Season 08 Episode 22: Somewhere in Dreamland
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Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, Chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. I'm excited to introduce a brand new season of my podcast, Math & Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. I'm having conversations with some folks across a wide range of industries to hear how they reached the top of their fields and the lessons they learned along the way that everyone can use.

I'll be joined by innovative leaders like chairman and CEO of Elf Beauty, Tarang Amin. Legendary singer-songwriter and philanthropist, Jewel. Being a rock star is very fun, but helping people is way more fun. And Damian Maldonado, CEO of American Financing. I figured out the formula is have to work hard, then that's magic. Join me as we uncover innovations in data and analytics, the math, and the ever-important creative spark, the magic.

Listen to Math & Magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all. It's your girl, Cheeky's, and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast, Cheeky's and Chill.

I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys. And as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more. And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheekies. It's going to be an exciting year and I hope that you can join me. Listen to Cheekies and Chill season four on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Would you do that to me? Los Angeles, 2021. A friendly neighbor appears out of nowhere and promises to make all my dreams come true. Let's not forget that David Bloom was a professional con artist. So you didn't stand a chance.

But my dreams soon turned into a nightmare. I'm Caroline DeMore. Listen as I take down my scammer on Once Upon a Con on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ever wonder what it would be like to be mentored by today's top business leaders? My podcast, This Is Working, can help with that.

Here's advice from Google CMO Lorraine Tuhill on how to treat AI like a partner. I see AI as an incredible co-pilot. You may use different tools or toys to get the work done, but AI is just the latest flavor of that. You're still the judge of what good looks like. I'm Dan Roth, LinkedIn's Editor-in-Chief. On my podcast, This Is Working, leaders share strategies for success. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. ♪

In late December 2013, a video was uploaded to the YouTube account of Dr Stephen Greer, a ufologist and founder of the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence, titled Area 51: Technician's Son Discloses Secret Alternative Energy. The 16-minute clip is an interview with Paul H. Utes about his father's involvement in a clandestine scientific project

For most of Paul's childhood, Ute Sr. worked at Nellis Air Force Base in Southern Nevada. Paul remembers him leaving every morning from the Las Vegas airport close to their home and flying to Nellis where he claimed to work as an optical engineer. Paul describes his dad as a quiet, conservative man, not prone to sharing details about his life.

But in 1993, after Ute senior retired, he and the now adult Paul met at a bar. It seemed the alcohol loosened something in the old man. It seemed as though there was something he needed to get off his chest, a truth he'd been withholding for years. According to Paul, this was when his father confessed to him that he hadn't simply worked at Nellis Air Force Base

he'd worked at the infamous Area 51. This site, which is indeed a remote part of the Nellis base, as many listeners will know, has been the centre for conspiracy theories for decades. Most famously, according to some, it is thought to be the place where the remains of the Roswell incident were studied. But other rumours have accrued and persisted. The development of exotic technologies, weather control,

time travel, and even face-to-face meetings with visiting extraterrestrials. It's a sight forever associated with shadowy black ops and secret, perhaps dangerous, knowledge. Paul Utes' father is said to have called it Dreamland. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith.

It was at Dreamland that Paul Yutes claimed his father and his team specialised in reverse engineering and adapting advanced technologies. The provenance of said technologies is never questioned in Paul's YouTube interview. Paul says they were presented to his father's team by government agencies and universities, but where they got them is not discussed.

One of the technologies, however, was apparently a new and unknown energy source. Paul has scant details to give, but he does say that his father described the device as containing a large amount of organic material and even potentially some degree of consciousness, though he doesn't elaborate on what his father meant by this.

He does add, however, that when Ute Sr.'s team took the device out into the desert to activate it, it exploded. After these tantalising hints of highly strange conspiracy, Paul's interview trails off into a long lament for a childhood marred by his father's career, how an atmosphere of secrecy suffocated the family and impeded Paul's social development.

The video does not return to the nature of Ute Senior's work or its mysterious implications. It's at best a half mystery, intriguing for sure, with Paul's knowledge of military jargon and regional geography giving some weight to his story. But it's never more than an anecdotal contribution to the sweeping mythology of Area 51. And that's probably where the video's impact would have ended.

as a minor footnote in a grand conspiracy, were it not for a single reply posted in the comment section below the video nearly a year later. At first glance, it reads like a typically kooky breadcrumb thrown at YouTube, either attention-grabbing fiction or a paranoid upping of the ante, but that comment turned out to be the first digital link in a new chain of mystery.

