Alien Invasion!

[Dakota Tebaldi]

You should probably sit down for this one.

Very close to six years ago now, in December of 2017, the New York Times and Politico jointly released front-page articles detailing claims by a whistleblower that for over a decade prior, the Pentagon had secretly been running a program to investigate military UFO sightings. The whistleblower was an intelligence officer named Luis Elizondo who had been, the articles reported, the director of that program, until he resigned from his job because he was frustrated at being unable to convince military leaders to take the issue of UFOs seriously.

Following these articles and an extensive press junket by Elizondo and a group of his colleagues, a couple of US representatives in Congress did take an interest, began holding hearings about the UFO claims, and eventually compelled the Pentagon to create a not-secret program to investigate UFO sightings and turn "every scrap of information" the military possessed about UFOs to Congress. And every few months for the last six years running, the same handful of congressional reps holds another press conference to express their dissatisfaction with the US military's response to their demands so far - to wit, while the military definitely has given briefings and handed over all kinds of stuff, the reps are upset that the fact UFOs are definitely alien spaceships hasn't been officially "Disclosed" to Congress and the public yet, which is what they ultimately want to hear and is the only thing that really matters.

Well, there's not really anything doing here as far as the allegations go (I'm sure some of you guessed) - none of the claimants has anything like evidence to prove anything they claim because of course they don't; and their claims aren't even anything new, they're the same old stories about crashed UFOs and secret Air Force hangars that have been sitting on public library shelves in paperback form for literally decades.

BUT, that doesn't mean there isn't a story in here at all. There is a story! A very interesting one! Well I think it's very interesting. I think it's at least worth your time. If nothing else, it's entertaining. You see, there totally is misinformation, a coverup, even outright lies mixed up in this situation, but they're not coming from the people you'd expect them to be coming from if this was like a Hollywood script or an episode of The X-Files.

Anyways yeah, blah blah blah - where's the videos? Fine, here you go. Now, I HAVE posted at least the first video on here somewhere before, but in case you didn't see it, or want a refresher, here it is again. You should definitely watch this video at least, even if you don't watch any of the others. And you should definitely watch it first, and I would say maybe even before reading the rest of this post, because there's RL SPOILERS AHEAD but of course that's totally up to you. But go ahead, I'll wait!


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All done? Good!

So, betcha weren't expecting some of THOSE twists, even if maybe nothing of them was all that surprising at the end of the day.

For what it's worth, Greenstreet's "Basement Office" series started out a few years ago straightforwardly reporting on all the AATIP whistleblower claims, taking them in good faith. While it's not nearly as interesting IMO, if you follow the Basement Office playlist back in time you will see all of these earlier episodes and get a feel for his initial approach to the whole thing. What sets Greenstreet apart is, once he was made aware of solid evidence that the story was ultimately based on a web of lies, he refused to rationalize it all away and keep uncritically believing it. It's a rare display of intellectual integrity and it has cost him friends and allies. So I have quite a bit of respect for him because of that.

But there is still more story to be had!

There's a good chance that the name "Skinwalker Ranch" rang a bell or two in your head, because you might be aware that there is a show called "The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch" that's been running on the History Channel for a couple of years and yes, it's the same place. The story of Skinwalker Ranch goes back a few years before the AAWSAP business, and you might have some questions about it. Like, how did Robert Bigelow end up owning a haunted ranch in Utah? How exactly did it end up being the subject of a corrupt sweetheart contract that siphoned government money to support a rich man's ghost-hunting hobby? What happened to Skinwalker Ranch after AAWSAP, and how the heck did it end up on a History Channel show? And finally, where the heck can I get a haunted ranch?

Well sadly I can't help you with that last question, but after making the above video, Greenstreet did a whole series covering pretty much the complete history of Skinwalker Ranch from the beginning. It could even be said the series is kind of ongoing, since a surprise new episode was added just a couple of days ago! And you will definitely want to watch them all. The only thing I would interject is that the third episode is mainly a straightforward biography of the current owner of the ranch, Brandon Fugal, and it's important stuff to the overall story but there also isn't nearly as much criticality or refutation in it, since that's not the point, but don't let that change in tone put you off, the good stuff DOES come.

With all that said, here's the first ep in the Skinwalker Ranch playlist. I'm not sure the "playlist" functionality works well in embeds, so you'll prolly want to click through and go to actual YouTube so you can see all of the episodes, there's several. So pace yourself, it will likely take you a few days to watch all it all - but it will be worth it! Enjoy.

