TheDebrief.org’s Chrissy Newton joins us to talk all things UFO including recent reports of “Racetrack” UAPs.
You can find Chrissy’s work at TheDebrief.org and on the fantastic podcast Somewhere In The Skies with Ryan Sprague.
Thanks Chrissy!
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TRANSCRIPT
CHRISSY NEWTON: I’m a female. There’s not many women in this space, so being a female communicator on this topic and helping to push narratives or even explain narratives to media and to journalists and make it easier for them, and really trying to find the truth and the fact with them so that what’s getting pushed to the forefront is not something that’s been pushed through entertainment or this other bubble – it’s really pushing through facts.
JIM HAROLD: That’s Chrissy Newton from The Debrief, and we’ll be talking with her on this edition of the Paranormal Podcast.
[intro music]
This is the Paranormal Podcast with Jim Harold.
JIM HAROLD: Welcome to the Paranormal Podcast. I am Jim Harold, and so glad to be with you once again. We have somebody on the line we’ve been wanting to get on the show because she is really making a splash in the area of UAPs and UFOs. Just multi-talented, and we’re so glad to have her on the show.
Chrissy Newton is on the program. She hosts various podcasts, including Rebelliously Curious. Another one getting ready to relaunch, as I understand it, Alt.Pop.Repeat. She also contributes to Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. Now, most people would say that’s a pretty full plate, but not Chrissy, no. That’s just for starters. She actually is an owner of Vocab Communications, and she’s an award-winning PR professional. In addition, she is Partner and Director of Media and PR for The Debrief.
Chrissy, how do you find the time to do so much?
CHRISSY NEWTON: I don’t know, Jim. I don’t sleep and I don’t have children. I always tell everybody, I don’t have kids. I have me and my dog, and I love my dog; my dog is my fur baby. He is my child currently at this moment. But it’s a passion. You do all the things that make you happy, and that’s what I try to do. I do everything that I enjoy in life and try to do it to the fullest and to the best extent I possibly can.
JIM HAROLD: There you go. And the most important question: what breed is your dog? What kind of dog is it?
CHRISSY NEWTON: He’s a chihuahua terrier. But he’s a rescue. His name’s Beethoven, but I call him B. Anyone who sees my Instagram or even Twitter, they know that he flies with me, he goes everywhere. If I’m doing research or I’m traveling or doing any type of work – even just personal – he comes with me.
JIM HAROLD: That’s awesome.
CHRISSY NEWTON: Yeah, he’s my companion.
JIM HAROLD: We’re big fans of dogs around the Spooky Studio. We have two of them here as well. And also both rescues.
CHRISSY NEWTON: Oh really? Nice. They’re the best pets. They are. Unconditional love.
JIM HAROLD: Rambo and Teddy. They’re little guys.
CHRISSY NEWTON: Nice. [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: Well, we’d love to talk about dogs for a long time, but we also love to talk about UFOs and UAPs. You and good buddy Micah Hanks really took the forefront of a recent story about what’s called “racetrack UAPs.” What are racetrack UAPs and what did you discover?
CHRISSY NEWTON: That’s a great question. It was with Ben Hanson, actually. I saw Ben recently and he was talking about this story, and I said, “This would be an amazing story with The Debrief.” So we were chatting and strategizing how we would release it and the fundamentals around the story. At that point I believe we were at 7 to 15 different cases, and now we’re at 35 different cases of pilots – and I should explain this – reporting UAP activity or just any unidentified flying object activity. The question was, is it satellites? Is it Starlink?
JIM HAROLD: That’s the first thing I thought of.
CHRISSY NEWTON: Exactly. We looked at all those 35 cases, and one specifically was a former F-18 pilot named Mark Halsey. I interviewed Mark myself, and his description of his UAP experience doesn’t really track as much to Starlink from what we know. It could, but his seemed really out of the bunch, along with the Miami case.
What happened is we have a whole bunch of different pilot reports that were reporting in to – I believe it’s called Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center. So we have his original audio explaining what he saw and what was happening, and they weren’t tracking this as well. They couldn’t see it on their radar. What ends up happening then, about an hour later we have American 6, which is another flight that ends up reporting the same thing in the exact same area.
Mark Halsey’s case is one of them that stands out the most, and then we look at like the Miami case we’re looking into now because that stands out as well. We’re seeing that maybe some of this is satellites, and we’re open to that. At The Debrief, we’re here to talk about UFOs in an academic sense, but also then report on it. So when it’s not unidentified, or it is identified, then we need to say that. Mick West has been commenting on this as well and saying that it’s satellites and it’s Starlink. So we’re looking at the whole spectrum of this and then figuring out which ones out of those 35 are identified and what are not. So we’re in the next steps, and hopefully Phase 2 of the next article that will come out about that.
