Taken? Allagash Wilderness Waterway

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Grab a pair at jbl.com. Over time, we have seen repeated examples of people or ideas who have been labeled as crazy. People scoffed at the thought of the Earth not being the center of the universe. People disbelieved the existence of unseen organisms called germs, couldn't conceive of the possibility of space travel, and laughed at the idea that people would desire computers in their pockets one day.

William Harvey, the first scientist to accurately describe blood circulation, published his theory in 1628, claiming that blood passed through the heart, not the liver, which was the 1500-year standing school of thought. He was criticized so strongly, his medical practice suffered and he became a recluse, saying, Much better is it oftentimes to grow wise at home and in private than by publishing what you have amassed with infinite labor.

to stir up tempests that may rob you of your peace and quiet for the rest of your days. Nowadays, we've made some big strides in opening our minds to various possibilities. and the scientific community in particular is hesitant to label something as truly impossible. The notion that we are alone in the universe seems to be one of those dated ideas, especially given the fact that numerous government officials have testified under oath regarding the existence of non-human biologicals.

But still, abduction cases seem to be our new line in the sand. They are just a little too far-fetched for most to believe we can be plucked from Earth, studied, and placed back into our beds, or our cars, or our canoes. It almost goes without saying that not every account of sightings or alleged abductions can be taken seriously. But you can't help but wonder if some of those people are modern-day William Harveys just waiting for the rest of us. to catch up. Welcome to National Park After Dark.

I think I speak for every single person listening when I say we are so excited for an abduction story. Thank you. It's been a long time coming. It really has. I don't know if I've done one. For like years. The last one I remember is Travis Walton. That was the one I was thinking of too. And I'm pretty sure I did that when I lived in Washington. Oh my God. Yes. We need. Yes. Thank you. We need this.

Yeah, we all need it in today's climate. We need an abduction story. Take us away. Get us away from here. Yeah. So we're doing an abduction story, a UFO case. And there are so many of them out there. So there are so many stories to potentially cover, but it's really difficult to find the ones that align with the wilderness and outdoors. And this one fits the bill. Cool. But before we get into it.

I guess the only thing that we want to say is it's the beginning of the holiday season. And if you're looking for a gift for somebody and you're one of those people who are like, I don't want to give someone like a physical item. like I'm into experiences and things like that, you can give them the experience of a National Park After Dark Patreon subscription.

Yes. Yeah. Just head over to our Patreon account. You can find that on our website. You can find it through our Instagram. If you go onto Patreon and just search National Park After Dark, we pop up right there and you can order a subscription for a friend. Yeah. So or yourself. Yeah. Treat yourself, that whole thing. Okay, great. That's all we have to say. You know, when you're shopping and you're like, you know who would love this? Me.

And then you're at the end of the day and you're like, well, I still need to shop for my loved ones. I know. I have a running list going of the people that I actually give gifts to for the holiday season. And I have. two of them done so far and you were the first person that i got i'm so excited i'm you're gonna be really excited

I'm so curious of what it is because you've been very secretive. Yeah. I don't want to spoil the surprise, but it is, yeah, not a physical item. That's for sure. Okay. Anyways, UFOs. All right.

Yes, tell me an alien story. Okay. UFOs, abductions. The nightmares were getting worse. It was 1988, and for Jim Weiner, he spent most of that year unable to sleep. He was becoming increasingly more anxious each night. afraid of what he may experience when he went to bed. Nightmares isn't exactly the right term because that implies that someone is having bad dreams while asleep. And for Jim, he would have sworn he was awake for these experiences.

They started some time ago, but weren't really causing a problem, aside from freaking Jim out, until his doctor started to get involved. Ten years prior, in 1978, Jim became injured following a freak accident. At the time, he was working as an electric... and agreed to help a friend with some electrical work at a newly purchased home.

Upon arrival, Jim opened a door he presumed held an electrical box and stepped inside. The small room that was meant to serve as a landing for a staircase leading to the basement had an issue. A big one. There were no stairs at all. So unknowingly, Jim walked right in and fell straight down. Ouch.

He landed in a seated position, and as a result of the traumatic compression on his spine, his brainstem was affected. He left the hospital with lower back issues and temporal lobe epilepsy, or TLE. He had managed his diagnosis well for years.

under the supervision of his doctors. Aside from causing seizures, TLE can result in other problems like body temperature, dysregulation, olfactory issues, increased heart rate, and confusion with immediate time. But for the most part, Jim wasn't concerned about those side effects. What was plaguing him the most

were the night terrors. He didn't say anything to anyone about them for a long time, until they started affecting his seizure activity by increasing the frequency in which he was having them. This change alerted his doctors to something amiss, and they pressed him on it.

Repeatedly, Jim declined to go into any detail, brushing off their inquiries in favor of keeping his anxieties close to the chest. But after some time, the doctors gave him an ultimatum. Tell us what's going on or find another care team. Not wanting to lose his providers, he spilled. It wasn't every night, but it had been happening on and off for years. And as of recently, they were becoming more intense and much more vivid.

Jim described a typical experience. He would wake up at some point in the night and have an overwhelming sense that someone was in the room with him. He felt as if someone was trying to reach out and touch him or pull the covers off of him. He would hear a flurry of voices, muffled just enough for him to not be able to understand the actual words, but loud enough and direct enough, he felt as if he was being spoken to. At times, he'd feel paralyzed, unable to move anything but his eyes.

He'd also have vivid reoccurring dreams that involved his twin brother, Jack, and their friends, Charlie and Chuck. Jim would be lying on a table in a blinding white room, and the other three men would be sitting nearby, seemingly unbothered, unfazed, and not helping Jim despite his mental pleas. Despite the striking similarities to sleep paralysis, Jim felt as if this was

totally different. What he was experiencing was not sleep paralysis, even though it seems like you're paralyzed, you can't move, you feel like someone's watching you, like all these different things. Yeah, it sounds very similar. He became so fearful of these experiences. Each night, he'd make sure to lock his windows and sometimes even lock himself in his bedroom, believing he could stop whatever or whoever was doing this to him. So he felt it was like an outside person. yes yes

After providing the information to his doctors, more specifically his psychiatrist on his care team, he was promised that they would look into getting him in touch with some additional resources. As he was awaiting their recommendations, Jim was on the phone with Jack one afternoon.

The two of them were close, as many twin siblings are, and Jack had called in to check in on how his brother's treatments were going. Until that point, Jim had said nothing to his brother about the night terrors and the horrible dreams, but perhaps emboldened. by speaking about it to his doctors, Jim decided to open up to his brother. He started by saying he was having trouble sleeping, and when Jack asked if it had to do with his TLE, Jim elaborated.

He told him of the voices, the paralyzing feelings and sensations of being watched or observed, the dreams in the brightly lit room feeling helpless while his friends looked on. A beat of silence followed before Jack said something Jim was not expecting. things have been happening to me oh oh that changes things within days jim's psychiatrist reached out to him with something else that was completely unexpected

The psychiatrist advised Jim to go to a nearby convention and seek out the help of one of their keynote speakers named Raymond Fowler. Raymond Fowler served as the director of scientific investigations at MUFON, or... the Mutual UFO Network. Wait, his psychiatrist? Yes. Yes. I would be like, is this a practical joke right now? Is everyone messing with me? It just seems like a very large leap. Yes. Yes. So move on a little bit about move on. This is a U.S. based nonprofit.

