211: The X-Files with Rob Kristoffersen

00:02:26:24 – 00:02:57:24
Dan LeFebvre
We’ll get into some of the specifics of The X-Files and UFO’s here in a bit. But before we do that, just take a step back. Look at The X-Files overall. How do you think it’s impacted the general public’s knowledge about the UFO phenomena?

00:02:58:15 – 00:03:45:06
Rob Kristoffersen
I think what it’s done and what it’s done really well is take in the UFO paranoia that was really prevalent in the 1980s and kind of projected it into a wider audience. So when we roll into the eighties, when you take a look back at eighties ufology, it is it’s not looked at as a high watermark for UFO study in general because, you know, later in the decade it was revealed that there were elements of disinformation introduced into the community through a guy named Richard Doty, who was the primary kind of like the antagonist of eighties ufology.

00:03:45:07 – 00:04:11:26
Rob Kristoffersen
He was a member of the Air Force office of Special Investigations, and he said he had been given this kind of special assignment to there was a guy named Paul Benowitz who lived like right across the street from Kirtland Air Force Base. And he had he had had this interest in UFOs. He was big into cattle mutilations and that kind of stuff.

00:04:11:26 – 00:04:35:12
Rob Kristoffersen
And he started noticing these lights over Kirtland Air Force Base, and he believed that it was aliens and that there were alien battles happening on Kirtland Air Force Base. So Richard Doty is given this assignment that they’re not going to tell him. No, that’s not what’s going on. They’re going to kind of fuel the paranoia for him and make him seem like, yes, there is an alien battle going on here.

00:04:35:21 – 00:05:06:00
Rob Kristoffersen
But what they’re ultimate goal was, is to draw his attention away from Kirtland because they did have some secret technology that they were testing. So they shift his focus to Dale, say, base, it’s in New Mexico. It’s kind of taken on this this law of being a place where an underground alien base is because they literally dress that place up to make it seem like there’s an underground alien base out there.

00:05:06:10 – 00:05:31:07
Rob Kristoffersen
So Richard Doty kind of gets he gets on Paul Benowitz here and he kind of shifts things around. But what he also does is he hooks up with a guy of UFO researcher named Bill Moore, and they agree to kind of introduce a lot of disinformation into the UFO community in exchange, he was going to give Bill more actual real information.

00:05:31:29 – 00:06:00:27
Rob Kristoffersen
And in 1989 at the Soufan Symposium is in Las Vegas, he comes out and he gives this I think it was like an hour long thing this hour long presentation about how the role that he played in all of this and what Richard Doty did and all of that. And it kind of casts this shadow on the UFO topic for those that were studying in the community.

00:06:00:27 – 00:06:26:02
Rob Kristoffersen
Bill Moore, he never researched it ever again. He was kind of a laughingstock after that. So when we look at Eighties Ufology on top of that, the eighties is when Roswell comes into prominence, it starts to gather this big reputation. And then it culminates in 1989 when there is an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, a segment dedicated to Roswell.

00:06:26:02 – 00:07:00:09
Rob Kristoffersen
And it becomes so popular that a few months later, I think they aired it in like November of 89. A few months later, in January 1990, they re-air it and it has more viewers. So we have that. We have alien abductions becoming very more prominent, especially around 1987. You start to see them appear more in pop culture. So in reality, you know, X-Files is based on all of these things.

00:07:00:09 – 00:07:30:21
Rob Kristoffersen
And what it did really well is just kind of push that narrative out into a wider public to the point where like it did affect a lot of people that were really interested in the subject. And it kind of became the de facto face of what, UFO research and UFOs, you know, what the interest in the topic actually looked like to the point where, you know, people are talking like alien abductions became a mainstream thing.

00:07:30:28 – 00:07:56:13
Rob Kristoffersen
And before that, alien abductions had kind of been a thing from like the mid-sixties up until that time in the eighties when it just like really gets out there. So The X-Files did a great job of really amplifying the most paranoid aspects and kind of the worst aspects of the UFO topic.

00:07:57:27 – 00:08:07:19
Dan LeFebvre
So kind of picking, pulling different pieces from other other places and creating a narrative around that. Yes, if I understand what you’re saying.

00:08:07:20 – 00:08:08:10
Rob Kristoffersen
Absolutely.

00:08:08:10 – 00:08:10:14
Dan LeFebvre
Basically, it’s kind of what they did a good job of doing.

00:08:10:27 – 00:08:34:21
Rob Kristoffersen
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, there are there are two definite things that I that I didn’t mention, like Bob Laser. Bob Laser was, again, 1989. It seems to be this year, this culminating year of all this paranoid stuff. His story starts to come out. That’s when the Area 51 stuff starts to come to prominence. So it definitely amplified those paranoid aspects of it.

00:08:35:11 – 00:09:02:09
Dan LeFebvre
In the I want to as in the second episode of the first season, we introduced the character of Deep Throat in the X-Files, and we get the idea of there’s a cover up, even within the government itself. Mulder and Scully, they’re FBI agents, but they’re not getting access to everything themselves. And so at least when we’re watching the show, we kind of get the sense that we’re on their side, even though they’re still part of the government, they’re not getting the whole information.

00:09:02:09 – 00:09:21:03
Dan LeFebvre
So they have difficulty finding the truth in their investigations. It kind of makes me think of some of the government’s real investigations I know I’ve talked to you about before and in the past, your project side, project, Grudge Project, Blue Book. Do we know if those government investigations into UFOs had the same sort of challenges that we see?

00:09:21:03 – 00:09:27:02
Dan LeFebvre
Mulder and Scully encountering in the show, where they even have trouble finding the truth themselves, even though they are FBI agents?

00:09:28:06 – 00:10:17:12
Rob Kristoffersen
Back in the fifties, right at the start of Project Blue Book in 1952, it’s at the start. It’s slated to be this really objective study of UFOs, the UFO phenomenon, and the people that were running it up a Edward Rubel, who was the head of the project, Dr. Jail and Hynek, was brought in by Edward Rubel because he had worked on Project Sign and he had actually criticized him for some of the determinations that he came to when it when in certain cases where he was saying, oh, well, the determination was that this witness was seeing Venus and stuff like that.

00:10:17:12 – 00:10:53:29
Rob Kristoffersen
And so he brings men and it’s set to be this objective study. And then in July that year, two consecutive weekends, there are these two big sighting events in Washington, D.C. and they’re talking about, you know, objects appearing over the Capitol and being chased by jets. When, you know, jets are scrambled, they can’t keep up with them. And it’s like following that incident that Project Blue Book comes under scrutiny.