One that has stumped both online sleuths and real world investigators for over a decade. One that suggests there may be far stranger things waiting in the Nevadan dreamland for those reckless enough to go looking. I am a long distance hiker, the comment began. One time, during one of my hikes out by Nellis Air Force Base, I found a hidden cave.

The entrance was shaped like a perfect capital M. I always enter every cave I find, but as I began to enter this particular cave, my whole body began to vibrate. The closer I got to the cave entrance, the worse it became. Suddenly, I became very scared and hightailed it out of there. That was one of the strangest things that ever happened to me. The poster went by the handle Snakebit McGee.

Out in the real world, he was Kenny Veach, a 47-year-old outdoors enthusiast and self-proclaimed inventor from Las Vegas. Kenny Veach frequently posted on other users' videos, typically about his prowess as an outdoorsman in the Mohave and Great Basin deserts. In one comment, he describes how, My hikes are brutal on the body. Sometimes my toenails turn black and fall off.

It takes me about three days to recover from the abuse I put myself through. He explains that his online moniker was a reference to his reckless habit of picking up snakes during his excursions. In another post, he sets out his experience in the desert. I have been doing this sort of thing for over 20 years. I go where no one goes and I never take anyone with me.

I hike over mountaintop after mountaintop and sleep on peaks under the stars. Sometimes I have to scale giant cliffs just to get myself out of a jam, but I always make it back beat up and tired. Though his remarks are strewn across YouTube, Kenny's own footprint on the site is minimal. The Snakebit McGee profile hosts only five videos, three of which demonstrate prototypes of his inventions.

One is a new and improved toilet roll holder. Another is a polar bear figurine filled with luminescent beads that make it glow in the dark. He calls it the Glowler Bear and says he plans to submit it to the reality TV show Shark Tank as an investment opportunity. There's a sense of cheerful desperation to Kenny's videos.

Another film documents an attempt to sell his house whilst hoping to be allowed to live on in the property as a caretaker of sorts. Watching the videos and reading Kenny's comments you get the impression of an endearingly eccentric man, funny, energetic and extremely confident in his own abilities, though it's hard to tell whether that confidence is hard earned and deserved. Foolhardy,

or camouflage for a deeper insecurity. There is only one video that substantiates Kenny's claims of outdoor expertise. This is the now infamous M Cave Hike, the video that sits at the centre of the mystery surrounding Kenny Veach. He made it as a response to the backlash he received to his comment on Paul Yutes' video.

After Kenny described the strange cave that scared him so badly, a number of YouTube users expressed doubts. Many were extremely sceptical, even hostile. Others were fascinated and encouraged Kenny to retrace his route and investigate further. One reply stands out though. A user named Lemmy Kilmister wrote, No, don't go back there.

If you find that cave entrance, don't go in. If you do, you won't get out. What makes you say that? Kenny asked, but he received no reply. Unmoved by the warning, or perhaps feeling the need to back up his self-professed reputation, Kenny posted that he would make another trip into the desert and he would film it.

The video he recorded would be the last footage the world ever saw of Kenny Veach. Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward. And he was just staring at me. And they had secrets of their own to share. I'm Gilbert King. I'm the son of...

Jeremy Lynn Scott. I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it. Every time I hear about my dad, it's, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil. I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known. If the cops and everything would have done their job properly, my dad would have been in jail. I would have never existed. I never expected to find myself in this place.

Now, I need to tell you how I got here. At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer. Bone Valley, Season 2, Jeremy. Jeremy, I want to tell you something. Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

M Cave Hike was uploaded to YouTube on October 18th, 2014. It is 22 minutes in length and opens without fanfare or title card on an unforgiving panorama. Far in the distance, a mountain range looms hazy in the morning light. The mountains roll down to a flat span of desert in the middle distance before the land rises again toward the camera.

In the immediate foreground there is a scaffold, a crude assembly of wood and steel over a small hole in the ground, an old mineshaft like a scene from an old western. After a few seconds we hear the crunch of approaching footsteps, then a figure steps into the frame. This is Kenny Veach. He's a lean, wiry man with dark hair and sun blasted skin.

He looks like someone who spends a lot of time outdoors. His clothing is a random assortment of technical and casual gear, all topped off with a floppy fishing hat. At his waist is a brown leather holster. He looks like someone experienced enough in the outdoors to know what he needs, not what looks good on camera.

Kenny walks back and forth until he settles in the center of the frame. Then he turns to the camera with a smile. Well, here I am on my hike up here in the mountains north of Las Vegas. He turns to point at the view behind him, tells us his truck is parked somewhere way out there on the far side of what looked to be impossibly distant peaks.

