BCC Classics: “The Voronezh UFO Landing” with Michael Moreci

Summary

Bigfoot Collectors Club – BCC Classics: “The Voronezh UFO Landing” with Michael Moreci

Date: December 31, 2025
Hosts: Michael McMillan (actor), Riley Bray (musician & sound designer, guest co-host)
Guest: Michael Moreci (sci-fi writer and comic book author)
Theme: “A classic trip into High Strangeness: the 1989 Voronezh UFO landing in Russia, and talk of personal paranormal history, geeky favorites, and the universal nature of weird encounters.”

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Episode Overview

The Bigfoot Collectors Club revisits a fan-favorite: the famous Voronezh UFO Landing case. Sci-fi and comics writer Michael Moreci joins host Michael McMillan and, for the first time, Riley Bray as a co-host. The episode explores Moreci’s geeky roots, brushes with the paranormal, and delves into the bizarre and internationally significant story of glowing orbs, three-eyed aliens, and disappearing children in late-Soviet Russia. Along the way, the conversation touches on the cultural lens of strange sightings, collective mythologies, and collecting the unexpected.

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Key Topics & Highlights

1. Meet the Club: Paranormal Geek Outs

• Bryce Johnson’s absence: Riley Bray is promoted from sound engineer to full co-host, leading to camaraderie, joking about a clubhouse “coup” (03:17–04:10).
• Guest intro: Michael Moreci’s sci-fi credentials—recent DC Comics work, new novel Black Star Renegades, and writing on the Star Wars universe. (04:10–06:47)

Moreci’s Sci-Fi & Fantasy Origins

• Influenced by Star Wars movies, Timothy Zahn’s “Heir to the Empire” trilogy, and classic sci-fi authors like Philip K. Dick and Vonnegut. (07:03–09:49)
• Riley Bray chimes in: “I definitely grew up on the...on the nerd side of life” (09:19) and admits a more Middle Earth than space opera leaning as a kid.

2. First Brushes with the Paranormal

• Michael Moreci recalls being a huge X-Files fan and co-creating the comic Hoax Hunters (Mythbusters meets X-Files), exploring creatures like the Jersey Devil, Wisconsin’s Haunchyville, and Mothman. (12:00–14:19)

• Personal Paranormal Encounter:

  • Recurring vision, as a child, of a ghostly, old-time carnival barker in his uncle’s house:

    “Like almost like an old-timey carnival person. …a beard, kinda tannish sepia color, just standing in the doorway…every time I stayed there.” (15:46–17:30)

  • Never told anyone until this podcast:

    “I think this is the first time I’ve actually even talked about this.” (16:28)

• Club’s reaction:

  • Speculation about haunted carnival burial grounds and the oddness of spectral presences “out of context” (18:09–19:06).

• Michael McMillan shares his own ghostly encounter in a haunted upstate NY farmhouse, seeing a woman in a Victorian dress and snapping a photo with a mysterious orb:

  “…out of the corner of my eye, I saw a...woman with dark hair in a red Victorian dress…snapped a photo…and when I looked there was a glowing orb where I saw the woman.” (21:19–23:08)

3. Beliefs: Ghosts, Bigfoot, UFOs

• Moreci is open to all three:

  “Yeah. Oh, yeah.” (23:37–23:40)

• Discussion: why people tend to believe in ghosts more than Bigfoot, the anthropocentric “supremacy” of humans, and why life elsewhere is almost a statistical certainty (23:40–26:00).

4. High Strangeness: The Voronezh UFO Landing

Main Segment Begins: 30:21

The Story, Step-by-Step

• Setting: Voronezh, Russia, September 27, 1989, just as the Soviet Union is collapsing. Multiple pink and red orbs are seen in the skies for a week.
• Incident:
  • Three children playing in “South Park” see a pink orb, approx. 9 meters wide, rippling the grass below it. (31:21–32:48)
  • 40–50 townsfolk gather to investigate. The orb returns, opens a portal; a three-eyed creature peeks out.

    “...a strange, strange three-eyed creature peered out, scanned the crowd, then slipped back inside the craft.” (33:58)

  • The orb turns red, extends legs, lands. The being—9 feet tall, silver jumpsuit, bronze boots, disc on chest, two white eyes and a single red eye—emerges with a small boxy robot.

    “He’s cool and tough…looks like a Jack Kirby comic book character.” (36:53–37:08)

  • The being seems to do “magic tricks” for the crowd: glowing shapes on the ground, fiddling with a robot.
  • A boy screams; the creature turns, beams light from his eyes, and the craft, robot, and giant vanish—then reappear wielding a silver rod.
  • The rod is pointed at a teenager, who disappears; when the aliens depart, the boy reappears. (38:52–39:32)
• Witnesses:
  • 40–50 people, including children and at least one police lieutenant

    “This is what’s insane—this is like a mass sighting.” (33:56)

• Aftermath:
  • Police take statements, physical evidence: “depressions in the grass...ground beneath allegedly turned to stone…strange rocks not of this earth.” (40:57–41:49)
  • Soviet media freely reports the case due to collapsing government control.
  • Discussion: “It’s significant...because as communism started to collapse, state control over the press and the media loosened. And this was one of the first UFO stories that came out.” (41:50)
  • Eyewitness interviews can still be found on Russian TV.

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Notable Moments & Quotes

• Michael McMillan on Russian sightings:

  “We tend to think of UFOs and flying saucers as a big American phenomenon. This was one of the first big stories to come out of the Soviet Union that showed similarities…” (31:34)

• On the being’s appearance:

  “The monster was described as being 9ft tall, wearing a silver jumpsuit with bronze boots and a disc on his chest…” (36:30)

• On cultural influence and truth:

  “It almost feels like the alien encounter itself is taking place in a foreign language…The symbology and the alien and stuff are designs that are not of our American culture, which kind of to me lends some credence...” (48:08)

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5. Discussion: Interpretation & Analysis

Segment: What the Hell Was That? (45:01–57:32)

• Moreci’s take:

  “I mean, undoubtedly true. …It’s weird. You get so many of these different sightings and occurrences…but…it’s always a singular point of view. This was a mass sighting.” (45:11–47:28)

• McMillan:

  “It almost feels like…the encounter is shaped by the people witnessing them, like some type of psychic phenomenon…whatever comes out of the orb materializes in a way that is recognizable to the sensibility of the culture…” (48:00–48:14)

• Riley Bray on recurring motifs:

  “That’s a theme we keep returning to…It's viewed through the lens of the time and culture.” (48:14)

• Moreci:

  “...there’s a sort of crossbreeding collective consciousness…shared iconography, ideas…” (49:35–50:53)

• On physical evidence and skepticism:

  “Well, too, there’s physical evidence left behind, verified by government scientists…not to be overlooked.” (51:20–51:35)

• Conclusion:

  “Are all the details totally right? Probably not. But something happened…There’s a thousand of these stories…but it just takes one to be right…” (56:17–56:44)

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6. Collector’s Corner: Show and Tell (58:48–66:18)

• Moreci collects Star Wars Black Series figures, books (especially sci-fi, Star Wars, RPGs), and talks “shelf porn.” (59:03–60:47)
• McMillan gifts his copy of Black Star Renegades to be autographed.

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 03:17 – Riley Bray steps in as co-host
• 04:10 – Michael Moreci intro
• 07:03 – Sci-fi/fantasy childhood favorites
• 12:00 – Moreci’s X-Files & Hoax Hunters
• 15:46 – Moreci’s ghost story (carnival barker)
• 21:19 – McMillan’s Victorian ghost story
• 23:37 – Discussion on belief in ghosts, Bigfoot, UFOs
• 30:21 – High Strangeness: Voronezh UFO Landing story
• 36:30 – Detailed description of the three-eyed alien
• 38:52 – The “disappearing boy” moment
• 41:50 – Soviet/social-political context of the incident
• 45:01 – “What the Hell Was That?” Reflection & analysis
• 58:48 – Collector’s Corner

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Memorable Quotes

• On paranormal encounters:

  “...a lot of these stories frustratingly have no endings. The sighting will happen. People are encountering it and then you never get any answers, which is why they’re so appealing in the first place.” — Michael McMillan (14:57)

• On the Voronezh entity:

  “He literally just kind of came down and started entertaining people. I kind of think that this guy was like some weird intergalactic magician…” — Michael McMillan (37:47)

• On belief and skepticism:

  “It just takes one [story] to be right…that blows the whole thing wide open.” — Michael Moreci (56:42)

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Tone & Style

Playful, geeky, and open-minded with plenty of ribbing, pop-culture references, and genuine curiosity about the universe’s weirdest happenings. The conversation veers between nostalgia, speculation, and moments of genuine awe.

