Cops and UFOs / High Strangeness

About the show

In the first half, retired Arizona police officers Marianne Robb and Dave Rich shed light on a lesser-known aspect of their profession: investigating UFOs. The two became interested in the work after their involvement with MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) and created their organization, UAP-PD, to help law enforcement process UFO and UAP reports. They seek to reduce the stigma surrounding UAP sightings within law enforcement, as officers often face ridicule or have their credibility questioned when they report such cases or are witnesses themselves. There is an absence of formal protocols for handling UFO sightings within law enforcement, Rich noted, and "what we're trying to do is... help establish some sort of rules" for reporting and investigating these sightings.

The two spoke about how, on the Navajo Indian reservation, police officers are more open to paranormal reports (such as anomalous aerial objects, little people, Skinwalkers, and ghosts) as these concepts are accepted in their culture. Robb detailed a 1975 incident centered in Lumberton, North Carolina that involved 27 officers across 11 cities who chased a triangular craft. Rich recalled a 1978 case in Nova Scotia in which a Canadian Mountie named Blackwood and multiple other witnesses watched a cylindrical craft hovering above water with lights that mimicked Blackwood's car headlights when he turned them on and off. Rich found that detail highly significant "because as a trained investigator, we're looking for those things that show some sort of intelligence behind it," which reveals it's not just a fluke or a natural phenomenon like ball lightning. George and the guests also discussed the 2023 Las Vegas case in which police investigated an alleged alien encounter in a family's backyard.

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High strangeness denotes happenings so uncanny they are deemed "utterly absurd" and often involve the intersection of multiple paranormal phenomena. In the latter half, paranormal researcher Matt Vaughn, who has been exploring high weirdness since childhood, offered a guide through this complex landscape, as he encouraged people to embrace the vastness of the unknown. He talked about his path of studying magic and the occult as a kind of spiritual technology to raise one's consciousness, and as a way to frame events of high strangeness. On the topic of distinguishing between genuine paranormal experiences and a mental health issue, he remarked, "Usually, when someone is having a paranormal experience, they're going to have a mental health disturbance. I mean, if you are taken aboard, say, a spaceship, that's going to be pretty stressful."

Vaughn pointed out the challenges of integrating high strangeness into scientific discourse, noting that the phenomena seem "purposely designed to defy science and defy any kind of logic." He referenced J. Allen Hynek's evolution from UFO skeptic to believer, explaining that he had a classification system for encounters. For instance, "if you see lights in the sky and your car battery dies, that's two factors of strange. You see a Bigfoot running across the road at the exact time. That's three factors of strange," Vaughn said, adding that he believes that, in a sense, the more levels of strangeness, the more credible the case becomes. He also touched on the work of several people that he found to be highly influential in this field-- Robert Anton Wilson, Aleister Crowley, and Colin Wilson.