Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to
another episode of the Area 52 podcast.
My name is Chris Ramsey and today we're
going to be deep diving into three
articles written in separate issues of
UFO magazine in the late 1990s 1998 by
someone uh who goes by the pseudonym
Greg Halifax,
which sounds made up uh by the way.
These three articles helped shape UFO
lore, especially involving crash
retrieval and uh reverse engineering of
alien tech as we know it today.
Researchers such as James Landoli as
well as Richard Dolan have done their
due diligence looking into whether or
not this is true. And according to
Richard Dolan, he claims that this is
thinly veiled in fiction and that this
might actually be real. They talk about
a project of crash retrieval that goes
by the name Zodiac. This is very
interesting because this was also
mentioned by Eric Davis in the end of
the Wilson Davis memos. If you're not
familiar with that, it's a whole other
deep dive which we'll eventually get
into. But essentially, there are
multiple corroborating anecdotal pieces
of evidence that lead us to believe that
Zodiac might be a real crash retrieval
project and some type of offshoot or
pseudonym for the Majestic 12 or MJ12
secret group.
Wild, wild stuff. So, there are three
articles here by u Greg Halifax who
tells the story of the one and only SGE
Masters. Now, if you've been involved in
UFO lore for quite some time, you may
have heard the name SGE Masters come up
because it is a really gripping story.
Now, according to one of the best
researchers of our time, Richard Dolan,
one of the goats, um, Greg Halifax is
actually a pseudonym and the real
person, uh, his name is Jeffrey
Griffith, who is a corporate attorney
who basically worked for some of these
aeronautics companies. Uh I think TRW
was the one who which eventually became
Northrup Grummond. If you try reaching
out to this guy, which many a researcher
have tried already, you just get hung up
on. But this guy might have witnessed
what he is going to talk about today.
And that's kind of how people have
pieced together those things throughout
UFO lore. Now, we're going to get a
little bit more into detail about the
separate witnesses, including Mary
Elizabeth Elliott, who was also named.
All these names don't mean anything to
you right now. And I I understand that.
So don't don't leave. All right. This is
interesting. I promise you.
But before we get into the deep stuff,
quick word from our sponsors. This
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folks. We've paid the bills. It's time
to get into it. Like this video,
subscribe, notification bell, all that
stuff. Check out area552.shop for your
latest trendy merch that you can pick up
to help support the show or become a
member. Up to you. A lot a lot to go
through. George Knap has talked about
Zodiac. Eric Davis, Edgar Mitchell, uh
Hal Putoff, Jacqu Valet. These are just
some of the names
that Zodiac
has been has been attached to. Very cool
stuff.
So,
I have the original magazines here, part
one, two, and three. And folks, I'm not
going to I'm not going to butter it up.
We're reading all three today, and we're
getting through them. So, without any
further ado, let's get into it.
Deep Files, Trans X Communique, Letter
to a UFO Recruit by Greg Halifax.
Also, quick little aside, Dolan, Richard
Dolan also noticed that there weren't
any editors mentions or notes. Normally
for these type of articles, you'll have
some type of editor mention, and there
wasn't any. So, just a strange little
thing. And throughout all these
magazines, you normally would have that,
but not for these particular articles in
these issues. So, just interesting. What
you're about to read is largely
unverified, but that doesn't mean it's
not true.
It's the type of UFO information that
would typically be deeply buried, then
carefully studied and compartmentalized
by a small faction within the
intelligence community, as suits any
sensitive black operation. As such,
straightforward corroboration is
difficult at best. But UFO magazine has
the advantage of more than a decade's
worth of collected bits of information
and broad-based facts on which to
construct some fair extrapolations.
Drawn from a range of sources, the
following incident reflects upon one of
the blackest of America's covert
operations that deal directly
with the UFO phenomenon. Oh, what an
intro.
I like this already. I like where this
is going.
They recruited him when he was fresh
from a not too harrowing assignment in
the Middle East. This was one area of
the globe at least where the CIA had
little trouble justifying its existence.
Having some military background, SGE
Masters wasn't too surprised when he was
called back for another briefing about
the new foreign technology assignment
overseen from Wright Patterson Air Force
Base. What he'd heard at the first
briefing didn't exactly fire his
professional instincts. The task sounded
less than challenging. He was assured
that more information would be coming
his way and that much of it would change
his mind about the degree of intrigue
his new assignment would hold.
Clearances intact, Masters arrived on
the base in short order. He was issued a
security badge and escorted by an airman
to an unmarked building. Once inside, he
was escorted by the airmen into a room
where his security badge was taken from
him and a different one given to him in
its place.
A different airman with a uniform that
masters had not seen before, armed with
an M16 and a sidearm, escorted him into
a private room. That man left and in
less than 2 minutes, another armed and
uniformed man entered and said nothing.
Masters was used to this routine.
When the soldier had positioned himself
in front of the door, masters turned
around to a table on which lay a thick
packet of papers. One more glance at the
impassive soldier and masters began to
read.
The letter on top carried a number on
the first page, but no date or
letterhead.
Dear Mr. Masters, consider this a deeper
introduction to your present assignment.
As you were told in last week's special
briefing, you were selected for the
program less for your wide intelligence
background and technical skills than for
the results of your psychological
profile. Both the one you took when you
first joined the agency and the one
administered earlier this year,
necessarily limited to technical experts
and professionals in only a handful of
military, scientific, and medical
disciplines. The program nevertheless
cannot sacrifice its dependence on
absolute secrecy
and the personality traits that go with
that exceptionally crucial need.
Can I just say this is really well
written.
I and my colleagues want to congratulate
you on nearly half a lifetime of
unwavering circumspection in regard to
the restricted information to which you
have been privy. From the long list of
classified technology to the paniply of
trade craft which you've successfully
and courageously practiced in many areas
of the globe. What you'll be doing with
us should be regarded as a complete
change. Not only in your understanding
of conventional trade craft, but in the
very attitudes and habits that you have
come to accept as SOP in your work,
standard operational protocol.
Who am I? UAP Gerb now. All right.
We're dealing with something that falls
well outside the normal boundaries of
classical espionage and counter
espionage has practiced since the advent
of World War II and yet has always been
included within the classified mission
statements of the various agencies and
military branches comprising the
military community since before the
formation of the agency in 1947.
Interesting. The program has been
carried on since then, albeit without
acknowledgement or broad dissemination
within the community itself for reasons
which will be obvious as you read the
material below.
It must be emphasized that a good deal
of the information set forth below is of
the highest significance to the national
security and cannot be divulged even to
those of your associates and colleagues
in the community in whom you repose
implicit confidence.
without authorization being given to you
too. We will discuss more about the
established protocol for this in the
days ahead. For now, refer to the
attached appendix A in which you'll find
details on the use and application of
code words, protocols of formal
introductions, and parameters of
discussion derived there from. Any
breaches of the conditions or the
protocol therein will be dealt with as a
security crime, even if committed
inadvertently with the severest
consequences to you and any recipient of
the information contained in the
communication, regardless of whether the
recipient solicited the information.
That's pretty serious.
During the years preceding World War II,
informal contacts made by Americans
touring in Europe, tasked to do so by
then attorney William Donovan, who was
later the head of the OSS in World War
II, revealed that there had been a
number of sightings of unusual aerial
phenomena and craft over European skies,
particularly in the vicinity of German
military facilities. It was considered
of extreme importance by Donovan and his
friend, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
that the nature of these sightings be
explored.
It was assumed that they might be
evidence of advanced weapons being
developed by the Nazi government.
Those gentlemen and other Allied leaders
likewise assumed that we would shortly
be at war with Germany.
At the time, little could be confirmed
about the reports of unidentified.
The persons offering the reports were
not professional espionage agents and in
any case found it difficult to elicit
much information which could be of use
in assessing the nature of the
sightings. Military intelligence made
modest efforts to flesh out these
ephemeral reports, but little
information was developed. In
retrospect, the most ominous of the
reports.
Whoa, that light just
I'll be right back.
Odd happenings sometimes occur in the
offices of Area 52. But not to worry,
folks. This will not veer us from our
current destination as we must proceed
with this
incredibly gripping and captivating
text. I might add this is a really good
read so far. I'm very invested. Military
intelligence made modest efforts to
flesh out these ephemeral reports, but
little information was developed. In
retrospect, the most ominous of the
reports claimed that a downed
saucer-like craft of indeterminate
origin was recovered by Vmach troops in
the days immediately preceding Germany's
invasion of Poland.
The rush of events focused the attention
of military and the OSS on the matters
of more pressing concern. Although it
had been resolved to look into these
reports again at the war's conclusion,
the need to follow up on these matters
was underscored by the appearance of the
so-called Foo Fighters, not the band,
although that would have been cool,
which shadowed military aircraft of all
combatants during the war in both the
European and Pacific theaters.
Naturally, each side assumed that the
devices were new weapons of the other
side. see attached appendix B for
censored press reports and military
intelligence reports pertaining to the
Foo Fighter phenomenon and the
apparently related phenomena which were
the subject of project twinkle
referenced therein. Now I also want to
note that the latest trunch by the way
hate that word stupid word let's stop
using it. Um, I don't know. I'm not a
fan of buzzwords. When people start
saying like impunity, trunch, and like
somehow indoctrinating it into our
current zeitgeist so seamlessly, I tend
to, I don't know, push back just like
UAP. Not a fan of that either. Stop
giving me these sanitized terms.
Aliens, UFOs, flying saucers.
Um, but the latest trunch, if you will,
had within it some really interesting
documents that went all the way back to
1947 and mentioned the Foo Fighters and
the interactions of the pilots. Multiple
interactions, also interactions um of
other flying discs in 47 prior to
Roswell during Kenneth Arnold's sort of
sightings as well. So, lots of
interesting stuff in those drops, none
of which were on video, by the way.
That's not a shot across the bow. I
think everyone is also aware that uh
the videos were kind of nothing burgers.
I covered the first batch in a video,
but um I just didn't think, you know, I
was just uh if I if I'd make one more
video on those batches, it felt like
engagement farming to me, and I just
didn't it didn't sit well with me.
Where is that, by the way? this this
redacted file that they speak of
somewhere else in here I guess
regardless talks about foo fighters
which are orbs that were circling uh the
planes and following them in formation
at the conclusion of World War II it
became apparent that the German Nazi
regime had been developing a number of
advanced missile and aircraft designs a
few of which such as the jet fighters
and the flying wings had been developed
in parallel, though somewhat belatedly
in the United States and the United
Kingdom. Nevertheless, it was clear that
extensive technological intelligence
gathering would be necessary to
determine the full extent of German
technological advances in these and
other areas. A lot of spying going on.
This effort was both impelled and
hampered by worsening relations between
the Western Allies and the USSR.
Initially played out in occupied
Germany, where most of the investigative
work was being pursued. With the
beginning of the Cold War, virtually all
access to German investigation sites in
the Soviet zone of occupation was denied
to Allied intelligence and military
personnel.
And there the matter might have rested,
but for the project twinkle phenomenon's
occurrence and the sighting by private
pilot Kenneth Arnold in the summer of
47, see appendix B. There you go. Before
there could be a full assessment of the
implications of these events, in July
1947, two craft were recovered from the
desert near Roswell Army Airore Bomber
Base. One of the crafts was a deltoid
wing lifting body which had suffered a
rupture to the crew compartment and some
impact distortion but which was
otherwise intact. The other craft had
completely disintegrated either before
or upon impact. Although there were
working hypotheses that these craft were
either one, secret Soviet surveillance
craft designed to spy upon the many
advanced technical and military
facilities in that region, or two, the
craft from some other dimension, the
details of which were and remain
unspecified by the proponents of this
hypothesis. Or three, craft from our own
future exploring the past through an
unknown temporal travel mechanism. It
soon became clear that these craft were
from some planet or solar system other
than our own as they were occupied by
two kinds of beings which clearly were
not of earthly origin. Now we're talking
about Psalm 101. This is the standard
operation manual of how to deal with
Ebans or EBEs one and two. The different
types of aliens, the crashes and
whatnot.
Um, shout out to agent M for sending me
uh this, by the way. You know who you
are. Thank you for that. Appreciate it.
Now, the deltoid craft is interesting.
Deltoid meaning shaped like a D.
You just say that. But hey, they want to
be fancy. Um,
you know, even looking at Kenneth
Kenneth Arnold's original depiction of
the craft seems to be in that deltoid uh
formation as well.
The occupants of the deltoid craft were
largely intact after the crash. When the
special recovery team established uh for
this purpose located the crash, two of
the occupants of the deltoid craft were
still alive, although one was badly
injured and would later die upon being
taken to the Roswell Airore base. The
other survivor was alive and remained so
for almost 30 days after the crash. It
was able to walk and seemed to
understand that it was a captive among
intelligent beings like itself. all
efforts at communication with the
survivor were inconclusive and largely
unsuccessful.