JIM HAROLD: Folks, we’re recording this on Monday, October 24th, and this will be coming out in November, so there may be further developments. We want you to stay tuned to TheDebrief.org to get the latest. Chrissy, you talked about those Starlink satellites, Elon Musk satellites that can bring the internet worldwide and can do all these marvels, but it is a challenge for UAP and UFO investigators, along with drones.
While we’re at a very exciting time for this topic – and I want to talk about that more in a bit – is it in some ways the most difficult time in history to separate the wheat from the chaff?
CHRISSY NEWTON: I would say maybe the beginning of it, right now, but I don’t think it’s going to take a very long time for us to figure out some kind of organizational strategy about how to identify these things. The first thing that needs to happen is that the FAA needs to be given a report from Starlink, or any other companies that are putting up satellites, saying, “This is what you have to look for. This is how you identify them,” and then pilots being able to know and be educated about this. That will stop that clutter.
Drones is another thing, too. There’s so many different types of drones. So that might be something we have to sift through a little bit more and we’ll get better at it. But honestly, I don’t feel that it will take that long. We’ll have some form of safety measures that are going to come forward. We’ll see that potentially with the classified report coming out, hopefully on the 31st. So I think it’s going to take time, but I don’t really think it will take that long of a time because we have enough people that are looking in the skies and enough people reporting, enough people interested, that we’ll be able to sift through what it is and what it isn’t, I think, at some point. Especially within those categories, I should say.
JIM HAROLD: Do you think there’s more UFO activity now, or do you think we’re just paying more attention to it?
CHRISSY NEWTON: I think we’re just paying more attention to it, to be honest. I think we’re really looking up. I believe in Canada – because I’m from Toronto – it was 1 in 3 Canadians were seeing unidentified flying objects during COVID. People had more time. People were looking up. They were spending more time in their backyards. They were seeing backyard UFOs, as I call them. I think a lot of people were more interested.
And then we get to 2017, the New York Times piece breaks – that’s for sure going to give a surge of people outside of the counterculture who are going to start moving it more into mainstream, may be more interested. So I think at some point we’re getting people that are seeing stuff and we’re getting those feedback loops that are happening, too. People are seeing something on camera or on entertainment and they’re going, “Wow,” and then they go outside or they’re out in their daily lives and they see something similar and they’re like, “That’s definitely a UFO.”
So I think culture feedback loops play a big part of it. The news cycle plays a big part of it. And also people having time and the interest is increasing.
JIM HAROLD: One thing I love about that racetrack UAP report or reports is that it seems like pilots are getting more involved. Do you feel that pilots are becoming more open to speaking out on what they see? Because to me, they could be some of the best witnesses, potentially.
CHRISSY NEWTON: I agree. I really do. This is the trouble that we have. If they can’t identify Starlink, then it makes them almost uncredible. It can make them look that way even though they’re not. We don’t want to do that to our pilots. I believe that they’re the most credible, and I’m seeing and hearing that more pilots are coming forward, going, “I’m having experiences.” Before, they obviously didn’t want to lose their wings and they didn’t want to be grounded.
Mark Halsey told me something in my interview which I thought was really interesting: even just a basic civilian report could ground you for weeks on end or days on end, and potentially months depending on how bad it is. So even that basic one civilian report can change everything for a pilot’s life, and that’s scary. It’s really, really scary. Even just that, not just looking at in a larger scope of seeing a UFO – anything. So no wonder they don’t want to talk about anything that they feel they’ve seen or related to themselves personally.
Hopefully we’re going to see that’s going to change. Ryan Graves – I forget the name of the committee that he’s chairing right now, but he’s looking into safety and other people are championing pilots to give them some form of protection. We have whistleblower protection going forward; then we obviously need to have some pilot protection as part of that as well. I think those conversations are being had.
JIM HAROLD: One of my favorite accounts – because again, I buy into that idea that the pilot is going to be one of your best witnesses. First of all, when you think about a pilot, they’re very vetted, they’re experienced, they’re trained to understand what another fixed wing aircraft looks like; many of them come from the military, so they’re familiar with the signature of military aviation and those things. But President Obama’s pilot, I think on his first campaign, before he was president – I believe his name was Andy Danziger – he reported, not while he was flying Obama, but previously having experienced this incredible UFO experience.
