Aliens? Yes! But Maybe No

Psychic Spies: The True Story of Project Stargate

• Aliens? Yes! But Maybe No • Episode 18

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Your thoughts might be capable of traveling where your body cannot. For over twenty years, the United States government poured resources into exploring this seemingly impossible concept through a classified program eventually known as Project Stargate.

Remote viewing—the ability to mentally perceive and describe distant locations without using conventional senses—wasn't just a fringe experiment. It involved serious scientists, military personnel, and intelligence agencies looking for unconventional ways to gather information during the Cold War. What began as a response to rumors of Soviet psychic research evolved into a fascinating exploration of human consciousness and its potential capabilities.

The results were extraordinary and puzzling. Some remote viewers accurately described Soviet military installations before satellite confirmation. Others predicted features of Jupiter that astronomers didn't yet know existed. One viewer even claimed to have mentally traveled to Mars one million years in the past, describing tall beings seeking shelter from environmental catastrophe. These successes suggested something profound about human consciousness that conventional science struggles to explain.

Yet the program was plagued by inconsistency. While statistical analysis showed results far beyond chance, practical applications remained elusive. Only about 1% of tested individuals demonstrated consistent ability, and training didn't reliably improve performance. The program bounced between agencies before being officially terminated in 1995—though some speculate it continues in classified operations.

What makes this story so compelling isn't just the possibility of psychic spying, but what it suggests about human potential. If even some of these documented cases are genuine, our understanding of consciousness may be dramatically incomplete. Could your mind already possess abilities that science has yet to fully comprehend or explain?

Whether you're fascinated by government secrets, human potential, or the unexplained, the remote viewing program represents one of the most serious scientific investigations into phenomena typically relegated to science fiction. What truths might we discover if we look beyond conventional understanding and dare to explore the full capabilities of the human mind?

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Josh:

aliens yes but maybe no. Welcome back to the show. Aliens, yes, but maybe no, but maybe no With Josh and Travis. I'm Travis, I'm Josh. This is an otherworldly podcast, as ambiguous as our title. So, josh, yeah. What did we talk about last week? Crop circles, that's right. Crop circles, yeah. Where do we fall on that? Do we give a final judgment?

Travis:

I believe that there are fake ones and there are real ones and you can distinguish them by some of the ways they grow afterwards and flourish, and yeah, that was kind of where I fell.

Josh:

I think I was more of like it's a hoax.

Travis:

Yeah, I think you were too. Yeah, I've always heard about crop circles but I never really researched it, so it was kind of cool to get a top down view.

Josh:

Yeah, Okay, good, this week probably should have started the show with paranormal. Yes, but maybe no.

Travis:

Potentially, yeah, because it's not like a full-on aliens episode this week.

Josh:

Yeah, we'll talk a little bit about it just because it is mentioned, but it's not the main theme. Yeah, so some of the subjects of our discussion today do acknowledge their believed existence of aliens and that they exist, but it's not really the meat of what we're going to be talking about today, which is some X-Men type shit.

Travis:

Yeah, professor X. Yeah, we're going to talk about remote viewing, yep, which I mean, I don't even think we need to talk. Yeah, professor X. Yeah, we're going to talk about remote viewing, yep, which I mean, I don't even think we need to talk about it, everyone knows. So have a good week.

Josh:

What is remote viewing? Is that just like you look at your remote and then you view the guide?

Travis:

Yeah, it's a little screen on your remote so you don't have to watch the TV. You can just watch your remote yeah.

Josh:

So you don't have to watch the TV, you can just watch your remote.

Travis:

Yeah, that's pretty cool, yeah. So yeah, remote viewing pretty crazy. We got a taste of it from our quiz that we took last time.

Josh:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and reference a very fun movie the Men who Stare at Goats.

Travis:

Yeah, yeah, which I have yet to see you have.

Josh:

I've seen it a couple of times.

Travis:

Yeah, I'm very excited about watching that and I'm very excited about this episode because remote viewing is batshit.

Josh:

It's wild. It's a wild thing testing the limits of what people can do, right? Yeah, maybe it's true, but a lot of it is subjective to that person and this sort of let's get like a rough idea. So have you heard of remote viewing? Anytime, like recently, do you know much about remote viewing?

Travis:

I think I saw a post about something I didn't know really what it was, and I think I heard about it in a documentary.

Josh:

So everything I know about remote viewing comes from another term called astral projection, where it happens like you can do this in your dreams or something that can be reached in like a deep meditative state, and you can move your consciousness and see other things throughout the world, like visit people and yeah, I've seen astral projection referenced in shows like uh, adventure, time and legion yeah, with uh dan ste.

Travis:

It's always been very intriguing. I haven't really given it much thought. In the real world it's just like, oh, that's so cool, like it's kind of like the idea of the multiverse and stuff like that. You're like, oh, that's super cool.

Josh:

Yeah.

Travis:

Not realizing that it could potentially be a real thing, yeah, but I guess it's real enough.

Josh:

Yeah, I feel like it's. I mean, it's wild just thinking about this kind of stuff for me.

Travis:

Yeah, I'm going to kind of start this off with the history.

Josh:

Yeah, let's tuck into the dossier a little bit.

Travis:

Yeah. So for over 20 years, the US government quietly funded a program to explore something many people still considered science fiction the ability to gather information using only the mind. It was called remote viewing, and it wasn't just a fringe experiment. It involved physicists, military officers, intelligence agencies and some of the most surprising claims ever made in the world of espionage. So they used it for spying, from locating hostages to describing top secret Soviet facilities. These so-called psychic spies were tasked with doing the impossible, and sometimes they did it. If any of this sounds familiar, you might be thinking like you said the men who stare at goats. Yeah, a book by journalist John Ronson.

Josh:

Yeah, doesn't that sound made up?

Travis:

John Ronson.

Josh:

I know he's an actual journalist. I usually do a lot of research before not a lot, but like my own supplementary research before doing this. Before we showed up today, I didn't do anything.

Travis:

Oh.

Josh:

I just wanted to get lost in the rhythm, lost in the rhyme. Get on up, it's podcast time, I get it. So anyway, john Ronson, it does sound like a made up name.

Travis:

Yeah, he later turned this into a film starring handsome George Clooney.

Josh:

And the handsome Ewan McGregor, oh, and the handsome Jeff Bridges oh my gosh. And the handsome Stephen Lang.

Travis:

Well, I probably shouldn't watch that movie with all those handsome men.

Josh:

There's also some goats. Oh well, maybe I should, and they get stared at.

Travis:

They get stared the fuck at man, hopefully with consent. So the Men who Stare at Goats. This title comes from a real experiment. Soldiers at Fort Bragg were reportedly trained to try and stop a goat's heart using only their minds. As strange as it sounds, it was part of a broader effort to explore psychic abilities for warfare.

Josh:

Alongside things like invisibility and walking through walls, they stared at a goat for over an hour. It's just so funny.

Travis:

So let's dive into the odd but true history of Project Stargate, the CIA's real psychic spying program, and explore what decades of research actually revealed so remote viewing. Decades of research actually revealed so remote viewing. This is what came of this whole program. According to a CIA document which is 30 pages, declassified in 2002, remote viewing is defined as an experiment in which a viewer attempts to draw or describe or both a target location, photograph, object or short video segment. So remote viewing, or anomalous cognition, experiments began in the 1970s. In a remote viewing session, a beacon or sender travels to a secret location. A remote viewer tries to describe that location using only their mind. Their description, often drawings and verbal notes, is judged against several possible sites. If the viewer's description matches the actual site, more often than chance, it's considered a hit.

