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Alien UFO Podcast
UFOs, Owls and High Strangeness.
00:58:58
This week I'm talking to Mike Clelland about UFOs, owls and high strangeness.
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- [00:01]
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- [02:05]
Simon Bown
This is an Alien UFO Podcast Classic episode and I'm your host Simon Bown. There are a number of UFO episodes that I released on the podcast a
- [02:15]
Interviewer
few years ago that are full of
- [02:17]
Simon Bown
great information and I thought it would be a good idea to share them for listeners who may have missed them the first time around. This week I'm talking to Mike Clelland about UFOs, synchronicities, owls and high strangeness. It was Mike's first hand experiences with these elusive events that have been the foundation for his research. Mike's 2015 book, The Messengers, was met with high praise. In it, he explores the mysterious connection between owls, synchronicities, and UFO abduction.
- [02:45]
Interviewer
Well, hi, Mike. Thanks a lot for coming on the podcast.
- [02:47]
Mike Clelland
It's my honor. Thank you so much.
- [02:50]
Interviewer
You've done so much research into alien abduction stuff, and that seems to have led you down a path into all sorts of things which we might call high strangeness. And you have all sorts of experiences. But how recently have you experienced something that may be to do with UFOs or synchronicities or just anything?
- [03:10]
Mike Clelland
Well, I mean, on some level, I treat synchronicity as just, you know, I weight it just the same as I do UFO contact in the sense that synchronicity, you know, a meaningful coincidence, just a powerful coincidence, I take just as seriously as, let's say, a magical event, as I do, like a UFO sighting or UFO contact. And the core of my research has been owls, so I treat an owl sighting equally. I'm doing this more as a thought experiment. Obviously, knowing someone, thinking of someone, and hearing and then they call you on the telephone is one thing, and you could weight that somewhat low. And then seeing a UFO in the sky, you would weight that pretty high. But I'm trying to weight those equally because I feel like they're somehow all interconnected. So I don't want to ignore the tiny clues in. In, you know, in the shadow of those larger clues. So what I can say is I am having. I'm going through a. A chapter of my life where I'm just astounded at the power of the synchronicities that are. That are happening in my life. So I could. Those might not be that interesting for me to tell a singular experience of a synchronicity, but I can say that they. That's ever present, and I trust that because it's. It's happening in a way that feels beyond mere chance or. Or mere, like, coincidence. So I don't dismiss that. But as far as, like, a powerful event. I went through a hypnotic regression in 2018, which is four years ago. But it seems like the events that emerged in that session have been, you know, resonating through my life even. Even today. So. And in. Since then, I guess I haven't had any, like, I haven't had any powerful UFO experiences, I don't think, since then, but I certainly have had, you know, a flood of synchronicities. And as I said, I take that very seriously as a recognition to, like, keep up with this work. It seems like the synchronicities are all surrounding this, this, you know, the research that I'm doing.
- [05:34]
Interviewer
Where do the synchronicities come from? How do they work? It's almost like there is some kind of intelligence behind it and controlling it. But like the universe is trying to tell you something.
- [05:47]
Mike Clelland
Yes, that's the issue. Yeah. And so there's like you can fall down the rabbit hole of thinking that it's monumentally important. So the experiences are happening to me and it would. I really have to fight to, to stay grounded sometimes because it seems like the, the messages coming through the synchronicities are, are somehow higher than here. I'll give you one example. I'm working on a, on a. I gotta be careful because the person hasn't given me permission this. But I'm working on a fiction book right now which has been incredibly difficult, but it's been very rewarding. And what has been happening and it happens over and over and over, is that I will get stuck in the book and then like I will get to a point where I'm writing fiction and, and I'll just get stymied. I'll get dead ended. And I'm like, oh, I just need to solve this. And then I am not exaggerating. There will be a ping on my email and an email comes in and I. And it is someone sharing a story because people are coming to me with their, with their stories, mostly their owl and UFO stories. And that singular story that arrives in the moment of my frustration exactly answers the issue at hand in what I need to add to the fictional narrative of a novel that I'm working on. So that has been going on a lot, several times a week on a big level, like a jaw dropping level. So I'm trusting that. And where do they come from? Wow. So that answer is, in my opinion, impossible to answer. Right. So the correct answer for me to say is I don't know. What I can do is speculate and say, well, it could be this, it could be that. I spoke with a fellow who's a clinician. You know, I'm not sure he's a PhD. I'm not sure if he's a psychiatrist or a psychologist. I apologize for not knowing that off the top of my head. But he's a clinician and does psychiatric work and he also wrote a book on synchronicity. His name is Dr. Kirby Surprise. And I talked to him for a long time at a point when I was struggling with my own issues. As far as this, it was A very confusing chapter of my life early on in this research. And he said something to me that really struck me and he just did it off the cuff. I don't know if he had rehearsed this or he just made it up, but it was. Came across like poetry where he said, we are all just parakeets in the cage, pecking at the mirror, not realizing it is our own reflection. And. And that's kind of a little brain twister, a little brain teaser, that statement. But I've come to really trust that where I feel that in some way we, the individual is generating the synchronicities, in some way we are putting this energy out into the universe and it is being reflected back at us in the form of synchronicity. And is it, is it my intention? And then the, let's say the other intelligences or the gods or the aliens or whatever terms you want to use, hear that yearning or that questioning that I'm putting out into the universe and do they provide me asynchronicity as a way to answer that? Or am I on an individual, like altering reality in some way? So the phone rings just when it needs to, with just the message I need to hear, or the email comes in at just the right time so I can proceed forward in a book of fiction. I can't answer that, but it certainly feels that there is some cause and effect, like it is a point of yearning or a point of conflict in the individual, which would be me. Quite often or oftentimes people will reach out to me and say they've had these experiences and are coming to me to share their accounts. And so I'm hearing exactly the same kinds of things that I'm directly experiencing.
