"Billy Meier: Beamships & Blondes" w/ John E.L. Tenney

Summary

Bigfoot Collectors Club
Episode: "Billy Meier: Beamships & Blondes"
Date: July 29, 2026
Guests: John E.L. Tenney

---

Episode Overview

The hosts, Michael McMillan and Riley Bray, are joined once again by John E.L. Tenney: paranormal investigator, author, and professional weirdo. This episode wraps up July’s focus on UFO encounters from the 1970s, culminating in a deep-dive into the controversial story of Billy Meier—the one-armed Swiss farmer who claims contact with Pleiadian aliens and presented infamous saucer photos. The discussion spans the cultural context of UFOs in the ‘70s, the evolution of UFO mythology, and a skeptical but affectionate breakdown of Billy Meier’s legacy.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

High Strangeness: One-off Paranormal Stories

• [06:16] John E.L. Tenney’s Paranormal Updates
  • John is posting short-form content sharing lesser-known Fortean cases (e.g., glowing dogs biting police in the Bronx, a New Mexico man arrested for allegedly turning into a frog and biting his wife).
  • He remarks on his fascination with weird, unresolved, one-off incidents, noting, “It is mostly one off. Like, it happens, and then it doesn't have any resolve. … It’s just this thing that happens and then it's done.” ([10:26])
• Discussion on the Psychological Nature of High Strangeness
  • The hosts and Tenney reflect on how bizarre events rarely have tidy narrative arcs, much like real life. Michael relates this to David Lynch’s films capturing the unpredictable nature of the truly weird. ([11:15])
  • Tenney: “We as human beings don’t have tidy arcs. … Our story just starts and then it ends, and a whole bunch of stuff happens in the middle.” ([11:34])

The Context: 1970s UFO Culture

• [13:40] What Was the Vibe in the 1970s?
  • Tenney describes the ‘70s as a period where UFO lore enters both mainstream and counterculture, with media jumping on the trend and every show having a UFO episode (“Six Million Dollar Man,” “Happy Days,” etc.).
  • Cults and metaphysical ideas (ancient aliens, crystals) explode. Early cult leaders like Heaven’s Gate gain media traction.
  • Michael: “It somehow gets weirder and … more mass produced.”
• The Pop Culture Feedback Loop
  • Discussion of Hollywood, made-for-TV movies, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", and the emergence of public figures like J. Allen Hynek, John Keel, and Jacques Vallée. ([18:44])
  • Tenney recalls winning tickets as a kid to the re-release of “Close Encounters” and being blown away. ([18:44])

The Evolution of UFO Lore: 1940s–1980s

• From Roswell Back to Airships
  • Tenney describes tracing UFO reports back to airship sightings in the 1800s, and how the Roswell incident was mostly forgotten until paperback UFO books in the 1970s revived it. ([20:58])
  • Enter Stanton Friedman: Physicist who helps popularize interest in Roswell via paperbacks.
• The "Grays" & 1980s Boom
  • The idea of "Grays" as the default alien cements in popular culture with the release of Whitley Strieber’s “Communion” (1987). Tenney describes the UFO craze surging with books, TV, talk shows. ([22:42])
  • The hosts tie this to techno-cultural shifts (personal computers, Usenet boards, Mac commercials), which further facilitate community and lore-building. ([25:49])

The Archetype Theory: Do We Imagine the Phenomenon Into Existence?

• Tenney’s Take on How Cultural Imagery Shapes Experience
  • “As our brains get filled with more information, more imagery … more and more people start. More and more people are able to have experiences that they might not have been able to have before.” ([26:46])
  • Discussion around how people learned to see photographs, and how collective imagination shapes perception of the paranormal.

---

The Main Event: The Billy Meier Case

[31:54] Billy Meier: Key Facts

1. Who Is Billy Meier?

   • Swiss farmer, self-proclaimed alien contactee, and founder of the FIGU group (Free Community of Interests for the Border and Spiritual Sciences and Ufological Studies).
   • Claims contact with the Pleiadians (blonde, blue-eyed "spiritual masters") from 1975–1978, hundreds of photos of their “beamships.”
   • Followers champion his photos; critics dismiss them as hoaxes. His work inspired the iconic "I Want to Believe" X-Files poster.

2. Cult Status and Biography

   • One-armed since a teenage accident; had a tumultuous youth (French Foreign Legion, expelled from schools, eloped with a 16-year-old).
   • Launched a movement that became increasingly cult-like. FIGU insists it's not a cult (“When you have to print out a booklet about your organization that says you’re not a cult, you are a cult.” – Tenney [05:06]).

[33:44] Breaking Down the Mythology

• The Backstory Keeps Expanding
  • Meier retconned his history, later claiming alien contact at age 4 by “Ptah,” and that the Pleiadians had communicated humanity’s cosmic role to him.
• The Evidence: Photographs and Films
  • Produced hundreds of “crystal clear” photos and 8mm films of beamships.
  • Meier’s model-making hobby—admitted by Meier himself—led to mounting suspicion about the authenticity of the photos.
  • Notable for “wedding cake” saucers (obviously homemade) and ray gun photos (“…someone wearing a silver jumpsuit… holding what looks like a dollar store plastic ray gun covered in tin foil” – Tenney [43:47]).
  • Dinosaur “time travel” photos and “God’s Eye”/nebula shots were traced back to books and TV broadcasts.

“My favorite Billy Meyer photographs aren’t Billy Meyer’s UFO photographs… he took pictures of dinosaurs [that] he was showing people that he took from time traveling… we found the book and the illustrations that he took a picture of.”
— John E.L. Tenney ([42:15])

• Hoax Mechanisms and Excuses
  • When confronted with proof of fakes, Meier would claim “the Men in Black” swapped his film to discredit him. ([59:12])
  • Also claimed photographs of Pleiadians were swapped by government agents for shots of TV dancers.

[47:39] Problematic Elements

• Cult Dynamics & Problematic Figures
  • Meier’s circle included figures like Wendelle Stevens—former military, later convicted of sex crimes.
  • Anti-Semitism, racist Aryan “master race” ideas, and cult control themes pervade FIGU literature; the group regularly issued pamphlets labeling defectors and critics as liars or frauds.
• Tenney on Critical Documentation
  • Shows pamphlets received from FIGU:
    • "Clarification of Defamatory Claims"
    • "Lies, Frauds, Schizophrenic Actions, Hoaxes and Defamations …"
    • “Cal Korf is a liar, Cheat and thief” response booklet

[55:02] The Enduring “Outsider Art” Appeal & Cultural Impact

• Despite the hoaxes, Meier's imagery remains iconic and undeniably influential in UFO pop culture.

  “There is something very outsider art beautiful about these photographs ... If these were just created and sold on Etsy, they’d be awesome.”
  — Michael McMillan ([55:02])

• Meier’s saucer photos essentially defined the “look” of UFOs from the 1970s onward, influencing media (e.g., X-Files).

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Minor Cases:
  “I have a huge file cabinet full of like, one off, very minorly reported cases that no one really ever talks about … I’m so fascinated by those one off incidents.”
  — John E.L. Tenney ([06:16])

• On Cult Self-Justification:
  “When you have to print out a booklet about your organization that says you’re not a cult, you are a cult.”
  — John E.L. Tenney ([05:06])

• On Making Excuses for Hoaxes:
  “He’s got a built-in story for why those photographs are actually fake: when he takes his film to be developed, … the Men in Black, the secret government, they take the original photos and replace them with fake photographs to discredit him.”
  — John E.L. Tenney ([59:12])

• On Outsider Art & The Legacy:
  “They're beautiful. They're really simple and cool. … If he would have said, I was kind of telepathically contacted by the aliens so I’ve done photographs to represent what I thought their ships look like, ... [that] would be fine.”
  — John E.L. Tenney ([55:55])

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 06:16 – Tenney shares new Fortean “one off” cases and his approach to folklore
• 13:40 – Deep dive into the ‘70s UFO/Cult zeitgeist and TV/film influence
• 22:42 – Why the “Grays” and UFO pop culture boomed in the ‘80s
• 26:46 – Discussion: Culture, imagination, and the perception of UFO phenomena
• 31:54 – Transition into the Billy Meier story
• 34:08 – Tenney’s history with Billy Meier’s organization (FIGU)
• 39:23 – Dissecting the infamous UFO/model photographs
• 42:15–45:55 – The faked dinosaur/time travel, ray gun, and “God’s eye” photographs
• 47:39 – The cult’s problematic elements & anti-Semitism; problematic supporters
• 52:23 – “Beamships” as a wordplay homage to Billy’s own initials
• 55:02 – Kitsch/artistic value vs. cultishness of Meier’s imagery
• 63:08–68:10 – How narrative escalation distorts true experience; linking to phenomena like the men in black and the pressure to continually “sequelize” stories

---

Final Reflections

• Experience vs. Cult of Personality:
  The episode closes on the importance of personal paranormal experiences—without exploiting or cultifying them:

  “I do think our personalized experiences are where it’s at and it’s meant as a mode of transmission for us to talk to each other… I just want to hear and share weird stories.”
  — John E.L. Tenney ([63:08–64:17])

• Takeaway on Hoaxes:
  The hosts and Tenney agree that, while stories like Meier’s are fun to dissect for their cultural impact and outsider art qualities, they should be approached with skepticism—especially when they cross into exploitation or propagate harmful ideas.

