Humpty Dumpty snuck out late at night. Humpty got snatched up by a beam of green light. All the King's horses and all the King's men never did see poor Humpty, not ever again. You've crossed over. The spook. You've got the shadow. Stay. In the book of Revelation, the narrator, John, describes what this thing's something like, a city. Respended, sending from the sky. The prophet Ezekiel, chronicles seeing something like a giant wheel, spinning in the clouds. Agina leaps aboard something like a flying chariot and soars into the air, something like. June 24, 1947, businessman Kenneth Arnold, pilot his Cal Air A2 toward Yakima, Washington. He turns toward Montreneer and sees nine objects moving in the line, flying formationing things well. Must be some kind of new military aircraft perhaps, but something's off. Because these objects move strangely. They weave, they bank, they flash in the sun and so Kenneth does something important. He times them. Watch as a sweep of his second hand on his cockpit clock, does the calculation determines that these nine objects are triadling around 1,200 miles per hour, which is insane. Instead of the soundbearer itself has not been broken yet. And then they're gone. And Kenneth does something very dangerous. He tells people what he saw. Newspapers report that Kenneth Arnold witnessed nine saucer-like objects. Kenneth later says, that's not what I meant exactly. He meant that the objects moved kind of like a saucer, skipping across water, too late. But people heard flying saucer, so flying saucer, it is. Even decades later, he says, he didn't really have words for he saw. But he saw just the same. Something like saucers, something like a chariot, something like a city, something like a giant wheel in the sky. When what happened is squeezed into a language too small to contain it. Maybe what we have is an experienced problem, but a translation problem. How do we capture in words, something words were never meant to contain, and woe but tie the person who attempts to relate the unrelatable, who dares to scribe the ineffable, at best we might call them prophets. At worst, and far more likely, we will dismiss them as lunatics. Beware what you say, because we put our prophets in cages, and those who walk the shadow learn very quickly. It is far safer to keep your observations to yourself, to pretend that you see what everyone else sees. And I'll say this here, the remnants of the book of shadow are unhelpful. This grabs certain creatures from very, very far away. It names them, it tells us that they are, but does not tell us from whence they came, how they came, or for purpose they came. Maybe just like the prophets who ever wrote the book of shadow, they too ran out of words. It's full of stars. Now. Spooksters. The truth is out. The truth is that they are not meant to be. They are not meant to be. Now Spooksters. The truth is out there, and there are people who have seen it. I'm watching them eat chaz. Chaz loves the outdoors. Spence is free time, hiking the mountains around silver plume and abandoned mining town in the middle of the Rockies a few miles south of Denver. And tonight, Chaz is heading up the mountain alone, playing with me this neighbor Brian and his brother higher up on the trail, where they'll be watching the Perseid meteor shower. I started out the hike, maybe seven or eight o'clock. I left silver plume behind, headed up this railroad trail that sort of switches back and forth across the front of the mountain. It was a beautiful August night. Silver plume is very wooded and around that time of years when like the leaves start changing. So you get these yellow bands of aspins interwoven in the green pine trees. The trail can be treacherous at times. I'm coming across a lot of steep cliffs kept having to detour up and around these little like ravines. It got dark about halfway up the mountain, but I was pretty accustomed to these woods and knew them pretty well, so I was comfortable in the dark there. It was probably well past nine, maybe 10 o'clock. At this point, I was expecting to meet my neighbor Brian and his brother Jack. I got to the top of the ridge line and got cell service again. I give him a call, say, "Hey, where are you at?" They tell me, "Hey, man, we're sorry, but we're having dinner in Georgetown and we're probably not going to make it there, but have fun." That's when I realized I'm going to be rolling this adventure solo, which was fine with me. I got to this place called Pavilion Point. It's an amazing viewpoint overlooking the whole valley. I kind of found a comfortable place to sit, built a tiny campfire, and got my backpack off, got my camel back out so I could lean back and watch the sky. It was about a perfect of night as you can get for watching a meteor shower. Dipping across the sky, almost in any direction, I can see these streaks of light, green, orange, yellow. Sometimes I see two or three at once. The whole Milky Way is sort of silhouetted behind all this. And it's very, very cool, very magical. By the time it was inching toward midnight, I'd counted well over 100 meteors. I was already shifting my mood into sort of packing it up and getting going. I was sort of gathering my things, getting stuff back into my bag. All of a sudden I see a sort of spotlight turn on. Have
