Hello, and welcome to Open Mind UFO Radio. I am your host, Alejandro Rojas, and I am with Martin Spaceman Willis Spacey or Spaceman Spaceman. That's I'll take that. It's space talk about the eclipse. It's more accurate today. I think it's pretty fitting. Actually. Yeah, so the eclipse, at least in many places as we speak, has either just peaked or
is just about to. I think it already did out here in Arizona, which isn't saying much because we couldn't really see a lot of it a bit, you know, when I did see some, uh, and I got kind of an interesting photo on my phone with it. But yeah, I was just watching in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, where there's a huge they're calling it Eclipsville there. There's a huge group of people camping out there and it just peaked there where they were completely dark. They you know, they were in
the path of where they could see the whole thing. Any Kelly Hopkinsville situation going on in the dark there, no that Yeah, well, yeah, there are lots of people outside having fun. But yes, that is where and it's in my lecture in fact, Well, yeah, you could go see it at UFO Congress Videos dot com. But you can see my lecture on Strange Alien Cases, and I talk about the Chilly Hopkinsville case, a very important case in the fifty where fifties where it essentially made the Little Green
Men saying more prominent and famous. And I'm gonna be talking about that also at Devil's Tower next month. Oh wow, you know that's one of my cases that are really I'm fascinated by that case by Kelly the incident. You know that they were up on the roof and they were shooting at him and oh it was just really case, quite amazing. They were horrified too.
Yeah, I'll be talking about that at the Devil's Tower Rendezvous, which is gonna be at Devil's Tower in honor of the fortieth anniversary of Close Encounters. I'm really excited about this. It's gonna be in Hewlett, Wyoming, and you can go to Devil's Tower UFO Rendezvous dot com to see more about it. But Janharzan Mark D'Antonio told me about that. Well, I don't think I told the listeners though. Debbie Ziegelmeyer, Chuck Ukowski, Travis Walton,
and Richard beckwith will all be there speaking. I'm excited because I'm gonna be talking about Spilberg and so I'll be talking about the Kelly Hopkinsville event because that inspired Spilberg many of his movies. Wow, I don't know if I knew that. That's interesting if you would have saw my lecture, but I don't think you made it to the conference. You should see the lecture because if you're interested in that, you would love it. Otherwise, maybe this one
will get recorded and I'll be able to to upload that or something. But yeah, yeah, right, So what's the date on that September fourteenth through the sixteenth. And yeah, I'm a big spill Brick fan and I've been following all of his UFO interests, so I've accumulated a lot of information and videos of him talking about UFOs. So yeah, I'm excited for the opportunity. Right. Great, But speaking back to the eclipse, like, can you see a lot of it? I mean, is it really cool where
you are? Well? I downloaded the iPhone app that Jeffrey Bennett, the astrophysicist that you and I both know, he created the app and it shows that as we speak right now, it's peaked in my area in the state of Maine. It peaks at two forty three, and that's about when we're talking right now. So I just went looked at it and did the pinhole thing, and I can see most of the sun, but it does look you know, the sky looks like it's really cloudy. You know, it's
kind of dim looking. Is that what you saw to kind of? But the pin hole thing, the best thing is to get the glasses at by far so you could see something, because otherwise the pinhole thing, which is kind of what I did, is boring. I've done that before. But really, unless you're like really close, it's it's kind of just like any other, you know, eclipse. But what's amazing about this? And I do regret it not going to somewhere where I could be with the full eclipse.
And I know I'm going to regret this for a long time, but hopefully I can. Maybe I'll have to go to another country to get that opportunity sometime. Yeah, I know. It's it's funny how it just did a swath right across the country and people are gathering, you know, had you know, they're from Salem, Oregon all the way across the country. Mm hmmm. Cool cool stuff. Now, Also, what's cool about this if you go to the Google search, of course they're featuring just Google dot
com. They're featuring the eclipse on their little thing on the top, as they usually do, you know, the little graphic they feature what's going on. So the eclipse is huge, so of course they're featuring that. But what's funny is aliens are involved. So if you go look at the Google graphic, it's super cool. It's essentially aliens bouncing the moon back and forth.
Little green man and there too. Hm hmm. Pretty cool. So what's funny about this too is, of course there are a lot of conspiracy theories about the moon and the moon being artificial and being brought here by aliens and that sort of thing, and largely because of this extraordinary phenomena that the
moon. So the Sun is four hundred times larger than the moon. How Ever, the Sun is four hundred times further away than the moon, and that's awfully coincidental, because that's what that's what makes this opportunity of what's happening today be possible, is that coincidentally, those two factors make it so this small object can pass in front of this humongous object and appear to be the
exact same size. Isn't that something? So you know, eventually, I say, the moon moves away a little bit, so we't, well, this, this type of eclipse isn't going to happen for a long time, right again, Well it will, but not I guess in the United States. What was unique about this one is that it the epicenter, you know, the place where it's completely covered, swept through the United States and only the United States. And that's what made it really unique. Wow. I
didn't know that. Wow. That's and a great opportunity for those in this country to go get off our butts and not get mucked up in daily life like you and I did and missed. Yeah, what the hell? But this is really funny too. Another coincidence that you brought up, Jeffrey Bennett. Okay, and here's why. So the twenty fourteen videos we have not uploaded because they haven't been ready to our video on demand. So we have almost every other year and almost all of them for every other year, but
we haven't don't have twenty fourteen. So I started working on that and literally or as Rob Low says in Parks and Rex. Literally literally right before I came over here to get on the phone with you, I began uploading Jeffrey Bennett's talk at the UFO Congress in twenty fourteen. Wow, that's pretty spooky. That is kind of weird. And then you bring him up. I know, wow, WHOA he was great too. I loved his talk. I think it is so good. Jeffrey Bennett is an astrophysicist. He's a
mainstream science guy. However, he's open, he's into he likes the topic of UFOs. He's open to the possibility of ET visitation, as he says, and I think the panel from twenty fourteen he was asked that specifically,
and I can't remember if he did it in his talk. However, what is interesting about his talk is a lot of theoretical, a lot of you know, kind of theorizing or pondering exists what extraterrestrial civilizations might be like from a scientific perspective, and looking at ourselves and technology, and a big question is are we even going to make it? You know, to write how long are we going to be able to survive? So some really it was an amazing talk, one of my favorite talks of that year. So that's
getting up and that's going to be in the video on demand soon. You know. One of my favorite sayings of Jefferies is he was also a visiting scientist at NASA too as well. One of my favorite sayings is that he and some colleagues have talked, you know, quietly about this situation that they think that if any intelligence can get through the bottleneck of technology without blowing themselves
up, they will indeed be traveling the stars. Yeah. Yeah, well it's a really cool concept and he kind of talks about that at length on this lecture. M h, really cool stuff. Yeah, he's great. So there was another coincidence. Oh no, there wasn't another coincidence. But I have another update. Okay, ready for this one. Yeah, I'm moving on from the eclipse, which is cool stuff. And of course people
are hoping to see some UFOs and stuff. And I'm sure some people will claim to you whether they not are truly anomalous or not, that we'll find out, I guess. But so I guess where I'm going to be in a week from today, let's see, that would be near the end of August. I have no idea Mars. I knew it. It was right on the tip of my tongue. No, sir, So what do you mean did you really think you thought I was going to be on Mars? Not really. Yeah, these wild claims you know of people going to Mars.