So this goes against so many other
tellings of you know the interaction
with the being. Now I don't know if this
is one and the same or if there was like
you know there was the later Kingman
crash I think in 52 where another body
might have been recovered
JRod or who knows what. But maybe yeah
maybe this initial back and forth didn't
yield anything. Now, if we look at the
case of Matilda Mroy, uh, in the book
written by Lawrence R. Spencer, an alien
interview where allegedly this nurse was
the only one able to communicate with
this being that lasted for weeks and
weeks and weeks. And so, one of these
people, or both, is telling a lie. And I
I'd like to think Matilda Mroy
isn't a real story. I'd like to think it
is a real story, but I don't think it's
a real story. And uh I lean towards this
being a little higher in conviction, but
I'm pretty low conviction on both of
these so far. But let's keep reading.
And by the way, let me know.
This would be interesting experiment. Uh
in the comments, let me know how you
feel currently on a conviction level
percentage 10% 5% that this is
legitimate. You're feeling. And then
after the video, cuz I'm currently
5 10%. I want to see how high or low my
conviction will fluctuate throughout the
reading here. I'd be curious to know
what that's like for you. Three other
occupants were dead when the recovery
team found them. The general appearance
of these creatures was reported in the
recently published somewhat fanciful
investigative books on the subject which
have received a certain amount of
popular acceptance and which resulted in
the recent 50th anniversary celebration
of this event. Popular attention to this
event remains strong. The occupants of
the second craft were not found for
several more days as their bodies had
been ejected in what appeared to be
safety pods similar in purpose to those
later employed in such high-performance
aircraft as the B-58 Hustler and XB70
supersonic bombers.
These creatures were longer in dimension
than the ones of the deltoid craft and
their bodies were dispersed over a much
wider area due to the disintegration of
the craft. All were dead when found with
their bodies much deteriorated from
prolonged exposure to the elements and
some having been partially eaten by
coyotes and other creatures.
All of the latter of which were found
dead near the alien corpses. Wild.
So, we had we had read about the bodies
being eaten before. I know that's morbid
and that's a terrible thought, but
animals are animals and they do animal
things and obviously,
you know, they're going to decay and the
elements will take care of them.
But to hear that the animals who ate the
bodies then later died
is incredibly troubling.
Um, but also makes sense. I mean, if
they're bringing in foreign bacteria
from god knows where,
you know, look at the varia case where
um
the gentleman, the soldier who had
carried the being, the being had then
scratched his underarm apparently and
the bacteria transferred into him. He
was unsavable. And so this kind of
checks out.
Analysis of the animal remains and the
alien bodies led to the conclusion that
the animals died from poisoning caused
by ingestion of chemicals in the alien
flesh. It appeared that the second group
of aliens could not survive if exposed
to the Earth's atmosphere. The need to
remove all evidence of the event from
the two crash sites limited the amount
of crash reconstruction which could be
accomplished by the recovery team with
the consequence that it is it has never
been made clear what exactly caused the
crash. Unfortunately, the large number
of civilian and military personnel who
witnessed physical evidence at the crash
sites and back at the Roswell base
created a significant security hazard,
which was dealt with by intimidation and
bribery of the witnesses to the extent
that those means proved effective
until unofficial investigators,
journalists, writers, and others began
renewing investigation of the subject in
the early 1980s. These techniques were
largely successful in keeping the truth
of Ro of the Roswell event from the
public as well as its ominous
implications. Now, we know this to be
true as well. Even someone like our
friend James Fox had interviewed, I
believe, some Roswell witnesses and many
more. There are some floating around on
YouTube as well, and they all say the
same thing. They were intimidated by
these uh sort of men that showed up and
said, "Hey, it's a big desert out there.
They'll never find your body." And yeah,
those tactics, unfortunately, are
probably still applied today. I'd like
to see them try.
I actually wouldn't probably wet myself.
All right, here we go.
Uh
the autopsies on the bodies of the
creatures showed that they were of very
light build and clearly not from this
planet.
The simplicity of their brain structures
and non-communication in the face of
stalwart efforts by researchers led
investigators at the time to conclude
that they were not the original
designers and builders of the craft
involved in the incident.
Rather, it's seen that they were
biological robots designed and bred for
the purpose of undertaking such
dangerous missions as flying through the
atmosphere of an alien world.
The survivor finally died when its body
accumulated toxic waste products from
its metabolism. There were no apparent
excreatory system or sexual organs.
Consistent with this biological robot
hypothesis was the complete absence of
any galley or food stores aboard the
craft. Of course, possibility of there
being a mother ship from which these
craft came was also considered and was
the less likely possibility that these
small craft could themselves attain
transumalininal speeds. The propulsion
system of the craft of obvious priority
interest to our group was inter
indeterminate for long after its
recovery. While still subject to the
laws of physics, as we imperfectly
understand them, the craft's workings
went far beyond our technological grasp
at the time. Unfamiliar, nearly magical
technology was displayed. devices that
we now know as integrated circuits,
fiber optics, super tenacious fibers and
metals, and an unfathomable power source
and drive mechanism, as well as other
technology which it is not necessary to
discuss in this document.
Perhaps Velcro
or the Shamwow.
Um, yeah, we've heard that before. fiber
optics, specifically memory metal as
well. Um, silicon chips perhaps,
microprocessors. Very interesting.
The military implications of the
presence of these craft in our
atmosphere and the possibility that they
may have established friendly
communications with our cold war enemies
were obvious and unsettling. By the way,
can we just mention that uh our author
seamlessly
referred to these beings as
smoothrained,
although the lack of excoratory systems
kind of matches up with the
um molecular biologist who talks about
them secretreting, you know, their
waste, pooping through their skin in the
more, you know, clinical term. Um, but
again, this is written in 1998. So,
could that later article that we read on
Reddit be derived from cases or um texts
such as these? That is a high
possibility, and I do keep that in mind.
The discovery of these craft led to an
equally unsettling re-examination of the
European intelligence reports referred
to above as well as the postwar
investigation by General Jimmy
Doolittle. That's a real name of the
ghost rockets of Norway. See appendix C
attached top secret report of General
James Doolittle.
President was made aware of these
developments and order the formation of
a special group of prominent scientists,
cabinet, military and intelligence
officers, the popular literature bandies
about the name of Majestic 12 or MJ12
for this special secret task force
formed by the president. Other names by
which it has been identified in the
public mind through disinformation
programs are project saucer and
Aquarius.
Now this is probably referring to
Richard Dodie or William Moore and the
sort of disinformation campaign that was
led uh that led people to you know that
led people to stray from the real
information. While it is possible that
any one or more of these was the name of
the group at one time, for most of its
existence, the code name for the group
and the extensive program which it
spawned has been and still is
zodiac. Zodiac. Zodiac. Zodiac
with each of its operational
subdivisions known by the name of a
different zodiacal sign including
Aquarius.
So that's interesting.
You know what else is interesting? That
Aquarius
and zodiac signs are constellations.
This is a new piece of information that
has been brought forward.
You know, Matthew Brown, whistleblower,
had mentioned uh Immaculate
Constellation being this sort of I think
gathering intelligence gathering
platform that used all other
intelligence gathering platforms
and sort of gathered all the UAP data
into one neat bundle and that was known
as the Immaculate Constellation. But if
you think about zodiac, Aquarius
constellations like there is a pattern
here. Also 12 zodiac signs, majestic 12.
Folks, we are connecting the dots today.
This is more than just a mere
coincidence.
Or maybe it's not. As the years passed,
the operational involvement of high
government officials in Zodiac wanted to
a certain degree, especially with the
conclusion of the Eisenhower
administration. Although most presidents
were still kept informed of low-key
overview facts as they came to light.
However, it fell to the agency
supervisors of Zodiac to determine who
else in the government should have
access to this very closely held and
highly compartmentalized information to
the point that like the heads of the
military intelligence before World War
II, they sometimes decided not to share
information with certain presidents,
including Nixon and Ford. All other
presidents were kept reasonably well
informed, including Jimmy Carter, who
went back on his pledge to reveal all
the information the government had on
UFOs once he was elected president.
Well, as of the early 1980s, the agency
exercised complete control over Zodiac
with the cooperation of the rest of the
intelligence community and the military
branches, particularly the Air Force and
the Navy, from 1947 to the early 1980s.
Zodiac recovered 11 other alien craft in
various states of disrepair from a
dimminionive single seat flying wing to
a rather large craft that had to be
trucked into Wright Patterson by dead of
night. I believe that's probably Aztec
by the way. Some craft were turned over
to our government by friendly powers,
most notably Denmark, which allowed the
US to retrieve a rather large disc that
had submerged off the Danish coast.
Occasionally, a live craft occupant was
recovered as well. Come on, the Danes.
Really?
There are ongoing efforts to discover
the technological secrets of the
recovered craft and to reverse engineer
them on their subsystems. But so far
these efforts have met with limited
success. Materials, technology, and
knowledge of physics of the builders of
the craft still present considerable
obstacles to matching their observed
performance characteristics.
Makes you wonder if we've gotten any
further. And I bet we have. Maybe only
incrementally, but still. This is 1998,
nearly 20 years later. A lot has
changed.
30 years later, pardon me.
Besides the technology,
the beings found with these craft are
central to the program's investigations.
There seem to be at least four types of
occupants. The two described above, as
well as humanoids that appear to be
almost human and Nordic in appearance
and small, strong, hairy ones. Wait,
what?
I was expecting to hear about mantids.
Somehow we're getting uh I don't know
small hairy ones.
Okay, you've heard about these though.
These have come up in lore. Not Bigfoot,
but like shaggy small hairy ones. Uh
even I believe it was Jeremy Weekes who
said um according to him during his
abduction
one was sort of leaving the room as he
was entering the room. So very
interesting. You don't hear much about
these ones though. Underrated aliens.
Okay. There may be others, but these are
all that have been recovered to date. It
is possible that one or more of these
types represent only a subtype of the
others. There's no evidence of
telepathic communication abilities of
these creatures. Speculation in the
popular literature notwithstanding.
However, there is some sort of
empathetic manipulation, thought control
ability as detailed below and in various
attached appendices.
Whoa.
So, they can manipulate your emotions.
That is crazy. But they can't
apparently allegedly perform any
telepathic abilities. But wouldn't that
feel the same? That's interesting.
Straight away, you know,
all types of experiencers have come out
and said that the beings when they look
in their eyes, they're sort of flooded
with endorphins and this feeling of
calmness or everything's going to be
okay or feeling of familiarity with the
beings like they know them and they know
that they're they don't mean any harm.
Even Jake Barber when encountering one
of these craft was kind of completely
disarmed and brought to tears uh from
some emotional heightening.
So that's interesting that they have
that power to sort of manipulate us
perhaps only chemically in the brain to
flood us with these you know good
hormones. Details of the following
incident should be carefully considered
and recalled as they will be useful to
you during the first phases of your
assignment. As you progress, you'll be
regularly debriefed and subsequently
introduced to new phases, each of which
may or may not have any direct relevance
to what has gone before. As such, each
anecdote like the following is to be
utilized strictly for the discrete phase
which introduces unless you're
instructed otherwise.
Any deviation from this practice and
attitude will be clearly evident and
will result in your immediate
termination.
By the late60s, Zodiac had been able to
recruit members from an elite recovery
team. 67 well-trained men were
dispatched to the sights of crash
landings and had by the 1970s perfected
the tasks of completely and thoroughly
documenting all actions and cleaning up
any debris remaining after these
incidents. The efficiency,
trustworthiness, and expertise of these
men was and is unquestioned.
Within the last 48 hours, the team was
dispatched to a remote site in the
Midwest where a craft and bodies were
collected and fied to the appropriate
locations, seemingly without incident.
Wow. Okay.
These men always comply with strict
directions to document practically every
single minute of these operations. They
are debriefed immediately after each
operation. This time it's become clear
to our debriefing teams at Wright
Patterson that the first members
questioned could not account for an hour
and a half's worth of time spent at the
site.
The pattern of forgetfulness was exact
with every team member debriefed so far.
Debriefings were cut off for the day.
Whoa, this is cool. I'm
I'm very heavily invested now.
I love that the recovery team
has now become experiencers missing
time. Were they abducted?
I'm very interested now.
You have been selected to be part of a
newly forming debriefing team whose task
will be correlation and analysis of
these events.
