Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:23):
Got any partners. You're listening to Conversations with Jacob, hosted
by my good friend Jacob Waller. Make sure to check
out the podcast where podcasts are available, and check out
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(00:49):
CWJ podcast, and you can visit our website Conversations with
Jacob podcast dot weebley dot com. Hey you got a
show idea, maybe a guest suggestion, email ius at Conversations
with Jacob at gmail dot com. Now here's your host,
(01:11):
Jacob Waller.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
And what's going on everybody? And welcome back to another
episode of Conversations with Jacob right here on YouTube and
where podcasts are available. We got a good episode lined
up for you this week. But before we get to
our guest this week, I want to make a few
with the guest podcast Plucks. You can check us out
(01:36):
on Facebook just type in conversations with a Jacob podcast.
Our website is Conversations with jacobpodcast dot week dot com.
You can find upcoming guest, past guest, and about a
few other things on there. You can also send us
the email Conversations with Jacob at gmail dot com and
also check out the podcast every Monday at one pm
(01:59):
Eastern Time. Also check out a good friend of mine.
His name is Alan Newsom and he's the host of
Two Chairs No Waiting. It's an Ay Griffin fan podcast.
The live shows are every Monday at eight pm and
you can visit two Chairs noowading dot com to watch
the episode's life every Monday. So, with no further ado,
(02:21):
and let's jump right into my guests this week. And
his name is a Chuck Hall, and we're going to
learn about what he did and I we're going to
learn and what he did in the seventies. And so,
with no further ADU, please welcome Chuck Hall to the podcast. Chuck,
and welcome to the podcast. Thanks thanks for having me absolutely. Now,
(02:42):
for people who don't know who you are, can you
give us a background?
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Sure? Well, I'm an author, obviously a retired therapist. Back
in the nineteen seventies, I was in high school in Gunnersville, Alabama,
and I wrote a book about of my experiences with
my friends, is called Tenfoil Aliens. How to Hoax an
Alien Invasion or how to Fake an Alien Invasion? And
(03:09):
what I mean by that is that We started off
probably about age eleven or twelve, of just doing pranks
here and there, faking UFOs, and then they got more
and more elaborate, until we wound up doing the what
has been called the Alabama MetalMan or the Alabama tenfoil Alien.
We started a well, I want to say we started
(03:31):
the UFO flap. It might have already been going on.
I'm not going to say we're a single hand of
the responsible for the UFO flap in northern Alabama in
the nineteen seventies, but we definitely contributed to it. Let's
put it that way.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Now, when you was doing these pranks, did you ever
get caught?
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Depends? So what do you mean by cought? Not technically caught.
The very last one, the the metal suit guy that
was one of my buddies who was rather tall. He
was like six ' one when he was thirteen years old,
and he played basketball in high school, and we didn't
(04:12):
technically get caught with that one, but a policeman did
take several pictures of him in the costume, and we
managed to get away before the cop did anything with it.
So that was as close as we ever came to
actually being caught.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Now, And why would you wait so long to tell
your story I'm in a book.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Well, Number one, you're afraid of getting caught. Number two,
we just kind of forgot about it. We didn't really
take it that seriously at the time. I mean, we
knew that there were some people. The only way that
we knew that this that these poaxes were having any
effect at all was there was a local am radio
talk show kind of like the ten cent version of Coasta,
(05:00):
if that makes sense. Very few people that actually were
able to hear it. There was like five thousand people
in the town. They were the audience for that. But
the point of that is that the only way that
we knew that our little hoaxes are pranked for having
any effect at all was if we heard on the
radio station or maybe in the local newspaper or something
(05:23):
like that. So we didn't really know at the time
whether or not we were doing anything. So it wasn't
really that big a deal that for us at the time.
And then later on we found out that the picture
of my friend in the tinfoil suit showed up on
a book I think it was called Beyond Earth was
(05:45):
the name of it, and he was actually on the
front cover of the book in the outfit, and so
apparently one of those photos had made it to that.
The second reason is my daughter is big into the paranormal,
and I retired a couple of years ago and have
more time to dedicate to my writing. So up until
(06:06):
then I've just been too busy living life to actually
sit down and write about it. My daughter, who is
into the paranormal, suggested that I write a book about it,
so I did, And that's the result here, just kind
of coming clean after what fifty years now.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Now doing these pranks. Oh, was this ever a time
our things went wrong during them?
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Yeah? Multiple times there. Well, there are several different varieties
of prank that we did. The very last one, the
tenfoil alien. Let me tell the story about that. We had.
We had been hoaxing for about two or three years.
We had been you know, just hoaxing things, getting more
(06:49):
and more elaborate. We started out with just we used
to build model rockets, and then we very quickly discovered
that you can create you on fireworks by instead of
putting a parachute in the mall or rocket for it
to return to Earth with you, filled the nose cone
full of gunpowder and certain chemicals and it'll make a
(07:10):
big explosion like a Fourth of July firework. So that
was our first attempt at hoaxing, and then we got
more and more elaborate until we finally had built this
about ten twelve fourteen foot diameter inflatable UFO with battery
powered LEDs glued all around it, and then we built
the tinfoil alien costume was actually a pattern from a
(07:37):
Wizard of Oz the Tin Men, and we made it
out of what they used to call them space blankets
back in the day. Now they're just called malar blankets.
They're just the silver blankets that they use for emergencies
where people have hypothermia and they want to keep them warm.
If you've ever been camping, you might have one of those.