And it's the world's oldest and largest civilian-based UFO investigation and research organization. And they pride themselves not only on taking unidentified aerial phenomenon reports, but by following up those reports with... different investigations. Over the years they have compiled over 4,000 accounts from several different countries, done hundreds of investigations, and have an extensive database that serves as a comprehensive collection of information encompassing reports.

of flying saucers, UFO crashes, and even cattle mutilations linked to different UFO activities and reports. Essentially, gym psychiatrist, for whatever reason that may be, and it bears mentioning that I... could not find why. When I was reading that, they were like, we're going to give you some additional resources.

I just, the last thing in my mind was like, they were going to recommend him to go talk to a UFO specialist for this. And I couldn't find a reason why that was, but either way, he was referred. to raymond fowler yeah it seems like a very odd jump from explaining symptoms to being referred to a ufo specialist right it seems like very odd like

Especially through a medical facility, you know, like that would not be, that feels very like outlandish a little bit. Yeah, it does seem outlandish, but Jim agreed.

Because it just so happens that he, his brother, Jack, and the two other men... that are in his dreams repeatedly, Charles Chuck Rack and Charlie Foltz, had all experienced something that they could never quite explain nearly 12 years earlier in the north woods of Maine.

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It was August of 1976, a perfect time to explore Maine, and Jim, Jack, Charlie, and Chuck were in their 20s and ready for an adventure. The group had all met and become friends as they attended the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. and were ready to get out of the city. They had carved out a two-week vacation to Vacationland.

They were to start with a climb of Mount Katahdin, the state's highest peak and epicenter of Baxter State Park, a mountain in the remote wilderness of Maine that also serves as the beginning or end of the 18th Appalachian Trail. Following their ascent, they hopped aboard

a chartered bush plane that carried them, their gear, and their canoe even further into the forest, hours to the north, to an area nearly bordering Canada. The men had heard wonderful things about the Allagash Wilderness and were stoked to explore it themselves. So this place that they were headed is called the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, and it's a 92.5 mile or 148 kilometer ribbon of lakes, rivers, streams, and ponds, and it's a paddler's dream.

Formally established in 1966 by the state of Maine and adopted as part of the National Wild and Scenic River System two years later, visitors can paddle, boat, or raft for days. Fishing is an extremely popular... activity here because of the sheer amount of water but in the in the winter snowmobiling is a big draw ice fishing. No matter what time of year you go, there's always something to do. And it's very remote. But that wild character is what draws thousands of people in every year.

Yeah, I know people have gone up there for large canoe trips where they just go out for like, I think... like two weeks at a time and we'll just be going through the waterways and I remember seeing people post photos just canoeing on these waterways in the morning and just seeing moose like lined up on the water sides and

yeah cool there's very little roads up here so just like the these four men did a lot of people you have to come into certain places on bush planes like that's just um the remoteness of the nature of how remote it is up there the waterways and hundreds of miles of shoreline is protected and the waterways are surrounded by commercial forest land and other conservation lands and while the state of maine has maintained control of this area

the National Park Service has filed numerous reports over the years recommending federal acquisition. So the National Park Service is like, we want a little bit of that. Fair. Acadia and another one? Yeah, I was looking at the reports and I think they did it a couple of years after they were first.

established so in the you know late 60s early 70s and then they did another bid for it a couple decades later so i don't know if they're going to keep trying but they've put in a lot of formal requests to acquire the allagash for federal Interesting.

started vying over control of the Allagash, various indigenous groups called this part of the world home and still continue to do so. Most recently, the Abenaki, whose heritage is reflected in many of the names given to the lakes, ponds, and streams in the area. ash itself has one possible origin from the Abenaki word alaguash, meaning camp on the lakeshore. Numerous indigenous archaeological sites have been documented along the waterways here, while others likely remain undetected.

in the thick forests. It's a rugged place home to an abundance of wildlife. Like you said, moose, tons of moose. There's lynx. I've never seen them, but allegedly they're there. Allegedly they're up there. There's lynx, black bear, river otters, snowshoe hares, and more. Maine as a whole is far enough north to have habitat conditions that support species commonly found in Canada, and some that have been considered to have gone extinct or have been extirpated.

from the state including the eastern cougar and the wolf and i just i love when people i mean whatever anything's possible up in especially the northern parts of maine it's borders canada where these species are prevalent but um every once in a while people in maine will post trail cam footage of an animal that they're like is this a wolf is this a cougar like etc etc and sometimes they are i mean vermont has had photos of wolves especially northern vermont uh same goes for maine and i don't

know if I've mentioned this on the show before, but just a quick antidote because it has to do with this directly. My ex-boyfriend was on a canoe trip in the north woods of maine i don't know if they were in the allagash or not but they were up there and they were there for a week him and his three buddies and they were out paddling at like 5 a.m

And they come around a corner and they saw a cougar with a duck in its mouth on the riverbank. And then it darted into the woods after like 15 seconds. But they all saw it. That's so cool. And it was the first thing he told me when he came back. It's so remote up there. Who knows what's actually going on? There's not enough people up there to study, to say, oh, these are extinct. It's like, are you sure?

well yeah and it's just it's so believable because the the eastern cougar has been officially declared extinct like locally extinct there but that means that they were once there and you know i don't know We talk about cougars a lot and like how far they travel. And I mean, one was hit in Connecticut by a car.

You know? Yeah. So they're around. For sure. There's been a couple of recent, I feel like every year there's a photo posted in Maine, especially of a snowmobile or owl where they see a wolf. like very quick glimpse but it's not It's not far-fetched because when you cross over into Canada, I mean, Vermont, right into Montreal, which is not far away at all, right outside of Montreal, they have a species of wolves that are there. Yeah. And there's a whole discussion about coyotes.

wolves that which we've never talked about formally on the show but i i found so fascinating just the they're thinking that the northeast is going to be kind of like that's where the koi wolf is really gonna take holds as coyotes and wolves start interbreeding yeah anyway okay we need we're talking about up here i know we're talking about ufos but we really need some predators up here because the roadkill is insane up here i was just

that is so crazy that you just say that because this morning i and i don't know why but compared to out west and i don't know what maybe it's just because There's larger areas that like the wildlife isn't pushed to roadways as much as they are here. But the roadway here, I don't know what the hell is going.

I counted like every day I see at least a porcupine and a possum, a skunk, squirrel, like not just like, oh, here's a squirrel here and there. Like they're like bigger every single day. And they're not just like the same ones I'm passing all the time. It's crazy. I'm like, what the, what is happening? Vermont has a season and it's in the spring and we don't have like a major highway system in Vermont, but we do have a highway. It's like a one lane.

Tulane Highway. It's not anything that major, but we do have a highway where in the springtime, there are so many deer that are hit that it is actually... people have been talking about in the state of Vermont, the importance of reintroducing a large predator such as a wolf because the problem is so bad, because so many people are hitting them, they're damaging their cars, they're getting hurt, or they're

They're also talking about doing the, what are they called? The over. Oh, the wildlife pass. Yes. Thank you. Overpasses. Yeah. the wildlife overpasses in Vermont because it's so bad here. But there's also, there's very limited predators that are here. So it's been this conversation that's been happening because, I mean, it's insane.

