First Contact

Chaz is hiking the mountains of Silver Plume, Colorado, on his way to watch the Perseid meteor shower. But that night, the lights aren’t just falling from the sky… they are rising from the ground too.

• 0:14Speaker 00

  Humpty Dumpty snuck out late at night. Humpty got snatched up by a beam of green light. All the king's horses and all the king's men never did see poor Humpty, not ever again. You've crossed over the spook, you've got the shadow. Stay tuned.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  Why have so many crop circles appeared around Britain? How did thousands of people demonstrate powers of telepathy? Can the dead suck the life from the living? Join me, Tim Harford, for a trip into the paranormal throughout Halloween month on Cautionary Tales. Listen to Cautionary Tales on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:25Speaker 00

  In the Book of Revelation, the narrator, John, describes witnessing something like a city resplendent ascending from the sky. The prophet Ezekiel chronicles seeing something like a giant wheel spinning in the clouds. The Mahabhatra, Arjuna leaps aboard something like a flying chariot and soars into the air. Something like... June 24, 1947, businessman Kenneth Arnold pilots his Calair A2 toward Yakima, Washington.

• 2:03Speaker 00

  He turns toward Mount Rainier and sees nine objects moving in a line, flying formation. He thinks, wow, must be some kind of new military aircraft perhaps, but something's off. Because these objects move strangely. They weave, they bank, they flash in the sun. And so Kenneth does something important. He times them, watches a sweep of his secondhand on his cockpit clock, does the calculation,

• 2:40Speaker 00

  determines that these nine objects are traveling around 1,200 miles per hour, which is insane, considering the sound bearer itself has not been broken yet. And then they're gone. And Kenneth does something very dangerous. He tells people what he saw. Newspapers report that Kenneth Arnold witnessed nine saucer-like objects. Kenneth later says, "That's not what I meant exactly." He meant that the objects moved, kind of like a saucer skipping across water.

• 3:22Speaker 00

  Too late, but people heard flying saucers, so flying saucer it is. Even decades later, he says, he didn't really have words for what he saw. But he saw it just the same, something like saucers, something like a chariot, something like a city, something like a giant wheel in the sky. When what happened is squeezed into a language too small to contain it, maybe what we have is an experience problem, but a translation problem. How do we capture in words something words were never meant to contain?

• 4:06Speaker 00

  And woe betide the person who attempts to relate the unrelatable, who dares describe the ineffable. At best, we might call them prophets. At worst, and far more likely, we will dismiss them as lunatics. Beware what you say, because we put our prophets in cages. And those who walk the shadow learn very quickly, it is far safer to keep your observations to yourself, to pretend that you see what everyone else sees.

• 4:47Speaker 00

  And I'll say this here, the remnants of the Book of Shadow are unhelpful. It describes certain creatures from very, very far away. It names them, it tells us that they are, but does not tell us from whence they came, how they came, or for what purpose they came. Maybe just like the prophets who ever wrote the Book of Shadow, they too ran out of words.

• 5:24Speaker 00

  Spookstars, now.

• 6:13Speaker 00

  Now spooksters, the truth is out there, and there are people who have seen it. I want you to meet Chaz. Chaz loves the outdoors, spends his free time hiking the mountains around Silver Plume, an abandoned mining town in the middle of the Rockies, a few miles south of Denver. And tonight, Chaz is heading up the mountain alone, planning to meet his neighbor Brian and his brother higher up on the trail, where they'll be watching the Perseid meteor shower.

