March 4, 2025 • 24 mins
Gabe revisits the leader of the drone hunters and uncovers the startling details of a bizarre new encounter. Disclosure doesn’t stop there. As explosive headlines fuel rumors of mass hysteria, Gabe’s investigation takes a darker turn, exposing a chilling possibility with far more dangerous implications.
This episode covers:
Chapter Thirteen - Into the Night
Chapter Fourteen - Warped
Episode Webpage: https://www.obscurumseries.com/podcast/invasion-of-the-drones/the-void
Music by Epidemic Sound
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Last time on Obscureum Invasion of the Drones.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
We track high value aerospace targets so to breakdown into
the business world, but our many focus is to go
after the UAPs better within the news.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Right now, now, big white one looks like it's coming closer.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
They are all over.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
There's another one right directly above me, to my left.
Speaker 5 (00:25):
The most plausible thing I heard, though, was that it
was somebody that was conducting experiments as far as figuring
out whether these things can do perimeter surveillance or missile sites.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
There's actually a report that one of these mysterious crafts landed.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Were there other drones there besides mine? Yeah, without a doubt.
Can I tell you who they were?
Speaker 4 (00:48):
No?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Do you think he's lying?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Despite pushback from the FAA and helping me speak with
special agent called Bumberger of the Law Enforcement Assistance Program,
I figured out how to contact him directly. I never
received a response. I worked at other angles, and one
of those was to look further into what Rod Miller
(01:15):
and his group of backcountry drone hunters were still observing
months after the initial sightings. I'd soon learn that some
of their revelations were much more mysterious than the FAA
is Silence chapter thirteen. Into the Night, Rod became the
(01:47):
go to local everyone shared their unidentified aircraft experiences with
the social media group he was always active in, called
Drone Intelligence Center Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming in all other states
stayed the long term hub for public conversation. However, what
(02:08):
was being talked about in Rod's separate drone hunter's messenger
chat remained a secret. I reconnected with Rod with the
hope that after we'd catch up, he'd add me to
the private thread.
Speaker 6 (02:20):
I use a Geiger counter, which is of course when
I start out as always zero, and then also having
any MF meter. Of course, he didn't show any lights
at all because there's no electrical I mean, there was
nothing out there.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Rod's latest process for studying the craft involved using a
Geiger counter to detect radiation in an EMF meter to
signal electromagnetic fields usually emitted from man made sources such
as wiring. He frequented many areas to follow the objects,
but his self discovered ancient site in northeast Colorado continued
(02:58):
to be a hotbed for activity.
Speaker 6 (03:00):
I know one night there was eleven of the orbs
that left the site the MF meter pegged itself, which
is huge, and the guy encounter was like an off
radiation to So there's that's just two of the things
I check. You know, it's we don't know what. I
don't know what else that throws off.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Rod sent me a couple videos of what he described.
There wasn't a way to verify his exact location when
the clip was taken or what might be just outside
of the video frame.
Speaker 6 (03:33):
I would notice that these orbs would flash lights, and
it's like they're communicated with each other with flashing lights.
So it got to the point where when I was
at my setup, that's what I would do is I
would flash lights in the same patterns that they are
and which would bring him in closer. And then I
(03:53):
have tested different tones, and when I play the sounds
it if it's an upbeat tempo, they will actually the
ORMs flash their lights in beat with the music. I'm
videos to show this. If I use a different tone
that's a real peaceful, mellow tone, the orbit will just
(04:13):
turn really pretty blue color. The whole thing will be blue.
And but if you use a bass tone, they turned red.
They become violent. I mean, they'll come at you real hard.
They act like a living bean. I mean they show curiosity.
(04:33):
They just show different emotions. You know, you can feel it.
One time I was playing the mellow tone that turned
them blue, and I had one come literally right up
in front of me, and then it went back to
the other arms real quick, and then it came up
by me and it was there, literally so close. I
(04:55):
felt like I could reach out. I could actually feel
some kind of a weird energy coming off of it.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Rod spoke with a directness. The things he said didn't
seem possible, but he pulled me into his world in
a way where I found myself rooting for his story
to be true. Was he just grasping for a way
to connect it all? Living an adventure he'd always dreamed of.
