Bret Hutchings is a helicopter pilot with the Utah Department of Public Safety. On November 18, Bret was flying a group surveying the Lockhart Valley, when the Utah Monolith was spotted. He shares his experience of discovering the monolith, the chaos that ensued, and further UAP experiences he's had in the area.

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Bret Hutchings

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[00:00:05] Bret: My name is Bret Hutchings and I'm a pilot, a helicopter pilot for the Utah Department of Public Safety/Highway Patrol. Probably 70% of what we're involved in the department is search and rescue operations. We support 29 counties in the state, the various Sheriff's departments and stuff.

Then the other 30% is devoted to other law enforcement. We worked with the UDOT which is the Utah Department of Transportation. We also work with the DNR, which is the Division of Natural Resources, which are the biologists that go out and conduct the wild animals surveys and counts and stuff like that.

[00:01:05] Bret: Yes, that varies. It can be anywhere from 10% to 20% sometimes depending on the year and the availability of our aircraft. The big thing is because we're primarily tasked with law enforcement, that that has to take priority. Sometimes, we've actually been called off of the biological surveys to go out and do law enforcement things. It just varies from year to year, time to time.

[00:01:39] Bret: I've been with the department now about five and a half years.

[00:01:48] Bret: Yes, it really is pretty fortunate. I get to go to work every day and not know exactly what I'm going to probably-- it can be anywhere from working with the secret service to drug enforcement, to going out and seeing some of the most spectacular scenery on the planet and stuff when we get into these areas where we're looking for these animals.

[00:02:45] Bret: I think you mean the day that we discovered the monolith, is that the day you're talking about?

[00:02:52] Bret: I think that was actually, if I'm not mistaken, I think it was November 18th. I could be wrong.

[00:03:00] Bret: Yes. Or November 8th. We're working down in Southeastern Utah down around the Moab area for people that are familiar with that. We had been out conducting surveys for two days working in this area that was called Lockhart Valley. On the third day, as we were flying over some of the lower terrain that we search for these big rocky mountain, big horn sheep, and desert big horn sheep, we happen to, one of the biologists, a fellow named Wade having to be looking down out of the aircraft, right below us in these little small red rock canyons and all of a sudden spotted what's come to be known as the monolith now, even though it's not really a monolith. Anyway, he immediately started going, "Whoa, whoa, what's that? Turn around. Turn around."

I was like, "What, what do you got?" He didn't know how to describe it [laughs] and I circled around to the right and the sun happened to hit the thing. It was pretty obvious to me what he was looking at. I went, "Oh, what in the heck is that thing man?" We circled around at about two or three times. Then I said, "Okay, we've got to take a break, go down and check this thing out." My first impression of it was is that, "Is this something that NASA or somebody put here, are they bouncing?" It almost brought to mind some sort of cell tower or something and I thought, "It was like NASA or somebody put this thing here and they're bouncing satellite signals off of it?"

We just landed and Wade and Brad and Dustin, the other two biologists with Wade and I proceeded to walk, hiked down to it and we landed up above it. I started filming them as they were walking down. I was making jokes a little bit about it. I'm sure you've seen the original video. Oh, I don't know why it popped into my head, aliens and all this stuff as I was looking at it. That's why I said, "The Intrepid explorers go down to check out the alien life form."

As they're walking down to it and stuff, then I put my cell phone away and hiked down to it. Then I got back out and started filming around it and stuff. We were just curious. We were looking at this thing going, "What in the world should this be for?" We noted that you could see where whoever put it in had used a cement type cutting saw to cut into the sandstone. We could see that the marks from that, whoever created it.

Eventually we came to the conclusion that it had to be an artistic type piece that somebody had put there and that it stayed there for apparently a number of years. According to the guys that looked back on Google Earth and stuff, that had been there for at least about four years without anybody discovering them. We accidentally flew over the top of it.

[00:06:33] Bret: No. I don't know if you're familiar with the Spiral Jetty that's on the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Have you ever heard of that?

[00:06:43] Bret: Google it and it'll pull it up. I've flown over it numerous times. It's way out in the desert to the-- it's on the Northeast side of the Great Salt Lake. It's literally, I don't know, 25, 30 miles away from probably the closest home of anybody that lives probably even farther than that. It's probably about 50 or 60.