the bottom of the mountain with its light and up the mountain, basically right in my direction. And then right next to it, I see another light pop on. In that moment, I realized that I had broken the rules. They recently had imposed a pretty strict fire band in Colorado, which basically meant if you had a campfire and if you got caught, they would find you up to thousand or more dollars. I was used to having my own fires up there and I think it had just slipped my mind. And so in my head, I'm like, oh man, they got me. I'm caught. Here comes forest service. And then almost immediately these two lights started coming up the mountain. I figured here's forest service. Now they're on ATVs and they're going to come up and give me a ticket. I need to be out of here. I take what's left of my camel back and just douse the campfire and start it hastily walking back down this trail. I got probably a hundred yards or more before I decided to turn around and look, that's when my heart sank. Right where my campfire was set up. I could just see lights, like flashlight lights, scanning all the trees up there. My mind was really spinning at this point because I couldn't imagine how anything could have gotten there so quickly, but it doesn't matter. I cannot get busted for this. I don't have a thousand dollars or more. I don't want to get in trouble. So I start running. I turn around behind me to look. I can see that one of these lights is now coming down the little trail that I'm on. And the other light has actually popped out right in front of me and it's floating up above the trees. At this point, I'm assuming that it's drones or something like that, but it's dead silent. I don't know what I'm seeing, but it definitely felt like I was being followed. So I just keep running. My body is in full sprint mode. The trail is steeper, much thinner. I haven't looked back in a second, but I can tell the light behind me on the trail is closing in. All of a sudden, boom, I'm weightless. Boom, my legs hit this tree. I'm flipping. I don't know what direction's up. And then boom, I hit the dirt. I'm confused. I'm in a lot of pain. I lay my head back. I realized that I had ran right off the edge of a cliff and saw that I was basically 20, 30 feet down from the trail that I was just on. I'm patting down my knees, my legs. I realized I'd gotten away for a second from these things, but I also realized I might be gravely injured. Now I'm out here in the dark, and I'm not exactly sure where I am. As I'm laying there, I see these two lights coming back down the trail that's now in front of me, maybe 40, 50 feet away from me. They were moving so slowly, almost at a creeping pace. In that moment, I thought, well, this is it, like they got me. But they didn't stop. They passed right in front of me, and this was the first time I got like a real good look. I can see that they're basically what look like tube floating sort of motorcycles. Just imagine like two big dirt bikes with the wheels taken off, just floating above the ground. They were white in color. I can see glowing lights along the side of each bike, ranging from a red to orange to yellow. No engine sounds, no fan propeller blades. I'd never seen anything like it. I can see there's like a guy riding on top of it like you would a motorcycle, and then right behind him is the second one with a guy on top of it. They look like people in chemical suits. Big, white, grayish, all one piece chemical suits. And as they're passing in front of me, I'm wondering in my own head, did I run off that cliff and smash my head and my death? What am I even looking at? I obviously didn't want to attract them to where I was. I'm almost holding my breath, and I'm trying to like make my body as small as I can, like just sink back into the mountain. They slow down, stop. They hop off these bikes. They're human sized five, six feet maybe. They weren't talking to each other, so it was just so quiet, just eerie. The hover bike stops, spins around very slowly, 360 degrees right in place, zero point turn. From the side of the vehicle, they grab what looks like a spear or some kind of digging tool. They dig a little hole in the ground. And on the side of the bike, this little sort of compartment opens up and they shovel some dirt in there. And now my brain is broken. I don't know what I'm seeing. They do this just over and over and over. They dig, throw dirt in the side, bike will slowly move a couple feet, spins around, they dig, and it's just the same thing over and over and over. All these different thoughts are occurring to me. Why are these things wearing like protective suits? Is there some sort of contamination? Is there something wrong with the air right now? Am I hallucinating? I know what it's like to hallucinate. I have taken substances like that. And this was nothing like that. It just felt real. All of a sudden, one of them gets moving in my direction. He stopped right in front of me, 20, 30 feet away, and it just stood there facing me with that dark hood or whatever mask from this chemical suit looking thing. My heart dropped. It just felt like it was staring right at me. I'm holding my breath. My heart's pounding in my ears. I was squinting my eyes because I didn't want this thing to see the whites of my eyes. It felt like ages. And then he just turned around and then dug right there and then he started making his way away from me. For hours, I just watched these things float around and digging in the dirt, sometimes getting nearer, sometimes getting further. At one point, I saw probably 10 more, maybe up to a dozen of these lights, shoot by down that trail. Not stop or slow down, but just come from somewhere and go somewhere else.
