In today’s episode, I kick off a new experiment called my ‘Mostly True Stories,’ which are written essays about subjects that tie into my life experiences that I read aloud during the podcast.
In today’s installment, I discuss the last week’s Congressional hearing on the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon. The first public hearing on UFOs (now known as UAPs) and then talk for the very first time publically about my own experiences seeing objects in the sky that I just can not explain.
Here is the original written essay that I read in today’s episode:
Mostly True Tales: Volume 1. My own personal disclosure.
There was once a time in my life when I very rudely and disrespectfully made fun of my uncle. Now my uncle is an excellent example of the influences in my life that made me who I am today.
Now in my family, when you refer to aunts and uncles and even cousins, they are usually not by blood relation, but more of how they have been a part of the family I grew up in, pouring their blood, sweat, and tears into a family that came together because they chose to.
So my Uncle Keith was our family's Drama Queen. Please think of Nathan Lane's character in the Robin Williams movie the Birdcage, except I never saw him in Drag. But think of Nathan’s reactions, and you have a quick reference point to my Uncle Keith.
Now, Uncle Keith lives in the remote mountains of northern California and comes out to visit us now and again. But he would call my mom constantly. They would talk about all kinds of things, the current state of politics, the arts, and how I was fucking up life (I know this particular topic because my mother at times would get confused about whom she was calling and launch into a rant about me—to me…I would have to interrupt her rant to explain that she was not calling Uncle Keith about me, but instead ranting about me…to me.) thinking it was Uncle Keith. …you know things that best friends since high school and remained in contact their whole lives talking about on the phone.
One of these conversation lines that would always stick with me was how Uncle Keith would always talk to my mother about the many UFOs he would see in the California mountain skies. He would say how sometimes they were classic flying saucer shapes, sometimes balls of different colored lights, and sometimes they even seemed to be following him when he drove his car around. I was a bit mean in making fun of ‘crazy ole uncle Kieth.’ And I would eventually have to make a call to Uncle Keith, begging him to forgive me for my youthful transgressions.
Now I was, up until about 5 or 6 years ago, an ardent nonbeliever. Well, that’s not entirely true. I certainly believed that there was indeed was other life elsewhere in an unlimited universe amongst unlimited multi-verses. I believe the universe is much like we see on earth, teeming with life, even intelligent life. I just didn’t think it was flying around in a saucer-shaped craft, giving my Uncle Keith something to talk to my mother about.
That all changed when I moved up to the wilds of northwestern Montana. That is when I began to see things moving up in the night skies that I could not explain myself. They started small like satellites, which I have seen many of during my tenure here on planet earth. But these were different. Oh, they moved and looked just like regular old satellites until they didn’t. These would instantly make unexpected 90-degree turns. But these experiences weren’t quite enough that I wouldn’t chalk it up to the ’90s being too kind to me. That was tiny potatoes compared to what I would eventually see, and I was not the only one to see them. We will get into my own experiences here in a minute. But Before we open that particular can of worms, I would like to speak about the congressional hearings this past week.
For the first time in over fifty years, there was a congressional hearing that focused on UFOs--Wait, sorry, we aren’t for some reason supposed to call them UFOs anymore (but they are just rebranded UFOs). The proper term now is UAP or Unidentified Aerial Phenonium. But I digress, So Pentagon Officials testified at a House subcommittee hearing last Tuesday. The show even included a previously classified video of a UAP, an impossibly-fast metallic blur that, when stopped at just the right frame, seemed to show a reflective spherical object speeding past a military fighter jet at incredible speeds.
There were no vast revelations about possible little green men and their clandestine agendas. No smoking ray-guns, so to say. But that was admittedly intentional. Pentagon Officials admitted in an open session, “We do not want potential adversaries to know exactly what we are able to see or understand, or how we come to the conclusion. “Said, Scott W. Bray. “Therefore, disclosures must be carefully considered on a case-by-case basis.”
The Pentagon officials also testified under oath that the government had not collected any materials from any alien landing on Earth. (Which I don’t believe for half a second, but who knows, maybe they will someday and have to account for their testimony.)
They also mentioned just how hard it could be to determine what short blurry video clips may be. That discussion continued into a classified session where Pentagon Officials discussed the capabilities and limitations of cameras and other sensors used to record the images openly.
According to Ronald S. Moultrie, the Defense Department’s undersecretary for intelligence, the plan is to make sure that military sensors are appropriately calibrated to record as much information as possible on the unexplained phenomena. Using better, higher-fidelity data allows the Pentagon to make conclusions about UAPs, including strange flight characteristics—like fast movements or no visible means of propulsion.
The last time a public hearing was held on these issues was close to fifty years ago after infamous Project Blue Book inquires, an Air Force effort to investigate UFOs.
During Opening remarks, Indiana Representative André Carson, appointed chair for the hearing, had some harsh words for the Pentagon for failing to name a director to lead the new task force and pledged to bring “the organization out of the shadows.”