- [10:08]
Interviewer
I have a synchronicity that happened to me once. I tell you quickly about this. I was traveling north from where I live on the south coast of England to gig with my band in a place west of London. And I have to go across this area called the New Forest, which is a national park. And it's very strictly controlled. You can't build there, you can't have parties there, you can't do anything really. It's just these little single track roads. And you drive through there and you come around a corner and there'll be all these horses in the middle of the road. It's very much nature driven. And so it was about 7 o' clock on an evening and I was driving up this dual carriageway about half a mile off the side of the road there was a ball of orange light, about the size of a car just above a tree, and it was really bright, and it was lighting up all the ground underneath it. So it wasn't like it was just a spotlight pointing at me. And I got a really good look at it for about 30 seconds driving up this road, and I wanted to stop, but you can't pull over. It's just trees and bushes down the sides, and it didn't move an inch the whole time. And I went up to this town, I did this gig, and I'm heading back, and it must have been around 1:32am there's no other vehicles around. And I was listening to one of your podcasts, and you were talking to Joe Montaldo, and you were talking to him about this point when you were living in that house, I think it was in Maine, and there was a really bright light coming through the window, and you looked out the window, and there were those five grays walking towards your house, and there was a really bright light behind them. This is how I remember you describing it. You'll have to correct me if I'm wrong, but it was bright orange light. And just as I got to that point where I saw this orange ball of light, Joe Montaldo said to you, and you know what that ball of light was now, don't you? And it felt like such a synchronicity that I hit that exact spot at that time. It felt like he was saying that to me.
- [12:13]
Grainger Advertiser
Wow.
- [12:13]
Mike Clelland
Okay, so now, to be clear, the light I saw, my memory of what I saw that night in Maine, which would have been 1993, the winter of 92. 93, I think. And that was a white light. But I did have another story about the sky lighting up orange. And I have certainly heard a lot of accounts of orange balls of light. So now this is a synchronicity tied directly into a what I would call a UFO sighting. Right. So a floating ball of light is a flying object, let's say. So it's an unidentified flying object. Did you. What. So what was what.
- [12:53]
Interviewer
How.
- [12:54]
Mike Clelland
What's your take on this? What do you sense happened?
- [12:57]
Interviewer
I don't know. I don't know. This is the second time I've seen a ufo. The first time, I was a lot closer to it, and I actually saw, like, a craft that was just 200ft away from me, just above some trees. But this time, it just seems. It's just that thing that seems like the universe has very sneakily put these two things together to try and give me a little message. You know, I mean, seeing a UFOs like that is a message enough, I suppose, but it's like they wanted to give me an extra little kick by getting Joe Montalda to say that exactly the right time.
- [13:32]
Mike Clelland
So this is the kind of thing that I am utterly fascinated by. So your story is exactly the kinds of things that I am, I am trying to document and trying to make sense of in my research. So you take a strict materialist, right? And they say, oh, people are having UFO contact. If you look at it in a strict materialist way, then you would have to say, this is not a paranormal event. This is an event of a mechanical craft that traveled here from some other place, let's say another planet, another star system, another galaxy. And, and it arrived here the same way that we fly a helicopter into Yellowstone national park and examine the grizzly bears, right? So we have a model in place that we do. Right? We have a. We, we do things right. We go, we take, you know, we have rovers on Mars and we have had astronauts land on the moon and such. So they're not doing anything that we're not doing, except their technology is just more advanced than ours, so we can totally anthropomorphize ourselves within the UFO context, right? So it's a metal ship lying here to study us with little scientists on boards, essentially us just a little further down the timeline. That model works great until you start confronting stories like yours which are all over the place. And I would have to say that anyone doing UFO research who's truly doing it, who's truly immersing themselves in it and taking it seriously, if they don't drop that materialistic paradigm and recognize that, wow, something far stranger is going on, they have to willfully ignore certain parts of the data in order to stay in that side of the continuum. Because, I mean, like, that's a powerful. I mean, that is, That's a powerful story. That, that makes the, that makes me as a researcher recognize that something, something much richer and much more personalized, right? That wasn't like a event meant to be seen by a, you know, a football stadium of people that was specifically, seemingly specifically tailored directly for you and the why of it and the how of it, I don't understand. All I can speculate is what it may or may not imply. But, wow, that's, that's, that's the kind of story I'm hearing a lot of exactly that story.
- [16:17]
Mood.com Advertiser
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- [17:16]
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- [17:46]
Interviewer
It's kind of like people are on some kind of spiritual path and a I feel that there's people who get lots of little nudges throughout their life going down this path and there may be other people who they'll have a near death experience and that'll be one massive nudge and they'll get it all in that one incident. But I noticed in your book you talk about the maybe people who might be getting these little nudges who may be connected with all this stuff.
