00;00;01;13 - 00;00;12;16
Speaker 1
What the fuck? What the fuck am I looking at?

00;00;12;18 - 00;00;42;14
Speaker 1
Oh, this is unbelievable. You're listening to Where the Trail Ends podcast, chronicling my ongoing journey to find the truth about my missing friend, and an explanation for the apparent evidence of your falsely left behind. After years spent traveling the country, researching the UFO phenomenon and interviewing experts and eyewitnesses. I was left with even more questions and decided to share my story and research with the public in the hopes that someone, somewhere, can provide the answers.

00;00;42;14 - 00;00;47;26
Speaker 1
I've been so desperately looking for.

00;00;47;28 - 00;01;07;27
Speaker 1
There were a lot of what the fuck moments that night as I watched Owen's recordings for the first time. I remember they kind of just hit me in waves. I found the recordings late the night before and so I didn't get a lot of sleep as a result.

00;01;08;00 - 00;01;39;07
Speaker 1
Making matters worse is that they were all recorded on these old mini DV cassettes, and so I had to wait until after work. When I finally tracked down an old camcorder that could play them. So I basically just spent the day anxious and exhausted. And then that night, when I finally did get the chance to sit down and watch them, I just picked up one of the cassettes randomly and not really reading the label and just put it into the camera that I had attached to my TV and hit play.

00;01;39;09 - 00;02;00;25
Speaker 1
And basically for the first 8 to 10 minutes or so, it's just I went hiking up a mountain with the camera by my side. I mean, occasionally he pauses to rest, but really, it's just this disorienting upside down footage for a good long while.

00;02;00;28 - 00;02;28;09
Speaker 1
I remember as I watched it the first time, I almost fast forward to just to make sure the whole tape wasn't this kind of useless, upside down nausea thing footage. But then he eventually clears the treeline, and even though it's upside down, you kind of get a few glimpses of the sky and eventually he comes to a stop.

00;02;28;11 - 00;02;50;09
Speaker 1
And he also finally does raise the camera, and you can tell that he's on the summit of the mountain and you can see other mountains far off. And as he holds the camera, a little bit of time passes with just the camera staying in place.

00;02;50;11 - 00;02;58;09
Speaker 1
Suddenly these four lights appear one by one in the sky, in the distance.

00;02;58;11 - 00;03;29;10
Speaker 1
It's not the best image quality, but you can clearly see them. And they don't appear to be shimmering or flashing or blinking. But kind of constant. They're not really moving, but they do kind of seem to be changing in intensity or brightness. I just sat there dumbstruck, just watching the lights with my mind racing for an explanation. I mean, I scroll through the possibilities, you know?

00;03;29;10 - 00;03;53;05
Speaker 1
Are they planes or are they satellites? You know, before this idea that, you know, maybe they're UFOs pops into my head as soon as I do. I just flashed back to the trip that Owen and I had taken to the black Angel trail the year before, when he told me that he'd begun seeing these strange lights that he thought were UFOs on his hikes.

00;03;53;07 - 00;04;09;12
Speaker 1
And then I just get this realization that that's what I'm looking at. These are the UFOs that Owen had been seeing, and I'm just stunned. You know, almost, you know, just overwhelmed.

00;04;09;14 - 00;04;27;05
Speaker 1
And then the UFOs disappear one by one. And all that's left are a few lights in the valley below. And some stars and just the sound of wind for a few seconds. And the whole room went black.

00;04;27;08 - 00;04;59;14
Speaker 1
But the silence and darkness doesn't last. Because all of a sudden the next recording starts playing. And once again, I see upside down woods and hear the sound of. I went hiking and climbing up rocks. I was like, what the fuck? And I paused the tape just because I needed a minute to compose myself. And so there I was, just sitting there in the glow of the TV, staring at upside down branches and trees on the screen.