---

Where to Find John E.L. Tenney’s Work

• Podcast: What’s Up, Weirdo?
• Website: weirdlectures.com
• Physical Media/Curios: John E.L. Tenney’s Library of the Curious
• Social: Active on TikTok, YouTube

---

For those new to the story of Billy Meier or the evolution of cult UFO mythology, this episode provides a lively, humorous, and ultimately critical guide through the labyrinth of saucer cults, 1970s contactees, and the enduring strangeness that fuels these tales.

Transcript

[Narrator]

This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for, from a browse to a bike ride this summer. Find more on Facebook.

[Michael McMillan]

Wet Hot Alien Sun Forever Forever School's

[John El Tenney]

out for summer

[Michael McMillan]

it's gonna go on forever Wet hot Alien Summer Forever Summer Fleeing for Aquafa Wet hot Alien Summer forever Got some classics. Saucers for a classic. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to bcc. I almost said the other side. I don't know where I am today. It's Bigfoot Collectors Club, the show where we talk to amazing guests about their personal paranormal history and share stories of high strangeness. I am your host, Michael McMillan, and with me always is the Telosian off of Topanga Riley Bray. That's right. That was submitted by wins818 over on the Discord, which you can join when you sign up for BCC clubhouse at bcc.supercast.com welcome back to Wet Hot Alien Summer Forever. All summer long, we were sharing stories of high strangeness involving UFO and extraterrestrial encounters from the 60s 70s and the 1980s. And this week we are wrapping up our month long look at the 1970s with an amazing guest. You know him from the podcast what's up Weirdo? And from Weird Lectures, please welcome back to the show our dear friend, paranormal investigator and author and professional weirdo, John El. Tenney. Tenney.

[John El Tenney]

Hey, everybody. Hello. Hello.

[Michael McMillan]

Johnny Tens is back. He's back, baby.

[John El Tenney]

I am back. And it is in Michigan. Is not wet, but it is a hot alien summer here.

[Michael McMillan]

I'm trying to remember because I spent some summers in Michigan. I guess it didn't really. I guess the wetness came from the humidity.

[John El Tenney]

Yes. So surrounded by the Great Lakes, we always have a very high humidity. And many times in the past two weeks we have gotten to 100 degrees temperature. But with humidity, feels like 108. That's insane, Louise. Brother, that is not what I remember growing up as a little kid.

[Michael McMillan]

I do remember July as being hot, but not that hot. Now it is cherry season. Correct me if I'm wrong. Are you getting some cherry pie while you're in?

[John El Tenney]

No, we're not allowed to eat any fruit because of diarrhea disease that's going around.

[Michael McMillan]

All right, I Forgot. The cherry pie is infested with an explosive diarrhea parasite.

[John El Tenney]

I mean, I guess that's how it's the wet hot alien summ.

[Riley Bray]

Right. Get the wet hots.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah, red hots.

[Michael McMillan]

The splatter hots. Splatter hot alien splatter for splatter. Well, we're happy that you're here with us, Tenny. It's been a year. The year went by fast. But last time we were talking to you, we were talking about big strange vacation. We're talking about strange locations and stuff. But now you're back. We're going to talk about UFOs. We're going to talk about the story of Billy Meier later in this episode, a subject that we've never talked about on the show before.

[John El Tenney]

I can't believe you've never talked about Billy Meyer. And I am very excited.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, my God. Only in passing have we mentioned his name. But it's one of those. I thought you'd be perfect to jump in on this conversation and will be more of a conversation, a scripted story of high strangeness. But there I have been learning a lot about Billy Meier in the past week or two.

[John El Tenney]

You know, I know we'll come back to it, but because of the kind of notoriety behind Billy meyer in the 80s and his photographs and stuff like that of flying saucers, alleged flying saucers and UFOs. The first time I wrote to his organization, which is back then, I think it was called figu.

[Michael McMillan]

F I G U. Yeah, it still is. Yeah, it still is. In 2026.

[John El Tenney]

I wrote to them in 1984.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, my God.

[John El Tenney]

So I have a long history with this crazy group.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, it. It's. It's in German or Swiss, I can't remember, but it is. Let me see. It is the figu. Yeah. F I G U is the acronym for the cult that Billy Meyer started.

[John El Tenney]

Oh, they, you know, they send. I have the documents here with me right now. Telling me it's not a cult.

[Michael McMillan]

Of course you do.

[John El Tenney]

When you have to print out a booklet about your organization that says you're not a cult, you are a cult.

[Michael McMillan]

You're a cult. Did you watch, by the way, have you seen Bring Me the Beauties, the documentary series on hbo, Max, about the alien cult that was all the Ford models in the 1980s and 90s.

[John El Tenney]

Jessica watched it and told me about it, but I haven't seen it yet.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, man. It's good. I mentioned a couple weeks ago on the show, but I definitely recommend. I finished the whole thing and it's, It's. It's a sad story, but it is another one of just like Aryan people getting together and being like, we're Watkins. We're Watkins again. Also Pleiadians. This guy Frederick really ripped off a lot of the Billy Myers stuff. It's a lot of the, like, you know, which Billy Meyer ripped off a lot of stuff from the Theosophical days. Oh, yeah, and. And some Nazi shit as well. Oh, yeah. Tenny, what's been going on? What's the. What is your personal paranormal investigation update? What have you been doing in the past year? What cases have you been investigating? What you've been working on? Tell us. So catch us up.

[John El Tenney]

I have been starting to do. I'm getting. I'm putting out little feelers on, like, tick tock and YouTube shorts and stuff. I have a huge file cabinet full of like, one off very minorly reported cases that no one really ever talks about. Some are really old, some are fairly new, and I've been doing little shorts to see if people have any interest of it. Like, I just posted one a few weeks ago about. In New York, in the Bronx, these people started seeing a glowing dog running around one of the parks there. And this police officer was there and he had caught a mugger. And. And while he was like arresting the mugger, this glowing dog bit him and he shook it off and he said that sparks came out of its mouth when it barked and that its eyes glowed red. But he had to take this guy in handcuffs. He took him back to the police station, went back to look for it, couldn't find it, but found the footprints of it. So he, like, made the casts of the footprints and turned them into his police station as evidence. And then people reported it for another, like, two weeks. And then like, no one ever saw it again. So it's like these, like. And it was in the newspapers for like two days, two or three days, and then it just disappears and no one talks about the like. And people thought it was a werewolf because, like, they would see this glowing dog and then it would disappear and then they'd see a man running. And I love stuff like that. So I posted that and it seemed to go over really well. And then I. I'm about to post one that I just talked about on what's up, Weirdo? Which was this guy in New Mexico in 1940s, his wife went to the police station, said, my husband's a witch. He turned into a frog and bit me, and you need to arrest him for Assault. So the police, the police went to the house and arrested this guy for turning into a frog and biting his wife. And then they asked everybody in the town like, do you know anything about this guy? And nobody in the town would show show up because they're like, he turns like people into donkeys and snakes and iguanas. Like, everybody knew this guy. And they're like, and he turns into frogs and he bites you. And even his son was like, he turned me into a frog one time. And then he somehow or another he posted bail and then he promised his wife he wouldn't bite her as a frog anymore. So the cops released him and that was like the end of the case.

[Michael McMillan]

Why didn't he just turn into a frog and hop through the little bars in the cell?

[John El Tenney]

And I don't know, but it's like, it's. So I've been working on collecting and compiling all these really weird kind of 40 and one off stories that just no one ever followed up on. It was just this thing that happened one time and I'm so fascinated by those one off incidents. Just like my forumenauts like one off incidents of these weird things, you know.

[Michael McMillan]

Second question. How does a frog bite?

[John El Tenney]

I have no idea.

[Riley Bray]

It's gummy. It's a very gummy bite.

[John El Tenney]

I have no idea. But there's also like little clues that, I mean, I can start to think about or I can start to theorize or hypothesize. So like the son he mentions in one article, when his dad turned him into a frog, he said, yeah, it was around Christmas time and my mom had gotten me some candy and my dad put magic powder on the candy and turned me into a frog. And so then I'm like, was this guy like doping people up? Was he like giving them hallucinogens? Like it's in the 40s, right, in kind of rural New Mexico. Was he like giving them peyotes buttons and like convincing them he was a frog or. I mean, whether or not there is case law now for a man who turned himself to a frog, bit his wife and was arrested, it's incredible.