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Summary for New Listeners

This episode is a perfect representation of Bigfoot Collectors Club: equal parts nerd-culture banter, personal ghost stories, and deep-dives into true tales of the unknown. The Voronezh UFO Landing’s unique details—mass witnesses, a three-eyed alien magician, Soviet intrigue—make for a captivating case study in high strangeness. The crew and their guest bring context, analysis, and a sense that, whatever the truth, our world is a lot weirder—and more fun—than we like to admit.

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Further Reading:

• Voronezh UFO landing – Wikipedia
• Michael Moreci – Twitter (@MichaelMoreci)
• Bigfoot Collectors Club – Instagram

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Transcript

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[Narrator/Announcer]

Hello Club Scouts and welcome to Bigfoot Collectors Club, the show where we talk to amazing guests about their personal paranormal history and share stories of high strangeness. I'm your host Michael McMillan and happy new Year as we collectively look to the future. This week on bcc, we'll be looking to the past. We have a classic episode for y' all this week. BCC Episode 14 the Verona UFO landing with Michael Morisi. Why is this a classic episode, you may ask? Well, not only is Michael a great guest and the story of High Strangeness is one of my all time favorites. It's also the first time Riley co hosted the show. Over on the Ad free [e-mail] we've been re releasing all of these classic episodes ad free beginning with episode zero and moving forward on a weekly basis from there. So if you'd like to go back and listen to the original episodes without ads or you simply want to start a re listen, all of the episodes leading up to this one are waiting for you right now. You join the cosmoteer membership on bcc.supercast.com okay, so the feed is going to go on a brief nap taking some Z's for a couple of weeks, but we will be back with all new episodes of BCC in January. Happy New Year Club Scouts. And I want to give a special shout out to my friend Jackson who I know will be listening to this episode. Happy New Year Jackson. And enjoy the Verona's UFO Landing with author, screenwriter, director and comic book writer Michael Morrisi.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

It's bigfoot collector's club with bryce and michael. I know a ghost story or two. Let's do this. Hey, guys. Welcome back to another episode of Bigfoot Collectors Club.

[Michael McMillan]

I am your host, Michael McMillan and with me usually is your co host, Bryce Johnson. But unfortunately, in an unprecedented clubhouse event, Bryce could not be here today. Everything's cool. Just some stuff came up and he could not make it. Instead though, we have our trusty sound designer and engineer Riley Bray sitting in the co host chair to fill in for Bryce today. Hi, Riley.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Hey, how's it going? Hi everybody.

[Michael McMillan]

There's those smooth dulcet sounds that we never hear because you're just listening and giving thumbs up all the time.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Mostly thumbs up.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

We really appreciate your support and your hard work.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Oh, well, thank you.

[Michael McMillan]

I'm gonna thank you up top until the end of the show.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

I like it. I've moved up and waiting in the wings.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

I know. You know it's funny because I feel like more recently you've been making vocal.

[Michael McMillan]

Appearances on the show.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Just little ones now.

[Michael McMillan]

I think you've fully made a coup.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

This has been my plan all along. I'll build the clubhouse.

[Michael McMillan]

It is your place. Also with us today is a very special guest. He is a science fiction writer and a comic book author. You may know his work from recent DC comics. He just did a two issue arc on Flash or the Flash, depending on how you like to approach your super speed, sir. And he's written for Superman. He has a new book coming up from Vault called Wasted Space. And he has just published a really great science fiction book called Black Star Renegades. Everybody, please put your hands together for Michael Morrisi.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Thank you, thank you. Glad to be here. What's up, dude? Nothing, Nothing.

[Michael McMillan]

So you're in town from Chicago right now?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

I am.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

To promote your new book.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah, yeah. One day only. Very limited engagement.

[Michael McMillan]

That makes you sound like a very busy, popular guy.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

I have wife, kids. Well, so minus the popularity.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

So you're saying they're.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Oh yeah.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

I thought you're gonna say they were your number one fans.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

They are, they are. There's been a lot of. My 6 year old's been making a lot of Black Star Renegades fan fiction.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, that's so awesome. So wait real quick because we'll get into it, but what's the book about?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

So Black Star Renegades is a space adventure in the spirit of Star wars or Guardians of the Galaxy, Flash Gordon, stuff like that. It is about a young guy named Cade who comes in possession of a super powerful weapon. Kind of like, you know, Arthurian legend. And he's like a gun, a super gun. Yeah, he.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

There's a lot of guns in Arthurian legend.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

He finds an Uzi and he's like, I'm going to start some shit. No, no, it's. It's like more of a. More of a laser sword.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Oh, yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Beginning to sound a little familiar.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

But yeah. No, he's the. And he's like the last person that should have it. He's the absolute wrong choice. But if he doesn't figure out what to do with it, then, you know, the evil Kingdom, not Empire kingdom, will take over.

[Michael McMillan]

The galaxy difference.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

One has an emperor, one has a king.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Exactly.

[Michael McMillan]

I'm reading it. Right.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

I'm really enjoying it.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Oh, thanks.

[Michael McMillan]

And I kind of thought, oh, this is cool. It's almost as if in Star Wars, Han Solo would have ended up with the Force instead of Luke Skywalker. It's a loose. I mean, that's a very loose interpretation. But I kind of. I was like. Once I saw what you're doing, I was like, I don't know where it's going yet. I'm only three chapters in. I just started reading it, but it. It. I kind of like that. Take that. The guy that you don't think should have it has it. I mean, Hansel is a good guy.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah, he's fine.

[Michael McMillan]

But I was just trying to find an analogy for it.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

But no, the other guy.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, the other guy. The other guy. Yeah. No, it's great. So congratulations. That's awesome.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Thanks.

[Michael McMillan]

So you are obviously a science fiction fan, fantasy fan. What kind of stuff did you grow up reading and devouring?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

You know, a lot of it. You know, probably. We'll probably talk about this a lot, but Star wars, you know, the movies when I was young, then I graduated to the Zahn novels start coming out.

[Michael McMillan]

When I was like 10. So it was like Timothy Zahn, Thrawn, heir to the trilogy, or after the trilogy, essentially was.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

He was the heir of the trilogy for a while.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

God damn. This is what happens. I'm just concerned that Bryce isn't here and he hates us now. I can't talk anymore.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

We can edit this out, but we probably won't.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Do not.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

No.

[Michael McMillan]

The Heir to the Empire trilogy. The Thrawn trilogy.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah, exactly.

[Michael McMillan]

That was big. I read that in high school. I was like, this is great. Finally making Episodes seven, eight, and nine.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah, that's what it was.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

And that's like, always lived in my head to. To be the continuation. Then many, many more books. Many more Star wars books.

[Michael McMillan]

And you've written for Luke or Star wars dot com. Right. Haven't you? And you've written pieces on Star wars for Tor.com and.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

Or am I mixing those websites?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

No, no, I do both. I do all the stuff. Like all like the straight news I [e-mail] then the opinions go.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Right?

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Exactly. The fan rants go on tour.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

So were you excited or disappointed when Disney took over? I mean, no one's going to listen to this from Lucasfilm, so you don't have to worry. But when Disney bought it and they were throwing out the old eu, the Extended Universe to make way for new stories and a new canon, how did you feel about that? Were you excited or were you bummed?

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

A little of both.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Because like, on one hand I was bummed because there's a lot of great stories in there, but on the other hand I was like, I get it. Because there's a lot of stories that weren't great. Yeah.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

And if they by episode seven, Chewbacca was dead.

[Michael McMillan]

Would be dead. Based on the canon, Luke and Leia would have already had three kids, one of who had already turned to the dark side and died.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Right.

[Michael McMillan]

I think by 30 years after the timeline. Riley, did you ever get into any.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Of the extended universe, the old Star wars canon, or were you too cool?

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

I was not cool.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Oh, really?

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Oh, very much.

[Michael McMillan]

Not fooling everybody, man.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

It's an all wrong idea. Smoking mirrors here. It's a full charade.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

The voice throws you. It's a very cool voice.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

I mean, you look like a real. Right.

[Michael McMillan]

Rock and roller, dude.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Well, I found that later, you know, But I definitely grew up on the. On the nerd side of life.

[Michael McMillan]

Maybe for this episode we'll post a picture of you when you were a kid. We'll put it up on Instagram and see what. And we'll let the audience vote. What a nerd you were.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Okay, fair.

