The Westall UFO Incident: Australia’s Schoolyard Mystery

In 1966, hundreds of students and teachers near Melbourne, Australia, looked up during a normal school day and saw something paranormal.

This episode, we dig into the Westall UFO Incident, one of Australia’s most famous mass UFO sightings. With all the mystery swirling around this story, it's no wonder they call it "Australia's Roswell"! 

So was it a secret military balloon recovery? A schoolyard mass misidentification? Or did hundreds of people actually see something unexplainable in broad daylight?

Recommended links:

• Video - Australian Story: Australia’s UFO Mystery
• Balwyn UFO photo & analysis
• HIBAL balloon explanation
• The Grange/Flying Saucer playground

Transcript

Josh 0:03

Aliens.

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Aliens. Yes. But maybe no.

Travis 0:19

Welcome back to the show. Aliens, yes, but maybe no with Josh and Travis. I am Travis. And I am Josh. And this is an otherworldly podcast as ambiguous as our title. Thank you.

Josh 0:31

Thanks for doing the intro always.

Travis 0:33

Yeah, well, it's fun. And just so the listener knows, this is the third take that we had to do. So I brought a different energy every day. Much like the patron saint of my town, Nick Cage. No. I'd never try to do the same performance twice.

Josh 0:50

Well, it was glorious every time.

Travis 0:53

Yeah, well, we can release that on the Goofs page.

Josh 0:56

One of them we weren't even recording.

Travis 0:58

Well, we can always uh if the listener wants, I will send out a very wordy email to them describing exactly what happened.

Josh 1:05

Okay. Well, let us know.

Travis 1:06

Yeah, hit us up in the comments. You want Travis's play-by-plays? Yeah. You want me to describe all of our outtakes in a long email?

Josh 1:14

Yeah.

Travis 1:15

I'll do it. I love our listeners. I love our paranoid freaks. Not that again. Like that I'm bringing that back?

Josh 1:21

No. But we are coming back.

Travis 1:23

We are.

Josh 1:24

Because we've done cryptids, we've done, we've done different things, but we're going back to the basic again. Just your classic UFO incident.

Travis 1:32

Yep. Very cool.

Josh 1:33

Yeah.

Travis 1:34

So what did we talk about last week?

Josh 1:36

Last week we talked about Bigfoot.

Travis 1:39

Good episode, I think. I feel very confident about my feelings regarding Bigfoot.

Josh 1:45

Yeah, I really enjoyed that. I think we've talked about it in the episode. It is a huge topic, so we are gonna do another one, I believe. But we also mentioned in the Bigfoot episode that we may be doing a Battle Cryptids episode where we pit different cryptids against each other in a kind of March Madness style bracket to see who comes out on top.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Yeah.

Josh 2:08

The elite, the best, as you would say, the S class. Can we say March Madness?

Travis 2:11

Isn't that trademarked? I we can say whatever we want. A November nuttiness? No. We're not doing that. That sounds gross. That kind of overlaps with the other thing that happens in November.

Josh 2:22

Yeah, we're not doing that.

Travis 2:24

Yeah.

Josh 2:24

But this episode, like we were saying, we are gonna be going back to the basics, like we said.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Yeah.

Josh 2:29

We're gonna be talking about the Westall UFO incident.

Travis 2:34

Everybody flow? No, we're not gonna keep workshopping it.

Josh 2:38

We can say March Madness. So yeah, we're gonna talk about the Westall UFO incident. I hadn't heard of it.

Travis 2:43

No, not surprising anybody. I haven't heard of it either.

Josh 2:47

This is basically the Australian Roswell.

Travis 2:51

This is basically the Australian aerial school incident. And Roswell. Sure. It can be multiple things. I I wouldn't really consider that because they didn't recover a craft here. Spoiler for the rest of the show.

Josh 3:04

Well, thanks for coming in. Bye. Bye. We're gonna do the quiz next. Yeah. You guys know we do a quiz every week. I don't know what it is yet. I'm gonna fail at it, but we're not gonna answer the questions. We're just gonna give you the answers.

Travis 3:17

Yeah. So yeah, why don't Josh, why don't you kick us off? Give us a little bit of a backstory into what this Westall UFO incident is all about.

Josh 3:27

Yeah. So we're traveling back in time to Melbourne, Australia, in April of 1966.

Travis 3:32

Love a time machine story.

Josh 3:34

Where a normal school day became one of the biggest mass UFO sightings in Australian history. A businessman in Baldwin, James Kibble, captured a photo of a metallic bell-shaped object spinning slowly in the air about twenty to three kilometers away from Westall. Four days later, shortly after 11 AM, a typical Wednesday at Westall school took an extraordinary turn. The mid morning bustle of hundreds of students and staff looked up, squinting against the bright daylight to behold an impossible sight. Silvery, metallic disks hovering in the sky. These silent shimmering saucers hummed with a low frequency vibration. As they tilted, the objects appeared to shift in thickness, flashing solid one moment and possibly thin the next.

Travis 4:17

I love the alliteration of that. These silent shimmering saucers.

Josh 4:21

Yeah, that is nice.

Travis 4:22

It's nice. And you breezed right through it. That was that was beautiful.

Josh 4:26

Thank you. Yeah. So students scrambled over the fence and charged into the nearby scrubland of the grange to follow the descending objects. They arrived to find the grass flattened and swirled into eerie circles. With some reporting the scent of ozone or scorched treetops. In an instant, an ordinary Melbourne suburb became the epicenter of a mystery that would haunt hundreds of witnesses for the rest of their lives. This moment became known as the Westall UFO incident.