- [18:12]
Mike Clelland
Yes. So that was a term I had to use because what was happening is, you know, so it's easy. Someone says, you know, like, oh, you know, I had this experience where I was, you know, driving down the road at night and a flying saucer landed in front of me and I was taken on board. And I have complete memories of being on board the craft and subjected to whatever it might be, a physical examination or some sort of teaching environment or some sort of communication. And then I, you know, got off the craft, got back in my car and drove home. Those stories are out there but, wow, they're. They're rare. What is much more, more prevalent is people who tell these stories where it was like, well, you know, like, I saw a UFO and then later I had a powerful dream, and then I had an OWL experience that seemed to be tied into these things. And, and then you can infer that, wow, maybe, maybe you had a UFO contact event and it, it is simply unremembered and buried in your subconscious. Where, where the hypnosis comes in is perhaps you could retrieve that unconscious event through hypnosis. I'm very cautious because, you know, the majority of the people I talk to have never gone through hypnosis. They have plenty of memories that can. Where you can put the puzzle pieces together. Maybe there would be more information. I started this talk just by saying that I have had a powerful hypnosis experience. And. But I see that more as a metaphoric event rather than a literal event. It might be literal. There's no way I can know. But let me back up. So these. What, what was happening when I was confronted with the people I was talking with and I was asking for people who had a UFO and OWL experience, right at my website, I said, I want to hear your OWL stories. And when I talk to people at conferences, you know, people who reach out to me, I say, one of the questions I ask everyone is if you're. Have you ever had an odd experience with an owl? And what's happening is, I'm collecting these very strange stories. But so back to your thing about the maybe people. Like, I, I'm one person. Like, how do I have an email conversation or talk to someone on the phone? And like, I, there's no way I can say that they've had direct UFO contact. What I can say is they may have the outlying pieces of what may be UFO contact. Some of those things may be a missing time, profound dreams, a sense that something happened. And then, and then I will also edit like a powerful OWL event. And that's, that's. I'm asking for those stories. So those are the stories I'm receiving. But you. There's like this point where you say, well, gee, it sure seems like something might have happened. And then, and then, and then I will also add that what is very common for people who have had these types of things, UFO sighting, you know, these kind of outlying aspects that don't directly point to UFO contact in a meaningful way, but imply something deeper may have gone on. These people often say, well, you know, I saw the UFO and then I had this OWL experience and then I had a spiritual awakening. Or they would say something like, I was on the steep upward curve of my spiritual development. And I'm like, that is interwoven into this mystery in a way that baffles me. So I talked earlier about the strict materialists on one side of this continuum, right? So they're doing this pragmatic work. They're measuring burn marks in the yard and they're talking to the local airport and see if they have any radar returns on something that may have happened at the time of the event in the area where the witness saw the, saw the light in the sky. Now that's all important, that's all vital work. On the other end of the continuum are these people who are talking about their own spiritual development, their own dreams. They're talking about the ascension of mankind and humanity now. So both of those are fraught with problems, right? So you stay too stuck in the strict materialist. You ignore some things, you stay too stuck. The term within the community is the consciousness end of the continuum. Sometimes it's referred to as the love and light side of things. You get stuck in either of those polar ends of the continuum, you're going to miss out on important data. So I'm working very hard to stay in the middle. I'm getting pulled right and left all the time, but I'm doing my best to stay in the middle. And, and so the, these maybe people are, are people who don't have like, I can't, I can't, let's say diagnose or I can't, I can't know what may have, may not happen to them. But what I can say is they are adding valuable clues to the overall mystery to me, because of their experiences. Even though they may not be what we would call, let's say, a top shelf experience. Like someone who had onboard memories of being on a craft. Their experiences and their life events are just as vital to the overall mystery and understanding it as are these sort of overt things that make up, let's say late night cable TV documentaries. I guess they don't really have cable TV or like streaming like the documentaries, the sort of low budget exploitative documentaries that seem to focus only on the scary monster movie aspects of it. People being picked up from the side of the road, that's part of the overall mystery. But wow, if you get stuck on that, you're missing a lot.
- [23:49]
Interviewer
And the thing with owls is fascinating. You've got your books, there's the messengers, owls, synchronicity and the UFO abductee. And then your other one is stories from the messengers accounts of owls, UFOs in a deeper reality. And it's not just owls, though, that some people might see a deer or some other animal. But you had quite a profound experience with owls, didn't you?
- [24:14]
Mike Clelland
Well, that's actually when you asked what's been going on in my life. I live in a place right now with lots of owls. I'm seeing owls all the time. I hear them every night. So I'm like, surrounded by owls. And that's a little bit, like, sort of funny in a way to me. So while you're talking about the camping experience I had in 2006.
- [24:33]
Interviewer
Yeah. Is that what set you on this path of looking into owls?
- [24:38]
Mike Clelland
Absolutely. Yeah. That was actually the event that happened that really changed my life. So I can happily tell the story if you want me to.
- [24:48]
Interviewer
Yeah, that'd be great.
