience being alifelong UFO enthusiast and
watching the spacecraft return on TV and then this thing out
(50:39):
the window And it like, it felt staged.
And, you know, maybe there's something about the subjective
experience itself we need to delve into with these things.
And I know it's tempting to wantto have more objective
scientific data, and I think that would be great.
And I think it's like, you know,I'm probably could have taken a
(51:00):
picture of this thing, although I wonder if the glinting might
have messed with auto focus. Who knows?
But, you know, the subjectivity of these experiences seems like
almost is being emphasized by the nature of the.
Experiences. You know, the lack of objective
(51:21):
data. There is objective data about
UFOs, but the fact that it's notoverwhelming at this point, it's
almost like, but we do have overwhelming subjective
experiences around these things.And maybe, maybe there's
something to that. Yeah, maybe we're being guided
to that. I don't know.
But thank you for giving me thisopportunity to share my strange
experience. Absolutely.
(51:42):
Thank you for being here, Nick. The Anomalous Review is a
project of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies.
It's hosted and produced by me, Michael Blossom, and edited by
Kelly Mishfeld. Our theme song is written and
performed by Telma Chrisanti. Communication and PR work is by
Preston Dykes. Our advisory team includes
Jennifer Roach, Robert Powell, Richard Hoffman, Joshua Pearson
(52:03):
and Larry Hancock. To find out more about SU, check
out Explorer scu.org.
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com