There were a few times where I felt like this is getting crazy. I just needed to stand up and walk home. But I couldn't bring myself to actually get up and walk through it. I was still terrified that they were going to catch me, catch on, that I was there watching everything. I'm just looking straight up at the sky, praying for the sun to come up. I sort of came up with some mantra that sort of kept me calm and kept me breathing slowly. Don't move, stay calm, don't move, stay calm. [Music] Finally the sky goes from black to that hint of blue. That's really when I heard them sort of communicate for the first time. These things jump back on their hover bikes and then they zoom off down the trail. Even a few seconds they were out of sight. I felt like I could breathe again. These things, whatever they were, had been gone for probably 30 minutes. The sun's now coming up over the horizon and I'm finally convincing myself that they're gone. It's safe. I basically just sort of creak forward, not even wondering if my body's going to work. Everything hurts, my back, my pelvis. I'm in a lot of pain but nothing's broken. I get up on my feet and just lumber down the mountain till I get to this trail that's been out in front of me all night. Get around where I saw this activity, they're basically like perfectly round little holes in the dirt on the trail, off the trail. I didn't want to think about it, I just needed to get home and go to sleep. I get back home, I walk around the building to where my stairwell is to my apartment and out the door and around the corner it comes Brian, probably getting up to do his morning stuff. He sees me and he, you know, cheerfully goes, "Hey man, how was the meteor shower?" And I looked at him in that moment and I was like, "Fuck you, Brian!" And I'm pretty angry. He goes like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you talking about, what's the problem?" I point at my legs. You can see these like open gashes, like blood still coming down. I basically was like, "You don't know what, what I've been through, man. You guys left me up there and I had the craziest night." I basically tell him the story and he doesn't believe a word of it. I just didn't believe him. It was just such a crazy story, you know. I didn't know what to make of it and I was like, "I don't know, maybe he took something, you know, dropped some acid and tripped out up there and like, I don't know." At that time I had known Chaz for about a year. We weren't super close friends. We were just sort of casual buddies, you know what I mean? I'd gotten hiking a couple times with Chaz and his girlfriend. He was always all geared up. He had his flashlights, his laser beam. He's very familiar with the area and everything. When I saw him all banged up, bloodied, I knew that something had happened but I didn't really know what to think. I just thought it was a crazy, crazy ass story. I told him like, "Listen, man, I'm exhausted. I'm going home to go to sleep but if you really don't believe me, how about tonight? Leave me back in my apartment and we'll walk back up there and see if the light show show back up." Brian's like cut and dry, logical, he doesn't do drugs, he's like an athlete. If I needed to prove this to somebody, Brian would be the best person to have. I did feel a little guilty about ditching him the night before. The Percy and Meteor shower is also going on. So I was like, "All right, whatever, we'll go up there tonight and you and I can both get eyes on whatever's up there." I didn't expect to see anything other than an awesome meteor shower. We probably leave, I don't know, 12, 12 at night, get some gear together, plenty of water, flashlights and whatnot. He didn't want to go up the same mountain, he was pretty freaked out about what had happened the night before. So we decided that we were going to go up the other side of the valley, basically go up the mountain that is opposite to Pavilion Point and look across. For the most part we're just pretty quietly hiking up. I'm very nervous, but I feel better knowing that there's another person there. As we go up, we can see the meteor shower going on. It was just incredible. It's like hundreds of shooting stars going off at the same time. We hiked up for about 30 minutes till I felt like we were high enough. There was one spot, I think in the middle of the trail. It was a clearing. There were fewer trees and we could see clear across. We found like a comfortable spot to sit where we could just see the entire mountain. And then once we sort of got comfortable and were able to put binoculars up to our faces, it just pretty much sat there in silence for a while. I still felt emotionally, physically drained. I just needed to prove that what I had told him happened, just so I don't have to