00:10:54:22 – 00:11:20:03
Rob Kristoffersen
Not only that, you know, in pop culture, you have Life magazine printing articles speculating about, you know, alien life and stuff like that. And in these incidents, just like had such a the government and specifically the CIA took a look at that, said, we’re going to come in, we’re going to do we’re going to we have a panel.

00:11:20:03 – 00:11:39:16
Rob Kristoffersen
We’re going to take a look at the UFO cases. And then essentially what they ultimately decide is that, well, your objective needs to change. And I always found that interesting. I was like, why is the CIA coming in to tell the Air Force what to do? Like, it doesn’t make sense, but that’s essentially what the Robertson panel was in 1953.

00:11:39:16 – 00:12:05:08
Rob Kristoffersen
There’s a panel of a few guys that came in. They looked at all I don’t know if they looked at every single case that they had amassed up until that point, but they looked at new cases that had come in. There was some even video footage that come through the project, Blue Book Desk, and they looked at that and said, Well, you’re going to have to change the scope of your project.

00:12:05:08 – 00:12:41:27
Rob Kristoffersen
You’re going to have to dismiss a lot of these cases because we’re in the middle of the Cold War. We don’t want a public that is untrusting or is, you know, paranoid of, you know, what’s going on out in the world. So the CIA comes in, says you’re going to have to change the nature of your project. So from 1952, up until I would say largely 1965, that’s when they just kind of downplay everything.

00:12:42:07 – 00:13:11:14
Rob Kristoffersen
And you don’t have a lot of major cases from that time period. The only major case that would come out is the case of Lonnie Zamora of the Socorro New Mexico Police officer who had seen a UFO, landed in an arroyo in New Mexico and had gotten close to the thing. He was a trustworthy witness, and that that’s kind of seemed to be a turning point.

00:13:11:14 – 00:13:53:18
Rob Kristoffersen
And then in 1965, a lot of people, including the press, kind of started to turn their back on the government and their determinations on things. What’s interesting about 1952 is that when you look at the total number of cases that Project Blue Book did or analyzed and investigated and stuff, there are only 701 cases that were labeled as unidentified in 1952 that that year had the most amount of unidentified cases ever, 303, which is an ungodly number.

00:13:53:27 – 00:14:15:29
Rob Kristoffersen
When you look at every other year. That Project Blue Book was in operation. There were 303 reports of unidentified objects that they could not come up with an explanation to. So it’s really not surprising when, you know, somebody steps in and says, you’re going to have to change this. This is a lot. There shouldn’t be that much happening in our skies.

00:14:15:29 – 00:14:54:00
Rob Kristoffersen
So, yeah, there there has definitely been, you know, cases where that has happened. But yeah, like and I think what’s interesting there too is that the, I think the main impetus for why the CIA came in was that Edward Rubio was brought in front of President Eisenhower. And Eisenhower wanted to know what was going on, and he had no clue because he had just this was like maybe days, maybe a day or two after these sightings that occurred in 52.

00:14:54:00 – 00:15:20:08
Rob Kristoffersen
And he didn’t have time to investigate it. So, you know, he’s brought in front of the president. President wants to know what the heck is going on and he he didn’t have an answer for him. So it kind of became this, you know, thing where they wanted to lock things down. And yeah, so there is definitely and you also do see that kind of in a little bit.

00:15:20:08 – 00:15:32:09
Rob Kristoffersen
And you know, Paul Benowitz again and stuff, but like the government influencing civilians even in that case. So yeah, there are definitely cases in which that did happen.

00:15:33:09 – 00:15:57:20
Dan LeFebvre
Hmm. Something that was what, rewatching The X-Files. It’s something I kind of get the sense that a lot of people refer to the government as, you know, this this single organization that’s orchestrating some of these cover ups. It’s kind of, you know, the government versus the public, which was kind of which is interesting that, you know, I got the impression I was watching The X-Files, even though, as I just mentioned, you know, obviously, Mulder and Scully are they’re part of the government.

00:15:57:29 – 00:16:07:13
Dan LeFebvre
So it it the show does a really good job of of having this this contrast there. Do you think that’s still the case where it’s kind of the government versus the people for these cover ups?

00:16:07:26 – 00:16:43:19
Rob Kristoffersen
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Even to this day, movements around disclosure are literally people yelling on the Internet at the government, telling them to release everything that they have, tell us everything that they know about, you know, UFOs, aliens, all this kind of stuff. And it’s kind of funny because, like, they probably don’t really have anything. Like, if they do, they’ve released it all to a certain extent, you know, and there are people that say, well, you know, not every single project, blue Book File has been released and and stuff like that.

00:16:43:19 – 00:16:58:09
Rob Kristoffersen
But yeah, this not a lot has changed since The X-Files has come out. It is literally people claiming that the government is just hiding everything. So disclosure now and people are still saying disclosure as if they.

00:16:58:11 – 00:17:03:07
Dan LeFebvre
Know that they’re not happy with the answer. They’re getting. So obviously there must be they must be hiding it. Yeah.

00:17:03:26 – 00:17:30:08
Rob Kristoffersen
Yeah, exactly. And and like now is interesting because there are like many of the branches in the military and stuff, they are like investigating UFOs. They’ve come out and said, we’ve got our own, you know, task forces that look into this stuff. So it’s only fuel to the fire. But yeah, it’s still disclosure all day long. Yeah.

00:17:30:08 – 00:17:49:15
Dan LeFebvre
Going back to The X-Files in a still in season one and episode ten, we get an indication for how the government might respond to a UFO crash in the show. It happens just outside towns in Wisconsin. It is a real town. And then Mulder finds out there’s this incident. Deep Throat tells him something about Operation Falcon. It’s gone into effect.

00:17:49:22 – 00:18:08:05
Dan LeFebvre
He says within 24 hours, the entire area is going to be sanitized. It’ll be like nothing ever happened. Later in the episode, Mulder and Scully talk to the widow of a local deputy who died at the scene, and she said she can’t afford to tell the truth because they told her if she says anything, then they’d withhold her deceased husband’s pension.

00:18:08:05 – 00:18:20:07
Dan LeFebvre
So they’re basically making her not say anything. Based on the reports that you’ve come across in your research, how realistic do you think The X-Files was and how it depicted a government response to a crashed UFO?

00:18:20:29 – 00:18:51:29
Rob Kristoffersen
There are a lot of interesting things that you read from people who say, I was on a team that went out and retrieved, you know, downed UFOs and stuff like that. There was a guy named Clifford Stone. And what was interesting about Clifford Stone is if you ever watched him talk, he would get very emotional about the the the retrievals that he went on and like because he would talk about like interacting with aliens and feeling their emotions and stuff like that.

