Lost Contact - The Mantell Incident and Post-War UFOs

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Reports of unidentified flout here unidentified VERYO phenomena today difret
weapons being tested by our own or foreign governments.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
The American people are becoming most interested and in many
instances very alarmed by the UFO story. So why do
you suppos that all of this has been kept from the.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
World exploring our past, our future, and the mysteries of
our universe? Where do they come from? Why can't you explain.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
That everybody in uthology is screaming for disclosure?

Speaker 3 (00:32):
The future is now. This is Micah.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Hanks from the high mountains of Appalachia and a bunker
below ground. Welcome, one and all. It is the Micah
Hanks Program. Glad once again to be getting into gear
and going in pursuit of the anomalist in our existence
as we do weekly right here, listened on demand via
podcasting apps all throughout space and time. Glad to be
behind the microphone with all this crazy travel that's been

(00:58):
going on this year. Yes, I was on the road
again this last weekend, hoping maybe to be staying in
one place at least for a while. But I guess
we'll see. There's always something that will emerge, something that
will present itself some new and sometimes strange opportunity to
go and see some new, unexplored place. There was something unusual,

(01:18):
by the way, happening up there in New York recently
that some of you may have noticed if you live
in the general vicinity of Manhattan, because there were a
lot of US Secret Service agents operating in that area recently.
Don't be alarmed. This was largely preemptive activity because with
world leaders now preparing to descend on Manhattan for the
UN General Assembly, CNBC reports that apparently there was a

(01:41):
system a hidden telecom network in the New York area
that investigators said could have crippled cell towers, jammed nine
one one calls, and flooded networks with chaos while the
Assembly was taking place. They go on to report here
that this cash, made up of more than three hundred
SEM servers, packed with over one hundred thousand SIM cards

(02:02):
and clustered within thirty five miles of the United Nations,
represents one of the most sweeping communications threats uncovered on
US soil. This is remarkable, and investigators apparently also warned
that the system could have blacked out cellular activity in
a city that relies on it. Not only for daily life,
but also for emergency response and counter terrorism. Now getting

(02:23):
into a few specifics here, they say that this system
was spread across multiple sites with servers that function like
banks of mock cell phones. Essentially, these were able to
generate mass calls and texts, which significantly would have been
able to overwhelm local networks and thereby provide a cover
for encrypted communications used by criminals. But of course, the
more pressing question on everybody's mind what exactly was this

(02:46):
system doing there? Who put it there in fact, and
was this part of a broader attack somebody had been planning. Well,
officials say they haven't uncovered a direct plot to disrupt
the UN General Assembly, and they say there are no
known credible threats to New York City. Also, forensic analysis
is still in the early stages. But evidently this system

(03:07):
of servers was in place, somebody put it there, and
it doesn't look like they had the best intentions in
mind for New Yorkers. So very glad that the US
Secret Service is all over this. You know, it reminds
me of an interesting historical parallel which also involves something
we're going to be talking about here shortly with our
guest this week filmmaker Seth Breedlove, who's got a new

(03:28):
film coming out just in a couple of weeks about
one of the early military UAP incidents and one that
involved the death of a pilot. But it was also
back in the early days of UFO studies, back in
nineteen fifty two, to be exact, when the Robertson Panel,
which was a CIA sponsored panel that reviewed UAP evidence
and they had government officials and scientists involved. One of

(03:52):
the recommendations of the Robertson Panel had been to try
and dissuade public interest in UFOs for a very similar
reason to what the US Secrets Servis has been uncovering
up there in New York, no joke. They were concerned
back in the early fifties that public interest in UFOs
might be something that the Soviet Union would use to
its advantage in advance of an attack. Specifically, experts on

(04:15):
the Robertson Panel had warned that a sudden swarm of
fake UFO reports could be used as a distraction by
Soviet intelligence. And while for instance, Project Bluebook investigators or
the US Air Force more broadly, was responding to a
sudden surge in UFO sightings reports trying to figure out
what's going on the Soviets would be able to execute

(04:37):
an attack or possibly even leverage communications systems on the
ground without so easily being noticed. So again this was
a concern in the early days of the intelligence communities
assessments of UFOs. They were worried not so much about
actual UFOs and people's belief in them, but more so
the concern that that might be something that would be

(04:57):
exploited by the enemy in advance of an attack. And
here again offering a historical parallel. Currently, with the investigations
still underway, secret service agents have said that they do
believe nation state actors, In other words, perpetrators from particular
countries have very likely used the system described earlier to
send encryptive messages to organized crime groups, cartels, and terrorist organizations.

(05:22):
CNBC now reports that authorities have not disclosed details on
the specific government or criminal groups that may be tied
to this network at this point, but again that forensic
investigation is still underway. Moving over now from national security
and over into anthropology, you may have seen this recent
study about how biologists at the University of California, Berkeley
have discovered that fruit eaten by chimpanzees in the wild

(05:46):
in Africa often contains measurable levels of ethanol, and in fact,
this was already known, but now they are saying that
there's enough ethanol in the fruit consumed daily by these
African chimps that it's essentially equivalent to two alcoholic beverages
each day, not unlike a lot of humans. In fact,
of course, these chimps aren't showing any direct signs of intoxication,

(06:09):
but what the study appears to reveal is that, in likelihood,
in this according to a UC Berkeley graduate student, Alexia
Morrow of the Department of Integrative Biology, who said in
a statement, human attraction to alcohol probably arose from this
dietary heritage of our common ancestors. With chimpanzees across all sites,
they say, male and female chimpanzees are consuming about fourteen

(06:31):
grams of pure ethanol per day in their diet, which
is the equivalent of just one standard American drink. But
he also adds that when you adjust for body mass,
because again chimps weigh a little less than the typical human,
that goes up to the equivalent of nearly two drinks.
So there may actually be an evolutionary reason why we
like alcohol, and that may go back to our ancient

(06:52):
pre human forbears. Also in the world of ancient discoveries, though,
there's something fascinating happening over there in Turkey right now, where,
of course, many years ago, a site known as go
Beckley Tepe changed everything we thought we knew about early humans,
not just in that region, but really everywhere, because twelve
thousand years ago, at the site of go Beckley Tepe