Rod was obviously driven by his family's safety and lifelong
(05:25):
obsession with geography and ancient cultures, But the truth was
outside of his battle with critics. Rod then shared that
he was in a battle for something else. Time he'd
been diagnosed with an aggressive type of brain cancer.
Speaker 6 (05:43):
Wasn't long after that close call, ve close experience I
had had. I've had like prive heart attacks my hereditary thing,
and I'd plugged up again. And while I was in
the hospital and they brain tumor that I had was
(06:03):
was still there or you know, but to what degree
or how much longer I had to live because they
had when they diagnosed me with the brain tumor, it
was an attack that you know, there wasn't nothing that
they could do about it. They wanted to treat it,
treat the cancer, but I wouldn't let them because they
basically said it was pretty hopeless and I just don't.
I wanted to die peacefully and not in a hospital.
(06:25):
Smart long story short, the toumur's gone, like missing totally,
like wasn't even there. I have to either tie that
to to God healing me or that close encounter, you know,
with that blue being thing.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
What would you say to skeptics, I.
Speaker 6 (06:47):
Think humans in in in general, any of us, we're
all fear based. I mean, that's that's just that's what
a human being is. We're fear based. Some people, can
you know, there's things that push them past that. You know,
maybe it's concerned, maybe it's just you know, curiosity, there's
(07:09):
certain things. But there's some people that really that just
remain fear based. And those people are the ones that
usually that fear base leads them to denial. And I
mean I've learned that. You know, like when I take
a video, if it's a big ORB, I reference the
moon in their video. I do everything I can because
(07:31):
I know the skeptics are going to be strong. I
know that they're going to say that's not a NORB,
that's the moon. So I reference the moon and then
I show that word, and I try to make it
as clear undeniable proof as I can get.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Proof is a daunting word, which I was continually reminded of,
especially relating to UAPs, UFOs orbs, drones or whistleblowers. I
called the kit Carson County Sheriff's office to see if
there were recent sidings near the general location. Rod described me.
A representative for the sheriff's office stated that things seem quiet. However,
(08:18):
a farming family who lived nearby confirmed strange lights were
still being seen.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
My name is Tammy Fogg, and I've lived in the
area for sixty seven years. I was born here except
when I went to college at k.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
You met at the center of Rod's in her circle
was his sister, Tammy. She's a registered nurse and our
n administrator and Chase's drones with him.
Speaker 7 (08:48):
Rod put me in this messenger group. Are you in
that group too?
Speaker 4 (08:53):
Yeah, it's called drone Hunters. We got real careful on
who we added to that group because we're just there
to share information. We don't aren't necessarily in there for
somebody to come in with big criticism. It's there. You
can express your ideas freely in pictures if you would
like to. And if you needed help, if you were
(09:14):
out drone watching somewhere, you know, and you had a
flat tire or you thought you needed help taking some pictures,
you can put that on there, shoot your location and
so be there in a little bit so because my
brother will go look at some of those remote site
If you had a flat tire out there, or something
(09:37):
spooky happened, you'd be way out there.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
The Drone Hunter messenger chain, which I finally made it into,
was a mix of shaky video posts cell phone photos
of blurry lights in the sky. In commentary on the
sightings and other current events, there was a definite right
leaning slant to the conversations. Sometimes folks were rasping for conclusions. However,
(10:02):
I could tell there was a common goal to see
cancers instead of spreading unvalidated theories.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
We've studied hard on like the starlink systems. We have
flight radar loaded in our phones so that we don't
accidentally pick up an aircraft, you know, and think that
it's a drone. I mean, we're genuinely concerned about what's
up there.
Speaker 7 (10:29):
Rod kind of told me that he had like a
close encounter and he had been diagnosed with cancer and
he said it wasn't looking good. He talked about that
with him at all.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Yeah, sure, because he did have like a tumor and
it was getting progressively worse. He was like, Okay, I'm
not going to treat this, you know, it just is
what it is. He did have a heart attack, was
shipped out to Greeley. He has more than one stint
in his heart. They put another stent in and so
(11:02):
I said, Rod, while you're there, he had had that
droning encounter that he was talking about at that time.