I'll be able to confirm them or not next week. No, actually I will be on Mars. But it's actually the set of Mars. But although I'm not traveling all the way to Mars, it is far. It is Budapest. Are you serious. Yeah, so you'd be traveling to Budapest for like three days or not even that. The traveling will be two of
those three days to go to the set of Mars. So, you know, the Science Channel has had this Mars series going and really cool series, and they're starting to shoot for the second season, and so I've been invited to come out for that to check it out, do some social media kind of fun stuff, and then write some stuff online. And so, yeah, the set of Mars for the Mars TV show in Budapest. Amazing. You know, you have the greatest life, you really do. I don't
know, Well, you get to do some amazing things. I do, get to do some fun stuff, and you know what, what's funny is a lot of this stuff it's and I guess it's it's this is journalism and people. I think this is one thing people should understand about journalism and doing all this sort of thing is that it doesn't pay. It's fun, but it doesn't pay. So a lot of journalists or a lot of people like
a friend of mine, Aaron Sager's, he does the coolest stuff. He's hanging out with you know, stars, and he mostly does He's spoken at the twenty fourteen UFO Congress also, but he does all of these like conferences where he does panels for sci fi conferences and comic book conferences and stuff like that. So yeah, sometimes you get to do our Ben Hansen, for example, he gets to do lots of fun stuff, but it's not like at pays, which is a big struggle for him because he's trying to start
a family. But it is fun stuff, but there's a sacrifice. So it just means, you know, you got to be able to willing to do some of this kind of stuff without compensation, essentially, but for the adventure of it. And I'm all four of that. Yeah, oh yeah, I mean you really got to You know, when you have a family, you know you have priorities. You know that I can understand the struggling, but also the independence and to be able to to do exciting things is
very alluring, very hard to say no to. Awesome. Who's the guest today? Oh, good question. That's a wonderful question. It's probably something I should have started off with, but such exciting stuff with the eclipse and everything. Richard Hoffman is my guest today. Oh yeah, yeah. I've had him on before and he's part of the Scientific Coalition for Euphrology, which is an organization that was created actually to investigate that Puerto Rico Ufo case.
So I've had him on before to talk about that case, which is pretty exciting. However, what we're going to be talking about today is an article that some of you might have seen on Openminds dot tv talking about the Spooklights of Cloverdale. So there's a place in Alabama which is where he, until recently was this eight director of Moufon. He's actually been in Moufon since it started, literally, but he resigned recently because he's wanted He's very into the
scientific kind of aspect. Any move on's moved a little bit away from that, so he's decided to invest more time in the See You and on some of these other cool projects that he's working on. So that's what we're talking about here, Just this phenomena kind of like the Marpha Lights or the Hestelen lights, where there are these balls of lights, except this is in Alabama, right, Yeah, And I know I've seen some images of that, you know, like the streaking streaking across the sky. Now, as far
as I know, Richard has not ever done any streaking. Well that'll be I hope you brought that up. I didn't, so we'll have to save that for next time. Yeah, or maybe you can have him on podcast UFO and ask him about that. Yeah, he's been on before. He's really good. I really enjoy talking to him. Yeah, so that's the show today. Doesn't he always wear a bow time? Or I think against someone else? I know he does often wear a bow tie when he dresses
up or when he does lectures and stuff like that. Right, right, that's the guy, fancy fella. Mm hmmm. So yeah, are we ready for a little news? Oh yeah, let's talk some news, all right. I'll start off this This is interesting because you see this quite often. And that's up and it's the title of it, and was did Fox News catch a UFO buzzing the US capital? Written by Alejandro Rojas recently. So I I suggest anyone you know check this video out. I've watched it
two or three times. It's uh, it's it's really interesting because my first thought is it's a bird, you know, going by, But then I look really closely. There's absolutely no flapping of wings. Would would be fine if it was going straight, you know, horizontal across the screen or or actually down, but it's it's on an incline, so there's absolutely no flapping that you can see. And it's sort of a yellow tinge to it. I don't know if you notice that I did. Yeah, yeah, So
I've looked at it, like I said, three or four times. It's really hard to figure out what this is now. I know at the bottom of your article you wrote that could be something like a frisbee or something like that, which you know is possible. It doesn't really it seems like you'd see the shape of a frisbee, you know, going past the screen. I don't know. You don't have to do some tests with it. Has
have you shown this? I know this was presented to move On by someone who you know, did a video and screenshot of it, but did you show this to Mark dy Antonio or anyone like that to get his opinion. No, as far as I know, Mark has not seen it yet. Now move On does its own investigation, So I was gonna kind of see where they'll go with this, and we'll see the leading theory is a frisbee,
and I can definitely see that. In fact, there's a lot of people who were upset about me posting it, and like those are the frisbee. It's obvious, but of course, just like any video, people are fighting about it, arguing over what it might be, because a lot of people are saying there's no way it's a frisbee because of it shoots up, you know, in this other direction. And if it's a frisbee, it might be a yellow and white one because the leading edge seems to be light
in color and I can't see anything. It doesn't look like it's rotating spinning, So although maybe you wouldn't be able to see that spinning, I think what we'd have to do is throw a frisbee, fling of frisbee. Fly a frisbee because it's smooth, so I mean it's flying, and see what happens there is of course, this is Washington, d C. The Capitol, and there is a a park of course in front of the Capitol, so it's it's possible it's a frisbee. In fact, that's that's probably most
likely. But some people are debating that and claiming it's not a frisbee. And there is something weird that happens when it gets in front of the Capitol. It seems to fade out, which made me think maybe it's a hoax. Maybe uh, it was. It was a hoaxed video because the person who submitted the video, all they did was submit this little clip and that was it. They didn't even describe it. All they said was something like
this is what their report said. It flew in front of the Capitol building while I was watching Fox News. That's all they wrote with this this video clip. So so there's no way to even check when this supposedly happens. Yeah, you could look at the news stories and then probably determined from there. I haven't taken the time to do that, but I did take the video and slow it down and blow it up and so, and then put it on YouTube slowed down greatly so that people can kind of analyze it.
