Kelly Chase has immersed herself in the UFO/UAP topic over the last few years and has emerged as one of the foremost voices on the subject.
Kelly feels strongly about the importance about the role of experiencers and their encounters with non-human intelligences, even though the subject is often considered taboo. She believes there are a range of different intelligences behind the UFO/UAP phenomenon. You’ll hear this and more on this fascinating interview.
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TRANSCRIPT
Jim Harold (00:00):
She is the mayor of UFO X, better known as Twitter. She’s an author, she’s a podcaster. She’s Kelly Chase and she’s our guest today on the Paranormal Podcast.
Announcer (00:26):
This is the Paranormal Podcast with Jim Harold.
Jim Harold (00:30):
Welcome to the Paranormal Podcast. I am Jim Harold. So glad to be with you. And our guest today is Kelly Chase. If you’re watching a video, you can see her right there. And she is the chief cook and bottle washer at UFOrabbithole.com. She has a book out on the same theme, and of course, a very popular podcast as well. Plus I kind of dubbed her last time the Mayor of UFO Twitter or UFO X, now I guess it is. Kelly Chase, welcome back to the show. So good to speak with you again.
Kelly Chase (01:06):
Oh, Jim, it’s so great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Jim Harold (01:08):
So let me ask you this. I mean, we talked maybe mid last year, maybe a little bit towards the fall. I know you’ve been out and about at some different UFO functions and those kind of things. What’s kind of got your attention today and what is really kind of getting your interest today in the UFO UAP scene?
Kelly Chase (01:32):
That’s such a great question because I do feel like kind of some things that happened near the end of last year really have kind of changed my overall perspective and the things that I’m sort of most passionate about. I was lucky enough to get to attend the SOL foundation conference out in Palo Alto at Stanford, which was an incredible experience, and I give them all the credit for putting on such a wonderful event. But it definitely brought some things to mind for me, something that’s cut out of some of the videos, because the q and a didn’t make it in, was that we had people like Whitley Strieber really stepping up to the mic and asking the question of where is the experiencer in this narrative? Because we seem to be talking about craft, and we also have even gotten to the point in the conversation where we’re talking about non-human bodies and biologics, and these are words that are suddenly much more recognized even outside of the community.
(02:35):
But when it comes to anyone actually interacting with or claiming to have had an experience with some kind of a non-human intelligence, that seems to still be a very taboo topic. And it seems like even at the very top of this, people who are advocating strongly in Washington for transparency are also saying, we’re not going to touch the abduction problem. That’s probably never going to be a part of the conversation because it’s just too complex, it’s too complicated. And I don’t think that a military industrial complex that is our Department of Defense, we’re getting closer and closer every year to spending a trillion dollars a year on defense. And so they’re probably not going to step up and say, but by the way, these things can come into your house and there’s nothing we can do to stop them. That suddenly the value proposition on us paying all of these tax dollars for our security, that kind of nullifies that whole proposition.
(03:37):
And so they’re probably not going to talk about it. I think that, and I can understand why that is the case in Washington, but I think that as a community that we need to continue to push that conversation forward because I don’t know how we can be advocating for transparency when we’re not talking about the fullness of the UFO phenomenon and non-human intelligence in general. And I also think that we can’t really get to the bottom of what’s going on here if we’re only willing to talk about their vehicles, but not who might be inside of them.
Jim Harold (04:07):
So let me ask you this because I hate to be a little conspiratorial, but I’ll be a little conspiratorial. So to me, if you take experiencers credibly, particularly those who have had some personal interaction with a being, the whole cloak that this is some other military or this is secret American technology that basically shoots that out of the water. And let me be clear, I do believe some things that are seen are secret military technology of the United States and other countries, some, but I think that the faction of government, because I believe there’s different factions. I think there’s a faction who like Rubio and Gillibrand and Moskowitz and Burchett, those people want some truth released to the American people. Maybe not the whole truth, but some truth. And I think there’s another probably bigger, more entrenched and powerful component of the government and the military industrial progress who don’t want any of this out. And that component is pushing like, okay, there’s something in the skies and they keep pushing the, oh, it could be secret technology, it could be, and there’s that cloak once you bring in the experiencer, the Whitley Striebers of the world, who have had one or successive interactions with these whatever they are, that blows that whole thing out of the water. Do you think that’s part of the reason this is being denied and kind of kept at arm’s length?
