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Odd Ball is sponsored by Bold Bean Coffee Roasters. While this podcast might be a mystery, Bold Bean’s coffee isn’t. Ethically sourced bags of beans are roasted to highlight their origin characteristics and natural sweetness, so when you order that latte, you’re supporting transparency and quality at every step of the coffee chain. Bold Bean: sourcing, roasting, brewing and serving outstanding coffee. 

From WJCT Public Media in Jacksonville this is Episode 5, the season finale of Odd Ball. I’m Lindsey Kilbride. 

[clips from previous episodes]

“We don’t know what else is inside of it. Yeah it could be anything.” 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“So you did bring up the fact that I want to talk to her.” 

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
“I did. She was like, you know, Nan, I just don't feel comfortable really sharing this with anyone.” 

“That makes it sound like he was covering. Like there was something about it he didn’t want to talk about.” 

[Dick Burnett:]
“The ball went back and forth. They weren’t sure they got the right ball back.” 

“Did it move of its own accord?” Hynek: “I think we have concluded that largely is a little bit of wishful thinking.” 

One of the main reasons the Betz sphere caught so much interest in the 70s is because a lot of people, including Gerri Betz herself, speculated the ball might be from outer space. So as I near the end of my own inquiry into this mystery, I’d really like to know for sure: Is that even possible?

A lot of people have said the ball is definitely made on Earth because it’s stainless steel. Remember? Like Brian Dunning from the Skeptoid podcast:

[Brian Dunning:]
“That’s a common industrial steel and it’s probably not likely to be something that aliens would use. So we can be pretty sure metallurgically that it’s something from some industrial plant right here on Earth.” 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
But can we? The week the ball started making headlines, Gerri Betz asked two different news reporters: “Who could say what’s on another planet?” 

And I have no idea. That’s why I brought back FSU geochemistry Professor Munir Humayun. 

[Munir Humayun:]
“My expertise is in the study of extraterrestrial materials, particularly in metals from extraterrestrial materials and their analysis.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“So what do we know about what materials exist outside of Earth?”

[Munir Humayun:]
“Well, if you're talking just natural materials, and you're not asking what have extraterrestrial civilizations come up with, then stainless steel is a very anthropogenic product, you do not find stainless steel falling from natural materials. The materials we find in space, including iron meteorites, have very distinct compositions and we can recognize them rather easily from the man-made products. Stainless Steel 431 is a very specific chemical composition and a very specific textural association. It would be remarkable if another civilization made a stainless steel that’s exactly like 431. 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Say that, that did happen. What would have happened to the sphere if it would have dropped into Earth?

[Munir Humayun:]
“Let's presume that for argument's sake, a spacecraft did not visit Earth and drop the sphere inadvertently, like a little space alien playing with our ball and left it behind on Earth. If it were roaming around in space, regardless of how it got there, it would be exposed to galactic cosmic rays. And so it would have a certain amount of radioactivity in it, which would have been detectable, if they had measured radioactivity very sensitively.”

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Gerri told reporters the Navy found the ball was NOT radioactive and NOT explosive. 

But what about that scientist’s alleged comments that the little balls inside the sphere are made out of elements heavier than another known to science.  

Humayun’s assessment?

[Munir Humayun:]
“Unlikely to be an element heavier than any known to humans, because a heavier metal would both increase the density beyond what we measure. And it would also be radioactive, incredibly radioactive. And so if there was a significant like a little sphere of some elements like Californium, or or any other transuranic, you would pick that up. You'd pick it up in the x-ray because it would come out really bright and shiny compared to the steel. And you would pick it up in the gamma rays, which probably was what they measured when they were looking for radioactivity.”

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
So if Navy did test for radioactivity and didn’t find anything, like the article said, that pretty much rules out Professor James Harder’s alleged comments that the ball contained elements heavier than anything found on Earth...BUT it doesn’t rule out the little balls inside were made of a different material than the outer shell. 

Why does that matter? 