(07:15):
in modern day Turkey, we had people who were staying
put as opposed to moving around and following a hunter
gatherer subsistence style of living. No, they were staying put.
They were building monumental architecture, they were storing food on site,
and not only that, they were also engaged and rather
elaborate bass relief artistic designs on some of these now

(07:36):
very enigmatic pillars that are preserved at the Go Beckley
Teppe site. In fact, the ancient builders sought to preserve
this site because what we know from the excavations there
is that the site was intentionally buried by the ancient builders,
not only of the primary complex, but once it was buried,
successive rebuildings on top of that, which were also buried,

(07:56):
and then successive rebuildings after that. So it does does
seem in this case that go Beckley Teppe had some
kind of ritual significance and for some reason people thought
that burying it and rebuilding the site going to all
that trouble would be a good idea, and that's what
we find they're in Turkey. That of course is just
captivated archaeologists and historical enthusiasts alike. But now a new

(08:19):
site that has been found close to go Beckley Tepe
could be pushing back the time scales on human activity
in the region even further. This one, known as Mendic Tepi,
was discovered some time ago there in the general area
around shan Lurfa, Turkey, but currently it's under investigation by
Professor Douglas Baird of the University of Liverpool who's been

(08:41):
leading excavations there, and what they've found so far is
a little different from go Beckley Teppe. They have found
some evidence of pillars, but nothing like the monumental architecture
at the more famous ancient site of go Beckley Teppy,
which is now also a UNESCO World Heritage site. There are, however,
larger structural remains at the site, and so right now
what Baird and the excavation team we're working to try

(09:03):
and do is understand what the different sizes of the
buildings that have been unearthed there at mendic Tepi would
have been used for. But again that possibility exists, based
on the current investigations at the site, that this one
could even be older than go Beckley Tepe itself. Mendic
Tepe is at least ten thousand years old, but if
it ends up being older than go Beckley Teppe, that's

(09:25):
going to be significant because they are also investigating what
may be signs of the emergence of agriculture at this site,
and if that were proven, not only are we going
to upend our past thinking on the early arrival of
humans and their activity they're in modern day Turkey, but
we're also pushing back the time scales on when people
may have first begun to use crops as a source

(09:47):
of food. And yet again, as has been said before,
it does seem in this case that things just keep
getting older, at very least if ongoing archaeological investigations can
confirm these suppositions about this ancient site. One more story
I thought we would quickly touch on here before we
get into our discussion with filmmaker Seth Breedlove about the
famous Thomas Mantel incident. Involves three I Atlas. Yes, the

(10:11):
comet that continues to capture our fascination. A lot of
people over the last week or so have been heading
over to the debrief dot org because we've had a
story trending over there on the site about Threeiyatlas and
something very unique that the latest imagery obtained of this
interstellar object has revealed. More specifically, three eye Atlas has

(10:33):
now grown a brand new feature, and I'm referring to
observations that were made by the Gemini South Telescope control
room in Chile which reveal the mysterious three I Atlas
now has a tail. Now, of course, that's not unusual
if it is indeed a comet, as many experts have
been saying now for weeks, and of course that is
an opinion that I share. All of the evidence points

(10:55):
to Threeiatlas simply being a comet, although it does bear
some unusual character teristics. Shortly after it appeared in our
solar system, initially it also appeared to have a tail
like formation, but one that was extending out in front
of the object as opposed to behind it. And some
people had said, Okay, that's really weird. And while that
is strange compared to other comets we're used to seeing,

(11:16):
which already exists in our Solar System, that may not
be all that unusual for an interstellar object. Let me
tell you why. Since three Ie Atlas came from interstellar space,
it's probably been a good while since it last encountered
a star, and that means it probably hasn't been exposed
to a significant amount of heat from a star like
our Sun. And so when it came into our Solar

(11:37):
System on its random trajectory through interstellar space, it starts
immediately warming up as it approaches our Sun. Therefore, the
side of the object that is facing the Sun starts
to release material. As that material starts to bake off,
you know, ice that's encased on the exterior of this
object starts to melt and it begins to evaporate, and

(11:58):
minerals and other materials are released during that evaporative process.
And so early on, yes, it did look really strange.
This object, which appears to be like a comet in
shape and appearance, but traveling in reverse with its tail
in the front. Yeah, that's unlike comets we would see
that already exist in our solar system, because those comets
are already in close enough proximity to our Sun, and

(12:18):
they've been traveling gravitationally bound in likelihood to our son,
and they've been doing that for a long time, so
they've had quite a while to accumulate a tail behind them.
And this essentially constitutes the kind of appearance we are
used to seeing when it comes to comets. The thing
that threw us off about three I atlas is that
this object did not look like other comets, because it

(12:39):
is not the kind of comet, ie one that exists
in our solar system that we're used to seeing, and
that has thrown a few observers off. That's also led
to speculations about whether this thing could be more than
a comet, and that notion, of course being championed mostly
by Avi Loebe, the Harvard astronomer, who has said that
it's possible some of the indications we are getting from
three iAtlas could point to the remote possibility that this

(13:01):
thing is some kind of technological artifact. But the more
that we learn about three ie Atlas, I think the
more evident it becomes that we are indeed dealing with
a comet that is behaving in ways inconsistent with known comets,
because this one came from a very different place and
therefore is new to our solar system, and despite being
one of the oldest comics probably that's ever been observed

(13:23):
by astronomers, it is currently going through processes in our
solar system that are fairly new or that would occur
early in the life of most comets. So we're essentially
seeing a really old comet behaving in the ways you
might expect a really young comet in our solar system
to behave. So, with the news all behind us, when
we get back, we'll be joined by filmmaker Seth Breedlove
to discuss the Thomas Mantel incident right here on the

(13:47):
Micah Hanks program.

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Speaker 1 (15:19):
Welcome back. On January seventh, nineteen forty eight, something unexplained
was observed in the skies over Kentucky, and whatever that
object was led to a pursuit by military pilots, one
of whom died during that incident. His name was Thomas Mantel.