 

[Free]

You should probably sit down for this one.

I've been sitting down to this for decades.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Well, my opinion of Harry Reid completely tanked after watching the video.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

$22million for a pentagon program? That'd barely cover an intern, a janitor's closet and travel expenses. /lol

 

[Pancake]

I knew we would eventually need an aliens thread

What I still can’t figure out is why Bigalow would have sold Skinwalker ranch, or some of the other properties featured in beyond Skinwalker. I will definitely take a look at the background video for Brandon though.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

I knew we would eventually need an aliens thread

What I still can’t figure out is why Bigalow would have sold Skinwalker ranch, or some of the other properties featured in beyond Skinwalker. I will definitely take a look at the background video for Brandon though.

The videos in the playlist give, I think, a pretty good possible explanation for why he sold the place - he eventually became convinced it was a dud.

Bigelow bought the ranch because a local newspaper article carried this rancher's story of being harassed by UFOs almost every night. So Bigelow goes there, he spends a WHOLE bunch of his own money to set up equipment and cameras and a full-time staff of scientists and then waited for all the miracles to happen the way the rancher's story implied they would. And waited.

The book that came out later, "The Hunt for the Skinwalker", about Bigelow's original investigation, would have you believe that the place was freaking lousy with flying saucers and boogeymen, just infested with all kinds of weird shizz. But from what other people who worked there at the time have said, the real truth is that Bigelow & Co waited there for years for something to happen and nothing ever did. It got to the point where like, security guards would think up stories to tell just to keep their jobs, but obviously nothing was ever caught on any cameras or instruments or anything. So finally he gave up. I don't know if Bigelow ever felt that he'd been suckered, but he at least felt that if anything HAD been going on there, it was long gone.

The first investigation was already shut down and I'd be willing to bet Bigelow was already thinking about selling the place in 2007 when the Pentagon guy read the book and, like Bigelow at the beginning, was led by it to believe that X-Files stuff was going down nightly at this place and decided to hit up Senator Reid for that contract. Bigelow was probably like "well okay if you'll pay me government money then sure we'll sit there and keep waiting for something interesting to actually happen", but he certainly wasn't going to sink any more of his own money into the place. As soon as the DoD contract was canceled, that's when he sold the place for good.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

By the way in the OP I mentioned that an update video was posted just a couple of days ago. But, that video isn't in the Skinwalker playlist I see. So here it is, separately. It's probably the best video out of all of them....

 

[Isabeau]

I have a Roku thingamajig and every time I see this ad, it makes me laugh. I haven’t watched it yet, but I’ll eventually get to it.

 

[Caete]

By the way in the OP I mentioned that an update video was posted just a couple of days ago. But, that video isn't in the Skinwalker playlist I see. So here it is, separately. It's probably the best video out of all of them....

Have to love all the detail of the "creature they saw at night" including a tattoo and the overly large but to comical size feet which is more like a Shon Howell drawing. Glad to see they all have night vision to see it all lol. Good on the journalist to dig deeper into the hidden details of the drawing instead of just giving them a pass.

 

[Pancake]

The videos in the playlist give, I think, a pretty good possible explanation for why he sold the place - he eventually became convinced it was a dud.

Bigelow bought the ranch because a local newspaper article carried this rancher's story of being harassed by UFOs almost every night. So Bigelow goes there, he spends a WHOLE bunch of his own money to set up equipment and cameras and a full-time staff of scientists and then waited for all the miracles to happen the way the rancher's story implied they would. And waited.

The book that came out later, "The Hunt for the Skinwalker", about Bigelow's original investigation, would have you believe that the place was freaking lousy with flying saucers and boogeymen, just infested with all kinds of weird shizz. But from what other people who worked there at the time have said, the real truth is that Bigelow & Co waited there for years for something to happen and nothing ever did. It got to the point where like, security guards would think up stories to tell just to keep their jobs, but obviously nothing was ever caught on any cameras or instruments or anything. So finally he gave up. I don't know if Bigelow ever felt that he'd been suckered, but he at least felt that if anything HAD been going on there, it was long gone.

The first investigation was already shut down and I'd be willing to bet Bigelow was already thinking about selling the place in 2007 when the Pentagon guy read the book and, like Bigelow at the beginning, was led by it to believe that X-Files stuff was going down nightly at this place and decided to hit up Senator Reid for that contract. Bigelow was probably like "well okay if you'll pay me government money then sure we'll sit there and keep waiting for something interesting to actually happen", but he certainly wasn't going to sink any more of his own money into the place. As soon as the DoD contract was canceled, that's when he sold the place for good.

