Gene and Chris present a very special episode featuring world-class UFO researcher Dr. Jacques Vallee.

Dr. Vallee appears on the occasion of the publication of his three-volume set of personal journals entitled Forbidden Science. You'll hear a very personal side of Dr. Vallee as he speaks about his early meetings with Ray Palmer, Kenneth Arnold, and even his first encounter with Jim Moseley (Gene was present), whose outspoken writings he enjoyed for many years.

Chris and Dr. Vallee will discuss their investigative process, and the work they've done on the strange happenings at the Skinwalker Ranch and other strange events.

You'll hear why Dr. Vallee maintains that the witness is an extremely significant element of the paranormal research process.

On an evening in late August, 2017, a police officer riding down a road in a wooded location in a southwestern section of Westmoreland County, PA saw something that startled him. Ahead of him on the side of the road, the officer observed what appeared to be a ball of very dull white light low to the ground. He was familiar with the area and had never noticed any type of lighting in that location. As he moved closer and was about 50 yards from the round light, it suddenly rose up or stood up from the ground.

It was then that the witness observed something that he couldn't process. The officer told me, "it was the weirdest thing I have ever seen." The ball of light was actually the head of a very strange being that looked to be about 6 feet tall or larger. It was tall and almost skeleton thin. The officer was of the opinion that the creature when he first observed it, had been lying on its belly on the ground with its head facing toward the road. It then stood up facing the road. In that dark location, he saw the dull light from the glowing head illuminating the upper section of the body of the creature.

While the officer watched, the creature turned toward the right. The dull illumination from the head lit up the shoulder area. The creature then turned and faced him, then turned to the left and took off at an incredible speed away towards a location away from the road. As it moved off, the witness could see its arms swinging. The officer indicated that it took off at a speed that you could only call abnormal. "it was faster than anything I have ever seen. It was there, then it was gone."  The witness assumed that the creature moved on two legs, however, he could not see the lower sections of the body in the dark.

"They say death and taxes are the only things that are inevitable. The truth is, you can not pay your taxes. I've done it, and there's consequences, but it can be done. Death you're not going to get out of, and you kind of got to deal with it" - Steve Earle

We tend to think that civilization consists of the finer things in life like literature, art, science, and the security of knowing that wild beasts and barbarians will be kept at bay. These are only "symptoms" of civilization, which can ultimately be boiled down to one fundamental element - taxes. The first monkey that swung down from the trees and convinced his primate compatriots to hand over their hard won fruit for the ambiguous idea of "community" invented civilization. The monkey that originated the idea of throwing his own feces in protest invented the concept of "political punditry", but that's a story for another occasion. Taxes are so essential to civilized life that the origins of writing are rooted in keeping a record of who had paid their taxes. It's no wonder historically that the collapse of civilizations starts with an onerous change in the tax laws.

The taxation policies of 3^rd Century A.D. Roman Emperor Diocletian drove many people into bankruptcy and starvation, and were said to have greatly contributed to the disintegration of the Roman Empire. 2^nd Century Han China came apart as local landlords increased taxes on the peasants, leading to the Yellow Turban Revolt. The American Revolution embraced the oddly uninspiring slogan "No taxation without representation". Basically, when things start to go to hell in a handbasket, it usually starts with disgruntled taxpayers. We make a lot of self-righteous noise about the rights of man, but we generally start reaching for the pitchforks and torches when someone wants an extra dollar from our pocket. 16^th Century Holland was no exception.

An airliner in Scotland had a recent close encounter with an object which aviation experts have so far been unable to identify. The incident is the second such near-miss to happen at the airport since 2012.

The Glasgow-based Evening Times reported the incident this week after the near-miss was posted to the UK Airprox Board, a forum where pilots and passengers can post reports of "airprox." An airprox is defined as any incident "in which, in the opinion of a pilot or air traffic services personnel, the distance between aircraft as well as their relative positions and speed have been such that the safety of the aircraft involved may have been compromised." According to the report, the incident occurred on May 26 when an Airbus A230 was on approach into the Glasgow Airport:

If you're into the subject of Cryptozoology, you will probably be familiar with a presently unidentified critter that is alleged to haunt the waters of Bala Lake, in Gwynedd, Wales (you can find one of my articles on the story here). It's a very weird tale which is filled with intrigue and drama. And even a bit of conspiracy. The intrigue and drama relates to the witness reports. As for the conspiracy angle, there are tales that in the build-up to World War One, the British military was using the lake as a place to train seals to attack German warships - kamikaze-style - with explosives attached to them. And hiding it all under the guise of a lake-monster legend. Maybe there is a bit of truth to this latter angle, but I'm not holding my breath. That said, however, there is a slightly similar story of cover-ups and monsters that might not have been monsters, after all. It concerns another creature of the deep. This one is known as Paddler.