Kelly Chase (05:43):
Yeah, I think it absolutely is. And I think that it blows that out of the water and it also opens the door to a bunch of scarier and more complex topics because when we’re talking about encounters with non-human intelligence, yes, we are talking about kind of the more classic abduction scenario that people are somewhat familiar with from the media. And granted, it’s not always represented well in the media, rarely is it represented well, but people’s encounters, whether it be abduction or at some other kind of contact with non-human intelligence are number one very, very strange. And it speaks to a phenomenon that is far more complex than just somebody coming here from another planet to check out what we’re doing, number one. And number two, you start to recognize that these patterns of contact don’t have their origin in 1945 or even in the 1930s. We’re talking about something that has been with us potentially since the beginning of human history. And that’s just a far more complex question to answer, and I think that they’re just not willing to open the door to that for a variety of reasons.
Jim Harold (06:51):
Do you feel that your own perspective has widened in getting involved in this? Did you start off as a nuts and bolts kind of person who said, Hey, this is just the Stanton Friedman and God rest his soul, Stanton Friedman craft coming from somewhere else? It sounds like you’ve reached that realization that there might be more to it. Is that new for you, or did you always feel that way?
Kelly Chase (07:15):
That’s a great question. When I started, I would say I wasn’t just nuts and bolts. I was a very strict materialist, which I am no longer. And so for me, I was looking for a tangible, measurable, logical answer to all of this. And I think that the amazing thing about really getting deep into the evidence around the UFO phenomenon is that it really kind of obliterates all of your preconceived notions about what reality even is. And so I think that I’ve gone very far down that rabbit hole. I have come to identify as an experiencer myself. I had an experience that I’ll be talking about in my next episode of the UFO Rabbit Hole that really kind of changed my entire life and set me on a different course and caused me to start the podcast that was a very strange and anomalous experience that I have come to understand as what I believe to be a contact with the non-human intelligence.
(08:21):
And I’d become really close friends with people who are profound and lifelong experiencers. And these are people that I know very well and that I’ve spent a lot of time with and that I’ve traveled with, and I’ve stayed in their home and they’ve stayed in my home. And I know these people to not be crazy. I know them to not be emotionally manipulative or attention seeking or all of these things that we presume about someone who has a story like that. And so my entire world has been turned upside down in the last few years in terms of what I think the nature of my reality even is. And I think that’s cool. I think it’s really great, and I think that it’s been really positive for me, but I’ve definitely gone through a huge transformation over the last few years.
Jim Harold (09:04):
Do you think because I, I did see one thing in the sky once, which I’m convinced was just space junk or an asteroid or something. My wife and I saw it about, gosh, probably 20 years ago, but regardless or more, but I’ve never seen the classic flying saucer or those kind of things or had a in-person experience with any kind of entity or anything. Do you think people are, think people are chosen for this? Do you think that whatever these non-human intelligences are, they say Kelly Chase, that seems like a good person to reach out to? I’m serious. I mean, do you think that’s part of the picture?
Kelly Chase (09:44):
I don’t know. I think about it all the, and I think that in some ways I almost refuse to personally come to a conclusion on that because it’s happened to me, right? It’d be really easy to be like they chose me. And I think that you see in the community, people who have an experience and they come to that kind of conclusion that they’ve been sort of chosen in some sort of special way and that that’s not always great for your mental health. And I don’t think that it’s always great for the kind of work that I hope to do in this field, which is inclusive and productive and objective. And so I really try to not come to a conclusion on that. I do think that humans in general have the ability to have these kind of anomalous experiences. Maybe not everyone has had this kind of profound high strangeness experience, but people have had synchronicities or precognitive dream or what I found really interesting is I had an interview recently with Dean Radin from the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and he was talking about how one of the hardest things in PSI research is just finding the control group to find someone who has never had any kind of an anomalous experience and doesn’t have anyone in their close family or friends who have those people are the outliers.
