Christopher Bledsoe and the UFO Cult of Intelligence, Pt. 6

American Cosmic Revisited / The Ballad of Tyler D.

Read Pt. 1 here.

In the months since my lengthy review of D.W. Pasulka’s most recent book, Encounters, the scholar of UFO religion has proven several of my suspicions warranted, illustrating some unsettling allegiances. I had expressed concern that she did an interview with Rod Dreher, a controversial conservative writer and Christian nationalist. I also noted another friendly interview conducted by ex-Thiel Capital investor and UFO influencer Jesse Michels. Both venues could simply be indicative of not thinking too much about who one is granting interviews to. However, recent posts tell a different story: Pasulka not only follows far-right commentator Jack Posobiec on Twitter, she engaged with one of his tweets regarding the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. Notably, Posobiec puts “Catholic” in his bio and advocates for positions that could be considered “TradCath.” In addition to this, Pasulka has not once but twice boosted or praised venture capitalist Peter Thiel’s appearance on Joe Rogan where the Christian conservative megadonor waxed poetic about the possibility UFOs being angels and demons. The choice of interview locale is looking less and less like random chance. Pasulka also quoted a portion of Robert Kennedy Jr.’s speech endorsing Donald Trump with the addition of a heart emoji.

Questionable political motivations aside, my main worry with 2023’s Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences was the widespread approval of very human intelligence personnel. At the time of reading it, I had viewed it as much more credulous than the earlier American Cosmic which I very much enjoyed upon release in 2019. However, as Timothy Taylor factors so heavily into the life of Chris Bledsoe, it was necessary to revisit the book and examine the sections in which Tim Taylor plays a role. Unfortunately, due to my own development as a researcher with the passage of time, I can confidently say that the same credulousness was present within this book as well, especially regarding Taylor. Pasulka believes him at every juncture, despite being familiar with his claims of being involved with a variety of military and intelligence organizations. Her writing on Taylor is not only limited to trusting him or simply respecting him, Pasulka appears to be genuinely in awe of the former NASA contractor.

In the early chapters of American Cosmic, the religious studies professor describes her introduction to Taylor, the supposed representative of a complex alphabet soup of government agencies and frequent tutor or monitor of Christopher Bledsoe. While Bledsoe would state that he was, in fact, the one who had introduced Pasulka to Taylor within UFO of God, he is anonymized within American Cosmic. Nevertheless, Bledsoe is mentioned by name in another section of the book and the acknowledgements. Whether this is protecting sources or obfuscating the implications of the book’s most important source being recommended by a vulnerable contactee, the result is smudged narrative clarity. Unambiguous, however, is the strangeness of Pasulka’s initial interactions with Taylor:

My first communication from (Taylor) that was not part of an email thread directed to several recipients was a text message. It was the longest text message I had ever received, full of information about how he came to study the phenomenon. He sent videos of where he worked in New Mexico, Florida, and other places. He also sent videos of his conversations with friends. These were very odd. His friends never looked at the camera, and they spoke as if they were unaware that they were being filmed. I quickly surmised that, in fact, they did not know. (Taylor) was outfitted with various types of cameras hidden in his clothes, disguised, and strategically placed on his body, and was recording everything. I knew that if and when I finally did meet him, he would be videotaping me too.¹

Odd, to say the least. But Pasulka was undeterred by this behavior, even while it earmarked Taylor as possibly some stripe of intelligence. As she writes: “I knew (…) that when one scratched the surface of the topic of UFO events (…) one might cross paths with agents.”² Despite warning signs, she chose to listen to and believe this possible agent. Compelled by Taylor’s enthusiasm for the space program and his biomedical ventures, Pasulka was also starstruck by other aspects of his life, such as his sports car, aviator sunglasses, and “rumors” of a private jet as well as an MMA career.³

