Mike Clelland

None

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to MeanwhileHere on Earth. This program features in
depth conversations with the leading names inthe subjects of UFOs abductees, the paranormal
panel discussions, and the very bestand brightest of the next generation of writers

(00:24):
and researchers. Meanwhile Here on Earththe show breaking new ground in alternative talk
with your in trepid host, veteraninvestigative writer and researcher Peter Robbins. Hello

(00:51):
again and here I am yet onemore time on Meanwhile Here on Earth.
You're intrepid host, as the voiceoversays, on this summer day and summer
with a vengeance in a lot ofthis country and around the world. If
you are in a high heat zone, you have our sympathies and concerns.

(01:14):
I've in touch with friends all overthe country the last few days and in
France, Italy, Greece, andtemperatures are frightening in some places. Stay
hydrated. Or if you're listening tothe show months after the fact and it's
snowing out where that extra layra pollof Flice, My guest tonight is an

(01:38):
old friend and a major contributor toour knowledge about the wider area of UFO
studies and in particular surrounding the abductionphenomenon. I'm going to take a moment
here and bring up his info.Mike Clellent has had many callings as author,

(02:00):
illustrator, wilderness traveler, podcaster,and UFO researcher. His books fall
into two contrasting categories. First camefunny outdoor instructionals with cartoons. These taught
the technical skills of skiing, climbing, mountain travel, glacier rescue, and
ultra led backpacking. Next came amore thoughtful series and inquiry into the relationship

(02:25):
between owls and UFOs. Mike's twentyand fifteen book and a very well received
book. It was for all theright reasons. The Messengers was met with
high praise. In it, heexplores the mysterious connections between owls, synchronicities,
and UFO abduction. It was hisfirsthand experience with these elusive events that

(02:47):
have been the foundation for his research. This book is also a personal memoir
and a journey of self discovery.His website is Mike Klelland dot com and
his last name is spelled c LE l l ND. Mike Clelland dot
com and will give me up toyou again at the end of the show.

(03:07):
It's a comprehensive resource of his researchand creative output. After twenty five
years of living in the Rockies,he now loves in the Pacific Northwest and
Mike Clelland in Seattle, welcome backto meanwhile here on Earth. Thank you.
It's it's a my honor to behere and mine as well. We

(03:28):
recently did an interview for my Britishpodcast UAP Global Perspective and we covered so
much interesting material that we can nowleisurely cover again and with more time on
it. But as is my wantand usual habit, I personally always have

(03:51):
an interest in how people in publiclife became the people that we come to
admire and follow and read and lookforward to information. Can we start at
the beginning? Where were you born? I was born in Detroit, Michigan,
so, and that would have beenin nineteen sixty two. I'm going
to be sixty one years old andin about a month, so you were

(04:15):
literally born with motown. I wasin the heart of it. Oh yeah,
there was radio, the radio stationsgrowing up. It's really funny,
like yeah, like like I meanthat was CKLW and the radio stations growing
up, we're you know, yeah, I was right in the heart of
it. Yeah, if you were. I didn't grow up in Detroit proper.
I was raised in a suburb righton the border of Detroit Southfield,

(04:39):
Michigan. So well, that musicwas probably filling your mother's head while you
were in utero, so you know, well it was a little more square
than that. I don't know ifshe was listening to Newtown, but but
yeah, so okay, not alot of Marvin Gay and yeah, okay,
um siblings when brother one sister botholder. I was the baby.

(05:02):
You know what I say is Iwas the very last person. So my
dad went, I think I'm thelast, very last baby Boomer, Like
I'm the last one, like theclosed the door after I think there's a
picture of me, and like thehistory of baby Boomer, I'm the very
last one. So and the jokeI make, which isn't really a joke,
is I was sort of I grewup in this kind of leave it

(05:23):
to Beaver neighborhood, and I usedto make a joke that I was the
last person to be born and raisedin the nineteen fifties, even though I
was born in nineteen sixty two.So well, there is a sophistication I
had as a child based on thatwonderful and lovable and incredibly innocent character.
What did your parents do? Wasyour mom? A mom? Pretty much?

(05:46):
My mom. She ended up sheworked at the school system a little
bit as a secretary. My dadworked for General Motors. So the Chevys
in the driveway, and everyone upand down both sides of the street,
and we're all, you know,we all worked for the car companies,
and so yeah, it was ayou know, a chapter of American history
that that I suspect is changed greatlyin the last sixty years as far as

(06:11):
you know, But there was noyou know, is General Motors, Ford
Chrysler. That's it. That wasthat defined the entirety of everything for those
years. And lots of muscle cars. I don't know, folks, I
don't know if this happens, butit seemed like everyone in high school had
like a you know, a coupleof like two volkswagens. One they were
taking a part in one where theywere putting together so and they figured out

(06:34):
every way to turn them into dunebuggies and dragsters and hot rods and stuff
like that. Yeah, so Igrew up so outside of the car culture,
but wanting a car, which atleast I got to borrow my parents'
car occasionally. Um a Plymouth sixtythree metal flake blue. Very nice.

(06:56):
By the time you were proceeding alongthe element entry school and then crack the
code of reading books, Were thereany particular books once you got beyond see
Dick and Mary go Um that youstarted to gravitate toward when you were on
your own in the world of reading. You know, my more formative stuff

(07:16):
happened, I guess more in highschool and stuff like that. Those are
the ones that really kind of like, you know, meant something to me.
That was nineteen eighty four and catchingthe rye and that kind of stuff.
But Um and Kurt Vonniget definitely atat at that I was right at
that age, you know, andthat was right like this was the era
I don't know what's going, likethe era of the garage sale and being

(07:40):
able to just ride your bike aroundand just like her, pull into a
garage sale and like that book looksgreat, and then to pick up like
you know, All the President's Menor Jaws or or you know, Kurt
Vonnegut, and yeah, so thatwas that was definitely that or or Lord
of the Rings or The Teachings ofDon Juan. You know, that was
that was the era. Those thosebooks were everywhere. And so, you

(08:03):
know what's interesting the very first thisis it's hard to know exactly, but
I can say one of the veryfirst, like fat Books, like the
kind of you sort of graduate thefirst time you read the Fat Book,
you know, like a great wayto describe it was Frank Edwards Flying Saucer,
Serious Business. I just found itin my brother's room. I don't
know what it was, you knowwhen I just found it and I was

(08:24):
like, I remember kind of openingit and well, let me read the
whole thing. I can't remember muchof it, but it was a lot
of um, just like report afterreport after report. I'm familiar with the
book. Yeah, it was anational bestseller for sure. When you were
still in elementary school or just beyondthat and watching movies, did your introduction

(08:48):
to the world of film come fromgoing to the movie theaters on your own
with friends or your parents, orfrom watching movies on television? We'll both
really. I mean so on televisionthere was something that was called four o'clock
movie. You must have had itin the East Coast. Yeah, like
the four thirty movie I think iswhat it was called. And it was
right when you kind of home fromalways had like oh like Fantastic Voyage or

(09:11):
Planet of the Apes or Soiling Greenor something like that. So those movies
were Yeah. I was totally theperfect age for all that. And then
I went to school. I wentto ny U Film School. That was
my major for the one year.I dropped out after my first year,
but I was a film major forone year. So if you have any
questions about Citizen Kane, still oneof my favorite films, yeah, yea,

(09:33):
as it should be. Yeah.Greg Toland one of the greatest amber
men of all time and one ofthe most innovative. I was still using
his techniques. Was the Frank Edwardsbook Your Introduction to the World of UFOs
Flying Saucers at UAPs as we callthem now sometimes or was there something before

(09:54):
that? It was hard in awin was what was before? But when
I was about tw I would havebeen in elementary school when I read that
Frank Hedward's book. You know,I got I don't know if I read
the whole thing. I bet Iskimmed pages, like I can't be sure.
But and then but I had aUFO sighting when I was twelve,

(10:15):
so that would have been seventh grade. And I don't know if we talked
about this, but I was.I mean, you and I may have
talked about this personally. I don'tthink we talked about it in the last
podcast. We did tell our viewersabout it. Please. So in like
the grand scope of my life,it's not that interesting. It's kind of
like, okay, well you know, but what it did do UM was

(10:35):
afterwards when I read like UFO reportsor I saw something on television about UFOs
or something, or I could say, well I saw one. You know,
these people would be there's a littleyou know. There were actually some
above board, even keeled documentaries madefor television in that are so that would

(10:56):
have been the era of in searchof yeah, so and so. Those
were those treated the subject very seriouslyand didn't have debunkers on and um and
so I so I was like Ihad seen something myself, so I had
that as a foundation or that waslike part of me, you know,
so I couldn't I could say,well, these I guess I have to
trust these people. So my eventwas I was twelve years old, which

(11:20):
was little, and I had afriend and his name was Kenny, and
I was at his house and atthe time, like I was drawing a
lot at that point, so Iwas drawing. We would draw together,
and I remember we would spent alot of time at the kitchen table that
day. And so it was thesun was down, and he lived in
the He had moved out of theneighborhood and lived a little bit away,
so my dad had to drive meto the house and so I had to
sleepover. He had a big familyand stuff. So it was and I

(11:41):
had grown up. He grew upright down the street from me as a
little little kid. And but umin the night, the sun was down.
We walked into his bedroom and itwas my recollection was the bedroom was
dark and we just walked into thebedroom and it was dark outside and had
a window, and it was eitherhim or me went look what is that?
And out the window would have beena do I have something here?

(12:05):
A coffee can shaped thing? Sosomething roughly shaped. This is too big
obviously, but a coffee can shape, it's a cylinder essentially in the air,
and it was descending at this veryodd angle at least if I'm doing
this right, and I think itwas descending like this at this very odd,
very controlled, very odd, youknow what, I liken it.