Josh:

So there are some things here that I just don't fundamentally understand. They say it's a secret location, but they're sending something there, so it's not a secret location, right? So there is information being passed to whoever is proctoring this exam or whatever you want to call it with this viewer. Like we watched this video about haze, did they send a beacon to mount haze for this remote viewer to view? Is that what you just read there is that? Am I understanding this right?

Travis:

a beacon or sender travels to a secret location, so that would be the access point, like what they're finding. It would be the access point like what they're trying to find.

Josh:

It would be the B to like an AB line, right? If I was calling you, I would be let's put this, and this is me dumbly trying to figure out what that line means I, the remote viewer, call you, josh Sn Snodgrass on a phone. You would be the beacon, is that? Am I understanding that right? But that beacon has been planted there by somebody else.

Travis:

Yeah, this has a beacon or sender travels to a secret location. So I mean, this was one of my big questions in doing our research is these people would give them a location and then they would basically astral project to that location. How can, like, if someone gave me coordinates, how would I be able to get there? Do I know all coordinates to be able to do that? I don't know. Yeah, but basically they're given coordinates and nothing else and then they're asked what is described there and then they'll usually follow up and check to see if it's accurate or not and then if it's accurate, then that's a hit.

Travis:

They will say that this was successful. And if someone has enough successes and then also if others can do it as well without prior knowledge, then what is happening is real. That's how they would test it. So in the mid 19801980s the Army Research Institute asked the National Research Council, or the NRC, to review a wide range of performance-enhancing techniques. A high-level panel led by David Goslin published their findings in the 1988 report Enhancing Human Performance. While they found some support for techniques like guided imagery, they found little to no evidence that things like sleep learning or remote viewing were effective.

Josh:

What is sleep learning Like, where they just try to put information into your head while you're asleep?

Travis:

Yeah, like playing a different language in headphones while you sleep. I think that's the sleep learning, which would be so cool.

Josh:

I would love that.

Travis:

It would make things so easy. Yeah, I'd never have to learn again.

Josh:

You could learn Kung Fu. You could learn how to fly a helicopter.

Travis:

Yeah, or jump across buildings, yeah, or fall. I mean, I don't believe enough. So despite this mostly negative review, the government sponsored remote viewing. Research continued Between 1986 and early 1990s. 50 to 100 new studies were conducted and many of them attempted to fix earlier flaws identified by the RNC. It's wild. Later the CIA was asked by Congress to take over the remote viewing program, which is weird because we're seeing nowadays that there's kind of a disconnect between the military and Congress.

Josh:

Not really, because, I mean, congress does approve funding, and so I think that's what they were probably doing. You have, like oversight committees and there'll be certain senators that are in charge of certain aspects of you know, like military funding, and it's their responsibility to be like the liaison to Congress or the president. Yeah, that way, you know, you don't have one person just trying to dictate and absorb all this information. So like I think that's broad by saying that they talked to Congress when it was probably just like one or two individuals.

Travis:

Yeah, that's true. So before making the decision, the CIA commissioned an evaluation to determine, one, whether the newer research had long-term value for intelligent gathering and, two, what changes would improve the research approach. They hired the American Institute for Research, air, to conduct this evaluation, and then, in 1988, researchers analyzed 154 experiments conducted at SRI between 1973 and 1988, involving over 26,000 trials and 227 participants.

Josh:

How do you get that many people involved in this? Is this like the back of a comic book advertisement? If you've ever astral traveled before, we're interested in you. Uncle Sam wants you.

Travis:

This was mainly military personnel, so they're actually sent over to do those trainings. So most of the people that are in these programs were already in the military.

Josh:

That's not what I read. I read that they had sent out broad communication. This is when they realized this stuff can't be taught, because some of the military personnel they tried to teach this information, like they tried to teach them astral travel, and they found, if you can do it, if this does in fact exist, it's a natural talent and can't be taught.

Travis:

I had the opposite.

Josh:

I heard that that they only tested on military people.

Travis:

No, that it can be taught and that's what they were doing. They had trainers and different things that were teaching everyone to do it.

Josh:

It says that right in our dossier. You have to have a natural ability to it.

Travis:

So the people with a natural ability, those were like the prodigies that were able to pinpoint and go and do crazy things. But normal people would be able to do it with training. I don't know how long the training takes, so the results were statistically extraordinary, far beyond what chance could explain, suggesting a real measurable effect. While early studies had flaws, similar results in later, more rigorously controlled experience supported the idea that remote viewing might be genuine. A standout group of participants group G1, performed especially well in these later tests. So here's some of the findings from the analysis. Free response remote viewing describing a target was much more successful than forced choice tasks picking from a set of options. A small group of six top performers consistently outperformed others even under different conditions, suggesting their abilities were genuine and not due to flawed methods. Three mass screening found about 1% of volunteers had consistent remote viewing ability, which much like natural talent in sports or music. Four training didn't reliably improve remote viewing. It's easier to find talent than to teach it. Five feedback may help motivation but isn't clearly necessary.

Josh:

Of course, telling somebody the right answer is going to influence how they're going to remote view. You're looking for a cat. Okay, I see something that has four legs, and maybe orange. It's chasing a mouse and they're like, oh man, nailed it.

Travis:

This may not be saying telling them the answer before they do it. That's what it just said Feedback. So feedback is usually after the fact, right. So feedback may help motivation, but isn't clearly necessary.

Josh:

That doesn't make any sense. Like you think you saw a cat, I'm going to tell you you saw a cat, and then that's not information.

Travis:

I mean it's more like what's in this envelope, what's over in this room over there. And if you tell them like, hey, you did a really good job? They said it's good for motivation but it isn't really necessary. So this is just government military people documenting.

Josh:

Yeah, that's not how I interpreted that part of the dossier, and especially not the way that this was phrased. Telling the subject the correct answer may help motivation, but isn't clearly necessary. So, like, what is the point of even including that? Because that's like okay, yeah, now I know you're going to ask me about a cat in the future.

Travis:

I think it is laying the groundwork to say you don't need to tell them that they were correct or not in their remote viewing, like it can motivate them to keep going, but it's not necessary for the remote viewing to truly work. Okay, so that was number five. Number six distance to the target doesn't affect results and these are findings of the analysis, right?

Josh:

so like I could be here asking to remote view something in italy, and then I could also be in italy asking to remote view something in italy, and that's not going to determine yeah, basically distance isn't an issue.

Travis:

seven electromagnetic shielding has no impact on performance, which is wild, because I mean it has impact on everything else. Sure Eight precognition describing a target chosen after the session also showed success.

Josh:

Why are you squinting? What's that look?

Travis:

I'm just trying to comprehend that. Okay, describing a target chosen after the session also showed success.

Josh:

I'm going to have to think about that a little bit also.

Travis:

Is that basically them doing it and then describing it after they did it instead of during?

Josh:

Describing a target chosen after the session. I don't know what that means, so maybe let's just move on.

Travis:

And then, lastly I mean not lastly there's a whole bunch of other things that they came up with, but what we have? Nine, there's no evidence supporting psychokinesis moving objects with your mind. So that was, in this air, research. I mean, it sounds like they're researching every kind of psychic ability they found walking through walls, moving things. These things could not exist. That can't happen, at least that we know of so far. So the conclusion of the study reads as follows what is not so clear is that we have progressed very far in understanding the mechanism for anomalous cognition.

