Radio Misterioso

Peter Robbins makes his third appearance on the program, and on the heels of the untimely death of Budd Hopkins, we talk about his friendship with Hopkins and insights into working with people who claim abduction by non-human entities. We started with an in-depth examination of Robbins' own sighting and subsequent repression of the troubling memory until he was reminded of it in the mid 1970s by his sister, who was there and had an apparent abduction experience. While there are certainly many troubling issues in UFO abduction research, I do not personally have all the data and experience of someone like Peter Robbins to be able to come to a solid conclusion about the way it has been conducted in the last 30 years, although I have been occasionally critical of it in the past. Peter addressed some of the charges leveled at Hopkins concerning the treatment of apparent abductees, protocols for interviews and hypnosis sessions and guarding against bias from both the researcher and the subjects. Peter brought up a new case he's been working on involving a security guard at a prison in the southwest and his sighting of a massive (100-yard or more) black, disc-shaped object which silently appeared and then disappeared in the night sky. Peter has promised to ask the witness if he would appear on the program for a short interview. We also discussed the problem of fundamentalist thinking and how it pervades the skeptical community, UFO researchers, religion and politics. This led to a segment about compassion and how we should conduct our lives to do the most good for others and ourselves. The theme of the program is probably best summed up as: "As much as you can, withhold judgment for as long as possible and keep your emotions in check." Robbins' paper that is referred to during the program, Politics, Religion and Human Nature: Practical Problems and on the Path Toward Official UFO Acknowledgment can be downloaded by clicking on the title. Photo credit: ICAR.

No guest this week, and I liked how the music show went, so it's posted for eternity. Actually, there are only three 9/11-themed songs in this show, and we get them out of the way right at the beginning. Also on the menu: Country music with distorted guitar and sitar, music produced entirely with computer-generated voices in close harmony, a jazz cover of "Voodoo Chile" with a tuba taking the lead, a ska version of the Beatles, and the original recording of the Plan 9 From Outer Space theme before Ed Wood got ahold of it. We end with a few favorites from the Messer Chups. Special thanks to Mr. Fab at Music For Maniacs for a couple of these gems!

Tim Binnall has become one of the leading lights in the paranormal radio podcast parade. He is known for his no-nonsense yet easygoing style and has interviewed such well-known UFO personalities as Jacques Vallee, Linda Howe and Stan Friedman. Like many of us, his projects evolved out of a need to learn more from those we considered leading researchers and theorists. What better way than to ask them yourself? Binnall of America started as a fan site for Coast To Coast AM and quickly developed it's own unique personality. We began with a discussion on the sorry state of mainstream paranormal radio, and the twin disasters of the 2008 Bigfoot hoax and Sylvia Browne's psychic prediction backtracking in 2006 which played out on Coast to Coast. I also mentioned my deep dislike of Sean Morton, and Tim called him and his ilk "Performance bullshit artists." We talked shop about interviews, problems with contemporary UFO study (a long segment), and then Tim launched into his negative assessment of Arizona Governor Fife Symington's about face on the Phoenix Lights sightings of 1997. Paul Kimball suddenly called in to comment on Symington and entered into a debate with Tim as to whether the man was a "coward" or just an opportunist. Three callers later, we closed with a discussion about the nature of what exactly constitutes a "ufologist." This program was recorded on April 1st of 2007. The photo above is from when Tim and Paul were visiting L.A. in 2008. (Tim is on the left and Paul is on the right. )

Nick was on the show again to talk about his new book, The Real Men In Black. The MIB have been a ufological bugaboo for over 50 years now, and the myth has changed little since it was introduced by ufologist Albert Bender in the mid 1950s. Are they real or imaginary? Nick says yes. For the first 15 minutes we actually discussed the problems that authors face with publishers, self publishing, and selling ideas. We then dove into our subject with an examination of Bender and some little-known parts of his story, including Nick's ideas about Bender's psychological state during his MIB visitations. We continued with a few well-known and not a few less well-known encounters with Ufology's shadowy silencers. For most of the last hour of the program we discussed theories about where the MIB might come from, how they are perceived and how these two issues interact in legend and reality. At the end of the show I played a segment from a rare recording of Albert Bender describing his experiences. The drawing above is Bender's depiction of the entities which he said scared him right out of his UFO studies.

Barbara Harris is the president of the Morongo Basin Historical Society and an expert on the history of the Joshua Tree/ Yucca Valley/ Landers area of the California high desert. Most people who listen to Radio Misterioso know about flying saucer contactee George Van Tassel and his famous Integratron. What many might not realize is that when Van Tassel moved his family from Los Angeles in the early 1950s, he didn't just pick the desert at random. His friend Frank Critzer told him about the area and carved out an 800 square foot living space underneath one of the world's largest freestanding granite boulders. In contrast to his reputation as a retiring hermit, Critzer also graded the roads and built an airstrip to encourage visitors. Critzer was accused of being a Nazi sympathizer (probably not true) and may have provided support to Japanese families hiding from arrest and internment camps during WWII. Barbara expanded on all of this, busted a quite a few myths and revealed much new information publicly for the first time during our interview, which lasted over two hours.