Clearly, the commonality of the gap in
memory among the team members was
induced somehow either by some sort of
localized phenomenon having nothing to
do with the recovered craft or by
contact with the downed craft. But these
two options are tentatively rejected for
lack of supporting evidence. We never
encountered this phenomenon before. We
fully appreciate that you have been
introduced to this material on a rather
short-term basis. Ordinarily, your
introduction to this information would
be more gradual.
But we have no time. We need to get to
the bottom of this in short order. We
selected you for your unique experience
in debriefing and interrogation. We kept
some of the more senior team members on
base for you to interview. Your
assignment is to find out why even the
most senior members of the team shared
in this memory gap and to find out what
happened during that hour and a half.
You are to keep in mind that each of
these team members is a highly valued
person of unique abilities whose loyalty
and patriotism is above reproach.
Although you are to draw your own
conclusions in your report to me, you
should be advised that the impression of
those who've conducted the interview so
far is that the team members genuinely
cannot recall what happened to them or
what happened out there. Indeed, they
were not even aware of the time gaps in
their reports until they were advised of
them by the debriefers. Your report is
to be in writing and is to have one
original and no copies.
It is to be handd delivered by you to
me. It is to bear the security stamps
top secret zodiac and eyes only. You
will let no one see your report but me
and you will not share its contents with
those with whom you are working at
Wright Patterson without my
authorization.
We cannot be certain of anything just
yet but need to collect as much data as
possible in order to deal with this
phenomenon in a manner consistent with
national security. I will require your
report within 48 hours. At this time,
please read this at least once more.
It will not be made available to you
again. Yours truly, Colonel David H.
USAF.
Masters read it through again.
When he looked up, an Air Force captain
had entered the room. "Are you finished
with the letter?" he asked in a flat
tone.
I'm done with it. Master sighed. For the
first time in his professional career,
heard his own voice waver with what
sounded like nervousness.
He handed the letter to the captain, who
took it without comment, counting the
pages.
The captain took out a cigarette lighter
and lit the corners of the pages,
gingerly, dropping them into a red burn
barrel, stirring the ashes with a metal
rod.
After the papers had been reduced to
small wisps of white ash, the captain
took another piece of paper out of his
briefcase, signed it, and presented it
to the airmen, who also signed it. The
airman then presented it to masters who
signed the sworn declaration of
witnessing the destruction of the
document.
A writer researcher for over 20 years,
Greg Halifax lives in South uh Southern
California. This is the first in an
occasional series of stories that while
presented to us from seemingly
trustworthy sources are second or
thirdand anecdotes and cannot be
verified at this time. They should be
weighed as such. Folks, that is part
one.
We got to read part two now. We got to
get on with it. That is very
tantalizing. What do we make of this?
What do we make of this?
20% max. 15 maybe. Conviction level
raised by five, maybe 10%.
raised maybe by 10, then dropped by five
at the burning of the page, which I felt
a little ceremonious and dramatic,
especially stirring it with a little
metal metal rod.
I don't know, maybe that's the way
people do things in the military. If
you've witnessed something like this in
a burn barrel done in front of you in a
secret room, let me know. Just comment,
I've seen it.
Not going to raise my conviction any,
but I'm curious. So, this first one was
from uh UFO magazine May June 1998. It
was
volume 13 number three. And now we are
in volume 13 number five, September
1998.
SGE Master Story Part Two Trans X lost
retrieval phase
by Greg Halifax.
Details on the deepest and blackest of
clandestine UFO operations such as they
are stay safely beyond the reach of
average citizens. While this inevitably
frustrates us, it allows the secret
keepers to do the job of collecting UFO
intelligence that might best serve the
military's agenda of maintaining at
least an appearance of control.
The saga of SGE Masters, interrogation
specialist and jaded veteran of CIA co
covert ops began in the last issue.
Masters was swiftly inducted into UFO
program Zodiac after reading a special
briefing on a bizarre UFO crash
retrieval.
That operation left the entire 67man
recovery team with over an hour of
missing time. and masters had been
tasked to find what lies behind the
collective memory lapse. What you're
about to read is largely unverified, but
that doesn't mean it's not true. Or in
other words, folks, keep suspending your
disbelief. Here we go. The captain
introduced himself and then requested
that masters follow him to one of the
debriefing rooms. They entered a spare
room with a metal metallic table, neon
lighting, and three metal chairs, two
occupied. On the table sat a clipboard,
a water pitcher, and three microphones
wired to a Sony recording unit off to
the side of the room. Seated in the
first chair was a civilian wearing a
polo shirt and cardigan.
I promise you, I was nowhere near this
uh facility.
He was slouched.
leaning far over the table. His hair was
longish and he wore a beard. Okay.
I feel like you ever you ever see the
movie Never- Ending Story where you're
like you're reading your own story.
His name was Chris Ramsay. What the
heck? No. Okay, I just made that up.
Psychologist. Master's guessed
correctly. Seated across from him was
another man, tall, lean, with steely
gray hair and steely eyes to match. He
gave the initial appearance of being
relaxed, but upon closer inspection,
masters could see that the man was still
ready for action. He knew the look,
having seen it many times before. The
shrink and the tall fellow stood up and
were introduced to masters by the
captain, who then withdrew. During the
walk over to the debriefing room, the
captain had explained that the civilian
would conduct the first part of the
interrogation, both to give Masters a
feel for how debriefings were generally
handed at Zodiac and also to help orient
Masters as he picked up the the thread
of the debriefing. Masters was not
entirely at home with this arrangement.
He had long ago become the master of his
own show with the agency and was not
used to being a spectator at a
debriefing. But he inwardly acknowledged
the wisdom of the approach. Moreover, he
knew that he was still having difficulty
in coming to terms with the letter from
the colonel. He would need time to
assess what was to be done and was so
grateful that he would not have to begin
the interrogation.
The tall man, with the steady, steely
gaze, began his rendition of the events
of the previous day, occasionally
referring to his handwritten notes on
the clipboard before him. He was the
colonel in charge of the security
detail. Masters thought it rather odd
that a lieutenant colonel would
personally command such a small
detachment of men. As if picking up his
thought, the colonel explained that the
army had been tasked to establish a
multi-layered security cordon around the
crash area and that the recovery team
was inserted by truck and helicopter
from Wright Patterson. His men provided
security around the immediate crash
site. After that, the operation went as
usual, he said, describing how cordons,
cordons, uh, were set up in concentric
rings around the craft. Radiation, gas,
and biochemical readings were taken by
men in multi-hazard suits. There were
some radiation readings, but nothing
dangerous. The craft was mostly intact,
even though it had plainly come in hard.
All of the alien occupants were said to
be aboard. The physicians and biologists
there pronounced that all alien
occupants were dead. He went on. The
recovery team docks were disappointed,
but I was relieved, the colonel
admitted.
The heavy equipment operators went to
work to extract the craft without
causing it further damage. All in all,
colonel said without any trace of irony
that masters could detect this was a
routine recovery. The colonel had
recovered other craft before without
difficulty most of the time, and this
particular operation went smoothly
because the site was blessedly distant
from population centers and air roots,
he noted. There were no security
intrusions whatsoever. The colonel
steadily flipped through his notes on
the clipboard and gave a detailed
account of how security was established
for the area and maintained throughout
the recovery. But then it happened. The
shrink noticed too and cast masters a
fleeting
sidelong glance.
Up to this point, the colonel's
rendition of events had been moment by
moment, almost burlesquely detailed in
the minutiae of the challenges
presented, tasks performed and decisions
made the uh in rel in the relatively
mundane mission of establishing and
maintaining security around an area that
had already been secured by a much
larger army. cordon established beyond
the horizon of the crash site. Then
without skipping a beat, the colonel
jumped ahead to the point in time where
the crane lifted the downcraft with the
harness onto a low boy to be trucked
back to the base, covered by framing,
disguise, and metal metallic tarp. In
effect, the colonel had abruptly skipped
in an hour, an hour and a half of the
process after reporting almost minuteby
minute what had occurred in the previous
3 hours. That's wild. Imagine someone
telling you a story and then just like
skipping ahead an hour and a You're
like, "Whoa, where'd you go?" And
they're like, "What do you mean?"
His tone never varying. The colonel went
back to describing the minutiae of
establishing security for the convoy
back to the base. Use of helicopters,
local police, army MPs, etc. The
frustrated psychologist was about to
interrupt the colonel to take him back
over the gap when Masters tapped the
shrink's right leg with his left hand,
shooting him a glance, which told the
shrink to let the colonel go on to the
end of his story unimpeded.
The colonel went on as if giving an
operational briefing, but in a tone
appropriate for the intimate
circumstances
of the small audience in a small room.
In another hour, his rendition complete,
he finished off with the securing of the
craft and the remains in a special
receiving building on the base. He then
saw to his men getting fed and reporting
to the briefing area. The tape word on
quietly. The shrink looked over at
Masters. Colonel, may I see your notes?
Masters asked. The colonel flashed an
inquiring glance at the shrink, who
quickly nodded his approval.
The colonel handed the clipboard to
masters who flipped through the pages.
The notes were written in small block
letters. The time was carefully noted in
military 24-hour notation down the left
margin of the graph paper pad. A very
methodical guy, thought masters. Several
pages back he found the gap.
There was no space on the page to mark
its place in the flow of events.
The time margin notes simply skipped
ahead an hour and a half from the
beginnings of the excavation to the
securing of the harness to lift the
thing onto the lowboy. Masters looked at
the colonel who gazed back at him with
the superficial appearance of openness
in his eyes. Master knew that there was
more. The colonel had not been wholly
successful in keeping the contempt he
felt for agency spooks out of his voice
during the introductions and in his eyes
on two other occasions during the
debrief.
Masters made a mental note to leverage
that attitude in his exploration of the
gap.
On the other hand, the captain had given
Masters a quick rundown on the colonel's
resume on the brisk walk over.
He was one tough customer. One of those
men that at the command structure called
upon to take care of the rough stuff. A
man much like masters himself. This was
not a guy to mess with lightly.
Colonel, your notes appear to be very
thorough. Thank you, sir. The colonel
responded flatly with the barest hint of
a smile. You seem to have recorded every
event in fine detail here in your notes,
masters continued, gesturing toward the
colonel's clipboard on the table.
Yes, sir, said the colonel. Now, without
a smile,
the colonel could sense it coming,
even though he seemed to have no notion
of what this CIA spook was getting at.
What the hell? Thought masters. Here
goes. And he spoke firmly. Colonel, what
happened back there 10 pages back down
at the bottom? The colonel looked at the
page, then looked up at masters.
I'm sorry, sir. I don't follow you.
Sir, there's over an hour gap in your
notes right there on that page. And no
such gap exists anywhere else in your
notes. Why is that, Colonel? The colonel
seemed perplexed by this information and
quickly looked at his notes. He was
clearly taken aback by the gap in the
margin notes.
It was equally clear that he was
searching his recollection of events for
some explanation. For the first time,
his professional demeanor slipped and a
look of confusion crossed his face.
Masters could see that the colonel had
no clue as to why there was a gap. The
colonel said nothing, just flipping the
note pages back and forth,
as if there was a page that had gotten
stuck to the one above it. and he just
stopped looked at the psychologist
and then masters he stammered I I don't
know sir I have no idea why there are no
notes for that period perhaps things
were going smoothly that I had nothing
to note down masters decided to press
but colonel the entire operation went
smoothly yet you found every detail
worthy of note before this point what
made this portion different at this the
colonel's face went blank After a
moment, his expression brightened. We
can check with my exo. I'm sure that
chat can fill in this time period. He's
a good man for detail. That's why I
selected him for the team.
We already checked with your exo,
Colonel. The shrink broke in, his jaw
tightening. His notes and his rendition
of events have the same gap. The colonel
was plainly non plused by this
intelligence.
Masters pressed on. Colonel, forget
about your notes for a minute.
Do you recall what happened during that
hour and a half or so? The colonel
stared at the governmentissue gray metal
table surface as if his notes of that
period were written there.
After 45 long seconds, he said quietly
as if his answer were a surprise to
himself.
No.
Masters looked at the psychologist for a
moment, then pushed his chair back from
the table. Colonel, thank you. Wait a
minute. Is that it? The Colonel barked.
"Well, for the moment," said Masters.
"Let's sleep on it, and we'll resume
this in the morning. You and your men
have a long day. Maybe everything will
be more clear after everyone is more
rested." Masters was able to dodge the
colonel's impulse to argue, spinning
about and leaving the room, dragging the
dimminionive shrink along with him. He
pulled the shrink into the next
unoccupied debriefing room and closed
the door. "Doctor, I want typewritten
transcripts of each of the interviews
with the recovery team," Masters
murmured, his voice slow and even. and I
want them as soon as possible. Even if
you have to keep everyone up all night
and even if you have to have brigaders
typing them.