00:18:52:07 – 00:19:40:09
Rob Kristoffersen
Very emotional, man. But there are there are a lot of similar these to certain crash retrieval cases, as they call them. Roswell comes to mind in a lot of cases because a lot of witnesses to Roswell that came forward in the eighties, nineties, up until now, they often talked about how the government would silence them and such. And you see a lot of that kind of stuff where people visit the areas today, they find them like really, you know, combed over and the like areas that are raked and stuff like that.

00:19:40:09 – 00:20:18:15
Rob Kristoffersen
One of the best examples of this is an incident called the Iceberg Incident that occurred in Rexburg, Pennsylvania, in 1965, in December. And what’s interesting about this case is that there were numerous eyewitnesses from Canada, Michigan, Ohio and a few other states in the area that saw this streaking object in the sky like before 5 p.m.. And what was interesting is that there was a group of people that saw this object make like a specific right hand turn.

00:20:18:28 – 00:20:49:11
Rob Kristoffersen
And in the town of Casper, this object comes out of the sky, crashes into the woods. People are believing it’s a meteor or something like that. But the local fire department, local police department, a lot of citizens respond to the area. They, you know, because it actually spread out on the radio really quickly that, oh, there was something that crashed in the woods and the fire and police department get there.

00:20:49:25 – 00:21:10:11
Rob Kristoffersen
They actually get into the woods and actually see what this object is. And they describe it as an ACORN shaped object. And one eyewitness, a guy named Jim Romanski, said that on the bottom of this object, there was this band. And on this band there was this like kind of weird writing that he related to Egyptian, Egyptian hieroglyphs.

00:21:10:25 – 00:21:40:10
Rob Kristoffersen
And before long, the military comes in, they cordon areas off. Everybody is not allowed within that area. They confiscate, I think, one reporter’s camera and such, and they hush everything up and like nobody really talks about this incident for probably 30 years or so, 20, 30 years. It was actually featured on Unsolved Mysteries in, I think the early nineties.

00:21:40:27 – 00:22:13:09
Rob Kristoffersen
But there are very there are a lot of similarities in the cases that you read of, you know, military coming in, make it in as quick a job as they can of it, just removing any trace from the area that anything could happen and silencing witnesses. So yeah, there there are quite a few cases like that. One of the most recent was actually in 2008 in California, and it was a place called Needles, California.

00:22:13:09 – 00:22:44:00
Rob Kristoffersen
And a bunch of people had witnessed a UFO crash into this riverbank. And there were a bunch of eyewitnesses, including a a guy in a boat that claimed that the government came in. They lifted this object off the riverbank, put it on like a flatbed truck, and transported it out of there. So, yeah, there’s there’s definitely a lot of similarities here with what you see in that particular episode of The X-Files.

00:22:45:01 – 00:23:13:00
Dan LeFebvre
You were talking earlier about disclosure, and as I was rewatching The X-Files for our chat, the final episode of Season one kind of left me with a question. In that episode, Mulder and Scully seem closer than ever to uncovering the evidence that they need to prove everything they’ve investigated so far. Again, it’s the season finale of the first season, and it’s a common theme that we see throughout the entire series, though it always seems like they get evidence, but none of it can really prove anything.

00:23:13:00 – 00:23:33:06
Dan LeFebvre
They’re always on the cusp of being able to reveal the truth for the whole world to see. But the truth is out there, right? They still can’t actually prove anything. It may. We want to ask about the that impact on the whole notion of disclosure, like you were talking about before, that being some sort of a magic pill that once for all is going to reveal the truth for everybody.

00:23:33:12 – 00:23:42:23
Dan LeFebvre
Do you think The X-Files played a part in this idea of government disclosure being the one size fits all answer to UFO phenomena?

00:23:43:15 – 00:24:12:20
Rob Kristoffersen
I think so, absolutely. Like before The X-Files and kind of you started to see in the UFO community this kind of shift between from, you know, yeah, there is a government cover up, but it just seems to be for the public’s benefit to, you know, just kind of cut down on the paranoia of everything and it starts to shift in the late seventies and into the eighties.

00:24:13:16 – 00:24:48:11
Rob Kristoffersen
In the eighties, there was a group of documents. This was all connected to Richard Doty and Bill Moore called the Majestic 12 documents. NIE’s were a series of memos that was that established a group within the government that was supposed to be responsible for kind of covering up UFO, those retrieving UFOs and stuff like that. And it’s kind of it’s pretty much been disproven at this point.

00:24:48:11 – 00:25:04:06
Rob Kristoffersen
Like there is no real evidence. Like if you go on the FBI’s website and you search for MJ 12, it has these great pictures of all of these memos and it has the words bogus written all over them. It’s great. It’s fantastic.

00:25:04:06 – 00:25:09:07
Dan LeFebvre
But but that’s exactly what you would expect, right? Of course, they’re never going to tell you, right?

00:25:09:15 – 00:25:39:27
Rob Kristoffersen
Yeah, exactly. Like these folks aren’t going to tell you anything. But yeah, it’s they a lot of people do see disclosure as this like magic pill that is going to solve this UFO mystery once and for all. And like, I really don’t understand, like, what people think that they have in the government. And again, it comes back to all of these stories that just kind of started to come to the forefront.

00:25:39:27 – 00:25:51:27
Rob Kristoffersen
You know, Bob Lazar saying that he worked on a UFO that had been reverse engineered from a crashed UFO. He even called it the sport model. You know, and a lot of the.

00:25:52:25 – 00:25:54:07
Dan LeFebvre
So the two door or the four door version.

00:25:54:28 – 00:26:15:23
Rob Kristoffersen
Apparently was the two door version. It was a little smaller, but, you know, that’s okay. But yeah, this like this like magic pill and like everybody has kind of built on to it. So like, what’s interesting is like you can look at a lot of the stuff that came out in the eighties. You could see how people have built upon it.

00:26:15:23 – 00:26:40:12
Rob Kristoffersen
So, you know, Roswell, there have been so many eyewitnesses that have come forward and say, oh, yeah, my parents, you know, were well aware of the event or, you know, my my dad, you know, did this or that and like it’s like this, like big, huge ball of clay. And it’s not you can’t really make out exactly what it is, but people keep adding to it.