(11:10):
And so I think that there’s been suggestions that has something to do with brain structure or genetics or something like that. And I don’t know, but I try to keep a really open mind because I don’t want to kind of get to that place where I’ve drank my own Kool-Aid and have lost touch with reality. I try to stay as humble and objective as possible.
Jim Harold (11:31):
Now here this, and I want to be careful how I say this, but I mean there’s people, I 100% believe that there are people who have legitimately experienced something. And it’s not their imagination, it’s something that they’ve experienced. However, I do believe there are people who think they’ve experienced something with non-human intelligences who may be incorrect. It may be a mental issue, it may be a wanting to believe it might be something, and not to be insensitive towards them, but I believe that’s part of the picture too. In your role, how do you look at that and kind of compare against that when somebody claims to have had an experience, especially if it’s a series of very incredible experiences.
Kelly Chase (12:22):
I mean, I agree with you, and I think that probably, I think this is very complex. I also think though that it’s virtually impossible to verify the contents of someone else’s subjective experience. And so in some ways, I try to not get too weighed down in terms of whether or not I think what this person is telling me is true. If I get the sense that they’re being as honest as they can in terms of their interpretation of it, I try to just not assign a truth value to it. It’s not that I believe everyone who tells me that they’ve had an experience, it’s quite the opposite. It’s that I try not to assign a truth value to it. I listen and I try to hear everything that they’re trying to say. And then I think the real work happens not just in hearing one story, but in hearing lots and lots of stories and taking a comparativist approach to things and something that’s a real outlier is maybe not as good a data, or maybe it is.
(13:27):
It’s hard to tell. But I think when you start listening to a lot of experiencers with an open mind and without assigning a truth value to it, patterns begin to emerge that can help us to understand it a little bit better, and most importantly, to help us ask better questions. And so that’s really where I try to keep it because I don’t have the ability to know if somebody’s subjective, because like you said, they may think that something really anomalous has happened, but maybe it’s a misinterpretation or maybe there’s a mental health issue there. Certainly those things happen also. So I try to just not make that judgment and just listen to it for what it is.
Jim Harold (14:05):
Now, if you take the experiences of Whitley Strieber, and he’s been a guest on our shows before, some of them are deeply, deeply disturbing and not the behavior of what I would consider a friendly non-human intelligence. Some of what he described was very traumatic. So what are your thoughts about the motives behind this, whatever these non-human intelligences are, do you think that they’re all malevolent? Do you think they’re all benevolent, or do you think there’s a mix?
Kelly Chase (14:46):
I think there’s definitely a mix, and I’ve benefited so much from Whitley, from his writing and from getting to know him a little bit. Side note, I’ll actually starting on the 29th of this month, be taking over the monthly guest hosting gig on Whitley Strieber’s Dreamland podcast.
Jim Harold: Congratulations!
Kelly Chase: Thank you! I’m very excited and I was absolutely honored that he asked me. I have so much admiration for him, but Whitley is one of these people who has these stories that you’re just like, sometimes you don’t even know what to do with it. And some of them are terrifying. And I think that, listen, I’m not a vegetarian. I eat meat and the ways in which that meat comes to me and that happens to a cow, it probably feels demonic. It probably feels evil. And from a certain perspective it is, and I think it’s hard to tell if we’re dealing with entities that are intrinsically good and evil or if it’s our perception based on our relationship to them and how they regard us.
(16:03):
Something that regards us as animals or livestock or a resource or something that they own or could own in some way is probably something that we’re going to perceive as evil. But we don’t have any kind of a concept of what the rest of their culture looks like or what. It’s very complex. And so I think there’s a wide swath of different kinds of intelligences that we’re dealing with. Some of them, it seems, do have our best interests at heart, and some of them don’t seem to be too concerned about how their behavior impacts us. And so I think it’s complicated, but whether it’s dealing with intrinsic good and evil, I’m not sure. I don’t feel like I have enough information to really make that call.