Anyway, this artist got permission to go out and create this thing. I can't remember what year he did it, but it's just called the Spiral Jetty and he made it out of rocks. I'm trying to remember the term that they use for, I think they call it land art. I'm trying to remember.

[00:07:27] Bret: Okay, you're looking at it right now. The other thing is, is there, if you look, and I think it's called, it might be called the Utah Desert Tree that's located along Interstate 80, out literally in the middle of the salt flats as you're going out towards, leaving Salt Lake, heading West towards Nevada.

An artist got permission to go create this. I think it's called the Desert Tree or the Utah Tree or something, but it's this big art object. It's literally, you're driving along the freeway and you look up and go, "What in the world is that?" It looks more alien-ish, I guess you'd say, because it's just like this big structure with these big balls that are on the ends of it.

[00:08:16] Bret: Yes, exactly, if you're looking at it. You know what I'm talking about?

There's another one that I'm trying to remember what it was called. I have never been to this one and I want to say it's up in the Northeastern corner of the state and it's something tubes.It was another artistic creation of this guy made out of, I think it was cement. There's just these big tubes that you can go up.

I guess he arrayed them in a certain way and stuff like that. Like I say, I haven't ever been to that one, but I think that this monolith thing, like I say, it's not truly a, but that I think that that's what whoever put this was going for was that kind of effect. When you looked at this, you could tell, obviously, it was very well constructed. It wasn't cheaply done.

It was firmly put into place and it's a shame that the guys that tore it down did that because I think it could have been one of these things that people could have gone to visit and taken in it for what it was worth. We have incredible scenery here in Utah. We have all these national parks and stuff that are just unbelievable to go and check out and to see this, which is not in one of the park areas by the way, it's in Bureau Land Management area.

Still, in order to do something like that, the artist should have gotten permission like the other artists did for their works, but maybe it was just because of all the red tape that they chose not to do it. It's is my guess. The New York Post came out with an article and said that the guys who had created it had stepped forward and claimed it. Now, whether or not they really did, I don't know. I just read that in the New York Post about a week ago, somebody sent it to me.

[00:10:25] Bret: Like I said, the sad part is, what they did obviously doing it on BLM land was wrong without getting permission. Then the guys that chose to go in and tear it down, they're in the wrong too. Two wrongs don't make a right but the sad part of this was that it was really unique. I thought, "That would be something fun to bring my family back out to eventually."

When I first sent that out, what happened was is we inspected the thing for about 30 minutes trying to figure out who had put it there, if there's any. There was literally no markings on it. At the end of it, we just climbed back in the aircraft and went back to doing what we do. Later on that day for work, we have a group app and I sent a picture of it out. All I said to the guys that I work with was, "Does anybody know what this thing is?" Then one of them chose to send it out on the Instagram account for our department and two of the local television stations picked up on it.

This happened on a Wednesday. I got a call that Friday from the guy that runs the Instagram account. He said, "They want to do an interview with you over that thing that you found down in the desert." I said, "Well, it's really nothing. I just was curious if anybody knew what it was." He said, "I know but can you give him a call?" I called this guy, his name's Andrew Adams that works for KSL TV 5 here.

He and I got chatting. We'd done some interviews before. I said, "Hey, Adam, it's really nothing. It's just this art piece down there in the middle of the desert." He said back to me, this is the ironic part were he goes, "You know what, I know it's nothing but he says it's a really slow news week and I need a filler piece for tonight."

Anyway, when I was talking to Andrew, I told him that I said, "Hey, this thing reminded me of 2001: A Space Odyssey." It was like everybody wanted it to be this portal to another dimension or something like that. At the end of the interview, I sent him a little clip off of YouTube that showed the apes jumping around the monolith in the movie and stuff.

He did a great job incorporating the story. I told him, I said, "Hey, we really don't want people to know where this is," because exactly what happened to it was what we were afraid was going to happen, that somebody would either go in and damage it or I didn't think they'd go as far as tearing it down thinking that they're the judge, jury and executioner for this thing.

The ironic part is the guys that tore it down, they're total hypocrites. I don't know if you've followed it at all but they've gotten really beat up on social media. The guy that was the lead instigator of it has gone down there and faced a lot of the area with his Slack lining and different things like that, apparently.