- [24:50]
Mike Clelland
Good. Okay, so before I tell this story, on some level, this is not that interesting of a story, except the fact that it changed my life. So I had been working for an outdoor school. This was 2006. I was 44 years old at the time. I'm 59 now. So it's 16 years ago, is that right? 16, 17 years. So I was working at an outdoor school. So I was spending my summers in Alaska, way far up north. And then I would come down to the lower 48 to the town I was living in in the fall. And the branch of the school that I was working for had an office in the town I lived in. And there was this woman there who worked at the school. She was working what's called in town. She was helping out with the in town things as opposed to working in the field doing the camping. And I said, oh, wow, you've been living in this beautiful place. The town I lived in was right next to Grand Teton national park, which is right next to Yellowstone National Park. And this is a really incredible spot of big, big, beautiful wilderness. And I said, wow, you've been here all summer. You must have camped a lot. You must have been out in the mountains camping a ton. And she said, no, I didn't camp once. And you could see her kind of like make this frowny face. And I was like, oh, that's terrible. I'll take you camping now. This was a person I just met. And in a way, I've talked to people from and told this story before, and they look at me. So you took a complete stranger camping. And I'm like, well, you don't really understand the culture there. It was really a camping culture. It was like, right butted up against a national park. Everyone had this big outdoor vibe, and the whole town did. And so that was like a normal kind of thing to like, to, you know, similar to like, hey, let's go to a restaurant. It was more, you know, let's go. Camping is essentially the same thing. So I took her to the mountains. Her name was Kristen. And we went for one night. And the weather forecast was beautiful, so we knew it was not going to rain, and so we didn't take a tent, and we had very light packs. So just food enough for one dinner, one breakfast. And we got deep, deep, deep into the mountains in just a few hours. So there was a point where the sun was setting and I was sitting in a rock making dinner. Now, I had been in Alaska and been working all summer. I'd been out in the field probably for 60 days that summer. And so I was completely in my element, and I was cooking outside, and it just felt totally, completely normal. And we had this conversation. And there was a point in the conversation where I recognized, like, wow, this person is much smarter than I realized. Like, this is a stranger. And I'm really, really impressed at the depth of this person. And then at that moment, an owl flew over us, and then a second owl and then a third owl. And these owls flew around us for what felt. Felt like the next two hours. They would fly close to us. They would swoop down low over us. They would land in the trees near us. They. So we would just sit and watch these owls as we ate dinner, and then we had to camp. So the sun was setting, and we set out our sleeping bags on the ground, and the stars came out, and these owls were still around. What would happen is. So you're laying flat on your back looking up at the stars. This is far north in the. In the Rockies and a high elevation, so you're looking at amazing stars, clear nights, and these owls would swoop right across our faces, so their wings would be outstretched, and they would just fly right over our faces. And the stars would be blotted out for just a brief instant. And owls have these remarkable feathers that dampen their sound, so they fly in almost complete silence so there's nothing to hear. And just like. And it was so powerful. It was so magical. We got up the next morning, we hiked out. It was a beautiful time. And I said, hey, let's do this again. This was tons of fun. And I'll give you a Call. And so four days later, we went camping again in a completely different part of the mountain range. This was the Tetons, which is right on the Wyoming, Idaho border in the Northern Rockies. So we went camping one more night. It was a little colder that time, so we had a tent set up. And I said, hey, let's hike to the top of that hill so we don't climb into the tent and be all cold. So we walked to the top of this. It wasn't anything big. Five minutes we walked. We're at the top of this lovely hill, and it was above tree line, so there weren't many trees around, little stumpy trees. But we get to the top of this hill, we watch the sunset, and as the sun is setting, an owl lands on the tree branch right next to us. And then another one swoops over us, and then a third one flies around. So. So the same thing happens, except that these owls were much closer the second night, much closer to us. I remember there was one that landed at our feet. And I just. I remember looking at Kristen's eyes, and she just was in awe of the power of this. She just was so thunderstruck, as was I. Just the expression on her face. So what I did not say then and I'm saying now is at this time, at this moment, I was looking at real owls. These owls, they were like. They weren't very big. They were 11 inches tall or so. And I heard a voice in my head. It might have been my own voice. It's really hard to know, but I heard a voice in my head that said, this has something to do with the UFOs. And. And now that may. So this was at a point in my life where I was reading a lot of UFO literature. And part of the reason I was reading these books was because I had had a series of events. Two of them when I was 12 years old, and one of them when I was 30. The event when I was 30 is when I saw the five gray beings walking towards the house, backlit by that bright light. And in that event, I just woke up. I was alone in a house. It was in rural Maine. I woke up and there was a bright light pouring into the bedroom. I looked out the window, and there were five beings walking towards the house. It was like I was the only person in the house, and there was no other houses nearby, and I should have been terrified. I wasn't. I felt nothing. I felt absolutely nothing. There was no emotion. And I heard a voice in my head that said, oh, yes, they're here. Now is the time to shut down and put your head on the pillow. And that's exactly what I did. And the next morning, I never even bothered to go out and look and see if there were footprints in the snow. I dismissed it entirely as a dream, as nothing at all. I pushed it away. And I had some UFO sightings or one powerful UFO sighting when I was 12. And one missing time sighting that took place with a bright orange light. It wasn't, as far as I recall, an orange orb or anything. It felt like. It felt like I was walking at night and God flipped a light switch and the entire nighttime sky turned orange. Click. And then click, turned off. So for one second, click. Bright orange click. Back to normal. It was very jarring. And when I got home that night, my parents were angry at me because I was out. And I said, oh, no, I want to be home. I knew exactly what time I was supposed to be home. I said, I'm home at 9:30, just like I told you I would be. But the clock said 11:30. And I knew I was right and it didn't make any sense at all. So I had these experiences in my youth and when