(12:28):
So we did the thing like.It wasn't a helicopter, It wasn't a
balloon. It wasn't it wasn't areflection on it. We moved right up
to the glass, so if itwas a reflection on the glass, we
were like it would have. Soit wasn't a reflection on the glass.
And it had a it had likea coffee can essentially with a pencil sticking
out of the top. But itwas it would have been essentially been all

(12:50):
black. And you know how inthe suburb sky, even on the blackest
night, in the street lights andstuff like, there's this ambience it's got
a little ambient glow. So itwas darker than the ambient glow. Okay,
though it had a series of oflights on it. So when it
was rotating like this, you couldsee that there were like like a dotted
row of lights. You could seethat it was rotating and then we watched

(13:13):
it for maybe thirty seconds and itdisappeared like poof gone, and there was
another associated light in the sky withit, like a little dot dot dot.
Now that that that light was notinteresting. It looked like nothing more
than a than an airplane in thesky, but it it. This is
tough to explain. So this onewas one was descending and the little dot

(13:33):
dot blink blink, blink, winkinglight met it. It vanished and then
the blinking light just just like wentoff into the sky and there was nothing
there was. So that's a veryand I remember this is an odd detail.
I remember thinking at the time,when that little dot touches it,
it's going to disappear. And itdid. It disappeared right in that instant,

(13:56):
and both of us were like,whoa, whoa, whoa, what
was that? It felt like itfelt like it was fairly close to the
house. So it might have beensmall, let's say the size of a
van. You know, it wastipped on its side. I bet you
was bigger than that, but itwas probably smaller than a school bus,
let's say, so I haven't it'simpossible to know. It was in the

(14:18):
nighttime. Sky. If it wasfar away, it could have been enormous.
If it was close up, itwould have obviously been smaller. But
my senses it was bigger than avan and smaller than a school bus.
And then we ran downstairs and weboth drew it, and we both do
the same thing. I contacted himdecades later, probably thirty five years later,

(14:41):
and asked him about it. Doyou remember that night? And he
said, now, I don't rememberthat night. And then and he said,
oh, you know, he hadbeen so anyway, he contacted me
later a couple days later and calledme back up and he said, I
talked to my mom. She remembersthe night we came downstairs and drew it.
Oh my gosh, So it issomewhat con Yeah. So that's a

(15:01):
confirmation to a very strong degree,and which I didn't really need the confirmation.
I feel I still have the drawing. That was my next question.
In my it's it's in the Messengers. It's early on in the Messengers.
I have an image of that drawing. And then so after that it was
like I felt like, Okay,I've seen something. And then afterwards,
at the same age as twelve yearsold, I had an associate, which

(15:22):
I've told this story many times.This is a little more telling. I
had a I was at a highschool football game twelve years old, and
I wanted to come home and seethe television show Coleshack The night Stalker,
which was Friday nights at ten o'clockon Channel seven. And I was so
jazz. I was twelve years old. It was a perfect show for a

(15:43):
twelve year old with zombies and it'svampires show. Yeah Darren McGavin, Yeah,
stands up very well and so um. So we got to a point
walking home. I was so thefriend his name was also Mike. We
got to the point the high schoolwas very close to my house, less
and a half a mile, sowe walked through this totally idyllic suburban neighborhood

(16:03):
and across the hight, across themain road, and then get into my
neighborhood. And I know exactly whereI was in the sidewalk. And then
the sky lit up orange for onesecond and then turned back to normal,
like it just went click click,Like the whole sky in my memory lit
up bright, electric rich orange,like the color of a you know when

(16:27):
the when the coals of a campfireor the coals of it just start burning
down, eat that rich rating orangea whole sky did that for one second,
just click on, clickoff, andwe both were just what just happened?
Like, was it an explosion offover the horizon? Did like the
power line zap each other? Therewas totally silent, There was no sound,

(16:48):
and it was only I was rightdown the street. It was just
a half a block away. Iwalked into my door. My friend lived
further on in the neighborhood, sohe just had a block or a few
blocks to walk. And then Iwalked in the door and my parents were
like so mad at me, likewhere have you been? And like I
said, I'd be home at ninethirty. It's nine thirty and they pointed
to the clock. They pointed inthe television and eleven o'clock news was ending,

(17:10):
so it would have been very closeto eleven thirty, So that roughly
two hours of missing time. Andit didn't mean like I had There was
no sense of I mean, Ihad no there was the term missing time
hadn't come into the vernacular yet therewas, So I was just like,
why are my parents mad at me? I didn't do anything wrong. And

(17:32):
the next Monday at school, myfriend Mike said, um, I was
kind of saying we were with somefriends and I said, yeah, something
happened on Friday night. He said, yeah, we saw Ufo with lights
and everything, and I was like, good grief, Like, I never
saw Ufo. I saw the skyturn orange, so that that event has
stuck with me. That seems muchmore telling than just seeing the coffee can

(17:55):
in the sky very much. So. Did Mike ever mentioned anything about his
parents' reaction when he got home,arguably about the same lateness. I talked
to him a couple of summers ago. I hadn't talked to him for we
graduated in nineteen eighty, and itwas like, well, it was probably
three or four summers ago. Itwas probably twenty twenty when I talked to
him, so forty years later,and we'd been friends on Facebook and like

(18:21):
so chatted and stuff like. ButI said, hey, I gotta ask,
like, do you remember that night? And he's like, nope,
I don't remember anything. And Isaid, well, here's the story.
And I told essentially the story Ijust told you, and he laughed when
I when he said he said theF word when he actually said the lights.
He said a little more more thanthe lights. He was a little
more forceful with his expletives than Ishared with you just now. But um,

(18:45):
so, I said, I quotedhim exactly, and he laughed and
he said, I don't remember,and I said, yeah, my parents
were mad at me. And hewas like, I remember your parents were
angry at you. I remember youtelling me that. I remember that.
So that's a little bit of aconfirmation. And I have to believe that
it happened because so much I remember. Pardon your parents reaction of you as

(19:07):
a young person being missing, essentiallybased on when you were said, when
you said you were going to gethome, and you know yours, it
sounds like you were a very straightup kid. You weren't. This is
not some presenting sign of you.You know, I was not a juvenile
delinquent yet like that, and you'renot an adult delinquent either. Yeah,
but your parents' reaction to you saidyou were going to be home at X,

(19:30):
and your home at why can youthink of any other time in your
life as living with your parents intheir home where they ever had a reaction
like that to something you had saidor oh my I mean I was I
So that was that was a standaloneevent as far as that so I have.

(19:52):
That's my only missing time event thatI know of where it feels like
I feel like other I've had alot of stuff happened in my life,
one of it seems to be inthe realm of missing time I've had.
I've been in situations where I'm like, look, what's clue, it's the
clock, say did we miss anytime? And stuff like that. So,
um, so that would be.Yeah, that's the only event that
I had that had missing time.By the time you graduated high school,

(20:15):
did you have your heart or yourdream set on a certain career or were
you thinking about you know, I'msticking around and working in the auto industry.
I worked for one. You knowwhat I did? I did.
I did not apply for college rightout of high school. And I've thought
about that now and it tells.It's all telling how like the person I
am in a way, I waslike, it's usually a middle class reflex.

(20:37):
We all did well, most ofus did if we were lucky enough
to have that well. I wastotally like, there was but I,
Um. I got a job atan ad agency near my house, and
I could ride my bike to thisad agency WB Donor in south Field,
Michigan, and I think it's stillthere. It's not in the same building
anymore, but it's still there inthe phone book and they were doing they

(21:03):
did the Tutsie pop commercial. Howmany licks does it take to get to
the center of the Tutsie Pop?That was WB Donor in self Field,
Michigan. So which also has anowl in it. I don't think that
means anything, but it does havean owl in at that commercial soul.
But I worked for a year atan ad agency, and what it did
is when I went to NYU thenext year, like I had been in

(21:23):
an environment where I was getting apaycheck, I was treated as an equal
in a team of a creative team, like I was doing illustrations and I
was working with an oar tractor writerand we were creating TV commercials. And
and then when I got to college, it was like, oh, this
is like felt like a step backwardsin some ways. So I was a
very skilled illustrator, and I knewI could just get a job at an

(21:45):
ad agency and that had much moreappeal to me. To work in New
York rather than go to school,I hung out with the same friends.
I managed to sneak in to seesome amazing movies for the next bunch of
years at NYU, so I knewthey had that what's the syllabus where they
would show for the film school,they would show movies. So they would
have a list of all the moviesand they would play them on Saturday,

(22:07):
all the movies that they played inthe week, because there was back in
an era when they had to rent. They had a thirty five millimeter projector
in a little theater off right offWashington Square, and I would just I
knew enough people, I could justwalk in and see the movies, even
though I hadn't dropped out of school, but so you could go in,
and I remember there was more thanone occasion where I sat through seven movies

(22:27):
on a Saturday. You know,it started at o'clock at Saturday morning,
and I wanted to way in thenighttime and I would you come out,
You're all strung out and ahead,so yes, and they were all great.
They were like debt, you know, like like classic film noir,
followed by you know, Viscontis theLeopards, followed by you know some Louis

(22:51):
Bouonwell film. It was Oh wow, that was so great. I have
to jump in here and say thissummer that after I graduated high school,
before I left for Connecticut to attendmy first year at the University of Bridgeport,
I worked for a small agency inManhattan in the East seventies, the

(23:15):
Wayne Albert Advertising Agency. Two guysnamed Wayne and Albert, and I did
drawings based on their ideas, andI at least had the chance before the
end of my job when I realizedwhat I don't want to do with my

(23:36):
life is working an advertising agency tosee an ice cream package that I had
designed in freezer cabinets in the localsupermarket and mascara packaging that was based on
my design. So you know,I was already kind of immortal in my
own mind. But you also remindme in the eighties there were a number

(23:59):
of second run theaters in me.Oh, it was heaven. It was
heaven. After the film came out, you got to see it for next
to nothing, and my favorites wereThere was one revival theater. It was
on Eighth Avenue in the fifties andthey have special showings that began at midnight,
and it was often three or fourWarner Brothers thirties gangster films that went

(24:26):
until like five or six in themorning. And what fun to come out
at dawn cross Syde, tired andremembering every machine gun blast that you would
heard. Good times. Oh,the repertory theater scene, as far as
the film repertory theaters. The justI would get I had a had a

(24:49):
I would I had a day planner. I lived on Sullivan Street between Spring
and Broom. I had this dayplanner, and then I would get all
the pamphlets because it was there wasno Internet, right, so you'd get
a little pamphlet and it would havelike you know, the film Forums movies,
and then they would have the Theatereighty movies, right, and then
they would have the Blaker Street Cinemamovies. And then they would have you

(25:11):
just grabbed the brochures of the Broadside, or they would have a museum a
modern art. Yeah, and thenI would put it all in the day
planner, so that would just likeI could write it down. So here's
the movies I was going to seefor the next couple of months. I'll
just share one other movie memory,which was about six months after Taxi Driver
came out. It was in secondrun at a wonderfully sleazy theater on West

(25:36):
forty second Street, and I guessit started about eight o'clock or something.
I went in with my friend SaulAstrau, and we come out and we
step out onto forty second Street whenit was still very much like it was
characterized in the film. It's rainingslightly, prostitutes are walking by. We

(25:56):
step out into the street and gotech, let's walk. Yeah for real?
Did you at that point, you'renow living in New York, you've
gone through the things that you've gonethrough. At that point, did you

(26:17):
set your sights on a career maybebased in your artistic skills or was there
sort of an opening? And Iguess what I'm getting out of here is
when did you first start to havean awareness that things were a little different
for you than they were for otherpeople in terms of non standard experiences I'll
call them. So those events likeI had, I had a when I

(26:41):
was thirty. I had a realpowerhouse of an event that shook me up.
So and then so in the soI was in my space gub I
lived in New York, City inmy twenties. From from nineteen to twenty
nine, I lived in New YorkCity, and for a little bit in
there, I was a ski bumb. I went for a winner and was
a ski bumb in Jackson Hall,Wyoming and UM, and then I moved

(27:03):
out to Jackson Hall, and thenI moved back to Maine, and then
I kind of spent some time inNew York City. So there's a few
years and there I was all overthe place and UM. But while in
Maine in the winter of nineteen ninetythree, ninety two, ninety three,
so it would have been in Januaryof February of nineteen ninety three, I've
got thirty years ago, I dothe right. Yeah, half a lifetime

(27:26):
ago for me. And I wasalone in this house in Maine, and
I I was So there came apoint in nineteen ninety two where I started
obsessively, obsessively reading UFO literature,read Buds books. I read probably let's

(27:52):
say ninety one nineteen ninety one,I started obsessively reading UFO books. Cut
you offer just a moment you remember, Was there anything that triggered it that
you were aware of? Were youjust started reading books? Like this.
I happened to be in an airportand I just picked up one of those
to you know, paperbacks, tradepaperbacks, and just it was continue on.