be like the sole bearer of all this. Also, immediately, I see a couple of these dim lights out in the middle of the valley coming straight up the mountain in front of us. I was like, Brian, look, look, look, look, look, see those lights? He's looking at it like, dude, that's what you're talking about. It was like four or five points of light that are moving together on the side of the mountain. They were yellow. From where we were standing, I couldn't make out any shape, like human shape or bike shape or anything. And I'm like, oh, well, it's probably some people hiking. What else could I think? All of a sudden, they start to multiply. There starts to be more and more of them all over the entire side of the mountain. That was very scary. We could actually see well over a hundred of these floating things, like moving all around the mountain. They were zipping around in all different kind of random locations. You'd see one at the bottom of the mountain and it would zip up to the top of the mountain. And they made no noise. It was totally silent. In the way they moved through the trees was in the same fashion as I'd seen the night before. I'm not freaked out at this point. There were just lights. I'm trying to figure out, like, an explanation. Maybe it's some sort of cosmic effect. Maybe this meteor shower is somehow causing, you know, us to see these clusters of light projected onto the mountain. At this point, I was just happy someone else was seeing it. I just felt like, well, I know I'm not crazy because now I got Brian next to me. And then, all of a sudden, I turn my head.
ahead and I see this massive 30 story tall cone sitting at the edge of the mountain in front of us. It was in the blink of an eye, all of a sudden just boom, shows up. It was round at the base and tapered up to a flat top. I remember it as being like translucent but we could see like textured on it like different shapes and just weird random patterns like a camouflage. I couldn't tell if it was on the ground or if it was hovering and look at how I'm like do you see that cone right there? Like look at that thing. I'm looking and it takes my eyes a second to adjust but right over the top of the mountain there was almost like this blurry triangle cone thing that looked like it was like reflecting light around it, almost like it's camouflage. Now I'm like getting freaked out. We're both like what the hell's what is that thing? I remember putting my finger to my neck and feeling my heart pounding. It's just like like total panic and then this cone it started to move. It would be at the bottom of the mountain and then you would blink and it would be at the top of the mountain and then to the middle and then to back to where it was but instantaneous boom. I have no idea what what it was doing but it looked like it was teleporting. I can't even comprehend what's going on. My mind was so broken by what I'd seen the night before and now this was way too weird for my brain to process it. We were just both just in shock. Like utter shock. I remember having the thought this is like first contact. We are here to witness the arrival of alien life on planet earth. How are people going to deal with this? You know, like this is going to change everything and then my amazement turned into fear. I had that actual thought, like am I about to be abducted by aliens right now? For hours we were just transfixed looking at this cone zipping around the mountain and these balls of light that were just all over the place. But we can't stop you know looking at this site. We were like we're going to stay here until until they leave. The sun started coming up and that was around post to 6 a.m. As soon as we saw just the tiniest little sliver of sun. These lights just basically disappeared. Oh they were gone. All the clusters of light the cone instantly gone. Where the hell did they go? What the hell did we just witness a minute ago? We were just tired and exhausted. All this stuff we just witnessed is way too weird for our brain to comprehend. So we just started walking down. And we didn't talk the whole way down. We made it down down the mountain and walked back into town. We got to the apartment and I was just like listen I need to sleep but I'll talk to you tomorrow. We just went in opposite directions. And I went to sleep. 