Travis 4:56

I love how specific that was. Scorched Treetops, you know, working in the industry that we both work in, a brewery would include spruce tips into their beer. Yeah. Which was very specific. It's a very specific call-out. And this kind of brings that to mind, the line scorched treetops.

Josh 5:17

Yeah. It's very specific. It is. I wouldn't recognize that smell. Yeah. If it was a treetop versus I would imagine a treetop versus the tree bottom, it would smell similar. You would. I wouldn't. I I mean, I wouldn't I would just say tree.

Travis 5:32

Yeah, I would say tree. I don't even think I could tell the difference between maybe I could apple and pine.

Josh 5:39

Oh, I wouldn't be able to. I would be able to tell there's a difference. I wouldn't know what it was.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

Yeah.

Josh 5:44

So because I had a little bit of confusion of just the name Westall, I had to actually look up what Westall is. So it's a neighborhood within Clayton South. Okay. And Clayton South is a district on the outskirts of Melbourne.

Travis 5:58

Okay. It's like a suburb of Melbourne.

Josh 6:00

Yeah. So this is where this event happened. And it was witnessed by students staff from both the Westall High School, now called Westall Secondary College, and the nearby primary school. And those are kind of in the same area. Their properties are butted up against each other on the same block.

Travis 6:16

Primary school, like little tiny babies with excellent memories.

Josh 6:20

Yes. But it does make it a little bit different with Ariel because it wasn't just young kids. It was high schoolers, teachers, teachers, and people in the surrounding area.

Travis 6:31

Somebody working in the market garden. Yep. Pretty cool phrase. I like the idea of a market garden.

Josh 6:36

So West Hall is basically just a neighborhood in a suburb, and the school's named after that.

Travis 6:41

Yeah. So this is Melbourne, 1966. This was a growing community defined by school uniforms, local factories, and kids playing outside. It was a very ordinary place for something extraordinary to happen. But don't forget this was also during the Cold War. Because of nuclear anxiety at the time, any report of a strange object in the sky was quickly elevated to official government business. By 11 a.m., hundreds of witnesses, anywhere from 200 to 400 people, depending on the account, watched as objects appeared. Most witnesses describe seeing one to three objects, and the descriptions were fairly consistent. So we're gonna talk a little bit about what people describe the silvery or silver gray object, disc shaped or saucer-shaped, bright in daylight. One person even said it looked like white hot heat. And then another person described it as being like she said donkey brown, which I think is so specific. It was so funny. She's like, Yeah, like donkey brown. And keep in mind, this is Australian, so it's like very specific.

Josh 7:45

So their point of reference and they have the right words for everything, honestly.

Travis 7:48

Yeah. I mean, just I could listen to an Australian accent or a New Zealand accent if if I'm being honest, oh yeah, forever and just be entertained. So anyway, some described that there was a humming and that the ships or the objects were able to tilt at an angle and they were appearing thicker when the underside came into view. I'm trying to picture what that looks like. What does it mean to describe something as being thicker?

Josh 8:12

I think that's part of the mystery is like it's weird, you know, and it changes shape a little bit. I mean, all of it combined is Yeah.

Travis 8:21

One of the witnesses said that the object became translucent as he watched it and it kind of just disappeared. I mean, and these are people that were very close to an airport. Yeah, so they see planes. They've seen planes. This is 1966, you know. Planes weren't littering the sky like they are now.

Josh 8:41

I mean, they were in that area because they were right next to an airport and there's a war going on.

Travis 8:45

But that's but like they were seeing smaller like Cessna's. They'd seen an airplane before. It's not like you can look out your window right now and probably see an airplane within five minutes, right?

Josh 8:54

Yeah, that's true.

Travis 8:55

So one of the most credible witnesses was a science teacher named Andrew Greenwood. He described a silver gray object that seemed to thicken as it turned, which suggested it was a flat disc tilting in the air rather than an object changing its physical size. There were also reports from Clayton South Primary, almost two kilometers away from Westall Primary, where a student named Dee Satake saw a silent metallic object that looked like a 20-cent piece. I don't mean to get caught up on a 20-cent piece, but that's wild. It moved horizontally before suddenly tilting and vanishing from sight.

Josh 9:29

Very specific.

Travis 9:30

Yeah.

Josh 9:30

They know what they saw and they know what it looked like.

Travis 9:33

It is. Very specific. Donkey brown.

Josh 9:36

Yeah.

Travis 9:37

But donkeys are also gray.

Josh 9:38

I mean Shrek. Yeah, I guess. I don't know too much about donkeys, but I imagine. I tune in next week for a show about donkeys.

Travis 9:48

Yeah. And the shows they put on south of the border.

Josh 9:50

Andrew Greenwood, the science teacher, kind of got the shit end of the stick with this. He was basically threatened into not speaking about this event by authorities and military. Yeah.

Travis 10:02

And the kids were all told by like the administration, school administration had told the kids that they needed to be quiet about it. And I think this is just like personally and you know, doing the show for as long as we've been doing this. I think there was a little bit of embarrassment. By who? By school administration. They didn't, they didn't want, you know, whatever happened to the school, whether it was an actual UAP sighting or not, they didn't want it to get out because you have to think of the culture that surrounded sightings. Yeah, and the time. And people were not very kind to what we now know as experiencers, people who have maybe experienced something otherworldly.

Josh 10:44

That's true. Yeah, it's true.

Travis 10:46

Right. And so I think the administration was trying to like shut them up, not out of trying to cover it up, but they didn't want a reputation or that kind of reputation.