Jim Harold (16:50):
Why don’t they just show up? I’m going to say it again. Why don’t they just show up on the White House lawn? I mean, why kind of the cloak and dagger stuff? What do you think?
Kelly Chase (17:02):
I’m not sure. I think that we can definitely make the statement confidently that the secrecy around the UFO phenomenon and contact with non-human intelligences is the choice of the intelligences that are behind this. They clearly kind of don’t want us to know, yes, there’s a government coverup going on, but like you said, if they wanted to end that coverup, they could do that very quickly. So I think that the question really comes down to why there is that secrecy, and I think it’s really hard to know. I think we can at least say with confidence that they don’t want to reveal themselves. Is it because they have a Star Trek style prime directive where they’re not supposed to interfere with us past a certain level because it will influence us one way or another or change our culture? Is it because maybe they just don’t care about us in the same way that we don’t go into our backyard and introduce ourselves to a chipmunk, maybe they just don’t care to be known by us, or maybe there’s something that they’re getting from us that if we knew what that was, maybe we wouldn’t be okay with it.
(18:13):
I think there’s a lot of possibilities, but I think that the reason, and on the simplest level, I think we can assume that they don’t land on the White House lawn because they don’t want to.
Jim Harold (18:23):
That’s a good point. Now, last summer, and I think we talked shortly after it in 2023 when there was that congressional situation going on and Burchett was up there, Moscowitz was up there, and other folks were up there questioning David Grusch and so forth. I was watching it. I was astounded that it wasn’t on CNN, MSNBC, all the main quote mainstream networks. Thank goodness for News Nation, which I know you’ve appeared on. But the point being I was very like, oh, this is finally happening. Tim Burchett sat up there and said literally there was a multi-decade coverup. I mean, to me that was okay, that’s huge type in the New York Times. It was kind of a collective beyond and kind of ignored. I mean, not totally, but mostly, but still, I felt at the end of that, it’s like, okay, if you use football as an analogy, and that’s a tough thing to do here in Cleveland with our history as you know, but it was kind of like I felt like we crossed the 50 yard line.
(19:31):
We were in the non-disclosure forces territory. We were on the offensive. We were probably at their 45 yard line. We weren’t ready to score a touchdown, but the ball was moving and it was moving in our direction. And I feel since then everything has flipped and they’ve driven the disclosure forces back to their own, maybe not the 20 yard line, but the 30 yard line; that the script has been flipped, and I call it the re-kookification of the subject. There’s been an attempt, the Super Bowl, there were umpteen tongue in cheek UFO commercials, and I want to just think it’s because it’s in the zeitgeist and people are interested in it now, but also part of me thinks, Hey, let’s cook up some silly whisper in the ear of your ad agency resources and say, Hey, let’s cook up some silly UFO commercials. We can get this re-kookification project cooking hot and just make this a big joke again. Do you think that there’s anything to that, or Kelly, do you think I’m just paranoid?
Kelly Chase (20:42):
No, I think there is something to that. I think that what we saw over the summer was really unprecedented and exciting, but a lot of that was the House Oversight Committee getting wind, that there was something going on and saying like, Hey, technically we’re supposed to have oversight of the spending of our government, and if we don’t know about this, we should know about this. And I give so much credit to the House UAP caucus for the way that they have continued to pursue this topic. But I think that as much as, yes, technically they should have that oversight, there’s been this secrecy in the government for so long. And what I find most interesting is the relative silence of the Senate Intelligence Committee because that is the group that has traditionally had the clearance and the access to have oversight of some of these higher level programs.
(21:44):
And that’s where the whistleblowers have gone. We got confirmation from Marco Rubio over the summer that these 40 or so whistleblowers had gone to the House Intelligence Committee to corroborate David Grusch’s claims. And so then my question is, where is the Senate Intelligence Committee in all of this? And their silence I think says a lot, although I’m not necessarily sure exactly what it says, but yeah, the pushback has been dramatic. And the way that Schumer rounds seem to go down in December, it’s almost too easily. It’s like we had all this momentum, there were so many people behind it, and then it just died because a few people who were willing to dig in their heels and stop, it seems, I don’t think we have the full story there as to what really happened with that legislation. And I agree with you. I think that we’ve seen over the last few months and weeks a continued push to, I like this re-kookification that you’re talking about. I think that’s exactly what it is. They’re trying to put the toothpaste back into the tube. And unfortunately, the stigma around this topic is so far entrenched that to a certain extent, I think they’ve been a little bit successful at that, which I know is disheartening for people who felt like we were having so much momentum.