May, June time, you're driving down the highway and every like minute of driving, you see a deer on the side of the road. There's a porcupine. Sometimes there's beavers that make it up there. Oh, that's another one. Yeah. Beavers are, yeah. Yeah. I've seen a couple. So sad. And it's because they're so overpopulated. Well, it makes me hesitant to drive at night.

here yes and i never felt like that in colorado yeah you like you don't have to worry about it it's like yeah there's elk and stuff and what like which is scary to think about driving into but deer just dart the fuck out in front of you and just seeing the sheer amount of roadkill it's like obviously somebody hit that and i don't want to be that person no

It's scary, one, because you don't want to hurt an animal, but also because you can get really injured yourself when you hit these large animals. Yeah, you can die. Yeah. You can die. There's a really big population on my road, and they're always in this certain area. drive super fast on my road anyway because it's a residential um but like every time i drive at either in the morning or around dusk or after it's dark i'm nervous because i'm like because i almost always see deer yep

I know. Anyway, okay. Anyway, UFOs, way off track. Here we are. Okay, so we're back in the Allagash. We're talking about it. The last thing I'm going to say about it is it's a very remote place and visitors, like I said earlier, either... take the bush planes or some of the logging roads that are out there to access different points along the waterway system. But in this case, for Jim, Jack, Charlie, and Chuck, they charted a float plane.

Despite not having a heap of backcountry experience, the men had prepared for nearly a year ahead of this trip, researching the best gear, conditioning, and studying local maps to select their campsites for their nearly 20-day.

planned excursion. The men waved the bush plane goodbye as they set up camp for the night. The next morning after breakfast, breaking camp and packing gear, they pushed off into the waters of Telos Lake for the kickoff of their canoe portion of their trip because they already hiked Katahdin and all that.

got that out of the way or dropped off. Sounds like a really fun trip. I'm like taking notes here. They paddled all day long in the lake making very little headway though because of the extreme headwind that they were battling for hours. Exhausted and not making

much progress, they decided to make camp not far from where they actually began, at Gravel Beach on nearby Mud Pond. Their spot was exposed, and the wind was making them absolutely miserable, so they were kind of scouting for another spot to move camp.

Glancing across the water, they noticed some available campsites. There was another group over there, but their current spot was just near impossible to sleep in, so they packed up, ditched their site, and made their way to the others. They made introductions to the others.

small group as they settled in and were made aware that that group were concerned about two members of their party. There were two teenagers who had split off from them hours ago and they were canoeing on their own on the lake. But their group was getting worried about them because they hadn't returned yet. The wind was picking up and it was getting dark.

Jim, Jack, Chuck, and Charlie offered to help locate the boys. So Jim picked up some binoculars and was scanning the water when he heard a voice from the other group behind him saying, hey, what? is that? Sweeping his binos in the direction of the man's outstretched finger pointing to the sky, he saw it. A bright light in the sky that had a reddish cast to it in the eastern part of the sky, moving slightly. At first, they all thought it could have been Mark.

because of the reddish tint to it. But it was astoundingly bright and seemed to be hovering about 200 feet from the top of the tree line. Suddenly, it inverted on itself, closing in sort of like an eyelid closing over an eye, closing from the outer edges inwards before disappearing from sight. From when it was spotted to when it blinked out was less than 30 seconds. Despite some murmurs of, huh, that was kind of weird. Like, what was that? Being exchanged from...

the people in the group that saw it, no one thought much more of it. Shortly after, the teens were spotted and they were actually setting up camp in the same spot that the four guys had just ditched. But the mystery was over. They seemed fine. So they all went to bed.

The next morning came and the journey continued, this time a paddle across Chamberlain Lake and a portage to Eagle Lake. Their plan was to camp at the Thoreau campsite on Pillsbury Island, named after the famed American naturalist, writer, and philosopher who ventured through.

Maine in the 1800s on various expeditions led by Penobscot guides. As the men approached, they were bummed to see that the site had already been taken, so they went with a plan B, an alternate campsite called Smithbrook. At this point, August 26th, Six days into their trip, they had fallen into a pattern. Have breakfast, break down their camp, pack up their gear, paddle for the day, set up camp again, sleep, repeat.

When things were settled and the sun had set, they decided to do some night fishing. It was a moonless night and nearly pitch black. In order to mark their site, they built a large fire.

big enough to burn brightly for at least three hours to serve as a beacon, and it was bordering on... like a bonfire size it wasn't just like a small and this is in the middle of the wilderness yes seems a little dangerous well it's funny you say that because jim even remembers thinking that like this is actually a little risky because

i don't want it to cause a forest fire but it was so dark that night if they paddled out and they got turned around like there would be no way to see where their campsite was So they needed a beacon and they had no idea how long they were going to be out fishing. So they built it large enough to burn for at least a handful of hours and went out to fish.

After loading their fishing gear, the men pushed off and paddled out, marveling at just how silent it was. Aside from the sloshing of their paddles slicing into the water and the occasional loon call, they all recall this stillness to the water and the air in the woods that made the night feel a little foreign and creepy. Leisurely paddling and throwing an occasional line, it didn't take long for the mosquitoes to descend. And if you know about mean mosquitoes, you know.

They're real, for sure. They're relentless. So needless to say, the group who were out for less than 20 minutes decided to start turning back. This is not worth it. We gotta go. Chuck was paddling in the back and suddenly felt like something...

was off he likened it to the feeling of knowing someone is looking at you through a crowded room like you can't explain it but you feel it you feel eyes on you yeah you turn and someone's staring right at you like that's how he was explaining it so he threw his gaze over his right right shoulder in the direction of that uneasy feeling to see a ball of light rising from the tree line about 200 yards away. Not the fire. Not the fire. That's correct.

Eyes wide, he alerted Jim, Jack, and Charlie, and they all turned to look at what he was pointing out looking towards the southeastern rim of the cove a large round light was rising above the tree line it ascended roughly 300 feet and seemed to stop and hover It was large, the size of a two-story building, its diameter as wide as a tractor trailer is long, and it was circular and very bright.

It appeared to have some sort of energy pathway between the polar and equatorial sides of it, and it seemed to be divided into four oscillating quadrants of light that fluctuated between red, green, and yellow. It also wasn't solid, but rather had an almost

liquid appearance similar to the way they described it is similar to sauce like if you're making a thick sauce right before it starts boiling you know how it like kind of undulates and rolls a little bit under the pressure of the heat but it's not like buttering and boiling, kind of like that. Like it had this pulsing energy to it. Interesting. It was also so bright that it illuminated the tops of the trees below it in a way that it almost looked like daylight. Most strikingly,

It was completely silent. It emitted absolutely no sound. There was no humming, whirring, or buzzing. If it wasn't emanating light, a light source, they would have never known that it was there. That's so interesting. And it's a couple different colors. Yep. And the silence really astounded them, especially given how sound travels on the water of a lake, and especially in a place this remote. I mean...

Everyone has heard people talking on a lake and they seem it sounds like they're right next to you. Yeah. Or if you're across the lake, you can hear the conversation of the people on the other side because there's just no sound barrier there. Right. Think about the last time you had to cancel a subscription. There was probably some waiting on hold, some guessing at your password, some mind-numbing small talk. And maybe, after all of that, you still weren't able to cancel it.