Josh 10:56

Yeah, I'm I'm not sure. I mean, it could have been that reason. It could have also been that the military told the school to like, hey, make sure none of this gets out. And some of the kids were talking to suits, and the suits were telling them to not speak on it.

Travis 11:11

But if if the military was coming in and telling the administration, I think that more info would be leaked. So the military was like, hey, look, you guys didn't see what you saw, and maybe lifted at that, and they weren't able to answer any or weren't available to answer any follow-up questions.

Josh 11:27

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure they're they're quick.

Travis 11:29

But I would think that like school administrators, it would eventually come out that they were silenced by the military.

Josh 11:35

Well, and it all did. I mean, that maybe not the administration, but the students definitely did, and the teacher, yeah, Andrew Greenwood, definitely did. They even said that he was drunk and that they're going to report him to the education board.

Travis 11:49

Yep. Classic teacher. Yeah. Especially a science teacher. I remember my science teachers, they were all, I swear to God, pouring vodka in their coffee, and every break they were outside smoking cigarettes.

Josh 11:59

I've never seen that. Man, wild. Okay, so that's what the people saw. Now here's what happens when they see it.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Yeah.

Josh 12:06

So as the object moved away from the school and towards the grange, witnesses believe that whatever they were seeing had actually touched down on the ground. The grange was about 15 acres of scrubland, which is basically like a fenced-off Australian bush.

Travis 12:21

Well, scrubland is like, I mean, that's basically what all of southern Idaho and eastern Oregon is is just scrubland. It's it's it's sage, it's weeds, it's dust, it's hot. Trees here and there. Barely, though. I mean, if it's a tree, it's like something that's like a juniper, something that doesn't take a lot of water.

Josh 12:41

Yeah, but they did have trees in this area. Sure. So this grange was close enough that the students were able to run there in a matter of minutes. It was probably like a neighborhood block distance away.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Yeah.

Josh 12:53

The scene became chaotic very quickly. The students were excited, scared, and curious. Some stayed behind the fence, others ran and jumped the school's chain link fence and headed towards the shrubland. What's interesting is that the witnesses also saw small Cessna type planes in the air at the same time. These planes appeared to be circling or even pursuing the object. Yeah. The aircraft could mean a couple of different things. Small planes were reacting to something unusual in the sky, like a UFO, or the planes could have been chase aircraft connected to a balloon recovery. And we'll get into that in a little bit. But after about 20 minutes, the objects reportedly rose into the air and shot off towards the northwest at an incredible speed.

Travis 13:33

So some of the witnesses that were part of both of these documentaries remember seeing these planes pursue, maybe pursuing. They were just in the air after the sighting. So who knows? I mean, there's there's a lot of speculation, and I don't think there's any Yeah, I think there's five planes, like five little Cessnas coming up. Quick. We don't know, we don't know if that's necessarily related to this incident or not, because we're not going to get like the flight reports.

Josh 13:58

Yeah, they couldn't even find who the pilots were in any of that. And one of the witnesses said that it seemed as though they were interacting, and the UAPs or UFOs, whatever it was, was kind of playing cat and mouse with them.

Travis 14:10

Yep. So like they would see the object in the air hovering, and then uh an airplane would come, you know, just like chugging along with our stupid earth technology, fossil fuel bullshit. Yeah. And then the ship would just go zoop and just go shoot straight up and disappear.

Josh 14:29

Damn. Perfect.

Travis 14:30

Yeah.

Josh 14:31

Just like an alien training.

Travis 14:33

Just just like an alien training. Yep.

Josh 14:36

They did it, they did it perfect.

Travis 14:37

Yep. Okay. So students who made it to the Grange describe seeing what are now called landingness, which were physical imprints left behind in the environment, like a loose crop circle. We haven't really talked about this yet. Loose crop circles. Landing nest. I just did a loose crop circle before the show. Oh, okay. Gardening. What are you talking about? And to go pull some weeds. And you made a little loose crop circle. But we haven't. We haven't really talked about landing nests, at least that I remember. So landing nests are circular patterns in the grass, roughly eight meters wide. The grass wasn't just stepped on, it was perfectly flattened or swirled in a single direction. Russell Haynes, who later had a long career in the Victoria Belize, was one of the people who saw these perfectly formed circles in the long grass. The reported landing nests were described as circular patterns in the grass, around eight meters in diameter, flattened or swirled, laid down in one direction, located in the area where the objects appeared to descend. So yeah, like it does evoke the idea of a crop circle. Yeah. You know, if all of the grass is in one direction, I mean that's exactly what was happening with the crop circles. But we found that if you had a board and some rope, you could do a very similar thing, not saying that that's what happened here, because this is 66. When were crop circles? Was that the 70s, 80s?

Josh 16:03

No, the 80s. But going back to the crop circles, it wasn't all like they said they did like 200 or something like that. But there's thousands of those. And pushing the crop circles down with a board is way different than because the the stocks will actually snap when they do that. But different crop circles that seem a little more otherworldly happen to just bend and the nodes actually start growing in a new direction, which is okay.

Travis 16:29

Well, I mean, we're not talking about growth patterns from nodes or or whatever.

Josh 16:34

But I mean once we're done doing this episode, that's all I'm gonna talk about for the rest of the night. You're just gonna talk about growth patterns of nodes and loose crop circles.

Travis 16:42

Love it. Yep. I I love that so much.

Josh 16:45

But yeah, you're you're right. It's basically just, I mean, if an animal were to lay down in tall grass, it you would see that something was there.