00;04;59;17 - 00;05;34;25
Speaker 1
And I felt like I hadn't taken a breath in hours. And, you know, maybe it was even hyperventilating. I was just was just trying to make sense of what I'd seen. You know, I was just in the state of utter disbelief. And I rewound and I watched the sequence of lights appearing and disappearing several times over, and then again hit pause and just stared at the four objects, just, you know, trying to understand what it was I was looking at, not really wanting to believe what I was seeing.

00;05;34;27 - 00;05;50;01
Speaker 1
I think in my mind, I was just trying to come up with any other possible explanation other than UFOs and, you know, hoping they would be, you know, meteors or something, anything but UFOs.

00;05;50;04 - 00;06;08;27
Speaker 1
Eventually, I remembered that there were more recordings to watch. And I even wondered if there was maybe a chance that the lights were just limited to this first recording, and they were some sort of a glitch or a weird anomaly.

00;06;09;00 - 00;06;32;27
Speaker 1
According to the label, the next recording said it was taken in Mount Mansfield State Forest in Vermont, and and it ended up being about half as long as the first. Oh, it must have been closer to the summit of the mountain, when you started to record, because he cleared the treeline pretty quickly, you know, and he climbs up and out over rocks and you could start to see some stars.

00;06;33;00 - 00;06;56;15
Speaker 1
I mean, it's all still largely upside down footage, you know. In the first recording, within about 20 or so seconds after he clears the treeline. Oh, and raised the camera and recorded the objects. But as I watched the second recording, he just kept walking for over a minute or so on the rocks. And I remember I had this moment where I thought to myself, oh, okay.

00;06;56;16 - 00;07;22;22
Speaker 1
Phew. No lights or objects or anything. Maybe I was just wrong about the UFOs in the first recording. And then, of course, like on cue, he just suddenly stops, lifts the camera up and about 10s or so pass and this small light appears in the sky near the top of the screen and stays there for a few seconds and disappears.

00;07;22;24 - 00;07;52;05
Speaker 1
And then a few more seconds pass and another light appears, and it's lower in the sky and brighter and moved from left to right, and it seems to get steadily brighter, and then stops and stays in place for a few seconds, and then suddenly two equal bright, same sized lights just seem to launch from the stationary one. And you now see three lights forming this kind of triangle.

00;07;52;07 - 00;08;14;04
Speaker 1
And then the lights just stop. And moments later, all three of them kind of disappear one at a time, and the camera stays on the empty sky for a few seconds. And then, just like before, everything goes black for a few moments at the end of the recording and you know, I'm snapped out of my stupor, and then a few seconds later, you know, not even getting a chance to catch my breath the next recording fires up.

00;08;14;11 - 00;08;45;26
Speaker 1
And again, it's upside down. Hiking. Only this time it's daytime and just an entirely different climate than the previous two videos. And so I have to hit pause again just to regroup. Seeing that second recording kind of erased any remaining doubt that I may have had about what no one had been recording. And I kind of got the sense that the lights or objects are going to be in all the recordings.

00;08;45;29 - 00;09;26;11
Speaker 1
I got up and I poured myself another drink, and that's when I decided to take out my phone and record my immediate thoughts. Even if I had no explanation for any of it. What the fuck? What the fuck am I? Look? Oh, this is unbelievable. I'm sorry. There are lights in these recordings, and they have to be UFOs.

00;09;26;12 - 00;10;09;05
Speaker 1
I have no other, I have no other explanation for what this could be. What the fuck, man? What? I mean, I think they're on. Oh, they're on every recording. Oh. Yeah, I guess I'm going to go through all of them. This is crazy. This is the craziest thing I've ever seen. Holy shit. Oh.

00;10;09;07 - 00;10;47;11
Speaker 1
And afterwards, I just sat there thinking about everything that had happened. You know, from Owen's disappearance to discovering his voicemail or to listening to the voicemail, kind of getting into Owen's house and finding the recordings and seeing the recordings. And, you know, that just made me think back to the trip to black Angel and start to kind of reconstruct everything that had happened on the trip and the moments leading up to him telling me about the sightings he'd been having.