(15:39):
And joining me to discuss this classic case is filmmaker
Seth Breedlove. He's an American filmmaker and founder of the
Ohio based production company Small Town Monsters. He's also directed
over a dozen documentary films and produced several mini series
based on strange happenings in small towns throughout America and
a range of other unexplained topics. Now, his latest documentary,

(16:00):
as I was describing, is titled Lost Contact UFOs After Wartime,
and this one chronicles the story of the death of
pilot Thomas Mantil. And this is a famous and tragic
incident involving a possible UFO pursued by military pilots over Kentucky.
I can tell you that mister Breedlove has dug deeply
into this and so welcome, in fact, for the first

(16:21):
time to the podcast. My dear friend, Seth Breedlove, how
are you.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
I'm good. Thanks for having me. I don't know if
I've have I told you, like my past experiences with you,
I don't think so. The podcaster, this is nine out
of ten conversations with people that are into these topics
that I'm like buddies with. I became familiar with through
their podcasting, and so like, when when I was first

(16:46):
getting into this stuff you were doing, was it Jim
Harold Show used to do a bit or a segment
on or something.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
Yeah, but he and I did a thing called the
Paranormal Report.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yes, that's what it was, The Paranormal Report. I used
to listen to that podcast when I did Medical Billin. Yeah,
and then I listened to other shows that you would
appear on. But I was always a fan of the
fact that you sounded intelligent and well informed, which is
it's a little bit of a rarity.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yeah, don't be fooled, though, don't be fooled. You can
ask my credits not anymore. Yeah, Yeah, full disclosure, Seth
and Courtney. We're actually visiting Nashville recently. We got to
catch up and actually we've done all kinds of things
over the last few years, including this documentary. That was
a very special thing being able to come over to
Gatlinburg and participate in the filming for this documentary Lost Contact,

(17:38):
which we're going to get into, but we'll save all
that for just a moment from now, because, first and foremost,
for anybody who doesn't follow your work and If they don't,
they should seth breedlove. Tell folks a little bit about
who you are and what you do.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
Yeah, I'm a filmmaker from Ohio. We I own a
company called Small Town Monsters. We do movies around the
United States about lost and forgotten history that usually relates
back to cryptids and UFOs and odd extraterrestrial humanoids and

(18:16):
things like that. But I think our focus tends to
be much more on the human side of those stories
than you know, your typical network television shows. At least
that's the goal. Yeah, and it was driven I would say, like.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
It.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
It's all driven by my upbringing because my parents owned
a historical bookstore and we grew up very involved in
historical preservation specifically, like my parents were very into the
Civil War side of things and were involved in helping
preserve battlefields and they were they were involved in the

(18:53):
fight against Disney in the nineties when Disney was trying
to open the the park. I can't remember what it
was called that they were going to open this park
in I want to say it was Virginia or Saint
Louis or something like that, but it was going to
to get it. They were going to take over like
a battlefield to build this park, and my parents were

(19:14):
involved in the fight against Disney to preserve the battlefield
and all that kind of stuff. So I blame my
parents for a lot of that stuff, like my my
love of history and my interest in preserving stories in
the in the most honest way possible, and hopefully that
comes across in our in our work. I mean it's
hard because at this point I run a company that

(19:35):
has multiple employees, and some of us make our own content,
you know, that is away from me. My wife just
went and did a whole series with Heather Mosier and
Aaron d s and Pennsylvania by themselves, completely free of me,
where they shot whatever they wanted and did this series.
So I can't control everything, but I try to make
sure my stuff has a very like historical bent to it.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
Oh one d percent. I mean that much was evident
last time you and Courtney were here in Asheville, and
you were, of course documenting some of the obscure communities,
you know, some of the actual lost communities, some which
I didn't even know about, which at one time existed
and which there's very little if any evidence that remains
apart from the oral histories and of course some recorded

(20:18):
history too, and again that's really important. We had that
in common. My parents also were history busts, my father especially,
and I like to put it like this, my dad
would be teaching me Latin, Greek and Hebrew and things
when I was in elementary school, and he'd be teaching
me about the local history, taking me to Civil War
sites or whatever, you know, actually teaching me about genealogy
of our own family, going all the way back to

(20:38):
the American Revolution. And then on the weekend's mom would
have a campfire and she'd say, now I'm going to
tell you about UFOs. So it was a mix of
the two. But you know, you told me one time
recently that your entry into chronicling topics like UFOs came
a little later, didn't it.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't have an interest in
this stuff growing up. My first introduction to the concept
of the paranormal is even like something that people considered
a factual reality, was through my sister showing up at
the house one day with a copy of John Keel's

(21:16):
Mothman Prophecies book. And it was because she was like
obsessed with Richard gear at the time, and the movie
was about to come out, and she had bought the
book which had it was Keel's Mothman Prophecies, but they
used the poster for the movie as the cover. And
I had flipped through this book and I was like,
what is this about? Because I could not make heads

(21:38):
or tails of it, and she was like, well, it's
about people who who've seen like flying saucers and had
encounters with like Bigfoot type creatures and flying humanoids or
however she put it. And I was blown away by
the fact that this was something people thought was real
and I didn't know what to think of it. So
that was, you know, that was the first introduction I

(21:59):
ever had to it. The Bigfoot stuff started later. I
used to run the soundboard at my church, and this
guy that ran the soundboard with me was like, you know,
you're He came into church one day with a burned
DVD and he hands it to me and he goes,
you're kind of weird like me, so I think you'll
like this. And he had burned me a DVD with

(22:20):
a bunch of like television documentaries about like the Luckness
Monster and UFOs and Bigfoot, and that's the first time
where I can remember being like, oh, yeah, I think
I'm into this stuff now. And then, you know, like
I was already writing for our local paper at that time,
so I kind of I don't think I had an

(22:40):
idea of like I want to do a project on
this or anything, but I took some of the things
I had learned from being a freelance reporter and started
putting them to use down in the town that I
grew up in, Bolivar, Ohio. I would drive down there
and i'd drive around on the back roads and find
people just walking or out in their yard or whatever,
and I'd ask if they had ever seen anything and

(23:03):
there was. That was kind of like my introduction to it,
and the way I dipped my toe into like talking
to witnesses and locals, you know, about the local history.
It was years before we before I started putting any
of that stuff to use, and that would have been
you know, my minner of a monster movie was the