He said, I said, have some check and do you
know that was totally gone. So can I explain that medically?
Speaker 3 (11:17):
No?
Speaker 4 (11:17):
I cannot.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Hearing a nurse's take on Rod's diagnosis added the layer
of authority to his mystifying story. Like Rod, I wanted
to know if Tammy saw the unknown objects communicating with
each other?
Speaker 7 (11:33):
Have you experienced this before?
Speaker 4 (11:36):
Truthfully, not so lunch, because not that just because I
usually get spooped and get the heck out of there.
But like at that ancient site up there, you know,
he can set up and they seem to be you know,
just they'll stay right there for a time that you know,
(11:57):
he can try lights and found and that type of thing.
But he goes there quite often. And there are a
couple older farmers out there that say they've been seeing
that stuff for a number of years.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Since Rod's observations were anything but normal, I've been burning
to ask Tammy how her drone hunting encounters compared to his.
She began telling me about a night in early twenty twenty,
right after the objects first appeared in northwest Kansas.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
So I was sent out down in a draw in
the middle of a field, felt very confident with where
I was at. I was in the car, had the
windows down, and it was getting like nine point thirty
twenty to ten maybe ten, and I thought, Okay, I'm
not going to see enoughing tonight. I'm going on home,
(12:53):
and just about that time, down over the top into
that draw came three triangular, huge about the size of
a vehicle craft, but they did not look like anything
I had ever seen from this planet. I flipped the
lights on the car, and when I did that, it
(13:16):
appeared to startle them, because they started these these all
these kind of flashing lights. And I looked my head
out the window, went to take a picture, and the
stuff out of the one closest to me started coming out.
That was like the fog stuff. I inhaled it. It
was like I couldn't get my breath and burnt my eyes.
(13:38):
I reached down, started the car and took off in
the car up over the top of the thing. They
backed those things up and were started to come after
me as I was coming down the road at a
low like I mean, at a low level. Then I
(13:59):
was headed back for town and then they just zipped off.
Speaker 7 (14:05):
Yeah, with you being a medical professional, did you think
he needed to go to the er and have you know,
have that checked out?
Speaker 4 (14:13):
Or yes, I loved it, Yes you'd go to the R.
I did not go to the R but I felt
like I should have, because what in the blue blazes
was I going to tell him happened? They would have
thought I was nuttiers than alone. Do you know what
I mean? I did not go. Did I feel like
I should have? Yes? Did I come into the house
(14:35):
and take an albu or all breathing treatment, Yes? I did.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Chapter fourteen worked over time. The disconnect between local and
federal officials investigating the sidings only increased if these objects
were in fact breaking laws. The FAA or other agencies
I wasn't even aware of couldn't enforce regulations. The general
(15:11):
consensus seemed to be that we know there's something not
normal flying around up there, but we don't know what
to do about it. We're going to pretend it's not there.
These factors opened the door to conspiracy theories and outside
interpretations of the mystery, including one prominent news outlet publishing
(15:31):
that the encounters I and so many people experienced weren't real.
This viewpoint was built on the idea of mass hysteria.
Since I'd made a commitment to keep an open mind
and look into every angle of this story, it was
important to understand what, if any, facts fueled this perspective.
Speaker 8 (15:52):
My name is Barry Markowsky. My position is Distinguished Professor
Emeritus at Universe City of South Carolina in sociology.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Barry Markowsky has a PhD from Stanford and he's one
of the nation's top experts on mass hysteria. What is
mass hysteria and how does hysteria develop around a particular event?
Speaker 8 (16:18):
So, mass hysteria is it's a temporary phenomenon, it's spontaneous.
It involves spreading false beliefs within some population or group,
and those false beliefs typically lead to irrational thoughts and
(16:39):
irrational behavior, sometimes destructive behaviors. There could be physical manifestations,
people could get sick, or psychosomatic manifestations. And it often
develops around particular events when there's an awareness that other
(16:59):
people are experiencing the same thing or holding the same
beliefs or similar beliefs. That provides a kind of validation
that further reinforces the effect. Putting this into context, I've
watched a lot of UFO videos where you can hear
(17:21):
the people who are taking the video of the UFO.