I'm just going off what people have told me about him but it's like, if you had really concerns about what was going on with the environment around this, what they should have done was notified the Bureau of Land Management and then said, "Hey, you really need to get some control measures in there so that people don't ruin all of this area where this is located."

[00:15:01] Bret: The area where this is located, there was one road. We put out-- When I told Andrew, I said, okay, when I gave him the video and the still photos, I said, "Hey, we don't want people to know where this is because we knew that there weren't any bathrooms, that it's quite a drive out there, that people could get stuck." It wasn't because it was dangerous or anything but it created the appearance that we were trying to hide where this thing was located and it created that mystery.

Since we've all been cooped up because of COVID and everything else, it was like this thing just blew up on its own. I was shocked to be honest with you, how crazy this whole thing took off. The fact that I think it was people on Reddit, I don't even really understand what Reddit is but I guess they're the ones that figured out the location of where we found it and they were able to get on Google Earth and somehow, they're able to follow some of the tracks of the helicopter and stuff.

It was from the time the story was released but I think that that following because it aired on a Friday night and by the following Monday or Tuesday, I think, was when people had figured out the location but we weren't trying to-- Go ahead.

[00:16:35] Bret: I was just there for that 30 minutes but I had people calling me. The crazy part is, excuse me, for most of the time when all this was going on, I was out of cellphone range. My wife, my parents were all getting phone calls because people couldn't get hold of me trying to find out what the location, when was the location is discovered. My wife jokingly said, "I'm going to quit my full-time job and just become your agent," because I wasn't there for any of the calls and stuff because we were still out doing the sheet counts.

It was funny. I'd come in at night and I'd have all of these. I'm not a big social media guy. I barely do Facebook without my wife and my kids and grandkids helping me. It's like on Instagram all of a sudden, I guess Instagram and Facebook are tied in together. I had all of these requests on Instagram. I didn't even know how to answer them. I was trying to figure it out my hotel room at night.

We put in some very long days on these biological counts. For me, it was like, "You know what, I'm just putting this off till I get back home and stuff." I was just in a completely surreal experience almost. I had people that I hadn't talked to in 35 years that were calling me up or trying to get, "Hey, I just saw you on the news." I've got a friend over in Switzerland that goes, sent me an Instagram thing and I finally figured out how to answer him.

He goes, "Is this you?" I'm like, "Yes." I go, "It's crazy, isn't it?" He's like, "Yes, it really is, man." He goes, "You're all over the news in Europe and stuff." I really think that what it was, and this is just my take is we've all been so cooped up because of COVID and the elections, everybody's sick of the election crap and stuff.

It was just a great diversion for everybody to think, "Oh, wow. There's just something unusual that we can-- What is it?" I know everybody wanted it to really be aliens. Trust me, I did too. In the end, it turns out that it's just some artistic guys that I guess are out there doing their version of land art.

[00:19:07] Bret: It was interesting. I don't know if my wife and I last night just were summing through movies on Netflix and we watch the Phenomenon. Have you watched that yet?

[00:19:25] Bret: It was a pretty, pretty interesting documentary and stuff. We were talking about it. As a matter of fact, we had a little bit more of the conversation right before we went to bed. Then when we got up this morning, we were still talking about it.

I think we'd be foolish to think that we're the only beings in the universe. I've actually had a couple of experiences in my lifetime that I could not explain. They were definitely UFO type experiences that I went, "Okay, this is just freaky," and I couldn't quite figure out what they were. I still to this day have no idea of what they were.

[00:20:10] Bret: Yes, I used to work prior to working for the Department of Public Safety, I worked at the University of Utah as a helicopter emergency medical service pilot for their program up there, it's called Air Med. We have a remote base up in Park City, Utah and we were actually heading back to that base in the middle of winter about two o'clock in the morning. I have had medical crew with me, a flight nurse and a flight paramedic.

As we're going up through an area that's known as Parley's Canyon where Interstate 80 goes out to the east, that's one of the main interstates that runs through Utah. As we're going up the canyon, I see this bright light coming towards us down the canyon. It was growing in intensity and we have a common air to air frequency that we utilize to talk to other airplanes and helicopters in the Salt Lake valley.

