Script

This is the My Dark Path Podcast

After the Allies defeated Germany in World War I, the country felt the punishing economic costs of the Treaty of Versailles which helped give rise to the Nazi Party.  To stoke extreme nationalism, one tactic the country’s leaders deployed was stimulating interest in the pre-history of Germany.  The Nazis formed the Ahnenerbe organization to be its instrument for Nazi archaeology and archaeological propaganda.  They rolled smaller, existing organizations into the Ahnenerbe and placed SS chief Heinrich Himmler at its head.  Ahnenerbe sponsored projects all over the world, from Bolivia to the middle east, pursuing evidence of their superiority and occult powers that would solidify their ascendant military strength.

As a part of their interest in pre-history, the Nazis reportedly sent an archeology team to Turkey to search for Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat in the 1930s. The search for Noah’s Ark on this mountain was not random.  The book of Genesis, chapter 8, verse 4, describes, "the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the mount up on the mountains of Ararat.”

Mount Ararat has been the target for dozens of expeditions seeking Noah’s Ark.  The first recorded ascent of Ararat for this purpose was led by Friedrich Parrot in 1829.  In his description of the trip, Parrot wrote "all the Armenians are firmly persuaded that Noah's Ark remains to this very day on the top of Ararat, and that, in order to preserve it, no human being is allowed to approach it."

Today, Mount Ararat is known in Turkish as Agri Dag—the Mountain of Pain. It is Turkey's highest mountain and positioned on the border with Iran and Armenia.  Today's episode isn't about the expeditions to find the ark.  Instead, we're going to talk about something else the Germans supposedly found.  When the Germans arrived to start their archeology work, they heard an odd story from a local Turkish man.  He shared a legend about an event that occurred 200 years earlier and kept a secret.  He told the Germans about the day a bright metal house fell from the sky. 

I’ll pause the story to make an observation, as I love this description of the object.  I learned about it from famed Turkish UFO researcher Farah Yurdozu while in Istanbul during my recent My Dark Path research trip.  As to be expected, I could find no substantiation other than a few references online.  I’ve even asked a few native speakers to Google references in Turkish, and they found nothing helpful.

But even if this story is just that, a story, the description is marvelous.  How else would a person in the Turkish countryside in the early 1700s describe a flying saucer...but as a metal house.

The Turkish man elaborated, recounting that on the day the bright metal house fell to the earth, it was hot and emitted a continuous whistling sound.  The Germans were obviously excited, knowing what this discovery might mean.  So, they had the man escort them to the location of the object.  It remained in the exact spot where it had landed 2 centuries earlier.  The story continues, noting that Nazi researchers found the object was disc-shaped and about 80 feet in diameter and 26 feet high at the center.  The Germans allegedly sent another team from Germany to recover the craft and study it in secret in Germany.

In the spectrum of evidence-based UFO encounters, I’ll definitely put this in the “I want to believe” category rather than one that has a reasonable chance of being true.  If it were true, the event would seem to be of such consequence that it would be backed up with other corroborating evidence.  But that’s ok – to search for the truth effectively requires that we discern which UFO or UAP sightings could be of alien origin and which ones could be dismissed.

But think about this unnamed man from Mount Ararat, if he existed.  He was in a tough spot – the Germans, their power in Europe was rising and potentially acting arrogantly – would have expected the truth.  If the man from Mount Ararat was being untruthful, his story would have unraveled quickly, and his lie would have cost him his reputation and potentially even his life.

But the story highlights a unique connection between UFOs and Turkey.  Today, I'll share the story of another Turkish man.  This modern Turk, we know by the name Murat Yalcin Yalman.  Yalman, like his supposed fellow countryman did decades earlier, claimed to have seen a UFO.  But in Yalman's case, he had incredible video evidence that was shared broadly in the late 2010s and continues to be hotly debated today.

I'm MF Thomas, and this is the My Dark Path podcast. 

I’m writing this script tonight from Istanbul, the capital of Turkey.  While my trip here involves research for an upcoming novel, I’ve outlined seven episodes that center around Istanbul – and in My Dark Path style, each will cover a story from the fringe of Istanbul’s history, scientific discoveries, serial killers, UFOs, hauntings and espionage.  While these seven episodes won’t drop all in sequence, I’ll release them all by the end of 2023.  If you like a deep dive on a particular geographic focus, you’ll definitely like our mini-series, Secrets of the Soviets, which is only available only on Patreon.  There, you'll get stories about cold war bunkers, UFOs, paranormal research, serial killers, and more based on my trip to Moscow in 2021.