I believe, if I remember – and this is from years ago – he was like a first officer or something on a flight, or a co-pilot. He wasn’t the main captain. It was very early in his career. When he mentioned it to the pilot who saw it as well, the main pilot said, “We’ll just be quiet about this.” Two things in there: yeah, there’s that stigma, and two, I love the fact that you’ve got somebody like that – if somebody flew a major presidential candidate who became president, you know he was vetted to the nth degree. And for him to come out and say, “Yeah, I had an incredible UFO sighting and I don’t think it was necessarily manmade” – that to me is incredible.
You get quite a few of these reports from pilots, and I just think it’s some of the best evidence out there.
CHRISSY NEWTON: I agree. You’re getting someone that’s flying around a president – for sure they’re going to be checked. If anything, I’m not surprised they don’t want to come forward, too, because they don’t want to lose their job, but it’s also attached to the president. So I agree. I’m just glad more pilots are coming forward.
JIM HAROLD: It’s good news. Now here’s a question for you – and I have a theory. You are uniquely qualified to tell me, “Jim, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard” or “That’s exactly right,” so you tell me – because of the fact that you’re in PR and you’re also very deep in UAP studies. So you’re actually singularly qualified to answer this question.
Here’s my thought. Last year, the U.S. government put out the report on whether there’s anything to UFOs or not during the summer. I very specifically recall they put that out on a Friday at about 4:00, and that said one thing to me: somebody in the U.S. government does not want this to get legs. Why? You, being a PR professional, know if you want to bury a story, when do you release it?
CHRISSY NEWTON: You actually release it on Sundays.
JIM HAROLD: I’ve always heard Fridays.
CHRISSY NEWTON: Fridays too.
JIM HAROLD: Yeah, late Friday. Well, it used to be – and this kind of shows my age – because of, in the U.S., the evening newscasts. You release it right before the evening newscast, and that’s about the time they did it. I think it was 4:30-5:00 Eastern, before there’s any time to do anything with it. I said, if they wanted this to be up front and part of the news cycle, they would’ve released it on a Monday or a Tuesday, probably, I’m guessing.
CHRISSY NEWTON: Yeah, Mondays are great days to release because it’s the most quiet, generally. Same with Tuesdays. Wednesdays and Thursdays get busy. Thursday for sure is a really busy news day. But Fridays are too. If you release after 4:00 – because most people go home around 3:00 or 4:00 because they have kids and families, and producers are out, so your newsroom is really tiny at that point. You still have people there, but you’re looking at the night news.
So you’re 100% right for that. Saturdays and Sundays are other times too because your news staff is so much smaller. Even now, currently, the news cycle and staff are so much smaller for the fact of budgets, people are getting laid off. Instead of – we call it a beat – for one subject, if people are listening – for example, the UAP topic is a beat. But we’re also look at something within the Pentagon would be another beat. So we’d have this one beat that instead of one writer doing one, they would be covering multiple. At 4:00 or 5:00 sending it out, for sure they don’t want anyone – not everyone to pick it up, and not to be as big of a deal.
But the thing is, though, they already know, especially the U.S. government, looking at media that covers the UAP topic, we were waiting for it anyway. So there was no way to get around that. So really they should’ve just sent it off at the top of the morning, to be honest. But they were just hoping that those mainstream media outlets wouldn’t pick it up and it would just be all the sub media. And that’s what happened. But it did its job.
Here’s the thing about the UFO community when it comes to podcasts or even just other outlets that cover it, like The Debrief: we’re able to help push that into the mainstream, and that’s never really happened before. It’s unbelievable now that people within a subculture, or I call it a counterculture, have this ability to really affect the mainstream culture right now by literally tweeting and posting, and civilians and people that are interested banding together around the world and being like, “We need to have this conversation.”
That’s never really happened. We see it within counterculture movements, but we’re seeing it more than ever, and it’s unbelievable how – now officially I will say this – UFOs are 100% part of the news media section now. They are their own section. Whoever thought that was going to happen?
JIM HAROLD: Yeah, that certainly makes sense. The one point I wanted to make about that, though, is that told me that somebody in the U.S. government – now, I don’t want to say “the” U.S. government because I think people tend to describe organizations or businesses or whatever it might be in monoliths, and the U.S. government is made up of many, many people of competing beliefs, interests, everything.
But somebody in a position of control wanted to, as much as possible, bury that story. That’s my belief. Because by Monday morning, people have had barbeques, they’ve gone to ballgames, they’ve done stuff with their kids, whatever. Monday morning they’re like, “Oh yeah, wasn’t there something about UFOs? Yeah, that’s interesting. Eh, there’s nothing to it. Next story.” That’s the way I felt. I felt that it was a deliberate play to minimize the impact of that report by someone.