You can hear them conversing on the audio track, and
they and the people around them are literally negotiating the
meaning of what they're seeing to listen to them, you
would think that this little light in the sky, which
(17:41):
is often all that it is, is the most extraordinary
thing they've ever seen. You're seeing in these or hearing
in these videos, this contagion effect, this amplification effect, happening
in real time. So again it's showing how, even more
than the final domenon itself up in the sky, people
(18:02):
are being influenced in their beliefs by the other people
around them, and they will often end up concluding that
they have seen an extraterrestrial visiting Earth or something really
extraordinary like that.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
If someone saw what they thought was a drone in
the sky and they spoke with a separate group who
saw it and thought it was a plane, would that
person's interpretation of what they saw change.
Speaker 8 (18:29):
So you're more likely to change your belief if you
find that a lot of people around you believe something
that you don't. You're more likely to change your belief
if the people who hold that alternative belief have some
kind of authority or status in your eyes, and you're
(18:49):
more likely to change your belief if they are socially
close to you than if they're socially distant. Another interesting
and related aspect of this is memory. Memory, it turns out,
is a really malleable thing, and even when you've experienced
something and feel that you understood what you saw, it's
(19:15):
possible that the influence of other people, the reinterpretations that
they provide you, cause you to think about what you
experienced in a different way, and your memory of it
can actually change as your brain is filling in gaps
or substituting bits of information.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
I agreed memories could get blurred, but those memories I
documented were tied to strong emotions, and that was key
for me. Regardless of the finer details of an encounter,
people never forgot how the craft made them feel. There
was no doubt in my mind that even though the
(19:55):
sightings were fewer and farther between compared to when the
craft first arrived in late twenty nineteen, many folks in
the region continue to experience a strange phenomenon in the sky.
This unsettling realization kept me thinking about a conversation I'd
had with family friend and aviation expert Bill Bowerley.
Speaker 9 (20:18):
Truthfully, yes, I still think it's it's government. Maybe they're
training for future kinds of threats. This is how we
find that threat. The technology is there. So if they're training,
if this is a training squadron and they come out
here to train, then okay, what are you training for?
That some kind of threat we're trying to stop, maybe
(20:41):
backpacked nuke from coming into the country. Well it got
into the country, maybe a dirty bomb, maybe this how
do we find it. Let's just go put five hours
of fuel on this airplane and just go see where
they land. It may be in the middle of a
isolated pasture somewhere with just a couple of trucks. It
could very well be on a fenced off remote former
(21:05):
ICBM silo that the military still has, because there's a
lot of those that don't have anything in them now.
So if the military was launching them, or somebody utilizing
military facilities, there's a good way to hide yourself.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
It was apparent that I needed to find out if
there was any connection between nuclear missile sites in the
unidentified aircraft coming up on obscure invasion of the drones?
Do you know how many people used to live in here?
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Like at one time four seven.
Speaker 6 (21:43):
From Cheyenne Zeffie Warren.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
When the Air Force was asked, they said, oh, we
don't know nothing.
Speaker 6 (21:51):
Okay, with all the missile sites, they would have known it.
Speaker 10 (21:55):
A couple of them broke off, had stopped over the
police station, and our local FAA said, and we don't
know anything about that. We don't show any scheduled flights.
We don't show anything on a radar, We don't show
anything in the air.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
If you have any information surrounding the events detailed in
this podcast, or have your own similar account, please visit
our website at obscureum series dot com and share your story.
You'll also find exclusive behind the scenes content on the site.
(22:37):
To connect with us on social media, you can follow
at Obscureum, Underscore Series and at Gabe Lenners on all
social platforms. Obscure Them is produced by Imagine and Lenner's
Entertainment for iHeartMedia. This series is written, hosted, and produced
(22:58):
by Me Gabe Blinners. It's executive produced by Ron Howard,
Brian Grazer, Carl Welker, Nathan Kloke, Nicki Etour and Me.
Additional production by Jacob Plu. Music and sound effects courtesy
(23:18):
of Epidemic Sound. Brand management in digital design by Labyrinth Branco,
Video editing by Alex Simmi.