[Michael McMillan]

So did you ever read the Thrawn trilogy?

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

I didn't get that far. No. I was more of like a Philip K. Dick.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Oh, yeah.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Vonnegut kind of guy.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Oh, yeah.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

As far as the sci fi reading. Well, Kirk Vonneg is a little borderline sci fi, but fantasy.

[Michael McMillan]

Ish. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

But yeah, no, I didn't go that deep on Star Wars. I was also more of a Lord of the Rings kind of person.

[Michael McMillan]

That kind of nerd. Real Middle Earth nerd.

[Additional Co-host or Guest (brief lines)]

Yeah, yeah.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

The crunchy sort of granola nerd, not the space nerd.

[Michael McMillan]

I remember when I first read the Lord of the Rings as a kid, I had Just read the Hobbit and then I tried to read Lord of the Rings and I got freaked out by the Ring wraiths. That stuff really freaked me out. And then I got really bored by all the Dwarf songs.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

So I never read. I never actually read.

[Michael McMillan]

This is a confession. I never got through the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy until the movies came out. And then I watched the movies and I loved them. So finally went back and. And read the original.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Fair enough.

[Michael McMillan]

Works, but never too late. I'm a little ashamed to admit that.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

And I'm all. I think I like the movies more.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

I like the movies way more.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. I mean, I think Tolkien, listen, trouble.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

I mean, when it comes to world.

[Michael McMillan]

Building and just epic storytelling, obviously no one comes close. But I do think his writing drags a little bit. There's a lot.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

A lot of Dwarf songs.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. I prefer the structure of the Hobbit, which the.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

The Hobbit was like, nailed it. Hobbit was just like a straight adventure.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

And then when.

[Michael McMillan]

Like more of a kid's book. And.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

If you think that the.

[Additional Co-host or Guest (brief lines)]

You should.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Now the Hobbit.

[Michael McMillan]

I like the book more than the movies.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Oh, yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Did you ever look into the Cimmerillion, the Boy?

[Additional Co-host or Guest (brief lines)]

I own it.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

I own it. It's on my shelf. Every now and then I crack it and then I close it and I run to the other end of the room.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

It's like reading the beginning of the Bible. Like the begat, begat, begat sort of things. They're just like, all right.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah, a lot. I think there's like. Like, if there's 2.7 million copies sold, there's like 17 copies read.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Sounds about accurate.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

So with all this fantasy and science.

[Michael McMillan]

Fiction growing up, did you ever have an attraction, romantic or otherwise?

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Let's be honest to the paranormal?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

I did.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah. I mean, I was a huge X Files fan. My first, like, my. I guess you can say like my breakout, quote, unquote breakout. Because I don't know if that's even happened yet, but yeah, was Hoax Hunters, which was like, basically Mythbusters meets X Files.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, nice. Oh, that's cool.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

And what's that?

[Michael McMillan]

I haven't heard of this.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

That is Hoax Hunters. It was a series that was. It was with image for, like, something issues.

[Michael McMillan]

You wrote?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Myself and Steve Seeley.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Oh, dude.

[Michael McMillan]

I should have known that before. I thought that was on the show.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

I thought we were gonna know. That's so cool.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

I guess we should tell everybody how.

[Michael McMillan]

We actually know Each other. We met during the DC New Talent Showcase. Talent Workshop, what was it called? We basically went through a program at DC Comics together. And we've only known each other as little squares over Skype.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

And now we're meeting for the first time. So you've done a little bit of writing for dc?

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

I've done a very little bit of writing for DC since then.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

I think my writing just have to be like some. Like, basically our writing is all in drawers. And they don't. They don't know which what is in what drawer. And they open up mine. They're like, oh, there's. That's Maurici's. Okay, let's throw it in. Let's press print and shove it out into stores.

[Michael McMillan]

That's nice. I gotta get some more stuff in those drawers. We're still in the D.C. family. And you know what? You might see some more work from.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Us in the near future.

[Michael McMillan]

Who knows? Maybe so. X Files. And so. Hoax busters. Hoax Busters.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Hoax hunters.

[Michael McMillan]

Hunters. Sorry, what topics did you cover in that comic book? Like what, what, what hoaxes did you.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

We did the Jersey Devil. Yeah, we did. Oh, gosh. What's the. I'm drawing it, lacking the name. The Wisconsin one with the gnomes.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

The Goblin.

[Michael McMillan]

No, not the Hopkinsville. That's Kentucky.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

No, Haunchyville.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, wait a minute.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

I don't know if I know about this.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah, Haunchyville is like, like kind of woodland kind of monsters.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

It's a.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

But like. So we went with that. That was. That was one of the arcs that we did. We did. Gosh, what was the. What was the first. I said Jersey Devil. Mothman. Mothman. Mothman.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. We haven't done him on the show yet. He's definitely coming up soon. He's a heavy hitter.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah, Mothman's a tough one.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, we use.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

We used Mothman. Very limited.

[Michael McMillan]

Very limited. Mothman tends to overshadow everything that he's in. He's commanding presence.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Exactly.

[Michael McMillan]

That's awesome. So have you ever had any paranormal experiences yourself? Sort of. Okay.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

That'S a little crack in the eggshell.

[Michael McMillan]

We're gonna make an omelette out of this.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

I'll be crying.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, tell us what happened.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

So it's weird because, like, you know, I have such a specific memory of this, but it's so like kind of like a non climatic thing that happened.

[Michael McMillan]

So basically they tend to be. That's the thing is, a lot of these stories frustratingly have no endings to them. The. The sighting will happen. People are encountering it and then you never get any answers, which is why they're so appealing in the first place.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

That's what makes them intriguing.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

They aren't explainable. You can't just put a bow on it. And that is what that was. Yeah, it was a ghost for sure. 100.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

So you don't. You don't know.

[Michael McMillan]

And we caught it? Not yet.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

That's why I thought you guys can have answers.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Well, let's hear about it and we'll.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

So basically it was one night. I spent a lot of time with my. My uncle's place. He had two boys that were right around the same age as me, my cousins and you know, going to bed one night.

[Michael McMillan]

You're about how old right now? I mean not right now, but in.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

The story right now I was probably nine somewhere around there.

[Additional Co-host or Guest (brief lines)]

So.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

And this happened recurring like at his house. I never would see this at my house. Every time I go to sleep and I would see this like apparition ghost, you know, whatever, like standing in the doorway and it was like this, like this like looked like an. Almost like an old timey carnival person.

[Michael McMillan]

Whoa.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Like had a beard and it was like kind of like a tannish sepia kind of color and never said anything.

[Michael McMillan]

Just like scared shit.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

I mean I close my eyes and I'd open them up and he'd still be there just standing in the hallway.

[Narrator/Announcer]

And then.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

And it happened every time I went there. Wait, what? Like I spend the night?

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

How many times would you say in total?

[Michael McMillan]

I don't know.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Five or six probably.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Wow.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Did you never know about this or talk to us about it?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

No. No.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

You never brought it up with anybody in the house?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

No, never.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Are you sure?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

I think this is the first time I've actually even talked about this.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Oh wow. This has just been waiting to come out. Let us know if you need any tissue.

[Michael McMillan]

I might.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Maybe there was like an old carnival.

[Michael McMillan]

Barker living in the basement that you.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Didn'T know about that was coming up.

[Michael McMillan]

For a nice glass of milk.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

The Maurices do have a rich Carney folk history.

[Michael McMillan]

Do they really?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

No.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh man. I would have been so excited. But.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

So wait, when you say he looks.

[Michael McMillan]

Like a carnival guy, what do you mean? How was he dressed? Like in a different. From a different era.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Different era. Look like almost like a 1920s. Almost like. Like kind of more of a vintage carnival. Like kind of like a, you know, that kind of. I don't know. I don't say huckster, but like that kind of get up.

[Michael McMillan]

Right.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

I can't.

[Michael McMillan]

It's hard to describe a coat with tails. Like. Yes, yes.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

Okay.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

And he had like I wear completely pants. Yeah.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Probably curly beard, you know, like it was like a. Like not like a grizzly ish beard, but like a really nice grooms look like soft.

[Michael McMillan]

Right.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

You know, curly white beard.

[Michael McMillan]

Okay.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Cowboyish hat.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Did he have like an emotional presence to him? Was he scary? Was he sad? Was he foreboding?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

No. Frightening. Very frightening.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Was he just.

[Michael McMillan]

Just demanding more and more absinthe? Because.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

That'S all I think of when I think of old timey guys. How much absent they can drink before they go crazy and die. That's really weird. So you have no idea what was.