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Terms apply. Jim remembers having the immediate thought of this must be what we saw the other night, but everyone was going through their own, like, what the hell is that?

question yeah it's so weird a plane or a helicopter a weather balloon swamp gas like they were just kind of rifling through all of these different trying to make logical yes reasoning of what's happening just trying to assign identifier to like identifying this yeah yeah but each time each thing they're like nope can't be that no no definitely not the object was unlike anything

that any of them had ever seen, and they were awestruck. But immediately after the awe came some anxiety. The what the hell is that kind of inquisitively, like that inquisitive like, huh, I'm curious about this. immediately started to take this edge of okay what the hell is that like let's get out of here what is that right and they started to feel that way especially as it started to slowly and silently move in their general direction

When it was about 100 yards away, Chuck leaned down to his feet and grabbed a flashlight. Pointing it towards the object, he began clicking it on and off. Three short, three long, three short. The Morse code. the earthly universe universal distress signal s o s

As if in response, the ball of light stopped moving, emitted a beam of light that hit the water surface, and started sweeping across the water like a search floodlight as it began approaching their canoe. The men had a collective oh crap moment. and dropped the flashlight turned forward and started collectively paddling to shore while the light approached from behind those without a paddle use their hands

They're like, get out of here right now. I don't know what that is, but it is coming for us. And we got to move. Jack remembers the moment very clearly saying, Quote, I remember looking over my shoulder trying to keep an eye on this object and it was coming up behind us. It was getting very close. It was almost on top of us at this point. And I remember thinking, we are not going to outrun this thing.

They weren't terribly far from shore, but before they knew it, they were skidding up onto the sandy shores of the beach and climbing out. After getting to their feet, they collectively turned to face the water, and they watched as the light now directly in front of them less than 30 feet away, and it started to implode on itself. At first, they thought it vanished completely, but after a moment, they watched it as it appeared again slightly further away and higher up in the sky.

And then it would blink out, almost eclipsing on itself like a camera lens closes in on itself. And then again, it would reappear a little higher and further away in the sky. And it repeated this process of kind of blinking in and out and moving further away several times until within mere seconds without a sound. It appeared like most of the other stars in the sky, moving further and further away until it was completely out of sight and gone. The group trudged up the beach to their camp in...

what they described as a daze. Charlie walked up to the fire pit and noticed that it was just a smoldering pile of coals. Like it was nearly completely out. Nothing more than just a little bit of glow coming from it. Even though they had only allegedly been gone for like 30 minutes. Yep. Puzzled, he turned to the others and asked if they wanted to throw more logs onto the fire. And they unanimously decided to forget the fire. And they all felt a little weird.

almost as if they were in some sort of altered state. Chuck compared it to after you get anesthesia. You're completely relaxed. You're really unconcerned and not really bothered by much. And you're really, really tired. Without any more discussion, they climbed into their sleeping bags and went to bed.

Day broke hours later and the group commenced their vacation routine. Breakfast, camp breakdown, gear packing. There was some talk of what they saw the previous night, but not in the way that you would typically expect for 20 something year old guys on a camping trip that just got chased.

by an unexplainable light across the lake. Like there weren't like, what the, like, what was that? They're just like, well, now we're tired. It's like, yeah, that was kind of weird, right? Anyways. Anyway, time for bed. That was kind of how the morning discussion went. Just kind of like. huh, like wonder what that could have been. That was kind of strange. But when they, by the time they reached their next campsite as the day wore on, they noticed a ranger patrolling the lake.

and flagged him down. The men told the ranger about their sighting, what happened to them on the canoe the previous night, and how they were essentially chased across the lake by this mysterious light. And the ranger squinted his eyes, cocked his head slightly, and spoke in a gruff, heavy main act.

accent and explained it away saying well what you boys probably saw was the grand opening of the new hardware store in millinocket they have those big hollywood spotlights on a truck parked outside of the store and the young man yeah Young men kind of like exchange some wary glances between like amongst themselves. But they thanked him first time. Like they weren't going to be like arguing. He doesn't believe us. He's just.

Chalking it up to something that we would clearly know was a normal light. Right. And it's... Like, okay, I can understand maybe that line of thinking. However, as the crow flies from where they were, Millinocket was more than 90 miles away. And not only that, Mount Katahdin sits in direct obstruction of that path. So they wouldn't have seen it.

Right. And it seems pretty unbelievable that they would have been chased by like the, it's like Hollywood spotlight. Over the lake. Over the lake. To the, yeah. Yeah. So needless to say, none of the guys. accepted that explanation but they didn't argue with him either but they didn't really have another explanation to assign to it so the rest of the trip goes by without a hitch they enjoy themselves they don't have another strange encounter and they just all go home

to Boston. They all told their friends and family about what they saw when they got back from their trip, but they received the usual brush offs and strange looks from people. that you would expect. What drugs did you take with you? Sounds like you had a good time. And they had the same repeated conversations wondering what it could have possibly been. But as time passed and...

The conversation surrounding that night in the Allagash, it just started to fade over time. You know, there's only so much you can talk about it without... answers like yeah it's weird and it's yeah whatever but you must start to feel a little crazy yourself too when every reaction you get is like what are you talking about that's i feel like you would feel that way if it was just you Because you question yourself. Like there are four of them having the shared experience. Very true. Yeah.

And there isn't much detailed information on their lives in the years following this experience, but there were graduations, marriages, new jobs, and generally just the normal cadence of life. for all four of them, until over a decade later when Jim and Jack realized they had been having the same night terrors. So now we're back to where we started at the beginning of the episode.

Now we're going to the MUFON conference because that's what the psychiatrist suggested that Jim do. And he did. He went to the MUFON conference and he met with Raymond Fowler.

And in his conversation with Raymond Fowler, Raymond was, had his interest really, he was very intrigued by what Jim was explaining to him because he had heard, you know, hundreds thousands of accounts of sightings and things like that but what was really piquing his interest about that you know that experience in maine and all that like yeah that's interesting to him but was what was really the hook for him was that

He and his twin brother were having the same exact night terrors however many years after this experience and had just realized that. Yeah, that they hadn't talked about it before. And now there's like some link here that might.

be tied to an event that happened in their lives right so raymond suggested that jim and jack along with charlie and chuck undergo hypnotic regression sessions especially because all four men had trouble recalling a portion of that night which was the blip of time between when they had that like oh crap like let's paddle away fast to when they bumped up on shore like it was like a split second for them like you said with the bonfire yes

It should have been burning for hours. So theoretically, they were missing like maybe two to three hours of their night. Yeah. And in their eyes, a few minutes, 10 at most, from what they could gather was missing.

like from when they started paddling to when they hit on shore like that time wasn't two to three hours yeah so either way to them it's something that they could easily brush off like i don't know we were in a panic we were paddling you know losing some time maybe could be confusing but when they really start to think about it and they're like okay we all can't remember anything that anything during that time like that's a little strange so they agree

In January of 1989, Raymond initiated a careful and meticulous formal investigation with MUFON investigator and solar physicist David Webb and MUFON consultant Anthony Tony Constantino, who was a professional hypnotist. over the next 24 months. So they did a two-year investigation into this.

To obtain the truest answers possible and to protect the integrity of the study, the men were instructed to not speak to one another regarding both the incident or their individual sessions during the duration of this study. All four men agreed to the terms and started their individual hypnotic regression sessions.

Jim found his first regression session in particular to be extremely difficult. As soon as he started remembering things from that night, he got so upset, agitated, and frightened that there was concern that his violent reaction would going to trigger one of his seizures, so the team had to keep stepping him backwards out of hypnosis to take the process really slow. Each of the men remembered bits and pieces and fragments of their experiences and

It was impossible for them to remember everything in sequence, like in a chronological smooth order, and not every one of the four men had the exact same version of events. Charlie likened it to the experience of a car accident.