Travis:

Centers do not appear to be necessary at all. Feedback of the correct answer may or may not be necessary. Distance and time and space do not seem to be impotent. Beyond those conclusions, we know very little. I believe that it would be wasteful of valuable resources to continue to look for proof. No one who has examined all the data across laboratories taken as a collective whole has been able to suggest methodological or statistical problems to explain the ever-increasing and consistent results to date. Resources should be directed to the pertinent questions about how this ability works. I'm confident that the questions are no more elusive than any other question in science dealing with small to medium-sized effects and that if appropriate resources are targeted to appropriate questions, we can have the answers within the next decade. So that's what AIR concluded with.

Josh:

They're basically saying it's pointless to keep this up. It's pointless. Yeah, there's nothing conclusive. We're throwing a lot of money into this program and we're not really getting any definitive results.

Travis:

Yeah, we could fund any science and maybe get something a little more substantial or have the same result. We could fund anything basically, yeah, so why did the government care?

Josh:

Why did the government care? Yeah, because we have been involved in a Cold War with Russia for decades. At this point, we got into a Cold War right after World War II, right, and so there's a lot of information. We have spies there, spies here.

Travis:

And the Cold War was basically just who's going to strike first?

Josh:

Who's going to strike first? Like we became a superpower when we dropped a bomb on Japan. That is when we became a superpower, that's when the world took notice of us. Before that we were just not a flash in the pan, but we were a very new democracy rising up. We didn't have a whole lot of we haven't showed our force yet. We didn't have any. I mean, we didn't have a whole lot of force to show.

Josh:

We weren't like the British Empire that's got fleets and has a history of, you know, taking control of countries and Taking everything yeah, taking everything and then claiming it as their own. We didn't quite have that history just yet. We were well on our, we were on our way, but we were not a superpower yet until that happened, that terrible day in world history. So after that happened, everybody took note of what we had done and because nuclear power was still very new, russia was trying to develop their own nuclear programs and they were spying on us and then we were keeping track of them and it was like an arms race, which is what the Cold War was. We were competing against each other. We viewed Russia as an enemy, just like Russia viewed us as an enemy.

Travis:

Yeah.

Josh:

Right, and so there's a little bit, and I find this part really funny is that they're not really sure who let the other side know that they were involved in paranormal research and psychokinesis. They think that Russia had heard the United States was involved and so they started their own program and then, because of that, the US got involved in it. So that's like it's a little convoluted. It's kind of like in the 80s Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone were involved in this big rivalry and it came to a head when Arnold was floated a script to throw mama from the train or was like throw mama from the train or don't I can remember the title of it um schwarzenegger passed on it, but they were so competitive.

Josh:

Stallone had heard that schwarzenegger was involved and so he took it. He jumped on it and it's like one of the worst movies of that decade and he only took it because he only took it out of spite yep to try to beat arnold schwarzenegger to the punch.

Josh:

And I feel like that's this situation writ large, where we had heard that the Russians were involved, but we weren't sure, so we couldn't let them get involved in Psy research without us also getting involved in it. And then the Russians seemingly responded the same way, like they thought we were getting involved. But it was that we had heard they were involved, and so it was like this do you know what an Ouroboros is? It's like a snake that eats its own tail. Now we've just created this wild situation, and then I think both programs just were like we can't find anything conclusive about it.

Travis:

Yeah, so in the seventies, a book titled Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain. It made waves in the intelligence community and it claimed that the Soviet Union was investing heavily in ESP research.

Josh:

People that are listening to the show now may not even know what the Soviet Union is, but it was that big block of countries that are now independent countries. They were all. They all fell under what is essentially Russian rule, so it was operated out of the Kremlin. But like think of anything like Pakistan, kazakhstan, croatia, anything in the Balkans. Those were all part of the USSR.

Travis:

Okay, so this book claimed that the Soviet Union was investing heavily in ESP research, including telepathy, telekinesis and remote viewing, if there was even a chance that psychic abilities could be weaponized. The US didn't want to fall behind, so they did it. But it sounds like this is kind of the same story on the Soviet Union side too. They're like they're doing what, and I mean they're going to do anything they can to potentially learn secrets.

Josh:

Yeah, wild time back then.

Travis:

Yeah.

Josh:

We didn't have the internet like we did now, so a lot of it was passed between spy networks, and so we're getting this information through like phone calls and certified mail or whatever.

Travis:

Yeah. So all this book and this kind of back and forth of information are they doing this or not? It kind of kicked off what later people called the psychic arms race, where American intelligence agencies, including the CIA, the defense intelligence agency and the army, started pouring resources into their own investigations. If there's a way to gather intel without spies on the ground or satellites in the sky, just by using the human mind, it would be a game-changer. Okay, yeah, so they saw remote viewing as a potential tool for surveillance, locating hostages.

Josh:

Right, and that's like the easy way out, like I don't have to do anything, I just have to make this guy sit in like a sensory deprivation chamber and he can see a cat right.

Travis:

Yeah, I used to take inventories for a job and I always wished that I didn't have to actually type in the numbers.

Josh:

Yeah, like you could just like, if I could just think it manifested into the iPad.

Travis:

Yeah, that would be phenomenal. Yeah, cause I'm wasting so much time typing things.

Josh:

Well, it's just so monotonous and boring it is.

Travis:

Yeah. So they saw remote viewing as a potential to predicting future threats. It was passive, non-invasive and, compared to most intelligence operations, remarkably inexpensive.

Josh:

Oh yeah, of course it is, because it's one person.

Travis:

Yeah, so of course it was also controversial. Not everyone in the government believed it was real, but in the world where military advantage could come from the most unexpected places, they were willing to explore the edges of what might be possible.

Josh:

How do you even test this? This is where it gets like, not sci-fi, but if we have one person giving us that information, how do we know that that person is giving us verified, true information? We're putting a lot of pressure on them and then if they get something wrong or they decide they don't want to work, that puts a lot of value on this one person.

Josh:

I think it starts with simple prediction tests, yeah, but I mean, if you find somebody with this ability and this is kind of what a lot of comic books deal with is we're talking about like free will and this person's ability to operate on their own. Once the government finds out that you can do this, you're no longer an agent of yourself. Now you become an agent of the government. The government's going to swoop in and they're going to do what they did conduct a bunch of tests to see what the limits of this ability is, and then you're no longer like a free citizen. Now you are a property of the US government or the Russian government and you're going to get locked up.

Travis:

They're not going to let you out. Well, I mean, we saw that with some of the people that projected or remote viewed into places they shouldn't have, that their lives ended shortly after yeah, like the presidential bathroom.

Josh:

Yeah, that was a no-no. Yeah, it was a no-no.

Travis:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would imagine you know they start the tests with you know, to see if you have basic gifts where they do what card am I holding?

Josh:

and then it moves into what's in yeah, what's in this envelope.

Travis:

and then, with more and more accuracy, they kind of weed the people out and it sounds like with all the people they tested in that one that air was testing, that they had like a top six that were just really good. And they then did bigger and bigger and bigger tests and, with enough information gathered by accuracy, they ended up just proving that it was real.

Josh:

But it's so unreliable and it's so it's not pointless. But they tried to give people coordinates and they struggled with it. It was more like I can remote view, I'm going to just remote view this place and somehow they knew where it was and then they could describe what they were seeing. But if you were like, tell me what's at these locations, they really struggled right.

Travis:

No, they were pretty accurate. They would give them coordinates and nothing else, and then they would explain what they saw. And then they would find out later that what they saw was real, that they did see the correct things. And there was that one time where they didn't see the correct thing and then they realized that they didn't go to the coordinate exactly.