You can find the link to My Dark Path Plus on Patreon in the show notes or on MyDarkPath.com.  Also, I’m putting out new videos regularly on Youtube and experimenting with shorts as well.  A recent commenter on Youtube said: "Really like the edit.  It just feels well made."  Well, Victor Krieter69, I'm grateful for your kind words.  To you and everyone else who enjoys this show, thank you for walking the dark paths of the world with me.  Let’s get started with Episode 53, UFOs and the Man from Istanbul.

Part 1

A famous Turkish UFOologist, Haktan Akdogan, commented in 2015 that “UFOs have been in touch with human beings for ages.  Besides the photographs and videos, there have been many UFO sightings in Turkish air space witnessed by Turkish pilots. I can say that Turkey is one of the top five UFO hotspots in the world.”

So, the thinly sourced event from the 1930s and the metal house is not a random event in Turkey’s history. Instead, it is an example of the country’s rich history of UFO sightings.  And, if potential alien visitors were picking a geography or even picking a city that represented a broad arc of human history and experience, Istanbul, Turkey’s capital, would certainly be at the top of the alien’s list.  Istanbul is a city that bridges time, continents, religions, and empires.

The city's founding came around the year 667 BC when Greek ships entered the Bosporus Straight, a narrow waterway that was famous for crushing the hulls of vessels against rocky cliffs.  A few miles past the straight, they sailed west and into a natural harbor with calm waters.  They would have disembarked and hiked a hill at the tip of a peninsula.  To their south, they would have looked into the Sea of Marmara through which they’d sailed from their homeland.  To the north, they would have seen rich forests and the continuation of the Bosporus straight leading further into the unknown.  And then, looking east, they would have seen rolling hills of an entirely different continent, Asia.

And so these Greek settlers would have unpacked their ships and started their new colony in this new land.

And, as I write this, I’m looking out over the same peninsula, the very western tip of the European continent and just across the water, the eastern tip of the Asian continent.  The darkness must have completely shrouded that Greek settlement on their very first night in a new land.  But today, in the same location, a city more than two millennia old unfolds before me.  On the Asian side, skyscrapers sparkle in the nighttime sky, including the iconic Camlica Tower, which was dedicated in 2021, making it the tallest building in the country.  On the European peninsula, I see at least five mosques, each majestically lit in the night.

Formerly known as both Byzantium and Constantinople, Istanbul has been a strategic and cultural center throughout its existence, witnessing the rise and fall of empires, the clash of civilizations, and the blending of diverse cultures.

In 2007, one of the citizens of Istanbul, Murat Yalcin Yalman, was working in the holiday village of Kumburgaz as a night watchman.  The oceanfront town is about 30 miles west of Istanbul along the coast.  He lived and worked in anonymity, and his name might have gone unnoticed in the news until something happened. 

Yalman’s work, watching over the vacation homes at night, gave him a perfect view of the ocean.  From this vantage point, he started seeing odd lights in the sky over the water.  After seeing these objects on multiple evenings, he finally bought a video camera and started shooting.  He took his first video in 2007 on June 20, and the final video from that year was shot on August 31.  UFOs were not an unknown phenomenon to Yalman.  While fishing with his father as a child, three unknown objects hovered over them.   

Over this 3 month period in 2007, Yalman used his Canon video camera to record a series of round and oval-shaped craft maneuvering over the ocean, always between midnight and 6am.  In an interview conducted in 2009 at the oceanfront location where he took the video, Yalman noted that he saw these objects every two to three weeks and, at most, two nights in a row.  He said: “I think it’s important to know the universe is filled with much smarter lives and not only limited to this planet.  This opportunity [to capture the video] luckily presented itself.  So I made the decision to keep shooting.”

In the series of videos taken over 3 years, several types of objects were captured.  All appear round or oval with a metallic structure.  Haktan Akdogan, who also appears alongside Yalman in most of his public appearances, noted something extraordinary, noting that the video captures images of “beings who are inside the object.  In the end, all this is one of the most extraordinary cases of all time.”