The Navy’s explanation is the balls inside, they’re just little fragments of the shell that fell in during manufacturing. So maybe it was intentionally placed there for a purpose but maybe something else got in there. I don’t know. Of course, debris doesn’t make a ball vibrate and roll around weird. Gerri also said that it was almost like she could hear the little balls inside pinging around by themselves. Like something more was going on in there. But none of the scientists I spoke with had any theories.

Professor Humayun said nowadays there are beams that would be able to collect the atomic composition of the inside of the sphere. The theory he finds most compelling: 

[Munir Humayun:]
“Somebody mentioned that this looked exactly like a pulp mill ball.”

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
NOO, not him too. Another one joins the paper plant theory club.

It’s been difficult to get scientists to participate in interviews about this because a lot of it is speculative.  I don’t have the official Navy report, (despite many many public records requests to governmental departs and archival departments. No one has been able to find anything.) If anyone out there listening does have it, I’d love to see it.  

One materials engineer who agreed to answer my questions by email says cutting the ball open would have pretty much answered all these questions. 

The Navy had asked to cut it open, and Professor J. Allen Hynek talked about it cutting it open during that radio interview after he returned from the New Orleans National Enquirer panel. 

[J. Allen Hynek]
“Of course we could cut the thing open and that would solve the whole thing probably.

[Radio host:]
"But it would ruin it for someone else."

[J. Allen Hynek:]
“It would, and it’s such a nice ball.”]

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
But all signs point to, the ball really wasn’t anything special. Or we can’t prove it was.

I think UFO expert Jerry Clark said it best when he called the ball a blip in history, nothing more. 

[Jerry Clark:]
“If it had really been with Harder says it was, it certainly would have made an impression and it would be something like proof of some kind of, you know, otherworldly visitations. This clearly wasn't that, whatever it was.” 

This is not what I want to hear. I ask Clark, what about all the weird allegations? The Navy’s trying to take the sphere back. Why would they want it if it wasn’t special? Terry’s being flown back to Florida and separated from the ball because his mom was supposedly sick, only to find out that was made up? What about its rolling uphill? What about all the witnesses who said the ball acted weird?

[Jerry Clark:]
“That's interesting. But you know, what are you going to do with that? You hear these stories, and there are stories where people claim that someone took their evidence. And if these stories are true in any way, they certainly have had no measurable influence on any observable government UFO policy.” 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
He believes if the government really had all this proof, or a collection of UFOs, they’d be reverse engineered and we’d have a lot of new technologies we don’t have.

[Jerry Clark:]
“These things are all taking place on the margins of society, and to the people who experienced them there, they may be life changing. I mean, they're extremely strange and upsetting and challenging. But they don't affect history. Life goes on.”

[Music]

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
After talking to Jerry Clark and all these scientists, I’d adopted this attitude too. And this is my mind set as I go into my next chat with Nan, the magazine editor who profiled Gerri Betz a couple years ago. She’s been talking with Gerri and said she’d ask her AGAIN on my behalf if there’s any way she’d consider talking for this podcast. 

This is Gerri’s most recent email to Nan:

Dear Nan, 

We are out of town and don’t expect to be home anytime soon. I wish you and your family the best. 

Sincerely, Gerri 

Nan says she feels like Gerri’s blowing her off. It does sound like that. So when I talked to Nan she was racking her brain, thinking, ‘Did I say something wrong?’ ‘Do something to upset her?’ and she even followed up with an apology to Gerri. 

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
“I took that, for what it seemed to be like this, you know, I'm just not really interested in engaging. I don't, I don't blame her. I really, I want to respect her privacy, and in I way I feel like her last email is definitely her trying to establish a boundary from our previous exchanges. And so, yeah, just wanted to kind of let it sit a little while and then mull it. I do, I want to. But I also want to speak with her again. 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“Yeah, no, it's a bummer for sure.” 

NK: “I know. I feel like I blew it.”

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“No!”