(23:23):
first kind of thing that I launched myself into that
drew off of the things I'd already learned about bigfoot
in the local area.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
Yeah, we have that in common as well, and in fact,
that's kind of a commonality with John Keel, who you mentioned,
because I don't think John got into this thinking, you know,
I think that there are flying saucers from outer space
and that there are you know, winged creatures and things
flying around. I mean, for Keel, it seems to have
been he was a newspaper guy. He was interested in
things like magic. He had written that book back when

(23:53):
he was in his twenties called Jed dou where he
traveled all throughout the Orient.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
Well while he was there, of course, he met Tensing Norgay,
and he had been told all about sightings of the
mysterious Yetty and you know, Keels kind of like, what,
there's a what up here? And then maybe it was
a bit of one of those kind of you know,
slightly embellished traveler's tales, but he kind of features in
the book feeling like he was being followed by a
large animal through a portion of the Himalayas that he traversed,

(24:19):
and he comes back to the United States going, maybe
there is more to this world than I realized before
I went on my travels. And again, that's the interesting
thing is you go out and you see the world
and you begin to question things, and you get to
experience other cultures and you begin to realize, Okay, maybe
the standard I'm going to write a newspaper story about
a new kind of chicken being raised on the farm

(24:41):
down the street, maybe that isn't the most interesting story
of the day. And yet people so often do reject
the idea that there could be undiscovered species, you know,
technological objects, whatever their provenance is, of any kind of
unknown origin, operating in our skies or maybe our c's.
When we look at a topic like UAP as they
are now called, and and you know the fact that
that name has changed, that's reflective of some societal changes

(25:04):
that began really back around twenty seventeen. I think for
a lot of people, their tipping point was seeing that
the United States government had been running secret programs and
that they've been looking into this, And a lot of
people would have thought, oh, I thought that was just
stuff we saw on old television documentaries and things. Looks
like the US government's looking into it. I mean, what
did that mean to you? Seth is somebody who had

(25:25):
already been chronicling these kind of stories in the history
of it when twenty seventeen happened, you know, Was that
a big revelation to you. Were you surprised to see
a Wow, the government also takes this stuff seriously.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
No, I don't think so, because I think that's that
has historically been the case. Now publicly, I don't think
they acknowledged that they've been taking it seriously, but I
think they've taken it seriously for a very long time.
I you know, I have a weird view of this stuff,

(25:58):
and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that we're probably
in no way on the same page. But like you know,
when twenty seventeen happened, I kind of rolled my eyes,
and I still do to agree the degree today, I'm
not as schooled. I think that's the other really important
thing is I'm not as schooled in UFOs as you are,

(26:21):
or you know, a lot of the people that I
look up to, the James Foxes of the world, like,
I'm just not. I'm friends with George Knapp like, and
it's always intimidating when I'm talking to him about, you know,
the history of the subject. When when I was making
on the trail of UFOs Night Visitors, we had an

(26:41):
email chain going back and forth about mutilations, cattle mutilations
because he knew so much about this that topic, and
I kind of needed to be schooled in it because
I didn't know anything about it. No my thing, you know,
when it became such a big deal in the public eye,
I was. I was and still am concerned that what

(27:02):
that leads to is sort of overlooking the general pub
not the general public, your average UFO witness. Sure, that's
always been a something that I was a little that
I was pushing back against with on the trail of
UFOs as a series. Was kind of like, man, I
get it. I think it's fascinating to hear from from

(27:26):
trained observers and military personnel. I love that stuff. But
to me, it's it really isn't any different from talking
to someone in the mountains of West Virginia who's never
left their hometown, who's seen strange things behind their house.
You know, like, I'm as fascinated by that as I am.

(27:49):
You're David Crushes and you know that kind of thing.
So it it was. It's been interesting, and it's been
interesting to watch the topic become so mainstream, you know,
to the point where we're having hearings and things about it.
But it hasn't. I don't think it's influenced my view

(28:09):
of anything. If anything, it maybe has made me a
little little more skeptical of some of it, because when
the government gets involved, I'm going to naturally be a
little more skeptical of what the government's doing. Oh yeah,
so I don't. I don't think I answered your question.
But that's that's where I'm at on the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
No, I think you did. And in fact, actually we're
not all that different in the sense that although I
think I have learned some things since twenty seventeen, and
again full disclosure, as you know, and as I've mentioned
on the podcast in the past, I mean I've gotten
to know most of the individuals who have you know,
been involved in this and in the government work, at
least former officials. I've met many of them. I've become

(28:52):
very good friends with the former director of the UAP
Task Force, Jay Stratton. You know, again, I think he
is a very good person. I back to him a
lot and now also value our friendship, both with relation
to this topic. But even you know, with things like
music and coming to know a person as a human
like that, I think is a really important factor that
gets lost. I mean, people are always saying this former

(29:14):
official says this, and why is that person's credibility? And
you know, is it a psyop? It could this be
some sort of a you know, counterintelligence thing. And again,
for me, although I didn't document it on film, I
did this as a journalist. Getting to know those people
is doing exactly the same thing that you do. I'm
trying to understand the human side of the story, to
know these people. You know, I do indeed find them

(29:36):
to be inherently credible, but only after having gotten to
know them and not forming judgments based on things I
see people on Twitter saying, right, so we're actually not
that different. And yet even though I've gone down that
rabbit hole and gotten to know those people in government,
for me, it was always frustrating that, you know, we
see these reports that come out now from the All

(29:56):
Domain Anomaly Resolution Office and they're acknowledging, Hey, you know,
here's our heat map of where the sidings occur. By
the way, it's probably biased because this is all just
stuff we collect in your military basis. And I see
Mark Rodeiger or George Napp or others saying and what
about all those civilian witnesses, those people who have had
personal experiences. But you know that's kind of where this

(30:16):
all overlaps with your new documentary. We are talking, of course,
with Seth Breedlove of Smalltown Monsters, And when we get
back here in just a moment, we're going to dive
deeper into the specifics of this case and also what
those who witnessed, what happened to Thomas Mantel remember about it.
All that and more right here on the Micah Hanks Program.

Speaker 5 (30:42):
Not all group chats are the same, just like not
all Adams are the same. Adam Brody, for instance, uses
WhatsApp to pin messages, send events, and subtle debates using
polls with his friends, all in one.

