Theories on the Guardian Hoax

It's february nineteen ninety two, and Bob Exler is sifting through his mail He's used to getting a lot of letters, letters that most people might find a bit strange. See, Bob is a well known and highly respected UFO researcher So people write to him from all over the place about their alleged sightings. Some of the reports are convincing, others Not so much. This evening, one envelope in particular catches his eye There's something different about it It's missing a return address Bob's interest is piqued. so he pulls it from the stack rips the Manila envelope open and dumps out the contents Out spills a bunch of folded documents At first glance appear to be official Canadian government memos There's also a hand drawn map. and photographs of aliens that well, honestly look like a guy in a cheap costume And then There's a VHS tape. Bob pops it in his VCR and a shaky homemade video flickers to life on his television Whoever holds the camera seems to be running through the dark toward a bunch of lights. The images are blurry and the objects far away, so it's not immediately obvious what Bob's looking at appears as though some kind of aircraft is landing near a line of red flares Bob studies the video Then he sends it to a colleague with expertise in photoanalysis. They both agreed There's something here worth investigating To Bob, this could be the most credible piece of UFO evidence ever captured on camera. and it landed right in his lap Only he doesn't know who sent it to him. The tape is labeled with just one word Guardian right next to the name There's an inky fingerprint. Whoever Guardian is, They've just sent Bob down a years long rabbit hole one that will ultimately cause him to step away from the field of UFO research entirely. one that still to this day has people asking who is? Guardian Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. New episodes come out every Wednesday. We'd love to hear from you, so if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts, or check us out on Instagram at the Conspiracy Pod. Stay with us Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun. An army hung on her every word. My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. 'Twas a lovely SUV, an inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight, we feast An offer you can feast on. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees, may apply. Pros trust the Home Depot for heavy duty storage solutions for any job site or garage. Right now, get up to fifteen percent off select storage and organization, impact in water resistant totes, and shelving built to hold up to two thousand five hundred pounds Storage systems have space for all your tools and protect them in the garage, on the job site, and everywhere in between. Save time and maximize efficiency with adjustable shelving customized to your business's needs. Shop and save on Prograde storage at the Home Depot, how pros get more done And we're live from the living room as Doug eyes up the match they spread. He's reaching for the buuffalo wing. Perfect Hang on, what's this? Oh, he's good for a C of Pepsi too. Inredible What to finish Sensational combination. Look at the delight on his face. There's no doubt about it. He just tastes better Match days deserve Pepsi. Food deserves Psi. Grab a pack of Pepsi Zero Sugar for today's match Poetry in motion Former NASA employee and UFO researcher Bob Exler pours over the Gardian tape It's february nineteen ninety two. So that means lots of pausing and rewinding on his VCR The video is blurry camera work is shaky, but there seems to be some horizontal light in the distance with another bluish light blinking above it At one point, whatever object they're attached to looks as though it flies away When you watch this video, it It seems like there is something there But also it really is hard to make out exactly what it could be. I can imagine going over this video back and forth a thousand times as I did The more Bob looks, the more he feels certain he can see a large curved object briefly illuminated with each strobe It looks larger than a truck, smaller than a bus, maybe twenty to thirty feet from one end to the other Of course, it can fly It doesn't look like any man made spacecraft he knows of which for Bob immediately rolls out a hoax H reasoning. Faking a scene with an object that size and that shape take a lot of effort and time And this appears to be a real video shot outdoors in a field somewhere in Canada There are no film sets or tiny models involved here staging the hoax of this scale would simply draw too much attention just as odd as what Bob sees is what he hears or doesn't hear The video does have sound. dog barks off in the distance potential spacecraft is completely silent From that moment on, Bob works under the assumption that Guardian's video is credible Although there's still a lot he doesn't know what the object in the video really is to When the events supposedly happened and three, Wh was operating the camera For him, that last question is the biggest hurdle to overcome doesn't know Guardian's identity They seem to be passing themselves off as some kind of government whistleblower, the deep throat of Canadian UFO conspiracies which would explain why they