Radio Misterioso

Joshua joined me a second time to delve into our audio vaults of the strange. We had to catch up first, so we talked UFO shop for the first twenty minutes, then right into the weirdness. This time, we decided to give each other 2 songs per turn. Highlights included a band named Hayseed Dixie and their cover of “Walk This Way,” in which you will hear and actually understand the lyrics to this song. A favorite from my virtual vaults was “On the Eve of my Multiplication” performed by Buddy Starcher, whose big hit was “History Repeats Itself” about the similarities between the JFK and Lincoln assassinations. We also listened to a light country ditty entitled “Flying Saucers In The Air,” which I probably haven’t played before.

My favorite co-host Walter returned to tell us about his new book Origins: The 19th Century Emergence of the 20th Century Breakaway Civilizations. The book presents a radical view of when, how and who was behind early controlled manned flight, and how early that this may have been achieved. We started off defining what exactly a “breakaway civilization” is, and moved quickly to a discussion of the famous airship artist Charles Dellschau, and how his beautiful drawings of aircraft from the 19th century may not have been merely fantasies. Walter says he has found many indications that those Dellschau mentions in his “fanciful” recollections were actual people. Walter further contends that there was a group in Germany who funded the efforts of airship researchers in the U.S. and that these inventors turned on their benefactors when they discovered that the research was for the purposes of war. We also talked about Dr. Solomon Andrews and his demonstration of a controllable airship to Abraham Lincoln’s War department. He says that this was the basis for the first “black project” sponsored by the U.S. Government.  

Steve Berg took me out to lunch a couple of years ago and we had a great time. We went again recently when my newest book was released. This was when I found out that Steve’s job was comedy writing and acting, and that he has a fairly successful career doing both. People may know him from the excellent Comedy Central show Drunk History or his acting work on Idiotsitter or even this superbowl ad. To start the show, we watched a video called “Two Hamsters, One Wheel,” and some music I located (titled “Ciocarlia”) that goes perfectly as a soundtrack. I had some questions for Steve and he had some questions for me. He likes my books and I like Drunk History and comedy, so the show veered between these themes. Steve considers UFO crazies like Steven Greer a form of performance art, and I can’t argue with that at all. Surprisingly enough, he says he was inspired to go into the funny biz by the comedic stylings of character actor Dabney Coleman. I played my bootleg recording of comedy legend Tony Clifton, which impressed Steve. He is worried about the phenomenon of more people (especially college-age kids) who are easily offended and how this is killing traditional comedy and satire. He asked me about the mysterious Naval intelligence man who was known as “Mike Younger” and our interactions, which forced me to wrack my brain for memories, as well as some of the research leading to Project Beta. We discussed the solution to the moving rocks mystery of Death Valley before a spaced-out dude called in for stilted shenanigans.

Red Pill Junkie (RPJ) and Robert “Burnt State” suggested that they should interview me about my latest book, and I agreed immediately. They are both very “inside baseball” on the subjects I discuss and I thought they would have a great perspective to really delve into the subject matter. For the most part, we concentrated on theories and opinions about how we (as humans) look at the UFO phenomenon and how researchers and other interested parties can frame their questions in different ways. We started with the idea that perhaps we need to examine the value of subjectivity and how closer encounters seem to affect many witnesses on a deep, individual level. RPJ said the attitude among most UFO fans seems to be “We have iphones, so our model is more valid than yours,” forgetting that some societies have solid traditions of communion with “the other.” We are also limited by our language. We also discussed that some researchers (such as Dr. Leo Sprinkle and Raymond Fowler) even seem to have gone “native” after years of interaction with witnesses. In contrast to other interviews I have done for the book, this one concentrated more on my favorite parts of the book, such as the alien writing chapter that suggests we can interact with a possible non-human consciousness in ways that are not necessarily direct or that even make sense. As Robert said “We need to have an adequate response in the song, when the ‘other’ calls out to us.” The illustration above by RPJ was a preliminary sketch for the cover of the book. Other links: Kindle, Amazon hard copy

The author of the singular and amazing A Trojan Feast joined me to indulge our mutual interest in strange and otherwise outsider music. For the first 20 minutes or so, we talked shop about UFOs. In his recent lectures, Josh was pleasantly surprised to find that civilian research groups were considering other approaches besides the extraterrestrial hypothesis, then we dove right in with the tunes. One of the standouts was the 1972 Italian hit “Prisencolinensinainciusol” which consists of wonderful gibberish that is an attempt to sound like English, or what Italians think English sounds like. It is genius and has become a personal favorite. Other standouts in our musical visit included a cover of “Day Tripper” in Thai, a virtuoso performance on the theremin, and a broken carousel calliope trying to play “76 Trombones.” There is also a seriously dirty blues song from 1935 that forced me to change my itunes rating to “explicit.”