I started making calls in the blind saying, "Hey, this is Air Med four, we're in route at Parley's Canyon, I've got the aircraft coming down the canyon, blah, blah, blah. I'm in the Park City." I got no response and the light just kept continuing to come closer and closer and closer and I was actually on night vision goggles. It was so bright that it would literally-- My night vision goggles have a phenomena where if too much light enters into they basically obscure what you're looking at and that's what happened with these night vision goggles that I had on.

I said to the crew, "Hey, can you see this light?" They're like, "Yes, we see it." I called Salt Lake Tower because I was still in contact with them. I said, "This is Med four, have you guys got any other aircraft out here on your radar?" They said, "No, you're the only one we're seeing." I said, "Well, I've got this incredibly bright light coming directly at me and I'm almost going to crash into it." They said, "No, you're the only one we see."

I literally took evasive actions and turned to the left away from it and it turned towards me. I go, "Okay, this is getting-- It kept coming and coming and coming." I said, "Can you guys see this?" They go, "Yes, we can see the light," and that stuff then I go, "Okay, it's continuing to come straight at us."

[00:23:12] Rob: Of course. I'm on the edge of my seat here, Bret.

[00:23:18] Rob: No worries.

The red is usually on the right side of the wing and the blues on the left side of the wing. Same thing with helicopters, they have to have a marking somewhere on them to put those position lights.

Anyway, it didn't have any of those, it was just this incredibly intense bright white light. It literally just stopped there and then reversed direction straight the other direction. I kept looking at it going, "What in the world's going on here?" I continue to fly up the canyon as it went further and further away. As I got further and further away it went up to a area called Duchesne County, which has the town of Roosevelt in it and I don't know if you're familiar with an area called Skinwalker Ranch?

[00:24:44] Bret: Literally, I've flown over Skinwalker Ranch, I've read the book about it and stuff. It is pretty intriguing, I've been up there and I even drove over to it and looked around the property from a distance and stuff. Anyway, this light continued to go clear out across Park City across the Uinta mountains and then literally disappeared in the general vicinity of where Skinwalker Ranch is. I went, "Okay, now I'm really freaked out." That was the last--

[00:25:41] Bret: Oh, yes. I'm fine with that.

[00:25:45] Bret: Let me ask you, Rob, do you have any connections to Skinwalker Ranch?

[00:26:15] Bret: Yes, Andrew Adams. The guy who started this whole story, he did a big story on the local TV here about Skinwalker Ranch so he's connected. I could put you in touch with him, he might be able to help you with it. Then a friend of my wife's, she knows the owner personally because I told her I said, "Hey, I want to spend some time at Skinwalker Ranch." [laughs]

[00:26:43] Bret: I actually got a phone call, Andrew Adams after he did the piece and it exploded, he called me wanting to know the location but I didn't give it to him at the time because nobody had discovered the location. He wanted-- the guy that owns Skinwalker Ranch wanted to bring some of the scientists down there to look at the monolith. I said, "I'm not going to disclose where it's at," it was like about a day later is when those guys can figured out where it was.

I said, "Hey, this is where it is if you guys want to get down there but unfortunately, they weren't able to get down there before the guys tore it down not that they would have found anything magical or alien-ish about it I guess. We got a lot of weird stuff at Utah. [laughs]

[00:27:54] Bret: Yes, they did. At the time, I didn't give it to them because we were literally trying to keep people from knowing where it was. Partially due, like I say, it's just such a remote and it wasn't that anybody had really get hurt. My biggest fear was that people-- you got to understand how cowboy-ish a lot of people around here. They bring their guns out, shoot holes in it, do stupid things. People just do stupid things and as a matter of fact, I'm in the process. I'm going to write an op-ed for a local newspaper here called, This is why we can't have nice things in Utah.

What these clowns did by just taking what they believe is the moral high ground in reality, I don't believe they have any moral high ground and going out and turn the thing down. I even found out that the Governor of the State of Utah wanted to go down and see this thing. Now it's gone and it's sad because like I was telling my wife I said, "I bet it was really spectacular on its own."

I thought the way whoever had figured out where to put it, there's a drainage the comes into it and I thought that would have looked even cooler during one of the thunderstorms that we get in Utah during the summertime, to see the water cascading down behind this and then flowing around it.

Like I say, whoever the artists were that put this in, they took a lot of time and care to figure out the exact spot for it.