Speaker 6 (30:54):
Group chat makes our guys night easier.

Speaker 5 (30:57):
But Adam Scott group messages with an app that is WhatsApp,
which means he still can't find that text from his
friends about where to meet.

Speaker 3 (31:05):
Hang on, still scrolling, No I think addresses here somewhere.

Speaker 5 (31:08):
It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone.

Speaker 4 (31:12):
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Speaker 1 (32:22):
UFOs. Immediately after the Second World War, a lot of
people were concerned about what kinds of objects might be
operating in our skies. That was certainly the case in
January of nineteen forty eight, when a group of pilots
went in pursuit of an unexplained occurrence in the Kentucky Skies.
We're joined, of course, by Seth Breedlove discussing the famous

(32:44):
Thomas Mantel incident, and we'll get back into that in
just a moment. First, I want to remind you, if
you aren't already an ex subscriber, you're only getting part
of the story because every week we've got additional content
that goes out for X subscribers. I think we're all
caught up by the way on the Enigma's specials, or
we're about to be, because we've got another one in
the bank. It is about to drop now any day.

(33:07):
And of course you've got more than gosh, I think
one hundred and twenty or so, more like one hundred
and thirty episodes of Enigma available there to subscribers. So
if you're new to the X podcasts or you're about
to be, you've got a lot of listening to catch
up on. You can find all that over at Micah
hanks dot com Forward slash X. Getting back into this

(33:28):
conversation with Seth. Breedlove, of course, was an American filmmaker
and founder of the Ohio based production company Smalltown Monsters.
Your newest documentary called Lost Contact. It chronicles the story
of Thomas Mantel, an early death and a controversy that
erupted in the very early years the Golden Age, so
to speak, of UFOs. You know, what was it, Seth,

(33:49):
that drove you to go back in time and not
only to you know, chronicle a human story, but also
one of the earliest military controversies involving UAP.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
Well, first of all, this is my favorite era of UFOs.
This like very early, you know, the post World War
two sort of the Cold War era of UFOs is
my absolute favorite. God For the longest time, I've wanted
to do like a comic book series that is heavily

(34:21):
inspired by the vibe of ed Brewbaker's Criminal which was
a comic book series from Image Comics, very like film
noir style, but sort of like Majestic what is it,
Majestic twelve, like all that kind of stuff. Always wanted
to do that, So that definitely, I mean this movie

(34:43):
and Flatwood's or Flatwood's movie really gave me a chance
to dive into that era specifically, So that was that
was something that appealed to me. The other big thing
I think is there's an author named Dewey Edwards who
was working on a on a book about this particular case,

(35:04):
and him and I had spoke, I think when I
was making our Belwitch movie. We were making a movie
called The Mark of the Beowitch, which I consider to
be our best movie, and him and I had spoken
about this case at the time, and he was just
starting to work on it, and do we did all
this work going into his book, including you know, meeting

(35:27):
Thomas Mantel's grandsons, talking with them. He had gone to
the crash site. He's been he'd talked to numerous sort
of flight forensics people who could tell him, you know,
how the crash would have played out and things like that.
So he had done a lot of that work. But
in talking to him about the case, then it got

(35:48):
me fascinated by the case because I remembered watching the
Sightings episode where they detailed the Thomas Mantel event. In fact,
that Thomis Mayntel episode of Sightings is the same episode
this is easter egg that no one's gonna care about,

(36:09):
but that's that episode of Sightings is the one that
kind of inspired the look of our movie American Werewolves
really because we were we were in the in the
process of making that movie and I had I couldn't
sleep one night, and I had watched multiple episodes of Sightings,
but one of those episodes was was the Thomas Mantel
event episode. And so for me, it was getting to

(36:32):
explore this case that's relatively well known, like most people
know at least the basics of like the Mantel event.
Now their basics are going to be way off, because
there's so many different versions of this story floating around.
But but that was you know, kind of diving into

(36:55):
it and retelling it in a way that I thought
maybe maybe similar to how we did like Our Mothman
a point pleasant movie, where you're you know, it's sort
of like a just a retelling of the events, uh,
contextualize them historically for where for where our nation was
at at that time, where Thomas Mantel was from Kentucky,

(37:16):
and then even do a little bit of exploration about
how the that that historical event has been sort of
co opted, you know, and become something that that it
really wasn't you know that that was the stuff that
really appealed to me. But what I came to find

(37:40):
was that I had, first of all, I'd never done
a movie that was solely about one person. You know,
you know, we've done The Bell which movie is about
the Bell family, and certainly you kind of do form
an attachment to some of these people. But for the
most part, you know, the movies we've made are are
there's interviews with witnesses, and we explore witness lives and

(38:02):
ramifications of events and things like that on their lives.
But this was a look at a man who lost
his life in the court over the course of one
of these spooky events, you know, like that that's kind
of how people would look at this, and I was.
I was amazed by the time it ended, how attached

(38:25):
I had gotten to Thomas Mantel. You know, I think
Dewey had the same kind of I think it had
the same impact on him. I remember him talking about
how he would he'd cry just kind of talking about it.
I didn't, I didn't get that emotional, but for sure,
like by the time it was over, it is a
it's a tragedy first and foremost. It's a tragedy too

(38:48):
because of it could have been avoided. And I think
our movie really lays that out, that this is a
tragedy that did not need to happen, because I think ultimately,
you know, what we might be dealing with was kept
kept secret by the by the US government, from the
very people who needed to know the most that it

(39:12):
was there. So it's a it's a tragic story in
that way, And so that that was the you know,
what appealed to me the most was was getting to
learn more about Thomas Mantel and his wife and learn
about their kids and their grandkids and the impact it
had on their lives as people. You know. I think
in the movie even Eric talks, Eric and Terry talk

(39:36):
about how their dad, who was Thomas Mantel's son, you know,
he became he became an alcoholic layer in life, and
a large part of that they think was connected to
the loss of his dad before he really got to
know him.