So we made a costume out of that, and then
(07:59):
we had our little UFO, the fourteen foot inflatable UFO,
and we went out looking for places to hoax and
we found a field out and a turned out later
to be I think it was Fife, Alabama. We didn't
know where it was at the time because it was
out in the middle of nowhere, which was what we
were looking for. Someplace out in the middle of nowhere,
and so we had the balloon UFO on a kite stream.
(08:23):
We let it up, let it fly around while turned
on the led lights, let them flash around. And then
my friend in the metal outfit got out and ran
around in the field, and that's when the cop showed up.
So that's pretty much as about as wrong as it
can go. And the cop took a few pictures of
(08:45):
him first, and then he flipped on the lights. We
didn't even know he was a cop that We didn't
at first. We just thought he was off duty when
he got called in. So he drove his truck out
there and started taking polaroid pictures of the guy in
the outfit. We'll just call him Ken. That's not his
real name, but I want to protect his identity because
I haven't told him that I'm telling all this. But
(09:09):
the cop showed up and turned on the flashing lights
after he had taken some pictures, and that's when we
all started panic and so Ken started running. We were
in a van, so he started running back to the van.
We all got in the van and ran away, and
the cop started chasing us. I don't know if he
saw the van or not. He started chasing you Ken
(09:32):
in the outfit, and he broke an axle driving across.
He was in the middle of a field. I don't
know if you've ever been in the middle of a
farm field, but trying to drive a vehicle through that
is not not exactly a good time. So he broke
his axle trying to chase us down, and so we
got away from the cops that way. But yeah, that
(09:53):
was pretty much about as bad as it could go wrong.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Now, how have you ever had any paranormal encounters?
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Yeah, there's one in the book where I talk about there. Well,
let me let me explain the book. The first part
of the book is about us hoaxing a bunch of UFOs.
The second part of the book is how to tell
a hoax from the real thing. And one of those
one part of this is that there's something the Sun
(10:26):
explained that doesn't automatically mean it's aliens from outer space.
Doesn't mean it's not, but it doesn't mean it is
too unless you have, you know, actual, some sort of
actual hard evidence that it is aliens from outer space.
So I tell one of my particular paranormal experiences in
the book and one of the final chapters, my daughter
(10:47):
and I were coming home from an event one night
and it was dark. It was a full moon. While
not I don't think it was full, it might have been. Well, anyway,
does the phase of the moon doesn't really matter. But
we just were looking at the sky and noticed that
there was a patch over there that we couldn't see
the stars in. And then as we kept looking at it,
(11:10):
the patch started moving, So, okay, what is this? Is
this big black spot in the sky, And then it
started moving over the car. And as it started crossing
the road where we were driving by, the lights came
on and it was one of those big black triangle UFOs.
And if I had to guess, I would say it
was probably about six hundred feet and it was maybe
(11:30):
one hundred feet off the ground right over us. And
then it flew across the road and into the field
and we pulled off the side of the road to
see if it was going to land. At this point,
we didn't know what it was. We were just kind
of curious, and it looked like it was going to land.
It got, you know, maybe within fifty feet of the ground,
(11:51):
and it was huge. It was gigantic, and you could
see the lights reflecting on the ground from the from
the ship or wherever where it was. And then just
when we thought it was going to land, it just
pointed up and took off faster than anything I've ever
seen in my life. It was not and I used
to live in Pensacola, so I've seen, you know, F
(12:13):
fourteen jets take off as fast as they can, so
how fast military hardware can move. It was way faster
than any of that. But it was also silent, and
there was no sonic boom or anything. So the point
to all that is that this was something that could
not be explained. I don't know, and this was in
(12:34):
nineteen ninety two, ninety three, maybe I don't remember the
exact date. But the point to all that is that
it could not be explained by anything that we would
know about. It could have been some sort of military project,
or it could have been aliens. It could have been
a military project from another country and they were spying
(12:56):
on us. But to this day, I've never found a
satisfactory elation of what this might have been.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Now, moving on to a next topic, care do you
believe in the psychics and the mediums?
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Well? I like to say that a belief exists on
a spectrum. A lot of people will say, you either
do believe in this or you don't believe in it,
and that's not necessarily true. There's two ends of the spectrum,
and what I mean by that on the far extreme end,
on one side is I absolutely refuse to believe in this,
(13:34):
no matter how much evidence you show me. And on
the other side of the spectrum is I'm going to
believe in this no matter how much evidence to the
contrary you show me. So most people are somewhere in
the middle. They're not on either extreme, and I'm usually
in the middle. And a lot of this stuff psychic phenomenon,
I would say that there is some evidence to support it,
(13:58):
and there's some evidence that doesn't support it. I'm kind
of in the middle on that. I I would like
to believe it. I've had my own experiences I don't
know if you call them psychic, but you know, precognition
experiences where I would dream something and that it would
happen later. So it is possible that something like that
is going on. However, I can't say conclusively that that's
(14:19):
something that's actually happening. If that makes sense. Oh, yes,
so I would like to believe it. I do have
my own experiences. There are other possible explanations, but the
other possible explanations don't feel right. If that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Absolutely. Now going back to aliens here, do you think
that I don't know? Do you think that? Do you
think that the government knows about these aliens?
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Again, that would be as possible that they know about them.