To paraphrase Gilbert & Sullivan, Paul Byron Whipkey was the very model of a modern Army First Lieutenant. The 26-year-old was smart, brave, serious and disciplined, described as "an all-American young man and a superior officer." He was, in short, one of the last people you could imagine being enveloped by The Weird.

However, since he is featured on this blog, you have probably already guessed that this is exactly what happened.

The young aviator and company commander was stationed at Fort Ord, California. On July 10, 1958, he told some friends at Fort Ord's bachelor officers quarters that he was going into town to "get a drink." Instead, he drove to Mojave, hundreds of miles away, and checked into a motel. The next day, he bought 14 gallons of gas.

After that, the Lieutenant was never heard from again. Five weeks after he was last seen, Whipkey's car was found in "a desolate and forbidding region" of Death Valley, about 400 miles from Fort Ord. The car appeared to be in perfect order, containing the missing man's suitcase, dog tags, and other personal belongings. There was nothing indicating what might have happened to the car's owner. Whipkey's bank accounts had not been touched immediately before he disappeared, and they had not been used since.

Vatican Official: "This would recognize [Ven. Maria Agreda] as the first woman evangelist in America"

Vatican officials are collecting evidence to document the case for the canonization of an incorruptible and bilocating Spanish nun, Maria of Jesus of Agreda, responsible for evangelizing Native Americans in the 1600s.

Reverend Stefano Cecchin, vice postulator of the Friars Minor, spent a week in San Angelo, Texas in early August and spoke with members of the Lady in Blue Committee. Members of this group spent years documenting the testimony of the Jumanos peoples who claim to have been visited by the Lady in Blue between 1622 and 1625, bilocating from Spain to the New World.

Cecchin says her canonization would be "a significant moment for the Catholic Church, for the entire world." Approving her bilocations in the canonization process "would recognize Sr. Maria as the first woman evangelist in America," he said. Bilocation is the ability to be in two places at once.

UFO watchers have been left baffled by three massive "alien portals" which mysteriously appear below the International Space Station in bizarre footage.

The video appears to show a trio of circular shapes flying across the earth's atmosphere and just below the space station.

Conspiracy theorists Blake and Brett Cousins uploaded the strange footage to their YouTube channel.

Blake says: "We've got three strange anomalies drifting downwards just above the Earth's atmosphere.

"Is this something extraterrestrial?"

The footage then zooms in on the objects which reveal they seem to be some sort of circle with a hole in the middle.

Brett adds: "They look almost like smoke rings and they seem to be drifting.

An intriguing piece of footage from Los Angeles shows a police helicopter circling an odd metallic-looking orb that is floating in the sky.

Area resident Julian Lopez filmed the weird scene early last week and his video has already amassed an astounding 250,000 views on YouTube.

In the footage, he marvels that "there's a UFO over the San Gabriel Valley" and observes that it looks like a balloon, but appears to be untethered.

While that alone would make for a fairly pedestrian UFO video, the presence of a police helicopter flying around the object adds an additional layer of strangeness to the footage.

According to Lopez, not one but two police helicopters were apparently dispatched to the area around the UFO to get a better look at it.

Unfortunately for the witness himself, Lopez had to stop watching the event because he had to get his kids ready to go to school, but he noted that the object seemed to be drifting towards the west after being stationary for quite some time.

Hidden deep inside Edinburgh's Greyfriars Graveyard, sits a tomb that is said to be home to an extremely violent entity known only as "The Mackenzie Poltergeist". The tomb sits behind a large looming wall and a constantly locked gate, an area known as "The Covenanters Prison". The spirit that dwells within the "Black Mausoleum" has been known to touch, scratch and even knock unsuspecting visitors unconscious. But who was Mackenzie? Why is the tomb so dangerous? Sit back, relax and grab a cushion as I tell you the tale of The Mackenzie Poltergeist.

George Mackenzie

Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh was born in Dundee in 1635. He was the Lord Advocate under King Charles II, who denied the Convenanters to practice their religion. Any found doing so were imprisoned by George Mackenzie. He was responsible for the imprisonment of over one thousand men and woman in the world's first ever concentration camp. Following the Battle of Bothwell Bridge in 1679, he imprisoned 1,200 Covenanters in a large field next to the famous Greyfriars graveyard. While hundreds of people died of malnutrition, more were executed at the hands of George Mackenzie, nicknamed "Bloody Mackenzie" by his victims. Following his death he was buried with his victims in Convenanters prison in a tomb called "The Black Mausoleum"