Jim Harold (23:07):
Where does all that stand with Congress? Is it just totally dead and nothing’s going on? I’ve kind of lost touch with it a little bit, Burchett and others. Is there anything that they’re doing, David Grusch, I mean, where are we with all of that?
Kelly Chase (23:25):
It’s so hard to tell. I pay attention as much as I can, but it’s really hard to tell what’s going on. I think part of it is just that things on Capitol Hill move slowly anyways. We have whatever side of the aisle you’re on. I think we can all agree that our legislative branch is entirely dysfunctional and almost non-functional at this point. And so I think that’s part of it. I think we’re in an election year, World War II might kick off here any second now. And it just feels like maybe people who last summer were more willing to go to bat for this in a more aggressive way of kind of backed off either because of considerations about reelection or considerations, or maybe there’s just bigger fish to fry right now. But it is surprising, and I think that there’s going to need to be some kind of push from the public for them to really take up this baton in the way that I know that we in the community would really like them to.
(24:28):
And so we need some sort of a catalyzing event, whether that’s going to be, I mean, there was allegedly supposed to be this article from David Grusch explaining that he actually does have firsthand knowledge of these programs. Lue Elizondo’s book has long been rumored to be coming out sometime in the next few months, although that date is unclear, and I’m not sure that it’s even out of the dopper process yet. And I think they’re going to try to hold that up for as long as they possibly can. And so without some kind of catalyzing event, I am not sure that we’re going to see a ton of progress right now.
Jim Harold (25:02):
And what did you think about the comments of Sean Kirkpatrick, the former head of the AARO, which really rankled some people, I would say probably including me. What are your thoughts, recap for folks what he said and your thoughts on it?
Kelly Chase (25:22):
Yeah, I mean, that was such a bizarre moment, wasn’t it? Because this guy who no longer works for AARO made it pretty clear that he didn’t want to work for AARO anymore, wanted to get out of UFOs, and then all of a sudden we get this op-ed that literally no one asked for in this kind of a lull period where not much is going on, where he’s basically saying, I never saw any evidence whatsoever for any kind of secret program, any kind of exotic technology, any kind of, you know, nothing, and that’s such a bizarre move. Why would you put that out? And so it feels like it’s part of this campaign behind the scenes to kind of try to take advantage of this lull in the action to kind of create as much friction as possible. But I also found, maybe this is where I might sound like a little bit of a conspiracy theorist, but my question is why?
(26:23):
Because yeah, we can say like, oh, they’re just trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube. But at the same time, no one is paying attention or even knows who Sean Kirkpatrick is outside of the UFO community. And so I have to assume that at least on some level, we were the intended audience, this op-ed that no one asked for. And so what is the purpose of that? Does it give us, is it a distraction? Is it somebody that we can kind of be taking shots at and feeling like, because it really did take over UFO Twitter and the whole community for weeks because we’re, I think there’s a very righteous outrage on behalf of the community for this ridiculous article that he put out. But I can’t help questioning why. And in some way, was it just to keep us busy? Was it to distract us from something else? I often feel like, especially in these intelligence things, there’s sort of a wrestling hero and heel dynamic that goes on. And so was this supposed to make us think more highly of certain people in contrast to Sean Kirkpatrick? And I don’t have any answers for that, but I just find it very, very strange because I promise you people outside of this community have no idea who Sean Kirkpatrick is. So what was the purpose? Who was that for?