Mike Clelland and I have talked by phone and skype a over the last couple of years, but we thought it might be time to talk publicly about our mutual interests. Mike has a fascinating site called Hidden Experience which he uses to examine his own strange experiences and discuss paranormal issues and synchronicities. We started out with a report from and commentary on the Laughlin UFO conference. Mike returned from the 2010 meeting with a mixed bag of impressions and memories. While at the conference, he attended an abductee support meeting, which he described in detail. We also spoke about conversations with our late friend Mac Tonnies. His analogy of a cat chasing a laser pointer and the comparison of humans seeing UFOs occupied us for a good while. This led to a conversation about Mac's last book The Cryptoterrestrials and how it might affect UFO research. Mike made the important point that many abduction researchers have agendas that ignore the variety of UFO encounter and abduction experiences. We went on to talk about the experience of the paranormal and how it changes lives. This interview was recorded on March 7th of 2010. No interview scheduled this week (8/7). Weird music will occur during your regularly scheduled program.

About three years ago, Walter Bosley's background in criminal investigation led him to a century-old series of unsolved deaths. As he looked into the unusual incidents, he noticed that the authorities of the time seemed to have little interest in pursuing any leads or making any real effort to solve the crimes, even though one of the victims was written up in newspapers as far away as Salt Lake City. Empire Of The Wheel recounts Bosley's increasing efforts to follow leads based on newspaper accounts, public records, and coroner reports from the autumn of 1915 in an effort to reconcile the unusual spate of unexplained deaths in the burgeoning town of San Bernardino, California. On the way, he and co-author Richard Spence discovered possible links to spiritualist groups, Masons, foreign spies, Aliester Crowley, and even a possible coverup by members of the local establishment at the time. Spence's most recent book is Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the Occult. Perhaps the strangest and most startling revelation was that the infamous "Zodiac" serial killer of the 1960s may have been using elements of occult geology to plan his murders in the same way that an unnamed person or persons might have been doing at the turn of the 20th century in San Bernardino. Bosley and Spence do not claim to have solved the mystery, but ask that the questions they raise be considered as hitherto unexamined motivations for the possible murder of at least seven people over a four-month period, which was highly unusual for the time.

Nick Redfern has been a very good friend for a very long time, and it was a pleasure to welcome him to the program once again to talk about one of his most controversial books. In short, Final Events and the Secret Government Group on Demonic UFOs and the Afterlife is the story Nick uncovered about a secret U.S. Government group that has been around since the 1950s and who labor under the belief that all UFO and specifically "alien" phenomena are demonic in origin. They are committed to fighting this supposed evil influence over mankind, and if possible, to defeat it. Nick describes the genesis of this group called the "Collins Elite" which began in the 1950s while background checks were being done on infamous rocket pioneer Jack Parsons and his connection to the "wickedest man in the world," Aliester Crowley. The group became convinced that Parsons and his cohorts opened some sort of psychic doorway that ushered in the age of flying saucers. Confused? Intrigued? You'll be less of the first and more of the second after listening to this episode of Radio Misterioso, recorded on April 17th of 2011. Note: Neither Nick nor I "believe" all of this wholeheartedly. As Nick says, it is an interesting story and one he wanted to tell after talking to a few individuals in the group. The photo above was taken when Nick and I visited the grave of Paul Bennewitz in New Mexico.

Norio Hayakawa has been part of the UFO/ conspiracy scene for over 20 years. In fact, he was becoming known in the community just as I was first writing about strange stuff. He has been in the thick of the Area 51 and Dulce underground base stories and personalities since before the beginning. This night we talked about his involvement with the early personalities involved in these stories, such as John Lear, Bill Cooper, Ted Gunderson, and Anthony Hilder. Norio recalled his 1990 interview with Area 51 "whistleblower" Bob Lazar and the strange men who wouldn't leave his side throughout the filming of a segment for Japanese television. He also noticed that Lazar's home didn't looked lived in, more like a movie set. This sounds very much like Lazar's leaking of government secrets were highly scripted. Norio also mentioned that he first heard of Area 51 and the supposed Dulce base in a packet of reading material he requested from Bill Moore in 1988. We also discussed our experiences with a man named "Mike Younger" and our impressions of him as a disinfo agent. Much of what he did also seemed scripted and designed to create definite ideas and opinions. Throughout the program, Norio stressed his agnostic approach. Like many others, he has found that interested non-belief is probably the best way to approach the UFO subject as well as so-called conspiracy issues. We also went into his background and bio since his immigration from his native Japan. I particularly liked his stories of working the night shift at a mortuary. We ended with one of his original keyboard compositions entitled "Showdown At Dulce, New Mexico."

Jerry Modjeski and I have very similar pursuits. We are both interested in all aspects of the paranromal, mind/ consciousness issues and research, and how it all fits together. Jerry hosted a program called the Musical Transportation Spree that was broadcast for over 15 years on public radio station KFAI in Minneapolis. He was a field investigator for MUFON and played weird music every week. My kind of guy. We have not spoken much since this program was aired on January 5th of 2003, and I plan to remedy that situation soon. On this night we spanned the spectrum of the weird, speaking about his UFO investigations, ghosts and ouija boards, the Cash-Landrum UFO incident, and UFO songs. I played a few gems on the show, such as "(You'd Better Pray To The Lord) When You See Those Flying Saucers" and UFO contactee Frank Stranges' audio documentary from the mid 1960s. This was a really fun show and I'm glad that I found the CDs on which it was recorded. Hello Jerry, wherever you are! Photo credit: Peter Stenshoel