Mike Clelland | Owls, Aliens, & Synchronicity

00:05 It's rough and masters almost surely have a There's clearly maybe something there beyond And until you've thoroughly tested every last close chest You'd think you know the less you really do That's true, Dr. Seuss! Edward without THC Cause we know they're lying to us Just don't without THC The higher side chat show Our one company

00:44 Alright, Hireside Chatters. When it comes to what lies in the weird end of the paranormal pool you'll find hundreds and thousands of experiences that people just can't explain. Abductions, visitations, glowing orb sightings, missing time telepathic messages intense synchronicities altered states of consciousness and a handful of other experiences in Pandora's Box We've heard about these stories before, but what might have flown a little bit under your radar is just how connected owls seem to be to these odd ordeals. And we can get stranger still because it's the curious crossroads between paranormal and conspiracy that really lights my fire. From the most hidden symbol on the dollar bill to the towering stone statue at Bohemian Grove, it becomes obvious the owl is of utmost importance in many dark corners we like to shed light on. It's today's guest Mike Clellan I truly have

01:31 for the big aha moment when it comes to owls because he's written the quintessential book on these strange connections titled The Messengers Owl Synchronicity and the UFO Abductee. Mike is also an avid outdoorsman, a personal experiencer of strange phenomenon which she has been cataloging on his hidden experience blog along with the strange occurrences of others for quite some time And if you want to explore the strange connections between this majestic bird of the night and anomalous events, there simply is no better person on this island earth to do it than The Owl Guy himself. A true honor and a pleasure Mike my man welcome to The Higher Side! Thank you so much that was a great introduction Thanks man I try

02:10 Of course, thank you for doing this. I think your work is pretty amazing it is quite a niche but its very cool to be the world's foremost expert on anything really especially something like this and your 400 page book is such a fun read because its story after story connection after connection and we've so many of your own related experiences throughout it's quite a ride Before we get into some of those early formative moments for you, broadly speaking for people who might not be familiar with the owl's relationship to high strangeness give us a bit of an overview. How strong is this linkage? Yeah, yeah. No this is one thing that I've come up with it confronted plenty of times where I realize that What do they call it when you when you try to pitch a movie right? You know It's called your elevator speech and then got it You gotta give some the talk in less than a minute or something So that's I found that that's about impossible To get but just uh, you know Lay it out there and give it to you and one what I can say Is that from some personal experiences

03:13 And then some book knowledge initially, I'm not the first one to find note this. Other researchers and authors have pointed this out oftentimes from their own personal experiences that there is a connection between UFO contact and Owls, there's two ways to look at that. There's the screen memory we can talk about that in depth if you want but for now the screen memory aspect where let's say someone has a Missing time event That they later realizes an abduction There might be a sort of curious memory related to that driving down the road at night and seeing a four-foot tall owl Mm-hmm And then arriving home and they're some hours late

03:53 That's very, very common. That kind of story so when you explore that you realize that that owl the four foot tall owl There's no owl on earth. It's actually that tall? that account doesn't really You know that turns out to be some sort of psychic curtain or psychic costume let's say that the alien entity would be projecting into the mind of the observer. That shows up enough times over and over again, I feel pretty confident saying it straight-up like that but my interest, my deeper interest is real owls that show up in the lives of these people and initially I had my own set of curious owl experiences hit me pretty hard in around 2006

04:43 And then after that I started looking at my own experiences and i would ask people the same question out all i would asking a researchers in people have had to direct contact experience it asking the same question. Have you ever had an unusual experience with our certain odd experience with ours and its not a hundred percent, But it was enough. There's enough of a pattern there where people say, you know that's funny No one has ever asked that and then they would tell you a story in the story was often so weird and weird in a way that goes beyond The screen memory aspect of it and weird in a way that kind of I'll jump to the conclusion in a way Weird in a way that makes me think

05:24 that the present owl mythology, right? So you open up a dusty old book in the library on mythology. It's gonna talk about owls. Owls show up in Greek mythology and Egyptian mythology and Babylonian and American Indian mythology and Norse mythology. These owls show up and they all have this similar theme that they bring a message, that their messengers. And my sense is that this ancient mythology is continuing right now playing out presently Most I mean the most of the documentation in the book is about the UFO abduction Aspect of it, but I find that it's also showing up and people who meditate or people who are in shamanic initiation Like the process of working to be a shaman Or people who have loved one who has died so I will show up in other aspects of highly charged human experiences beyond me obviously a UFO contact experience as a highly charged human experience and

06:14 science, as is the death of a loved one. As is deep meditation as is shamanic initiation so these other realms also share the owl has let's say a totem animal and so what I did in the book I think and what I wish I could do when an elevator talk I can't I wish I could just tell stories often story after story after story to prove my point I may be overdid it a little bit in the book and then do a little bit of speculation and then see how all these stories kind of link together because I feel that there is a connecting thread with all these accounts.

