Joseph Burkes MD 2009, updated 2026
“Misha Goldman” greeted me at the front door of a small, rented track home. It was located in the San Fernando Valley just a few miles from the medical center where we had first met some 15 years before when he was hired as an EKG technician. Misha was Russian-Jewish and as a teenager had been permitted to emigrate from the USSR. I had studied Russian in college. This knowledge facilitated my interviewing patients from the former Soviet Union who ended up in our ambulance area. I enjoyed practicing my Russian language skills by chatting with the young man.
A “Prime Contactee” Surfaced in our Medical Center’s Ambulance Area.
A year after we started working together, Misha approached me and claimed that while back in the USSR he had a dream indicating the following. He was going to move to the USA and do contact work with a tall bearded Jewish American. Allegedly when he came to the ER to do an EKG in 1992, he recognized me as the man in the dream. He reportedly had started meditating as a teenager with no adult encouragement and described having multiple UFO sightings with others present.
I immediately realized that Misha’s personal story was reminiscent of Dr. Steven Greer’s. Greer was the founder of the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI). He, along with his assistant Shari Adamiak had founded the Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind (CE-5) Initiative. From doing volunteer contact work with both Dr. Greer and the young man I call “Misha Goldman”, I developed the profile of what I would later call “Prime Contactees” who function like “human UFO magnets.” Some 30 years later, similar individuals are now being called “psionic assets.”
Volunteer Contact Work with a “Human UFO Magnet.”
As soon as Misha joined out Los Angeles based CE-5 team. Our level of contact went way up. We had sightings of anomalous nocturnal lights almost every time we were in the field with him. In addition, I started having what are called “contact downloads.” Two of them involved my being correctly informed during fieldwork, when, where in the sky, and the number of UFOs that were going to show up. Subsequent sightings by multiple witnesses confirmed that I had received an accurate, “heads up.”
“Misha Goldman” and I had many adventures in the high desert from 1993 to 1996. In one, after having what he described as “an out of body experience,” he knew we had to go out into the field on Veterans Day 1993. During the first storm of the rainy season we had a ninety minute plus interactive encounter with two types of UFOs. One of them when viewed through binoculars appeared to have the configuration of a brilliantly illuminated inverted bowl that had a flat 2D appearance.
A Series of Missing Time Events Across the Network
The following month Misha and I had missing time while driving back from Joshua Tree National Monument. (This was before it was designated a National Park.) This High Strangeness event was the second of three missing time episodes that occurred for CE-5 team members across the Western US. The first was with Ron Russell, a member of the Denver group. Then Misha and I in Southern California, and finally seven members of Wayne Peterson’s team had not one, but two episodes of missing time during the same night while in the desert near Phoenix. The curious thing about this sequence of High Strangeness events was that the pattern matched the order in which our CE-5 Working Groups started doing fieldwork: Denver 1991, then LA in August 1992 and finally Phoenix in December of that year. For more details, see the links to reports listed below.
Indications That There Were Serious Problems with Misha
After working as an EKG tech for a few years in our Kaiser Panorama City Medical Center, Misha attended junior college and became a registered nurse. Only after a few years as an RN, he told me that he left that profession because he “didn’t like that kind of work.” In early 2000s I strongly suspected that was not the whole story. I subsequently checked the internet published records of the California nursing board. In nearly fifty pages of documentation, I discovered that he had lost his license because of repeated violations of regulations for dispensing controlled substances. Not unexpectedly the official version was different from lies that he had told me when I had inquired about his giving up nursing.
Misha always liked to have nice things. In the driveway of the rented tract home in 2007 when I visited him, there was a late model black Lexus. Opening a heavy metal security door he welcomed me into the house. A giant large screen TV was the centerpiece in the small living room. A sleek leather recliner faced the blank TV screen. Despite going through a divorce and filling for bankruptcy, Misha still managed to hold on to some adult toys.
“You shouldn’t make yourself a stranger,” he complained to me. During the last two years I had only visited him twice. During each visit my intuitive sense signaled “danger” as I entered his suburban home. Despite my continued interest in how he was doing, I had resisted the desire to visit more often. For some time he had been involved with some very unscrupulous Russian businessmen and his situation increasingly frightened me. According to Misha his “friends” had initially allowed him to stay at the house for free and they obtained a luxury sedan on lease for his personal use. I knew these perks were not good signs.
