I’ve always looked up…
I've always looked up.
Deep down inside the supplemental addendum to Intelligence Authorization Act for 2023 fiscal year, are a few startling Government statements regarding UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon), and well actually, more. If you don’t know by now, UAP is the term the United States has used in recent years as a replacement for UFO.
The first claim in the bill re-categorizes UAP with a broader and more accurate description. UAP are now referred to as “cross-domain trans-medium threats” by the United States Government because of the ability of some unexplained vehicular phenomenon being able to travel through sea, air and space. The Government added that these cross-domain trans-medium threats in the U.S. are “expanding exponentially.” This phenomenon even got an updated acronym: Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena (UAUP). The second even more extraordinary point given in the bill states the U.S. government wants to distinguish between craft that are human in origin and those that are not. Yep. That’s right, this Summer, the United States Government admitted that UFOs are real and that some are possibly non-human in origin. The specific language reads:
“Temporary non-attributed objects, or those that are positively identified as man-made after analysis, will be passed to appropriate offices and should not be considered under the definition as unidentified aerospace-undersea phenomena.”
That’s a technical, bureaucratic way of saying that Congress, and thus the U.S. Government believes that some UFOs are real in the traditional sense of the way the term has been framed and the way the public has thought about it for almost 80 years.
In June of 2021, in a Facebook post I suggested that we’d be receiving some form of this reporting from the Pentagon. I suggested that it would strategically ambiguous but will also provide a compelling perspective that otherworldly or interdimensional vehicles have been and are presently active in Earth's skies and oceans. Well. Here it is. Buried in a defense bill addendum.
My deep interest in space and wonder has been with me since childhood. Watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos and reading the book as an elementary school kid, inspired a robust curiosity. My mother even lied about my age to get me into space/astronomy classes at the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park back in the early 80s. Shaking George Lucas' hand at a San Francisco premiere of Return of the Jedi in 1983 was a catalyzing moment of my early life.
As adolescence turned to teen age, my space and science interests took a backseat to socializing, rock-n-roll and other behaviors aimed at winning peer approval and acceptance. After all, being an overt science/space nerd in high school ain't exactly the ticket to coolness, particularly for an orphan boy trying to navigate teen life while straddled between a poverty-stricken working-class existence and affluence all around him.
That said, I still secretly imbibed books and media that covered the fringe edges of science and mysticism, including topics considered paranormal or even supernatural. I left Catholicism early in High School. Organized religion was not to be for me. I was ripe to explore all kinds of ideas. I read a copy of Whitley Strieber’s seminal alien abduction account Communion around the same time I chose to not go through Confirmation in the Catholic Church. Along with thoughts of aliens, also came a fascination with cryptids. Cryptids are animals that are claimed to exist but have never been proven to exist. Yes, we’re talking Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, etc. To lend credence to these daydreaming dalliances of the time, I’m pretty sure the first song I ever wrote at age 15 was called Mokele-Mbembe – A Grateful Dead-sounding sonata about a village boy who encounters the legendary sauropod who’s said to slink around the deep, dark jungles of the Congo River basin in the modern age (I likely also watched the 1985 movie Baby about the same topic). Very few people knew about these interests of mine then. Later in High School, an older hippie co-worker at the Corner Market in Nashville introduced me to the writings of John M. Allegro. Some of Allegro’s more noted works included The Dead Sea Scrolls & The Christian Myth and The Sacred Mushroom &The Cross. Mix that with seeing Timothy Leary and Abbie Hoffman speak at Vanderbilt, some teenage psychotropic experimentation and why yes, of course then… I was “ripe to explore all kinds of ideas.”
To this day, I'm still kicking myself for choosing the Mongoose BMX bike over Space Camp that one summer between 7th and 8th grade. Oh, the gut-punch, nostalgic melancholia of pondering the possibilities lost from a life path unchosen.
In college, while studying Psychology, my interest in science, space and unexplained phenomena resurfaced with a vigor and with less guardedness. My interest was high, but I did develop a more skeptical and science-minded discernment regarding these topics. The 90’s was the era of the X-Files and Bob Lazar coming forward. By now, I was firmly a hybrid between Mulder and Scully. Part naïve dreamer and part cynical clinician. The science needed to lead on these topics. Anecdotes and shaky “evidence” were not enough. I wanted proof. I wanted things to be sensible. I needed for stories to line up. While in college in 1994, the alleged Ariel School UFO encounter in Zimbabwe occurred. Over 50 students between the ages of 6 and 12 apparently had an interaction with a UFO and its occupants during a recess from class. Some claimed that this was a case of mass hysteria. Famed Harvard Psychiatrist John Mack went to Africa to interview the children shortly after the incident. The accounts told and drawings made by the children are incredible if not unnerving. Earlier this summer, filmmaker Randall Nickerson released a feature-length documentary about the Ariel School encounter called Ariel Phenomenon (watch.arielphenomenon.com). It’s compelling and convincing. I recommend you watch it. I was fortunate to meet Randall and hang with him a bit this past June at the scientifically focused SCU (Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies) conference on UAP phenomena in Huntsville, AL. There will be more on my experience at that SCU conference in a future, dedicated piece.