It's possible that they don't exist. Everybody has their own
standards of evidence for what would be deemed credible. In
other words, what I think would be credible evidence of
aliens might not be what you think would be credible
(15:12):
evidence of aliens, And what we both think would be
credible evidence might not be for someone else. I can't
prove to the scientific community that there's any kind of
alien presence on Earth or any sort of aliens coming
to visit us. On the other hand, there's a lot
of people that have seen them. So if there are
(15:34):
no alien visitations, then what else is going on that
makes all these people say that they saw them. See
what I'm saying there. So that's there's a thing called
the Fermi paradox, and the Fermi paradox says, if you
think about all the stars, there's one hundred billion or
(15:55):
two hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone, and when
I would was born, we didn't know of any other
planets outside of our solar system. I think there's now
like five thousand outside of our solar system that we
know about, and it looks like pretty much every star
out there has a planet at least one planet. So
if only a small portion of those have Earth like
(16:18):
planets where intelligent life can evolve, then if you start
thinking about two hundred billion, if one in a billion planets,
as one of the billion stars has a planet that
intelligent life could evolve on, then that's still two hundred
intelligent civilizations in our galaxy alone. So the odds are
(16:42):
pretty good that there should be intelligent life there. What
the Fermi paradox is is, if there's all these planets
out there, where is everybody. One answer to that might
be that we're alone in the universe. Another answer to
that might be that they're already using us in the
government's covering. Another answer might be that they just haven't
gotten to see us yet, you know. So there's all
(17:03):
sorts of proposed solutions to the Fermi paradox. I like
to believe that there are some aliens out there somewhere.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Wow, that kind of goes into my next question. And
T think T think that there's life on other planets.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Oh definitely, Yeah, Now what the odds are overwhelming in
favor of that. Like I said, there's only one of
the billion chances of life for every star, then that
means there's at least two hundred in our galaxy alone.
And if you think about all the stars in the
(17:41):
known universe, there are more stars in the known universe
than there are grains of sand on every beach on Earth.
That's a lot of sand. So if one of the
trillion of those had a planet capable of sustaining life,
then we're still talking about trillions and trillions of planets
(18:04):
capable of sustaining life. So yeah, definitely. Now there's a
difference between believing and the possibility and coming out and
saying definitely, absolutely aliens exist. But yeah, I believe that
the odds are extremely good that there are aliens out there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
And before we went on the air today, Oh, it's
I get like a like a news story on my
phone that talked about UFOs. Uh, there was a UFO
sites in Colorado and it was spotted by twelve people
and they said it was like a circular disc of
shape had disappeared about ten feet. I'm about put at
(18:42):
one am, so I don't know if it really happened
or or if somebody actually saw something.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
And that's one of the things in the book. I
have ten steps in there. I won't go over all
of those, but there's a chapter in there on how
you tell if something is real or not. I have
personal experience and how easy it is to fake a
flying saucer or a UFO, and so it's real easy
to fake something. On the other hand, there could be
(19:15):
something visiting the earth, and I'm not saying that it's not,
but just saying that the chances are if you go
through this list of things that are common with hoaxes
and then check off all of those and none of
those are ringing a bell, then you might have a
(19:36):
UFO there. And I always tell people, sometimes they call
them UFOs and sometimes they call them UAPs. But remember
what the letter U stands for. It stands for unidentified.
So unless the aliens get out and shake your hand
and say here's a map to our homeworld. Was it
an alien or was it something you just don't know
what it was? If that makes sense?
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Oh yeah, Now he kind of say the same thing
for the paranormal encounters.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Yeah, and that goes back to that belief spectrum. How
much evidence would be necessary to convince you. So if
it's a ghost encounter or a psychic phenomenon or cryptid
or anything like that. I live in bigfoot country. We
went bigfoot hunting for Father's Day this year, and so
(20:29):
there's each thing. The more extraordinary the paranormal claim gets
to be, then the more evidence you're going to need.
I forgot who said it, but extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
So if I'm saying something like a bigfoot, there were
(20:53):
animals back a million years ago. I don't remember the
exact but way back in the pre historic times, there
was an animal called Gigantopithecus, and it was a ten
foot tall ape that they still haven't decided whether or
not it walked upright, So we know something like that
definitely existed. So Bigfoot could be a descendant of that,
(21:19):
that particular creature, and that wouldn't be too big of
a stretch because we already know that such creatures existed,
to say, well, maybe there's some of them that survived
and they live in the woods in the Pacific Northwest
and they're hanging out at coffee shops in Seattle, that
sort of thing. Are on the other hand, and we
have Okay, this big giant metal man tinfoil outfit was
(21:43):
running around in a field in northeastern Alabama in the seventies.
That's a little more of an extraordinary claim, and so
we're going to need a little more evidence to say
that that was a real alien and not just somebody
running around in a tinfoil suit, if that makes sense.
So it depends on each Each one of them has
(22:04):
a certain criteria that it would have to to push
that credibility bar a little closer to the believable side,
if that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Now, how you mentioned that you went bigfoot huntings, So
did you experience anything, heard.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Some sounds out in the woods. I don't know if
it was a bigfoot or a bear or somebody else
yelling out in the woods trying to make us think
it was a big foot. So don't really know for sure.
We did get to talk to just called the Bigfoot
Interpretive Center of Mount Saint Helen's and there's a guy
(22:42):
there named Joe Joseph. He's a very helpful individual. If
you ever in the area around Mount Saint Helens, he
will give you more information than you know what to
do with about Bigfoot. They go out and hunt them routinely, recordings.
He has a whole case there in the store full
(23:05):
of Bigfoot footprint castings, and so they have a lot
of that stuff there if you're interested in that sort
of thing.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Now, going back to big coming back to Bigfoot, and
have you seen the Patterson famous so and what do
is your opinions on that?