A passenger is going to remember bits and pieces of the accident that the driver does not and vice versa. Even though they experience the same accident, the driver may remember gripping the steering wheel while the passenger remembers a tire flying past the window. Yeah, different. perspectives in the same situation correct so that's how he is likening their recollection of of this event okay

The regressions lasted for months, they were all recorded, and as the sessions progressed, their memories began flooding back. Raymond instructed them to draw what they remembered, and to write down any vivid dreams.

that related to those newly uncovered memories. Again, not to be shared amongst each other. And so, after lots of research and reading everybody's individual accounts, uh throughout different hypnotic sessions this is essentially what they report in a condensed version okay so essentially The following is what Jim, Jack, Charlie, and Chuck remembered of their night on the lake in August of 1976 through months of hypnotherapy regression sessions. Again, they didn't recite this exactly the same.

There are slight variations of minor details that do exist between their accounts, and some men remembered more than others. However, this is their agreed-upon recounting, a summary of the hundreds and hundreds of hours of sessions. the object, it caught up to them and simultaneously shone a tube-shaped beam of light that erupted from the object and hit the water.

It appeared as a glowing ring with a dark center that was reflecting on the water's surface, indicating to them that the beam was hollow. Before they knew it, it was directly on top of them as they were sitting in the canoe. It must have acted as some sort of transport beam, some sort of hollow tube that got them onto the ship because before they knew it, they were...

all naked, and one by one were laid face up on a table while the other three men sat by on the side on a nearby bench that was kind of attached to the wall to the left of the exam table. Once they were laid down... They were paralyzed but not physically tied down in any way. They were able to move their eyes but not their bodies and they were unable to speak. They would note how unfazed their companions looked as

they laid on their table internally panicking and not able to say anything. And then they would suddenly realize that they weren't... Out of the corner of their eye appeared three humanoid-looking beings that would approach them. They were very thin, with slender arms and legs and thin necks. Their heads were large, and they had large, dark, metallic-looking eyes. described sort of like a phosphorescent beetle.

that seemed to change colors as they moved. And they were about the height of an average adult human being wearing skin-tight spandex-looking clothing. Their hands were also unlike those of a human. They had four digits with an articulating pad. palm of the hand and all four digits seem to be opposable digits like our thumb is and i'm gonna show you because and i'll post it on our socials so that like people can see this but

Remember, all of these men are artists in some way. They all go to. Right. They all went to the Boston Art School. Yes. So and some of them did like one of them was ceramics and pottery. One of them was like a cartoon.

artists like but they're all in the art field so they were really good at yes at depicting what they saw and i believe don't quote me i believe this was charlie's drawing of the hands because it was just like so like burned into his memory when he recalled this but this is what he described and i'll show you and i'll post it but this is what he described that they're pants looked like and interesting you know what this reminds me of so okay have this in your mind

It reminds me of a lemur foot. Oh. And I'll show you the exact like this. This is what it reminds me of. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I can see it. I'll post the side-by-side because I'm like, wow. Even like the pads of the fingers. Aliens or lemurs. Maybe. Cousins to lemurs. Who's to say, really? So anyway.

The hands were very something that he remembers very vividly. And they would hold the tools like in their like their articulating palm instead of in their digits. Yeah. Very interesting. Anyways. Okay. That was just a side tangent. The holidays are here, and that means it's the most wonderful time of the year to save with Rakuten.

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Each of the men were internally panicking when they recalled their turns on the table. In particular, Charlie recalls feeling extremely upset and unwilling to be participating in whatever was happening. And he remembers repeating in his mind, we shouldn't be here. I want to be back in the canoe. I want to leave.

what is happening and these thoughts were all racing in his mind when one of the humanoid figures leaned close to his face almost touching his its huge black eyes inches from his as thoughts that were not his own started flooding into his mind as well. And they said, relax, you are not in any danger. Don't move.

Each man was put through a variety of medical procedures, various sample collection procedures, including blood, saliva, fecal, and sperm retrievals, and some skin scrapings. Various objects were utilized for different exams, like a small

thin rod with a small light on the end while most men recall being on the table chuck also remembers being seated on the bench saying quote i see some sort of device on him referring to charlie they've got this a thing that looks like a silvery it looks like like it got curves on it. It's almost like it sucks something. He's got his head tipped all the way back. It's almost like he's in pain. We can't help him. All I can do is watch. That's so scary.

After the medical procedures concluded, they were led into a room with their clothes in a big heap. in the corner and they slowly got dressed still feeling like they're in a daze. Next they were brought into another room with a bright light coming out of the wall that looked like some sort of membrane barrier which they were all led through. It was painful.

It felt like, quote, they were being ripped apart at a molecular level. It felt like death. And then their next memory was sliding onto the beach. All of the men recall feeling terror and... being in extreme discomfort while in their regressions and found their experiences really difficult to grapple with. They had gone over a decade without remembering any more than just this strange light.

that was chasing their canoe. And now all of a sudden, they have all of these new painful memories to deal with now. And they're all thinking and they all came back with the same memories to something around the same, like you said before, a different perspectives, but the same thing was happening to all of them. And the same flow of events, which makes it so much more real.

After several months of gathering their accounts, collecting their artwork, and compiling all of the information, Raymond and his team gathered the men into a room to disclose the results of their findings.

going by that they're instructed to not say anything to each other can't talk about it right until the end of they don't even know yet that they've all had the same recollection correct so they're in this room and raymond laid out each of their drawings of of different parts of what they remembered he basically said draw whatever you can you can

of this event there's the strange light in the sky the room they were in the beings they encountered like anything that they remembered and he lays them out and the all the guys like just have goosebumps they're like these are all the same exact thing Like everything is the same. They were completely floored by this and started to question, how is this possible? And their first thought wasn't, well, I guess we're all abducted boys.

that that's it like their first mystery solved their first thought was like what happened to us did we encounter something that like gave us this mass delusion do we have brain tumors like are we all sick like Again, trying to find a logical explanation. Yeah. What is going on? So they grappled with all of this. And then ultimately, they had to face the very real possibility that...

we could have been abducted by extraterrestrials off of our canoe in Maine. I personally think that's way better than a brain tumor. Yeah, one would argue.

There were other revelations made during the regression sessions as well. Most notably, Jim and Jack, the twins, remembered that their childhood home was haunted. Raymond checked this claim with their mother, Jean, and it turns out that the activity was no... by everyone in the house, the adults in the house, so much so that they nicknamed the entity Harry. She described it as having a humanoid-like appearance and that everyone in the household had some type of experience with citing Harry.

at some point. Jack added that as a kid, he used to be woken up by this horrible monster, how he described it, who had the power to paralyze him in bed. That is very scary and oddly familiar. He and his brother would wake to the sound of what they thought was music in the middle of the night, hear knocking on their door when no one was there, and voices calling their names. Jack also remembered something pulling the covers off of him at night and trying to yank him out of bed.

He also alleged seeing a ball of light moving through his house when he was home alone one day, and all of these experiences with Harry kept happening until they were about 15 years old when they suddenly stopped. They always thought it was some sort of ghost or

poltergeist activity, but Raymond couldn't help but believe that there was some sort of connection to their experience as children's to the one that happened in Maine as adults. Interesting. It does have a lot of correlation. So he's like... Were they being studied? Throughout their entire life. Yeah. And then they just happened, like Chuck and Charlie were like collateral damage. They're like, oh, well, you're with the twins we've been studying. Yeah. Guess we got a couple more.