That’s right, not only are the images of the UFOs extraordinary, but several show humanoid figures moving within the object.  To see the videos for yourself, google Kumburgaz UFO or just follow a link in the show notes where I've clipped together some of the key sequences.  If you're driving or otherwise can't look at the video, the objects have the shape that we've come to expect of a UFO – disc-shaped with a thicker center tapering to a thinner edge.  If you’re familiar with the show Battlestar Galactica, the images have the distinctly arched look of a Cylon raider.  In addition to their metallic appearance, they flew without sound and sometimes were accompanied by strange red and orange lights. 

Akdogan goes on to describe the analysis of these figures.

“We are under the impression that the two silhouettes belong to extraterrestrials and there is a great possibility our friends agree with us on this issue, when we compare the heights of the extraterrestrial’s silhouettes and the structure of their heads to the object.  According to us estimation the ship is about 10-12 meters wide in diameter.” 

That’s a diameter of about 33 to 40 feet.

Initially, I thought that I’d cover the Kumbergaz sightings alongside several others in this episode.  However, I've found the video to be so compelling, and the potential explanations are so intriguing that I've moved the other UFO and close encounter stories to another Secrets of Istanbul episode.

So, before we dive into the arguments for and against these videos, I think it’s worth sharing additional background.

First, the movies were captured from land, looking out over the Sea of Marmara.  The distance from Kumburgaz, where the videos were shot, directly south to opposite shore is about 46 miles.  The shoreline to the southeast is similarly about 50 miles.  To the southwest, a large island called Marmara Island is a similar distance.  In another interview with Akdogan and Yalman, they describe the location where the video was shot:

“the residential area is right behind the Yenikent residential site [and] is near the beach above the sea. In other words, the horizon follows right behind and the area is clear. There is no mountain or a residential area that could be recorded.  And because he was focused directly on the object, Mr. Yalman did not feel it necessary to shoot the surroundings that was behind him because he did not want to run out of batteries either.  We did check the configuration of the sky and the moon was there wand the moonlight was strong at the time of the recording and therefore the source of the light comes from the moon which reflected its light to the object’s surface.  The light [for the video] has a source and that is the moon.  The reflection on the object is from the light that comes from the moon.”

Also of note is the presence of other witnesses.  About twenty witnesses observed the disc and oval-shaped objects.  Some of the witnesses lived nearby.  Others were curious onlookers and fishermen.  In a 2009 interview with some of these witnesses, one said, "I don't agree with what the skeptics say, because I know that I saw them with my own two eyes."  Another witness present with Yalman said in the same interview, "I saw a very intense, extremely bright light.  It stayed there in the sky.  By the way it moved I think this definitely goes against the laws of gravity.  After staying there for a while, it started to grow bigger like this and it suddenly disappeared.”

One of the witnesses was not a local but Dr. Roger Leir, a podiatric surgeon who became a UFOlogist later in life.  He recounted his experience, saying, “it’s a close up of a craft, so close you can see the occupants.  It’s a 100% real and I was there as it was filmed.  We were on the beach and filming out over the water.  And we saw something bright that was under the moon.  If the moon were the size of a dime, this was the size of a flashlight.  As the camera focused on the craft, those were the shots that became famous.”

As you’ll learn, more than the footage would become famous.

Part 2

Initially, Yalman did little to publicize these sightings other than speaking with locals who were interested in talking with him.  He took additional video of objects the following year in 2008, with objects captured on video from May 22 to September 28.  These sightings included a new feature - the presence of balls of light.   For example, the June 9th sighting included a ball of orange-red plasma that hovered in the sky for several minutes.  The light was intense enough that its reflection could be seen on the surface of the ocean.

The next sighting was on June 12.  This time, a bright orange ball of light appeared first, followed by a craft.  Bright balls of light continued to accompany many of the sightings that summer.

Finally, news of his video arrived at the Sirius UFO and Space Science Research group, which was Turkey's primary UFO reporting organization run by Haktan Akdogan.  Akdogan first spoke with all the witnesses separately and then did an analysis of the videos. With the participation of the members of their science board, they enlarged the images and did the detailed analysis, checked the pixels, and went through them frame by frame.

Akdogan said of the images:

"After doing all the necessary analysis which went on for several weeks, the board came to a definite conclusion with no doubt that these are 100% genuine videos. The objects sighted in the aforementioned footage that have a structure that is made of specific material are definitely not made up by any kind of computer animation nor are they any form of special effects used for simulation in a studio or for a video effect therefore in conclusion it was decided that the sightings were neither a mock up or hoax. And it is concluded that these objects in the sightings that have physical and material structures do not belong in any category such as; planes, helicopters, meteors, Venus, Mars, satellites, fire balls, Chinese lantern, fire balls, weather balloons, natural or atmospheric phenomenon etc. and but rather fall into the category of UFOs.”