CHRISSY NEWTON: Yeah, and it could be. I think there’s a group of people there saying – we’ve heard Travis Taylor say this, we’ve heard multiple people say that they feel there’s a group of people working within the Pentagon or within the American government that don’t want this to come forward. I do believe in that, too. Do we know who these people are? Do we have an idea who they might be? For sure. But do we have any real proof or evidence that they’re actually doing this? Maybe not as much as we’d want.
So I think there’s something going on there, but here’s the thing I always say to people. We’re not going to find out for another 20 years. This always happens with any type of story like this. We’re living in it right now, day to day, consistently. So news media and other whistleblowers and other things will start coming forward in the next 20 years. The stuff that we learn now that we think is factual might not be fully factual, and new stuff might come out. But it’s going to take time. One thing we know about the UFO community – we’ve got lots of time. It’s been over 75 years. [laughs] We can wait a little bit longer.
JIM HAROLD: And speaking of time, your timing is excellent because it’s time for a break. We’ll be back with Chrissy Newton on the Paranormal Podcast talking all about UFOs and UAPs.
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JIM HAROLD: We’re back on the Paranormal Podcast. Our guest is Chrissy Newton, and she has her finger on the pulse of the UAP phenomena, UFOs, and we’re talking to her all about it. Chrissy, going way back, how did you get started on this topic? What got you into it?
CHRISSY NEWTON: My dad. My dad had a UFO experience when he was around 18 years old in northern Canada – Northern Ontario, to be exact. He was with a group of people who had this experience, and he ended up taking a photo of the UAP. When I was a little girl, about six or seven years old I believe, he showed me that photo and told me the story. I always tell people it lit up everything inside of me. I was like, “Wow, what is this?”
I consistently was so interested in it as a little girl, and he would talk about it with me. My dad was so deep into it, and still is to this day. But he was teaching me, and then as I was getting older, I made a conscious decision to really start getting involved in the area of study of UFOs, just learning who the people’s names were to start, really. It was like, “Who are all these people? I want to remember these people.” That was important to me.
So I started there, and I went to the UFO Congress. That was the first one. I took my dad and we walked in and we were like, “Wow, we’re actually doing this now as a family.” Just him and I. My mom, not so much interested in it, or my sister. But we were doing this together and learning. And he would talk to everybody, and I would as well. I started going on some research trips by myself in England and looking at the crop circles because it was the closest thing I could get to, and learning more about them and the phenomenon. My ideas of what crop circles are have changed over the years, obviously, through my experiences.
But that’s really what started me to get myself into the field. And then I came across The Debrief and was creating content, and long story short, I pitched them to be part of them just to create content for them. I was talking to MJ Banias about it, and then they brought me in and they realized – they knew that I had some PR skills and obviously run a business, and I was giving them some examples of things that they could do in the PR space. We were all in a group chat.
Long story short, I think Joe Rogan mentioned us for the first time ever about two and a half years ago, and I was like, “We need to comment on this.” So I started making comments and explaining PR, and I became more integrated into the core team and then really found a family, to be honest. We’ve all been working together almost three years – January will be three years, which is crazy, running this media company together. But truly being able to work together, having highs and lows, but being able to focus on multiple topics – not just UFOs, but I will say the one thing that brought us all together was the UFO topic.
It’s probably one of the best things that’s ever happened to me because it’s given me the ability to do PR and work with the UAP topic and talk to some of the best people in the business, and work with some of the best people too, outside of just working with The Debrief – having clients that are really notable within the scientific space and in the UFO topic in general. So it’s been wonderful. I’ve been able to learn so much, and my thoughts and my opinions have grown. I’m just thankful to be where I am right now.
JIM HAROLD: That’s fantastic when you can marry an interest with your profession and they crosspollinate and work well together. That is the best of both worlds. It happened for me; it sounds like it’s happened for you. It is just a blessing when you can say, “I’ve worked in this one area all these years, and now I can take all that knowledge and apply it to this thing that I really love.” There’s not much better than that.
CHRISSY NEWTON: Yeah, and actually contribute. To me, there was this space where there was no PR person in this topic, and I went, “Wow, I really get to do this.” And also, I’m a female. There’s not many women in this space, so being a female communicator on this topic and helping to push narratives or even explain narratives to media and to journalists and make it easier for them, and really trying to find the truth and the fact with them so that what’s getting pushed to the forefront is not something that’s been pushed through entertainment or this other bubble – it’s really pushing through facts and doing the best we possibly can to make it easy for journalists and to teach them so that they’re interested in the beat, but it’s also approachable to them.