00:26:40:12 – 00:27:11:05
Rob Kristoffersen
And it’s like, unless you can produce the bodies, which is what people are hoping that the government has, you’re never going to get like anywhere when it comes to validity of these incidences. But like the UFO phenomenon in and of itself is built upon eyewitness testimony and kind of little bits of evidence that turn up and, you know, landing trace cases, whether that be, you know, like vegetation or, you know, other effects that it could have in the area.

00:27:11:05 – 00:27:39:25
Rob Kristoffersen
There isn’t a lot of evidence for UFOs out there because they they don’t often leave evidence. So in the end, you’re left with these anecdotal stories that people will kind of, you know, bring out. And like you can you could read all these stories in many UFO journals and stuff. You can read stories about encounters with strange humanoid aliens.

00:27:40:14 – 00:28:07:13
Rob Kristoffersen
There’s plenty of them out there. But yeah, just this the magic pill that that is disclosure. The X-Files did a great job of really hammering that point home. And and I think, like, when you look at these episodes, like when you look at like this image of Mulder out on Area 51, like on the base and there’s a UFO hovering over him.

00:28:07:13 – 00:28:34:12
Rob Kristoffersen
I think that’s what a lot of people’s views of this topic is that the government’s got it, they’ve got the goods, they’re not letting it out. We as taxpayers deserve to know and we’re going to complain about it until we get it. So be the X-Files played a huge part in that, like to the point where now how much has really changed in the 20 plus years since it’s been out?

00:28:34:12 – 00:28:43:15
Rob Kristoffersen
Like we’re we’re almost up to what, 30 years at this point, I think. What is it like 30 years next year? Something like that.

00:28:43:22 – 00:29:07:02
Dan LeFebvre
But I think that’s that’s that sounds right. Yeah, it has been. Wow. There’s another concept that that The X-Files puts forward and it’s in the in season two, the first episode, of course, the title of the episode is Little Green Men, right? In that episode, we find out there’s two craft that were sent into space in 1977 with messages from Earth for whoever might find it.

00:29:07:20 – 00:29:33:23
Dan LeFebvre
In 1990. The show depicts Voyager one passing the orbital plane of Neptune, leaving our solar system. And then later in the episode, Mulder goes to visit an observatory in Puerto Rico, where it appears that there was a response to Voyager, even though we don’t actually see a UFO in the episode, there’s lights. Mulder sees that he’s there while he’s there in Puerto Rico.

00:29:33:23 – 00:29:51:02
Dan LeFebvre
That kind of implies that there’s UFOs. I think The X-Files did a great job. I’m sure for budgetary reasons, you don’t actually see things. A lot of times you see the lights coming through the windows and, you know, causing this effect. And then Mulder sees the while now at least what we kind of think of the stereotypical shape of an alien.

00:29:51:27 – 00:30:17:04
Dan LeFebvre
Even though that episode came out in 1994, I think a lot of people today still poll the concept of UFOs and extraterrestrials being tied together and maybe even the shape of the alien here in this Little Green Men. As the title of the episode, do you think The X-Files contributed to people tying all of those things together, or was that something that was happening even before the show and they were pulling pieces together for that, for that concept?

00:30:17:18 – 00:30:52:18
Rob Kristoffersen
I think it definitely is one of those cases in which it amplified it because the the idea of the little green man comes from the gray alien. So the gray turns into the green. But the term little green men is interesting. It goes back to 1955 in the Kelly Hopkinsville case, in which the Sutton family basically holds off this, you know, these aliens in this like kind of siege on their home, they keep coming back to this window and they keep shooting at them.

00:30:52:18 – 00:31:12:05
Rob Kristoffersen
They keep retreating, but they keep coming back. It was a it was a really fascinating case to find. Yeah, it’s it’s absolutely terrifying. And like, there’s some there was one moment when one of the members of the family stepped out onto the front porch, and he claimed that one of those aliens kind of just like pulled him by his hair.

00:31:12:05 – 00:31:17:02
Rob Kristoffersen
That was like the most aggressive that they got with them. But in the press.

00:31:17:02 – 00:31:22:03
Dan LeFebvre
Sorry if I see if I see that happening, like I’m going to go to the front porch and say like, yeah.

00:31:22:28 – 00:31:24:29
Rob Kristoffersen
But yeah, I mean, it’s probably.

00:31:25:06 – 00:31:26:19
Dan LeFebvre
Just not me. That’s not what I would do.

00:31:26:24 – 00:32:12:01
Rob Kristoffersen
It’s not the smart response. No, it’s it’s not it’s not adequate. Like, just like don’t even engage with them because it’s like they just feel like door to door salesman at this point because they’re coming up to your door, you know, I don’t know what they want. Maybe, maybe they like their UFO broke down because that there was a preceding UFO event that one of the members of the household at the time had seen this like light streaking across the sky and it was like less than an hour later when this, like, this being comes out of like it approaches the house like they were first indicated to it because their dog was just, like

00:32:12:01 – 00:32:32:13
Rob Kristoffersen
barking like crazy in this weird being with you. It was short, maybe like no more than four feet tall hair. It was glowing. It was a luminescent being, had kind of big eyes and it had really big point eight years and it was approaching the house and I had its hands up looking like it was about to surrender to these people.

00:32:33:00 – 00:32:52:27
Rob Kristoffersen
And in response, they just started shooting at the thing to the point where like when they shot, they didn’t hit it. And it started to do kind of these like back flips and it started to float backwards. And it led to this, like, hours long ordeal to the point where I think they were like fending them off for a couple of hours.

00:32:52:27 – 00:33:17:26
Rob Kristoffersen
They got in their vehicle, they went to the police department, police came out with them. They looked at everything. They saw that there was a lot of bullet holes in like the windows and doors and stuff, but they didn’t find anything. So police leaves and these aliens come back and they just terrorize these people into the morning. So that’s where the term little green men comes from, because in the press, that’s what they call them.

00:33:17:26 – 00:33:49:06
Rob Kristoffersen
They it’s kind of similar to with Kenneth Arnold. They talk about because he had mentioned that the the objects that he saw in 1947 looked like saucers skipping across water, that, you know, there were flying saucers at that point. So, you know, that was that was what the press had dubbed them. But in late 1987, you start to see kind of like the concept of of what aliens could be start to be streamlined.

00:33:49:14 – 00:34:19:06
Rob Kristoffersen
Before that, you read reports of humanoid encounters and they’re all varied. They’re all very different. Sometimes people see human looking beings, other times they’re short, other times really tall. But they all look very different. And then you get to 1987, and that’s where the image of the gray comes in. And that image specifically comes from the cover of Whitley Strippers, but Communion.