Speaker 1 (39:51):
Yeah. Again, that was a huge takeaway for me, as
well as just all the testimony from the people who
witnessed the accident firsthand. And we'll get into all that
seth right now. Maybe we could just kind of recapt
the key events, you know, what was going on on
January seventh, nineteen forty eight, when godmin Field begins receiving
these calls about an object up there in the sky.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
Yeah, I mean the again, what I would like to do.
I would like to tell the version that we know
and then sort of like the folkloric version, because it's
really what was super fascinating to me was interviewing people
from Kentucky and kind of asking them. And some of
this didn't end up in the movie. I think maybe
two or three of the people did a brief retelling

(40:33):
of what they recalled about learning about the event. But
it is really interesting what some people remember learning about
this event, because it in no way resembles reality. But
the sort of what we know about what happened is
that January seventh, nineteen forty eight, Godmin Tower would have

(40:53):
been what right outside It's outside of Louisville, I believe.
So I nailed that pronunciation too, to just point that out. Yeah,
they the uh, the state What does the state police
start receiving reports of this large circular object. I want
to say, you know large they were. They were talking

(41:14):
two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet across. These
reports start coming in and at this point in time,
which was according to this one twenty in the afternoon
when those reports first start coming in in there's there's
a four P fifty one mustangs that are being piloted

(41:35):
from I want to say, like somewhere outside of Atlanta
or Marietta, that's what it is, Marrietta, Georgia. And that's
where Thomas Mantel comes in. So Mantela is ferrying these
P fifty ones with his squadron back up to Godman
and before they can land. You know, they're they're kind

(41:55):
of dispatched by the control tower to go check into
this large arge unknown object that seems to be hanging
out around Louisville, Kentucky, and so they go, they go
to check into it. They do cite an object in
the sky, and this plays out over the course of

(42:18):
like over an hour. There's really like there's there's an
initial sighting of the object and then an approach. Pretty
much everyone except Mantel eventually bails on this and Mantel
continues climbing until he hits what like twenty two thousand

(42:39):
feet something like that. Mantel cites the object, approaches it,
and then loses oxygen, passes out, and his plane crashes
to Earth. And that's really like that is the extent
of what we know. There has been a lot of

(43:02):
additions to the story over the years, you know, including
like in that sightings episode we talked about. I believe
that's where it originated, where there was there was a
guy who claimed to be in the control tower. You
probably have names or something, but I don't because I
forget these things. But there was there was a guy
who claimed to be in the control tower who said

(43:24):
that he was talking about seeing windows and there being
men in the windows or you know, like humanoid looking
figures in the windows watching him. All of that is
is a late stage addition to the story. All we
really know is, you know what came out of the
the flight logs, the control tower radio transmissions that that

(43:49):
weren't if I remember right, those transmissions were simply transcribed.
We don't have access to the actual transmissions themselves. And
then and so the story becomes at that point in time,
it's kind of dead. But you have there's a move

(44:13):
documentary that we show clips of in in Lost Contact
that comes along and I think the sixties, maybe the
fifties where they retell the event, and they do a
decent job of like retelling the event. But after that
it kind of goes hey wire. So this is where
I became very interested in my angle on the story.

(44:35):
I have a good friend in Kentucky, doctor Eleanor Haskins,
who's a folklorist. She runs the Capital City Museum in Lexington.
She's the curator of the museum, and I got to
interview her for the movie. This was like her dozenth
time being in an stm thing. I mean, She's traveled

(44:55):
all over the country with me. We've been in La together,
she's been on multiple shoots, so she's kind of used
to this kind of thing. But I was interested to
learn from her, like her version of this story is
so beyond what really happened, And in talking to other people,

(45:16):
especially younger people from Kentucky, this is kind of like
their version of the story too, which is that Mantel
and his squadrons scramble after this UFO. They cite the
UFO in I think it was Ellie's version of that story.
There's a dog fight that aroucts between between Mantel and

(45:38):
the UFO, and you know, like it depends on who
you're talking to, but there are multiple people that we
spoke to during the making of the movie who recalled
that version of this story, that there's a literal dog
fight and then you know, his plane's actually shot down
and that's how you know Mantel's life was brought to

(45:58):
an end. But I'm always fascinated by that, like basically
like Game of Telephone that we play with these historical
events where they becomes something completely different. You know, if
it's not preserved, it's not preserved. To the utmost. It
just it can become something completely different from what we

(46:21):
know actually happened. And you know, I think this story specifically,
I think was in danger of that happening over time,
just because it's it's I think if we hadn't made
a movie about this, I think someone else would have.
I don't know that it would have done the sort
of ground level look at it that we attempted. I

(46:43):
think you might have had a much more outlandish version
of this story kind of play out. So that's that's
the rambling version of the Thomas Manteau.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
Well, I mean to your point though about you know
how especially UFO cases, but really any story can be mythologized.
I mean you look back at American you know, historical figures, right,
Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
Yeah, and you.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
Look at the reality of who these people were and
what they did according to historians, versus the folk tales depicted,
you know, in popular children's books and things. We grow
up hearing these characters become larger than life, and then
we can look back at you know, folklore throughout history
and even prehistory, you know, carried along through oral traditions,

(47:31):
and there are extraordinary stories of dragons and monsters and
things that often have very little basis in reality, but
they do have an anchor in reality. UFOs are very
much like that. I mean, I actually am a proponent
of the idea that there are technological objects that account
for UFO sightings. But you've got to be so careful
when it comes to interpreting the history versus the myth

(47:53):
building exercises that often follow. We're talking with Seth Breedlove,
and you can follow the work he and his team
produce over at small Town Monsters dot com. We've got
a lot more to say about the tragic Mantel incident,
what this all means, the effect it head on UFO research,
and so much more. When we were turning to wrap
things up right here on the Micah Hanks program.

Speaker 5 (48:20):
Not all group chats are the same, just like not
all atoms are the same. Adam Brody, for instance, uses
WhatsApp to pin messages, send events, and subtle debates using
polls with his friends all in one group.

Speaker 6 (48:33):
Chat makes our guys night easier.

Speaker 5 (48:36):
But Adam Scott group messages with an app that isn't WhatsApp,
which means he still can't find that text from his
friends about where to meet.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
Hang on, still scrolling, No the addresses here somewhere.

Speaker 5 (48:46):
It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone with.