Can you do that? Masters asked, making
it clear that it was not a question. The
doc took a small step back. Uh, sure.
I'll check with the captain. A lot of
them are already being transcribed now.
Masters warmed to his place of
authority.
Please arrange to bring them to my
quarters as they are completed along
with the tapes.
Smaller man hesitated. Well, I I'll need
to check with the captain. Look, Doc,
check with anyone you want, but get me
the damn transcripts and I'll take care
of the captain.
As it turned out, the captain was way
ahead of them and had already made all
of these arrangements and more. It meant
just as the letter had said. Every one
of the team members drew a blank when
pressed about the missing time. After
the 15th transcript, Masters turned off
his light, rolled over, and tried to go
to sleep, but sleep would not come. The
accumulated knowledge of the past few
days jammed into his mind. First, he
learned that his government really
believed that there were flying saucers
and little green gray men
and that they were covertly funding this
rather elaborate program to run around
at night surreptitiously collecting
these things whenever they slipped a cog
and crashed.
Then, as if that were not enough, a
bunch of hard-bitten cold warriors go
out to hold the eggheheads hands and
keep away the riff raff while the
eggheheads recover this saucer thing.
And no one can remember what the hell
happened. What's going on here? Worse
still, they all forgot the same hour and
a half.
What the holy hell is happening here?
He finally drifted off to a fitful sleep
just before dawn, about 20 minutes
before the airmen knocked on his door to
wake him. Masters decided that it was
all fine and good for the military boys
to demonstrate how wonderfully
disciplined they were at dawn by being
all starched and chipper, but he'd had
it with all that long ago. He politely
but firmly informed the airmen that
there would be a change of plans and
that he would be rising at noon. Thank
you. The airmen started to stammer out a
protest, but something in Master's tone
told the airmen that this was probably
not a good idea.
At the crack of one, Masters blurily
arose, cleaned up, and made his way to
the captain's office escorted by the
ubiquitous overarmed airmen.
"You all right?" the captain asked.
Masters could not tell if he was being
cute or if it was a sincere inquiry.
Once he and the captain were alone, the
captain made it clear that the inquiry
was genuine. Look, it's quite a jolt to
everyone the first time that they're
introduced to this stuff. On top of it,
you get pushed into something that none
of us had seen before. No one can blame
you for feeling a little disoriented by
all this, the captain commiserated.
Yeah, said Masters. So, what's next?
We start again, and you get to start
with the colonel.
Wait a minute, Captain. Masters
interrupted. Why don't we cut to the
chase here and break out the sodium
penol and the other drugs? What about
hypnosis? I mean, I've been at this for
a while, and I can tell you that the
that your colonel there is the kind of
guy that if he thought he had something
to tell us, he would already have told
us. We're wasting our time here. But
masters could tell from the captain's
reaction what the answer would be. The
captain stiffened,
said with pointedly measured words, "Mr.
Masters." Whenever the military types
did not much care for someone, they
would place uncommon emphasis on the
first syllable of Mister.
I think my teacher did that when Mr.
Ramsay.
These are our people and their loyalty
is beyond question. We do not use truth
serum on people like this. And we're not
going to hypnotize them either. I don't
know how they do things at the agency,
but that's how we do it here, sir.
Yeah. Yeah. All honorable men. Masters
thought to himself out loud, he said.
For your information, Captain.
That's the way we handle it at the
agency as well, he replied. But we need
answers, and if we don't get them, we're
going to have to do something other than
shrug our shoulders and wonder what
happened out there.
The captain seemed ready to take the
matter to another level. But then he
shrugged it off. Mr. Masters,
once you've been in this area of
intelligence for a while, you will
probably become more accustomed to
running up blind alleys. But you're
right. We have to do something about the
gap thing. But we also have to treat our
people with respect and dignity, not
like counter intel agents from Russia.
Very well, Captain Master said
impatiently.
Let's go see if the colonel has had a
sudden recollection of things past,
shall we? The shrank and the colonel
were already back in the grim little
debriefing room. The colonel did not
look quite the same this morning. He was
pouring himself a glass of water, and as
he did, masters noted that his hands
were shaking.
His eyes were averted.
"What is this?" thought Masters. The
shrink noted it too. Masters could see.
Tape on, Doc. Master said to the
psychologist. "Yeah, okay, Colonel. Did
you get a good night's rest?" The
colonel looked up at Masters with a
bewildered, desperate look. The steelyed
eagle of a man was nowhere in evidence.
The colonel started slowly.
His voice a tremulous whisper.
Something h happened this morning.
I remember now.
It's all right to tell you now. It
wasn't all right before.
Momentarily taken a back, master's
queried. What do you mean by that?
I don't know really. I I just know that
I couldn't tell you yesterday.
But now it's okay. He blinked and
repeated.
It's okay now. That's all. Well,
Colonel, who told you that it was okay?
Masters probed.
They did.
Colonel replied, looking as if he did
not quite believe it himself.
The
aliens on the ship, said Colonel,
clearly shaken by his own realization of
what he was saying. Masters looked at
the shrink. The dead things on the crash
saucer.
No,
the ones on the big ship that showed up
as we were fitting the harness on the
crashed one.
Masters and the shrink shot each other a
look and both said at once, "What big
ship that showed up?" "The There was a
ship," his voice trembled.
A huge mother, 20 times larger than the
one we were digging out. It just
suddenly showed up overhead, took a
position right above us, so low that we
figured we thought that the we thought
the army boys at the outer perimeter
wouldn't be able to see it. What did it
do? asked Masters, flipping a pen
between his thumb and forefinger.
Nothing, said the colonel. It just
hovered up there.
Threatening us and trying to scare us
off from the wreck.
They didn't want us there. He closed his
eyes and his face drawn. They didn't
want us to take the craft or the bodies.
How did you know that? Did they tell you
that over a PA system or something?
A look of amusement quickly gone. The
colonel shivered. No, he said.
Believe me, they did not need a PA
system. It was real clear how they felt
on the subject.
The colonel and the shrink again
exchanged surprised glances. Masters
ventured. Are we talking telepathy here,
Colonel?
He made no effort to hide the skepticism
in his voice, but the colonel seemed not
to notice. too busy reliving the moment
with the mother ship overhead.
"No,
not exactly," the colonel said slowly.
"It wasn't telepathy. It was more just
like being able to feel their hostility.
We could feel
that they did not want us there. We all
understood that. We didn't even need to
talk about it.
But it wasn't verbal. It It wasn't like
we received a thought out sentence or
anything like that.
We didn't need to. We
We got the point.
Empathy, whispered the psychologist,
transfixed by the colonel's words.
"Masters took a deep breath."
"Okay, Colonel, what did you and your
men do once you felt this hostility from
the ship?" he asked. I ordered the men
to go weapons hot and wait to fire on my
command or at the first sign of an overt
attack. He looked down at the floor for
a few seconds.
The order was superfluous. Really? All
of us had already done that the minute
the damn thing showed up.
Was there any sign of hostility? No.
It just hovered there, emanating
hostility for the next hour and a half.
We just held our ground, ready to shoot
it out of the sky at the first move it
made, but didn't do anything. "So, what
happened eventually?" Masters asked, his
voice softening.
The colonel squinted in frustration.
"Just flew straight up into the night,
and that was it."
He said, "Guys went back to lifting the
wreck onto the trailer, and that was
that. I guess we were all a little too
busy to bother with noting our
procedures at that point. The slightest
tinge of sarcasm and defensiveness
entered his voice again.
Why didn't you tell us this before?
Astress pressed again. There was no way.
I I I couldn't tell anyone. I I couldn't
even remember. But when I woke up this
morning, I suddenly remembered it all
and knew that it was okay with them
to tell you about it now.
Okay with them? Masters repeated slowly
under his breath. There was a knock on
the door and the captain ducked in.
Excuse me, gentlemen. Colonel, Mr.
Masters, Doc, could I see you outside
for a minute, please?
My apologies, Colonel. But the colonel
seemed lost in thought and merely
glanced up and waved the captain off.
Masters and the psychologist followed
the captain out in the hallway. The
captain seemed very excited. I don't
know what's happening in your room, but
I would bet money that the colonel
suddenly remembered a Mexican standoff
with some big ship that showed up and
tried to scare our guys off. Am I right?
He looked expectantly from Masters to
the psychologist. Our first 15 team
members all said the same thing. Can you
believe it? The colonel said it too,
didn't he? Now, it was the shrink who
was excited. Yes. Yeah, that's right.
It's as if uh the aliens uh turned on
their memories of the incident.
Little gray bastards of thought control
and empathy projection. But can you
believe this These great critters
get scarier at every turn. But masters
could see that the shrink was actually
thrilled they were making this
discovery.
At the same time, he noticed that the
captain wasn't nearly as thrilled. The
truth, as it were, had not set him free.
A thought occurred to him. How do we
know that this version is the truth
either, gentlemen?
The captain and the doctor spun around
to look at Masters. What do you mean?
Captain asked in a rush. They remember
what happened now.
Yeah. Masters agreed slowly.
Maybe, maybe not. These memories are now
allowed by the aliens. The same aliens
that would not let them even talk about
it before. He turned to the shrink. Doc,
you know anything about hypnosis?
The psychologist brightened. He saw what
Masters was getting at. You're talking
about screen memory, aren't you?
Like the aliens only allowed the team to
remember what they wanted them to
remember, right? Yeah, something like
that. Masters replied.
You could see that this line of
questioning was making the captain cross
and uneasy.
Masters looked squarely at the captain.
So, Doc, how would one go about punching
through that screen memory to get to the
truth?
Well, it isn't clear that it can be done
at all, the captain snorted. But if it
can be done, it will be with either deep
hypnosis or some sort of inhibition
reducing drug like sodium penol. Even
then, it isn't certain that we can break
through or we can even get to the truth
if we do. Hypnosis is very unreliable,
the doc injected. Also, if these alien
guys are this good, they might be able
to implant several layers of screen
memories. Would be a crapshoot at best,
he added, then shrank into silence,
suddenly aware of the captain's
discomfort with the whole discussion.
The captain turned to Masters. I remind
you again, Mr. masters. He said, "We do
not put our people under hypnosis or
drugs unless they are under suspicion of
counter espionage, which is not
applicable here. Moreover, you heard
him. Hypnosis is unreliable. And even if
we use drugs, we couldn't be sure of the
results." Master's side.
Well, Captain, one thing's for damn
sure.
Your fine colonel, your quintessential
man of action in there and his group of
class A battle studs did not just stand
there cocked and locked for an hour and
a half without doing something or
without something happening.
Your colonel is also one meticulous
mother who doesn't take a breath with
without documenting it.
But for an hour and a half, he and all
of our team didn't write one damn thing
down on their clipboards. Doesn't that
make you just a little curious to know
what really happened out there, Captain?
Hell yes, I'm curious, the captain
snapped. But not at the price of
degrading these good people. Some of the
best people that I or anyone else has
ever worked with. He drew himself up and
stared into Master's eyes. No, Mr.
Masters. We are not going to do what you
suggest. Besides, their real memories
will probably surface eventually, no
matter what we do or don't do.
Very well, Captain Master said coldly. I
just hope we have the time to find out
what we need to know about this before
these gray bastards have taken over the
whole damn place. What good will your
people's dignity do for them then,
Captain? That's about enough, Mr.
Masters. The captain spat as if he were
dressing down a new recruit. In any
case, the decision is not up to me. The
base commander will have to take care of
this one.
Masters looked out the window of the 727
as it lowered into Washington. There
would be no hypnosis, no truth drugs.
The base commander was unconvinced of
Master's argument. In any case, that is
not how we treat our people and so on.
Masters sneered to himself and then
knocked back his scotch on the rocks. On
balance, he vastly preferred the
Russians and the Iranians to this
Maybe it was time to retire after all.
But the agency had other ideas as we
would soon discover.
All right. A writer, researcher for over
20 years, Greg Halifax lives in Southern
California. He has a number of good
friends from the military-industrial
complex. You don't say.
As part two, man, this story gets better
and better. I'm enthralled.
SGE Master's character reads as a um I
don't know, some like mid-century gruff
type,
you know, hard-nosed
scotch on the rocks.
I don't know. I like the cut of his jib.
All right, here we go. Part three.
The ballroom, the scooter, and the
Christmas ornament. I feel like we
should play those uh those organs, you
know, they did when in the 1940s when
there was like these radio shows during
the war, like it was like all live, just
me. I listen to some weird stuff when
I'm alone in the car.
At any rate, they would have these live
shows,
you know, on air and they would do all
the sound effects in studio. None of it
was pre-recorded. They had this like
organ type thing that would play. I
digress. Let's get back to the story.
interrogation specialist and veteran
operative Sedwick Masters. Okay, we have
a full name now. Sedwick. No, not the
name of Harry Potter's bird.