[Michael McMillan]

So what do you, I mean, you're kind of talking about it now, but like, I, I guess I just like to have these emotional check ins and we do this on the show from time to time too. Like, what are your feelings about this stuff? Like, are you, do you, do you feel obviously your skeptical brain is gonna turn on, but do you, how do you, do you believe it at all? Or are you just sort of like, it is what it is.

[John El Tenney]

I mean, it is what it is. But I also. I like to believe that strange phenomena is, like, it is mostly one off. Like, it happens, and then it doesn't have any resolve. It's not like a fictionalized story that has to have a beginning, middle, and end. It's just this thing that happens and then it's done. And you just have to be like, okay, well, that happened, I guess.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. It's rare that these things. And this is one of the hard things about doing this show and writing the stories of high strangeness is they so often don't have a story arc. They don't go anywhere. They just begin and then stop. And sometimes you're like. And then that just. No one ever saw this again. And that's the story of Momo.

[John El Tenney]

You know what I mean?

[Michael McMillan]

You're just kind of like, there isn't this clean arc. It's one of the things that I appreciate. I'm wearing a shirt today with David Lynch's face on it. But it's. The thing that lynch captures in his films is just sort of this. There isn't a tidy arc when it comes to strange things. They just happen, and then they're gone. It's over.

[John El Tenney]

But I think psychologically, that makes sense to me, because in that, what you're talking about, they don't have these nice, clean, tidy arcs, like fictionalized stories that do have arcs or something created by us. We as human beings don't have tidy arcs. Like, our story just starts and then it ends, and a whole bunch of stuff happens in the middle, you know? And so I feel like these little incidents of frogmen and glowing dogs. There's a case of a magical shotgun that I was reading about that I'm gonna do a little short where this

[Michael McMillan]

guy tell us a little bit about this magical shotgun. Is there a genie in the shotgun?

[John El Tenney]

No. This guy was. Killed his neighbor's chickens. And he said that he didn't. And then he sued him and took him to court. And then one of the jurors, who was a magic practitioner was like, listen, if he, like, is lying, and we have him fire the gun, the gun will bleed. And they let the guy who was testifying bring the shotgun into the court and, like, shoot it out the window, and the barrel bled, and they convicted him.

[Michael McMillan]

Where is this? Where is this happening?

[John El Tenney]

That was in Missouri.

[Michael McMillan]

This is a. This is a brilliant idea for a new Law and Order series where it's all Law and Order.

[John El Tenney]

Paranormal Magic shotgun unit.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah, right.

[John El Tenney]

Yes. But I think these events are kind of meant to remind us that, like, it's not clean and it's not solvable and our lives are pretty random. We can try and put them into an order and we can try and make sense out of our lives, but, like, they just start and they stop.

[Michael McMillan]

So, Tenney, something I was thinking about sitting down doing this episode is we have this summer been sort of doing a big overview of the 1960s, 70s and 80s in UFO cases. So July this month has been the 1970s. I remember stuff as a kid from the 80s. I don't wanna. I don't wanna out you, but you're a few years older than me.

[John El Tenney]

Oh, I.

[Michael McMillan]

What is.

[John El Tenney]

I'm. With my age.

[Michael McMillan]

What is your what? What? Because you were there growing up, getting into this stuff as a kid. Like, what was the vibe of UFOs and this type of phenomenon in the 1970s? Because to me, my take is this is sort of the era where UFO stuff is kind of handed down to the next generation and where it gets weirdly, simultaneously counterculture and mainstream with things like in search of and, you know, television programs. At the very same time, it somehow gets weirder and sort of more mass produced.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah. So you're absolutely right. So it gets handed into this era of the late 60s, early 70s, where there is a counterculture. That's when UFOs really, really start to become metaphysical. That's when you start hearing about, like, not that it hadn't been talked about like that they were aligned with crystals and healing points and portals and ley lines that was around, but like, it was really jumped on in the 70s by people. And I feel like the way that Hollywood and California is like, they saw that rising storm, right? Like, this is something that we can make a lot of episodes about. And so every episode of every television show, like, as a kid when I watched it, every other episode had a UFO episode or an alien episode. So, you know, I'm watching Six Million Dollar man and a lot of people don't really remember this, but like the Bigfoot episode of Six Million Dollar Man. Bigfoot is a robot built by aliens that live inside a moon.

[Michael McMillan]

I didn't know that. I remembered he was a robot, but I didn't remember that it was aliens.

[John El Tenney]

There were aliens living inside a mountain, like Mount Shasta. They don't call it Mount Shasta, but there's aliens living in there. And Bigfoot is a robot they built to do recon in the area. Or even like Happy Days. Like Happy Days. The first appearance of Mork from Ork, right? Yep. You have an alien land. Patsy and Richie see a UFO and then all of a sudden there's Mork from Ork and he has to fight Fonzie and every single television show. And I don't know if you've talked about this or not, but this is right around the time that Marshall Applewhite and his wife are living in California.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, interesting.

[John El Tenney]

And they're touring colleges and somehow or another there is a made for TV movie that was made about them long before. They're known as Heaven's Gate. Allen Landsberg Productions, which did In Search of and all of that, they would do these made for TV movies. And there is a made for TV movie available online. You can probably find it on YouTube called the mysterious two. And it's about a white haired husband and his older wife. And they go around and say that they're from outer space and they gather up people and there's people worried that they're a cult. Like and then 20 years later they end up being Heaven's Gate. But like at the time they were going to parties with movie producers and like pitching their UFO story to different television shows.

[Michael McMillan]

There's always a sexy phase with this stuff. I feel like I don't know if in the bill, I don't know the Billy Meyer ever had a sexy phase. But like it seems like the cult, the cults do always have a sexy phase. There was a sexy phase in Bring Me the Beauties as well, where they're like hanging out in Studio 54 and they're like partying with like real upper crust like New York socialites and just like full of hot like Runway models and supermodels.

[John El Tenney]

Like I don't know, I don't know if you know who the actor John Forsyth was. He was the voice of Charlie on Charlie's Angels. But he was an actor in the 40s and 50s. Like he plays the Marshall Applewhite character in the made for TV movie. Like handsome guy, good solid head hair. And who would have known that 20 years later, like they are one of the largest UFO cults in the country that actually follow through with their suicide mission.

[Michael McMillan]

That's crazy. And then of course we also have like Close Encounters of the Third Kind which is like a massive movie.

[John El Tenney]

Massive. I didn't see it because it was released twice. There was a, it was released and then a year and a half later they did an, an alternate cut where they actually show Richard Dreyfus getting on the ship and they show You. The Inside of the Ship. That's the one that I saw. I won tickets to that. So funny. So long ago, I won tickets to that by calling in a television station, and they were like, we've got 10 tickets to the re release of Close Encounters. You know, call in, we'll take the 10th caller. And somehow my little ass, like, I was screaming at my mother, like, I gotta win tickets. I gotta win tickets. And then I went and saw it, and it was just like, I remember

[Michael McMillan]

your first manifestation, Tenny.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah, my mind was blown. I love that movie still to this day. I love it so much.

[Michael McMillan]

We're going to talk about it later this week on bcc. The Other side. That's our movie club of the month. Yeah, I love that movie, too. And it captures that. I mean, there's obviously, J. Allen Hynek makes an appearance, because this is the decade when J. Alec Hynek has Project Blue Book behind him, and he can kind of strike out on his own and continue investigating with his own opinions. John Keel has arrived. He's reporting on the Mothman stuff. In the 70s, Jacques Vallee is showing up for the first time. So it really is this cool era, I feel like.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah. And in Close Encounters, you know, you have the. The alternate Jacques Vallee showing up in the film. Like, there's this weird, weird French ufologist that is, like, kind of running the whole thing.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, that's Francois Truffaut.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah, it's Truffaut playing Lacombe. And. And, you know, you have the Hynek walk up in the. There's one scene at the very end where they have Hynek actually walk out of the crowd while the UFO is down. So they give him his moment to

[Michael McMillan]

shine, looking like Colonel Sanders.

[Riley Bray]

Yep.

[Michael McMillan]

What were some of your favorite cases from that era? What are ones that stick out to you that you remember? Anything that caught your imagination as a kid, that you're like, oh, that really scares me.

[John El Tenney]

No, I don't think it was. I think. I think I was little enough and not like, hardcore researching where I was just fascinated by the television shows and the movies. And then by the time I'm 14, 15, I'm starting with older cases. Like, even then I knew, like, I have to go back to where it starts. And so I started, like most people do, like, in 47, because I was like, 13 or 14 when I started reading. Right. And then all of a sudden I realized, like, oh, there's the airship flap in the 1800s, and it goes back further. And then I Keep going back and back and back. I remember just me personally discovering, like, the airship flap and being like, oh, my God, they were seeing UFOs in the 1800s, and, like, then I was totally on board.

