By Tim Binnall
Weird history stories, wild gambling tales, and the claims of alien contactee Billy Meier were among the fascinating topics explored this past week on Coast to Coast AM. And, here at the C2C website, we told you about strange UFOs seen over Montana, Canada, and Croatia, psychics behaving badly, and a forthcoming reality show featuring Flat Earthers. Check out our round-up of highlights from the past week ... In Coast You Missed It.
The case of alleged alien contactee Billy Meier was revisited on Wednesday night's program by documentary filmmaker Brit Elders, who shared insights into the Swiss farmer's famous claims. While many have dismissed his account as a hoax, she noted that his photos of the purported ET craft were examined by some scientists and seemingly confirmed to be genuine. Elders also talked about how an audio recording of a sound that purportedly came from a UFO had left experts mystified as they could not figure out how to replicate the eerie noise. During her appearance, she also talked about other UFO cases that she has investigated, including flotillas of odd objects seen over Mexico City and a Dutch engineer who claimed to have accidentally killed an alien with his yacht.
Suggesting that this may truly be the golden age of television, it was announced this past week that a new online streaming service is creating a reality show wherein Flat Earthers are challenged to convince a panel of experts that the controversial conspiracy theory is correct. Produced by the ad-supported platform The Network, the program will chronicle the lives of five families who believe that the planet is not round and, amazingly, they will be provided $50,000 in resources to prove it. At the culmination of the show, titled Flat Earthers, each group will make their case to a panel consisting of a scientist, a theologian, and a cartographer in the hopes of swaying their opinion and taking home a cash prize.
Weird history took center stage on Tuesday night's program as author Marc Hartzman shared a variety of stories involving strange incidents and people who left their mark on the world. One such individual that he profiled was Illinois school principal Wilbur Glenn Voliva, who was an ardent Flat Earth believer back in 1921 and lectured thousands of students about the controversial conspiracy theory. Another curious character detailed by Hartzman was UFO contactee Gabriel Green, who ran for president in 1960 against Nixon and Kennedy. Other tales recounted during the evening were the "Great Moon Hoax" of 1835 and 1930s-era sideshow star the 'Rubber Skin Lady.'
This past week saw multiple intriguing instances of odd UFOs caught on film. First, in Montana, a witness with a military-grade night vision camera captured a curious cylindrical object cruising through the sky. Then, a Canadian couple filmed an odd cluster of fiery UFOs that appeared over a river in the province of Manitoba. Later in the week, an individual in the Croatian city of Rijeka spotted a particularly puzzling anomaly that appeared to be a blue triangular-shaped craft. Remarkably, the strange UFO was also picked up by a trio of timelapse webcams watching over the community, though the additional perspectives only made the object all the more mystifying.
The remarkable life of gambler Billy Walters was in the spotlight on Sunday night's show as he recalled colorful and astounding stories from his career as a legendary high roller. One wild account, from the 1980s, saw him purchase a roulette to study it and then use a computer program to identify certain spots that would be particularly favorable to a player. Armed with that knowledge, he subsequently won a whopping $3.8 million in just a few days. Walters also talked about developing a system for sports betting that proved to be so successful that he eventually ran afoul of the mob, who wanted a cut of his profits, which caused him and his wife to promptly leave Las Vegas.
Self-proclaimed psychics behaving badly made the news this past week by way of two unfortunate stories. In the first troubling tale, a Canadian woman revealed that she was duped into giving a staggering $46,000 to a fortune teller who claimed that evil spirits had attached themselves to her, but these sinister entities could 'fortunately' be removed provided she forked over a hefty fee. Even more unsettling was an incident in Florida where a psychic mysteriously showed up at the home of a woman and offered her a reading. While she passed on the odd offer, her mother-in-law took the clairvoyant up on the opportunity, which led to the family being robbed at gunpoint once they had let their guard down.
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