Taylor also spun incredible yarns about his time with the space program, a role that seems to be no more than a contractor before moving into medical tech if one is to read his autobiography, Launch Fever. In American Cosmic, he claimed to receive “a plaque, a patent, and five hundred dollars” from a general after performing a stunning experiment onboard a space shuttle in the wake of the Challenger disaster.⁴ But in his own book, the procedure seems very rote, involving a team of at least three other researchers who were named in the patent after proposing the experiment to NASA. Other stories from his time in the space program are also strangely exaggerated, including him mentioning talking to a reporter on the day of the Challenger disaster and seeing his name appear on a front page story with the headline “SPACE SHUTTLE EXPLODES”. This led to his reprimand by a NASA superior.⁵ However, Taylor does not appear on the front page, he shows up on page six. He is also not quoted by the paper, rather paraphrased as saying “he did not expect a halt” to his contracting company’s project at the Kennedy Space Center “but thought a slowdown was likely” in wake of the disaster.⁶ If he was reprimanded, so were the countless other employees and contractors quoted in this edition of The Orlando Sentinel—and his statements are rather milquetoast compared to others. Slight half-truths of this nature appear often in Taylor’s tales.

Nevertheless, once Pasulka “was sold on (Taylor’s) legitimate place in the space program,” she extended an invitation to meet in person at a religious studies conference in Atlanta.⁷ Pasulka writes that she had briefed fellow religious scholar Jeff Kripal, another figure in academic paranormal studies, on the Taylor situation in order to get Kripal’s thoughts on Taylor’s claims and motivations. Prior to meeting Taylor in person, and knowing only what Pasulka had relayed, Kripal supposedly told her “that (Taylor) was probably an angel, which (…) meant that he was a person who is part human and part extraterrestrial.”⁸ It seems that some preconceived notions were already coloring the perceptions of Tim Taylor. Regardless, their initial in-person meeting only further exemplified how compelling Taylor could be, seemingly able to convince anyone of his impressive background and access to privileged information. Indeed, Kripal and Pasulka were immediately taken by him:

(Taylor) turned out to be very charismatic in person, just as he was virtually. He laughed easily and was as comfortable talking about his family as he was talking about science. His natural charm impressed Jeff, who invited him to his house in Houston for dinner to meet his wife and family. I had hoped Jeff would be a little reserved and keep (Taylor) at arm’s distance, but (Taylor’s) charisma proved too powerful and was no match for my suggestion that perhaps (Taylor) was using it for a purpose. None of my warnings were heeded. This would be just the first case where (Taylor’s) charm and social abilities were in evidence. Every person or group of people to whom I introduced him was taken by his demeanor. He was some kind of rock star, and that just added to my suspicion of him.⁹

While expressing that she treated Taylor with caution, Pasulka would eventually undermine this approach by letting Taylor get just as close to her and her family. In her later book, Encounters, she mentions Taylor interacting with her children and warning her that the new secret space program would be recruiting from kids their age.¹⁰ Even within American Cosmic, there is a closeness between them that at times strains the limits of typical sociological study. One is left wondering if eager belief in the paranormal combined with Taylor’s highly magnetic personality and behavior has led to his claims being accepted at face value without the due diligence to confirm them. After all, for these professors interested in extraterrestrial life and religious experience, Taylor gave them much to chew on.

In addition to supposedly inhabiting an intersection of military intelligence and space exploration, Taylor revealed himself to be an impressive experiencer who had developed a “protocol” to contact nonhuman intelligences. He viewed his DNA as a kind of satellite receiver that needed to be prepped to receive the messages and divine sparks of inspiration. His protocol, however, is rather ordinary, resembling the daily life of many health-conscious individuals. “I make sure I sleep really well. I use the eight plus one rule. That is, I sleep for eight hours, wake up, and then make myself go back to bed for an hour. That one hour, the top- off, really makes or breaks my day,” he reported to Pasulka. Further:

