Due to the graphic nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised this conspiracy theory contains descriptions of animal mutilation. Extreme caution is advised for listeners under 13.

On June 14th, 1947, Mac Brazel, head of J.B. Foster Ranch, noticed black objects strewn across his hills. Upon closer investigation, the strange metallic debris littering the rangeland appeared to be the wreckage of a crashed object. Brazil also noticed a terrible stench rising from the area. Even his sheep wouldn't go near the downed object. The wreckage, whatever it was, was getting in the way of ranch operations.

So Brazil traveled to the Walker Air Force Base, located just three miles south of Roswell, New Mexico, where he filed a complaint. Captain Sheridan Cavitt and Major Jesse Marcel immediately took interest and followed him back to the ranch.

They were baffled by the material that littered Brazil's field wielding hammers. The three men tried to put a nick in the metal, but it wouldn't dent.

That's when Major Marcel noticed unintelligible markings along the side of the debris. The symbols were unlike any language or military code he'd ever seen, desperate for answers. The officers pieced the fragments together. It formed a spectacular disc, 12 feet in diameter.

Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify original from podcast, every Monday and Wednesday, we dig into the complicated stories behind the world's most controversial events in Search for the Truth.

I'm Carter Roy. And I'm Molly Brandenberg. And neither of us are conspiracy theorists, but we are open minded, skeptical and curious. Don't get us wrong. Sometimes the official version is the truth, but sometimes it's not.

You can find episodes of conspiracy theories and all other originals from Park Cast for free on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcast. This is our second episode on Paul Benowitz and his 1981 report titled Project Baida. Last time we talked about the strange lights floating over Kirtland Air Force Base, which led Benowitz to believe that an alien invasion was on the horizon. In this episode, we'll explore some of the conspiracy theories sparked by Project Beira to that end will cover the supposed existence of Majestic 12, a secret organization responsible for investigating extraterrestrial life.

Next, we'll investigate the theory that the U.S. government used alien technology to advance their own aircraft. And finally, we'll see if aliens are experimenting on humans in a bid to achieve eternal life. We have all that and more coming up. Stay with us. This podcast is not affiliated with Podcast Network. If you're a fan of paranormal and true crime stories, you're going to love the outstanding podcast. And that's why we drink every Sunday. Hosts Christine and Emme dive deep into some of the most chilling ghost stories.

And wild is true crime cases. You can also be a part of the show by sending in your own experiences for listener stories, which are monthly bonus episodes where Christine and Emme share your real life spooky stories from black eyed kids to math man and John Wayne Gacy to Jeffrey Dahmer. The world is scary and that's why they drink. Listen to and that's why we drink on Spotify or your favorite listening platform today. Around 1980, Paul Bennewitz investigated the supposedly numerous UFO is flying over Kirtland military base.

He handed his evidence over to the Air Force for analysis. But ultimately, Benowitz worried that they weren't paying attention to his concerns.

Then in the summer of 1981, Paul Benowitz received a top secret file from fellow Ufologist Bill Moore. It was titled Project Aquarius. Inside was the military's analysis of Benowitz Research. It claimed that his findings were genuine UFOs. But there was another clue at the bottom of the document, a reference to a classified government organization called MJ 12.

This brings us to our first conspiracy theory. In 1947, President Harry Truman created a top secret group called Majestic 12 to research and conceal alien life as the theory goes.

It all began with a crash in Roswell, New Mexico, after the brief mention of MJ 12 in Project Aquarius. Neither Paul Benowitz nor Bill Moore heard much else about the mysterious group. But on December 4th, 1984, Bill Moyers assistant Jamie Shandra received a strange package, a manila envelope. The missive was postmarked from Albuquerque, New Mexico, but it had no return address on opening it more found a roll of film. Chinderah and More developed the negatives and found snapshots of eight different military documents.

Each was headed with the words top secret magic eyes only. One of these reports was a briefing for President Eisenhower. It appeared to be written by a member of the Majestic 12 because the file described the formation, existence and role of the secretive group. It also seemed to confirm the impossible.

The document stated that in 1947, aliens had crashed a flying saucer outside of Roswell, New Mexico, in the wake of the accident. Eisenhower's predecessor, President Truman, formed the Majestic 12 to manage any alien government contact that might arise.