00:34:19:15 – 00:35:01:02
Rob Kristoffersen
And that book is all about his lifelong abduction experiences. And it was a book that made a lot of big waves at the time because he was a well known author. And he’s coming forward and saying, Hey, I have this lifelong experience of being abducted by aliens. This actually happened to me. And the cover image on there is a painting of this alien by a guy named Ted Seth Jacobs, and it connected with a lot of people there were a lot of people that came forward after that saying, I had an interaction with this.

00:35:01:02 – 00:35:27:25
Rob Kristoffersen
And like, when you look at that cover image, it is it’s uncanny to look at. It’s it’s it’s that uncanny valley, man. It just like plays with you because for one, it’s a really well done painting. But two like the the eyes on that being that alien just stare back into your soul. And after that grays are kind of this big.

00:35:27:25 – 00:35:54:26
Rob Kristoffersen
The, the predominant aliens that people are interacting with, it gets streamlined into, oh, well, there’s certain of aliens that people interact with, grays they interact with, like reptilian looking beings. They interact with what they call like the Nordics, which are like these tall, blond, human looking beings. You know, there’s mantis beings that are pretty voyeuristic in certain accounts.

00:35:54:26 – 00:36:30:15
Rob Kristoffersen
It’s kind of funny, but that image ultimately gets transposed into UFO culture, which kind of gets pushed into the pop culture, and then the X-Files just kind of pushes it out there because one of the best, one of the most iconic episodes, Jose Chung’s from Outer Space. There is that scene toward the end of the episode in which Dana Scully is reading the book, the book of, you know, Jose Chung wrote about alien abductions.

00:36:30:15 – 00:37:04:14
Rob Kristoffersen
He took an interest in it. And on the cover of the book, it’s a spoof, spoof of communion because it’s essentially a gray aliens smoking a cigaret. So that image projected out to people, it definitely helped to become like that main popular image. That’s where the little green men really come from because, you know, the grays, they ultimately in pop culture, they’re portrayed as green now like you see green alien hits like all over the place.

00:37:04:14 – 00:37:11:03
Rob Kristoffersen
So X-Files definitely played a part in pushing that out into the public.

00:37:12:17 – 00:37:36:29
Dan LeFebvre
And it sounds like they’re pulling from different stories from the past in order to tell that story together. You’re talking about. I mean, what could we talked about a comedian before the show, actually, and so I’m familiar with that. The cover image that you were referring to. And I mean, if you see that or even a spoof of it in the show, I’m we have to go back and watch that episode again to look for that.

00:37:37:15 – 00:37:42:14
Dan LeFebvre
But I can only imagine that’s going to push that concept even further.

00:37:42:14 – 00:38:16:07
Rob Kristoffersen
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s and and that’s the thing is like it’s widely regarded as like probably the best episode of The X-Files ever because and I think what it does is it kind of boils down to all of like UFO culture into one really well done episode. And it also contains an incident in which the there are there’s a government I think it’s like the Air Force or something like that that is going out and abducting people.

00:38:16:19 – 00:38:51:00
Rob Kristoffersen
These are what became known as military abductions. My labs. And in there in that episode, these abductors get abducted by aliens. So it’s you know, it’s just absolutely fantastic. But like, yeah, it ultimately distills what UFOs and UFO culture is down into one really great episode. And I mean, to see Alex Trebek as a man in black is is it an experience that is, you know, one of the best experiences of my life?

00:38:52:06 – 00:39:17:17
Dan LeFebvre
If we go back to the show in season four, episode number 17, there’s a story that centers around a commercial airliner that has an encounter with a UFO. Ultimately, the encounter with that airliner, Flight 549 in the show is a tragic one. It causes the plane to crash, kills everyone on board. Are there any real reports of UFOs interacting with commercial airliners like we see in that episode?

00:39:18:06 – 00:40:03:18
Rob Kristoffersen
Yeah, there is a lot of cases like that in the most famous probably Kenneth Arnold and they and they didn’t really interact, but like it was such a close encounter that, you know, it really it really rattled him at the time. But there is an incident in 48. It’s called the Charles Whitted case. And these two pilots, they’re flying their commercial airliner and they see kind of this they describe it as like a long missile like object, but it like basically flies right next to their plane and they just speeds away.

00:40:04:12 – 00:40:32:26
Rob Kristoffersen
And it made it got a lot of attention in the press to the to the point where, you know, the people were giving interviews. That was it was Eastern Airlines Flight 576. So, you know, they were flying from Houston to Atlanta. And the funny thing is, is like the first thing that they thought was that this was kind of a it was a military vehicle of some kind.

00:40:33:09 – 00:40:59:23
Rob Kristoffersen
But the they they were flying a DC, I think a DC three plane and it was just odd because it was wingless. But another odd feature is it looked like it had windows on it. So it wasn’t necessarily a missile. But the thing was it was Holland and it it had a lot of fire spewing out of the back allegedly, but there are a lot of cases.

00:40:59:23 – 00:41:29:03
Rob Kristoffersen
There’s another kind of infamous case from 1986 over Alaska in which a Japan Airlines flight interacted. They they ultimately see kind of this these like two small prelude objects that are kind of floating in midair in front of their plane. And that gives way to an object that they described as a mothership. They they described this object as like miles wide and just like absolutely huge.

00:41:29:03 – 00:42:09:24
Rob Kristoffersen
Like, when you look at sketches of this incident, like there’s a tiny plane and then there’s this huge UFO, but there are like quite a few incidences in which, you know, civilians, military pilots, they just kind of have these, you know, brief but memorable interactions with them. Yeah, they’re interesting, especially when you can hear like because you sometimes you’ll hear like kind of the recordings between the tower operators and the the pilots.

00:42:10:11 – 00:42:38:14
Rob Kristoffersen
We recently covered a case, a guy there was a guy who’s flying from Zihuatanejo, of all places, the place where Andy Dufresne ends up in The Shawshank Redemption at the end, he’s he’s flying to, I believe, Mexico City. And as he’s in the air, there are these three UFOs that appear alongside them, not to one on each side.

00:42:38:14 – 00:43:14:22
Rob Kristoffersen
And then there’s like one kind of in front of him. It ends up like kind of descending underneath his plane. And his first thought is to get out of the way. So he angles the nose of his plane down, ends up hitting one of these objects. At that point, he loses control of his plane. And he’s he’s trying desperately to regain, you know, the controls and such and these planes, these objects essentially escort him for a certain period of time before they eventually break off and fly towards a volcano.