As a woman, it’s important to me because the way that we deliver things as women in the world of communications can be very different than the way it’s been delivered by mine. And the topic, to be honest, it’s been white men, generally, rich white men that have been able to push the narrative of the UAP topic. So it’s nice to be a woman that still gets to have somewhat of a voice to really wonderful people that will give a larger voice to this topic, too. I’m just happy that I’m a female in this, and I hope more people get involved, and I hope more women do, and I hope more female communicators do, too, because we need that. We need a diverse group of everybody from all different cultures, all different ethnicities, and all different backgrounds.
JIM HAROLD: I agree with that fully. Another thing I should say – and you touched on it there – lets’ ace it: some of the people involved in UFOs and UAP may be very knowledgeable, but they may not themselves be great communicators. They may reach out to reporters and people in media and present themselves in such a way – and this is not to cast aspersions on these people – that they may not be taken credibly.
To have someone who can say, “Here’s this information; let’s present it in a way that’s accessible and approachable for the reporters” I think makes a major difference. And I never really thought about it that way, but that is a major – it’s a PR problem for UFO studies and ufology. To have somebody like you – and I agree, having the female perspective is an excellent addition, long overdue – I think that really is a major advance.
Because again, you’ve got some guy who’s in his room and he’s pored over all these UFO reports and he finds these interesting trends and he calls up a reporter, but he’s fumbling around and he’s just not very smooth – it may be the greatest information in the world, but nobody’s going to pick up on it.
CHRISSY NEWTON: 100%, you’re right. I love being in that space where we can look at telling the facts and the truth when it comes to public relations because we know that we have a really negative side of PR, which can be spin doctors. We see that come from government, we see it with corporate companies, where they just come in and mess with the communications. And let’s be honest, major corporate companies and government have money and people to be able to do that.
When you’re looking at civilian companies like mine that I’ve run for 15 years, I’m able to say morally, I get to make a decision. Doesn’t mean I’m morally right, but what I withhold and what I believe and my standards are I don’t want to push through a false narrative. I want to push through the most correct narrative I possibly can.
Obviously I work with The Debrief, which is a media outlet; that is our goal. We want unbiased reporting. While I’m trying to push that and have an idea when it’s working – not even just with The Debrief and us pushing our stories to help us go to mainstream as well, but working with scientists or filmmakers in the UFO community. My job is to publicize it and to push through those facts. And the stories and the clients that I pick, I feel to my best knowledge from what I know, are doing their best job too.
You can really PR anything, but you have to make a moral decision of what you want to PR as well. Technically I could go work for the government – and I don’t. There’s always a joke that The Debrief is part of the CIA, and we’re not. [laughs] I’d laugh if we are. We’re the funniest group of CIA members ever then, if that’s the case. But I could go work and do all that stuff, but I choose not to.
So it really depends on the person who’s communicating, what they’re communicating, and where they see their value. What’s the value level for them when it comes to this topic? What do they feel is right or wrong? There’s a lot that comes around the PR topic, and it’s nice to know that people in the UFO community, and just in general communities, are understanding what PR is and what it does and how it can influence and how important it is in any type of marketing mechanism. So it’s nice to see that people are understanding that more. And hopefully we move forward with more positive messages.
JIM HAROLD: Speaking of UFO cases, do you have one favorite one – one that you look at it and that is the case? We could be talking about something very historic; it could be something that you have investigated and followed up on with The Debrief. Do you have one that stands out for you?
CHRISSY NEWTON: I’ve been investigating a few. Recently, I’ve been doing a piece around the Uinta Basin. I’m learning more on that. It looks at Skinwalker, Blind Frog Ranch, all of that. It’s the whole phenomenon that’s happening in the Uinta Basin. So I’m in the midst of what right now should be a six-episode piece around that. But mainly, my favorite story – and I’ve been really lucky to work alongside – is Randall Nickerson, Ariel Phenomenon.
I approached Randall to do an interview with him and we ended up talking about PR, and that’s how I got mixed in with this because he didn’t have a publicist. I told him, “This is my favorite story. I love the Ariel story.” I have a real heart for Africa myself. I’ve been there a couple times, working there, and just really loving the African spirit, but also knowing that there hasn’t been a story that’s been told from that area. It’s important that we show that.
But also, these children had the most unbelievable experience. They’re saying that it potentially could’ve been over 100 people, not just the small group that was first evaluated through John Mack and the BBC and everyone else. We have some of the best archive footage; we have amazing drawings from these children. So that case on its own, when I first heard about it, I was blown away. I’ve been very lucky to spend a lot of time with Randall to talk about the case with him and just other little tidbits and stuff that might not be fully in the movie. So that’s for sure my favorite case. And if anybody’s never watched Ariel Phenomenon, 100% please go watch it. It’s just a beautiful, well-done, gorgeous movie.