06:55 That's a pretty good summary man and I do think, I agree that it is the totality of these instances these tales that really get you to think well there must be connection here some kind of mechanism behind the abduction phenomenon behind glowing orbs even they come up and in the owl. And is super strange but there isn't any other animal that is connected to this phenomenon like the owl is Well, the deer is I think yeah sure deer show up in and then I think it's funny because people sort of say oh what's the next book? And I'm like well the next book needs to be a book on deer but I don't think I want to write it cause they just haven't had that many. I've been telling any kind of meaningful dear experiences but people have so there's a you know deer is also a mythic animal shows up all over the place and all kinds of uh... It has a different symbolism its not as foreboding obviously as an owl and true deer is not as intimidating as an owl

07:50 So, yeah. There are other animals connected with this and deer would be the one-two on the top of the list and then you could go down the line in things like cats and things like that show up too. Interesting! Yeah I've heard from your previous interviews and stuff... You mentioned deer and it kind of surprised me. Cats? I see though you mentioned Oliver or Oscar the cat in the book who was stay at a hospital and could tell when people were going to die. You would spend time in their room the day before they died, I've had my cat stare at weird things in the room, I know he wrote about that too It's weird animals seem to be able to see beyond the veil At least some species of them can see beyond the veil in ways that we cant

08:29 That's the mythology. I mean, that's absolutely the mythology That's what owls do they see into the darkness they see into the nighttime and that's a that's if that's a fact right? That's like you know any owl biologist could tell you exactly The reasons why and how they see into the darkness but ancient man would have known the same thing just from observing it all yeah And from that is born the mythology the mythology of owls seeing into the darkness that very quickly becomes a metaphor for seeing into other realms. Now you take that one step further, the owl has to travel through those realms they fly into the darkness something we can't do and I think that we live in an era with electric light bulb just a few generations ago there was no such thing as that so night time must have had very different meaning

09:16 to our ancestors and not even our ancient ancestors. So the owl would fly into the darkness, a realm we are very uncomfortable with, very poorly equipped to travel in but the owl is very skilled at traveling in the darkness they would Travel to this other realm, but then the next step the next logical Step would be they have to return and they have to come back and that with them They would bring a message And and it we you know when I would get these reports. And I mean, I've got cheese I guess I don't know how many reports in some form or another I've accumulated on this whole thing I don't think there's a way to actually count them because Some of them are little more anecdotal and some of them are very thorough

09:51 But the amount of times that people have just said it straight up long before I'd you know coined the title of the book They would say well, how this messenger arrived at my windowsill? You know, I you know then I came home from work and there was a messenger on my doorstep, you know And they would tell about an owl being there and they would use the word straight-up without any prompting for me. Oh I love it man, and let's get into some of those stories tell us about maybe some of the stranger events that brought you down this path Personally some of the things that happened. Where did this all start for you? Well, so in 2006 I was living out west I would have been 44 years old I think and I was living near Grand Teton National Park and

10:32 Beautiful place and i was doing a lot of camping so I would go out for one night it was very normal for me just to go For one night sleep out under the stars and then come back. It was beautiful, close to this pristine wonderful wilderness environment And I met a young woman and she had been living in the area all summer long. And I said, Oh you must have been doing a lot of camping just know I never camped once. I was like oh that's terrible let's go. So I took her out camping for one night and we didn't bother to bring a shelter because just the weather report and that you know the weather patterns there was no reason to would've been it's gonna be a beautiful nights so I think either the end of September very early October I think it was actually very early October 2006 You know we hike into the mountains

11:13 And I taught for an outdoor school for a long time, so I'm very comfortable in this environment. So I'm sitting on a big flat rock and I'm making dinner and she says something and I think to myself like wow! This was a stranger in a way it's like this first date in the way you know is complete stranger. She said a few things we're talking about and I think to myself this is really incredible. I didn't expect this. I was impressed there was depth that I didn't expect and then at that moment an owl flew over And then a second owl, and then a third owl flew over. And these owls flew around us as the sun set and the moon rose in this beautiful environment. They would land on branches near us, they would swoop down low right over us... So these three owls just hung out with us for the next couple of hours! The sun went down

11:59 And we laid our sleeping pads out on the ground and we laid on the ground and looked straight up at the big starry skies. We were high in the mountains, so the skies are astounding that latitude in that elevation. And for just one second thought, the stars would be blotted out. It happened silently. Owls fly very quietly. And it was a really magical powerful experience. The next day we walked out and we were both on fire like oh! That was the coolest thing ever like owls Oh my gosh So I said to her, like listen if I ever go camping. I'm gonna give you a call and she said great so four days later We went camping again So we went to a different part of the mountains and walked in and it was little colder this time And it was cold enough that when it came time to go to bed. We took a shelter this time to cool tent and I said let's walk up that hill and just will generate some heat by walking uphill and watch the sunset mean come back down and climb In the tent will be warm because it was just felt like his little bone chilling just to hang out So we walk up this this gentle Hill It's a big wide open Vista

12:55 And it takes about 10 minutes to walk up and then we get to the top. As we get to the top, this owl lands on a branch and then a second owl flies around us in this third owl lands right at our feet. This is the same person four days later and it lasted for about I'm going to say 45 minutes. This time they got really close like astoundingly close. These were real owls. I talked about the screen memory aspect as well aware of UFO reports and UFO I've been reading UFO books at the time. So, I knew about the screen memory thing right in the moment and was thinking like oh gosh you know these are real owls but right in the moment I also had another thought which was very clear and I didn't say it then but I'm saying now this voice in my head said this has something to do with UFOs

13:43 Throughout my life had a handful of experiences some in my youth and some as a young adult that certainly seem to imply or indicate Like UFO contact. I mean the textbook stuff you would read in a book by Bud Hopkins. I Had those experiences? I ignored them, I denied them But when I saw these owls close up real owls this voice in my head said this has something to do with UFOs In the aftermath of that, a few years later I started an online blog. Mostly what I was writing about initially was my synchronicities which I've had a lot of and they make for perfect little blog posts right? You know they're just kind of short you can tell them they got nice little punchlines so their perfect for a blog site. What happened is when one of the first stories that I put on on this site was this story I just told with this woman Kristen of seeing three owls two times four days apart

