32.18 - MU Podcast - The Liminality Zone
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Welcome to Mysterious Universe, Season 32, Episode 18. Coming up on the show, we've got the phenomena of liminality, vehicle interference, and when your occult dick zapper malfunctions. I'm your host, Benjamin Grundy. Joining me is Aaron Wright. Did you have to start with a cult dick zapper? Yes, I did.

Indeed I did. That is a plus exclusive on this episode. We're going to be talking about the wonders of Max Freedom Long. Have you heard of Max Freedom Long? No, but the name sounds appropriate given that it's a dick zapper. He was an occult practitioner and author. He wrote a bunch of books in the 50s and 60s.

And in 1915, he joined the Theosophical Society. And he wanted to, under the wing of his instructor, he wanted to unlock his maximum spiritual potential. And so they put him on this regimen of vegetarianism,

He had this special ascetic practice where, you know, he had to... Following the adepts. Eat a certain way and stretch and do all these meditations and focusing and all this sort of stuff. And part of the whole program was that he wasn't allowed to ejaculate. This was very clearly stated. He found this quite difficult. And his solution for this was to create a kind of metal ring-like device he would put around his penis before he went to sleep. And if he got an erection...

an alarm would go off. It was connected to an alarm next to his bed because he could stop himself during the day, but his worry was that, you know, because after a few weeks, he started to have these lustful dreams and he was worried that he would have these nocturnal emissions. So he'd be going to sleep at night and there'd be this bang, bang, bang. Ha, ha, ha.

And he'd wake up and be like, oh, my erection machine's gone off. He'd turn it off and then go back to sleep. And did he achieve enlightenment? Is that what he was going for? This worked. This actually worked for a few months. And he was like, oh, my erection machine's gone off.

until it got to the point where he'd hear this, and he'd wake up. He's like, oh, an erection. Oh, and he'd control himself and he'd go back to sleep. But then like 15 minutes later, it'd be, he was so pent up. He was so suffering from blue balls. His alarm was going off every 15 minutes all night. So he was going to like work in the morning, dozing off behind the wheel. It just became a disaster.

And so we're going to be going into that story in the plus extension coming up. I'm just in shock. I'm sorry. Okay. Yeah. You haven't heard of the dick alarm? No, I haven't heard of the dick alarm, but let's just start the show just a little bit calmer and probably a little bit more or less risque, I should say. I want to go in on this episode into the phenomena of liminality. What does that mean? So this essentially is you can have liminal zones, right? And liminal zones exist in all aspects of our life, but they especially exist in paranormal phenomena.

And it's like a liminal zone is a place that is betwixt and between. It's a interference zone. It's a not quite there space. It's somewhere there that leaves questions. And by leaving questions, it seems to enhance the manifestation of paranormal phenomena.

And that applies to a whole range of things, whether it's ghost encounters, Bigfoot encounters, UFOs, alien abductions, high strangeness, interdimensional entities. They all occur in these zones. So for this episode, I want to go into a collection of those stories. So should we just jump straight into it or?

Do you want to give us more dick stories? What else are you going to do? It's not a dick story. It's a dick zapper story. Oh, that's good. Oh, that's good to know. All right. I do want to mention that I have some work coming up that is a little bit different. I don't just have dick zapping. I've got this new book from William F. Bloom coming up in Plus called Occurrence, Dancing with Tricksters, the very strange story of William F. Bloom. I thought this was AI slop.

Well, the cover looks like AI slop. It does, doesn't it? And to be fair, all the images on our website are now AI slop. That's true. It's not a bad cover, but I just thought, okay, so this is AI. The name sounds fake, right? And then I looked at his author image on Amazon. That looks AI. Clearly AI. Yeah. The name William F. Bloom is fake. And then you read the description of the author, fake. So I've been complaining about these AI slop books that just –

Amazon at the moment. There's thousands of them. And I thought this was one of them, but for some reason, I bought it. I just thought I'll buy it, refund it, give it a one-star review, but I bought it and the forward is from Joshua Cutchin. Oh, excellent. And the book is dedicated to Jacques Vallée.

And Josh was telling the story of how he was at a UFO conference. It was the one hosted by Rice University in Texas back in 2023. It's called the Archives of the Impossible. Oh, yes. And Josh was there. He was listening. He was presenting and he was listening to the speakers and he got caught in this conversation with this older guy.

And he was so enthralled by the conversation, he realized that the next speaker had already come and gone, and he was still sitting down at one of the tables talking to this old man.

And the story he told him was so enthralling. Josh was like, you've got to write this down. You've got to tell people your story. The whole reason he was at the conference is because he wanted to get Jacques Vallée's autograph and thank him for answering a letter he wrote to him years earlier. And he went up to Jacques and he said to Jacques, you know, you won't remember this, but I sent you this letter about this experience I had when I was a boy.

And Jacques is like, oh, what was the letter about? And he says, it was about the blimp I saw. And immediately, Jacques knew the letter, which was from decades earlier. And the book starts with Jacques basically asking him, well, did anything else happen to you? And, oh boy. Really?

Really? Oh, boy. So is Josh turning into, yet again, and he's an excellent researcher. He's published some really fantastic books. He's got The Brimstone Deceit is one of his latest books, but a collection of the food book that was well done. I'll link to them in the show notes. But is he kind of becoming like many of these researchers where-

Much later, when you're an adult and you start researching this stuff, you find out that you have childhood experiences. Is that where we're going with Josh? Well, it's not Josh's book. It's not Joshua Cutcher's book. Oh, it's the guy that was, oh, I see. Okay. Yeah, this guy, William F. Bloom, which is, again, as a pseudonym, he's revealing this letter and Jacques remembered the letter. Right. And it's a sighting he had as a child. And it starts off as one of those stories where there's a sighting as a child and then there's an interaction and then other things flow from it.

But the whole time, because we've been doing this for so long, as you know, you're like, I know where this story is going. Yeah. I know what's coming next. Oh, there's a light outside the window. I know what's going to happen next. But every single time in this story...

There was some curveball I didn't see coming. Is that just simply because the AI has gotten so good that it knows all the stories? Now it's like, I know how to give you a curveball. No, it's not. It's too good for AI. It's one of the best experience of books I've ever read. And that's saying something for this long time we've been doing this. Okay. Well, that's coming up in plus as well. It's not just Dick Zappers. I just wanted to get that out there. That's important. So I'm not painting me as some kind of Dick Zapper aficionado.

All right. They have their uses, obviously, as we're going to find out. Yeah, as we'll find out. All right. Well, let's- Liminality, sorry. Well, it's funny that this book should be about dancing with tricksters because the way that I got to this actually was because I was looking into the work of George P. Hansen. And of course, he's written a book called The Trickster and the Paranormal. I'll link to that as well. But basically, it's more of a, I wouldn't say it's academic, but it leans more in that direction. It's more about, I guess, some of the more abstractions.

more abstract ideas within paranormal phenomena. And one such idea, of course, is ghosts and liminality. And he writes here that, look, ghosts are odd because the question is, are they alive? Are they dead? Are they fact? Are they fiction? Are they natural? Are they supernatural? Are hallucinations real? They sit in this realm that is at the border of what is possible. And so because of that, even in an abstract way, that does cause them to be

obscure and unusual. They actually are in themselves. People claim that they see these things and yet they have no proof to back up what they're seeing. But it's a phenomenon that exists within everything. It's not just ghosts. It's everything that we experience that I was describing before. These things that people see are on the very limits of what the human consciousness can perceive. So I wanted to go into some of these stories, but funnily enough,

What was highlighted in this is that you can actually apply a physical presence to these liminalities, these zones, right? And that is things like roadways, rivers, you know, like airport, what is it called? Like monorail tracks. There was a story where someone was describing seeing strange things. Anywhere that there is some type of crossing, a bridge. Transit, yeah. Transit. That creates an increase in

Well, it seems to be an increase in the observance of paranormal phenomena. You have a look and yeah, of course, you have all these other stories of people that experience things in their homes, for example, and you go, well, that's not, you know, any type of liminality. Oh, but it is. It actually is because the liminality there is the zone of sleep.