were able to be in the right place at the right time to capture the video they had inssider information becausecause Guardian has remained anonymous Pob can't get in touch. However, He's a seasoned researcher You'll just have to go out there and find Guardian along with the truths behind the video If Bob can do all that He might be looking at a career defining case and in a way ends up being right probably just not in the way he hoped Like any great nineties adventure, this one starts with a map Guardian hasn't spelled out for Bob exactly where to go, but he did send along a hand drawn map of a Canadian region known as West Carlton. thirty five miles outside of Ottawa, Ontario. The search area defined on the map covers a little over one square mile. It's not huge But we're talking about a place with big open fields, farmland Some areas are covered in dense vegetation, There are even swamps It's not the easiest terrain, especially if you're trying to pinpoint the precise location where a twenty to thirty foot object might have landed. Bob lives in Maryland and he doesn't know much about West Carlton But he does have a head start thanks to his connections. He's a member of the mutual UFO network, or Mfon, and his first order of business is calling his fellow researchers in Canada. The guy he talks to tells Bob He's not the only person who received a VHS tape from Guardian On the one hand, that's gota staying a little bit right. Like Bob's not as special as he might have thought he was. Oh, o, you got a tape too? No, I figured, I mean, of course you got a tape. I didn't think I was the only One who got the super special tape On the other hand, it's kind of exciting news. Bob's no longer alone in this mystery. Plus He learns not all of the tapes are identical His copy includes a closer shot of the mysterious craft And by the end of that long distance call, which probably cost an arm and a leg, that was very much still the thing in the early nineties He has a plan to visit West Carlton. following week On may tenth, Bob and his son meet up with a crew of eight Canadian UFO researchers including a man named Graham Lightfoot who knows a little more about the history of Guardian. And yes, I said history because apparently Guardian has been sending out packages Since nineteen eighty nine He'd mailed various organizations and lecturers and experts at least four times before differenceces Those earlier communications only included documents and some blurry photos never a VHS Even so, Guardian's first letters caused a bit of a stir back in ' eighty nine Guardian wrote about an alleged UFO crash near Ottawa in roughly the same area where the tape is later filmed Graham Lightfoot was sent to investigate that first claim He managed to track down at least three possible witnesses to the nineteen eighty nine crash Guardian desescribe There's a couple who recalled an intense light flooding into their house And a woman named Diane Labinak saw something similar bright light that she says flew over her house and toward the adjacent swamp followed by several helicopters that appear to be using their lights to search for something that may sound like a solid lead, but Graham is a thorough and discerning researcher, he ends up speaking to far more residents who don't recall seeing anything out of the ordinary He searches the land surrounding Diane's house on foot and comes up empty handed Ultimately, Graham has no choice but to report back. I could find nothing conclusive to support or disprove any of the witnesses' claims The first investigation prompted by Guardian mustust But now it's nineteen ninety two Th years later Cw. newew leads, a map and not to mention, freaking video The search begins near the Cedar Ridge Estates, an upscale neighborhood Stately two story homes dot the countryside. each one surrounded by a couple acres fields bring to mind the scene from Guardian's videoide What's more One investigator notices he can hear a single dog king in the distance The team thinks they've pinpointed the square mile highlighted on Guardian's map problem And they're standing in the middle of a mosquito infested swamp. The land is wet and mucky and they have to trudge through knee high plants After a while, most of the team decides to throw in the towel get some din Only Bob and his son stay behind when they all rendezvous that evening Bob announces he's found the spot from Guardian's videoide Graham Lightfoot realizes It's not far from the home of Diane Lavvenck. The woman he believes is a credible witness to the nineteen eighty nine s The following day, Graham introduces Diane to Bob They ask if she's seen anything else strange near her home in the past few months againain she has Diane remembers a night in mid August, nineteen ninety one Around ten PM bright light caught her attention and drew her to a nearby window calls thinking there was a fire out in the field beyond her house but it may have been Flaers As she watched likeike some kind of aircraft landed out there Graham is gobsmacked not only by her clear memories of the event, Be Diane is describing exactly what unfolds on Guardian's video. Only she hasn't seen the video yet. She doesn't even know it exists Then Graham asks her to draw the aircraft, and Diane sketches a basic silver object