Akdogan then submitted the videos to two other state-sponsored and influential scientific organizations in Turkey, The Scientific and Technology Research Board of Turkey" and "The TUG National Observatory."

At first, the scientists in Turkey were highly certain that it was a hoax. At that point, Akdogan, who had already analyzed the videos frame by frame, challenged the TUBITAK representatives on television to check for themselves.

Ultimately the TUBITAK report came back saying

“The objects observed on the images have a structure made of a specific material and definitely are not any kind of CGI animation or in any means a type of special effects used for simulation in a studio or for video effects. "So the conclusion of this report is that the observations are not a model, mock-up, or a fraud." At the last part of the report, it's concluded that the objects observed have a physical structure and are made of materials that do not belong to any category (airplanes, helicopters, meteors, Venus, Mars, Satellites, artificial lights, or Chinese lanterns etc.”

I find it interesting that the use of the word authentic is flexible here; in this case, authenticity is not that the images are of alien ships, but that they were not fraudulently created.

Akdogan went on to explain that the original video tape cassettes were also studied by people from Japan, Chile, Brazil, and Russia.  All of whom, reportedly, have been unable to demonstrate evidence of a hoax, fraud, or manipulation.

News of Yalman’s sightings broke out of his circle of friends and neighbors when the videos were featured in the 2009 International UFO and New Age Congress in Istanbul.  A thousand attendees listened to speakers from around the world speak about the latest UFO sightings and theories.  The conference was held at a time when interest in UFOs had expanded into the general population and celebrities. 

A former head of the British Defense Ministry's UFO desk and a well-known UFO-biologist, Nick Pope, a conference speaker, was surprised by the number of attendees.  He said: "UFO-ology has a bit of an image problem back home, computer-nerds, train-spotters, you know," he said. "But that is not the sense I get here at all. And there seems to be an equal balance between men and women."  Ummmmm….thanks, Nick! 

The conference also featured revelations about UFO sightings from Istanbul's show business celebrities.  Reyhan Karaca, a singer who represented Turkey at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1991, told Turkish newspapers how a "prawn-colored" alien had abducted her from her bed to give her a tour of sites around the globe. "They were very friendly," she said. "We communicated using our thoughts."

And, almost as though it had been scripted, an object was in the sky during the first day of the conference, causing everyone to whip out their cameras and start filming.

Immediately after the conference, another celebrity, Hulya Avsar, a singer and TV host, told her talk show audience that she had seen a UFO from the balcony of her home too.

And so it was amid this frenzy that the conference organizer, Akdogan spoke about Yalman’s videos, calling them “the most remarkable images taken in Turkish history.  Authorities can no longer turn a blind eye to this phenomenon.”

Akdogan also described how the Sirius Society analyzed the videos: 

“The first thing we did was convert it to a digital environment and larged it square by square, pixel by pixel, studied it and said, is this a mockup?  We came across a very significant image in one of the squares.  This turned out to be the breaking point.  There are two more objects at the sides of the centered object.  You will see one on the left and one on the right. They stop for a second only.  After the images were studied with scrutiny our friends from our scientific board said that these recorded images were no doubt genuine.”

The unveiling of the unusual video evidence, combined with numerous eyewitnesses, made the news of these UFOs go worldwide.  Coverage started with Turkish national publications and TV but then escalated internationally all the way to CNN.  But with these sightings gaining so much attention, what are the possible explanations?  Or are the videos, by being unexplainable, potentially what Yalman purports them to be – images of alien craft and even of aliens inside them?

Part 3 – Explanations

Like any good case of an unidentified aerial phenomenon, there are believers on both sides.  Some who believe unequivocally that the objects are alien; others believe that the objects are easily explained.  Any search of message boards about the topic, but the arguments can be summarized nicely by using these words from a commenter on Reddit. 

This footage never ceases to amaze me, both because of the footage itself AND the fact that it's been both debunked and not debunked.

The debunkers feel very confident that they've proven it's a crock…or a misidentified boat, but none of what they've put out there is like a definitive gotcha, IMHO.

That said, the circumstances of the footage are so far out there it's really hard to take it seriously....the craft supposedly sat out there for hours on end on multiple nights, and nobody else took photos or got it on video.

