Strange Arrivals

By iHeartPodcasts and Grim & Mild

Society & Culture History

What's Strange Arrivals about?

Welcome to Strange Arrivals, where host Toby Ball unravels history's most famous cases of extraterrestrial encounters. In season two, we explore how folklore, media representation and institutional propaganda have shaped our understanding of UFOs, beginning with the Rendlesham Forest incident, a case known as Britain’s Roswell.

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LAST EPISODE

Introducing: Grim & Mild Pr...

01.07.2022

Hi, Strange Arrivals fans! Aaron Mahnke kicks off the new year with a brand-new podcast we think you'll enjoy. Don't just take our word for it, though. Check out the trailer for Grim & Mild Presents to decide for yourself! ...

Strange Arrivals episodes:

01.07.2022 Introducing: Grim & Mild Presents Hi, Strange Arrivals fans! Aaron Mahnke kicks off the new year with a brand-new podcast we think you'll enjoy. Don't just take our word for it, though. Check out the trailer for Grim & Mild Presents to decide for yourself! ...
09.07.2021 INTERVIEW 5: Glen Morgan An interview with Glen Morgan, writer and producer for The X-Files. Glen talks about how he came to be involved in the series, the development of the X-Files mythology and how an episode is conceived. Learn more about your ad-choices ...
08.31.2021 INTERVIEW 4: Lynne McNeil An interview with Lynne McNeill, associate professor of folklore in the English Department at Utah State University and Chair of the Folklore Program. She is also a regular cast member on the Travel Channel's Paranormal Caught on Camera. Learn more ...
08.24.2021 INTERVIEW 3: David J. Halperin Interview with David J. Halperin, who taught in the Religious Studies department at the University of North Carolina until he retired in 2000, and author of The Intimate Alien, which pushes aside the believer/skeptic dichotomy to propose a new framework ...
08.17.2021 INTERVIEW 2: Chris Carter An interview with Chris Carter, the creator of a little television show you might have heard of called The X-Files. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
08.14.2021 Introducing: Bridgewater Hi, Strange Arrivals fans! Since you love this podcast, we think you'll like Bridgewater, too. Check out the trailer and decide for yourself! About Bridgewater: When a relic from his past is rediscovered, folklore professor Jeremy Bradshaw puts his life ...
08.10.2021 INTERVIEW 1: Colin Dickey An interview with author Colin Dickey about his book, The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
08.03.2021 Mylar Batman Photographs and videos are a critical component in UFO folklore, but there isn't a single example as iconic as ones for the Sasquatch and the Loch Ness Monster. But two photos taken in Oregon in 1950 might come the closest. ...
07.27.2021 Hypernormalization Popular culture has been important in UFO folklore, both absorbing the existing stories around UFOs and creating new narratives. The 90s television show The X-Files was probably the most important of all UFO-related media. Show creator Chris Carter and writer ...
07.20.2021 The Rumor Equation Richard Doty makes a deal with Bill Moore to trade what the government knows about flying saucers for information about the UFO community. But what is this information that Moore receives and can it be trusted? Learn more about your ...
07.13.2021 Enemy Above In the late 1970s and early 80s, an electrical engineer named Paul Bennewitz filmed lights over Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, NM, and recorded audio signals that he believed were alien communications. Instead of asking him to stop, the ...
07.06.2021 Balloon Train The Roswell crash is perhaps the most famous UFO incident in history. But for more than 30 years after the debris was found in 1947, the case was relatively unknown. It resurfaced in 1980, amid an era of civilian UFO ...
06.29.2021 Radically Different and Richer Alternatives After Project Blue Book was shuttered, J. Allen Hynek was the best known authority on UFOs and cemented this perception with his Close Encounters classification system. But despite his scientific training, Hynek was very interested in and receptive to the ...
06.22.2021 The Illusion of Motion J. Allen Hynek arrives in Michigan to investigate a rash of UFO sightings.
06.15.2021 Quicksand J. Allen Hynek joins the Air Force’s UFO investigation effort in its earliest stages. He finds most cases easy to explain, but become increasingly troubled by the ones that he can’t. During the Spring of 1966 in Michigan a series ...
06.08.2021 Seagulls In 1964, a patrolman on a desert stretch of highway hears an explosion. Investigating, he sees two beings standing outside an egg-shaped vehicle. As he watches in terror, the vehicle takes off with a great noise and recedes across the ...
06.01.2021 Eyes of Your Eyes The three main witnesses to the Rendlesham Forest encounters agree about the basic events that happened over the three nights. But there are parts where they don’t agree, and that's where things get even stranger. And what, exactly, did they ...
05.25.2021 The Lighthouse The British tabloids get wind of the Rendlesham encounter and it becomes public in 1983. The news prompts a closer look at the Rendlesham narratives, and researchers put forward alternative explanations that don’t involve unknown craft entering the air space ...
05.18.2021 This is Unreal Two nights after the first encounter, strange lights are once again seen above RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge. The US Air Force dispatches a group into Rendlesham Forest to investigate. The leader of the group makes an audio recording of ...