with a zig zag design It reportedly looks a lot like a sketch included in Guardian' documents When Graham and Bob show her the tape, Diane agrees. That's what she saw back in August She feels like finally, here's some proof that she's not imagining things. whichich is apparently something she's been wrestling with. She's been nervous about telling anybody your story because she knows how all this sounds. However, that night wasn't the end of her troubles. If you ask Diane Labineek Unmarked helicopters have been buzzing over her house, flying too low all the time fure operers every now and then wouldn't be so strange in West Carlton, but there's a military base not far away Except The Canadian government claims the helicopters Aren't theirs Now that Bob has found a possible witness to back up the guardian tape It's time to inspect the site where he thinks it all happened. He guides Graham through the swamp patch of land that looks like it's been disturbed. And Bob excitedly points out A lot of the nearby plants seem to have been blasted by intense heat look like they could fall apart to the touch Maybe they've even been irradiated Graham isn't so sure He happens to work for the Ontario Federation of Agriculture So when Graham sees the dug up soil, he thinks it's simply the work of a regular old skunk As for the irradiated plants, Graham knows it's common for juniper bushes to look dried out after surviving the harsh winter Bob isn't aeterred. He just thinks he needs to locate the real guardian person who started this whole investigation So far None of the UFO researchers working the case have any clue who Guardian could be So Bob decides why not get this story out to the largest audience possible? Surely someone out there knows more If only Bob could get enough eyes on this Guardian tape. And in the early nineties, There is one person who could make that happen The man The icon Robert, Stack. host. of unsolved mysteries Bob actually reaches out to one of the show's producers, not Robert Stack I imagine was too busy in wardrobe fittings, trying on one thousand different trench coats, too trenchy. Todody. At this point, Unsolved mysteries has been on the air for about five years And it's grown from a time slot filler into a massive hit The weekly show features everything from wanted fugitives to murders to UFO settings. When Bob pitches the Guardian case, the producerss bite They agreed to travel with him to West Carlton in the fall of nineteen ninety two to film the segment. It airs in season five and features Bob. Graham and Diane playing themselves in one of the show's hallmark recreations The producers on the show also tracked down a couple of experts firstirst Dor Robert Nathan of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory He watches the guardian tape and concludes can't say whether or not the events captured are real. or a hoax. Then there's Major N J. Patterson of the Canadian Forces base in Ottawa. He confirms that if any helicopters are flying over Diane Labank's house They are not military. He also says something else Major Patterson gets a good look at the documents sent by Guardian. Remember the envelope with the VHS tape. It also included the cheap looking alien photos I mentioned earlier, along with a bunch of papers They're emblazoned with an official looking letterhead that purportedly comes from the Department of National Defense But if the letterhead adds any authenticity at all, the contents of those documents quickly reveal that these aren't real government memos They outline a supposed conspiracy between China working with quote gray aliens to take over the world Major Patterson looks through these pages and without hesitation, concludes They're forged He cites several errors throughout and adds, quote someomeone with very little effort could have come a lot closer than this. J both a pretty solid burn and a really nice way to call out the documents as BS If you're wondering why Bob has put so much faith and effort into this case, consonsidering how unbelievable the documents and alien photos are He says he was just that confident in the video evidence reggardless going to unsolved mysteries does have its intended effect Not long after the episode airs, showing the raw footage to the world for the first time. more information to light Another witness steps forward who works for the government And she believes on that night in august nineteen ninety one She may have seen extxtr terrestrials Then, Bob meets a man who tells him He knows true Ta So good, so good, so good New summer arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Get ready to save big with up to sixty percent off brands like Rag and Bone, Levi's, Adidas, and Free People. Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack There are two types of business owners Those who are busy and those who want to be busy. Toast is designed for both with tools to keep you humming and help turn grind into growth. That's how you turn busy into business. Toast built for busy. Bob Exler's plan to get the Guardians story out to the public works. After Unsolved Mysteries airs the segment in february nineteen ninety three, the case gets picked up by papers and local news That's when a woman reaches out to Bob She claimed she also witnessed the event captured on Guardian's videoide Because she lives right across a small road from where it supposedly happened The story this woman tells Bob is apparently so compelling that he persuades her to appear on another national TV show with him called counters She agrees, but will only go on camera in Silhouette Voice modulation She also uses a pseudonym Sarah although we now know that her real name is Susan Gills Susan insists on staying anonymous because she says she fears repercussions at work She apparently has some kind of quote, unquote sensitive government job But neither she nor Bob can be more specific And this is the story she tells on On that August night in nineteen ninety one Susan was watching television on her couch when her dog, Shehiba started barking like mad. Out the window, she saw lights beyond the trees spinning counterclockwise She claimed she could clearly see a large aircraft, so she ran outside or vantage point Susan saw a hatch open on the side of the craft and some kind of glowing humanoid figure stepped out When the host of encounters shows her the alien photograph sent by Guardian Susan agrees they look similar to the beings she saw then she tells him She watched as the craft rose straight into the sky As she stood there in her driveway, contemplating what she just witnessed, she heard a sound There was a car driving toward her house Susan lives alone It's nightt time And she thinks she just saw aliens so she was freaked out to say the least frozen in place, she watched as the car ambled past her in the dark without its headlights on Encnters conducts a lie detector test on Susan and she apparently does pass polygraphs are known to unreliable But whether or not her story sounds believable, she at least seems to believe it really happened To her, this is a scary story she seems almost reluctant to tell Bob Susan provided an exciting new lead. He thinks the car she saw that night Along Gardian. I don't know how much the following events played out exactly as they were described and how much was movie magic, but encounters claim Susan is able to describe the mysterious car and Remember the license plate That brings them to the doorstep of a man they allege is the real guardian They perform a full stakeout outside this man's apartment and even give chase when he runs away from their cameras Why am I a tad skeptical? Well Graham Lightfoot had already been given this guy's name as a possible guardian suspect over a year ago Bobby Charlebois a UFO enthusiast who has reportedly used the name Guardian before littleittle side note Their similar names might sound confusing, but Bob is the UFO researcher, while Bobby is the potential guardian suspect Bob's been chasing down Bobby for a while now It turns out lots of people know Hobby even for a small town Remember Diane Labanak, who claimed she saw both the nineteen eighty nine and nineteen ninety one incidents Guardian reported She admits to being close friends with Bobby He visits her family at herer home all the time be familiar with the area depicted on Guardian's map. It seems like this should be an open and shut case for Bob Exleer, right? And remember He has Guardian's fingerprint to work with It's stamped on each and every VHS tape Assuming that finger belongs to Gardian simply a matter of finding a match A first Bob tries to recruit a local reporter to help him get Bobby's prince She knows the case and personally knows Bobby Charlebois She agrees to pass along a packet of information to him I don't know what's in that packet. It's described only as some kind of UFO material dangling carrot for a guy like Bobby, I guess The hope is that he'll handle the materials leave his fingerprints all over everything and return the package The UFO materials come back an hour later. Bob brings them to the police to have them dusted for printince. They find Nothing Well maybe Bobby just didn't take the baits Bob thinks it's far more likely that he's outsmarted everyone Maybe he handled everything with gloves or wiped every page clean somehow Next, Bob goes to the RCMP, the Royal Canadian Mounted pololice He asked them to charge Bobby with a minor offense for forging government documents He thinks even if the charges don't stick, maybe they can scare Bobby into admitting he's guardian the RCMPieces No We're not going to do that. For one thing, Bob isn't even a Canadian citizen. He lives in Maryland. Secondly, they have no hard evidence that Bobby is behind any of this. foiled again. Bob never gains access to these fingerprints He's never able to confirm or deny whether Bobby Charlebois is guardian But if you ask Bobby's friends around town, He's just a regular Joe who happens to be interested in UFO's. some mastermind Pankster. And these days, the prevailing theory is that the guardian tape was all Big hoax A saaucer Swindle. if you will I mean, the documents purporting to be from the Canadian Department of National Defense t really fool anybody. And even Bob Exler can admit the photographs of the aliens don't look realistic He tells unsolved mysteries Clearly, this could have been someone dressed up in a costume The one element Bob seemed convinced by is the videotape Along with the fact that witnesses claim they saw something around the time that tape