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yeah, I haven't talked about that in that particular book,
but I'm working on a book. My next book is
going to be about Bigfoot. And yeah, the it's tentatively
called Bigfoot is my spirit animal. But I haven't decided
if I'm going to go with that yet or not.
But the Patterson Gimlin film that has been pretty much debunked.
(23:48):
The there was a guy who ran a costume shop
in North Carolina who came out and said that he's
the one that made the costume and he explained in
great detail how he made the costume and how he
told the people to try it out. There was I
(24:11):
can't remember the guy's name now I'm drawing a blank,
but the guy that was actually in the suit, he
has come out and said that he was the one
that was in the suit. And just prior to them
making that film, Patterson was working on a Bigfoot documentary.
He was gonna it was going to be a docu
(24:32):
drama where he was going to create this Well, let
me let me back up a little bit. I don't
know if you're familiar with the legend of Boggie Creek.
Have you ever seen that movie? That film?
Speaker 2 (24:45):
I think so, yeah, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
It came out in the early seventies, about the same
time that we were doing all this UFO stuff, and
we watched that as well, and we were expecting it
to be like real footage of a real Bigfoot or
a real series of bigfoots, and what it was was
a guy in a Bigfoot costume and they just told
(25:09):
stories about people who had seen Bigfoot and then they
re enacted them with this guy in the Bigfoot costume.
So it wasn't an actual Bigfoot. So Patterson and Gimlin
were going to do the same thing. They're going to
make their own movie. They had They have documented that
they went to Hollywood and talked to several prop houses
(25:31):
there and taught to several movie producers to try to
get them to be interested in making the movie. And
then shortly thereafter they bought a Bigfoot costume from this
guy in North Carolina, and then shortly after that that's
when the Bigfoot film was made. So all of that
(25:58):
just seems to be a little too much coincidence, if
you know what I mean. That all that they buy
a big Foot costume and then they just coincidentally happen
to see a big Foot a couple of weeks later.
But there's all this is backed up by a testimony
from people, from the guy that owns the costume, from
(26:19):
the guy who bought the costume, from the guy who
made the costume, from the guy who was in the costume,
and so so yeah, I think that one's kind of
beene pretty much debunked. Now, there are some other ones
that are a little more incredible right now, and I
can't think of any of the I have. I have
(26:42):
a YouTube channel called Conspiracy Chronicles, and I've put those
on that footage on that side. But the Patterson Gilman,
I'm not convinced anymore about that because I've seen too
much stuff. Gimlin actually lives in yak them A, Washington,
which is maybe two hours two and a half hours
(27:04):
from where I am, so he still does circuit lectures
about it, so he's still making money off of it.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Now for people, Now, for people who get your book,
and what do you expect them to take away from it?
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Well, number one, people just assume that because it's about
how to fake a UFO, that it means that I
automatically am not going to believe in UFOs no matter
what anybody says. That's not true. What the point of
writing the book was was just this is how you
can tell if it's folks or not. And if you
(27:44):
can't prove that it's not a hoax, that doesn't automatically
mean that it's aliens. But it also is a better
chance of it being aliens than if it's some guy
in a ten spoil suit or somebody with a balloon.
So the other part of that is that whole idea
(28:04):
that belief is on a spectrum. What I believe might
be different from what you believe. If you're going to
convince me, then you have to have evidence that convinces me,
not evidence that convinces you, if that makes sense. And
part of the whole idea behind all of that is,
I don't know if you guys remember the Heaven's Gate cult.
(28:26):
Heaven's Gate happened nineties. I think it was that was
a UFO cult that had convinced themselves that there was
a comet that had a UFO hidden in the tail,
and if they committed suicide at the right time, their
souls would go up to the UFO and then they
would go off to paradise. So if you're so willing
(28:47):
to believe things that you fall for things like that,
then you can see the danger of not having enough
evidence for to believe what you believe. If that makes sense.
The way I put it is that you proportion your
belief to the amount of evidence available. And that doesn't
mean that it's not UFOs or it's not aliens. It
(29:08):
just means I'm going to put a pen in this
until I get more evidence so that people don't get
taken and then by people who are trying to make
money off of UFOs or people who are even more dangerous,
are going to get you to commit suicide, so the
flying saucer can take you off to paradise or whatever.
So there's a thin line there between what's believable and
(29:33):
what's knowable.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Now and where can people get your book?
Speaker 3 (29:39):
It's available at most of the major media outlets. It's
Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Just go to Amazon if
you want and look for a tenfoil Aliens by Chuck Hall,
or you can go to my website. I have a
website is Chuck Hall online dot com and I also
have a blog there where I write about parent noimal topics.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
All right, and before you wrap up this podcast, I
would like to ask my guess at the end of
every episode if they get a closing thoughts, So, do
you got a close and thought for the people listening?
Speaker 3 (30:14):
You know? Closing thought would just be that I'd always
make a line between what I believe and what I
can prove to be true. So I consider myself a
hopeful skeptic. What I mean by that is that I'd
love to believe in aliens. I'd be the first one
there if I could. If you know, they landed on
(30:35):
the White House lawn and said, take me to your leader.
I'd love to be there and meet them. On the
other hand, if I don't have the evidence to convince someone,
then I shouldn't expect them to be convinced. If the
evidence isn't good enough for them, then I shouldn't get
upset if they don't believe me. If that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Oh yeah, absolutely absolutely, Oh what Chuck? I want to
think of it coming on the podcast once again, and
it's been a pleasure. And it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Yeah, I had a good time. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Oh absolutely, all right. That wraps it up this week
for conversations with Jacob. Tune in next week for another interview.