Jim Harold (27:52):
It’s interesting where he ended up on CNN, the mainstream press, and I would dare say that if he had a different opinion, let’s say his opinion were 180 degrees, and he said, yeah, there’s really something, some exotic technologies and things we should be looking at, I definitely very seriously don’t think CNN would’ve done anything on it. It’s almost like, oh, it fits the narrative. Let’s go after that. I mean, the mainstream press, do you think they’re a party to the coverup?
Kelly Chase (28:24):
I think they absolutely are. The extent to which the individual players know that they are, I think is a little more questionable. I think that for a lot of these big outlets, for them to get certain stories and to get breaks on certain things and to get certain information, they have to be constantly developing a relationship with kind of the PR arm of the Department of Defense and various contacts within the intelligence world and that sort of thing. And so I don’t doubt at all, and I think there’s plenty of evidence to show that there’s often kind a quid pro quo kind of thing that goes on where you kill this, help me kill this story, and then I’m going to give you this other thing. And I don’t know that UFO stories, given the stigma have ever been valuable enough that people want to really hold onto that.
(29:17):
And I think it’s really easy for somebody to trade that away for something that’s more valuable. And so I think that’s something that happens. I also think that what’s going on in the media in some ways is related to what’s going on. I dunno if you’ve seen this on UFO Twitter talking about the ways in which Wikipedia has been kind of weaponized against.
Jim Harold:
Oh, sure.
Kelly Chase:
Yeah. And so to be able to get those quotes that you put in Wikipedia that says that basically people go to Wikipedia to get some sort of source of truth. And so now if you have something on CNN or one of these major outlets or this op-ed that Kirkpatrick wrote, now you have source material that you can then use to update Wikipedia stuff. When people search for UFO program, UFO office, UFO program, what evidence was ever found for UFOs, there’s an element of search engine optimization. The big news outlets come up first. And so this is what if you’re just the casual observer in the public at large, and you just want to like, oh, I wonder what’s going on with UFOs. And you Google and then you quickly find a bunch of stuff that says there’s nothing to see here. And most people do that and they don’t go deeper, they just move on. And so I think there’s a really multi-layered thing that happens there.
Jim Harold (30:35):
And I think that speaks to the organization behind all of this. But I do agree people can be pawns and not even know reporters can be pawns. And they’ve been conditioned in many cases, I think, to believe this is all just a bunch of delusional people and so much BS, basically. But that’s a very interesting scenario you give. And I think that’s exactly right. I mean, you could have people who are very intelligent, but open-minded like, hey, let me see if there’s anything to this UFO thing. And they see a guy who worked for the government and a big capacity, and he’s been interviewed by CNN, and he said, we looked into that and there’s nothing to it. And then being a well-intentioned, open-minded person, intelligent who does research, he said, oh, I looked into it. This very authoritative person said, no, there’s nothing to it.
(31:31):
So there’s nothing to it. So I think that’s a great, great point. So where do you see things going from here? You made a great point about election year, that from the political scene probably not much happening. Of course, we’ve got the Russians about to put nukes in space and people, concerns about EMP attacks. China is expanding their military. We of course have the disaster and the sad situation in the Middle East. You have still Ukraine. I mean, a lot of this seems like 1939. It’s very scary. So I agree with you, we’re not going to see a lot from the government in the next several months at least, but where do you think long-term we’re going with this? Are we getting closer to truth? Do you think truth will out?
Kelly Chase (32:23):
I think that we are making progress, and I think that we’ll continue to make progress. I think that we still have some hope this year. I think it’s probably not going to be what people thought it was going to be. I’d love to be wrong about that. People are like, ah, 2024 is the year. I just don’t think that it is, given all the things you just listed, there’s still the X factor of Lue Elizondo’s book and how much of that made it through DOPSR and what kind of an impact that’s going to have, and if it can even get time in the news cycle, UFO stories get bumped a lot can tell you from doing a little bit of work with News Nation and that sort of thing, if anything of real import is happening on the national stage, it’s going to get bumped. I completely understand, and I completely understand why that’s true, even if I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I understand.