14:32 different parts of the mountains. So I wrote that up as an essay and then it, like reached out to her and I called her up she had long since moved away from the area and I hadn't been in touch with her in a while and I called her we talked on the phone and I said you know Kristen I have to ask what were you talking about? The very first night when the very first owls appeared she said oh I remember exactly what I was talking about! I was giving my deepest most heartfelt definition of what God meant to me Mm-hmm and that took an already powerful magical experience and just tipped it into the transcendent And I have to say that I treated the subject differently after she told me that like I recognized The power in what she was saying. And from that point on I took this study and the documentation of this

15:21 Seriously so that's what's been going on for you know that was two thousand and nine when the blog started so that has been eight years now they've been actively studying researching this one little. Small corner and i just been astounded at the bottomless pit, You would think that you would just collect a few reports and write up a little three-page blog post and be done with it, but thatís not how it played out. It has had depth that just left me astounded. Yeah, man. It is quite a rabbit hole and real owls are definitely interesting but when we look at the stories in the more mystical perceived owls category meaning visions of owls or seeing them in altered states or even these screen memories from abduction experiences you mentioned as different as they can be have you found any major commonalities or conditions that unite those type of strange experiences?

16:19 Well, I know that people have taken mushrooms and there's a woman in the book. Her name is Shana Holman and she's a shaman. She lives on the West Coast and she wrote about her experience with a white owl that she encountered while under what was referred to as heroic dose five grams of mushrooms. Cheers for that! Yeah so more power to her yes. So she had an experience or first experience doing usually when you're doing this it comes up point when they initiate who's working with a mentor has to break away and do the ceremony on their own without the tutelage or the tutor alongside. So when she did that, she said she was confronted by this huge

17:04 White owl she said her but she was in her bedroom. She said the entire interior of the bedroom turned to white feathers and She saw this giant like she described it like seven foot tall owl You know in her room and they all said to her is you are no longer woman who yearns? You are now a woman who knows And in a way that Is the transformation that transformation from yearning to knowing I Or let's say yearning to being comfortable with the unknown. That may be a better way to put it because I don't think anyone truly knows the core of what's truly going on with this stuff, but some people are more comfortable and can navigate the waters a little better so her account

17:52 And I later got her on the phone. Listen, have you had any UFO experience? That's funny she'd ask. I just had one recently and she described this thing where she lying in her back and there is a shiny disc up in the nighttime sky and heard her friend both see it like oh my gosh we're seeing UFO so when I asked her she could answer yes she has had a UFO experience though I don't necessarily put her in the category of UFO abductee but I put her in this gray category of someone who has the same transformative experience that a UFO contact would have and also this powerful experience with owls. Now, this woman, Shauna her account came out on Monday and then on Tuesday I get a follow-up account from another woman and her name is Lori she's just giving me permission to use her real name her real her name her pseudonym in the book is Leslie

18:46 Basically had the mother of all stories so her account is that her son was about nine years old at the time with showing signs of being psychic and this is a woman who was very. Comfortable and at peace with her own experiences with being having UFO contact. So her son is showing signs of you know psychic stuff so she sits in the backyard and says well, let's play some games Okay Let's try some dice tosses You know guess what? The next ice is then I got a deck cards out Guess what the next card is gonna be and that boy was doing really well And during this during this class an owl shows up on a branch his white owl

19:26 And then it hangs around for the next three years, you know they get in the car and they go to the grocery store and the owl flies with them to the grocery store. They get to the grocery store and the owl's on a lamppost and they go into the grocery store like do their shopping and they leave and come home and all follows the car back home for three years this goes on there comes a point when When this woman wants to leave to become a hypnotherapist, she has to move and take some classes. So she takes her son and they leave and they leave this house where the owl is in the day after they leave, they get a phone call from their neighbor. And he said you know, Lori I have some terrible news your white owl we found it dead in the backyard So and this woman has other owl stories that are equally remarkable. And and this is a woman who unlike Shauna, Shauna the shaman who saw the six foot tall visionary owl on tripping on mushrooms This woman is very very straight up about her UFO contact experiences the woman Laurie Now so I get this one call in a Monday one call on a Tuesday here these two stories back to back They're both the same age Lori and Shana they're both

20:31 Adopted hmm, which is very strange. They're both born in Ontario Canada they're both I mean they're not sisters that was the first thing across my mind like oh my gosh and then They and I will also say both of these women have very striking blue eyes Now they both had experiences with owls that both women are now working as therapists one in a very traditional setting Counseling family counseling doing hypnosis the other one in a more let's say esoteric realm Therapists through and then the role of shaman. So there was a power to me These two stories are related not only in in the details but

21:12 But in the fact that they arrived within 24 hours of each other. So this so there's also the title of the book is I will synchronicity the UFO factory, so this synchronistic aspect is something that you know You know, like as I was working on the book. I felt like I was on a boat on an open ocean right and I was just kind of being my compass was leading me wherever it wanted to lead me Like I had no sense of direction at all where I needed to go But I depended on this compass to lead me you know in the open waters where there was no markings to find my way And so I just trusted that the compass of synchronicity

21:52 And this is a perfect example of the story I just told. These two stories back to back, to me the most important part of those two stories is their connection coming 24 hours apart Yeah, man. That is interesting and synchronicities I just love how they come through layer after layer and when you see how deep they stack up it's got to make you wonder if something else is pulling the strings And the similarities between those two women that kind of reminds me of the stories I've heard where Irish people say that they can see fairies or mystical creatures That others can't because of some genetic component which comes up in the abduction scenario too The idea of a bloodline connection

22:31 That it's this multi-generational thing and I don't know but there does seem to be a certain kind of person that is more Susceptible to these things in the paranormal realm There you know, so yes. So that would be like the synchronicity prone individual. I think that's actually a term used by There's a researcher, there are couple of researchers who use that same term. One is Dr Kirby Surprise who I write about in the book at length and the other is a researcher named Gibbs Williams both of these guys would be great interviews for you and Gibbs says something similar like synchronous, you know, synchronicity prone personality so there are people who are prone to this things and I think that they're people obviously prone to UFO abduction

23:13 Mm-hmm. Um, there was a point in early on and UFO research where if someone saw two UFOs you would say well this is ridiculous You know statistically it's impossible that two people would you know? Or one person would see to UFOs So he would take their reports and you would crumble them up and throw him in the wastebasket But now we're finding It's exactly the opposite Where you talk to someone who seen a UFO and you corner him a little bit then you realize they've seen ten right, you know so that people have having these Contact experiences it doesn't happen just once it's an ongoing thing so you know like synchronicities and like abduction these things are reoccurring I think everyone.