According to that same briefing, the Air Force recovered three alien corpses from the Roswell site. A military examination of the bodies proved that their biological makeup was unlike anything of this world. The information was revolutionary. If accurate, it proved the existence of aliens. But Shandra and more still doubted the document's authenticity. More knew that the government staged elaborate hoaxes and forged evidence. After all, he participated in a disinformation campaign against Benowitz three years prior.

As a result, both researchers felt it was impossible to prove the veracity of these files. But maybe they could disprove them and put the whole thing to bed.

To that end, more. And Chindia roped in Stanton Friedman Ufologist, an expert on the Roswell incident. Once they had a team compiled, they began by investigating the original members of the Majestic 12.

This wasn't that difficult to do, as they were all conveniently listed by name in the files.

The purported members of the Majestic 12 were extremely impressive. High ranking officials there was Lt. Gen. Robert Montague, the deputy commander at Fort Bliss, Texas, where the military allegedly stored the Roswell wreckage. Air Force Chief of Staff General Nathan Twining, who had spoken to the press about the Roswell crash shortly after the debris was found, was also a member.

Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, assistant secretary of the Army Gordon Gray and director of the CIA Roscoe Hill and Carter were all listed in the files as well.

However, there was one name that didn't add up an astrophysicist named Donald Menzel. He was an extremely vocal opponent of ufology who had written three books explaining the impossibility of UFOs on Earth. This seemed to suggest that Menzel would be the last person who would join a group to facilitate communications between aliens and the U.S. government. However, more and Chinderah were willing to accept that they might not know everything about Menzel, so they sent Ufologist expert Stanton Friedman to the Library of Congress in D.C. to investigate.

There, Stanton found a letter written to Menzel in 1951, it was from Dr. Vannevar Bush, head of the Pentagon's Research and Development Board, and another alleged member of MJ 12. The letter confirmed that Menzel had Air Force security clearance. This was strange for a civilian. So Stanton kept digging.

His research proved fruitful when he learned that for decades Menzel had been doing classified work for the CIA as a cryptographer, Stanton knew that the Roswell craft and its contents were covered in strange symbols. As a result, he theorized that maybe Menzel had been the person chosen to decode them.

Stanton also found that in 1947, after the Roswell crash, Menzel made several trips between Washington, D.C., and New Mexico. In other words, if he had worked on the Roswell incident, then Mansell's public opposition to ufology might have been a clever disinformation strategy. Beyond their investigation into Menzel, Stanton Moore and Shandra continued combing the libraries, searching for something that could prove the 12 documents were fakes. Instead, things continued to check out. According to the files they received, Truman established MJ 12 at a meeting which took place on September 24th, 1947.

Also in attendance, where the secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, and Dr. Van Neveu Bush to verify the occurrence of this purported gathering.

The team scanned old copies of Truman's calendar, and there it was in black and white. Truman had, in fact, met with Forrestal and Bush on September 24th, 1947.

They also learned that Forrestal registered for a concealed firearm permit with the D.C. police department. Hours after that meeting, whatever he'd heard in Truman's office must have rattled him to his core. Months into their investigation, Moore received another mysterious clue. This time came in the form of an unsigned postcard which read When Doors Won't Open Search for Windows at Zestra trip to Washington. Try Reeses Pieces for a stylish look shop SUITLAND. In addition to this encrypted message, the postcard also featured a return address P.O. Box one eight nine Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

After learning about the postcard, Stanton told Moore he was meeting with a man at the National Archives for more info, his source was called Ed Reese.

Reese told Stanton that a catalog of Air Force records from the 40s and 50s had recently been declassified, according to his intel. The records were stored in Suitland, Maryland. If you recall, the mysterious postcard had implored its recipient to shop Suitland in a bid to chase up the lead.

The team went to Suitland for days. They sifted through hundreds of boxes, but they couldn't find anything regarding MJ 12. Then more remembered the postcards return address P.O. Box one eight nine Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The men had no intention of traveling to Ethiopia. Instead, they searched inside a box at Suitland, which was catalogued with the same number. Inside, they found a 1954 memo which was sent by the national security adviser, Robert Cutler, to Air Force General Nathan Twining. Like the MJ 12 files, the memo was also marked top secret, even more promising. It also spoke about an MJ 12 special studies project.

Now, Maureen Stanton had a certified document mentioning Majestic 12 rather than just a photograph of one, and it was from the official Air Force archives, not some anonymous source.