It's between wakefulness and unconsciousness. You have it in experiences of the near-death experience because it's between life and death. Even if they're hallucinations, it's between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. So I wanted to start off by diving into a few of these kinds of experiences.

and highlight just the strangeness of these things. And funnily enough, let's start with sleep. Sleep is a great example. And we know there's things like the sleep paralysis stories. We covered one on the last PLOS show where there was a poor kid who throughout his entirety of his childhood, for the most part, had experiences breathing next to him in his bed. And it kind of reached this crescendo where

He'd never really seen it until it manifested as this old man next to his bed. And it finally, he moved house. And when he moved house, it reached this peak of it climbing on top of him, physically climbing on top of him while he's in bed. And then it scared the hell out of him and then left. And we were discussing the possibility that the reason why it left is because it essentially wasn't able to get sustenance out of this witness. He wasn't scared enough. He didn't engage with it. He didn't continue. So it just, it moved on to something else.

That seems to be what's occurring with a lot of this phenomena. This is something that Nick Redfern picked up a long time ago, he realized. And of course, Nick Redfern, another great researcher who's been looking at these stories for a long time in the full spectrum of paranormal phenomena, he was saying that, look, when you think about it, experiences like Bigfoot, for example, Dogman, Linda Godfrey did a great deal of research into that. Where are people encountering these things?

on roads. It's like they're crossing. But he said these entities, UFOs, the number of stories of truck drivers saying that they drive along and find a UFO landed upon the road or farmers saying that they come out and they find something that's on the track coming down to their property.

It's like they want to be caught. They want to be seen. But why? Why do they want to be seen? Why do they want us to indulge in it? And it goes back to what we were talking about in that last episode. It's because they're getting something from the human experience. Whether it's energy or whatever it is, I don't know. These things could quite easily hide themselves.

They absolutely could hide themselves. You've got these abandoned roads. What are the odds? You've got an abandoned road in the middle of nowhere where no one drives for hours on end. And it just so happens that as you're driving along as a used car salesman at three o'clock in the morning, traveling businessman, for example, that a

Pardon me, a partially transparent Bigfoot wanders out into the road and makes sure that you see it. Have you got that story? I do. I do actually have that story. I thought so. But we'll start with sleep, right? Because sleep really... And the problem with sleep as well, it's not a problem, but where sleep applies this sense of...

It's not unbelievable, but a lot of the time people have strange experiences that are associated with sleep and we completely brush them off because we immediately go to, oh, that was a very vivid dream. Or, oh, that was because I was asleep. Or that was because I was just waking up and I misinterpreted something. But no, there seems to be some suggestion here that these entities purposely target those periods of luminality between wakefulness and sleep. It's funny you're saying that because the dick zapper guy

He started to develop what he was trying to achieve never really happened. But what did happen was he started to gain mastery of his dreams. He started to become conscious of his dreams. Oh, was he having lucid dreams? Yeah, because the tests of not having an omission would come in the form of lustful temptation in the dream state. So he realized, I've got to get in and control these dreams. I've got to direct it. I've got to set it up. So he started to consciously do this.

You know, what's the term for it? Loser dreaming, right? But then he said he noticed that individuals, characters and entities would show up in his dreams that he didn't have control over. They seem to be external forces. Right. They weren't part of his imaginations. He could very clearly delineate between, oh, here's something I've created in my dream state because I'm conscious.

some creature would come in and he would try and shift it and change it and it wouldn't react. Yeah. Or it'd be some individual or some person that seemed to be conscious in his dream. Yeah. Well, dreams in themselves are these could be conveyed as being these zones of liminality. And it seems like these entities, that's where they invade. That's where they go. And previously he probably, because he wasn't lucid dreaming,

These things come in and interact with him for whatever reason. But the fact that he was lucid and could control it, it made him recognize that there was more to it. He said he was thankful he was lucid because whenever he encountered something demonic, he would always exit out into the conscious state. He said he never locked horns with anything of that nature because he wasn't sure if he would come out on top.

Interesting. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm looking forward to getting into that a little bit later. Let's start though with some of these experiences. So there's this great set of experiences that were researched by Albert Rosales. Albert Rosales at the moment has like 16- 10 billion cases.

It relates to a witness in Seattle, Washington, obviously in the United States, where they awoke one evening. It was August 1965, and she noticed that her bedroom window was open. Now, obviously, normally her bedroom window shouldn't be open, but she said a small, dull, gray, football-shaped object appeared.

flew into the room through the open window. It hovered for some time, like right in front of her, before deploying three tripod legs and then landing on the floor. So it's only about this big. It's a football. Not only that, a small ramp opens up and descends to the floor and out from it climbs five or six man-like figures in tight-fitting metallic outfits. What do they have?

Like three inches tall? A few inches tall, it says. A few inches in height. These figures seem to be working on something on the outside of their ship, after which they seemingly repaired it. They went back up the ramp of their craft silently, and then it took off and floated out the window. Throughout the entire ordeal, the witness claims that she had been paralyzed and was only able to move again after the craft had gone. So this goes back to what I was saying earlier.

Look, why didn't it land outside? You've got a problem. Let's say this is real. You've got a problem with your spacecraft. Why not land on the roof? Why would you fly through a woman's window, open up the craft, have all these people come out so she witnesses the entire thing and fly off again? It's mocking us. It's showing us. It's trying to engage with us. Did they speak to her? Was there any communication? Nope. They weren't like...

I know that goes back to it also. No, no, it wasn't like that at all. But there are more reports. So there was an issue of the magazine called UFO Zone that was published back in July of 1989.

And it relates to the Perm region of Russia. And apparently in this case, the witness claimed that she had been asleep in a modest apartment when she was awoken by an indistinct feeling of dread creeping over her. She doesn't know where it came from. It was just this horrible feeling. And when she opened her eyes, she could see a short figure crouched over the top of her.

It had a pale gray complexion, but it looked ancient. It had large pitch black eyes like a shark and a sparse beard. So it's not a gray. It's not that kind of typical case of someone waking up to find a gray. But she said also, then a younger looking entity appeared and these two gnomes, as she called them, just stared at her before vanishing. But when they vanished, they left an orb of light in their place that also drifted out of the room and out of sight.

nothing happens, but they're deliberately waking people up. Nothing ever happens. Nothing ever happens, but they're deliberately waking people up to show themselves. Why? Well, maybe something has happened, but they are just becoming conscious of the experience at the tail end of it. Perhaps that's one possibility. But there's no, obviously, you know, follow-ups here of regression hypnosis. Yeah. That's the problem with Rosales' database. Oh, it's all very brief and short. Like,

A tiny amount of information for each case, and you're left just wanting more in most cases. Well, yeah, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, these particular stories are just to bullet point just how many there are and how strange it is. We were talking about New York last week. There's another story here from Manhattan. A witness says that when she was a young girl, she must have been about six years of age, she would often see small green eyes peering at her from the shadows as she tried to sleep.

This apparently went on for some time until one evening it reached a crescendo of high strangeness where she witnessed a greenish orb floating out of the closet and hovering over the top of her. As she looked on bewildered, the orb began to morph into something altogether outlandish. She said, I watched as the terrifying orb constructed itself.

into what looked to be two little greenish feet, then greenish pants, and then what looked like a small greenish jacket or vest top. Finally, a head appeared as it kind of manifested as a thick whitish greenish beard and pointed hat. It looked very vintage with old and beardy eyes, a wrinkled face, and a pointed nose. From what I saw, it looked angry and resembled a gnome.

That's so weird. Really? Well, the story I've got coming up, he sees this, which is the Alka-Seltzer kid from like a 1950s. It's like an aspirin ad from the 1950s. It's the mascot. He's basically a little elf kid.

And this is what he remembers is seeing this. Yeah, I think that's what happens to a number of people that have experiences as children because you don't have any real reference for it apart from possibly cartoons or something. If something obscure and strange manifests in your bedroom in the middle of the night, you associate it with some type of entity that you know.