(28:14):
Oh, I could think of thename of the book, Golf's I
can't remember now, I'm all thinkinga second. But but it was just
one of those, and I wasfascinated. Yeah, I was fascinated.
And then I just I just onceI read it, I would pick up
another one. And once I read, I was like, So I read
Buds books. I read Chock Falet'strilogy. I read Past Sport to my
Goo, and yeah, I readCommunion, I read there's a bunch of

(28:37):
lesser books in that yell. Theywere like out There by Howard Bloom and
so and I was totally so.I was reading Bud's book Intruders that night.
It was on my bed. Boy, it was like and I was
alone at the house and it waswintertime, and I was in Maine.

(28:57):
I'm kind of a nut really rural, but it was kind of at the
edge of rural and a kind ofdown this road and there was a forest
and there was like a river behind, so it was felt very secluded,
and I there was a bright lightshining through the window, and I sat
up on my elbow and I lookedout the window and there were five gray

(29:18):
beings, the ubiquitous grays with thebig black eyes and the bald heads and
the skinny bodies, walking towards thehouse. And they were backlit by a
bright light. And I was theonly one home, and they nobody else
in the house, and they werewalking towards the house, and I I
had this feeling that was like noemotion, like emotions just sucked dry,

(29:45):
no emotion. And I heard avoice in my head that said now.
The voice in my head said,oh, yes, they're here. Now
is the time to put your headon the pillow and shut down. And
that's exactly what I did. Butit was like it wasn't my voice.
It it felt like my voice,like or a command from the outside.

(30:07):
It's very difficult to know. Andthe next morning I never even bothered to
go outside and look and see ifthere were footprints in the snow. I
dismissed it entirely as nothing at all. It was a dream. I was
reading Bud's book. I had thatscary imagery embedded in my head. So
it feels like I projected. Idrew that image later some years later.
It's on my website, it's inthe book too, And and it was

(30:29):
a very strange experience because I knewI had one chance to draw it right,
because after I drew it, thatimage would become my memory. If
that makes sense. Yes, AndI feel like I captured it as best
I could. I talk about itin the blog posts that I did at
the time. It's like, didthey have a belt? Did they not
have a belt? Well, Ican't remember that a belt or not have

(30:49):
a belt. It didn't look rightwhen I drew him without a belt,
so I put it gave him abelt like a little So it doesn't mean
I don't know if that means theyhad a belt or not. So that
was like, but that that's howit's drawn. But I can't I can't
vouch for the belt. I canvouch for that very clearly matches my memory
of them approaching the house and thething that was backlit behind them was small.

(31:10):
It was like the who was aflying saucer, a big flying saucer
that'd be perfect. It wasn't.It was It was a like about the
size of a washing machine or something. Like that, just out in the
yard. And then we had apretty big yard. There was like the
landlords grew corn in a big sectionof the yard. It was wintertime.
It was all you know, undersnow. U So but that was that

(31:30):
was very telling. So can Ijust did one little detail about this lace?
Do you know um Terry Lovelace alltoo well? Terry's great, yes,
respect, so tear it. SoI did a session with Bud and
I think two thousand and eight.Let's go back just a little bit.
Okay, sure, how you connectedwith Bud? I sent him a letter

(31:52):
and I was working on a documentaryat the time, which I almost never
bring up anymore. It seems likeso long ago. But I was kind
of working on a documentary. That'sa funny story to tell that. I
put a blog post on my thingexplaining the documentary and how the genesis of
the documentary. I just spoke itinto a microphone, so it's an audio
post. And that would have beenin around two thousand and seven, two
thousand and eight, and I wantedto do a documentary on UFOs and the

(32:15):
fellow's named Steve. When you methim, Stephen Dyer, you met him,
you met him in Laughlin. That'slike Laughlin. That was like when
the UFO I UFOC was still Laughlin, and I started going to UFO conferences
and I was like, all ofa sudden, I was on fire with
the stuff. Like I was like, I gotta figure this out. This
is after the initial OWL experience andstuff. So um, but I remember

(32:40):
I didn't. I was like,I convinced this guy, this guy Um
Stephen and his wife Lisa were scriptwriters. They had written some Hollywood scripts and
they were living in the little townI was in this idyllic little ski town,
and they they I convinced them toto try to do a documentary on
UFO production. They had no ideawhat I was talking about, and I've

(33:01):
managed to do what I managed toconvince him um and and the documentary eventually
petered out. But what happened wasthere was a like it was just going
to be I was going to likekind of be the fact checker. I
was going to kind of do theresearch, and they were going to do
the production. And we we hadmet with a cameraman who had worked on

(33:24):
I think he had He had beenone of the cameraman on Jimmy plays Berkeley.
So he's this guy who was livingin Jackson, holl And. He
was doing documentary film work and hewas going to semi retired. He was
just looking for small projects that tokeep him busy. And he was a
great guy. Peter was his name, And and so we had learned lunch
with Peter, and I had beenin this other world. I'd like dropped
out of the film industry. I'ddone a lot of TV commercials, so

(33:45):
I'd been in the kind of filmindustry was TV commercials. But and I
was at this little bagel shop inJackson, Wyoming with these two guys and
they were doing the film talk andI kind of like, oh, there
it is. I haven't been inthe film talking a long time. They're
doing it. And then on thedrive home with Stephen, it's about a
forty five minutes drive from the townto the time I was living in and
and we were talking and I kindof said, well, Stephen, this

(34:07):
might not be interesting to you.But um, I had the close up
UFO sighting when I was twelve.I was like, so dismissive. I
didn't mean anything to me. Iwas like, I had a close up
poo sightny when I was twelve,and he kind of looked at me like
he did yeah, and I,um, oh, yeah, I had
this orange flash in the sky andI had a missing time event when I
was also twelve, and he lookedat me like and and and then I

(34:31):
said, oh and um ninety nineteenninety three, I saw five gray beings
with big black eyes walking towards thehouse and they were back light by a
big bright light. And I hada voice in my head that said that
was the time to shut down andgo to sleep. And he looked at
me like, how can you,like, how come we even told me
this before? And he could justsee us like his brain ticking is like

(34:52):
we have a new we have adirection for this documentary now, So that
we attempted a documentary just a lotof footage in the can sitting after nothing's
ever been done with it, whereI was someone who had never looked into
these experiences and I was going tobe looking into my experiences for the first
time. And I met with Bud, I met with Leo, I met

(35:14):
with Barbara a little bit, Imet with Dave Jacobs. Let's let folks
know in case they're not aware Leois the late great doctor Leo Sprinkle,
who was not just a courageous pioneeringpsychologist, one of the first people to

(35:37):
really dedicate himself to work with experiencersand abductees and the first mental health professional.
The first hypnotic regression that Travis Waltondid was with Leo Sprinkle and Barbara
is dear Barbara Lamb, who alsouses well hypnotic regression working with people that
have had experiences as well. Youreally were with some of the most innovative

(36:02):
and some of the most empathetic andintelligent people in the work, that's for
sure. And I so so itwas so that was sort of happening,
and that kind of like you knowwhat happened as I got like like budd
tried to hypnotize me and Leo triedto hypnotize me with a camera in the
room and I couldn't go under,and it was like there was this pressure
from the I want to be carefulto say this. They weren't pressuring me.

(36:23):
I felt the pressure on myself tolike I didn't want to perform,
like I didn't want I couldn't lieor anything like that. So so that
and then I get and then asI was like, there came a point
when I had a conversation with Budand it was like there was like this
oh shit moment where this is real? Can I say that I'm not sure
if I can even be sure?So where like basically like I like Budd

(36:45):
and I had a conversation and hesaid this, like, like what you
just said, I've heard this manytimes where you're telling me I've heard many
times, you know everything you've said. And I would then say, like
I worry that I'm wasting your time. And then he's like the fact that
you're saying that tells me so much. And so I'm I'm and so I

(37:05):
was just like crawling out of myskin at a certain point. Yeah,
Like I was very distressed. Andthen and then the documentary took kin a
different flavor and it just and thenit kind of nut. We didn't make
forward progress after that, and thenwe didn't put that much time into it.
But there's a there's a forty hoursof great footage of of of those
folks, maybe not forty hours,twenty hours, let's say twenty hours when

(37:35):
people have a camera on them asopposed to an audio recorder it can be
the difference between night and day.If you want a permanent record. I
know for myself, I'd be perfectlyhappy doing this show, just old fashioned
radio, no screen, theater ofthe mind. But this is what so

(37:58):
many people prefer, and we wouldbecome such a visual culture. And my
feeling is if you want that experience, don't look at the screen or you
know, basically you can cover yourcomputer screen and listener however you want to
do it. But for some peoplethat is important. For me, we're
producing the result is what you're after, and cameras can tend to make people

(38:22):
feel self conscious. Other folks,after two minutes or so, you just
forget it's there and move on.When you had finished the hypnotic regression with
Bud, was that at the pointwhere you were still you're going to see
doctor Dave Jacobs or was that apoint so I only went to interview doctor

(38:46):
Dave Jacobs. I never did hypnosiswith him. I did do a hypnos
session with Bud with a camera inthe room, and very little came up.
What did come up was this,I mentioned Terry Lovelace. This is
a very odd little detail and I'lljust like so I talked with Terry Lovelace,

(39:06):
and it's like, Terry, thisis how it felt like. I
felt this at the moment. Icould have told this at the time,
and it was too weird and tooembarrassing to say. But when I was
under hypnosis, there wasn't a newmemory. It was exactly as I remembered
it. Basically, I just sawthe beings out the window in my mind's
eye, and then I put myhead on the pillow and shut down,

(39:27):
and that was where the memory ended. But when I was talking with Terry,
I said, listen, this iswhat it felt like. And it
felt like I had permission under hypnosisto just say exactly how it felt like.
So imagine you're a little kid andevery year at Easter time, this
one this one, these aunt anduncles come in one car and they get

(39:51):
out of the car and let's sayin one year, as an eleven year
old boy, you can see himout the window and they get out of
the car and they walk towards thehouse. And then the next year it's
Easter time, you're gonna have thesame family type event. They that car
pulls up. It's a year later, they car opens up and they get
a house. There's that familiarity.So the feeling was, Oh they're back

(40:15):
again. Oh they're here again.And it was so familiar. It was
like, oh, yeah, that'sthem, They're back again. It's the
so under hypnosis there was there wasa mood and understanding and internal knowing that
this was totally normal and very familiarwhen I did the session with budd and

(40:35):
that was in essence the only newinformation I got. And I will say
again the the it was very difficultto I feel fully go under with them
with the hip with you bring upTerry, was that in regard to um
is having a similar memory or experience, Because I've interviewed Terry on the show,

(40:57):
and we spent quite a bit oftime, well not as much time
as I would have liked, inArkansas just this past to April. But
was that what the association was withJerry here? Well, we were just
having a conversation and we would wewent for a while where we would just
call each other up and talk.We haven't done it for a while,
but that which just came. Therewas a point where we just call it
diale each other up and we wouldtalk. And I think he needed it

(41:20):
and I know I needed it,and he was very new to the field,
and I had a little bit.I was just a little bit further
down the road than he was asfar as having been out and talking about
my experiences, and then he wasMy book came out a couple of years
before his, and so so itwas just sort of like I didn't know
who else to ask, right,and like, who do you ask about
that level of detail that? Andso he was like, oh, man,

(41:44):
I know just what you mean,that feeling of familiarity. So he
has a character named Betty and hetalks about like when he saw Betty,
which was this seemed like a wigand he called her Betty because the wig
looked like the wig that like BettyRubble from the Flintstones. And so so
he had mentioned that in his book, like there was a familiarity when he

(42:07):
when this one character. I thinkhe has a story of just see him,
like hearing a noise downstairs, walkingdownstairs and she's in sitting in the
living room waiting for him, andthere was this familiarity I might I think
I've got that right, that's inhis first book. So that was the
reason I contact him, just orit just came up in converversation, but
his understanding of that level of likeit was, it did not feel like

(42:30):
that was the first time it feltlike under hypnosis. This had happened many
times. That doesn't make it truesimply because it felt that. But I'm
but I'm taking that feeling seriously asfar as a possibility. Do you have
any subjective feeling thinking in terms ofyour childhood sighting the Missing Time episode and

(42:54):
the five beings coming toward the housepurely subjective? But they're good, they're
bad. I don't know what theyare. They some kind of judgment,
some kind of opinion on them atthose early stages, none at all.