[Michael McMillan]

Am I correct? That late 70s is sort of when the Roswell thing comes back around? Is that when they're like, hey, this thing happened when our parents were in World War II and this whole thing went down?

[John El Tenney]

Yeah. So the other thing that happens, too, in the 70s, aside from television, is, like, mass market paperbacks of the occult and supernatural and paranormal. And so you really. You know, that's when you're getting all your Bermuda Triangle books and you're starting to get all your Bigfoot paperbacks. And I think that's where you get the first kind of Roswell paperback. And that is a real keynote moment because that sparks the appearance of, like, Stanton Friedman, I was gonna say.

[Michael McMillan]

That's when he comes on.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah. Because all of a sudden you've got, at the time, younger guy who's a physicist and he's researching UFOs. And so people are like, oh, this is gonna be a big thing. Because honestly, when you kind of learn this, as you look back, like, nobody really cared about Roswell for, like, decades.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[John El Tenney]

Like, in the 50s and 60s, nobody really talked about Roswell unless you were really deep in it. But otherwise, like, it was this thing that got reported in the newspapers, and then, like, it kind of got forgotten about until these paperbacks started showing up. The Roswell incident and the crash at Roswell. And then all of a sudden, people were like, oh, wow, this thing did happen. It was all covered up. And then it explodes in the 80s and 90s.

[Michael McMillan]

And then going into the 80s, this is peeking ahead a little bit to next month. But that I feel like that's when we really get into solidifying the grays as the. As the aliens that everybody sees. Because in the 70s, we still have Pascagoula. We got the weird gray elephant, Carrot men and the Gray. I feel like the 80s, then it really becomes like, okay, we all agree that this stuff is being covered up by the government and alien grays are real and they're abducting people.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah. So, I mean, you have the big push. I always feel like people say that, you know, the rise of the grays kind of stems from Betty and Barney hill in the 60s and whatever, but it really gets pushed to the forefront with the book communion. As soon as that big head and those big eyes come out, like it's everywhere. All of a sudden, you're seeing it on T shirts and stickers, and the 80s just blows up. And then everybody is seeing, you know, whether it. Whether it's these guys who say that they're former army and they've been in the dulce, like, underground base where the aliens are at. And you're starting to get the first inklings of, like, Groom lake and Area 51 in the mid-80s. And then, of course, Bob Lazar pops up and says he's been there and worked there and he's seen aliens and. Or he has. You know, he's seen the ships. But yeah, it's just this. It sparks so fast because everybody has this general interest in UFOs, probably up until about 84. And then there's like this pop and it's just everywhere. Like books, television, you know, the early episodes of, like, Donahue. Like, everybody's now talking about it as if it's this real thing. And it got to such a point in the 90s, you know, I think, like, Bill Clinton had to say, like, yeah, Groom Lake is a real place. Like, it's a military base. He was the first person who had to admit, like, it's a real place.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh, I didn't realize Clinton was the one. I mean, I knew that it wasn't really, but I guess that makes sense because he was president at the time.

[Riley Bray]

I didn't realize.

[John El Tenney]

And then they had to release, like, I think a year later, they had to release Roswell. Case closed. Like, the military's book. Because so many people were putting out VHS documentaries. I mean, that was the early stuff that I was working on by that time, too. Like, people were just pumping out these shitty, horrible, like, VHS documentaries, which were fun to work on, but I mean, they're just so terrible.

[Riley Bray]

What do you think it is about 84 in particular? Why it all just sort of, like, popped like that.

[John El Tenney]

Like, I think that there is. Honestly, I think there's something like, collectively, in a group of people's mind, a large amount of people who. Whether it was in elementary school, junior high, high school, probably within three decades of each other. I think, like, the book 1984 put us in the future, right? And so, like, as soon as 84, 85 hits, people are like, okay, now we're in the future. It didn't take to the year 2000. It was like there was this seminal work, this book, right, that was in the Future, and it's 1984. And I remember, like, in 84, people talking about, like, oh, my God, it's Orwell, 1984.

[Michael McMillan]

And then, well. And there was that whole Mac commercial, that famous Mac commercial that was like, we're here, everybody. It's sort of a self fulfilling. Weird.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah. And all of a sudden. And that's a great point too. Like all of a sudden we had computers, you know, and all of a sudden you have telnet boards and use net boards. And so everybody's beginning to talk to each other about the things they're researching and writing.

[Riley Bray]

And of course the nerds all start talking about aliens.

[John El Tenney]

All the nerds of time on aliens.

[Riley Bray]

That actually does make perfect sense. It was the. Yeah, the. The Mac on the scene, the explosion of the personal computer. That's also just so interesting about the paperback. I'd never thought about that. Like you always think of the medium being television and film that like spread these ideas, but it really was the paperback. Yeah, that's. That's really interesting.

[Michael McMillan]

It's weird when we talk about it with a. As you're speaking about this tenny, like my mind starts to go to the like the weird aspect of these things and it's sort of like maybe alien, maybe aliens never existed. It was just the concept of aliens or is out there in a fictional way. And then they really start to materialize in the late 70s and 80s as, as society. Just a sort of conjuring them and agreeing on what they're gonna look like and what they're. How they're gonna interact with us.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah, I think we've talked about this too. Some, like in some of the Forman stuff we talked about. I think that like as our brains get filled with more information, more imagery, more sounds, you can imagine more. Right. So like as there are more pictures, even drawings, illustrations of aliens and Bigfoot, like now people are getting in their brain, it's getting locked in there. It's becoming kind of archetypal in our brain. And as it happens to more and more people, more and more people start. More and more people are able to have experiences that they might not have been able to have before. I don't know if that makes any sense. So like I've talked about in my lectures before, if you read about the history of like portraiture and portrait painting and stuff like that, like it took a long time for people to get on board because when people were painting hyper realistic paintings, the people's brains weren't used to seeing it. And then the same thing happened with photographs. When people started seeing photographs, they couldn't see the image unless you pointed out the image to them. Because people had only Ever seen moving images. You've only ever seen things moving. So when they saw their face locked down into a single like flat two dimensional image, you had to say to people like, this is your face here in your eyes. And then their brains immediately adjusted to it. But at first people didn't understand photography.

[Michael McMillan]

That's so strange. I had always heard, and I don't know if this is true, that like when the conquistadors arrived in Mexico that like, and that, that the ships that they were sailing in on didn't even register to the people on shore until they were like docking or until they were like landing on shore because they, their brains couldn't even comprehend what they were looking at. I don't know if that's true, but that was just something that I always heard that kind of blew my mind.

[John El Tenney]

I always heard that too. But I do think that we still see stuff like that. Like if you look at something like, and I'm speaking solely in the United States just because that's where I am and that's how I grew up and whatever. But if you look at something like just in the past, let's say four to five years, the acceptance of like atonal music in the United States. Right. Like it's existed for centuries all over the world. And then when it first comes to the United States, people are like, who is interested in that? And then within like five years, people are like, that's my favorite band. And they're playing like chords and structures no one had ever heard before in the United States. Right. And now it's like, oh, that's what my. I'm gonna have my new band do that.

[Michael McMillan]

Mm, that's great.

[John El Tenney]

So it's like this learning process that has to happen, but it has to happen as like a societal learning.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, yeah. It all goes into that sort of collective library of, of sensory reference. I would always think about that as a kid.

[Riley Bray]

What is the name of that new band that it's like?

[John El Tenney]

Oh, it's like the Polka Dot. Yeah. Engine, Porn, Torture. Something like French.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah, but that's like a perfect guys talking about. Do you not know about this?

[Michael McMillan]

Oh man, no.

[Riley Bray]

I don't even know how to google this name. But they play like microtonal music. They're like polka dot people. And one has a big. The drummer has a big long nose. It's just a drummer and like a two neck guitar player. But they're. The frets are microtonal and the music sounds like it's insane sounding music, but

[John El Tenney]

it's also Time you hear it, you're like, do I like that? And then like within like a couple weeks, you're like, yeah, it's not bad.

[Riley Bray]

But they just played like, they just played like one of the biggest crowds ever at a certain point festival. Like, it was like an insane, like. So it's like what you're talking about Jay, he's like, before, like years ago. That's like, this sounds like nonsense music. But then everyone's like, no, I. I lock into this. Like, it's interesting. Someone's screaming the name of this band. It's. It's something. A. A something. Anjient and Botin or something.

[Michael McMillan]

All right, well, we'll take a break. You Google that, see if you can find it. When we come back, we're gonna talk about Bill. All right, all right.

[Riley Bray]

I googled polka dot. Yeah, I googled polka dot band.

[John El Tenney]

Polka dot band.

[Riley Bray]

It's Angie de Patrine. We were pretty close.