Um, he has been tasked with the
uncovering with uncovering the secrets
behind UFO reports. CIA background
notwithstanding, there are just some
secrets that stubbornly resist the
probes of even the world's best
investigative minds, forcing the most
sensible and objective man to completely
re-evaluate
his version of reality.
After a sudden and perplexing briefing
on the state of the UFO phenomenon, as
the best intelligence pros know it,
Masters was hustled off to Wright
Patterson Air Force Base. There, he sat
in on the briefings of some men at the
Air Force Base's top flight crash
recovery team. all of whom had
experienced over an hour of missing time
during a sensitive recovery operation.
Still reeling psychologically, Masters
is about to engage in another round of
the patently weird
SG. Masters had been back in Washington
DC for two weeks. Most of the time he
had spent drinking in his townhouse in
Fairfax.
small part of the time he had spent
reporting on what had occurred at Wright
Patterson. The entire UFO recovery team
losing its collective memory of the
threatening appearance of a second much
larger UFO over the recovery site and
then the sudden and explicable
recollection of the events by all 67
members of the team. While he was at the
base assigned specially by the agency to
debrief the team's commander, he had
argued in favor of using hypnosis and
drugs to try to penetrate beyond what he
suspects were screen memories of the
event. He had been overridden by the
local commanders and his own supervisor
within the agency had gone along with
that determination. The first debriefing
took place in a safe house in the
countryside outside Fairfax. His boss,
the colonel, took in Master's oral
report impassively, asking no questions.
Also, let's just like pause here a
second. The mass screen memory thing is
extremely strange yet not completely
unheard of.
I think it was Mario Woods who had also
told me a story that when he was a
child, I think they went to church. So,
this family, clear as day, discs
appeared over the church.
This might have been Mario Woods or this
might have been
Preston Denn. I might be mistaken. In
any case, everyone looked at it and then
everyone forgot about it and just kind
of went on about their day. And I I
think that
for the most part
a lot of mass sightings behave this way.
Even in there's a documentary by James
Fox, a very famous one called I think
out of the blue or I know what I saw. I
think it's out of the blue. It's the
Phoenix Lights. And there were these
ladies sitting around having tea
enjoying a lovely afternoon. And above
them lurks this looming ominous giant
boomerang of a monolith slowly making
its way overhead and casting a shadow on
their faces as they're drinking tea. And
all of them stop to gaze at this low
humming giant
obelisk that's floating.
And as soon as it's out of sight,
they all proceed to continue drinking
tea as if nothing happened. And so I
don't know if that's an effect of in
that particular case, the technology
aboard the craft or simply like I'm
going to give myself a screen memory cuz
that that was way too wild. Um, but it
seems at least in this case like they
have the ability to do that. Also, I
think that the original the person who
showed up originally to the crash site
of Argia 1996 in Brazil, I think there
was also something there that kind of
made him forget about a bunch of stuff.
But this this isn't unheard of.
Wild that they can just turn it off and
then on.
Masters and the colonel had worked
together for some time in the variety of
contexts. They were not chummy by any
means. The colonel had never left any
doubt in master's mind as to who was in
charge and that the colonel was all
business. The colonel had made no effort
to justify or explain why he had backed
up the commanders at Wright Patton
overriding master's position that the
recovery team interrogation should have
gone on using whatever pharmaceutical or
psychological means were available to
get to the bottom of what had happened
during the missing time.
Masters was supposed to be in charge of
the debriefing operation, but he had
been outranked by an Air Force captain.
A captain for Christ's sakes. So he
drank and waited to be summoned again.
It was not just the issue of being
undercut by his supervisor with the
agency whom he had come to trust. There
was also the very fact there were UFOs
at all. the government was recovering
them and had been doing so for decades.
That there was a secret network within
the government, Zodiac.
It seemed to be able to skirt the chain
of command with impunity, spend money
earmarked for other projects, and
generally do whatever it damn well
pleased, all in the name of UFOs and
their importance to national security.
One of Master's strengths had always
been that while he was flexible and
open-minded, he thought he had a firm
grasp on the world in which he lived.
He'd been alive for 49 years. Two weeks
ago, he discovered in the span of a day
that he had understood nothing about
this world. He was not real damn happy
about this revelation. During Master's
second meeting with him, the colonel had
questioned him about personal reactions
to the UFO revelations.
It was clear that if Masters had too
negative a take on what he'd learned, he
would be terminated from UFO related
assignments or perhaps just terminated.
The colonel had broken the usual
protocols of introducing new recruits to
Zodiac slowly, gradually to allow them
time to adjust to the radically
different paradigm.
There was not time to do that in
Master's case. The colonel said he was
ordered to report to Fort Belvoir
for 3 days of psychological testing and
then he was told to sit tight, relax,
and wait further orders. When he went
out jogging along the creek near his
home, he had the distinct impression
that he was being followed, but even he
with his experience in field operations
could not be sure. "Why were they
following him?" he thought. Dumb
bastards think that I'm going to meet
Woodward and Bernstein while running
along in the woods. Or maybe they just
want to see if I crack. Still, he
couldn't be sure. His wife was out of
town as usual on yet another sales
junket on the West Coast. She had not
expected him to be back so soon.
Not that it would have made any
difference. Although their marriage had
started out happily enough, her life had
become her work. His frequent prolonged
absences on foreign assignments were now
mirrored by her sales travels,
conventions, and temporary postings all
over the world, except here at home in
Virginia. She was supposed to be
assigned to DC, but had not spent 3
weeks there in the last 8 months.
He was very much alone, which up to now
had been fine with him. He wished she
were home.
He needed someone to talk to. The
colonel told him not to discuss the UFO
matters with his wife. Everyone knew
that was the rule. Everyone also knew
that the rule was almost never observed
except by masters. He had never shared
with his wife what he did. Up until now,
he never wanted to. For some time, he
had been missing their lost intimacy,
their joyous partnership,
sweet conspiracy of their youth. But now
you realize for the first time just how
much they had lost as the chasm between
them widened. It was for times like
these that they were married. Every bit
as much as for their sense of shared
beauty, cleverness, and wit when they
were young. Thought about her increased
drinking. She was home and wondered if
she shared his yearning for communion.
If so, he wondered what had driven her
to reach the same conclusions. After
all, no one had told her that UFOs were
real and that most of what she thought
she knew was false. Or perhaps she had
been told something very much like that
by his shows of indifference. She
thought of her marriage to him as a sort
of fulfillment of her life's
expectations.
And it did not exactly turn out that
way, did it? He poured himself another
drink. There were old friends he could
call, but he knew that the lines were
tapped. More to the point, he had not
been good about keeping up his
relationships outside the agency. His
work was his life, and for the first
time, he regretted how isolated and
depended upon the agency he had become.
He therefore resented what he was
thinking and feeling. This was the first
time in his career that his supervisor
had undercut him. This was the first
time that he felt so out of the loop.
Intelligence was always
compartmentalized, always shared only on
a need to- know basis. But this time he
felt
that he was like one of those rats in a
cyclap back in college. He felt that he
was being played with. He had turned
over in his mind night after night that
this was some kind of weird test to set
up for no UFOs.
There were no little green men, gray
men, whatever. It was all just some sort
of perverted test.
They were checking his stability or his
confidence in his own perception or
something like that. He poured another
drink. Well, he had had it with this
He would call the colonel and
tell him that he'd put in his 25 years
and he was taken early retirement. He
looked over at the phone next to his
chair and as if it were a venomous
snake. Gingerly, tentatively, he
extended his hand toward the phone.
Screw it. He reached for the phone just
as it rang.
"SGE," the colonel's voice came over the
phone, more like a barked command than a
question. "Yes, sir. I'm here."
Masters said, noting with irritation the
groggy, slurred sound of his own voice.
"Sput that bottle away and get yourself
cleaned up. We're sending a car around
for you in 30 minutes to take you to the
fort. I'll meet you there.
Your wife still out of town? As if he
didn't know, thought Masters. Yes, sir.
She's still in San Francisco at the
dealers's convention. I won't be back
till Friday. Good. See you then. The
receiver clicked twice as the colonel
hung up. Masters dangled the receiver
from its cord for 5 seconds without
moving. New assignment, termination from
Zodiac, or just plain old termination or
with extreme prejudice? Oh, for Christ's
sake, just get your ass in the shower
and get on with it, he thought.
They wanted to do it, they'd just come
here and do it. No need to summon you
back to Fort Belvoir. With that, he
slammed down the receiver and heaved
himself awkwardly out of the chair,
weaving down the hall for the cold
shower that he hoped would give him some
semblance of alertness by the time he
reached the fort.
After the usual security routine
with the changed badges and whatnot,
Masters was admitted to a small
conference room with a table and two
chairs. The colonel was sitting at one
of them with two briefing folders in
front of him. Sit down, SGE.
Masters took the chair across from the
colonel. The shower and the fresh air on
the drive over had helped along with the
quart of ice water he had gulped down
right after the shower. Still, he was in
no mood for any more mind games. He I'll
get right to the point, Colonel began.
You made quite the case for use of
aggressive debriefing techniques where
these UFO devices are involved. I was
impressed, but there was more at stake
in the situation in Ohio than just
getting to the facts. That retrieval
team is valuable to us. They've proven
their worth many times over. We cannot
easily replace them. And what's more, we
don't want to. I know you didn't agree
with me or the fly boys out at Right
Pat, but you just have to suck it up on
that one, SGE.
I know that you didn't like the way it
was handled. So, I'm going to give you
another chance to test your theory. At
least the hypnosis part, the colonel
said, gesturing toward the folders in
front of him. He pushed one of them
towards SGE.
Read this while I get us some coffee,"
the colonel instructed. He got up and
left the room. And as he left, an MP,
military police, with an automatic
weapon, entered the room and stood guard
at Master's back. "What do you think I'm
going to do? Eat the file?" The report
in the folder was brief, followed by
surveillance reports and standard no
contact security background checks. The
subjects were two young graduate
students in the Los Angeles area, Mike
Castillion and Bob Ernest.
That's interesting.
Ernest had contacted a UFO organization
in Colorado and reported a series of odd
events. Most of the information came
from taps on the organization's phones
supplemented by undercover agents within
the organization. So, we actually spend
assets on these UFO wackos. masters
thought.
In the first of these episodes, Ernest
and Cast Castillion uh had encountered a
large USO underwater submerged object
off the coast of Palos Veres near
Catalina Islands. Okay,
this is interesting.
We've heard of this place. Before their
eyes, the USO had then become a UFO
flying right over their heads while they
were driving around the peninsula in an
open sports car on Palos Verde's Drive
North. This was around midnight. We're
going to visit some young woman who they
knew lived on the other side of the
peninsula. They first noticed the USO, a
large, brightly glowing mass under the
surface of the ocean, which was moving
at high speeds directly toward the part
of the peninsula on which they were
driving. They lost sight of it as it
approached the cliffs below them, but
were startled as it broke the horizon
and flew soundlessly over them toward
the higher slopes to their right. My
gosh.
They followed the path of the UFO up the
valley away from the water. And when
they could drive no further up the
increasingly rugged terrain, they
climbed up the slope on foot.
Suddenly, they encountered a police
officer whose uniform they described as
strange.
The officer told them that they were
trespassing on private property and that
they would have to leave at once. The
two students somewhat indignantly
explained what they were doing and also
appined that whoever owned the steep
overgrown slopes going up the cliffs
would probably not mind their presence.
But the officer was unmoved and ordered
them to leave again. One odd fact came
out of the telephone interview. And the
officer's patrol car was seen by the
students to be parked behind the officer
on the steep slope. Even though there
were no roads, and they themselves had
to abandon their car to climb up the
steeply inclined and overgrown
mountainside. They described the car as
odd, but offered no specifics in the
taped phone calls. They followed the
officer's orders and left the area.
The second incident took place two weeks
later at almost the same location when
the young men were driving the same
sports car on the same road to see the
same young woman. This time, a shiny,
much smaller UFO was seen pacing their
car's progress up the road. About 20 ft
away from them and directly off to their
side. When they pulled over to get a
better look, it flew away into the night
sky. They heard no sound from the
object. The third sighting involved only
Castillion
who had a UFO hovering over his sports
car as he drove through Wilmington on
Pacific Coast Highway on a Saturday
morning. The thing hung over him for
about 20 minutes, then just flew away.
Again, the object emitted no noise that
Castion could detect. Traffic was so
light during all of these incidents that
there were no other witnesses known to
Ernest and Castion. I keep saying
Castion, but uh the French in me cannot
help but pronounce it that way. The
fourth incident, okay, super
experiencers here, uh, was the focus of
the report. Interesting. Ernest and
Castile had met some fellow at a
friend's party who shared with Ernest an
interest in very avantguard music.