(43:15):
I have no sense of they weregood they were bad. I don't have
any bad memories. I do haveone very scary memory, but that was
just a feeling of being scared ina tent. I was with a friend
of mine, Natasha, who you'vealso met, Natasha from Germany and um
and so the event wasn't it wascertainly scary. Share that with our listeners

(43:39):
and viewers. Yeah, okay,so this is let's jump ahead two thousand
and ten. This is two thousandand ten, and I had met Natasha
at um the i UFOC when itwas in Laughlin. Oh, this is
funny, how we it? Soshe was she was they have a little

(44:05):
Starbucks at the at the casino,and everyone kind of met there in the
morning and I would get my coffeethere, and I remember I got a
coffee and I got a like abear claw, one of the little pastries,
a bear clawed pastry. So Igot a coffee and a bear claw,
and then I like had my stuffat my book bag. And then
there was like all the tables werefull, and there was this one woman
sitting with at a very small table, but she had a free chair,
and I just wanted to check myemail and stuff. And I kind of

(44:27):
went up and says, okay,if I sit here, and I don't
think we said much more than that. She nodded, and I sat down
and they were sitting there, andall of a sudden, I'm like drinking
the coffee and and then I andshe looks at me. She gives me
to look like, and I'm like, what is it? What happened?
And she looks at me and said, you ate my bear claw? I
did, And then I opened upand I had my own bear claw was

(44:51):
in a paper bag like next tomy book bag, and so I was
like, oops, and so itwas still in the bag and I handed
her my bear claw and so butthat sound that was like her first words
to me were like, you atemy bearcloth? Interesting way to meet someone.
It was totally adorable way to meetsomething. Yeah, So it was
like, right, it was ifyou could script it. So anyway,
we we became close and and thenshe came back to the United States,

(45:15):
and I was at that point inmy life. I was doing all kinds
of outdoor work and um, andwe spent I think it was over ten
days, like twelve days driving aroundthe Southwest in the Four Corners area,
going to national parks, sleeping outunder the stars and canyon lands. And
so there came a point when wewere going to drive back to my house

(45:35):
and Idaho, which is a longdrive but it's a beautiful drive through the
state of Utah, and the brakesin the car were sort of acting up.
Breaks in my car were acting up, and so I pulled into this
little town and and the guy atthe at the This is a long story,
but to tell it correctly, Ihave to tell this detail. So
we go into this. It's inCortez, Colorado. Yeah, Cortes,

(46:01):
Colorado. So we're in Cortez,Colorado. And I asked somebody on the
street, like, hey, where'sthis. There a mechanic here, and
he's like, oh yeah, everyoneused the guy down. They go down
the road and turn the corns.Tiny little town, cute towns. I
pull in this little town mechanic andand he says, okay, bring the
car in. And and there wasa smell coming up, and it was
heat coming up from the brakes andstuff and so, and they could tell
they were acting funny. And andthen the mechanic. Fifteen minutes later,

(46:22):
the mechanic comes out and he's gotthe boily rag and open his hands.
He comes up to me and andhe says, well, I can't let
you leave town or you'll die.I go, um, okay, tell
me more, you know so,and then he says, your brakes are
failing, and if I let youout right now, you would I would
be liable by the county sheriff.I would be liable if you got into

(46:45):
an accident, because they are right, they're essentially not working. And I'm
like okay, So what does thatmean? So well, I can fix
it, but I won't be ableto get the parts for five days.
So the owner of the shop,you know, helped us find a cheap
rend car. He said, listen, I know the lady who doos arount
a car thing. She's got cars, don't it's a quiet time of the
year here, I'll set you up. So he asked a favor. So

(47:07):
we got this cheap round of car. Was great, like just totally had
this dream car. We so wespent five days driving around. But that
night we went to um we foundout. We asked around, is there
a place to camp here? Andthere's like, oh, there's great what's

(47:27):
called primitive camping, just like outsideof town. You just pull off the
side of the road and there's wonderfulturnouts and stuff like that. There's no
fees or anything like that. Sowe found this great spot to camp and
then we we went to bed kindof I don't know, it wasn't that
late. We had pizza that night, and then the next morning, excuse
me, in the middle of thenight at about I think I remember looking

(47:49):
it was eleven forty like we bothwoke up screaming. We both woke up
screaming like just like boom boom boomboom boom boom, like as much adrenaline
as it could possibly be going through. I have described it as synthetic fear,
like it was not just fear andnormally, like normal fear has like
a this was just off the church, both of you at the same moment,

(48:12):
absolutely at the same time, bothof us. She describes it the
same way, just absolute like andI remember just like, what's happening?
What's happening? And I was like, I kind of I was like like
like, Okay, we can getout of here. We can get out
of here, and can get thecar, I can drive to a hotel,
we can get a motel, wecan just so we can get out
of here right now. We canjust leave the temp set up. We
can come back to marm And Iwas just like and then I'm like,
what happened? What happened? Whathappened? She said, I saw a

(48:35):
face? What does that mean?I saw face? And she said,
do you believe in it's just notthings? She said, do you believe
in evil ghosts? And I hadno opinion at all about evil ghosts,
So I just to deflate the scene. I said no, and which I
don't know. I mean so,but it was like I didn't want anything
to be scarier. I was likebringing the level of feared up. So

(48:55):
we're like panicking and I just likeand then we're both asleep. And then
I have a memory. I donot think this is how it all worked
out, but I have a memoryof being in the tent like like like

(49:15):
I we're asleep, but I didn'twake up, so I don't know what
kind of realm I'm in. Itwas like not quite a dream, like
I know what a dream feels like. This didn't feel like a dream.
And I'm in the tent and I'mI have the elevator up feeling, and
I'm floating up off the sleeping pad. And then I just and I say
to myself, I have to rememberthis. I have to remember this.
I have to remember this. Ihave to remember this. And I look

(49:37):
in the corner of the tent byNatasha's but like her feet or her knees,
let's say, and floating in thetent is what it was like A
size of a pizza pan was acircle, like a translucent circle with a
single dot in the middle of it, and I had this thought, this

(49:58):
is to tell the strike. I'mgonna tell the whole thing. I said,
that looks like the thing in myeye. Now that won't mean anything
to y'all. Fill you in asecond. So that looks like the thing
in my life. So then I'mfloating. I'm saying I have to think.
I have to remember this, Ihave to remember that. That turns
into me saying oh. Then Ipass right through the roof of the tent,
just magically, just and I'm nolonger in this normal realm. I'm

(50:20):
in a white realm, like amagical, infinite realm of whiteness. Down
I'm not in a room, SoI'm in this white realm. There's nothing
but whiteness. It's all my memories. And then I say in my voice,
I say, am I on atable? Am I on a table?
Am I on a table? AmI on a table? And then

(50:43):
and then I hear Natasha's voice withher German accent. She goes, Mike,
you're floating. And then I'm backin the tent, and I don't
think this is she she doesn't remembersaying that. I don't think that happened.
What I just described. I don'tthink that happened. That is clearly
my memory, but I don't thinkthat's what happened. So and then we

(51:06):
slept soundly, which I usually wakeup and drift in and out and wake
up. We slept soundly till thenext morning, and we get up and
there's birds chirping, and there's there'sa beautiful Colorado morning and it's just magical.
And I and I wake up whereI both wake up, and I
say, what happened last night?And she said, I don't know.
I don't know, like what whatwhat happened? And so she says,

(51:31):
she said, well, I sawa face, and can you describe the
face? And she said, Idon't know if I can, I can't
describe it. Please please, pleaseget to describe the face. And she
said, you know what it lookedlike. It looked like that thing in
your eye. Now let me backup, and I said, where was
it? And she pointed right tothe spot where I had seen the floating

(51:53):
pizza pan shape, which was didn'tThis is a you must having worked in
this, you must be familiar withlike how like every story is like connected
to another thread. And then youstart pulling on one thread, and in
order to you got to tell anotherstory. So I in two thousand and

(52:14):
eight, I think this is righttwo two thousand and nine, and the
spring of two thousand, the fallof two thousand and nine. In October
of two thousand and nine, Iwas in Pasadena, California. I was
visiting a friend. I was justdriving around and and I there was nobody
at the house. So I justthey were they weren't going to be back
in the house for a while.So I was just like, I'll just
like take a nap in this park. So I was in this pretty park

(52:37):
in um in um Pasadena, andyou know the feeling you get when you
take an You lay out in thesun and you close your eyes slightly and
your eyes and you can just getthe twinkle through your eyes. That little
filter it was in my eye wasthe shape of a gray alien seeded like
a Buddha. And no one inthe world could see it but me,

(53:00):
so so I was so I drewit and put it on my blog.
And so it's this image of likea seated Buddha. It's like this little
it was a I had a cataractin my right eye and it was a
it was in It was within thatshape of the cataract. It was as
clear as a bell if I squintedmy eyes, and I could look into

(53:20):
a light and squint and then andthat would show up in my eye.
So when she said it looked likethe thing in your eye, she was,
it didn't look anything what I saw. Look, that was just a
circle. I saw it as thesame thing she saw. So, and
then then when we got up thatmorning, I had a big scratch across
my chest which had not been therethe day before. And then in what

(53:43):
happened later on that evening or excuseme, later on that that night we
went to we had a shamanic ritualat a sweat lodge in the on the
Navajo reservation. So to tell thestory properly, it begins with a guy
saying, you can't leave town oryou'll die, and it ends with like
a beautiful ritual in the landscape ofthe Navajo people. That was a death

(54:07):
and rebirth event. So I can'ttell it without telling the like we get
trapped in that little town, thisevent happens, and then it culminates in
this beautiful ceremony. So that wasa long story. We asked one simple
question that went on and on andon. Well, that's great. It's
one of the things about doing thisshow that we have the luxury of following

(54:29):
on. Often our time is lessor we want guests to be more concise.
I'm I really like this format alot and it's as good a place
to take are on the hour break. We will be back in four minutes.
This is Peter Robbins with my specialguest, my cloning. The show

(54:50):
is meanwhile here on Earth seeing fouryea hey members. The new KGr ra

(55:13):
dB app is now available on iOSand Android devices. Gain on demand access
to any kgrra dB programming. Downloadany show directly to your mobile device to
listen or watch on the go.Go to the app store and search KGr
ra dB. Are we alone inthe universe? The most important question facing

(55:52):
humanity is on the verge of beingsettled once and for all. The Mutual
UFO Network has been at the forefrontof this journey for nearly fifty years.
Our members worldwide are dedicated to theresearch, documentation, and awareness that will
shape the future of humanity. Won'tyou join us? It's not just a

(56:24):
donation, it's a warm blanket,it's a bottle of clean water, it's
a roof and a bed. It'sknowing someone cares. It's feeling safe.
He said today, that's better thanyesterday. Every dollar you can spare helps

(56:45):
so much more than you can imagine. Please donate now to help people affected
by Hurricane Ian. Your support isurgently needed. Discover the Observation Deck,
a one of a kind virtual eventplatform that takes video pressing to the next
level by using avatars to navigate acampus. There's so many areas and activities

(57:06):
to choose from. There's a thousandseed auditorium, an exco hall, a
nightclub, and even a beach.So come atwna conference, take a class,
or hear a lecture on the incredibleobservation to campus. Go to the
Observation DKA dot com. You're listeningto the KGr, a digital broadcasting network.