I barely drink alcohol, as it interferes with sleep, and I never drink coffee. Coffee really messes up the signal. (…) I also have to be in the sun. So I wake up, and the previous night I will have gone to bed a little dehydrated. Then, I get my extra hour of sleep and go out into the sun. While I bask in the light of vitamin D, I drink a tall glass of water, which flushes my cells and rehydrates them. This is better than coffee. It is at this point that I can usually feel the connection. I know I’ve established connection when the thoughts that show up in my mind don’t seem like my own. They are unfamiliar. With practice you can feel the difference.¹¹

This protocol resembles those of countless health influencers of the present minus a few supplements. Even the reception of NHI signals feels like a typical state of inspiration shoved into a more esoteric framework. Nevertheless, Pasulka found his protocol to be similar to those of other religious traditions. Just as divine knowledge was granted to receptive individuals, these sessions gave Taylor his remarkable entrepreneurial ideas and technological concepts—all coming from an outside source, he assured. Awestruck by this belief system that melded religion and technology, Pasulka compared Taylor directly to Lt. Colonel Philip J. Corso, noting that both were responsible for seeding extraterrestrial technology to the public sphere. “Whereas the original Colonel Corso functioned as a contemporary Prometheus and was punished in the public court of ridicule, the contemporary Corso, (Taylor), worked silently, invisibly,” she writes. “His invisibility ensured his success and was somehow a key to it.”¹² Regular readers of Getting Spooked will note the unfortunate truth about Corso, a career intelligence man, far-right operative, and likely disinformation agent—maybe some of those descriptors apply to Taylor as well. But if one is to believe The Day After Roswell, the comparison becomes more apt given Taylor’s dealings with the supposed debris extraterrestrial craft.

Taylor took Pasulka and Stanford immunologist Garry Nolan on a trip to a “donation” site where remnants of nonhuman technology could be found, going so far as to blindfold them to keep its location secret—or putting them through pointless rigmarole to give the two some theater, further etching the illusion of a top secret mission in their minds. UFO researcher Grant Cameron has alleged that he told Taylor about the site, and it is far from secret, but these “inside baseball” ufology stories should be taken with a grain of salt. An artifact was recovered from the site, not unlike the one that Taylor had presented to Bledsoe, causing an intense physical reaction in the North Carolinian experiencer. This hunk of strange metal was deemed “so anomalous as to be incomprehensible” in tests, but explication on this claim within American Cosmic is sorely limited.¹³ What were the test results? A bright red flashing screen reading “ANOMALY”? The reader is left to take much on faith, but I suppose that meshes with the ultimate purpose of the book.

Taylor also joined Pasulka on a visit to the Vatican archives for her research. According to Pasulka, he was given unprecedented access after telling Vatican security just “who he was.”¹⁴ A picture from this trip was included in early editions of Bledsoe’s UFO of God, but after Pasulka expressed her displeasure at this, it was replaced with another. As noted previously, the inclusion of this picture along with Pasulka’s overall depiction by Bledsoe in the book have seemingly led to a rift between the two figures. Regardless, their mutual friend Tim Taylor had a “spiritual conversion” while in Rome, spurred by experiences with locals, Vatican personnel, and findings within the archives. In this trip loaded with religious significance, Taylor’s conversion serves as the perfect conclusion to American Cosmic: A merging of Catholicism with a nascent UFO religion. Taylor and Pasulka’s conceptions of the phenomena, at their core, also match Bledsoe’s specific amalgamation of Christianity, esotericism, and UFO encounters. The question of who’s leading who, if anyone, is somewhat hard to grasp, but it’s important to note how key Taylor was to both Bledsoe’s development as an experiencer and Pasulka’s research into UFO religion. Being the shared source calls into question his motivations once again. While Bledsoe was eager to find any validation of his experiences, Pasulka, as a serious religious scholar, should have known better than to rely on someone who directly expresses that they are involved in the intelligence field, even if their claims are enticing. Anyone familiar with the culture of ufology (and figures like Richard Doty, John Lear, Silas Newton, et al.) would know to trust no one, especially secretive sources with phenomenal claims and an alleged occupation intelligence. Instead, in a book published by an elite scholarly press, the smoke and mirrors game within ufology has been jumpstarted once again, and five years onward no verification has been given. While often defended as a sociological exploration into UFO culture, Pasulka’s engagement with slow drip disclosure advocates and other intelligence-connected “whistleblowers” indicates that she is not an impartial observer and has fallen for Taylor hook, line, and sinker.