Strangely, neither Cassion nor Ernest
could recall the fellow's name. Ernest
was more friendly toward this fellow
than Castion. The latter considered the
fellow a little strange and did not care
for his taste in music. A few days after
the party, Ernest called the fellow who
invited them to visit him at his house
on Dapprey Lane in Rolling Hills estate,
a small exclusive community on the Palos
Verde's Peninsula.
They took him up on his invitation one
night later that week.
The strange fellow's home was heated too
much for their liking, and after Castion
grew tired of humoring Ernest's interest
in the guy's strange recordings, he
finally persuaded Ernest that they
needed to be going. Masters noted that
when Ernest was pressed by the telephone
interviewer to provide details of what
happened in the home, he was rather
vague.
Other than the excessive warmth and the
music, all that he could remember of the
evening was that he and Cassion had
taken off their jackets and outer shirts
because of the heat, leaving them with
only their t-shirts and jeans on. It was
almost exactly midnight when they left.
As they went down the porch steps to the
short walkway to the street,
they both saw a bright glowing red ball
a little larger than a basketball
resting on the front lawn.
Oddly, there was no mention of their
host noticing the ball or even staying
with them as they walked toward it to
check it out.
They stood there looking at the ball for
what seemed like a moment
and then got into Ernest's car, the
Volkswagen.
It was then that Ernest noticed that the
clock in the Volkswagen showed the time
as 300 a.m. He mentioned this with
surprise to Castile. Their watches
confirmed the time. Somehow they had
lost 3 hours looking at a red ball.
There was a fifth episode. Okay, come
on.
Occurred in New Orleans during Martyra a
few months after the Red Ball incident.
According to Ernest, they were staying
at a hotel and there was a loud bang and
a flash outside followed by a large gray
coming right through their locked door
startlingly fast. It loomed over them
for a few seconds while they were
paralyzed and then just withdrew through
the same door just as swiftly. Whoa,
that's wild.
Grays running very rapidly through solid
objects is very common. We hear about
this quite I wouldn't say very common.
That's misappropriating this situation.
Uh it is among experiencers frequently
noted
definitely not very common if you're
seeing something like that. It is not
normal.
Um but uh Eric um Nansteel who was here
in the podcast uh that was his first
experience with multiple grays sort of
zipping out of the room and through the
wall. But you hear about this quite
often enough among experiencers stories.
The transcripts of the telephone
interviews were always with Ernest, not
Castile. Ernest told the interviewer
that Castion was not particularly
interested in these odd events,
even though he acknowledged their
stranges. Ernest, on the other hand, had
apparently become a UFO enthusiast as a
consequence of these encounters. Ah,
okay. So, that that's a bit of a red
flag for me. the guy who has five
sightings who's eager to talk about
them. But then again,
as we know, if you start looking at the
phenomenon, the phenomenon seems to
start looking at you. So, what are we
seeing here? Are we seeing some type of
feedback loop?
Are we seeing confirmation bias? Or is
he kind of attracting something now? At
this point, he found out about the UFO
organization and wanted Castion himself
to be hypnotized to try and find out
what happened during the missing 3
hours. As it turned out, the
hypnotherapist, one Dr. Beth Culp, who
donated her services to the
organization, was an agency asset. She
had done work for the agency for the
past 15 years and had been working on
UFO related incidents off and on for the
last 11 years. They've infiltrated
psychologists. I don't like that. She
arranged to interview the two students
in the next two days and Masters was to
go along as a representative of the UFO
enthusiast organization to observe
hypnotherapy regression sessions.
Sneaky. See, when people mention, you
know, and this is not a slight toon, but
I mean these organizations have to be
they they must be infiltrated
otherwise you just be leaving that on
the table, right? You you you would need
to have a foot in there. So crazy. Where
do you turn then if you have an
experience, right? Who can you trust?
Masters noted with disappointment that
no chemical injections were discussed
with the young men, although he sensed
from the report that Castion would not
be aminable to such a procedure.
as it had taken some salesmanship on
Ernest's part just to get him to go
along with hypnosis. The colonel
re-entered the room as the MP left. He
sat down the coffees on the table. "I
left yours black," he said. "Well," said
the colonel, "Here's your chance to see
if hypnosis can bring back those
memories you say are being masked by
aliens." "How do we know if the red
balls from aliens?" Masters asked,
sipping his coffee. The colonel smiled.
"Well, they aren't ours," said if that's
what you're getting at. "How do you know
that, sir? How do you know if there
isn't a compartment apart from yours
where someone knows that we designed
these things to control people or for
some other agenda?
Good question. The colonel seemed amused
by this despite his usual stern manner.
Trust me on this SGE. They're not ours.
Indeed, they are not anyone else's. They
are something of a mystery really.
That's why you're going out to Los
Angeles. Try and find out what these
damn things are.
Colonel, you spoke of a ball as if it
were more than one. The report only
spoke about one, as I recall. Very good,
SGE. After you cover this hypno debrief,
I want you to swing by right pad again
and tell your friend, the captain, what
you learned. You may have more
information for you on this. Then come
back to DC and we'll talk. Have a good
trip, SGE, and uh keep it professional
while you're on the mission. All right.
Masters was sorely tempted to tell the
colonel to take his assignment and shove
it along with his advice on drinking,
but he just barely managed to hold his
tongue. He maintained a sullen silence
on the drive back to Fairfax despite the
best efforts of the outgoing seaman
driver.
Christ, graduate students, red balls,
UFO nuts, and hypnotists, he thought.
Not to mention conducting a domestic
operation within the borders of the
United States in violation of the
National Security Act of 1947.
This were a test.
He had no idea where it was going. And
he refers to that act because you are
not allowed to
spy on your own people. You're not
allowed to sigh up your own people.
These are all things to protect the
American people.
But alas, these agencies have broken uh
this promise many a times. By the time
his plane leveled off from his climb out
from Dulles, masters had already ordered
two scotches from the middle-aged flight
attendant. Here's to you, Colonel, and
your godamn UFOs, red balls, and Dr.
Culp, the therapist, he thought as he
knocked back the first shot of J&B. By
the time his plane descended into the
brown sludge that LA called a sky, he
was pleasantly buzzed and eronously
thought that he was ready for his
rendevous with Dr. Culp. They were to
meet 2 hours before Ernest and Castion
were expected to arrive at a hotel in
Rodondo overlooking the beach in King
Harbor.
Culp had a suite at the hotel. Masters
knocked on the suite door and heard
someone unlocking the multiple locks
after checking the spy hole. He was not
quite ready for Dr. Culp. As it turned
out, she was almost as tall as Masters
himself. 5'11 Masters Guest with long
blonde hair, beautiful, large, clear
blue eyes.
Her doseier said that she was 48 years
old, but she looked at least 15 years
younger. She was very pretty, slim, and
had a dazzling smile.
Masters was a cool customer in a crisis,
but he could feel his voice sounding a
little offkey as he introduced himself
to the striking therapist.
She was very much in possession of the
moment and seemed to take delight in the
effect she had on him, even though she
had become used to this sort of thing
over the years. Masters was irritated
with himself for being so takenback by
her.
She asked him if he would like a drink.
He thought. Now that's more like it.
Cult poured masters of Coke over ice.
She poured herself a Perry with lime. So
that's how it is. He thought Miss Prim,
I understand that the colonel has
already gone over the protocol for these
interviews, Mr. Masters.
Yes. You will put each of them under
individually and ask them a battery of
questions aimed at figuring out what
happened during the 3 hours that they
thought they were looking at the ball.
We're instructed not to talk with each
other about the incident, but given the
passage of time, you know that they did,
right? Right. We do the best we can to
filter out the corrupted recollections.
As you know, hypnosis is not perfect,
but beats sitting around scratching our
heads wondering what happened. I agree
with you on that, said Masters. He also
noted that these were the same words
that he had used in arguing with the
captain at Wright Patterson about using
hypnosis to debrief the recovery team.
She must have been given a more thorough
briefing than I was told, master
thought.
Have you done this before? Culp asked.
Yes, but under much different
circumstances. Master did not elaborate.
even though it was clear from Culp's
expectant gaze that she expected him to
do so. When it became clear that he had
nothing more to say, she crisply
instructed. In this instance, I will do
all of the talking. If you have any
questions, you will write them down and
pass them to me. Please do not make any
sudden movements or noises while the
session is in progress. Do you have any
questions? Only one. You have any real
drinks in that refrigerator? Classic
SGE. Classic Sedwick.
If by real you mean alcoholic? Yes, they
do. The colonel was quite specific that
you are not to have any during this
assignment.
I see. If I were to disregard that
instruction,
I don't know why Sedick is turning into
John Marson from uh Red Dead Redemption,
but it's where I'm going with it. All
right.
Then I'd be forced to stop you and put
your lack of cooperation in my report.
She looked at him levely
as if to say, "Even though I look like a
willowy woman, I can deal with you
physically if the need be." He believed
that she
would really try to. "All right, strong
woman."
"Okay, Dr. Culp," he smiled. "It looks
as if I am your prisoner for the time
being." "Good," she said. "Let's
rearrange the furniture to make it more
comfortable and get ready for our
guests."
One other thing, doctor, said masters.
Why did you rule out sodium penithol or
some other psychoactive drug? I didn't
rule it out. Our subjects did. My Cion
was not at all enthused about doing
this. The only way he would agree was if
only hypnosis were used. Besides, we
often find that hypnosis gets better
results with hidden memories than drugs.
As you know from your background, drugs
are more useful when there is a
subjective inhibition making the subject
less than forthcoming. How do you know
that isn't indicated here? He asked,
picking up the coffee table. Because it
isn't that these subjects don't want to
talk about it, they just don't remember.
Lifting her end of the table. How can
you be sure of that? He asked, thinking
of the recovery team statements that
they were later allowed to tell
different versions of the events. She
caught his eye and asked,
"Just what are you thinking of in asking
that?" "Oops," master thought. "Oh,
nothing. Damn," he thought. "She isn't
cleared for that." Culp sat down the
table and drew herself up to her full
6'1 in low heels, setting her clear,
light blue eyes right into line with
Masters. "Mr. Masters, if we are going
to work together effectively on this
assignment, you are going to have to be
frank with me. Now, why do you think
that these subjects might be holding
back during this interview? If I am to
discharge my duties during these
interviews, I need to have all the
information you have that you can share
with me. Do I make myself clear?
Yes, ma'am, you do.
Oh, fabulously, masters thought. I can't
go into details, Miss Culp, but it is
possible that these phenomena involve
making the uh subjects obey a command
not to talk about what they underwent
during the missing time sequence as
opposed to not remembering what
happened. That's why I asked about the
drugs.
But if it's to be hypnosis, then so be
it. I was just curious as to what your
thoughts were on the subject. That's
all.
Seems like our SGE has met his match. Uh
now it is to be noted by the way I just
want to take a quick little pause. Uh
this reads as a really good book not as
a real detailed account. The details are
too specific. This is obviously
uh interpreted into a story. But what I
find interesting is that something this
interpretive made its way into UFO
magazine and there was no note by the
editor. This is kind of just very
strange.
It is
like a fictional story but much like
perhaps secret machines or many other
books uh perhaps even Krypto's conundrum
all these books that might hide truth
within fiction.
Culps seem to relax a bit. Well, it's
true that in some of the purported
abductions with which we've dealt, the
subjects sometimes say that they've been
instructed not to talk about all or part
of their experience. In fact, they
become quite agitated if pressed on the
subject, even while under deep hypnosis.
"So, how successful have you been when
you try to break through this
instruction?" he asked. "It's hard to
say. Sometimes they don't budge. Other
times, they tell us more detailed
stories behind the so-called screen
memory. But still, I get the feeling
that we're just getting the next screen
memory and not what really happened."
You may be right about the drugs, but we
can't make citizens accept them against
their will.
Oh, yeah, of course, said masters while
thinking. The hell we can't.
There was a knock at the door. Two
good-looking young men stood at the
door, smiling and filled with the quiet
cockiness of men in their prime. Both of
the young men were a little surprised by
the statuesque Dr. Culp, but they
quickly recovered. Their spirits much
improved by her obvious charms
notwithstanding master's brooding
presence and less than enthused
greeting.
Kulp explained the procedure, escorted
Castillion to the far bedroom, turned on
the TV in his room, got him a drink, and
came back to the other bedroom to start
with Ernest. Masters noted that both of
these fellows seemed normal enough. They
did not give the appearance of being
countercultural or science geeks. The
stories told by these two men were
virtually identical on every point,
particularly the most important point
that they lost 3 hours of time that
night on Dappel Grey Lane. The stories
did not change under hypnosis except
that they now said that they remembered
spending the 3 hours just standing on
the walkway staring at the glowing red
ball until it floated up into the night
sky. No amount of probing by the
resourceful Dr. Culp ever penetrated
behind this story.