According to subsequent press accounts, Misha’s home had been under FBI surveillance starting in 2005. He subsequently had been arrested for satellite signal piracy. In retrospect my strong sense of danger just being there in the house with him was probably a psi mediated warning
In 2005 during my first visit, I had asked Misha what he was doing for these “businessmen” to secure their “friendship.” I suspected that they were using Misha’s highly developed computer skills for no good purposes. He didn’t own up to me what the deal was. Instead, he made some inane remarks about the virtues of “friendship.”
Back in the USSR
In the former Soviet Union where Misha had grown up, “friends” were often people who helped you because you helped them. The constant shortages of the necessities of life, food, children’s clothing, even toilet paper, made people depend on one another to get by. Under the Communists any type of business not controlled by the State was outlawed. The simplest commercial transactions that were legal anywhere else, were deemed to be criminal in the USSR.
When the Soviet Union allowed its Jewish citizens to leave in the 1980s, many underworld entrepreneurs were among the emigrants. For almost a decade I that suspected Misha had direct ties with such outlaws. In June of 2007, a year since a previous visit, his relationship had clearly changed with his Russian “friends.” According to Misha he now was required to pay rent and he was so broke that he needed a boarder in his home to help pay the bills.
More Lies from Misha, a Satellite Pirate
Misha started telling me about his current legal problems with the federal authorities. Not unexpectedly his story appeared to be a combination of half-truths and adolescent fantasy. In a bizarre touch, he even suggested that his difficulties with the FBI were the result of the contact work we had done a decade before. I found that very difficult to believe. All our activities with CSETI had been legal. Although our CE-5 teams had faced surveillance and I had received threatening phone calls, I thought perhaps those watching us were private intelligence contractors with no direct connection to any government agency under the US President’s control. The notion that the FBI would take an interest in Misha for contact work in my view was absurd. It was my judgment that his legal problems had everything to do with his Russian “business friends” and nothing to do with our past contact efforts together.
Clearly whatever trouble he had gotten himself into was really very serious. I guessed that he would likely face heavy fines and probably even go to prison. These concerns subsequently were proved to be warranted. And what of his so-called Russian friends? From what Misha told me it seemed as if they had left him holding the bag.
From the internet I also learned the details of his computer crimes. Misha and his “friends” had set up a satellite TV company and stole signals being used by legitimate companies. According to news reports about his legal problems, he could be punished by the hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and possibly even jail time.
It was so sad that things had ended up this way. I remembered happier times, his wedding celebration where I was the best man, and then there was the joy surrounding the birth of his son. Over a decade had passed years since we had done volunteer contact work together in the high desert. I recalled the numerous sightings we had, our missing time experience and challenges of doing fieldwork despite threatening phone calls and being the target of surveillance. It all had been an adventure of a lifetime. We had confronted the unknown in what I had imagined was a project inspired by high ideals. Now that was all in the past and for Misha the future didn’t look very bright.
Auditory High Strangeness
I made my way towards the door of the house. Misha asked me to visit again soon. I knew that would not likely happen. I had his sister’s telephone number. In the future it would be better to call her to find out what was Misha’s fate.
It was twilight. As I stood in the doorway preparing to say goodbye, the sound of a low flying jet could be heard in the sky overhead. The roar was increasing in volume and it became difficult to continue our conversation. We stepped out on to the porch. Misha stood outside the door. I asked him if he could hear the noise and he said he did. Then I noticed something very strange. The roar continued full blast instead of decreasing, as one would expect from a jet passing overhead. The Burbank Airport was just a few miles away and at first, I thought a low flying jet was going in for a landing.
I looked at Misha who was standing under the roof overhang of his rented house. He had a silly half smile on his face “Don’t look up Joe, he said. They have satellites.” His remark sounded somewhat paranoid, adolescent and totally inappropriate. I got the impression that he was referring to a disturbing scenario described by Dr. Greer during the mid 1990’s.
A Possible “Havana Syndrome” Connection from the 1990s
Dr. Greer was still living in North Carolina at that time; Misha was in Los Angeles. Both he and Misha reported being awoken repeatedly by a bizarre sound. They had used similar terms to describe it. It was like a small metal ball had been dropped onto metal directly above them. At times the clicking sound seemed come from within the head. Following this they reportedly had not been able to fall back to sleep. This particular description matches some of the testimony later given by victims of what has been called “Havana Syndrome.”