Until then, God bless and we'll catch you next week.
Got any partners. You're listening to Conversations with Jacob, hosted
by my good friend Jacob Waller. Make sure to check
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(00:49):
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with Jacob at gmail dot com. Now here's your host,
(01:11):
Jacob Waller.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
And what's going on everybody? And welcome back to another
episode of Conversations with Jacob right here on YouTube and
where podcasts are available. We got a good episode lined
up for you this week. But before we get to
our guest this week, I want to make a few
with the guest podcast Plucks. You can check us out
(01:36):
on Facebook just type in conversations with a Jacob podcast.
Our website is Conversations with jacobpodcast dot week dot com.
You can find upcoming guest, past guest, and about a
few other things on there. You can also send us
the email Conversations with Jacob at gmail dot com and
also check out the podcast every Monday at one pm
(01:59):
Eastern Time. Also check out a good friend of mine.
His name is Alan Newsom and he's the host of
Two Chairs No Waiting. It's an Ay Griffin fan podcast.
The live shows are every Monday at eight pm and
you can visit two Chairs noowading dot com to watch
the episode's life every Monday. So, with no further ado,
(02:21):
and let's jump right into my guests this week. And
his name is a Chuck Hall, and we're going to
learn about what he did and I we're going to
learn and what he did in the seventies. And so,
with no further ADU, please welcome Chuck Hall to the podcast. Chuck,
and welcome to the podcast. Thanks thanks for having me absolutely. Now,
(02:42):
for people who don't know who you are, can you
give us a background?
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Sure? Well, I'm an author, obviously a retired therapist. Back
in the nineteen seventies, I was in high school in Gunnersville, Alabama,
and I wrote a book about of my experiences with
my friends, is called Tenfoil Aliens. How to Hoax an
Alien Invasion or how to Fake an Alien Invasion? And
(03:09):
what I mean by that is that We started off
probably about age eleven or twelve, of just doing pranks
here and there, faking UFOs, and then they got more
and more elaborate, until we wound up doing the what
has been called the Alabama MetalMan or the Alabama tenfoil Alien.
We started a well, I want to say we started
(03:31):
the UFO flap. It might have already been going on.
I'm not going to say we're a single hand of
the responsible for the UFO flap in northern Alabama in
the nineteen seventies, but we definitely contributed to it. Let's
put it that way.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Now, when you was doing these pranks, did you ever
get caught?
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Depends? So what do you mean by cought? Not technically caught.
The very last one, the the metal suit guy that
was one of my buddies who was rather tall. He
was like six ' one when he was thirteen years old,
and he played basketball in high school, and we didn't
(04:12):
technically get caught with that one, but a policeman did
take several pictures of him in the costume, and we
managed to get away before the cop did anything with it.
So that was as close as we ever came to
actually being caught.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Now, And why would you wait so long to tell
your story I'm in a book.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Well, Number one, you're afraid of getting caught. Number two,
we just kind of forgot about it. We didn't really
take it that seriously at the time. I mean, we
knew that there were some people. The only way that
we knew that this that these poaxes were having any
effect at all was there was a local am radio
talk show kind of like the ten cent version of Coasta,
(05:00):
if that makes sense. Very few people that actually were
able to hear it. There was like five thousand people
in the town. They were the audience for that. But
the point of that is that the only way that
we knew that our little hoaxes are pranked for having
any effect at all was if we heard on the
radio station or maybe in the local newspaper or something
(05:23):
like that. So we didn't really know at the time
whether or not we were doing anything. So it wasn't
really that big a deal that for us at the time.
And then later on we found out that the picture
of my friend in the tinfoil suit showed up on
a book I think it was called Beyond Earth was
(05:45):
the name of it, and he was actually on the
front cover of the book in the outfit, and so
apparently one of those photos had made it to that.
The second reason is my daughter is big into the paranormal,
and I retired a couple of years ago and have
more time to dedicate to my writing. So up until
(06:06):
then I've just been too busy living life to actually
sit down and write about it. My daughter, who is
into the paranormal, suggested that I write a book about it,
so I did, And that's the result here, just kind
of coming clean after what fifty years now.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Now doing these pranks. Oh, was this ever a time
our things went wrong during them?
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Yeah? Multiple times there. Well, there are several different varieties
of prank that we did. The very last one, the
tenfoil alien. Let me tell the story about that. We had.
We had been hoaxing for about two or three years.
We had been you know, just hoaxing things, getting more
(06:49):
and more elaborate. We started out with just we used
to build model rockets, and then we very quickly discovered
that you can create you on fireworks by instead of
putting a parachute in the mall or rocket for it
to return to Earth with you, filled the nose cone
full of gunpowder and certain chemicals and it'll make a
(07:10):
big explosion like a Fourth of July firework. So that
was our first attempt at hoaxing, and then we got
more and more elaborate until we finally had built this
about ten twelve fourteen foot diameter inflatable UFO with battery
powered LEDs glued all around it, and then we built
the tinfoil alien costume was actually a pattern from a
(07:37):
Wizard of Oz the Tin Men, and we made it
out of what they used to call them space blankets
back in the day. Now they're just called malar blankets.
They're just the silver blankets that they use for emergencies
where people have hypothermia and they want to keep them warm.
If you've ever been camping, you might have one of those.