JIM HAROLD: For folks who aren’t familiar, this is a case that goes back – was it the late ’80s, Zimbabwe? Is that right? Late ’80s, early ’90s, somewhere in there?
CHRISSY NEWTON: Yeah, I’m almost forgetting the date now too. I was going to say ’92, but I’m confusing my own dates now.
JIM HAROLD: But it is a fantastic case. We got to interview Randall – thanks to Chrissy, actually. We worked through Vocab Communications to get that done. And really, the thing that impressed me about that story was you were dealing with children in a very remote area; it was almost a moment in time that you could never recapture because it was before the internet. They didn’t have access to a lot of popular entertainment or all that. So it’s like if you looked at a case 100 years ago because it’s not poisoned by pop culture and those kinds of thing.
These kids explained something that was very consistent. The pictures that they drew were amazing, and the account. And then later on, in adulthood, they back up what they said, and there’s reason to really believe that there was this mass sighting in Zimbabwe all these decades ago with these children. Just remarkable.
CHRISSY NEWTON: It was. I looked it up; it was ’94.
JIM HAROLD: I knew you would.
CHRISSY NEWTON: I forgot the date. I always confuse the Phoenix Lights for different times, too.
JIM HAROLD: That’s a favorite of mine. And what I was going to say real quick is I was vamping there to get you time to look it up because I knew you would. [laughs]
CHRISSY NEWTON: I appreciate that. I was like, “I’ve got to make sure they correct this.” But it is such an unbelievable story. Emily, the witness and one of the children that lived in Zimbabwe at the school ended up living in Toronto at some point in time. I believe she is still outside of Toronto, in the Scarborough area.
I’ve been wanting and one day would love to meet with her. She makes beautiful art, and I would love to just sit with her, not on a record thing, but just have a conversation with her about her experience. They’re unbelievable. I want more people to come forward if they’ve had experiences like that. Abductions and all that are a really hard conversation to have. With The Debrief and what I do, we just focus on UFOs. But I am still open and very, very curious about those types of conversations. Hopefully we have more and more evidence come forward, too.
JIM HAROLD: Indeed, indeed. We’re going to be back with Chrissy Newton for our final segment talking about UAPs, The Debrief, PR, the UFO field, and much more. Stay tuned. We’ll be back right after this.
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JIM HAROLD: We’re back on the Paranormal Podcast. Our guest is Chrissy Newton. We’re talking all about UFOs and UAPs. She is a major player over at The Debrief, a podcaster, a PR professional and business owner, and we’re so glad to speak with her today.
So Chrissy, we’ve talked about your background, we’ve talked about some cases, we’ve talked about The Debrief; now, have you developed a theory of UFOs? Do you think it’s attributable to one thing? Do you think it’s attributable to multiple things? What are your thoughts? What are UFOs?
CHRISSY NEWTON: Wow. My thoughts on the whole UFO theory, or just hypothesis of what it might be, has changed over the years drastically. I think when I was younger, I was way more on the alien conversation and theory. Doesn’t mean I’m fully off it, but it’s evolved from what I’ve learned. That’s also something I think is really important. If you’re interested in the topic – and anybody who’s listening to this obviously is – you’re always learning. You’re always consistently learning as an area of study. Your thoughts should change and your opinions should change over the course of years. That’s what I think, and I think it’s positive that they do, and it’s healthy.
But I look at it and I go, for me, I’m not just looking at the alien conversation. I think it’s multiple players. I’m really interested in the interdimensional theory. Really, really interested in that and look at what that could possibly be and what are those multiple players. But also, AI or some form of reconnaissance. Why can’t it be something that’s a probe or something that’s coming off-world, or even in our own world at this point? If it’s ultra-terrestrial or extraterrestrial, it could be that it is some form of other lifeform somewhere else that’s looking to find out more information about us.
The reason why I look at that is – we go back to Skinwalker. Skinwalker, one of the first books speaks about the types of orbs that they had and that they experienced. They said they were I believe the size of tennis balls or a little bit larger, and there is this blue – we don’t know what it was, some kind of liquid that was splashing around in it, the closest they could get, and it felt like it was intelligent. For me, is that alive? I don’t know. Is it conscious? I don’t know. But to me, that sounds very AI-ish and very reconnaissance-ish.
So I look at that. And you know what, my dad said that theory to me a long time ago when I was a little kid. We actually had a conversation about this, I believe a couple months ago, and the craft that he saw was very tiny, he said. This was in the early ’80s. And let’s be honest – it maybe could’ve been a drone. It could’ve been at that time. We know the government has had multiple different technologies for a long time. But also, this is in Canada; our tech isn’t as good as American tech.