• 6:45Speaker 00

  Spooked.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  I started out the hike maybe seven or eight o'clock. I left Silver Plume behind, headed up this railroad trail that sort of switches back and forth across the front of the mountain. It was a beautiful August night. Silver Plume is very wooded, and around that time of year is when like the leaves start changing, so you get these like yellow bands of aspens interwoven in the green pine trees. The trail can be treacherous at times. I'm coming across a lot of steep cliffs, kept having to detour up and around these little

• 8:07Speaker 02

  like ravines. It got dark about halfway up the mountain, but I was pretty accustomed to these woods and knew them pretty well, so I was comfortable in the dark there. It was probably well past nine, maybe 10 o'clock. At this point, I was expecting to meet my neighbor Brian and his brother Jack. I got to the top of the ridgeline and got cell service again. Got to give them a call, say, "Hey, where are you at?" They tell me, "Hey, man, we're sorry, but we're having dinner in Georgetown, and we're

• 8:51Speaker 02

  probably not going to make it there, but have fun." That's when I realized I'm going to be rolling this adventure solo, which was fine with me. I got to this place called Pavilion Point. It's an amazing viewpoint overlooking the whole valley. I kind of found a comfortable place to sit, built a tiny campfire, and got my backpack off, got my camel back out, so I could lean back and watch the sky. It was about a perfect night as you can get for watching a meteor shower.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Dipping across the sky, almost in any direction, I can see these streaks of light, green, orange, yellow. Sometimes I see two or three at once. The whole Milky Way is sort of silhouetted behind all this, and it's very, very cool, very magical. By the time, it was inching toward midnight, I'd counted well over 100 meteors.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  I was already shifting my mood into sort of packing it up and getting going. So I was sort of gathering my things, getting stuff back into my bag.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  All of a sudden, I see a sort of spotlight turn on at the bottom of the mountain with its light and up the mountain, basically right in my direction.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  And then, right next to it, I see another light pop on.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  In that moment, I realized that I had broken the rules.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  They recently had imposed a pretty strict fire ban in Colorado, which basically meant if you had a campfire and if you got caught, they would fine you up to a thousand or more dollars. I was used to having my own fires up there, and I think it had just slipped my mind. And so, in my head, I'm like, "Oh, man, they got me. I'm caught. Here comes Forest Service."

• 11:23Speaker 02

  And then, almost immediately, these two lights started coming up the mountain.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  I figured, "Here's Forest Service. Now they're on ATVs and they're gonna come up and give me a ticket. I need to be out of here."

• 11:41Speaker 02

  I take what's left of my Camelback and just douse the campfire and started hastily walking back down this trail.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  I got probably 100 yards or more before I decided to turn around and look.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  That's when my heart sank. Right where my campfire was set up, I could just see lights, like flashlight lights, scanning all the trees up there.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  My mind was really spinning at this point, because I couldn't imagine how anything could have gotten there so quickly. But it doesn't matter. I cannot get busted for this. I don't have $1,000 or more. I don't want to get in trouble.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  So I start running.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  I turn around behind me to look. I can see that one of these lights is now coming down the little trail that I'm on.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  And the other light has actually popped out right in front of me. And it's floating up above the trees.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  At this point, I'm assuming that it's drones or something like that, but it's dead silent.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  I don't know what I'm seeing, but it definitely felt like I was being followed. So I just keep running.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  My body's in full sprint mode. The trail is steeper, much thinner. I haven't looked back in a second, but I can tell the light behind me on the trail is closing in.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  All of a sudden, boom, I'm weightless.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Boom, my legs hit this tree. I'm flipping. I don't know what direction's up. And then, boom, I hit the dirt.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  I'm confused. I'm in a lot of pain. I lay my head back. I realized that I had ran right off the edge of a cliff and saw that I was basically 20, 30 feet down from the trail that I was just on.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  I'm patting down my knees, my legs. I realized I'd gotten away for a second from these things, but I also realized I might be gravely injured.

• 14:29Speaker 02

  Now I'm out here in the dark, and I'm not exactly sure where I am.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  As I'm laying there, I see these two lights coming back down the trail that's now in front of me, maybe 40, 50 feet away from me.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  They were moving so slowly, almost at a creeping pace.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  In that moment, I thought, "Well, this is it. Like, they got me."