(57:31):
We provide unparalleled coverage of trending newsin the world of ufology, cryptozoology,
and paranormal phenomenon. Whether you're watchingour video live stream or listening to
one of our audio programs, youare getting the best from world renowned researchers

(57:52):
and hosts guiding you through topics themainstream won't touch miss one of your favorite
programs, no problem. Head overto the members area at kgra a dB
dot com for access to our massivelibrary of award winning content. Make contact

(58:14):
stay connected only at kgra a dBdot com. And we are back with

(58:42):
Mike Clellan and myself Peter Robbins onmeanwhile here on Earth and Mica. As
we move into the beginning of oursecond hour, let's pick up on where
the Owl story enters into your storystory. What was the beginning of what

(59:04):
has become the focus of your majorwork and what you're best known for in
the field. How did that startin two thousand and six, which was
before I started looking into any ofthe stuff. Like two thousand and six,
I had not looked into a thing. At the same time, I

(59:25):
had been reading somewhat compulsively UFO literaturefor over a decade, so I was
well primed to like look at myown life experiences and kind of say,
like, oh, like, Isure know what those imply like, you
know, missing time? And thenand so I it was this autumn of

(59:52):
two thousand and six, I wouldhave been forty four years old. I
lived in this beautiful idyllic town ofDrigs, Idaho, and I had I
had been working in Alaska all summer, so I was, I was,
I'd been outside living in the mountainsall summer long up in Alaska. And
then I got back down to thelower forty eight and back down to my
town, and I met this youngwoman who had been living in the town,

(01:00:13):
and she was working for the sameschool I worked for. They have
a branch in that town, andshe was doing what's called in town work.
We're helping with gear and stuff likethat. So I got in a
conversation with her name is Kristen,and I said, Wow, you must
have been out camping all summer long. You were here all summer at October
now it's I think would have beenlate September. That's probably a little more
accurate late September. And I said, yeah, you've been We should like

(01:00:35):
while you've been camping all summer?I bet hunt. She went, I've
been camped once. I'm like,that's terrible. I'll take a camping.
So this was so it was essentiallya first date and in kind of this
outdoor culture, that's very normal,you know. So we went out for
one night with very light pack becauseit was a beautiful weather, so we
had no issues at all. Wewere going to just sleep out under the
stars. And we walked left inthe afternoon and you'd walked for a few

(01:00:58):
hours, and from where I wasliving, in a few hours you can
be deep, deep, deep intothe mountains, and I was. We
were sitting on a big flat rockas the sun was setting, and three
owls passed right above us, andthey flew around us for the next two
hours as the sun set. Andthen when we actually lay down to go

(01:01:22):
to sleep, you'd be on youron your back, looking straight up at
the sky. This is glorious.This is far northern latitude, rocky mountains
and high elevation, just trillions ofstars and see on your back that the
sky would be blotted out for justhalf a second when these owls would fly
right in front of our faces.And then the next morning it was like,

(01:01:47):
wow, that was really cool,the owls and stuff like. Then
said and I said, hey,let's say if that was fun, we
went. We just walked out.The next morning. We were back in
town well before lunchtime, and thenI said, well, let's do this
some other time. This was fun. And she said great. And then
so we went to a different partof the mountains four days later for one
night. Again one night and thenat sunset the we actually was a little

(01:02:10):
colder the second trip, so Isaid, let's walk up to that hilltop
and we brought a tent. Thistime. The weather was a little more
unsettled, so let's walk up tothat hilltop to warm up. Just so
we walk up up to the hilltop, we'll warm up, we'll walk back
down it just as it's getting dark, and then we'll we'll be a little
warmer in the tent as opposed tojust climbing in the tent when you're a
little chilled. So she was great. So we walked up to the hill

(01:02:34):
and as we got to the hillthe sunset and three owls flew around us.
Now before they had been sort offar away. This time they were
like right up close to us.And I have such a clear memory of
this one owl standing right at ourfeet, and I said, this is

(01:02:55):
something I talked about now. Idid not talk about it then, but
I had a voice in my headas we were seeing those owls, those
real owls, and the voice said, this has something to do with the
UFOs. There's no UFOs in thestory except for the voice in my head.
And so afterwards we were both bothboth of us recognized that like to

(01:03:16):
have it happened once was pretty cool, to have had happened twice was mystical
to the point of like kind ofbeing scary. And we started searching out
and researching owls and what the totemmeaning of owls, what the spiritual meaning
of owls, what it might mean, what does this, what does this
mean? And and we were bothbut I had the extra like I started

(01:03:37):
asking why, like I got itstuck to my own UFO experience because of
these owls. The voice in myhead said, well, h m hm

(01:04:01):
m Mike, your sound has goneout. Mike, m my own experiences
talk Michael, can you hear me? And can you hear me? Your

(01:04:27):
sound has just dropped out for thelast minute or so, we're not hearing
you, Chanelle. Is this somethingfrom our side that we can correct?

(01:04:48):
Okay, okay, Mike is goingto exit and return. This only happens
on live radio, folks. Youdon't get this excitement in podcasts. It's

(01:05:08):
all edited out. Mike and Imet about a bit more than fifteen years
ago when he started working with BudHopkins, and we had had I think
one case where alves had come up. I'm going to ask Mike about that
when he returns. But it's extraordinaryin this field of study, how we

(01:05:35):
can retrigger and you are back andcan you hear me? I can hear
you? Sound great? I hearyou, yes, and you sound great
too. Can you take this backagain to um? Well, you don't
know when you faded out, andI pretty much know right when I faded
out. Okay, So so sorryabout that you disappeared an I kind of

(01:05:57):
kept talking. I was hoping,So I, um, did we get
to the second set of owls?Yes, we got to the second set
of owls? Okay. So whathappened was afterwards, I two things happened,
right, So there's this crazy impulseto research owls because it felt like
something powerful had happened. And thesame impulse was also something that Christine experienced

(01:06:23):
in her own way. Yes,so she kind of went down a different
path and it was very so.Yes, so Kristen was was looking at
her own so but the UFO stuffdidn't mean anything to her, like that
was but she had a lot ofsynchronicities in her life and so she also
a very spiritual person. So andthen um, so I was looking into

(01:06:44):
the owl issues through Totem animals andstuff. And then I was also um
looking into the UFO stuff. Istarted looking into my own UFOL experience as
I reached out to Leo, andI started reaching out to people and other
researchers and move on. And soI Leo would would introduce me. People
said, call this person. Let'sbe a good Purpson for you to call,
and I would talk to him.And so I met a lot of

(01:07:04):
people, and I would ask everyonethe same question. You know, I'd
say, have you ever had anyodd experiences with owls? And I was
shocked and how many people said,you know, no one has ever asked
me that I have the weirdest storiesa one weird story about owls with an
owl in it. And I startedto take this seriously. I started to
collect these stories and I started toarchive them, and I started a blog.

(01:07:28):
And within the blog I started,I put right on the top of
my blog, I want to hearyour owl stories very early on, and
people, and it did not takelong before if you googled UFOs owls.
I was the first thing that cameup. So anyone anywhere in the world
who had a UFO and an owlexperience would find me in about two mouse
clicks and if they were curious aboutit. So I I took this research

(01:07:56):
race seriously and I was so thisis something that I'm very been with.
But this between about two thousand andsix when I had the experience with Kristen
to about two thousand and thirteen whenI had like an experience that basically cemented
it, like this is real,and I was just full of doubt.
In those years two thousand and sixto two thousand set here, I was

(01:08:21):
ninety five percent of my waking hourswondering if I had gone insane, and
it was just like that, myjust this can't be happening. This cannot
be happening. It's impossible. Whyyou it can't be or why me?
Is what I was saying, Whythis can't be happening? And it just
drawn on and on and on andso it was a tough time and we

(01:08:44):
acted in those years, and itwas a tough time. So you have
worked with budd and King with whoseexperiences must recognize that, and I'm at
a point now where I recognize thatin other people. That to me,
And I'm not a I don't pretendto be a psychologist or or clinician or
anyone with any expertise, but Ican listen to people's stories and tell them

(01:09:04):
like you are not alone, Mike, for a moment um, you're familiar
with the term confirmation U, confirmationbias um, that confirmation anxiety. You
know, um, Essentially it's Inow believe this, so you know,

(01:09:26):
to a hammer everything looks like anail. I'm I'm focusing on these things.
And yeah, um, for folkswho you know may have just tuned
in or are not familiar with yourwork, confirmation bias um, can you
give us a couple of examples ofthings that have come to you from completely
different directions or have happened to youbeyond this and not you know, the

(01:09:51):
one that confirmed it all for youin twenty thirteen, you're garbling up a
little bit. Oh, can yougive us some examples of some of these
OWL accounts that for you, whetherthey happen to you or somebody whose account
you take very seriously, made itall the more real that it constitutes evidence

(01:10:15):
on a certain way of understanding thatword. Okay, so here's a simple
one. So this is one ofthe very first ones I got. A
friend of mine contacts me. He'scamping in has become a close friend of
mine, but he reached out tome, one of the very first people
to reach out to me. He'scamping in Arizona with a friend and they're
out under the night sky in thedesert and they're just talking and looking at

(01:10:38):
the stars, and then they noticean owl at the top of a cactus
looking down at them, and itgives them a strange, eerie feeling,
and the owl flies off, andthen moments later, a triangle UFO flies
by, goes right over them,and this fellow Derek struggled to define,

(01:10:58):
to try to describe how eerie theflight pattern of this craft was. This
triangle craft. Said. It wasvery low, totally silent, moved very
strangely where it hugged the terrain inthis very eerie, unsettling way, and
flew right over them and down thecanyon. And just a minute before they
had been looking at an owl.I have got that story in one form

(01:11:19):
or another. Good God, manymany, many many times where an owl
shows up in the context of directUFO contact or let's say that was a
UFO sighting. But and so there'stwo aspects of this. One is the
screen memory aspect, and one isthe real owl. Once you've heard the
screen memory story five hundred times,you kind of get it. And what

(01:11:43):
I'm more fascinated with now is theaccounts of real owls showing up at the
time of contact. And so,yeah, like I've got a lot of
stories like that. You know ofit very similar to Derek's where you would
see an owl and it very oftencomes with an owl first and then the
UFO, not the other way round. Do you remember the first time you

(01:12:04):
spoke to Bud Hompkins about this phenomena? Oh? Yeah, and I brought
up the owls. I said,I had this weird experience. I told
him exactly the story I just toldyou with Kristen. So that would have
been two thousand and seven or eight, So that would have been just a
year or so before, and Iwas very um, I was on edge.

