Mystery Drones: The 2019 Sky Invasion (Interview with Obscure Podcast)

The Sightings Begin

In late 2019, residents of rural Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas began reporting strange sightings in the night sky. Large swarms of drones—sometimes 20, 30, or even 50 at a time—were flying over farms, towns, and open land. The drones appeared to be operating in coordinated patterns, moving systematically across the sky.

Law enforcement was called. Sheriffs' departments confirmed the sightings. One report from law enforcement described seeing 50 drones at once flying in formation. Residents described large white ball-shaped drones surrounded by smaller drones with red and white flashing lights.

No one knew who was operating them. No one knew why they were there. And no one could stop them.

The Investigation

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) launched an investigation. The FBI got involved. Local law enforcement tried to track the drones, but they moved too quickly and covered too much ground. Residents formed "drone hunter" groups—networks of locals in cars with radios who would track the drones and try to figure out where they were coming from.

Despite all the attention and resources, the mystery was never solved.

The Theories

Several theories emerged about what the drones were:

1.Government Surveillance - Some believed the drones were part of a classified government program testing surveillance technology

2.Private Companies - Others thought private companies were mapping land or testing delivery drones

3.Hobbyists - Some suggested it was just hobbyists flying drones for fun (though this seemed unlikely given the scale and coordination)

4.Something Else - A few people wondered if the drones were connected to UFO activity or foreign surveillance

The Interview

This episode features an interview with Gabe from the Obscure podcast, who investigated the drone phenomenon in depth. Gabe traveled to the affected areas, spoke with witnesses, and researched the government response.

He discusses:

•What locals saw and how they reacted

•The "drone hunter" groups that formed to track the drones

•The FAA and FBI investigations

•Why the mystery was never solved

•His own theories about what the drones were

The Mystery Remains

To this day, no one knows who was operating the drones or why they were flying over rural Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas. The sightings eventually stopped, but the mystery remains unsolved.

Were they government surveillance? Private companies testing technology? Something else entirely?

To hear the full investigation, listen to the Obscure podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms of Mysteries podcast, a True Crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Hi Mandy. How are you? I'm doing great. I'm excited because we are back with another bonus episode and a very special one that doesn't special. Just include the two of us.

Yes. You know we done, that's too much that. No, I'm over it and I'm part of it. No. We have a very special guest with us today. This we have Gabe Leonards. From the podcast obscure him. Super excited to get into it with him and talk to him about all things drone, drone related things. I don't know if space will come up.

Conspiracy theories have to come up because Mandy's here. That's why I'm here. That's the only reason she showed up. Gabe, hello. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. It's great to be here and hang out with you all. Wow. We don't get that a lot. Wherever. Well, it really is though. I'm, I'm excited, I'm excited to kick things off here.

So, wow. That's, I'm, I'm, I'm thrilled. So, Gabe, we'll [00:01:00] jump right into it. Just we wanted to give our listeners a little background on you. Tell us who you are, where you're from, all of the goodies. Absolutely. I'll just start back at the beginning. So I am an on-camera journalist and producer. I actually grew up in the Midwest and went to college at the University of Oklahoma.

Like so many people do. Found myself moving to the West Coast in Los Angeles and uh, I got into the broadcast industry and worked on a lot of red carpets. You may have heard me on radio, Disney Radio, Disney Country, or um, good Morning America. But yeah, so I do a lot of entertainment work. Um, and I have the past couple years, but my family still lives in Nebraska.

And so one holiday in 2019, I went home for the holidays, just like normal. The entertainment industry basically shuts down over the holidays. There's not a lot of production and, you know, different things going on. And so, yeah, I got on a plane in Burbank. Flew into, uh, Colorado, [00:02:00] drove home and we get this knock at the door.

I'm sitting there with my family a couple nights before New Year's Eve. Just relaxing. My mom had cooked a nice meal and yeah, I go answer it and it's this local police officer and he said, Gabe, something very strange is happening over these people's farms in the county. It's a totally remote area. Um, not a lot of people live there.

Small towns are just kind of dotted throughout the region. And sure enough, I drove out into the prairie, looked up into the night sky, and saw all of these flashing lights. Just lighting up the whole region. And so that kind of kicked off this mystery and obscure invasion of the drones, um, to ask questions and get answers into what these things were that were flying and if they were, in fact, could be drones or something else.