That’s along the lines of what I’ve been thinking. There is no way Bigelow sold if he found anything. And no way the government gave up if they found something. Yet both walked away.

So who is surveilling them now and why. . I mean unmarked and non transponding blackhawks doing flyovers isn’t coincidence.

I do enjoy watching the show, and they have admittedly recorded some unusual and reproducible data with their experiments, but I’m unconvinced it’s Aliens and have no working theories.

The team seems to be leaning towards wormholes but I don’t know enough about those.

I’m thinking maybe there is equipment, maybe military, buried in the mesa from the time of Bigelow and military contracts. Or some rare mineral deposit.

Whatever is there I am enjoying the show for entertainment purposes. Watching term come up with experiments and try to collect data, even if I don’t know what it’s all pointing too.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

So who is surveilling them now and why. . I mean unmarked and non transponding blackhawks doing flyovers isn’t coincidence.

That was the part that really got my attention. After long minutes of yammering about nothing, suddenly they show these Blackhawks flying over the ranch in multiples, and they can't pick 'em up on their sensors. That intrigued me, even if it's not proof of anything beyond probable-military EW.

I'm hoping in this new season they leave out the "physicist" (David something) they brought in who wears one of the last bad mullets known to man. He was a joke.

 

[Casey Pelous]

Okay, I'm too "fergawdssake, git to the dam point awready" with this to watch the whole mess, but let's generously assume that these crackpots did see Blackhawk helicopters out in the middle of BFE and that those insanely-expensive-to-operate helicopters* were, in fact, surveilling them. Is it surprising that they wouldn't be able to detect them on their 'sensors?" I mean -- we're talking about a helicopter on which we spent billions and billions to make the sneakiest helicopter in the world! Sikorsky 1 - Ghostbusters 0!

* I note that the very same mission could probably have been accomplished by any 14-year-old with a quadcopter.

 

[Free]

Is there a SparkNotes version?

 

[Cindy Claveau]

Okay, I'm too "fergawdssake, git to the dam point awready" with this to watch the whole mess, but let's generously assume that these crackpots did see Blackhawk helicopters out in the middle of BFE and that those insanely-expensive-to-operate helicopters* were, in fact, surveilling them. Is it surprising that they wouldn't be able to detect them on their 'sensors?" I mean -- we're talking about a helicopter on which we spent billions and billions to make the sneakiest helicopter in the world! Sikorsky 1 - Ghostbusters 0!

* I note that the very same mission could probably have been accomplished by any 14-year-old with a quadcopter.

I'm no expert, I just read a lot. But the Hueys I saw on that episode (the ones they couldn't detect) did not look anything like the Blackhawk stealth helicopters the Armed Forces have actually developed and even used on the bin Laden raid.

I don't get too excited about it. Most of my secret fetish TV watching is about entertainment over information. If they propose an idea I'm unsure of, I just do my own fact checking and falsification. I don't even trust mainstream news these days, not without widespread confirmation.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

I don't watch the show so I don't know what the episode talking about the Blackhawk helicopters said or showed. But I have a couple of observations:

Firstly, you can't trust the show's word or even its video for what happened. Shows like "Secret of Skinwalker Ranch" will absolutely do stuff like take footage of a helicopter that flew over once and did a lazy circle or two before leaving, and use multiple camera angles and editing to assert that it was a whole fleet of the things that were circling for hours and that it's a regular occurrence.

Likewise, the show's assertion that the helicopter "didn't show up on their sensors" is a bit silly and meaningless without more explanation than that - like, WHAT sensors? I highly doubt that the producers of Skinwalker Ranch have a literal radar installation on the ranch that they can use to "detect" airplanes, so what "sensors" are they even talking about, and are they even something that WOULD detect a helicopter under normal conditions?

And finally, the Utah National Guard does have Blackhawk helicopters; and I dunno how "expensive to operate" they are, but the National Guard units train pretty regularly and fly them all the time.

Here's a blurb about a family of lost hikers that was found this past summer by the Utah National Guard and rescued by a Blackhawk.

