Episode 265 continues down the horrifying path of spooky season with a fresh batch of GenX nostalgia.
We start by going through a maze. That maze consists of the many confusing timelines of the beloved Halloween movie franchise. It all begins with the classic original, then it goes in all different directions. The question is, why are there so many? I might not be able to answer that, but I can try to lead you through them as best I can.
Ong’s Hat was one of the early Internet mysteries. It was based enough in reality that it gained traction as a potential conspiracy theory story. However, the creators hadn’t anticipated that the spark of reality caused an inferno that they could not put out. I will share the entire story of Ong’s Hat, a fascinating and spooky early internet rabbit hole.
This completes the COMPLEAT Broadcast series. It will remain here on this Substack so you may revisit it or share it. If you’d like a print copy of the book section of this work, it is available through https://compleat.store
They’re just never gonna let this one go, are they? I guess that was kinda the point. 😜
(Hint: Some things are more fun if left a mystery)
Queued up at the relevant point in the video, but feel free to watch the entire thing.
Their mission: retrieve a 1975 IBM 5100 computer with a hidden function that almost nobody outside a handful of retired engineers knew existed.
Over 4 months, the user made 151 posts under the name John Titor.
He described the time machine down to serial components. Posted photographs and what appeared to be pages from an operations manual. Cited real theoretical physics..
He answered hundreds of questions with a patience and consistency that pointed away from a hoax.
Then on March 24th, 2001, he typed one final sentence and disappeared. Nobody using that name ever posted again.
4 years later, a journalist tracked down one of the original IBM 5100 engineers.
Bob Dubke confirmed the hidden function was real!
It was his personal contribution to the machine and IBM suppressed it.
You know, it is gratifying when you point out a very obvious (to you) hanging thread, and someone takes the time to follow it and, most importantly, has the capacity to comprehend it. Good job, lads.
The truth is out there… sometimes… maybe… well, Hine and Buckley just aren’t sure. UFOs, UAPs, Flying Saucers, Alien Spacecraft, whatever you think they are, you don’t know for sure – and if you think you do know for sure, it’s a sure sign you don’t.
What you do know for sure is that you are told a lot of different things about them by a lot of different people: abductees spinning stories of high strangeness, senators pressuring whistle-blowers for information in congress, devoutly religious authors telling tales of angels and demons, folklorists and scholars of comparative religion painting vivid pictures of ancient beings dressed up in the skin of Technicolor sci-fi nightmares… no-one agrees and everyone is out to prove that their interpretation is the right interpretation – but what does any of it actually mean?
In this episode Hine and Buckley don’t analyse the verisimilitude of the stories or the veracity of the storytellers but instead examine the discourse around the phenomena or more accurately the discourse around the discourse around UFOs. The mechanisms with which people might think about this topic and the reasons that they may think in that way.
The conversation around UFOs is big business, a lot of people making a lot of money – but who are these people and what happens to that money? Where did it all start? Was it Peter Levenda that stealthily laid the ground work over the last 50 years to shape the UFO movement as we know it today? Why would people lie about this stuff? Why should you believe some conspiracy theorist warning you of the terrible dangers of the existential crisis that UFOs pose anymore than you should trust some conspiracy theorist warning you of the terrible dangers of vaccines and their link to childhood autism?… and if the people who are trying to take control of the discourse are lying, overly-gullible or deluded, then is there really any truth out there at all? (recorded 23 April 2026)