Speaker 4 (48:50):
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(49:14):
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Speaker 1 (49:46):
Welcome back, enjoying a conversation right now with Seth Breedlove,
a fellow who's projects over the years I've actually contributed
to quite a lot. Great to have him here on
the program with us. I'm sure it won't be the
last time, since Relove stays very busy in this space,
and of course we are right now discussing his latest documentary,

(50:07):
which will be released in the early days of October.
That's called lost contact UFOs after wartime, primarily dealing with
the death of pilot Thomas Mantel. But again, I actually
appear in this documentary, and I want to point out
that there's something new for everybody. If you are familiar
with UFO reports from the Golden Age, the early years

(50:28):
of flying saucers, you're probably still going to hear some
new things about this case and other similar sightings that
were occurring around that time. Now you know, Seth, there
was the official explanation given by the US Air Force
at the time, and maybe this somewhat contributed to parts
of the misunderstanding and even the myth building process, because
at the time of this incident, the first US government

(50:51):
investigative effort, known as Projects Sign had just gotten underway,
and one interpretation i'd actually read, which I was thinking
because again full disclosure to my listeners, I appear in
this documentary, and as I was reviewing that over the weekend,
it dawned on me that again one interpretation had been
that Projects SIGN investigators may have actually been aware of

(51:14):
the Navy's Skyhook balloon project, and they said, well, we
can't tell the public that that's what this pilot was chasing.
So we got to come up with something else. And
so either they were mistaken and they led to the
conclusion that it was the planet Venus. Venus, but that
was essentially what they said. I mean, what was your
interpretation of that early explanation, why it was provided, and

(51:35):
how that helped to shape or maybe didn't shape public
opinion about this.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
Well, I think, I mean, the problem with Venus is
the same problem with Venus in the Portage County UFO chase,
which is another one of my favorite UFO stories. It
paints the people involved to be complete morons, like it's
such a stupid, idiotic like like Mantel, chasing Venus was

(52:05):
an absurd idea even at the time. I mean, we
interviewed God, I mean again, I haven't made this movie.
It's been a year, but we interviewed someone from from
military dot Com who talked about it, and even he
was talking about how what a slap in the face
it was to Mantel or any anyone that claimed to
see this from the ground that they would have misidentified
Venuses as this object. I think there was sort of

(52:32):
a you know, the way that Terry and Eric Thomas
Mantel's grandsons put it is, there's almost like a relying
on the fact that, well, these are rural people, so
naturally the public is going to consider them, you know,
maybe just hillbillies. And so yeah, maybe Thomas Mantelli's from Kentucky.

(52:54):
He wouldn't know the difference between Venus and a UFO
and a skyhook balloon. So just put that out there,
you know, sort of the the reasoning behind it. But
I mean, they couldn't. They didn't stick to that. How
long did they stick to the Venus story. It didn't
last very long.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
It didn't. And I guess the reason primarily being that
after Edward Rupelt had served as the inaugural director of
Project blue Book and then he of course leaves government,
and he may have still actually been in government at
that point, but he certainly was no longer director of
Blue Book. But in his book from nineteen fifty six,
he actually said, this is what I think it was.
I think it was a skyhook balloon.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's an it was a it was this.
The way the way all of that worked with with
sign in those days seemed to be to just outright
discredit to witnesses themselves in a way that really does
a disservice to Thomas Mantel. This was a decorated World

(53:54):
War Two fighter pilot. I thought one of the most
important things in the movie was to establish him as
as a obviously as a person who was you know,
like he was a married man, he had two kids
and and all that stuff. We wanted to establish him
as a human being, but also established like his military career.
This wasn't this wasn't your average pilot. Not not to

(54:17):
disparage any anyone who's an average pilot, but he was.
He was a decorated UH War hero and someone that
that I don't think would have made that mistake to
begin with. But to try to discredit him, you know,
like I kind of feel like by coming back years

(54:38):
later and they give him this memorial and they put
up a plaque in Kentucky and all that, that's almost
a way of trying to to make up for the
fact that the government did make him look so bad
at the time when all of this happened. Some of
the stories, some of the early headlines in the newspaper.
The way some of those early newspaper articles were written

(54:59):
after the the Venus thing came out really disparage him
and his ability to to observe, you know what, what
he was seeing and properly categorize it. It's a it's
a it's offensive in the worst way when you consider
his what he had just done for our country. And

(55:19):
I thought that was a really important thing going into
the movie. It was just to try to to to
put across that this isn't the type of guy who
would make that mistake in the first place. But for
the for the government to kind of like drag him
like they did is makes the entire thing even more offensive.

Speaker 1 (55:41):
And to me, though, I gotta say, Seth, that's also
one of the parallels with the modern issue involving UAP.
You know, look, it seems likely, and again I think
your your documentary film really lays out the case very well,
although it gives fair time to all the different perspectives.
But I think it's it's pretty evident that this this
was probably a Navy skyhook balloon at the time, but

(56:02):
Mantel wouldn't have known about that, he wouldn't have been
briefed about that, and that's part of what's so tragic.
He was essentially pursuing an object he couldn't identify, and
it was to him a UFO at the time. Based
on the information we have, turns out it was an
experimental secret project. And today one of the concerns is

(56:22):
that there may be experimental secret technologies that members of
our military could be encountering in our skies and they
haven't been briefed on what they've seen, and therefore the
officials come along and they provide these explanations. Well, based
on our investigation, it was most likely this was insert
you know, prosaic explanation. Sure, and it makes these people

(56:42):
out to seem like they don't know what's happening in
our skies, let alone are they effective as pilots and observers,
Whereas it's quite the opposite. They're very good observers to
the ability that, in the best of their ability, giving
the information they had at hand, they were good observers
and they accurately describe what they saw. However, we do
have a better explanation for what they for what they saw.

(57:03):
The cover up is often to try and mislead the
public from thinking that these people have observed our own
secret technologies. I mean, that's still a problem today.

