Shimmering shadows and fields of boulders play very strange roles in surprising accounts of things people claim to witness. David Paulides answers questions about “chameleo” effects that seem to be a common theme in this extended interview with investigative reporter George Knapp. This previously unaired interview was recorded Jan. 25, 2019 in Las Vegas. Third of 7 Parts.

George Knapp: You have a couple of other outlier cases. I mean, it’s hard to pinpoint what is responsible for these disappearances or abductions, if you want to call them that, but you have a couple of other outlier cases where people report really strange things. For example, the chameleon effect was a case. Bruce Maccabee’s wife who reported seeing something that sounds like it might be related to this.

David Paulides: So, I usually don’t give these kinds of stories much credence. But Bruce Maccabee, retired physicist from the Navy, the epitome of integrity. I saw a story that he wrote about his wife going into the woods. She was a hunter, archery hunter. And she was sitting in a blind, and she saw something in a tree 50 feet away. And she said, Dave, the best I could describe it is, is almost like you had something in your eye or you’re looking through a piece of Saran Wrap at distance. And she said you could see it reach from one tree to another tree, grab that tree, and then slowly move away. And she said it lasted maybe 30 seconds. And she goes, “I don’t even know what I was seeing.” And she came back home, told Bruce what she had seen. And he said, “Hold on a sec.” He grabs the movie, “Predator.” Puts that on and goes, “See that in the tree?” She goes, “Oh my God. That’s exactly the effect I saw.” Not the definition, but the effect.

Knapp: It suggests the technology, the camouflage type technology.

Paulides: Something strange, and the unusual part is once I talked about that story at various venues, I’ve had several people come to me who are highly credible and said that they’ve seen similar things.

Knapp: You know, one of the other factors in your cases is the presence of boulders. Granite and boulders. And I can never quite make that connection. Well, how does that fit? You’re out in the wilderness, there’s granite and boulders all over the place. But you’ve had stories, as well, about boulders that aren’t really boulders, right?

Paulides: It’s strange that that came up. But there’s been many times over the years that people have talked about, “I was in boulder field and something happened.” Or somebody disappeared in a boulder field. In one of my books I wrote a story about the road department in Iceland. And in Iceland, they will not blow up a boulder to put a road through a specific spot. They’ll put the road around the boulder because they believe that people or spirits live inside the boulder. And that’s interesting because people that I’ve written about have heard things come out of boulder fields, have seen things come out of boulder fields, have disappeared in boulder fields. It’s very weird.

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