0:03

The US Air Force's Project

0:05

Blue Book investigated nearly 13,000 UFO cases between 1952

0:08

and 1969. 95% of

0:14

them were explained away as natural phenomena,

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conventional aircraft, secret projects,

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psychopathology or hoaxes. But

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what about that last 5%? The

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Blue Book team found them perplexing enough

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to file them away as unknown, but

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there was a deeper, more mysterious

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class within these unknowns that comprised

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just 1% of them. Those

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involving humanoids known as encounters

0:38

of the third kind. This episode tells

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the tale of one of those 1%. This

0:43

story also, perplexingly, has

0:45

to do with dinosaurs in a NASA parking

0:48

lot.

1:13

Behind

1:14

the cracking wallpaper of our reality,

1:16

there exists another world that science

1:18

has yet to explain.

1:20

In here dwell monsters and

1:23

madness, and potentially the

1:25

answers to our most important questions.

1:28

In this world, gravity intensifies,

1:30

time slows down, and

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your heart rate quickens.

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I'm Jake Rokitansky. And I'm Brad Abrahams.

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And you're listening to The Spectral

1:39

Voyager. The

1:45

Sequora Saucer. While

1:48

the main events of today's story took place in 1964, for

1:52

me, it all began in December of 2019. It

1:55

was a Friday night, and as is my proclivity,

1:57

I was half watching the 1980s series Arthur C.

1:59

Clarke.

1:59

Clark's mysterious world. It was the UFO

2:02

episode, and sandwiched between the story of Kenneth

2:04

Arnold's infamous saucer sighting and some lights

2:06

in the New Zealand sky, a segment appeared that

2:08

jolted me to full attention. It was about

2:10

a UFO investigative team just outside

2:13

Austin, Texas, where I had just moved some months

2:15

before. Men in matching jumpsuits wearing

2:17

bizarre goggles operated a menagerie

2:19

of high-tech looking equipment, at least high-tech

2:22

for 1980. It started like this.

2:25

Trying to trap a UFO is now

2:28

big business. In the scrubland of

2:30

Texas, Ray Stanford heads Project

2:32

Starlight International, with a million dollars'

2:35

worth of equipment. The

2:37

laser is to signal to spaceships his goggles

2:39

in case they answer back. The aim

2:41

is to use the highest technology to

2:44

establish beyond doubt that craft

2:46

from other times or worlds are

2:48

visiting the Earth. Hey, Jake, so

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what's your first impression of that? First

2:53

impression? First impression? The tech

2:55

is awesome. He's wearing some

2:57

kind of primitive form of virtual reality

3:00

goggles, and he's got

3:03

a big remote control, and

3:05

he's manipulating this

3:08

giant laser cannon

3:10

around quickly and smoothly.

3:12

It's got the right whirs and clicks.

3:15

There were white jumpsuits.

3:17

This looks like... You know what I

3:20

thought of? It reminds me of an

3:22

indie science

3:25

fiction movie, like Primer or

3:26

something like that. There's something kind

3:29

of desolate and cold

3:31

about it. Very cool. It went on

3:33

to show just how serious and ambitious this

3:35

organization was. Centipiece of Project

3:38

Starlight's armory is a computer

3:40

to monitor UFO activities in the area.

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This

3:45

is an Operation Argus alert.

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Please proceed as you have been instructed.

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The computer automatically calls

3:52

up spotters to scan the sky.

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And it really hits the panic

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button if...

3:59

landing is indicated.

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With

4:05

techniques

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like these, Stanford hopes to add to the

4:08

evidence he's already amassed. So

4:10

yeah, they seem to be tracking UFOs

4:12

with satellite data and then automatically

4:15

calling affiliates in those areas to watch

4:17

the skies while Ray Stanford or other staff

4:19

jump in their pickup trucks and are dispatched.

4:23

The clip ended with a message from the org's founder,

4:25

Ray, wearing a PSI branded white

4:27

jumpsuit, Wolbini, in glasses. We

4:30

have motion picture films, magnetometer

4:32

recordings, sound recordings, and

4:35

a whole variety of data

4:36

that

4:37

begin to make us think that UFOs

4:40

are technological, that they're really not

4:42

something natural after all, but something

4:44

not only technological but highly sophisticated

4:47

and capable of

4:48

speeds and accelerations far

4:51

beyond anything that we've ever dreamed of. In fact,

4:53

we've really been surprised at how

4:55

fast these things can move, that we've tracked

4:58

and frankly, I would say that

5:01

they simply don't originate on the

5:03

Earth, at least any place on the Earth that

5:06

I know of. So yeah, I found this

5:08

so cool when I first saw it because

5:10

Ray and Project Starlight were basically the

5:13

Jacques Cousteau for UFOs, down to

5:15

all the matching uniforms, the custom-built equipment,

5:17

the swag. I was just going to say, these

5:20

are the two swaggiest UFO

5:23

researchers that I've ever seen. So

5:27

when did this come out? That clip

5:29

is from 1979. 1979. He's

5:33

Ray Stanford, but

5:35

he really does have the

5:38

sort of quality and personality

5:40

of Ray Stance from the Ghostbusters.