So did you have a, a relationship with the deputy because he knew you, like your family or because of trouble that you had been in? And there is, that's a great question. I'm so glad you asked. [00:03:00] So I used to be a, uh, a storm spotter. I used to chase tornadoes. And so growing up I would go out with this officer, um, and we would go chase storms in the local area.

Um, and so I gotten to know him pretty well and he just knew I had an, an inkling for journalism and interesting stories and he just thought, you know what? This may be something that you should look into. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. And see, um, 'cause we're, we're kind of stumped on this one. Wow. Okay. So on a scale though of I keep an open mind to shh, I think the birds are recording us.

Where exactly do you fall in terms of being a conspiracy theorist? Because when the drones, like when we started hearing about the drones really last year, um, you know, it opened up a whole world for conspiracy theorists to just really go at it. You know, I really approach this like a journalist and going where the evidence is.

I mean, that's kind of how I approach everything, but. There were so many real life things happening that were very strange almost as if we were living, [00:04:00] um, in which, uh, you know, I think Bethany Frankon and one of her videos, the real upside down, it really was. And this happened five years earlier before New Jersey.

Yeah. So I approached this as a, um, you know, as a journalistic type of thing to really follow where the evidence is. And I really had no idea of where. I would end up, um, five years later. Yeah. So that's, that's where it all begin. I can't appreciate anymore that you brought up Bethany Frankel, because I am a real Housewives person, but I know she was so big in drone talk during all of, you know, during the end of last year.

So very important person to have on the case. So when you've met with a deputy and you've gone out to go see these drones, or you're not really sure what it is, at what point does it become I want to pursue this as a project. Basically, I wanted to help the people in my hometown and figure out what was flying above them because they had no clue.

And if you, and if you think about it, I didn't really know this would turn into a project. I just kind [00:05:00] of went out there. I was, uh, working at Radio Disney at the time, and I had been doing some recording at home over the break, and I had all my great recording equipment there and I was like, I'm just gonna start asking questions and see what happens here because this is very fascinating and interesting.

Um, and I didn't know, um, at all. Where it would go. Um, and so the first thing I did was, I mean, imagine this, you're sitting at home, you have someone knock on the door and they're like, there are these weird drones hovering over people's cars. And I might add they were the size of small vehicles, people would report them.

Whoa. And so, and this is in Northeast Colorado. Southwest Nebraska, Northwest Kansas. And we heard some of this in New Jersey. I'm sure you've heard about this late last year. Um, but yeah, like I mentioned, this happened. Five years earlier in almost an identical way. Now some of the parallels are different, um, but it's weird to see kind of history repeating itself and, and be there.

But yeah, so the first thing I did was just talk to all of these neighbors and just [00:06:00] kind of see and compare what they were, you know, experiencing and what they had saw. And that's when some of the, you know, the strange stories started to unfold. Yeah. Outta the woodwork. Yeah. Do you feel like, being from a small town and coming to hear about this story, do you think that people were more open to telling you, since you were from the area and you've known a lot of these people, obviously, do you think, uh, that gave you more access than maybe somebody else would've had?

I think so. I mean, I think it was such a weird time in general. People were talking, you know, at the local bars or at the post office or at the grocery store. It was such a big viral topic of conversation that, um. A lot of people felt comfortable, I think talking about it in general and yeah, it definitely added the layer of, you know, people were being open with me right as I, you know, because I was from, from the area for sure.

So I have had a chance to listen to the first episode. I'm definitely hooked. I feel like time is not on my side. I have so many things I would love to listen to. Um, but I'm too coming back [00:07:00] to, uh, to your podcast for sure. I did listen to the first episode. I started episode two a little bit earlier today.

I'm absolutely hooked. It's fascinating. As Melissa was saying, this is like right up my alley. I love just a good, weird mystery and like anything that has even a hint of a conspiracy possibly. I'm all in. Um, so in, in that first episode though, you are, you know, you're talking about the sheriff's deputy telling you about these drones hovering over his neighbor's farm.

What were your, what were you thinking? What was your gut reaction in that moment? I thought that this could be two things. I thought that maybe related to something, uh, in the government, but I wasn't quite sure because, you know, it's such an expansive area and these were seen on a massive scale over many counties at the same time.