Right? And so, like, that would make sense here. In this case, she's like, it's a gnome. You know, that kind of makes sense to me. But she claims that this thing opened its mouth but made no noise. Its eyes were very cold. And she said, for whatever reason, it was indulging in her father's shoes. What was it doing? It was sniffing them. No, no, no, no. It's not something weird gnome with a foot fetish breaking into your bedroom in the middle of the night. Did he pay her at least? Have you seen that video online where there's a guy coming up to this woman

woman's window. She's in her car and he just hands over like a $50 bill or something. She's like, all right, but this is the last time. And she takes her shoe off and hands her shoe over and he's like, oh, oh,

Society's done. This is the last time. Society's done. It's finished. It's all done. Just bring the asteroids now. You wouldn't be a shoe whore? No. 50 bucks a pop? No. So apparently this being was trying to put his feet into them, but he kept on walking through them because he was in a transparent ghostly state. So he physically couldn't wear the shoes. And this pissed him off.

This entity apparently got really angry. He tried a few times, but couldn't put them on, became more and more frustrated. Finally, he gave up and threw a kind of a small mini gnome tantrum. And then she writes from this point, I can't remember what exactly happened, but he vanished. And because my mother walked into the room. So it's like maybe the mother had disturbed what was going on. But she said since then, I've never seen him again.

So, strange. Then, of course, we come to Australia. We come to a report. It's not as unusual as a foot fetish known, but in the 1980s, there's a report from Western Australia where one December evening in 1984, a farmer was working in his field when he tripped over something.

It just so happens that he realized that he tripped over a small fence-like enclosure and a little mini farm where tiny people and a fleet of miniature buses were going about their business. Oddly, the witness claimed that the creatures etched upon his forehead five lines like a barcode that remained there for years until gradually fading away.

100% true. I was there. Other reports of tiny little buses, like little Lego towns driving around in a farm, have come in over the years. This coming from the man that claims that he had visions and dreams of there being little mini fairy people at the very back of his garden when he was a kid. Yeah, but they weren't driving busses.

buses. Well, you know what though? They didn't have a little metro town down there. There's a crazy story from the UK of where some children saw gnomes driving little cars, like naughty cars. Yeah, that's the naughty cars. What's the name of that account? I can't recall that, but there are... Covered it on the show like three times. Yeah, exactly. So there are similar reports. But that's not like...

A tiny little thing, like what you're describing. Tiny people and a fleet of miniature buses going about their business. Thimble-sized cars zipping around. It's like Gulliver's Travels. But they're still able to hold him down and tattoo his forehead. That's what's not included. It's just like, oddly, the witness claims that the creature's etched upon his forehead five lines like a barcode.

Did anyone go up to him with a barcode reader, scan his forehead? It's like a link to an Amazon store where you can get the whole set. That would be better. Get the little figures. Talk about marketing. Like that's one way of doing it. That's for sure. I don't know how that would work. And then of course, there's a reference here to a report that came up on the Phantoms and Monsters website where it was from Buenos Aires in Argentina. It was the summer of 2008. So relatively recent case.

where there was a group of garden workers that were trimming trees that lined this main stretch of road. And they had to come and they had to cut back this very large 100-year-old eucalyptus tree. And apparently, when they cut this back,

it pissed off a bunch of mini entities that were... Now, again, this is a liminality. It's along a road. And people that were using that road claimed to have witnessed little men in brownish clothes emerging from the stumps in single file formations heading in the direction of the local library for reasons unknown. And according to locals, these trees of that particular stretch of the road

have housed these elvish or gnomish beings for a long time. That's the Wollaton gnomes sketch from one of the eyewitnesses. That's the sighting we were thinking of back in September 1979. Yeah, the old Wollaton gnomes driving their little cars. In Nottingham. Yeah, so there are these reports out there. People are having these experiences, but they're just so strange. And it doesn't make sense, but in a way I think that's done on purpose. It's not meant to make any type of sense.

So you're going back to what Nick Redfern was saying. He was talking about the manipulative angle of the phenomenon. And he says, you know, as I've written these articles and stories over the years, I've noticed that these entities, they practically overemphasize who or what they claim to be and they want to be seen.

He highlights that there's a really great flap. There was a wave of the soil samplers back in the 1950s and 1960s. The soil samplers? The soil samplers. Like those sightings of beings and they've got a little tube or something. Yeah, yeah.

Stabbing into the ground. Yeah. I never realized just how many cases there were. Between the 50s and 60s, there were multiple, and I say dozens, like dozens of these cases. Tons of them in Europe. There was a flap in France. Yeah. So to give you a kind of an indication of what they are, let's go a little bit earlier back to 1948. You've got Ontario, Canada. There's a Mr. Goldbraith. He claimed that he witnessed a disc-like object that landed on the ground. An object left...

sorry, entities left the object and collected samples of vegetation. The object transmitted a force field which pushed the witness to the ground. The same witness observed an object on the ground, three entities who smiled at him and then climbed back into the craft. A police patrol saw a light in the nearby woods but couldn't approach because of an invisible wall.

So I projected some type of thing. But again, there's essentially this large remote space or at least a sparsely populated space, but this craft just happens to land in front of a witness and then collect samples.

He could have collected them from anywhere, but it has to be just there. Then you go to Germany, summer of 1948. There was a shepherd that was guarding his flock of sheep in an isolated grassy area when suddenly the animals scattered in panic. He heard a rushing sound. He saw a large metallic domed object emerge from what appeared to be an artificial fog. So it was emitting this mist. It landed nearby. He said that he approached the object and touched it and felt a strong electrical shock that caused him to be knocked unconscious.

unconscious. He later woke up and found himself in a completely different field surrounded by short entities. He said they had large heads, large slanted almond shaped eyes, uh, narrow mouths. They're essentially greys. Uh, but he said also their foreheads had, uh, foreheads had short stubby hair, which is a little bit different to the greys. Um,

But he noted that they all had boxes on their chests with tubes protruding from it. They would occasionally take a gasp from whatever these tubes were. Oh, really? Yeah. Like they need a bit of fresh air, their own air or something. And then apparently they were speaking in an unknown language, clearly. The object remained encased in mist. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, that's exactly what's going on.

You know what they did in front of him? They collected soil samples, placed them in large containers, put them back aboard the craft that made a high-speed whirring sound, and then took off. Now, what backs up this case is that there were burnt spots in the area when he'd gone to speak to other people to describe what he'd seen. So it wasn't like this guy had just passed out because he'd had a few drinks and was slacking off on work. There was some kind of experience. It's just a ruse. Obviously, they're there to take him.

and extract what they need. And after he's contrasted, they're like, oh, we just need some soil samples. Don't mind us. Is that it? Is there like a group, like a species of aliens or like, okay, our cover story is going to be, we're collecting soil samples.

And then go through it for 20 years. That's how it's recorded. But it happened for 20 years. 1953, Sweden. There was a Nilsson who was cycling to a village when she suddenly felt this warmth over her body. She realized that there was an object not too far from her that landed on a ridge. Four people wearing strange equipment on their backs like divers, much like the previous case, and some type of helmet fastened to their light-colored overalls emerged. They started to dig in the ground and...

and took samples. She was so frightened that she took off on a bicycle. So nothing else happens in that one. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know, one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year, he wants you to know the best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile's unlimited wireless for $15 a month. Now, you don't even need to wrap

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Thanks to IP. Learn more at phrma.org slash IPWorksWonders. Then we come to Borough Garang. Borough Garang? Yeah, this is in the valley in New South Wales here in Australia in 1953. I know Borough Garang. Well, isn't that... I grew up near Borough Garang. Oh, did you? No. Oh, okay. I know from these reports, actually, I recall that it was... Borough Wang I grew up near, not Borough Garang. Borough Wang. Borough Wang. No, this is a different area. Yeah.

But it's funny because I think Rex Gilroy had a collection of reports from that particular area. But apparently following the sighting of low object or low hovering objects in the area. Are you sure it's not Burrowing?

No, it's not Burrawang. It's Burragawang. Burragawang. Because Burrawang was like right down the road from my hometown. No, no, it's not there. These figures apparently that were emerging from these craft were searching the ground with metallic objects, apparently collecting soil samples. So again. It's Burrawang. There is no Burragawang. There's no W in it. There's no W in it. How do you spell it? B-U-R-R-A-G-O-R-A-N-G.

