P.I. To N.J. in 6 Months
Before I started my graphic design career, I worked as a grunt case examiner. Nothing lavish to any extent. I primarily was put on piracy cases concerning televised broadcasts. All the stuff that the higher ups deemed as little fish in big nets. I actually liked it. The procedure requirements were pretty cut and dry. Start simple, and if you stumble onto something big, hand it over to one of the leads. Nobody in the firm really expected any of us to pull in anything of significance (we were all in our mid 20’s). The most they suspected us to eventually come across was some bar owner televising a pay per view broadcast to the public without permission. You see, the whole purpose of this section of the firm was to train new investigators on field work. Set them into the wild and see what they can do; so to speak. How good were they at observation, note taking, interviewing, report writing, communication, etc. The bare basics of investigative work. If you couldn’t excel at these things, they couldn’t use you for regular cases that ended up on trial.
So, as things went, the first two months were as expected. A few sports bars and local downtown pubs each week were the norm. One or a pair of us, would run a quadrant of the downtown area each week with 4 or 5 others. We would all rotate our shifts between the hours of 2 and 10pm. Going to the same bars in different quadrants each following week that were already visited. Having partners tended to get more complicated, but it was encouraged. One taking surveillance and one working the floor. Only at sports bars though. The bigger venues that televised multiple sports. Especially during big pay per view events. At the end run of the second month of my stretch, one pair of case examiners received a radio intercept conversation while conducting surveillance. It was required to record any radio communication between a partnered pair during a case. Mostly because of evidentiary reasons as well as a teaching tool to better understand proper and improper coms usage. During their case, their radio picked up a CB transmission between two rig drivers. They were talking about a mass cattle mutilation east of the city. According to one operator, there were close to 20 or so cattle wrapped in electrified fencing along the causeway that ran parallel to a connecting highway that fed to the main freeway into the city. The description given was very detailed and graphic. Mainly, according to the operator, because they pulled over and got out of the rig to take pictures.
During our end of week debrief, all of us thought these two were pranking us. Even the lead investigator that ran the meetings. Until of course, when they played us the 20 minute recording. Side note, they were using a low frequency band during their case. Which was pretty bad and less secure. That being said, the lead investigator thought it would be a good experience for a pair of us to go out and gather as much information as they could on the matter. Of course I volunteered immediately. So did three others.
The following month was the best and creepiest experience I had ever encountered while working for the firm. Every couple of days drove us deeper into the case. We had decided after the first week that meeting once every 7 days was to unnerving. The amount of information we were gathering was far to overwhelming to go through all at once. So our lead investigator happily agreed to our request to meet every two days and assigned us another lead to help us organize our research properly. You see, the ‘lead’ didn’t expect us to find much of anything. And figured it was a one or two day stint at most. But he let us run with it when he saw what we were pulling in.
What we found and discovered seemed to come straight out of an X-Files TV episode. Thousands of photographs, interview testimonies, map locations of similar events from those testimonies. Even released law enforcement records deemed as hoaxes. It looked like a jumbled mess half way through the case. But when we pieced everything together at the end of the month with a timeline. It was chilling. The supposed “cattle mutilations” happened on a seasonal schedule; in an elliptical pattern that was running on a south-eastern path from Canada and into Colorado. When we received the police reports from multiple counties (spanning the NW’n states) relaying and confirming the other reported locations. The firm refused to pay for our travel to investigate. So we agreed to pony up the dough ourselves. Which was just fine by them. (It ended up costing us 8k in the end, TOTALLY WORTH IT.)
Anyway, when two of us asked if we could continue the case beyond the one month mark, the firm refused, despite the fact that we still had a great number of leads to follow up on, let alone a prospective interview with a certain NPR jockey. The four of us turned everything over and reluctantly continued on with the boring cases.
For me at least, it was like the jet engine was turned off with a full tank of fuel. I wanted to keep going. But was grounded. I didn’t last another week before quitting and joining a college research team from eastern Oregon. Which I can say was a pretty reckless decision. But I didn’t mind or care about living out of a car and eating gas station food. I wanted that rush again. And I most certainly got it. Only one other case examiner (turned friend) joined me almost a year later. Weirdly enough, they weren’t on my team during the case. But got so excited about it when they reviewed the case months later. They quickly decided to leave and join up when they heard why I left the firm. They are still a close friend to this day. Now an English professor at a private college if you can believe it.
Ufologists, back then, were ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ dedicated. Especially the ones that were seasoned and pushing 60. The two we worked with were “nut jobs”. Fun nut jobs, but I swear there were a couple screws loose. Some of the $#!+ we saw was mind blowing. And I could relate. Seeing this stuff over and over again for decades would drive almost anyone a little bonkers.
Could that be why I am the way I am now? Maybe a little?
Hmmm… it was only a couple years of weird… That one time in the desert when we all blacked out and couldn’t remember the previous day… now that was something…
Who knows.