And a lot of time in my. Research and even hearing, you know, things at the very beginning when someone's doing a test, it's kind of over a controlled area. I wasn't quite sure 'cause it was over such a large region. And the second was, you know, we have a lot of agriculture [00:08:00] out there in Nebraska and I thought, I've seen these spray planes for years doing things over the fields and I thought maybe this was a new type of technology that was maybe, um, you know, working in some kind of way to like, facilitate growth with like the corn fields or the wheat.

And, and I was kind of able to quickly. Rule out the, for sure, the agricultural one early. But one of the things I wanted to dive into at the beginning was, it's so hard when you see a flashing light in the sky to deduce like what it is. Because you know, if someone looks on their phone and they, they're videoing that light may be the most interesting thing when they're telling their friends that they see.

But at the end of the day, it's just a flashing light. And so I wanted to dive into the why instead of the what at first, and think about why these things may actually be there in the first place. And that's what, that's what led me to that, and that's what I was thinking. It could either be government or it could be related to agriculture at the beginning.

Okay. Of course, with any investigation into anything [00:09:00] like this or anything really big, there's gonna be a lot of roadblocks I feel like, along the way. So whether it's crime, paranormal, um, or whatever these drones are, what do you think was the hardest part about just getting to the bottom of your investigation?

I think the hardest thing was. Just the time it took because of the area was so spread out. As I mentioned, it was hard to track down people and meet people because you weren't in one metropolitan area like you were in the Northeast with, you know, New Jersey and New York and you, you know, you're fairly close.

Yeah. I mean, we're talking about driving around in Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming. South Dakota, north Texas. I was in, I was in Kansas and so I was going all over the place to try to piece together what was happening here. And I think that was one of the biggest challenges. Um, and then once you get outside of the local, you know, the local folks, like talking to other people that are like local law enforcement that actually took peeling back some layers, [00:10:00] um, to kind of get into those where I didn't have a previous connection to 'em.

Right. Did your opinion ever kind of change? You know, did you ever feel like this is definitely what's going on, and then find yourself thinking like, no, that's not it. It has to be something else? That's a great question. I, I didn't have outside of those early thoughts like a preconceived notion of what I 100% thought it was.

'cause I wanted to keep an open mind, but. Um, you know, outside of like, figuring out what was flying above people, uh, you know, it's a safety issue if you, you know, you've seen all the things that have happened this year with like different, um, plane incidents and different types of things in the sky. And I think more than anything it's just, it's important to know what's flying, um, above us at any given time.

Because if you think about it. Right now, it's kind of like with all the things up there, it's, it really is like a circus in the sky where you have, um, helicopters, you have consumer drones, you have [00:11:00] mysterious drones or something else. People are reporting UFOs or UAPs. Yeah. You know, you have airplanes and so there's so many things up in the sky at one time, probably I would guess, more than ever before in our time in history.

Um, and so it's kind of figuring out. Where those lines are between, between the different, you know, things flying. It's interesting. I feel like part of my, um, fascination with this case is that, uh, Melissa, I think knows this, but my dad was an air traffic controller, so growing up I always was really interested in what he did for work and, um, I used.

That this was back when you used to be able to take your child to, uh, work with you as an air traffic controller? Yeah. They stopped that. Um, a little, you know, a little after I got a little older. But, um, I, I, you know, I grew up sitting in the radar room and watching like all these things they were tracking, you know, and I would go sit in the tower and be able to like visually watched the planes landing.

Just, it was a really cool experience, but I've always been really fascinated with like [00:12:00] aviation and things in the sky, you know, as a result of that. So something like this I feel like would first of all freak me out a lot. Um, but I would absolutely wanna know what on earth was going on. So did it seem like the people that you spoke to were affected by the presence of the drones or were they kind of looking over their shoulders?

Were people. Not really concerned. How, what was the general feel? What do you think? Uh, well, first of all, so different people had, you know, different opinions. And I can dive into like, which ones do you mean like the local people or do you mean like the officials? Because I feel like they had a different opinion than the people.

What, what people, what, what ones? Do you want me to dive first? Why not both? How about the locals? First, let's do the, let's do the locals. I, I think the locals in general were nervous as you get into kind of the podcast and I'll just kind of. Paint a picture for you. But basically a group of these locals came together and formed this drone hunter group and went out to investigate these things themselves.