Here's a video of a (non-fatal) training flight accident where two Utah NG Blackhawks crashed last year:


That incident happened at the Snowbird ski resort, which is only around 70 miles or so from Skinwalker Ranch. So like, there's definitely Blackhawks in the area doing completely legit things. Why would one or more of them fly over Skinwalker Ranch specifically? I think the easy guess is that they were flying from some place to some other place and Skinwalker Ranch happened to be on the route. Why would they circle? That I couldn't say without more information; but consider that these things are being flown by 22-year-old part-timers, some of whom might also watch "The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch". This demographic doesn't always make mature and responsible decisions while training in their equipment.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

Likewise, the show's assertion that the helicopter "didn't show up on their sensors" is a bit silly and meaningless without more explanation than that - like, WHAT sensors? I highly doubt that the producers of Skinwalker Ranch have a literal radar installation on the ranch that they can use to "detect" airplanes, so what "sensors" are they even talking about, and are they even something that WOULD detect a helicopter under normal conditions?

According to the show's narrative, they have a full array of sensors including radar and ground-penetrating radar. I question whether their equipment is sophisticated enough to actually detect a legit 6th-gen stealth target, but that's just me.

Most of these paranormal/UFO/reality shows rely on badly-edited video segments they use as demonstrations - like "this is what a UH1 would look like" but presented as "stealth helicopters like this". "If ghosts were real, this is what they might look like."

I watch some History Channel too, mainly to watch for editing gaffes when I'm bored. Showing the wrong ship or type of aircraft is pretty common in illustration clips.

Things changed when I discovered the Smithsonian channel. Much heavier on facts and lighter on sensationalism.

 

[Pancake]

I work in an aviation adjacent field and have spent hundreds of hours in helicopters and talking to them on the radio, and yes tracking them which is why I perked up at the 2 episodes where there were fly overs.

The first was confirmed military after the attorney general was contacted, but no explanation why they were flying over at night, lights off, and not transponding. Military can of course get special permission to be exempt from industry regulations but usually when flying in civilian airspace they are still required to have lights and transmitters.

The second time was broad daylight, multiple passes, again no registration visible on the belly and not transmitting their position in civilian airspace. Some type of practice maneuvers? Perhaps, but why there?

Someone is giving them permission to do that. Even “stealth” capable aircraft have to follow certain rules in US airspace. If the ranch just happens to be on a flight path to somewhere else they are going, I would be curious where that is. It might explain the first incident but not the second. Unless some pilots are pranking them for fun but highly unlikely in that kind of aircraft.

 

[Casey Pelous]

...I dunno how "expensive to operate" they are ...

A little north of $3,000 per hour, not counting fuel which they drink like Uncle Cletus hitting the Jim Beam on Christmas Eve.

It Costs Tens of Thousands of Dollars Per Hour to Fly These U.S. Military Aircraft

And you thought car expenses were bad.

www.popularmechanics.com

I once knew a crusty old flight instructor. He owned a helicopter school -- but he wouldn't get in one! I've never forgotten what he said; "If you're in a plane, all kinds of stuff can fail and as long as the wings stay on, you have a pretty good chance. On a helicopter, every single part is a critical part."* Despite numerous opportunities, I have mostly heeded his implied advice.

Imagine that if you didn't keep every single part on your car in 100% tip-top shape it would crash into a bridge abutment at 150 mph. Oh, and you have to have a trained, certified mechanic check it over almost every time you drive it. Then once it has run 1,000 hours, you have to have the engine completely overhauled. It adds up.

* I'm pretty sure this was the same guy who told me that helicopters fly because "they're so damn ugly the ground repels them."

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Well - the alternative explanation is that the Army deliberately ran a "secret" mission in the middle of the daytime in open plain sight over the filming location of a years-running paranormal-conspiracy TV show that famously has cameras pointed at the sky all the time, knowing they would absolutely put that video on their TV show.

 

[Pancake]

Well - the alternative explanation is that the Army deliberately ran a "secret" mission in the middle of the daytime in open plain sight over the filming location of a years-running paranormal-conspiracy TV show that famously has cameras pointed at the sky all the time, knowing they would absolutely put that video on their TV show.

There are lots of explanations from the mundane to the absurd.

Maybe, as the one politician gave them as an explanation, the military are monitoring the phenomenon in case they are caused by foreign adversaries. Maybe the military is investigating the crazy rockets and drones displays they are doing as experiments. Maybe the military was paid to do a cameo lol. Most likely the ranch is on some common flight path for military exercises which would also explain the UAP reports.