But American Cosmic was not the first piece of scholarship by Pasulka that utilized the testimony of Timothy Taylor. He was hidden behind the pseudonym “Tyler D.” in American Cosmic, as one might have noticed from the ample parentheticals. Strangely, this occlusion continues in several instances to this day—including in Pasulka’s recent Joe Rogan appearance—despite his identity now being well-known. However, the religious scholar had previously named this mysterious figure and gave the context clues necessary to ascertain his identity in the 2018 collection of scholarly essays, Posthumanism: The Future of Homo Sapiens. In her piece “The Spectrum of Human Techno-hybridity: The Total Recall Effect”, Pasulka explores human engagement with technology, instances of the human body being technologically enhanced, and the religious implications that follow such changes. While exploring this topic, Pasulka looks at “contemporary technologies” that “involve the use of therapeutic biologics, or biologics for therapy”—an uncannily familiar phrase within modern-day ufology.¹⁵ Most notably, the term “biologics” (a word mostly used in biomedical science of pharmacology) popped up in former intelligence official David Grusch’s testimony to the United States Congress in July 2023.¹⁶ Grusch stated that non-human biologics were retrieved from a recovered craft, implying that the recovered material was not non-human biological matter, but a product made with non-human biological matter. That is, if he was not just misusing the term. An alternate explanation: One of Grusch’s alleged sources in the know was Tim Taylor, some other individual who was relaying information from Taylor, or someone within the same group of people whispering sweet nothings into the ears of primed believers.

In context of this specific essay, Pasulka does not mention how Taylor credited his mystical protocol with his innovations in biomedical implements, but the equipment his company produced are key to the essay’s thesis. These procedures are still written about as “miracles” with Pasulka writing that Taylor had discovered a method where “he learned that he could take an inert object, ceramic, and charge it such that it acted like human bone.”¹⁷ This is compared directly to the parable in which “Jesus performed (a) miracle by mixing his own spit with dirt, creating mud, and placing it on the eyes of the man,” restoring his sight.¹⁸ To say that Pasulka is dazzled by Taylor’s assertions may be an understatement.

The claims of this miraculous procedure, divined from nonhuman intelligence sources, are complicated by the fact that within Tim Taylor’s own autobiography, the ceramic coating is described as “not a novel concept except for adding (…) biomaterial to support bone in-growth.”¹⁹ The patent and experiment also required the assistance of a real biomaterial specialist, Dr. William R. Lacefield, who was already familiar with similar types of ceramic coatings in hip implants. Later projects with Taylor’s early medical company also required the assistance of Dr. Gilbert Aust, an orthopedic surgeon, who asked Taylor to solve “engineering problems” in preexisting medical implants. While Taylor may remark that he was “motivated by what must have been another guardian angel” in his biomedical ventures, the picture is far removed from Pasulka’s depiction of a great man of science who has novel ideas beamed into his head from nonhuman sources.²⁰ One wonders how these seemingly standard updates to existing medical devices got spun into occult knowledge of highly advanced technology. This method of business within medical industries—making changes to preexisting tech and filing a new patent—is extraordinarily common. Perhaps it is Taylor’s oft-mentioned charisma and entrepreneurial abilities that make people believe his ideas are literally out of this world. Add on stories of secret crash retrievals and shadowy intelligence work, and you have a figure that is alluring to those primed to buy in and inaccessible to those who are not.