At 2AM most nights, Dr. Greer reported hearing a kind a clicking inside his head. He immediately found himself totally awake and could not fall back to sleep for the rest of the night. Misha’s wife confirmed to me that her husband was hardly sleeping at all. At the medical center where we worked Misha appeared totally exhausted like a man who had been sleep deprived for weeks.
The CSETI Director reportedly had the same symptoms. He also stated that he had received confidential reports from contacts in the dark world of USAPs (Unacknowledged Special Access Projects) describing the existence of a satellite based non-lethal weapon that supposedly used some kind of psychotronic technology to target individuals in their homes at night. Disabling insomnia was the alleged result. The lack of sleep over time could induce a kind of encephalopathy, a clouding of consciousness. Mental concentration deteriorated, personality changes could occur and the victim became highly accident prone, especially while driving at night. Conceivably it was a form of Black Ops harassment that could turn deadly if the victim fell asleep at the wheel. If such alleged reports were accurate, what better way to commit murder and make it look like an ordinary motor accident.
High Strangeness of an Auditory Kind
The roar of jet engines resounded between the tract houses on Misha’s street. I stared at my Russian friend who seemed oblivious to the noise. To me it sounded like a 747 was parked right over the neighborhood and wasn’t going to budge an inch. I glanced up and saw only the darkening sky. If a jet were close overhead, in order to remain in our vicinity it would have to travel in circular path several miles across. I reasoned this would be a very dangerous maneuver so close to the main approach path for Burbank Airport. In any case such a radical turn could only be executed across a considerable distance. Such maneuvers should have been visible from the ground where we stood. But no large jet going in a circle was seen. The roaring engine noise would also vary during the time required to complete its turn. Instead the street reverberated with an unvarying “jet blast” that did not change in quality or volume. The roar dragged on for several minutes as I was making my exit from Misha’s. The entire experience was truly bizarre.
It was twilight. I said goodbye and walked out to the street. I continued to scan the sky, still expecting to see a low flying jet. Only a small single engine propeller plane was visible in the distance. As I searched the sky further, the roar slowly began to recede. After several perplexing moments, I was able to locate the source of the jet engine sound. To my amazement it was definitely emanating from a solitary red orb that was very slowly flying away northward into the darkening sky. The orb appeared to be perhaps a mile away and at an altitude of less than a thousand feet. At that range even at twilight, the lights and silhouette of a jet aircraft should have been unmistakable. I estimated the object’s speed to be less than eighty miles per hour. All these parameters were totally inconsistent with the unmistakable jet engine sound that now was fading as the crimson orb flew slowly into the distance. I was left with the realization that yet again I had witnessed a display of the High Strangeness.
There were precedents for this kind of auditory weirdness. During the cattle mutilation epidemic of the 1980’s according to investigator Linda Moulton Howe, western ranchers reported experiencing similar inexplicable events. At night with no craft visible overhead, the ranchers described hearing the sounds of jets flying over their ranches.
CSETI investigator Wayne Peterson in the early 1990s also described hearing a series of bizarre sounds while conducting fieldwork one night in the Arizona desert. He told me that his team clearly heard the roar of a large commercial jet passing overhead. No jet or any other craft however was reportedly visible. To his amazement this was followed by the sound of diesel engine used by a large truck. This also came from above. The rumble grew louder in the sky and then receded.
In a final display of weirdness, Wayne described hearing the unmistakable clanging of a diesel tractor tracing a path overhead. He told me that it sounded just like his grandfather’s old tractor that long ago was used on their family farm in the Midwest.
Thus the “747’s” roar in the sky above Misha’s house fit into a pattern of High Strangeness linked to UFO phenomena. But what could it mean? Why would non-human intelligence choose to display its technological prowess in this mischievous way as I was saying goodbye, possibly for the last time to Misha. Even though it was now ten years since Misha and I had done any fieldwork together, they (whoever they ultimately turn out to be) once again demonstrated a persistent interest in us. The alleged extraterrestrials apparently chose not to appear in their usually recognizable forms such as a disc, triangle, or globe. Instead they signaled their presence in a bizarre way, as a slow flying small red light from which emanated the roar of large jet aircraft.
This was the last time I was to see a man that I call “Misha Goldman.” I choose not to reveal his real name for purposes of confidentiality. His antisocial behavior was not limited to his difficulties with the FBI that according to press accounts had led to his arrest for satellite signal piracy. His sister indicated that he subsequently was punished by serving a sentence of incarceration. I have no desire to expose a one-time friend to any more public shame. I suspect that he has suffered enough.
