Close Encounter Club

What happens when a lifelong skeptic, a science communicator, and an astrophysicist sees something in the sky he can’t explain?

In this episode, we step back from the eerie and the unexplainable… and zoom all the way out.
To galaxies, black holes, and the limits of what we think we know.

We talk with Ethan Siegel about the moment that shook his worldview—and what it really means to stay grounded in science while keeping your mind open to the unknown.

Whether you're here for the mystery or the math… this one will rewire your brain.

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💥 Ethan Siegel Links:

🎧 Starts With A Bang (Spotify)
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📖 Infinite Cosmos: Visions From The James Webb Space Telescope
👧 The Littlest Girl Goes Inside An Atom (Children’s Book)

What does an unexplained encounter sound like from the outside looking in?

In this Close Encounter Club bonus episode, host Justin Gearheart sits down with Ryan, husband of Jennifer Jones, to hear his first-hand account of the chilling night his family experienced what they came to call “The Breathing.”

From his bedroom, Ryan was pulled into the experience when Jennifer and their son heard something outside the second-story window — a deep, metallic, labored breathing unlike anything he had ever encountered. He recalls the sound in vivid detail: slow, powerful, mechanical yet organic, and so close it felt pressed against the wall of their house. The moment he pulled back the curtains, the breathing stopped.

Ryan shares his honest, skeptical perspective: weighing possible rational explanations, ruling out machinery or neighbors, and grappling with the eerie fact that there were no vibrations despite the sheer volume of the sound. He also reflects on the connection between this strange event and Jennifer’s sudden, unexplained recovery from years of debilitating back pain — something he admits defies explanation.

This conversation offers a grounded, outsider’s view of an encounter that challenges logic and raises unsettling questions about what might be lurking just beyond our perception.

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What if a mysterious sound in the night could change your life forever?

In this episode of the Close Encounter Club, host Justin Gearheart sits down with Jennifer Jones of Knoxville, Tennessee, who experienced one of the most chilling and transformative encounters we’ve ever covered. It began with an unexplainable sound outside her second-story window — a deep, mechanical-yet-organic breathing that filled her entire room. Days later, something even stranger happened: Jennifer’s decades of chronic spinal pain vanished completely.

Backed by years of documented medical records, MRIs, and neurology visits, Jennifer’s story raises profound questions. Was this a case of spontaneous healing, or could it have been an extraterrestrial intervention? During a QHHT (Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique) session, Jennifer recalled the presence of Arcturian beings, said to be advanced extraterrestrials known for healing and guiding humanity.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

Jennifer’s medical history and the severity of her back pain.
The night she and her family heard “The Breathing.”
How her pain disappeared overnight after the encounter.
Insights from her QHHT session and connection to the Arcturians.
Commentary from Scully, our AI researcher, exploring scientific and psychological explanations.

This isn’t just a UFO story. It’s about healing, consciousness, and the unexplained mysteries that push us to rethink reality itself.

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Courtney has been seeing ghosts for as long as she can remember.

At first, she kept it to herself—unsure if anyone would believe her. But after opening up, she realized this ability wasn’t just hers alone. It ran deep in the family.

What began as a secret became a calling.

She started Jaunty Haunts, a podcast where ghost stories are shared with humor, honesty, and just the right amount of spookiness. Now she’s built a community for people who’ve experienced the unexplainable and don’t want to feel so alone anymore.

In this special crossover, Courtney joins Justin and Josh to talk about hauntings, family secrets, and why making space for joy and weirdness might be the best way to navigate the paranormal.

Got a story to share? Email us at [email protected]

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Some nights unfold like scenes from a horror movie.

In EP13: That One Night, host Justin Gearheart sits down with Annie, who shares a terrifying childhood memory that has haunted her for years. What began as two kids heading outside to grab a DVD turned into a night of pure fear — an old powder-blue pickup truck, flashing headlights in the dark, and a sudden eruption of car alarms from every vehicle in the lot.

The most chilling part? Annie and her friend remember it vividly, but the adults upstairs — just a few feet away — heard nothing. No alarms. No chaos. Nothing at all.

This episode marks the first appearance of Scully, our AI researcher built to keep Close Encounter Club grounded, skeptical, and scientific. Together, Justin and Scully break down the events, explore possible explanations — from electromagnetic interference to altered perception — and ask the questions that matter: What really happened that night? Was it human, paranormal, or something we don’t yet understand?

If you’re fascinated by paranormal encounters, UFO phenomena, unexplained mysteries, or consciousness research, this is a story that will stay with you long after you finish listening.

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What if contact with extraterrestrials wasn’t a single moment — but a lifelong relationship?

In EP12: The Night Family, host Justin Gearheart speaks with Reddit experiencer ForbiddenSnackie, who has shared her extraordinary story with rare openness and detail. From early childhood drawings of purple aliens with suction-cup fingers to vivid onboard memories of telepathic star navigation games, Snackie’s story reveals a reality where encounters aren’t isolated events — they are part of an ongoing connection.