So we made a costume out of that, and then
(07:59):
we had our little UFO, the fourteen foot inflatable UFO,
and we went out looking for places to hoax and
we found a field out and a turned out later
to be I think it was Fife, Alabama. We didn't
know where it was at the time because it was
out in the middle of nowhere, which was what we
were looking for. Someplace out in the middle of nowhere,
and so we had the balloon UFO on a kite stream.
(08:23):
We let it up, let it fly around while turned
on the led lights, let them flash around. And then
my friend in the metal outfit got out and ran
around in the field, and that's when the cop showed up.
So that's pretty much as about as wrong as it
can go. And the cop took a few pictures of
(08:45):
him first, and then he flipped on the lights. We
didn't even know he was a cop that We didn't
at first. We just thought he was off duty when
he got called in. So he drove his truck out
there and started taking polaroid pictures of the guy in
the outfit. We'll just call him Ken. That's not his
real name, but I want to protect his identity because
I haven't told him that I'm telling all this. But
(09:09):
the cop showed up and turned on the flashing lights
after he had taken some pictures, and that's when we
all started panic and so Ken started running. We were
in a van, so he started running back to the van.
We all got in the van and ran away, and
the cop started chasing us. I don't know if he
saw the van or not. He started chasing you Ken
(09:32):
in the outfit, and he broke an axle driving across.
He was in the middle of a field. I don't
know if you've ever been in the middle of a
farm field, but trying to drive a vehicle through that
is not not exactly a good time. So he broke
his axle trying to chase us down, and so we
got away from the cops that way. But yeah, that
(09:53):
was pretty much about as bad as it could go wrong.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Now, how have you ever had any paranormal encounters?
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Yeah, there's one in the book where I talk about there. Well,
let me let me explain the book. The first part
of the book is about us hoaxing a bunch of UFOs.
The second part of the book is how to tell
a hoax from the real thing. And one of those
one part of this is that there's something the Sun
(10:26):
explained that doesn't automatically mean it's aliens from outer space.
Doesn't mean it's not, but it doesn't mean it is
too unless you have, you know, actual, some sort of
actual hard evidence that it is aliens from outer space.
So I tell one of my particular paranormal experiences in
the book and one of the final chapters, my daughter
(10:47):
and I were coming home from an event one night
and it was dark. It was a full moon. While
not I don't think it was full, it might have been. Well, anyway,
does the phase of the moon doesn't really matter. But
we just were looking at the sky and noticed that
there was a patch over there that we couldn't see
the stars in. And then as we kept looking at it,
(11:10):
the patch started moving, So, okay, what is this? Is
this big black spot in the sky, And then it
started moving over the car. And as it started crossing
the road where we were driving by, the lights came
on and it was one of those big black triangle UFOs.
And if I had to guess, I would say it
was probably about six hundred feet and it was maybe
(11:30):
one hundred feet off the ground right over us. And
then it flew across the road and into the field
and we pulled off the side of the road to
see if it was going to land. At this point,
we didn't know what it was. We were just kind
of curious, and it looked like it was going to land.
It got, you know, maybe within fifty feet of the ground,
(11:51):
and it was huge. It was gigantic, and you could
see the lights reflecting on the ground from the from
the ship or wherever where it was. And then just
when we thought it was going to land, it just
pointed up and took off faster than anything I've ever
seen in my life. It was not and I used
to live in Pensacola, so I've seen, you know, F
(12:13):
fourteen jets take off as fast as they can, so
how fast military hardware can move. It was way faster
than any of that. But it was also silent, and
there was no sonic boom or anything. So the point
to all that is that this was something that could
not be explained. I don't know, and this was in
(12:34):
nineteen ninety two, ninety three, maybe I don't remember the
exact date. But the point to all that is that
it could not be explained by anything that we would
know about. It could have been some sort of military project,
or it could have been aliens. It could have been
a military project from another country and they were spying
(12:56):
on us. But to this day, I've never found a
satisfactory elation of what this might have been.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Now, moving on to a next topic, care do you
believe in the psychics and the mediums?
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Well? I like to say that a belief exists on
a spectrum. A lot of people will say, you either
do believe in this or you don't believe in it,
and that's not necessarily true. There's two ends of the spectrum,
and what I mean by that on the far extreme end,
on one side is I absolutely refuse to believe in this,
(13:34):
no matter how much evidence you show me. And on
the other side of the spectrum is I'm going to
believe in this no matter how much evidence to the
contrary you show me. So most people are somewhere in
the middle. They're not on either extreme, and I'm usually
in the middle. And a lot of this stuff psychic phenomenon,
I would say that there is some evidence to support it,
(13:58):
and there's some evidence that doesn't support it. I'm kind
of in the middle on that. I I would like
to believe it. I've had my own experiences I don't
know if you call them psychic, but you know, precognition
experiences where I would dream something and that it would
happen later. So it is possible that something like that
is going on. However, I can't say conclusively that that's
(14:19):
something that's actually happening. If that makes sense. Oh, yes,
so I would like to believe it. I do have
my own experiences. There are other possible explanations, but the
other possible explanations don't feel right. If that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Absolutely. Now going back to aliens here, do you think
that I don't know? Do you think that? Do you
think that the government knows about these aliens?
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Again, that would be as possible that they know about them.