Travis 16:54

Yeah. Or just imagine going out into a field full of weeds, and everybody's got one. I mean, not everybody, but a lot of people, a lot of listeners are probably close to a field of of weeds. You could go out and drop a heavy object out in the weeds and then pick that object up, and you'll see something kind of similar.

Josh 17:13

Yeah.

Travis 17:14

Just imagine something coming down and landing in that spot. It's gonna be pressed down grass or whatever. I mean, even if you step in long grass with your shoes on, you could see imprints of it. So one of the most cited witnesses is Russell Haynes, who later served 32 years in the Victoria Police. He said he saw where one object had landed in long grass and that the grass was laid down perfectly in one direction in a circle. It's important to note that in 2009, investigators discovered that Australia's mysterious UFO nests were caused by wallabies getting high on poppies and hanging around until they created crop circles, which we covered on our show, and it was like the cutest. Oh, I love it. Yeah, so much fun talking about that. That being said, there were also more reports of damage, like treetops that appeared burned black. Some witnesses even claimed that authorities arrived later to destroy or burn the grass to hide the evidence of where the objects had been.

Josh 18:07

Yeah, they didn't just destroy or burn the grass after the morning sighting. The official response was really fast. So witnesses remembered seeing local police, the RAF personnel, and even people they believed were American officials, which is uh oh. Yep. The area was secure. The students were reportedly told to stop talking about the incident entirely. And some also claimed that even the soil from the landing circles was actually just completely dug up and hauled away in trucks. If it was a secret Cold War project, this could be a standard cleanup, maybe. I don't know. But if it was something else, it suggests that the authorities were very interested in whatever physical residue was left behind. So that with the combination of don't talk about this, as well as destroying evidence and taking evidence with them. A suspect.

Travis 18:56

Uh yeah, super sus. Yeah. Super Sass. So now we're going to talk about a vanished student. Pretty scary. Yeah. Yeah. Like the idea of a missing kid is terrifying.

Josh 19:08

And I didn't hear about this in the documentaries.

Travis 19:11

I didn't either.

Josh 19:12

But I did read a couple of articles and stories written about it.

Travis 19:15

Yeah, I mean, we're we're both parents. This is like a parent's worst fear. Damn. So the story of Tanya. Within the Westall lore, one story could just be an urban legend. Some say Tanya had a close encounter near the landing site and was found in a state of extreme distress. The reports go that she was taken away by an ambulance, and when her friends went to her home that evening to check on her, they met a woman who told them that Tanya and her family had never lived there. Then told them to leave and never come back. Even though the school principal eventually dismissed the whole thing as mass hysteria, the witnesses were certain that what they saw was real and physical. That's wild.

Josh 19:54

Interesting. Yeah, it could go back to kind of what you were talking about is the time and the culture. Like people don't want to stand out what you were saying, that the administration was trying to protect the school and the students. And maybe the family was doing the same. Like, oh no, she had this crazy experience. We don't want this to taint her, or she was hysteric. In one of the interviews and one of the films we watched, one of the witnesses did say that when she ran over to where it was, she was one that hopped the fence and went to the grange. When she got there, the craft had just started lifting off. And there's two girls there before her. One was just laying or sitting on the ground. Yeah. And the other one, I think she used the word hysterical. So maybe that was this Tanya.

Travis 20:41

So they would say they were sobbing because they thought this is the end of the world.

Josh 20:46

Yeah. It was mass chaos all over. Like people were losing their minds. But yeah, if it is real, if it's not an urban legend, that is genuinely sad.

Travis 20:56

Either your child experiences something that changes them, or it sounds like their entire family had been taken, not just not just Tanya, but like either taken or they quickly moved away.

Josh 21:08

I mean, if something happened where she had a close encounter and she needed medical thing or military needed to do testing or something, I don't know. I mean, there's just a lot of mystery to it.

Travis 21:18

I don't either to quote somebody from our documentary, Were you there? Were you there? No, but I was Yeah, exactly.

Josh 21:26

So we have the Hibble theory as well. Yeah. So while witness accounts are compelling, we have to look at this Hibble theory fairly. This joint U.S. Australian balloon program is the most likely conventional explanation, and it has some very strong evidence behind it. So the Hibble operated from 1962 to 1970, launching massive 100 meter long reflective balloons from Mildra to sample radiation after nuclear tests. So the basic HIBL setup included large balloons around 100 meters long, reflective material compared to Klingrap. A 180 kilogram payload, radiation sampling equipment, and a light chase plane used to track the balloon and trigger the payload's parachute.

Travis 22:10

Interesting. So that is it kind of lines up. Kind of lines up with what we talked about earlier.

Josh 22:16

Yeah. So a Hibble balloon was launched from Mildura on April 5th, 1966, one day before the Westall sighting. The Hibble can account for several Westall details. A large reflective object could appear silvery in daylight. A chase plane could match the Cessna type aircraft witnesses described. A secret radiation sampling project could explain a quick official response. A Cold War secrecy could explain pressure on witnesses, and soil removal or cleanup could fit a sensitive recovery operation. But the Hebble explanation isn't perfect. Many witnesses argue that the shape and behavior of the object they saw simply don't match a drifting balloon because the biggest problems are the shape. Witnesses describe solid metallic discs or saucers rather than balloons with physical equipment. And then movement, a balloon drifts. Witnesses describe it hovering, tilting, rising, and shooting away at incredible speeds. That's not a balloon. And then the landing area, the grange had pine trees and scrub. Critics argue that a fragile 100 meter balloon would have been damaged badly by that environment. Mm-hmm. I know balloons, actually. They're right. Oh I went to balloon school.