23:50 Can experience synchronicity and i'm quite certain everyone has I think it's the awareness. And then would say I spoke to this wonderful woman she's an abductee a spoke to her conference in she, she told the story about one secret city that led to another choose animated shoes actually like pulling right so she standing there is pretending like she's pulling like pulling on a big rope right just point towards my father synchronously pull on at least this other synchronicity and then she says at the end of this rope is your destiny And I thought that was so wonderful. So yes, so I think that if you are aware You can trust synchronicity you can use synchronicity like a um, you know Like you would use the advice of a life coach. Mm-hmm. So yeah poetic man. I'm with ya. I'm drinking a lot of coffee I'm jacked up on coffee right now. So Synapses are firing really well right now

24:42 Beautiful, beautiful. So I find the screen memories aspect to be just super interesting and we talked a little bit about stories where people see UFOs and also see owls you have stories in the book where people see orbs and then also see owls but seems to be some overlap in an area where people see greys that maybe turn into owls or orbs that turn into owls, or they see four-foot owls that might be some type of screen for a grey that they're actually seeing. That's a really strange area? I mean do you think there is some kind of intelligence hiding behind the owl facade perhaps?

25:19 Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, is the director of Profile Investment Services and the host So here this woman, she's a young woman at the time. She is in her 40s now and at the time she was 19 years old and working in summer camp for girls so she is walking between basically just between two parts of the camp right? So she's like on a little path and you can hear girls in background and she's just walking along and comes around to corner full daylight full sunshine bright meadow. She's on this little path standing next to the path it's a grey alien

26:07 like full daylight and she had only at that point she recognized that she had these contact experiences and felt that they were related to aliens, but here it was full daylight. And up until then every experience you'd ever had happened at night so she just like is shocked right now She said she doesn't she's so shocked that she doesn't stop walking sure like feeder in like autopilot Just walk walk walk So she sees this alien the aliens he's her and then There's this telepathy that takes place in 100% of the accounts. And so she has this telepathic kind of like Reverberation like this echo chamber and she hears this being go owl owl owl owl owl And she watches boom it morphed into a four-foot tall owl This four foot tall gray being with the bald head and the big black eyes in the skinny body Suddenly turns into a 4 foot tall. Oh, and then she watches this I'll turn around and run awkwardly Into the woods now

27:08 I also have an account in the book with deer. So here's a woman, there's a woman she's at her house. There's a bright flash outside." She was like that's weird that was a strange flash and wonder what that is? So she walks out of front door and stands on our front porch And she looks to the side of the porch then standing right next to the house alongside the porch are four spindly gray aliens Right you know the classic just what i described before The big head, the big black eyes, skinny body...she looks at these aliens they look at her And then all of a sudden they turn into four deer and they begin walking backwards in the walk backwards around the corner super creepy image so those are.

27:50 Two accounts which are rare. It's very unusual to hear those accounts I've heard a few like that, but what it tells me is that there's some I mean, obviously I don't think that they physically Transposed from a great alien into an owl. I think there was some sort of psychic Curtain being drawn in front of the perceptions of the observer. So So that it was projected into the mind of the observer, that they were not seeing something frightening like an owl. They were seeing something a little more benign like a deer or an owl

28:33 I love it man i mean next time i see either one of those animals and definitely gonna give a nice hard luck and make sure i'm looking at the real deal in that some kind of weird facade weather just so you know there's like there's a lot out there right so people see all the time they're very common bird reason we don't see them obviously is just cuz their night burden where we go. They're basically hard to see because in the forest at night, we're not going to see them. But they are out there with plenty of owls, lots and lots of owls. I'll be busy then. You call the book The Messengers and this of course does relate heavily to the synchronicity aspect, but you did mention this trend of people who've gotten these literal messages telepathically in their encounters

29:27 Many in the book seem quite personal or kind of cryptic But is there a common theme among the messages that might give us clues into what or why this is happening any kind? Of agenda behind it. Well, it sounds like something Yoda would say to Luke Skywalker and away You know, I mean, yes, yeah, it's like it's kind of cryptic Yeah sure so this one woman Rebecca Hardcastle Wright has wrote a book she coined the term exo politics I'm pretty sure she was, I think she actually wrote a book called Exo Politics. And I think Michael Sala actually coined the term so she's very forthright about her experiences. She is very grounded. She's very smart and she was living in Phoenix Arizona. She was in like just a dumb parking lot at some strip mall in the suburbs of Phenix. She looks up on a light post

30:19 the parking lot and there's an owl full daylight huge owl standing up there she looks up at this owl, and she gets this telepathic voice in her mind that says you are not who you seem to be which is great like I mean if a script writer wanted to put that into a kind of a mystical movie it couldn't come up with A better line than that right? You're not who you seem to be. And She felt that she was gonna have a visitation that night what she did Then I asked her like was that a real owl. She said, I don't think so I think that was a projection of some sort which is interesting because it gets to the point where like You know Like I asked like okay did it was at a real outlet people are like you know? Like maybe maybe not I'm not sure So there's no easy answers for any these things but that was that's there's one example of someone who got a very cryptic You know one line message and then I have another person had long conversation with an owl in the woods And I would have to refer to my notes to actually describe what that is