But with that said, who knows? My dad said, “Those people in that craft had to have been the size of children. That’s how small it was,” and that’s how close they were to it. So for him, he thought – what he felt inside, from his intuition, was that it was probably some form of reconnaissance craft. And now when I look back and what we’re learning now, and what we’re doing with drones and everything else, and technology – why can’t it be?
JIM HAROLD: The other thing that occurs to me – because my shows are on a wide range of what I call the paranormal. I have a much broader definition of that. When most people say “paranormal,” you mean ghosts. That’s part of it, but I also extend that out to things like cryptid creatures, because we don’t necessarily know what some of them are if they do exist; I extend it out to UFOs. And I used to have this viewpoint of everything being very siloed. Bigfoot was some kind of manlike ape, if he exists or she exists. Ghosts are dead people. UFOs are aliens. It’s all disconnected.
But if you read things like John Keel and so forth, you talk about high strangeness in general, particularly where UFOs are seen, or Stan Gordon, the appearance of Bigfoot near UFO sightings, whatever it might be, I always wonder if it somehow maybe could potentially be connected. Also, people ask me, “17 years of doing these shows, what have you learned?”, and the one thing I think I have learned is that a lot of this stuff is real; I don’t know what it is, but I will tell you this: I believe that our existence and our reality is much weirder, stranger, and more complex than what we understand, and we only see a very small sliver of reality.
So that opens up a lot of different things for UFOs. Yeah, are there hoaxers? Absolutely. Are there drones and satellites and good people being mistaken? Absolutely. Is there military experimentation? Absolutely. I’m sure that there’s been many UFO reports that are secret military craft. But there’s that other category where people are telling the God’s honest truth and it’s not the military and it’s not Venus; it’s something else. I guess the big question is, what is that something else?
CHRISSY NEWTON: Yeah, and it only takes one to make it real. Like real-real. And to prove it – we prove one, that’s all you need. And being able to know what that is, I don’t know how close we are. I don’t know if we’ll ever know what they are or what’s going on. But if we’re able to do that, that’s going to be one of the most exciting times ever. And maybe we do know. That’s the other question. Maybe some people actually do know; they just don’t want us to know. That’s the hardest part around this. Do they know, do they not know? That could be American government; it could be tons of different people that work around this topic.
I just hope that if there is some form of knowledge and there is acknowledgment and people do actually know what’s going on with the American government, at some point in time, hopefully before the day I die, there will be full acknowledgment of exactly what it is.
JIM HAROLD: You’re hopeful. Do you think that will actually happen?
CHRISSY NEWTON: I don’t. [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: [laughs] The eternal optimist.
CHRISSY NEWTON: Yeah, I am hopeful, but my realistic side says if we haven’t gotten something in 75 years, then why would we get it now? The one thing I always say – and maybe I’m wrong with this, with disclosure, but I don’t really know if there’s such a thing as disclosure. People are pissed right now at me. I can hear everyone, all the UFO community, UFO Twitter, just pissed. [laughs] Steven Greenstreet cheered. [laughs]
But why I say that there’s no such thing as disclosure is that no matter what, when we answer one question, there’s going to be about 70,000 more that are going to happen after we answer one. Somebody’s going to get their handle on it, or if they have a handle on it, information’s always going to be trickled down to us. Once we answer one question, we’re going to go to the next one and the next one and the next one. We’re always going to be looking for disclosure, I feel, within this topic or around it.
Maybe we don’t know what’s actually going on, and maybe we know a little bit so we’re still searching for answers. If that’s the case, then disclosure will never really happen in that space. And to be honest, will people be happy? Are we living in disclosure now? There’s all those questions. For me, I don’t even really consider it. I don’t really use it in my lexicon anymore because I feel that it’s an ever-going process.
JIM HAROLD: Is it one of those things where “be careful what you wish for”? What if it’s something horrible?
CHRISSY NEWTON: Yeah, we hear that too. There’s that whole conversation about if it’s satanic or something like that. We hear about groups like the Collins Elite attached to it that might have a fundamental religious component to it, too. We use the word lightly – I’ll say “conspiracy,” because it’s considered such a negative word now – but those theories and conversations, for sure. I’ve always wondered too. Are we opening up Pandora’s box? It’s scary. Do we really want to go down the rabbit hole? All the clichés that I can use. [laughs]
I’m prepared to do it. That’s why I’m here. But it doesn’t mean that it’s not scary. And the closer I get to something or get to what I feel might be truth or understanding for myself for this topic, I’m still mindful of like, hey, this might be a scary road. It’s not nice – and I think all of us know this – when you have some form of conversation or a larger voice within a topic that is not fully publicized from the American government. For sure they’re looking at you or looking at us. Am I scared of that? No, because I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m not leaking all this classified information. But for sure it’s not nice to have that and for them to know who you are. I like my anonymity to a degree. [laughs]
But it is scary. If we do open Pandora’s box, I think we all have to be prepared that we have to face that. Do we want to know? I should ask you, Jim. Do you want to know, if we open up Pandora’s box?