They even traced the documents watermark to the paper manufacturer. The company confirmed that the parchment was made sometime between the 50s to the early 70s and sold in bulk to the U.S. government. Finally, the men compared the typeface to other memos coming from Cutler's office. MJ 12 document used a typographic unit of measurement known as a PAKA. Two more surprise. He found 34 other documents that used the same unit of measurement. The similarities suggested that the Cutler Twining memo could be authentic, which meant that maybe MJ 12 really did exist.

Despite the seemingly irrefutable proof, Morris spent two more years trying to verify MJ Twelve's existence. Finally, he decided that the only way to get real answers was to elicit the help of the public.

To that end, in 1987, more in Shandor released the 12 files to the press. They were met with a flurry of follow up questions. ABC's Nightline interviewed Stanton about the authenticity of the documents. The New York Times insisted that the files had to be fakes.

Meanwhile, the government stayed silent.

It's hard to say why the government didn't chime in. After all, leaking classified documents was considered treasonous. As a result, the FBI could have ostensibly imprisoned a whistleblower like Moore. However, they did nothing. Perhaps they felt that acting would only work to give credibility to Morris claims.

After all, if the documents were completely bogus, it's likely the FBI would have investigated immediately.

However, federal agents didn't touch the 12 documents for a year when they finally addressed them. They only did so at the behest of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations or Air Force Ossi.

Even then, the FBI still didn't act until Air Force Ossi reached out to them a second time. It was only then that federal agents asserted that the documents were phony. However, they claimed that there was no need for an investigation and simply closed the case.

This begs the question, if there was no formal investigation, then how in the world did the Air Force ISI know the MJ 12 documents were fake.

To this day, it's unclear where the MJ 12 documents came from. It's possible that the Cutler Twyning memo found at Suitland, along with the May 12 documents sent to more, were planted by the Air Force OCI. After all, in part one, we covered how federal agents like Richard Doty went out of their way to misinform UFOlogists.

Like more, a disinformation campaign would be the most likely explanation for the MJ 12 documents, except for one thing. In the early 2000s, Dhoti admitted that aliens existed. He claimed that he'd seen evidence that the U.S. government dealt with UFOs. That's true.

And if you remember, in part one, we covered Doty's promise to more that he would deliver him the truth if he misled Paul Benowitz. So maybe Dhody sent the NJ 12 documents, perhaps they were his way of compensating more for helping to mislead Paul Benowitz and by that, so on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being the most believable. I give the MJ 12 theory a five.

I think it's plausible. I disagree. Doty's entire career was based on lies and he went to great lengths to corroborate them. According to the official story, he staged an entire base to throw Benowitz off the scent. The MJ 12 documents probably came right out of the same playbook, except this time Dhoti was aiming to mislead and discredit Bellmore. For those reasons, I give the MJ 12 theory.

A three Majestic 12 wasn't the only conspiracy theory to spring from Project Beda. Some truthers believe that Paul Benowitz stumbled upon something he shouldn't have seen, namely a downed aircraft that proved the military had gained access to alien technology. Coming up, the military cooperates with aliens in a bid to expand their scientific knowledge.

Hi, listeners.

Here's a show I think you'll enjoy when it comes to love. Every story is unique. Some play out like fairy tales seemingly meant to be. Others defy the odds to achieve happily ever after.

In our love story, the new Spotify original from PA cast, you'll discover the many pathways to love as told by the actual couples who found them every Tuesday.

Our love story celebrates the ups, downs and pivotal moments that turn complete strangers into perfect pairs. Each episode offers an intimate glimpse inside a real life romance, with couples recounting the highlights and hardships that define their love. Whether it's a chance encounter, a former friendship or even a former enemy, our love story proves that love can begin and blossom in the most unexpected ways. Follow our love story free on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Now back to the story.

Near the end of 1984, Jamie Skandera and Bill Moore received documents that seemed to prove the existence of Majestic 12, a top secret government organization that was supposedly created to investigate evidence of alien life. However, it's possible that the files were yet another disinformation campaign established by Air Force Special Ops Agent Richard Doty. This lines up with what we know about Dody. After all, he reportedly built a fake base, hired soldiers to perform drills, repave the roads around Dulci, all to mislead Paul Benowitz.

This begs the question, why go to so much trouble and spend thousands, if not millions of dollars just to throw off one ufologist? That makes you wonder what we're Dhody and his fellow agents really covering up.

