WEBVTT FILE

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Downloaded from
YTS.MX

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Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX

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And I'll start it up...

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-...and we'll start generating.

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John has a very special mission in life.

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He is trying to contact aliens.

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It was started by myself.
My grandfather helped me.

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I lived with my grandparents
in a small cottage in Northern Michigan.

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I started building
the electronic equipment to make contact

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with whatever might be out there
beyond the Earth.

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It grew to encompass an entire bedroom.

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That equipment continued to grow.

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In the next two years,
it was migrating into the living room.

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It became more and more massive.

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Most everything I did was self-taught.

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I envisioned an idea
and completed that vision,

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built it into a physical reality.

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I was always seeking to explore,

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to look beyond what we have here.

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I pictured many alien worlds,

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imagining what it would be like
to make contact.

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The moment of sharing extreme knowledge
and thoughts

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and communication with another species,

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is just beyond anything
most of us even imagine.

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I seem to be picking up a radio signal.

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Okay, fine.

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I decided that the best way
to try and make contact

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was to broadcast a signal
into outer space.

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I thought the best signal would be music.

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Technically, we were achieving
the actual transmissions

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from a large tower out in front
of my grandparents' home.

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I sent music into space
because it represents

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a certain, uh, universal language.

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And I'm talking
about non-commercial music as such.

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I'm talking about jazz,
uh, electronic music...

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Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Harmonia,

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and there were many others.

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African music,

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Eastern music, which covers a broad area.

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Reggae, Afrobeat...

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And one of the things I really liked
to send out was gamelan music.

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It was a really beautiful form.

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<i>John Shepherd has devoted</i>
<i>all his time, money, and energies</i>

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<i>to a personal search</i>
<i>for outer space aliens.</i>

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<i>I send</i>
<i>cultural or creative music out into space.</i>

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<i>I beam it out for approximately</i>

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<i>half a million, million miles</i>
<i>out into space.</i>

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<i>About twice the distance of the moon.</i>

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This is Project STRAT Earth Station One,

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broadcasting to you
from beautiful Northwestern Michigan.

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You are listening to the group Harmonia.

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This is Project STRAT Earth Station One
signing off from another broadcast day.

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If you ETs are out there,

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we'd like you to tune in again
tomorrow night at nine p.m.

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for more cultural music.

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This is John Shepherd.

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I don't remember much about my mom.

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Things were rough in the early years.

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It wasn't the best home environment
to raise me in.

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My dad left while I was just born,

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and my grandma felt sorry for me
and took me with her.

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I had very little contact with my mother.

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She was always
a little different than I was.

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Almost... Not alien.
That's not the right word, really.

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Just different.

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The fondest memories
were after my grandparents adopted me.

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Took care of me, raised me.

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Sometimes taking the course that I have
in my life and the path

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is like a... maybe a lonely mountain road

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to some higher elevation peaks,
to see the view,

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to check out something
most people don't see.

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So, you tend to go it alone more.

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You don't have much company in this.

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I set up this whole operation
inside of a small cottage

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in the middle
of a kind of sparsely populated area.

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Small town, you know, rural.

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My lifestyle,
relative to the local lifestyle,

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was quite, quite removed, quite different.

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My mind was in space and in other realms,

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where my body was in this local community,

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this little... real quiet, peaceful area.

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But my mind was traveling,
traveling the cosmos.

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Uh, probably 12, 14 years old,
I realized that I was a little different,

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that I was gay.

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Growing up gay in Michigan
was rather difficult.

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That's one of the tougher realities,
and especially in a rural area.

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You don't get as much,
well, shall we say, understanding.

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You don't get as much of that.

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<i>I think the real tough part</i>
<i>to deal with sometimes is loneliness.</i>

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<i>You don't go right out and, so to speak,</i>
<i>date somebody for very long</i>

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<i>that they don't find out</i>
<i>you're a little different.</i>

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To find someone that is on the wavelength
that I am on

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and be able to share my life
with that person in any degree or way

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is nearly impossible.
Although I believe it exists.

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I believe for everybody there's someone.

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As time went on, the equipment got
consuming most of the house.

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It became obvious
that we needed more room.

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My grandmother and I got together
and pooled our funds to build an addition.

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It had plenty of room to expand.

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The project could be fully realized.

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<i>John Shepherd calls his project "STRAT."</i>

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<i>That's an acronym for Special Telemetry</i>
<i>Research and Tracking.</i>

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<i>There are 60,000 volts</i>
<i>running through his basement,</i>

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<i>powering a signal</i>
<i>that's beamed straight out into space.</i>

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So, I built this two-story-high
deep-space transmitter, basically,

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a tuned circuit resonator.

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It allowed me to reach deeper
and further out into space.

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Project STRAT
had become a major operation.

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I was busy developing other kinds
of devices for communication.

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I never gave up trying to make contact.

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And the excitement, for me,
was always there,

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always the anticipation
that something might happen.

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We're now going to bring you some Afropop
to warm up your evening.

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It was always an exploration.
It was always a sort of a dream state.

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So, I kept going.
I kept doing that throughout...

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well, 25, 30 years of my life.

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Can't say I found a lot of... hard data

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that would be of great significance,
necessarily, on the UFO front.

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But as far as inspiration, creative ideas,

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it gave me the chance to do all of that

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and to share the results with people,
with others.

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And it filled my life.
It gave it something, meaning.

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What remains of Project STRAT
is what's stored in this building.

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A lot of the equipment
is disassembled for storage,

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but it's still here in its spirit,
you might say.

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And this was...
...one of the data mapping consoles.

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There were endless components,
all kinds of unique things.

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Satellite communication equipment,

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high-power microwave tubes
that used to transmit microwaves.

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So, it's lots and lots of stuff
that was all parts of the lab,

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including
the high-voltage transmitter accelerator

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that we used
for sending signals into space.

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So, these are just the remnants,
or little leftover pieces of thought.

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Well, having had to give up,
due to lack of funds,

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was deeply frustrating, almost depressing.

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But also realizing
that maybe it was time to move on.

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I never really had any serious boyfriends

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or anyone that I went steady with,
that sort of thing.

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But in 1993,

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I met somebody I really love very much
named John Litrenta.

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We were both at a club one evening.
That's where we met.

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When he first walked in the door
of the club, I was still there...

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I was quite...
taken by his appearance.

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His look...
the fact that he was different.

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There was an attraction almost immediately
to the way he looked.

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When I first met John,
I had this impression that,

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"This fellow's really kind of different.
He gives me an interesting impression.

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I think I wanna meet this guy."

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It just came over me
to go ahead and get up the courage

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to go over and say hello
and introduce myself, at least.

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And after that, it just seemed like...

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we were, well,
we were off and running a bit, I'd say.

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We started discussing music

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and some of the more obscure things
we love about music.

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John's character is really warm.

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What I really like about him

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is that warmth
and that understanding that he has.

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Once I met him and realized
that he was that sort of person:

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warm, loving, sensitive, patient.

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I was like, "Wow, that's really...
That's really something.

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You don't find that every day."

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And that's what everyone, I think,
in this world to some degree seeks

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and doesn't always find it.

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I was one of the lucky ones.

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I feel I found it. Found it in John.

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So, contact has been made.

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My interest is in finding out the unknown,

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and the unknown is just that, unknown.

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And you search, and you continue
searching because of your desire,

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because of that
you know there's something there.