There were also events that, taken individually and out of context, seemed out of character but not given too much thought, yet put together and looked at as a collective, seemed kind of odd. For example, pretty much immediately... After the Eagle Lake incident, Jim had revelations about his work. He worked with pottery before. Like, remember, that's what he studied in college. That's what he... did but suddenly he had a shift of how he created his pieces suddenly inspired

out of nowhere, to integrate elements of nature into his pieces. And additionally, he became obsessive-compulsive about ancient temple architecture and the belief that ancient temple sites were actually these macrochip... technology and that they functioned as a large computer motherboard like immediately was like this is That's a strange niche to just jump into with no prior interest in. Yeah, he's like, suddenly my Roman Empire is ancient temples. I'm passionate about this. Yes.

And then there's his brother Jack, who was a painter, whose work prior to the incident were all classic traditional landscape, nice paintings. Immediately after the Allagash, He never painted those again and instead became obsessed with mathematics, geometry, trigonometry, and physics. He had no idea where this interest came from, but it became...

what he described as a compulsion. He began making 3D constructions of various mathematic patterns, most specifically drawing the mathematical patterns based on pi. And Charlie, who was a photographer and printmaker, dual major, in school became obsessed with medical technology. He started using photography in a different way by using ultraviolet light and film to photograph below the surface of human skin to capture different venous structures. came back as spies.

Oh, I did not think about that. Yeah, look, they came back to study these specific things and to figure out what to find the information of whatever they wanted. So now they're doing mathematic problems and they're looking at. people in a different way. And they just all have these little spy skills. I just find it so interesting that and this is so this is to be clear, this is after the incident on the lake, but before there.

hypnotic regression studies yeah before they knew that they were abducted by aliens they are spies it's crazy it's crazy yeah

And then there was the revelation of a separate abduction. On May 20th, 1988, Jack had another abduction experience from their home in Townshend, Vermont. What he initially thought was a dream was unveiled in a hypnosis regression in great detail.

That evening, he was awoken to the sound of his dog scratching at the door on the first level of his home. He got up, went downstairs, and into the kitchen, which was illuminated by a bright bluish light. He opened the front door to find a bright light hovering and glowing. over the field across from his home not again he took a few steps towards it before retrieving his dog and going back inside he went up to his room and pulled the covers over his and his wife

Mary's head. Shortly after, he felt the covers being pulled off of them, and his eyes met three beings who were standing over their bed. The couple were told, quote unquote, like telepathically, to walk towards the light. and were powerless to object. Oh, so his wife now gets abducted? Yeah. So he's remembering this in one of the regressions. Okay.

Okay. And I'm going to read an excerpt about this incident from the MUFON UFO Journal article written by Raymond Fowler from 1993 because it's just instead of trying to put it into my own words. Quote, when they walked outside, they were brought to stand.

in front of a large, house-sized glowing object sitting on a blue light that enveloped its underside. The glow around the object itself was changing colors from white to yellow to orange. No noise emanated from the object. Jack and Mary were made to walk into the bluish light under the object and were instantaneously transferred inside of the glowing object. Mary was separated from Jack, who was made to undergo examinations similar to the ones that he and his friends had experienced 12.

years earlier. After the examination Mary rejoined Jack and they were floated across the lawn from the craft to their house through the unopened front door and into their bedroom where they went back to bed in a strange lethargic state of mind. This experience left physical evidence behind in the form of burns on the bottom of Jack's feet.

Jack also received a biopsy-like scoop mark above his ankle. The scoop mark was located just above a scar left behind during an operation for an anomalous lump that had appeared overnight on Jack's leg several years prior. doctor thought it was a cyst, but was unable to drain it, so referred Jack to a surgeon who removed it. Jack was told that the local pathologist did not know what it was and that

it had to be sent to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta for further analysis. However, when we checked Jack's medical records, we found that it was in fact sent to a military pathologist in Washington, D.C., where it was examined by a United States. States Air Force Colonel. Interesting. Attempts for further information about the anomalous lump were thwarted as the surgeon would not cooperate with our inquiry.

End quote. Now the government's involved in hiding stuff. Now you know it's aliens for sure. The government's meddling. Because that is their MO.

okay so that was the quote and now once it's discovered that like now mary's involved and she's kind of brought into questioning about her experience she said she remembered that night dreaming about a deer with huge eyes coming to their bedside that night and looking at her once this was discovered during a regression session mary was like you know all this was like kind of laid out and like okay mary's involved

She was brought in for a session herself, but she expressed a lot of fear of being regressed. So instead, Raymond used a pendulum to get answers, which ultimately corroborated what her husband Jack had conveyed. So take that with a grain of salt. I don't... that's just the information i have on that okay

As a small aside, Jack remembered during the regression that the beings put up round flat objects on either side of his ankle during that. So that's what he remembered during the regression. But separately, he had always wondered why suddenly his hair stopped growing in circular patterns above his ankle. Oh, interesting. Right? Like it totally changed. Yeah. The investigation was thorough.

Over the two-year investigation, Raymond and his team conducted witness background checks, examined medical records and diaries, cross-checked witness testimony, coordinated witness psychological profile tests, correlated witness accounts with other reports, and conducted 15 hypnosis sessions. The final 10-volume report numbered over 700 pages. In addition, all witnesses were subjected to detailed interrogations, rigorous character reference checks, and a battery of psychological profile tests.

All four men also agreed to undergo a series of polygraph testing administered by Ernest Reed, who worked previously as a polygraph tech for the FBI before his current position at the time for the Massachusetts State Police Department. them all tests, Reed concluded they were all telling the truth or believed they were telling the truth. And we have discussed several times on the show about the legitimacy problems with using

polygraph test. So I'm not going to go into great detail on the issues with that, but I just had to include it because that was part of the study. They're not admissible in court. Raymond's team also examined a number of alternate theories.

that attempted to explain you know what could have happened other than a ufo abduction everything from hoaxes fantasies psychoses to birth trauma memories at like they literally tried every explanation and each was critiqued and eliminated in light of the evidence collected during the investigation

Raymond compiled all of the above information and condensed it and published a book in 1993 called The Allagash Abductions, Undeniable Evidence of Alien Intervention. After its publication, the group was dubbed the Allagash Four by the media.

and their story caught fire. They made an onslaught of appearances on various television programs, such as the Joan Rivers Show. They were interviewed by a number of local news outlets. Their story was in newspapers, TV... programs everything they were even featured as an episode on unsolved mysteries interesting

At the time of the Joan Rivers show appearance in the early 1990s, Charlie was employed at a medical teaching hospital that worked in conjunction with Tufts, BU, and Harvard, and he didn't tell anyone, aside from his boss, that he was going to be going. on the Joan Rivers show, especially for why he was really proud of his position at the hospital and didn't want to be treated any differently by his peers.

But unbeknownst to him, so he goes and he didn't realize at the time that the program was going to be live and broadcasted on televisions throughout the entire hospital because the Joan Rivers show was huge. You know, I remember that it was a really big. thing so he goes and like people meanwhile at his hospital are like

Is that Charlie on TV? So by the time he returned from his trip to New York City, his co-workers were well aware of Charlie's experience. But instead of being shunned, he was actually approached by several of his fellow employees. that were all veterans of the military who came to him to share their own experiences of high strangeness. Interesting. Okay, it's kind of embarrassing how bad I am at budgeting.