[Narrator/Announcer]

The history of the house?

[Michael McMillan]

Do you know?

[Narrator/Announcer]

Was it a. Was it an old house?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

No, no, just a suburban.

[Michael McMillan]

Whoa.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

You know, what do they call it?

[Michael McMillan]

I don't know.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

It's like one and a half level. What's that called?

[Michael McMillan]

Like a split level. Okay. Like a ranch house.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

So I wonder this.

[Michael McMillan]

That's weird because we've brought this book up on the show before. But that sounds like almost like Pennywise strain. Like it. Like a thing that doesn't belong in the area that it's from. Like in it there's just a guy dressed as a clown or a creature that looks like a clown. But there's no circus in town. So I'm wondering why. What? The carnival connection is so out of context. In other words.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

That's a good point. Yeah. I wonder.

[Michael McMillan]

Maybe there was like an old carnival in that field that the suburban neighborhood was built on that like burnt down. Maybe he drank so much absence he.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Knocked over an oil lamp and the carnival killed everybody.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Carnival equivalent of the Indian burial ground situation.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Yeah, exactly. I say get under the floorboard, start digging. Get a shovel.

[Michael McMillan]

Go on. See what's under there.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

The carny burial ground.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Oh, yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

There is just skeletons of sideshow freaks underneath that swimming pool.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Oh. Wouldn't it be cool if we found like a skeleton of conjoined twins?

[Michael McMillan]

I mean it's. It exists. I mean maybe not under the swimming pool at your uncle's house, but actually.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

I think if we found skeleton of conjoined twins would be the furthest thing from cool.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Some questions for your uncle.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

These are fresh.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

And then you go into his closet and find a fake white beard and a coat with tails.

[Michael McMillan]

That's so weird.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Did you think it was a ghost at the time when you were a kid? Like.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah, totally. Yeah, absolutely. I still think so.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

You still do?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Next question.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Oh, sorry.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Well, this is the thing that we.

[Michael McMillan]

Tend to ask people who've. And we do it in the show when we present our topics of high strangeness. But if you had to trust your gut, your instinct based on what you experienced, how would you contextualize what you saw?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

What do you mean?

[Michael McMillan]

Like, like, okay, this is what I. If I had to write down on paper what it is, what I saw. A ghost. What, like what was it?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah, I guess a ghost. I mean, I guess like judging by the dress, you know, the, the, the how he looked, you know, like how he's groomed and stuff like that. It goes from like some other time that hadn't passed on to wherever we pass on to. I don't know why he would be there. You know, it's just a south suburban, you know, suburb of, of Chicago.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

I heard they have something now called.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Cheetos that's worth sticking around for.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

This is a nice pantry.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Cheetos haunting the pantry.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Oreos Dorado. This guy's got an appetite.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Trying to go eat the same Cheeto for years.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Still good.

[Michael McMillan]

Riley, did you ever see any old timey dressed people where they didn't belong?

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

No, no, I wish so badly that I had, but I just. There's the one ghost story I told on the Lister files. That's my only real good sort of ghost encounter. I've never really seen an apparition.

[Michael McMillan]

I was in a strange. It's part of a larger, weirder story that at some point, somewhere I'm gonna tell. But a number of years ago, I was staying in a giant, very old farmhouse in upstate New York outside Albany. And this place felt like Grand Central Station at night. You just felt like there were so many entities coming in and out of that house. There were a number of us up there sleeping in different rooms, but I would turn out the light and I'd try to sleep. And it just felt like my room was full of people. It felt so haunted. And I got up in the middle of the night because the bathroom was down the hall. And when you walked out, there was this giant banister that was like a square shape that looked over like an atrium in the, in the main entryway of the house. And as I walked out and I was bringing my phone with me everywhere because in case I saw something, I wanted to take a picture of it. And out of the corner of my eye, I saw a. What looked like a woman with dark hair in a red Victorian dress walking on the other side. And I turned to look and she was gone. But I snapped a photo, and then when I looked at the picture, there was a glowing orb in the picture where I saw. Saw the woman. But it was literally just out of the corner of my eye in my peripheral vision. But I could see, like, the ruffles and the shimmer of the red and like, she had a bow, like, on her back. And she. She looked like. It was definitely like the Victorian era, almost like Scarlet o', Hara, that kind of dress, you know, but it was a dark, dark red dress.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

That's awesome that you had the reflexes.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, well, I.

[Narrator/Announcer]

You.

[Michael McMillan]

I tell you, this was. I was like, on alert the entire time. I was like, behind my bed with camo and just my camera ready, like.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Something going on here. Man, it was crazy.

[Michael McMillan]

That there is a. That whole weekend was a weird story. And maybe perhaps Wednesday I'll tell it on this podcast.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

But.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, so. So ghost you're open to.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

What about Bigfoot?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, good. We always hear no.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

It's a lot of no's.

[Michael McMillan]

A lot of no's on Bigfoot.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Now it's kind of funny when you think about it because you're like, you know, afterlife, wrapping your head around that as wrapping your head around a guy with a lot of hair.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

Or just some sort of indigenous bipedal simian that might live in deep areas of the forest that we can't. We haven't really caught, like, a rare species.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

It's hard to, like, you know, like, it's like the thing we forget, like, like driving here, you know, you guys, we're in the canyon. You know, I'm driving up, I'm like, I've never seen any of this before in my life. Like, and there's this. This whole thing that didn't exist. So the idea that's like, huh, no, sir.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

I've seen it all in the woods.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

That.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Is there something in the woods that.

[Michael McMillan]

I don't know about?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Impossible.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

You know, it's like, are you kidding me?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Like, I didn't know about the can in California.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Yeah. Right here.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

It's a very.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

I mean, I think they're fairly well documented. And you do live in Chicago, but, I mean, you bring up.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

The point remains, I think a lot of people and.

[Michael McMillan]

And having. And being someone who's had experiences, I really think it comes down to. You have to see it to believe it. And then once you see it and believe it, whatever it is, you then spend a very long Period of time trying to wrap your brain around exactly what you saw, and then you end up having a podcast where you talk.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

On a weekly basis.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

I think people are threatened by Bigfoot too, because it's another intelligent mammal, humanoid, on this planet.

[Michael McMillan]

Right. It almost challenges our.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

I almost said supremacy, but that's like, not a good term.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

You don't want to be a Bigfoot supremacist. It's not good. It's a bad look, really.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Bigfoot, they're trying to take my power.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

But yeah, no, that's.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Yeah, it is a little threatening when.

[Michael McMillan]

You'Re like, oh, wait a minute, that we could have been just living off nature this whole time and had big old feet and strong arms. Instead we're, you know, addicted to our iPhones. Please keep listening to this podcast, available on itunes.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Yeah, no, it is interesting.

[Michael McMillan]

I mean, there is that sort of belief that, like, nope, man is the dominant species and he has dominion over the Earth and he can kill and. And take over anything that he wants, dominate the Earth any. Any way he wants.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Meanwhile, the cephalopods are just waiting. They're just wa. Moment coming out.

[Michael McMillan]

Well, those and the lizard people that live in the Hollow Earth, they're waiting too. I mean, they're really.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

They have their.

[Michael McMillan]

Actually, they've designed this whole thing to collapse just this way. With the help of the Illuminati, of course. And then. So ghost bigfoot. What about UFOs?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Oh, totally. Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's a slam dunk, right?

[Michael McMillan]

Do you think that there could be galaxies out there like. Like the one in your book or in stories like Star wars or Battlestar Galactica, where there's just a whole epic style fantasy going on?

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Now I can think. And now, as you said, all I can think of is like, have you ever heard the rap that's like some about Star Wars? It looks like the future, but it's really the past.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

No, I haven't.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

It's so funny. It's. It's the bad lip syncing, people.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Awesome.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

And yeah, so I think a lot might be like, Michael. No, that's the past.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

No, well, I know it is the past, but I'm saying it could be.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, it's our past. I get it. No, but maybe.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

But it's in a galaxy.

[Michael McMillan]

It's also the past, but it's in a galaxy far, far away.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

So like light speed. It's like the future or something. I don't know what that sentence meant at all.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

No, I know what you mean though, man.

[Michael McMillan]

No, but I don't know. I just wonder if, like, other gat life in other galaxies or even on other planets on this galaxy would even look recognizable to us as life. Yeah, I don't know.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

That's the thing.

[Michael McMillan]

That's.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

That's the interesting question I think we all have. It's like the odds of that happening, like, the odds of us happening are so slim. The odds of us happening again. Oh, man.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Again.