5 or 6 in the afternoon I can just hear my phone buzzing under my pillow like over and over and over. I wake up pick up the phone. I look at it. It says Jack who's Brian's brother. I answer the phone and he tells me that Brian was at the hospital. I'm going like whoa whoa whoa like how did that happen when I left Brian he seemed fine. I got home that morning and I didn't really know what to do at that point. I was still like shocked. I made some coffee and tried to get myself together a little bit. I had some stuff I had to do down in Denver that day. So I was like okay I'm just going to go about my day and like try and be normal. So I just got in my car and drove down the highway. While I was driving I was just freaking out in my head. I didn't know how to make sense of anything. I thought like the world was ending. I had some sort of forbidden knowledge. It was terrifying. My heart is just pounding out of my chest. I thought I was having like a heart attack or something like that. I pulled over. I don't know if I should call anyone. I didn't know what to do. I went down by the river and there's a guy fly fishing in the river. I like waved him down. I'm like hey man can you help me man. I'm freaking out over here. He gave me some food. He gave me some water. He's like did you take anything like what did you do? He drove me down to the hospital down in Denver and the hospital said you're fine man. I was just having a panic attack. Once I started to settle down my brother Jack picked me up from the hospital. But I didn't want to talk about it at that point. So I didn't I didn't explain what happened. I just told Jack his brother we just we saw some weird stuff and I don't know how to explain that to you. And we sort of left it at that because you know I think if I'd have told somebody else about it it would have made me feel like crazy. There was nothing I could I felt like I could do about Brian. But what I did do now that I was awake I drove down to like the nearest thrift store Goodwill. Then I bought like four telescopes that night from my apartment which is second floor window. I set up like all four telescopes. But I saw nothing. Over the next couple weeks I sort of calmed down a little bit. But Chaz and I we didn't we didn't talk for months. I just didn't hear from him you know I didn't reach out to him either. It's been seven years now and similarly to me he wants to find answers too. It's up buddy. It's going on man. Yeah it is. I need headphones right. All right I can hear you now. Was the last time I saw you it was like it's been at least two three years I think yeah. I think maybe right after it happened we talked about it a little bit but yeah I don't know we've never really just sat down and talked about it I don't think it felt like you didn't want to talk about it at first you know and this might be me projecting but it felt like kind of a sore subject. Yeah I mean I think we're both just shocked at what we just saw and like wanted to put it out of my mind
a little bit because I feel like that night, my mind was just broken open. But I don't know. I'm not scared of it anymore. Like I've kind of like accepted it. You know, my heart doesn't pound whenever I talk about it, you know, so. - Yeah, it took me probably a week or two before I was going back out there at night, just 'cause I was nervous. But I pretty much looked out my window staring for probably an hour to every single night for months it felt like. And to this day I've seen nothing. So now it's just like might as well get it out there see if there's any other feedback in the world or maybe someone's seen something like it, I doubt it. But, you know. - Yeah, so I've looked around online about, you know, if anyone has ever seen a sort of cone structure and there is some sort of, you know, vehicle that people describe as a triangle, but it's not what I saw, you know. And then you got in touch with Mufon, right? - Yeah. - Yeah, so Chaz got in touch with Mufon and was it step four? - Mutual UFO network. - Yeah, it's like a database for, you know, sightings and stuff. There was someone that heard the story and was like, oh, that cone sounds familiar. Like that's a, what's it called? - TR3V. - A TR3V and he showed me an image of it and it was like, almost looked like a boomerang or something like, no, that's not it. - Yeah, and I thought maybe they would have some, maybe reasonable explanations or know something about it. - Yeah, yeah, and nothing really came from it after that. So I was like, okay, well. - Yeah. I mean, I still have no idea what it was we saw. Like, I don't know if it was aliens, I don't know if it was government with all their capability. Like, I have no idea what it was. - I have a question for you actually that I've never thought to ask, but like, do you ever wish that I hadn't like, drug you, you know, out there that day? Do you wish I'd never like? - No, I mean, I am like so grateful to have like seen that. It feels like we were audience to a really special thing, you know, just completely flipped my worldview like upside down, it made me question a lot of things about what I thought about the world, you know, in my place in it, like nothing is as it seems, you know? It was a traumatic experience, but it was