Radio Misterioso

Most people know researcher/ author Chris O’Brien from his books Mysterious Valley and Enter the Valley, both about his investigations into UFO and cattle mutilation activity in the San Luis Valley (SLV) area of Southern Colorado. We covered these subjects in two previous interviews which have been posted at my Radio4all.net site. Chris’ official site is a treasure trove of information and useful links. This interview concentrates on the many other aspects of Chris’ paranormal investigations and theories.

We start the conversation with reports of bigfoot-type entities in southern Colorado. This leads to a discussion of the apparent interconnectedness of paranormal phenomena, and a possible nexus of violence and bad luck during upturns of weirdness in the SLV. Chris remembers an incident concerning psychedelics and synchronicity with cattle mutilations. We both decry the hesitation of many paranormal researchers to consider examples of strange events that don’t fit the narrow scope of their own research.

In the second hour, we discuss his ghost investigations and video taping in an abandoned mental institution, recordings of cursing ghosts, and apparent time slips during EVP recording sessions. One implication of the time-shifted EVP is the rumor that O’Brien has heard that there may be some sort of secret technology which can tune in and record conversations which have taken place hours, days, or years in the past. Riffing on this idea, we also talk about the possibilities of “time travel” through the use of visual and auditory equipment. This leads to a discussion of ancient tools of divination.

We also talk about the work of Ray Stanford, who Chris encouraged me to interview, and who I finally did just last week.

This interview was recorded on August 27, 2006.

 

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Apologies are in order before the intro. For some reason, the automatic recorder that I use to document my shows inexplicably shut off 1 hour before the end of the interview.

Ray Stanford entered the world of flying saucers in the mid-1950s. Just out of high school, Ray and his twin brother Rex took a bus from southern Texas to visit George Adamski at his Palomar (CA) mountain headquarters to find out first hand about that “UFO business.” A few years later (surprise!), Adamski actually admitted to the Stanford brothers that he had hoaxed his entire story.

Ray has little good to say about the early contactees, and on our program actually related an incident of unwelcome homosexual advances at the hand of one of the most prominent figures in the early saucer circus. One personality for whom he still holds a little respect, surprisingly is Truman Bethurum, who claimed contact with a beautiful space maiden named Aura Rhanes.

Stanford was one of the investigators on at the scene at the famous Socorro landing/ trace case of 1966. We talked about what it was like and what happened to a sample of metal he retrieved from the site.

In the 1970s, Stanford was the moving force behind the Association for the Understanding of Man (AUM) and Project Starlight. The former an attempt to decipher the UFO enigma by psychic means, the latter using advanced scientific instruments. We talked about his success rate on both accounts.

I will certainly ask Ray Stanford on the program in the future to take up where we got cut off!

 

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Paul Krassner should be declared a national treasure. The title of his 1993 autobiography, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut was quoted from a letter about him from the FBI to Life magazine. In 1958, he founded the legendary underground newspaper The Realist, which satirized the government and social establishment as well as some of the radical elements which were pitted against them. It was often difficult to tell which articles were real and which were fiction. Krassner was a founding member of the Youth International Party (aka the “Yippies”) which used satire and humor to make political statements throughout the late 1960s and early ’70s.

He was friends with legendary comedian Lenny Bruce, who encouraged him to perform standup comedy beginning in 1961, which he still does from time to time.

Krassner’s extensive wikipedia entry continues his biography:

Krassner remains a prolific writer. In 1971 he published a collection of his favorite works for the Realist, as How A Satirical Editor Became A Yippie Conspirator In Ten Easy Years. In 1981 he published the satirical story Tales of Tongue Fu, in which the hilarious misadventures of the Japanese-American man Tongue Fu are mixed with a wicked social commentary. In July 2009, City Lights Publishers will release Who’s to Say What’s Obscene?, a collection of satirical essays that explore contemporary comedy and obscenity in politics and culture.

I consider myself extremely fortunate to know Paul, and was honored to talk to him on September 16 of 2001. There was one subject on everyone’s minds that week which we discussed at length.

 

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This was a fun interview from February 3 of 2008. Richelle Hawks writes a column called Medusa’s Ladder for Binnall of America, is part of a group of female writers on the paranormal at Women of Esoterica and has written articles for UFO Digest. Her home page blog is entitled Beamships Equal Love.

We talked about objectivity as an enemy of paranormal research, her investigation of a possible murder connected to Aliester Crowley (based on an enigmatic grave marker), the influence of the occult on anomalies research, old/new and female UFO contactees, the merit of channeled messages, controversy surrounding the spiricom device, her Men In Black experiences, a strange sighting of a tethered helicopter, her discovery of an alien face hidden in Crowley’s famous LAM drawing, and blog trolls.

The interview tended to be more of a conversation than most RadioMisterioso shows, but we did get deeper into some of the subjects because of it.

 

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