Just completely lost. There you go. I don't know what you're talking about. Just nonsense coming out of your mouth. What's strange in this particular report is that where these entities were seen collecting soil samples, weeks after this incident, three young hikers disappeared in the area and were never located again. But that's an important point. That's the problem with these stories. You try and look up the source and... Well, the source, as I told you, was Rex Gilroy.

The place doesn't exist. Where did these stories get reported from? And I would dare to say, to play devil's advocate on this show, because we are a pro-paranormal show, that up to 70% of these stories or more cannot be verified. We don't know where the source is from. You know what you're doing? Albert Rosales is just...

scooped them all up. How do we know they're not from like Amazing Stories issue 140, 1956? Well, because I think in those circumstances for much of this that so many people read these stories that they would, some people like especially skeptics are really hardcore on this and if they found it published previously they would

call it out. Like this stuff would be called out. So we'd see it more often, but you're actually really emphasizing what I'm describing because once again, this sits in the realm of liminality because is it believable? Is it not believable? Did this story actually happen? Did it really happen? Like all this kind of stuff, it leaves it up in the air and it leaves it in this liminality zone. Yeah, but you should be able to look it up.

It's like if he's written it down from somewhere, there should be a source. There's a source. I just told you. Rex Gilroy, Nexus Volume 2, Number 17. Yeah, from a place called Baragawang, which doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. Okay, now I've got to look it up. Yeah, you've got the spelling there. You...

quality entertainment here as we go through and pull it up. We need to know. We don't need to know. I actually couldn't give a damn. I really couldn't give a damn. That is the truth. That's the truest thing you've said on this show so far. You want your freaking spooky stories and, oh, look, Wayback Machine just crashed. So that's... I've just lost it. Just effing lost it. Just about. Just about. Effing had it. Yep.

With your freaking, I want sauce, like some fuckwit on YouTube was like, where's the sauce for this? I'm like, the sauce is here. Oh, dude, the YouTube comments are hilarious. Oh, they're fucking retards, most of them. Here we go. It's a valley. It's located in the MacArthur region of New South Wales.

All right. I would like to officially apologize to Aaron James Wright and everyone listening. I was wrong. Good. The location does exist. You're always wrong. And all these stories about tiny little people driving around in their little buses are 100% real. We have confirmed it here live on the show. Thank you very much.

May I continue? Sorry, go ahead. Is that all right? Well, this one's pretty good. Italy, November the 14th, 1954. The source is when sources came to earth, if you want your sources.

And the location is just Italy. Yeah, Lorenzini, right? A 48-year-old farmer by the name of Lorenzini was placing rabbits in a hutch one day when all of a sudden he heard a swishing sound like a flock of swallows. It was interspersed by some sort of metallic noise above him. He was blinded by a dazzling light and then realized that there was a craft descending from the sky. Apparently, the object was surrounded by some type of strange light. A hatch opened on the side and small diminutive figures climbed out. They were all wearing diving suits.

Like it's this diving suit thing coming up once again. It's like it's, you can go, maybe this is some type of weird space suit that they're using because they can't function properly in our atmosphere. Or is it part of the ruse? Is it part of like what they think humans are supposed to see? What's really upsetting about this particular case is that he tried to fire at them. He had his rifle and he tried to shoot these things. He couldn't shoot them. They stole his rabbits, climbed back into the craft and then flew off into the night. Yeah.

Stolle's Rapids. What are these things doing? Going to cook them and eat them, probably. You've got December 19th, 1954, Venezuela. Well, we know that's not real. It's not a real place. What else have we got here? I should mention that one, actually, because it was the last one. There was an 18-year-old jockey by the name of Jose Parra. He was out on a training run when he came upon six very hairy little men loading rocks into a dish-shaped craft, which was hovering less than nine feet from the ground. Rocks. So, again, it's like the soil sample, aren't you? Yeah.

Yeah, and this is like the whole collection. Like when you go to this, you can still find it on Wayback Machine. It's like just pages and pages and pages of these strange reports. Why are you looking at Wayback Machine? Is Rosales' database down or something? So the earlier reports were from Rosales, but this is from the research that Nick Redfern has pulled together. That's when I realized how important the Wayback Machine is because a lot of the stuff we cover, there's a link that you reference, right? There's some kind of reference. It's usually online, which will lead you back to the original source if you're lucky. Yeah.

But since Wayback Machine went down, all of that's gone. All of that history is just wiped. It's gone. I mean, obviously, it's coming back. Wayback Machine's being reinstalled. But, I mean, it made me realize just how fragile this whole world of information we pull upon is. It can just be gone. It can go in a second. And no one has a record of it.

It's just gone. And then in 20 years time, when another podcast starts up talking about this stuff, there's going to be some guy go, what's the source? And it's gone. The source will be our show. It's gone. Oh, yeah, great. The source will be like Aaron Wright. And then you can't even find that because then it's gone. So going back, I just wanted to highlight that these incidents, Nick says that these incidents are clearly stage managed. It's a game. It's a scenario that has nothing to do with real soil sampling or collecting something.

But it's like it's doing everything it can to emphasize the E.T. meme. And I totally agree with him. It's like, again, like I highlight these spacesuits they're wearing and strange apparatuses. Do you think a lot of this is for show? Is that what you're saying? Absolutely. Yeah, that's what Nick is saying. I think it really is. It's designed to make people see what they're supposed to see. And it makes sense, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, when you would think of like, oh, yeah, space, you know,

Yeah, sci-fi was getting really popular. Sci-fi, they're wearing weird space suits that look like bell diving costumes. And people don't realize how much of that science fiction there was at the time. I mean, we think of amazing stories and the Ray Palmer magazines, but there was nothing.

Oh, it's overwhelming.

It's like the phenomena is melding itself into what is the popular culture at the time. Right, and that's the argument for the Wallaton known. Yes. The kids saw them looking like naughty driving little cars because that was their frame of reference. That's right. And so that's how the activity...

chooses to appear. That's right. And then, you know, now I don't know what happened in the 80s and the 90s, but for whatever reason, people started seeing a lot more grace. And maybe it's because of television shows like The X-Files, perhaps, but I feel like the change in the phenomena preceded television shows like The X-Files, but perhaps it kind of

I don't know, maybe something changed in the zeitgeist of our consciousness that caused us to go in that direction. It went from being like these weird encounters with like little creatures and the contactee period of the large Venusian style creature, you know,

entities to these weird little greys. But, you know, Nick says it's not just aliens. Whether it's the likes of the Chupacabra, Bigfoot, lake monsters, dogmen, they just cannot resist racing across the road just when people happen to be around. As with the soil samplers, these monsters seem to need to be seen and seen only.

often. I agree. They do. It's like, how often does this happen? A really good example that was put forward where he says, look, you've got July the 22nd, 1933. You have a Mr. and Mrs. Spicer. They were driving alongside Loch Ness in Scotland. And to their horror, they saw a large wormy kind of creature making its way awkwardly across the road. They were shocked and terrified by the appearance of the beast.