And of course it's gotten a ton of hits and so, and it kind of as usual when it comes to social media. Some good comments, but a lot of really people like to be me. Yeah, I know that. Wow. You know, you can see it talks about people killed in Acapolco, Yesico resort, so you can kind of see when that aired and try to figure that out, because yeah, of course it is possible that he might have the person who's that submitted it might have done something cgi and
here it senate. That story looks like it was on August thirteenth end or fourteenth, so that was just about a week ago. Yeah, you know, it's funny though. You do see a lot of things in news casts come up, and some of them are you know, faked, but also you know, after the fact, but some of them are most likely like
birds or bugs or something like that. Yeah. Well, they have their cameras on all the time, so and there's only one case and I can't even remember when and where it was where they were filming news where they actually did stop and film what was in the sky? Do you remember what I'm
talking about? Did you see that? Well, I'm not sure if I'm thinking of the same one you are, But there was a case in Colorado where they were actually going out there to film a UFO story and they captured one of the objects on video a little bit there, and so that was pretty interesting. They were white orbs, I know, like rich Hoffman was felt strongly it was a Google balloon and they were the pheno. The whole flap out there that was happening were Google balloons, and there were Google balloons
flowing in the area. However, I'm not so sure about that because the Google balloons, at least for that period of time, had or at least most of them, and according to Google, they have tracking devices on them. And as many people and I linked to some of these some of the people who looked into it found you can go to those airplane like flight tracker
sites. I think one's called flight tracker, and you can track those Google balloons, so you could see what's in the area, and some people were able to see where the Google balloons were at the time, and so yeah, so it's pretty interesting all part of investigating. Another interesting story we have that I would like to point people to otherwise I think we're about out of time is a story from Linda Zimmerman. So Linda Zimmerman did the Hudson Valley
UFO yeh book. She wrote that, and she wrote a story for US or an article called the UFOs Flying Dark. And it's a really great idea because you know, there's all this controversy why would UFOs have lights? You know, why are UFOs all lights in the sky. And she wanted to make the point that there are objects seen that don't have lights on them. And so that's the article she wrote about mostly triangles seen at night without lights
on them. So some really interesting sightings. Well, yeah, you don't hear that is funny you say that because I have heard people talk about wrangles without lights, but not any others. Really. I mean, the one, you know, amazing sighting I had had no lights on it, you know, but it wasn't really dark either, you know, it was you know, twilight. Wow. So dis yours was a disc My uncle had one like that that was a large rectangular object in Aspen, Colorado. Mm
hmm. Wow, that's a great. You know, she thinks of great topics. The last one was on UFOs and dogs, yeah, which was awesome, and pets. She's just a great thinker. I love Linda Zimmermann's Wonderf's wonderful. Yep. Absolutely. All right, Well I think we're out of time. All right, Well, thank you. We're gonna go ahead and take a break and we'll be right back with Rich Hoffman. I am happy to welcome back to the show Rich Hoffman. Hello, Hey, how
you doing al good? It's great to talk to you again. How have you been well, I've been busy between work and family life and then everything else that's been It's been hectic, but it's been great. This is a good summer. I'm looking forward to my vacation next week at the Hilton Head. So there you go. Oh that sounds fun. So things have changed a bit since we've last talked to you. So you're no longer a state director with move On. Yeah, I basically resigned my position as State director
as well as the director of Strategic Projects. I'm basically now just a lifetime member because I was a benefactor prior to that separation, and so that's pretty much it. H plan. Oh there was a weird noise. Did you hear that? Yeah, I sure did. That was very strange. I wonder if the listeners could hear that too. That was really weird. But anyway, yet, so you're not with move On anymore, but you're still
doing UFOs. I sure am, I'm I'm I'm not gonna just turn away after fifty two years of studying them, and I'm going to keep on investigating and and that's that's what I like to do and and I probably will do as long as I'm still upright and above the ground. You were with move On for a long time, though, right where didn't you join in what was it nineteen sixty nine when they started or something like that, you got it. I'm one of the I think I joined right right in seventy nineteen
seventy. They had started it in May, I guess they incorporated it, let's put it that way, and they were the Midwest UFO network at the time. And I announcement about them coming into existence and immediately sent in my interest. And so yeah, I've been with them for a long time. I wish them well, I certainly do. I think that well. My separation was based around some of the movements I saw that were kind of like away from science, and certainly the last Symposium, in my estimation, wasn't
really helping to support science. So I decided that I was going to move on and go towards more of a scientific bent. And that's pretty much where I'm at now. You know what, I want to take a minute to talk about that, not move on? Really, I think you explained that well enough, and of course I've talked about the symposium, but I mean the importance of science, because I don't know, I guess it does get a little bit concerning, I know for you and some of our colleagues when
larger organizations or people in general kind of move away from it. And I guess, what are the sentiments you hear out there? Why do you think it happened that people move away? It seems that I want to get your opinion on this. Science is hard, it's rigorous, and a lot of people seem to get like kind of disappointed or impatient. Yeah, and that's
very, very true. I think that my take on the whole thing, after my fifty two years of watching it, has been that well, I mean, overall, we have a culture, you know, have shifted kind of like away from science as being something that the everyday person has an interest in, although I will sit and say that there's still a good number of people who like astronomy, who liked meteorology, there's there are people who are engineering, but even you know, in a lot of these professions, the
number of yes people are not going to some of those things. And the UFO field, I mean if early in the early days was I mean, it was all about science. It was about you know, what can we do to collect evidence? How do we do what we do and what was