31:15 whole conversation was, but the gist of it was exactly the same. I think the initial line she asked the owl... So she walks into the woods and she's on a hike and she felt strongly that she was going to meet an alien that day. And then her name is Keras and she walks into the woods all of a sudden she's like well I should leave the path. She walks off the path. Well I should walk over here. She climbs over some rocks and stuff. Well I gotta sit on this rock She's on the rock. Well, no I need to sit a little over it No, no, I need a little so here okay over here This is right where you just said she sits there for a little while and says pretty spot And then she realizes she's lined up Exactly So there's this like the way the bushes are arranged She can see this owl kind of through this one little gap in The bushes and she says it great horned owls common all big they're loved with larger holes They could beautiful face

32:12 So she's has a soul stare down with his owl and she went into the woods fully expecting that day to see an alien And she says are you an alien or are you a fairy? She'd been doing all kinds of fairy research at that point Which is blends, you know Some of your four researchers if I had said that then they take my report crumpled up in throw it in the trash But so she says are you an alien or are you a fairy and the owl replies telepathically into her mind Why can't I be both your both? Boom which is not again a great line. I mean if a script writer Wanted to create an a beautiful eerie Transcendent mood in a movie that's the line they would put in the script So I'm just struck at them at the power of these stories Yeah

33:01 Yeah, I love that one. Karis Melinda Brown – I had that one highlighted to have you mention because it does have that fairy aspect. She would also be a great person to talk to on your podcast. She's very well-spoken. Nice! That is just one connection that has really stuck with me is Old ancient fairy lore and the modern abduction experience in the way that the two kind of dovetail with, you know People being taken in the night or taking kids or being in a another realm and not being able to get out I think yeah Maybe the alien abduction experience is just kind of a modern techno Centric lens on a phenomenon. That's been with us since the beginning of humanity perhaps

33:45 I agree completely i mean this is all just speculation right no proof of it that what i have a sort of a wealth of anecdotal reports you know so thats when i was working on the book with people would. This is your husband years working in the book and people say so what are up to these days well we're writing a book like you kidding reading books about, And I said, it's on owls. They're interesting owls? Well what about owls and then this is the point when i had to kind of size them up and like oh gee do I open like the UFO thing Do I start the UFO conversation because if I do like I'm going to be stuck there for an hour so So I kinda have to size them up and basically If I had to you know Be on my way in a few minutes I would say well You know It's a book on mythology That's very interesting What's your premise? My premise Is that the ancient myths

34:32 are playing out present day. The ancient owl myths are repeating, playing out present day for real people, real experiences the same way they would have played out for our ancients. The way these ancient myths evolved and emerged I'm convinced are based on real experiences. They might have been visionary experiences, but that's still an experience that can be incorporated into the campfire myths around the village." So that was my answer and I hold to that answer now say as I said earlier you know the highly charged experience in a meditation shamanic initiation death

35:10 UFO contact being taken by the fairies. These are all highly charged human experiences that lie outside our normal perceived reality and then for some reason the owl seems to be the Totem of these experiences here, I'll give you one story here There's a fellow his name is Peter manz. He said Reiki healer he does this very interesting Work with spine alignment very practical kind of kind of stuff, but it's like a it's like I don't want to be careful Years at words. Are you is? I mean it's like magic in a way so he um He's powerful interesting Spiritual guy and he comes over to our house for dinner. He was in the area. He's from Germany and

35:53 And he asked the question so we can i'm working on this book and also make an interrupt me in our standing in our living room my partner andrea night at your house and when the living room and any says. Oh that's interesting cause i had a native american tell me that i had it told him my total was all and its sitting right here, He puts his hand up kind of near his ear, his left ear. His left shoulder is my head but all sitting on my left shoulder here and that's what the shaman told me now he didn't know it but from where he was standing I Had a direct line-of-sight so i'm standing in the living room He's standing in front of me behind him as the window And out on the porch Is a totem pole and at the top of the totem pole is a white owl? And when he put his hand

36:43 Over his shoulder and kind of made the little gesture like here's where the owl was. His hand was basically Petting the head of the owl on the totem pole So he said I have an owl as a totem, and he was petting from my visual sight He was petting an owl on a totem pole like hmm That's not in the book that happened after the book was completed but it is like Like where do you go from there? You know, I mean that is so perfect. It is so clean and it is also Deeply personal for me because I was the only one that saw it right? I'm the only one that had to that we had the visionary experience of his hand lining up with the owl Yeah That is an interesting one. I wrote down one of my favorite stories here about

37:32 It's this woman named Ashley and it's because of the cryptic text on her phone in relation to the experience. It starts with her UFO sighting where she says as you write, I had to pull over on the side of the road there was a large flying object hovering in the sky above me. It was making no sound whatsoever and was flying very low There weren't any flashing lights on it, only a red dangling string that was lit up. There were three cars pulled over behind me and the guy from the first car was taking pictures. The pictures were unclear you could only make out the red light After seeing this UFO I started noticing some weird things. I started having encounters with owls Why owl? I have no idea

38:09 She also started having strange dreams with both owls and UFOs together. Along with that, she wrote about an odd experience with her mobile phone. Two weeks ago I woke up to a text from my boyfriend that said... What the hell are you talking about? When i checked my outbox, I noticed four strange texts that I didn't remember sending And I saved them into my phone! And this is just amazing Text 1 It will identify all planes in the sky, will detect unauthorized flying objects and will warn them of aliens nearby. Text message 2 Yes destroy it we must hold our ground. Text message 3 You will remain undetected. Text message 4 They threaten us but they are weak report back to me