No alien ships, no medical exams, no
short or tall grays, nothing. Just
standing there for 3 hours and then
leaving. Neither man showed any
discomfort when pressed. They just had
nothing more to say. Masters wanted to
inject both of them with drugs, but knew
that Culp would not go for it. One thing
that both Dr. Culp and masters noticed
was that while Ernest was understandably
interested in what had happened, Castion
seemed almost weirdly detached from and
disinterested in the Red Ball experience
and the other incidents that he
described.
He said that he had other concerns with
graduate school, his pending marriage to
his fiance, and financial pressures. He
also said that he simply did not have
time for UFOs. Cassion regarded nest's
interest with beusement. Even so, both
culp and masters thought that Castion's
outlook was a little too detached, as if
he had been conditioned to disregard the
experience and not to look into it
further. After saying goodbye to the two
young men, Master suggested that Dr.
Culp and he debriefed over dinner at the
chart house overlooking the water. Culp
declined, stating that they should do
their work without distractions in the
most efficient manner possible, as she
had a plane to catch. They were in
general agreement as to their
impressions of the men's story. The two
men seemed to be sincere.
They had nothing to gain by making up
the story. Indeed, Castile was
uncomfortable with the time that he gave
to this exercise, being anxious to get
back to his normal pursuits. There's one
more thing to do before we leave this
mud hole of a town. master said. We
should drive by the house of Dapprey.
See what there is to see. No need, said
Kulp as she was repacking her briefcase.
Why not? Don't you think that there's
something to be gained from going back
to the scene? Sure, but not from me
doing so. I was raised in Palos Veres.
In fact, I went to Dapprey Elementary
School. I've seen Dapprey Lane dozens of
times. There's nothing about the street
to suggest anything out of the ordinary
except and she hesitated. Except what,
Dr. Cult? Master's asked. "Oh, nothing.
It's It's nothing really." She waved her
hand dismissively and went back to her
packing.
"Humor me, Beth," Master said, moving
around the table to face her. "Well,
there was a report which came into the
UFO center in Denver several years ago,
which we just finished investigating,
but it was so offthe-wall that I'm sure
it has nothing to do with our boys in
their red ball."
Enough with the coiness, doctor. give
what supposedly happened. Oh, it was
kind of like one of those terrible
low-budget science fiction movies from
the ' 50s. In fact, that's what we
thought inspired this little story.
However, there are certain similarities
to these interviews. That settles it,
thought Masters, grabbing her hand. Come
on, you can tell me the story on the
way. Once they were in the car, Culp
resumed her story. It happened 7 years
ago in August of 1971.
There were these two young guys around
the same ages as Casio and Ernest. Their
names were John Hodes and Peter
Rodriguez.
They were visiting a mutual friend on
Dapprey Lane at 2 a.m. They left their
friend's house and got into Haj's car.
They then saw two large brains in the
middle of the road ahead of them, each
about as high as a man's waist when
standing, and each apparently alive.
Hodgees drove around the brains and took
Rodriguez back to his apartment below
Palos Veres. Masters interrupted her.
Oh, wait a minute. Hajes sees two giant
living brains in the middle of the road
in front of him and he just drives
around them just like that. Culp
laughed. I told you that it didn't make
any sense. And he said that they were
afraid of them and felt getting away was
the most important thing to do at the
time. Masters remained incredulous.
So, did they call the cops about this?
Culp laughed louder. Well, no, of course
not. If they did that, then their story
would begin to make sense. Masters shot
her a look of intense skepticism. She
seemed amused at his frustration in
dealing with what he clearly regarded as
nonsense.
"Okay," she said. The story wouldn't
make sense in any event, but the point
is that it was weird that they didn't
call the cops, honk their horns, go bang
on the friend's door or a neighbor's
door. Instead, they just try to get home
without any effort to report it to
anyone.
and it somehow takes Hodgeges 2 hours to
get home, even though he lives nearby.
He was recently regressed under hypnosis
by one of my colleagues, and he
remembered a much different story to
explain the 2-hour gap. He said that he
encountered the brains again outside of
his apartment, whereupon he was
projected out of his car and into an
equipment-filled room where he was
confronted by humanoids who warned him
of dangers of nuclear war. Hajes was
abducted a second time under similar
circumstances and was given a brain
implant that he was told by the
humanoids would increase his quote
unquote psychic awareness. They also
told him that humankind is the product
of millions of years of scientific
experimentation.
By now, Masters was chuckling to
himself. Kulp herself smiled with a hint
of embarrassment. What? she said,
pretending not to know why he would be
laughing about the kidnapping brains of
Dapprey Lane.
Beth,
it sounds like bad drugs to me, not bad
brains, he said between bursts of
laughter. She started laughing too.
Well, I tried to avoid telling you about
it. I know it sounds like a stupid old
movie, Donovan's Brain or something.
I think that we ought to add blood tests
to these interviews, master said, not
laughing as hard now. These things have
to be hallucinations.
Culp stopped laughing at that. Sedwick,
this is no hallucination. I'm not
standing tall for the brain story, but
it is clear to me these two young men
that we met today really believe that
what they saw was what they saw.
And they only had one beer a piece when
they visited that fellow.
Do we check the address where they saw
the ball? He asked. Yes. The problem is
that it was being leased to the guy with
the weird music. He moved out. Tracing
him went nowhere. The intriguing
question is whether he is the same guy
who was visited by Hodgees and Rodriguez
6 years earlier.
Unfortunately, we lost contact with
Hodgees and Rodriguez before we knew
about Castio and Ernest, so we've been
unable to check. We're working on it.
They were proceeding west on Palos
Verdees Drive, the street that encircled
the entire Palos Verdees Peninsula.
After they passed the reservoir above
San Pedro, the quality of the drive
changed with the road narrowing and the
trees becoming much more dense. Young
girls were riding horses along the side
of the road, their dogs bounding along
ahead. It was a beautiful place, an
island of rural tranquility above the
brown suburban sea of LA.
Purchased and maintained with money,
lots of money. It was not Virginia, but
it reminded masters of his home state,
the horses and the rural peace. Soon
they came upon the sign for Dapprey
Lane. They turned right and followed the
short road up and down a couple of hilly
rises and dips. It ended in a culde-sac
with no curbs at the side of the road.
Most of the lane was shaded with the
40-year-old trees which lined it on both
sides. There were ranch homes spaced out
at some distance from one another on
both sides. Masters could see the
stables and tennis courts in the
backyards.
It was quiet, comfortable, and seemed
utterly unlikely to be the venue for
alien probes and giant disembodied
brains.
By the way, pause here. Didn't the
Immaculate Constellation document also
mention floating brains? By the way, I
believe it did.
Shout outs to those who's made that
connection already, but that is
Yes, I remember reading that. That is
disturbing to say the least. Now again,
are the reports of floating brains
made up as some passage material uh
inserted into the bowels of the agency
uh by the very same people who wrote
this article? Or
have multiple people witnessed giant
floating brains for real?
Give me the grays. Give me the mantids.
Actually, I'll take mantids over
floating brains.
I guess the Ninja Turtles weren't so far
off with Crang after all.
Which house was it? He wondered.
That was the temporary abode of this
alleged alien agent. No house looked
more likely than another. They all
seemed quintessentially domestic and
serene.
They would run all of the records, but
he already knew that they would find
nothing.
Which house was it? Masters asked. That
one over there on the northwest side of
the street, she replied. You can see
that it was yet another of the
ranchstyle homes. Perhaps a little more
in need of maintenance than its
neighbors, but otherwise serenely normal
by all appearances.
He brought their car to a halt and
jumped out to look around. There
appeared to be no one home. The windows
were shuttered from the inside. He
pulled himself up on the backyard fence.
Nothing unusual there. What in the hell
had happened here?
He walked back to the front yard and
looked at the faded lawn next to the
front of the walkway.
The place where the ball had been seen.
There was no sign on the grass of
anything out of the ordinary except for
small patches where lab samples had been
taken.
Culp told him the lab test of the soil
and grass revealed nothing unusual.
See, said Kulp, breaking through his
revery.
There is nothing here now that you've
made me miss my plane to Vancouver.
Sorry, but I thought we had to see it
for ourselves, and I figured I'd better
take a former native with me in case I
needed an an interpreter for the brains.
She laughed. I've been gone for years,
and most of the people who I knew here
were a little short of brains, frankly.
In any case, we've seen it. Now, can we
go to the airport? Just an hour after
landing at Wright Patterson Air Force
Base in Dayton, Ohio, Masters gave his
report in writing and orally to the Air
Force captain with whom he had the
cordial disagreement 3 weeks earlier.
The captain made no comment until
Masters completed his presentation. The
captain then said, "Don't be too
disappointed that you couldn't come up
with much out there, Mr. Masters. We've
had quite a few of these reports and so
far they've led us nowhere.
Masters was a little surprised by this.
Although by now his capacity for
surprise had been somewhat diminished.
You had more of these. The captain rose
from his desk. Let me show you
something. Please come with me. He
directed masters down the hall from his
office until they came to an unmarked
door that looked like a broom closet. He
unlocked it, turned on the lights, and
escorted masters into a very large file
room which contained rows of filing
cabinets. There are over 2 million files
in this room documenting an equal number
of separate reports involving facts
similar to your red ball story.
Sometimes the balls are white, green,
yellow, blue, or orange. But the basic
outline of the story, you were told, is
repeated millions of times in these
files, which we've been compiling since
1945.
The wise guys around here refer to this
place as the ballroom. Little play on
words. The captain chuckled. Wanley.
Wanley. Wanley.
2 million since 1945.
Have all these been investigated?
Masters asked, impressed by what he was
told. No way that we could devote the
resources to such an effort. In fact,
your interview of Castillo and Ernest
was more effort than we usually go to
from your ball incidents.
We dug deeper into their case because of
all the other sightings that they had
experienced in addition to the red ball
business. There are just too many of
these ball stories to follow up on. We
don't even put these on the computer. We
just convert the reports to our format
and put them in here on the off chance
that they turn out to be more
significant than we think they are.
Masters could feel his frustration with
the captain's way of doing things rising
once again. Only this time, he'd only
been on the base for an hour. Last time
it took two whole days.
And just how significant do you folks
think that they are? He asked, trying to
give no hint of his feelings.
Near as we can figure from the stories
in these files, the balls are some sort
of scanning device. Could be that when
Castillion and Ernest said they just
stood there for 3 hours, they did just
that while this red ball scanned them
for data. Yeah, master said without
conviction. Could be.
Besides, the captain added. We had
bigger concerns to occupy our resources
such as masters asked. I'm glad you
asked that. Come with me. The colonel
instructed us to show you something that
we recovered several years ago. One
which has recently presented us with
somewhat of a unique problem.
Lead the way, said masters, still
thinking about over 2 million ball
incidences and wondering what next. They
were met by an AP who drove them in a
jeep out to one of the hangers somewhat
removed from the flight line.
The hanger was guarded but unmarked. The
captain saluted the guard and they
entered the hanger, going through the
usual security routine and changing
their security badges before going
further into the hangar.
When they went through the second set of
doors, masters saw a lot of men and
women in unbuttoned white coats standing
around some sort of drone aircraft which
was connected by cables and wires to
racks of test equipment and computers
attended by prototypical quote unquote
nerds whose unckempt hair appeared in
stark contrast to their crisp white
coats. No one seemed to notice when they
first walked in. Everyone seemed intent
upon a test that was being run.
As they drew closer to the group,
Masters realized that what he had
thought was a drone
was actually built as a piloted craft.
It was a cockpit with a seamless clear
canopy, but there was something wrong,
something not quite right. The captain
looked a little smug as he led Masters
to the craft. At first, Masters told
himself that he would not bite. He would
wait to be told, but he couldn't stand
it any longer. There was something so
odd about the little flying wing model.
Captain,
what is this thing?
Who flies it? Cockpit's so small, it
would have to be a seven-year-old. And
what's that humming sound? Masters
asked. Do you notice anything else odd
about it, Mr. Masters? the captain
asked, obviously enjoying this. Well,
yeah. Where are the engines? There's
there are no props and no jets, no
ailons. The shape of the wings is not
right for a plane. It's just a wing.
There's no fuselage, no tail. What is
that humming sound? Quite right, Mr.
Masters. This is a recovered craft which
we picked up in a field in the Midwest
around 1972.