Travis 23:26

Uh isn't that just clown callets?

Josh 23:29

No, no, no. You're just like my parents. No. It's an art. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh 23:39

Anyways, there's also the landing nest. So the circular, one-directional, flattened grass patterns don't easily match a balloon dragging or collapsing through the trees. And then witness confidence. Many witnesses remained firm for decades that what they saw behaved like a craft, not a balloon. Well, a balloon is a craft. Not that it's a floater.

Travis 24:01

Now we're talking about landingness.

Josh 24:03

Oh, I'm sorry. Did you go to balloon school?

Travis 24:05

I didn't go to balloon school. There you go. Okay. I didn't. I've been in a balloon once.

Josh 24:09

Well, and this also talked about how the balloons have a Cessna or an aircraft behind it to release whatever. What is it?

Travis 24:18

Well, you would you would know this because you went to balloon school, but balloons, once you're in the air.

Josh 24:23

Well, I didn't go to plane school.

Travis 24:24

No, you don't have to. That's why you need a chase plane, though, is because once you get in the air in a balloon, and again, this is old news for you. I don't need to explain this to you. This is just for our listener. You are susceptible to the winds. You cannot control that balloon or where it goes, where it lands. So sometimes you'll have a chase airplane, which you know, and we're talking about. Yeah. And sometimes you'll have a ground vehicle that follows on surface roads and tries to get as close as possible to where that balloon is going to land. But once you get in a balloon, like there's no controlling the direction it goes. You're just, you're on the wind. You can control the vertical, the up and down portion of it. So you can decide where you're going to land and hope for the best.

Josh 25:06

Yeah. And I I think these people that witnessed this, I think they were definitely confident that it wasn't a balloon because it moved different than a balloon. Yeah. It moved in intelligently. I mean, a balloon isn't just gonna shoot up and or hover.

Travis 25:23

I mean, a a helium balloon does. You ever pop a helium balloon in a room? It shoots up pretty fast. Yeah.

Josh 25:31

Are you really gonna sit there and talk to me about balloons?

Travis 25:35

No, no. This is this is Josh. This is something that you know. Yeah. I'm just informing our audience. That's all. I'm the audience surrogate here when it comes to balloon knowledge. I am saying what you are thinking and what you know.

Josh 25:50

Mm-hmm. There's also the humming that it has. Yeah. So there's just I think there's a lot that doesn't line up with the balloon thing. Very similar excuse that the military gave in Roswell that it was a balloon after it had already been reported on that it was a flying saucer, a spacecraft. So basically, this is the Roswell if 200 or 400 people saw it, not just in a lone field crashing.

Travis 26:17

I still feel like this is more of an aerial school thing.

Josh 26:20

It's a little bit of both. You're right.

Travis 26:21

I mean, Roswell being the pinnacle of areas that people know. Yeah. And this just being like a sighting. That's why. And like the ties to the aerial school are very strong. They are. Also, very similar latitude. Aerial school was in South Africa, correct? Zimbabwe. Oh, I thought no, I thought South Africa, like the country South Africa. I thought that's where it was. It was in Zimbabwe.

Josh 26:45

Yeah, it was in Zimbabwe. Westall wasn't the only one. So throughout all the 60s and 70s, Australia had a ton of sightings that shared the same belly forward flight pattern. So it wasn't maybe the first and it wasn't the last. And another thing we didn't talk about is when school got out that day on April 6th, there was news there, Channel 9 news, whatever. And they were starting to interview kids, and a couple of kids did talk and they were pointing up where it happened. And the military came and told the news, like, turn it off, get out of here, don't report on this. It was aired on the news that night. And then when documentarians were coming to find this news segment at the station, they were taken. And then there's a bunch of other stuff taken as well. They just basically scrubbed all media and everything. I think there was one lone little article. It looked like just kind of a small obituary or classified in a newspaper. But that was it. There's no information on it anywhere. Pretty wild. Yeah. Reminds me of government stuff. Military stuff. Military stuff. Yeah. But why would they do that? I don't know. I don't know. And there were people who took pictures too, and those were taken. They can't find the pictures. Yeah.

Travis 27:56

People took pictures and the pictures were taken.

Josh 27:58

Except for James Kibble, the guy who took a Polaroid of that same kind of metallic object, but it was four days earlier. And he still had it. Because he never talked about it. He never told anyone about it until 50 years later.

Travis 28:12

But he held on to that Polaroid?

Josh 28:14

Yeah, he still had it. Pretty cool. It is. It's a cool picture, too. But it's not definitive proof because I mean, who knows?

Travis 28:21

Maybe we should link that in our show notes, a picture of that. Yeah, absolutely. A picture of that picture. Damn. Okay. So at the end of the day, West Hall is a tough case. Yeah, I'll say. Yeah. It's wild. Although there are some perfectly normal explanations. Hundreds of people saw something they thought was otherworldly in a schoolyard in broad daylight. You have credible adult witnesses like Andrew Greenwood, physical evidence like those swirl grass circles, and a government response that felt pretty intense. Maybe it was a balloon. Maybe it was something much stranger. Perhaps the real answer is still tucked away in a classified folder somewhere. But regardless of what was in that sky, the mystery is the reason that Grange Reserve now has UFO themed playground equipment. And why, for hundreds of people, that April morning became a life-altering event they're still trying to understand. Yeah. I don't remember talking about UFO themed playground equipment. That's yeah.

Josh 29:16

So many years later, to honor the story, uh-huh, the community turned the Grange into a park and they have a UFO themed playground there.

Travis 29:26

Pretty cool. I I think that's fantastic.