5:44

I wonder if Dan Aykroyd

5:46

and Harold Ramis were privy to

5:49

these videos and potentially named

5:51

their character after him. Because he's

5:54

got the passion, he's got the swag

5:57

though. Oh, the matching uniforms,

5:59

the beanie. This is so cool. Yeah,

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I just I actually I was thinking as I

6:03

was watching this last clip I went I wish I didn't

6:05

have to be a part of this episode

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I wish I could just sit back and and watch

6:10

I just want to watch this like a movie now Yeah,

6:13

so they had remote-controlled VHS cameras magnetometers

6:16

gravitometers lasers things

6:18

called photo theodolites and it

6:20

all totaled around like 200 k plus today

6:23

and it was thanks to wealthy Texas

6:25

oil guys who like donated all the money and

6:28

equipment and there's some of their on the next page the

6:30

Cover from their journal and one of their

6:33

PhDs with a microphone just

6:35

looks like straight out of Ghostbusters Oh,

6:37

yeah. I mean, this is so Ghostbusters.

6:39

It's under the branding is

6:42

good. You know, they have cool Their

6:44

logo is cool. The colorways

6:47

is awesome. It's like they understand

6:49

the cinematic sensibility of

6:51

what they're doing, you know that they're fans

6:54

of science fiction whether

6:56

you know reading it or or watching

6:59

it in movies and basically said which

7:01

this is what I would do as Well, I am totally

7:03

in this camp It's like if I'm do if I'm

7:06

doing something that is close

7:08

to the movie, you know The movie

7:10

or the book that I like I want to look like

7:13

what they did in the movie or the book like there's

7:15

no need To dress down for this so

7:17

I could have left it at that But the documentarian

7:20

in me crave to know more was raised still

7:22

alive and still living in Austin What

7:24

was he up to info was scarce, but

7:26

I found a Texas Monthly article from 1976 which

7:29

featured a reporter that visited psi He

7:32

described Ray better than I could a small

7:34

tight live man The kind of person

7:36

who doesn't burn off energy so much as recycle

7:38

it so that he gives the impression of being a compact

7:41

self-contained organism Charged

7:44

maverick particle when he asked Ray

7:46

why the white suits Ray's answer was

7:48

we wear the white suits for two reasons

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one

7:51

Safety white will reflect the heat from infrared

7:53

radiation a possible component of a possible

7:55

UFO laser and to general

7:58

above boardness if they're intelligent I'm

8:00

not going to try and play games. We're not

8:02

going to wear black and hide in the bushes. This

8:04

isn't a game. It's a dangerous undertaking.

8:06

That's one reason we wear name tags out there. Should

8:09

we be killed, people will at least be able to identify

8:11

us." Such a Ray

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answer, oh my god. RYAN LAUGHS

8:16

During their night watches, he was known to look up into

8:18

the sky and exclaim, Land over here!

8:20

We have no weapons! So, Ray

8:23

was a character. Further digging revealed that

8:25

he was very much alive and in his mid-80s. He

8:28

had a life-spanning decades of work with UFO

8:30

investigations, parapsychology, and

8:32

even paleontology. It wasn't much longer before

8:34

I found his email and asked if he'd be interested in

8:36

being filmed, perhaps for a short documentary

8:38

portrait.

8:39

It did not go well. RYAN LAUGHS

8:43

Ray had googled me and my documentary Love

8:45

and Saucers came up. This is an excerpt from

8:47

his first reply. Thanks for your interest, Brad.

8:50

But that utterly disgusting, at least to

8:52

me, Love and Saucers, brings to the watcher,

8:54

listener the kind of, in my not-inexperienced

8:57

opinion, fantasies, delusions, and

8:59

or lies useful to the anti-UFO

9:02

community in trying to make even those in scientifically

9:04

serious and obelisarial object studies look

9:07

laughable. In short, I do not care

9:09

to become

9:09

associated, even if only indirectly,

9:12

with delusional or hoax discourse alleging

9:14

intergalactic or even just intragalactic

9:17

intercourse. And there was a winky face

9:19

in there that he... Oh, dude. Dude,

9:22

oh my god. This guy

9:24

is so fucking cool. He owned you, but

9:26

he did it gently and sternly.

9:29

Oh, yeah. Oh

9:31

my, oh, maron.

10:15

Yesterday upon the stair, I met a man

10:17

who wasn't there. He wasn't there

10:19

again today.

10:21

I wish, I

10:21

wish he'd go away.