• 15:03Speaker 02

  But they didn't stop.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  They passed right in front of me.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  And this was the first time I got like a real good look.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  I can see that there're basically what looked like two floating, sort of motorcycles. Just imagine like two big dirt bikes with the wheels taking off, just floating above the ground.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  They were white in color. I can see glowing lights along the side of each bike, ranging from red to orange to yellow. No engine sounds, no fan propeller blades. I'd never seen anything like it.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  I can see there's like a guy riding on top of it like you would a motorcycle. And then, right behind him is a second one with a guy on top of it.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  They look like people in chemical suits. Big, white, grayish, all one-piece, chemical suits.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  And as they're passing in front of me, I'm wondering in my own head, "Did I run off that cliff, smash my head? Am I deaf? What am I even looking at?"

• 16:41Speaker 02

  I obviously didn't want to attract them to where I was. I'm almost holding my breath, and I'm trying to like make my body as small as I can, like just sink back into the mountain.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  They slow down, stop. They hop off these bikes.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  They're human-sized, five, six feet maybe. They weren't talking to each other, so it was just so quiet, just eerie.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  The hoverbike stops, spins around very slowly, 360 degrees, right in place, zero-point turn.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  From the side of the vehicle, they grab what looks like a spear or some kind of digging tool.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  They dig a little hole in the ground. And on the side of the bike, this little sort of compartment opens up, and they shovel some dirt in there.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  And now, my brain is broken. I don't know what I'm seeing.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  They do this just over and over and over. They dig, throw dirt in the side, bike will slowly move a couple feet, spins around, they dig. And it's just the same thing over and over and over.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  All these different thoughts are occurring to me. Why are these things wearing like protective suits? Is there some sort of contamination? Is there something wrong with the air right now? Am I hallucinating? I know what it's like to hallucinate. I have taken substances like that.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  And this was nothing like that. It just felt real.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  All of a sudden, one of them gets moving in my direction.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  He stopped right in front of me, 20, 30 feet away.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  And it just stood there facing me with that dark hood or whatever mask from this chemical suit-looking thing.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  My heart dropped. It just felt like it was staring right at me.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  I'm holding my breath. My heart's like pounding in my ears. I was like squinting my eyes, because I didn't want this thing to see like the whites of my eyes. It felt like ages.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  And then, he just turned around and then dug right there, and then he started making his way, you know, away from me.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  For hours, I just watched these things float around and digging in the dirt, sometimes getting nearer, sometimes getting further.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  At one point, I saw probably 10 more, maybe up to a dozen of these lights, shoot by down that trail. Not stop or slow down, but just like come from somewhere and go somewhere else.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  There were a few times where I felt like, "This is getting crazy." I just needed to stand up and walk home. But I couldn't bring myself to actually get up and walk through it. I was still terrified that they were gonna catch me, catch on, that I was there watching everything.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  I'm just looking straight up at the sky, praying for the sun to come up.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  I sort of came up with some mantra that sort of kept me calm and kept me breathing slowly. "Don't move. Stay calm. Don't move. Stay calm."

• 21:54Speaker 02

  Finally, the sky goes from black to that hint of blue. That's really when I heard them sort of communicate for the first time.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  These things jump back on their hover bikes and then they zoom off down the trail.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  Within a few seconds, they were out of sight.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  I felt like I could breathe again.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  These things, whatever they were, had been gone for probably 30 minutes. The sun's now coming up over the horizon. And I'm finally convincing myself that they're gone, it's safe.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  I basically just sort of creak forward, not even wondering if my body's gonna work. Everything hurts, my back, my pelvis. I'm in a lot of pain, but nothing's broken. I get up on my feet and just lumber down the mountain till I get to this trail that's been out in front of me all night.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Right around where I saw this activity, there were basically like perfectly round little holes in the dirt, on the trail, off the trail.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  I didn't want to think about it. I just needed to get home and go to sleep.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  I get back home. I walk around the building to where my stairwell is, to my apartment. And out the door and around the corner comes Brian, probably getting up to do his morning stuff.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  He sees me and he, you know, cheerfully goes, "Hey, man, how was the meteor shower?" And I looked at him in that moment and I was like, "Fuck you, Brian." And like, I'm pretty angry. He goes like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you talking about? What's the problem?" I point at my legs. He can see these like open gashes, like blood's still coming down. I basically was like, "You don't know what I've been through, man. You guys left me up there and I had the craziest night." I basically tell him the story. And he doesn't believe a word of it.