This brings us to our second conspiracy theory. Not only did the U.S. military know about aliens, but they'd also gotten their hands on extraterrestrial technology. Furthermore, the aliens showed an interest in our scientific achievements as well.

As it turns out, it wasn't just Paul Benowitz who saw mysterious lights over Kirtland Air Force Base back in 1948.

Kirtland staffers began reporting green fireballs in the same location.

Over the years, reports of UFOs in the area escalated. But in August 1980, one particular event made the U.S. government nervous.

It's been reported that one night, three guards watched as a bright orb descended into Coyote Canyon. This happened to also be where the Sandia Labs, a research and development center for nuclear weaponry near Kirtland, was located.

As a result, Kirtland officers radioed the Sandia guards who went in to investigate. Upon their arrival, they found a brilliant light hovering near their nuclear storage bunker. One guard approached it, expecting to see some sort of enemy helicopter. He radioed for backup. At least he tried. Unfortunately, the guards soon found out that his radio had stopped working, this made him realize that this was no ordinary helicopter. Instead, it was a circular, disc shaped craft.

It levitated only a few feet from the ground.

The guard opened his mouth to scream, but before he could utter a sound, the object shot back into the sky with incredible speed.

A month later, there was another sighting by Air Force guards near that same nuclear bunker, and it behaved in exactly the same way, levitating only a few feet from the ground and appearing to observe the area around the top secret facility.

Theorists insist that these crafts were manned by aliens, although they don't offer a uniform reason as to why the extraterrestrials would be interested in nuclear storage centers. Some believers theorize that aliens were worried about the human race creating an atomic weapon. They suggest that the otherworldly visitors might see this as a threat to the entire galaxy. This widespread belief might explain why there are so many reports of supposed UFOs powering down nuclear weapons systems.

In 1967, officers working at Montana's Malmstrom Air Force Base reported that they saw a glowing red object looming near their nuclear storage site.

This location was home to many dangerous missiles that could be used in case of war right after the UFO arrived.

Air Force Captain Robert Salis reported that several of their missiles shut down completely. He claimed that they all automatically went into a no go condition and were thus rendered completely unwatchable. This suggests that the supposed alien crafts were aware of and interested in military technology. As it turns out, that might have been a two way street.

In our last episode, we talked about Benowitz reconnaissance missions over the Dulci base. On one of these trips, he spotted a black triangular craft lying in the side of the slope. It was unlike anything he'd seen before.

At the time, Bennewitz was corresponding with an intelligence officer at the National Security Administration. So on seeing the craft, Benowitz Centas NSA contact images of it for analysis. In December, the informant who will call Smith wrote back with some shocking revelations.

Smith suggested that in July 1947, the U.S. government came into the possession of a downed aircraft that was not their own. This was around the same time as the Roswell crash.

The officer responsible for recovering the debris was Air Force Major Jesse Marcel. He was one of the two agents chosen to accompany Mark Brazel back to his ranch.

At the time, Officer Marcel stuck to the military's official story. He claimed that the downed craft Brazel found was a weather balloon.

However, when he retired, Marcel recanted this claim. In 1978, he told UFOlogists Stanton Friedman that the military forced him to stay silent. Now he insisted that the materials they'd found were not of this world.

This was what Smith relayed to Benowitz when he reached out. And Smith corroborated Marseille's story, telling Benowitz that the debris Brazel found was made of a lightweight metal. According to Smith, it resembled a combination of aluminum and titanium but was porous, making it different from any known material on Earth. For reasons unknown, Smith believed that this alloy had been created in a zero gravity environment like outer space.

Smith further alleged that NASA scientists had proven his theory to be accurate, supposedly during the early space shuttle experiments. Astronauts were able to recreate this metal in a zero gravity environment. However, Smith didn't bother going into detail as to how they were able to do so. He was clear on one thing. The material discovered in 1947 came prior to Man's journey into space. He believed that this was proof that the downed craft was not built by humans. According to Smith, this porous alloy material was passed on to Lockheed Martin and Aerospace.

Base and defense company for the U.S. government who manufactured advanced aircraft for the Air Force, Smith speculated that this metal helped them develop a stealth plane called the Lockheed F 117 Nighthawk. Allegedly, its special alien technology allowed the aircraft to fly in and out of enemy radar undetected.

