Quicksand

swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacence, people went to and fro of the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small spinning fragment of solar driftwood, which, by chance or design man has inherited out of the dark mystery of time and space. Yet across an immense ethereal goat minds that are to our minds as always that are

the beasts in the jungle. Intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this birth with envious eyes, and slowly and sure they drew their plans against US. If, like we're doing here, you look at the UFO era in the United States is a developing modern legend, then one of the protagonists is Alan Heinek. Heinik, who he met in the last episode, was the consulting scientists for Project Blue Book, and in that capacity was deeply involved in the early years of

official investigation into UFO reports. But what really makes him noteworthy in this context is that he went from a vowed skeptic at the beginning of his work too, if not exactly endorsing the view that extraterrestrials for visiting Earth, certainly making the case that the UFO phenomenon was real and required scientific scrutiny. I'm Toby Ball and this is Strange Arrivals. Episode six quicksand In Joseph Campbell, a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College, published his opus of

comparative mythology, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In it, he described a type of folk narrative he called the hero's journey. Like the US quote, a hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces are there encountered, and a decisive victory is one. The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man end quote. Campbell thought that mythic tales across cultures

and time followed basic narrative patterns. One of these was the hero's journey. I'm not going to make the case that Alan Heinik is a hero in the usual sense, though I know that many people consider him to be just that. But the way that his career has been positioned in UFO lore adheres to the hero's journey story. He has called from his job in the ordinary world, enters the strange world of UFO, encounters and emerges with a message that UFOs are real, even if he doesn't

know exactly what they are. So it's this journey that we are going to follow over the next few episodes, how Heineck's outlook towards UFOs changed, and how that coincided with the winding down of Project Blue Book. Heineck story begins in Chicago, where he was raised by his parents, who are Czech emigres. When he was about eight years old, he had scarlet fever and he was a voracious reader.

He read every book in the house, and his parents would go to neighbors to ask if they could borrow books from neighbors author Mark O'Connell, and one of the books ended up being an astronomy textbook. So Heinech read that from cover to cover and he was completely entranced by the world of stars and planets, and he says it at a j he was pretty sure that's what

he wanted to do with his life. And then he, you know, he went to college and studied astrophysics and became a professor of astronomy, first at the Ohio State University, later on at both Harvard and then Northwestern in Evanston, Illinois. So his his whole life was pretty much a straight shot between getting that astronomy book when he was sicking bed at a j and then going to you know, being a really successful and very very well known and

highly respected astronomer in the fields of academia. But it's his work on UFOs that he is best known for. Here's Heinik in the radio interview on w i n S describing how he came to consult with the Air Force on UFOs sightings. When how did you get involved with UFOs? Price by accidents and by for property. Really, I happened to be teaching astronomy at Ohio State University,

which is just a two miles from Dayton. And when the science suffer um era really began in seven, the responsibility for kicking it out and monitoring it was given to the Air Force in the head right field and maybe didn't cunomer to help pass the judgment as to how many of the reports could be attributed to meteors, ours planers, go forth, and I just happened to be a handy astronomer, and I, well, you might say, the

one thing led to another. I became interested in some of the really oddball cases that we clearly didn't have an astronomical explanation, and my curiosity with the rouses too how those might be explained. Heinik was contracted at the beginning of the Air Force's investigation into UFOs when it was known as Projects Signed. He came in with the assumption that the job of explaining away UFO sightings would be relatively straightforward word and this turned out to be

true in the vast majority of cases. As part of Projects Signed. Heinich looks to this stack of UFO reports and at the end he comes to the conclusion that he's able to explain away about of these reports. They're either misidentifications of the planet Venus or the star ar tourists, or it's a meteor shower, or it's a sun dog.

And the leftover he's not too concerned about those because he feels like, well, if I had enough time and resources, and I had a staff working with me, we could probably get to the bottom of those other as well and explain them away. Heinik did his work for Projects Sign, got paid, and that was it for a couple of years.

During that time, Projects Signed became Project Grudge, then Project blue Book, the name it operated under until the Air Force officially ended UFO investigations at the end of the nineteen sixties. But in the early nineteen fifties, the Air Force realized that they needed Heinich again. The director of Project Blue Book comes back to visit Heineck at the university and says, Hey, guess what those UFOs that we all laughed about a couple of years ago, They never

went anywhere. We still have stacks of reports, and because you did such a good job with this two years ago, we'd like to rehire you too, to do what you did last time, go through all these reports and explain away as many of them as you can as genuine astronomical events and objects. And Heinek accepts the job and he starts going through these reports, and again he's able

to explain away about them pretty handily. But it occurs to him that, wow, this is now like three plus years since I first started looking at these reports, and there's a very consistent year after year that I can't explain. This new collection of data showing that cases weren't easily explained. Changed Heine's thinking a little. He no longer assumed that if given time, he'd be able to explain them all away. Nick started thinking, well, I need to start looking at

