Interview with Col. John B. Alexander by Shawn Ryan
February 13, 2024, Former U.S. SEAL Shawn Ryan, aired an interview with Col. Alexander titled "Military Applications of the Paranormal"
A few days ago, Shawn Ryan published on his YouTube channel one of his favorite lengthy interviews. Shawn Ryan, a former Navy Seal, is well known for his commitment to veterans and his support for research into the use of psychedelics in the treatment of disorders suffered by veterans. He introduced Colonel John B. Alexander, retired from the army, who, after starting out in the infantry, soon joined the military intelligence services. Known for his work on psychic and paranormal phenomena, as well as non-lethal weapons, he published "Reality denied" in 2017, a book in which he recounts his extraordinary experiences.
After a short introduction, the first question focused on the Colonel's experience at Skinwalker Ranch, plunging us right into the heart of the matter. He spoke of a force at work there, and recalled the manifestations he witnessed (the animal mutilations, for example). He described the phenomenon as:
"certainly intelligent and certainly not human".
The interview delved into the colonel's life and career. After a brief sequence on his childhood, the Vietnam War, where he served in the Special Forces, is evoked at length. He places the American intervention in the context of the domino theory. The tense relations between the USA and the Soviets would be a common thread running through the colonel's career.
In December 1980, he wrote an article for Military Review on "the new intermediate battlefield". In it, he explained the military potential of psychic abilities. This article was to propel him to INSCOM under General "Bert" Stubblebine. For Stubblebine, "it's about not eliminating things just because you don't understand them". This viewpoint would enable John Alexander to start laboratory research into alleged psychic abilities and paranormal or unexplained phenomena.
During the interview, some work supervised by Colonel Alexander was discussed, and he offered a few examples of direct personal experience.
John Alexander's research focused on Near Death Experiences. On one occasion, he met Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and Raymond Moody. But long before that, in Vietnam, he had been introduced to the most striking case of Near-Death Experience (NDE). He recounted Jim's extraordinary story of a helicopter crash, an out-of-body experience and an encounter with "a hooded figure".
He also shared interest in claims of telekinesis and "spoon bending". John Alexander revealed that he not only conducted work inspired by the controversial Uri Geller, but also taught the technique of bending metal without physical intervention.
In the same period, he supervised a research program on the Hutchinson effect with the eponymous inventor, whom he humorously described as a "boy who liked to sit and watch sparks". The subject of remote viewing and the Stargate program were touched on very briefly here, as is work on Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP).
A long sequence of the interview was devoted to the study of primary perception alongside Cleve Backster. First, John Alexander described how, using a polygraph, Cleve demonstrated that plants not only responded to pain, but also responded to the intention of inflicting pain. Cleve then went on to monitor oral leukocytes, the white blood cells in the mouth. The experiment involved taking a saliva sample from a human subject, then connecting the sample to a polygraph. The subject went home and watched a TV program with highly emotional content. On numerous occasions, Cleve and his team were able to record a response from the polygraph. From a distance. The colonel himself was a subject of this experiment. According to Col. Alxander, the polygraph reacted remotely with his own cells while he was stressed during a conference.
The UFOs were also addressed. The colonel recounted the twists and turns that led to the creation of the secretive "Advanced Theoretical Physics Program", which research was clearly focused on the physics of UFOs. Once again, he put the events in context. A context in which NORAD people who saw "things” couldn't report them because "it wouldn't improve their careers". They were very interested in the major incidents reported: the Tehran incident and the Rendlesham Forest incident. John Alexander declared himself very interested in "trans-medium phenomena", air/ocean, but also air/land like at the Skinwalker Ranch. He drew a parallel between the Rendlesham incident and the Skinwalker Ranch. Indeed, he discovered that that was not the first UFO incident on the base. And according to him, the incidents are still continuing - just like at the ranch. He moved on to the much-maligned "Cash-Landrum" case in Texas in 1980. He maintains, however, that there is no doubt that the events unfolded as reported by the witnesses. The injuries suffered by the witnesses, he says, are proof of this. Despite this, he confirmed that there was no helicopter in the area that day. And that's the whole problem with the UFO subject, he points out, mentioning that hundreds of other incidents remain unexplained and inexplicable, even with the scientific knowledge we have today. He added there is an astounding number of cases of weapons neutralization linked to these phenomena - quite a problem for military security.
Answering the 100 million dollar question - What are they? -, he rejected the extraterrestrial hypothesis. He preferred "ultra-terrestrial", meaning that these phenomena could be interdimensional or from another time. He pointed out that reports of incidents have existed in all cultures for thousands of years. So, he said, rather than a materialistic explanation, perhaps we should turn our gaze to the phenomenon of consciousness.
Translated from French by Guillaume Fournier Airaud
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0