They didn't just willy-nilly stick it up in the middle of something. The fact that it wasn't discovered for four years proves that they definitely spend a lot of time with it with figuring out what they were going to do.

[00:30:19] Bret: If you look up, I think it's monolith. If you look it up, mono is singular and lith is stone. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey, the monolith. When I went back and watched it about a week ago with my wife and my grandson, my wife got up towards the end and said, "I'm done watching. This is stupid." My grandson was like, "Grandpa, this is the weirdest show I've ever seen."

[laughter]

I sent the clip to Andrew Adams. I said, "This is what it reminded me of once we stood there and we're looking at it." Like I say, he chose to incorporate that into the story. When we got right up to it and I don't know if you've seen the pictures, Wade got up, I boosted Wade up on top of my shoulders so that he could look on top of it to see if there was anything up on top that said, who'd put it there or anything like that.

Anyway, it was comical. People grabbed hold of that and said that we were almost acting ape-like around it and stuff like that. I think it was the guardian over in England that these men in green monkey suits or something to that effect were examining it. All we're trying to do is figure out, "Okay, who put this thing here?"

It was made out of stainless steel. It was pop riveted together. It wasn't screwed together because one of the, I think it might've been Brad or Dustin got their pocket knife out and tried to actually pop one of the rivets out safe, but it was very, very well constructed out of stainless steel.

I think it's the Diesel Brothers or some guys here in Utah that do a reality show. They actually, they weren't the first, but they got down there by the time they actually have a helicopter, they flew into the location and went around. He gives his take on the whole thing. "Oh, yes, this is very well constructed, blah, blah, blah."

Like I say, the artists, it wasn't like they just took a piece of junk and stuck it in the middle of the desert. It actually had a lot of merit to it I thought. Like I say, it's a shame that these, as I call them scuff laws from Seinfeld decided that they were the ones that would tear it down. I think that the Bureau of Land Management could have easily put some restrictions into place and then people could have come and seen it and enjoyed it for what it was.

It's really tragic that, like I say, that these guys tore it down in the end. Part of me understands a little bit why they did it, but the other side of me goes, "You didn't have the right to do what you did."

To that end, a lot have now been popping up all over the world. Do you think that it's the same artist collective? I know that there's an argument about who it could be. There is this artist collective that has claimed it, there's also this artist, I think his name's Dave McCracken to his work resembled it a lot. He had, in fact, before he passed away, he had told his son, "I think maybe I'd like to just put these up all around the world so people think that it's aliens." Do you believe one person or another?

The fact that, like I say, whoever did it, they took their time. They definitely thought through this. It might've been years in the doing just because it's such a remote location that not a lot of people go to and it was accessible to them to be able to get the material in there to put this in. It's hard to say. Like I say, the sad part is unless somebody comes forward, that's actually got video or pictures of them putting it in place, we're never going to really know so it's added to the mystery.

As far as them popping up around the world, I think I was shocked at how much this little filler story just went completely crazy. It just blew my mind just how quickly, but then I thought, "You know what, the entire world is basically been cooped up now for almost a year and we're going stir crazy." We want something to get us away from the COVID-19 thing. We want something to get us away from politics and all the garbage that seems to go on in the world is.

I think people really wanted this to be probably more than just an art installation. They wanted it to be something from another world that they could actually go, "Wow, this is mind blowing." Unfortunately-

[00:37:14] Bret: Yes. It is what it is.

It has blown, that post blew up way more than any of our other posts on Instagram had. We still get people liking it to this day. I was like, "Wow, there is a lot of interest in this." I think you're definitely right about it. It's something that provides a little mystery and some fine in a crazy, crazy year.

Have so many, I think fun explanations to it too, beyond just the aliens. The artwork angle I think is very cool. I think that it is impressive work of art and very sad that somebody tore it down. I'm going to throw one more theory at you to take what you think about this. Some people had said that it could be leftover set design for Westworld. Is there any film production out in that area and would that be viable?

I know that apparently parts of Westworld were filmed here, but I don't think this, I haven't watched the current. I've seen the old Westworld with Yul Brynner and stuff, but I've never watched the series. I don't think that there's anything because it would have been a known thing. One of the spots that we flew over that I was unaware until the biologist told me was the, do you remember the movie Thelma & Louise?