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Terms apply. In September of 2016, Chuck Rack went on record to say that the abduction was a lie, stating the initial sighting was true. but that the abduction experience was quote-unquote bullshit. Hesitant to call it a complete hoax, but rather he refers to it as elaborate storytelling. He claimed that the story was fabricated for money.

the four men hoping that there would be millions to be made from such a tale. He also claims that they were all on drugs, more specifically, smoking weed. Jim, Jack, and Charlie vehemently deny his allegations and instead revealed the breakdown of their friendship with Chuck prior to these allegations. Oh, so this didn't come out until after they had a falling out? Yes. Interesting. Jim stated Charlie was with him visiting Jack and his wife Mary in Vermont shortly before they...

They went on the Joan Rivers show back in the 90s. Chuck arrived and declared that he had a plan to make millions of dollars off of the abduction prior to going on this show. Oh, how the tables have turned. His proposal was that all four of them refute the professional help of MUFON in order to create some big controversy over the handling of their story in hopes of stirring up a lot of media attention to their story and hopefully...

exchange payouts. Jack, Jim, and Charlie were appalled by the idea and shot it down immediately. They were very hesitant from that point forward to continue their friendship and continue going in public. you know on public platforms and appearing with him uh after that but they

did forgive him and went forward with several different public interviews and attended several conferences together, but it was clear that Chuck's behavior was becoming more and more difficult to deal with. Chuck's violent temper eventually resulted in him getting thrown out and banned from several different

And in response to his allegations, his former friends stated that Chuck's disparaging accusations are rants resulting from a very angry and resenting individual, venturing to guess that he changed his story to control. the narrative.

Jim, Jack, and Charlie have continued to agree to various interviews and speaking engagements to speak about their experience on the Allagash and stand by their truth. Charlie was quoted in the Portland Press-Herald saying, quote, And have been ridiculed for decades now. he doesn't care whether people believe their story or not. Nowadays he dismisses debunkers as close-minded and sometimes ignorant of the breadth of scientific knowledge there is out there. He says,

They weren't there, Jack Wiener said in the same article. I didn't see them there. If they want to stay ignorant, there's nothing I can do to change them. I know differently from my own experience. And he went on to suggest that naysayers perhaps have some sort of restrictive worldview and cannot possibly fathom that aliens exist, saying,

Quote, what we describe threatens them in some way. The only way they can maintain some sense of self is by denial or accusation. It's much easier to say, oh, you're making it up or oh, you're crazy or you're a fraud. than actually accept what could have possibly happened to them. It's not wrong. That's true.

The years have passed but the trio remains adamant of their experience, both what they consciously recalled at first and what was later revealed to them all under hypnosis. Chuck Rack has not made public comment regarding the incident in nearly 10 years and

and has spent the years following his time in Maine traveling the country and throughout the world. He lives in the Austin, Texas area, where he expresses his talent and love of the arts by creating beautiful portraits, caricatures, and pastel paintings. are all New Englanders and continue to talk about their experience and give lectures and just live really simple lives here in New England. Very interesting. We'll never truly know what happened that night.

Because as Jack said, we weren't there. We just have to ask ourselves, do we think they're crazy? Or will we eventually discover that they were right all along? And that is the story of the Allagash Four and the alleged abduction in the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. Well, I believe them. Okay.

I believe them. I do think that something happened that night. And I do think with regression therapy, there is some studies of like how valid your memories are, like how much you really recollect. And there's also to be. said that in those sessions, you can be led.

to believe something. And that is all dependent on the person that you're working with, if they're leading you to believe these memories. So I mean, of course, you have to question the person who is performing this to make sure they're legitimate. Well, and if I I didn't personally listen to the hundreds of hours of tape or read the 700 pages of transcript or whatever, but it...

They're out there. Like, so if somebody is really, really interested in this and wants to know the answers to that question, like were they led? You know, what was the atmosphere around their sessions?

like it's out there to it you know it didn't happen without being recorded so that is out there if you if you want to uh investigate that further but i totally agree i mean just like with the polygraph testing that it's not a solid like just because that happened and now okay they were regressed and that's what their account was that is now truth like there's clearly room for debate on that yeah

But to them, I think the most important thing about this whole thing is like it's real to them and it's affecting their real lives and their real psychological well-being. And for them, this is their experience. Yeah. And I mean, you could say that for people who are struggling with mental illness, too. For them, this is real. But they are all experiencing it. And regardless, something did happen that night. I personally believe their story. I'm just saying there are a lot of questions.

to certainly be investigated and asked, especially if you're someone who's interested in this because of especially the means that it was discovered with regression therapy. There are so many faults in that. So I think that it's definitely worth... asking questions but i believe them as it's worth to ask questions for everything i totally agree it's just i think the one there's elements of this story that make it a little more like huh

Okay. And again, you're taking their word for it, but like the element of the fire, like that's a physical, that the fire is down. The burns on his feet. The burns on his feet, the weird lump that was sent out to the military for some reason. Yeah. Like, you know, there's just different elements that are just a little more.

uh an additional level of curiosity for me into this one because there's some there's some ufo i this is coming from a die-hard believer in extraterrestrial life at this level like not just like There's microbes out there on other planets. Like I think there's intelligent extraterrestrial life out there that is light years ahead of us evolutionarily. But even coming from somebody with that line of thinking, there are a lot of UFO sightings or abduction.

claims that i even am like okay probably not you know and this one is not one of those and that's why i chose in part to cover it and also it happened to correlate with the wilderness and

Yeah, so totally. I thought it was a really cool story. And you mentioned one thing in passing and it's been on my mind this whole episode. So I wanted to ask you when they were abducted, you mentioned different samples that they were taking and. One of them was sperm. And I am curious, what do you think that extraterrestrials are doing with human sperm? Well, if you want the totally out there answer, I do.

I mean, there's a theory that they are creating or experimenting with another, like creating hybrids, essentially. Yeah. Like human. alien hybrids. But there's also, if we, okay, we're really getting... We're going to lose half our listeners with this theory. But there is a theory out there that humans, us, are a result of some type of human alien hybridization that happened thousands and thousands of years ago.

Interesting. I haven't heard that before. There is, and I'm probably going to butcher this because I know of this theory and I've thought about it, but I'm not like really into it. So I've never really like... super researched it but essentially there's a theory that we because we have this you know we have this fossil record of you know different humans

like throughout human history homo sapiens homo you know all these different things we have and have you heard of like the missing link like what is the missing link how did we jump from this to where we are now like what there's a gap there in our knowledge of our own evolution and so a lot of people fill in that gap with alien intervention essentially to earth when we were you know at whatever time point in human evolution and took individuals and hybridized them with

aliens and now that's what we are and that's why they are coming down and abducting us because we're a continual study to them because we they created us OK, I can see where that's coming from, for sure. And who am I to say whether it's right or wrong? One of the things I was thinking when you said that they were collecting sperm and really studying them as people and like taking samples of their skin and they want to look under their skin.

