A broadcast that's out of this world

Photo by John Rennison, the Hamilton Spectator

Mark McNeil
The Hamilton Spectator

(Mar 1, 2008)
WEEKEND INTERVIEW WITH ROB McCONNELL

Rob McConnell is host and executive producer of the X Zone radio and TV talk show, which is broadcast from his home on Hamilton Mountain to 56 stations in North America and around the world as well as to satellite and Internet subscribers. The closest major station carrying his show is CFRA radio in Ottawa.

The program claims to "bring the world of the paranormal and the science of parapsychology to the world on live radio, satellite and Internet." He recently talked to Mark McNeil of The Hamilton Spectator about the X Zone and other things that go bump in the night.

Q: Your show runs from Monday to Friday from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. What do you talk about in all that time?

A: I talk about everything from UFOs to government conspiracies, self-help, unsolved mysteries, Egyptology, manned space flights, ghost hauntings, things that go bump in the night, the JFK assassination. You name it, we cover it.

Q: What kind of staff do you have to do all this?

A: My wife and I.

Q: Where do you do the actual studio work?

A: We have a studio in our home. The Talkstar Radio network installed broadcast lines, from their satellite uplink centre in White Springs, Fla., right to our home.

Q: How did you get into this type of work?

A: When I was a kid, I saw something in the sky that I just didn't understand. We lived in Chomedey (near Laval, Que.). I guess it was about 8 or 9 p.m. It was in the summer time and we could hear our buddies playing baseball outside ...

All of sudden it got very quiet. My brother and I got up to see what happened and something caught my eye in the sky. It was long, cylindrical, I don't know what it was. We tried to get dad to come into the bedroom to take a look. I think he thought it was a couple of kids wanting to stay up later.

Finally when dad did come, whatever this was had gone ...

The funny thing was, the next day none of the adults were talking about the strange novelty in the sky. Yet every kid was. That was what started it. I knew something had changed and my life was going to be a quest ... whatever it was, it certainly sparked my interest in the unknown.

Since then, I have been throughout the United States, I have been down in South America. I have gone scuba diving in the Bermuda Triangle, across Canada and looking at ancient sites. I was the consultant for the TV series Creepy Canada.

Q: At what point did you end up in Hamilton?

A: Seven years ago.

Q: How was it that you came here?

A: The woman of my dreams.

Q: How do you find your way through all the frauds and people seeing things that aren't there?

A: Over the years, we have established a network of top experts in all fields, whether they're scientists, videographers, special effect artists, pilots. I send them e-mails and photographs. Plus, we have sophisticated software at our studio to do digital photo analysis on. I don't take anything for verbatim. I ask questions. I challenge. If you are making a claim I want to know who, what, when, where and how ...

Out of 95 per cent of the UFO stories we get, 5 per cent truly remain unidentified. I'm not saying they are from Mars or outside of the universe. I am saying they are unidentified. A majority ... are military top secret projects, new space re-entry vehicles, natural phenomenon. In there somewhere are things people are seeing that cannot be identified.

I've had people on the show who talk to me about being abducted by aliens who walked through their walls at night and took them up to the mother ship and examined them with every kind of probe imaginable. You know what, I call them on it.

Yet you have the people who sincerely and honestly believe that they have had an experience. You have the people who honestly believe they have seen a ghost. You have people who honestly believe they saw an angel. I wasn't there to tell whether they saw an angel or a ghost. But you can tell whether they are being honest and sincere or whether they are just trying to get their five minutes of fame.

Q. Do you think of yourself as a skeptic or debunker?

A. I'm a realist ... that is what is missing in ufology and investigation of the paranormal is the scientific approach or the logical approach. You get these people who go on ghost hunts and they will see ghosts. But the point is they think they see ghosts or hear things. I've been on these hunts, and I haven't seen a thing.

Q. What do you think you saw as a kid looking back at it now?

A. I still don't know ... I'm 55 now. That was some years ago. My perception of what I saw then and now has certainly changed. I know something was in the sky. I remember talking to my friends the next day, and they saw something in the sky. I guess that has fuelled my quest. What was that thing in the sky that night? Was it (a) UFO from outer space? I don't know.