After hearing Dave's story in the previous episode and the profound similarity between his UFO experience in Ojai and his meditation at the Integratron, we wanted to learn more about the strange history of this building. But what started out as an effort to learn more about this place ended up turning into a bit of an adventure. In this episode, historian Daniel Paul joins to tell the story of The Integratron and the man who built it, George Van Tassel. Van Tassel was an aerospace engineer who became a UFO pioneer after claiming contact with extraterrestrials in California’s Mojave Desert. He lived under Giant Rock, a 7-story boulder in the desert where he operated an airstrip and café. His life’s work was the Integratron, a domed structure he built based on channeled communications with a group of aliens called the Council of Seven Lights —and, more specifically, an individual being named Solganda. After this interview, we traveled to the desert to meet a man named Don McKinney, who owns a massive archive of George's recordings, photos, and the original blueprints of the Integratron. If you want to hear about that trip and our effort to help Don preserve this archive, it will be available on the Otherworld Patreon next week. Daniel's Historical Proposal for The Integratron George Van Tassel's FBI File Check out our Merch Follow us on: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter For business inquiries contact: [email protected] If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your story at [email protected] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Jack Wagner and what is the episode about?
Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. In the previous episode, we met a software engineer and musician named David who was camping in Ojai, California as a teenager when he had a terrifying experience with a UFO above his tent. He described not only seeing this craft, but the craft making an incredibly loud humming sound that resonated throughout his entire body.
He told me that he had never heard anything like it before, and he never heard anything like it after until years later when his girlfriend took him to a sound bath out in the desert near Joshua Tree at a place called the Integratron.
During the sound bath, the frequencies of the glass bowls being rung in this acoustic dome resonated throughout his body and instantly gave David vivid flashbacks to this experience he had as a teenager. He told me that it was the first time he had ever heard anything slightly similar to the sound that this UFO made.
And to make things weirder, when David left the sound bath, he learned that the building it was in was no ordinary building. It's called the Integratron, and it was built by an aerospace engineer named George Van Tassel, who claimed to have been given the instructions on how to build it by an extraterrestrial named Salgonda.
After the interview with David, I spent several months reaching out to the current owners of the Integratron in hopes of learning more about the history of the building. They declined. However, I eventually was introduced to Daniel Paul, and I immediately knew I had met the exact person I was looking for.
Daniel Paul is a historian, and he actually wrote the National Register of Historic Places landmark application for the Integratron. Not only that, he was fascinated by this building long before he was brought on to do that work. He's very passionate about the Integratron and the eccentric man who built it, George Van Tassel.
And it turns out the Integratron is just one part of a much larger story that is absolutely incredible and super strange. So, in this episode, I sit down with historian Daniel Paul to learn about the long, bizarre, and complicated history of the Integratron and George Van Tassel. This is episode 123, and you're listening to Otherworld. Hello? Is this Bobby? Yes, it is.
At its core, the science, you can't argue with.
I'm worried about all the science.
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Chapter 2: Who is Daniel Paul and what is his expertise on the Integratron?
Yes. Okay. So what is the Integratron? Well, the Integratron, if we look, let's start off with it physically, and then we'll talk a little bit about its intention and its purpose. The Integratron is located in a town called Landers. So this is what we call the high desert here in Southern California. It's near a town called Joshua Tree.
And if you were to drive up on the Integratron, the first thing you would see is a large white dome. So the Integratron is basically a substantially scaled hemispherical dome structure, about 43 feet in diameter and 33 feet tall, with these 64 metal die rods, you know, rods sticking off of it. So this is a very peculiar dome. building to identify.
So when you first see it, it looks like something from 1950s science fiction or outer space or some sort of stage set for something related to something very otherworldly. Originally, the Integratron was not called the Integratron. It was called the College of Universal Wisdom Research Laboratory.
And the building was intended to be the primary building of a campus that was going to be about 10 acres, that was going to be focused upon information that George Van Tassel and others had received through channeling activity and primarily information given to George and these others from what he called the space people, what are commonly called aliens.
When I was working on the nomination, they preferred not to be called aliens. So I guess we could stick with space people or these entities. But in general, the Integratron was intended as a life extension machine.
that through electrostatic if the integrotron was to generate electricity modulate it basically to a human cell as a way to keep the cell alive and to therefore extend human life so this was intended as a life extension machine primarily. I mean, among some other uses that George Van Tassel talked about, but that was the primary purpose for the Integratron.
Yes. And as a novice who just kind of heard about this place somewhere nearby to where I live, you know, in Los Angeles, I always heard of it as, you know, this strange place that has a unique design and, and, uh, kind of like perfect acoustics almost. Is that true? Are the acoustics inside of this place remarkable in some way?