Like later they go on their spies later in life and they're figuring out all this stuff for them. Yeah. So that is my theory. But I was thinking. What if this alien population that's coming down and studying people is actually a struggling population that, similar to how humans are destroying our own planet, destroyed their own planet, and now they are looking for ways to increase their population, but they've...

run out of different genetics to do so. So they're coming down and they're getting sperm to create, like you said, hybrids.

to be able to expand their genetic gene pool and create a new civilization somewhere else. Also a possibility. Like they're using us to repopulate their... Another planet that they have because they're clearly not interested. I mean, maybe they are, but they don't seem all that... interested in staying or hanging around it seems like they're specifically doing studies on people which makes you wonder why and if their planet was like great and lovely why are they here well that's the question

But I don't know. I just, I always revert back to the analogy of us darting animals in the wild and studying them and leaving. Like, we're not staying out. in you know like i just think we've also taken we have stayed though we've taken up their entire landscape and taken over where all these animals live and now they're sectioned okay all right maybe that's not the greatest analogy because we're all can confined to this planet to live here yeah i'm saying like if we found a way to

get to another planet that has life forms that we're really interested in studying it doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to be like okay well we're staying like we have earth to go back to but we still want to see what's going on over here that if human beings found another planet with other intelligent life on it, I think that they would murder everyone, take prisoners and take over the planet. I don't think that there would be any studying. I think that we

In history, throughout everywhere we've ever been, we don't study, we invade. Yeah, that's true. I'm just trying to have a little bit of hope, I guess. I don't know. Yeah. It makes me think like, of course, alien species, we don't know about them. Like maybe their thought processes are totally different than ours. And you wouldn't even think of like what they would be.

needing because we don't have their perspective. But I just think like, maybe they need something from us. And that's why they're coming in taking samples and studying because they are doing something on their own turf and their own planet. Yeah, maybe he has a sun on some planet galaxies away. Well, for me, my line of thinking is you're correct in your when you said they have a different perspective, they wouldn't do that. Like to me.

The answer is yes, because they are so ahead of us. To them, I feel like we... they view us like we view neanderthals like look at them like so stupid idiot stupid and like they have so much like learning and growing and evolving to do like i feel like other intelligent life forms are just

so far advanced they have such a like they aren't self-destructive they aren't they aren't always warring with one another like even if you look at that okay here we go and now there's only a small piece of them left and they have warred and destroyed everything and now they're trying to recreate Because they were where we were thousands of years ago.

Okay. And they've gotten over that and they've evolved and they're just like these enlightened species, this enlightened species that is just like, we have, we've done all this. We've made all those mistakes, but look at us now. Like we are just so far past you evolved.

not only like in the way they think or whatever, they've just moved past. If you look, okay. Oh my God. Okay. People can turn this off now. I'm going to still talk to you about this. Okay. So if you're looking at the descriptions of what people describe the typical gray alien.

Kind of like they described. They're thin. They have large heads. They have big eyes. They have big heads. Everything else is really thin. They don't have any musculature. They're just, you know, they're slight. They communicate telepathically. Even evolutionarily wise, it seems as if they've evolved past the need for, they don't need big muscles, they don't need this physical strong body because they've intellectually developed.

so much that they just use their mind for everything. They don't need physical strength anymore. Maybe that's why their head's so big because their brain is so big. Their brain is so big. And, you know, like, what are we toying with right now with freaking... What's the what is Elon Musk doing with like MindLink or whatever? What is that? I don't I all I know are the robots. I don't know what MindLink is. It's not MindLink. It's sorry. This is important to my.

to my argument. So hold on. I want to get this right. Maybe Elon Musk is an alien. That was...

came here. Neuralink. Sorry, Neuralink. So it's a chip that is being implanted in people's brains and it records electrical signals from neurons. So it basically serves as like a digital device, like a computer or... like via bluetooth so you there is footage of somebody that has neural link that is playing a video game with their thoughts and their mind and he developed it initially for people who are paralyzed and don't have the function of

their their hands are things anymore that's very interesting the technology is uh like with people with like spinal cord injuries and things like that to help them but these The thought process is that it's going to just be a chip that you use your mind to control everything. Very interesting. Does Elon Musk have one implanted? And to read thoughts and to communicate with other people that also have a chip without having to verbally speak.

just like I view it as a little lazy though I just view it as a step in this like evolution of like telepathic I don't know I'm just going off the rails right now and I don't know if it makes any sense it would be cool to be able to like speak your mind like to speak with someone next to you and especially like say you're in a um

You're in a dangerous situation where you need to speak with the person next to you without someone else hearing. That would be cool. Or just to say like, I don't know, to make it less morbid than that, but like say you and I are in a business meeting and we could like speak to each other about what.

going on and know like what to say and you know like that would be cool but then also it feels like there's an element to that where like is there a huge invasion of privacy like can i read your mind at any point in time no i just well that's the question right but I don't think that would be the case. I don't think it's just a free for all, all of a sudden. I think it would be similar to speaking. Like you can choose what to express and not express. Yeah.

But then if you're reading ACOTAR, if you don't have your shields trained to be up, your mental shields trained and up, then anyone can get in. Right. I don't know. And that's this is just all to say when people are like, I would never want to be. OK, I just told you an hour long story about how terrifying the abduction was and how like it's impacted their lives and night terrors and.

psychological stress and all that, which I'm sure there would be an element of. But kind of like we were just talking about with Dan Cummings, like what an opportunity. I would love to hear if you got abducted by aliens and you told me the story, I would believe you and I would be very happy for you and I would be thankful that I am not involved. i would just have so many questions like not i don't care it sounds like you don't get to ask questions

I feel like they would be, I guess, surprised and stunned. Usually people are like, no, my God, stop, help. And they're like, relax, relax. Hey, about time. I got some stuff to ask you. Yeah, they'd be like, oh, what? Anyways, so on the alien subject, I know you haven't seen it because it's such a... I don't want to say it's a niche movie, but it's older. Is it Signs? No. It's a movie that is... If somebody is...

out there like, I want a good movie that has to do with aliens. K-Pax? I have not seen that. My God, it's so good. So it's from the 90s. It was one of my dad's favorite movies. And it's actually one of the when I was going through his apartment after he passed away, I was just grabbing things that had his handwriting on it.

And he had a lot of VHSs with like a label that he would handwrite. Because he would like record. I remember those. Yeah. And one of them just happened to be K-Pax. But it's from the 90s. And it's not like this. classic or anything it's a classic in my mind but it has Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges are the main characters okay and it's essentially the story of this like mysterious patient that somehow comes to this mental hospital and

And he claims that he's from a planet called Kapax. And his psychiatrist is played by Jeff Bridges. And he's trying to, like, figure out how to help this patient. But over the movie, like... It turns out that like he really is an alien from K-Pax and he's on Earth studying humans. Oh, interesting. And it's not like a super serious or creepy movie. This sounds familiar to me. Maybe I have seen like snippets of it.

Now that you're talking about it, I'm like, maybe I saw it like once, like a very long time ago. And because it's like ringing some bells for me. But it's not funny, but it's kind of lighthearted. Yeah. Movie night. Have a movie night with K-Pax.

yeah anyway so okay well god this went a different way than i thought but anyways anyway Thank you, everyone, for hanging out with us for an Alien episode. I, for one, was very excited. And I know you all were, too. So thank you for hanging out. I know you're all still here because this was a very riveting conversation about aliens afterwards. Yeah, and probably so well presented.

Presented and clearly experts. Okay. Well, we will see you next week. In the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch your back for aliens. Right. They'll get you. Yeah. Bye. Thank you so much for joining us again this week. If you have a trail tale or story suggestion, send us an email at stories at npadpodcast.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at National Park After Dark and on Twitter at NP. And remember, when you support our sponsors, you are supporting our show.

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