I was 30 as a young man, and I could kind of guess what the implications could be. The maybe people kind of thing. Like, well, I don't have all the information I need. I'm pushing it away. I'm not going to go there. I'm denying it. No. No way. Not going to go there. Not going to deal with this. But I saw three owls two separate times, four days apart, with the same person, Kristen. And I heard a voice in my head when I looked at real owls, and it said, this has something to do with the UFOs. So what I did is after that, right? So to see. To have owls show up once was pretty cool. To have them show up twice with the same person four days apart, like, blew my mind. Like, I really got obsessed. Like, I recognized something weird was going on and I started obsessively researching owls. And there was totem meaning and their spiritual meaning and their mystical meaning and their folkloric meaning and their mythological meaning. And I just got obsessed. And then also I started looking into my UFO experiences. I started reaching out to UFO researchers. I started talking to other people who had UFO experiences. And so I saw real owls and I started looking into my UFO experiences, right? So I heard a voice in my head that said, this has something to do with the UFOs. And I started. I started to, like, take A little ownership of what may or may not have happened. Now at the same time. Wow. I like it's the scary stuff to look. To look into something that may imply UFO contact. What I now back up in the story. There was a night when I that first time that I was camping with Kristen, the first night when we saw the first owl, she was talking about something. Now what happened in the interim? That was 2006. In 2009 I started a blog. And that blog initially was just a listing of my synchronicities. And I had a lot of them. So they make really nice short little blog posts. So I was putting myself synchronicities online as a blog. And I also. There's no synchronicity in this. I put the story of Kristen and the owls just. I thought it was a beautiful magical account of seeing these owls. I did not put the detail in about, about the voice in my head. I had that in a diary entry, personal diary entry. I did not put it into the blog post. But I recognized like, wait a minute, she was talking about something and, and it was. I remember, I took note of it. So three years later, Kristen had moved away from the town and I contacted her back in Michigan where she was living. And I asked her on the phone, I asked her what was going on that night. I remember we were talking about something the first night when we saw the first owls, when we were sitting on that big flat rock eating dinner. And she said, oh, I remember exactly what I was talking about. I was giving my most heartfelt definition of what God means to me. So for me, someone who's already obsessed about the mystical meaning of owls, right. So this first event happens at a point where someone is giving her deepest definition of what God means to herself. And now I'm not like at all churchy. Like I don't put that much weight into what the word God I think is kind of a loaded term in our society. But I recognize the mythic importance of that term. I recognize that that term is heavily weighted. And I. And so it, it made my own self inquiry that much more urgent, let's say. So it. And. And that is the kind of things that I've been So. So your question was, you know, could you let me. What's my experience with owls? So yes, so I had an experience with owls that changed the direction of my life. I can look back on the surface, like what? We went camping, we saw some owls. So what? But my life turned. Made a 90 degree turn. My old life ended. Wow. I was off on this new path. And that path has continued to today, where I feel like doing this owl research has turned into a full time job.
- [36:34]
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- [37:05]
Interviewer
And it's almost like the thing with synchronicities. It's like the universe is somehow manipulating things. But with owls, the way they came to you, it's like the universe is manipulating them or we wouldn't be able to say. ETs have some kind of telepathic control of those owls and they were just trying to give you a nudge.
- [37:27]
Mike Clelland
I agree. The issue is that in my research, owls, let's. How to say this. So let's turn the clock back. I'm in North America here. Let's turn the clock back like 500 years. So if I was living in a village in South Dakota and I had a powerful visionary experience, I'm walking down the path on the way back to my village. I'm alone. I have a powerful owl experience. Maybe there's a light in the sky or a glowing orb, let's say. I don't know what to make of it. So I would get back to my village. I would have a source. I could just go to the edge of the village, knock on the teepee and go in and talk to the shaman, right? There would be a village shaman that, that could help me in my questioning. I would say my spiritual questioning. And that shaman would. I can't. I mean, I'm guessing the shaman would ask things like, you know, what was going on leading up to your owl sighting? What happened after your owl sighting? How have your dreams been? What are your. What are your. What's your pull? Where do you want to, you know, what are your highest aspirations? You know, those are the kinds of things a shaman would ask. The shaman might then journey or maybe just look back in the lineage of the tribe and know owls might have a certain folklore within that tribe. It might be different. The tribe over in the next valley might have a totally different folklore. But I would say, I would argue that those folklores would be similar. I would also argue that this has been Happening since the dawn of time. The experience I had in the mountains with Kristin is not unusual. It has a framework. People have been having these kinds of experiences. I am convinced all throughout time. I'm convinced because of the mythology of owls. I'm convinced because the folklore of owls. I'm convinced because of the stories I am receiving every day in my email inbox and about people who have powerful owl experiences. So, you know, so the owl to me is unless. So you're, you're saying yes, this feels staged, right? My sighting of those owls in the mountains with Kristen. I thousand percent agree. It felt staged for me. I was at a point in my life where I was questioning my UFO contact experience. Like it was anxious, like I was no longer at peace. Like it was like a, it was tough like to be confronted with. Did these things happen in my life? I did not want to go down that road. I had these experiences with owls also a voice in my head, a message, right. So I received a message. This has something to do with UFOs. Very clear. And then afterwards my life changed. So what was going on in my life before, like I recognized that I needed to look into this afterwards. Like I looked into it and it has turned into, it is, it has turned into, as I said before, a full time job of trying to make sense of not only my set of experiences, but a whole lot of other people's experiences which are play out very, very similar in many ways.
- [40:34]
Simon Bown
Well, can we talk about that other
- [40:36]
Interviewer
side of owls within the UFO sort of experience is these four foot owls, these screen memories? Yes.