[Michael McMillan]

But better.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Hopefully, maybe laser swords.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. I know of at least one alien species that visited this planet in 1989. And I'm going to tell you guys all about that right after this break.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Hey, club scouts, you like gross facts, don't you? I know you do, because you like alien goo and ectoplasm. Well, here's a gross fact for you. Traditional bed sheets can hold more bacteria than a toilet seat. Yeah, not exactly what you want to.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Lay your face on, unless you're some.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Kind of real grosso. Miracle made bedding is designed to fight bacteria and stay cleaner longer with silver infused fabrics that actually Prevent up to 99.7% of bacterial growth. Whoa. Silver infused? That's right. Miracle made sheets are crafted with NASA inspired silver infused fabric that helps regulate your body temperature. So if you're a hot sleeper, you're a cold sleeper, it doesn't matter. They're gonna help you stay in the comfort zone all night long. And these sheets stay cleaner and fresher up to three times longer than regular sheets. That means fewer sheets, odors, fewer wash cycles, and way, way, way, way less laundry. And guess what? They feel just as good, if not better than sheets you'll find at a five star hotel. But without the sleep. The sleepy steepy price tag. Smooth, breathable and ridiculously comfortable. And guess what? They're great for your skin. All that hidden bacteria that we talked about, all that gross stuff, it can clog your pores and cause breakouts. Then people will laugh at you. That's not good. Miracle Maid's antibacterial design helps you sleep cleaner and clearer night after night. So here's what I want you to do.

[Michael McMillan]

I want you. It's a new year.

[Narrator/Announcer]

I want you to upgrade your sleep. Okay? Or give the gift of better rest. If you're slacking on your holiday gift giving, now's the time. Go to trymiracle.com BCC to try Miracle made sheets. Today you'll save over 40%. And when you use promo code BCC, you'll get an extra 20% off plus a free three piece towel set. They make an amazing gift and with a 30 day money back guarantee, there's no risk. That's trymiracle.com BCC code BCC at checkout. Thanks to Miracle made for sponsoring this episode.

[Michael McMillan]

All right, it's time for High Strangeness. Now, this is a story that I had not actually heard before I started doing research for our episode with Jen Kirkman when we talked about the Solway for Spaceman. This is a story, and it's a really strange one, of the Voronezh alien landing. This story takes place in Varonish, Russia on September 27, 1989, on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, in 1989, the population of Voronezh was around 800,000. And during the week of September 21st and September 27th, thousands of people across the city had claimed to see strange lights in the sky. Specifically pink and red orbs flying in and around the city environs. On the outskirts of the city in a public park referred to as the south park, which is like, I already.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Know the Russian reboot for South Park. It's gonna be this. And if you want to picture all the witnesses in this looking like south.

[Michael McMillan]

Park cartoon characters, feel free doing that. Yeah, I mean, it's too late and.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

It'S kind of of plays out like.

[Michael McMillan]

A South park episode, to be honest. There were three children, Vasya Surin, Genya Blinov and Julia Shokalova. They were playing in the park when they heard a strange whistling in the sky. Now this story is really cool because it sounds a lot like the story that we did last month about the, that I covered about the Flatwoods monster and in West Virginia. But what's funny and the thing you have to keep in mind, and one of the reasons this story is really remarkable, remarkable is that up until this point, a lot of what was happening in Russia had been behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. And a lot of stuff, American stuff, movies, pop culture, didn't always make it all the way over there. So we tend to think of aliens and UFOs and flying saucers as a really big American phenomenon. And this was one of the first big stories to come out of the Soviet Union that showed similarities to stories that we had. But during a time when there a lot of those stories really weren't making their way across. So it kind of builds an argument that these things are happening all over the world.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

It makes a lot of sense.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah, yeah. They're not like influenced by each other.

[Michael McMillan]

Right. And it's really cool because as you'll find as you'll see, this is a really like, like the Flatwoods monster, which took place in 1952. This in 1989 is another very like B movie alien sci fi encounter. So the kids heard this whistling in the sky and they look up and they saw a pink orb hovering overhead, about 9 meters wide, which proceeded to fly around the park. Now the kids claimed that they could see the grass ripple as the orb moved overhead and would dive down over the grass. They could see the grass rippling out like riplets in a puddle when you drop a, you know, a rock in a little thing of water. And the orb flew around the park for a little bit, the kids watch it and then it took back off into the sky. Now the strange craft had attracted the attention of more people and a group of about 40 to 50 locals came into the park and joined the kids that were already there.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

That's a lot of eyewitnesses.

[Narrator/Announcer]

I know.

[Michael McMillan]

This is what's so insane about this. And again, this is important. This is like a mass sighting. This is wasn't just like a handful of people. And as they all gathered around and talked about what had just happened and what they'd seen, the orb returned and a rectangular portal opened. And the crowd watched in disbelief as a strange, strange three eyed creature peered out, scanned the crowd and then slipped back inside the craft. The orb then turned from pink. The.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

I don't want to hear anymore.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Pause on that just for a second.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

I gotta go.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

This guy pokes his head out and he's like, yep, this looks like a good place.

[Michael McMillan]

It gets weirder, guys.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

So the orb turns from pink to.

[Michael McMillan]

Deep red as the crowd stepped back and watched the craft land on the park lawn. And they said three like legs came out of the orb and parked right there and made indentions in the the grass, which is important.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Later.

[Michael McMillan]

A hatch and a rampway open and the three eyed creature walks down the ramp and out into the park. Now some of the details varied in the game of telephone between the Russian press And then the St. Louis Dispatch, which would later pick up the story and in and then would later be picked up by the New York Times. And in some versions of this story there were three space creatures. But as we've already learned on this show, a lot of times as the game of telephone, you know, as the stories spread, they tend to get exaggerated. Remember like in Hopkinsville when they had the little goblin encounters, the people at the time, the eyewitnesses said there were no more than two ever seen @ the same Time. But by the time it hit the press, there were 12. You know, they said there were 12 or 13. And the eyewitnesses swore up and down that, nope, there were never. There were definitely no more than four that we could.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Count. Right. Especially in this case too, where you're translating languages. Three eyes could have easily been.

[Michael McMillan]

Misconstrued. And also when the American press picks up this story and really wants to make fun of a Russian UFO story, of course it can get crazy. So anyway, for the sake of being conservative and simplifying the story, we are going to only refer to there being one giant three eyed space.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Creature. Let's be reasonable here, come.

[Michael McMillan]

On. So the monster was described as being 9ft tall, wearing a silver jumpsuit with bronze boots and a disc on his chest. He had a small dome shaped head with two white eyes and a third red eye on what constituted his forehead. And I have some pictures here I'm going to show you. Here's a sketch from around that time that I got off the Internet of the.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Creature. Guy looks dope.

[Michael McMillan]

Man. He looks like the Jug. He's kind of shaped like the juggernaut from X.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Men. He's cool and.

[Michael McMillan]

Tough. And I had another picture of him here somewhere. Here's a really cool illustration of him attacking a.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Child. Yeah, I like.

[Michael McMillan]

It. The space monster was also accompanied by a small boxy robot that walked down the rampway and started moving around the park in front of all of these people. The space monster supposedly mumbled a strange phrase in a glowing rectangle, or in some stories a glowing triangle appeared on the ground before him as people. He was just kind of came out. He's like, he was doing tricks for these people. He's like, he literally just kind of came down and started entertaining people. I kind of think that this guy was like some weird intergalactic magician.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Who had been run out of his home planet and was just trying to find an.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Audience. He got banned for playing three cup, you.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Know. Yeah, exactly. So he like, he starts doing these tricks for these people. He like makes a glowing rectangle.

[Narrator/Announcer]

And it disappears and a triangle and it.

[Michael McMillan]

Disappears. And then the creature made got down on the droid and like fiddled with some buttons on the droid and he started scanning the park and walking around and then the robot returned to the craft. Now at this point. Oh, here, here's the other picture of this guy. This is my favorite one. He's pretty rad here. He totally looks like a comic. He looks like a Jack Kirby comic book character. Now at this point the stupefication of the crowd was interrupted when one of the witnesses, a small boy, came to his senses and promptly screamed. And the space monster turned towards the boy. And witnesses claim a beam of light shot from his eyes and surrounded the kid. And then suddenly the craft, the giant and the robot all vanished into thin.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Air. Whoa. No.