Speaker 2 (57:12):
Yeah. No, the the amount of sort of correlations to
what's going on in in uh, you know, with the
military and the government and UFOs today and this project
from however many years ago, decades ago there, you can't
ignore it. Uh, in particular the way we seem to

(57:36):
keep things a secret from people who need who probably
need to know. And you understand the reasoning behind it,
But at the same time, when you're when you're dealing
with you know, uh, decorated pilots losing their life due
to the fact that we keep those secrets, it starts
to make you wonder, you know, like when do you
draw the line on what should be secret of from

(58:00):
from our own military.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
There were witnesses that appeared in Lost Contact that I
was unaware of, people whose participation in this at the
time of the event, having actually observed the craft go down.
I'd never heard this testimony before, and this, to me
is extremely important information. What did you learn from interviewing
those witnesses who actually observe the craft come down?

Speaker 2 (58:24):
Yeah? I mean that to me is the highlight of
the whole movie. That that and getting to talk with
Terry and Eric. But Terry and Eric weren't there. You know,
they weren't even born. So so getting to speak with
the witnesses, the people who actually witnessed the the airplane
come down, was pretty crazy. I think. You know, there's

(58:48):
a lot of when it comes to this kind of interview,
it takes something that you've almost in your head. You know,
you said, mythologize. It's kind of like that, even even
with me even learning about Thomas as a person and
his family and all that, going to where you know,

(59:11):
like going to the town where he grew up, going
to his grave, going to his dad's grave, like we
I was fully aware of this guy as a person,
but there's still an aspect of it that's like, oh,
this isn't real. Talking with the people who saw his
plane come down and seeing the impact that had on them.

(59:33):
In particular, there's three witnesses in the movie. One would
have been a brother and sister who lived on the
farm where the where the plane actually crashed, and then
the other ended up marrying the sister later. It's not
not not her brother, obviously, there's another boy that lived
nearby who also witnessed the crash. We interviewed all three

(59:56):
of them. The one kid he would have been a
kid at the time. He's in his eighties today. Actually
was taken to the crash site and saw the body
of Thomas Mantel by his father at the time, and

(01:00:17):
it is painfully obvious, and in talking with his sister
she confirmed this that he has PTSD from the event.
He witnessed Thomas Mantel's body sitting there, the scalp sheared
off of his head. You know, there's a very we
cut it out of the movie. You might have seen

(01:00:39):
it in the version you got sent, but there there
was I don't know if you recall this, but there
was an anecdote about when when he came down, when
the plane came down, his scalp was sheared off and
it was found in a field by a dog. Yeah,

(01:01:01):
was that in the version that you watched? Okay, So
that that eventually was cut, we just felt I felt
like final cut. I was like, I think this might
you know, it might undermine kind of what I'm trying
to do with the movie. But that that is it
was found, his scalp was found in in a field
by a dog and it was you know its and

(01:01:23):
and then even stranger that dad eventually took the scalp
and kind of had it as a souvenir for a
little while before giving I believe he either buried it
or gave it to someone connected with the investigation. Those
are the kind of like real world anecdotes that bring
this the reality of the story to life in a

(01:01:44):
way that you just can't when you're just hearing sort
of second and third hand retellings of an event like this,
you can't properly comprehend the reality of it. So talking
to them was was really something. And then one of
the witnesses, I mean, this is kind of a spoiler

(01:02:06):
because I think it's it's it's a kind of a
big reveal in the moment. But like one of the
witnesses to the plane crash, it emphatically insists that the
following day there was a UFO that came and hovered
over the field where the plane crashed. And I find
that very interesting, you know, like, could it is it

(01:02:29):
possible that he witnessed another weather balloon. It's doubtful, but
maybe that's, you know, maybe that's what it was. Maybe
we put something up in the sky to try to
I don't I don't know, but he he is insistent
that the following day, uh, he witnessed this UFO in
the sky over the field where Thomas Mantel lost his life.

(01:02:51):
The one elderly man that we interviewed, I connected with him.
He reminded me of my family, you know, my dad's side,
the family front from Bryson City. He kind of talks
like some of my cousins, and he was like very
obviously moved by this event to the extent that even

(01:03:13):
in his old age, he hasn't outrun it. And I
think ultimately that's kind of like the takeaway from the
movie is even even his grandchildren, Thomas Mantel's grandchildren have
been touched by his death in a negative way. You know,

(01:03:34):
that has extended generations beyond Thomas Mantel. And again, all
that needed to be done to make this at least
somewhat salvageable would have been for the government to fess
up to what was in the sky, what had actually happened. Instead,

(01:03:55):
it's left this sort of looming thing that's hung over
the Mantel family for for decades. And so that's that
was I think my biggest takeaway from the entire movie
is that, you know, like are the the the lasting
effects of something like this on a on a family,

(01:04:15):
you know, And it's yes, it's a if you don't
know the reality behind it, it is just kind of
a fun there's a comic book retelling of this, this story,
I mean, it is a in in euphological circles and
you know, like television, this would be just a fun

(01:04:37):
kind of you know, this this this is top gun
meets Close Encounters of the third time, you know. But
it's the fact is it's a it's a it's a tragedy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:50):
And there are other UFO researchers too over the last
few decades, even as recently as the last couple, who
have tried to reopen the case and say that they
doubt the skyhook explanation at other you know, prosaic explanations.
But my concern again is that really most of the data,
not only with this case, with other cases from that
era and other cases even more recently, it seems to

(01:05:13):
point to the idea that sometimes there are experimental technologies
that are misidentified as UAP or UFOs, and this is
one reason the government doesn't want to own up to that.
And in the tragic case that involves the death of
a pilot like Thomas Mantel, it seems pretty evident why
they wouldn't want the public to think, oh, this was
something of ours that somehow led to this. You know, Seth,

(01:05:36):
when does the documentary come out. It's going to be
coming out here, just in a couple of weeks.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
Right October seventh. Yeah, it's October seventh. That'll be out.

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
Excellent, That's what I thought, and so we will have
additional information about that available on the website and in
the show notes. You can follow Seth online at Smalltownmonsters
dot com. Definitely check out Lost Contact UFOs after wartime. Again,
I think we've covered the fact you're on the episode,
that there are a lot of parallels between this case

(01:06:04):
and certain things happening with regard to military UAP encounters today.
And as always, ex subscribers, you'll have a little more
to look forward to from Seth and I. But for
the here and now, that wraps things up here on
this installment of the podcast. As always, you guys, take
care out there, and once again, stay strange. We'll talk
to you next time.