- [40:45]
Mike Clelland
The screen memory aspect of it is something that, that, that I, I have to address. Right. And then there's other part half where I feel very strongly. The owls I saw with Christian in the mountains, those were real owls. They were 11 inches tall. They looked like owls. We were right next to them. We, they were flying around us. They were doing things that an owl would do. The context was odd, right. But that they would seem so attracted to us. But they were certainly real owls. I, I don't doubt that. But what is very common here. Let me tell a story. So I, I was, I went to a UFO conference very early on in all this. This would have been about 2008 or so. And I was very stressed. And they have what's called a UFO support group. Right. So people who've had UFO contact experiences sit around in a circle. You can visualize it like a Alcoholics Anonymous meeting where, where people share their stories. A very important setting because your people realize I am not alone. You look around the circle, everyone looks, everyone's very normal, right? Very. It's a cross section of the population. It's, it's very normal in those events. And then there's one guy off on the side of the circle, or he's kind of like a little. Remember he was kind of backed off into the corner a little bit. He kind of raised his hand timidly at the end of the meeting and he said, hey, I just got to ask, has anyone here had any unusual experiences with owls? And this guy literally almost fell out of his chair when I'm going to say almost everyone in the room raised their hand, including me. And, and then he told a story, said, you know, I was driving down the road at night and there was this four foot tall owl on the side of the road. It didn't make any sense. So I slowed down, I rolled my window down, I looked at this owl out my window. I was alone out the driver's side window. And I got a really bad feeling. I got really bad feeling. I drove off. And then later on, he's a photographer, he went to go take some pictures of owls. There was a nest in a tree and he's taking pictures, he's looking through the telephoto lens and he's looking at these little teeny owls, these baby owls in a nest and this mother owl. And he says, you know, I don't think that was an owl I saw that night. Like it just didn't match. What a real owl. He's looking at a real owl and he says, that was not a real owl that I saw that night. So he went through hypnotic regression depression. He said nothing emerged in that session except that the owl was wearing boots. So now I've read the transcripts, I've talked to people, I've talked to hypnotherapists who've done this kind of research. And I asked them, you know, like, hey, do you have owls show up in your research? And they look at me like, oh my God, owls show up all the time. And then they say, like the hypnosis, the hypnotherapist will say, you know, this is what happens if someone's driving down the road or there's a four foot tall owl in their yard or whatever. And then in the hypnotherapy session, the hypnotherapist will say, well, describe the owl for me. And the person will say, well, it's bald and it's skinny and it's got a tight Fitting little uniform on and it's got big black eyes. And I don't think this is an owl. So they're describing what we would call the prototypical gray alien. But what they're seeing in their mind is an owl. And that is very, very common. Driving at night, owls peeking in the window, people saying like, oh, I woke up and there was a four foot tall owl standing at the side of my bed. That's pretty common. So you get these things that are at play in these accounts. Now this is a story from a woman. Her pen name is Lucretia Hart. She had had uf, was very aware she was having UFO contact experiences from a teenager. She knew these things were happening in her life, but they always happened at night. She was working for a girls school, like a, like a Girl Scouts taking girls camping. And they were out in the mountains. This was in the northwest of the United States. And, and the, and she was between two campsites. There was a little path between the two campsites. So there's one campsite of girls and it was that she walked to another campsite of girls. Had to walk down this so she could hear the girls like in the background. Well she wasn't far away. They could hear their voices and they're talking. So she's walking down this path and she turns a corner and there's a gray alien standing on the side of the path. And this total 4 foot tall being with a big bald head and the skinny, skinny body. And she said like, wow. To see that in the full daylight was absolutely jarring, like, like soul shattering. And she said, she said the eeriness of the bright sunshine reflecting off the white, the gray white head was just like freaked her out. So this thing looks at her and there's this moment where it was like, oh, she's not supposed to see me. She had this kind of. So these beings are telepathic, right? So like all like I'm, I feel like I'm jumping right to like graduate level UFO studies here. So the like everyone who reports. No, I like talk to people all the, like you ever see their mouth move? And like nobody says they saw their mouth move. Like people communicate with these beings. It's all done through direct telepathy, like 99% of it. I've heard a few little stories where people said that it felt like they spoke to them in what would be audible sound. It seems to be all direct communication to the mind to mind. So this thing looks at her, she looks at, kind of panics and, but at the same time they're telepathic. So she's like absorbing this alien panic and she just basically hears it go owl, owl, owl, owl. And she watches it morph into a four foot tall owl and it turns around and walks into the woods. So there's an event where it kind of like the alien got caught or busted or messed up. And so there it, so she watched it. And I have a couple other accounts of people who watched, you know, what would be a gray alien just turn into one where it turned into a cat, another where it turned into three or four aliens. I'm drawing a blank now. Turned into a deer and. Or turned into four deer before a witness's eyes. So there's this aspect within the, within the, within the phenomena of the alien entity. The alien intelligence has some way, whether it's through technology or whether it's through psychic means, to put an impression into the mind of the observer. And that impression would be most often either a deer or an owl. And I've talked to a lot of people, I feel like I'm correct in this. Most often the screen memory is either a deer or an owl. And then after that there's a whole long list of things that are less commonly reported. Raccoons, squirrels, firemen, clowns. This is. And then Jesus actually gets reported. It's not uncommon for people to see Jesus, right. So I woke up in this, you know, there was Jesus in the backyard or Jesus was standing next to my bed in the middle of the night. And, and it plays out like UFO contact the same way if it had been like a four foot tall squirrel or something like that. So these are, are woven into the UFO lore. And now I would also say that the owl is a highly charged totem. It's an archetype, it's a highly charged part of our mythology, part of our folklore, as also as deer. Deer has a rich mythological lineage the same way that the owl do. So I, I wonder the reason that they're using the owls now. I've asked UFO researchers, I asked Bud Hopkins, who's since passed on, who was a, was a pioneering research in UFO abduction experiences. And I asked him, you know, why are they using owls as screen memories? And he kind of swell, you know, they, the aliens kind of look like an owl, right? They got the big black eyes, you see them at night. So, so they can kind of, it just, it makes sense that they would use an owl. And that has been repeated so many times in the UFO culture that it's become a sort of Truth. But I have to question that. I'm much more intrigued by the fact that the owl is a rich symbolic animal, as is the deer, as is a clown, as is Jesus, you know, so these. Why are they using these archetypal spiritual elements, mythological elements, symbolic presentations in the context of UFO experience? That, to me, is a more interesting question than they just. Man. Well, an owl sort of looks like an alien. I may be totally off base and just speculating, but that's where I'm at. Yeah.