05.11.2021 Boxing Day, 1980 On Christmas night, 1980, a light is observed descending into a forest just outside RAF Bentwaters, a British military air base on the eastern coast of England. Three American servicemen leave the base and follow the light into Rendlesham Forest. ...
05.06.2021 Teaser: Rendlesham In this extended trailer, we give you a sneak preview of the story at the heart of Strange Arrivals season two: The Rendlesham Forest Incident, sometimes known as Britain's Roswell. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for ...
05.04.2021 Strange Arrivals: Season Two Trailer This season on Strange Arrivals, we explore the Rendlesham Forest Incident, one of the most famous UFO sightings in history, sometimes described as Britain's Roswell. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
10.23.2020 Introducing 13 Days Of Halloween, a New Podcast from Aaron Mahnke, Blumhouse Productions, and iHeartRadio Hi, Strange Arrivals fans! In case you haven't heard, we just released a brand new podcast from Aaron Mahnke's Grim and Mild, in partnership with Blumhouse productions. It's a spooky 13-day journey to Halloween, featuring binaural audio for a three-dimensional ...
09.01.2020 Introducing: The Hidden Djinn Around the world, and throughout history, billions of people have believed in an entire race of creatures known as the djinn. Ancient, powerful, and hidden from the human eye, djinn lore spans continents and centuries. Join host Rabia Chaudry every ...
08.13.2020 Introducing: American Shadows a Grim & Mild American Shadows is a bi-weekly podcast from iHeartRadio and Aaron Mahnke’s Grim & Mild. The show focuses on the darker stories from American history: the people, places, and things that are hidden and forgotten in the shadows. From better-known tales ...
06.30.2020 INTERVIEW 3: Carol Rainey An interview with documentary filmmaker Carol Rainey, who was the research partner and wife of UFO researcher Budd Hopkins in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
06.23.2020 INTERVIEW 2: Stephanie Kelley-Romano An interview with Stephanie Kelley-Romano, an associate professor at Bates College who has done academic work on alien abduction stories. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
06.16.2020 INTERVIEW 1: Sarah Scoles An interview with Sarah Scoles, author of They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers, a first-person anthropolical look at the people who make up the UFO community. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener ...
06.09.2020 Extraordinary Claims The abduction phenomenon has largely faded from public consciousness. What is the current state of abduction research? And looking back to the very beginning of this season, why is it that some people are prone to belief in the paranormal ...
06.02.2020 The Secretary General The search for ever-more-incredible stories led to strange theories about the purpose of alien abductions and eventually to the bizarre case of Linda Cortile. Budd Hopkins considered it to be the most compelling abduction case ever investigated. But was it ...
05.26.2020 The Troika Three researchers, Budd Hopkins, David Jacobs, and John Mack, revolutionized the study of alien abductions in the 1980s and 90s. Their research, based on hypnotic regression of people they suspected were abductees, suggested that aliens could access anyone, anywhere, at ...
05.19.2020 Quazgaa and Joohop Betty and Barney Hill's experience established the framework for future tales of alien abduction. But the Hill story was just the jumping off point for abductee narratives that followed. Among the first abduction tales to follow the publication of An ...
05.12.2020 Motion Parallax The Hills described their UFO encounter taking place over several miles, beginning with a bright light in the sky and ending with a craft hovering above a field. Nobody believes they were just making their story up. So what did ...
05.05.2020 Junior Betty Hill had a series of intense dreams after her UFO encounter. How did these dreams inform the memories recovered during hypnosis sessions two years later? They way the Hills described the aliens they met changed over time, becoming less ...
04.28.2020 Regressed Betty and Barney Hill's memories of being abducted by aliens were recovered through hypnotic regression. But does this technique uncover actual memories, or something else? How does what we know now about memory formation and hypnosis change how we look ...
04.21.2020 Zeta Reticuli While under hypnosis, Betty Hill told of being shown a star map by one of her alien captors. Years later, she sketched what she remembered of the map. This led a teacher named Marjorie Fish to create intricate models of ...
04.14.2020 What's Yellow UFO culture of the 1950s revolved around two competing visions; one of contact with advanced beings from within our solar system and another focusing sightings of distant flying objects in the sky. Under hypnosis, the Hills told a story that ...
04.07.2020 Men In The Road More than two years after their UFO encounter in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Betty and Barney Hill underwent hypnosis therapy with renowned psychiatrist Dr. Benjamin Simon. These sessions revealed that there was more to the Hill's story than ...
03.31.2020 Falling Star Driving through northern New Hampshire on a clear fall night in 1961, Betty and Barney Hill spotted a light in the sky that seemed to be following them. As they navigated mountain roads, the light came increasingly closer until the ...
03.23.2020 Strange Arrivals: Trailer On a September night in 1961, in the mountains of New Hampshire, Betty and Barney Hill encountered something they could not explain. What really happened that autumn night? Welcome to Strange Arrivals, where host Toby Ball will unravel one of ...