Radio Misterioso

Chris may hold the record for most appearances on Radio Misterioso, dating back over 10 years. Since that first talk, we have become friends, mainly because he refuses to be pigeonholed as a researcher or in his opinions. He described the UFO tours he conducts in the Sedona area, and although he guarantees nothing, says that about 1/5 of the tours actually result in apparent sightings of unexplained aerial phenomena. He described his approach to the tours and how he “deprograms” his audience about what they think UFOs might be. We spoke about language, culture, and media and how it affects what people think they see and experience during a paranormal encounter. He also mentioned his theory that UFO activity seems to increase in this country during military drawdowns and when the party in the Oval Office changes. Also discussed: How we could possibly put ourselves in a state of mind to experience the paranormal, the futility of trying to explain where a researcher may be coming from, and a strange cattle mutilation that occurred close to a rancher’s home while he was watching a herd slowly circle something in a pasture. As always, a great “inside baseball”- type talk with an experienced researcher and author. Photo: Chris grabs my drone out of the air near Sedona, AZ.

David Weatherly is known as an investigator with a wide-range of interests and expertise. We met last year at the International UFO Conference and found that we had similar views on many paranormal topics. What I admired about him was that he seemed to have no set agenda and had no problem discussing any theory or idea. He is perhaps best known for his book The Black Eyed Children. It is because of this that we didn’t mention the subject at all. He also written other books on paranormal entities and publishes a Bigfoot studies journal called Woodknocks. His newest, Haunted Toys, was released last month. We sat in a couple of comfy chairs in my room at this year’s conference and explored ideas about manifested thoughtforms (also known by their Tibetan name: tulpas) the Philip experiment, bigfoot as a physical being with paranormal abilities (something I hadn’t considered before) and his investigations of ghostly disturbances at the Ripley Museum in Florida. He is as thoughtful and non-dogmatic as they come in this field, and that is rare. Photo: David at the Travis Walton phone booth near Heber, Arizona.

My first and only (so far) in-studio interview at my new place (my desk at home) was with Aaron Dabbah (also known as “EsoterX.”) As I say somewhere in this program, his writing makes me feel like I am learning about something that I don’t want to. In this episode, we talked about folklore as an early warning system, skeptics vs. believers (who often have the same ego motivations for their opinions) and the “phantom clown” phenomenon considered as a chaotic trickster manifestation (such as the mudhead kachina pictured above.) Later in the program, we took an extended sidetrack into writers whom we admire. He lives in town, so we’ll be talking again soon. The post title refers to Aaron’s contention that if we weren’t supposed to see paranormal things, then the ability should have been evolved out of our brains by now.

On January 5th, writer Leslie Kean released a story at the Huffington Post about an infrared video of a seemingly mysterious object traveling through Chilean airspace on November 11, 2014. The images were captured by a camera mounted on a helicopter of the Chilean Navy. They gave the video to their official UFO investigative group (the CEFAA) to study and see if the object could be identified. They declared it unidentified and passed the story on to Kean. On January 6th, using the information provided in the article, a preliminary analysis by  the skeptical group Metabunk guessed that the object was a passenger aircraft departing from the Benítez International Airport in Santiago. Being a licensed pilot, I took an immediate interest in this case. By January 7th, after going through all of their analysis points in detail, I found that I agreed with virtually all of their findings and said so at the RM facebook page. On January 17th, Kean magnanimously wrote a follow-up article that basically said she and the CEFAA were most likely in error. Alejandro spoke about this saga, and how it is another lesson for the UFO community and interested parties. I offered my observations about the skeptical explanation, and we discussed how it became obvious very early on how the assumptions made by the Chilean authorities were wrong. Later, we asked who are the “authorities” we listen to and how we determine that they actually are authoritative. In the last third of the program, we discussed the upcoming International UFO Congress, the speakers, and their subjects, some of which are surprisingly progressive for a major gathering. Image credit: Metabunk.org

Old buddy Tim Binnall of Binnall Of America called and suggested we continue the growing tradition of our year-in-review shows. “Great idea!” I said. Among other subjects, we covered UFOs in the election and how the subject may be in a fallow period entering into the next administration (but due for a possible renaissance from within) the Creepy Clown Panic of the summer, and all the celebrities that seemed to have left us this past year. There was also some discussion about the Chilean UFO video story that had just broken the week before. That and a whole lot more. Enjoy and Happy New Year!