NK: :I feel like I totally blew it.”

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
I called Nan on her cell instead of having her swing by the studio for better-quality sound because I thought this would be the extent of the conversation, just a little check-in...But we end up talking for 45 minutes.

I fill her in about a lot of my research and conversations, like with Leo Sprinkle, the scientist on the UFO panel who doesn’t remember the sphere at all. 

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
That sounds kind of like pleading the fifth or something.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
And the conversation I had with the UFO expert Jerry Clark, where he basically says no one in the UFO community cared about this ball. It was nothing special. Nan says, yeah, but the government does all kinds of secret stuff. And think about who Gerri is. 

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
“There was no, like, need for her to kind of create this fiction around this object, to sensationalize something. I personally think that the Betz family — something happened during that time period that scared the Betz family into silence.” 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
And just like that, I’m back again. Not sure what to believe, remembering Nan’s conversations with Gerri and all these weird things that happened with the ball, some I haven’t even shared with you yet.

Nan was the second person who has a direct relationship with Gerri to tell me Allen Hynek, from the UFO panel, came to Gerri’s home to examine the ball. 

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
“Hynek reached out. He wanted them to come to Chicago and she said, ‘No, if you want to see this sphere, you're gonna have to come to us.’ So he came and she said that he was just a delightful person. They enjoyed their time together. He was only there for a couple days. He asked if he could bring the sphere into his bedroom overnight, and she didn't really see any harm in that. She trusted him. He was a government scientist with a very staunch reputation. I think Gerri just wanted to know what it was. That was her whole mission behind all of this, was just to find out what this thing was, so he spent the night with it and then he left the next day. She said that he came carrying an old-fashioned doctors bag. Like one of those large leather sacks. I think she just assumed it was full of tools or clothes or whatever. Then he left.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Some time after this, Nan says Gerri told her she took the ball to be x-rayed again because the ball had stopped rolling around and vibrating.                                                                      

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
“I think she felt like there was something different about it and she wanted to be sure, and she was really surprised when the x-rays came back and they were different from the original ones that she had done prior to Dr. Hynek coming.” 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“Did she say what was different about them?”

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
“She did. She said that they were seams. There were actual seems on the sphere where in the original x-rays there were no seams of the…”

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“Like on the inside?” 

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
“She didn't specifically say.”  

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“But it looked different.”

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
“Yeah.” 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
I found an article in which Gerri actually addresses this. The date is cut off, but it’s definitely later on. She explains a lot of people are after the ball. She had to have a guy ordered off her property. Some firm offered her 750-grand for the ball. Then she says she had the ball x-rayed again and these did not match the Navy’s x-rays. The Betz sphere has three little balls inside. Two look perfectly round. And the third is bigger and not so round  — there’s a little line coming from it, which she calls an antenna. She says that ball was now pulverized. “I can’t even prove now it’s the same one we originally had,” she said.

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
“She was just furious. Then she...I think that anger changed to kind of the revelation that whatever the sphere was, the government did not want her to find out and not want her to know, and she decided, in that moment, to burn those x-rays. She did not feel comfortable with any sort of proof of that information.”

[Music]

Nan says the family knows where the ball is, it’s still around.

[Nan Kavanaugh:]
“They still have the ball that she feels like is not the ball.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
But she doesn’t know WHO has it. Someone close to Gerri, who asked to remain anonymous, tells me, today she isn’t sure if it was swapped out or tampered with it...but the ball was never the same after all these investigators had their hands on it.

So we don’t have proof Hynek took the ball or tampered with it, and I want that to be clear. But let’s talk about how likely that could have been. Because if it’s true, it would make more sense as to why it seemed like so many people were after it. Because maybe it was something they weren’t supposed to have. 

There’s also this weird new detail: One of Hynek’s son’s recently — as in this year  — was quoted in his hometown newspaper saying, growing up, his family had a metal ball from a Florida UFO case. 