(33:15):
But I think that for anybody who hasn’t watched some of the videos from the SOL Foundation, those came out just recently. And I think probably the most important one to watch is Karl Nell’s talk because in it, you get some real behind the scenes in a way that I don’t think we’ve ever gotten before, information about how these decisions are being made in the background and what a controlled disclosure would look like. And what we’re looking at based on the slides that he presented, is basically that even if everything goes according to plan, which I think we can assume that it won’t because there are so many powerful forces pushing against this that we’re about five years into a 15 year disclosure process. And so I think that we have a ways to go before we get to any kind of meaningful disclosure. And I think that’s hard for people to hear, but I think it’s probably true.
(34:15):
And as for whether or not that disclosure is going to be the truth and the whole truth, I doubt it. I think that all of this is so entirely inextricably wrapped up with national security and also this deeply secret aspect of our government that I think most people aren’t even aware of. In a recent episode I did, there was a stat, there was a writer named Mark Burchett wrote me this episode, and it was wonderful. But the stat that he came up with that really blew me away is that there are 1.8 million people working in the public part of the government that we know about, and there’s more than twice that 4 million people working in the black world, in classified programs. And so there’s literally this kind of secret government that’s twice as big as the government that we know about. And I don’t think they’re just going to come out with the truth.
(35:15):
They’re going to tell us as much of the truth as is expedient and necessary and serves whatever objectives they have. And so I think in some ways I will continue to work and lend my voice to the disclosure movement where I can, because I think that it’s what we should be doing. I think it’s the ethical and right thing to do, and I don’t think the government should be hiding these things from us, but I also am increasingly just putting my efforts towards building toward a new kind of ufology that doesn’t need disclosure. I think in some ways ufology needs to be saved from disclosure and not let this disclosure narrative subsume the decades of work and research and stuff that has been done, and to continue to push that needle forward and not just be kind of waiting with their handout for the government to tell us the truth, because I don’t think they’re going to, and what little we’re going to get, I think is going to take a long time.
Jim Harold (36:06):
UFO Twitter, I guess I should say UFO X now, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that. But anyway, the thing is that I think it’s great in many ways, but I do think something that happens online, we see it. Whether you’re talking about political movements on the left, on the right in the center or any subject, you get in kind of an echo chamber, you say, oh yeah, you’re right. Yeah, you’re right. And you don’t accept sometimes outside perspectives. What do you think about the role of UFO X? Is it a good thing? I’m guessing that you do think that, and what role should it play in this question of UFOs?
Kelly Chase (36:49):
I think it is a good thing. I think that our ability to connect with each other and to compare notes and all of that is great. And I’ve met some of my best friends and some of my best collaborators, and I am really inspired by the work and the scholarship that’s coming out of these connections that are made on UFO Twitter. I think that it’s a double-edged sword, though. I think that we’ve gotten to a place where people are really mistaking social media clout for genuine expertise in the topic. You see some of the people with the, this isn’t a dig on them, but some of the people with the most followers on UFO Twitter are people who essentially just aggregate other people’s content and tweet it out there. You know what I mean? They’re just sitting there all day tweeting stuff out other people’s stuff.
(37:46):
And I think that in some ways, the community being so small, it causes us to be in an echo chamber. And it also causes us to get to a place where we aren’t seeing the forest for the trees and where I think it’s really hard for people, people talk about PSYOPs all the time, but nobody wants to admit that there are probably ops being played out on UFO Twitter all the time. And it’s not the ones that everybody is claiming is going on because the people who everyone thinks is an OP of some kind is really just like some guy in his basement. And there’s a kind of self-importance that comes about where people feel like they’re closer to this than they are, or that they see it better than they do, or that just because somebody has X amount of followers, that they have some kind of expertise.
(38:37):
And I think that it makes it really easy to create. We’re basically doing the intelligence community’s work for them. It’s really easy to distract us. It’s really easy to give people the impression that tweeting about this stuff is equal to doing it and doing the work to both the work of advocacy for transparency and also the actual work of doing genuine research scholarship and really doing things that can genuinely move this forward instead of just constantly retweeting other people’s thoughts from 30 years ago for likes and retweets and stuff. So I mean, I love UFO Twitter and I love being a part of it, and I think amazing things come out of it, but it’s also UFO. Twitter is its own worst enemy in a lot of ways.