[00:39:47] Bret: Remember at the end, when they drive off the cliff in the car?

[00:39:52] Bret: That's filmed here in Utah and down around this same area and the biologists were showing it to me. I went, "Oh, I didn't know that's where the spot was." They said, "Oh, yes," and they were talking about how they don the car off this cliff, and all of that kind of stuff. I'll send you, on your phone that you texted me.

It was kind of unusual, let me throw in a little caveat here. When we got done looking at the monolith, we started resuming our game counts, and we're flying these grid-like pattern trying to look for the sheep. Anyway, as we're flying this grid, probably about 30 minutes later, I'm like, "We're coming up over this little area that's got a sand dune to it." I look down and I go, "Whoa, what in the world is that?" We circled around it, and they go, "That's one of the rockets that crashed there from back in, I think it was, either the '60s or the '70s."

Apparently, it was an active test range back in the '60s and the '70s for testing these rockets and stuff. They would fly, I think it was, the forerunner selected cruise missiles and stuff. That's why it was restricted, apparently. It's pretty much shattered at this point. Some of the remnants of it are still up there by Green River. As a matter of fact, a mechanic good friend of mine named Steve was telling me about it, because he's very familiar with that area down there.

Anyway, it was comical because I actually went back and took pictures of the remnants of this rocket. I'll send them to you. It looks like remnants from something out of Star Wars that's crashed, how they showed them on the planets. There's all these things and stuff. I was taking pictures of it.

Then later on that same day, as we landed down near Lake Tahoe, the moon was starting to come up over this one bluff, and it was still daylight. It was probably about three-quarters of the moon, maybe two-thirds, I don't know. Anyway, it reminded me of that scene, I think it's from the second Star Wars episode, where the Death Star is three-quarters of the way rebuilt, if you remember the movie and I was just chuckling.

I walked into the biologist and I said, "Okay, I've solved the mystery of the monolith." I said, "The monolith is a tombstone to the alien spacecraft that we found that is crashed in the desert out there. The Death Star is back to claim the monolith because the human race was not worthy of it." We were just joking about it. I sent it to Andrew Adams, and stuff like that too.

It was just comical, the way you see all these weird things when you're out flying around and stuff like that, that I just thought, "Man, if I had to stop that out, it probably would have been even crazier." Things probably really would have exploded out there. I'll send you the pictures of it. You'll see where I was thinking in my head. I'm a little bit of a weirdo anyway. [chuckles]

Here's a question that I have for you is, with the strange art and the fascination of it in Utah, and Skinwalker Ranch in Utah, and all of this together, why do you think Utah attracts that kind of, for lack of better word, phenomenon?

I've been in both areas and stuff. It's just there's a lot of weirdness that goes on, there's a lot of conspiracy theories about what the government's hiding from us, and what they don't tell us. If you watch that show, that documentary, The Phenomenon, it was pretty fascinating, because I thought, "Wow." There was one that I had no idea about on there about these girls over, not just girls, it was a whole school class over in, I think it was, Zimbabwe, Africa.

There's just all these mysteries and I think it's our search for meaning and purpose in life. Is there more out there? Yes, I believe there is. You can either go through things looking at it from more of a religious aspect or more of a scientific aspect. I think everybody's just curious, is what it boils down to. We definitely have our share of odd things in Utah, but we're not the only one. It's pretty strange.

[00:46:46] Bret: Yes. As far as the monolith goes, I think I pretty much covered it all. Like I said, I guess my biggest frustration was that those guys tore it down, that other people really couldn't go out and enjoy it because of their actions, which is pretty tragic. I had a lot of people call me and they asked me where it was located once it had been disclosed by the online sleuth.

I was telling people, "Go check it out. It's pretty unique and stuff. Just be prepared." Like I say, unfortunately, those guys took it upon themselves to be judge, jury and executioner. Like I say, even the Governor of the State wanted to go down and see it. I got a call from one of our people in the Department of Public Safety saying, "Hey, the Governor's interested in going down and seeing this. Will you tell us where it's at?" I said, "Yes." Obviously, you're going to tell the Governor.