• 24:30Speaker 03

  I just didn't believe him. It was just such a crazy story, you know? I didn't know what to make of it. And I was like, "I don't know, maybe he took something, you know, dropped some acid and tripped out up there and like, I don't know."

• 24:46Speaker 03

  At that time, I'd known Chaz for about a year. We weren't super close friends. We were just sort of casual buddies, you know? I mean, I'd gone hiking a couple times with Chaz and his girlfriend. He was always all geared up. He had his flashlights, his laser beam. He's very familiar with the area and everything. So when I saw him, all banged up, bloodied, I mean, I knew that something had happened, but I didn't really know what to think. I just thought it was a crazy, crazy-ass story.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  So I told him like, "Listen, man, I'm exhausted. I'm going home to go to sleep. But if you really don't believe me, how about tonight? Meet me back at my apartment and we'll walk back up there and see if the lights show back up."

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Brian's like cut and dry, logical. He doesn't do drugs. He's like an athlete. If I needed to prove this to somebody, Brian would be the best person to have.

• 25:54Speaker 03

  I did feel a little guilty about ditching him the night before.

• 25:59Speaker 03

  The perceived meteor shower was also going on. So I was like, "All right, whatever. We'll go up there tonight and you and I can both get eyes on whatever's up there."

• 26:12Speaker 03

  I didn't expect to see anything, you know, other than, other than an awesome meteor shower.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  We probably leave, I don't know, 12, 12 at night, get some gear together, plenty of water, flashlights and whatnot.

• 26:32Speaker 03

  He didn't want to go up the same mountain. He was pretty freaked out about what had happened the night before. So we decided that we were gonna go up the other side of the valley. Basically, go up the mountain that is opposite to Pavilion Point and look across.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  For the most part, we're just pretty quietly hiking up.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  I'm very nervous, but I feel better knowing that there's another person there.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  As we'd go up, we can see the meteor shower going on. It was just incredible. It's like hundreds of shooting stars going off at the same time.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  We hiked up for about 30 minutes till I felt like we were high enough.

• 27:28Speaker 03

  There was one spot, I think in the middle of the trail. It was a clearing. There were fewer trees and we could see clear across.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  We found like a comfortable spot to sit where we could just see the entire mountain. And then once we sort of got comfortable and were able to put binoculars up to our faces, we just pretty much sat there in silence for a while.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  I still felt emotionally, physically drained. I just needed to prove that what I had told him happened. Just so I don't have to be like the sole bearer of all this.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Almost immediately, I see a couple of these dim lights out in the middle of the valley coming straight up the mountain in front of us.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  I was like, "Brian, look, look, look, look, you see those lights?"

• 28:31Speaker 02

  He's looking at it like, "Dude, that's what you're talking about?"

• 28:36Speaker 03

  It was like four or five points of light that are moving together on the side of the mountain. They were yellow.

• 28:46Speaker 03

  From where we were standing, I couldn't make out any, any shape, like human shape or bike shape or anything. And I'm like, "Oh, well, it's probably some people hiking." Because what else, what else could I think?

• 29:02Speaker 03

  And all of a sudden, they start to multiply.

• 29:07Speaker 03

  There starts to be more and more of them, all over the entire side of the mountain.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  That was very scary. We could actually see well over 100 of these floating things, like moving all around the mountain.

• 29:24Speaker 03

  They were zipping around in all different kind of random locations.

• 29:30Speaker 03

  You'd see one at the bottom of the mountain and it would zip up to the top of the mountain.

• 29:36Speaker 03

  And they made no noise, it was totally silent.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  And the way they moved through the trees was in the same fashion as I'd seen the night before.

• 29:48Speaker 03

  I'm not freaked out at this point. They were just lights. I'm trying to figure out like an explanation.

• 29:58Speaker 03

  Maybe it's some sort of cosmic effect. Maybe this meteor shower is somehow causing, you know, us to see these clusters of light projected onto the mountain.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  At this point, I was just happy someone else was seeing it. I just felt like, "Well, I know I'm not crazy because now I got Brian next to me."