What are the odds? What would be the alternative to this scenario, though? It's like, if people didn't see them, what would you even be reporting on? That's a good point. What's the alternative? If Nick's arguing that, oh, they're making themselves known to people, well, if they weren't doing that, then how would that appear? Well, I did see the other side of the coin that Nick wrote an article about where he was saying that...

and this kind of fits into this liminality kind of thing, is that there used to be an old road that was built in the late 1700s, I believe, that kind of went past the lock. But because it was an older road, you wouldn't be able to get a full view of the road. And there was some project that went in to build a proper, decent, more modern road to run in. And as soon as that went in, sightings of the Loch Ness Monster and associated phenomena just skyrocketed from the 1930s, 1940s, I believe, onwards. These encounters just skyrocketed. And Nick suggested that, well,

Could it be that

And he's not saying this is exactly the reason, but could it be that because they did all this blasting, they had to do a huge amount of blasting. They had to do this whole upsetting of the land that that actually caused an increase in the phenomena because they disturbed the land. It's like whatever this liminality is, they had changed that structure, which caused a resurgence of all this kind of stuff. It's not because there's just more people on the road. Well, that's one possibility, but no, he was suggesting that it might be more to it. And then I get the argument. It's like if you're on some lonely road in the middle of the night,

It's like, what are the odds? What are the odds that you're stumbling across this phenomenon, which is often the case in these reports? But I mean, again, it's like, well, someone's got to see it and report it. Otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it. That's true. That's true. Funny though, how you can even fit this liminality into things like house renovations, right? I found this old article on the 14th, again, way back machine. I found this old article and I'll see if I can link to it in the show notes. I don't have it in front of me here, but it was about hauntings and renovations and

And you would tend to think that if you renovate a house, that the haunting would stop. Let's say you've got some type of ghostly activity. You'd expect an unrenovated old home to be more likely to be haunted. But strangely enough, there seems to be an increase in people that renovate their homes. They suddenly have ghostly phenomena going on. And the suggestion is very similar to what Nick was describing with upsetting that road or doing all this by...

disturbing a particular location. Yeah. It's the same thing with the, sorry to interrupt, but the highways in

Finland, for example. You've got to consult the elf council before you build a road. That's absolutely right. And if you don't, then it can result in very disturbing things. And in fact, that fits into this liminality thing as well, because roads like haunted roads are just, they're extremely common, especially in the UK, afforded frees. I mean, they happen in other locations as well. But the UK, because it has this long history as well, it seems to attract these urbanists

urban folkloric style legends of this kind of stuff. But it's very typical. You've got things like people are driving along and all of a sudden there's this wraith-like figure kind of standing on the side of the road, but still solid. And the classic case is there is that it's either raining or it's very late and dark at night. And why is this young girl out there by herself? And you kind of

pull up in the car and say, do you need a lift? And this old trope is they never say anything. They climb into the back of your car. And when they climb into the back of your car, you start talking to them. They don't reply. And then you turn around to look and

They've disappeared. Where's my spooky sound effect? There you go. It's not on my screen. Don't worry about it. So then, of course, we go back to Loch Ness. So in that exact same area, 1934, so just one year later, a motorcyclist almost hit one of the Nessies as he rode along the road in the early hours of the morning. Apparently, it was the same stretch of road.

What was it? Just lying across the road? Yeah, just in the middle of the night. It's tail? The whole thing? It's a full Nessie. A full Nessie was just there. What did it look like? It doesn't say. It just says a Nessie. It doesn't say. It just says a Nessie. A Nessie. And no, Nick points out. That could be anything. It's like in the dead of the night, no less. Why is a Nessie roaming about on the road? That's some local slang for a drunk whore who's just passed out on the side of the road. Used to see it all the time in country towns. I've seen it a hundred times growing up.

In Burrow Wang. Yeah. Well, he says, look, this is suspicious. It's orchestrated timing, perhaps. But then, of course, he references other cases. Like we go to Puerto Rico. He says August 1975, the atmosphere –

Again, here's the liminality. It's dusk, so you've got daylight surrendering to nightfall. Everything else was normal and tranquil. But for whatever reason, it gave way to a woman by the name of Norka driving through or just on the outskirts of the El Yunque rainforest.

when suddenly something emerged from the trees. Doing barely 20 miles an hour, she said she was easily able to slow down and observe this curious beast that loomed into view. She described it as being a chupacabra, except she said that it looked like a bat, only much larger."

Like it was essentially a bat, but extremely large, possibly four to five feet in height. Now, of course, she could scarcely believe her own eyes. The monster shuffled along the road in front of her, its muscular legs taking slow and deliberate strides across the road before vanishing from view. Again, she's just driving along. Bats are gross enough as it is. Yeah, like what a terrible experience to go through. But it's almost like it's orchestrated. Flying fox? Yeah.

No, because I mean, flying foxes are big, but she said this was four to five feet. No, but tall. I'm not sure. They don't really have muscly legs. No. And I think you'd know the difference between a flying fox and some weird, horrible creature. Although look at this photo. If it loads, if it loads. It's an elephant. If it loads. I could already tell it. Oh.

Yeah, no, I don't think that's the same. I don't think that's what's going on. I mean, are there flying foxes in Puerto Rico? Great question. See, here we go. You're trying to debunk me before even seeking out what the actual native fauna is. Oh, sorry for asking questions. Don't ask questions. Just sit there and listen. Do not ask me questions about cigar goyles in Puerto Rico. Don't. No.

Nine. So then we go to Highway 72, right? So Highway 72, it's along the towns of Salem and Roller in the United States. It's the gateway to the Ozarks Mountains through the state of Missouri. But apparently it's a hotspot for, of course, UFO encounters and Bigfoot encounters. But also in the vicinity, it meanders through a rural area known as Dent County. And there was a witness that claims that they were

What, you look... No flying foxes in Puerto Rico, just little bats. Yeah, okay, so there you go. So apparently this particular witness said that they were driving along when, for whatever reason, that... No, hang on, I've got the wrong case backwards. Just give me... Pull this one up here. What? Play your music, I just messed up this one. How do you have the case backwards? Did you just read the end of it? No, no, I've messed up which case this was because I highlighted the wrong one. Okay. Irrelevant! Fucking offensive!

Come on. I'm waiting for you to eat it. The classics get him every time.

Oh, that's like eight years old now. That's great. Okay, so where was this one? So this particular eyewitness experienced a Bigfoot, but we'll skip over that one. I've messed that one up. Highway 50. Okay, we're headed to Highway 50. June 1994, a motorist by the name of Deborah Hoyt was traveling along this very lonely, almost deserted stretch of highway when she had a very strange experience. And in fact, I'm going to, rather than telling you this story...

I'm going to play some video for you. So it relates actually to a young mother and her son that were driving along this particular area. First of all, let's take you to Deputy Rick, sorry, Rich Strasser, who described what happened. In the spring of 1994, this remote mountain setting became the backdrop for an ominous mystery and a wondrous... High-res video you got here. Very high-res.

On June 6th, a young single mother named Christine Scoobish and her three-year-old son Nick were driving Highway 50, headed for Carson City, Nevada. But somewhere along a 75-mile stretch of road, Christine and Nick vanished without a trace.

A couple of days went by and the family called the sheriff's department to report her missing and felt something had gone wrong. And it was at that point that we began to start a missing persons investigation on both her and her son, Nick. They couldn't find him. Oh, and by the way, I said five. No, he was three. I'm sorry. But they couldn't find him until, or them, until five days later when we've got Deborah here driving along with her partner and she sees something of...

high strangeness. Five days after Christine and Nick disappeared, Deborah Hoyt and her husband are also driving Highway 50. It was late and the Hoyts were singing to help stay awake. Then Deborah caught a glimpse of a startling sight. I saw a naked lady laying on the side of the road. Her face was towards me. On her side, her knees were slightly bent and she had one arm underneath her head and one arm on her head.

So it wasn't an accident, obviously. No. Within minutes, two cruisers were at the site where Deborah had seen the woman's body. But without a landmark to pinpoint the exact location, the authorities found nothing.

What? So isn't this strange? She's driving along. She just happens to look at her window and there is a naked woman lying on the road there. No sign of the kid? No sign of the kid. And we don't even know who this is. It just happens to be along the area of where they disappeared. So what is a naked woman doing there? And of course, the police come and inspect. They find nothing. So it didn't look like she'd been in a car accident or anything?

There's no car. She wasn't injured. There's no car just there. Nope. There's no lights in the woods, anything like that. That is, of course, until the following day. So when Deputy Strasser had gone there and hadn't found anything, he still had this urge, this understanding that something was off. And obviously going back there in the daylight would be a better idea. Maybe he'll be able to use that to see something. And it just so happens that where this road was, the road drops off quite

It's called this particular type of bend. And where it drops off, you can actually drive along and you don't see anything that's below eye level. Right? So he goes back. He realizes that there's a crashed car. Just play number three for me, Ben. Deborah Hoyt had pinpointed a particularly dangerous stretch of Highway 50 known as Bullion Bend. As I was driving in the area, I saw a black, little black child's tennis shoe.