Josh:

They went a couple miles away. The first finding that we talked about was free response remote viewing, and that was much more successful than forced choice, which was picking from set options yeah, that was early on in the studies and then they redid the studies and kind of condensed it down.

Travis:

But yeah, having the guy find a location, he didn't find the right one and they're like, oh, you didn't get it right, it was supposed to be my cabin. And then they find out, oh, what he did see was real.

Josh:

It was a couple miles that way and it ended up being an NSA with a sugar grove it was a frequency free area, yeah, so it's kind of like we have here in our state where we have these like dark zones where no light is allowed. You can have street lights or house lights or flashlights or anything like that that could compromise our view of the night sky.

Josh:

Oh, I didn't know that it's supposed to be like perfectly dark, no light pollution whatsoever. So this is very similar to that with Like surveillance and radio Radio frequency, sure?

Travis:

Yeah. So this guy astral, projected into an NSA black site, basically, and read the names of documents and what he was supposed to be projecting at, or remote viewing, was just a cabin in the woods. But he went a little bit further and they said no, you're wrong, this is not what you're supposed to see. And then they found out later like oh okay, you did go somewhere and you found some stuff in the Oopsies. The NSA sent every agency over to this testing place because they were pissed Like why are you guys spying on NSA shit?

Josh:

But how did they?

Travis:

know that, I don't know. I mean, maybe they reported it. I mean, the NSA is spying on us.

Josh:

Well, it sounded more like the way it was told in this video was they knew it was happening, like as it was happening, and sent somebody over immediately. I don't think that's reported the way that it actually happened. I think it was more like what you were saying they had heard about it and they're like you got to stop whatever it is. You stop trying to look into what we're doing over here.

Travis:

Yeah, it wasn't a sequence of events.

Josh:

It was like through a period of time or they saw like an astral projection within their facility or something like that.

Travis:

Huh, that'd be interesting. So with all this testing came Project Stargate, and it had a few names before, but in 1977, the Defense Intelligence Agency and US Army created an official unit based out of Fort Meade, maryland, and that's where the Project Stargate was born. The team included military personnel, civilian researchers and trained remote viewers. They conducted hundreds of experiments and intelligence gathering missions, some of which, according to declassified reports, had surprisingly accurate results. So some of the few most well-documented examples are the giant Soviet submarine. Some of the few most well-documented examples are the giant Soviet submarine, where, in 1979, joe McMoneagle described a massive Soviet submarine under construction at a secret shipyard in northern Russia no-transcript their spy network.

Travis:

Maybe this one yeah, they're gonna be, and he was seeing this thing being built. It wasn't done yet.

Josh:

Yeah in red october and it was the pictures they had. They had, I mean, this is obviously a fictitious claim or it's a movie based on a book, based on tertiary knowledge of russian subs, u-boats but yeah, that was the. The picture that was given in the movie was a submarine that was still being made interesting and then as the movie kind of slowly progresses because it's a slow burn of a movie the sub is put into the water.

Travis:

Yeah, this sounds like it. He even talked about the channel it was being built in. And then months later when was this? 1979. Okay, months later, good year, satellite imagery confirmed everything he said, including the launch timeline. So that's one example. Another one is the Semipalatinsk nuclear site. The viewer is Pat Price and he was asked to describe a suspected nuclear facility in Kazakhstan and he drew a detailed image of a massive gantry crane used at the site, something that wasn't publicly known. And when satellite photos eventually came in they matched his sketches almost exactly. The site was also known as the Polygon and was the primary testing venue for the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons.

Travis:

Another one and these are all very well documented a hostage location in Lebanon. In 1988, a viewer was tasked with locating Marine Colonel William Higgins, who had been kidnapped in Lebanon. The viewer described the specific village and even identified the building where Higgins, who had been kidnapped in Lebanon. The viewer described the specific village and even identified the building where Higgins was being held. Later another hostage confirmed the accuracy of that location. And then the rings of Jupiter. Here's another one. This was kind of a more experimental case. Ingo Swann was asked to remote view the planet Jupiter before NASA's Pioneer 10 spacecraft arrived, he described rings around the planet which astronomers at the time thought didn't exist. Then, weeks later, the Pioneer confirmed he was right. And then the Libyan ship prediction. In 1989, a viewer was asked to predict how Libya might respond to international pressure over chemical weapons, and the viewer named a ship Potwa or Patwe.

Josh:

What I was waiting for you to get, to the potato part.

Travis:

That would transport chemicals to an eastern Libyan port. A ship called Batato arrived shortly after and did exactly that. How did you say it? Boat Batato, mm-hmm.

Josh:

Potato Batato.

Travis:

Yeah either way. But the results were inconsistent and not everyone in the intelligence community was convinced it worked. That's the theme. Some people were convinced, some people were not. By the early 90s, oversight of the project Project Stargate had bounced between agencies, with increasing skepticism about its value. In 1995, the CIA commissioned an official review to decide whether the program should continue, and that review concluded that the remote viewing hadn't produced enough reliable intelligence and the program was shut down later that year.

Josh:

Hmm, it's a big harumph there. What's that? What's that about?

Travis:

Well, I'm just saying it may not have shut down. People were talking about it and since it was something that could be trained, there was prodigies. I mean, I can learn music, I can learn sports. I'm not going to be good at them necessarily.

Josh:

Oh, come on, give yourself more credit.

Travis:

But if basically anyone could learn the fundamentals of doing this, I don't know how long it would take to learn that. That would mean that the US would not be able to keep secrets from the public. So it seems as though that they shut it down because it worked really well and they didn't want the testing and the knowledge of that to be sent out into the world. I've always grown up thinking that all this stuff is kind of fake Mediums and psychic readers, readers that it was just fake con artists yes, I 100 believe that.

Josh:

I mean we saw that with miss cleo right through the 90s.

Travis:

She was this famous in air quotes, psychic yeah, I called and did you really once with a friend and we charged up quite a bill. We weren't on very long either, it was.

Josh:

Oh no, I mean, she made a killing off of that because phone charges were especially like long, long distance back then was um, anyway, yeah, um, proven to be a fraud. So, yeah, we definitely grew up with that. But I was also like and I'm speaking about myself personally uh, you know, grew up reading comics and being a big fan of comic book uh, characters. I always wanted this to be the case and I always believed in, like x-men being the next level of human evolution and I just I believed it. I just I hoped, I wished you know, like, like all kids that are dorky, little nerd kids, they want, like, puberty to hit and suddenly you become this great, cool thing well, it never happened.

Josh:

I'm still some this dorky little kid and a grown man's dumb body, but I I I still think this is like it's cool, because there's so much about the human mind that we don't understand and there's so much about people that we don't understand that this could very well be the case. I don't think the way it's being reported is probably accurate and I don't think the government, especially the military, should be the ones running this test.

Josh:

It's like that, saying, if you have a hammer, you're going to look at all of your solutions like a nail right, and if you put it in the hands of a weapon or somebody who wants to weaponize this skill or this gift, they're going to do that right. They're going. Or this gift, they're going to do that? Yeah Right, they're going to make it. They're going to weaponize it in some way instead of using it to make or help make humanity better or progress through whatever evolution.

Travis:

It kind of makes me think, just because you and I had similar experiences, I think a lot of people have the same thought that it was. It's fake, it's a hoax, all this stuff, that maybe potentially this works so well and that humans are capable of this. But there was similar that we've seen with the alien community and UFOs, that there has been a lot of disinformation and we have documentation and proof that high ranking military officers have been purposely confusing and lying about the stuff to make people who believe crazy.