[Michael McMillan]

Liftoff. Just no liftoff. Just disappeared. There's a lot of vanishing in this story. Like an annoying guest who doesn't know when to leave the party. The entities then rematerialized a few minutes later and the space monster was now wielding a silver rod in his hand, which he then pointed at a different teenage boy. And to the shock and awe of the crowd, the boy disappeared. The creature and the robot then got back into the craft and the orb flew off into the sky. And then thankfully, the teenage boy reappeared after the craft took.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Off.

[Michael McMillan]

Whoa. Just a.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Weird. And this is an account of like 40.

[Michael McMillan]

People. This is 40 to 50 people from children to adults. And one of the things that happened when the story was running, the St. Louis Dispatch, they said only kids were there, but actually there were a bunch of adults there. And the police came to the scene and started taking questions and investigating the. The park. The witnesses accounts were written down and one of the witnesses was actually a police lieutenant who saw the orb fly towards the park before all of this happened. And he's been on. I saw a video with this police, this cat police lieutenant being interviewed on Russian television. So this was like a really big story. Soviet scientists came out to the park and found evidence of the landing. A depression from the landing gear in the grass and the ground beneath the grass had been allegedly turned to stone. In some reports it was said that the Soviet scientists retrieved strange rocks that were not of this earth. A reporter named Paul Stonehill covered the story for tas, the Soviet Information Agency newspaper. During the investigation in story, TAS also uncovered all the eyewitness accounts that we mentioned at the top of the story of strange lights in the sky and more eyewitness accounts of seeing strange three eyed giants and in some boxy robots, orbs. And then in some cases little, little tiny grayish green creatures, little men in blue robes were also seen during this time, during this whole world week. The fact that this was reported in the Soviet news was significant because as communism started to collapse, state control over the press and the media loosened. And this was one of the first UFO stories that that came out. And it was, like I said, one of the ones that was not only reported in the Soviet media, but Also then made it over to the western United States. And they think that one of the reasons that this story took off was because the media was suddenly having so much freedom to write about whatever they wanted.

[Narrator/Announcer]

About.

[Michael McMillan]

Sure. And so they picked kind of the wildest story to see how far that they could.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Go.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. But the witnesses there, and they interviewed many and you can f. You can look up this story on YouTube and you see people, they all swear up and down that this, this thing took.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Place. That's a wild.

[Additional Co-host or Guest (brief lines)]

Story.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Right. That's a good.

[Michael McMillan]

One. I've never heard this one. There's a lot of great UFO and weird creature encounters that happen in Europe and in the east that we don't really get a lot of. And I think moving forward in the next phase of the show, I'm going to start doing some more research on some of the paranormal, international paranormal.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Stuff. I like it. That's a good move.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Right. It's interesting too how these things often seem to happen around like major political events. Like you know, the, the, the men that appeared around the.

[Michael McMillan]

Nuclear. This was months before the, like the Berlin Wall.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Felt. Yeah. Which is a huge global event. You know, it's. I don't know what, we'll get into it in the next segment. But it's interesting how these sort of appearances happen around these major.

[Michael McMillan]

Events. And it's weird too when you have, I mean obviously we have so many stories of alien grays or reptilians or what they called the, the Nordic aliens that are like these tall blonde dream boats. But I love the.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Story. Totally. Show me a Venusian and I'll show you my massive hard.

[Michael McMillan]

On. I think that I, I love the stories when you get these singular type entities like the Flatwoods monster where their descriptions are so strange and so unique or this three eyed giant that don't seem to pop up again in popular culture anywhere. El. Uh, but okay, so that's the story of the Voroneish alien landing. And when we come back, we're gonna ask our sci fi author Michael Maurici what the hell was.

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[Michael McMillan]

Eyes. Exhale. Feel your body relax, and let.

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[Michael McMillan]

Fast. And.

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[Michael McMillan]

Order. 1-800-contacts. And we're.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Back. Bigfoot Collectors.

[Michael McMillan]

Club. And now it's time for our segment. What the hell was.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

That? What the hell was.

[Michael McMillan]

That? Michael Maurici, you heard the story of the Veronaj alien.

[Additional Co-host or Guest (brief lines)]

Landing? I.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Did.

[Michael McMillan]

Unbelievable. What's your take? What's your hot take on.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

This? I mean, undoubtedly true. All.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Right. Podcast.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Over. Yeah, great. We just proved the existence of.

[Michael McMillan]

Aliens. No, I mean, like, you know, it's.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Weird. You get so many of these different sightings and occurrences, and we. We hear it like, you know, if you watch, like, you know, the History Channel, then it's like the. The woman lying in bed who was frozen and.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Paralyzed. Tell me.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

More. Wait, wait.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Wait. That was something.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Different. Way, way different.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Channel. That was the Spice Channel. They still have the Spice.

[Michael McMillan]

Channel. I don't know. I don't. Probably not. I think now. Now it's the Game Show Network. They.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Rebranded. That's my channel just replaced with the.

[Michael McMillan]

Internet. Yeah, it's like the Sports Illustrated Illustrated Swimsuit issue is just now every.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Magazine. It's like Maxim and the Internet.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Used to be special.

[Michael McMillan]

Guys. You know, misogyny used to come.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Out only once a year. The male gays used to only every March get to really express itself. Now it's just everywhere you.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Look. 24 7, man. But we.

[Michael McMillan]

Digress. So you were talking about a woman lying in bed on the History.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Channel? Well, no, but it'd be like the thing. And I'm not making this up, but she'd be like, she told this story, and I've seen this a number of times. It could be a man lying in bed also, but they'd be paralyzed and, like, I couldn't move. And then they get, you know, they all sudden just kind of levitate toward the window. Window. And be in a spaceship and this kind of thing. But it's always a singular point of view. It's always a singular, you know, account. And while they're all similar, like, Michael mentioned that story of, like, the. It's been reiterated so many times. Is it because that's like the alien procedure or is it because, like.

[Michael McMillan]

You saw it on the history. Right, right.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Right. That's the.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Story. And that's what I find is.

[Michael McMillan]

Really unique about this because this experience is very. Even though it's a UFO one, it's unlike. And I mean, obviously there's similarities, like I said to the Flatwoods monster, in a sense. But it's so strange that in. In. It's so strange that it almost feels like the alien encounter itself is taking place in a foreign language. You know what I mean? Totally. That. That the symbology and the alien and stuff are designs that are not of our American culture, which kind of to me lends some credence and if they weren't influenced by some of the American media, that perhaps some of these instances really are affected and shaped by the people witnessing them. Like some type of psychic phenomenon is also taking place during these.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Encounters.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. And that perhaps whatever comes out of the orb materializes in a way that is recognizable to the sensibility of the culture that it is presenting itself.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

To. Yeah. That's a theme I think we keep returning to, which is really interesting that that's viewed through the lens of the time and the.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Culture.

[Michael McMillan]

Right. And I think I tried to bring this up before, but what's the. In Harry Potter, what's the name of the creature that's in the trunk? And then when it comes out, it takes the form of whatever you're afraid.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Of. I know what you're talking about. They're in that. The.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Class. I want to say patronus, but it's.

[Michael McMillan]

Not. No, the patronus is the thing that they use to fight the dement. You know, your spirit kind of animal that fights the. But it's that.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Kind. Someone is sitting in their car right now.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Screaming. You know what? Let's take a two second.

[Michael McMillan]

Break. Just. We'll pause so you can scream the name at us right now. Hold.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

On. All right, that's.

[Michael McMillan]

It. Okay, cool. Thank you. Sorry. But it's that kind of thing where it's almost like. I don't know if the mind. It's sort of half between a hallucination and a physical. Yeah. I think that there's something really is making contact, but it's. It's taking the form of something that will be not necessarily recognizable but interpreted by the culture that's witnessing it.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah. I mean, what's strange where there's two things that say to that. Like, one is like it kind of is reminiscent of the Zemeckis contact film where it's like, you know, her father, you know, the alien comes in the father's form because it's the form that you would.

[Michael McMillan]

Understand.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Right. But what's also cool, like, if you're thinking about this from like a cultural gaze, like we're talking about looking like there's a certain kind of like crossbreeding collective consciousness that you can like dig into because like the, the, you know, we can't show them. But if you looked up the.

[Michael McMillan]

Illustrations and we'll put links in our show notes and this will be up on Instagram and Facebook as this is live. So you can go hop over to our Facebook page or Instagram and see some of these.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Pictures. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, go.

[Michael McMillan]

On. Sorry, I was just plugging that.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

So people could go see.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

It. Nailed.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

It. Give us a like player over.

[Michael McMillan]

There.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

So. No, but like that's it like totally rings of like Americana Silver age sci.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Fi. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like that B.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Movie.