(01:12:26):
Who I was on edge when Imet Bud like I was. That
was that chapter when I was worried, I was going insane and he just
kind of he was very grounding.He was just like, Okay, that's
the owl story. Okay, justdon't don't worry too much about that.
Let's just one thing at a time. And so I think he suspected strongly
that there were UFO contact events aroundthat issue with Kristen and I I do

(01:12:50):
not think there were. I thinkthose were real owls. I there's no
way to I guess I could gothrough withnotic regression and see if there's anything
there out of regression is its own, you know, ball of wax.
Where there's some it's hard to isto me that's regression. Is not conclusive
information. It's information, for sure, but I'm very cautious to treat it

(01:13:11):
as conclusive information. So, um, but those those that's the stories.
And I've got hundreds of stories ofowls and UFOs. And these stories come
not just from the Northwest or theUnited States, but around the world,
all over the world. People fromRussia, people from Cyprus, people from

(01:13:32):
Finland, people from Canada, peoplefrom England, yeah, Scotland. Wow,
I've got them from all over theworld. Here at this point,
looking back at it and looking straightat it as sort of the ground zero
center of this area of study.Have you been able to reach any kind

(01:13:58):
of conclusions for lack of a betterword, or it's not something you can
draw conclusions around, do you feelI can? I can speculate and that,
and I can speculate from an informedposition, but you can, like
the conclusion is anybody's guests? Sothe source of the owls? Right,

(01:14:19):
so you can you can. Wedon't know the source of the UFOs,
right? Are they from another planet? Are they from another realm? Are
they from our own unconscious? Sowhy are the owls connected to it?
So here's here's one thing I feelvery strongly with now. Owls are also
connected with other highly charged human experiences. Right, So seeing a flying sauce

(01:14:40):
or seeing a UFO, seeing atriangle craft is a highly charged human experience.
And there are other highly charged humanexperiences meditation. These are the ones
I'm finding. This is this iswhere I'm finding the patterns meditation, psychedelics,
most often mushrooms. And so I'mope I understand Like a lot some

(01:15:00):
researchers will say, he's like talkingto people taking mushrooms and I'm taking this,
and like, yes i am,I'm talking to people who take my
thoms and they have the owl experiences. That's what I'm looking for, the
owl experience. People who go throughshamanic initiation see owls. This is well
understood in the cultures, the shamaniccultures, in the community of shamans well
understood. When you go through ashamanic initiation, you see owls and then

(01:15:25):
death would be the other one.So when somebody this is what I'm getting
in myself, I've got. Icould do a beautiful, big fat book
on owls and death and it's veryheartwarming stories, mostly where it's usually a
parent. This is the story I'mgetting. Okay, here, I'll just
tell you one. This is,of course, guy walks his dad dies

(01:15:46):
of a heart attack, massive heartattack. He's in the hospital, his
dad has died. He leaves thehospital. The doors open up, and
he's on the little sidewalk right wherethe just like a few feet from the
do doors to the hospital, andin the grass next to the sidewalk is
an owl looking up at him.And he looks at the owl and just

(01:16:09):
he says, Dad, I loveyou. You were a great father.
You were I'm so honored to haveknown you. Thank you for everything you
did. I appreciate it more thanyou'll ever know. And I have that
story over and over and over andover and over in ways that are so

(01:16:31):
beautiful. So here's another story.This is and so unconnected and people don't
know each other, and I'm I'mconvinced. I'm convinced. Now here,
let me tell you one story.This happens to me. I don't know.
So I my mother died in twotwelve and I was holding her hand

(01:16:51):
on one side of the bed andmy sister was holding her hand on the
other side of the bed. Shehad been suffering terribly from Alzheimer's. She
had an aneurysm and four days latershe passed gently away and it was it
was her last couple of years wereterribly sad. So it was a beautiful

(01:17:12):
experience to to have that life experience, to have that life experience, to
be that have that connection with mymother there and and so that was like
a three in the morning and wasmy mother was living in an assisted living
facility near my sister and outside ofCharlotte, North Carolina, excuse me,

(01:17:33):
outside of Yah, outside of Charlotte, and um and my brother was not
in the room and it happened,So me, my brother and sister had
to plan all the things. Sothen so like to try to sleep that
next day where none of us couldsleep. We were trying to like,
what's involved in the funeral, what'sinvolved in the obituary, what's involved in
you know, family and so atabout as the sun was setting, we

(01:17:59):
took a big relief and we wentout onto Jeanie's my sister's Jeanie, my
brother's Jim. I'm the baby.I was on a couch, the kind
of a little wicker couch in theirback porch, very southern environment, and
Jeannie's best friend was sitting across fromus. Now, my brother and sister
knew I had been doing owl research. I was reading, I was getting
emails. Every morning. I wouldread him to my sister. I was

(01:18:21):
there for a bunch of days ina row, and I would read these
letters to my sister. Here's what'sgoing on with My brother didn't like it.
He was not comfortable with it,and so I never pushed it.
My sister was curious and she didn'tknow what to make of it. So
I I'm sitting on the couch mysister's dear friend Ruthie, who lived right
across the street, was sitting acrossfrom us, and we all got a

(01:18:44):
glass of wine and decompressing from whathad been an emotional day. And Ruthie
says, Jim, Jean Mike,I know there is an afterlife. I
know. And Ruthie is this beautiful, heart felt, radiant being, like,
if you want a witness that isunquestionably telling the truth, it's this.

(01:19:08):
It's my sister's best friend, Ruthie. She says, I know there
is an afterlife. And I knowbecause I'm an experience with an owl.
Oh my gosh, my sister didthe thing where she was like no,
no, no, no. Andmy brother like looked at me and he
gave me like, like you puther up to this something? What did
you do? You did something?And I'm like, and Ruthie, poor

(01:19:30):
Ruthie, I could see her facelike what did I do? And and
so I like said, Ruthie,you don't know it, but I've been
doing research on owls and their mysticalconnection to things like death and UFO experiences
and big powerful events and and sojust let me say, like I want
to hear your story. So shesays, my father died. After my

(01:19:51):
father died, I was having aterrible time with grief, and so part
of the part of my grieving processwas to walk this nature trail that went
around the neighborhood. I walked thedog, I walked my sister's dog around
that nature trail. So and shesaid, I would every day I would
pass an owl on a branch.And then one day I was approaching the

(01:20:13):
branch with the owl, and theowl hooted at me. And I looked
up at the owl, and Ithought owls shouldn't be out in the daytime.
And I looked up at this owl, and I said, are you
my daddy? And she said,every bit of the grief faded away.
And I had this mystical unquestioning knowingthat my dad was fine, and he

(01:20:41):
was telling me that he was fine. He was telling me through this owl.
And she said, after that,my grieving was gone. So that
is the story that shows up withremarkable consistency in my research. As far
as owls and death doesn't have anythingto do with the UFOs. It has

(01:21:02):
everything to do with the highly chargedhuman experience of which so the owl is
at the center. And then there'sall these little spokes coming in and these
highly charged events that people can havein their lives. One is UFO context.
So I think that the to theowl is not the totem of the
UFO experience. The owl is thetotem of the highly charged human event.

(01:21:25):
So that is a better way toframe it. People say, oh,
my gosh, I saw it likean owl. Does that mean I'm abducted
by aliens? I'm like, no, no, no, it doesn't.
It's like it. You should takethat seriously in a mythic way, but
it don't jump to the UFO thing, because that's that's been at the forefront
of my research. But but there'slots lots more to these stories. Let's

(01:21:51):
shift gears here a bit and talkabout the novel that you have written.
I have never written non fiction,although a lot of people wish some of
the work that I had written wasfiction. I mean, I've never written
fiction. And so the best didyou write any fiction before you decided to

(01:22:15):
not write a novel? Nothing?So the book started out of a comic
book. I wanted to do acomic book. I was a professional illustrator.
I have a comic book kind ofstyle. I wanted. I have
an idea, Oh, I'm goingto do a comic book, and so
graphic novel. Graphic novel, that'sthe more grown up way to say it.
But I'm like, there's a teenagerin me, like, can't make
that leap. It was going tobe a comic book, so it would
have been a graphic novel obviously,but so but I had an idea,

(01:22:36):
and I did some illustrations, andI did some roughsos are all online and
stuff like that. I put thatout there, and this would have been
around twenty ten eleven, that's liketwelve years ago, a dozen years ago.
So I did some sketches, Iwrote a big treatment out. I
really worked on the treatment, andthe treatment was and then then I put
it like a kind of a friendof mine worked in the comic book industry

(01:22:57):
and said, you don't want todo a comic book alone. You got
to be part of a team.You want to illustrator, You wanted to
have someone do the inkings. I'mand do the pencilings. I'm and do
the colors, someone do the lettering. Don't you'll make you'll you'll kill yourself
with trying to do it. Allalone. So I was like, oh,
and I put it on a shelf. In twenty nineteen, I took
it off the shelf, and Inot it wasn't it was in my computer.
It wasn't on a shelf, butmetaphorically off a shelf, and um.

