The Void

Last time on OBSCURUM: Invasion of the Drones.

We track high value aerospace targets is how would break down into the business world. But our main focus is to go after the UAPs that are within the news.

Right now, now, big white one looks like it's coming closer.

They are all over.

There's another one right directly above me, to my left.

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.

There's actually a report that one of these mysterious crafts landed.

You have to get down to the basics, and that is that there were drones in the sky that weren't mine.

Do you think he's lying? 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 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's silence chapter thirteen. Into the Night, Rod became the go to local. Everyone shared their unidentified aircraft experiences with the social media group he was always active in, called Drone Intelligence Center Colorado, Rasca, Wyoming in all other states stayed the long term hub for public conversation. However, what 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.

I use a Geiger counter, which is of course when I start out as always zero, and then also having any MF meter doesn't show any lights at all because there's no electric I mean, there was nothing out there.

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 to be a hotbed for activity.

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 too. 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.

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.

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 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, or it will just turn really pretty blue color. The whole thing will be blue. And if you use a base 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. They just show different emotions. You know, you can feel it. One time I was playing the mellow tone that turns 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 felt like I could reach out. I could actually feel some kind of a weird energy coming off of it.

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 in an adventure he'd always dreamed of. Rod was obviously driven by his family's safety and lifelong 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.

It wasn't long after that close school, that close experience I had had. I've had like five 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 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. Mart Long story short, the tumor'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 bean thing.

What would you say to skeptics, I.

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 certain things. But there's some people that real 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 the video. I do everything I can because I know the skeptics are going to be strong. I know that they're going to say, that's the learn 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.

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, a farming family who lived nearby confirms strange lights were still being seen.

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 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.

Rod put me in this messenger group. Are you in that group too.

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 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 somebody be there in a little bit. So because my brother will go look at some of those remote sites. If you had a flat tire out there, or something spooky happened, you'd be way out there.

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 asping for conclusions. However, I could tell there was a common goal to see cancers instead of spreading unvalidated theories.

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.

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.

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 art. They put another stent in and so I said, Rod, while you're there, he had had that drone encounter that he was talking about at that time. He said, I said, I have some check and do you know that was totally gone. So can I explain that medically?

No?

I cannot.

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.

Have you experienced this before?

Truthfully, not so much, 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, he can try lights and sounds in 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.

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.

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 nothing tonight. I'm going on home, 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 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. 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 was headed back for town and then they just zipped off.

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?

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 and take an albuteroral breathing treatment? Yes? I did.

Chapter fourteen worked over time. The disconnect between local and federal officials investigating the sightings 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 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 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.

My name is Barry Markowsky. My position is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Universe of South Carolina in sociology.

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?

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 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 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 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 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 com on itself up in the sky, people 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.

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.

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 more likely to change your belief if they are socially close to you than if they're socially distant. Another interesting and relate 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 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.

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 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.

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? Some kind of threat we're trying to stop maybe 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 pastor somewhere with just a couple of trucks. It could very well be on a fenced off remote former 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.

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? Like at one time?

Four seven from Cheyenne, z Effie Warren.

When the Air Force was asked, they said, oh, we don't know nothing. Okay, with all the missile sites, they would have known.

A couple of them broke off and 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 our radar, We don't show anything in the air. If you have any information surrounding the events detailed in this podcast, or have your own similar account, please visit our website at obscurumseries.com and share your story. You'll also find exclusive behind the scenes content on the site. To connect with us on social media, you can follow @obscurum_series and @gabelenners on all social platforms. OBSCURUM is produced by Imagine Entertainment and Lenners Entertainment for iHeartMedia. The series is written, hosted, and produced by Me Gabe Lenners. It's executive produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Carl Welker, Nathan Kloke, Nicki Etour and Me. Additional production by Jacob Plough. Music and sound effects courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Brand management and digital design by Labyrinth Brand Co. Video editing by Alex Semikopenko. This project was mixed and mastered by Jacob Plough. Special thanks to Dan Bodansky, Josh Hiller, Keeton Storts, Bryson Keyes, Ailie Birchfield, David Wasserman, Katrina Norvell and my family. OBSCURUM: Invasion of the Drones is available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Follow now.