00;10;47;14 - 00;11;09;12
Speaker 1
I don't know if there's an appropriate response when a friend tells you that they've seen UFOs, but if you spent the majority of your life not really thinking about them like I had, I think you'd just kind of absorb the information and forget about it and move on. And that's pretty much what happened that night a year before us to go missing.

00;11;09;15 - 00;11;31;24
Speaker 1
We'd been discussing this trip to the White Mountains in New Hampshire to hike the black Angel trail for months, but just couldn't seem to lock in a date. And it was getting to be mid late fall. And I think we were both thinking that we would just hold off until spring. But we both saw the forecast call for this unseasonably warm weekend in the mountains, and we just kind of sprung into action.

00;11;31;26 - 00;11;53;10
Speaker 1
I think we exchanged emails on like a Tuesday, and there I was, heading up to his place after work on Friday. He looked closer, so we basically decided that I'd spend the night at his house so we could get an early start the next day. So we hung out and packed and left early in the morning because we knew it was going to be a full day hike.

00;11;53;13 - 00;12;12;08
Speaker 1
And it was a great day, and we were both tired at the end of it. And we got back to the campsite and made a fire and had dinner and were just sitting around discussing where we might want to hike next, and were talking about maybe doing one in the winter, because I'd gotten these crampons that I was excited to try out.

00;12;12;10 - 00;12;27;12
Speaker 1
And there was really nothing out of the ordinary with Owen's behavior or what we talked about just, you know, the usual topics of conversation destiny to hike, equipment, life itself, whatever.

00;12;27;14 - 00;12;49;05
Speaker 1
At one point, I'd gotten up to go to the bathroom and was gone a few minutes. And when I got back, oh, and had gotten up and was standing kind of at the edge of the clearing a short distance away, looking up at the sky through the trees. And I remember it was a pretty clear night that night because, you know, I looked up myself and saw plenty of stars.

00;12;49;07 - 00;13;13;14
Speaker 1
And, you know, that entire trip, I didn't sense that anything was wrong with him or or weighing on him. And so I just walked up to where he was standing and just kind of stood there for a moment with him, you know, just taking in the view. and then after a bit, he turned to me and he said that he'd been seeing these strange lights in the sky on some of his recent hikes.

00;13;13;17 - 00;13;31;16
Speaker 1
And then he just kind of looked at me as if, you know, judging my reaction and waiting for me to say something. I don't think I really grasp what he was saying at first, because I asked them if he was like the Northern lights or something, and then when he didn't really say anything, he just kind of kept looking at me.

00;13;31;16 - 00;13;59;18
Speaker 1
I realized that no, that's not what he was talking about. He didn't really seem shaken or affected by these sightings. He just proceeded to kind of matter of factly tell me about these two instances where he'd be out hiking and would see these balls, or orbs of light appear in the sky in the distance. The first time I think he said it was just one light that lasted for, you know, ten, 15 seconds or so.

00;13;59;20 - 00;14;16;25
Speaker 1
But the second time was, you know, 20 30s and one light seemed to split in two before both lights disappeared. And that's pretty much all he said about.

00;14;16;27 - 00;14;43;26
Speaker 1
Owen was very practical and down to earth, so I didn't really doubt that he'd seen something, but I probably thought that there just be some sort of a more earthly explanation or whatever. And I guess I was a bit caught off guard because I remember asking him, why are you telling me this now? Had he seen something in the sky just then that triggered the conversation and he basically said no, that he really just needed to tell someone and not be judged.

00;14;43;26 - 00;15;09;17
Speaker 1
And he thought he could tell me. And I didn't really think about it much. I just told him that I believe that he'd seen something or experienced something, but that for me personally, I'd need to really see something for myself that would be more definitive proof just to be convinced that they were UFOs or whatever. And he basically accepted that.

