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The Abandoned Town of Centralia & The Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program
21 Plays2 years ago
This week, we’re going from fires underground to “fires in the sky”! 🔥🛸
First up, Lauren explores the abandoned ghost town of Centralia, Pennsylvania - an old mining town that steadily declined in population over the decades since 1962 due to a coal mine fire which has continued to mysteriously burn under the ground for 60 years straight. This creepy location even served as the spooky inspiration for the Silent Hill film adaptation!
Next, Felicia opens up the X-Files on a few more recent UFO cases, focusing on the modern disclosure movement and release of the various UAP reports from the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, as first covered in the famous New York Times expose in 2017. 👽
Links:
60 Minutes Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBtMbBPzqHY
Centralia Spooky Website: https://offroaders.com/album/centralia/haunted.htm
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Transcript
Introduction to Sinister Sisters
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to the Sinister Sisters podcast. I'm Lauren. I'm Felicia. We're best friends. And we like spooky stuff. Yes, we do.
00:00:23
Speaker
All right, guys. Well, we're back this week.
The Manti Peyo Catfishing Scandal
00:00:27
Speaker
I have a couple of recommendations actually that are a little bit more on theme this week. Oh, okay. No more cooking or singing children. You know, those I think people need to see too, but no, they're a little bit more on theme. I watched the new documentary called Untold, The Girlfriend Who Didn't Exist. Have you been offered this yet?
00:00:50
Speaker
Is it about a football player? Yes, Manti Peyo. Yeah, I haven't watched it, but I got the recommendation. It's a classic catfish story, but lots of twists and turns. Did you watch the show a lot?
00:01:08
Speaker
Catfish? I love it. Yeah. Oh my God. Okay. Yeah. I thought you did. Yeah. I thought you did, but there's like a, you know, there's a fair amount of, I would say trans and or queer people kind of situations. And this is one of those. So it is very sad and obviously more complicated, but I will say that the person that catfishes him is not super apologetic about it, which is pretty crazy.
00:01:38
Speaker
Really? So anyway, yes. Interesting. She was male and, you know, now identifies as a woman, but really is like this was good because it allowed me to like discover my true self and like I, you know, things happen for a reason and it's like very like, you know, all of this had to come to pass. She forgives herself whether she messed up someone else's life or not. Like truly.
Impact and Insights of 'Untold' Series
00:02:05
Speaker
And again, you always have to do the like,
00:02:08
Speaker
Is this a documentary produced by him? Is this very much told from his point of view? Always a great point. Yeah. You know, I don't know. I haven't done my own research too much. He claims to like, you'll have to watch it yourself because there's so much information. He claims to really have been totally bamboozled. And there's like some people that think he was in on it and knew that like, you know,
00:02:31
Speaker
she wasn't a real person. I don't know. It's very interesting. So I definitely recommend it. But it's apparently going to be part of or maybe there already exists like a whole bunch of these sort of documentaries like this that are called Untold that are like all the information behind like bigger news stories. So I'm interested to see them.
00:02:54
Speaker
I'll check it out because I love a catfish tail. I really do because the internet has made it such a thing. It's just so easy to use someone else's photos and pretend you're them. It happens all the time. The craziest thing is that it was before the movie had come out, like the catfish movie. So people, when they were talking about it, are not
00:03:17
Speaker
sympathetic to the guy that was catfish. They're very much like, is this a hoax? What is he doing? Is he trying to get attention? Because I think it really wasn't happening. It wasn't something that people knew about quite yet. It was about to break. And so it's really interesting to see it through that lens now. We know that it happens all the time, and there's a whole show about it. That's wild. That's wild. So definitely recommend
Praise for the Movie 'Pray'
00:03:44
Speaker
that. And then I did watch Pray. Did I talk to you about that?
00:03:48
Speaker
Oh, no, everyone's been telling me it's great, but I have not seen it. I really liked it. And I honestly, sorry to
00:03:56
Speaker
both of my siblings and father, they'd be so ashamed. But I wasn't a Predator movie fan, or I wasn't into that whole series at all. I don't really know them at all, honestly. No, me either. And it's a great standalone. I didn't feel like I was missing out. Oh, good. And it's all indigenous actors, and the main girl is so good. Yeah, so definitely recommend that too. Yeah. All right, awesome.
00:04:26
Speaker
What did I watch?
Review of 'Bodies, Bodies, Bodies'
00:04:27
Speaker
I can't remember what I, I can't remember how long ago we recorded before we last recorded. So did I talk about bodies, bodies, bodies? No. Did you see it? Yeah. Yeah. I saw it. Okay. I think I thought it was enjoyable. Like it was definitely fun. I think it's very like made for Gen Z. Yeah. Like, but it's absurd. It's like satire. It's, it's, it's very funny. And there are some great freaking scenes in there that are like so
00:04:56
Speaker
comically cringy in a perfect way. But it was so funny because I went with like a group of people and most of the people there were like 30 ish.