Josh:

Oh, so you think they're gaslighting everybody?

Travis:

well, what if they did a disinformation thing and they were trying to make psychics look crazy? Where they? They put out psychics out there to make it look fake so you think miss cleo was a government a? Deep. It's possible agent? I don't think so, I mean anything's possible maybe not her, but maybe there was others. I don't think so I just that.

Josh:

I that seems, that seems like a wild accusation. Then then, what's true and what isn't true?

Travis:

Well it's wild that they did it with the UFOs and aliens. I mean the government did that and they purposely put out information, then went back, purposely got caught then said sorry, we were faking it. I mean they're just creating confusion no-transcript.

Josh:

A very disappointing realization as a kid, like when you're just like I'm not actually channeling or funneling dark arts or whatever, yeah, through the earth. I'm, you know, with the right incantation I can summon something or levitate or walk on the wall or whatever, turn water into gold, like the best you can do is get sunglasses that have like a reflective paint on it so it looks you can kind of see who's behind you, or whatever. That's like the best you can get with magic. So I just remember that being really disappointing.

Travis:

Like that peek behind the curtain maybe, like you said, we don't know much about the human brain and our body and what we can truly do.

Josh:

But I'm not as cynical as you are, though, when you're saying, like the government gaslit people. I don't believe that that's the case. And just saying that that is the case because it happened with aliens and I'm not familiar with this instance where the government gaslit people about aliens other than, like you know, one or two people saying it I don't believe that that's the case with psychics or with anything, because if you start going down that hole, then you become a very untrusting person, and you, I mean you start to like not even trust humanity any longer.

Travis:

Yeah, and I'm not saying it's the case, I was just saying, like a what if? Like it was just a theory. Ok, you know, I mean it is possible, especially with government. I mean, if the government is running shit like this, who knows what they're doing?

Josh:

Yeah Well, this isn't the government, this is military run and I do not trust the military but the government gave them funding and allocated stuff like that.

Josh:

So I mean we talked about this like congressional hearings that we just heard. The government doesn't know what the fuck the military is doing. No, it's weird, and they're like you need to tell us this is mismanagement. This is like you need to be telling us what's going on and the military is just like I don't know. Oopsies, we already spent a billion dollars. Can we have another billion please?

Travis:

Yeah, but we can't tell you.

Josh:

We can't tell love it. It's about hot pockets. We're gonna try to make them not so hot. The heat's gonna be equal. Yeah, it'll be equally distributed. When you bite into it, it's not gonna burn your mouth and also freeze it so you were talking about that.

Travis:

It was in the wrong hands with the military, so the military.

Travis:

They had a quiet unit, basically a side project that wasn't talked about. So stargate was really prominent and that got all the attention. That wasn't talked about. So Stargate was really prominent and that got all the attention. It wasn't the US military's only remote viewing effort. So around the same time another program was quietly operating out of the Army Intelligence and the Security Command of INSCOM and it was known as Project 8200. So when Stargate focused heavily on research, training and experimentation, 8200 had a much direct purpose Operational intelligence gathering. These were real missions run by trained military personnel, not civilian psychics or university researchers. So Project 8200 began in the early 1980s and remained 1982.

Travis:

Yes, kind of lines up with their. I know that's the military?

Josh:

Yeah, it of lines up with their. I know that's the military yeah.

Travis:

It remained classified for many years. Its goal was to apply remote viewing techniques to actual intelligence targets Things like foreign weapons facilities, espionage threats and missing personnel. And the viewers involved. They were military trained operatives, not recruited psychics. In many ways, 8200 acted as a sister unit to Stargate. Both shared information and personnel over time. But 8200 kept a lower profile and operated with a more tactical mindset. The work was overseen by high ranking officers, including Major General Albert Stubblebine, a major supporter of the psychic intelligence, who famously believed soldiers could walk through walls yep.

Josh:

So in the movie this is not a spoiler for the men who stare it goes. But it starts with steven lang. After there's like, uh, they're like this is documented, or whatever. You know that that bit of text that shows up in a lot of movies based on real events or whatever. It's basically that same thing with a little more depth. And then it opens up on Stephen Lang's eyes as he's just staring and he's like all sweaty. He has an assistant that's sitting in the room with him and he said, corporal, I'm going to go into the next room. And then he's still focused on the wall. He gets up from behind his desk, still looking at the wall, and then just runs as hard as he can and crashes into the wall.

Travis:

And wall and then just runs as hard as he can and crashes into the wall and it's so funny and you know there is video of real tests of people doing I would love to see that.

Josh:

I know they're great they're. I'm sure that there is, oh, absolutely, but I don't know that it exists anymore. I'm sure that there was. I'm. I bet a lot of that stuff got deleted or thrown in the trash probably maybe there's something out there that that would be hilarious to see oh that'd be so good. It would be hilarious, but then also kind of sad.

Travis:

If it was declassified. And that's what we got. Yeah, there's a bunch of people running through walls and staring at goats.

Josh:

I can get that on Instagram. I can see people running into walls. The sad part of that is that they'd either told this person that they could pass through a wall or this person believed it so strongly and got up and tried it and then, just I bet a lot of noses were broken oh, absolutely yeah, and then you get a lot of cowards that just like didn't believe hard enough.

Travis:

Right at the wall, right at the yeah like nope.

Josh:

But if you commit to the bit, maybe it would have happened yeah, maybe no one believed enough they didn't believe enough. Yeah, yeah, that's what they say about airplanes. Like that's how they fly, you start to believe really strong and then, when it starts to land, the pilot just believes a little less.

Travis:

Interesting.

Josh:

See Science man, the mind is crazy.

Travis:

Yeah, so one of these astral projections, one of these remote viewing sessions through project 8200 is probably one of the strangest ones and most talked about is the mars session. Oh my god. Okay, it didn't involve soviets, submarines or nuclear sites, it wasn't. I mean, really, it's kind of weird it doesn't have to yeah, there was no.

Josh:

From my understanding, there's no reason no, this was just like them doing an exercise, just like stretching or whatever.

Travis:

They're just testing it's just part of like the the testing yeah, so a declassified ca document and I can link that in the show notes as well. Yeah, reports that on may 22nd 1984 a sealed envelope with a secret target was handed to remote viewer John McMonagle or Joe McMonagle. Mcmonagle was instructed to describe what he saw at the time and place using standard remote viewing protocol.

Josh:

Okay, I'm going to jump. Actually, I'll let you finish this before I jump in, because I do want to talk about this.

Travis:

She just has images of the actual text and dialogue. Yeah, and I don't think I'm going to read that.

Josh:

read that, okay we can sum it up so that's like the proctor saying the ones who sleep through the storm. So because he had described seeing something like people that were like basically emaciated and sheltered and they were looking for a way out, and he said it was like a desolate area, basically describing the planet Mars, I guess, or just any desert. But here's the kicker it was over a million years ago.

Travis:

Yeah, he traversed time in space.

Josh:

It wasn't just space, it wasn't just space like, not just space here down on earth, but space in space, outer space, which is wild. So the question I have is they said they performed like thousands and thousands and thousands of tests. Was this in that same time frame? And, if so, how many closed end floats were put on a table? And he guessed wrong and then he got this one right. And so people are just like like that meme we were talking about earlier of that cool guy just very proud of himself for doing this one cool thing. And so people are just like like that meme we were talking about earlier of that cool guy just very proud of himself for doing this one cool thing. And so now they're like well, see, that proves it, because he astral projected to a planet a million years in our past. Right, like how many tests were done before this one before, like closed envelope tests, and how many after, and how many of those were wrong?