• 30:25Speaker 03

  And then, all of a sudden, I turned my head and I see this massive thirty-story tall cone, sitting at the edge of the mountain in front of us. It was in the blink of an eye. All of a sudden, just boom, shows up. It was round at the base and tapered up to a flat top.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  I remember it as being translucent, but we could see texture on it, like different shapes and just weird, random patterns, like a camouflage. I couldn't tell if it was on the ground or if it was hovering. I look at Chaz, I'm like, "Do you see that cone right there? Like, look at that thing."

• 31:25Speaker 02

  I'm looking, and it takes my eyes a second to adjust, but right over the top of the mountain, there was almost like this blurry, triangle cone thing that looked like it was reflecting light around it, almost like it's camouflage.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  Now I'm getting freaked out. We're both like, "What the hell is that thing?" I remember putting my finger to my neck and feeling my heart pounding. It's just like total panic. And then, this cone, it started to move. It would be at the bottom of the mountain, and then you would blink, and it would be at the top of the mountain. Then to the middle, and then back to where it was, but instantaneous, boom.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  I have no idea what it was doing, but it looked like it was teleporting.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  I can't even comprehend what's going on. My mind was so broken by what I'd seen the night before, and now, this was way too weird for my brain to process it.

• 32:50Speaker 03

  We were just both just in shock, like utter shock. I remember having the thought, "This is like first contact. We are here to witness the arrival of alien life on planet Earth. How are people gonna deal with this? You know, like this is gonna change everything." And then, my amazement turned into fear.

• 33:27Speaker 03

  I had that actual thought, like, "Am I about to be abducted by aliens right now?" For hours, we were just transfixed, looking at this cone zipping around the mountain and these balls of light that were just all over the place. But we can't stop, you know, looking at this sight. We were like, "We're gonna stay here until they leave."

• 33:54Speaker 02

  The sun started coming up, and that was around close to 6:00 AM.

• 34:08Speaker 03

  As soon as, we saw just the tiniest little sliver of sun.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  These lights just basically disappeared.

• 34:16Speaker 03

  Boom, they were gone. All the clusters of light, the cone, instantly, gone. Where the hell did they go? What the hell did we just witness a minute ago?

• 34:38Speaker 02

  We were just tired and exhausted. All this stuff we just witnessed is way too weird for our brain to comprehend.

• 34:46Speaker 03

  So, we just started walking down.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  And we didn't talk the whole way down.

• 34:53Speaker 03

  We made it down the mountain, we walked back into town.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  We got to the apartment, and I was just like, "Listen, I need to sleep, but I'll talk to you tomorrow."

• 35:09Speaker 03

  We just went in opposite directions.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  And I went to sleep.

• 35:13Speaker 00

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• 35:55Speaker 00

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• 36:23Speaker 02

  Five or six in the afternoon, I can just hear my phone buzzing under my pillow, like, over and over and over. I wake up, pick up the phone, I look at it, it says, "Jack, who's Brian's brother." I answer the phone, and he tells me that Brian was at the hospital.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  I'm going like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, like, how did that happen? When I left Brian, he seemed fine."

• 37:17Speaker 03

  I got home that morning, and I didn't really know what to do at that point. I was still shocked. I made some coffee and tried to get myself together a little bit. I had some stuff I had to do down in Denver that day, so I was like, "Okay, I'm just gonna go about my day and like, try and be normal." So I just got in my car and drove down the highway. While I was driving, I was just freaking out in my head. I didn't know how to make sense of anything.

• 38:02Speaker 03

  I thought like the world was ending, you know, like, I had some sort of forbidden knowledge. It was terrifying. My heart is just pounding out of my chest. I thought I was having like a heart attack or something like that. I pulled over, I don't know if I should call anyone, I didn't know what to do. I went down by the river, and there's a guy fly fishing in the river. I like waved him down, I'm like, "Hey, man, can you help me, man? I'm freaking out over here." He gave me some food, he gave me some water, he's like, "Did you take anything?