It's possible that they don't exist. Everybody has their own
standards of evidence for what would be deemed credible. In
other words, what I think would be credible evidence of
aliens might not be what you think would be credible
(15:12):
evidence of aliens, And what we both think would be
credible evidence might not be for someone else. I can't
prove to the scientific community that there's any kind of
alien presence on Earth or any sort of aliens coming
to visit us. On the other hand, there's a lot
of people that have seen them. So if there are
(15:34):
no alien visitations, then what else is going on that
makes all these people say that they saw them. See
what I'm saying there. So that's there's a thing called
the Fermi paradox, and the Fermi paradox says, if you
think about all the stars, there's one hundred billion or
(15:55):
two hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone, and when
I would was born, we didn't know of any other
planets outside of our solar system. I think there's now
like five thousand outside of our solar system that we
know about, and it looks like pretty much every star
out there has a planet at least one planet. So
if only a small portion of those have Earth like
(16:18):
planets where intelligent life can evolve, then if you start
thinking about two hundred billion, if one in a billion planets,
as one of the billion stars has a planet that
intelligent life could evolve on, then that's still two hundred
intelligent civilizations in our galaxy alone. So the odds are
(16:42):
pretty good that there should be intelligent life there. What
the Fermi paradox is is, if there's all these planets
out there, where is everybody. One answer to that might
be that we're alone in the universe. Another answer to
that might be that they're already using us in the
government's covering. Another answer might be that they just haven't
gotten to see us yet, you know. So there's all
(17:03):
sorts of proposed solutions to the Fermi paradox. I like
to believe that there are some aliens out there somewhere.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Wow, that kind of goes into my next question. And
T think T think that there's life on other planets.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Oh definitely, Yeah, Now what the odds are overwhelming in
favor of that. Like I said, there's only one of
the billion chances of life for every star, then that
means there's at least two hundred in our galaxy alone.
And if you think about all the stars in the
(17:41):
known universe, there are more stars in the known universe
than there are grains of sand on every beach on Earth.
That's a lot of sand. So if one of the
trillion of those had a planet capable of sustaining life,
then we're still talking about trillions and trillions of planets
(18:04):
capable of sustaining life. So yeah, definitely. Now there's a
difference between believing and the possibility and coming out and
saying definitely, absolutely aliens exist. But yeah, I believe that
the odds are extremely good that there are aliens out there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
And before we went on the air today, Oh, it's
I get like a like a news story on my
phone that talked about UFOs. Uh, there was a UFO
sites in Colorado and it was spotted by twelve people
and they said it was like a circular disc of
shape had disappeared about ten feet. I'm about put at
(18:42):
one am, so I don't know if it really happened
or or if somebody actually saw something.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
And that's one of the things in the book. I
have ten steps in there. I won't go over all
of those, but there's a chapter in there on how
you tell if something is real or not. I have
personal experience and how easy it is to fake a
flying saucer or a UFO, and so it's real easy
to fake something. On the other hand, there could be
(19:15):
something visiting the earth, and I'm not saying that it's not,
but just saying that the chances are if you go
through this list of things that are common with hoaxes
and then check off all of those and none of
those are ringing a bell, then you might have a
(19:36):
UFO there. And I always tell people, sometimes they call
them UFOs and sometimes they call them UAPs. But remember
what the letter U stands for. It stands for unidentified.
So unless the aliens get out and shake your hand
and say here's a map to our homeworld. Was it
an alien or was it something you just don't know
what it was? If that makes sense?
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Oh yeah, Now he kind of say the same thing
for the paranormal encounters.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Yeah, and that goes back to that belief spectrum. How
much evidence would be necessary to convince you. So if
it's a ghost encounter or a psychic phenomenon or cryptid
or anything like that. I live in bigfoot country. We
went bigfoot hunting for Father's Day this year, and so
(20:29):
there's each thing. The more extraordinary the paranormal claim gets
to be, then the more evidence you're going to need.
I forgot who said it, but extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
So if I'm saying something like a bigfoot, there were
(20:53):
animals back a million years ago. I don't remember the
exact but way back in the pre historic times, there
was an animal called Gigantopithecus, and it was a ten
foot tall ape that they still haven't decided whether or
not it walked upright, So we know something like that
definitely existed. So Bigfoot could be a descendant of that,
(21:19):
that particular creature, and that wouldn't be too big of
a stretch because we already know that such creatures existed,
to say, well, maybe there's some of them that survived
and they live in the woods in the Pacific Northwest
and they're hanging out at coffee shops in Seattle, that
sort of thing. Are on the other hand, and we
have Okay, this big giant metal man tinfoil outfit was
(21:43):
running around in a field in northeastern Alabama in the seventies.
That's a little more of an extraordinary claim, and so
we're going to need a little more evidence to say
that that was a real alien and not just somebody
running around in a tinfoil suit, if that makes sense.
So it depends on each Each one of them has
(22:04):
a certain criteria that it would have to to push
that credibility bar a little closer to the believable side,
if that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Now, how you mentioned that you went bigfoot huntings, So
did you experience anything, heard.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Some sounds out in the woods. I don't know if
it was a bigfoot or a bear or somebody else
yelling out in the woods trying to make us think
it was a big foot. So don't really know for sure.
We did get to talk to just called the Bigfoot
Interpretive Center of Mount Saint Helen's and there's a guy
(22:42):
there named Joe Joseph. He's a very helpful individual. If
you ever in the area around Mount Saint Helens, he
will give you more information than you know what to
do with about Bigfoot. They go out and hunt them routinely, recordings.
He has a whole case there in the store full
(23:05):
of Bigfoot footprint castings, and so they have a lot
of that stuff there if you're interested in that sort
of thing.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Now, going back to big coming back to Bigfoot, and
have you seen the Patterson famous so and what do
is your opinions on that?
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yeah, I haven't talked about that in that particular book,
but I'm working on a book. My next book is
going to be about Bigfoot. And yeah, the it's tentatively
called Bigfoot is my spirit animal. But I haven't decided
if I'm going to go with that yet or not.
