24th Annual McMenamins UFO Festival

The Tek-Gnostics field research team attended the 24th annual McMenamins UFO festival, held in McMinnville, Oregon. The two day festival includes speakers... this year's key note being former U S Navy pilot Ryan Graves. Those who follow recent disclosures around UAP remember Graves as the former Lt. U.S. Navy and F/A-18F pilot who served for a decade, including two deployments in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Inherent Resolve. 

Graves was the first active duty pilot to come forward publicly about regular sightings of Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) and has been featured in Politico, NBC News, 60 Minutes, The History Channel, and the New York Times. Graves' lecture was very informative, and Graves himself came off as very knowledgeable and believable. Graves is the founder and executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace, the first military pilot led nonprofit dedicated to UAP as a matter of national security, aerospace safety, and science.

However... it is the seemingly unrelated, yet significant anomalies... the synchronous instances of high strangeness that attracts team tek-gnostics' collective attention. So i will relate an incident... what we at tek-gnostics have filed as the "Man in Black" incident... that occurred prior to Graves lecture.

The lecture was held at the McMinnville community center. My cohort, Agent 87 and myself had gone early to purchase tickets for the event. As we walked through the front doors of the community center, an enigmatic character was standing just inside the doors... seemingly waiting for something or someone. The man was dressed from head to toe in a crisp, classic 1960's era black suit. He wore a black fedora and mirror sunglasses.

As i walked through the door... the man in black immediately approached me and asked... "have you purchased your ticket for the event?"  I answered in the negative, to which he produced a ticket to the event and handed it to me. Handing me the ticket, he said something to the effect of his having an extra ticket. I thanked him and introduced myself. At this point, agent 87 spoke up, saying... "i see you have more tickets... do you have another extra?" 

But the man in black quickly disappeared into the gathering crowd, leaving us both laughing and scratching our heads. At $35 bucks a ticket, this was a generous gift from a total stranger. And of course you... like us... are probably asking yourself... just how strange was this stranger?

My first thought was how generous this man... seemingly a cosplayer... had been. Over the course of the festival, 87 and myself would return to that moment. The more we thought about it, the more we appreciated the synchronous, synchro-mystic quality of the encounter. Agent 87 has long held that UFO conferences are the perfect venue for honest-to-god extra-terrestrials to infiltrate and observe the quirky behaviors of humans, as they gather to discuss and celebrate extra-terrestrial contact, disclosure, and all things UFO related.

The Man in Black incident occurred on Friday evening, the first day of the festival. So our field trip to the McMenamins UFO festival, got off to highly strange start. There were other highly strange incidents, such as an extended conversation with a mysterious "follower of the Craft" ...yeah that was one weird and wiccan exchange i will tell you! 

The rest of the festival was very enjoyable... what one might expect... a cross between a UFO conference and a county fair. The Saturday parade was hilarious! My favorite entry was a marching band... dressed up as aliens (of course) and playing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Here we are now... entertain us!

All things considered, a very rewarding and entertaining field trip! Everybody was having a good time... I suppose the beer gardens didn't hurt. The overall vibe was very friendly and folksy. There were many curious farmers who came to see the high strangeness of such events. Undoubtedly they were interested in having the crop circles they find in their alfalfa fields explained. Tons of cosplayers... and many who were ready to have serious conversations concerning contact, disclosure, and the state of UAP investigations.

All in all... the folks of McMinnville and the surrounding countryside... want to believe.