(01:23:19):
I read the treatment and I waslike, this is pretty good.
Well, this is good. Ilike this. I like the story,
and you could do it by yourself. And I could do it all alone.
And I had written already written threebooks at that point, and I
said, Okay, I'm gonna I'mgonna make this happen. And I kind
of tinkered with it. It neverfelt right. It never felt right.
I was tinker with it and I'dmake a little thing here, and it
makes some notes here, and I'drework a chapter there, and I add

(01:23:41):
a little bit there, and I'dmake some and it never and then and
then I looked it out and Iwas like, oh, I crossed the
line. I did too much notto finish it. And then COVID happened,
and I was like, forgot,I'm locked up. I'm doing it.
I'm I'm doing it, and II never trusted it. I read
it aloud. I read some partsaloud to a friend over the phone,

(01:24:03):
and she cried and I was like, oh, I cried too, actually,
so it was to be fair.We read one chapter. It wasn't
even well, not court chapter ofthe book. It was just a peripheral
little thing, and we both cried, and I was like, and neither
one of you were crying because itwas like, oh, please stop reading
because oh no, it wasn't.Yeah it was. It was. It
was very so so it was soI was like, I got it.
Okay, this is a real book. And I never treated it as a

(01:24:26):
real book until that point. Andthen then it was like I gotta take
it really seriously. And so II worked, and so that was it
was a wow. Was it hard? Wow? Was it hard? And
like it was like like I hadto let go, like just let go,

(01:24:46):
Like I mean, it's nonfiction.Is easy, right, You talk
to someone, you totally transcribe themover the phone. You got the transcription,
you can button up the transcription,you can make a few comments and
then you know, like okay,and then you can summarize the chapter and
none of that. Boy, youthey talk about the blank page. Oh
it was hard. It's yeah.One tell us as much as you can

(01:25:12):
about the book without walking away fromwhat you're about to say, saying I
don't need to buy that, orright that. I'm not going to spoil.
I won't spoil anything. I knowenough not to spoil it. So
so the past fifteen years, Iget one good story a day. I
got five stories yesterday. I gotfive owl in UFO stories yesterday in my

(01:25:34):
email inbox. That's a big day. Like not like i' something like I
can't respond to anyone. I haveto apologize. I ask for your stories,
I archive them, I read themall. I wish I could get
back to every single person. Ido my very very best, and it's
so hard. So when I talkto these people, I have typed it.
I have typed it a thousand times. People will tell me there's story,

(01:25:58):
and oftentimes I've heard not exact actuallythe story, but I but I
can say I have heard a story. I haven't heard your story exactly,
but I have heard many stories withthe same flavor and mood. And there
is this eerreequality to these stories,and I wanted to I wanted to embed
that inequality into the into the fictionbook. So the story is basically an

(01:26:19):
artist who more than a little bitrep like it's me. I went through
comic and here's one thing I usethat like my fallback, my reflex was
the comic book, like I had. I was like this, I'm giving
my self permission to go for it. You know, comic book has a

(01:26:41):
logic where you can go for it, and in the themes and the boldness
of it literature, you want tobe a little more stoic and stuff like
that. I wasn't stoic at all. I went for it. And so
it's a story of an artist whohas a sort of he's struggling with memories
in his past, and he hasa sort of life crisis and he does
kind of walk about in the desert, and in the desert has these kind

(01:27:04):
of mystical experiences and he turns hisback on his old life and ends up
in this little town. And thenwhile in that little town, he realizes
that he has been led to thistown. And within that little town there's
a cast of characters that there's somespies, there's some mystery, there's a

(01:27:26):
very profound mystery that's set up basicallylike why am I in this town?
And there's um so little romance inthere. There's a lot of mystery and
it it plays out like a kindof an action through well not really an
action, but a thriller and alsoa detective novel. So the first quarter
of the novel is this person's internaldrama while he's walking alone in the desert.

(01:27:50):
The next three quarters of the novelis a detective novel. I read
a lot of Raymond Chandler, soit's it's like, oh, I felt
that was my so so it was. It's a detective novel where he is
trying to solve the mystery. Themystery is himself. Why am I in
this town? So? And andthe reviews have been I'm absolutely humbled at

(01:28:13):
the reviews on Amazon. It's beenout two months and one day as of
as of today. So here here, I mean, we should I should
probably good idea. Here's the book. It's called The Unseen and the cover
of the book. I very muchwanted it to feel like a comic book,
and um, so it's a Itwas a huge departure for me to

(01:28:35):
go there's there are owls in it. I will say that. Oh,
one more thing, it's a UFObook. Like basically he's having UFO experiences.
I never use the word UFO oncein the book. I was I
was thinking that was like a challengefor me never to use the word UFO.
Also for such a simple illustration.Um, it's very powerful. It

(01:28:56):
sits well on the cover, andit has a very deep think your ground
because of the treatment of the figurewalking away from us in a real depth
of field. And I can't waitto read it. Our mutual friend Lauren
Kutts, who is outside of theUFO work, he's a railroad man and

(01:29:17):
all those very knowledgeable on the subjectof UFOs, and he absolutely thought it
was terrific. And that's somebody whowhose opinion I respect. You've also reminded
me in the same manner that thetitle of Bud's first book, Missing Time,
became part of the English language,which is an extraordinary thing to have

(01:29:42):
happened for a writer. And I'mnow thinking we may come to a time
when somebody says, you know,I had a five hour day. Yeah,
well so, yeah, it's it'sa it's funny. I've like I've
caught it where people are like,we'll talk about owls in the U contact
experience, and it has been it'ssomewhat accepted within the lore now that there

(01:30:05):
is this mythic quality to it asopposed to the screen memory quality to the
albums. Sort of a mythic qualityto these owl sightings that show up in
the context of these experiences. Whenyou say screen memory quality, let me
qualify that of it. I rememberin working with Bud and I think it

(01:30:25):
was somewhere in the eighties where anowl came into the story, a particularly
large white one on standing on thewindow ledge of the room of an experiencer,
and it was just one more factorbit of data. And I think

(01:30:47):
in the field of UFO studies,oftentimes researchers, investigators, writers really look
for the exotic as opposed to theevery day. And our minds are such
extraordinarily complex things, and they helpto protect us in many respects. I

(01:31:12):
know for myself, even after allof my decades in this work, if
tonight, for the very first timein my life, I woke up and
there was a glow coming under thedoor, and I was able to move,
and there were figures at the endof the bed of a certain kind
of physical profile. I don't thinkI would find myself saying, oh,
well, I know what this isall about. I think I would freak

(01:31:34):
that out and walk away from thiswork, possibly in a very shaken state.
And that screen memory of something thatisn't what you're actually seeing, and
not necessarily what the power of theseother intelligences are putting in your head,

(01:31:57):
but your mind itself protecting you.You're looking at, for example, an
archetypical gray and something in they're sayingI'm not ready for this, or I
can't handle this, or I amcompletely on overload right now, So I
think I'll see something else, andmaybe at some point in the future when

(01:32:18):
I'm ready, this memory will fallaway. Whether they put it there or
I put it there. Is thatsomething that you can easily discern, you
know, sort of a second senseat this point, or that you're not
sure in some cases which type ofvowel that is, so to say,

(01:32:39):
well, when someone says they sawfour foot owl in the road, four
and a half foot tall owl inthe road, and there's no such thing
as a four and a half foottall owl, that's so that's too big
to be a real owl. Andthen I can assume that it's some sort
of screen memory. And if it'saccompanied by a missing time or so,

(01:32:59):
yeah, I'm the screen memory aspectof it. I'm oh, here's the
story. This is a this isa This story was told to me by
a close friend, and she hadbeen having contact She worked with Bud.
She had been having contact experiences froma very young age, and basically her,
she always thought they happened at night. She just assumed these are nighttime

(01:33:21):
events. She was working at asummer camp for girls, and this would
have been in Oregon. And soshe was in the forest and there was
this one campsite and one part ofthe forest, and there was another campsite
not too far away, but justwere the flat spots where you had to
walk on a trail that connected thetwo was close you could actually, So
she was walking away from one campsiteand walking to the other, full daylight

(01:33:45):
alone. She heard kids behind her, the girls behind her at the one
campsite, and she turns the corneron the trail and there's a gray alien
standing on the side of the trail, and she says, and she was
shocked because she had seen them beforein fleeting little glimpses in her home,
in her bedroom, and she waslike, I'd only ever seen him at

(01:34:09):
night, so that was she waslike, oh, stopped in the trail
on the trail, and she saidthat the she looked at it, and
it looked at her, and shebasically there was like this telepathic communication and
the thing, like her impression wasthat the thing did not expect her to
see it, and she heard thisvoice in her brain like this this telepathic

(01:34:31):
reverberation, says she was she's veryskilled at like I'm telling her story for
her, but she's she says,when you're in that telepathic communication, like
you're feeling its thoughts, it isfeeling your thoughts. So there's this kind
of echo almost this echo chamber eventin communication. And she said she looked
at this thing and she heard itgo owl owl, owl, owl,

(01:34:54):
and she watched this gray alien morphinto an owl and turned around and walk
into the woods. I've never heardof an account like that. I have
one other account in my files,which there was a woman and she was
at she'd had a contact experiences.She's at her house and she there's a
bright flash outside in the front ofthe yard. So what is that bright

(01:35:15):
flash? They opens it or shestands in the porch. She looks around.
There's nothing in the yard. Andthen she looks right next to the
porch, right next to her,and there are four I think it's maybe
I can't remember the exact number,three beings, gray aliens looking at her,
and she looks at the three grays. The three grays look at her,
and they turn into three deer,and they walked backwards and around the

(01:35:38):
corner. So three deer walked backwardsand around the corner. And I've heard
I've heard another person who has thisstory of a cat like basically like in
the kitchen, they turn around,there's a gray alien. That gray alien
goes it just turns into a cat. But it was like a cat the
size of a gray alien, likea four and a half foot tall cat.
So there's there's this like like thepsychic projection is like, oh,
oh, you caught us, oops, and they so somehow that's take.

(01:36:01):
I'm of the opinion that it isa it's not, it's less a defense
mechanism. Screen memory is a Freudianterm for the defense mechanism of hiding like
what would be very trauma in youryouth, of course, and then but
in the UFO context, I feelit doesn't make me right. But this
is this is what's coming through ourresponsible research. Is I feel that that

(01:36:25):
the screen memory aspect is somehow projectedfrom the being into the mind of the
observer. John Carpenter has reports inhis files where people will basically at the
end of it of a contact event, the gray alien under hypnosis is coming
out again. It's a little bitmurky. It's hard to know what's true.

(01:36:46):
But under hypnosis the being will say, you will remember us as an
owl and so ok one And youare, of course referring to John Carpenter,
the mental health professional, and notthe famous film direct not the guy
who directed the thing Yeah yea orEscape from York. Continuing on, you

(01:37:11):
really are a marvelous artist and illustrator. You have an economy of line,
a whimsical sense of portraying events betweenpeople, and a way of using your
particular style to educate. For me, especially when I was younger in my

(01:37:33):
twenties and traveled to places on myown and took risks that we're just stupid
to go right to the right word. But I was addicted to it for
a while, and I had noadult supervision for about a year and when
you're roaming around Afghanistan or Nepal andyou know you're willing to try anything you

(01:37:57):
can get into situations. But thethought of wilderness survival, of literally living
off the land of serious mountain climbing, that's a whole other level of the
game. Can I ask you abit about how you not only became involved
in these very serious skills, buthow it kind of transmorphed into wanting to

(01:38:26):
communicate your enthusiasm and educate other peoplearound it. Again, this has nothing
to do with the paranormal unless youwell on a certain level. You know,
standing thousands of feet up, separatedcivilization by miles and miles, and
if you break your ankle, thewolves will eat you. How did this

(01:38:46):
really take hold with you? Becauseit's definitely a non standard way of making
a living. Well. I livedin a funny little town, the town
of Drigs, Idaho, has abunch of people that work for the school.
I used to not use the nameof the school. I don't care
anymore because like we're like, youcould google my name and find out in
one two seconds the school. Butthe school is a national outdoor leadership school,

(01:39:09):
and I worked for them for seventeenyears, and then I worked for
some guide services for the next eightor nine years. So there's about twenty
five years of my life that wasIt's very few people do this full time,
but I was working extensively for abouttwenty five years doing this work.
I took what course it knows whenI was like my twenties, and then
I was like, oh my god, that was the coolest thing ever.