these in a different way. I need to start looking at these as sort of a scientific puzzle and applying scientific research methods to, you know, trying to determine what these things are. So Heinek decided that he would look at those of cases that he wasn't able to explain. Those became his focus on blue Buck, and he began to try to direct blue Bucks resources towards focusing on those cases specifically. But these cases were not the priority

for Heine's bosses in the Air Force. Hinik came to feel that his attempts to focus resources on difficult to explain cases, we're stymied from above. The exceptions were a small number of cases that broke through to the popular media, newspapers or the nightly news. There'd be so much pressure on the Air Force to come up with an answer that they would reluctantly say, Okay, go to Albuquerque, Okay, go to ann Arbor, figure out what happened, and take

care of it. Albuquerque was the Lonnie Zamora case that we looked at in the last episode. Ann Arbor was an even more confounding case, one that would change the

trajectory of Heineck's journey into UFO investigations. In March of nineteen sixty six, there was a wave of UFO sightings that were concentrated in southeast Michigan, but we're part of a larger wave, almost a three year sort of peak of sightings that sort of swept from northeast Ohio all the way up to the upper peninsul of Michigan and Wisconsin.

Host of the Saucer Life podcast, Aaron Gullias and in March of nineteen sixty six, there were sightings in southeast Michigan centered around the communities of Dexter and Hillsdale, Hillsdale College in particular, and the sightings began at the family farm of a man named Frank Manor. Frank Manner owned a farm in the town of Dexter. On the night of March his family saw lights coming from the swamp

near his house. One night, a farm family saw some strange lights in the swamp down below their house, and the father and son went out to find out what was in the swamp, and they ended up seeing all sorts of strange lights that were moving around strangely, seeming to hover or lift off and then settle back down again. The lights would disappear from one part of the swamp

and reappear in another part of the swamp. From w j R Radio in Detroit, eight four year seven year old prime matter of Farmer and his nineteen year old son Ronalds said they approached within a hundred yards of austrain the object excited last night. They said it lay in a swamp of head pole setting lights on each end. Manner said it was fitted like coral rock kind about the length of the car. He said, it's shapeless, like that of a football. Matter said his son then said,

look at that horrible thing in the craft vanished. They called the authorities and the local authorities and Dexter came out and took statements. Reports went out to the local newspapers, and the next day there were people sort of camped out waiting for another sighting. Washington County Sheriff Doug Harvey investigated the scene. Although he was unable to find any evidence of a landing, the sheer number of reported sightings had him convinced that there was something in the skies here.

Harvey talks with newsman William Harris for Detroit radio station w j R H was completed the investigation, all of seen under fighting life. They're all to be discover We've found nothing out there. There's no indication that every not a word to come down or the mister manners. So they come down where my officers stated in the area when it come down, also they got your kind of picked up nothing. There was all flap grad flap brodt

very then to indicate sping in lander Breck whatever. Do you have any series of the hoppers might be I wish I did. I wish handful man that I I don't. I were a little doubt for first way first sighting this among the seven teams we sided with first one. My men did that again, only eight teens, and then last night and now we've got too many people, too many train officers. They have also seen that. So I my daughter is gone. I know these teens things, what

are they? They don't know. So while the manner citing attracted news coverage, it wasn't a nice lated incident. Others had seen lights or even objects. In previous days. You had a number of people, including sheriff's deputies, seeing things in the sky, not just lights, but also sort of structured craft, sort of football shaped things with what was described as a quilted surface, almost like a waffle pattern, antenna sticking off it, and lights around the edge of

the craft. And these craft were, you know, like nothing the witnesses had ever seen. And then came another sighting that seemed to erase any doubt that something was going on. After the break. In the spring of nineteen southern Michigan was hit with a rash of strange sightings, including ones with multiple witnesses, but there had been no mass sighting, an event witnessed by a large group of people, an event that could not be brushed aside as confusion or misinterpretation.

But that changed. On the night of March one, there were a number of young women in a dorm at Hillsdale College not too far away who saw some strange lights in the sky. And you know, it was one of these mass sightings where you have dozens of people

seeing the same thing at the same time. So you've got like eighty seven women in this dorm, all looking out of their windows at these strange lights in the swamp down below, and they call in the county Civil Service agent and he takes one look at these lights and says, well, that's obviously a vehicle. That's obviously a spaceship. Of course, he had none he had no basis for saying that, but that's what he said, and that was the you know, that was what the story became, was, Wow,

we've had these multiple sightings of spaceships in Michigan. That County Civil Service agent was William Van Horne. Here he is talking with w j R News. To be on the surface of the earth, on the ground However, I don't feel that it was, because it moved very freely, uh from left to right and right to left at various times which it would be impossible great type of vehicle on we os or on the ground to move that moves because of the boggy maggy note than the

marching port in there. But at the time that I first observed it would say that on the right was the quite a dem orange new colored light and to the left was quite a kind of dem quite light, and it was a approximately twenty five feet in between the two lights. Uh. Now I was observing this with binocuvers, and at this distance after darkness, pretty hard to estimate the distance there. It would at time rise from its position just over the surface, and I'm a rising lights