JIM HAROLD: Maybe I want to know before I die. That would be good. But I don’t know if I want to know now.
CHRISSY NEWTON: With the exit out? [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: Yeah. I’m further along the road than you are, so I would like to know, but I’d be willing to wait a little bit. But I guess I do want to know. It would be good to know, I think. And it has a lot of implications. I mean, let’s say that the report happens – “Aliens are real. We’re admitting it. There are aliens out there.” That changes a lot of things for people’s belief, humanity’s place in the universe spiritually and so forth.
The thing that I always think about – and I think it was Michio Kaku that talked about something like this, so I’m going to steal liberally from what he was saying – I think of us maybe to the aliens as ants. Let’s say I go outside to cut my grass and there’s an anthill. It’s not like “I want to make those ants suffer,” but I’m going to knock it over because I don’t want them to infest my area. It’s not this malicious thing.
But what if we’re like ants to them? If somebody is going to build something, like construct a road, they’re not going to stop because there’s an anthill there. They’ll just pave right over it. What if we’re like the ants to aliens? Not even consequential enough to really think about. From an anthropological point of view, they mighty study us just for informational and educational purposes, but they think we’re so insignificant that they’ll just pave right over us.
CHRISSY NEWTON: For sure. If there is another lifeform out there that is way more intelligent than us, then for sure we’re the ants. Just hope that they’re friendly, if anything. The universe is so vast; we look at how many exoplanets we’re finding, even in our own solar system, we’re looking at potential life. This could be from small, minute life to something larger as well.
Even for example if we ended up going to Europa and finding some form of life in the oceans of Europa. That’s totally possible, and it’s a conversation right now. I believe NASA is sending a probe to look for that and to see if there actually is some form of lifeform. If it’s small, then we’re doing the exact same thing – they’re ants to us in that space, really, then, too.
So who knows? It’s so vast, and we’re learning so much more. Kepler is out there doing its thing. Maybe we’ll learn more about our solar system. We’re finding Planet Nine, potentially, too. That’s something that’s been a big conversation, and hopefully we’ll be able to find that within the next X amount of years and that’ll teach us even more about our solar system. So I think there’s possibly some form of life somewhere, and for sure I think the ant theory does make sense because we do the exact same thing. Why wouldn’t other species or anything else do exactly what we do? Can’t everybody just be curious? And why wouldn’t they be curious?
JIM HAROLD: Good point. So what else is going on at The Debrief that you’d like to mention for the UAP and UFO aficionados out there?
CHRISSY NEWTON: We should be doing a Part 2 of this pilot. That will be coming out – well, you can go back and look now, because I believe this will come out in November. You can go back to the website and see our follow-up to the racetrack UFO conversation and story that Micah Hanks and I have been developing together. So more there. Hopefully we’ll have more on the unclassified report and what comes out. We’ll see if maybe they give us some Easter eggs. That would be really exciting. I’m not holding my breath, but we’ll see. [laughs]
And then we should be covering Moment of Contact as well. I should be doing an interview with James Fox coming up, speaking with him about that and his experience creating it, along with talking to Paul Hynek. My plan is to have Paul – if anyone doesn’t know, it’s Allen Hynek’s son who worked on Project Blue Book. I’ll be talking to Paul Hynek about his experiences with his father and growing up with such a brilliant man. So lots of fun things in the UFO space to look forward to.
JIM HAROLD: Indeed, indeed. Well, Chrissy, where can everybody connect with everything you do – The Debrief, the podcasts, and the whole litany of projects you’re involved in?
CHRISSY NEWTON: Everyone can go to thedebrief.org. That’s our main website. And then if they want to follow me on Twitter, they can go to @chrissynewton. It’s my full name. And then Instagram is @beingchrissynewton, and you can always go to YouTube and type in “The Debrief,” and that’s where my show pops up called Rebelliously Curious with Chrissy Newton. But I’m also on all streaming platforms as well, so you can listen to the audio version as well.
JIM HAROLD: Chrissy Newton, it’s been a lot of fun. I appreciate it, and continued success in everything you do. Thanks for being a part of the program today – or being the program, I should say, today.
CHRISSY NEWTON: Awesome. Thanks for having me, Jim.
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