[Michael McMillan]

You were really close. All right, I gotta check them out. I just, I just want to let anybody. I want to let everybody know who might be watching this on YouTube. Who saw shadows in the background. That's not a shadow person. My cat Biggie is being very needy and really trying to get my attention during this recording. So if you see a little Himalayan Persian mix walking around, that's Mr. Biggs. All right, let's talk about Billy Meyer. Now, Riley, are you familiar with Billy Meyer at all?

[Riley Bray]

I mean, I scrolled ahead in the doc and I recognize some of these images, okay, like, you know, ufo, Pinterest or whatever. But that's, that's about as far as my knowledge goes.

[Michael McMillan]

That's fair. So I'll do a little brief overview just to kind of give a synopsis and then let's get into it. So we can't talk about UFOs in the 70s without talking about the case of Eduard Billy Meyer, a self proclaimed alien contactee turned cult leader who asserts that between 1975 and 1978 he was visited by members of the Pleiadian alien race and allowed to take hundreds of photos of their spacecraft, which Meyer referred to as beam ships. The blonde haired, blue eyed aliens led by a spiritual master named Semyasi, told the one Seminyasa. Seminyasa. It's a hard name to pronounce because it's not spelled that way. Told the one armed Swiss farmer through telepathic communication that they were 3,000 years older than the human race and that they were the descendants of the survivors of a nuclear holocaust that destroyed their original home. Planet Lyra. They were now visiting Earth from the planet era to warn Meer that the human race was at a dangerous crossroads in its evolution. Meyer produced photographs as proof of his alien visitations. The vehicles portrayed in the photos look like classic flying saucers and also look like pie plates, hubcaps and trash can lids with bits and bobs glued to them. Myers work was made widely famous when one of his beamship photos was used as the iconic I want to believe poster hung on Fox Mulder's basement office in the X Files. You may have also seen them. A lot of people found out of them because of this book, UFO Contact from the Pleiades, volumes one and two, which was put out by his followers. Since his initial contact with Semyaswe. How did you say it?

[John El Tenney]

Semyasa.

[Michael McMillan]

Semyasa and the Pleiadians. Meyer has established a literal cult following as the leader of the Phi Goo New Age spiritual group in Switzerland and claims to be the reincarnation of Jesus. With that said, I open the floor to Tenny to help us unpack the work and ongoing legacy of Billy Meyer.

[John El Tenney]

We were talking before we started, so when I was a younger teenager, really starting to get into this, there was so much Billy Meier Fiego, his organization. The photos were really starting to spread around and I was like, I'm gonna write to this group. And so I wrote to them in like 1984 or 19, I think it was. 84, 85.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, they were really cooking then.

[John El Tenney]

They were cooking. I've got the envelope still.

[Michael McMillan]

I have all My God, that's so cool.

[John El Tenney]

That book that you held up, is this Only Voice or is there YouTube for that too?

[Riley Bray]

No, there's YouTube.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. See, look, you can order that book

[Riley Bray]

for the real heads.

[John El Tenney]

There's the envelope to order that book. The first printing.

[Michael McMillan]

This is the 45th anniversary edition.

[John El Tenney]

There you go. But yeah, it's funny because there was this kind of thing that was going on with Billy at the time, right? So he had all these great, allegedly great photographs and allegedly great video. Well, film of them.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. Eight millimeter film.

[John El Tenney]

Yep. But there was this weird kind of. So Billy has one arm and there was this very strange, like ableist thing going on where people were like, there's no way a one armed guy could fake all this stuff.

[Michael McMillan]

Right, right, right.

[Riley Bray]

Like, that's why they said, like, how

[John El Tenney]

could he hold his string? How could he hold the string and take the picture at the same time? Like, there's no way anybody can do that. He's Only got one arm. So like there was a long period of time where people were like, that was like, why? It was real.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. And they said he. So he, he used an Olympus 35 ECR camera. Do you know what that is? Riley, I know you're a camera guy. But they were like, it's the only camera he can use because he only has one arm. And then they also would throw in. And he only has a 5th grade education, so he's too stupid to make any of this stuff up.

[Riley Bray]

This little dum dum's not tricking us.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, yeah, He's a humble farmer, y'. All. And he, he was a kid. He barely was like a bad kid. He got in a lot of trouble. Kicked out of schools, he ran, Ran away from home. Joined the. The French Foreign Legion. Got kicked out of that. Got in a car accident in Turkey when he was like a teenager. Lost his arm. Then he went to Greece when he was like in his 30s, I want to say early 30s, and hooked up with a 16, 15 or 16 year old his. Who became his wife, Calliope. And the family refused. They were like, you're not marrying our daughter. And they ran away together and eloped. And then Calliope was with him. They had like three kids and they lived in this farm in Switzerland. When he started turning out all of this stuff, he said it was January 28, 1975. He was, he had gotten. He was just like in his farm house and got the urgent to go outside with his camera and lo and behold, there was a flying saucer over his farm. It. It descended and this tall, Nordic blonde haired guy came out and was like, you're our guy. You're our boy. He's telepathically communicating with him, being like, we tried a lot of other people and they just didn't get it. But we think you're gonna get it. So if you get it, you're gonna see me again and we're gonna let you take pictures of our beam ships.

[John El Tenney]

And then, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure we'll get to this. I'm getting to it right now.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, go. We can hop around anywhere.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah. Billy is also one of those people where 15 to maybe 20 years later, he's now got a backstory about when he was like 4 years old and was visited by aliens. Like, he starts telling people. He starts telling people, oh, when I was four is when I was first contacted by an alien named Patah. And then when I started, he's like

[Michael McMillan]

a plesian he's like a different type of. Yeah, yeah, but he's still. But Patah is still like blonde and blue eyed.

[John El Tenney]

They're all blond and blue eyed. Yes, absolutely. But yeah, so it's funny because it's like, it's one of those things, right? Like he's got this great story, he starts getting a ton of traction and then 20 years later he's like, oh, and I forgot to tell you, when I was five years old, I was first contacted by the aliens. And like, how do you forget? How do you leave that part out of your story? Yeah, but you know, he starts. It's as soon as the photos come out. Everybody's doubting the photos because they're so sharp, they're so crystal clear. And people are just like, this can't be a thing. And if you watch.

[Michael McMillan]

Hold on. I just wanted to interrupt and say if you're listening to this and you're able to. This is the point where you just start Googling Billy Meier UFO photos. Riley, you do the same. I mean there are countless of them on the Internet. But just to give you a vibe sense, I mean, this is going to be so familiar to everybody who looks at these because I do feel like this is sort of the visual language for flying saucers in the 70s and 80s.

[John El Tenney]

Go on. And there's, there's just some that are just so amazingly ridiculous. There's one that's called like the wedding cake saucer, which just. Oh my God. A garbage can with a bunch of like Christmas ornaments pasted all over it, like ball.

[Michael McMillan]

That's a later one. That's the one from like a little late in the career. And you're like, buddy, you're losing your touch a little bit because this looks like the fakest thing I've ever seen.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah. But you know, obviously people like come out of the woodwork and they're just like taking apart his photographs, trying to figure out how you would do it. And what is most shocking is the admission at a certain point by Billy Meyer that like he has miniatures of all the spaceships and he builds miniature forest backgrounds, like as a hobby. But that's not how he's taking the photographs.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, he was being interviewed, I think in the late 80s or early 90s, and he was like, yeah, oh yeah, I have models of all of these and yeah, they're all in my workshop. And yes, I make them and they look exactly like the things you've seen in the pictures. But it's just how that's relevant. Yeah, it doesn't mean that these things didn't happen. But he. Yeah, go on.

[John El Tenney]

No, no, no, go ahead.

[Michael McMillan]

I was just gonna say the thing that's shocking is that this just. It's one of those things where this does. You know, it's got echoes of George Adamski, which we talked about a couple years ago with you on the show. Very similar, Very similar story. Like, I was telepathically communicated to these tall blond people. They're Ascendant masters. They're trying to warn me about where we're going as a people. It's just funny that this actually kind of takes off in a way. And I guess it's just because photography got good enough that you could fake this and get away with it, I guess. And part of the mythology is like, experts came in and skeptics came in, and this book, UFO Contact from the Pleiades, has all of these photo analyses that are like, look at the infrared. Look at the heat signatures on these things. They're in the photos. And these things are. Look, it's behind a tree. The branch is overlapping with the thing. And so part of the narrative is, again, he's a humble, one armed Swiss farmer with a fifth grade education. How could he possibly come up with all of this stuff? And we were skeptics, but now we're like, there's the couple who did this book. Why am I blanking on their names? I should have written it down. But basically the couple who put together this book were like. We were skeptics. It's Brit Elders and Lee Elders.

[John El Tenney]

Right.