The magnitude of Pasulka’s commitment to Timothy Taylor reached a head in 2020, not long after American Cosmic was first published. In a flurry of deleted tweets, she remarked that To the Stars Academy was a CIA psyop, with Tom Delonge being part of a secret coalition of Freemasons—an organization she implied had great authority over those in power, making presidents perform moon-oriented rituals and instilling Masonic symbology into “classified launches.”²¹ While I would be willing to go along for the ride with the first part, as TTSA has an overabundance of CIA-affiliated people in leadership positions, the second part gets into the esoteric ramblings one usually finds in less academia-oriented places.²² Getting some backlash, Pasulka would allege that she was hacked and reported it to university and local authorities. The intrepid Jack Brewer, however, was able to discover that records of these police reports did not seem to exist.²³ Adding some credence to the idea that these posts were genuinely from Pasulka herself, Ryan, the son of Chris Bledsoe, mentioned on a podcast episode that Taylor had also informed the family of NASA being a Freemasonic organization, mirroring some of the assertions in the deleted tweets.²⁴ Despite the later denials, I imagine that they received the same information from the same source: Timothy Taylor.

Later posts—also promptly deleted—alleged further incredible details into Taylor’s background, such as him being Elon Musk’s handler at SpaceX. The only evidence I have seen put forward for this is a picture of Taylor wearing a SpaceX Dragon polo shirt, no other documentation or corroboration. One could buy a similar shirt, if they so desire, from eBay for $17.99. But, as noted in the comments of my prior review, Pasulka’s strange relationship with Taylor would come to an unceremonious end: He cut off contact because she had begun talking with a foreign scientist experiencer, a person he was not allowed to have any engagement with. This makes me wonder, however, because Pasulka’s source would only need to talk to her, Taylor would not have to interact with this foreign scientist at all if he chose not to. Pasulka writes:

(Taylor) explained that as long as Gray Man (the foreign scientist) lived in Australia, he would continue to work with me. If Gray Man came to the United States and I continued to work with him, my working relationship with (Taylor) would be over.
At the time, I didn’t understand. I wanted to know why we all couldn’t work together.

There were only a few times I have seen (Taylor) angry. This was one of those times. He didn’t raise his voice; that wasn’t his style. He paused for an interval that was long enough to make his point. He turned his face and said with very little emotion and an underlying tone of disdain, because I hadn’t yet understood, “The point is not to figure it out. We are not meant to figure it out.”²⁵

I find this passage peculiar, almost as if Taylor was jealous that Pasulka was speaking with another source. Indeed, despite Taylor’s identity being known not long after the release of American Cosmic, he is still referred to as Tyler D. within Encounters, indicating a strange, continued reticence to attach his real name to the claims within. Whether at the behest of Taylor or a choice made by Pasulka, it may indicate a last-ditch effort to maintain anonymity. If Taylor’s roles at various military organizations really had such strict requirements that he could not interact with a military scientist from another country, one would think his wide-ranging discussions with Pasulka, reproduced throughout her writing, would qualify as breaching some kind of confidentiality. Not to mention the information divulged to civilians like Chris Bledsoe and his family, info that was also partially reproduced in writing or podcasts. Put simply, his trickle of secrets and revelations makes no sense if the knowledge is as classified or groundbreaking as implied. His faux anonymity is not strong enough to make any of the stories he has put out into the world untraceable, they are all attributable directly to him. He has largely abandoned any public engagement with the UFO world since cutting ties with Pasulka and also apparently faded out of Bledsoe’s life.

But what was the point of all this hubbub? Was Taylor an intelligence asset sent to sow chaos in the already chaotic realm of ufology? Was he a simple biomedical industry businessman and former NASA contractor who had greatly exaggerated his credentials and dipped out after his participation became too public? With the heavily Christianity-tinged mythology alleged to both Pasulka and Bledsoe, was he attempting to gather followers of a new UFO religion—one in which he insisted that some intelligence personnel were higher beings? At the very least, his claims should be taken with an abundance of caution, if not dismissed outright. Whatever Taylor’s intent, the result has been widespread ufological confusion without the substantial evidence needed to back up his declarations. Indeed, a variety of Taylor’s claims appear nowhere other than Pasulka’s American Cosmic or Bledsoe’s UFO of God—they are not even given space within his autobiography, Launch Fever.