also sort of a growth experience, too. I feel a new, like, a new energy for life, I guess. - If you hadn't been there, I don't know if I would have told anybody ever. - I definitely feel a bond that, you know. - Yeah, for sure. - And it is sort of like a weird secret that we have. Maybe me and you are the only ones who've ever experienced it. - I kind of like, you know, hope we see it again. Maybe I'd be ready for it next time. (soft music) (soft music) - Thank you, Chaz and Brian, for sharing your story with Spooked. Now, if you know anything at all about this, if you've seen these contraptions yourself, please reach out to Chaz, reach out to us, he still needs answers. We'll have his email in the show notes. The original score for this piece was by Doug Stewart. He was produced by Eddick Janjez. (upbeat music) - Now, have you personally witnessed something that might even go toe to toe with these hoverbikes? I have reason to believe that the truth is not just out there. It's in here, within the Spooked community, there exists a library of experience to rival the original book of shadow. And that is why I ask you, if you've seen something, please say something. Tell me about it,
[email protected], because I mean it when I say it, there is nothing better than a Spooked story from a Spooked listener. And we, at long last, hear you. Do you want extra Spooked stories that you can hear, nowhere else? Do you want ad-free Spooked? Your wish is our command. Pass through the veil, join us on the shadow road, spooked.supercast.com. That's spooked.supercast.com. And the directions to Spooked, studios, are these? Turn right, go down to tunnel. Pass into the void, sail down the dark river, and then quickly, quickly. Turn back from once you came. Don't seek to find it. Let's it seek to find you. KQD in San Francisco holds the key, but they won't tell us what it's for. And if you see a creature with oily skin, wearing those creepy, recording people glasses, run up to this imposter and shout in their AirPods, let no snaps, studios, content, maybe used for training, testing, or developing machine learning, or AI systems, while prior written permission, haunting the Spooked. The union representative producers, artists, editors, and engineers, members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, communications with America, AFL, sail, local 51, and Spooked. It's brought to you by the team that generally keeps an open mind about things and gives people the benefit of the doubt. So for Mark Ristich, Mark always shakes his head meaningfully whenever you speak to him. It's very uncomfortable. And I would like to take a moment. As his lamp and customary to place a coin in the hand of the fallen, so they could pay their passage to the fairy man, as he carries passengers down the dark river, and instead of a piece of silver for conveying us down this shadow lane, for each and every one of these seekers, would you please join me and giving them a hand for guiding us through the mystery? David Kim, Zoe Farrigno, Eric Yanges, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Regina Barriaco, Tailed Kot, Doug Stewart, Nicholas Marx, Tacey Georgie, Alton Takiyama Chung, Bridget Armstrong, Chris Frick, Ashley DeColony, the spook theme song is by Pat McCeevee Miller. My name is Ben Washington. And we operate under a lot of assumptions in that we assume that other folk we see, the ones with two arms, two legs walking down the street, are similar to us. Similar histories, similar desires, wants, needs, perhaps, but, it's also true that the very first rule of shadow is to know that you are being hunted and to appreciate the wolf hides under the skin of the lamb, under the lie of welcome. The second most important law for the book of shadow is to appreciate what every fiber of your being that things are never as they seem, 'cause there's comfort in imagining the monster comes from somewhere else, another world, another dimension, the woods, the basement, the stairs, anywhere, but right here, anyone but us, but the book of shadow offers no such comfort. It says, look again. This world is stranger than you imagine. Your neighbor is stranger than you imagine. You are stranger than you imagine, and there are things walking beside us right now that we do not understand, no matter. Look around, 'cause under the bright light of day, under the spotlight of a thousand cameras, monsters roam. Right now, daywalkers, telling us to hate the other, telling us they are after you, telling us that if you don't do it to them, they will most certainly do it to you, watch them. No, with certainty that the shadow is not the only place monsters hide. Never, ever, never, never, ever, never.
Ever. turn out. the last. [BLANK_AUDIO]
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