it? And so that was our primary focus. And we didn't have all these other distractions, like you know, I guess exopolitics, and we didn't have all the other kinds of things that come up with UFOs now, and we didn't have a YouTube that was promoting fake videos or any of that stuff. So to me, it was more like, you know, if you got into this, you know you were going to be appl it to the
best of your ability. And you know, we were always challenged because we had a you know, if you go with a volunteer base kind of approach. Uh, well, I mean a lot of people lost. I mean, you know, at the Condom Report closed out Project Bluebook, and then you know, the National Academy of Scientists did their little stick on it, and then you started to see that they had basically said, well, it's
no longer a credible subject, you know. And so there was all the promotion that was within the mainstream science to be able to say, you know, hey, look, don't don't even don't even go into the UFO thing. Jokingly, I saw a thing where I was like on a site where I was going to look at how do I write scientific articles? And on the front page of that was don't do anything on UFOs. And I'm going like, okay, well there's a message right up front, don't bother to
do anything like a journal or anything like on the CUFO subject. So I guess what I'm trying to say to you is that there's this there seems to be a rise in the level of these younger people to be very naive and gullible. Uh there. I think I've talked about this in the past,
but there's a lack of critical thinking skills that we see. I was in the training development profession and we were alerted to the fact that we didn't see students and younger people at the time and this is like years and years ago that I was doing this, but that we were we were seeing that thinking critical thinking was a major concern for students, that we had to change our
way we were doing things. And it has written at the top. But then coupled that with all the social media that's out there, that that gives you just erroneous information and very bad information, and pretty soon you know you're
off under lalla land and you accept lalla land as being the norm. Uh. And so when somebody comes in and tries to apply a very scientific approach or something like that and use that rigor that you're trying to talk about that you have in science, it just doesn't seem to rise to the level of being of interest. And you know, I'll say this much I think that you know, move on is was attempting to try to put you know, and then do its best to be able to create science and Jan was also
working with me to be able to get technology and put in place. But the struggle that we continued to have was that again we're getting like, you know, maybe an ex witness might sign up to say that I want to be an investigator, and that doesn't mean that they're necessarily good at it, right, And it doesn't I mean, despite the fact you offer training, it doesn't suddenly make them start thinking in a scientific way, you know,
And so you run into problems there. You know, even if you hand it out technology to people, would they even understand what that particular technology does or how how to use it in the field. Uh. And so there's there's those challenges, and we just haven't seen a whole lot of like scientific minded people that are coming into the the field. Uh and uh the only thing that I've seen, and I'm very encouraged by that, by way.
But there's a number of like small projects that that people are doing from you know, people who have been in it for a long time, like Mark Roddicker is doing with UFO data uh that ronalds was doing out in California with putting together his uh technical package. Uh. Shalon Holt is doing something with you know, basically getting some data and and and I'm and then you had
Mark and Mark D'Antonio and Doug Trumbull that were looking at you FUTOG. So there are these like little projects and because technology has definitely come down and cost. They are trying to assemble devices that would be able to beneficial and getting data. And that's what this phenomenon has needed all along. It is not another report from someonetness to say I saw a light in the sky twenty years
ago. I mean, that's not going to get at us anywhere. And we're not even hitting the other parts of the spectrum, you know, I mean we only see like photos from cameras and and what about the infrared, what about ultra violet? What about you know, you know, all these other kinds of things that we can get from that electromagnetic spectrum. So we need if we attack it in a very broad way and then look at this, we might be able to do something where we might actually be able to
get some results that are meaningful and some helpful data. But it's not the collection of just testimonies from people that said that they saw these objects. That that's not going to get us anyway. Seventy thousand cases and movement that have we made any convincing strides towards producing evidence. No, We've got a lot of good cases that seem to be rather unexplainable, But yet we still struggle
with the fact that we can't provide anything that makes a dent. And as close as we've come so far, I might be the ugly dea case in the sense that you do get something that's kind of interesting in the sense that it's an infrared kind of video, but anyway, were lacking those kind of
other kinds of like you know, tools being applied. And again it's more scientific mindedness and a definite specific approach that has to be taken, and that means we need to get those kinds of people who think that way together. Yeah, and you know what I'm saying, and that's that's the critical thing
we've got to be able to come up with. Yeah, and I understand move On's movement and the intense pressure because when I was doing PR you know, we get so many people why don't you do this, why don't you do that? And I used to always say, well, we can't do everything for everybody. There's other groups doing some of those sort of things. We've got to focus on what other people aren't doing, which is our mission statement, which is the science. But you know, some people get disappointed
with that, and so it's always a struggle. But It's great that there because my heart, even though I cover everything in this field and I try to cover, you know, what's going on out there to share with people, my heart is in the science area. So I've always try to keep an eye and grease the wheels and keep that sort of thing happening. It always makes me think of that JFK and let's see if I could do a
good impression. It always makes me think of his quote, we chose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Wow, you did that very well. Did you like it that I do? Okay, you did a great job. All Wow, I think you could be the next next movie and that would be great and you can play it apart. That would be
fun do that. But yeah, exactly, I think to me, it's like one of those things where it's like and that's precisely it's hard, but it's also doing it smartly. So I think that, you know, if we focus our efforts on going after like what we can and tackling the best cases we can come up with and going into greater detail for example, you know, I mean, we couldn't figure out what the Aguadia thing is.