00:05:08
Speaker
a little above 30 or a little below. And then my cousin, who was 20 and everyone that was over 30 was like, that was the worst movie ever. I hated it. And then my cousin was like, that movie was amazing. And I was like, I was. And for me, I was like, I thought that movie was good. And I can I can see that I was maybe not the target audience. But I also was like, I feel like this is a movie that in like, I don't even know, like 10 years.
00:05:39
Speaker
It's going to have like kind of a culty following for it's like for being this very specific moment in time. That makes sense. But yeah, it was fun. I had a Pete Davidson in it, you know. It's already brag. Our intern Rachel Sennett was at a Telsey intern before she became the actress she is now.
00:06:02
Speaker
But she was like in Shiva baby. Which one is she? Sorry, sorry. She's one of the white girls. I don't know what her exact part is. But she's that's amazing. Yeah, yeah. She's she her big thing is that she did this movie called Shiva baby. That was all about being Jewish that did really well. But she's so freaking funny. I mean, she was the funniest intern in the world because she would always just be like, like people would yell at her and she'd be like, Yep, sounds good. It was like the funniest.
00:06:31
Speaker
Like, she really always cracked me up, so I hope she's good in it. That's excellent. She's the one I'm thinking of. She is the funniest of the bunch. She's really weird. Like, I bet she has, like, a really, in the best way. Like, she does not, to me, seem like she would be, I don't know, like, confused with anyone else. Does that make sense? Like, she's very specific. Like, it's this one. Yeah, that's her. Yeah. Yeah, she's great.
00:06:59
Speaker
And like there's a one particular scene where four of the characters it's a very long scene of them basically like just insulting each other in different ways. And it is so genius and hilarious because it's like all these like wealthy kids fighting about who has a harder life. It is so funny.
00:07:25
Speaker
Um, it's great, but in the kills are fun. I mean, I don't know. I'm thinking back. I'm like, I think I did enjoy it. It's not something that like, I would be like, Oh my God, you have to like run out and see right now, but I think it's worth watching at some point. Nice. I really, it's on my list. So I have to, I want to try to see it this week. Hopefully.
00:07:43
Speaker
Yeah, awesome.
The Enigmatic Town of Centralia, PA
00:07:45
Speaker
Amazing. Are you first today? I am first today. So this week I'm covering, I'm doing another recommendation. Really, I'm just taking advantage of all my friends and family right now for ideas. Yeah. But Andrew Hess, my friend, recommended a abandoned town that I think is relatively close to where him and his boyfriend Joe grew up. So it's Centralia.
00:08:13
Speaker
which is a borough of Columbia County, Pennsylvania, and it's nearly totally abandoned. In 2020, there were four residents living there. I always loved the four people. I'm like, who are you for people? Who are they? Yes. How did they choose that life? Or did they get left behind? Do people know they're there? I don't know. Where do they get their groceries?
00:08:41
Speaker
Sorry, go ahead. We'll never know. Does Amazon deliver there? I have no idea. So it was a relatively quick decline. There were a thousand people in 1980. But the best part of this story is why is it abandoned? Because there is a coal mine fire that has been burning underneath the town since 1962.
00:09:11
Speaker
No, I've ever gone out is that an away explosive It seems really bad to me. Okay, it seems it seems like there's honestly Yeah, I mean I I don't know if you ever I have like some weird. I don't know I have like weird anxiety spiral sometimes where I'm just like
00:09:30
Speaker
California is burning. Like do you ever do that where you're like, the glaciers are melting like it is like, there are like big, natural disasters or like really big things that are just happening and we're just like living our lives. Yeah, and things that aren't like a one night thing. It's like an ongoing process. Yeah, that you that no one can really stop or knows how to or is willing to I don't really know science but
00:09:56
Speaker
Yeah, that is scary. It's like, yeah, we'll get into it. We'll get into it. But it's like the government has just basically been like, yep, that's just happening in that town. And I'm like, why are we not? Yeah, putting it out, figuring this out. It's crazy. That's crazy. So all real estate in the area was claimed and condemned by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1992. The zip code was discontinued by the Postal Service in 2002.
00:10:30
Speaker
Yeah, you don't even have a postal code. That's terrible. And then in 2013, the seven residents that were still living there were allowed to remain in their homes until their deaths. But after they die, their homes will be claimed by the government. So I assume those those four that are left, I guess three people died between 2013 and 2020. That's very sad.
00:10:56
Speaker
Anyway, old people. But I'm going to go into a little bit about the history or mostly just like the crazy stuff that's happened in this area. So the mining began in 1856 and it started with two mines and more quickly opened after that, but trouble struck. So this is like, you know, we're getting into a little bit of classic sinister sisters of like, is this land cursed?