Right after college, I came back to Nashville and hoped to pursue a career in music. In that time, my interest in the phenomenon was still prevalent. In 1997, I penned a song for my band at the time Kombucha called Voltaire Over Coffee. The opening verse captured both my interest and skepticism regarding the topic:
“Some have said we’ve had many visitors from the stars, but on this premise I must disagree. ‘Cause the Greys pass us by, in their starched white-collared shirts like we’re some universal, ghetto pedigree.”
During that time as well, Strieber’s follow-up to Communion was released in 1998. The title? Coincidentally was Confirmation. I still have my copy nearly a quarter century later. The Catholic terminology was not lost on me. I generally believe that ascribing meaning to things is mostly a human defensive construct and that seeing signs is more a product of the Baader-Meinhof psychological phenomenon (also called the “frequency illusion”) than something supernatural. Humans often process stimuli in a symbolic manner. Our species may be unique on Earth in this regard. We look for patterns. We look for meaning in occurrences. It provides us hope and comfort. It helps us feel that we are not alone. Maybe we’re not alone. Spiritually, Physically, or even Inter-Dimensionally. While I’m a skeptic, I’ve had my own visceral experiences over the years. Possibly, related to all three of those realms. For that, I remain open-minded to all possibilities.
By the late 90’s, I had cut my hair and gotten my first real professional job. That led to an era where I was headlong into starting companies, trying to build my professional reputation, and developing my business network. Until recently, talking about UFOs was taboo in the corporate world and mainstream culture. From the late 90’s through the early 10’s, I mostly kept my interest in the topic close to my hip. But in 2011, that would change…
Since 2011, I've personally had 6 experiences with what was to me…unexplained aerial phenomena. All of which are possibly explainable as earthly or human-induced phenomena. The two that were the most curious and awe-inspiring, however, I experienced with other witnesses. Here are some quick descriptions of each occurrence.
April 14th, 2011 : Going north on I-65 near Cool Springs, TN. Here’s the text of the post I made on Facebook the day it happened. “I saw a UFO this morning. For real. As in ‘Unidentified Flying Object.’ I was driving up I-65 and near the Cool Springs exit at about 9:29am. There was a commercial jet making a landing approach to BNA. Very near it and seemingly to the north of it was a bright silvery-white ball of light. Within about 2-3 seconds, that ball of light “shrank” and disappeared on center. I’d love to know if any of the passengers on the left side of that plane saw anything. Could have been an optical illusion. Don’t know, but it was very strange.”
August 18th 2018 : This one occurred high above Whites Creek TN on a clear, late summer night at a music/camping festival. What I experienced was similar to what I witnessed in April 2011, except this time, it was at night. This was witnessed alongside Chris Long (Natchez Tracers’ – my band’s - prior full time drummer) for several minutes. It was a high altitude, white, circular light that would be in one position and then "disappear or implode on itself" rapidly and reappear immediately nearby in a new position. It wasn't a firefly, drone, airplane or anything else low atmospheric. It wasn’t the Space Station, an Iridium Satellite or any other kind of satellite. It was unexplainable. Again, it was up very high in the sky.
November 24th, 2018 : This experience happened at late dusk near the Mack Hatcher and Lewisburg Pike intersection in Franklin TN. This was likely a drone or RC plane covered in LED lights. I suppose. I mean, what else could it have been? But it was large and moved silently. I've researched what this might have been. There didn't seem to be any commercial product available at the time that matches what I saw and still doesn’t to this day. Again, it was probably a custom aircraft or drone of some kind. But it was so strange. It almost looked like a large v-shaped craft that resembled a bird of prey. I wish I was able to get an answer on this. The video I captured is attached below. Take a look.