Where I saw it, the road dropped off quite a steep embankment and I couldn't see over the shoulder at that point. So I parked my patrol car and began walking back on the shoulder. At the bottom of a ravine lay the twisted remains of Christine Skubish's car. I checked Christine Skubish and it was apparent that she was deceased.

Whoa.

He'd been dead for five days. So what he says actually, and I'll link to that, it's an old Unsolved Mysteries bit. The kid recovered? Kid recovered. Kid's fine. Apart from losing his mum, obviously, which is terrible. But yeah, apparently Deputy Strasser was saying that when he spoke to the medics, this kid had been exposed to extremely hot days and very cold nights. He'd been laying there beside his mother for five days. They estimated that he was possibly an hour and a half away from death.

Like, that's how close they cut this to finding this kid. So it was the apparition of the woman, if that's what it was, to get their attention? That's the question. Play number four. Christine was seat belted, fully clothed, probably killed on impact in that accident. So there was no way that that was her physical body on the side of the road. I know I saw a naked woman on the side of the road, up on the mountain. And I know it was Christine.

Isn't that strange? She was killed on impact. There is absolutely no way that she could have climbed up onto that road, disrobed, laid there until someone came along and then put her clothes back on and then strapped herself back into the vehicle. Wanted to save her son. Yeah. It's like how strong this was for her to be able to make sure that her son was rescued. There's this other element which isn't included in there as well. In the meantime, apparently Christine's aunt, her name was Karen,

She had a series of vivid dreams in which she saw herself within the car, only the vehicle was wrecked and Christine and her son were in trouble. Throughout these horrible dreams, the number 16 constantly flashed up in her mind. Now, later on, we found out that the car had crashed at road marker 16. Oh, right. So not only was she somehow lying there on the side of the road trying to get the attention of someone passing by, she also was like...

reaching out in dreams to family members. Imagine how frustrating it is when you're a spirit on the other side, freshly dead, and you have no idea how to contact people, how to get the message across. There must be many cases of that. Absolutely. But the question is, right, why did she see a, why was she naked?

And I think there's something to that. To get attention? To get attention. Because if you're driving along, right, and you see- Just another drunk chicken burrowing. Well, I mean, it's funny you should say that because I was driving late one night in Melbourne of all places, so it's not surprising at all. And I almost ran over a guy that was lying on the road. A lot of people sleep in the road in Australia. Yeah. And I got out of my car to go and- because obviously I was concerned for him. And the guy was just rolling pissed and refused to get off the road.

So I'm like, well, you know, I'm not going to get killed for this. He didn't just roll him yourself. I wasn't going to touch him. He wouldn't let me get near him. Like he got up, he got up and moved to the side of the road. But it's like, if I'd not been paying attention and it's so foolish. And of course the other thing here, and that was, you know, said in the, that piece of video there was that, you know, they were concerned that perhaps it was some type of ruse to carjack them.

So I get those thoughts. So that's why they didn't stop. That's why they went and immediately called the police. So it's just amazing when you hear those sorts of stories. But again, this liminal zone along the road, is it somehow enhanced by the fact that it was on one of these spaces? So it's very, and when I say liminal zone, what I'm trying to highlight is it's very much in the abstract, but also in the literal as well.

You've got Route 44 in Massachusetts, and according to the law there, it's prowled by a malevolent spectral form of a red-headed male hitchhiker. This apparition is described as being a large man with red hair and a red beard, almost said to be wearing often a red flannel shirt, brown work pants, and work boots. Some reports say that he looks clean-cut normal, while others describe him as looking decidedly filthy and almost feral in appearance.

his clothing in tatters, and his beard a wild tangle. He's usually reported as being somewhat transparent, but he can also appear to be quite solid and realistic. And that's what happens in a lot of Bigfoot cases, strangely enough. There's numerous reports of people describing that they see some type of what they think is some animal at first. Other times people think that it's some type of man in a weird costume or even a ghillie suit.

But what's odd in a couple of cases is that they describe it as being shifting between transparent and observable, obviously. So again, that in itself, it's not like their cloak is failing. It falls back into what I think Nick's theory is here, is that it's doing it deliberately as some type of performance, some type of act. Because if you're

Why would you do that? If you're trance and phasing in and out, is it just simply that it's a coincidence and they don't care or doesn't know? Or is it some type of performative act which is being put on to drag people's attention to it? For what purposes? We just simply don't know. And then of course,

we fall into the concept of Bigfoot vehicle interference. And this is a case that was reported in June of 1977 and happened to Gerald. He was driving through the town of Kunze in Texas, I hope I pronounced that correctly, when he was going past the old Hardin Cemetery. He claims that suddenly his engine began to falter and its lights faded. He thought that perhaps a fuse had blown and was to blame. Carefully, he brought the vehicle to a halt at the side of the road and he exited the vehicle to take a look under the hood.

Now, at a distance of approximately 50 feet from him, he saw a tall, strange, dark, hair-covered figure that was moving about the road, its arms swinging about. The sighting only lasted a few seconds, and he said the creature vanished into the trees. But what was more notable...

was what happened next. He said, almost two or three seconds later, it couldn't have been any more than that, a soccer ball-sized glowing mass of bright light came floating from the trees exactly where this creature had walked into. Now, what do we know? There's multiple reports of Bigfoots being associated with this strange beast.

B-O-L activity, ball of light, orb activity. This ghostly light apparently moved across the road until it disappeared into thick trees on the opposite side. Interestingly, after both the beast and the light had vanished, his car started functioning normally once again without any problems. So this is what is referred to as possible Bigfoot vehicle interference. And Nick wrote a book actually

It was co-written with Ken Gerhardt. It was called Monsters of Texas. He said, look, there's multiple tales that are similar to this all throughout the Lone Star State, but

But he said there was people that came forward and had described previously unheard incidents. And one such incident came from a man who was driving home late one evening from Austin to Houston. It was the summer of 1999 when at the edge of the highway, he was horrified to see a creature that looked like the real life equivalent of a flying nightmare from Jeepers Creepers. He said this thing seemed to, it was like a man, a

flying winged creature. It zoomed about at approximately 80 miles per hour and he was unable to describe really what he was experiencing. But he did note that the headlights, radio and air conditioner of his vehicle all briefly but suddenly failed. Yeah, pretty common. It's like one of these threads that connect...

all the phenomena we talk about is it seems to interfere with our electronic technology. Vehicles die when UFOs appear. Certain entities are in range and electronics die, batteries die around ghosts and things like that. You hear this all the time. Well, guess where else it happens? It happens in Phantom Hitchhiker stories. There's multiple stories where people are driving along, their radio starts getting static on it, there's some type of malfunction, electrical malfunction, the car stops and then they look up

And they see one of these wraith-like figures standing there, still fully formed though, not transparent. They'll get in the car as soon as they get in the car. The car turns to normal. It's almost like it was done to stop the car at that particular point. Otherwise, it's unlikely that the person would have stopped. So these winged wonders, though, grabbed my attention because they also pop up on other road cases too.

And I found this very old report from the Journal of Fortean Research. This was published in their volume one, number one, if you want the source for that one. I'll link to it, of course, in the show notes. But this relates to a case that occurred back in the autumn afternoon of 1956 to a man that we just simply refer to as Hank because he requested anonymity. So this apparently relates to, where was it? It was Fall City.

must be Nebraska as far as I'm aware. Apparently, the family had just returned home from an outing that unloaded their car and had gone into the house while Hank readied some equipment that he needed at work in the back of his pickup truck. He said that he noticed at first what he thought was a kite about three blocks away from the home. But as he watched the kite coming closer, he realized that it wasn't a kite, but something very different. This object fluttered about.

And he realized that this isn't a kite, but a human form with wings. He says as this thing came closer, he was able to see the creature's face, which he described as being extremely frightening, almost demonic. Its eyes were very large, blue in color, and watery, he wrote.