[Music]

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Quick refresh: Hynek was contracted by the Air Force to figure out explanations for UFO sightings. After his work with the government he founded the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) near where he lived in Evanston, Illinois. It’s still around today and it’s where I got that old radio interview tape. 

Jerry Clark, the UFO expert, was on the center’s board. Very small world, this UFO community.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“What was Hynek like?” 

[Jerry Clark:]
“Oh, he was a wonderful man. He always had a twinkle in his eye and pipe in his mouth and he was just fun. He was extremely smart and he was just sort of overwhelmed every living moment with, you know, scientific curiosity.”  

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“And so you said you knew him fairly well. How do you define that? I guess I'm just trying to gauge how much time you spent with him.” 

[Jerry Clark:]
“Oh, man. I don't know. Maybe see him once every week or two. Sometimes, we were at his...by we, I mean, I and fellow CUFOCs officers or sometimes just myself at his house in  Evanston, and I know his wife, and, I don't know, how do you know somebody, you know? He was a colleague, you know, a friendly colleague, and we were bonded. Same organization, the same goals.” 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
I want to hear what Clark thinks about these rumors, that the sphere was different after Hynek left the Betzes or sometime around the National Enquirer UFO conference in New Orleans. I’ve heard and read both. And that Hynek supposedly had a similar ball in his home.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“The sphere apparently wasn't the same afterward. So they didn't know if he tampered with it or switched it out. So do you know if he ever would, you know, swipe artifacts that he was interested in or try to recreate them or anything like that?” 

[Jerry Clark:]
“Well, let me answer it this way. Because I'm trying to just try to work this out of my memory. One thing is Allen really wanted was validation. That he really hoped before he died, that he would have the proof that UFOs exist. And this was really important to him, because he had taken a real hit from his colleagues. He had been a prominent and respected  astronomer till he went to the dark side. And so it was very important for Allen to find validation. So he wasn't above quietly grabbing a document of the official files, which is going to be burned or otherwise discarded, that he thought, this is, you know — I don't mean highly classified documents. Allen had a high security classification and he took it very seriously — but there was a lot of stuff that was...would have been interesting to somebody researching UFOs that, to the people around Allen, when he was working in his official capacity, just junk. And if there was a sphere in the house — which I never saw. And I was in that house on a number of occasions, and was never mentioned to me. And I never saw anything like that — but it would have been in the context of just picking up something that otherwise would have been discarded. He didn't even necessarily have to think that it was important in the context of documenting the existence of UFOs.  

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“Do you think that if he did think that there was something to the sphere that you would have known that?”

[Jerry Clark:]
:Yes, I think it would have been known to us at CUFOs, as an important item. 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
He said the center published a scientific journal and he believes if Hynek had the sphere, it would have been handed over to their scientists, and that never happened. 

I reached out the center myself and heard back from its current director… He said “The Betz sphere was ultimately found not to be anything alien or paranormal” and he attached the NICAP report we dived into last episode: which concludes: the thing is probably from the paper mill. 

I also reached out to a woman named Jennie Ziedman, one of Hynek’s old colleagues. She emailed me that she’s not familiar with the ball I described either.

So what was Hynek’s son talking about, growing up with a metal sphere from A FLORIDA UFO CASE? 

[Paul Hynek:]
“Well here’s what I know about that.”

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
After the break.

Odd Ball is made possible by supporters of WJCT Public Media, with additional support from Bold Bean Coffee Roasters, based in Jacksonville, Florida.  It started as a father and son roasting coffee in their garage about a decade ago, and now it’s a company that works directly with farmers and more than 140 wholesale partners, and it has several cafes where you can a latte and delicious food to go with it...that’s where Adam Burnett, the bakery manager comes in. 

[Adam:]
It's just food that people want to eat. That's, that like, comfortable, really good from scratch, baked goods.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Like his favorite, croissants, which take three-and-a-half days to make.