Mid-October 2019 : My wife and I were at Deerwood Arboretum in Brentwood. It was a sunny, Sunday afternoon. We were laying on a blanket relaxing. We witnessed two small white dots at high altitude "dancing" with one another. Darting together back and forth across a wide berth of the sky above us. There was a decent amount of traditional aircraft traffic around as well that day (for reference). These two dancing white lights/dots seemed to be maybe trans-atmospheric. They seemed very high altitude like what I saw at the Whites Creek event. So high that my wife said she could only see one of them clearly (her eyesight isn’t as good as mine). You know how a half moon looks during the day? These kind of looked like that but a lot smaller. This lasted for a minute or two before they darted off/disappeared to the horizon.
June 8th 2021 : We were in downtown Savannah, GA. My wife and I were relaxing on a hotel, roof-top pool. It was getting close to dusk. There was traditional, recognizable aircraft traffic in the sky. I witnessed a medium-to-high altitude cylindrical, whitish and semi-transparent object moving in what seemed to be a controlled manner moving across the sky in a straight line from left to right. It also almost looked gelatinous. Like the way a jellyfish looks. It was moving at a brisk pace. Faster than the way wind currents could carry a balloon or debris. I watched it for 20-30 seconds. I guess it could have been a weather balloon or something, but it really didn’t seem like it.
Mid-January 2022 : I was talking an exercise walk near my home in the busy Nipper’s Corner area of Nashville. It was dusk and almost black in the sky. Rush hour road traffic was heavy. From the sidewalk, I looked up a the clear, crisp winter sky and saw three, equidistant white static lights moving together in the form of a triangle coming from the west above me but a little north of my position on Old Hickory Blvd. None of the lights were flashing. I thought at first this was a small plane perhaps. But as it banked slightly to the left, I noticed there were no FAA lights (no green, no red) and no approach lights blinking or strobing. The lights remained in a static triangular position. While due to the light conditions, I couldn’t see the shape of vehicle, but inference is that it was triangular shaped. I have no real way of knowing it actual altitude or size, but if I were to estimate, I’d say it was probably around 1,500-2,000 feet up and maybe the size of a small aircraft. It’s hard to describe but it was moving “slow-fast”. When you see airplanes at low altitude they often appear to be moving slow. Almost slower than what they would require to stay aloft. This was moving a little faster than that. The bank it made as it turned northward was more like a horizontal axis turn versus a true airplane banking turn. It then proceeded in a brisk straight line north-eastward over and beyond the trees north of Nippers Corner. I also heard no noise coming from this airborne vehicle. But it should be noted, the street traffic around was fairly loud that evening as it was late rush hour. To me, what I saw, was a classic black triangle UFO with three white lights in the corners which has been reported and photographed numerous times for decades.
From my Facebook post on June 24th, 2021 I suggested that for a variety of reasons, I don't believe that the United States Government is going to offer an outright public confession and disclosure of what humanity is experiencing. Rather, over the coming years, I think there will be more and more evidence, science and data that will gradually let our species understand that we are not alone in this cosmic existence. It will be drawn-out and through that slow trickle, we will be allowed to absorb this reality with psychological and spiritual safety intact. So yes, our Government releasing a thinly-veiled confession of non man-made craft operating in our seas, sky and space buried deep in a spending bill addendum is shocking but also exactly a type of method of slow trickle disclosure to expect as I described last year. And along with that trickle will also come push-back from the very same Government we hope will be forthright with the American public and humanity at large. For instance, just last week, the deputy director of the Navy’s FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) office Gregory Cason denied watchdog group The Black Vault’s FOIA request for the release of the Navy’s UAP videos and photos. The official statement was “The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities. (Therefore) No portions of the videos can be segregated for release.”
The national security angle is how Congress has been able to legitimize the topic of UAP/UAUP and bring forth legislation to hold our military and defense to account regarding their knowledge and held documentation of the phenomenon. There is a legitimate concern regarding defense and the military has bona fide reasons for wanting certain domain advantages to be maintained. However, the question of “are we alone in the universe?” is arguably humanity’s biggest question. How much secrecy is truly justified then. Treating the UAP/UAUP phenomenon as a potential national defense issue appears to be the only path our official government structure can take to help answer this question.
Because for all our ingenuity, creativity and technical progression, we’re still often still a petty, paranoid and violent species. And while this may be the biggest question of humanity’s existence, people will still have jobs to do daily, bills to pay and shows to binge watch. Maybe slow trickle disclosure is the logical and safest way to bring the answer forward. No big deal, right?
In the interim, I suggest you look up a little more often. If you do, I guarantee you’ll see some pretty interesting stuff. Afterall, the truth is out there…