The Paracast

UFO researcher and religious scholar David Halperin returns to talk about his recent columns about UFOs and the Bible, including the theories that ancient man was visited by beings from outer space. He continues to focus on his theory that UFOs are a myth, manifestations of a collective unconscious, and not physical spaceships from other planets. Back in the 1960s, David was a teenage UFO investigator. Later he became a professor of religious studies — his specialty, religious traditions of heavenly ascent. From 1976 through 2000, David taught Jewish history in the Religious Studies Department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He’s the author of five non-fiction books on Jewish mysticism and messianism, the coming-of-age novel Journal of a UFO Investigator, and Intimate Alien: The Hidden Story of the UFO.

After 15 years, The Paracast is still here, as Gene and Randall present a special episode featuring veteran UFO researchers and authors Tim “Mr. UFO” Beckley and Jerome Clark. The discussion takes us way back to the early days of the UFO field, and how they became lifelong friends in the pages of Ray Palmer’s Flying Saucers magazine. Topics include the reasons why people interested in sci-fi often reject UFO believers, and the concept of “event anomalies,” and “experience anomalies” to describe the sort of encounters people report. Beckley boasts that he has had “so many careers that even his own girlfriend doesn’t know what he does for a living.” He has published hundreds of books covering paranormal topics. Clark is best known as author of the sprawling “UFO Encyclopedia.” He has also written numerous articles covering “Fortean” topics, and also worked with the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek at the Center for UFO Studies, and as an editor for Fate magazine.

Gene and Randall present paranormal researcher Sheryl Gottschall, president of Australia’s UFO Research Queensland (UFORQ), one of the oldest research organizations exploring the phenomenon. Starting in the the mid-1970s, she started exploring the field of near death experiences which deepened over the next decade. Sheryl was introduced to the UFO subject in 1980 by her father-in-law who had seen contactee George Adamski speak at Brisbane City Hall in the 1960s. As a child she would watch the stars at night and wonder if life existed elsewhere in the universe, and she read as many books about the 1950s and 1960s contactees as she could find. During the 1990s she became interested in alien abduction and attended a 1992 event in Brisbane featuring abduction researcher, Budd Hopkins. During this interview, Sheryl will focus on her interest in UFOs and also possible near-death experiences.

Gene and Randall present paranormal writer and researcher Tim R. Swartz to bring us up to date on his ongoing studies involving the strange and unknown. He is an Indiana native and Emmy-Award winning television producer/videographer, and is the author of a number of popular books including “The Lost Journals of Nikola Tesla,” “America’s Strange and Supernatural History,”  and “Time Travel: Fact Not Fiction!” In this episode, he’ll focus on a recent book, “Alien Lives Matter — It’s OK to Be Gray,” which contains reports from 20 of the world’s leading UFOlogists that establish that humans have done battle with aliens over and over again, shooting at them, molesting them, hitting them, running them over,  unleashing dogs upon them, and injuring — and even killing them — though any means possible, as humans try to combat their fear of the unknown.

Gene and Randall present a very special episode featuring Martin Willis, of Podcast UFO, and experiencer Tom Warner, author of an autobiography, “Beyond the Stars,” who reports he and four other families were abducted by a UFO on September 1, 1969, when he was just 10 years of age. As he explains during the episode, this was not his first nor his last paranormal encounter. Martin has been fascinated with the subject of UFOs since his youth, yet he was on the fence about the subject until he experienced a personal sighting in 2006 in Carmel Valley, CA. That sighting solidified his belief that Unidentifiable Flying Objects really do exist. Tom is a self-taught watercolor artist and was named to the American Gallery Greatest American Painters, winner of James Weldon Johnson Literary Foundation Legacy Award for stellar contributions to Literature and the Arts.

Gene and Randall present the return of Walter Bosley. Walter worked briefly in the film industry as a production assistant on commercials and a feature film. He then decided to put his talents to use in counter-espionage and counter-terrorism in a career with the FBI, the AFOSI, and other U.S. federal organizations. His non-fiction books include Latitude 33: Key to the Kingdom, and Empire of the Wheel: Espionage, The Occult and Murder in Southern California. He frequently sits in as an unofficial co-host on the critically-acclaimed radio show Radio Misterioso, and appeared on numerous other radio programs, including Coast to Coast AM, The Kevin Smith Show, Dark Matters Radio, and, of course, The Paracast.

Gene and Randall take a journey through time and space with biological anthropologist Dr. Michael P. Masters, author of Identified Flying Objects: A Multidisciplinary Scientific Approach to the UFO Phenomenon. The book challenges readers to consider new possibilities while cultivating conversations about our ever-evolving understanding of time and time travel. In other words, whether UFOs are piloted by humans from our future. Dr. Masters also discusses his next book, which focuses on abductions. Collectively, his background, education, and current research program combine to offer a unique perspective and novel approach to addressing unanswered questions pertaining to a widely recognized yet poorly understood aspect of modern global culture.

Gene and Randall present Special Correspondent William Puckett with another collection of recent sightings from around the world, plus his comments about prospects for solid information from the Pentagon UAP Task Force. Among the key sightings is a report about a robot-like being emerging from a glowing green UFO, as reported in Las Vegas on November 22, 2020. William worked as a meteorologist with the National Weather Service for 3 years and the Environmental Protection Agency for 27 years. He was a consultant for the History Channel series “UFO Hunters” and is also a research associate with NARCAP (National Reporting Center for Anomalous Phenomena). He is credited with meteorological and radar analysis for the November 7, 2006 UFO Incident at O’Hare Airport in Chicago.