38:52 And she says, I don't know what these mean. They don't make very much sense and now that is interesting man because i think there's some overlap when it comes to the frequencies of our electronic devices in these other realms It's hard to nail down but that story because of those odd creepy details that seem like fairly intense messages almost military in their nature But I liked that one I love that one too and i got a hold of her and had a long talk with her. So this woman, it took a lot of work to find her because this was like some little thing in some little report and it was online and I had to figure out who this person was. So finally got ahold over talked on the phone she is now working as not quite a shaman but if she's studying alternative healing and spiritual healing

39:47 And I don't know what it means. So yeah, so why is that any different than then? Whatever is controlling reality, right? Whatever is controlling these synchronicities You know that I don't think that it It's a big leap for them to put them on text messages in my upcoming book the follow-up book that I'm working right now. I have almost a similar story Which is very unusual because there's one thing that's funny here There's a there's a spelling error In it. It's not unauthorized vehicles its own other eyes It says will detect unauthorized flying objects and warn them of aliens nearby now. That's a great on other eyes I mean, that's so perfect now. I have another account where there's also a single miss spelling my sense is that perhaps like the secret government could have Obviously they could have sent her some text messages just to mess with her right? Um

40:45 Here's a UFO witness. There is plenty of evidence that UFO witnesses have been messed with you know, like just very simple things like yeah Like getting you know clicking noises on their phones or their mail being opened and now this is like come on It's like it's like the 21st century Nobody like needs to hear a click on their phone too. Like that's like I mean Don't you think they would have figured that out how to like tap someone's phone without putting a look click noise on it? So but that's what people are reporting like this obvious harassment That's like meant to be Noted and maybe this falls into that. Maybe it's paranormal I don't know but what is very interesting is, I mean she's not like a conspiracy theorist That's going on the David Icke tour You know she's dedicating herself to helping people through holistic means Which is also something that shows up over and over again? I cannot tell you what I mean when I was doing this research I just would always do the same thing in a piece of paper I'd write down some key things and then on this piece of paper. I would write Reiki

41:44 And then at some point I say, Hey what are you doing for anything interesting? Doing any sense of psychic stuff or any kind of. You know and then they would say well I'm a Reiki therapist or I'm a Reiki master or you know and so this just got checked off. No way do how to like figure percentage but in a way that does not match you know like if he just pulled people at random at the shopping mall with the people that I was talking to Were that there's a consistency of Reiki therapy or hands-on healing. That was just off the charts So what does that mean? You know, how do we I mean, I have one guy he's a teamster right? He's a truck driver he's not like

42:19 He does not fit the new age caricature let me put it that way you know he's like listening to ACDC driving his truck and he is not listening to, you know sitting in the lotus position of the thing to win him hill music keys. He's a and he said you got this thing if you had beautiful contact experience as he said you all the sudden a few years ago i just have this overwhelming pull to study reiki and I became a reiki master Seems a lot of context given the person that he's you know, they would perceive him to be So where you know like yes. Where do you go with all this? I'm glad you picked that story out. I like that story a lot and it's funny because I contacted her when I was working on this updated story in the second book which also has this odd phantom text message, and I don't have in front of me but it's equally as cryptic." And I said like what do you make of this? She was just baffled she says, �I don�t know. It is so weird! I have no idea what to think.�

43:15 Yeah, that stuff's great because there is a little physical trace of something strange. So this relationship between these experiences and shamanism that we've been talking about I wrote down a quote you have in the book from an author Joe Llewells Joel Lewis, he'd be another person would be great for you to talk. Yeah I mean there's no shortage for sure and You asked him about the shamanism connection He said when it comes to these encounters with non-human intelligences The people who are having these experiences are many times rather unwillingly being dragged into a shamanic apprenticeship The people having these experiences are being taught how to heal their consciousness is being elevated They're being given opportunities to help people many of them will leave their jobs

43:57 and then become Reiki masters, massage therapists and hypnotherapists. All of these can be seen as forms of shamanic activity We need shamans! And if society doesn't provide it the universe will!" That is so poetic and it really sums up... I actually got chills just reading that just now I literally got the chills It's great. It is definitely a great little paragraph that sums up this whole realm. frightening negative experiences that they see as traumatic and haven't gone down that road that Joe Lowell's says but but I mean, I'm saying that there's a Percentage. I don't know what it is But it's a large enough percentage of people who have had these contact experiences who then go down this road? mm-hmm of helping people and you are totally right And that is what I was gonna ask you Is that

44:55 Is there a counterpoint an owl centric counterpoint to maybe the those more nefarious medical style? Abductions in any way. Oh like it's hold him animal, you know That's a great question and I don't think I have an answer for that You know in a way um, you know that this I struggle so much with this the woman who saw the Gray alien along the side of the path And then it watched it turn into a to an owl or She and I have had long conversations, and she there's this kind of which i think is a little bit dangerous And i'm cautious to go down this road where people will say like you know it's the energy you bring to it right so if You have a negative experience because you have negative thoughts? You're bringing your own negativity into the experience in that and its framing your experience as

45:44 To be that so if you have wonderful blissful thoughts, then you'll have these, you know wonderful angelic experience That's a little naive to me And I think it puts a lot of like in just on a straight like, you know blaming the person for their bad experience. I mean Yeah Then this woman what do you know who I mentioned earlier with it? She basically we had this conversation she said, you know She summed it up best, you know like some people are just shit out of luck and they get the crappy experience And I don't know why some people get the blissful spirits and some people with the crappy. Some people get both and there's also There's a sense that the experiences themselves, I'm cautious to say this because this is almost like yearning. This is what I want it to be and but I certainly could cherry pick the evidence to make it seem like this, is that people start having dark frightening experiences somewhere along the way they come to terms with these