So there wasn’t so much disclosed other than the same disclosures we have gotten from the government lately. Basically that there is indeed something happening in our night skies. But nothing beyond that admission.
For those of you who have followed my writing, I have been reporting on these disclosures for a while now. One of the reasons I have had such a keen interest in this topic is because I have always been fascinated by stories of scientific studies, much like we have seen at the Skin Walker Ranch (I will be extensively covering the Skin Walker Ranch much more this fall…if you would like to read what I feel is the scariest book I have ever read, pick up a copy of The Hunt for The Skin Walker by Colm A. Kelleher and investigative journalist George Knapp. Then watch the History Channel reality-TV-styled documentary The Secret of Skin Walker Ranch (But I suggest you read the book first.) About a hotbed of UAP and paranormal events at a cattle ranch just across the Colorado border in Utah. In truth, my theories about these types of events and places form the backbone of all my worldbuilding in my supernatural horror fiction stories.
And because I indeed have had my own witnessing experiences with UAP.
I have never written or spoken about these experiences publicly before. But things are now happening with such frequency that even our government can no longer say officially that nothing is happening, and everyone who has seen a UAP is just bat shit crazy. It just no longer holds water.
Part of the reason I have not discussed these events is because of just that stigma. You are labeled as crazy or a cook because you dare to step forward and say that I, too, have seen something I cannot explain.
The first time I witnessed much more significant and closer UFOs—So, the first time I witnessed a UAP was when I was working as an EMT for the Eureka Volunteer Emergency Medicine team. My EMS manager, who was unlike me, was a very credible witness. She was married to the commanding officer of the State Patrol in that area of the state. I remember we had to, at one time, bring her to the evidence locker at the town police department to let her smell some pot because she had never seen or smelt it before. Plus, unlike me, she doesn’t have any tattoos on her face.
We were returning from a late-night run to the Hospital in Whitefish at around 2:30 in the morning when coming around Dickie Lake, outside of Trego, MT. When she jumped from the driver’s seat and pointed to the far corner of the windshield, exclaiming, “Am I going crazy, or do you see that too?!” Indeed, I did see what she was pointing at. They're hanging in the clear night sky below the peaks of the Cabinet Mountains were two substantial black triangle-shapes; slowly turning with a red light at each tip of both triangles. We only saw them for maybe thirty seconds before the trees took away the view. But, sure as shit, we both saw them. After an intense conversation about what they could have been, we resolved to ask our law enforcement friends if they had seen anything in the area or maybe heard some reports.
The next day I asked a border patrol friend if he had seen anything last night. He laughed then said, “No, not last night anyways.”
As incredible as that may have sounded, it was again small potatoes compared to my next experience.
This time it was at my own house. My oldest daughter had brought my granddaughter up to Montana to visit us, and we had an Ivy-league educated acquaintance staying with us at the time. After a pleasant family dinner, we had decided to retire to the second-story living room to all watch a movie together.
Gathered on the couch and chairs of the room sat me, Shilo, my wife, my then 23-year-old daughter, my three-year-old granddaughter, 11-year-old daughter, and 7-year-old daughter, along with an acquaintance that was couch surfing for a bit. As I found the blue-ray selection for that evening’s entertainment, My 11-year-old started pointing towards the large bay window behind the TV, saying she thought there was something weird in the sky.
I brushed her off; we lived so far out in the middle of nowhere that you could see the pulsing light of pulsars dancing across the Milky Way, telling her, “It’s just another Pulsar, sweetheart.”
She interrupted me again, saying, “No! that’s not what this is.” And demanding I go to the window to look closer at what was happening. The whole room jumped up from their seats, joining me at the windows.
At first, I saw what I thought could be a drone flying through the trees. But, upon further watching, we determined they didn’t look like drones, and they remained in the air for much longer than any commercial could, performing aerial acrobatics that no drone could pull off. There were maybe nine of the things that all pulsed fluorescent purple, yellow, and green light patterns around their polygon shapes. They seemed to have an intention to the patterns they were flying. Maybe a survey of some kind. We also had some electrical issues in the house, such as the TV turning on multiple times when we had shut it off.
Of course, I had some higher-end cameras and attempted to document the situation, but nothing was any good the next morning. They flew in patterns behind our house for hours that night, sometimes seeming to pop out and back into existence well above the tree line on a cloudless night. They returned about the same time in the evening the following night and stuck around for about as long. Then we never saw them again.
After some research, I found that this particular design had been seen around the world and is often referred to as ‘Disco-ball’ UFOs.
Now, I want to clarify that I have no real idea what these things actually are. Much like the Pentagon, all I can do is admit that there are Unidentified Objects up in our skies, and more and more of us are seeing them.
Shortly after these experiences, I called up my Uncle Keith and apologized profusely to him for my previous mocking and admitted to my own experiences.
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