[Adam:][In the kitchen:] “That's where I roll all the croissants in all the butter. We do that first thing in the morning. [door opening] I bring the croissants up here to proof because this warm weather really pops up real good up here so yeah, This is a full breakfast croissant. It's got ham, eggs, bacon, cheese, herbs in it.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“And what day are these on?” Adam: “These are day three. So these will get baked here in several hours, once they're done proofing.”

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Taste one for yourself at one of Bold Bean’s Jacksonville coffee shops. And for a limited time, you can also pick up a bag of a special Odd Ball coffee, blended just for this podcast. Or order the coffee online, along with a Bold Bean tote bag and mug. Shop all the merch at oddballpodcast.com, where you can also make a donation to WJCT, so we can keep making podcasts like this one.

What It’s Like promo:
[Lindsey Kilbride:]
If you like stories about regular people going through extraordinary circumstances — and I assume you do if you’re listening to Odd Ball — you might also want to check out another WJCT podcast that I’m really proud of, called “What It’s Like.” Each of the 8 episodes is basically a conversation between two people who went through something intense, together. What It’s Like is available wherever you get your podcasts. It’s the one with the purple background and white table and chairs on the logo. 

[music fades out]

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Paul Hynek is an advisor on the TV show Project Blue Book, which is about his dad. 

[TV show trailer:]
A family reported seeing something falling from the sky. “I’ll be down there right away.” “I need you to meet someone first.” “The name’s Dr. Allen Hynek.” “You want me to investigate flying saucers?” “I want you to help me prove to the public the truth: they don’t exist.”

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
He was recently quoted in an article about his role on the TV show and what it was like growing up with a dad really into UFOs. But this is the very last quote in the story: “I found out recently that a big silver sphere we had was from some famous UFO case in Florida. We would just kick it around on the floor because we didn’t know what it was.”

Whaaat? So I get him on the phone and rather than lead with this alleged ball theft, I ask him, what was your dad like? 

[Paul Hynek:]
“People talk about him, you know, changing from being a skeptic to a believer. I don't think believer’s really a good word for a scientist. I think he became an acceptor. That he accepted that there was a phenomena. He felt very strongly that you should keep your eyes open or your mind open when confronted with what may be a new phenomena, but then also to not close your mind too quickly, just availing yourself of the best answer that you have handy. Because the answer may be more difficult, and you need to be comfortable with questions that you can't answer, which is a large part of science.”

“He became convinced within a few years that there was something going on, because he and the Air Force couldn't explain all these cases, and if you look at Project Blue Book's official stats of some 12,000 cases that they investigated, and over 700 they couldn't explain. And this is with a clear mandate, as we see in the show, to explain them all away. And yet, they still couldn't.” 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“It seemed your Dad maybe disagreed with some of their public conclusions about the cases. Can you talk at all about that?”

[Paul Hynek:]
“My father felt that the Air Force’s job isn't science, it's national security. But while he was there, yes, there was friction and frustration. 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“He said Project Blue Book, turned into more of public relations exercise to tamp down hysteria.” 

[Paul Hynek:]
“But he felt that his ability to help collect the information and guide how it’s collected and recorded was very valuable for his later analysis and discussion.” 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
OK, OK, I won’t keep you waiting any more. What about this Florida ball in his house?

[Paul Hynek:]
“Well, here's what I know about that. I spoke on a panel for [the] History [Channel] at Alien Con in Pasadena last year in the summer, and a woman came up to me after the panel and showed me a newspaper clipping with a picture of a sphere and said, "Do you know anything about this case?’ And I said, ‘I haven't heard about this case. But we had a big metallic sphere in our basement for years. And my brother and I had no idea where it came from, and we would just sort of kick it around the floor. I mean, it was like it was larger than a basketball, it was just big metallic sphere and we had no idea where it came from.’ And so I mentioned this to the woman, and then 10 minutes later after Googling on her phone, she came back and she said, ‘I think your father took possession of that sphere.’ So I can't confirm or deny if the sphere we saw was from that case, but I do know that woman was very excited and that we had a sphere in our house.”