Raised in a Mormon household, Snacky grew up with both spiritual and paranormal frameworks that shaped her understanding of what was happening. Over time, she uncovered memories of being aboard craft, interacting with beings she calls her “night family,” and even learning directly from them through consciousness-based teaching tools. These encounters blurred the line between dream, memory, and lived experience, echoing the themes we’ve heard in other Close Encounter Club episodes — yet with a uniquely human depth.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

Childhood encounters, drawings, and early memories of aliens.

This is one of the most detailed and personal alien contact stories ever shared on Close Encounter Club. It raises not only questions about UFOs and abduction, but also about consciousness, memory, and humanity’s place in the cosmos.

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Can past life regression unlock healing, reveal hidden traumas, and even connect us to lifetimes lived beyond Earth?

In EP 11: Steve Burgess – Past Life Regression, Healing & Consciousness, host Justin Gearheart speaks with world-renowned hypnotherapist Steve Burgess, who has guided more than 15,000 sessions of regression therapy. With decades of experience and books like The Power of Past Life Regression and Adventures of a Hypnotherapist, Burgess shares remarkable stories of clients who uncovered ancestral trauma, revisited ancient lifetimes, and even explored memories of other worlds.

From healing chronic pain and depression through regression therapy to cases of clients recalling detailed historical events they couldn’t have known, Steve reveals how revisiting locked-in emotions can transform lives. He also opens up about cutting-edge work in surrogate regression (healing one person or even animals by working with another) and what happens when clients regress into lifetimes as extraterrestrials.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

What hypnosis really is — and what it isn’t.

Whether you approach with skepticism or curiosity, Steve’s insights challenge conventional ideas about memory, trauma, and reality itself.

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A quiet night at an Australian golf resort turned into one of the most astonishing UFO encounters we’ve ever covered. In EP 10: The Wyong UFO Incident, host Justin Gearheart speaks with Clark Watson about a sighting that began as a distant flashing light over the coast and escalated into aerial “orbs” accelerating and chasing each other with impossible agility—then forming a rotating “wheel of light.” Moments later, a vast, organic-looking triangular craft hovered silently above the hotel, moving like a second hand across the sky. Afterward came the strangest twist: missing time and disappearing videos that should have captured the triangle.

Clark—now a field investigator with MUFON Australia—walks us through every detail: the irregular strobing, the darting movements that left light trails, the spoke-like wheel pattern, the texture and concave edges of the triangle, the overwhelming “ontological shock,” and the realization that raw phone footage rarely matches what witnesses perceive. We also explore why oceans might be hotspots, how consciousness could shape what we observe, and why disclosure without mental-health scaffolding could do more harm than good.

If you’re drawn to UFO sightings, alien encounters, paranormal phenomena, consciousness research, and unexplained mysteries, this episode delivers a rare combination of vivid testimony, on-the-scene video context, and hard questions about reality itself.

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What if aliens weren’t just visiting — but actively planning to replace humanity?

In EP 9: The Rising (Part 3), host Justin Gearheart concludes his three-part conversation with Jeff Selver, whose lifelong contact story pushes into the most unsettling territory yet. Traveling alone across Canada in 1998, Jeff was taken in broad daylight by a massive cloaked craft. Inside, he met the Twins — two identical Gray beings who revealed a disturbing truth: humanity had failed to protect Earth, and a program was already underway to create the “new human.”

What Jeff saw shocked him — medical beds with exhumed bodies, a warehouse of hybrid forms growing in tubes, and a telepathic message that nuclear weapons marked humanity’s last chance. Through holograms, he was shown Earth’s biosphere collapsing, consumed in flames, and rebuilt under alien stewardship. At the heart of this revelation was something even stranger: an encounter with the ship’s consciousness itself — a radiant intelligence the beings called God.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

Jeff’s daylight abduction and meeting with the Twins.

This final installment of The Rising is not just an abduction account — it’s a glimpse into an alien agenda of replacement, evolution, and planetary stewardship that forces us to question humanity’s place in the cosmos.

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What if a voice in your head told you to drop everything and leave — and it ended up saving your life?

In EP 8: Escape from Lahaina, host Justin Gearheart speaks with Michaela, a cruise ship bartender whose mysterious intuition led her to quit her job in Hawaii just one week before the deadly Lahaina wildfires. Without warning, a clear voice in her mind urged, “Leave now. Get off the ship. Don’t come back.” She listened — and days later, every hotel, restaurant, and street she’d stayed in was gone.

Michaela shares her journey from heartbreak in Maryland to an unexpected calling in Maui, and the strange guidance she’s felt ever since. She describes the moment she touched the ancient banyan tree in Lahaina and felt an electric surge assuring her she made the right choice, and the deeper connection between intuition, consciousness, and quantum mechanics that continues to shape her life.

In this episode, you’ll hear how Michaela’s inner voice returned after Lahaina — offering messages of reassurance and warnings about “what’s to come” — her perspective on the New Jersey drone and orb sightings, her belief that the mind and universe are connected through frequency, and the life-changing effect of Moldavite, a green meteorite crystal she swears awakened her senses.

This is a story about intuition, fate, and the unseen forces that protect us, raising questions about whether these inner voices come from within — or from somewhere far beyond.

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