Josh 29:29

Yeah. And it's not the first time we've seen towns embrace the lore and the history when it comes to, you know, cryptid or I mean, look at Roswell. I mean, the whole town is alien themed now. Yeah. So what do you what do you think? What what do you think?

Travis 29:45

What what do you think? What tink? Um complicated, but not. I mean, nobody's gonna be really surprised. I think that there was an experience that happened. I don't, I mean, it's it's just as credible as what happened with the aerial school, and just as credible as what happened with a lot of these other sightings that we've seen, but there's like really no evidence. It's all witnesses from 60 years ago. So who knows? All I know is that the people that experienced this thing definitely experienced something and they know what it was. They felt something very, very primal, and I don't think that can be discounted. You think it was a balloon? I don't know what it was. Like, like to quote that guy, I wasn't there, I didn't see it. Who knows what they saw? I'm just saying, like, I acknowledge their experience and it's sacred right to exist in this narrative.

Josh 30:42

Okay.

Travis 30:42

Do I think that it moves the needle for me? Very slowly, as we record more and more episodes and I do more and more of my own exploration of this, there are a lot of similarities that cross continents and a lot of similarities that people are having within this experience or community that I feel like it's worth listening to. And then, you know, having just recently watched Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg's newest movie, and how strongly he feels about this subject definitely has influenced me being a little movie boy.

Josh 31:20

You are a little movie boy. I am. I mean, for me, I feel as though, yeah, we don't have proof proof. Like we don't have video, we don't have the craft, we don't have these things. But I also believe that that many people coming forward is proof. I think the military having an intense response like that is proof. It's also their go-to to say it's something else. We've heard that many a times, whether it be owls or balloons.

SPEAKER_01 31:49

Yeah.

Josh 31:49

And then just listening to the witnesses talk. I mean, they're not weird, they're not crazy, they're not anything out of the ordinary. They're just regular people. They were very genuine.

Travis 31:58

I know where you're going. You're saying that they're very articulate and that should be taken seriously, and they're not just like a bunch of uneducated idiots wandering around half drunk, shooting holes in the wall of their house, which we've also covered on this show, which is which is fine. That's definitely a lifestyle choice. Yeah. But it's it's hard to take that seriously when you're that impulsive. And these people that I mean, getting even into the comments section, people felt very strongly about the witness narrative and that they are upset that people aren't taking them more seriously because they're able to articulate what they saw 60 years ago.

Josh 32:42

Yeah.

Travis 32:42

And then it gets also kind of weird.

Josh 32:44

In the comments?

Travis 32:45

Yeah. No. Yeah, I know.

Josh 32:48

No, that never happens.

Travis 32:49

If you don't want to feel uncomfortable in your skin and the way people are, just staff the comments in general. Yeah. It's fun for a little bit. Which gets us to our end. Send us a comment. I never said if I believe or not. Yeah, well, we know, Josh. We know.

Josh 33:05

I I think this is all fake. I'm kidding. No, I actually 95%, maybe even more, believe that this happened. Classic Josh. It was all by the playbook that you've seen many a times. And that's where I lie.

Travis 33:19

Sure.

Josh 33:19

And I'm a huge fan of Australia, especially Australia TV.

Travis 33:24

Oh, yeah. I mean, you're always talking about it offline, just like Wallaby's man. That's like your favorite. No, I'm talking about Digerido's like you started picking up the Dideridoo before it became popular.

Josh 33:36

I mean, I'm a Digeridooman.

Travis 33:38

Have you ever didgeridooman?

Josh 33:41

No, I uh I watch a lot of their TV shows. We can't get enough of it. They just do it better.

Travis 33:47

They do.

Josh 33:47

But yeah, get a hold of us. Let us know what cryptid you want on our Battle Cryptid episode if we decide to do that.

Travis 33:53

Yeah, let's get ahead of that. Let's get all those votes in.

Josh 33:56

Yeah, and you also have to give a reason why you have to impress us with your cryptids.

Travis 34:02

Yeah. I mean, like, we know it's gonna be Bigfoot, right? He's gonna win.

Josh 34:07

I mean, no. You don't know that.

Travis 34:09

Yeah, he's gonna win. Spoiler.

Josh 34:12

Oh, you know every cryptid? Name them all right now. Spoiler, name every cryptid. Name every cryptid. Yeah, that's what I thought. Get out of here. Anyway. Uh, we do have a fan mail. Oh no. So if you guys want your fan mails read or anything like that, send it. You can actually just text us while you're listening. Unless you want to send a voice note, then you'll have to stop listening. But do it now and we'll wait.

Travis 34:40

We did actually wait. We just cut out all of the waiting time.

Josh 34:43

We waited for like an hour.

Travis 34:45

Well, it was a really long time. I hope it worked.

Josh 34:47

But we do have one. This fan mail says fan mail for your podcast. Hi, Travis and Josh. Hi. Love, love, love your podcast. Totally addicted. Groupy status. Okay.

Travis 34:58

Whoa my God.

Josh 35:00

Actually started listening after my kids recommended, knowing I see all the documentaries and believe with Josh like a passion, yet I'm Travis-like, skeptical of many of the personal accounts of alien encounters. What finally got me to write in was an idea for an episode I'd love to hear you guys do. I was watching a recent interview of Steven Spielberg on real life evidence that inspired Disclosure Day on YouTube. Stevie Spiels. And he mentioned the Washington, D.C. 1952 incident. I see there was a documentary done on it that can be rented on Prime, but before today I had never heard of it. Would love to hear your take on the whole thing. Spielberg interview with Rachel Abrams on the Daily as well as the 1952 sightings and their influence on society, culture, and government response. Anyhow, keep up the great work, guys. Keep them coming.