He switches stance and points to the mountains to the right side of the frame. On the other side of these mountains, I'll show you in a second, is the bombing range, the Nellis Air Force bombing range. They do a lot of practice stuff out there.

These details and other geographical features seen in the video have led experts to believe that Kenny was hiking in the Sheep Range, a 60 mile stretch of mountains running north to south in the desert National Wildlife Refuge and named for the bighorn sheep that make their home amidst the rock and rubble. Though it parallels Highway 93, it is the largest roadless area in Nevada

Clearly Kenny is well oriented himself, he knows where he is and where he has been, pointing to the nearby gas peak where he spent the night on his previous visit to the area, but on this day his mission is a single day 10 hour hike looking for the cave that had so spooked him, M Cave.

The last time I came up here I didn't have a sidearm when I was here before. He gestures casually to the weapon now holstered on his hip. Something about this cave just spooked me out of all the caves I've ever gone in. This one just made my body vibrate. The closer I got to it the crazier my body felt and I was like alright I'm not going to go in there right now but I'm coming back someday. The first section of Kenny's MK video lasts for six minutes.

He speaks to the camera casually, telling the viewer that he has a big cooler of beer waiting for him in his truck because he didn't bring a lot of water with him and only a single candy bar. He emphasises the length of his hike and the harshness of the terrain, establishing also that he's already at a significant altitude, telling us that a nearby mountain is around 9,000 feet.

that would put him somewhere close to Hayford Peak, the highest part of the range. Kenny then points out the next stage of his hike. He turns the camera to reveal a low rise. On the far side, he tells us, there is a canyon heading west towards Mount Charleston, a canyon that gets ever narrower, and in there, somewhere, is the M Cave.

Seemingly reminded of his purpose, Kenny references being called out on YouTube for his claims of the cave's strange properties. I don't know if I'll be freaked out like I was last time. Who knows? There might have been a mountain lion in there and it was just my sixth sense talking to me. He grins at the camera. If I find the cave, I'm definitely going to set up my tripod over here and I'm going to go check it out. So you'll see me with my gun in hand and my flashlight and we'll see what happens.

The rest of the video continues in somewhat repetitive two or three minute chunks. Each leaps forward to a new stage of Kenny's hike. He discovers fresh pine nuts and pops them in his mouth. Much later, he stops to marvel at a large mohawk tortoise and tells us he got a great photo of a tarantula. Though Kenny is looking for the cave, the video does not give the impression of a man possessed by singular purpose.

He is enjoying his day in the desert. He's relaxed. Oh, perfect. They're just at the right stage. Look at that. Perfect. Wow. So I'm a happy camper. I'm going to collect these for a while and then hopefully we'll find that cave. Kenny doesn't have a compass with him and he has an odd approach to self-discipline.

Despite the stark, frightening beauty of the desert, there is little in the video that appears strange or out of place.

but two details catch the eye. Around 13 minutes, Kenny's camera lens lingers on an unusual rock formation, a patch of stone that looks different to the rock around it, almost like brickwork set into the hillside. Beside it, there is what looks in passing more like a ruined stone structure than a natural outcrop. Kenny pauses for a moment, gives a curious hum, then moves on.

Towards the very end of the video, he cuts to the lonely profile of a ram standing on a cliff edge. It's an animal native to the area, but it looks eerie nonetheless. When it turns its horned head in Kenny's direction, it's hard not to feel that the creature has sensed the interloper from its distant perch. And then, the adventure is over.

Suddenly the film cuts to the canyon mouth where the tight wind opens up onto the hard packed floor of the Great Basin. Well, I did not find the cave. That is so weird. Kenny sounds more surprised than disappointed here. I mean, I thought for sure I was just going to be able to find it. I remember it being fairly easy.

Who knows? But that's it. I'll talk to you when I get back to my truck. Bye-bye. And with that, he begins the remaining three-mile trek to his car with its tantalizing promise of cold beer. When Kenny uploaded his failed hike to M-Cave, it was met by an intense blast of skepticism and negativity. Fellow YouTubers angrily insisted that he'd fabricated the entire story.

After several weeks of this, Kenny posted a reply. I'm going again this weekend, he wrote. I'll be hiking solo for three days and plan on covering about 40 miles. I will cross through the same canyon where I found the cave. If I don't find it again, I'll just continue hiking over mountain after mountain to the north of the canyon. Kenny sounded incensed by his followers' attitudes. He continued...