And they would have [00:13:00] kind of a network of people in these different cars calling back and forth, uh, with each other. And so, yeah, they were really nervous about what was flying with them because at the early stages of this, and this is in late 2019, early 2020, people were reporting. At any given time, and the first, one of the first major reports of this was law enforcement, which reported 50 of 'em at the same time lying in the sky.

But a lot of people who live in the country were saying 20, 30, 40 of them at one time. And you had this like white, large kind of ball shaped drone and you had these red and white lights kind of, that were smaller flashing around it, just kind of working the sky. So people were concerned they didn't know what it could be because when you live in the country, there's not a lot of people in, in driving distance.

Um, from you. You may live 15, 20 miles away and you're out there and you have this weird technology hovering above your, your farm at night. Yeah. You're gonna get, uh, a little worried. [00:14:00] Yeah, it gives me big, uh, signs, the movie signs, vibes of that with the crop circles and all of that. So I finished today, I finished your series today and the final episode.

You're talking about connections between drones and all these other states, and then some people are saying they're not being taken seriously when they're talking about these things. Do you feel like through your entire investigation, if this is a spoiler, don't say it. Um, do you feel like there was.

There was ever a coverup from what you were asking officials and stuff like that, or do you think people genuinely didn't know or didn't feel like they could share? I think that there. Still and was a lot of confusion. I think at the end of the day, people weren't quite sure what to make of the situation.

If you look at this drone mystery and kind of unpack the layers, we have this Colorado and Nebraska Drone Mystery from 2019 to 2020, which we cover in the podcast. Then you [00:15:00] have. Ongoing sightings. Um, there were some reported in, uh, Ohio. We've seen 'em in Minnesota as well as Illinois. And then we have the Langley Air Force Base Incident.

December, 2023, the Pentagon went on the record and acknowledged that there were mysterious drones for two weeks. And then we have the Colorado and Nebraska, or then we have the, the northeast sightings. So connecting all of those different incidents together. Um, you know, I do think that people are still unsure of what they saw, and that goes from local officials all the way up towards government officials because in the New Jersey sightings specifically, which a lot of people may be the most familiar with.

You had all of these different agencies going on the record saying like, we aren't flying these, these aren't our drones. We're going to, um, look into this. You know, and the DOD and the FAA re released a joint statement in December that said they were looking into these sightings. And, uh, say what you will about, you know, what you think about the government [00:16:00] or anyone else.

You know, a lot of times if there's something questionable, and I'm sure you both can weigh on this too, it's kind of a wink in the nod of like. That may be us, or it's not us like, right. You know? Mm-hmm. And they don't go on the record and comment. But what, what I noticed in this thing is both in Nebraska and Colorado and in New Jersey, several years later, people went out of their way to say, these aren't ours, and they don't belong to us, and we don't know who they belong to.

Which is incredibly, uh, scary to hear when you think like you guys are the ones that are supposed to know who this is and then to not know. Yeah. That's very, very, very scary. This is a little silly of a question, but did you ever have anything on the podcast or any interviews or anything that felt just too wild to include and your, in your podcast, whether it's conversations or just something that was really funny or you weren't expecting it?

This was actually in the podcast, but one of the weirdest. Things to me was the connection to in episode three. And, and Mandy, I don't mean to spoil it for you, but I'll go [00:17:00] ahead and just say it, but, um, but basically, uh, there was this guy who was convinced that these drones or something else were related to cattle mutilations on his property.

Okay. And so. And so he would see these flying around at night. He got one locked into the scope of his gun and it was coming over him. And during like, you know, a certain timeframe, he had had these, these cows. Um, which yeah, they were mutilated on his land and he believes that there could be a connection to whatever was flying in the sky.

So it is interesting. Mm-hmm. You can't connect that and say that actually is what happened. But, um, but that was one of the stranger type of things. And like I said, I kept a very level head moving into this and I wasn't sure where, where it would go, but. But yeah, that's definitely one of the, the craziest things I heard.

This is why Maddy and I could never do any sort of investigation. We would absolutely go on every theory. We would be absolute. Team, whatever the [00:18:00] craziest thing was that we heard. Yeah. And need like an, an expert to be like that. That doesn't make any sense. So with your podcast being out for a while now mm-hmm.