But the Patterson Gimlin film that has been pretty much debunked.
(23:48):
The there was a guy who ran a costume shop
in North Carolina who came out and said that he's
the one that made the costume and he explained in
great detail how he made the costume and how he
told the people to try it out. There was I
(24:11):
can't remember the guy's name now I'm drawing a blank,
but the guy that was actually in the suit, he
has come out and said that he was the one
that was in the suit. And just prior to them
making that film, Patterson was working on a Bigfoot documentary.
He was gonna it was going to be a docu
(24:32):
drama where he was going to create this Well, let
me let me back up a little bit. I don't
know if you're familiar with the legend of Boggie Creek.
Have you ever seen that movie? That film?
Speaker 2 (24:45):
I think so, yeah, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
It came out in the early seventies, about the same
time that we were doing all this UFO stuff, and
we watched that as well, and we were expecting it
to be like real footage of a real Bigfoot or
a real series of bigfoots, and what it was was
a guy in a Bigfoot costume and they just told
(25:09):
stories about people who had seen Bigfoot and then they
re enacted them with this guy in the Bigfoot costume.
So it wasn't an actual Bigfoot. So Patterson and Gimlin
were going to do the same thing. They're going to
make their own movie. They had They have documented that
they went to Hollywood and talked to several prop houses
(25:31):
there and taught to several movie producers to try to
get them to be interested in making the movie. And
then shortly thereafter they bought a Bigfoot costume from this
guy in North Carolina, and then shortly after that that's
when the Bigfoot film was made. So all of that
(25:58):
just seems to be a little too much coincidence, if
you know what I mean. That all that they buy
a big Foot costume and then they just coincidentally happen
to see a big Foot a couple of weeks later.
But there's all this is backed up by a testimony
from people, from the guy that owns the costume, from
(26:19):
the guy who bought the costume, from the guy who
made the costume, from the guy who was in the costume,
and so so yeah, I think that one's kind of
beene pretty much debunked. Now, there are some other ones
that are a little more incredible right now, and I
can't think of any of the I have. I have
(26:42):
a YouTube channel called Conspiracy Chronicles, and I've put those
on that footage on that side. But the Patterson Gilman,
I'm not convinced anymore about that because I've seen too
much stuff. Gimlin actually lives in yak them A, Washington,
which is maybe two hours two and a half hours
(27:04):
from where I am, so he still does circuit lectures
about it, so he's still making money off of it.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Now for people, Now, for people who get your book,
and what do you expect them to take away from it?
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Well, number one, people just assume that because it's about
how to fake a UFO, that it means that I
automatically am not going to believe in UFOs no matter
what anybody says. That's not true. What the point of
writing the book was was just this is how you
can tell if it's folks or not. And if you
(27:44):
can't prove that it's not a hoax, that doesn't automatically
mean that it's aliens. But it also is a better
chance of it being aliens than if it's some guy
in a ten spoil suit or somebody with a balloon.
So the other part of that is that whole idea
(28:04):
that belief is on a spectrum. What I believe might
be different from what you believe. If you're going to
convince me, then you have to have evidence that convinces me,
not evidence that convinces you, if that makes sense. And
part of the whole idea behind all of that is,
I don't know if you guys remember the Heaven's Gate cult.
(28:26):
Heaven's Gate happened nineties. I think it was that was
a UFO cult that had convinced themselves that there was
a comet that had a UFO hidden in the tail,
and if they committed suicide at the right time, their
souls would go up to the UFO and then they
would go off to paradise. So if you're so willing
(28:47):
to believe things that you fall for things like that,
then you can see the danger of not having enough
evidence for to believe what you believe. If that makes sense.
The way I put it is that you proportion your
belief to the amount of evidence available. And that doesn't
mean that it's not UFOs or it's not aliens. It
(29:08):
just means I'm going to put a pen in this
until I get more evidence so that people don't get
taken and then by people who are trying to make
money off of UFOs or people who are even more dangerous,
are going to get you to commit suicide, so the
flying saucer can take you off to paradise or whatever.
So there's a thin line there between what's believable and
(29:33):
what's knowable.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Now and where can people get your book?
Speaker 3 (29:39):
It's available at most of the major media outlets. It's
Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Just go to Amazon if
you want and look for a tenfoil Aliens by Chuck Hall,
or you can go to my website. I have a
website is Chuck Hall online dot com and I also
have a blog there where I write about parent noimal topics.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
All right, and before you wrap up this podcast, I
would like to ask my guess at the end of
every episode if they get a closing thoughts, So, do
you got a close and thought for the people listening?
Speaker 3 (30:14):
You know? Closing thought would just be that I'd always
make a line between what I believe and what I
can prove to be true. So I consider myself a
hopeful skeptic. What I mean by that is that I'd
love to believe in aliens. I'd be the first one
there if I could. If you know, they landed on
(30:35):
the White House lawn and said, take me to your leader.
I'd love to be there and meet them. On the
other hand, if I don't have the evidence to convince someone,
then I shouldn't expect them to be convinced. If the
evidence isn't good enough for them, then I shouldn't get
upset if they don't believe me. If that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Oh yeah, absolutely absolutely, Oh what Chuck? I want to
think of it coming on the podcast once again, and
it's been a pleasure. And it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Yeah, I had a good time. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Oh absolutely, all right. That wraps it up this week
for conversations with Jacob. Tune in next week for another interview.
Until then, God bless and we'll catch you next week.
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