- [49:40]
Interviewer
One of the things about owls, I suppose, is that their eyesight is so good and their hearing is so good, it's almost like the ETs could use them as some kind of biological telepathic CCTV.
- [49:52]
Mike Clelland
I agree. Yeah. And I speculate on that in the first book, and I'm cautious, right, because that also falls apart when you really start studying it. But if you wanted to pick any animal on Earth to be your organic drone, you would want to. The owl would be perfect, right? Flies silently. It's got amazing. See in the dark, it's got amazing hearing, right? So if an owl is in the tree branch outside your window and the windows closed, the owl has hearing attuned enough, good enough that it would be able to hear a conversation in a room even, you know, so. So it could. So it would be the perfect animal to. To have those experiences to. And then also, so I asked. Had to ask, you know, why are owls, why do they show up at. At UFO events? And one thought is that, like, almost as if the UFO is emanating some energy and the. The owl is. Exists, like owls are all over the place. They're like hawks, you know, like, you don't see them very often, but they're in the forest. There's owls everywhere on all the continents. They're. So they're. They're a very common bird. You don't see them very often simply because they come out at night and we can't see in the dark and. And we're often indoors, sleeping at night, so. But the owl, if they're, they're. Their hearing is highly attuned. Their vision is highly attuned. So is the, Is the UFO making a noise like a giant dog whistle? Let's say there is a UFO making a noise we can't hear, that the owl is somehow hearing and is simply attracted to it. Right? So owls are curious by nature. They'll come and look at things. That's. Well, you know, that's. That's well understood, you know, owls will follow people in the woods a little bit. They're curious like other animals are, but so, so there. Yeah. The question is, why are they showing up at these contact events? And, and, and if. And if the beings are telepathic and can see through the eyes of the owl, not using technology, but using, let's say, psychic means they may use technology. I don't know, you know, what's happening. As I said, the owl would be the perfect thing to. The perfect animal to play that role of organic drone.
- [52:18]
Interviewer
Can we talk about after effects? People talk about being experiencers and there's those different words, isn't there? There's abductee, contactee, experiencer. But some of them have some real strong after effects with synchronicities and psychic flashes. And they can't wear wristwatches.
- [52:36]
Mike Clelland
That's very commonly reported. Yeah. Yeah. So now even there's a very conservative organization called MUFON and their mutual UFO Network. And I think they're all over the world, but they're based in the United States. And I. They're very, very much. They're very much so on the nuts and bolts end of the continuum. And I've looked at. They have a little checklist, right? They have a printed checklist. You print it out and you go to the, you know, someone says, I saw ufo, and you go to their house and you have your checklist. And the folks that are doing the research on the ground research are very professional and they take it very seriously. And they ask the questions, what time was it? What was the date? Where did you see it? Very simple, pragmatic things, like if you held your arm out, if you held your hand out at arm's length and held, would it be the size of a quarter, the size of a nickel, the size of a dime? How big would it be in the nighttime sky? Also in that same form is a little line that says, and I'm doing this from memory. So I might be paraphrasing this incorrectly, but I'm close. There's a question that says, since you're sighting, have you had any psychic experiences? And then they'd also ask, since you're sighting, how has your spirituality changed? So even the most conservative, driest organization doing nuts and bolts research is asking those questions. And the reason they're asking them is because I'm certain they recognize the pattern where people said, I saw ufo. Afterwards, my spirituality changed. So people have. Here's. So I have a story. A fellow son owl. The woman is Maria Wheatley. She's a woman in England who Does ancient. She gives tours of ancient sites like Avebury and Stonehenge. And she has done crop circle research too. So she and a friend were about to walk in the woods. This is somewhere in Wiltshire. And they were gonna walk on a path and. But they. They parked the car and they're at this little trailhead and they started walking down the path. They just left the car. They're just a few paces down the path. And this white owl swooped across the path directly crossing their. Their. Their line of travel. And they both got the same feeling. They both said, like, we're. We're not allowed in here. It felt like that owl was barring their path that, like, wasn't. It said, you are not allowed in here. Like, don't cross this line. So they turned around and said, well, let's hike up this hill and get a view from the top. And I think it's called Oliver's Castle, which is somewhere in Wiltshire. And they hike to the top of this hill and they get to the top of the hill to watch the sunset. And this orange ball of light here we have a great orange ball of light. It's like off in the distance. So what is that thing? And it kind of bobs and comes closer and is moving around in erratic ways. And then it, like, grows really big and then it grows huge. And. And then instead of being a single orb, it, like, stretches out into the shape of a giant cigar. And then it floats around, then shrinks back and then poof. Disappears. And they are both freaked out. They're scared, so they run back down to the car. And she said he was so upset that he could barely get the car keys in. His hand, was shaking so bad. So they drive away. And afterwards he said that he, like, he went to the pub. He said, I could read everyone's mind, the pub. Like, I could just look around the room and I could read everyone's mind. It scared him terribly. It faded over time, but. But that was his direct experience after having a combination owl and UFO experience. Maria Wheatley at the time was doing tarot readings. So she was. She was doing. Using tarot cards, was doing tarot readings. And she said after that event, her ability to do tarot readings just amplified. Like, her ability just grew in a way that she did not expect. So we have two paranormal psychic tarot reading. I mean, there's implications, a divination tool, and there's a skill that the tarot reader has. But she said it was. It had taken a quantum leap in its power. Her Ability to read the cards. And then this fellow who has ESP like mind reading abilities after his sighting. This is normal in the lore. People don't talk about this like you watch late night or you watch like, you know, documentaries about UFOs. They don't touch this. But this is what is commonly reported. Every UFO researcher knows this and, and I will say a lot of them are, are hesitant and shy to share it because it is so bizarre. But it is unmistakably a pattern in, in this research. It's funny, just as I was saying this, Oliver and excuse me, the orange orb from Oliver's castle, which is hilltop. And then that, you know, once again that orange orb thing shows up. That, you know, very similar to what? Well, yours didn't move, but it's a very commonly reported thing within this research.