Then Smith finally delivered the clincher. He told Benowitz that the downed craft he saw outside of Dorcy was the Lockheed F 117 nighthawk. This meant that Benowitz had personally seen a plane built with alien technology.

At the time of Smith's correspondence with Benowitz, the F 117 was still top secret. This meant that Benowitz was largely forced to take Smith's claims at face value. He had no way of corroborating them for himself, however.

In 1988, the F 117 was officially declassified. It was revealed that the aircraft was operating out of Holloman Air Force Base, just 300 miles south of where Benowitz found it.

Not only that, the Air Force also admitted that the plane was made out of metals they had recreated in a zero gravity environment. This means it's possible that Smith knew exactly what he was talking about.

Further proving Smith's claims was the fact that Richard Doty admitted that the military had advanced alien technologies early in his Air Force career. Dhoti was stationed at Groom Lake in Nevada, otherwise known as Area 51.

In 1969, he was on guard outside an aircraft hangar. One evening he watched as scientists experimented on a disk like object. According to him, the craft had no wings, no tail and no cockpit. Dhoti claimed that he saw a blue light shining from the ship's underside, it grew brighter and then levitated 200 feet above the ground.

Finally it hovered in place, spinning in circles before returning back to Earth. Another officer who happened to be with him at the time whispered to Dodi that was what was generally known as a UFO. And it's not one of ours. It's on loan. Well, dhoti isn't the most reliable source.

His story is supported by many Air Force officers and Sandia Lab contractors who've witnessed similar events recently.

One anonymous Sandia scientist admitted to Greg Bishop, author of Project Baida, The Paul Benowitz story, that there were some strange things hidden in the labs. Bishop claimed that some of the guys working on the base used to talk about other things that were in there, pressed for more details. He flatly said flying saucers.

The problem is that all of the evidence for this theory is purely anecdotal. Not to mention NASA proved they could reconstruct the F1 seventeens material in zero gravity, which meant that it could have been created by humans, perhaps the Russians or the Chinese long before we got our hands on it in 1947.

Maybe the Roswell debris wasn't from another planet. It was just from a different country. For those reasons, I'm not convinced that this was alien technology, which is why I'm giving this theory a two.

I'm not so sure. Well, there have been numerous reports about UFO shutting down nuclear weapons facilities. Perhaps they're aware or maybe even retaliating against humans for stealing their technologies. And aside from Dhody, who we both agree we can't exactly trust, many of these reports come from government agents, military officers and accredited scientists. If we can't believe them, then who can we trust?

I give this theory a four out of 10. I'm not convinced that the government is conspiring with aliens and or exploiting their scientific achievements. However, I'm very interested in whether Benowitz ever found out what was causing all the strange cattle mutilations on his ranch.

Fortunately, there are some ufologists who claim that they can explain the connection between those livestock mutilations and tales of human abductions. Coming up, aliens and humans have more in common than we think. Now back to the story. In 1985, Paul Bennewitz saw an unidentified craft near Archuleta Mesa.

This led him to believe that the U.S. government might have access to secret alien technologies.

However, Benowitz never suspected the American government of being privy to an even more dire alien threat. This brings us to our final theory that aliens are abducting and experimenting on livestock and human beings to discover the secrets of reproduction. For decades, UFOlogists have agreed that aliens were behind the violent cattle mutilations plaguing the country. To them, it seemed certain that these animals did not die a natural death.

Surgically precise cuts were used to remove organs, limbs and brains from the animals bodies.

Sometimes even the rectum had vanished, as if the cows Río had been clawed like an apple.

In many of these cases, there weren't any footprints surrounding the bodies, neither human nor predator. Even the victim's tracks were nowhere to be found. Instead, it looked like the bodies had been dropped from the sky.

In 1967, a beloved horse named a lady was found dead on a Colorado farm.

An autopsy revealed that lady's blood and spinal fluid were completely gone. If a human were to do something like this, it would take up to seven days. And yet lady had been perfectly healthy just one day before passing away.

The autopsy also revealed that lady's brain was missing. This was especially bizarre because there was no sign of excision on her head, even stranger. When the medical expert opened up her abdomen, he was shocked to find that most of ladies internal organs were gone as well. Trends like this began cropping up all across the country, and in 1975, the mutilations reached New Mexico.

They're the job of investigating the cattle.

Carnage felled a highway patrol officer, Gabe Valdez.