00:11:24
Speaker
Who knows? So Alexander Ray, who is the town's founder, was murdered in his buggy by members of the Molly Maguires. So that's basically like a secret society of Irish immigrants.
00:11:41
Speaker
I always love all that stuff. I feel like all the Irish immigrant, Italian immigrant stuff came up for us when we were on that New York... What did we do? The cathedral ghost tour thing that we did? Catacombs. Yeah, catacombs. Thank you. I cannot think of that word. So all the... Yeah, I think Irish immigrants in the area were very unhappy with low wages, poor working conditions.
00:12:07
Speaker
And so they killed the town's founder on October 17, 1863. And then those three men that were accused of killing him were hung, were convicted for his death and then hung. And there were several other murders and other cases of arson at this time.
00:12:27
Speaker
as the Molly Maguires were kind of trying to take over, trying to form this union of mine workers to, as I said, get their wages up and fix working conditions. There is a local legend that Father Daniel Ignatius McDermott, who was the first Roman Catholic priest in the area, cursed the land
00:12:53
Speaker
in retaliation for being assaulted by three members of the Molly McGuire's. So McDermott said that there would be a day when the Catholic Church would be the only structure remaining and curse the land. So I like that theory, but many of the Molly McGuire's leaders were hanged by 1877, kind of ending this, you know, their rebellious time.
00:13:17
Speaker
It was a pretty well-functioning town after that. It reached its max population of 2,761 people in 1890. By that time, it had seven churches, five hotels, 27 saloons, two theaters, a bank, a post office, and 14 grocery stores.
00:13:39
Speaker
I still really wish I could live in a time that there were 27 saloons. What does that even mean? Bars? I think it's just bars. What is a saloon other than a bar? Oh, but you can stay in a saloon, right? No. Wait, that's something else. All I know about saloons is what I've learned from Westworld. Are there prostitutes there?
00:14:01
Speaker
Ideally, just kidding. Wait, what? Saloon, the definition of a saloon is a public room or building used for a specific purpose. Oh, so anything. But then it says, what is a saloon versus a bar? A saloon is an old fashioned name for a bar or tavern. Yeah. Because I was thinking saloons sometimes had like rooms that you could stay in if you were like passing through or something. I think so.
00:14:28
Speaker
Yeah, apparently there's like British versions and Western saloons. Yeah, anyway, a range of how seedy they were, I guess. Yeah. But the town started to decline right when, you know, World War I started. And so a bunch of the miners enlisted in the military. Then there was also the Wall Street crash of 1929. And that resulted in the big coal company. It was Lehigh Valley Coal Company.
00:14:58
Speaker
closed five of its mines in Centralia. So basically at that time, this is when things really started to get bad. There were these people popping up that were called bootleg miners, which basically means that they were mining coal illegally. So they continued to mine in several of these idle mines by pillar robbing, which is what it was called, which basically just means they would extract coal from the pillars left in mines
00:15:28
Speaker
that were supporting the roofs, so it would cause these mines to collapse, which also added to why they couldn't really stop this fire. But interestingly enough, people looking back really disagree about the specific cause of the fire.
00:15:45
Speaker
So David Kakak wrote a book called Fire Underground, the ongoing tragedy of the Centralia mine fire. And he believed that it started with an attempt to clean up the town landfill, which was located in an abandoned strip mine pit.
00:16:03
Speaker
But they set the dump on fire, and unlike previous years that they'd done that, the fire wasn't able to be extinguished. So this opening in the pit basically allowed the fire to enter all of these twisting coal mines that had been abandoned underneath the city.
00:16:22
Speaker
And because of these people destroying the roofs, it kind of made it able to pass through more quickly and catch more quickly. But then there are other sources that claim that the fire had started on the previous day when a trash hauler had dumped hot ash or coal into this open trash pit. But basically, it seems like they pretty much know that it started from
00:16:46
Speaker
this time trying to get rid of the trash in the town. And so there are borough council minutes like from a meeting in June 4th, 1962 that refer to two different fires at the dump. And the borough, classic government, was supposed to install a fire resistant clay barrier between each layer of this landfill
00:17:11
Speaker
but they had fallen behind schedule and hadn't done that. And so that meant that the fire was able to keep spreading at a rate that they couldn't stop it, basically.
00:17:21
Speaker
There's another theory that a different fire was never fully extinguished, but bootleg miners in the area claimed that it couldn't have happened because they would have been affected and had kept mining since this fire back in 1932. So I think it's more likely that it was in the 60s, this 1962 fire. So in 1979, the locals started to become aware. It's so crazy to me too, 10 years later.
00:17:51
Speaker
They're like, hey, this is really bad. So they're starting to realize how bad the fire had gotten. And then it took all the way until February 14th, 1981.