Travis 35:47

Oh, I love it. What a great message. I love that so much. I would love to watch the Stevie Spiels documentary.

Josh 35:54

I don't know anything about this 1952 Washington, DC. I do I think I remember hearing about an incident with Washington, DC, where like a UFO came down above the White House, and maybe that's this, but I don't know anything about it. I'm sure if I mean if this is a thing and it convinced Spielberg, I'm sure we'll definitely do that topic.

Travis 36:16

Yeah. Well, I love it. Thank you. Shout out, Superfan. What was their name? They didn't have a name. Oh.

Josh 36:22

They didn't give a name for us to mispronounce.

Travis 36:24

Well, thank you, nameless superfan. We love you very much. We're very, very glad that you listen to our show. Super glad.

Josh 36:32

And we will keep them coming.

Travis 36:33

We saw them come up with a term for what we would call our fans. Alienos. Fuck, that's stuck. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's what everyone's saying. That's the one time that I've given a nickname and it's stuck.

Josh 36:47

Yeah. I love it. Alien Renos. Okay. But now we get to our quiz. Cool. Our baseline quiz. So this is when we find out what our next episode's topic is because we don't know. We don't know what we're talking about. Barely, even when we have a dossier. Yeah. Our researcher, right when we're done with our episode recording, she emails us the quiz. Yeah. We just got it. I'm opening it up. And it is the Bridgewater Triangle. Hmm. So it must be like the Bermuda Triangle. I've heard there's triangles all around, just that have weird things that happen. Never heard of this one? Okay. Okay. First question: In which geographical region is the Bridgewater Triangle located? Is it A, Glasgow, B, New Orleans, C, Rio de Janeiro, or D, Massachusetts? Ooh.

Travis 37:42

Bridge, bridge water, uh, crossing water.

Josh 37:46

Water under the bridge.

Travis 37:47

Water water under the bridge. Let's do some associations.

Josh 37:51

They're all next to water.

Travis 37:52

Rio, meaning bridge, a river.

Josh 37:56

These all mean bridge.

Travis 37:57

Yeah. Oh, shoot.

Josh 37:59

I'm going to say, I know there's something in Massachusetts, but I feel like I would have heard when we did some of the cryptids over in the east. But maybe I didn't. I forgot. I'm going to say Glasgow. Okay. What are you thinking?

Travis 38:13

I want to say New Orleans, Nolans. Mm-hmm. But that is really close to the Bermuda Triangle. So two triangles so close together, you can't.

Josh 38:24

That's impossible.

Travis 38:25

You can't. It would be impossible. It's too much weird. Be the nexus of the universe. That would just everything would collapse. I like the idea of Glasgow.

Josh 38:34

I do too. That's why I picked it.

Travis 38:36

Yeah. So I'm gonna agree with you and say Glasgow. Just kidding, Rio de Janeiro.

Josh 38:43

Oh. Right at the end. Okay. Next one. Which researcher is credited with coining the name Bridgewater Triangle in 1983? So it's a little bit newer. Is it A. Jeff Ballinger, B, Edmund Delabar, C Cotton Mather? Cool name. Or D. Lauren Coleman? I don't I mean, I don't know. So is this gonna be a guess? I'm gonna say Cotton, because that's the coolest one.

Travis 39:09

I'm going to say Lauren Coleman for no reason.

Josh 39:14

Okay, next one. The the Hokomack swamp was a major site of conflict during which historical event? A. The French and Indian War. B the Revolutionary War. C, the Salem Witch Trials, or D, King Philip's War. Mmm. The Salem Witch Trials makes you think maybe it's Massachusetts.

Travis 39:35

Uh oh. French and Indian War. That was near Louisiana way.

Josh 39:40

I don't know where the King's Philip War is, but I'm gonna pretend it's in Glasgow. I don't want to pivot. I'm gonna say King Philip's War. I'm gonna try to stick with that.

Travis 39:50

Okay, so this is just saying this is a major site of conflict during a historical event. Right. So we're we're putting a timestamp on it, not a geographical stamp on it. Is that right?

Josh 40:04

Right. A Hawkmock swamp must be a swamp or a location inside this triangle and what major event happened at the same time. At the same time. Hackmock does sound Native American. I'm gonna I'm gonna change mine to Salem Witch Trials. Okay. I'm pivoting.

Travis 40:21

Well, that lines up with your cotton mather, who was like a Do you know who that is? He's a he was a real life person. Yeah. He was like Oh my goodness. Salem witch trials type character. Oh, really? Oh yeah.

Josh 40:32

Was he a bad guy?

Travis 40:34

Wasn't a good guy.

Josh 40:35

Sounds like a bad guy name. What do you think? I'm gonna go with Salem Witch Trials. Okay. Next one. What specific type of cryptid do locals and legends claim to be found within the Hockamok Swamp and surrounding woods? A. Frogmen. B. The Chupacabra. C. Skinwalkers or D. Puckwag Puckwaggies? I don't know. I'm gonna say chupacabra.

Travis 41:00

Puckwag uh I am not chupacabra is this you know what? You say chupacabra. That's totally fine. Okay. I'm gonna say frogmen. Chupacabra is like a southwest Mexican cryptid, also known as the goat eaters. Okay. I'm going because it's a swamp. Frogmen. Frogmen. Obviously. Yeah, it makes sense, but you never know. But puck wedgies, I don't know what that is. It sounds like a George Lucas Star Wars character. Like a little bird guy that looks like a penguin.