Travis:

and yeah, we don't.

Josh:

We don't know the accuracy this one just line up, and then that's why they're like see, it works, kind of, because we did three tests and he passed one. So that's like a 33 chance that's better than an f. I mean, it's not a better than f, that's enough I'll get to that.

Travis:

So he described on mars tall and ancient well, we didn't know.

Josh:

Ancient, he just said, like tall emaciated, there was a storm happening and they were supposedly sleeping through it, and they asked to tell us more about those who sleep through the storms.

Travis:

Yeah, he said basically large, thin beings. I think he said like 12 feet tall and they're sleeping in massive pyramid-like shelters. Because they were experiencing an environmental catastrophe, because their planet was dying, dust storms were raging, the atmosphere was failing because a comet busted through the atmosphere and basically just popped the atmosphere like the tail of a comet no, they said they that they were living in the tail of a comet is how it was described, I believe okay but that is just like that's language that person used.

Josh:

That doesn't necessarily mean that they were actually living through a comet, necessarily. It's just like, if this is true and information is being communicated to him, as he's astral traveling and he's just like a guy, you know, who can allegedly do this thing, he's going to describe things, and we've talked about this on the show before. He's going to describe things as best as he can. Yeah, and so if they're communicating to him through and this is another thing they were speaking English. Did he communicate with them? They said tell us about the ones who sleep, and they said they were waiting for people to come back to save them.

Travis:

So basically, these people were sleeping. They had a search party to be sent out to find another planet to live on, but time was running out for those left behind.

Josh:

Yeah, so how was this communicated? Was this like a consciousness thing, like brain to brain, where they're just like able to project feelings and emotion?

Travis:

It possibly, or was it?

Josh:

like I mean. Then that's where it gets ridiculous. Is that's not? That's not talked about Like okay, so they talked to him in English.

Travis:

And that's what's hard about all this is because we don't know, like how do they find those coordinates?

Josh:

You can't verify it. It's supposedly Mars a million years ago. Like we can't verify that, that exists, that civilization exists. There's no proof.

Travis:

So McGonagall McMonagall was then instructed by the Monitor.

Josh:

Wouldn't you love Professor McMonagall out?

Travis:

there casting magic man.

Josh:

Oh, that's great.

Travis:

McMonagall was then instructed by the monitor to find out where the search party had traveled to and when the session was over, joe mcgonigal he mentioned that they came to earth, they found earth and in the declassified ca document you can see the whole conversation that we'll have posted in the show notes. When the session was completely over, joe finally opened the sealed envelope and it was a three by five card with the following information. It said the planet Mars. Time of interest approximately 1 million years BC. So I don't know how it works and I think that's why they scrubbed this whole project is because more and more people would know how this works. Like we heard that he's basically in a chamber when these projections, these remote viewings, are happening.

Josh:

But if this was like a million BC right, supposedly and things were always evolving, we can't stop it. Like evolution, there's no stopping it. Why do things suck so bad? Right now? We're driving shitty cars that are reliant on fuel. That is killing our planet. They had the ability to travel from one planet to another safely greed, no, but. But I mean, that's a million plus years ago. Like we should be at least traveling to other planets by now if they had that ability. You think they just came here and they're just like fucking easy life and we don't have to do shit anymore. Look at all this vegetate oh shit, is that a dinosaur? Oh my god. Ah, yeah, I easy life, we don't have to do shit anymore. Look at all this vegetation oh shit, is that a dinosaur, oh my God.

Travis:

Yeah, I'm not sure. I don't know the answer to that.

Josh:

Why not, Josh? I'm coming to you for this information. Why don't you have this answer? I?

Travis:

just think that maybe they use technology, that it's like that Futurama episode when they were leaving Mars.

Josh:

Did you? I love that you're going to back up my sincere question with a Futurama episode.

Travis:

They used. The ancient aboriginal people of Mars had a connection with the wild bungalow, which was like the cow of Mars, like it was their sacred animal, and they used that relationship to power an ancient spacecraft to travel to another planet because Mars was being destroyed. And maybe they had some other technology or maybe they could tap into the 100% of their mind and be able to control something without the technology or ancient devices that didn't use electricity, that it used mind power. You know, I don't know. I mean this is already showing that potentially, our minds are much more powerful than we realize, which is completely plausible.

Travis:

I was thinking too about these mediums when you were talking about how are they communicating? Maybe some of these mediums in today's age where they think they're talking to the deceased, maybe they're not actually talking to the deceased. Maybe they are remote viewing into and not realizing it. Maybe they think they are, but they're not actually talking to the deceased. Maybe they are remote viewing into and not realizing it. Maybe they think they are, but they're remote viewing into this person's mind and seeing what this person needs, because they talk about memories of that person, not memories.

Josh:

Well, that's all part of what these mediums do. It's like you read a crowd. It has nothing to do with astral projection or anything like that. It's just like having an understanding, like you said, what a person needs, what they're looking for. So they just throw this random stuff out and I forget they have a term for it even. But they'll throw out this random information to a big group of people, knowing it's going to land with somebody, and then they can get a little more specific. But it's usually like I generalize, get specifics from the person in the audience, then I use that to make another generalization that gets them more specific.

Travis:

So they're giving more information than you are asking of them, yeah, and that I mean cold read or something like that. I think there's a lot of con artists out there like big time. I mean they've gone as far as with live shows. They've done background checks on every single person, and the so-called medium of the show already knows everything that they're going to talk about before I mean they've gone crazy with it. But I do believe that there are gifted people, and so does the military and the CIA enough to spend a ridiculous amount of money funding projects for decades. So if there is something there, then maybe we use that to leave mars maybe, maybe I don't know.

Josh:

I mean if, if that technology existed and they were, they had a search party here. Did that? That's what I'm asking it's like. Did something happen then to that search party, that party that was sent to save the species? And then that's how, or why, we have pyramids here or whatever, because they say that there are pyramids on mars or whatever, but we're not really seeing that they sent a bunch of dummies down here that didn't know how to create whatever it is technology that they had, and so now we're just like, uh well, fuck the pyramids on mars do look similar to a lot of the pyramids that we found on earth before excavation, which is bizarre.

Travis:

And maybe yeah, I mean, if some of the earlier people in our earth life were influenced by storytelling and lore and they just kind of carried on that same construction habit, it's very possible um, I mean okay, but like we don't have any evidence of these tall beings here, all early human civilization, we're actually getting bigger now we are but there have been there's lore and myth of potential giant rays I mean, that's like unicorns.

Josh:

We have stories of unicorns and manticores and dragons and things like that as well, but we don't have evidence that they existed, just like giant people. There are anecdotal evidence pointing to some giants, like Robert Ludlow, who is like nine feet tall tallest person ever but it's not like a huge community of giants.

Travis:

Yeah, and it's also. I mean, context is important. You know, if we were very, very small back then, a person that was seven feet would be a giant.

Josh:

Sure, what I'm saying is we don't have communities of them Historically.

Travis:

There's not a group of giant people that we have like a giant person in a community, but not an entire community of giant people, yeah, so one last thing I want to talk about and it's not in our dossier is the alien bases that were found during remote viewing. I think that's a fascinating story. We watched that on the Y-Files about the remote viewing and basically some of these top people that we've talked about were able to remote view into a mountain in Alaska and they all went without any information and they all saw the same thing and it was bases that were built into the mountain that were much higher tech than we had at the time.