[Michael McMillan]

Exactly. Like the Day the Earth Stood still kind of stuff.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Right. And then like there's like a reverse thing too where like, you know, like it feels like, you know, Russia because of whatever, you know, you know, Iron Curtain, you know, culture, stuff like that, like are like 30 years behind that of America. But like, if you look at like the dystopian novel, like another like sci fi thread, there's like, like a Russian novel from like the 20s that's called we that never, you know, made it out of Russian until, you know, years and years later that it's like really like you can. I mean, it's almost like, you know, Orwell or something or Huxley would have written it, but that was like, you know, it's almost like there's this weird collective consciousness of like.

[Michael McMillan]

Shared. Right. Shared kind of.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Iconography. Iconography and.

[Michael McMillan]

Ideas. Characters and.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Ideas.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Totally. Well, and.

[Michael McMillan]

It'S. I mean, that's just goes back to Joseph Campbell and his, you know, studying all the world myths and. Yeah.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah. The.

[Michael McMillan]

Monomyth. It's it. All these things exist in different forms all over the world throughout human.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

History.

[Michael McMillan]

Right. But I just, I love it when you get one of these stories and it's just a weird ass dude coming out of a weird spaceship and just befuddling.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

People. Well, no, too. That there's physical evidence left behind verified by government scientists. I.

[Michael McMillan]

Mean.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Yeah. Not to be.

[Michael McMillan]

Overlooked. Right, right. And I think that we tend to be very skeptic when we go, well, but.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

It'S. But Russians Yeah, but it was.

[Michael McMillan]

So, you know, this was coming at it, hitting like Time magazine wrote a piece about it at the time, and then they revisited it 25 years later. And at the time, Time magazine was kind of making fun of this, and they chalked it up to just being a fake story that tasks ran because they could, because no one had control over them. But that doesn't explain the fact that they have. This was all over the Soviet media, and there are eyewitnesses who have been interviewed and reporters who interview the eyewitnesses. And it wasn't just this story in the park. It was stories that were that whole week of seeing strange lights and stuff in the sky. So I think that the skeptic tends to go, it's just a bunch of. But something to it. When you get down, as we've learned on this podcast, when you get down to the personal level and talk to eyewitnesses and talk to people who have seen things, you know, no one can tell you, Michael, that you didn't see repeatedly some old timey carnival barker. And, you know, as weird and as strange as that is, you saw multiple times, they're. They're in the same location. It's very easy for somebody else who did not have that. That experience to brush it off. Right. So, you know, we'll never know exactly what happened in that park. But if you had to take a guess, what would you say happened.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Definitively? Oh, I think it's as described. You know, I mean, I think that, like, something landed. I think something came out. And like, you know, I mean, there's certain degree, like you can chalk it up to a hoax, but I think that, like, passes that degree when you start making teenagers disappear, You.

[Michael McMillan]

Know? Point. Yeah. And I try to find story. I tried to find, like, that teenage, you know, the, the problem with.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

This story is for a second, like I say, you're trying to find that.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Teenager. I'm trying to find that.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Teenager. Russian.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Teen. It's.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

My. Sergey, can you hear us? Where did you go, Sergey? For those brief moments, yeah, I've tried to find out. I mean, what's worse is I.

[Michael McMillan]

Was actually saying I was trying to find a teenage boy, but really, aren't we all trying to find the teenage boy within ourselves? But I couldn't find any, any, any a story or any interviews with that guy. So perhaps that's part of the exaggeration as the story grew. But that's the kind of thing it's like, I want to talk to that guy and find out what and what he went through when he vanished into thin.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Air. Totally. What's your take on like where this. So this is a visitor that's come and landed. Do you think that it's someone who's traveled across the distances of space because that, you know, presents the big problem of everything is so far apart? Or do you think it's more of like an interdimensional thing? Or is it someone who's actually from this planet to begin with and we just don't know about.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Them?

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Or. What's your take on.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

That? That's a good.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Question. And UFOs in.

[Michael McMillan]

General. Just answer all of these.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Now. Just let us know what's going.

[Michael McMillan]

On. You're assigned. Science fiction.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Writer.

[Michael McMillan]

You. We know you have the.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Answers. Okay, guys, I'll tell you. I'll tell you, okay? Just don't tell anyone.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Else. Communicating with an alien species from a different planet. They're the ones giving you all the information for your.

[Michael McMillan]

Stories. We want to hear about it.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Now. Sometimes I want. No, no, I mean like, yeah, I think like it's, it's so complicated because like the idea of like that, that travel from vast distances is like, from our viewpoint is so impossible. Like there's no way but like interdimensional travels just as impossible. Or like, you know, yet, yet.

[Michael McMillan]

Give us, you know, but like I always say, give a species a million year jump start on us, they can figure it.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Out. Yeah, it's like grandpa always said, you gave a species a million year jump start. Man, they're zooming all over this galaxy. That thing pointed a rod at me and I ended up at a Wendy's at 2am up to my knees and chicken.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Nuggets. Checks out. Checks out. Should have your grandpa on the.

[Michael McMillan]

Show. Oh, yeah, my grandpa's.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Dead.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Sorry. Oh, let's try to get him on the show. That would actually really help. Oh.

[Michael McMillan]

No. So.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Yeah. So you think this is taking a face? I mean, I think at the.

[Narrator/Announcer]

End of the day we have to.

[Michael McMillan]

Take some of these, these stories at face value. Whether you choose to believe it or not is up to.

[Narrator/Announcer]

You.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah. Are all the details totally.

[Michael McMillan]

Right? Probably.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Not. But something happened, right? Like something, something happened. And it's, you know, you look at these stories and I always think to myself, it's like, well, you know, there's, there's, there's a thousand of these stories, you know, like, of like, you know, alien encounters, being beamed to a ship, whatever, you know, but like, it just takes one, one to be right, you know, and that's it. That blows the whole thing wide open. So is one of them right? Right? I think.

[Michael McMillan]

So. And I kind of like that. These encounters sort of support the idea that the aliens don't care about landing on the White House lawn. They're not interested. I know.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

She. If you guys wouldn't mind though.

[Michael McMillan]

If any of you are listening, but that they, they're just sort of. I like that they tend to interact with just everyday.

[Narrator/Announcer]

People.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Yeah. And sort of non malevolently. He's doing magic tricks with.

[Michael McMillan]

His. I mean, honestly, most of stories don't have much of a. They're not. They don't tend to be alien attacks. Now, like I said, you could say that pointing a magic rod at somebody, making them disappear is an attack. But I think it's a magic trick. I mean, that's a.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Trick. It came.

[Michael McMillan]

Back. No one was hurt. Well, anyway. All right, well, we will be back in just a moment with our final segment for the episode the Collector's.

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[Michael McMillan]

Tennessee. And we're back and it's time for Collector's.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Corner.

[Michael McMillan]

Yay. Now, Michael, this is the Bigfoot Collectors club. And we always ask our guest, beyond collecting stories, what do you.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Collect? I collect, let's see, Star wars.

[Michael McMillan]

Figures. Obviously you're in good.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Company. Yeah, we've shared a lot.

[Michael McMillan]

Of. We've shared some shelf porn, as they call.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

It. We've shared some self porn.

[Michael McMillan]

Yes. Yeah. Which is somehow worse than real.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Porn. Sounds way worse. Way.

[Michael McMillan]

Dirtier.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yeah. Hey, Mike, look at my black series.

[Michael McMillan]

Hair. Like, look at my Star wars shelf. It's so.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Beautiful. Texting at 1am he's like, who is that? It's like, it's it's east, it's.

[Michael McMillan]

West coast times only 11. It's fine. You're in a Star wars figures. You collect the vintage stuff or the new black series 6 inch.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Stuff. That's basically all I collect is.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Like series 6 inch also sounds worse. Oh.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

No. Lando.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Exclusive. No. Oh man. So do you collect old books.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Too? No, I'm not really particular about my books. I like to have the Star wars books and all hardcover. I collect books just in general. I like to have physical books. I like to collect. I'm getting back into building up my RPG collection. I just tracked down through a friend through actually this fan found out that how much I liked HeroQuest. Oh wow. And I used to have the game. I used to have that board game when I was a kid. And it's funny, I was telling a friend today, it's like my mom like kept everything of my.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Stuff. That's so.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Awesome. Good job. Except, except like the things like the Thrawn Zahn series, that's gone. My hero Quest game, that's gone. She's got like my like Flintstones movie tie in McDonald's.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Cup. Some people really want.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

That. Yeah, I mean that's like at least $2 on good.