could have been made Now, interestingly enough, Bob is able to help open an official investigation It brings attention to Diane Labink's complaints of helicopters buzzing her house As a result, the RCMP agrees to look into the matter part of the case. they have to review the guardian tape to determine what kind of aircraft appears in the footage Their expert concludes it was a Skorsky S seventy six helicopter. Bob never accepts those findings to most The real mystery here was never Is this footage of a real UFO Rather, the enduring question remains Who is Gardian because nobody ever stepped forward But over the years, a few more suspects or name Susan Gills, A K A Sarah the anonymous witness working for the government. Her grandson will later tell a CBC documentary that she was seemingly a true believer She was conducting her own investigation And she wasn't particularly impressed with Bob's work on the case grandson also says that after Susan died found a letter where she'd recorded her memories of august nineteen ninety one It was Beat for beat, very close to the stories she told on encounters One Major difference She wrote that what really happened was she was sitting on her couch watching the nine o'clock program on television when she heard her dog barking She saw the lights outside, went to investigate spotted beings coming out of a spacecraft. and suddenly She found herself back on her couch, watching television again. onlyn now, clock program is on She didn't remember one show ending and the next one starting couldn't account for this jump forward in time at all It was like She simply blinked So adddding to the list of bizarre things going on in West Carlton that night Susan believed She might have been abducted O did she? Was it just a story she bought into so much that it continued snowballing long after the spotlight faded away Or was she invested in the story F first place Because Susan really was Already The CBC documentary poses this question to her grandson who've heard the stories she told ever since he was a kid He says he did notice that she owned a typewriter like the one used by Guardian to forge those government documents. Susan was also good with electronics and would have known how to use a camera As to whether Nana was really Gardian. Her grandson says he can't answer yes or no if she was guess at a motive unless she really did see something strange It doesn't even make sense that Susan would be a whistleblower about vast alien cover upps She really does work for the government. That part is true. But it turns out her job is not as sensitive as Bob Exler made it sound Susan actually works in external affairs A detailed bob often conveniently leaves out of the story Her day to day job has to do with managing relationships between Canada and foreign countries. She's not involved in secret UFO recoveries or investigations I can understand why she'd still want to remain anonymous because she's divulging classified information She just doesn't want to be seen talking about aliens on screens across the world Not me, though. I live for it Susan's secret is that her job really isn't secret at all. Why does Bob push her story so hard Well think about it We know he doesn't find those alien photos credible. And clearly, Bob's stance is that the documents are counterfeit He tries to get Bobby Charlebois charged for forging them Bobs support for Susan all be part of the hoax Bob Exler B Gardia. While Bob has been looking into the case and going on camera as an expert and giving talks across the U. S, Another investigation into his investigation has been happening behind the scenes And the Ontario chapter of Mufon, the mutual UFO network, has their own theories about why Bob is so obsessed Gardy Get businessusiness done with the new American Express Graphite Business Cash Unlimited card, with unlimited two percent cashback on all eligible purchases, unlimited five percent cashback on flights and prepaid hotels booked through American Express travel online, and a flexible spending capacity that can grow with your business, you'll have the confidence to keep building. Apply today and earn a welcome offer of one thousand five hundred dollars cashback after you spend fifty thousand dollars in qualifying purchases on your new card within the first six months of card membership T terms apply,en at go. Amic slash graphite. Hear that? Sounds like breakfast is ready becausecause quQakers coming in hot with morning nutrition one hundred percent whole grain oats and a good source of fiber to fuel the rhythm of your morning and kickst your day. And that sounds absolutely delicious. Fuel to start whatever's next. Quaker, official sponsor of FIFA World Cup twenty six. In october nineteen ninety five, Muon, Ontario releases a special report titled The Guardianper. That's right Caper. So you can probably guess what they think of the whole ordeal They say this was all an elaborate hoax And that's not the only part of the story they're calling a sham. Some of these Mufon Ontario investigators have worked shoulder to shoulder with Bob Exler since the beginning trapsing through the swamp on Bob's first visit to West Carlton, tracking down possible witnesses. Pck. They even knew about Guardian before Bob since the first communications