Yes, they are. So it's essentially what we call a whispering gallery. It's a dome. So the acoustics in there are absolutely incredible. And it's that effect... where if you say hello or anything, you sort of hear your own voice coming back at you and surround sound.
Today in the Integratron building, they do sound baths where people lay down and they have various crystal bowls and they hit the bowl and rub the rim of the bowl and come up with these frequencies.
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Chapter 3: What is the Integratron and its physical and acoustic features?
So the acoustics in there are magnificent and to the point where during these sound baths, if somebody's whispering something to their friend or if they're falling asleep and snoring on one side of the Integra Tron, everybody could hear everything they're saying on the other side.
That is fascinating. Okay, so I should catch you up a little bit on why I'm talking to you. I interviewed a person who had an encounter with a UFO, essentially. They were camping in the Ojai area with their friends in high school. and saw this thing in the sky, of course. They're woken up to it. The remarkable thing for him was not what he saw, it was what he heard.
He described hearing this sound that was like a resonant tone that shook his core. like literally like vibrated his bones is how he was describing it to me. And he said it was an incredibly unique sound. He's never heard anything like it in his life. It completely resonated throughout his body. And this was in high school. The experience was weird. It was him and his high school friends.
They kind of put it behind them and he didn't think about it for a while until years later when he's an adult and he goes into with his girlfriend, who booked them a sound bath at the Integratron. He didn't know anything about this place. He just went along with his girlfriend. And they do the sound bath.
And as these glass bowls are being played in the dome, he said it was the first time he ever heard a sound similar to what this UFO was making. And it gave him flashbacks, essentially. He said it was crazy. It was like the same exact sound and feeling that he experienced before.
when he saw this UFO, and then later learned the history behind the Integratron, which freaked him out even further, that there was this connection, and this man built it with instructions from space people, essentially.
That's right.
Is this unusual for you to hear people having strange alien space people experiences in connection with the Integratron in its current form?
I'm not surprised. I don't really talk with a lot of people about their experiences, but I'm not surprised by that. I think being inside that dome is a very special experience for anybody.
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Chapter 4: What is the story of George Van Tassel and his connection to the Integratron?
Absolutely. There's all kinds of that stuff out there. Right after World War II, Southern California was the world's capital for aerospace manufacturing. I think it was probably the primary generator of the Southern California economy was defense, satellite missiles and aerospace and all of that. So George is right in the middle of that.
During World War II, Frank Kritzer builds an antenna on Giant Rock and the locals, including some of the local sheriffs, accuse him of being a spy. And they're getting really suspicious of him because here's this German living deep in the desert with an antenna on his boulder.
And at a certain point, they accuse him of stealing dynamite because Kritzer is doing some, you know, mining or whatever in the area. they get suspicious. And at a certain point, there's two different stories as to what happened next. One of them is that he committed suicide as they were closing in on him.
But the other was that they threw a flashbang into his little hovel beneath the rock, probably knowing that there was TNT in there and knowing that they were going to kill him. And the flashbang, you know, caught the dynamite on fire and it blew up and Frank Kritzer was dead. So...
Van Tassel finds out about this and he works with the Bureau of Land Management to acquire that property to sort of homestead it. And Van Tassel eventually moves out there. I think this is about 1947. He leaves the aerospace practice altogether and decides to run the landing strip out there.
He builds a little cafe for his wife to run called the Come On In, where people could land on the landing strip just to go get a piece of pie, like Howard Hughes apparently did all the time. He would fly and get a piece of cherry pie and leave. And when Van Tassel first moved in there, he had three young daughters also. He cleaned Kritzer's blood off the rocks.
I mean, his blood and his innards were still in there. Like, it was just, you know... Van Tassel, what a weird experience. He cleans it off. One of his daughters told me later that they never actually lived under the rock. They lived kind of next to it in these sort of tents, but they lived outdoors. But Van Tassel gets really interested in what's going on under that rock.
And at a certain point, he starts leading regular Christian church services out at Giant Rock. prayers, singing of hymns, so on and so forth. I mean, he's not a minister, but he's doing this. And he's running the airstrip that Kritzer had established. And at a certain point, those who are gathered with him underneath the rock, Start getting really interested in experiments.
I believe it's called telekinesis, where you move objects by thinking, you know, thinking your way through moving them and whatnot. And he starts getting into more things, a little more esoteric than just your typical church service. And that led to a series of channelings that... Van Tassel and others claimed to begin having underneath the rock.
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Chapter 5: How did George Van Tassel's contact with extraterrestrials influence the Integratron's design?
So what the being imparted on George was that by the time humans have the wisdom that they sort of need to understand the world, they're ready to die or they're starting to decay. And so there must be a way to extend human life. And apparently Solganda gave George various instructions on how to build what later became the Integratron.