00;15;09;17 - 00;15;38;12
Speaker 1
And that's really where we kind of left things and moved on to some other topic and eventually went to bed that night. That's really all there is to it. I mean, the whole exchange must have been, you know, what, a minute and a half. And afterwards you just went back to talking and hanging out. And I guess because I hadn't been interested UFOs at the time, it really just was not memorable information.

00;15;38;14 - 00;15;52;03
Speaker 1
And so I didn't think about that conversation again for another year and a half, until the night I watched his recordings for the first time.

00;15;52;05 - 00;16;19;00
Speaker 1
When I saw the third recording, I could immediately tell that he was taken into a completely different environment, an entirely different part of the country, and quickly looking at the label just confirmed that. And it said Lost Creek State Park in Utah. And it was similar to the first two recordings I'd seen in that. Again, it was mostly upside down footage of hiking for a while.

00;16;19;03 - 00;16;42;04
Speaker 1
But it was daytime and they don't really look much like lights, but were either like these white dots or orbs and there were six of them, and they all appear to be moving in the same direction, although they're not really kind of in any pattern, but they were certainly something that I had never seen before up until that point.

00;16;42;07 - 00;17;04;12
Speaker 1
And I watched the third recording several times before it really dawned on me that Owens sightings weren't just confined to the northeast, where he'd lived, and I quickly looked through the other labels and saw that there were locations all across the country, something that I really hadn't put together before. And that just led to more questions.

00;17;04;14 - 00;17;25;18
Speaker 1
But it was getting really late, and I felt totally and utterly exhausted. And I just wanted to keep going because I was hoping that at one point in at least one of the recordings, Owen might actually say something and possibly explain what was going on. So I just popped in the next tape.

00;17;25;21 - 00;17;45;27
Speaker 1
And the next tape had one recording on it, and it took place at night, with Owen occasionally turning on a headlamp as he hiked. And it was much longer than the previous three recordings that I'd seen. And looking at the label, it said not to haul a national forest in North Carolina.

00;17;45;29 - 00;18;06;23
Speaker 1
And you really can't see much of the recording when the headlamp is off. And so after about 15 or so minutes of watching this, I'd had enough and just fast forwarded until there was change and the screen gets a bit brighter and you could kind of see steps out on this area, which is more exposed to moonlight. So I just resumed watching at regular speed.

00;18;06;23 - 00;18;24;13
Speaker 1
At that point. And after a minute or so, he comes to a stop and raises his camera towards the sky. And sure enough, 20 or so seconds later, this bright light appears in the distant horizon.

00;18;24;16 - 00;18;50;19
Speaker 1
And over the course of about 1015 or so seconds, it moves from left to right and gets steadily brighter, and then seemingly splits into three lights and forms a triangle again, and continues in the direction it's heading for another 20 or so seconds before the lights just all disappear, and moments later the recording ends.

00;18;50;22 - 00;19;14;21
Speaker 1
I didn't watch that recording again. I just injected the tape and just moved on to the next recording, and I read the label first before putting in the tape on the camera. And according to the label, there were two recordings on the tape. One was taken in the Colville National Forest in Washington state, and the second one was at Fremont, within a national forest in Oregon.

00;19;14;24 - 00;19;41;12
Speaker 1
I watched both recordings, again, fast forwarded through the parts where I was just hiking in the first recording to Culver Recording another daytime recording, you see four objects moving in unison across the sky before disappearing. Then in the Fremont, Winnemucca recording, Just Take It Around Sunset, there are two objects which appear and just seem to stay stationary before they disappear.

00;19;41;15 - 00;20;19;18
Speaker 1
And I'd seen five recordings at that point, and there was still no sign of Owen talking or communicating in any way. So I really just wanted to barrel through and get through all of them at that point so I could finally go to sleep thinking that maybe I could wrap my head around everything. The next day. And as soon as the objects in the front of my recording disappeared, I got up and walked over to the camera and was about to hit eject on the tape because, you know, the label said that this was the last recording, so I was expecting the tape to just stop after everything went black.