came in nineteen eighty nine And while Bob and the Canadian investigators start off working together They very quickly go their separate ways because from the jump They think Bob is in it for all the wrong reasons accccording to the Moofon Ontario crew on their first outing back in May of nineteen ninety two Rub rubs them the wrong way Even though they've been asked to guide him through this location he supposedly doesn't know He keeps trying to take charge Okay, so maybe Bob is just excited. That's understandable He only has a few days in town. He wants to find the site where Guardian allegedly shot that video. And if you'll recall, he claims he's successful. Later that day, he announces that he and his son found the site while the two of them were out on their own But one Canadian investigator has a hard time buying what Bob's selling His name is Tom and he ased Bob How he was lucky enough to find this needle in a haystack in such a short amount of time while the sun was setting Tom says he a smile in response. Later, he confronts Bob more directly And again, this is according to Tom, Bob says something to the effect of What's wrong with trying to make a box Tom says he has nothing against money so long as the investigation is still ethical. But he also drops out of the guardian case. He and others distance themselves from Bob, so you can connect the dots one do, two dogs From their point in the story onward, the Guardian Caper newsletter reads like an expose on the hoax and on Bob Exler The team alleges that he feigned expertise on more than one occasion that his analysis of Guardian's video was unfounded that he tried to control how the story was portrayed in the media, and that he only revealed parts of his investigation that backed up the story he wanted to tell I don't know about you, but I was not ready for this level of interpersonal drama. I mean, this is like a reality TV show before there was reality TV and it's in UFOand. Kind of incredible Keep in mind Bob. is a well respected researcher Aarently It's not uncommon for egos to sneake their way into the world of paranormal investigations. In the mid nineties, UFO researcher Ian Rodogers is an enthusiastic teenage novice Ever since he saw the Guardian case featured on Unsolved Mysteries He's dreamed of playing Fox Moulder and going to West Carleton to poke around one day finally does it He borrows his mom's car in the dead of winter and sets off on his own investigation. Unnaturally, his trail leads him to Bob. Eventually It tawns on Anne that it is a tad strange just how involved Bob is in the story And not only did he play himself in the Unsolved Mysteries recreations When it came time to film shots of the anonymous guuardian putting the packages together and stamping each tape with their fingerprint It was Bob who played that role too. and says it's actually pretty common for investigators to try to put their names on a big case. The Gardian's story is suddenly getting picked up by TV shows and news outlets Bob's controlling behavior may seem a little weird, but it's not unheard of by any means. Mofon Ontario goes further though They suggest that Bob is behind a series of inflammatory comments left on one of their message boards The user who goes by the name Alex from Quebec, Rils against Mufon's debunking of the case All their investigation really amounts to, Alex suggests, is Character bashing meananing they're being too harsh on Bob Exler We don't know for certain that Alex is Bob, but we do know that Bob's next move in all of this is drastic In nineteen ninety four Bob is at a conference in Florida when he hand delivers a letter to all of his fellow researchers in attendance It's his resignation from the field of UFO investigations Although he's made a lot of great friends and achieved some career highs, he writes like what I've seen this phenomenon do to otherwise concerned rational people, including myself. The malicious libel, slander distortion unchecked fabrication that runs rampant in the UFO field is destructive and counterproductive He wraps up his letter by saying he has no doubt that UFOs are real Bob vanishes into the sunset to spend more time with his family prettyret explosive mic dropped to end the whole Guardian debacle Mofon Ontario bets this will only be temporary That as soon as people forget about this scandal, Bob will be back ready to tackle the next big story The wrong Bob never comes out of retirement And he never delivers a final documentary or book on the Guardian case as he'd promised Nobody knows why Maybe he didn't have anything further to say Or maybe he didn't like how the case devolved into a of finger pointing If you read between the lines of some of these reports, not just by Mufon, but more modern coverage too It almost seems like there's an insinuation Bob Cardia No one dares to spell that out But Mfon Ontario does submit their own suspect Should I say suspects In a real murder on the Orient Express style ending, they allege that Guardian wasn't just one person, but a group of hoaxers including Bobby Charlebois, who is Bob's lead suspect Diane Labineeck and her husband, after all, they were the only witnesses who reported seeing both of Guardian's UFO sightings and Diane's nephew whose truck could have been a stand