Ever since Josh Cutchin hipped me to the imminent arrival of Arrival, I’ve been waiting eagerly to see it. Radio Misterioso friend Red Pill Junkie and I had seen it within a few days of this show, so all the ideas were still fresh. We began with by looking at how anomalies and UFO research are changing for the better in many ways. The barriers between bigfoot researchers, cyrytozoologists, and those interested in psychic phenomena seem to be falling, even in the mainstream groups. We discussed the value of smaller groups and the need to work with people you may not agree with, but trust implicitly. The themes in Arrival provide many helpful suggestions for UFO study. It points up how language creates our perceptions of time and reality, and how we are prisoners of our assumptions. We also discussed how an awareness of alternate perspectives may ultimately save us from ourselves. We ended with the concept that an idea has to be alive in people’s minds and evolve to continue to be useful. The show is one long spoiler, so don’t listen if you haven’t seen the movie yet. As of this posting, the film has fallen out of wide release. Photo: Me and RPJ find the UMMO symbol is universal.

This year, I decided to have a partner on the holiday-themed wacky tunes show. Author and musician Josh Cutchin is an aficionado of strange music, and he brought along a nice crop of weirdness for the 2016 edition of this Radio Misterioso tradition. We started with Porky Pig (or someone who does a very credible impression) singing “Blue Christmas,” and it went downhill from there! We also featured three Yogi Yorgesson tracks, and a cover of “Please Daddy Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas” by John Denver. Merry Happy! Songlist: “Porky Pig” – Blue Christmas Mark Pitta – Jingle Two Times Mel Blanc – The Hat I Got For Christmas Is Too Big Two Anti-Drug PSAs from Porky Pig and Foghorn Leghorn Patrick Donohue – I Want To See A UFO For Christmas Yogi Yorgesson – I Was Santa Claus at the Schoolhouse for the PTA Yogi Yorgesson – I Just Go Nuts at Christmas Yogi Yorgesson – Rusty Chevrolet John Boy And Billy – Christmas Balls Insane Star Wars Christmas Music Box Robert Smigel – Tingles The Christmas Tension John Bongiovi – R2-D2 We Wish You A Merry Christmas Steve Martin/ Paul Simon – Silver Bells Robert Earl Keene – Merry Christmas From The Family Portsmouth Sinfonia – From the Nutcracker Suite Op. 71a Bob Rivers – I Am Santa Claus John Denver – Please Daddy Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas Shari Lewis and Lambchop – Some Things For Christmas Bob Rivers – Oh Christmas Tree Mojochronic – Yuletide Zeppelin

Wren Collier has an amazing blog called Liminal Room where he addresses such ideas as alien anatomy, time and causality, and if an extra-human intelligence is capable of controlling us. These are weighty subjects which I believe go right to the heart of the anomalous, since the way he looks at them forces us to take a step back and look at how we look at things rather than assuming that we are separate from our environment. In this mind-wringing episode, we had fun talking about how we see, understand, and process information. Wren is sharp and I had to keep up, which made this a lot of fun. We compared AI to ET and wondered if AI is going to go out of control and become our robot overlords. We also had a light debate about the individual capacity for learning. Wren talked extensively about a book called Amazon Beaming, which is the story of a professional photographer who was stranded in the Amazon with a tribe who apparently communicated in some sort of non-verbal language. He will be back on the show.

After the wonderful East Coast Paraconference, Paul Kimball put us up for one night in a haunted hotel in his hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Before the event, he took us on a guided tour of the province, including a pilgrimage to the alleged UFO crash site in Shag Harbour. Sitting on the roof of our hotel, we discussed the events of that weekend and just about anything else that came to mind while we had a few beers and Tim tried to get a hookup on Tinder. We also talked about who can claim the title of “most influential ufologist,” praised the organizers of the conference for their non-dogmatic stance, and apparently annoyed some other guests of the hotel. Aaron also performed his soon-to-be-famous impressions of legendary UFO researcher and Men In Black originator Albert K. Bender. Photo – Shag Harbour crash site visit with Tim, Aaron, and Paul.