Speaker 7 (23:28):
Kopenko.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
This project was mixed and mastered by Jacob Plu. Special
thanks to Dan Bodansky, Josh Hiller, Keaton Starts, Bryson Keyes,
Ailey Birchfield, David Wasserman, Katrina Norvel in My Family. Obscurum
(23:50):
Invasion of the Drones is available on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite A podcasts.
Follow now,
Last time on Obscureum Invasion of the Drones.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
We track high value aerospace targets so to breakdown into
the business world, but our many focus is to go
after the UAPs better within the news.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Right now, now, big white one looks like it's coming closer.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
They are all over.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
There's another one right directly above me, to my left.
Speaker 5 (00:25):
The most plausible thing I heard, though, was that it
was somebody that was conducting experiments as far as figuring
out whether these things can do perimeter surveillance or missile sites.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
There's actually a report that one of these mysterious crafts landed.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Were there other drones there besides mine? Yeah, without a doubt.
Can I tell you who they were?
Speaker 4 (00:48):
No?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Do you think he's lying?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Despite pushback from the FAA and helping me speak with
special agent called Bumberger of the Law Enforcement Assistance Program,
I figured out how to contact him directly. I never
received a response. I worked at other angles, and one
of those was to look further into what Rod Miller
(01:15):
and his group of backcountry drone hunters were still observing
months after the initial sightings. I'd soon learn that some
of their revelations were much more mysterious than the FAA
is Silence chapter thirteen. Into the Night, Rod became the
(01:47):
go to local everyone shared their unidentified aircraft experiences with
the social media group he was always active in, called
Drone Intelligence Center Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming in all other states
stayed the long term hub for public conversation. However, what
(02:08):
was being talked about in Rod's separate drone hunter's messenger
chat remained a secret. I reconnected with Rod with the
hope that after we'd catch up, he'd add me to
the private thread.
Speaker 6 (02:20):
I use a Geiger counter, which is of course when
I start out as always zero, and then also having
any MF meter. Of course, he didn't show any lights
at all because there's no electrical I mean, there was
nothing out there.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Rod's latest process for studying the craft involved using a
Geiger counter to detect radiation in an EMF meter to
signal electromagnetic fields usually emitted from man made sources such
as wiring. He frequented many areas to follow the objects,
but his self discovered ancient site in northeast Colorado continued
(02:58):
to be a hotbed for activity.
Speaker 6 (03:00):
I know one night there was eleven of the orbs
that left the site the MF meter pegged itself, which
is huge, and the guy encounter was like an off
radiation to So there's that's just two of the things
I check. You know, it's we don't know what. I
don't know what else that throws off.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Rod sent me a couple videos of what he described.
There wasn't a way to verify his exact location when
the clip was taken or what might be just outside
of the video frame.
Speaker 6 (03:33):
I would notice that these orbs would flash lights, and
it's like they're communicated with each other with flashing lights.
So it got to the point where when I was
at my setup, that's what I would do is I
would flash lights in the same patterns that they are
and which would bring him in closer. And then I
(03:53):
have tested different tones, and when I play the sounds
it if it's an upbeat tempo, they will actually the
ORMs flash their lights in beat with the music. I'm
videos to show this. If I use a different tone
that's a real peaceful, mellow tone, the orbit will just
(04:13):
turn really pretty blue color. The whole thing will be blue.
And but if you use a bass tone, they turned red.
They become violent. I mean, they'll come at you real hard.
They act like a living bean. I mean they show curiosity.
(04:33):
They just show different emotions. You know, you can feel it.
One time I was playing the mellow tone that turned
them blue, and I had one come literally right up
in front of me, and then it went back to
the other arms real quick, and then it came up
by me and it was there, literally so close. I
(04:55):
felt like I could reach out. I could actually feel
some kind of a weird energy coming off of it.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Rod spoke with a directness. The things he said didn't
seem possible, but he pulled me into his world in
a way where I found myself rooting for his story
to be true. Was he just grasping for a way
to connect it all? Living an adventure he'd always dreamed of.
Rod was obviously driven by his family's safety and lifelong
(05:25):
obsession with geography and ancient cultures, But the truth was
outside of his battle with critics. Rod then shared that
he was in a battle for something else. Time he'd
been diagnosed with an aggressive type of brain cancer.