I think that frames up the situation around these videos.  While researching the Kumburgaz videos, I’ve been thinking about a framework to evaluate UFO scenarios that reflects two elements – the first, the probability of the evidence being a deliberate hoax, and the second, the ability to explain the source of the video.  If the idea of a 2x2 matrix isn’t immediately evident, just think about the current memes of “F around and find out” and you’ll see the concept.    

Anyway, the x-axis is the Hoax line, and the y-axis is the Explanation line.  Using this framework, I think one must explore the options for all 4 quadrants.  The lower left quadrant is the explainable hoax – in this case, the images or video have been generated in a deliberate way to mislead, and the method of the fraud is detectable.  In the opposite quadrant, the upper right side, it's possible that there is no fraud but also that the images can't be explained away by any means.  These are the cases where the potential for real alien craft could exist.  Rather than dive deep into this analytic approach now, I leave that to a youtube video I’ll produce.

But let’s apply it here.  First, let’s address the potential for a hoax by evaluating what we know.

·      Point 1 - Yalman – we definitely know that he was interested in UFOs.  How might this desire to see a UFO affect the credibility of his claim?  We know he shared that he and his father had seen 3 UFOs together while fishing.  This interest in UFOs has no correlation with the potential for a deliberate hoax, but the idea makes me wonder how the desires of an individual’s subconscious mind can drive them to see something that isn’t real.

·      Point 2 -  the presence of witnesses is an intriguing factor that reduces the probability of a hoax.  I’ve seen the interviews of the locals who saw the lights and also saw the interviews with Dr. Lier.  But from what I’ve read, I’ve not seen where the witnesses observed the objects directly through Yalman's camera. Instead, they just observed the objects at a distance.  I find this, well, interesting.  I can’t definitively say that no one else saw the objects through the camera, but I can’t find any evidence of it.

·      Point 3 – from my research, I appreciate Akdogan’s advocacy on the part of Yalman.  It’s very clear from his work that he cares deeply about the potential for humanity’s connection with other intelligent races.  When I watch the interviews where Akdogan and Yalman are present together, I see Yalman completely deferring to Akdogan in answering almost every question.  In some, Yalman is actively looking into the sky, as if he’s looking for a UFO right at that moment.  Is he playing the part that he thinks Akdogan wants of him?  The behavior makes me wonder – how much of Yalman’s video could be a product of him wanting to please this UFO expert?

Now, let’s talk about the potential sources of an earthly explanation for the images. 

·      First, I find it compelling that the TUBITAK report found no fraud in the videos or other explanations for the objects.  Sometimes, believers in a particular UFO image, like the video shot at Kumburgaz, take this to mean that it's a validation that objects are actually alien spaceships.  Instead, it's a statement that the images are not a hoax and do not have an explanation.  Without other evidence to the contrary, that would simply make the video have the possibility of being alien in origin.  However, there are some compelling arguments for the videos being of earthly origin.

·      The most common argument is that the objects are actually the command deck of a cruise ship.  Being a podcast, describing images is not an easy thing to do, but many people have shown how similar the object is to a single, lighted deck on a cruise ship.  Again, I’ll post a single video that is a synopsis of all the evidence I’m presenting here.  It’s a compelling argument and has been used to discredit the videos.  And this week, having walked the coastline west of Istanbul, I'm impressed by how many large ships are anchored at sea just at the mouth of the Bosporus Straight.  I've uploaded some photos and videos just to show you how many large cargo ships are at anchor in this area.  It's a compelling claim but for two issues.  One, cruise ships rarely are at sea in that area at night.  There are means of tracking large ocean-going vessels – and reportedly there is no evidence of a cruise ship in that area on the nights when the footage was taken.  Istanbul’s cruise ship dock is actually less than a mile from my hotel in the Galata Kulesi area.  The line of sight from the Kumburgaz area to the dock is broken up by the hills and city lights of the Peninsula and thousands of buildings.  In other words, if it were a cruise ship, there would be a lot of other lights between the camera and the lit deck.  Two, the object is too high to be a cruise ship.  Several people have analyzed these angles, and it does appear that the object is significantly higher than the highest deck of a cruise ship.  Personally, if the object were from a ship, I think it would have to be a tanker or other transport ship that is not normally lit at night other than the command deck.  For me, that is a more likely scenario as there are many of these at anchor on the water off the coast of Kumburgaz.