Josh:

That was Mount Haze in Alaska. Right that kept coming out.

Travis:

Yeah, and it was ran by human-like beings, but with bigger heads and bigger eyes, and each person kind of described not all of them saw, because it sounds like these bases weren't occupied all the time.

Josh:

This was found by Pat Price. I think that was that his name.

Travis:

He's the one that accidentally found this place and was killed shortly after, and he saw that beings there, but he also saw humans, military earthlings working alongside these potential aliens and throughout the years they did more remote viewings with this location, which is creepy. I think like if humans have been working with the aliens.

Josh:

But I mean, this is a testable thing. We can go to Mount Haze and, like, dig around in there and find out if this is true.

Travis:

Right, this is uh yeah, and some of the other remote viewers found other locations.

Josh:

This is provable, so why why? Not just go look, why not just go look? And don't say, and this is like we know where Mount Hayes is.

Travis:

We know the exact point. We know the exact point. We know the exact point.

Josh:

It's very remote, so this is not something the government can hide right. We don't have a government base keeping people from Mount Hayes, because that would throw up a lot of questions.

Travis:

I mean there's crazy. I mean in the Grand Canyon there is a base inside the Grand Canyon in the wall, and you can't get near it at all. People have tried flying drones towards it and the drones air out and return home so it's cut off from everything. If I was walking through and I tried to go there, you can't even get close enough to get there. There's just probably no way of getting there.

Josh:

Okay, well, I mean just our little bit of research.

Travis:

Nobody had gone to try to check out this place in Alaska, yeah, and there's blackout zones on like Google Maps and stuff like that. I'm sure this isn't blacked out because there's nothing to see. It's inside the mountain. They found other ones, some underwater, some in other mountains around the world, yeah.

Josh:

Which raises a question like how if it's underwater and I know there's a way to turn like water into oxygen but if we have people down there, how are they breathing?

Travis:

They didn't talk about those ones being manned by humans.

Josh:

But I mean, from what we understand from just basic physiology, you need to have oxygen to live on this planet. So I don't know, maybe they don't breathe. I mean, this is again a very fundamental understanding of how we work here. It doesn't mean that that's how they work on another planet, right? Yeah maybe they don't need it.

Travis:

Maybe they can get everything they need from absorbing it through their skin, kind of like a frog maybe, and so basically there's all these different locations of these extraterrestrial bases, which these people didn't really call them extraterrestrial, they were just doing their job. They were told to observe something and they came back and we've kind of concluded with the beings and the different technology there that it is extraterrestrial, that they are spread around the whole world and they're all connected and it seems as though they're harvesting or gathering something and sending it off, because another remote viewer was able to view where they were sending it or what was receiving, whatever they were collecting, and he described that as an unmanned vessel, fully automated. It just makes me wonder what they're collecting. And in one of the guy's statements he had a conversation so this is another thing like how are they able to communicate? He had a conversation with an alien saying what do you think about humans?

Josh:

and they said not much not much, but again like how is this communicated was? It done in english like that is. It's just so wild, and I guess, if this group of extraterrestrials had decided to take up residence here, maybe they learn the language. But like we don't communicate with dolphins, or if they look at us like animals, we don't communicate with birds in that way.

Travis:

Well, so that's what he meant is by saying not much is that there's some aliens that are on Earth are interested scientifically in humans, but most of them view us as animals, as a flock of birds or fish in the sea. You know we're more intelligent, but that just definitely made me think. You know, they're here just letting us do our thing. They're here for the earth. They don't really care about us that much. They don't want us to hurt the earth, but they don't care if we hurt each other.

Josh:

But that's what we're doing right now.

Travis:

I mean we're doing all of it.

Josh:

Yeah, we're doing everything. All of the bad, all of the bad, hurt things yeah.

Travis:

Yeah, I just I thought that was interesting, especially sticking to the aliens theme of our show.

Josh:

I mean, I guess it would be the same if a dolphin asked us like what do you think of dolphins? We'd be like I don't know man, like I heard you guys fuck a lot.

Travis:

Yeah, not much.

Josh:

Yeah, I can't go in the water when you guys are all hot and bothered because that turns out bad.

Travis:

Yeah, and I heard that AI is working on learning animal language, that, and I heard that AI is working on learning animal language. That'd be cool. That would be cool If these aliens have higher tech, or maybe they communicate in the same way that the people using the remote viewing are able to communicate. Maybe they can tap into that, I don't know. But overall, in conclusion, for more than two decades, the US government poured time, money and classified resources into exploring a question that still divides people today Can the human mind access information beyond space and time?

Josh:

Are you asking me?

Travis:

No, who are you?

Josh:

asking. You asked the question.

Travis:

I'm telling you that is the question that is dividing people, but you're not asking me that. I'm not asking you. Okay, I already know you believe Project Stargate may have ended in 1995, but the question-.

Josh:

Nice, you just threw that in there.

Travis:

It raised never really went away. So where I stand on this, on the yes, no, maybe is yes. I think that our minds are capable of this. I think that the military knew I mean, I've kind of just sprinkled my thoughts throughout all of this I think the military knew that this worked. I think they shut it down because it worked so well that they didn't want it to get out, and I think it is potentially going to be a lost art, except for these black site operations where they're able to still utilize that today in the world. That's what I think okay.

Josh:

So under the parameters of our show, where it's yes, no, maybe aliens no, because we're not talking about aliens here. So as far as that goes, no, this doesn't push the needle for me into believing whether or not aliens do exist. Yes, um, but I I will echo what you had said. Like I, I think that there's a lot that humans are capable of. I am a humanist to the bone and I want to believe there are incredible things that we can do, and I know that there's incredible things that we can do. I mean, that's the just like an adrenaline.

Josh:

Well, just I mean, what is so fascinating about the olympics, right like we're watching, incredible human beings do incredible things and getting better every year and getting better and faster every year. Yeah, so there are. There are things that the human body and human mind can do, and we're just it's not fully tapped yeah, most everything is not fully tapped right because there's not funding for it. So yes, maybe no. Do I believe in humans?

Travis:

100 yes you believe humans are real I believe humans are real.

Josh:

Yes, I know, that's a hot take.

Travis:

Well, I you believe humans are real.

Josh:

I believe humans are real. Yes, I know that's a hot take, but I do believe humans are real and I believe in them. I believe in us. I believe in us humans. Come on, humans, just be better.

Travis:

Yeah, humans are what divide us.

Josh:

Yeah, we're all getting in our own way, but come on, we can. Let's be better. Be better humans.

Travis:

So I want to invite you all to click on the links that we're providing some of the documents and some of the release CIA stuff. Do your own research there's a whole bunch of more information on this and let us know what you think. Spread the word, tell people about us. You can get ahold of us with fan mail Pretty easy. Click the fan mail link in the show notes and you can just message us right from your phone and we will get it on our phone just like a text. I think that's it. There's nothing more for this show.

Josh:

Is it over? Is this the end?

Travis:

Yeah, we have nothing more.

Josh:

Series finale.

Travis:

No, we have a quiz.

Josh:

Oh, we do have a quiz, don't we? Yeah, we have a quiz.

Travis:

I don't know, so we're going to do a quiz on the next week's topic. I don't know what it is, we haven't looked as we do. Okay, the baseline quiz, I know, is the flatwoods monster. I have no idea what this is. Are we getting into cryptids?

Josh:

I hope so. I love, I love a good cryptid tale. Okay, and some cryptids have tails lucky.

Travis:

Yeah, good old, lucky okay.