00:18:03
Speaker
when it really got statewide attention. So this is a wild story. So there was a 12-year-old resident named Tom Domboski who fell into a sinkhole that was four feet wide by 150 feet deep. No. That suddenly, no, this is crazy. So it opened up like underneath, it literally just suddenly opened up underneath his feet. He was playing in the backyard with his cousin.
00:18:33
Speaker
And his cousin, who was 14 years old, his name was Eric Wolfgang, pulled him out of this sinkhole. So I think obviously he hadn't, I mean, I don't think he'd fell all 150 feet. So I'm sure he was like hanging on to the side, but his cousin saved him. Good job, cousin. I mean, that's crazy. Is that insane? You're just playing in the backyard and suddenly a giant sinkhole. New fear unlocked. I know. I know.
00:19:01
Speaker
So even though there was clearly physical, visible evidence of the fire, residents of the town were divided on whether this posed a direct threat to the town. So in that- I don't know, seems pretty threatening. I mean, that to me, did you ever watch Don't Look Up, where it was like all this, you know? I never watched it. Yeah. I wasn't in a place to watch that when it came out.
00:19:30
Speaker
No. And I just haven't gone back. It's so true. It's like flat earthers, like people that it's like there is so much science. There's so much science. Just ignore it. Just ignore it. So in 1983, the US Congress allocated more than 42 million for
00:19:50
Speaker
relocation efforts for nearly all of the residents. So basically they just took the money and said, we'll just move out of the town. And a thousand people moved, 500 structures were demolished. But there was some, basically there were just like legal back and forth on the government trying to make everyone else move. And these people didn't want to leave their homes. And so it got down to, you know, those numbers that I shared earlier.
00:20:20
Speaker
But the mine fire meanwhile was extending and it extended to the village of Byernsville, which was several miles away and also required that town to be abandoned. Wow. It's crazy that it must have been so much cheaper to relocate than to actually deal with the problem because everything's always about money in my brain. It must have just been such a structural issue.
00:20:48
Speaker
under all this land that there was just no way they could fix it, I guess. I don't know. Which is crazy. Yeah. Like just this fire burning away. And they're like, let's just make everyone move. It's so crazy. That's crazy. So beyond this, you know, continually raging fire, I will say one of my favorite parts, and this is what Andrew knew about the town and what I think got him interested.
00:21:16
Speaker
is there was this really cool spray painted mile that was part of Route 61. And it was all this brightly colored graffiti. There's all these cracks and splits in the road because obviously there's a raging fire underneath it. But it became this beautiful artistic moment in this mostly abandoned town where, and it seems kind of similar to
00:21:45
Speaker
I don't know we talked about I think it was like when I was talking about like the bunny man where like people wanted to stay in the area and it's like all this turnover and stuff so like people think about this like graffiti mile as like you know people fighting back and making something beautiful in this abandoned place but this is so sad but in 2020 when the pandemic hit
00:22:08
Speaker
Basically, crowd control just became an issue and all these people were traveling to this graffiti mile to either add to it or see it or whatever and it was unsafe. And so people were having these bonfires and hanging out in the area.
00:22:25
Speaker
because of the pandemic and I guess there's nothing really going on. And so the company that owns that land decided to get rid of it and they buried it over three days with 8,000 to 10,000 tons of dirt. And so now- They buried the road? They buried the road. No more graffiti mile.
00:22:46
Speaker
So that's sad. I know. That is sad. But if it's so unsafe to live there, it's probably unsafe for everyone to be driving through and partying there, too. Exactly. I think it's like it's sad, but I just don't. Yeah, I don't know enough about like, why did they do that and not focus on this fire? But I'm sure it's just so much more money. But there are, you know, GoFundMe's and petitions to return the graffiti mile to its glory. But it seems like they're not really getting anywhere.
00:23:14
Speaker
And then another kind of cool tidbit. So I'm going to get into like a little bit of ghost stuff really quick just for fun. But the screenwriter Roger Avery researched Centralia when working on Silent Hill. The Silent Hill. The Silent Hill.
00:23:38
Speaker
film adaptation. So he went to the area. Oh my god, so scary. Yes, I love that movie. I still think that movie really bothered me. Really? Yeah, I thought it was really scary. The messed up little girl. Is that what it was? Do you remember like the evil little girl and then the nice little girl? They're twins, right? I don't know. I don't remember. I just remember being very scared.
00:24:02
Speaker
It's creepy. It definitely gives you similar abandoned town vibes. And then as far as real ghosts, past residents do talk about seeing... This is actually really sad. This is real, so not ghosts. People who used to live there do talk about seeing deer caught in sinkholes and starving to death.
00:24:24
Speaker
Or like being suffocated by the fumes. People talk about losing pets to the sinkholes. Like somebody talked about their cat just like being sucked down a sinkhole and never seeing it again. Like just so sad. The craziest thing is that Toby and Rufus are never leaving the house again. No more sinkholes.