Unfortunately, while Taylor was one of the most influential alleged IC members to alter the life of Chris Bledsoe, he was certainly not the last. As Bledsoe’s story continued to gain prominence, other actors in a strange network with competing factions would introduce themselves, eventually transmogrifying the experiencer’s belief system into a bizarre UFO cult of intelligence.

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1. Pasulka, D.W. American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Page 28.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid., page 27. (There are no records of “well-publicized” MMA fights involving Taylor to my knowledge, but he mentions boxing in college within his autobiography Launch Fever. If Taylor is exaggerating his fighting accomplishments, it stands to reason that one should question whether many of his other claims are comparable embellishments.)

4. Ibid., page 33.

5. Taylor, Timothy E. Launch Fever: An Entrepreneur’s Journey. Bloomington: iUniverse, 2003. Page 103.

6. Hinman, Catherine. “Companies bank future on work at space center.” The Orlando Sentinel. 29 January 1986. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-orlando-sentinel/143390952/.

7. Pasulka, D.W. American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Page 39.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., page 40.

10. Pasulka, D.W. Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences. New York: St. Martin’s Essentials, 2023. Page 22.

11. Pasulka, D.W. American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Page 41-42.

12. Ibid., page 37.

13. Ibid., page 240.

14. Ibid, page 221.

15. Pasulka, Diana Walsh. “The Spectrum of Human Techno-hybridity: The Total Recall Effect.” Posthumanism: The Future of Homo Sapiens, edited by Michael Bess and Diana Walsh Pasulka. New York: Macmillan, 2018. Page 182.

16. Romo, Vanessa and Bill Chappell. “U.S. recovered non-human 'biologics' from UFO crash sites, former intel official says.” NPR. 27 July 2023. https://www.npr.org/2023/07/27/1190390376/ufo-hearing-non-human-biologics-uaps.

17. Pasulka, Diana Walsh. “The Spectrum of Human Techno-hybridity: The Total Recall Effect.” Posthumanism: The Future of Homo Sapiens, edited by Michael Bess and Diana Walsh Pasulka. New York: Macmillan, 2018. Page 183.

18. Ibid.

19. Taylor, Timothy E. Launch Fever: An Entrepreneur’s Journey. Bloomington: iUniverse, 2003. Page 132.

20. Ibid., page 141-142.

21. Gorightly, Adam. “Jacques Vallee Meets James Shelby Downard on the ol’ Jornada del Muerto (Part 1).” Chasing UFOs. 19 May 2023. https://chasingufosblog.com/2023/05/19/jacques-vallee-meets-james-shelby-downard-on-the-ol-jornada-del-muerto-part-1/.

22. I should note also, regarding the friendly interview with Rod Dreher, that Pasulka certainly wasn’t concerned with his Masonic ties. Dreher’s father, Ray, was in the same Freemasonic lodge as John Rarick, a Ku Klux Klan-affiliated Louisiana congressman and judge. Ray Dreher himself was also very active in the KKK, with the lodge being “a center of Klan recruitment.” (Dreher, Rod. “A Darkness Revealed: What the FBI archives showed about my dad's distant past.” The American Conservative. 27 December 2022. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/a-darkness-revealed/.)

23. Brewer, Jack. “Police: No Records of Walsh Pasulka January Hack.” The UFO Trail. 6 February 2020. https://ufotrail.blogspot.com/2020/02/police-no-records-of-walsh-pasulka.html.

24. Bledsoe, Ryan. “Episode 16: Mystic Crystal Revelations.” Bledsoe Said So, 10 November 2021, link.

25. Pasulka, D.W. Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences. New York: St. Martin’s Essentials, 2023. Page 102.