[Michael McMillan]

And then they become like, Billy's like, top, you know, generals in. In. In the figure. You know, it's all. It's like a classic kind of cult story.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah, for sure. And. But here's the thing, right? Like, so, like, he gets so brazen with these photographs at a certain point. Like, my favorite Billy Meyer photographs aren't Billy Myers UFO photographs. So the ones that people don't talk about because they are so ridiculous is. Okay, so Billy at one point went back in time with the Pleiadians.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, he went to Prehistoria and he

[John El Tenney]

took pictures of dinosaurs, priests. And so he had dinosaur pictures that he was showing people that he took from time traveling, which we. Now, we. We found the book and the illustrations that he took a picture of of the dinosaurs. So, like. But that's still not my favorite photograph. My favorite photograph is some of the Pleiadians when they were hanging out with Billy. Meyer said he asked if he could take pictures of their laser guns. And so there are photographs of the Pleiadians holding their laser guns. But they said don't take photos of our face. So the only thing you can see of the Pleiadian is their shoulder, their like right leg and their right arm holding what looks like a dollar tree dollar store plastic ray gun covered in tin foil. And they are the craziest. Like if you would want someone to believe you, you would have never released these photographs. And Billy's like, that's their ray guns. That's what they look like. That's their ray guns.

[Michael McMillan]

I just dropped a link to one of the dinosaur photos that Billy Meyer took in his time travel in the chat. And you'll just. It's side by side next to the, like, it's not of the drawing of the book that it comes from.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah, yeah, come on.

[Michael McMillan]

I love that he goes, he goes to prehistoric times, just happened to get a close up of a pteranodon flying over his head.

[John El Tenney]

So.

[Michael McMillan]

And there's also. He also goes to other planets and, and stole photos from, I think like NASA. He took photos from like books that love like the moon and, and space and claimed those were pictures that he took when he was aboard the beam ships.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah, I tried to drop a link in the chat too.

[Michael McMillan]

So you can see one of his other favorite famous stories was that he photographed God's eye.

[John El Tenney]

Yep.

[Michael McMillan]

And it's like a photo of like a galaxy, you know, or a different nebula or something. And he's like, I took a photograph of, of the eye of God.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah. Let me see. For some reason the la. The laser gun is my favorite.

[Michael McMillan]

This is great. I mean this looks like.

[Riley Bray]

I like that the aliens are like, don't, don't show our faces with the guns.

[John El Tenney]

We gotta go to work.

[Riley Bray]

And you know, this one's not registered, so.

[Michael McMillan]

So the photo, if you're not looking at the YouTube of this, it is like you're looking at the back of a house as the backdrop and some trees. And then there's someone who's wearing like a silver jumps, tinfoil silver jumpsuit with their head turned away. First of all, their hair's not even blonde, it's brown.

[John El Tenney]

It's the color of Billy Myers hair actually.

[Michael McMillan]

And there you go. And they're holding what looks to be like it would be like a costume that a mom would make for their kid who wanted a Star Wars, a generic Star wars ray gun in the like late 70s. Like it's the most homemade thing you've ever seen. And it does it is one of those things where you're like, well, clearly the hands that built this built some of these UFO models.

[John El Tenney]

Right.

[Michael McMillan]

It's got a real dad's garage workshop feel to all of this. Like my dad would go down in the basement. There was a period in the 80s where he was just like making like little steampunk machines and just out of like aluminum and copper wires and he would just like this was how he like processed his stress. I guess it's got like dads in the workshop coming up with something creative. You know, my dad would make little rock creatures and paint eyes on them and then put them in the woods and take photos of them. And that's like. That is like what Billy Myers did.

[Riley Bray]

That's pretty much the same thing, honestly. Yeah.

[John El Tenney]

And like even his wife said like, you know, he made models. Like, these are models.

[Michael McMillan]

Well, she came out in 1997 after they divorced and she's like, he made the whole thing up. He lied about it. All of this, all of these stories were fictitious. All of these photos were staged. The whole thing was a big make them up. And you know, of course, figu. To this day I think still just denies all of that. Cuz he's still around. He's still, he's still with. He's like 87, 88 years old now.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah, somebody's selling lots of his photographs on ebay. Well, from the original scans.

[Michael McMillan]

So they and saw the bees did an auction recently of like six original photographs, including the one that is in the Google Doc here. And I'll throw it up here where that they've cropped the I want to believe photo from. It's the. It's the one of the flying saucer over the trees on this hilly, hilly meadow. But you do see moments as you go through the book where you're like, you're just kind of phoning it in now, like this is pretty, pretty lazy.

[John El Tenney]

Well, and like you said before, there's some problematic stuff too because it's not just that Billy had met a child to bring on as his bride, but like there were a lot of problematic people involved with Billy Meyer. I mean one of his biggest supporters and proponents and made a huge documentary about him was Wendell Stevens. And I don't know if you guys have ever talked about Wendell Stevens.

[Michael McMillan]

We haven't. And that's a. Is Wendell Stevens former military?

[John El Tenney]

He's former military and convicted for sex crimes with children.

[Michael McMillan]

Oh God. Yeah, yeah. They leave that part out of the book here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not good, huh?

[John El Tenney]

So I mean, there's aspects to it that get worrisome. And then, like I was telling y',

[Michael McMillan]

all,

[John El Tenney]

like, when you say you're not a cult. So, like, some of the things that I have that were sent to me through Phi Goo, like, I have this document called Clarification of Defamatory Claims, and it goes through and it talks about

[Riley Bray]

how

[John El Tenney]

Billy has never said that he was a reincarnation of Jesus Christ because people say that he said he was Jesus Christ Christ, but he wants to clarify he's not. And these are the words of the organization. He is simply a prophet of the new age for the entire terrestrial world and all the human beings on this planet.

[Riley Bray]

Oh, well, that clears it up.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, that clears it up.

[John El Tenney]

And he has come to Earth in other carnations and has proclaimed once again now that he is the being of truth, creation, and love to all people on Earth. But I am not Jesus Christ.

[Michael McMillan]

But all those other incarnations were also, like, religious leaders. Like, they were all, like, yeah, they were all. Yeah, they're all prophets.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah, yeah, they were all prophets for sure. And, you know, they also, in this booklet, talk about how they are not anti lgbtq. Well, at the time, it's just they're not anti homosexual. Even though a lot of the readings are. How they're not racist. Even though a lot of the readings are. Again, when you have to put out books because you have written books, and now you're like, oh, we shouldn't have said that.

[Michael McMillan]

Like, a lot of anti Semitism, blaming Jewish people for the destruction of the Earth, and, like, where everything's going. Like, it's pretty Aryan, recycled Aryan stuff, master race stuff, just wrapped up in, like, an all new, you know, not so new package. Because, like, this also, the history of the Pleiadians in this story sound a lot like the Lemurians and the Atlanteans. All stuff that you know of, like, oh, we came from a great society and then it was destroyed by our own hubris. Some of us escaped. And now we're now, instead of. Instead of them living under Mount Shasta. In his story, they moved to the Pleiades. The Pleiades. And now they've come back down and they're coming back and they're like, we can. We can save you in a way that we failed to save us. You know, it's all this recycled stuff that all feels, like, really creepier and creepier as you get into the origins of it and all seems to be like, guys, we just want to remind you that White people are the superior people, not just of Earth, but of the galaxy. Like, and you know, you can read

[John El Tenney]

a lot about that in their own manifesto. Like, it's literally called Our Man. Our Man.

[Michael McMillan]

He's holding up a man. He's holding up a manifesto, everybody.

[John El Tenney]

Wow,

[Riley Bray]

that is hilarious.

[John El Tenney]

No, I went on what to title it. I went and saw back in. It would have been 80. Oh, excuse me, 93 or 94. Someone from Figu. One of his best friends, this guy named Guido Moosebruger, who. I love that name.

[Michael McMillan]

Yes.

[John El Tenney]

He actually came to the United States and did like a speaking tour trying to sell people on Billy Meyer. And I remember my friend Brian.

[Michael McMillan]

Guido Mooseburger.

[John El Tenney]

Guido Moosebruger. Moosebrugger.

[Riley Bray]

One night only.

[John El Tenney]

To this day, my friend Brian and I, who went to that, when we hear something outrageous, we say, you've been Moosebruggered. But Brian's question was, does Billy call them beam ships? Because he is Billy Edward Albert Meyer.

[Michael McMillan]

B E A M. Oh, yeah, Absolutely.

[Riley Bray]

Yes, he does. He's like. And I've left the clue hidden in plain sight.

[Michael McMillan]

I also was reading a book this past week, Spaceships of the Pleiades by Cal Korf. Have you ever read that book?

[John El Tenney]

I have. Many years ago I read that.

[Michael McMillan]

It's like in the 90s. And this investigative journalist who's got a real hard on for busting Billy Myers.

[Narrator]

It.