46:39 Things and then they turn into transformative experiences, then they fall into that list that Joel Lewis read so eloquently. Or that he just spoke off the cuff and I transcribed yeah Yeah, I mean...I would actually like that to be the case. But some experiences that i've heard about, and im sure youve heard about just as many as me, probably way more than me but some of them seem pretty objectively negative when your talking about burning needles being put in peoples eyes and these kind of things do experience some type of pain, maybe there is a positive altruistic motive behind that. I mean some medical procedures are going to be painful even though there's a positive end result but... Well and also i'll say so you know if you want to go have a visionary experience and you're living out in the reservation in South Dakota You know you go off into the plains and take eagle talons

47:40 Put them through the skin of your nipples on your chest and you have your village members, you know haul you up and suspend you like that until you break free and drop to the ground again. I mean that's part of the visionary experience in that shows up in one form or another and all kinds of religious ceremonies. You know the Catholicism thing where you like whip your own back with a cat-of-nine tails? So that is not without precedent in a transformative visionary experience That's true. So yes, so is it I mean are people physically getting needles put into their eyes? They're very well could be absolutely read plenty of accounts of that Is it some sort of visionary experiences it is it just as an

48:27 symbolic as The four-foot tall owl on the side of the road is something else happening, you know So I don't have an answer to these questions But it is to me worth wrestling with mm-hmm. Right? Yeah We're not gonna get through a lot of conclusions today, but it's still quite fun In terms of just the proximity of real owls to orbs and UFOs one curiosity you do mention it early in the book and it seems like you kind of evolve from It but might there be some type of energy or frequency that we don't recognize That relates to spiritual or alien experiences that owls can sensor are attracted to yeah I mean, that's I mean like so is the UFO right? So the UFO has all kinds of odd

49:15 Things that take place right so you know UFOs are oddly silent, you know They make almost they'd not only do they not make noise. They like suck any available noise out of the environment So it's not even when people say like oh this how this UFO flew over my head and it was quiet They don't say it's quiet there they felt they'll hammer at home and say like the crickets stopped the crunching of leaves stopped though You know the wind in the trees stopped It was weirdly silent the UFO flies past in it then the sound returns Now that's very common. as a you know, like we could sit at a you know with a with a material scientist who does You know work with with you know magnets or something like that and we could then postulate Like oh let's say this there the operating system of the flying saucer is using some advanced technology that Distorts the fabric of sound or the fabric of reality in some subtle way That we perceive his silence now if there's any animal on earth. That is attuned to have

50:15 amazing hearing. Owls have amazing eyesight, but their hearing is actually considered much better than their eyesight so they can see into the dark and they can hear a mouse rustling around on the forest floor half-a-mile away So we're talking about an animal that's you know that can fly at night through the trees They are uniquely attuned to perhaps hearing Sensing or seeing whatever it is that makes these UFOs fly around You know my cat in the book I'm referenced to my cat, you know sits near the heater right? So here's up. Here's a physical machine It has a it has a measurable output, you know Like warm air comes out of little vent My cat has a behavior it seeks that out and sits near it

51:03 There's something as simple as that going on with the owls, you know is it is the UFO just a glorified dog whistle that attracts the owl So that's one way to look at now. That actually that's a wonderful Avenue of speculation I think I exhausted in the book but there's more to it because it just gets so mysterious and it just gets so like laden with Symbology and sort of archetypal overlays at a certain point perhaps that might be partially true or In my sense, it's less than the grand chess player of reality. is setting that owl in place near the abductee, the same way that I would set a pawn on a different square. That would just be one move in the game. The pawn would then be set alongside the bishop let's say. That's my sense is somehow the fabric of reality is being... Oh, manipulated is the wrong term it's being stage managed

52:01 The same way you would do it for a theatrical play. And these characters are making their appearance and then stepping off the stage, so the owl would make an experience. There's an archetypal power to these owls. They're imbued with some sort of subconscious energy. Now I'm getting way out on a limb here but I feel like they can archetype this is like You know, like there are archetypal things. You know the hero Luke Skywalker is an archetype and owl is an archetype It is imbued with some deeper meaning And that we can sense it almost on a cellular level Like you know within our deeper consciousness and so it brings with it a deeper meaning So when I will landing on a branch happens all the time in the forest if it happens at a certain point In a certain person's life At a certain key moment

52:57 You know that that's imbued with something more powerful how it happens why it happens is all just speculation But but it certainly seems to it certainly does seem to happen Yeah, and if we want to really ramp the weird up to 11 I've had a lot of guests talk about the idea that we're in some type of Simulated environment or just an environment. That has been heavily monitored from a higher level with absolutely abductions and all this you know If we want to get really weird Could owls be some type of agents of these watchers, of some kind? Some kind of liaison. Some type of information gatherer that seems to be a middleman between those observers and us. A biological drone! I mean there is no animal more perfectly suited right... So instead of building a little machine you just

53:53 Co-opt the consciousness of a bird that can see in the dark can fly silently and then has amazing hearing, right? So if I'm having this conversation here an owl can sit You know, I'm quite certain an owl could sit 50 yards away from the window in here every single word. I'm saying more clearly than any Technological microphone that's ever been invented Mm-hmm That's it. Now we're talking man because when you get into the aspect that grays seem to morph into these things on occasion or even orbs, now that sounds like some type of biological technology