Following on the heels of his groundbreaking A Trojan Feast (about food encountered in UFO and other paranormal experiences) Joshua Cutchin has recently released his second book The Brimstone Deceit. We started off with a little shop talk about writing books and how great it is to see something you have been working on for so long finally show up in reality. Josh told me the funny story of how he came up with the title and we jumped into a discussion about smells and UFOs and other weirdness. He says that sulfur compounds are some of the easiest smells for the human nose to detect, which seems not entirely coincidental when it is traditionally connected with negative encounters and evil. The smell connects many seemingly disparate phenomena (such as UFOs and Bigfoot.) Something definitely wants to be noticed. He also mentioned the phenomenon of witnesses who have a strange encounter and carry around a weird odor for the rest of their lives. The part of the show were taken up with gushing about the movie Arrival and what it might be like (the show was recorded a couple of months before release.)  

A few months ago, longtime listeners Stephanie Quick and Steve Ray told me that they had been experimenting on me. They heard me complain about a lack of first person paranormal experience amongst researchers, or specifically, myself. To that end, they devised a psychic influencing experiment to see if they could affect the content of the shows by concentrating on a theme. For instance, On a show recorded on January 18, 2015, the focus chosen was “heat,” and a car fire erupted right next to my car parked on the street below the studio. This was the most spectacular example, there were other more modest “hits” throughout the months-long experimental period. The last third of the show was taken up with discussions of Zen temples and the power of a positive mindset. Excel files and images documenting the experiment can be downloaded here.

Joining me for this RM popup show were Michael Hughes, Seriah Azkath, and Josh Cutchin. We all agree that UFO study can be changed and improved by some sort of personal involvement with the subject and whatever causes it. More people working along these lines would be a good thing and the time appears to be ripe. Subjects discussed included: ritual magick, chaos magick, DMT, Whitley Strieber, tulpas and whether people can handle what might happen if the abyss or anything living there stares back (or worse.) It was a lively and fast-paced talk. Michael brought up a forward thinking researcher I hadn’t heard about in years and who was making these connections 20 years ago: a guy who called himself “Brother Blue.” We called for people to get personally involved with the phenomenon in whatever way they can and then, and most importantly, get back to us and others with their reports and findings. Go! Illustration by RPJ from It Defies Language!

Nick is of course an old friend and having him on the show is just an excuse to catch up and talk shop, although we spent an amazingly substantial amount of time on his new book: Women In Black: The Creepy Companions of the Mysterious M.I.B. Nick can say whatever he wants to on my show and he did. We spoke quite a lot about Albert K. Bender and his occult interests and experiences, and a bit about his involvement with alchemy, of all things. The subject of fairy lore came up, and some of the similarities to aspects of visits from the Women In Black. Nick found that these entities, while having a similar M.O. to their male brethren, tend to act more like what we think of a vampires, at least in their theatrical aspects, being more seductive and less overtly threatening. We even got to a case of a woman in white who harassed a witness to an apparent whale mutilation in the UK.  

Just a few days ago, I was alerted to a strange sighting from the UK in 2009. The witness, (who wishes to remain anonymous, and along with 3 others) reported seeing a passenger aircraft flying dangerously low over the British countryside. As they approached closer, they realized that the object appeared to be hanging perfectly still in mid-air. This was rather disconcerting, along with the fact that the airplane was perfectly white, with no markings whatsoever. We talked about this, my own stationary UFO sighting, and what might be happening to witnesses of weird stuff.

New idea: Occasional pop-up RM episodes dealing with current topics. This morning I saw a post from Daniel Malone on facebook with a map of the area around the recent mysterious and disturbing Greenville, South Carolina clown sightings. He pointed out that the area is also a UFO hotspot, which of course got my attention. In a couple of hours, we arranged to talk about the facts and implications of this strange, but not unfamiliar phenomenon, as Loren Coleman (who coined the term “phantom clowns” in 1981 for his landmark book Mysterious America) has recently pointed out. Show friend Skylaire Alfvegren also joined us for historical and symbolic perspectives. A couple of audio captures from the local news lead off the show.