Episode 154

August 14. 2020

In the second part of this series, I continue to examine a strange pattern of unsolved missing persons cases and mysterious deaths, concentrated in the national parks of North America.

After receiving a wealth of theories from last week’s listeners, I look into some of the suspects associated with these strange events. Join me in this episode, as I investigate a lead, interview witnesses and experts, then stumble onto the trail of a coverup – one that seems to conceal an even more sinister truth. Coverups, conspiracies and much, much more await in this week’s show.

As usual, you can download the episode or stream it below. An extended cut is available on Patreon, and the episode is available for playback on Spotify.

CASE NOTES

A few episodes ago, with encouragement from some of our members, I started running case notes alongside each episode. These include additional information, links to relevant articles, downloadable documents, interviews, my thoughts on the research process and a whole lot more. Scroll down to dive into the case notes for Episode 154.

Strange men in unusual circumstances…

This episode focussed on a lot of human sources – and I don’t have a whole load of case notes for you because I spent most of the week conducting interviews with them. Since then, though, I’ve done a little research of my own. Specifically, I’ve been looking for a family into which to place our Man in Plaid; and during that time, I’ve run into numerous stories in which other questionable men show up at the scene of strange occurrences.

Everyone knows about the Men in Black: men who, it is claimed, often show up after people see unusual things in the sky, interview people about their experiences and sometimes threaten witnesses. If you want to read up on that – and all the occult weirdness attached – then the best resource for data is probably Nick Redfern’s book, Real Men in Black: Evidence, Famous Cases, and True Stories of These Mysterious Men and Their Connection to the UFO Phenomena. Investigative journalist, John Keel is responsible, perhaps, for their popularity in the media today, and for anyone wanting a deep dive, I recommend his seminal exploration of the strange, The Mothman Prophecies. His is a story that I’d like to cover some day on this show. At any rate, make of this folklore what you will, but to my mind, there’s some correlation between these stories, and the thought that a man wearing plaid turns up to intimidate people see weird creatures; a man who threatens witnesses, encouraging them to keep quiet about their traumatic experiences.

But we should not jump the gun here. Given everything I learned in this episode, the man in question seems more corporeal than the otherworldly spooks described by both Redfern and Keel. Perhaps this is a side note, but when I started to explore the concept of government contractors being used to gaslight witnesses who’ve seen things they should never have seen, I came across a fascinating book by investigative author, Robert Guffey. In his Chameleo, he examines the plight of Dion, a heroine addict who was gang-stalked by military contractors after being wrongly implicated in the theft of experimental technology from a base being run by US Naval Intelligence. Or that’s how it starts. But the more you dig in, the weirder it gets; and the weirder it gets, the more questions it raises about the tactics employed by unregulated elements in our national security agencies, alongside the sinister methods used by their secretive, private sector contractors. I won’t spoil the book, as it’s a fantastic read, but it did make me wonder about Wes’s comments, and Claire’s, in this episode. After all, if these things are going on in the other parts of American life, instigated by Navy and by Homeland Security – why not also by the Department of the Interior in the National Parks Service, which we already know to be one of the least transparent institutions active in the USA.

Previous episodes this series: Episode 153 | Next up: Episode 155