I dare any of the people that like to run their mouths on here to join me. My hikes are brutal on the body. There's no guarantee that I will find the cave again. The region that I cover is vast. There are many caves. I have been in hundreds of them. The M Cave is the only cave I ever feared going inside. I really want to find it again. It was November 10th, 2014, when Kenny ventured out to the sheep range for the third time.

All we know is that he set out in his truck that morning with a cell phone and the necessary supplies for a multi-day hike. He told his girlfriend, Sherian Pilgrim, that he would be gone for a few days. When he didn't return after three, she raised the alarm. In the days following Sherian's report, the Las Vegas-based Red Rock Search and Rescue located Kenny's truck.

Led by Commander Dave Cummings, they followed Kenny's trail to that first mine shaft featured in the M Cave hike video. Lying on the ground near the boarded shaft entrance, they found Kenny's cell phone. Efforts intensified to find Kenny. Other crews poured in from surrounding areas with over 30 rescuers conducting three separate searches.

A helicopter surveyed the scene but found no sign of Kenny, his camp or his trail. Commander Cummings told reporters that there was no visible trail leading away from the mine. It doesn't mean he went down the mine shaft, he hedged, but we've tracked him as far as we can.

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward. And he was just staring at me. And they had secrets of their own to share. Gilbert came. I'm the son of...

Jeremy Lynn Scott. I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it. Every time I hear about my dad, it's, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil. I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known. If the cops and everything would have done their job properly, my dad would have been in jail. I would have never existed. I never expected to find myself in this place.

Now, I need to tell you how I got here. At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer. Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy. Jeremy, I want to tell you something. Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

In the days that followed Kenny's disappearance, with comments and conspiracies already boiling up online, Kenny's girlfriend Sherian posted an unexpected note under the M Cave hike video. In it, she first acknowledges the interest and sadness of other posters, before confirming that Kenny has not been found and suggesting that he would likely not be found for many, many months, if ever.

She then goes on to explain that she and Kenny had hiked often together in the desert and though Kenny was more daring than her, they always took appropriate precaution. That led her to a sad conclusion. I want you to know that I do not think Kenny had an accident. Sherian writes, I believe he committed suicide. He battled depression for many years and would not take medication or see a doctor.

Sherian suspected that Kenny left his phone where he did so that he could not be tracked by the GPS. She also points out that this time he had left the video camera at home because he had no intention of filming anything. She concluded her message with a plea to those who may be inspired to go looking for Kenny or the M-Cave. Please, please be careful. Enjoy your adventures of life.

And thank you for the kind, loving comments sent my way. For some, Sherian's assumption of suicide is the most reasonable explanation. Others suggest that Kenny simply had an accident, got lost, dehydrated, or fell prey to the countless spiders, rattlesnakes and scorpions that routinely skitter across the desert floor.

Some point out that the area is a known hotspot for criminal activity and that Kenny may have stumbled into something he shouldn't and was murdered as a result. But some suggest there are other lines that Kenny could have unknowingly crossed. Thousands of comments on the MK video still fixate on nearby Nellis Air Force Base and the infamous Area 51. After all, in the video itself,

Kenny points out that the base and its test sites are located just over a nearby mountain. One theory in particular relates to the intense fear and physical vibration that Kenny said he experienced near the M cave. Commentators have pointed out that both are symptoms theoretically ascribed to the effects of infrasound.

Infrasound is a term used to describe sound waves with a frequency below the normal limits of human hearing, generally considered to be 20 Hz or less. Though the vast majority of humans fail to perceive such sounds, many feel the waves as physical vibrations in their body. More surprisingly, exposure to infrasound may prompt feelings of extreme fear or awe.

Several academics have tested this hypothesis, with the psychologist Richard Wiseman going as far as to suggest that infrasound could be an explanation for supposedly supernatural accounts, especially the perception of ghosts. In an experiment at the University of Hertfordshire, a blind sample of participants was exposed to infrasound of 17 Hz, 22%,

reported feelings of unease, nervousness or outright terror. Among the more conspiratorially minded, many think that Kenny Veach came under the influence of infrasound on his first visit to the M Cave, sending him fleeing in fear without cause or understanding. Even Kenny had no rational explanation for his apparent reaction.

But if there was infrasound emanating from the M Cave, that is only half an answer. It doesn't give any closure to the question of Kenny's whereabouts, and a few strange details give an extra twist to the mystery. First, Kenny's comment under the Paul Utes interview, and the forbidding warning posted by Lemmy Kilmister that Kenny should stay well away from the M Cave,

have both since been deleted from YouTube. Indeed, a great number of the more recent posts on the Utes and M Cave hike video are now exclusively about those deletions, with many seeing it as a sign of a potential cover-up. Second, since Kenny's disappearance, many have continued to look for the cave. The internet is littered with search videos, updates and claims to have discovered the site.