Speaker 6 (05:43):
Wasn't long after that close call, ve close experience I
had had. I've had like prive heart attacks my hereditary thing,
and I'd plugged up again. And while I was in
the hospital and they brain tumor that I had was
(06:03):
was still there or you know, but to what degree
or how much longer I had to live because they
had when they diagnosed me with the brain tumor, it
was an attack that you know, there wasn't nothing that
they could do about it. They wanted to treat it,
treat the cancer, but I wouldn't let them because they
basically said it was pretty hopeless and I just don't.
I wanted to die peacefully and not in a hospital.
(06:25):
Smart long story short, the toumur's gone, like missing totally,
like wasn't even there. I have to either tie that
to to God healing me or that close encounter, you know,
with that blue being thing.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
What would you say to skeptics, I.
Speaker 6 (06:47):
Think humans in in in general, any of us, we're
all fear based. I mean, that's that's just that's what
a human being is. We're fear based. Some people, can
you know, there's things that push them past that. You know,
maybe it's concerned, maybe it's just you know, curiosity, there's
(07:09):
certain things. But there's some people that really that just
remain fear based. And those people are the ones that
usually that fear base leads them to denial. And I
mean I've learned that. You know, like when I take
a video, if it's a big ORB, I reference the
moon in their video. I do everything I can because
(07:31):
I know the skeptics are going to be strong. I
know that they're going to say that's not a NORB,
that's the moon. So I reference the moon and then
I show that word, and I try to make it
as clear undeniable proof as I can get.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Proof is a daunting word, which I was continually reminded of,
especially relating to UAPs, UFOs orbs, drones or whistleblowers. I
called the kit Carson County Sheriff's office to see if
there were recent sidings near the general location. Rod described me.
A representative for the sheriff's office stated that things seem quiet. However,
(08:18):
a farming family who lived nearby confirmed strange lights were
still being seen.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
My name is Tammy Fogg, and I've lived in the
area for sixty seven years. I was born here except
when I went to college at k.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
You met at the center of Rod's in her circle
was his sister, Tammy. She's a registered nurse and our
n administrator and Chase's drones with him.
Speaker 7 (08:48):
Rod put me in this messenger group. Are you in
that group too?
Speaker 4 (08:53):
Yeah, it's called drone Hunters. We got real careful on
who we added to that group because we're just there
to share information. We don't aren't necessarily in there for
somebody to come in with big criticism. It's there. You
can express your ideas freely in pictures if you would
like to. And if you needed help, if you were
(09:14):
out drone watching somewhere, you know, and you had a
flat tire or you thought you needed help taking some pictures,
you can put that on there, shoot your location and
so be there in a little bit so because my
brother will go look at some of those remote site
If you had a flat tire out there, or something
(09:37):
spooky happened, you'd be way out there.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
The Drone Hunter messenger chain, which I finally made it into,
was a mix of shaky video posts cell phone photos
of blurry lights in the sky. In commentary on the
sightings and other current events, there was a definite right
leaning slant to the conversations. Sometimes folks were rasping for conclusions. However,
(10:02):
I could tell there was a common goal to see
cancers instead of spreading unvalidated theories.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
We've studied hard on like the starlink systems. We have
flight radar loaded in our phones so that we don't
accidentally pick up an aircraft, you know, and think that
it's a drone. I mean, we're genuinely concerned about what's
up there.
Speaker 7 (10:29):
Rod kind of told me that he had like a
close encounter and he had been diagnosed with cancer and
he said it wasn't looking good. He talked about that
with him at all.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Yeah, sure, because he did have like a tumor and
it was getting progressively worse. He was like, Okay, I'm
not going to treat this, you know, it just is
what it is. He did have a heart attack, was
shipped out to Greeley. He has more than one stint
in his heart. They put another stent in and so
(11:02):
I said, Rod, while you're there, he had had that
droning encounter that he was talking about at that time.
He said, I said, have some check and do you
know that was totally gone. So can I explain that medically?
Speaker 3 (11:17):
No?
Speaker 4 (11:17):
I cannot.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Hearing a nurse's take on Rod's diagnosis added the layer
of authority to his mystifying story. Like Rod, I wanted
to know if Tammy saw the unknown objects communicating with
each other?
