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This is Connective Tissue. I'm Darren Marlar. In 1967, a
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horse named Lady was found on her side near Alamosa, Colorado,
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with the flesh stripped from her head and neck and
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no blood on the ground. In Montana, ranchers kept finding
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cattle dead with their organs missing and no tracks leading
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in or out. On a ranch in Utah, a wolf
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took six shots and walked off into the trees. In
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this series, I'm taking you through my book, Connective Tissue,
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one chapter at a time, following the dead cattle to Bigfoot,
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alien abductions, mind control, and the men in black. The
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cases come from government records, police and court files, published accounts,
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and the people who were there. A word of warning
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before I begin. Several chapters do describe real violence against animals,
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household pets included, and against people. and now, Connective Tissue,
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How Cattle Mutilations Link Bigfoot, Alien Abductions, Mind Control, and
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The Men in Black. In May 1973, Judy Doherty was
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driving home outside Houston, Texas, with her daughter Cindy, her
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mother and her sister-in-law in the car after dropping off
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friends when the group noticed a strange light in the
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sky and pulled over to watch it. In the weeks
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that followed, Doherty began suffering severe headaches and anxiety she
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couldn't explain. My first guess would be that she was
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stuck in the car with an in-law, but I'd be wrong.
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Several doctors examined her and found nothing that accounted for
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the symptoms. Years later, Doherty underwent hypnotic regression. An earlier
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session was conducted through APRO, the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization.
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Then in March 1980, she sat for a filmed regression
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with University of Wyoming psychologist Leo Sprinkle, who had become
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known for working with people reporting UFO encounters. Under hypnosis,
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Doherty described something she had no conscious memory of, standing
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beside her car, watching the light, and at the same time,
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by her own account, inside a chamber aboard a craft.
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she described a cow that jumped over the moon. Sorry,
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I couldn't resist. Actually, she described a cow being lifted
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into the same space and then worked on by two
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small beings, methodically, in what she described as a mutilation
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carried out in front of her. Later accounts say Cindy
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also underwent regression and described an experience that paralleled important
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parts of her mother's. Investigative journalist Linda Moulton Howe included
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footage of Doherty's regression session in her documentary A Strange Harvest.
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It first aired in May 1980, an hour-long examination of
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the cattle mutilation phenomenon worldwide. The film won a regional Emmy,
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and it became one of the best-known documentaries linking cattle
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mutilations with reported extraterrestrial activity. It's hard to laugh off
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the cattle mutilation phenomenon when a documentary about it wins
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an Emmy. Although I know many of you will likely
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laugh anyway, because that's how you are, and that's the
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audience I've built over the years. Howe built the case
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largely on eyewitness testimony and physical evidence gathered from ranchers
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and law enforcement across multiple states. Some regions appear repeatedly
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in both UFO reports and cattle mutilation investigations, and Colorado's
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San Luis Valley is perhaps the best-known example. Researchers, such
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as Christopher O'Brien, have cataloged hundreds of UFO and Bigfoot
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reports from the region, along with roughly 200 reported cattle mutilations.
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O'Brien has estimated the true mutilation total could be closer
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to 1,000, reasoning that mutilations go unreported at close to
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the same rate UFO sightings do. But then, if they
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go unreported, how do we know it's closer to 1,000
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or the same rate as UFO sightings? Somebody should do
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a study on that. By 2000, the Valley's UFO reputation
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had become strong enough for rancher Judy Mezzaline to turn
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it into a business, opening the UFO Watchtower, a platform
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offering a 360-degree view of the Valley floor. Not
Load full transcript
to
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be confused with the Watchtower magazine, which is more unbelievable
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than cows jumping over moons. Not every UFO sighting tied
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to a mutilation case comes from a rancher after the fact.
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Some come from witnesses who believed they interrupted one in progress.
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In August 1985, in Cannock Chase, Staffordshire, England, a father
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and son driving home around 8.30 in the evening saw
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a triangular object hovering over a field beside the road,
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lit from below by three bright lights. They pulled over
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and watched it for several minutes before it shot away
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at a speed neither of them could explain. According to
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researcher Nick Redfern's account of the case, when they reported
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the sighting to local police, two officers came to their
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home in person to take statements. an unusual step for
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a UFO report, and told the pair it had been
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a mistake for them to get out of the car.
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Neither officer explained what they meant. I couldn't independently verify
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that detail beyond Redfern's own reporting. If you are envisioning
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Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in police uniforms, you
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might not be too far off. Official-looking visitors showing up
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in person to deliver an unexplained warning is a pattern
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we'll focus on directly in the chapter on the men
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in black. Two days later, in the same area, a
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man out hunting ducks with friends before dawn watched a
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similar light come to a controlled stop directly over a
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field of cattle. He moved closer to get a better look.
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As soon as the craft appeared to register his presence,
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several beams of light shot down from it toward the ground,
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and he ran for the tree line. By the time
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he found the courage to go back, the object was gone.