Um, the whole First Season's out, which is, it's. So great. And our listeners will absolutely love it, but were there any wild theories that you heard from listeners? Like after you've put this out, did you get people saying to you, oh my gosh, this happened to me, or, I saw this, you had to have gotten some good stuff.

The armchair detectives? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh, there, there are a lot of armchair detectives. I'm still going through my email inbox. I, I get 'em every day of people who have experienced, um, a lot of different things and fingers crossed we'll be doing. Hopefully more episodes on this and kind of to dive into it.

Yeah. Can't say for sure. Mm-hmm. But, um, but I've gotten a lot of like, you know, interesting stories where people have seen these all across the country and a lot of them, you know, it's so weird because they're not quite sure what's in that, you know, what's in that rear view mirror behind them following.

Yeah. They're like, it's not a star. It's low at night and [00:19:00] they're just not quite sure. So, um, I mean, I've heard some. I've heard some weird things and, and what I've read that like there's been connections to water and riverbeds and like in backyards of people. Um, they've been hovering over different people's, like Quonsets, their farm, Quonsets, they've been in and out of their quonsets.

So I've heard some, some crazy things now I haven't looked into that. Um, but I think there's a lot of stuff to go through which I need to catch up on. And so I'm sure there's some, some great nuggets. Buried deep, deep in the inbox I need to look at. Well, I look forward to hearing any updates if they happen.

If you have new episodes, if I, uh, look forward to hearing them. I have one last question, Mandy, I know you have a few more, but you're one of the producers on this, but also Imagine Entertainment is. Producing this, which means Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. And my question is, how did you do that? And how can we do that?

You know, it's been, it was, it, it [00:20:00] just kind of, honestly, that's so cool. It's really cool. You know, I've been in Los Angeles, uh, for a while. I met some really interesting people, um, and. I got in a couple conversations with, with some producers there and they loved the story and got invested in it and before you know it, um, we get a partner like iHeart and Imagine Jumps on.

Yeah. And then Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are eps and it's just been this beautiful kind of, you know, relationship. Because if you think of Imagine Shows, there's been so many great ones. Mm-hmm. Like Friday Night Lights or even movies, like A Beautiful Mind and that's what we wanted to really. Put together with this audio and kind of create, you know, a cinematic storytelling experience where you're immersed in this kind of world.

Um, and I think, I think it's been, uh, it's come together really well, so, yeah. It it, that's so cool. I'm so excited to help happen. Yeah. My, uh, dad, I told him that we were interviewing somebody who is working. On something that Ron Howard did and he just thought it was the coolest thing in the world. My dad's like a huge Andy Griffith fan, so mine too.

[00:21:00] My dad is too, right? Well it's probably like small town. I'm from like a small town in north Florida. That's like what we watched. I know all of those. But yeah, so anyway, big deal. Thank you very much for coming on Andy. Oh yeah. Okay. Uh, so I just wanna know for you, what was the big scary or the big moment?

What was the biggest, you know, the height of everything for you? The height of everything for me was when I thought this was a local story, um, that was in like a small area of three kind of states. Northwest Kansas, southwest Nebraska, northeast Colorado, and then getting to the end of the podcast, which it's been out now.

And I mean, I'll just, I'll just say it, hearing how this really. Was going on in multiple other states at that same time, on a huge scale and how the FAA was in fact aware of it. Um, that was kind of a, that was kind of a red flag for me in something where I was like, huh, this is very interesting. 'cause if you think about it.

How could someone have [00:22:00] that much technology covering that many states all at the same time during one four week period in 2019? Um, it's a lot of money if you think about it. Yeah. And so it has to be a huge kind of operation regardless of who's doing it. Um, or, or, or what, what's doing it. So I guess the next big question on everyone's minds is from where you stand today, what do you think these drones are?

That's a, that's a great question. I honestly am. Not 100% sure. I just know there's been strong parallels between what happened in New Jersey and what I saw in Nebraska and Colorado, and I have been able to rule out, like I said, probably four or five different theories, and that's why I wanted to put this podcast out to really document what people were going through.

And hopefully we have this place where you can share your story on the website. Hopefully we can all come together and keep asking questions and fully get to the bottom of it. Um, and other episodes and then, um, and other [00:23:00] content, uh, with everyone because I think that it's something that, that needs to be looked at, you know, specifically even from a safety issue.