00;20;19;20 - 00;20;44;05
Speaker 1
But as I put my hand on the camera, another recording pops up, which was a bit surprising, and I wondered if maybe the cases and tapes hadn't gotten mixed up because it wasn't supposed to be this third recording. But I decided to watch the new recording for a bit anyway, and was just anticipating fast forwarding through, you know, what I thought was going to be this upside down hiking footage again.

00;20;44;08 - 00;21;03;16
Speaker 1
And everything is dark at first, but what struck me was that it wasn't the sound of I went hiking or walking or whatever, but it sounded like he was moving around in a tent. And soon enough you hear him unzip it and get out and stand up.

00;21;03;19 - 00;21;24;22
Speaker 1
And eventually he turns on a flashlight or headlamp or something, and you could see the ground, and that he's in this kind of clearing and campsite and remnants of a fire. And my initial response, seeing that this recording wasn't like the others, was, it was a little bit of excitement because I thought, oh, maybe he's finally going to talk.

00;21;24;24 - 00;21;48;21
Speaker 1
And then the camera just stays pointed at the ground for a little while as I'm waiting, you know. Do I get to hear his voice? And then he starts moving around the campsite, and you quickly see it move past the tent. And then moments later, he continues to move around and you see more of the tent, and it looks strangely familiar to me.

00;21;48;23 - 00;22;17;23
Speaker 1
And he moves around the campsite some more and past the tent again, and suddenly I realize why it looks so familiar. And I'm kind of replaying the image of the campsite that I just seen in my mind, you know, remembering the logs around the campfire and just put this whole picture together. And I realize that it's our campsite from our trip to the black Angel trail.

00;22;17;26 - 00;22;22;07
Speaker 1
I'm like, what the fuck?

00;22;22;10 - 00;22;47;25
Speaker 1
And after a few minutes, he steps away from the campsite and turns off his headlamp. And it's just darkness, and he just stands there quietly for 30 or so seconds and I am thinking, what is going on? You know, what is this? Where where am I when this is happening? And I realized that it must have been in the middle of the night after I'd gone to sleep.

00;22;47;27 - 00;23;10;19
Speaker 1
So I paused the tape and quickly grabbed the case again and take out the label and just look to see if it has black Angel written anywhere on it, and then thinking that maybe there's a mix up with the other cases, I open all of them, look at the labels inside and out, and none say black Angel trail or White Mountains or anything in the area.

00;23;10;21 - 00;23;41;16
Speaker 1
And then I go back to the recording again and hit play, and there's another ten or so seconds of darkness. And then he holds up the camera, and you can kind of see him get used to the sky, and a few more seconds pass, and suddenly these three lights appear in triangular formation and kind of move from left to right before they seem to just stop and hover in place for five seven seconds and then disappear.

00;23;41;16 - 00;23;50;23
Speaker 1
And then a few moments later, the recording turns off and.

00;23;50;25 - 00;24;12;25
Speaker 1
I remember just sitting there with my head in my hands and stunned silence, and everything that had happened in the preceding 24 hours had been so shocking and bizarre that now I'm just emotionally and physically drained.

00;24;12;28 - 00;24;28;04
Speaker 1
And I must have sat there that night after seeing this footage for good, you know, 20 minutes, half hour. Just wondering what the fuck was happening.

00;24;28;06 - 00;24;45;08
Speaker 1
And I knew that I still had more recordings to go through, but I looked at the clock and saw that it was almost 2 a.m. and I really just didn't think I could handle any more.

00;24;45;11 - 00;24;59;22
Speaker 1
I don't really remember exactly what I was thinking as I went to bed, but I do remember this uneasy feeling coming over me, thinking that I don't think I could ever see the world in the same way again.