Over the next few years, Valdez recognized a pattern. The cattle mutilations were almost always accompanied by UFO sightings. In 1978, Valdez experience something that confirmed his fledgling theory. One night, he received a call from the police chief of the Hickory Apache nation, located just outside of Dulci, New Mexico. The chief found four of his own cattle mutilated, although they were alive only a few hours earlier.

At the same time, Valdés received a flurry of reports regarding an unexplained craft hovering in the D.C. area. Normally, the lights that accompanied the mutilations disappeared too fast for Valdez to validate them.

But this time he was in luck as the craft hovered for hours around Dulci, desperate to catch side of it himself, Valdez ran out of his house so fast he almost forgot his gun.

Upon arriving at the site, Valdez met up with a tribal police chief and several other officers at the ranch.

Then, as a team, they pursued the hovering orange light.

Eventually, the police caught up with the craft and surrounded it from down below. Allegedly, it was then that Valdez commanded the craft to land. According to reports, whoever or whatever was manning the craft refused to descend.

Frustrated, Valdez commanded his accompanying officers to shoot the disc. Yet nothing they did seem to faze it. Eventually, the disc flew off, leaving Valdez and the other officers gobsmacked.

Shortly after this incident, Benowitz and Valdez learned of two alien abduction cases. The seemed to unilaterally confirm Valdez's theory that there was a connection between the aliens and the mutilations.

The first purported victim was a woman named Judy Doretti. Judy was allegedly abducted in Texas in 1973. The other abductee was Myrna Hansen, who we covered in part one without ever having met.

Both women describe the same experience during their abductions. They both witnessed screaming cattle being beamed. Onto a strange ship, Hansen also saw vats that contained body parts and organs, she claimed that some belonged to animals, but that others clearly originated from human beings.

Hanson and Dorothy are not alone. There have been millions of abduction reports throughout history all over the globe. This propensity of claims all seem to suggest that aliens have a keen interest in the human race.

Some of the abductees are as young as two or three children who are too small to have learned about UFO lore. Some victims lived thousands of miles from one another, yet claimed to have seen each other on the same craft. At the same time, this diversity of supposed abductees seems to offer proof that there's no way they could have corroborated or orchestrated their stories.

Several of these alien abductees have something else in common. After their experiences, some victims report anomalous marks and scars on their body. They also claim to suffer from PTSD. Symptoms like nightmares triggered flashbacks and unrelenting stress.

It's natural to wonder why aliens would go to the trouble of abducting humans and animals. Fortunately, a few ufologists point to answers listed in Benowitz report much of Benowitz as Project Beita research was based on the signals he intercepted from those lights hovering over Kirtland.

After interpreting the signals, Benowitz surmise that individual grey aliens don't think for themselves. Rather, they are an obedient race that reports to a higher consciousness.

Nigel Kerner, the author of Grey Aliens and the Harvesting of Souls, seem to expand upon Benowitz as Project Beita allegations. Karsner claim that Gray aliens had a DNA sequence that was almost identical to our own. There was only one glaring difference. According to Karsner, these extraterrestrials didn't have reproductive organs. Instead, they cloned themselves in order to procreate. But Kershner theorized that their DNA had started to degrade, making it difficult for them to continue their cloning process.

As a result, the Greys were in search of fresh genetic material, naturally due to their similarities to human beings. They targeted us as their unwitting donors, but according to Kerner, the grey aliens preferred it if the DNA was reproduced naturally rather than through the cloning process. This meant that they wanted humans to give a birth to alien life.

If Kerner's research was accurate, it would certainly seem to explain why abductee reports often included the examination of reproductive organs.

For example, many male victims said that their sperm was extracted. By that same token, many females claim their eggs were harvested in. Most of these witnesses reported that the aliens didn't appear to have any genitalia themselves.

One such claim came in 1994 from a woman named Allison Reed.

Reed was allegedly abducted by aliens for four days. During that time, she recalled visiting a kind of extraterrestrial museum there and intelligent being explained to her that the bodies on display were failed.

Attempts at creating human alien hybrids ufologist seem to back up Reid's allegations.

According to them, human alien experimentation isn't even new. It's ancient. They claim that it might account for the very existence of humanity.

Some researchers point to the idea that human brainpower evolved at an unnaturally accelerated pace.

In 2004, scientists at the University of Chicago found evidence that this was true.