to become more brilliant. And at the time from our minute airport here we had a beacon which was throwing out a beam or light as a beacon does around the area, and the vehicles seem to go up and as it would get up to a type of approximate heard gun fifty here the moudemn mort beam a light be keep staying there and then would descend back down. In other words, it was appeared to me that it was attempting to stay out of this beam a light

that was coming around. Among the eighty seven student witnesses at Hills l College was Josephine Wilson, an eighteen year old from Cleveland. Well, I never leave, That's when I thought. And I saw this. It wasn't anything horrendous. I mean nothing that's like a big ball of fire in front of your eyes. But it was very sat and after lot at the two hours and seeing it however around

and change light and seeing it glow. Um, I don't think I'm gonna plan so much in our and say definitely, definitely, you know such thing as remember in last week's episode, when the Robertson panel expressed concern about the possible psychological effects UFOs might cause. They were also concerned that the Soviet Union might be able to use UFOs to manipulate the American public to instill panic. Here in Michigan seemed to be a case where these concerns might become a reality.

With this many people seeing UFOs in a small area and over a small period of time, how would the public react. There is a long history of public officials being afraid of public panic. My name is Jesse Walker. I worked at Reason magazine. I wrote The United States of Paranoia of conspiracy theory, and I also wrote another

book about the history of radio. And the interesting thing is that in that Cold War moment, I mean a little bit later than what you're talking about, I think some sociologists went to investigate how people behave I mean natural disasters, you know, sort of the classic time people expect mass panic, and they found that panic is rare. People sort of moved towards cooperation. Crime declines usually as

opposed to like the orgy of looting. I mean, there's a few times there's been like looting and stuff that's basically amounts to a disaster coinciding with a riot. And the further follow up studies looked at as another context, you know, like you technological disasters and so on. In other words, studies eventually showed that a full on public panic was a very unlikely outcome, regardless of the circumstances. But this wasn't known when the Robertson Panel issued its

report in ninety three. In six while studies of the sociology of disaster were underway, the conclusions were not well known. The fear of mass panic was still real. A lot of books also at that point still believed the myth of mass panic. After the War the World's broadcast, so in n Um there was a special Halloween edition of the Mercury Theater on the air, which was Cource and wells Is radio drama program, and they did an adaptation of War of the World. The enemy is now inside

about the palace sades five five great matines. First one is crossing the river. I can see it from here, waiting, waiting the Hudson like a man waiting through a brook bullets and has handed me Fran. Cylinders are falling all over the country, one outside of Buffalo, one in Chicago. They Lewis seemed to be timed in space. Now the first machine reaches the shore, it is widely believed that it's set off a mass panic. You know, people are running out in the streets being afraid that the you know,

the world was coming to an end. Basically, several people reported to St. Michael's Hospital in Newark, New Jersey for shock Baltimore Mare and died of a heart attack. Car accidents panicked people in the streets. None of these things happened. The story of the reaction to the program is an urban legend, the one that was briefly promoted by the

popular press. Now later on scholars went back and found that no, most people did understand that it was a work of fiction that they were listening to on the radio. Of the people who did miss the announcement at the beginning, and that it was a play, and who thought they were listening to a real broadcast, most of them thought

it was an invasion of Germans, not Martians. It got sort of played up a lot, I mean, in part because it was newspapers who like losing audiences to radio and wanted to be able to cast radio is this uniquely new threat. And in part, you know, it just sort of fed people's fear of the masses in general, and this idea that people were just easily manipulated by a demagogue within microphone. And of course ours In Welles was happy to have this story going around that he

was such an amazing storyteller. He had you know, the country panicking. I mean, I mean, in addition to being you know, a great popular artist, Orson Welles he understood show business as the stories of the Michigan sightings made it into the national press. The questions began, what is the government going to do about it? Are they going to investigate in this environment? Alan Heinek pressed his boss, Captain Hector Quintinilla, the head of Project Blue Book, to

be sent to Michigan to try to determine what was happening. First, his boss at Project blue Book said no, we're ignoring this, and Heineck was very frustrated. Well, a little while later he gets a call from his boss at the Air Force again he says, all right, go to Michigan. The press attention had made not investigating an untenable position. They were embarrassed by their inaction, and so they decided they had to do something. So they send Heineck to Michigan.

And in Michigan, Heinik encountered the case that would be the turning point of his career, the confrontation in his hero's journey that would eventually bring him back to the public with a new message next time on Strange Arrivals. Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heeart, three D audio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky. This episode was written and hosted by Toby Ball and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Josh Thame, with executive producers Alex Williams,

Matt Frederick, and Aaron Manky. And special thanks to Wendy Connors, creator of the Faded Discs archive of UFO related audio on archive dot org. Learn more about Strange Rivals over at grimm and mild dot com, and find more podcasts from My Heart Radio by visiting the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H