For months now, people have been asking me to interview Seriah Azkath, host of the very popular “Where Did The Road Go?” podcast. Seriah and I found that we had a lot in common in our views on the paranormal. Unlike myself though, he has had a wide variety of strange and sometimes disturbing experiences which he revealed throughout the program. For example, he said he once saw the moon come through the clouds at night and apparently vibrate in the sky.  He also talked about how an undiagnosed medical condition was brought under control when he used a kundalini model to deal with it. We also discussed the state of UFO study, possible new models of the phenomenon, and different ways to gather data from sightings, as well as its interconnectedness with other paranormal events. Seriah also mentioned this weird fact: some ghost hunters have seen “midgets” or small humanoid shapes showing up on specialized cameras that seem to be climbing on people. For much of the last part of the show, we engaged in “shop talk” about how and why we do interviews. A fun show with a kindred spirit.

The old quote about those not knowing history who are doomed to repeat it is just as relevant to the study of UFOs as any other subject. For many years now, Chris Aubeck has been chronicling the history of strange objects seen in the sky to show that the phenomenon is much older and more pervasive than most people think. Chris told me that the very term “flying saucer” was in common usage in the English-speaking world starting in the late 19th century. It referred to clay targets used for trap and skeet shooting, and he argues that the press had a ready-made phrase when Kenneth Arnold reported his sighting in 1947, and which may have affected preconceptions of witnesses and the press afterwords. In 2003, Aubeck visited Dr. Jacques Vallée at a speaking date in Portugal and asked him to collaborate on a book he was going to call “Return To Magonia.” Vallée at first said “no,” but called him a few months later and agreed to co-author what would become Wonders In The Sky. The book examines reports of strange objects seen in in the sky from antiquity to the late 19th century and weeded out accounts that were hoaxes and misidentifications of natural phenomena by combing through historical records of people, places, weather, and astronomical data. A deluxe edition has been announced. Since Wonders, Chris has co-authored two other volumes: OOPARTs: Ojetos Fuera De Su Tiempo (Things Out Of Time) (Spanish only) and Return To Magonia: Investigating UFOs In History. We talked about both books and how the use of historical records explained many events that have been attributed to paranormal, unearthly, or mysterious origins have turned out to be false or easily explainable. In Return, Aubeck and co-author Martin Shough picked a top 20 of UFO cases throughout history and found some that were explainable and others that remain unidentified. Chris has lived in Spain since age 19 and we talked about the convoluted and sometimes harrowing series of events that led him to adopt that country as his home. His next project is an examination of the history of beliefs about extraterrestrial life. A very fun and informative interview which I enjoyed thoroughly. I hope you will too.

For all my bashing of large UFO groups, I haven’t actually confronted someone from one of those groups to pose some of the questions that I’d been asking almost rhetorically. Hearing about Cassidy Nicholas changed that. For the past two years, she has been Associate Communications Producer for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) which puts her in charge of their national media. She is also the author of three books on the paranormal, as well as a field investigator for MUFON, and has hosted many radio interviews. We started out with her experiences as an interviewer and the chance it gives the host to learn directly from the guest, which is something I always like. How does an investigator keep from imposing their views and even unconscious motivations on a UFO witness? Nicholas says that MUFON field investigators are supposed to adhere to a standard set of questions that have no ET or other bias. She emphasized that they are routinely reminded not to impose any point of view in their reports or questioning. She added that MUFON as a group does not espouse the ET explanation, even though individual members may try to speak for the organization with that belief. I asked of there was any movement towards the inclusion of nonstandard questions about the witness, such as ethnic background as well as subjective data about emotions, feelings, or life changes, and she indicated that they were moving towards some of these goals, and are open to alternate viewpoints. Cassidy began as a paranormal investigator of ghost and haunting cases, but soon grew tired of the culture of that group, as well as the realization that she might not be able to deal with some of the more disturbing aspects of that world. She says her young son was thrown out of bed in the middle of the night during a period when she was working on a particularly intense case. At one investigation of a site with a myriad of phenomena, she told me that all the various researchers (bigfoot, paranormal, and UFO people) all got along great, which surprised me. The one statement which impressed me the most in this interview was Cassidy’s response to my question about what she thought was the source of UFO reports and what she might be searching for when investigating a case. “I don’t know,” she said.