[Michael McMillan]

It's kind. It quickly becomes sort of unreadable because Carl Korf is just like. He go. He gets excited because he. He infiltrates Phygu. He goes undercover with his wife. And the funny thing is he's like, we're gonna go and we're gonna blow the lid off of this cult because this guy's a phony and he's a fake and it's time that everybody knows it. And it's one of those things you're like, you know, by 1994, I feel like everyone's kind of figured out that this is all fake and who cares? So.

[Riley Bray]

And.

[Michael McMillan]

And it's all about Karl Korf going. And he's got a secret. He's got a name that's not. He's got his own like, fake name, his secret agent name, but his wife is just going by her regular name. Like she's sort of only half playing along. And then he gets there and he meets everybody there, like the Elders, Britt Lee Elder and Guido. And he's like, hey, have you heard about this Carl Korf guy who says that Billy Meyer is like a phony and they're like, oh, we never let him in here. And it's just. The book just becomes like, about his little adventure of faking them out and it gets real tedious. So I kind of gave up on it. But it was. It was pretty amusing.

[John El Tenney]

So aside from the manifesto and other documents that I've been sent over the years, because once you're on the Phygu mailing list, it's one of the. It's like a televangelist. Like you just. Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

You're not getting off.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah. So eventually they have to send me the Cal Korf is a liar, Cheat and thief booklet.

[Michael McMillan]

The fact that you keep producing these documents.

[John El Tenney]

He's a liar, cheat and integrant.

[Michael McMillan]

I don't even know what that word means.

[John El Tenney]

And then at some point, too, even though Lee Elders was a friend, you have to get Lee Elders a cheat, a liar and thief. Pam.

[Michael McMillan]

Just discrediting everyone.

[John El Tenney]

Everybody just keeps falling the longer they know him. Eventually you're going to get a flyer about how you. How you're untrustable and a liar.

[Michael McMillan]

It's amazing. I mean, these, these. I will say, as kitschy as they are, there is something very outsider art beautiful about these photographs. I mean, they really are compelling, don't you think? Like, I mean, all ultra clearly to me, fake, obviously, but beautiful. And if they'd just been created, like, if these were just created and sold on Etsy, they'd be awesome.

[John El Tenney]

I feel like it is one of those things. You're absolutely right. I do love the photographs. I still do. I have one of them in my office. But I feel like if he would have said something to the effect of, like, you know what? I was kind of telepathically contacted by the aliens and so I've done photographs to represent what I thought that their ships look like.

[Michael McMillan]

Yes.

[John El Tenney]

And that's kind of his story. That's it. Like, it'd be fine. Everything would be fine. But when you start, like, bilking people for money and then you're seeing dinosaurs and then you're taking pictures of laser

[Michael McMillan]

guns and then like, once you're declaring yourself a prophet. A prophet?

[John El Tenney]

Yeah. An eternal reincarnation prophet. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

Like, it's, it's. It is a weird choice to go from, like, I'm being taught by space aliens to, like. No, actually, I'm the star of the show now.

[Riley Bray]

I mean, he already lost me at child bride, so.

[Michael McMillan]

Child bride. Yeah. Real. Real. That's a big, like. No, thank. No, thank you. Yeah.

[Riley Bray]

This guy. Yeah.

[John El Tenney]

What's really funny is in all of the papers that they sent me and have sent me over the years about the people who are liars and cheats and frauds. This is the other thing too. Every time someone else in the community, the UFO community would say that they had met like a Pleiadian or something that very closely sounded like Pleiadian or Patah or Semiasa or something like that. So I have one of the things that they sent me hold it up here. It's like it stops being about one person. This, this piece of paper that they sent me is called Lies, Frauds, Schizophrenic Actions, Hoaxes and Defamations around the World, perpetrated by Penny Maclean, Barbara Clow, Barbara Marsinic, Amore Kwan Adrian, Fred Bell, Janny King and many others. So it's like, just so you know, anybody that says anything that is related to Billy Meyer, that isn't Billy Meyer himself is a fraud and is making it up, it can only come from Billy Meyer.

[Michael McMillan]

There was, I remember in that Curl Cake car book, they were also saying they were like, here, you should read. Because they thought he was in like an American Tourist. And. And they said, here, here's some pamphlets that you should read. But whatever you do, you cannot give this to anybody else to read. They have to buy their own. And he's like, why? And they said, because anyone who reads this infuses their aura with the document, with the book, and then the book and the person become as one. But if you share it with other people, other people's auras will contaminate it and it'll reverberate back to the source and then it pollutes the source. So to be safe, everyone has to purchase their own literature. Like, you're coming up with a built in lore reason of why everyone has to like buy their own unique copy. I'm like, okay, that's a pretty great marketing technique. Even though it falls flat on its

[Riley Bray]

face, you don't want this one. It has aura all over it. You got to get a fresh one.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah, you don't want someone's aura splashed all over your copy. The other thing is too, he's got this built in. So whether it's the beamship photos and people saying that they're hoaxes and finding the models or the dinosaur photographs, which we eventually find the original picture book for, or even like, we haven't even talked about the photos of Samyasa that he took of her. He took pictures of her which ended up being a dancer from the Dean Martin show taken off of television.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[John El Tenney]

He's got a, he's got a built in story for why those photographs are actually fake, which is when he takes his film to be developed. They, the Men in Black, the secret government, they take the original photos and replace them with fake photographs to discredit him.

[Riley Bray]

Perfect the. Perfect the ploy.

[Michael McMillan]

It's the way to get out of anything.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah. And they did it. And they look so close to the original photos, he doesn't notice it when he looks at the. He gets, oh yeah, that's the picture of some yasa that I took. And then once somebody says, oh no, this is taken off of a television set from a Dean Martin show that was rerunning in Switzerland at the time. You said you took the photo. Oh, actually that's not the picture I took. That was the one that was replaced by the Men in Black and actually

[Michael McMillan]

looks exactly like a woman who's contemporary of that time, just wearing contemporary makeup, looks like a dancer. Doesn't look at all like a mysterious alien of any of any sort.

[John El Tenney]

Right.

[Riley Bray]

Wow. Wow.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. So Billy Meer, I mean this stuff, I think like as a kid, I think the only people could be fooled by this are kids. Like if you're in elementary school in the 80s looking at these books, these photos, you're like, I don't know, maybe there's something to it. But it's very childlike in its presentation.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah. Again, they're beautiful. They're really simple and cool. But again, like, I think I stumbled on them when I was 13 or 14. By the time I'm 15 or 16, like I'm writing to them as a goof.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah.

[John El Tenney]

Like I've, even at 15, I'm like, okay, this is nonsense. Like these aren't real. Like there's no way.

[Riley Bray]

Yeah.

[John El Tenney]

Eventually I see like the, the film of the beam ship appearing and disappearing and like even then I can like you can obviously see the splice that is made to make it disappear. You know, it's just one of those things that I was like, oh my God, this is just a goof. But it's a wonderful goof. So I want to be like, I want to know what's going on with them. What are they being so wacky for? Then, you know, as you get older and you start to see the darker sides to it and stuff, you're like, oh, okay, this is, this is probably problematic.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. It's like this person's just a fantasist and a narcissist and someone who wants to Create a cult around themselves.

[John El Tenney]

For sure.

[Michael McMillan]

Sad story. But photos are fun and kitschy, so I recommend checking them out. I mean, I think the thing that bother. I mean the thing that disappoints me is when you look at some of the outlines of these drawings, you're like, like, oh, so much of this stuff down to the X Files, it just got so infused with ufology. Like it really, it. I mean, it's hard. Type in flying saucer, you're gonna get a Billy Meyer photo. So it's one, it's another one of those things. It's just like it's so ingrained in this stuff that it's one of those that makes you go, it's all fake. Then I guess to your point.

[John El Tenney]

Exactly. Like the photograph that's used in the X Files, the one that everybody sees, which is the beam ship, right. Like it's this, that it looks exactly, you know, five years after that photo comes out when you get Bob Lazar, he describes the sport model, which looks exactly like the beamship in Billy Meyer's photographs. So it's like, like you said, they're all just like building on each other's.

[Narrator]

Yeah.

[Michael McMillan]

So where does that, where does that leave us? Like where. How do we reconcile this and the current of documents being released by, you know, the Pentagon? Like where, like where, where, how do we hold all of, how do we hold all of this in, in our hands, you know, or do we, I

[John El Tenney]

think much like ghostly experiences or any kind of metaphysical or paranormal experience, like I've said on this show, I'm sure many times, like I do think that our personalized experiences are where it's at and it's meant as a mode of like transmission for us to talk to each other and other like minded people. Right. Because like when I went to Giant Rock, the, you know, kind of UFO central out there in California with Justin Jessica, I did a little lecture and then I turned around and looked at Giant Rock and I was like, you can't give me like one silver saucer. Like I was talking to this guy, you know, and right as I turned, like out of the corner of my eye, like over the top of the mountain, I saw a little silver saucer blip. And I was just like, thanks man. Like, there's no photo of it. It was just my moment, my experience. I had no way of proving it. It's just for me and it's for me to share with other people who might have experiences like it. I don't care if you didn't get all these photographs that became famous on the X Files. I don't care if you became famous and started a cult. Like, I just want to hear and share weird stories with people.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. And I think, like, the difference between people have those experiences and people like Billy Myers, like, you're not, you're not yelling at me. People who disagree with you just like, hey, I saw this thing. It was weird. I can't explain it. Let's all move on with our lives. But I'm happy to share this story if you want to hear it.