00:43:14:22 – 00:43:37:24
Rob Kristoffersen
And he is so frightened by this incident that when he is eventually able to land, he actually has to end up he ends up like circling the airport like 11 times because his his landing gear, the doors to his landing gear were damaged. But he finally got him open. He lands the plane, he jumps out of the plane before the engine even shuts off.

00:43:38:01 – 00:44:09:24
Rob Kristoffersen
And he’s just absolutely freaked out. And eventually he ends up having these it ends up making the press in 1978. And he has these men in black experiences after that in which he is kind of harassed by a few group groups of people. Twice he in the first one, he was actually going to make a TV appearance. And this car kind of just like cuts of off the middle of the road.

00:44:09:27 – 00:44:29:12
Rob Kristoffersen
They approached him in his vehicle and they say, you’re not going to the studio, you’re not going to talk about this. So after that happens, you know, he goes home. Eventually, people catch up with them, he tells them what happened and they decide that, no, he’s going to we’ll have a private meeting in a hotel. So he goes and he meets with jail.

00:44:29:12 – 00:44:49:01
Rob Kristoffersen
And Hynek, of all people, he has a, I think, like a 11 hour meeting with him. It was very long, but they were going to make plans to meet again. And while he was going back up to their hotel room, he encounters another group of men in this lobby that says, you’re not going to talk about it, stop talking about it.

00:44:49:01 – 00:44:56:16
Rob Kristoffersen
So, yeah, there’s there’s a lot of interesting cases between, you know, interactions with pilots and UFOs.

00:44:57:21 – 00:45:25:26
Dan LeFebvre
Like you mentioned a few things in there that circle right into my next question. It’s in season five, episode 13, and in that episode we see a UFO in Kazakhstan, in the former Soviet Union, and with the popularity of Hollywood, a lot of movies and TV shows produced obviously in the United States, X-Files included. So it stands to reason that a lot of the UFO reports in the US get a lot more spotlight in pop culture than those outside of the U.S. But you mentioned something like that.

00:45:25:26 – 00:45:51:14
Dan LeFebvre
You know, the the some of the flights that you just mentioned were not in the U.S. do you think there are more reports in the U.S. or is it that incidents like Roswell or, you know, Kenneth Arnold you’re talking about because those get publicized more in things like movies and TV shows like The X-Files. Do you think that’s a reason why they’re, for lack of a better term, more popular than the events that we there are outside the U.S.?

00:45:52:09 – 00:46:20:02
Rob Kristoffersen
I think what’s interesting in I’ve had guests on and we’ve talked about cases that aren’t as well known that should be as well known a lot of the times that they’re not, you know, known far and wide because they weren’t printed in English and like, the thing is, is like UFOs. There were UFO incidences that predated Kenneth Arnold’s sighting in 47.

00:46:20:02 – 00:46:55:07
Rob Kristoffersen
So there was this phenomenon in 1946 in which countries like Norway, Finland, Sweden, some other European countries were seeing these things that they dubbed as ghost rockets. So they were these long objects that would fly really fast. Some people claimed to see them enter into bodies of water and stuff like that. And one of the earliest UFO reports that would it wouldn’t come out until about the 1970s, but there was a guy named used to.

00:46:55:07 – 00:47:46:09
Rob Kristoffersen
Carlson and he he lived in Sweden and he had this encounter in the woods with a landed object. And the he saw a human kind of human looking aliens around it. There was allegedly physical evidence left, including like these two kind of like containers which were used. I don’t remember exactly what they were used for, but I think with the way that the popularity of UFOs took off and because of the kind of massive footprint that American pop culture has worldwide, I think it had a definite influence on the cases that really kind of went to the forefront and became well known.

00:47:46:27 – 00:48:19:07
Rob Kristoffersen
So I don’t think it’s necessarily that there are more, you know, UFO cases in the United States. Maybe, maybe there are, maybe there aren’t. But when you read through reports, a lot of the times what you realize is that your UFO reports, the only time that you ever see that anybody ever sees a UFO in and is if it’s reported, essentially, that’s the only way that we know about it in the States.

00:48:19:07 – 00:48:54:29
Rob Kristoffersen
I would say that that may be changing because now the investigators that were researching and investigating these cases in the forties, 50, 60, 1780s, they’re no longer with us. And the main bodies that investigate these cases generally keep the information to themselves. Organizations like Move On, they’re not very with the information that they have. There’s new Falk, which is another outlet that you can report sightings to their cases aren’t really investigated, but they’re collected.

00:48:55:06 – 00:49:22:18
Rob Kristoffersen
But though, because those investigators aren’t out there, it just seems like there aren’t a lot of UFO cases out there. But I struggle with the idea that, you know, there are more UFOs in the United States than anything I there they have more of a they’ve had more of a, you know, public reputation in the United States than, I think in most places.

00:49:23:00 – 00:49:50:28
Rob Kristoffersen
Like if you don’t read through UFO magazines, UFO journals and read the cases that people are investigating, you wouldn’t know that they were happening. Like, I don’t think a lot of people realize how much of a hot spot Brazil is for UFO cases in Argentina. Those those countries had very strange and intense cases to the point where Brazil kind of has this reputation in which UFOs are kind of hostile.

00:49:51:02 – 00:50:14:05
Rob Kristoffersen
They’ll they’ve been reported as like, you know, harming civilians and stuff. I would say, like the UK has a very good body of of case work on par I would say with the states in many cases there were a lot of great investigators that are still doing things over there. But I think a lot of it is public perception.

00:50:14:21 – 00:50:49:05
Rob Kristoffersen
More than anything. There are always going to be those cases and probably the most well known cases are always going to be American cases. But yeah, I don’t think that UFOs are seen anymore here than they are anywhere else. But a lot of the times it just comes down to, you know, where can you report it to? And and are those people going to make that information prevalent because the UFO journals aren’t there anymore to publish these reports move kind of publishes them from time to time.

00:50:49:05 – 00:51:25:12
Rob Kristoffersen
You’ll see like a blog post of a case that they think is interesting. But yeah, it’s yeah, I just don’t think that. I just think that because of the reputation that the U.S. has, that’s why they it seems like there’s just a ton of cases here, but I definitely think they are everywhere. But it’s interesting. Think, too, when it comes to Russia and like the Soviet Union, they weren’t allowed to talk about their UFO cases.

00:51:25:12 – 00:51:55:07
Rob Kristoffersen
There was, you know, people who had UFO reports were not allowed to release them, share them until 1989. So once once that happened, you know, you start to see more like Russian UFO cases, but yeah, I think it’s a lot of it definitely has to do with the reputation that America has worldwide and especially American pop culture. You know.