00:24:44
Speaker
But the craziest thing to me is that there have been no human lives seemingly directly associated with the fire. Seemingly no one has died from this. It's just been pets or a deer, I guess.
00:25:01
Speaker
But people do report all kinds of weird feelings, seeing figures, hearing voices, feeling watched, all those normal things we think about. And then I'll just share one. There's a bunch of really fun, spooky stories. I found this one on the website Off-Roaders. Maybe I'll try to put in the... I never know if people look at the links in our description, but this one does have a bunch of scary stories if you want to look at it.
00:25:31
Speaker
But this is one of the entries of a spooky experience that Scott Saylor had. So I'm just going to read it directly. I visited Centralia last weekend with a couple of friends and I thought I might share a very weird experience I had while exploring the town. We were there for about an hour and a half and we're checking out the interesting locations that I had heard about.
00:25:53
Speaker
like the burning hillside, the Kraken Route 61, and the streets without homes. We were in the area next to an old cemetery on the east side of the town, east of Route 61. We had just checked out the old tombstones and were getting a whiff of smoke from the east, so we walked down the old gravel road to look around. We found a slag-covered hillside with steam coming out of it, and were pretty fascinated by some fossils we found. When we heard what sounded like a voice saying something inaudible,
00:26:22
Speaker
from down below where we were. All three of us heard it. We figured it was someone else checking out the area too, so we sort of ignored it. Then we heard it again a little more clearly. A few words and it sort of sounded like, leave this place. At the moment the hill we were standing on started steaming more than a few moments before.
00:26:43
Speaker
and it really stunk like rotten eggs, sulfur, I guess. Well, it sort of spooked us out, so we figured we better head back to the car. As we were walking back in the area of the cemetery, we heard it again. Not the same words and not as clear, but something like, why? Why did you do that? What was even weirder was that it wasn't like someone was yelling it out of the bushes. It was quiet and kind of closer, and we couldn't figure out the direction it was coming from. Too weird. We got back to our car and didn't see any other cars or people the whole time we were there.
00:27:14
Speaker
We left and we weren't sure what to make of it. We really weren't sure we wanted to talk about it. All I know is I'm not going back. When I got home, I found out that the area where we were walking was near the location that was where the fire started across the cemetery.
UFOs: Government Files and Public Intrigue
00:27:29
Speaker
across from the cemetery. I just thought I'd let you know about it. Something is not right about that place. Something's not right. So, you know, I thought this was such a cool story because obviously there's a lot of abandoned towns and I think they're all very cool and spooky. But the idea that
00:27:48
Speaker
this isn't an actually dangerous place to visit. You could fall into a sinkhole. This fire is still going on. It's just such an added scary part to me. The government really isn't doing anything about it, it seems like. Obviously, it makes it a much spookier place to go visit because there really is real danger behind this area. It's just very crazy.
00:28:17
Speaker
That's crazy. And that's and yeah, there's also something so ominous about this idea of an underground fire that ever goes out. Like that feels like that could be a very interesting basis for like some type of horror movie. Right. And like a metaphor of like, yeah, something exactly. I know it's a metaphor for something there. I guess there is stuff in Silent Hill about like an underground place, but not not in the same way. Yeah.
00:28:57
Speaker
Oh, wow. Well, you know, speaking of governments not doing things. Yes, look at that. Look at that transition. Boom. Transition. Today I'm talking about UFOs and the American government.
00:29:15
Speaker
I've been waiting for this day.
00:29:21
Speaker
I don't even once again, same thing as like last week where it's like, I don't really even know what title bisection because it's it's such a mishmash of information. But it is sort of based around the Pentagon releasing their UFO documents and videos. So I guess to do my own research too, but I'm excited to learn. I like haven't gotten into it at all, because it honestly really freaks me out.
00:29:50
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I mean, it is. It's freaky. And it's also just just amazing. The most amazing thing to me about it is the fact that it's not really talked about very much. Yeah, that the Pentagon basically released these videos.
00:30:11
Speaker
from 2004, 2014, 2015, and now also from some later years of UFOs, of unidentified flying objects, that our government says, hi, we have this footage. We see these things are existing. We cannot explain how they exist. We don't know what they are. But I will tell you what they do know.
00:30:42
Speaker
And, you know, it's our government, so they probably know tons of things that we don't know. But it's it's pretty wild that any of this actually got released at all. So the investigation of of UFOs in our government is not a new thing. There was a Blue Book investigation, Project Blue Book that was going on from 1947 to 1969, which was the Air Force investigating unidentified flying objects.