[John El Tenney]

Yeah. And you know, it's a, it can be a, like a repeater thing too. Right. Like, we've seen it throughout the UFO community. Like where Billy Meyer might have had a legitimate experience, but that, that wasn't enough. Right. And so you have to have bigger, more grandiose, more over the top and hyperbolic experiences to feed the mania that's building around you.

[Michael McMillan]

I think there are many cases like that over the course of UFO history where you are or, or you're, you're like the early Men in Black stuff with Albert K. Bender and, and why, why am I blanking on his name? His buddy who pranked everybody. Yeah, yeah, those. Jim Moseley like, and the Woody Derenberger stuff. Like the, where you're like, okay, well, I kind of like the, the, the Indri Cold thing. Kind of believe it. Once we get into Visitors of Lanulos and he's going to like Saturn and Venus, you're like, okay, now we're just kind of perpetuated. We're keeping the lore alive to keep the identity going, I guess, or to double down on doubters, I don't know. Or maybe it's all a scam from the beginning. I don't know.

[John El Tenney]

I think there are a lot of legitimate experiences. But to tie it to like just the human process, the human us being human beings, like, we see it all the time, whether it's with notoriety and fame. Like, it happens. Like someone will hit really hard on like TikTok or YouTube and they'll have like one video, right. And it blow up and. But then they have to do something more outrageous and more outrageous and more outrageous and just like keep feeding it it. And you see that it happens a lot. I mean, you guys are in the entertainment industry. Like, someone will get a bit part in something and then all of a sudden that's like this mania to keep, like getting bigger parts and better parts and pumping themselves up more and more and more and bigger and bigger and bigger. Like I don't know what. To what end, but it's inside most of us. You know, we want to be recognized for what we do, and we want to be recognized for our creativity and our. But there's some people who just can't handle it.

[Michael McMillan]

I think it also goes back in some. In some ways to what we were talking about at the beginning of this episode, which is like, these things don't have narrative arcs. And what happens is when you become someone who's publicly facing. Become a public facing UFO experiencer, reporters are coming back and being like, and now what? And I think there's this thing now. Maybe it's fueled by mania, maybe it's fueled by other. I think all of these things are possible, but it's sort of like there does seem this drive to sequelize the experiences or retcon. Oh, yeah. Actually, I also. This did happen when I was five years old. You know, that kind of a thing. And I think, like, all sequels, it gets to a point where you're like, okay, this is just too much. And it's gotten so far away from the original thing that I just. I'm kind of. I don't even care anymore.

[John El Tenney]

Once you start plusing and subtracting. I mean, you know, it's the old trope about, like, if you. If you tell the truth, you don't have to worry about what you said. Right. Like, if you start, like, adding and subtracting and lying and pushing the truth here and there, like, you're going to get called out eventually because someone's going to put, like, one and one together and realize it doesn't equal three. Right. It equals two. And so, I mean, again, I think you're right, too. The narrative and sequelization of, like, our experiences. Like, maybe it'll mean more if I tell people something happened to me when I was a kid.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah. I was just saying I always go back to the Betty Andreas in sequels, and you're like, okay, this is getting wild now we're going into underground caves where, like, Obama is frozen in ice. I don't know what to think anymore. Like, I think maybe none of this happened now. I don't know. Yeah, it's crazy stuff. Tenny, thank you so much for being here, man. It's always so great to talk to you. Where can people find what's up, weirdo? Where can people find support that you're working on? I also want to point toward people towards, like, you've put out these awesome, like, smaller booklets about, like, the. Oh, what was the the now I'm

[John El Tenney]

probably the Green Witch and Lee Childers and.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, yeah, like really good stuff on your website. You're like, hey, you can just buy this like really reasonably priced 20 page book on a certain topic that you've researched. So there's great. You put out great physical media as well that I'm not sure people know. Know of. So where can we get all this stuff?

[John El Tenney]

You can find all. Well, what's up, Weirdo? Is anywhere people listen to podcasts. It's all over the place. And then my website is weirdlectures.com and then whenever I have something to sell, I don't know what the Earl is to it, but maybe Library of the Curious. If you Google.

[Michael McMillan]

I think that's what it is.

[John El Tenney]

Tenney Library of the Curious. I'll put a link in. Did you guys ever get my. Did I ever send you guys my kids record?

[Michael McMillan]

No.

[John El Tenney]

No. You guys need to give me a physical address so I can send you my kids.

[Riley Bray]

I want that.

[Michael McMillan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Curious books. Okay, let me see. Not that one. Yeah. John E.L. tenney's Library of the Curious. Yeah. The Green Witch. I have. I don't have the Prince of Outer Space and I do not have a very haunted house. Ghostly stories and Songs for Kids of all ages, which looks like a 1960s record. It's very cool.

[John El Tenney]

It was meant to be like a scholastic book record.

[Michael McMillan]

It is. It's John El tenney.myshopify.com for people listening. But I'll put, I'll put a link in the episode show notes so people can go get this stuff. So go support John's work. It's great. I love that you're putting out physical media. That is so, so cool.

[John El Tenney]

I was very excited. I hadn't put out a record since 1992 and I kept waiting for someone to put out. Like when I was growing up I used to like have a records where I could listen to like spooky stories and then hear weird silly songs about ghosts and stuff. And I was like, why doesn't anybody do that anymore? And then like literally I was like, why don't you do it? Like you, you're a musician.

[Riley Bray]

Anybody.

[John El Tenney]

You, you're the person to put it out. So I put it out. And I mean it's, it's funny to a certain degree. I mean it's got. The Halloween frog is one song and then the turkey ghost is the other song. But then there's like three scary silly poems. It's meant for kids of all ages, but But I think, like, 12 is the person. 10 or 11. 12 is the perfect age for it.

[Michael McMillan]

Great. Yeah, great. Go check that out, everybody. And we definitely want a copy. All right, well, have a great wet hot alien summer forever. Tenney, I will be following you on what's Up, Weirdo? And on the what's Up, Weirdo? Patreon, Riley, anything you want to plug, you want to plug in these tuner apps or anything? Anything that you're working on in your little workshop. Anything you got to plug for people.

[Riley Bray]

I ran into this, like, long, annoying snag, but it's all coming out really soon, and it's like, oh, man, it's exciting. But there's. It's not even an interesting story.

[Michael McMillan]

Okay, fair enough. And I'll let everybody know. I was recently on Steve Berg's podcast High Strangeness. If you know. Everybody knows Steve. Go check that out. We were talking about weird Kansas stuff again, our favorite topic of mine. So that should be playing as you're listening to this episode. Otherwise, if you're on the Other side, we will see you on Friday for our movie club episode of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We will be watching the director's cut. So, like, whatever the latest cut is, we'll be watching that. I have my 4K. I just bought the 4K disk, so I have it queued up and ready to go. And then we are. Tenney, I mean, you can say no right now. We can talk about it. You are welcome to come back and talk about Close Encounters of the Third Kind with us if you want. So we can talk about that if you want to. What did he just say?

[Riley Bray]

You're muted.

[Michael McMillan]

He's muted.

[John El Tenney]

I would love to talk about Close Encounters.

[Riley Bray]

Okay, he's back.

[Michael McMillan]

All right, well, maybe we can make that happen. Maybe check your episode drop on the Other side on Friday. Maybe Tenny will be there. Otherwise, we will see you in two weeks when we cross over into the 1980s. I'm going to tease. I got a Deep Dive series coming up that I'm very excited about that's going to be happening in August. It's a story that I've been putting out for a long time. Well, if we don't see you there, we'll see you then. Until then, good night.

[Riley Bray]

And go get regressed.

[John El Tenney]

Good night, everyone.

[Michael McMillan]

Good night.

[Riley Bray]

Good night. Penny, I want you to to write a pamphlet one day that I received in the mail called why the Bigfoot

[John El Tenney]

Collector's Club Are Frauds, Liars, and Cheats.

[Michael McMillan]

Please mail it out to everyone on our mailing list that would be so great.

[John El Tenney]

A true dream. Let's start a pamphlet.

[Michael McMillan]

Bigfoot Collectors Club is executive produced by Riley Bray and Michael McMillan and engineered and edited by Riley Bray. Our theme song is Come Alone by Song 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 exclusive content on YouTube.com advitfocollectors.