Jonathan Reed says he carried a non-human
body out of the woods and
put it in his garage freezer.
Three days later, he says, it woke up
screaming.
How does someone end up bringing that
home?
And what happens when the encounter
becomes a relationship?
I'm Bill Van Nort.
This is Unknown Origin.
Reed places the encounter in Washington's
Cascade Mountains in October
1996.
In his interview with Chris Ramsay on
Area52, he describes a familiar
outing with his golden retriever, Susie.
She was seven and the woods gave her room
to run.
Then, he says, he came upon something
holding her.
His description is brutal.
A small, human-like figure wearing black,
his dog being shaken with
extraordinary force.
He says an extension of the suit moved
against her and that within
seconds, she was dead.
In his account, her remains then collapsed
into white ash.
Reed says he struck the being in the head
with a branch.
It fell.
So did he.
What he describes next is a loss of
control over his own body, violent
sickness, weakness in his arms and legs,
and an inability to catch his
breath.
He says he lay close to the figure for
roughly 40 to 45 minutes before
he could crawl away.
He compares the feeling to radiation
poisoning.
No medical diagnosis is established here.
The violence is already over, but he's
still on the ground, trying to
get enough air to move.
And somewhere beyond the trees, he says,
there's a sound.
A deep harmonic tone.
Something he says he could feel through
his body.
He follows it toward a dark shape beyond
the vegetation.
Reed calls the object an obelisk, an
elongated, pointed diamond lying
on its side and suspended above the
ground.
He estimates it at 10 to 12 feet long.
He bases that estimate on a later
comparison using photographs.
As he approaches, he says he slips and
puts a hand against it.
The surface is so cold that he compares
the injury to touching dry
ice.
Then comes a moment he struggles to
explain.
For an instant, he says, he feels as
though he's inside an immense
dark space with distant lights.
Then he's outside again.
Reed separates that moment from
explanations people later gave him.
In the experience itself, he describes
being somewhere else for an
instant, without understanding how he got
there.
Now he has to decide what to do with the
cameras in his pack.
Reed says he had both a 35mm camera and a
small video camera with him.
In the interview, he gives a very human
explanation for using them.
Working a camera was something familiar.
In the middle of an experience he couldn't
make sense of, it gave him
a task he knew how to perform.
He describes bracing himself on the ground
for photographs beneath the
tree canopy, then struggling with the
video camera while still
breathing heavily.
The images associated with this account
are part of its lasting pull,
a dark, angular object among the trees,
and a small figure presented
as the being he encountered.
They are also disputed.
We haven't authenticated the original
recordings.
In this interview, Reed says he retains
some photographic negatives,
but that the original videotape was
stolen.
For now, stay with the decision he
describes making next.
He takes a thermal blanket from his pack.
His first intention, he says, is to cover
the body and return with
help.
But while wrapping it, he discovers how
little it seems to weigh.
He later describes a figure about 53
inches tall and roughly 30
pounds.
At the time, the immediate realization is
simpler.
He thinks he can carry it.
So he does.
In Reed's account, the walk back becomes
another gap in his
understanding.
The outward journey had taken about an
hour.
On the return, he describes finding
himself back at his jeep without a
clear sense of where the time had gone.
He puts the wrapped figure in the vehicle.
Then he notices the passenger seat.
Susie isn't there.
For all the extraordinary claims in this
story, that's the detail that
lands hardest for me.
The animal who came with him is gone.
What he's taking back is the thing he says
killed her.
He describes stopping at a ranger station,
finding nobody there, and
eventually driving home.
In his telling, the choices aren't part of
a grand plan to reveal
alien life.
He is sick, exhausted, and trying to deal
with one immediate problem
at a time.
First, get home.
Then, get the body out of the vehicle.
Then, find somewhere to put it.
Inside his garage is an old freezer.
He says he puts the body inside to
preserve what he believes is a dead
body.
The forest is behind him now.
The being is at home.
Before we go further, a quick invitation.