Speaker 7 (11:33):
Have you experienced this before?
Speaker 4 (11:36):
Truthfully, not so lunch, because not that just because I
usually get spooped and get the heck out of there.
But like at that ancient site up there, you know,
he can set up and they seem to be you know,
just they'll stay right there for a time that you know,
(11:57):
he can try lights and found and that type of thing.
But he goes there quite often. And there are a
couple older farmers out there that say they've been seeing
that stuff for a number of years.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Since Rod's observations were anything but normal, I've been burning
to ask Tammy how her drone hunting encounters compared to his.
She began telling me about a night in early twenty twenty,
right after the objects first appeared in northwest Kansas.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
So I was sent out down in a draw in
the middle of a field, felt very confident with where
I was at. I was in the car, had the
windows down, and it was getting like nine point thirty
twenty to ten maybe ten, and I thought, Okay, I'm
not going to see enoughing tonight. I'm going on home,
(12:53):
and just about that time, down over the top into
that draw came three triangular, huge about the size of
a vehicle craft, but they did not look like anything
I had ever seen from this planet. I flipped the
lights on the car, and when I did that, it
(13:16):
appeared to startle them, because they started these these all
these kind of flashing lights. And I looked my head
out the window, went to take a picture, and the
stuff out of the one closest to me started coming out.
That was like the fog stuff. I inhaled it. It
was like I couldn't get my breath and burnt my eyes.
(13:38):
I reached down, started the car and took off in
the car up over the top of the thing. They
backed those things up and were started to come after
me as I was coming down the road at a
low like I mean, at a low level. Then I
(13:59):
was headed back for town and then they just zipped off.
Speaker 7 (14:05):
Yeah, with you being a medical professional, did you think
he needed to go to the er and have you know,
have that checked out?
Speaker 4 (14:13):
Or yes, I loved it, Yes you'd go to the R.
I did not go to the R but I felt
like I should have, because what in the blue blazes
was I going to tell him happened? They would have
thought I was nuttiers than alone. Do you know what
I mean? I did not go. Did I feel like
I should have? Yes? Did I come into the house
(14:35):
and take an albu or all breathing treatment, Yes? I did.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Chapter fourteen worked over time. The disconnect between local and
federal officials investigating the sidings only increased if these objects
were in fact breaking laws. The FAA or other agencies
I wasn't even aware of couldn't enforce regulations. The general
(15:11):
consensus seemed to be that we know there's something not
normal flying around up there, but we don't know what
to do about it. We're going to pretend it's not there.
These factors opened the door to conspiracy theories and outside
interpretations of the mystery, including one prominent news outlet publishing
(15:31):
that the encounters I and so many people experienced weren't real.
This viewpoint was built on the idea of mass hysteria.
Since I'd made a commitment to keep an open mind
and look into every angle of this story, it was
important to understand what, if any, facts fueled this perspective.
Speaker 8 (15:52):
My name is Barry Markowsky. My position is Distinguished Professor
Emeritus at Universe City of South Carolina in sociology.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Barry Markowsky has a PhD from Stanford and he's one
of the nation's top experts on mass hysteria. What is
mass hysteria and how does hysteria develop around a particular event?
Speaker 8 (16:18):
So, mass hysteria is it's a temporary phenomenon, it's spontaneous.
It involves spreading false beliefs within some population or group,
and those false beliefs typically lead to irrational thoughts and
(16:39):
irrational behavior, sometimes destructive behaviors. There could be physical manifestations,
people could get sick, or psychosomatic manifestations. And it often
develops around particular events when there's an awareness that other
(16:59):
people are experiencing the same thing or holding the same
beliefs or similar beliefs. That provides a kind of validation
that further reinforces the effect. Putting this into context, I've
watched a lot of UFO videos where you can hear
(17:21):
the people who are taking the video of the UFO.