They determined that the sophistication of the human brain wasn't created through a normal evolutionary process.

Rather, it came about as part of a mysterious special event some 50000 years ago.

Brain function exploded in a short period of time.

This was after hominids had already been around for millions of years without evolving much at all.

The University of Chicago team found that Homo sapiens intelligence didn't evolve through natural selection as we under. Standard instead, it was caused by an enormous number of environmental mutations, lead scientist Bruce Lohn claimed that humans evolved their cognitive abilities not due to a few accidental developments, but rather from an enormous number of mutations acquired through exceptionally intense selection. Some UFO researchers suggest that this intense selection process was actually performed by aliens. There's more evidence for this theory in an ancient Sumerian text called the Archons, according to this stone tablet, humans were formed by 12 foot tall beings who descended from the sky.

The text describe these Arcon aliens as rulers of humanity. Even more alarming, ancient carvings left by the Sumerian suggested that the Archons came in flying objects.

Some ufologists say that the Archons brought knowledge to the people of Sumar, strangely enough, this theory doesn't seem that far fetched. After all, for an ancient civilization, the Sumerians were incredibly advanced. They had cities, sewage systems, a written language and even their own form of government.

However, if the Sumerians really were guided and ruled by the extraterrestrial Arkan's, it would mean that human beings have had a symbiotic relationship with aliens for centuries. There's just one glaring issue with this theory.

If extraterrestrials are supposedly helpful beings teaching humans to build cities and sewage systems, then why are they also violently abducting people? Those two things seem completely contradictory. Maybe not. Aliens might just believe that it's safer for everyone if we don't know they're here. After all, many abductees describe a feeling of comfort and safety when they're with their abductors.

This doesn't seem to speak to a species that has malicious intent toward humans. It's even possible that alien research is not only critical to their kind, but also to human beings.

Perhaps, but let's take a step back to the livestock mutilations. We should consider the possibility that these deaths were tied to a natural phenomenon, maybe bloat, because the animal's skin to split in lines that appeared surgically precise. In addition, extremities like ears could be taken off by other nocturnal predators. Who knows, maybe a satanic cult is to blame. We know that such groups exist and we know that they often engage in ritualistic animal sacrifice. So while lurid, the satanic cult theory feels more realistic than alien invaders.

That could certainly be the cause behind some of the cattle mutilation cases. But it doesn't explain the quick drainage of blood, the spinal fluid or the lack of footprints surrounding the cattle corpses.

Still, that doesn't prove that aliens were behind the gruesome events.

In addition, I've seen no evidence that extraterrestrials were going around abducting people. After all, most of the victims who claimed they were taken had undergone hypnosis just to recall their experience. And that technique is notoriously unreliable. Plus, there are more reasonable explanations that would create a similar sensation.

Perhaps the purported abductees were experiencing sleep paralysis or the side effects of drugs or alcohol, or maybe they were just straight up fibbing.

All of those explanations seem more believable than alien abduction.

For that reason, I'm giving this theory a three out of 10 by drugs and sleep paralysis don't account for the consistent details shared in many abductees stories. Nor do they explain the physical and psychological scars that were found in victims after the fact. That's why I'm giving this theory a five.

Ultimately, we can't completely rule out the possibility that Benowitz was on to something. Who knows, maybe one day we'll come to realize that everything he wrote in Project Bita was true.

Perhaps there are secret alien colonies underneath the Colorado New Mexico border. Maybe gray aliens were using humans to save their own kind from extinction. Whatever the case, when you do sincerely hope that Benowitz was wrong about the intergalactic alien war. But I guess we're bound to find out sooner or later.

Thanks for tuning into conspiracy theories, we'll be back Monday with a new episode you can find all episodes of conspiracy theories and all other originals from Paşa cast for free on Spotify.

Until then, remember, the truth isn't always the best story, and the official story isn't always the truth.

Conspiracy Theories is a Spotify original from past. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler, Sound Design by Anthony Vasek with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden and Joshua Kern. This episode of Conspiracy Theories was written by Ma Doyle with writing assistance by Ali Whicker and stars Molly Brandenberg and Carter Roy. Remember to follow the newest Spotify original from podcast, Our Love Story every Tuesday catch an intimate glimpse inside a real life romance with couples recounting the highlights and hardships that define their love.

Listen to our love story. Free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.