But I mean we spent two years looking at that. But I mean there are cases like that that you need to spend a lot of time, you know, and you really need to do the digging, and you need to have scientific minded people approaching it. It's not just like let me fill out a report form and have it done within a ninety day window. So I think that, you know, there are some cases that want to the fact that you spend a lot more time on it, and you should put to
a full court press. And especially when you get like evidence that comes out, like you know, in the form of maybe a video, a very good video clip with a lot of references, but and maybe it's an infrared that's something relatively new to us. We just need to take the time to look at it, analyze it, get smart about it, and find out what we can do. And so I think that that's you know, we need to do scientific approaches to it and to really think things through. And
that's kind of like what I've done with this Cloverdale project. Mm hmm. Yeah. So Agua Dan, for those who don't remember, we've talked about it so much and last time you were on the show, we talked about it quite a bit, but the homeland security case that was handled outside of Muffin, it was actually handled with a group you and others form called the
Scientific Coalidal Coalition for Eufology, which now you know I'm involved with. Also that we're getting some more movement around it to have it one of hopefully a bastion of scientific thought and work towards this field. But this new case is exciting because you know, we've talked a lot about the Hesdelen Lights on the show, because that's exciting where they have these light phenomena that happens in Denmark, but Cloverdale essentially is something similar right in your neck of the witch.
Maybe you can explain what this phenomena is and how far observations of it have gone back. Sure well as a being I live in Huntsville, which is if you look at it, it's like maybe fifteen minutes south of the Tennessee state line and it's in the middle part of that northern section of the state.
I had monthly move on meetings. I still have these meetings. We just don't call them move on. But I mean I got these people that are that are meeting and all along while I've been here in the Huntsville area that I've had people, you know, make occasional mentions of ball lightning or ball lights that they call them, that were over and they would call them orbs, they call them, all different kinds of things that were flying around
this area just north of Florence, which if you look at Florence, Alabama,
it's pretty much over near the Mississippi state line. But anyway, I would get people telling me about these like lots of lights that are being seen over there, and I kind of like, okay, well, lights, you know, and then I wou occasionally get a move on reports from people of Vicinity who would be describing these orbs that were moving around and doing some interesting things, and so I, you know, I would check them out, you know, and typically I didn't see that there was like a repeatable
phenomena. Could have been an aircraft, could have been could all these different kinds of things. Well, uh, I got a hold actually I was contacted by a gentleman by the name of Wyatt Cox. Uh. In fact, he contacted me several years ago and mentioned something about these lights that were over in an area of Cloverdale and and then we just recently got back into touch with each other. And of course now I'm I'm I've got a lot more time because I'm not doing the move on stuff, but I've got I
said, well, let's focus on that. Let's see what it is. So basically what I did is, I uh, He's published a book. It's called Uh I Believe the Cloverdale Spook Lights and anyway, it's and he had him and another friend of his that I guess they were living in the Florence area, became aware of this and these lights that were moving around people's
farms that are up in that area. And they, I mean they were saying that they would see lights that would that would be rather large, that would be moving around and in fact they would be you know, going up near trees or in between trees, and then they would get up to a
certain altitude. And anyway, these things were being reported by the residents, but nobody or they would talk about it, and it's kind of like, oh, there's those lights again, you know, I mean, they didn't report it, and so consequently it's like, you know, turns out a lot of residents over there know about this. Thing. Well, he became aware of it, and him and his friend spent from roughly right around like this is right around the nineteen seventy three time period, and basically they were
starting to see the reports. Just like you know, nineteen seventy three was up very hot year for UFO reports in general, as you very well know, that's a major flat year. But it seemed as though that there were these lights that were being seen around the Florence and north of that Florence area.
And so him his friend would go out and they would try to see what they could find, and they were got permission to be able to go on people's farms and some clearing kind of areas, and they would they started to document the fact that there were these lights that were out there. In fact, basically he came up with some sort of a way of classifying them, and he talks about in his book where you have and then it's kind
of by color. So you have a white light, you'll have a blue light, and then you'll have kind of like an orange or yellow orange kind of like light that and those three primary colors tend to be the most common. The sizes were interesting in the sense that the white and the blue tend to be roughly two to four feet in diameter, while the yellow orange tend
to be about eight foot in diameter. And they started noticing that and again as these things are moving around, like a good example of how they came up with the eight foot in diameter, with the fact that this thing was above a railroad track and so you could actually get an estimate and you knew the size of the railroad track and so on. Anyway, they talk about this in their book, and it seems that those colors have an association pretty
much with the time of year that you look at these things. So during the summer months they tend to be more whitish, as the days gets cooler and the nights gets cooler, and for the fall they tend to be more in this yellow orange. The blue ones kind of like you know, are popping up here, there and everywhere in terms of the time period, at least as far as I could see from or what I've learned so far.
But the definitely and the cooler nights from a period of like about October through maybe like you know, about March or something of that nature, or April, you could go into this area and they tended to be that large variety and the frequency of them could be that you're seeing many of these things, and they generally are after just after sundown and up to maybe like about midnight,
that's when they were out there. And so you could on some nights you'd be able to go out there and see as many as three or four of these things. Wow. And the other thing is that they don't seem to be impacted at all by wind. So you've got these lights that apparently they said that they seemingly moved up from the ground and they start rising and then they're moving in a straight line. They tend to go east and west or west to east, and they are basically, you know, like I
said, not impacted by wind. They've they tend to be these balls of if you would like a like a plasma or something like a ball plasma. Uh. You had a situation on one particular case, and this was in the newspaper articles for the Florence paper over there. They spoke of a woman who saw an object and then a short time after that, feathers came flying out of the sky. Well that that indicates maybe a bird went into one,
you know, and was immediately zapped or something you have. But I mean again, so this repeatable phenomenon you can actually go take a look at. Now for the most part, we believe, I mean, I think we're all pretty much in agreement that they are a natural phenomena. And especially when you look at other you know that the fact that there seems to be
these areas where you have those kind of multiple things. So if you look at it, like you know, doctor Harley Rutlich talked about the Piedmont sightings in nineteen seventy three that were going on, and these lights that we're moving around. You have the Marphall lights, You've got the Brown Mountain lights.