00:31:11
Speaker
And this also interestingly enough, I guess coincides with some of our earlier episodes about like the early abduction stuff from like the 40s and 50s in America. So all happening kind of around the same time. And they said that they, during that investigation, there was 12,618 sightings that were reported to Project Blue Book
00:31:35
Speaker
And they were able to explain all of them except for 701 of them, which remained unidentified. And that's a lot. And then they discontinued the program due to who knows what funding, probably unclear, being scared, being very scared, not being able to have any explanations what they were looking at.
00:32:06
Speaker
So then a program started again in 2008 called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. And it was a $22 million program that was pushed by Senator Harry Reid to investigate UFOs.
00:32:25
Speaker
So there had been all of these UFO sightings that the Air Force had, but they weren't really being documented in a helpful way for investigation. And there is a really good and if you're if you're putting links, then I think you should put this one. But there's a 60 Minutes video of some Air Force pilots now that these videos and documents have been
00:32:53
Speaker
declassified, talking about their experiences and talking about the fact that there's just these freaking UFOs. I think it's from 2021 that this interview came out and it is freaking wild to hear from these like government officials being like, yeah, that's that's what's that's yes, that's correct. That did happen.
00:33:20
Speaker
So the interview on 60 Minutes, it starts out with this guy named Louis Elizano, who is a former US Army counterintelligence special agent. And he was the director of global security for special programs to the stars. And so basically his job for many years was to research
00:33:48
Speaker
and document and investigate UFOs in the Advanced Aerospace Identification Program. And this program was also set up with this idea of national security, of being like, hi, there's all these things floating over US soil that nobody is doing anything about. And whether they're UFOs or whether they're from other countries,
00:34:14
Speaker
it's a security threat and nobody is doing anything about it because we don't know what they are. So it's so crazy. So this guy, I mean, he, he's so blunt, which I really like.
00:34:30
Speaker
He's like, Listen, we have all this footage. These planes are the sorry, sorry, not planes. That's the whole point. These UFOs are going sometimes up to 13,000 miles per hour. Just for a little context, I googled a commercial airplane goes somewhere between 500
00:34:52
Speaker
50 to 575 miles per hour. So these UFOs are going unimaginably fast.
00:35:02
Speaker
They can evade radar. They can fly through the air in water and probably space. They have no propulsion technology on them to be seen. There's no wings. There's no wings on these objects. There's no propellers. No one understands how they are actually defying gravity. I know. And the craziest thing to me
00:35:30
Speaker
So they interviewed a pilot that was with the Air Force for a long time, and he was like, yeah, I mean, I saw these things every day for years while flying. Every day, he would see objects flying in the sky when he was on Air Force missions, and they weren't documenting it because they just didn't know what it was. It's freaking crazy. Just like, oh, can't document it. We don't know what it is.
00:35:59
Speaker
Yeah. And so these things, sometimes they're in the shapes of triangles or silvery masses or little pills almost. They have different shapes to them. And there's all these, obviously, skeptics, of course, being like, oh, well, maybe it's just a trick of the camera. Oh, maybe it's just a weather balloon. Oh, maybe it's just this and this guy.
00:36:25
Speaker
this Louis Elizondo is like, do you not think that we thoroughly ruled out every possible thing it could be as the United States government? The only options are that it is another country's technology that is so advanced we can't comprehend it, that we're so behind, that there's no possible way that we could even comprehend this technology that they have.
00:36:53
Speaker
Or it's from another another planet. Yeah, I think it has to be from another planet.
00:37:00
Speaker
Yeah. And eventually, so he was there until 2017. And he actually resigned, because he felt like his findings were not being taken seriously. Like he was told to run this program, he's doing it. And he feels like nobody is actually doing anything about what he considers like huge security threats to our national security.
00:37:23
Speaker
So he ended up quitting. And then in 2017, after he resigned, is when they basically before he left, what he fought really hard for was to get some of the information, including those videos declassified so that they could be shared with the public because he felt and also Harry Reid, the senator that was helping fund this program, felt that the only way that the Department of Defense was going to take any of this stuff seriously
00:37:53
Speaker
is if there was public outcry. Because they're like, the public doesn't know about it. No one is pushing this, these people to investigate and do something about it. And yeah, and not just investigate, but actually take action. And so they got it declassified, they leaked it to the New York Times. And then in 2017, that article came out saying that the Pentagon has declassified these documents.
00:38:23
Speaker
Check it out, there's UFOs. And then from that point to me, and this is also someone like I don't watch like CNN on my TV.