Mike’s new book The Messengers defines a new category in close encounter studies. He has singlehandedly created and developed a whole subgenre of the abduction/ encounter scenario with his careful and insightful observations of the imagery of owls that are reported along with strange experiences. He has been studying this phenomenon intensely for about five years. He does not assign the classic abduction scenario to his own strange and sometimes disturbing experiences, and he does not judge or categorize other accounts that he has collected. He says that the owl connection to abductions is something that has been a factor for a long time, but it was one of the things that major researchers like Budd Hopkins and John Mack considered just another of the many weird outlier events connected with their studies and which they wouldn’t normally reveal because it didn’t fit in a neat box with their main focus. Mike has concluded that as an archetype, the owl imagery fits in very well as a way to view connections between apparent alien encounters and the human history of mythology and symbolism and how they help us deal with issues of the psyche. One of the most striking non-UFO stories that Mike has collected involved a girl who was prevented from committing suicide due to an amazing encounter with an owl. Illustration courtesy Red Pill Junkie

Allen Greenfield has been in the UFO biz almost since the beginning. He has been on the board of the National UFO Conference (NUFOC) since its inception and was there in the 1950s and ’60s along with James Moseley, Gray Barker, and later, Tim Beckley as they pulled off legendary UFO conferences attended by thousands. He is also heavily steeped in occult lore, particularly Aliester Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis. I have long believed that the mind-expanding rituals of Western Occultism may be an important key to the solution of the UFO enigma, and Greenfield’s 1992 book, Secret Cipher Of The Ufonauts made that connection for many. On this program, we talked about the early NUFOC gatherings and the strange and famous people who used to show up, including James Randi, who gave a talk about the mysterious Nazca Lines. We also spoke about Jim Moseley and Gray Barker’s juvenile jokes and hoaxes which were pulled on anyone they considered deserving targets, such as John Keel and George Adamski. Greenfield recalled the weird antics of Albert Bender, the man who brought the term and idea of the “Men In Black” into public consciousness. He says that Bender may have been performing some sort of ill-formed rituals that summoned these entities and that he didn’t know how to get rid of them. In conclusion, Allen said that what needs to be done with UFO study is to use our limited human comprehension to examine various aspects of the unknown and make connections between what we find in order to understand the underlying structures. Guest intro stolen from Adam Gorightly’s Untamed Dimensions podcast.

On September 27, Gorightly was in town for an interview with the MANdate crew. It just happened to be the night of the “Super Blood Moon” eclipse, so we climbed the mountain to Los Angeles’ famous Griffith Observatory for the festivities. There was no agenda or list of questions and the second-ever remote Misterioso broadcast was glitch-free as we stood on the upper deck between two huge telescopes. We could see the searchlights from the Hollywood Bowl where Grace Jones was performing as Gorightly described a new UFO book project. He has also learned a bit more about late UFO publisher James Moseley’s mysterious girlfriend and her alleged alien contacts in the 1950s and ’60s. She eventually wrote a book entitled Those Sexy Saucer People. Gorightly has also uncovered a previously unknown flying saucer contactee story from the 1930s. Ever the sleuth, he also shared the story of a UFO sighting wave from France in 1954 and how it may have coincided with a outbreak of ergot fungus poisoning, which mimics the effects of LSD. We also talked about how much Nick Redfern hates Paul McCartney while we tried in vain to see the eclipse, which was obscured by cloud cover. As soon as the event was over, the skies were clear again. Typical. A short, but enjoyable show which was limited by the time constraints imposed on us by the remote broadcast software.

Joshua has written A Trojan Feast, a singularly amazing and insightful book about food offerings in UFO and other paranormal encounters. For me, reading it was one of those “Why hasn’t someone thought of this before?” moments. We began by comparing experiences of meeting authors and researchers we admire and how they turned out to be pretty friendly. Everyone who is interested in these strange subjects learns and builds on the work of those we admire and respect. At about 28 minutes into the program, we actually started talking about the book! Echoing the words of one my favorite researchers, the late Karla Turner, Josh says the weird details of paranormal encounters are probably where a solution, or part of a solution, lies. A Trojan Feast is full of stories that are strange even for a UFO book, all centering on the subject of food and drink during encounters with “aliens, faeries, and Sasquatch,” as the book’s subtitle indicates. Significantly, Cutchin has found that much of the food and drink that witnesses claim were given to them adhere to the Hindu “sattvic” diet, which is recommended for seekers of spiritual truth. Also, although we tend to eat a lot of both in North America, meats and candy are virtually never reported. As we got deeper into the discussion, we talked about the idea of UFO abductions as a form of shamanistic rite returning to a technological society. We also compared “soft” (feelings and impressions and effects on witnesses) vs. “hard” (“just the facts”) research and the value of the qualitative vs. the quantitative. We also agreed that paranormal researchers need to consider how the witnesses and indeed those who talk to them are interpreting the experience and how that may give a false sense of what may be actually happening. He brought up the example of the dress color that people argued about on Twitter and how it shows that perception is individualized. In a first and exclusive for Radio Misterioso, Joshua is a professional musician who plays the tuba in a brass band, so we ended the show with a private solo on the Sousaphone. Above: Joe Simonton, who was given flax cakes by UFO occupants in 1961.