• 38:44Speaker 03

  Like, what did you do?" He drove me down to the hospital down in Denver. And the hospital said, "You're fine, man." I was just having a panic attack. Once I started to settle down, my brother, Jack, picked me up from the hospital, but I didn't want to talk about it at that point. So I didn't explain what happened.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  I just told Jack, his brother, "We just, we saw some weird stuff, and I don't know how to explain that to you." And we sort of left it at that, because, you know, I think if I'd have told somebody else about it, it would have made me feel like crazy. There was nothing I could, I felt like I could do about Brian. But what I did do, now that I was awake, I drove down to like the nearest thrift store, Goodwill, and I bought like four telescopes.

• 39:50Speaker 02

  That night, from my apartment, second floor window, I set up like all four telescopes, but I saw nothing.

• 40:07Speaker 03

  Over the next couple of weeks, I sort of calmed down a little bit. But Chaz and I, we didn't talk for months. I just didn't hear from him, you know? I didn't reach out to him either.

• 40:22Speaker 02

  It's been seven years now, and similarly to me, he wants to find answers too.

• 40:33Speaker 03

  What's up, buddy?

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can see the cross.

• 40:36Speaker 03

  What's going on, man?

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Nice to see you.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  Good to see you.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Getting this shit out is weird, huh?

• 40:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  I need headphones, right? I see you. All right, I can hear you now.

• 40:51Speaker 03

  When's the last time I saw you? Was it like?

• 40:53Speaker 02

  It's been at least two, three years, I think.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  I think maybe right after it happened, we talked about it a little bit, but...

• 41:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  I don't know, we've never really just sat down and talked about it, I don't think. It felt like you didn't want to talk about it at first, you know? And this may be me projecting, but it felt like kind of a sore subject.

• 41:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think we were both just shocked at what we just saw.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:25Speaker 03

  And like, wanted to put it out of my mind a little bit, because I feel like that night, my mind was just broken open. But, um, I don't know, I'm not scared of it anymore. Like, I've kind of like, accepted it. You know, my heart doesn't pound whenever I, whenever I talk about it, you know, so...

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it took me probably a week or two before I was going back out there at night, just because I was nervous. But I pretty much looked out my window staring for probably an hour or two every single night for months, it felt like. And to this day, I've seen nothing. So now it's just like, might as well get it out there, see if there's any other feedback in the world, or you know, maybe someone's seen something like it, maybe I doubt it, but you know?

• 42:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I've looked around online about, you know, if anyone has ever seen a sort of cone structure. And there is some sort of, you know, vehicle that people describe as a triangle, but it's not, it's not what I saw, you know? And then, you got in touch with MUFON, right?

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, so Chaz got in touch with MUFON, and what does it stand for?

• 42:47Speaker 02

  Mutual UFO Network.

• 42:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like a database for, you know, sightings and stuff. There was someone that heard the story and was like, "Oh, that cone sounds familiar", like that's a, what's it called?

• 43:02Speaker 02

  TR-3V.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  A TR-3V. And he showed me an image of it, and it was like, almost looked like a boomerang or something. I'm like, "No, that's not, that's not it."

• 43:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I thought maybe they would have some, maybe reasonable explanations.

• 43:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, or know something about it, yeah.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, and nothing really came from it after that, so I was like, "Okay, well..."

• 43:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, I still have no idea what it was we saw. Like, I, I don't, I don't know if it was aliens, I don't know if it was government with all their capability. Like, I have no idea what it was.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  I have a question for you, actually, that I never thought to ask, but like, do you ever wish that I hadn't like, drug you, you know, out there that day? Do you wish I'd never like?

• 43:56Speaker 03

  No, I mean, I, I am like, so grateful to have like, seen that. It feels like we were audience to a really special thing, you know? It just completely flipped my worldview, like, upside down. It made me question a lot of things about what I thought about the world, you know, and my place in it. Like, nothing is as it seems, you know? It was a traumatic experience, but it was also sort of a growth experience too. I feel a new, like, a new like, energy for life, I guess.

