For those of you tired of looking at pictures from Mars that appear to be skulls, levitating rocks or animals, here’s a story with a new twist. An audio clip posted on YouTube from a Coast to Coast AM show has a woman claiming to be an ex-NASA employee also claiming that she and some colleagues were watching a video feed in 1979 from the Viking lander when they saw two human-like figures walking around.

“Jackie” called in to tell her story to John Lear, the former CIA pilot, ufologist and well-known conspiracy theorist. She is heard saying she handled the downlink telemetry from Viking. She and six coworkers were watching a group of monitors when the incident occurred.

Then I saw two men in space suits – not the bulky suits we normally used, but they looked protective. They came over the horizon walking to the Viking Explorer.

At that point the video feed cut out, so she says they went “upstairs” but the door was locked and paper was taped over the window so they couldn’t see in. Her question to Lear was whether the men she saw were from NASA.

Lear, who claims NASA landed on Mars in 1966, responds that they were probably from NASA and were there to do repairs on Viking. He said the light spacesuits weren’t even necessary because humans can adapt to breath the Martian atmosphere. After some banter with the host of the show, the audio clip ends.

As expected, there’s both buzz and questions about Jackie’s claim, not to mention Lear’s response. She calls it a “27-year-old mystery” but 1979 is actually 35 years ago. The clip is from 2014 and was posted in September but there’s no specific date of the broadcast. None of her coworkers were with her to corroborate the story. John Lear has many interesting and controversial theories, too numerous to mention (see Micah Hanks’ article for more info), about UFOs, aliens, life on the moon, NASA’s cover-ups of its work with extraterrestrials and 9/11 conspiracies.

Any thoughts? It’s an interesting story. Now that it’s out, let’s hope Jackie’s coworkers come forward with more information.