His dishonesty naturally calls into question most of what he told me during our contact work together and I am left with much uncertainty. The things I witnessed with my own eyes I can trust.
All else, who knows?
Discussion
I interpreted this strange 2007 experience as a reminder of what in my judgment are some basic principles of UFO intelligences’ interactions with humanity.
- What are now called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) in my judgment threaten all terrestrial elites, but not necessarily the Earth’s people.
- a. The planet’s military are unable to match the flight characteristics of what formerly have been called “flying saucers.”
b. Academic scientific elites are threatened by UAP intelligences’ apparent ability to manipulate spacetime, thus undermining the physicalist principles of modern Western science.
c. If UFOs are an ancient phenomenon, then it is possible that the Earth’s wisdom traditions (i.e. religions) have been based on interactions with these non-human intelligences. Such a possibility could be a serious threat to organized religion.
d. Given this analysis, it is not surprising that terrestrial governments (with the USA leading the pack) have adopted a de facto policy of ridicule and denial directed at witnesses. This has been as part of a psychological warfare project against their respective populations in order to convince them to “Move along now, nothing to see here.”
e. Thus, the US Executive military and intelligence organizations find themselves in a conflict mode when challenged by UAP. This involves attempts at shooting flying saucers down, as well as reverse engineering efforts based on material obtained from downed craft.
f. Additionally, high level contactees who have ongoing direct telepathic communication with UAP intelligences are dealt within a counterintelligence framework. This translates into surveillance of contactee networks as well as recruitment of “psionic assets” to obtain information about UAP intelligences.
3.When it comes to dealing with UFO witnesses, UAP intelligences use High Strangeness often with a good dose of ambiguity to remind us that UFOs may not always be physical objects. Instead at times, UFOs are sensory displays that are designed to make us aware of the presence of a non-human intelligences that you could say are in “the belief business.” UFO witnesses all over the world accept the ET hypothesis on the basis of these visual displays. The popularity of this belief system appears to be increasing. This is not to say that all Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena are psi mediated illusions. Both physical and mental components of our interactions are mixed together in confounding ways.
4.These displays sometimes correspond to our culturally determined expectations as to what we may think strange visitors from the sky and their craft should be. During the 1890s they looked like ordinary humans in airships. Later with the influence of modern sci-fi, a host of phenotypes of alien beings have been described by witnesses for almost a century.
5. At times cultural notions are apparently thrown out and beings and craft are totally weird. Thus, the Mothman of West Virginia in the 1960s was described as a flying creature whose weight to wingspan ratio was impossible by the laws of aeronautics. In addition, it reportedly took off without flapping its wings by going straight up. During my farewell to Misha the roar of a commercial jetliner hung over the house for several minutes. Moments later the sound appeared to emanate from a tiny red light that was flying s over the neighborhood. Such inexplicable displays are part of what has been called the “trickster” element of UAP.
5.Thus, UFO intelligences at times appear to be great tricksters. The physical nature of many encounters with UFOs is undeniable, but their more powerful effect appears to be on human belief systems. As the worldwide UAP contact drama continues to unfold, the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) as explanation for UFOs continues to be a popular one.
Links to additional “Reports from the Contact Underground
I describe a prolonged UFO encounter in November 1993 involving multiple UFOs
“Missing Time on Highway 62” This report demonstrates that those facilitating Human Initiated Contact Events (HICE) aka CE5s in the 1990s were targeted to have missing time. These “programmed” occurrences demonstrated the sophistication and awesome psi capabilities of non-human intelligences responsible for UFOs.
AND THEN THE SKY EXPLODED: INCIDENT AT JOSHUA TREE, JANUARY
Synopsis: This detailed report is about a Human Initiated Contact Event that occurred in the high desert January 24-25, 1996. For a week prior to fieldwork, my wife and I repeatedly received strange telephone calls. When the phone was picked up, there was silence on the line. At the research site in Joshua Tree in two separate locations, contact team members were openly photographed in apparent surveillance. During a windstorm, golden globes of presumed ET origin were seen on several occasions. The following morning the contact team was buzzed at low altitude by three waves of fighter-bombers. They were flying well below 1000 feet and were headed to the east, in the direction where the team had anticipated their next sighting of UFOs would take place.
For the full report click on the link below.
Contact Underground 