And by the way, I just we just basically looked at Joshua pier Warren's presentation that he gave several years ago for you on the Brown Mountain lights, and in fact, we took a look at that video and a lot of his descriptions and things like you said, you know, and him and I
have been in conversation with each other, are very very similar. I mean, going back to the time of the year and the fact that it's cooler and that seems to make the lights of different color and more frequent, and you know, he was looking at it from the standpoint that it might have some sort of relationship to what they called K waves and the it's like space weather if you look at some sort of space weather relationship that there showed that.
Plus you the Brown Mountain area, you've got a large number of you know, fault lines that are ruping along this mountain chain if you would where if you go look at for the geophysical kind of like maps for the area that we're talking about, you'll see that there's maybe like one fault that's going north to south, but it's a very small one. And we've got to take a quick break and then we'll talk some more about that aspect of it.
But you mentioned nineteen seventy three was actually the year I was born, and I suspect, you know, there's a video out there that relates to how I believe I came to this planet. It's called rocket by Baby. It's a Bugs Bunny the Looney tune. So google Looney Tunes Rocket by Baby if you want to see my origin story, Do you remember that video? I sure do. Yeah, that's a great one. All right, So we're gonna take a quick break for kg r A. Of course, podcast
listeners will be right back. But for kg r A, you're gonna hear a lot of great commercials, so definitely patronize the commercials that you hear here. But we'll be back in just a minute with Open Minds Radio. All right, we are back with Rich Hoffman talking about the Cloverdale spook lights is what they used to be called, or at least the researchers you meant mentioned Wyatt Cox had a book called Spook Lights about these lights. Now you were
talking about some of the other light phenomena like Marpha lights. I had mentioned Hesdelin before, but in the Hesdelin Lights, what was surprising he said this that, you know, I don't know what's his name, Eric, you're talking about Errand erling Strand. Yeah. At the move On symposium that you and I both spoke at, and then at our UFO congress last year, he has been investigating those lights with a lot of different devices and things like
that. He had mentioned that, you know, a lot of people out there believe them to be some sort of uh, you know, natural phenomena, but he disagreed. He felt there was some sort of intelligence behind these
objects. You mentioned earlier that you feel that the lights here in Alabama and possibly the Marpha lights and others do have a natural uh an answer that may lie in like some sort of natural phenomena you think, Yeah, I think that we all tend to seemingly agree that they're not there, that they they tend to be some sort of a ball plasma of some sort of nature. And you know, I mean it's like anything that we we I think, you know, going back to whether or not these have I mean some sort
of sentience and can think, and some I mean they don't. I mean, for example, these move in a straight line, and they may disappear and they then suddenly they'll come back and appear, but they eventually they go out, they h and at least the ones over in Cloverdale now they're they're moving in pretty much a straight line path, uh and where you might and you see others that have a little bit more deviation to them in terms of
their flight path or the path that they take. And I and I would only cautions that that you know, we as humans tend to be answerpomorphic and we want to be able to turn anything we see and make patterns out of it, and our minds would interpret something and say, oh, it looks
like it looks like it's got intelligence. And I've heard that commonly. I've heard that applied to these types of ball lights that that people see that will move around and they'll kind of like move maybe even move around to person. And I've also seen reports where for example, you know, oh, here's
something interesting. So I remember even a move on case where you had a red orbed light that was that was moving toward a car that was actually heading at about sixty five miles an hour, and the object came over next to that and and stayed up with that same speed of the vehicle from one side and then kind of like went over to the other side. And you had, you know, the food fighter phenomenons kind of like that, you know, in a sense that they kind of came up near a plane and they
might move around the plane like there's some sort of an intelligence there. Well, here you had this case in the Cloverdale where there's an instance where they see the light above the track and the train comes and at that point where that the train comes, it now kind of like attaches itself and is following along with the train. Now to me, if you look at all those kind of instances right there, what do you see? You see an object
that is next to a metallic object. Okay, these are moving vehicles, these are moving aircraft, and in what do we know? I mean there's probably a you know, well, there's batteries and everything else associated with it. So I think that what happens is there's they have some sort of electromagnetic connection or magnetic connection to that object, which is why they suddenly trail with the birth of the plane, the train and you know and everything else.
So I think that we might say, oh, well, that seems like it's pretty intelligent because it was doing that. But maybe it's just the fact that again there's a connection to it being near metallic object. Yeah, that's interesting. And you know, you also mentioned that they mostly move east west, which is also interesting. Yeah, and it's interesting in that sense that
there's this repeatable pattern. And so you know, that's what's curious about it for me is like, are there you know, and any underground water, uh maybe like kinds of rivers if you would, are they trailing that? And so are they are there anything? Is there a magnetic kind of effect
that's going on that makes it want to trail that way. And so part of what we want to do with the project is actually get some baselines and go up and find measurement, do measurements, find out what we can to see if there's any kind of you know, thing like that that may be coming into play. I mean, why do they go east to west?