Richard Francis Burton was a Victorian explorer, linguist, spy, loner, and scientist. Walter Bosley’s new book (Secret Missions 2: The Lost Expedition Of Sir Richard Francis Burton) speculates that he was secretly tasked to find lost civilizations. We discussed his early life and background, including Walter’s suspicion that he was involved with a secret society at Oxford University in the 1840s. This group supposedly wanted to find out about ancient civilizations to see if they had esoteric knowledge and perhaps ancient technology. Burton worked for the British East India Co. which was essentially a 19th century Wackenhut – a private company with almost sovereign government powers. Burton visited the US in 1860 and went to Salt Lake City to visit Mormon leader Brigham Young. Walter says that Burton believed the Mormons knew something about the esoteric history of the US and perhaps beyond. Burton, who documented his travels in minute detail, somehow did not describe one particularly compelling period when he was traveling though the jungles of Brazil in 1868. Walter’s theory is that he was there to look for a lost city described in documents which Burton published himself in his account of the time. We also discussed the strange miles-long prehistoric tunnels of Brazil, which researcher/writer David Childress explored years ago. Concluding, Walter says that he writes about what resonates personally with him. In this case, he saw a kindred spirit in Burton and his intelligence activities, since Walter is a former government intel employee (FBI and Air Force.) For no reason whatsoever, the show starts with a few minutes’ discussion of Electro-Voice Phenomena.

Gorightly messaged me a few weeks ago asking if I knew anything about the phenomenon known as the “Missing Fundamental,” which is a strange effect produced by the human hearing system. I said no, but did he want to do a show about it? He said he knew just the guy to bring along. Gorightly’s buddy John Fenderson is a sharp and eclectic dude. He’s interested in perception and consciousness, and his view that as a pattern-recognizing species, that much of our thinking and delusions flow from this. It’s good for survival, but not for the evolution of ideas. “Schizophrenia is pattern-matching gone out of control,” says Fenderson. Many years ago, Fenderson and some friends built a few of those plastic bag/ candles  hot-air thingies and let them float high over their town. He says that everyone reported seeing the same thing, but interpreted it based on their predispositions. How to quiet the mind and try to iron out some of these fixed beliefs? Some people try isolation tanks. Others meditate or seek answers in psychedelics. The Missing Fundamental is a phenomenon where the mind fills in a missing harmonic tone and makes us think we are hearing a third singer, instrument or oscillation that is not there. Fenderson says this fact is used in the design of high-end headphones. The effect can actually be “shaped” into a perceived space by the subtle adjustment of frequencies. The human visual system changes what is seen before we are consciously aware of it. “Most of what you’re seeing, you are actually imagining” says Fenderson. “You’re filling it in based on patterns you expect. When something happens that you don’t expect, very often you won’t see it at all.” Because of our rationalizing minds, subjectivity and objectivity have soft and fuzzy definitions. Nobody’s life is a straight narrative, we just edit and change our memories to make it sound like one. The occultist and the scientist and how they are going about achieving their goals in pretty much the same way, even though they seem completely different. As an example of the similarity, we can change our behavior to change life into something we want. This has been experimentally proven. At his Discordian-themed site Singlenesia, Fenderson published a lock-picking manual that was authored by a group of MIT students and says that it is a metaphor for his whole philosophy of being aware how to hack yourself and your environment. Hacking yourself begins by re-imaging your reality to conform to what you want or want to do. All these subjects and many more were covered in this very enjoyable program. Many thanks to Adam Gorightly for introducing me to his friend and helping to steer the show.

This conversation was recorded the evening that Paul returned from the conference, where he had just given his presentation that morning. Of course, he is the originator of UFO/ paranormal conferences in Canada/Nova Scotia, since he organized the New Frontiers meet in October of 2008. Also speaking that weekend were Paul’s uncle-in-law Stan Friedman and famed cryptozoologist and prolific author Loren Coleman. Uncle Stan actually ran Paul’s powerpoint slides for his talk, showing that family is thicker than ideology. During his talk, he also proposed to famed paranormal radio host Tim Binnall. His take away from the weekend was that the mix of presenters (ghost hunting/ psychic stuff/ ufos/ cryptozoology) was unique and worked well. We also answered a question from a listener about why he won’t be doing another UFO film in the near future, and launched into a discussion of synchronicities where Paul mentioned an earlier episode from 2011 when he was in Los Angeles staying at my place and the synchronicities were running rampant. One of the events for the weekend was a ghost hunt in and old theater where Kimball had a strange and creepy episode in the basement under the stage. He describes it in detail. In a first for this show, just as he was getting to the scariest part of the story, a voice seemed to cut in to the show feed. See if you can locate it and give us your take on it! (Photo above was taken during the ghost hunt.)