·      The second argument is that the objects are likely from a US or Turkish airforce base.  Now, I’ve pondered this one.  While it’s compelling for Yalman to have so many opportunities over 3 years to capture these objects on film, it also raises a question.  Why would alien spacecraft choose this particular area to appear, over and over, without concern for being observed?  In any other scenario, we’d be thinking that the area was a base of some kind that explained why aircraft were consistently present in the area for years.  Should these be alien ships, it seems that the masters of such advanced technology would also be more careful in continuously exposing themselves to direct observation.  However, we know that there are several Air Force bases within a range of 200 miles from the sighting location. 2 of them have U.S. and NATO personnel.  Despite this, there does not appear to be any evidence that Turkish or US airforces are responsible for the sightings.

·      There’s an extension of the last argument, where the US airforce is testing technologies in a more remote part of the world instead of the bases in the western US that every UFO and defense fanatic is watching.  This, of course, is reasonable.  As we've come to see, the US government will outsource the testing of materials and technologies, funding labs in China and the old Soviet bloc.  This isn't a supposition but a fact.  However, it would seem to be foolish to allow testing to be repeated over and over in the same spot for 3 years.  Yet the lab leak theory was just a conspiracy…until it wasn't.

So, what’s the net of all this?  After 15 years, I think the Kumburgaz videos remain in the “unexplainable” and “non-hoax” category….meaning that it’s possible.  Still, I struggle to find these to be the most compelling evidence of alien visitors.

Part 4 - 

As I mentioned in the introduction, I started this episode thinking that the Kumburgaz videos would be just a small part of an Istanbul UFO episode.  But the more I studied it, the people and the arguments, it became clear it required an entire episode.  So, I guess I'm at 8 episodes for the Secrets of Istanbul mini-series. 

It’s a fascinating case because of the videos, but it’s really the people who make it all the more intriguing.  It may be that UFO cases are fascinating because they reveal so much of the human condition.  Between Arkogan, the arch-advocate, and the hundreds of faceless detractors, there's the usual tension that exists in all worthwhile UFO cases.  But I find Yalman to be the most human, the most compelling figure.  At the height of his visibility, he was asked his thoughts about why UFOs were appearing in front of him with such regularity.  He responded by taking a puff on his cigarette, clicking his tongue, the Turkish equivalent of shaking his head before responding:

"I see them as the world's policemen, up there to keep an eye on us. I only wish they'd come down for a chat. Then we could drink tea and play a few rounds of backgammon."

That’s a very authentic response from a very authentic Turk.  If I haven’t mentioned it earlier, I’ve found the Turks to be warm and kind, friendly but not to excess.  But tea and backgammon would certainly be on the list of experiences to welcome any visitor to the country.

But Yalman’s story, moving from a simple night watchman to spokesman for alien visitors, did not end there.  There’s still one part of the story I’ve not shared with you. You see, Murat Yalman Yalman, the man who reached international fame for his videos, became homeless in 2015.  By the last account, he lives on the streets outside the city of Balikesir.  

When a Turkish reporter found him, Yalman said of himself: “I am currently living a street life due to my family problems. I am experiencing these problems due to my loan debts. The bank confiscated my retirement. I'm looking for a philanthropic sponsor to help me."

Noting that he lost all his assets, Yalman continued his speech as follows; " I had 5 cars, while I had a villa, they were all God's power at once. This has been a lesson to us. I want to fight. Wherever fate makes way for me, I'm going there. The world has heard my name. I am a person who brought famous scientists to Turkey. It has still been watched on the Internet for 8 years without falling.”

It's instructive to have the rest of Yalman’s story.  I’ve looked for and asked others to look for evidence of where he is today but found nothing recent.  Amid the passions that are inflamed around any topic, perhaps not the least of which are UFOs, we need to be aware that our personal success with family and friends requires separation from the passions that may drive our work.  If they become too intertwined, the demise of one leads to the demise of the other.

As Yalman says: “This can happen to anyone.”

I hope for Yalman that, wherever he is today, he's found the peace that he hoped visitors from another world might bestow on mankind.

***

Thank you for listening to My Dark Path. I’m MF Thomas, creator and host, and I produce the show with our creative director Dom Purdie. I researched and prepared this story.  Big thank yous to them and the entire My Dark Path team, as well as to you, our Patreon supporters and listeners.

Please take a moment and give My Dark Path a 5-star rating wherever you’re listening. It really helps the show, and we love to hear from you.

Again, thanks for walking the dark paths of history, science, and the paranormal with me. Until next time, good night.