Why out? I mean or west to east and in that direction? Uh, And from what I've seen in terms of the geological studies and stuff like that that I've got, uh, you don't really see anything that sticks out like this is what would be causing it? Mm hmm. And that I mean that would be big for uphology too. And that's what's exciting about these projects, even when it comes to these balls of light, is that if it can be proven there is a phenomena of balls of light that you know,
move around, you know, they can be visible at night. I mean, that would be a big deal for euthology. And that sure, some people may be bummed, and I think a lot of people don't want to know if something like that exists, But that way it helps us to know what's really unusual. Yeah, to me, you're absolutely right, And to me, al, I mean, you know it as well as I
do. The vast majority of the UFO cases that we get are typically if out there are explainable phenomena, right, So it's when we get down into some of these things because science doesn't have an answer to what these orbs are, these like these types of like you know, lights or luminous phenomena, I think that we would benefit our uthology by being able to understand these so that we could clearly eliminate them from being the uf UP. You know what
I'm saying. So let's let's get to know this this phenomena that keeps getting reported that we can't explain and they end up being thrown into the UFO category when indeed they have an explanation as being high fos so and I think that this helps us out from a standpoint of understanding atmospheric physics and so so to me, I think that there's benefit in doing this, uh and for us to get smarter about the things that we know and UH And because these things,
like I said, are relatively unknown and we are trying to figure them out, let's let's get an answer to them and we can eliminate them from the UFO equation, so m h. And also, yeah, they're not
tied to jumps. They're not tied just to these areas, is what I'm also is that whatever phenomena is creating this thing, whether it be you know, whether it be a pah ol electric type of thing from a fault zone or whatever like that, or some people suggest that it might be a gas that somehow ignites the fact that it goes into a plasma state which is extremely hot by the way I mean, and it does what it does, we ought to understand the physics of how that thing happens and it would help us
out in a lot of different ways. Sorry. Yeah, I think it also helps legitimize the field of UFO study, because you know, when the definition of a UFO is something that we haven't identified yet, if we begin to identify and especially come up with more prosaic answers, but something that's unknown and that adds to science, I think that really legitimizes the field and the
research. I can't agree with you more. And the fact that we can now get technology pretty inexpensively we can go out and get some readings on this. We can might be able to get some sort of like indications. I intend to go out there with an and fly it as close as I can without but again going back to want to be able to film it up close
learn from it. That way, we're going to be looking at and I've actually got Shallon Halt that is going to be providing me some of his devices and we're going to be putting those out into farming areas and seeing if that
will help register anything. And I'm looking for other people who are interested, by the way, and some of your listeners who would be interested in the We're looking around the late fall and maybe early winter time frame of this year, but to actually go out and we're looking to be able to set up our gear and stuff like that where and you might have they might have gear that we'd like to be able to test and to do anything to gather data that we can. So that's kind of like where I'm hoping to go.
And I've been building a project plan, looking at the types of things and trying to set up, you know, different times of experiments that we can do. I've got people that are I've already talked to a couple of colleges and they're going to get back to me with some whether they're going to have some support. But cool, there you go, Yeah, that's really cool. So yeah, that's kind of the future of what you're doing here is
that you know, you want to take it to that next level. So I guess what you're going to be doing is kind of similar to some of those projects you had mentioned earlier has done being one of them, but like the uphotog project or UFO data where they're putting together kind of these viewing stations right where they can film and get other types of telemetry on these objects.
Yeah, and I exactly, And what we lack is throughout this whole you know UFO phenomena is good data and that you're going back to the point where I think a lot of people feel that that's you know, the scientific study
of UFOs has been a way it has. I'm giving us anything, right, but we've never had these tools before until now, and we didn't have people that were willing to go out and to do this kind of like level of grunt work and rigor and so I mean I've always said, you know that we have for the longest period of time, I mean, in in the UFO history of the United States, on the known side. We have had little scientific study of this phenomenon. Mm hmm. We've had scientists who
sat there read reports. But what I'm saying is engaging and putting equipment out and and there's there's very few of that. You have people that like Ray Stanford had projects starlighted international years and years ago that that I was impressed with, where he actually had some equipment, And there's been maybe a few others, but not it's not been you know, uh done from a broader standpoint,
and we've not attacked and we're just now getting started with that. So I think that we might be able to get more scientific data now than we could in the past. Why do you think that hasn't happened in the past. I well, I think that, you know, I think it's a matter of that the technology wasn't there. I mean, who had a computer in the nineteen you know, before nineteen eighty, you know, I mean who had that? You know when I did my investigations back in the early
days of sixty four and after that, I didn't have any equipment. I didn't have anything that I could really do it. The pair of binoculars I had maybe a Geiger counter I had. That's about it, you know. I mean I had accomplished I could have walked around with, but I didn't have any you know, and no funding to be able to do it. So it was all just me walking around the fields trying to do what I could do and going investigating cases. And you know that didn't really amount to
much. And then you'd hear about maybe some people that said, well, we ought to do this, but we just you know, the cost of technology was too great. I mean, now you can you know, your smartphone is way more capable of doing all different kinds of things. It's got a grab a meter, it's it's got uh the all types of other kinds of things associated with it, the accelerometers. So my cell phone alone can
become a tool. I I just bought the other day a way that I can get a diffraction grading attached to my my phone and I can get a spectral image. Now, so I mean that's that's unheard of. I mean, you know, you can use your smartphone to be able to record radiation. They've got a little attached bustle they help you to do that. So I you know, you're you have Tesla meter which there's a little app that allows you to be able to do uh, two different different things like that
with the magnetic relationship. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the tools are out there now, they're they're getting down to the root level, and now the time to be able to attack it. And I think that that's why it wasn't done in the past. They just didn't have tools, they couldn't get money for yeah, resources, I mean the few groups like well, and not only that, people seem not as excited unfortunately with some of those findings. I guess it's always kind of the case with science.
I just got done watching the whole mini series on Einstein Genius from National Geographic, which was great, and he had sort of the same problem. For some reason, he became famous, mostly probably because of his hair, but unfortunately people didn't care about the details of things he was excited about.
Often because even France, for example, they've been able to spend some resources and they have discovered some cases in which there was a physical effect on electro magnetic effect in particular in a couple of cases, and they're really excited about that. And that has actually even though through old cases inspired them to continue
investigating UFOs to this day. So there is a little bit of science that's been done out there, but it takes a lot of resources and time and money and equipment that just so far, you know, that billion researchers haven't been able to afford exactly exactly. So I'm encouraged. I think that the future is wide open in the form of science and technology being applied to UFOs
because it's getting affordable. And you know, if you have those people around the country that are interested in science and want to apply it, we're all game for that. I mean, that's applaud the effort. I mean, but we need to also do the rigor of winding up our reports and getting them into scientific journals and having them peer reviewed, all those things that you
would expect. And I say that because you just don't want to have make articles sent out to the world and then it all gets criticalized, you know, and everybody's going to be critical of it. Well, it's not science.
