Beyond the Beyond:
The Curious Case of Bob Lazar
If a silver, shiny UFO covered in strobing red and yellow lights hovers above a falling tree in the middle of the forest… does it make a sound? There may in fact be one man who can answer that question.
The UFO community is often a murky, deception-filled cesspool of quacks, frauds, charlatans, and hoodwinkers, all looking to take advantage of any hopeful soul they can. The New Age movement inserted its greasy tendrils into that community over 30 years ago, realizing that a buck is easy to make when it comes to people who just want to believe. While the UFO phenomenon and the New Age movement were once distinct entities, now they are some strange, reanimated Frankenstein made up of channelers and energy workers, syncretism and ascended Venusian masters. It’s a little sickening. Anyway, grab your crystal and the hand of your spirit guide, balance your chakras and hit snooze on your moon phase alarm clock. Your aura’s a nice shade of blue/green now. I think you’re ready. Let’s get back to the original question.
There’s a guy who can answer it.
His name is Robert Scott Lazar, and he’s a buddy of mine. Well, I don’t really know him. I mean I don’t him at all, but I’ve read so much about him and watched so many interviews that ol’ Bob practically feels like family.
The first time I saw him I was eleven years old. It was 1989 and George Knapp from Las Vegas’s Channel 8 News was interviewing a man named Dennis who had supposedly worked at the (then unknown to the public) site called S-4, close to Area 51. You remember Area 51, right? It’s the place that half a million online users pledged to storm a few years back. About a hundred showed up and did Naruto runs around the front gates, were told to leave, and then drove away promptly in their parents’ minivans.
The whole interview was almost by accident, as Channel 8 had a guest cancel, so Knapp reached out to a man named John Lear (son of Learjet magnate Bill Lear) to see if he knew someone who could come in and replace the guest. Lear had been on Knapp’s Sunday morning news show earlier, and Channel 8 received many positive reviews from it.
This was when Lear introduced Knapp to Dennis, a supposed employee at S-4 who had run into trouble there and was now in fear of his own safety. Evidently, the higher ups at the base began to be concerned over Dennis’s ongoing divorce and the impact it was having on his personal and professional life. His phones were tapped, and men began following him around the city. Dennis wanted to tell his story to the people and use that as leverage so that nothing bad would happen to him.
Dennis, in shadow and using his own voice, claimed that the government was housing at least nine “flying saucers” of extraterrestrial origin deep in the Nevada desert at a location close to Area 51. He also said that they had been dismantled, reverse engineered, and flown secretly without the knowledge of the American public.
In a completely punk rock move, it was revealed seven and a half months later that the shadowy figure’s real name was not Dennis, but Bob Lazar. Dennis was actually his supervisor out at the test site, Groom Lake. Balls of steel or stupidity? You decide as the tale unfolds.
Bob then decided to take Lear and Knapp to see the crafts being flown in person. On several occasions, they traveled out to the Nevada desert to get a glimpse of strange lights in the sky—which made even stranger movements that would have proved impossible for anything the military was known to have at the time—and to any occupant inside. The craft darted across the sky, dropped thousands of feet in an instant, and seemed to be some type of brightly lit metallic disc. You can see some stabilized footage here:
After several visits, however, the men were approached by Area 51 security and Lazar was terminated from his position. It was then that he decided to reveal his identity to the public, and came on Channel 8 as himself. The results were astonishing, and the feedback from the Las Vegas community was massive. Phones were ringing off the hook. In an early viral moment, other stations picked up the story and Lazar and Knapp’s segments ended up on Para Net, a precursor to modern paranormal forums on an early version of the internet.
Lazar’s life, however, began to take a turn for the worst. He was shot at, had his house broken into, and had strange things happen like his car doors being opened and the windows rolled down with no rhyme or reason.
Knapp put out a call for anyone who worked at Area 51 to come forward. Six did, and within days all six were visited by mysterious men in black, who vaguely threatened them and their families with bodily harm and worse.
In the next 30 years or so, Bob Lazar has only popped up a handful of times to do interviews and tell his story. He was recently involved in a documentary with Jeremy Corbell and his old cohort George Knapp.
There are several problems with ol’ Bob’s story, though. Lazar has never provided even a shred of physical evidence that he was near or around S-4. He once claimed that he had a sample of the famed Element 115, or Unumpentium, the chemical that was used to power the reverse engineered crafts. He said he has it stashed somewhere out of the way, again as a leverage of sorts to protect his own life. He recently claimed that his house was raided by law enforcement, and even had the pictures to prove it. Were they looking for Element 115, or was he selling things on his website he wasn’t supposed to and the photos are actually several years old?
There is also the fact that he was never enrolled at MIT, the institution he claims he got his degree at. Well, he has a perfectly good explanation for this: the government wiped his records. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I went to college way back when in the olden golden days, I actually met people. And some of them I still talk to. And even the ones I don’t, for better or worse, would probably remember me if someone came looking. There hasn’t been one person at MIT that has come forward to say they knew Bob. Maybe, as he’s also recently stated, he was there for some type of special project and didn’t officially go to the school at all. Or maybe he’s full of shit.
There are some things he got right, like the bone density hand scanner he claimed was at the entrance to S-4. It was not widely known at the time, but can now be found in many facilities around the world. He did in fact work at Los Alamos, and gave Knapp a guided tour shortly after they met. He called Element 115 long before it was a thing, and it was eventually synthesized in a lab (now called Moscovium), but its relation to the powering of any type of propulsion system remains unproven.
Did Lazar never work at S-4, but frequented a bar in Rachel, Nevada and heard whispers and rumors of flying saucer tests being held at the base? Is that how he knew the days to drive out there and witness them? And he may have lied to his friends and told them a story that got so large and so convoluted, that Bob eventually couldn’t find his way out of it.
Or is it more likely that it’s all one big joke on the American public, and even Bob Lazar isn’t in on it? It could be that he was hired on at S-4 specifically because he was friends with the very vocal UFO enthusiast John Lear. That “they” knew that whatever was shown to Bob, he was going to turn around and share it with Lear, who eventually shared it with Knapp. Now, that then opens up the questions of why, doesn’t it? And now, Knapp and Corbell have made a good deal of money from Bob’s story, so wouldn’t it behoove them to continue the narrative? And that pains me to say, because George Knapp is someone I still look up to as an investigative journalist. But it seems like he’s not able to see the UFO for the tree… I mean the forest for the trees. Talk about cognitive dissonance.
Sometimes it seems like the whole UFO phenomenon is one big psyop. One big game that someone or something is playing to keep those wired to explore the unknown constantly chasing their own tails. To what end, we can only speculate. But it seems like the phenomenon is very good at giving you one answer while at the same time posing 50 questions.
It could be that Bob is just a sociopath, stringing everyone along for his own sick enjoyment. Or maybe he’s actually telling the truth. It’s an interesting question, and only one man can answer it.
Have you had a sighting? Text 702-875-1848 or message @beyondthebeyond1 on Instagram.
Tanner Rush
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Eastern Sierra Now. Readers are encouraged to conduct further research and consult with relevant experts or professionals before making any decisions or taking any actions based on the information provided in this article.
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