00:51:55:07 – 00:52:22:17
Dan LeFebvre
There is a bit of dialog in that episode I was just mentioning in season five, episode 13, that I wanted to ask you about. It’s between Mulder and Dr. Ferber, where Mulder says the conspiracy is not to hide the existence of extraterrestrials, but to make people believe in it so completely that they question nothing. Do you think there’s any truth to that idea that the show puts forth?

00:52:22:17 – 00:52:59:20
Rob Kristoffersen
Or if you think about it, the scientific attitude to extraterrestrial life and like the popular consensuses is like, Oh, there’s definitely alien life in the universe. We just don’t think it has visited here. So I think we are at a point now where we are conditioned to believe that there is definitely extraterrestrial life out there, but I don’t think it’s to that point where it’s just this is an average mundane thing.

00:52:59:20 – 00:53:35:24
Rob Kristoffersen
You know, it’s it’s it’s no big deal. And it’s it’s such a thing that’s ingrained in you that that you don’t question it. But like there are also those people will, you know, just be like a passing comment or something like that. But yeah, I, I don’t think it’s like that. I don’t think it’s like conditioning like that because I don’t see, like the scientific community, like conditioning people to, you know, just, just make it seem like it’s an average everyday run of the mill kind of thing.

00:53:35:24 – 00:54:15:09
Rob Kristoffersen
But yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting. Yeah. The way that they worded it in that because you know, it gets into the idea of like a psyop or something like that in which, you know, people claim that the government conditions the public to believe in things because one of the things that you see now is that people will look at a certain thing, whether that’s the the 2017 New York Times article with the, you know, the footage and stuff like that is like, oh, we’re being conditioned for disclosure.

00:54:15:09 – 00:54:47:06
Rob Kristoffersen
And it’s like, no, I don’t think so. I think it’s just, you know, people did some investigating. They found this project. You know, this project is done and over with. But they did find some interesting stuff. And it’s always those people, they call it quote unquote, drip, drip disclosure or soft disclosure and ultimately this conditioning. But I don’t think that’s a case that people are being conditioned to think about aliens or UFOs in a certain way.

00:54:47:28 – 00:55:09:19
Rob Kristoffersen
You know, and I don’t see that happening. It just seems like that seems like very expensive because like there are plenty of people that also say that some of the UFO sightings and even some of the most like since national UFO sightings were orchestrated by the government, it’s like, I don’t think the government has that much money, but, you know, maybe I’m wrong.

00:55:09:20 – 00:55:19:29
Rob Kristoffersen
Maybe they got those reverse engineered UFOs and I’m just, you know, I’m just living in my world where I block all that out.

00:55:19:29 – 00:55:33:13
Dan LeFebvre
Well, not that we’re talking about The X-Files, but not to go off in. Was it independence? Like, Oh, you don’t think it cost $20,000 for a hamburger or $10,000 for a toilet seat, do you. Right. That’s right. They get the money from.

00:55:34:01 – 00:55:37:12
Rob Kristoffersen
Yeah, exactly.

00:55:37:12 – 00:56:06:09
Dan LeFebvre
We were talking about Roswell just briefly before I mention that. And there’s something else that people are familiar with when it comes to UFO phenomena. It’s Area 51 and we see that in The X-Files in season six. Episode four, Mulder visits that top secret base Area 51 That episode was released in 1998, and I’m a lot has changed since then so what are the current theory is on area 51, is it still synonymous with UFOs as it used to be when The X-Files episode was released?

00:56:07:01 – 00:56:35:08
Rob Kristoffersen
A lot has come out to the point where, you know, the government has officially acknowledged that Area 51 is a thing, but Area 51 became, you know, really well known because of Barbara Starr, like we mentioned before. And, you know, it was dubbed Area 51 by the Atomic Energy Commission because it was part of the Nevada test and training range where they dropped nukes out there.

00:56:35:21 – 00:57:04:24
Rob Kristoffersen
They tested, you know, nuclear weapons and such. But it’s where they actually because they didn’t want anybody going out there, they actually gave this area of land near Groom Lake to Lockheed Martin, basically. And Lockheed Martin, you know, has been at the forefront of, you know, aviation specifically, you know, things like the S.R. 71, the B-2 bomber, etc..

00:57:06:07 – 00:57:31:09
Rob Kristoffersen
You know, it’s the last place anyone should be looking because nobody should be out there because, you know, radiation and stuff. But that’s pretty much where they they worked on, you know, like high tech planes and stuff like that. But any Jacobsen wrote a book about the base called Area 51, which, you know, she exposed what Lockheed Martin was doing.

00:57:31:18 – 00:58:15:05
Rob Kristoffersen
And there’s actually a couple of years ago, there was a great History Channel documentary made about it called The The Secret in the Sky The Untold Story of Skunkworks, which is absolutely fantastic. You know, I recommend any everybody check it out. I think it’s narrated by Dennis Quaid, but it is you know, it talks about all the technological advances that they made with skunkworks and like all the things that they had to design to, you know, make, you know, like the U-2 spy plane, which is still being used today, I believe, because the the camera on that thing is so amazing.

00:58:16:00 – 00:58:32:03
Rob Kristoffersen
The S.R. 71, which it’s it’s frightening to think that there’s a plane that leaks gasoline until you get to high altitude when everything gets squished together and air tight. So, yeah, that’s that’s pretty much what we know.

00:58:32:03 – 00:58:33:11
Dan LeFebvre
That’s a great design, doesn’t it?

00:58:33:18 – 00:58:56:10
Rob Kristoffersen
It does. And it’s you know, if you watch the documentary and you see the footage, you see this plane and it’s just like leaking all over the runway until it gets up into the air, the high altitude. And it’s just like, you know, everything comes together and eventually they have to meet up with like a refuel or in the air to get their, you know, their fuel.

00:58:56:10 – 00:59:09:05
Rob Kristoffersen
But it is an absolutely great documentary. And Gary, 51, is a great book. So if you’re interested in the subject, I highly recommend you go check either one of those out.

00:59:10:00 – 00:59:37:04
Dan LeFebvre
Well, you talk talking about those airplanes. And in that episode in that episode I was talking about with Area 51, there is a UFO that flies over Mulder and Scully and if you pause the episode as the UFO flies away, to me it looks a lot like a B-2 bomber. Yes. Do you think that there’s something to the idea that the UFO is not maybe not even just at Area 51, but it’s you know, it’s actually just military stealth technology.