They were shaped and placed on its face like horse's eyes. The skin in the face was like a tan leather. It was very wrinkled. It seemed to overlap in folds. He said he had a good look at this creature when it was only about 25 feet away and hovering 15 feet from the ground. He said it must have been at least eight feet tall. As he watched, he claimed that this creature wobbled and almost fell to the street below. Wobbled?

this other performative thing. Flying fox. You're a flying... Well, the flying foxes don't wobble and are not eight feet tall and accidentally fall to the ground very often. Is that because it's a pterodactyl from another time? No, it's definitely humanoid. Like he says, it's definitely humanoid, right? But it gets even more bizarre because at the moment it just sounds like some weird cryptid. I like these details though. Like you hear this with men in black encounters and other things where the entity kind of looks

stiff or it walks kind of funny or it has a waddle to it where it doesn't belong in our dimension. It's not used to physicality. Yeah, it can't seemingly just fit into this reality for whatever reason.

But he claims, as he's watching this thing, it passed overhead, he claims that he was suffering from paralysis. He couldn't move, much like many of these other experiences, but normally it's while people are in bed at night or while they're in the vehicle. They're carrying off in its talons. No, but he said as this creature passed over his head, he was able to observe not only the wings, but what appeared to be structures of polished aluminium and a grid-like appearance on the top side. Huh?

It's artificial. He said on the underside of the wings, there were four or five colored lights about four inches in diameter. The lights that were closest to his body on either side glowed blue, then yellow, then orange, and then finally red before going out. This was on the wing tips. He said the wings were at least 15 feet long from tip to tip.

He also said that- Wait, so it's kind of like a gargoyle robot. Yeah. He said that it was fastened to him by a shoulder harness, like the wing structure had a shoulder harness, which seemed to have a breastplate upon it with some sort of dials. He seemed to touch and move these dials, but his hands, if that's what they were, looked more like white dove wings all opened up. Let's go. He went on to say that the creature, when it passed, he heard a sound like air hissing, which seemed to be coming from the rear of the wing, like some type of weird-

propulsion system, perhaps. He said this creature moved off into the distance and disappeared behind a group of trees about two blocks away. What time period is this from again? This report is on 1956 when this was reported. An autumn afternoon. So again, it's in the vein of the amazing stories. Well, it is. Yeah, it does. But as I said, this was published in the Journal of 14 Research. Apparently, according to him...

when this thing disappeared behind the groups of trees about two blocks away, only then once it was out of sight did his paralysis leave and he was able to return to normal. But he said he felt, you know, uncomfortable and this experience lasted somewhere between eight and 10 minutes. Now, according to him, it was 23 years before

that he was constantly bothered by a nightmare of this creature. You would be. Yeah, it stayed with him. He said he became- Robo-mothman. Well, he became a workaholic because he couldn't sleep, so he tried to distract himself from it. But finally, over a period of three years, he was able to overcome this obsession by forcing himself to write it out in a story and then destroy it. And then destroy it. It's like this cathartic kind of way of getting it out. Do you have a copy of this? The-

23 issues, volumes one to six. No, I don't. Complete annals of the 14 research center. That means it will be in there though. Yeah, right. But Ray Beauches, like he is a very reliable researcher from the stories we've covered. I love the cover because if you scroll down, you've got this guy caught in a kind of pink slime monster.

And I love that there's a bunch of dudes with rifles just shooting at it. It's completely pointless. Shoot that slum, Steve. Get it. Yeah, it's completely pointless. But yeah, this is just strange. And then people like, this is a weird kind of creature for someone to encounter, right? Like if you're going to make something up,

Maybe, but to describe it in such vivid detail, yeah, I mean, either the guy has just written a completely fictional crazy story or he's experiencing something which is on the limits of what is, you know, describable, which is common in these sorts of experiences and these sorts of encounters. So then we come back to a report from, we're still in the same range, Ben, November the 8th, 1958,

There was a man by the name of Charles Wetzel. He was driving along in his green Buick. It was along North Main Street in Riverside, California, near the Santa Ana River. Apparently, he reached this particular stretch of road that had flooded, and as he did, the radio of his car began to crackle loudly.

in a highly distorted fashion, this vehicle interference once again. Now, he said with the water levels being high, he tried to figure out what to do and whether it was if he should go through, what was going wrong with his radio. Obviously, he slowed down. It caused him to slow down. But when he slowed down, he said that all of a sudden he caught sight of an extraordinary creature that surfaced from the shadows and

And in a very brazen fashion, again, this performance, it stood in the middle of the road preventing him from being able to go any further. He could only sit and stare in a combination of fear and awe as he tried to take in and comprehend what was standing before him. Now listen to this, Ben.

He said it was humanoid in shape. It was an excess of six feet in height. It had a large round head described as being pumpkin-like, glowing eyes with a prominent mouth that had beak-like qualities to it, and scaly skin that resembled leaves. He said this creature was just something else entirely. Apparently, it emitted a reptile kind of high-pitched noise and started to scream and then charged at his Buick. He could only sit there paralyzed with fear

as this scaly thing raced towards the hood of his vehicle, then lunged closer and apparently clawed at the windshield. Now, Wetzel had his rifle with him. So he was thinking, well, maybe I should shoot at this thing. But it wasn't because he was like, well, if I kill this thing, what's going to happen?

Uh, he also decided not to fire through the windshield because he thought if I fire and I miss and fail to kill it, the shadow windshield would allow this thing to actually reach inside and get him. So we did the next best next thing. Uh, he floored the accelerator and ran the thing down. Like he actually ran the thing over. Uh, and he said that he felt the entire vehicle kind of like bounce over a large, heavy, uh, creature.

Now, you could go, look, this is a hoax. This is an absurd hoax. This story is just an urban legend of some kind. But no, the reason why we have this is because Wetzel reported it to the police. He reported to the local police who launched an investigation. Yeah, I remember they examined the scratches on his car and couldn't account for the depth of them or how they were created. That's right. If he did hoax it, they couldn't figure out

how or what his motivation was because his car was heavily damaged. That's right. Police officers sent bloodhounds to the scene, but they couldn't find anything except for the fact that when they examined the vehicle, it corroborated his experience because there were vicious looking claw marks in the windshield and the underside of the Buick where he would have run this thing over.

So this isn't all fake, but yet again, it's these roads. Why would this thing deliberately block his path? Why would it do that? It's just, again, it's trying to allow itself to be, it's trying to make itself seen. And of course, you know, these cases continue. Then you have like the other side of the coin where you have things like road angels, right?

So it's not all negative and all scary in these accounts. You've also got plenty of reports. Funnily enough, there's reports in India. They've got classic reports of what they refer to as the road demons, the road devils, where people in India describe encountering weird, almost pale crawler-like entities, shapeshifting entities in some circumstances that try to get into people's vehicles and attack them.

But the more positive side of things, of course, is these road angels. So there's a case that goes all the way back to 1602. This is a very early report of this. And it relates to an old manuscript called Signs and Wonders. This was published by John Kunt. And basically, he was the John Keel of his time. He was an early paranormal writer.

But he describes this story of an acquaintance of his who in February of 1602 had been traveling by sleigh to a local town. Now, as he and his companions, three companions were going along, they came across this young woman

who was standing out in the cold. It was frigid outside. She seemed to be inadequately dressed. It was in the middle of nowhere, so they offered her a ride. Now, when they offered her a ride, she accepted without saying anything, just simply gave a nod. Once again, fitting this old trope, fitting this kind of archetype of these experiences. They pulled into an inn where they offered her a mug of beer. No sooner was the mug of beer placed in front of her before it turned immediately to malt.

A second one was then transformed into a cup full of acorns and a third one turned into blood. So it becomes more urban legend as we kind of go through these stories. She then said, or proclaimed, sorry, that the crop will be good this year before vanishing directly before their eyes.

The thing was, though, is that apparently she was true to her word as the year turned out to be extremely good as she had prophesied. So it's like she wasn't necessarily an angel rescuing anyone, although there are those cases which I'll get into, but she was a bringer of goodwill and a good omen. Then we have another report that relates to a witness claiming that when they're a toddler, they're 20 now, apparently the parents were cruising around town while they stayed with their grandmother. And they write that, look,

I understand that my parents were young and they needed some time to take a break, but they stopped at a gas station. And while they were there, this homeless man came up to them and politely asked for a ride. Now, apparently the parents said that the man seemed harmless enough and they accepted his request. They were driving along and as they were crossing an intersection at a green light, they saw a car that had run through the red light coming full speed at them. But instead of getting T-boned, the oncoming car went straight through them.