00:38:34
Speaker
You know what I mean? I don't have cable. So the news that I get is from me looking up stuff or from Twitter or Facebook or whatever. And though there was this thing on 60 Minutes in 2021, for as big of a deal as this is, it doesn't feel like it got a lot of coverage. No, I agree. It sort of was a huge deal when it came out. And now it's like, and? Yeah. And part of me wonders if that's
00:39:02
Speaker
the government doing that. Or if we think about the year it came out 2017, it's like we were in Trump chaos, where every day, the news cycle was just like overwhelmed with like the falling apart of America. So it's I was kind of like it might have also been a timing issue. It's like, yeah, Americans couldn't comprehend other
00:39:26
Speaker
Problems cuz we were already having so many and so many like right in front of our face Yes, not like the concept of like this other thing out there Yeah, yeah exactly this other thing that we can't even explain being a threat to us when like we're already a huge threat to ourselves Yes, literally
00:39:46
Speaker
Yeah. So the main video or sighting that I want to talk about, and it's the one that's covered in 60 minutes, and I just think it's so freaking crazy, is called the Nimitz encounter. So the Nimitz encounter happened on November 14, 2004.
00:40:09
Speaker
And it was the Air Force was doing pilots exercises off the coast of like the border between the US and Mexico and just like standard like basically war exercises. They're like, OK, we have two planes that are playing the US planes. We had two planes that are playing enemy planes. They're like practicing how to do those maneuvers in the sky.
00:40:36
Speaker
So they're flying around up there, they're doing their exercises. And this is this is also happening off a ship that's called the Princeton, I believe. And at some point, the Princeton on their radars, they see this thing down near the water on their radars, and they don't know what it is. And so they stopped the training exercises, and they send two of the planes out to investigate. They basically were like, training is over today. We have an actual threat we need you to go look at. So
00:41:06
Speaker
These two planes, and there's two pilots on each plane, they're flying out.
00:41:11
Speaker
to go check it out. They don't really know what they're looking for. And so they're kind of flying in this area. And the radar on the Princeton at some point says, OK, you are over what you're looking for. Like start looking around down there. Like it's not even going to be on your radar anymore because you're literally on top of it. And they're like, oh, OK. So they're flying around and they start looking. And what they see is something that looks like they describe as like a white tic tac, like a tic tac shaped object.
00:41:40
Speaker
So they see it down by the water and they start basically doing this thing where the two planes are circling it and they're trying to get an understanding of what it is. They can't really tell. And then the object starts kind of being able to flip and jerk around and fly very quickly and switch directions. And once again, this is a unidentified flying object that
00:42:07
Speaker
has no propulsion device. There is no wings. There are no propellers. They don't understand how the thing is freaking moving in the first place. And it's moving really, really fast. So one of the pilots is like, okay, like, this is kind of ridiculous. At this point, like I'm going to go down towards the water and try to get a better look at what this actually is.
00:42:34
Speaker
So the plane starts going down and the tic-tac, which is what he calls it, so that's what I'll call it, starts mimicking the plane's movement and doing what he does sort of in this way of acknowledging that they are there. And as the plane is going down, the tic-tac starts to come up to meet it. And the tic-tac then goes straight towards the plane and flies right past it
00:43:03
Speaker
off. And it's gone, like disappears so fast that the pilots like cannot believe it. And these two of the pilots are interviewed on 60 Minutes. And like, one of them says, if someone else hadn't seen it with me, I don't know if I would have told anyone because it seemed so impossible. I thought I would get fired. Like, I was crazy. But four people saw it. It's on the Princeton radars. It's on their planes. They have photos and video of it.
00:43:33
Speaker
And it's just so crazy. So first of all, oh, OK. So then it disappears, right? And so they're like, this thing is crazy. Also, the rate at which it was able to fly up was extremely fast. And then someone on the Princeton says, OK, let's just go to our meeting spot now and do some recon if the thing is gone. And we'll figure out what to do next. So the planes start flying to where they're supposed to meet for recon. And then they get another radio in that says,
00:44:02
Speaker
the tic-tac is now 60 miles away from you where you are headed to. So it's already at the area that you're supposed to be flying to, and it flew 60 miles in less than 60 seconds, which means that it was flying at 3,700 miles per hour, which once again, a normal airplane flies around 550.
00:44:30
Speaker
So it just doesn't make any sense. And they still don't know what it is, by the way, like there's a and that's the thing about this stuff is the videos are released and the it's released that like, hi, we don't know what this is. But there's really no answers yet. So scary. Yeah, which is just, you know, freaking annoying.
00:44:54
Speaker
Okay, so an update ish, and I'm really reading this right off the Wikipedia here. Also, so if you ever want to look up government stuff on UFOs, they don't use UFO anymore. They use UAP. Oh, interesting. Which means unidentified aerial phenomena.
00:45:19
Speaker
And I've heard some people say that they changed that name to, you know, get some of the attention off of government UFO stuff. Yeah. But it also I mean, who knows why they changed the name like it might have just been like a paperwork situation. Who knows?
00:45:36
Speaker
But yeah, so if you ever want to look up this stuff, UAP is the way to go. Okay, so the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a preliminary report on UAPs. This is 2021 once again, largely centering on evidence gathered in the last 20 years from the US Navy reports.