Josh 41:32

It does. Yeah. Okay, next one. What unique visual phenomenon is frequently reported at the bridge near the Hokamok swamp? A freezing rain that floats and never falls. Whoa. Don't like that. B, a spectral ship from the 1600s. Like a ghost ship? Yeah. C, the ghost of Lizzie Borden. And then D, glowing balls of colored light. Lizzie Borden, was that one of the witches?

Travis 42:00

No, she was somebody who killed her parents because she was abused by her parents in the system and killed them with an axe. Oh, wait, is she still alive? Allegedly. No. This no, no, this was centuries ago.

Josh 42:14

I was just trying to find a hole in the answer. I'm gonna say glowing balls, because I've experienced that. Glowing balls?

Travis 42:20

You would call it blue? Do that are they blue?

Josh 42:22

No, no. I've seen a glowing orb in my house before. Not directly. It was in my peripherals. Okay.

Travis 42:29

I'm gonna say freezing rain. It's a swamp, a lot of moisture in the air. Okay. Humidity is a thing in a swamp. I'm gonna say freezing rain that floats and never falls.

Josh 42:40

All right. And last question: the Freetown Fall River State Forest became notorious for reports of what kind of illicit activity in the 1980s. A. Skinny dipping teens, B. Prohibition era bootlegging, C, polygamist homesteaders, or D. Satanic cult members.

Travis 42:59

I'm gonna let you answer first because I think I know what it is.

Josh 43:03

I'm just gonna say satanic cult members, right?

Travis 43:05

Okay, yep. Okay, yeah.

Josh 43:07

You mentioned this, I forget which episode. I'd never heard of it.

Travis 43:10

It was like a big thing where they thought there were all these Satan worshippers everywhere. People were allegedly finding dead animals that were skinned or performed as part of a satanic rite. A lot of bands were accused of being satanic. If you were to play the records back, it would be like an incantation or there would be satanic messaging in it. So, like that was pretty prevalent throughout much of the 80s, which is why I'm also agreeing with Josh and saying satanic cult members.

Josh 43:39

Okay. Well, I'm gonna submit and we're gonna view our accuracy. Oh, okay. I didn't start off well.

Travis 43:46

Boy, did I do terribly.

Josh 43:50

So, in which geographic region is the Bridgewater Triangle located? I said Glasgow.

Travis 43:55

My gut was telling me Massachusetts, but I said Rio de Janeiro. It was Massachusetts. Which lines up with some things.

Josh 44:04

So, next one, which researcher is credited with coining the name Bridgewater Triangle in 1983? Uh-huh. I said Cotton Mather, not knowing who that is. I said Lauren Coleman, and I got it right. That's right. Yeah. Lucky guess. Okay. Oh, dang it. The Hokamak Swamp was a major site of conflict during which historical event. I change it to Salem Witch Trials.

Travis 44:25

Yeah, from King Phillips War, which is correct. And I said Salem Witch Trials as well.

Josh 44:29

It was King Phillips War. Don't even know what that is. It was a war that King Phillips fought.

Travis 44:34

Obviously. Uh duh.

Josh 44:36

Yeah.

Travis 44:36

Obviously.

Josh 44:37

All right. What specific type of cryptid do locals and legends claim can be found within the Hokamok swamp and surrounding woods? I said chupacabra.

Travis 44:46

I said frogman, which give me some credit, but it was puck wudge. Which is the funniest answer. I'm so excited to figure that one out. That should have been my response.

Josh 44:56

Normally it would have been.

Travis 44:57

Yeah, just it's the funniest.

Josh 44:59

Okay. Next one. What unique visual phenomenon is frequently reported at the bridge near the Hawkmock swamp? I said glowing balls of light.

Travis 45:07

And I said freezing rain that floats and never falls because I really uh doubled down on the swamp thing.

Josh 45:14

Yeah. And it was glowing balls of colored light.

Travis 45:17

Blue. Blue balls of colored. Blue colored balls of light.

Josh 45:21

So multiple. Okay. And then last one, the Freetown Fall River State Forest became notorious for reports of what kind of illicit activity in the 80s. We both said satanic cult members, and that is correct. Correct. So how many did you get? I got two correct. The last two.

Travis 45:38

I got two, also.

Josh 45:39

Sweet. A tie? So a weird triangle over Massachusetts. Cryptids are involved. Love it so far. Sounds great. Wars have been fought in these areas. I mean, wars have been fought over all of that area.

Travis 45:54

Well, I mean, really what we're doing is putting a timestamp on it, according to that question. So like that just gives us a an era.

Josh 46:02

Yeah, but death has happened here.

Travis 46:04

Oh, death has happened. Oh, yeah. Definitely has happened.

Josh 46:08

We get to find out about puckweggies. A puckwedgy?

Travis 46:11

You're gonna Google that. We're probably mispronouncing it.

Josh 46:14

Probably. Well, cool. Well, I am excited. We haven't done a triangle.

Travis 46:18

No, surprisingly.

Josh 46:20

So this is gonna be good. Well, thank you for listening, and uh I hope you enjoyed the rest of your day. Or if you're listening at night, I hope you sleep well.

Travis 46:28

That's nice. I'm just glad you're listening.

Josh 46:30

Me too. And also thank you, Jordan, our researcher, for making all this possible.

Travis 46:37

Yes, making all this. Yes. Still not convinced I'm not a ventriloquist dummy. I'm not either sometimes. I feel like that would explain some of the choices I've made in my life.

Josh 46:48

All right. Well, we will chat at you next episode. Okay. Bye. Bye.