They pulled to the side to make sure that everything was okay to look in the back of the vehicle and guess what? The hitchhiker was gone. He was a guardian angel, Aaron. Well, it turned them apparently...

permeable to avoid this crash. Of course, just an anecdote, but a wild story. There was another one where a witness had been stuck in early morning traffic when he noticed a man standing at the side of the road. He was hitchhiking, carrying a heavy looking bag. Apparently, the witness's father, or the witness, so it was a father, it was the son that was reporting this case, said that he took pity on this guy, seeing he looked kind of all bedraggled and

you know, a little bit down on his luck. The stranger got into the car, but apparently was very friendly and kind. The two chatted about life, family, work, until the man without warning demanded for the car to be stopped and for him to be let out. Now, the father was like, this is weird because you're wanting me to stop next to a field in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing around here.

This is how that skinwalker story started the other day.

The guy's not there. And you can see in both directions. And then his car gets T-boned. No. He gets back in the vehicle and starts driving along. He comes across a horrific car accident.

that he would have been involved in had it not been for the fact that he was stopped to let the guy out of the vehicle. Yeah, I mean, take it with a grain of salt, but he is convinced, and these are these stories, these particularly road angel stories, they're very personal experiences that are very profound for the person experiencing it, but he's convinced that had that not happened, he would have been involved in that accident.

And not only did it save the father's life, he's like two weeks later, my mother was pregnant because of him. And had he died, I wouldn't be here either. So it shows you also like this procession of fate. I was a road angel the other day. Oh yeah. How was that? I was getting my, putting some air in my tires and this old woman in a,

A really old Mercedes pulled up behind me. She was about 70 years old and she got out. She's like, oh, darling, can you help me? I think I hit a, I've got a slightly flat tire. And I looked over behind me. There was a rock the size of Jupiter wedged into her tire. The tire was completely flat. Are you like, no, it's fine.

It's all good. You can drive with that. I said, I'll change it for you. Don't worry, love. That's like the second time that you've changed some old lady's tire. I pulled out her 1970s Mercedes. I pulled out this ancient jack and this tire iron to get the bloody tire off. Do you think I could get the bolts off? No, of course you couldn't. No freaking chance. They're probably rusted on. Those tires hadn't been changed in like a decade. This old bitty's been driving around on them.

So I just like threw all the stuff in the back of the car and said, here's the number for the guy to come and fix it. Roadside assistance. And that was my angel experience. I saved her day. Did you though? I mean, if you just credit more asshole for it. Okay, dearie, I guess I'll call him. And I drove off in my Audi. I just saw the dust in my rear view mirror. Came to work and did a show. That's my story.

Okay, so let's look at... There's another story here I've got to pull up, actually, where it was another one of these... How are you going for time, my friend? I know, I know. Check the clock. I'm running a little bit long, so I just need to... Let's just pull it up here. Do we have a conclusion to the liminality? No, there's not, and that's the whole point. That's the actual whole point. That is the point. There is no point. There is no conclusion. There is no... Because it is a space which exists in the liminal. And, you know, this is why. But so many of these cases, when you think about it, can fit into this. Like, you can fit them all into this...

I guess it's like, it teeters between, is it real? Is it not real? And I think that's something that the entirety of this phenomenon kind of thrives upon. Like it really thrives upon this stuff of leaving people questioning, is this real? Is it not real? And this makes me a little bit more perhaps cynical about the phenomenon because it feels like we're never, this is the whole point of it. We're never going to get an answer about it. No.

There's just, there's no way. And this is why so many researchers become so cynical towards the end of their careers, because it's like you dig deeper and you dig deeper and you find new stories and new encounters. And it's just, it is so evasive. It's like it's leading you down this garden path. But for what purpose? As I pointed out, it's just, it's unknown.

In the very essence of what it is, it's unknown and it remains unknown. And I think it will. And all this money, even the UFO phenomenon, all this money now, the governments are pumping into UFO research. They're like, oh, we're getting close to disclosure and we're getting close...

I don't think it's going to happen. I mean, you can go back to our old shows from 15 years ago and we were talking about disclosure. Yeah. Stephen Bassett was right around the corner from exposing everything. There were politicians involved. News was, information was coming out. Journalists were writing about it. It was getting mainstream coverage. You know, that was over a decade ago. And then it all disappeared.

And then it all just kind of just, you know, and of course, it drums up attention and gets some media headlines and then it just disappears once again. But it's like there's every new generation also has an interest in this kind of stuff because it's like they're being subjected to it, but just in a different way. There was one other report that I wanted to mention. Yeah, give us a closer. Well, the closer, it was a- I want to tell you about becoming the Lizardman's egg sack, a trans femme transformation sex short that I found today. What the?

I was trying to find it while you were talking about the lizard man story because I found this today. It's quite good. I have to ask the question, is it AI slop? It's all AI slop. It's AI slop now. No, there was finally one road angel story that I wanted to find here, but I don't know what I've done. I'm just a mess today. I've completely lost the story. Yeah, there was a really great story of a guy that, yeah, thank you. That's really helpful. And with that, you know what? Let's get a plus. Yeah. Let's do it.

I'm finishing up this free part of the show before we go to our plus extension. A whole heap of load of stories. I'll link to them in the show notes at mysteriousuniverse.org so you can go and check it out. Yeah, go and check out that 14 archives though. There's a whole heap of great stories in there. I want to know what happened to the guy that got caught in the slime. Well, there was a story actually that I was reading just today that I wonder if it fits into this. But it's not pink. So there was a story from somewhere in South America where essentially this road had a black...

ooze that kept on bubbling up, right? Yeah, there was that story from, was it somewhere in England where the guy remembered from his childhood, like riding home on his bike and having this horrified feeling come over him and seeing this giant, almost like from a Miyazaki animation, this giant

blob of black goo just go across the road and disappear over the hill. And his friends said, two of his friends said they had seen it late at night as well. Again, at night, it's like, so you've got multiple categories of this. Yeah, transitioning. Yeah. So it's a road. It's at night. It's like, it's so absurd. And this is what happens. You go to the extremes because it's not a Bigfoot or a humanoid creature. It's some black goo. Yeah.

which in itself is at the limits of what people are experiencing or being able to understand or at the very least explain. It's just, it's crazy, these sorts of stuff. So yeah, make sure you check it out in the show notes at mysteriousuniverse.org. Good stuff. Lots more coming up on this episode. Head to mysteriousuniverse.org forward slash plus, you know the drill. Sign up today and get access. Coming up after the break, I have a bit of a banger, this story from William Bloom. Very well written, very kind of twisty story.

Surprisingly,

It's a surprising story because we know the archetype of how these things play out with these early childhood experiences. But a couple of curveballs in there that will keep you guessing. And of course, I want to talk about the escapades of Max Freedom Long. I might mention that straight after the break when we go into Plass, who tried his ascetic practices in the 1910s and was so insistent on not ejaculating, not having nocturnal emissions. Yeah.

he rigged a detection, an erection detection device up to his penis. So for whatever reason, I thought that it was electrocuting him, but it's not. Is it electrocuting him? I don't know why I called it the Dick Zapper. I just thought that sounded funny. It's appropriate, yeah. But no, it's like it's a ring, and when he expands...

It detects it. It triggers the alarm. It would have been better if it electrocuted him, but we'll let you get away. Yeah, I'll put that into the story. I'll just throw that in. That zaps him as well. That's coming up on PLAS. Mysteriousuniverse.org forward slash PLAS. Sign up today. Help support your favorite show. You get access to the big extensions we do every single Friday. And of course, on PLAS, you get access to the exclusive season...

The show's come out on Tuesdays for our PLOS members. Also, you get an entirely ad-free version of the show. If you're on our MU Max tier, you get access to our entire back catalogue going back to 2007. Again, it's all at mysteriousuniverse.org forward slash PLOS. Sign up today, help support your favourite show. That's a wrap for this free edition of MU. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching.

If you're on Plus, stick around for the great stuff after the break. For everyone else, we'll catch you next week.