00:45:55
Speaker
The report came to no conclusion about what the UAPs were based on a lack of sufficient data to determine the nature of mysterious flying objects observed by military pilots, including whether they are advanced earthly technologies, atmospherics, or of an extraterrestrial nature.
00:46:15
Speaker
So in 2021, they were basically like, we don't know if it's possible that somebody could have made this on Earth, or if it's extraterrestrial. Because there's no evidence to take us conclusively either way. Wow. But from what we know about at least the US's technology right now, it is impossible that it was created. It's not created in the US.
00:46:43
Speaker
Wow. It's just impossible. So I mean, they can't even narrow it down to like, yeah, what planet could be or it could be anything else. Could be anything. It says through a limited number of incidents, UAP reportedly appeared to exhibit unusual flight characteristics, including high velocity, breaking the sound barrier without producing a sonic boom. Like what?
00:47:09
Speaker
high maneuverability. Like it can move it can flip around spin around. It can like go upside down like it without
00:47:21
Speaker
seemingly anything on the craft that makes it look like it should be able to do that. It can do any kind of movement that doesn't make sense. Long duration flights, the ability to submerge in water, which is not something I had heard about, but is actually documented a lot of this thing that can go in the water and also fly, which is pretty mind boggling that I've never really heard that. And then once again, I said this over and over, but they appear to move with no discernible means of propulsion.
00:47:50
Speaker
high speeds that do like according to our technology would normally destroy any craft that would be trying to go that speed. And it does say here, these observations could be the result of sensor error spoofing or observer misperception and require additional rigorous analysis. So it's like they're saying like, there's also the possibility it's a mistake.
00:48:15
Speaker
But it would be a lot of mistakes. So it's pretty crazy. So another sort of update that I just wanted to mention is there's also this thing called the Galileo Project.
00:48:30
Speaker
which is not government funded, but is a like a team of like 70 to 100 scientists run by this scientist professor at Harvard, that their entire goal is to
00:48:47
Speaker
bring the search for extraterrestrial technological signatures of extraterrestrial technological civilizations from accidental observations and legends to the mainstream of transparent, validated, and systematic scientific research.
00:49:07
Speaker
So they're mainly, they want to prove the existence of aliens is what's happening. Yeah. I mean, that is so specific. Yes. Which I think is, you know, good because they're trying to be like, we're scientists. We're not crazy. So the two goals under that say to examine the possibility of extraterrestrial origin for UAPs and then also to understand the origins of interstellar objects.
00:49:35
Speaker
that exhibit characteristics that are different from typical asteroids or comets. So like other things out in space that they can't that they haven't currently been able to explain. And I'm not really certain exactly what those are. But yeah, this is a
00:49:52
Speaker
doesn't say how much funding they have, but it's a privately funded project. And the guy that runs it says like, as soon as they have stuff that their whole plan is to make it all public, publicly available. Because once again, just like the government guy was saying, it's like,
00:50:08
Speaker
If there's no public outcry about a security threat, sometimes the government is just like, let's just not do anything. It's not focused on it. Because they don't know what to do about it. Yeah. Right. Let's just look away. I mean, it's such a... Yeah. I wish you could say, I want my tax money to go towards this. Right? What if we got a checklist that you could say where you wanted your tax money to go? Can you imagine? Yeah. That would be crazy. I would like that. Yeah.
00:50:35
Speaker
But it's really fascinating stuff. And I mean, I've barely like scratched the freaking surface at all. There's so much. I will in our Instagram post the video or some videos of some of the UFO stuff that has been released from the Pentagon. But it's it's just freaking crazy. It's just so crazy. And it's just so crazy that like we know so much, but we actually don't know any of it. I know. You know what I mean? Yeah. And what was so much and so little.
00:51:05
Speaker
Yeah, what was craziest for me when researching this is just some of these Air Force guys, these pilots being like, yeah, this is something we encounter very often. This is not like a once in my career, I saw a UFO. It's like, no, I am an Air Force person. So I see UFOs constantly. And we're not doing anything about it. It's so it's so crazy.
00:51:33
Speaker
because you do feel like people like, like we've covered stories of like UFOs that, you know, I might believe that it's like once in their life did this person see something like, you know, anything like this. And then it's like that these people are like, yeah, just part of the use. Just the use. It's wild. But that's it. That's as much research as I did on this right now. And like the current state of like UFOs in the US government. That's what I got today. Well, that's what I was gonna say. Yeah, I feel like
00:52:03
Speaker
We had to limit you by the length of our podcast, but there's so much. There's so much. Oh, and definitely I'll send you the link to put in the show notes for the 60 Minutes interview, because it's actually pretty in-depth and pretty cool. So yeah. Amazing. Well, thank you for covering that this week. We had two very different stories, but of the unknown, I guess. The unknown, yes.
00:52:30
Speaker
Well, thank you all for listening. We hope you have some sweet, sweet nightmares. Bye.