Jim Harold (39:33):
So what’s next for Kelly Chase, the UFO Rabbit podcast, your website, everything else you do and some things maybe we haven’t mentioned today? What’s coming up?
Kelly Chase (39:45):
I’ve got a lot of cool things coming up. So like I mentioned, I will be doing a series, my next three episodes that are coming up are going to be about my own personal anomalous experience that set me on this path and also connected me to someone else’s story who was a stranger at the time. And I’m really going to be examining these ideas of what are these experiences, what do they mean, how do they relate to issues of mental health and addiction? And there’s all these kinds of things that cross over that make this all very complicated. And I’m lucky enough to be working with the Institute of Noetic Sciences on that for those episodes, which I’m really excited about, and I really thank them for their help in all of this.
(40:32):
I’m also in the full swing of production with my new media company Ontocalypse Productions, on our new docuseries, the Beyond UFOs, and a New Reality that’ll be directed by Jay Christopher King and written by me and Jay Christopher King. And we are traveling, we’re doing all kinds of stuff. We’re doing shoots constantly and working on that. We’re hoping it’ll be out later this spring and early summer at the latest. And that project I’m really excited about because I really am passionate about this idea that ufology needs to be saved from disclosure. And we wanted to do something that we feel like really hasn’t been done in terms of media in this space. And one is that we want to create something that has a very high level of expertise and professionalism behind it, but also we don’t want to bother with this whole proving the case that UFOs are real because that’s where a lot of other projects end up getting stuck for reasons that make a lot of sense.
(41:34):
But we’re independent. We can do what we want and we got our own investors and we can make the show we want to make. And so we’re going to start with UFOs are real, so now what? And we’re going to go from there. And I’m really excited about that project. I think it’s going to be really cool. We have Jeff Kripel from Rice University, the Archives of the Impossible, who is our consulting producer on that, which was an absolute honor to have him on board. And we have everybody from Whitley Strieber, Diana Pasulka, Mike Masters, Alex Dietrich, I could go on and on that we filmed with for this and some new voices I think that maybe people haven’t heard before. We also have really focused on trying to be as diverse and representative as possible because we don’t always hear from new people in the field. And so we’re trying to do that, and I’m really excited about it. So that’s going to be just all of my focus over the next few months, but I’m very excited to share that with people when it’s ready by the summertime,
Jim Harold (42:37):
And we know you’re on UFO Twitter, UFO X of course, your podcast, but where would you direct people to follow everything you do and make sure they don’t miss a thing?
Kelly Chase (42:50):
There’s definitely my website, UFOrabbithole.com, where you can find links to all of my social media to the Patreon community. I will say the Patreon community has gotten very, very cool. We have a private Discord server that has become very vibrant and interesting, and it’s kind of taken off and people are doing their own research projects together, and they’re doing book clubs and happy hours, and I am thrilled to see that happen, but mostly the best place to find me is on the website, UFOrabbithole.com or on Twitter, X, whatever we’re calling it these days, which is just UFO_rabbit_hole. It’s not a tongue twister a little bit, but you can find me there.
Jim Harold (43:32):
Kelly Chase, thank you for joining us today.
Kelly Chase (43:35):
Oh, thank you so much for having me, Jim. It’s always a pleasure.
Jim Harold (43:37):
It’s always great to catch up with Kelly. She has such insight on this subject and always enjoy getting that insight. So we thank Kelly for her time, and we thank you for your time, and if you enjoy what we do, please share the show. I think that this show doesn’t get enough credit. I have to be honest, because I think we do a great job of talking to great minds like Kelly, and I’d like to see us get a little more visibility, whether it’s this audio version or our full video version where you can actually see the speaker. That’s on my YouTube channel, and I hope you check that out as well and share the show so we can elevate these great discussions to the level that I think they really should be. I see some of the other interview podcasts out there and it’s like, Hey, we’re just every bit as good. We’re just not as known. We need your help to get us there. Thank you so much. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week, everybody. Stay safe and stay spooky. Bye-Bye.
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