(01:39:30):
And then I started doing this stuffon my own. So the courses are
thirty days long, so I wouldgo out for thirty days, you know,
the bus would drop us off,usually a team of instructors, usually
three or four instructors, and thetotal team number would be around twelve to
fifteen. Fifteen would be a biggroup. Twelve would be about normal.
So and you would go out forthirty days. You would walk away from

(01:39:53):
the bus. Now it's very difficult, so you said survival. You're living
off the land, and you don'treally live off the land. You drink
that, you don't carry your ownwater. But you're like, it's pretty
tough to go into the mountains ofWyoming or British Columbia and live off the
land. You might be able toget a little wild onion that you can
maybe make a little mint tea.But beyond that, wow, unless you're
yelling a moose that you're not goingto you're carrying that stuff on your back

(01:40:15):
to eat the food. So youcan only carry about ten days of food
at a time. After that itgets prohibitively heavy. So a thirty day
trip you would get the groceries deliveredtwice. And so I've had them delivered
by boats in a lake and Yellowstone. I've had helicopters in British Columbia.
I've had lots of horse packers comein and throughout the Rockies and airplanes in

(01:40:35):
the glaciers of Alaska would deliver thefood. So that's how you would So
it's not wilderness survival in that sense. You're eating pretty well. We were
like food was critical to the wholeexperience, or you're eating well and I
got to be a really good backcountrycook. But the but the trips were
designed this is so what happens isit's so it's a small team, twelve

(01:41:01):
to fifteen people. You see noone, you see no one else.
So what was joyous about the situation? You were in a primitive wilderness area,
and there's all kinds of We teachsafety, and we teach map reading,
and we taught group dynamics and teambehavior and stuff like that. So
but you the way I would describeit, because I was leading these trips

(01:41:21):
for most of the time that Iwas working there. After a certain apprenticeship,
you were just put into the roleof course leader and so thirty day
trip I was in charge of.What I was most focused on was building
a community within this small team,so I would So it wasn't like people
weren't just following the leaders No,no, no, we were everyone was

(01:41:43):
given a leadership opportunities people were andthat was the l in the school at
National Outdoor Leadership School. So theleadership aspect and leadership is like it's teamwork
and there's obviously decisions that the studentscouldn't make. But wow, I I
worked on Denali one time, sothat was a thirty five day course,
So most of that time was onglacier. So thirty five days on glacier,

(01:42:09):
we hauled our own food, sowe had what's called you'd do fairies,
you'd ferry the food. So thatthat was an outrageously powerful events.
So this is really funny. Thatdoesn't mean anything to the people who've worked
there, because after you do ita bunch of times. So I was
working two thirty day trips of summers. That's sixty days out. That's like
June and July. Like it's likebasically at the end of May, you

(01:42:32):
go into the woods, you comeout of the woods in September first.
It was great. It was great. Actually would have been August. Yeah,
August first, so sixty days inthe mountains and then you would come
back and you have one shower andthen you go right back in the field.
So one shower in sixty days.That's my record. And people hear

(01:42:57):
these stories and they think of likelike a brutal challenge and persevering and overcoming,
overcoming. It's nothing like that.It is smiles, it is laughing.
It is becoming close to the peopleon the team in ways you never
are close in the front country.So the front country is where we are
now. In the back country iswhere we would do the trips. The

(01:43:18):
joy and the power and in thesupportive environment that I worked so hard to
create was just electric. There's sometimeswhen things go wrong and they have to
deal with interpersonal conflicts in the fieldand stuff like that. But for the
majority of it it was wildly lifeaffirming and so beautiful. So you go

(01:43:41):
out for thirty days in the rockymountains, You see the snow, the
winter snow recede, You see wildflowerscoming up. You see the wildflowers blooming
to their full potential. And bythe time thirty days are up, those
those you know. So you gothrough a field of wildflower on day two,
they're just little things. By daytwenty nine, those wildflowers are bleached
in the sun, being replaced bya new crop of wildflowers that you're seeing.

(01:44:04):
You get so in tune with thesmells and where water is and the
sound of running water in the inthe you know what it means if you're
cold, tired, and hungry andhave a tent mate to say, here,
I just made you a cup ofhot chocolate. Enjoy. So it
was incredibly powerful in the most lifeaffirming, rewarding ways. How wonderful um

(01:44:31):
a question, did there ever comea time when you had to deal with
a genuine physical emergency when we mighthave even been like, can you give
us some examples of that? Becausethat I think is something. The way
our minds work is what's the worstcase scenario here? Snake bite? You
know, thirty miles from civilization,and what do you have to deal with

(01:44:53):
it? Can you give us someexamples of that in my situations? Look
at a map the wrangle Saint EliasMountain Range in Alaska. It is about
as a remote as any place inNorth America. You have to go to
Antarctic or Greenland, I think,to get to any place more remote than
that. So it's uh, andwe were crossing the range. That was
freaking bold. Man. I waslike, that was bold, Like to

(01:45:15):
start at one side of the range. And this is all mostly the glacier
travel. You know, you sendthere's a ridge on the range, and
you go down, you go upthe glaciers on one side, you come
down the glaciers on the other.We're gonna exit that side. So we
got to the apex of the tripin a storm, like this is the
highest point. We're behind schedule,we're low on food, all kinds of
stuff, tons of drama on thistrip. Um. Actually there's a there's

(01:45:39):
a I told this story in itscompletion on a podcast called Hot Drinks and
it's hosted by Sean Stratton and andthe podcast is called Hot Drinks. I
think you could google Hot Drinks podcastMike Clelland and it would come right up.
So and I told this story.So a young woman from Belgium had

(01:46:00):
a had was was dealing with intestinalor excuse me gi issues. So she
she was I think she was seventeenyears old, and she was vomiting blood
and had bloody diarrhea in about themost remote place that you can be without
going to Antarctica, and you haveno physical contact with the album. We

(01:46:24):
had we had, we had,we had a we had a satellite phone,
and we had what's called a lineof site marine band radio, so
if a overflying aircraft, we couldcommunicate with the with the marine band radio.
And we had a satellite phone thatwe could communicate to the branch.
So it only had one number wecould call. We could call if we
picked up. It was like thehot It was like the red line in
the White House, Like you callthat number, boy, like like they

(01:46:45):
answered the phone at the other endand we say, okay, we have
a medical emergency. We were allevery all the instructors have advanced medical training.
So we could not diagnose the issuein the field. So in the
middle of a storm we had itwas like it was there was close to
forty eight hours of just like dealingwith the storms, the air forces flying
helicopters above us. We could talkto the helicopters, we could not see
them in the white out conditions inthe storm. Eventually we had UM.

(01:47:12):
She got evacuated on a helicopter,and so we had to we had to.
We were part of a team thatmoved her down to a lower elevation
and so the helicopters. Anyway,it was that was a long involved story
and UM and and it was.So here's what happened. The team was
amazing. Sixteen year seventeen ye oldkids, young adults, let's say young

(01:47:38):
adults college A young adults were amazing. They rose to the So you're in
this situation where you're remote, Yes, the team, and I was very
clear. I kept everyone updated onevery possible thing I could, so the
entire team knew about this. Andthen we'd be in the middle of doing

(01:48:00):
something and a student would come upand they would hand you a bowl of
macaroni and cheese. So here's somefood you like thank you me eat this
food then, and just that kindof thing, like the issues of you
know, we need to I'm justtrying to think of something. So the
teamwork, the teamwork was was remarkable, so in the she ended up being
fine. So here's this is theI did cartoons for climbing magazine, like

(01:48:28):
instructional cartoons for climbing magazine, andI very nice handwriting, so I would
do these instructional cartoons, howe totight knots and these drawings. So she
got so I had her handwrite allthe notes, all the medical notes.
We kept track of her her respirationsor pulse or what food she'd been eating,
what time all this is happening,so we could give that to the
air force. They put her onthe helicopter. They flew over to the

(01:48:50):
Anchorage hospital and then we could wecould deal with that. So the I
wrote the notes. Someone at thehospital was Alimer, and they looked at
the notes and they said, didMike Clellen write this? S that's kind
of a compliment, to put itmildly, Well, it was a compliment

(01:49:11):
my handwriting. But Mike, wehave about four or five minutes left.
Again, I want to remind ourviewers and listeners that your website is Mike
Clellan dot com and that's cl EL L A N D any parting thoughts

(01:49:33):
with the minutes that we have left, My friend, Sure, I will
tell one story. This is astory I can tell very quickly and it
has no UFOs in it, allin it and it is so so.
A woman contacted me. She wasa grandmother. She was a happy grandmother,
but she told a story about inher youth. She was terribly depressed.

(01:49:56):
So I went back and forth andtalked with her. But she told
a story where she said, basicallyI I don't tell the story to people.
She was going to kill herself.She had she was in her parents'
car. She had a hose thatcould lead in the car with her,
and she had a pillow. Shewas going to take the hose to the
tailpipe into the car and lay aheadof them, and then a head on

(01:50:17):
a pillow so she could lie downin the backseat. And she had a
spot all picked out, and shewas sixteen years old, and she's driving
to the spot and she is it'sa turnout in the woods, and she
slows down to make the turn intothe spot and an owl flies right up
to the windshield. The cars almoststopped. The owl flies right up to

(01:50:38):
the windshield. They lock eyes oneach other, and the owl flies off.
And she said this was a sign. And she turns around and came
home, and she's still here.She said this, she felt, she
felt she was told this will pass. You can live your life. That
story has no UFOs in it.Everything about the owl research I've been doing

(01:51:02):
embedded in that short little story.What's next for you? Well, I'll
tell you say to a degree,what's next is at the end of August,
you and I and a cadre ofcolleagues, and I know a fascinating

(01:51:23):
audience. We'll all be meeting upin Cincinnati for the move f On Symposium,
the international symposium which takes place inanother American city each year. What
is your subject of your talk goingto be, dar, I asked,
you can guess it's gonna be owlsand UFOs. So I will tell this.

(01:51:43):
I will you know what I've beenworking on the talk, and I'm
going to talk less about my ownexperiences and more about my research. I
find that audience is really like mytalking about my own experiences. But what
happens is that just the time limitationsto tell my own story correctly, I
either got to do one or theother. If I try to do both,
it's it's kind of like mixing modalis. I'm gonna I'll talk about a

(01:52:04):
little bit about my own experiences,but the majority will be about my research
and there'll be lots and lots ofstories about owls. Great. Are you
working on another book now? I'mgoing to do the audio book reading.
I'm gonna read it myself, right, and then I I'm going to be
very careful to say so. Thequestion everyone asks after they finished the book,

(01:52:26):
The first question they asking is it'sgonna be a sequel? And I
al, I say, because thebook just came out. And I was
like, that's like asking a ladyafter she gives birth, like you can
have another biggie. And so I'mI'm I'm getting to the point where I'm
like taking that seriously. I canmake no promises, but I'm considering part

(01:52:47):
two of the book, The UnseenMike. Always a pleasure spending time with
you, my friend, and abig hug to you in Seattle. Look
forward to seeing you in out fiveor six weeks, and in the meantime
stay well. This is Peter Robbinswith my special guest tonight, Mike clelland

(01:53:10):
you stay well too, stand upfor what you believe in and be kind
to each other. We'll see younext week right on. Thank you so much