[Michael McMillan]

Intention. Questionable.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Taste. Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

Exactly. Also a quick follow up question. Who is Stalker sending you.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Gifts? Oh yes, he has to be anonymous. He's a good, he's a good dude.

[Michael McMillan]

He's. I'm just season Stalker. I hope you're listening. And I, I, I, I don't mean any.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Of. But no, he's sending, he sent me that so I was able to get that. I'm trying to like build up some RPG stuff. I'm getting back in the DnD.

[Michael McMillan]

So I'm like oh, I gotta go. Did you play the old, was it West End that did the original Star wars role playing game? Was that.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Tsr? No, I think it was West End. Yeah. I've never played the original but they re released the book recently and I want to get.

[Michael McMillan]

It. And that, that was the first time that they actually gave character names to peop to the guys like Hammerhead and Walrus Man. Was it I think Pablo Hidalgo from Lucasfilm. Didn't he name all of those or was he working for them.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Yet? I'm not.

[Michael McMillan]

Sure. Real deep cut guys. But that was kind of cool that they suddenly gave them all all those little action figures that we had growing up. Then they expand really started to expand the universe. I have a bunch of the paperbacks from the old Star Wars EU I kept I Got rid of a bunch. But then I kept the ones that had really cool painted covers. Like wraparound painted covers. Nice. Cuz they all kind of look like that. I think even Drew Stran did some for like the Han Solo trilogy.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Books.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. And they're just really cool. I keep them for the art because it's, it's. You don't see those published anywhere else anymore. There's a lot of really cool old school painted art before Photoshop came out of awesome Star wars stuff. So I keep the, I keep all the ones with the cool art and then I have a hardback collection of all the newer new canon stuff. I tried, tried to collect all the new canon and now it's just gotten already too out of.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Control. So I.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. Narrow my focus. You can't be a completist anymore.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Though. You can't be a completist, Grandpa. Go back to.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Heaven. Take your.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Nuggets. Get your nuggets. Finish those nuggets.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Grandpa. No you can't. You know, but like, yeah, like I mean I love those, like Star Wars, a lot of sci fi fantasy books. Those like 70s and 80s, like you know, had tremendously talented artists working on them. That those covers were just.

[Michael McMillan]

Awesome. Did you ever read any of Philip Jose Farmer? You Philip Jose Farmer fans, you ever read Tarzan Alive or. Oh dude, you've got to read those.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Books.

[Michael McMillan]

Really? Yeah, he's kind of one of these guys that was the first he was writing in the. He actually had a whole other career. I think he was like a social worker for like 30 or 40 years. And then in the 60s he started submitting to short story publications for science fiction. And he took off and he started. He was one of the first guys that really started the shared universe concept for Victorian characters. So he took the original Edgar Rice Burrows Tarzan and recontextualized it as if Tarzan had been a real person. And Edgar Rice Burroughs, the book that he wrote was based on that.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Guy.

[Michael McMillan]

Okay. So one of his first books was called Tarzan Alive where he, the author supposedly meets the real Tarzan in a hotel in like London. And he's immortal for reasons that we find out later. And he interviews him about his life and about the Edar Rice Burroughs book and what he got right and what he got wrong. And it all ties into the world Newton universe, which actually Alan Moore borrowed heavily from for League of Extraordinary.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Gentlemen. Oh.

[Michael McMillan]

Man. And the Walt Newton universe is this awesome concept that he came up with that there were. That it was based on a real meteorite that landed outside world Newton in County in England. And he wrote a story that there was a carriage passing by when the meteorite hit. And in the carriage were, like, Elizabeth Bennett's parents from Pride and Prejudice and. And the Greystokes from Tarzan and like, the guy who became the Scarlet Pimpernel. And they were all embedded with this radiation that gave them like, just almost superhuman abilities. And then they passed that lineage along throughout the 20th century. And it's really in depth. And then other people will. Other writers have written in to build on the Walt Newton universe.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Model.

[Michael McMillan]

Okay. And some of it is more. Some of it's real dry. Some of it is really just Philip Jose, former, trying to, like, rewrite stuff to justify how it fits into his fiction, you know, into the shared universe. Okay. It's real geeky, but. But fun. And then some of them are just really cool. Science fiction, fantasy, pulp. You know, it's all pulp.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Novels. Oh.

[Michael McMillan]

Man. I mean, well, you got to. You got to check it out. Yeah, you look up for. Look up W. Newton. Anything W. Newton. Philip Jose Farmer. I recommend, even though some people would say don't start with this one because it's kind of a. A. It kind of concludes a lot of the Tarzan stuff, but times Last Gift is a really cool sci fi.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Story. Okay.

[Michael McMillan]

Great. So check that one out. I really recommend that one. Cool. Well, we're gonna wrap up. Thank you so much for joining us today. I know you're very busy having a. A book signing today. Book Soup. Obviously, if you're listening to this, you missed it too late. But where can people find Black Star Renegades? And what other stuff is coming out that you want people to. To know.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

About? You know, you can find Blackstar A's anywhere. You know, it's Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, Audible, you know, any, you know, local bookstores. So, yeah, anywhere you can find. I have the new book Wasted Space coming out in.

[Michael McMillan]

April. And that's with Vault. That's with Vault.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Comics. Yeah. And then Blast 2 is next.

[Michael McMillan]

Year. Cool. And you're on Twitter, Instagram. Where can people find.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

You?

[Michael McMillan]

MichaelMarisi. Awesome. That's pretty. Pretty simple, like, I guess.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Yeah. Oh, I.

[Michael McMillan]

Forgot. I do have a collectible today to share.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Something. Something special for the.

[Michael McMillan]

Group. And this one is sort of a cheat, but I have my copy of Blackstar Renegades that I'm gonna ask Mr. Morisi to sign for me. I have a pen too, so we'll do that.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

After. Oh, we got a Sharpie. We're doing this live.

[Michael McMillan]

On. Yeah, Riley, while he's doing that. Do you have anything you want.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

To plug for our listening.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Audience? I'm not real heavy on the Internet, but if you want to see some very artful photos of garbage, you can check out my Instagram Rashbag hashtag. Hashtag. That's it, though. That's the only social media I.

[Michael McMillan]

Do. Just.

[Narrator/Announcer]

You.

[Michael McMillan]

Really? I thought that was a.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Joke. No, it's literally photos of garbage. Yeah, that's. They're nice. It's nice.

[Michael McMillan]

Garbage.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Yeah. Provocative.

[Michael McMillan]

Garbage. They're nice photos of.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Garbage. Yeah. Either.

[Michael McMillan]

Way. Do you ever go to, like, rich neighborhoods and. And take pictures of rich people.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Garbage? Rich people have the best.

[Michael McMillan]

Garbage. Yeah, it's just like gold chunks.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Just sitting wads of cash and.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Diamonds. Old money they don't need anymore that they throw out. This money's.

[Michael Morisi (Guest, Sci-fi Author and Comic Writer)]

Dirty.

[Michael McMillan]

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for listening, guys. We are so thankful that you're listening to the show and we appreciate all of your likes and comments on our Facebook page, Bigfoot Collectors Club, and Instagram. You can find us on Twitter bigfootclub. And please keep listening. Keep writing in to bigfootcollectorsclubmail.com we'll read your emails on our next listener files episode which is coming up very soon. Thank you so much. Thanks again to Michael. Oh, thank you. Out his book Black Star Renegades. I think you're really going to love it. If you like this show. I think you're really going to enjoy Michael's work. So please go out, support this author. He's really great. He believes in ghosts. He believes in UFOs. He's one of us. Okay, guys. Riley, thank you for stepping in in the co captain's.

[Riley Bray (Sound Designer and Engineer, Co-host substitute)]

Chair. My.

[Michael McMillan]

Pleasure. That basically meant that I'm the captain and now I have to talk to Bryce about.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

That. There are.

[Michael McMillan]

Two. There's not one captain. They're both co captain chairs. You know, they sit next to each other at the. On the bridge of our starship Bigfoot. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you guys next week.

[Co-host Bryce Johnson]

Byebye. Bigfoot Collectors Club is executive produced.

[Narrator/Announcer]

By Riley Bray and Michael McMillan and.

[Michael McMillan]

Engineered and edited by Riley Bray. Our theme song is Come Alone by Sun Eaters courtesy of Lotus Pool Records for ad free listening and bonus episodes every month. Join BCC Clubhouse on bcc.supercast.com Want to see us watch video episodes and.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Explain exclusive content on YouTube.com advocle.

[Additional Co-host or Guest (brief lines)]

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