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“And your dad didn't say where it was from ever?”

[Paul Hynek:]
“No because we had so many things at our house that it just sort of became normal for us. You know, we had this artistic rendering of Travis Walton being zapped by UFOs on the wall in our laundry room.”  

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“As you do.” 

[Paul Hynek:]
“Yeah, as one does. And Christmas ornaments that were UFOs on the tree, and things like that.”

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“Wow. Yeah. So I read that you said that in a recent article, and there are comments that were like, "Maybe it's the Betz sphere," and then I also know that in the show, there's a plot point where your dad takes one of the artifacts, and I was like, is that based on a real occurrence?

[Paul Hynek:]
“Yes. Are you insinuating, Lindsay, that my father is some kind of UFO kleptomaniac?”

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“Not necessarily.”

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
But yes.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“But that is...so there's a cult following around the sphere, right? And then once that, quote came out in the article, people are like, you know, maybe the sphere was switched out or maybe has it or maybe he made a duplicate of it. And so everyone's sort of inquiring, you know, what's going on with it?” 

[Paul Hynek:]
“Oh, well, you know, I can imagine a situation where if that was the case, let's just entertain the sort of, the kind of fun aspect of that. If this was that sphere, then I think my father probably did a good job not telling his gabby teenage sons where it came from.” 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
I didn’t have Paul on the phone for long, so I followed-up with some emails. I ask him where that basement ball is today. He has no idea. I ask about the ball’s weight. The Betz sphere was more than 20 lbs. Paul said his dad’s sphere: really heavy. But he estimates his ball was a little bigger than a basketball. The Betz sphere would have actually been a little smaller, not by much. He doesn’t remember a triangular chip out of the side. 

Then Paul reaches out to his brother, who reminds him their ball seemed hollow and made some kind of jingly noises when they rolled it...well, that sounds pretty familiar ... and they remembered there was some kind of mark on the outside. He described it as a manufacturing scar, “a seal where the molten metal was poured into a mold, perhaps,” he wrote.  But he followed up saying, “If you heard my dad say it wasn’t out of this world in an interview. I’d go with that.”

I’m not ready to just “go with that.” 

So I reach out to one of Hynek’s other sons. He says if he remembers correctly, it was an industrial ball bearing, and his dad didn’t bring it home, a different brother did. He confirmed it was hollow and when you rolled it, something else moved around inside. Then he tells me, “I vaguely remember the ball ending up with one of my friends somehow.”

Then I asked if he’d mind following up with his brother, the one who maybe brought a giant ball bearing home, because if Hynek definitely didn’t bring this ball home, that’s a pretty big breakthrough. More than a month later, I get a reply. 

“Finally got a hold of Joel (that’s the other brother). It turns out he is not the one that brought the sphere back home. He seems to remember that it was our dad who brought it home. Still a bit of a mystery. I also seem to remember that at one time there were actually two spheres, although Joel doesn’t seem to remember the second. We both agree that it was a long time ago.”

I ask if he knows where the ball is today and he says no, he thinks an old friend may have taken it, but the person he’d want to ask has passed away. 

[music swells and fades] 

After all these interviews...I still haven’t talked to Gerri, and I’ve honestly been panicking because I don’t know if I can tell this story without her — or if I even want to. I really only wanted to do this project under that assumption. That’s the only way to do it right, right?

My coworker who works in a totally different department knew I was having trouble getting in touch with somebody, so a couple days later he dropped off some stationary on my desk and said “try writing her a letter.”

So I did… and I quickly realize I can’t remember the last time I’ve handwritten someone a letter. I have to Google what a cursive capital G looks like. Ultimately, decided against cursive if you’re wondering. This is what I write: 

“I’m reaching out because over the past year I’ve been working on a podcast about the sphere your family found in 1974…” 

I start with: I know your family has chosen not to discuss this.