It's a sort of single-seater flying wing
craft superficially similar to the
flying wing prototypes developed by the
Germans and us during World War II. The
captain went on while leading masters
over to a table with a coffee earn and
coffee cups. We kind of lucked out on
this one. We didn't see it on radar or
anything like that. There were three
good old boys who were out hunting one
fine fall day 1972 to the west of here.
Their dogs ran across this small gray
who had died in the woods. These old
fellas had backtracked down the trail of
the gray once they got over their shock
at the appearance of the alien. About a
mile back up this trail, there was this
plane sitting in a field, just as pretty
as you please. There was no crash. The
alien had made a perfect landing as far
as we can tell.
But something went wrong for him. He was
dead. These old boys being the good
patriotic members of the World War II
generation that they were hightailed it
back to their truck and got to a
telephone to call the Air Force.
We rounded them up, retrieved the body
and the plane and scared the hell out of
the hunters while still appealing to
their patriotism.
One really nice thing about the World
War II generation is that they know the
value of national security and don't put
up much of a fight about keeping these
things secret.
I got to say I agree with that, you
know. During the Manhattan Project, a
lot of people say, "How would you keep
this UFO thing under a tarp for so long
and there were 130,000 people that we
know of that were involved with the
Manhattan Project in many different sort
of compartmentalized factions and so a
lot of them didn't know what they were
working on. They just knew it was top
secret. But after the war, like directly
after
and during, while you were working on
the Manhattan project, building nuclear
arms,
you could consider yourself a hero. You
helped stop the war.
It was your duty to protect your country
and to keep those secrets.
And so patriotism was very real. I mean,
it's it's the one thing that I think
some people overlook with the secrecy
business is that when true national
security is at risk, a lot of people are
willing to keep a secret to their grave
and they've demonstrated that in World
War II. And I think just like he said,
the generation um that comes out of
World War II probably still had that
pride in them. And uh and so that's
probably the the one strongest thing
keeping this thing under wraps other
than the threats and uh reprisals and
everything else, but he makes a good
point. So I take it this is the same
kind of small gray that we recovered
from Roswell mentioned uh ventured
masters. Yeah, that's right, said the
captain. For all we know, that little
guy was bred just to deliver this little
plane to us.
the way it's scaled down. Some of the
engineers have taken to calling it the
scooter. Kind of cute cuz the small
scale of the thing and all. Yeah, cute,
said masters.
So, what do they use it for?
We have no idea, said the captain. We
speculate that it's just some sort of
small shuttle craft for one creature to
come down and gather samples or
whatever, but we may be guilty of
anthropomorphism.
For all we know, this thing may be
capable of intergalactic travel. Doesn't
seem likely, but then neither does the
entire situation, if you know what I
mean. Yeah, says Masters. I know what
you mean. So, do you know how it works
after having it for 6 years? Well, not
exactly, the captain said. We're still
trying to figure out the basics, like uh
how to turn it off. What said Masters?
You mean that humming sound is coming
from that thing? Thought that you guys
didn't know how to run it. We don't,
said the captain a little sheepishly.
One of our researchers just got a little
frustrated at having an intact craft
without being able to turn anything on
after years of tests and experiments.
So, he just abandoned the protocol one
day and started punching touchcreens and
proximity switches on the thing without
even taking notes. And suddenly, it
sprang to life. The instruments came on,
the thing started making that humming
sound, and it obviously was and is ready
for action. So, what's the problem? Just
have the guy reverse his steps, and the
thing should shut off, right? Asked
masters. Yeah. Captain said, that might
work, but the guy who got it going was
so surprised when it powered up that he
forgot the sequence of what he did. We
can't duplicate it, and even if we
could, we have no assurance that
reversing the command steps would
reverse the current result. They may not
think as we do and may not wire things
the same way. Has anybody tried to
switch anything differently since the
thing fired up? Uh, no. Look around you,
Mr. Masters. We are in a building.
Suppose one of the geniuses punches the
wrong button and this thing decides to
go transluminal right through the wall.
What if it runs out of fuel? Masters
asked. Again, we don't know. It's been
humming for over a year and a half
without running down so far. Since we
don't know how they generate the power
for it in the first place, it is
difficult to determine what to throw at
the problem. But we're working on it and
we'll solve it someday.
Has everything that you recovered been
along the lines of the scooter? Masters
asked his curiosity peaked. Not at all.
Let's go back to the jeep and I'll show
you another one. Um, we are supposed to
show you in connection with your next
assignment.
Masters took one last look at the
scooter with its live otherworldly lines
and walked out to the jeep.
The AP drove them to a different hanger
further down the flight line.
This one was also guarded, although it
now occurred to masters that none of
these hangers were as heavily guarded as
he would have expected under the
circumstances.
He mentioned this to the captain who
replied, "We're just taking a page out
of your book, Mr. Masters. If you want
to protect something really well, you
don't telegraph it to the world where it
is by placing a heavy security force
around it." Besides, there are people
right on this base who are way too
curious about what goes on here. The
best disguise is no disguise at all. Not
sure I agree with that, but I understand
the sentiment.
Once again, they exchanged their
security badges inside for special
Zodiac clearance badges. Masters was
then escorted into a large enclosure of
the hangar. He involuntarily inhaled and
held his breath at what he saw, a large
ovoid disc, which had to be over 50 ft
wide and 23 feet tall at the widest
point. It looked like one of those
opaque glass ornaments his parents used
to hang on the Christmas tree when they
were when he was a kid. There were
service scaffoldings and ramps all
around it with about 55 people working
on it and cables and hoses snaking away
from the craft. Uh, ours are theirs,
masters asked. Theirs, if you mean the
aliens, the captain said. Masters said
nothing, but kept walking slowly up to
the craft, keeping an eye on it to be
sure that it was not a dream, that it
would not just fly away despite the
closed hanger doors.
One look at the thing, and it seemed
clear that his question was rhetorical.
He felt that he knew from its very
appearance. Even as glimpsed through the
scaffolding, no human had ever designed
this vehicle. There was just something
about the proportions, the angles, the
material, the whole thinking that had
gone into it which was not familiar, not
human.
Masters walked up to it very slowly,
craning his neck up to follow the upward
curvature of the ship's hull. May I
touch it? he asked. "Sure," said the
captain. This one was recovered a few
years ago off the coast of Denmark,
where it had sunk in relatively shallow
water. The Danish government cooperated
with us in retrieving the thing and
getting it out of the country without a
big to-do.
Getting it into the base was a bit of a
nightmare. We had to truck it through
the city on a low boy in the dead of
night, covered with a tarp and flanked
by plenty of security. It was pretty
tense, I could tell you.
While the captain prattled on about the
difficulty of housing the ship and the
problems they were having trying to
decipher its complex systems, masters
extended his hand toward the ship's
hull. He touched it. It was cool and
smooth to the touch like a piece of fine
sculpture or porcelain.
As the captain spoke, Masters ran his
fingertips up and down the hall,
gradually placing his whole palm on the
surface, rubbing it back and forth.
as if he were wiping down a horse after
a hard ride.
"May we go inside?" Masters asked. The
captain was shot a look by a general who
had just approached with an earshot as
this question was asked. "Not today,
sir. We are performing some tests
utilizing super coolant. It's not a very
healthy place to be right now."
"Mr. Masters," the general smiled,
extending his hand and shaking It is a
pleasure to meet with you.
Introductions were made all around. I'm
sorry that we cannot accommodate you on
going inside the spacecraft, but I'm
sure that you find even the outside very
impressive.
That would be putting it mildly,
General, replied masters. Well, maybe
next time when you visit us again, the
general said, "Why don't you and the
captain join me over at the Oak Club for
a drink? I was just heading there
myself.
General, I'd really like to get a look
inside the ship before I report to
Washington. And I masters hesitated on
account of the look he received from the
captain. Masters knew it was poor
etiquette to refuse the general's
invitation. The general cut him off. Oh,
you'll get your chance to see it, but
not right now. As a captain explained to
you, "Let's take my car and you can tell
us what you found out about these damn
red balls that are cropping up all over
the place." The captain mentioned to me
that you were looking into it out in
California.
As he was speaking, the general
shephered Masters, the captain, and
everyone else with an earshot toward a
side door of the hanger where his car
and driver were waiting. It was clear to
Masters that this general was not used
to taking no for an answer. With
resignation, he exited the hangar after
one last look at the saucer.
Back at Fort Belvoir, Masters had just
finished his report to the colonel.
"Well, so much for hypnosis," the
colonel observed. "Not necessarily,
sir," Master said.
"We really need to try harder and longer
on this thing. Also, use drugs on the
tougher cases.
He really really wants to drug these
people. This guy's a bit of a shaman.
Um, the colonel's face showed some
irritation with master's tenacity,
although he'd come to expect it by now.
SGE,
we're going to have to put your screen
memory hobby on hold for the time being.
I want you to report to the office of
the Admiral Keading this afternoon.
Keading's people stumbled on something
up in the Arctic Ocean. I want you to be
on the debriefing. You'll be going to
Connecticut, so you better pack some
warm clothes. May I ask what this trip
is about, sir? Sure, you can ask. For
now, let's just say that it relates to
what those young fellas in California
told you about the USO
off of Palos Veres and that large craft
we pulled out of the waters coast of
Denmark.
But it will be Admiral Keading who gives
you the briefing. Meet with him and no
one else when you get to the Puzzle
Palace and report to me personally when
you get back from Connecticut. His
masters drove to Fairfax to pack for his
next assignment. He wondered
where this was all going. After all, he
had never actually seen a UFO in flight,
never seen an alien, never received any
objective confirmation of their
existence.
While the ships he'd been allowed to see
were initially impressive, now that he
was more distant from the event, he was
confident that George Lucas or Steven
Spielberg's propenmen could do as well.
He shook his head at what he had gotten
himself into and drove down the highway
to prepare for his next excursion into
the wilderness of mirrors that his work
had become.
And that is the end of the third
installation of said masters said
masters adventures.
I would be the first person to help make
this into a Hollywood movie. I think
this is such a fantastic script.
I'm eager to know where this goes, but
unfortunately the story ends there and
the trail goes somewhat cold.
Now, I mentioned at the top of this
episode Jeffrey Griffith, attorney at
law, corporate attorney who had worked
for these aeronautical sort of military
installations or contractors previously,
um had been pinpointed as Greg Halifax
and that
Mary Elizabeth Elliott, who was also
mentioned in the Wilson Davis memos,
which I think we'll eventually cover
here as well,
um you know, Rear Admiral uh Wilson met
with uh Eric Davis uh who was then part
of I I believe at OSAP or NIDS or all
three uh basically this super group of
scientists studying the phenomenon even
how put off was a part of this group and
how was the one who expressed his
interest
in this particular case via email. So on
an email thread, Hal is seen asking the
question, "Hey, what do we think about
Zodiac and this SGE Masters character?"
Um, obviously this reads as fiction, but
makes I mean it makes for a really
compelling story.
It connects a lot of dots. even where
he's off to in the Arctic, something
moving in the ocean, a USO. You know,
we've read through the 4chan
whistleblowers account of observing
something similar, but this sort of
large mobile construction unit in the
Atlantic in the Bahamas. They even talk
about the Catalinas having, you know,
USOs. And there's some really
interesting connections to be made in
here. But also it begs the question,
are all modern UFO
lore pieces and LARs
just a product of these three articles?
Is everything derived from this? Is this
somehow the CIA or these agencies way
of infiltrating
the UFO community
and disseminating false information so
that we take it and run with it?
Are we SGE masters
in this particular case? After being
shown pictures and and testimony from
congressional hearings and all this
stuff, we've not seen the bodies.
We've not seen the craft flying.
Is this some grand scop scheme?
Or is this truth? Or is it fiction? Who
knows? My conviction level
isn't
that much higher. I would say still 15
or 20% maybe. Um, but I'm willing to
have it grow and fluctuate upwards.
Uh, it does make a lot of connections,
but it also predates a lot of the later,
you know, it comes after Psalm 1, uh,
the whole Majestic 12, Stanton Friedman
release.
Um, but it comes before a lot of the
modern LARs on Reddit, 4chan, etc. So, I
don't know. It's just interesting to me.
I'd be really curious to hear your
thoughts as well. This was a lengthy
one. This was a very long read through,
the longest we read through we've ever
done on one episode. I hope you guys
enjoy it. I am gearing up to potentially
read through a book very soon. And I
want to tackle a book with the audience
entirely. that is a tentative
uh project that I would like to do. I
think that that would be very fun and
perhaps we could all sort of read it
together in one giant internet
collective book club. Uh let me know if
you think that that's something you'd
want to partake in or even just sit back
and listen to me uh read out loud. Um
I'd be curious to know your thoughts.
Folks, thank you so much for joining me
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Peace and love.