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No mutilation was confirmed afterward, but Redfern later speculated that
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the witness may have interrupted whatever was happening. Wales has
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its own version of the same overlap, concentrated enough that
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some UFO researchers have dubbed part of the Cambrian Mountains
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the Sheep Mutilation Corridor, a stretch where livestock deaths have
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been reported for decades. Farmer Jonathan Davies reported finding two
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of his yearling ewes skinned so cleanly that only the
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head remained attached to anything resembling a body. It was
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so tidy, he said, it was like someone had been
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there with a knife and skinned them. Local police suggested
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a large cat might be responsible, a theory that has
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circulated in the area since the 1970s under the name
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the Beast of Bont. Helena Wirth, a self-described amateur scientist
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from the area who says she has watched for UFOs
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since spotting one over her home in 2018, rejects the
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big cat explanation outright. The cat, she argued, would have
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left the carcass a mess. If your furry kid ever
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showed up with a dead mouse as a gift for you,
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you'll understand what Helena is saying. My cat Pumpkin absolutely
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refuses to use a knife and fork. What she and
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others report seeing around the same region are glowing orbs,
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sometimes during periods when unusual sheep deaths were also being reported, hovering,
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moving in straight lines, sometimes changing color before disappearing. The
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Calhoun County, Texas, sheep mutilations examined in the last chapter
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drew more than local law enforcement. They drew MUFON, the
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Mutual UFO Network, one of the largest UFO investigative organizations
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in the country. Beginning in July 2013, Wayne Daggs watched
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his flock of 21 Barbados sheep dwindle to only a few.
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Some disappeared. Others turned up shot, stabbed, or mutilated. Among
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the mutilated animals, males were found castrated and at least
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one female had reproductive tissue removed, all without the tracks
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or blood a natural predator would have left behind. Sheriff
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George Ailman, who investigated the case for Calhoun County, Put
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it plainly, it wasn't a wild animal which would tear
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the meat. This was too clean to be an animal.
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Whoever did this knew
what they were doing. MoveOn sent
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its own investigators, Section Director Charles Stanbridge and Senior Field
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Investigator Fletcher Gray, to examine the property independently. While local
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law enforcement increasingly considered a human explanation, most likely a
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ritual or cult connection given the precision involved, MUFON publicly
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kept several possibilities on the table— people, predators, or something extraterrestrial.
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The wounds, they said, matched decades of similar reports elsewhere.
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MUFON declined to release its findings, telling reporters the investigation
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was ongoing and that related documents were confidential. Stanbridge offered
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his own blunt assessment of the case at the time.
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No one knows the purpose of the mutilations. The crime
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is not solvable. No public findings or final report from
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MUFON on the Dagg's property investigation appear to have surfaced
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in the years since. By 1973, the idea that people
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could be taken aboard a craft and returned changed had
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already entered the public imagination, through two cases that had
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nothing to do with cattle. but I'm including them for
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a connection I'll make momentarily. Betty and Barney Hill, a
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couple from New Hampshire, reported being taken aboard a craft
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on the night of September 19, 1961, in what's now
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recognized as the first widely publicized alien abduction account in
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the United States. In case you're curious, Betty and Barney
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Rubble got famous first, a year earlier, in 1960 on
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the Flintstones. I know that has nothing to do with
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the topic of this book, but I cannot help but
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think of the rubbles every time I read about Betty
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and Barney Hill. Anyway, both of the Hills later described
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medical-style examinations conducted by the beings aboard the craft, with
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Betty recalling hair, fingernail, and skin samples being taken, presumably
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not by an alien named Gazoo. Fourteen years later, in
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November 1975, a 22-year-old logger named Travis Walton vanished for
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five days after his six-man logging crew watched a beam
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of light strike him near Heber, Arizona. Five of the
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six co-workers were judged truthful on a police-administered polygraph, indicating
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they believed they had seen a genuine UFO and had
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not harmed Walton themselves. The sixth man's result came back inconclusive.
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Neither the Hill case nor the Walton case involved a
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mutilated animal. What they did establish was that, years before
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Doherty ever sat for hypnosis, an ordinary person claiming to
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have been taken aboard a craft could attract serious investigators
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and national attention. Both cases also share something more specific
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with the rest of this book. Living tissue, allegedly examined
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or sampled by whatever intelligence the witnesses believed they encountered, Equine? Canine? Humankind?
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Does someone or something want to know how we tick?
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Thanks for listening. I've been reading from my book, Connective Tissue,
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How Cattle Mutilations Link Bigfoot, Alien Abductions, Mind Control, and
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the Men in Black. The book is currently on pre-sale,
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releasing Friday, November 13th on Amazon for Kindle and paperback,
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and the Kindle edition is included with Kindle Plus. You
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can pre-order the Kindle edition right now on that same page, weirddarkness.com
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slash connectivetissue. That's weirddarkness.com slash connectivetissue. Or find all of
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my books, fiction and non-fiction, at weirddarkness.com slash books.