In truth, there was little to be gleaned from the vast majority of them. That was until 2019, when a professional hiker and YouTuber named Sean Neil Horlacher published a video retracing Kenny's exact route. In it, Horlacher roams the canyons until he comes across a strange looking rock formation, partially obscured behind desert brush, close to the ground,

There is indeed a sharply arched pattern to the dark rock that isn't unlike a letter M, but where a cave mouth could potentially be. There are layers of much lighter stone to the naked eye. It does look like a space that has been filled in. As Sean Orlucar notes of the strange pattern in the rock, each of the rocks filling the hole seem to stand separate.

I don't even know how these are sitting here right now, he says excitedly to the camera. How are they holding themselves up? Upon closer inspection, the stones seem unusually flat and well fitted together. Horluka also points out what he regards as an artificial seam in the base of the rock, complete with a white substance that he says resembles a sealant.

He then peers into a gap between the rocks and finds what appears to be the beginning of a cavity. Shortly after peering into the obscured cave, Horlacher begins to cough. This quickly accelerates to breathlessness and nausea. Within minutes, he is vomiting. He only starts to recover when he leaves the scene. As with any mystery pursued online, it's difficult to find any certain foothold from which to start.

We only ever have the subjective, edited and curated videos of Kenny and those like Sean Horlacher who follow in his footsteps and from the prevailing comments it's near impossible to sift the fiction and trolling from Ernest Hypothesis but there is one substantial link between Kenny's and Sean Horlacher's footage.

at 15 minutes and 40 seconds on Kenny Veitch's M Cave hike video. Kenny is becoming frustrated by his inability to find the cave. The footage scans across a canyon wall, resting momentarily on each opening in the rock. Just as he says, I have to keep my eyes peeled. His camera flits across a patch of lighter material nestled in a triangle of darkly contrasting stone.

then the moment is gone and Kenny doesn't stop or notice it. This strange formation in the canyon is the exact spot that Sean Horlacher discovers in his exploration. Taken all together, this has led some to believe that Kenny's cave had in fact been filled in during the time between his discovery and his failed attempt to relocate it. And if Horlacher's supposition is true,

This was not the result of natural processes. This episode was written by Neil McRobert and produced by me, Richard McLean-Smith. Neil is the creator and host of his own brilliant podcast called Talking Scared, in which he discusses the craft of horror writing with everyone from Tananarive Do to the god of horror himself, Stephen King. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Unplained is an AV Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLean-Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, were also produced by me, Richard McLean-Smith. Unplained, the book and audiobook, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores.

Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can find out more at unexplainedpodcast.com and reach us online through Twitter at UnexplainedPod and Facebook at facebook.com forward slash unexplainedpodcast.

Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, Chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. I'm excited to introduce a brand new season of my podcast, Math & Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. I'm having conversations with some folks across a wide range of industries to hear how they reached the top of their fields and the lessons they learned along the way that everyone can use.

I'll be joined by innovative leaders like chairman and CEO of Elf Beauty, Tarang Amin. Legendary singer-songwriter and philanthropist, Jewel. Being a rock star is very fun, but helping people is way more fun. And Damian Maldonado, CEO of American Financing. I figured out the formula. You just have to work hard, then that's magic. Join me as we uncover innovations in data and analytics, the math, and the ever-important creative spark, the magic.

Listen to Math & Magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all. It's your girl, Cheeky's, and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast, Cheeky's and Chill.

I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys. And as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more. And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheekies. It's going to be an exciting year and I hope that you can join me. Listen to Cheekies and Chill season four on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Ever wonder what it would be like to be mentored by today's top business leaders? My podcast, This Is Working, can help with that.

Here's advice from Google CMO Lorraine Tuhill on how to treat AI like a partner. I see AI as an incredible co-pilot. You may use different tools or toys to get the work done, but AI is just the latest flavor of that. You're still the judge of what good looks like. I'm Dan Roth, LinkedIn's Editor-in-Chief. On my podcast, This Is Working, leaders share strategies for success. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey sis, it's Dr. Joy from Therapy for Black Girls. We've had 400 episodes of conversations, growth and healing. So we're celebrating. Join us for a special episode with internationally recognized yogi, Chelsea Jackson Roberts, as she shares wisdom on mindfulness, movement and motherhood. I waited later to have children and I still have exactly what I knew that I wanted. You don't want to miss this special episode.

Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.