Josh:

So I don't know, huh Huh Locky, yeah, little Locky.

Travis:

Okay, so I don't know anything about this. Never heard of it. Flatwoods monster. We have a handful of questions and we'll try to figure out what's going on as we answer these, but this is what we're going to talk about next week. Yeah, so in what state did the reported sighting of the Flatwoods monster take place? Is it A Oklahoma, b Montana, c West Virginia or D Oregon? This sounds like a fucking West Virginia. I was totally going to say that this sounds like a fucking West.

Josh:

Virginia. Thing.

Travis:

I know, I think there's one of those triangles like the Alaskan Triangle, bermuda Triangle, I think there's one in that area. Okay, so I'm going to say West Virginia, yeah, okay. Next question and what year was the monster reportedly seen? This is a cryptid man, Okay, a, 1936, b, 1952, c, 1978 or D, 2003.

Josh:

I'm going to say 1936.

Travis:

I'm going to say 52.

Josh:

That was my runner up choice. Okay, I'm going 36'm going 36. It just I don't know. There's something about the way this is starting to take frame in in my head. Is that it's just like a monster that like plays music on a milk jug and a washboard I'm curious to see what it looks like.

Travis:

Yeah, okay. So next question who initially came upon the flatwoods monster? A a troop of boy scouts on a camping trip. B a church youth group and pastor. C a softball team coming home from the game or d a mother with a group of local kids?

Josh:

I've read that really quick and I thought it said a monster with a group of another, another monster, that's it like yeah, real recognize, real monster is gonna recognize another monster. Go ahead, josh, you answer. You answer yours first and I'll tell you mine, because I went first last time I'm gonna say a softball team coming home from a game. Okay, I don't know why that just rings a bell I'm gonna say an intrepid troop of boy scouts on a camping trip. Those guys are always up to something they are.

Travis:

What's going on over?

Josh:

What's going on with those scouts?

Travis:

Yeah, why are you doing stuff all the time? Okay, so next question how is the monster described? A, 10 feet tall, with glowing eyes and a spade shaped head. B, seven feet long, with matted fur and six legs oh my God. C three feet tall, with a scrunched up face and long arms. Or D eight feet tall, with scaly skin and large orange wings.

Josh:

I'm going to say, just having you read those descriptions, they're all very upsetting. Picturing those if seeing this out in the woods.

Travis:

None of those should exist.

Josh:

No, no, and I probably wouldn't either, after having seen them, I would die of a heart attack Poop your entire insides out. Yeah yeah, my insides would be an Audi.

Travis:

Yep, what do you think? I'm going to say I don't like the six legs.

Josh:

I don't like anything with more legs than it should have. Yeah, and like matted fur sounds awful. Like what's matting your fur, is it blood? Orange wings, blood?

Travis:

orange wings also. I don't like anything that flies I hear spiders are evolving to fly.

Josh:

I've heard that too I don't like hate it. Uh, I'm gonna say the cutest one, the three foot tall with a scrunched up face and long arms, even though the long arms are really upsetting, like I'm picturing like a tall furby that is able to reach me across the room. I don't like that, but I feel like I can swat some arms away better than I can something that has six legs, a swap fight, just like.

Travis:

Get away from me. No, I'm just slapping yeah, or just slapping me, yeah, yeah I am gonna say a 10 feet tall with glowing eyes and spade shaped head. I don't like the spade shape either. It's gross, no like a shovel yeah, okay, next one. What accompanied the sighting of the flatwoods monster? A high-pitched ringing in the ears, b nauseating, pungent mist, c telepathic message of peace, or d a sudden massive thunderstorm jeez I mean, I think we talked about, uh, telepathic message of peace.

Josh:

I don't know if it was on the Betty and Barney Hill.

Travis:

That was the aerial school.

Josh:

Okay, I knew that one of them had that. I'm not going to associate that with this tiny little monster. I'm going to say nauseating, pungent mist.

Travis:

I am too, because in the cryptids I've learned about how terrible they smell. Yeah, that is a pretty common theme, okay, how terrible they smell, yeah, that is a pretty common theme, okay. Last question what did the air force suggest? The creature was oh shit.

Josh:

Okay, so the military is involved military is involved, but like this, is going to throw out your descriptions oh geez, because none of these line up with what you said okay, so a a mountain.

Travis:

B, a prank by teenagers, uh-huh. C, a wild hen which is a bird. Yeah, or D an owl.

Josh:

Which is also a bird, a little bird. Yeah, I'm going to say an owl, because that kind of lines up, Because owls have a pretty large wingspan.

Travis:

Yeah, they do Long arms. They can be three feet Uh-huh, and they kind of they have a scrunched up face. They have a scrunched up face. It's a flat face. Yeah, oh man, I'm going to say mountain lion. Okay, all right, we're going to submit these answers. View accuracy. Okay, west Virginia, right out of the gate. West Virginia. Yeah, in what state did a reported take place? West virginia? In what year was the monster reportedly?

Josh:

seen? Uh, here we go, classic travis. This is where it goes downhill.

Travis:

For me it was 1952 yeah, he said 36 yeah, who initially came upon the flatwood monsters?

Josh:

I said a softball team and you said the boy scouts I said a boy scout it was a mother with a group of local kids I should have stuck to my gut when I thought it was monster. Yeah well, josh, here we go.

Travis:

You were right. How is the monster described? 10 feet tall, with glowing eyes and a spade shaped head?

Josh:

Got that one wrong. Yeah, classic Travis. I said three feet tall with a scrunched up face. Yeah, yeah.

Travis:

So the next one what accompanied the sighting of the Flatwoods monster? I said a nauseating pungent mist. You said A nauseating pungent mist. And that is correct, because it seems like they're just all that way, All the cryptids. And then, lastly, what did the Air Force suggest the creature was? I said a mountain lion. I said an owl, you said an owl.

Josh:

Lining up with my previous description, little guy, which is wrong. How many owls do you know that are 10 feet tall? Because that's the correct answer.

Travis:

Yes, the Air Force said an owl.

Josh:

How do you pass off an owl as being a 10 foot tall monster, which is what was reported?

Travis:

I have no idea, I am very interested in this.

Josh:

I guess, if it's in a tree, yeah, a shadow, maybe the sun was setting and the light bounced off the owl's eyes and it said and that scared the shit out of them and they looked up and they do kind of have a spade. Yeah, I mean. Well, I mean it depends on the owl, but I wouldn't say spade, Like a Batman shape head is an owl.

Travis:

So I guess we're veering off aliens again a little bit. That's fine. Yeah, cryptids. So the next episode will be a cryptid. I'm pretty excited about that. I wasn't expecting to do a cryptid, but hey, I'm all game.

Josh:

Yeah, this is fun. I like cryptids. I think they're a lot of fun.

Travis:

Yeah Well, thank you for listening. I hope you listen to the next episode. It'll be a good one. Yeah, who do we thank? And we want to thank our? We'll do this without her.

Josh:

Our everything.

Travis:

She picks the episodes, she writes the quizzes, she gives us all of our notes. She does the music.

Josh:

She's a ventriloquist. She's actually doing all of the talking for us right now.

Travis:

Yeah Tells us what to research, yep. So yeah, big shout out to her. We wouldn't be able to do this without her. Yeah, living in her house. Yeah, now, eating her food, breathing her air, Raising her children Peeing in her potty. Well, thank you for listening and we'll catch you next time. Okay, bye, bye.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Josh Snodgrass

Co-host
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Travis Wright

Co-host
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Jordan Blair

Producer