• 44:40Speaker 02

  If you hadn't been there, I don't know if I would have told anybody ever. I definitely feel a bond that, you know?

• 44:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  And it is sort of like, a weird secret that we have. Maybe me and you are the only ones who've ever experienced it.

• 44:57Speaker 03

  I kind of like, you know, hope we see it again. Maybe I'd be ready for it next time.

• 45:22Speaker 00

  Thank you, Chaz and Brian, for sharing your story with Spooked. Now, if you know anything at all about this, if you've seen these contraptions yourself, please, reach out to Chaz, reach out to us, he still needs answers. We'll have his email in the show notes. The original score for this piece was by Doug Stewart. It was produced by Eric Yanez. Now, have you personally witnessed something that might even go toe-to-toe with these hoverbikes?

• 46:06Speaker 00

  I have reason to believe that the truth is not just out there, it's in here. Within the Spook community, there exists a library of experience to rival the original Book of Shadow, and that is why I ask you, if you've seen something, please, say something. Tell me about it, [email protected], because I mean it when I say it, there is nothing better than a Spook story from a Spook listener. And we, at Long Last, hear you. Do you want extra Spook stories that you can hear nowhere else? Do you want ad-free Spook?

• 46:49Speaker 00

  Your wish is our command. Pass through the veil, join us on the Shadow Road, spooked.supercast.com. That's spooked.supercast.com. And the directions to Spooked Studios are these. Turn right, go down the tunnel, pass into the void, sail down the Dark River, and then quickly, quickly, turn back from whence you came. Don't seek to find it, lest it seek to find you. KQD in San Francisco holds the key, but they won't tell us what it's for.

• 47:30Speaker 00

  And if you see a creature with oily skin, wearing those creepy recording people glasses, run up to this imposter and shout in their AirPods that, "No! Snap Studios content may be used for training, testing, or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission." On Team Spooked, the union-represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers, members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications of America, AFL-CIA, Local 51. And Spooked is brought to you by a team that generally keeps an open mind about things and gives people the benefit of the doubt. Except for Mark Ristich.

• 48:13Speaker 00

  Mark always shakes his head meaningfully whenever you speak to him. It's very uncomfortable. And I would like to take a moment, as it has long been customary, to place a coin in the hand of the fallen, so they can pay their passage to the ferryman, as he carries passengers down the Dark River. And instead of a piece of silver for conveying us down this shadow lane, for each and every one of these seekers, would you please join me in giving them a hand for guiding us through the mystery? Davy Kim, Zoe Farigno, Eric Yanez, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Regina Barriaco, Tail

• 48:57Speaker 00

  Cot, Doug Stewart, Nicholas Marks, Casey Georgie, Alton Takiyama Chung, Bridget Armstrong, Chris Frick, Ashley the Colony. The Spook theme song is by Pat Mercedes Miller. My name is Glynn Washington. And we operate under a lot of assumptions, in that we assume that other folk we see, the ones with two arms, two legs, walking down the street, are similar to us, similar histories, similar desires, wants, needs, perhaps, but...

• 49:39Speaker 00

  It's also true that the very first rule of Shadow is to know that you are being hunted, and to appreciate the wolf hides under the skin of the lamb, under the lie of welcome. The second most important law of the Book of Shadow is to appreciate with every fiber of your being that things are never as they seem. Because there's comfort in imagining the monster comes from somewhere else, another world, another dimension, the woods, the basement, the stairs, anywhere but right here, anyone but us. But the Book of Shadow offers no such comfort.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  It says, "Look again. This world is stranger than you imagine. Your neighbor is stranger than you imagine. You are stranger than you imagine, and there are things walking beside us right now that we do not understand, no matter..." Look around, because under the bright light of day, under the spotlight of a thousand cameras, monsters roam. Right now, daywalkers, telling us to hate the other, telling us, "They are after you",

• 51:02Speaker 00

  telling us that if you don't do it to them, they will most certainly do it to you. Watch them. Know with certainty that the Shadow is not the only place monsters hide. Never, ever, never, never, ever, never, ever, turn out the lights.