Mostly True Alien Stories

On March 2nd 1679 — 268 years before the word UFO existed — 16 people in County Tipperary, Ireland looked up at the sky and saw something they could not explain.They wrote it down. They had it printed in Dublin. They signed their names.A military lieutenant. A gentleman of the landed gentry. Named civilians who understood exactly what it meant to publish a sworn account of something inexplicable in 17th century Ireland.You did not sign your name to something like that lightly.The pamphlet exists. The WorldCat library catalog records it. One copy sold at auction in Dublin in 2021. The witnesses described something large, moving with purpose, that they could only call a ship — because that was the largest moving object any of them had ever seen.This is the oldest documented UFO report in history. And it rewrites when this conversation actually began.Neal, Andrew, and Lemon cover the Tipperary Skyship.Is this a Mostly True Alien Story?New episodes every Wednesday. Subscribe wherever you listen. 🛸

October 18th 1973. 11pm. Ohio.A US Army Reserve helicopter with five military crew members encounters a cigar-shaped craft that stops dead above them — no deceleration, no momentum — and bathes the cockpit in green light.The pilot pushes the controls down to descend.The helicopter rises 1,800 feet against his own controls.No mechanical explanation has ever been identified for how a 9,500 pound military aircraft ascends against pilot input under those conditions.Four civilians on the ground watched the same green beam illuminate the cockpit and watched the helicopter rise — before they knew what anyone in the aircraft had described.Nine independent witnesses. One instrument record. A compass that spun for 10 minutes after it left.The case was presented to the United Nations in 1978 by Dr. J. Allen Hynek and Dr. Jacques Vallée. Hynek called it among the most credible close encounters he had ever evaluated.It is still officially unexplained.Neal, Andrew, and Lemon cover the night a UFO lifted a military helicopter against its own controls.Is this a Mostly True Alien Story?New episodes every Wednesday. Subscribe wherever you listen. 🛸

November 2nd 1957. Levelland, Texas. 11pm.A farm worker's engine dies. A glowing object is in the road. It lifts off. His engine restarts on its own.He calls the sheriff. Before the officer can process that call — another one comes in. Then another. Then another.Nine independent witnesses. Three hours. Multiple roads. All strangers. All describing the same object. All reporting the same thing — engine dies when it approaches, engine restarts when it leaves.The sheriff drove out and saw it himself.The Air Force sent one investigator in plain clothes for seven hours and blamed a storm that never happened.Their own chief scientific consultant later said on the record — the explanation was wrong. Ball lightning cannot stop cars and put out headlights.Neal, Andrew, and Emma cover the most electromagnetically documented UFO mass sighting in American history.Is this a Mostly True Alien Story?New episodes every Wednesday. Subscribe wherever you listen. 🛸

On April 30th 2023 a green fireball crossed four states at 11:50pm. Forty minutes later a Las Vegas family called 911."They're eight, nine, ten feet tall. Big eyes. 100% not human."Two police officers were dispatched. On body cam one said to his partner: "I'm so nervous right now. I have butterflies bro." He independently corroborated seeing something fall from the sky on the way to the call.Officers arrived. Interviewed the family. One entered the backyard. Metro PD blacked out that portion of the footage.Their official statement: they are not treating this as a hoax.A forensic analyst later concluded the family's footage is authentic and shows two figures. The case was officially closed and officially unexplained.The family is still in that house. Still wants to move.Neal, Andrew, and Emma cover the Las Vegas backyard alien incident — one of the most documented modern UFO contact claims on record.Is this a Mostly True Alien Story?New episodes every Wednesday. Subscribe wherever you listen. 🛸

On March 26th 1997 authorities found 39 people dead in a rented mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, California. Matching outfits. Nike sneakers. Purple shrouds. Five dollars and three quarters in each pocket — travel money for a journey they believed was real.Heaven's Gate took 25 years to build. Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles created a theology that was genuinely original — the God of the Bible was an extraterrestrial, Jesus was an alien, and Heaven was a literal physical realm in outer space called the Next Level.When Nettles died in 1985 Applewhite reframed her death as the graduation ceremony. Twelve years later the Hale-Bopp comet appeared. They believed a spacecraft was hiding behind it. They were waiting for a sign.They found one. It was not what they thought it was.The Heaven's Gate website is still live today.Neal, Andrew, and Lemon cover the UFO cult that ended at a comet — and the question underneath all of it.Is this a Mostly True Alien Story?New episodes every Wednesday. Subscribe wherever you listen. 🛸

Spring 1941. Six years before Roswell. A Baptist minister in Cape Girardeau, Missouri receives a phone call in the middle of the night. There has been a crash outside of town. Someone needs last rites.What he finds is not a plane.Three grey figures. Three and a half feet tall. Large heads. Large eyes. Three fingers. A disc-shaped craft partially on fire. FBI agents already on the scene.He prays over all three of them. Then the military arrives. Everyone is sworn to secrecy. He goes home and tells his wife. And never speaks of it publicly again.The account stayed inside the family for forty years — passing from a deathbed to a granddaughter to a letter to a UFO researcher in 1991.The evidence chain is thin. But it is not absent.And if it is true — the US government had already done this once before Roswell. Six years of practice at making things disappear.Neal, Andrew, and Emma cover America's first Roswell.Is this a Mostly True Alien Story?New episodes every Wednesday. Subscribe wherever you listen. 🛸

On November 29th 1989 two Belgian police officers watched a massive triangular craft hover silently over a field.Over the next five months 13,000 people across Belgium filed formal reports — all describing the same craft.Then the Belgian Air Force scrambled two F-16s.Nine radar locks.Nine times it disappeared.Then the Belgian government did something almost no government has ever done — held a press conference, presented the radar data,and said on the record — we don't know what this is.Major General Wilfred de Brouwer gave the same answer for thirty years.Neal, Andrew, and Emma cover the most government-confirmed mass UFO sighting in history.Also — Andrew has been misunderstanding the premise of this show for 62 episodes.Is this a Mostly True Alien Story?New episodes every Wednesday.Subscribe wherever you listen. 🛸