If Unknown Origin speaks to your
curiosity, you can carry a little of
that spirit into the everyday.
Explore the official Unknown Origin
collection through the store Link
in the description.
Every purchase helps support the show and
the work behind it.
Strange encounters.
Bigger questions.
Thanks for being part of this.
Reed says he calls a friend named Gary,
tells him Susie is dead, and
asks him to come over.
At first, he says, Gary is focused on how
ill he looks.
Reed leads him to the garage, takes the
wrapped figure out, and opens
the blanket.
He describes his friend's reaction as a
stunned silence.
Reed says he films the body the following
day, alone in the garage,
using what he has available to position
the camera.
And then comes the event that changes the
entire direction of his
story.
He says he had seen no breathing, no
pulse, nothing that told him the
being was alive.
Then, three days after he put it in the
freezer, he says it woke up
and began screaming at him.
Every decision up to this point had
depended on one assumption.
It was dead.
The photographs, the wrapping, the
freezer.
In his telling, that assumption has just
collapsed.
He had treated it as a body.
Now, in his account, he has to deal with a
living intelligence.
Reed calls the being Freddy.
He describes a relationship that continued
for years, including
unexpected appearances and a form of
communication that reached into
his memories.
One example is startlingly specific.
He says the being could bring back
experiences from when he was five
years old, memories it could examine,
select, and replay in his mind.
Chris Ramsay asks how he distinguishes
that from his own imagination.
Reed's answer is about sensory detail.
He describes childhood grass and
dandelions with a smell so vivid it
seemed present again.
He says these experiences happened while
he was awake.
Then, he describes another problem.
The information arrived too quickly.
He couldn't make sense of it.
He says he had to ask the being to slow
down, and that it did.
That changes the intimacy of the story.
The object in the forest could be
approached or left behind.
In this part of his account, the contact
reaches into experiences he
carries within himself.
And there is still Susie.
The being he says killed his dog is the
same being he describes
communicating with over many years.
Reed speaks about familiarity, but also
about something that remains
foreign to him, with abilities he doesn't
understand.
I believe non-human intelligence exists,
and I believe people have
experienced real contact, both positive
and negative.
That belief is why I take the
possibilities seriously.
It doesn't give me an answer to every part
of Reed's account.
An intelligence might understand our
memories without sharing our
values.
It might communicate clearly about one
thing and leave something
fundamental unresolved.
Those are possibilities this story raises
for me, especially when its
violence and its later intimacy sit side
by side.
Reed's later claims also involve a metal
cuff he calls the Link, which
he says he found near the encounter and
carried away with the figure.
He attributes transportation experiences
to it.
Ramsay is more skeptical of those later
technology claims than of the
initial encounter imagery.
His full conversation with Reed is linked
below.
The cuff Ramsay holds during his
commentary is a replica made for the
show, not the original object Reed claims
to have found.
The Link is a separate claim, with
separate questions.
It expands the story from an encounter in
one place into an alleged
means of reaching other places.
Across Reed's account, that expansion
keeps happening.
First, something in the woods.
Then, something in the garage.
Finally, something that can enter his life
again and reach into his
memories.
If contact could work that way, distance
would offer very little
reassurance.
Getting home would stop being the end of
the encounter.
The uncertainty has followed him inside.
Reed's full Area 52 interview and our
source notes are linked below.
Chris Ramsay gives him room to describe
the experience and presses him
on the parts that raise harder questions.
It's a conversation worth hearing in
context.
If you could ask Reed one question about
the continuing contact, what
would it be?
Leave it in the comments.
For another perspective on encounters and
their aftermath, watch our
Jay Stratton episode next.
Jonathan Reed's story leaves us with the
possibility of meeting an
intelligence that can reach us,
communicate with us, and still remain
deeply unfamiliar.
What would it take to understand one
another?
That question is the basis of this show,
Unknown Origin.
Stay curious, think deeply, and look for
deeper meaning in everything
you do.
Till next time!