So I'm not quite sure. Um, I know that conspiracy theories are running wild over what it could be, but the bottom line is, you know, I just go where the facts are and wanna figure out what I can 100%, um, verify and I'm a. I thought this story was going to kind of maybe fade away a little bit the end of last year, and then when the New Jersey thing kicked up, it got really wild, really quick.

Yeah. Um, again, and so, so, yeah. That's where we're ending now. I mean, you know, I'm sure people want me to say, oh, there's aliens flying around it there. Right? I can't confirm you said it here. I can't confirm you said it here on our show. I can't confirm. Um, but yeah, but I just think that it definitely needs, you know, warrants a lot more discussion and, and, and investigative work to kind of figure it out.

And like I said, I'm not a UFO person, like at all. This was just a story where I wanted to [00:24:00] figure out for the people where I lived, like what was going on. 'cause. I just, I didn't know. And it's kind of turned into this whole, you know, this whole thing. So, yeah. So with that said, with there still needing to be a lot of questions answered, does that mean are, is there gonna be a next season of this?

So I can't say 100% for sure, but, um, I will say that, so I was in New Jersey. Um, once that stuff started popping, I got on a plane and flew to New Jersey and I was in New Jersey at the height of those sightings there. Okay. As everything was kind of going. Um, and so I'm looking into some stuff there now, so hopefully there will be more, more episodes in the future with that.

But the New Jersey stuff is kind of on a whole other level. Um, yeah, because you have pol high level politicians in it. Yeah. Um, and different and different things, and so. I dunno. That was, yeah, so I, I'm, I'm really hoping there's gonna be more. I'm just gonna go ahead and say that Yeah. [00:25:00] We have some good stuff and there'll be more.

Yeah. All right. We'll take it again. You also said that on the show you're releasing a second season. Say. Yeah. I'm just gonna say that I just think that, you know, when people listen to this, like keep an open mind and um, really start from the beginning and listen the full way through. I know sometimes people like to jump into different parts of different episodes and just see like.

Um, you know, especially on YouTube, if you see a spark part and you scroll through and and want to hear it, I would listen to the full thing in context because we really do look into a lot of different, yeah, a lot of different things. And I think you're gonna get the most, uh, value from it from starting at the beginning.

And, you know, just, just take time to be entertained and I think you will. I think he'll learn something too. So yeah, it's, it's wonderful. You've honestly done such, such a great job. It's fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. We, we both love it. Thank, thank you. So David, if you have a few minutes, we'd love to do a little game with you.

It's conspiracy theory. We know you are a real journalist. We are not. So we can easily,[00:26:00] 

so I'm just ask a few multiple choice questions, you and Mandy. Mandy, if you can answer it before I even give choices, you get double points. Uh, the winner gets nothing and the points mean. Nothing. I feel like, man, I feel like Mandy's gonna like own this maybe. Well, let's hope. Maybe. Let's hope. All right.

Sometimes she gets me good with these games. We'll see. We'll see. Okay, come on. According to conspiracy theorists, what is hidden underneath the Denver International Airport? Mandy, do you wanna say before, oh yeah, go ahead. If you know, go ahead. What's hidden under there? Oh, this isn't good if you're asking me questions.

Yeah, I don't know. Okay. Do you have a guest, Gabe, before I do Multiple choice. I feel like it's some like, uh, command post or something for likes government tunnels. Is it tunnels? Tunnels? I dunno. Let me help you. Is it a portal to Narnia? A massive alien command center. The Illuminati Secret Bunker or Elvis's personal bowling alley.

I think it's, I'm. Elvis is personal. Okay, so Gabe is actually [00:27:00] very bad at this game. Um, okay, so, okay, this one, Gabe, you've got this one. Okay. What unusual shape do some people believe is a signal from aliens embedded in crop fields? Circle. Great job, Gabe. You're back in the game. Mandy. I'm back in the game.

You're running it? Barely. Have you all been to the, have you all been to the Denver airport though? You've flown through there, right? Mandy? Has you flown through? I have not. I we're going there this year for Crime Con. I was gonna say, I mean, it's a whole experience in itself. It's, I mean, once you get on that terrain, you just don't even know where you're gonna end up.

So I wouldn't be surprised. Really? Oh gosh. Okay. Mandy. Mandy got real big into this. I mean, in a joking way. I'm not gonna throw it under the bus. Here we go. What does the birds aren't real conspiracy claim. This one's right up your alley. Yeah, go ahead. Uh, birds are government drones. Birds are spies from Mars.