54:30 Yeah, and do I don't know do I have a story of an orb morphing into a to an owl in the book anywhere? I don't know if I do not specifically maybe not specifically but in the proximity So I thought that perhaps there was some overlap Okay Because I do have a great story with this young guy from New Zealand And he had been recording. This is nothing that shows up just people like you know, I've got all this footage of UFOs Nobody wants paying attention. I've just got one You know so he's been collecting all this video footage of orbs and He actually Have the quote directly in the book. I can't want to do it paraphrase for my head so he sees this beautiful orbs goes in the house Documents that right away sits down at the computer He sent me a long list of his documentation's pretty dry, right? You know 730 p.m You know on this night northeast direction. I saw this work This documentation says something like why is this happening? What does this mean? Why me and

55:24 You know these big profound questions there must be a more important reason behind this so he asked these questions and then he walks back outside And there's an orb hovering above a power line. So, he's looking up at this Then he realizes there's an owl on the power line So he's looking at the owl The owls looking at the orb and they're all kind of it seems like all three are kind of checking each other out you know They always checking him out They always check in or about yeah, you know that orb is kind of you know Seems to be very aware of this whole thing. The important part of that is that there was a like an internal questioning, you know why me? What does it all mean and then in a way An answer is the wrong way to put it because certainly not an answer but but he has this follow-up experience A minute later less than a minute later Of an owl and an orb together. And I'll the symbolic totem of these

56:20 I don't state it clearly in the book and it's interesting because I almost feel like I've come to a deeper genesis, in the year that the book has been out where The Owl is the totem animal of the transformational process. And its not an easy transformation. Some transformations are easy right? You just become an adult right? There are things that happen along the way maybe it's a struggle but you know so that transformation happens naturally the transformational process of a more profound and spiritual process or transformation that takes place. And I feel that the owl is the totem of that process, of that transformational process

57:08 Yeah, I can totally see that after getting through the book and all the stories that are in it. But man great time talking to you Mike! You really have secured yourself as the king of owl weirdness Well its actually been...I mean its funny because I haven't said this before because your not first person and I said It did not..I did not pick this it picked me so yeah well Before we go please remind people where they can get your book follow up on your blog or contact you with any other own related stories I'm easy to find you can just google my name Mike Cleland owls. I am not only the first thing that comes up I'm like the first ten things that comes up Oh, excuse me I'll rephrase that You can just Google UFOs and owls and I'm the first 10 or so things that come up on that list My blog is hidden experience dot blog spot calm. You could just google my name in hidden experience And it'll come right up

57:59 From there you can get the book. The books available on Amazon It has been selling remarkably well given that it's kind of a niche markety little esoteric thing and I was also kind of intimidating, but I Made a terrible mistake in a way by making such a thick book because it's a little intimidating to hold in your hand I worked hard to make the writing engaging and so it zips along but at the same time I really couldn't figure out what to pull out Yeah, so the book is available and yeah either of those places you can google my name or Google owls and UFOs it'll come up very cool. Well I had a great time Hopefully we can do it again in the future any other strange subjects on your horizon You mentioned you were working on a follow-up book? I believe right well the follow because again on owl So this is the follow book as though is the longer more complex stories that I just simply could not fit into the first book I had a collection of them And they are um

58:54 I've got a lot of them. So, I've got about 16 the book should read as like a book of short stories it'll probably be a little bit under 200 pages so much more modest books and this big fat book here on my desk in front me now and that will just be called Stories from the Messengers and it would be companion to this so they should sit on the shelf side by side is nice tidy couple so if you read one you know the next one which would Keep your interest and I think it'll be a standalone book where you don't really need to read the thick one in order to Read the thin one nice. Well, I look forward to that and definitely thanks for talking to me today I couldn't have done it without you and take care of my good man Thank you so much. This was great You got it all right people Mike Clellan closing out the month of January

59:39 I think he covers some interesting ground, right? Owls are one of the most fascinating animals and association with shamanism and aliens seems to be pretty established. And I just think it's a good return to the paranormal side of the coin. THC has been pretty political lately, the whole world has really and it's good to take a little bit of a breather but I'd say this is definitely a worthy higher-side style exploration Big thanks to Mike for being here and for doing all the work putting this together! I don't have too much to add here but if you liked The First Hour or The Plus Show got into conspiratorial angles, Bohemian Grove the hidden owl symbol on the dollar bill, connections to Athena.

1:00:23 told of course some more great Owl-related stories and Chris Knowles actually that we all know and love he makes an appearance in Mike's book with his own connections to the material. We got into the trickster elements at play, And one of my favorite parts...we got into Bill Hicks UFO sighting Mike spoke to his friend Kevin Booth at length in person so we got to hear a pretty close to first hand account A shared UFO experience with Bill Hicks. Talked about the connection with mushrooms, sacred spaces and crop circles, charged areas in the owl... And of course my own owl-related syncs when preparing for this interview so a lot of good stuff! Sign up for PLUS if you're interested in the second hour of this interview and all the interviews that I do here

1:01:17 If anyone out there has owl stories of their own, I'm sure Mike would love to hear them if he hasn't been burnt out already. But the world is a weird place what can i say? I've done what I can! Your move aliens orbs and owls whatever you are your fucking move. Woke up this morning with light in my eye And then realized it was dark outside It was like coming down from the sky Don't know who or why Must be those strangers that come every night Whose saucer shapes light put people uptight Leave blue-green footprints that glow in the dark

1:02:24 I hope they get home Mr. Spaceman Won't you please take me along? I won't do anything wrong Hey! Mr. Spaceman, won't you please take me along the high side Woke up this morning

1:03:04 I was feeling quite weird. I had flies in my beard, My toothpaste was smeared. I opened my window they'd written my name Said so long we'll see you again Hey Mr. Spaceman Won't you please take me along? I won't do anything wrong Hey, Mr. Spaceman Won't you please take me along the higher side Hey, Mr. Spaceman Won't you please take me along