- [57:57]
Interviewer
I wonder if they were targeted. It's kind of like the thing with the owls and the synchronicities. The universe saw them there and thought, hang on, we can sort these two out right now, quick. Send them an orb or something.
- [58:11]
Mike Clelland
They sent an owl. Yeah, well, they sent him an owl first. Like, we don't want you in the forest, we want you on the hilltop. That's the message I got from it. And they went to the hilltop and had that powerful experience.
- [58:20]
Interviewer
Yeah, we've nearly run out of time, I'm sad to say. It's been really great talking to you and it's fascinating conversation. I've still got 10 million questions listed here to ask you. I want to tell people they should get your books. The Messengers, Owls, Synchronicity and the UFO Abductee and the others. One is Stories from the Messengers. And can you tell us about your other books?
- [58:45]
Mike Clelland
Well, I have a third book which is Hidden Experience which I just mentioned before. And that was. It's very interesting that one is selling the least. And the people who are responding to that one most are the people who have had the direct contact experience. Contact me and say, wow, that book was very powerful. What happened was I, starting in 2009, I started my blog and I don't understand this at all, but I started writing initially Synchronicities and I started looking into my own UFO experiences and documenting that journey on the blog. So I documented little by little my own doubts, my fears, the events that were happening, which were a lot. The synchronicities, the owl stuff and that that got put into that blog. Including the session with Lorraine Flaherty. Including the session. I did some that had more direct UFO type stuff in it. This is all in that, that book. And so that book I wouldn't recommend unless people have a very, very specific interest in the UFO contact experience. But the other two books are much more general about the owl and UFO connection. And then I will also back off and say like, I'm now that first book came out in 2015. And in the book I even say like, I'm trying not to cling so much to the owl thing and, or, excuse me, try not clinging so much to the UFO thing. Because the owls seemingly are much more a. They're much more tied into what I would say the powerful human experience. So they would be the totem animal or the spirit animal that would be symbolic of a powerful human experience. Now, seeing a UFO is a powerful human experience, but so is the synchronicity and so is death. And it's showing up in all kinds of other life things. Shamanic initiation, people who are working to be shamans see owls. That's well understood within the community of shamans, though it's still fascinating. So, as I said, I'm looking for people's owl stories. If anyone has a powerful owl or unusual experience with a UFO and owl, I want to hear your story. And then I want to. And so I'm encouraging folks to reach out and connect with me through. And you can find my contact information@mikecleland.com and my blog, which is linked through mikecleland.com is Hidden Experience. And if you can't remember that, you can just google UFOs owls. And my books are available on Amazon
- [61:27]
Interviewer
and all of the podcasts are on
- [61:29]
Simon Bown
your blog site, is that right?
- [61:31]
Mike Clelland
I got about 200 hours of podcasting and then also on Whitley Strieber's site, I did a series of podcasts for a few years and those are linked on his site. Also that series was called the Unseen. And the series when I did it on the blogs was called the Hidden Experience.
- [61:47]
Interviewer
Great. Well, thanks a lot again for coming on the podcast. It's been fascinating.
- [61:51]
Mike Clelland
My honor. Thank you so much.
- [61:53]
Simon Bown
And that was an interview with Mike Clelland about UFOs, synchronicities, owls and high strangeness. A great way to support the podcast is to sign up on Patreon, just go to patreon.com alien ufopodcast and this is the free one hour version of the episode. The extended episode is an hour and 24 minutes. If you join the $4.50 a month tier, you get an extended episode every month. If you join the $7.50 a month
- [62:19]
Interviewer
tier, you will have access to an
- [62:20]
Simon Bown
extended episode every week and the back catalogue of extended episodes. And if you enjoy the podcast, be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or via your favorite podcast app to make sure that you don't miss out on any episodes. And thanks for listening.
- [62:43]
Mike Clelland
Sam.