And even scientists when they put together their papers and they try to get them peer reviewed, go through a very lot of abuse and a lot of time and effort from other scientists, you know, so I guess what I'm trying to say is we've got to figure this out, and how can we do it, and how can we work jointly with I'll say this right now, between even skeptics and debunkers and everything else, if you apply scientists to
it, I think that you find a less resistance. But they seem to want to go after the fact that we didn't do our homework, that we weren't disciplined, and we weren't this and if you have facts and data that can stand up on their own and expert opinion, and often it's hard to get these experts when you aren't a credible organization or you're not doing things in
a way that they recognize as credible. So that's really important too. Yeah, So we for those of us who have an interest in the UFO phenomena wanting to solve it or to explain it or come up with answers and stuff like that, we really have to become more disciplined and more objective, and we have to ditch all these crazy ideas about you know, the secret space programs and all other stuff like that and start to really focus on the study of the phenomena as it stands right now. Yeah, I mean, and
go ahead. I was just getting excited about that comment because it's like, yeah, you can have you can have anecdotal information all day long, and of course those have us in this field receive that anecdotal information all day long. Extraordinary claims. But as Carl say, you can said, you know, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which sets our bar really high, but you know, it's it's worth the effort. By the way, I like
what Stanton Freeman says, extraordinary extra extordinary claims requires extraordinary investigation. Ah, that's a really good one too, which yeah, he's put in some really hard work in the past, no doubt about that. Well, we're pretty much out of time, but I am really excited. And that's what's fun bringing people like you on because there are people, and I know a lot of our listeners who get kind of bummed, you know, with when they
see a lot of groups organizations moving towards the fringe. Not that it's you know, everybody has a right to do what they want, but it's scary to see people move away from some of the harder stuff that I think it's going to be more fruitful, especially with getting the mainstream involved with all of this, and so it's great to see people like you that are continuing to just kind of roll up your sleeves and get at it. And I'm looking
for more people that want to do that too. So yeah, by all means, that's that's what we need, and thank you for helping us to get the word out to people that this is what we need to do as well. For sure. All right, well, thank you so much for coming on the show again. The time flew. Oh my gosh, it felt like a couple of minutes instead of you know, forty five minutes or so. So thanks for coming on again, and I'm sure we'll be talking again in the future. All right, now, you have a nice one
night summer, by the way, Yeah you too. Thank you so much to Rich Hoffman for being on the show. Really exciting stuff. It's so cool that you know there is science being done out there, and that there are people doing the hard, hard work to try to investigate some of this phenomena in a more scientific way. I know it's a lot of hard work, but it's so doing in my humble opinion, and I'm very happy that
people like Rich are doing this now. He talked about the Scientific Coalition for Ufology and they are the group that investigated the Puerto Rico case that you know, we've had Robert Powell on, We've had Morgan Biel on or bell on, and we've had rich On talking about that. You can see that report at the Scientific Coalition for Ufology website which is explore SCU dot org. Explore SCU dot org. You can see the video and get the full report.
Also, you might see it online, especially like at the open Mind UFO news Facebook group. People battling and kind of having ideas about what is in that video, and the SCU is taking a look at that, and they do take people very seriously. In fact, I think that they really do a lot of work and bend over backwards for the critics out there, because you know, they invite criticism, actually constructive, credible criticism, So they
are trying to answer those questions. And you can see that at that website explore SEU dot org. So we'll see what happens with that as time goes on. Will they discover this to be something mundane or will it be discovered that it is something much much more mysterious. Stay tuned so you could check that out. Also, as we said earlier, you know, the SEU is going to be doing more and more exciting stuff now that rich is freed
up time because he's not doing the move on thing. I know he and others are going to be spending more time doing some really cool research and you know, getting to bet together people who are interested in the science of things. Otherwise, thank you so much for joining us. You can go to open Minds doat TV to find out about any of the stuff that we talked about, all of those stories that Martin and I talked about Open Minds dot
TV. Of course, like I say, go to my Facebook and my my Twitter account so you can follow some of my adventures coming up in next week. And my Facebook you can just find Alejandro t Rojas and you'll see in parentheses open Minds for that account, and then also for Twitter, it's just Alejandro t Rojas, So please go check that out. I would love for you to join me on my trips. On my journey to Mars,
I ought to be a lot of fun or boodha pest. I don't know why, but I really when I see the word buddapest and I'd like to say pest. I don't know if that's a real accent that people say, and I got that from television, but I just boo that pest. It just sounds fun to do that, and that's how I like to say the name of that town. And it's interesting that I'll actually be there. But
otherwise, UFO Congress lots of new stuff going on there. You can go, there's getting there's new videos up on the video on demand, including my video and what Ryan Sprague We've got up there, and I've got more of that. It'll be coming up next week. So also ufocongress dot com and you can see some of the speakers that we've listed. In fact, one of the people we're going to have is Anne Druffels. Some of you that know her will know how exciting that is because she hasn't been around for a
while and she's been a researcher for many, many years. So that's going to be a lot of fun. And yeah, just go to ufocongress dot com to see more. Because I'm running out of time and I want to say thank you. I want to say thank you to Caleb Hanks for the opening end close music. I want to say thank you to Systematics who created that bumper music for me. I also want to thank kg R for hosting
open Minds Now. I hope you KGr A listeners are enjoying us. And then I also want to thank Martin Martin Willis from podcast UFO for joining me with the news. He's always a lot of fun. He is a goofy fella. So thank you to everybody, and of course, as usual, thank you to you the listener. I am so happy that you listen.
Go check out the Devil's Tower thing, because again I love to see listeners and it's always fun to see people who listen to the show and say hey and see what you look like, and all of that good stuff happens at every conference and it's a lot of fun. But anyway, you can find out more about that Devil's Tower rendezvous at UFO at open Minds dot tv on the event page or google the Devil's Tower UFO rendezvous. That is all time is up until next time. Audios moves