00:59:37:09 – 01:00:00:01
Rob Kristoffersen
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, again, with the the Paul Benowitz stuff, like when you look at lights in the sky and you don’t know what the heck it is, you’ve never seen anything like that before. It could be anything. And a lot of the times you see people will, you know, go to the idea, hey, this is aliens or something like that.

01:00:00:01 – 01:00:31:04
Rob Kristoffersen
But yeah, like I definitely think that a lot of mistake in technology, a lot of lights in the sky are a mistake in technology. I remember in that documentary they talked about how like there were reports in, I think like the 1950s or something like that where people were seeing basically like flying crosses in the sky and they basically said, yeah, that that was the U-2 spy plane.

01:00:31:12 – 01:00:41:28
Rob Kristoffersen
They were seeing it from really high up. But yeah, I definitely believe that there are some like secret military technology that is mistaken for UFOs.

01:00:43:01 – 01:00:56:25
Dan LeFebvre
After 13 years. The X-Files came back in 2016 with season ten and the first episode they the Roswell crash from 1947. Based on what we know of that incident, how old do you think The X-Files did recreating that?

01:00:58:14 – 01:01:27:09
Rob Kristoffersen
This is a very sensational version of what happened at Roswell. You know, like in reality, the government’s response to Roswell was very it actually took them 4 to 5 days to get out there. And it actually took, you know, Mac Brazel discovering all of this debris on the ranch he was working at to collect it. And even when it comes to, like, the iceberg crash there, their response was delayed a little bit.

01:01:27:09 – 01:02:14:09
Rob Kristoffersen
But you know, it’s it’s interesting to watch this very sensationalized version because, like, there were no reports of aliens on the Foster ranch or the supposed alien bodies were found in different spots. And like the thing is, is like the narrative with Roswell has changed so many times over the years. So it when it first began in when there was, you know, discussion about bodies, which largely relates to a guy named Barney Barnett who claimed that in an area called the plains of seeing Augustine, he had come across the crashed UFO in 1947.

01:02:15:09 – 01:02:39:15
Rob Kristoffersen
I think like somewhere around July or early July. And he saw alien bodies. He claimed that there was a group of archeology students that had also seen it that had come across the crash site. But when investigators went to track down, he was he had passed away. But the thing was, is he kept telling people about these aliens that he that he saw.

01:02:39:15 – 01:03:09:19
Rob Kristoffersen
So, like, all of these people had second hand stories of Barney Barnett saying, hey, I saw these alien bodies. But then the story morphed to the bodies being found like like maybe a mile or so away from the Foster ranch recovered by the government. There was even one time when it’s when they suggested that maybe it was two UFOs that actually crashed into each other, or maybe this UFO was hit by lightning.

01:03:09:19 – 01:03:51:15
Rob Kristoffersen
But, yeah, like it it wasn’t it wasn’t as sensational, like, as this. Like this. This was definitely weird. Like, they, they went and they kind of ran with it. But I to be honest, I was not a big fan of season ten because it was it kind of veered full blown into like, following the conspiracies as far as you could go, like like modern conspiracies, which, you know, when you’re talking about UFOs and it’s this kind of this like cheeky, funny thing, you know, in like the nineties and stuff.

01:03:51:15 – 01:04:05:05
Rob Kristoffersen
It’s like, yeah, I dig that. It’s kind of a thing. But like, but it’s the way that it’s portrayed in season ten. I’m not, not a huge fan of it, but yeah, I don’t, I do not like this depiction of Roswell in that episode.

01:04:05:21 – 01:04:15:15
Dan LeFebvre
Well, let’s say let’s say you were the showrunner for a reboot of The X-Files. What would be the first case that you would cover?

01:04:15:15 – 01:04:47:13
Rob Kristoffersen
Um, it’s, that’s kind of tough because, like, you know, they can pick and pull from whatever they want. They can influence anything that that they ever did. And like, you can see certain, like real life or like, like events that are alleged to have happened like in season six episode four, for instance, there’s shades of the Philadelphia experiment in there.

01:04:48:09 – 01:05:14:00
Rob Kristoffersen
You know, this alleged event in 1943 in which the government attempted to turn a a destroyer invisible, and allegedly it all went wrong and it caused people to kind of fuze to the ship. If there’s anything that I would love to see, The X-Files do is kind of like a comedic episode, a take on, like Jeff, The Talking Mongoose would be absolutely hilarious.

01:05:14:00 – 01:05:44:12
Rob Kristoffersen
I’d love to see an episode influenced on Jeff The Talking Mongoose, because it’s such a strange story in a strange, isolated place in the Isle of Man. It’s, you know, the story of a a quote unquote mongoose that, you know, lived in this family’s house talked to the family. There was like poltergeist like phenomenon that took place in their in their home and stuff.

01:05:44:12 – 01:05:54:16
Rob Kristoffersen
But it would be absolute comedy gold, just a talking mongoose if if X-Files ever came back, ever did anything, that that would be like the ultimate thing I’d want to see.

01:05:55:11 – 01:05:57:10
Dan LeFebvre
I would watch that. Yes, for sure.

01:05:57:16 – 01:05:57:28
Rob Kristoffersen
Right.

01:05:59:23 – 01:06:16:04
Dan LeFebvre
Thank you so much for coming on to chat about The X-Files. I’m a huge fan of your podcast and I love how you cover some obscure cases so well. So my last question is kind of a two parter. One, what’s one of your favorite stories that you’ve covered? And two, can you let listeners know where they can find your show?

01:06:17:03 – 01:06:44:25
Rob Kristoffersen
Oh, absolutely. You can find the show, Our Strange Skies, pretty much anywhere that you find podcasts. My one of my absolute favorite episodes I recently had on our good buddy Sam Fredrickson from the Not Alone podcast. And we talked about the story of this alien human hybrid that allegedly had moved into this college dorm room with this girl.

01:06:45:00 – 01:07:14:12
Rob Kristoffersen
And she was blind. So she wasn’t totally, you know, open. She didn’t know exactly what was going on, but she claimed to have had this alien human hybrid as a as a roommate. And like, the story gets really emotional. It points and Sam’s the perfect guest for that. So it’s our Rachel’s Eyes episode. So if you want a good introduction to what we do at the Our Strange Skies podcast, go check out that episode.

01:07:14:20 – 01:07:15:08
Rob Kristoffersen
It’s great.

01:07:15:29 – 01:07:20:20
Dan LeFebvre
Nice. I have make sure to include a link to that one in the show notes for this episode. Thank you again so much for your time, Rob.

01:07:20:20 – 01:07:29:02
Rob Kristoffersen
Thank you. Dan.