Birds are shape shifting. Robots, birds are holograms. Powered by breadcrumbs. I think it's the government drones one. [00:28:00] Mandy, there's a whole story behind it. You'll have to look into it. Yeah, it's a whole conspiracy theory. She, yeah. She's into this, but we'll go. This one is a little birdish, so we'll stay on this one and then we've got one more.

Um, what do some people believe is the reason Pigeons, bob, their heads. Mandy, what? I don't know. I have no clue on this. I've never heard this one. Oh, come on guys. We know this. Just say balanced while flying. Obviously, to scan barcodes on the ground to recalibrate their internal GPS or to record sound with hidden microphones.

Well, if birds are drones, I guess it could be any of those things. Mm-hmm. I'd say the hidden microphones. Thank you, Gabe. I think you've taken the lead because Mandy should have gotten that one. Okay, last one. Uh, what's the conspiracy theory behind the Bernstein bears spelling? So that's, what is that called?

Oh, Mandela Effect. Mandela Effect? Mm-hmm. Thank you. I have no clue. So, okay, then you'll have to go. Choices that the bears changed it themselves to hide from tax evasion, a government [00:29:00] typo gone viral. Or we are in a parallel universe where it was always baron stain bears. We're in a parallel universe. Okay.

Yeah. That's it. I mean, yeah, we, I do have moments where I could believe that because it was never spelled that way. Um, Gabe, I'm gonna say that you won because you're the guest. Um, all right. I'll take it. But Mandy kind of smoked you there at the end. He really did. I mean, I'm glad it would've been embarrassing for us.

I know it. I'm embarrassed that I could win a silly game. I think it's more embarrassing to win. I have to be honest. I agree. Gabe, thank you so much for coming on and talking with us. This has been an absolute pleasure. Um, we would love to hear from you where we can find your show, how to listen. Uh, anything else that you would like to share with us before we get outta here?

Absolutely. You can listen to the podcast wherever you get your podcast on Apple. Spotify, um, and you can search obscure invasion of the drones or anywhere else. You can [00:30:00] also listen on our website, obscure him series.com, and we have some videos. I mentioned that guy who had the, the craft in the barrel of his gun.

You can see that in one of our videos. Um, and some interesting social content. So yeah, make sure to check that all out. One of the best things you can do, we talked about this early too, is leave a comment wherever you listen to the podcast and tell me if you're seeing these drones, because I'm scrolling through and trying to find inspiration for future episodes to see which direction this is gonna go.

So it's very helpful. Um, like we talked about that, you leave a comment so I can know your story. Awesome, awesome. And we will have all this information of course in our show notes. Gabe, thank you so much for coming on. I'm so glad we got connected. You are an awesome guest and we've learned so much. Love your podcast.

Love it. Thank you. Yes, thank you. I guess that would be the normal thing to say. No, thank you. It's been so much fun and we'll have to do this again and, uh. Uh, hang out and I wanna hear more about like, working with like the FAA and like the airport security and all the stuff that you did with your dad.

[00:31:00] That's pretty interesting. It's a lot different now. It was back then. Well, you're gonna, I mean, I just, last question, I'm gonna, I wanna ask you, oh, please. What did you think when you first heard of the drones having that whole history and you heard about all of these mysterious drones, did you think they were actually drones or small planes or something else?

Careful, Mandy. Careful. Don't go too far down a rabbit hole.

I have my theories. I don't know if I want them on the record. She's gonna, she's gonna say UFOs. No. We wish. No, but no, but actually, you know what's like, uh, funny, my husband has like his theories about UFOs and stuff, and he thinks it's time travelers from the future that are coming back to look at check out.

You're gonna let us keep back in the show, but you won't say anything. You threw him under the boat. No, I can't say, I can't say what I think. I think it's better. I think the explanation is probably a lot simpler than, yeah. What? You know what I'm gonna do? I'm just gonna put a thinking long beep for whatever you said.

I'm just gonna put a beep and people can just fill [00:32:00] it in, make it, it sound like I said something crazy. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Gabe, well thank you so much. Well, again, we'll have everything in the show notes. Check out obscure right now and find it wherever you get your podcast. Awesome. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much again.