Some of these George took with him, you know, never shared it with anybody. But from what we know, from what he did share, the structure was to be made entirely of wood. Humans were not to wear metal. And he imparted on George an equation of F equals one over T. Frequency equals one over time. So after this, George kind of hit the ground running.
He acquires 10 acres where the Integratron is eventually going to be made. He has plans to start a whole campus based off the teachings of these channeling experiences. And shortly after this, he starts what's called the Interplanetary Spacecraft Conventions at Giant Rock, which lasted from 1954 until 1977, but only missing one year there, like 1971. And these were the first in the U.S.
sort of conventions or gatherings where people would come together and talk about contact or UFO experiences. So George Van Tassel becomes kind of an important person in what's called ufology. And immediately after this experience, he begins to get going on building this campus. He builds an observatory that's still there and kind of like a room for taking care of business, like an office.
And then there's plans to build the College of Universal Wisdom Research Laboratory with the Integratron as its center point. And all of this is done. I mean, starting in 1947, that's right when Van Tassel moved out there. This is when a lot of people think they're seeing flying saucers, UFOs. You know, you have Kenneth Arnold, Marjorie Cameron, who I think was the first...
in the post-war era to see something that we would call today a UFO. I think she saw hers in like February or March of 1946. So George is kind of like part of this whole milieu. He's coming out of the aerospace thing. He's working with Howard Hughes
he's he's deep in the desert he's kind of like the perfect person to have this experience you know in looking back and uh leads these spacecraft conventions right around that time the fbi opens a file on him i mean they're totally like a little freaked out by everything he's doing somebody he had given up he had been giving a lot of talks all over the country in tv interviews
I wrote a book called I Wrote a Flying Saucer, even though he really didn't. As soon as you get in the book, it says, the being said I did. I don't claim to write a flying saucer, the being said I did. A little bit of a disclaimer there, I guess. After this experience, it was all about starting this campus and building the Integratron and finding a way to make the Integratron happen.
Alright, we'll be right back after this quick break. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Mental health awareness is growing, but there's still progress to be made. 26% of Americans who participated in a recent survey say that they have avoided seeking mental health support due to fear of judgment. When people hesitate to get help, it doesn't just affect them.
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Chapter 6: What were the Interplanetary Spacecraft Conventions and Van Tassel's role in ufology?
Chapter 7: What is the significance of the sound bath experience related to UFO encounters?
and he's fixing cars in a garage in Santa Monica, meets this fellow named Frank Kritzer, who was a German, even though, you know, of German descent, even though apparently he was an American citizen and even born here, you know, I think a lot of people just thought he was German and I'll get to that. This fellow says, I live deep in the desert.
I live at this large boulder, which we know today as Giant Rock. aptly enough. And George befriended Frank. Frank would have George out to the boulder. He thought Frank Kritzer had a very good positive energy. And he thought he somehow attributed Frank's well-being to living underneath this rock. It's believed to be world's largest freestanding boulder.
George would visit him, go out there, hang out with Frank. And that was that for a while. Well, at a certain point, George takes on aerospace work. I think he works for McDonnell Douglas, Hughes Aircraft, and Lockheed. At this time, Southern California is sort of the... world's sort of center for aerospace and high tech. And so George is in the milieu of that.
In fact, for a while, George is working directly under Howard Hughes as one of his test flight inspectors. So George has a personal relationship with Howard Hughes, which is going to factor into this too.
And yeah, and it still is a bit like that too, you know, like directly north of the Integratron in the desert. Lockheed has the Skunk Works facilities there and a lot of the other big experimental crafts are being tested out there in the desert, not far away.
Absolutely. There's all kinds of that stuff out there. Right after World War II, Southern California was the world's capital for aerospace manufacturing. I think it was probably the primary generator of the Southern California economy was defense, satellite missiles and aerospace and all of that. So George is right in the middle of that.
During World War II, Frank Kritzer builds an antenna on Giant Rock and the locals, including some of the local sheriffs, accuse him of being a spy. And they're getting really suspicious of him because here's this German living deep in the desert with an antenna on his boulder.
And at a certain point, they accuse him of stealing dynamite because Kritzer is doing some, you know, mining or whatever in the area. they get suspicious. And at a certain point, there's two different stories as to what happened next. One of them is that he committed suicide as they were closing in on him.
But the other was that they threw a flashbang into his little hovel beneath the rock, probably knowing that there was TNT in there and knowing that they were going to kill him. And the flashbang, you know, caught the dynamite on fire and it blew up and Frank Kritzer was dead. So...
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Chapter 8: What is the FBI's interest in George Van Tassel and his activities?
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