in for the mysterious aircraft seen in the video. As for Bob's involvement, they say he molded the story into something that was more believable than it had any right to be. spepecifically by confusing the timelines and making it sound like witnesses all saw something the same night that the video was shot in the Guardian group went along with it. yearsars later, Ian Rogers now a former UFO researcher appears on a CBC documentary He finds that among people who actually live in West Carlton, where all this took place, there are three camps of thinking This was a hoax. to This is a nighttime military training exercise three There really are UFO's in the area People around West Carlton had been reporting unexplained sightings and eerie phenomena since long before Bob Exler got involved once a young girl living in the Cedar Ridge states neighborhood saw a bright light flooding through her bedroom window She ran to look outside but the light blinded her. Even as a kid, she understood that her family lived near a military base, but the oddest thing she recalls is that there were no sounds, no engine humming, no helicopter blades churning through the night. Not far away A married couple saw something in the summer of nineteen ninety one that frightened them both One night, Catherine Curley was putting her children to bed The bright light came through her window Again, there was no noise The following day She and her husband Kirk witnessed a helicopter land on their property They claim four people jumped out ran around frantically got back in the chopper and took off again Yet another man, almost nonchalantly tells a documentary crew, Yep, there's UFO's And they always come from the West D don't know what that's about Ian Roggers concludes There seems to be something odd going on in West Carlton which the Gardian case and Bob's handling of it Oshadow Locals have their own theories about why the area seems to be a hotspot. The town isn't far from Ottawa, the capital city of Canada. If aliens are researching us, they might be drawn to this nexus of operations Then there's a place called the Defenbunker, commissioned in nineteen fifty nine. It was constructed to house and protect more than five hundred key members of the Canadian government in the event of nuclear war. It reaches four levels and seventy five feet below the ground and once housed a supercomputer before the days of the Innet or even RRPNet, it would allow survivors to continue communications with other governments around the world even if a five megaton bomb landed outside. If you're a being from another planet and you wanted to communicate with humans, or we're simply interested in how we communicate You might be intrigued by the Def and bunker Give this. Paul Hellier, Canada's former Minister of National Defense has said he has no doubt extraterrestrials have visited the Defen bunker which is located in West Carlton Today, the Defin bunker is a national historic site. It was decommissioned in nineteen ninety four Right around the same time, UFO settings in the area reportedly dropped off That was the same year Bob retired His work on the Guardian case had brought it to international attention. Some say he also delegitimized the bigger story of bizarre phenomena there If that's true, I think we can at least say that wasn't Bob's intent What if someone else did want to disenfranchise Ottawans from speaking up about UFO sightings. There is one last theory about who sent the Guardian package And it wasn't a whistleblower. But someone in the government was behind it. Remember, aside from Bob and a handful of others, a lot of people looked at Guardian' evidence and called it a hoax Even UFO enthusiasts came to that same conclusion According to this theory was all intentional Blurry video badly forged documents. photographs of aliens that look like men in cheap plastic costumes. All in one neat little package. which conveniently arrived in dozens of mailboxes right as the residents of West Carlton began seeing things they couldn't explain Better way to take the heat off than to release a tape showing what's happening Kning people won't take it seriously What if Government officials sent the Guardian package. So we would never believe a story out of West Carlton Thank you for listening to Conspiracy theories We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at the Conspiracy Pod If you're watching on Spotify, swipe up and give us your thoughts Our sources for today's episode include Harp Mystery from CBC Docs POV, UFO Town. Unsolved mysteries and Carp case or the Guardian Caper compiled by Mufon, Ontario. Until next time, remember The truth isn't always the best story And the official story isn't always the truth This episode was written and researched by Mkki Taylor edited by Justin Sales by Sophie Kent Engineered, video edited and sound desesigned by Alex Button host, Carter Roy Hey there, it's Wayfair here, where delivery and setup are as easy as a few taps on your phone. You're relaxing in an old hammock, scrolling Wayfair's app when you spot it, a brand new patio set. Next thing you know, Wayfair delivers it right to your patio and sets it up. Ooh, you need a new grill too? Allright, Wayfair's got you covered. 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