I guess it's just frustrating. It's like in a time when we're all trying to-- I think COVID has just hit us all, humanity in general, throughout the entire world. It was just something that was fun to get our minds off of all the crap that's going on. The world, for all of us, has been transformed because of this. We realize just how, I don't want to say, not insignificant, but just how our world can change so quickly in just almost the blink of an eye, it seems like.

My wife and I, we weren't able to go on our vacations, as well as everybody else. It's just all of a sudden everything's come to this grinding halt. I think if nothing else, the whole monolith story gave us a little reprieve for a while, and let us just have something else to get our minds off of what's going on throughout the world at this point. Anyway, that's probably about all I got to say on it.

[00:49:45] Bret: It really is. Have you read the book? The Hunt for the Skinwalker?

[00:49:51] Bret: I'm sure. It's very intriguing. My mom actually had it for her book club. I thought [unintelligible 00:49:58] . I said, "What's this?" She goes, "Oh, that's really interesting. You got to read it and stuff." Unfortunately, I'm so busy with my job and a number of other things so I don't get to read books as often as I'd like to but I grabbed that one and it just sucked me in. I was like, "Oh man, I got to go check this thing out." Literally, every chance that I've gotten when I'm up in that neck of the woods, I'll either go drive over there or I'll fly over it and stuff and just kind of scope it out.

[00:50:42] Bret: I've seen things out in the West Desert that I can't explain back when I was flying emergency medical services. I was just telling my wife about it last night. I said, "I remember I had a flight from down in Southern Utah." Again, it was 2:00 AM or 3:00 AM and I was looking out to the West with the goggles and I could see this huge thing that looked like-- the only thing I could think it reminded me of like a giant blimp like the Hindenburg or something like that. It was out flying and it was gradually coming down and it just kept moving north. It was almost keeping pace with the helicopters.

I was flying to the North and I kept looking at it with the goggles, trying to figure out what it was and then I looked to see if I could see it with my naked eye and I couldn't see if there were any lights on it or anything. Once again, it's out in this restricted area in these test ranges that are out west of Salt Lake.

Eventually, it just continued this gradual decline down into an area that's known as Dugway Proving Ground, which is where they did a lot of testing and stuff with biological and chemical munitions and stuff. Who knows what it was? I don't know if it was military. I just know it was really odd and I'd never seen it before and couldn't figure out quite what it was.

[00:52:10] Bret: I know when I was younger, I remember as I watched that show last night with my wife called The Phenomenon, and I remember being on an outing with a bunch of friends and [unintelligible 00:52:25] and we were up in an area and this is back-- It's called the East Fork of the Bear River but it's up in the Uinta's but I remember waking up one night and seeing this red light across the river and this was a very remote area where there's no other cabins or anything and there was this red light that was over in the trees.

I remember it was, once again, it seems like 2:00 AM to 3:00 AM is the magical hour for this kind of stuff and I remember just kind of sitting up and watching it and going, "Okay, what is that?" I never could explain it.

I asked if anybody else has seen it. Nobody else. I was the only one that saw it that night so it was weird. I'm sure if I sat down and thought about it, there's more but those are the ones that have stayed embedded in my memory. [laughs]

[00:53:48] Bret: I'll send you the stuff and I'll send you the original video. It's out now so it doesn't matter and stuff. Everybody's got it. It's the uncropped version, to give you more of an idea. It's been fun doing the talk with you and stuff.

[00:54:29] Rob: Well, yes. Talking a little bit more about the monolith, I guess one question I do have is there were-- there was one article I read that said that there had been a rash of UFO sightings before this. It may sound like UFO sightings happen pretty commonly out in Utah? Is that correct or no?

[00:55:13] Rob: Yes, actually.

Like I said, I think it's foolish to think that we're the only ones in this massive universe. That there's beings that have a higher intelligence than we do, absolutely. I think that's a very high probability, but until we see physical proof, it's just still a big mystery.

[00:56:06] Bret: It is. Like I say, trust me, nobody was-- When those guys got down to it, I was going, "Okay, if anybody disappears, we all better make a run for it," because I'm like, "We're approaching it and stuff." We're just like, "What is this?" I think it's just that scientific mind in all of us that we want some sort of portal to another dimension that would be really cool.

[00:56:48] Bret: All right. Thanks, Rob. Good talking with you. Have a good day.

[00:56:53] Bret: Bye.