You can hear them conversing on the audio track, and
they and the people around them are literally negotiating the
meaning of what they're seeing to listen to them, you
would think that this little light in the sky, which
(17:41):
is often all that it is, is the most extraordinary
thing they've ever seen. You're seeing in these or hearing
in these videos, this contagion effect, this amplification effect, happening
in real time. So again it's showing how, even more
than the final domenon itself up in the sky, people
(18:02):
are being influenced in their beliefs by the other people
around them, and they will often end up concluding that
they have seen an extraterrestrial visiting Earth or something really
extraordinary like that.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
If someone saw what they thought was a drone in
the sky and they spoke with a separate group who
saw it and thought it was a plane, would that
person's interpretation of what they saw change.
Speaker 8 (18:29):
So you're more likely to change your belief if you
find that a lot of people around you believe something
that you don't. You're more likely to change your belief
if the people who hold that alternative belief have some
kind of authority or status in your eyes, and you're
(18:49):
more likely to change your belief if they are socially
close to you than if they're socially distant. Another interesting
and related aspect of this is memory. Memory, it turns out,
is a really malleable thing, and even when you've experienced
something and feel that you understood what you saw, it's
(19:15):
possible that the influence of other people, the reinterpretations that
they provide you, cause you to think about what you
experienced in a different way, and your memory of it
can actually change as your brain is filling in gaps
or substituting bits of information.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
I agreed memories could get blurred, but those memories I
documented were tied to strong emotions, and that was key
for me. Regardless of the finer details of an encounter,
people never forgot how the craft made them feel. There
was no doubt in my mind that even though the
(19:55):
sightings were fewer and farther between compared to when the
craft first arrived in late twenty nineteen, many folks in
the region continue to experience a strange phenomenon in the sky.
This unsettling realization kept me thinking about a conversation I'd
had with family friend and aviation expert Bill Bowerley.
Speaker 9 (20:18):
Truthfully, yes, I still think it's it's government. Maybe they're
training for future kinds of threats. This is how we
find that threat. The technology is there. So if they're training,
if this is a training squadron and they come out
here to train, then okay, what are you training for?
That some kind of threat we're trying to stop, maybe
(20:41):
backpacked nuke from coming into the country. Well it got
into the country, maybe a dirty bomb, maybe this how
do we find it. Let's just go put five hours
of fuel on this airplane and just go see where
they land. It may be in the middle of a
isolated pasture somewhere with just a couple of trucks. It
could very well be on a fenced off remote former
(21:05):
ICBM silo that the military still has, because there's a
lot of those that don't have anything in them now.
So if the military was launching them, or somebody utilizing
military facilities, there's a good way to hide yourself.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
It was apparent that I needed to find out if
there was any connection between nuclear missile sites in the
unidentified aircraft coming up on obscure invasion of the drones?
Do you know how many people used to live in here?
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Like at one time four seven.
Speaker 6 (21:43):
From Cheyenne Zeffie Warren.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
When the Air Force was asked, they said, oh, we
don't know nothing.
Speaker 6 (21:51):
Okay, with all the missile sites, they would have known it.
Speaker 10 (21:55):
A couple of them broke off, had stopped over the
police station, and our local FAA said, and we don't
know anything about that. We don't show any scheduled flights.
We don't show anything on a radar, We don't show
anything in the air.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
If you have any information surrounding the events detailed in
this podcast, or have your own similar account, please visit
our website at obscureum series dot com and share your story.
You'll also find exclusive behind the scenes content on the site.
(22:37):
To connect with us on social media, you can follow
at Obscureum, Underscore Series and at Gabe Lenners on all
social platforms. Obscure Them is produced by Imagine and Lenner's
Entertainment for iHeartMedia. This series is written, hosted, and produced
(22:58):
by Me Gabe Blinners. It's executive produced by Ron Howard,
Brian Grazer, Carl Welker, Nathan Kloke, Nicki Etour and Me.
Additional production by Jacob Plu. Music and sound effects courtesy
(23:18):
of Epidemic Sound. Brand management in digital design by Labyrinth Branco,
Video editing by Alex Simmi.
Speaker 7 (23:28):
Kopenko.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
This project was mixed and mastered by Jacob Plu. Special
thanks to Dan Bodansky, Josh Hiller, Keaton Starts, Bryson Keyes,
Ailey Birchfield, David Wasserman, Katrina Norvel in My Family. Obscurum
(23:50):
Invasion of the Drones is available on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite A podcasts.
Follow now,
Host
Gabe Lenners
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