“It’s been difficult to figure out what to write to you because I don’t know the best way to show you my intentions are not to sensationalize, nor to exploit. Through my research I’ve interviewed two of Dr. Hynek’s sons about this sphere they had in their house growing up.”  

I try to show her this is really well-researched.

“But I don’t only care about the ball. For me, that’s a small piece of this story. From the very beginning I’ve admired you and thought you were incredible. I want listeners to understand that too. You know, there’s an entire ‘Gerri Betz’ folder of articles in The Florida Times-Union library. The focus of the folder isn’t the ball, it’s your work in the community: pre-sphere discovery. Stories about you standing up to City Council…” 

You know all this already.

“I’m 100 percent willing to work with you. If you even agree to talk, but don't want to talk about the ball, that’s OK. I won’t cross any lines. I just think it’s extremely important for me to actually speak to you. If anything, would you be open to fact-checking some of what I’ve uncovered?” 

 I left her my cell number and email. 

“I really hope to hear from you. Lindsey.”

I send it to an address she’s associated with, hoping she’ll receive it. 

[Music]

In trying to make sense of all these rabbit holes I reached out to a couple guys who also recently did a deep dive into the “Betz Mystery Sphere,”  Scott Philbrook

[Scott Philbrook:]
“OK, Lindsey, I’m starting our record session here.” 

And Forrest Burgess 

[Forrest Burgess:]
“I have our show script notes punched up in case there’s a question I have to search for.” 

They host the podcast Astonishing Legends. I thought it would be helpful to sort of compare notes and talk through some of what I’m stuck on. 

On their podcast, they basically look into stuff they’re interested in: The paranormal, weird science, odd historical stories. 

[Hosts:]
“I guess we consider everything every possibility going in, but try not to settle on one before going in and discounting the others would you see, a lot of times, especially with people who study this kind of thing…” “Yeah, we don't rule it out. But conversely, with people who are open to wilder explanations, we also don't rule out mundane explanations. And sometimes we do an investigation and at the end of it, it seems like maybe it was much more mundane than the legends and the lore around it would have you believe. Other times, we do an investigation, and at the end of it, it seems like it’s the craziest thing you’ve ever heard in your life.” 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
Like the Betz sphere. They have this interview with an anonymous woman who they say is a member of the Betz family, although not Gerri. And the source even says she was there when her family member found the ball. 

[Hosts:]
“Having a first-hand account, that's something a lot of times we don't get a chance at getting, because we're often talking about things that are hundreds of years old, and everybody's dead. So it’s nice to talk to somebody who was there.”

She backs up a lot of what we’ve heard before, plus that the Betz family knows where the ball is, but, no one in the family has it at their house because they’ve entrusted a third party with it for safekeeping. 

She tells the story of Terry, the guy who found the ball, being flown home and separated from the ball. She says the ball actually rolled up hill in front of a crowd and all the footage was confiscated.

She even says Dr. Hynek told the family, if the ball was flown it would have to be kept in a special cage so it wouldn’t interfere with the plane. Nan told me this too. 

She talked about those dead trees in the area where the ball was found, saying the tops were twisted and broken, but most likely from a storm. She says people who worked at the paper mill, told her family they’d never seen balls like the Betzes’.

But there are a few things she says that are different: That the ball stopped rolling around and acting weird after it came back from the UFO conference, which would have been before Hynek allegedly came to the Betz house to examine the ball. When he came to the house, she says Gerri didn’t give him permission to take the ball in his room, but rather she got up and caught him with it, doing tests.

This person says the outside of the ball had very specific markings and those are this still on it, so this ball they have may not have been switched, but instead tampered with or cut open. And again, the new x-rays didn’t match.  Gerri thought Hynek had something to do with all that. Although I have him on tape saying the ball was pretty ordinary.

[Paul Hynek:] [On old radio show]“It seems like a perfectly normal metal sphere.”

This source says after he spent time with the ball he told the family it was amazing and did think it may have been extraterrestrial. She said he took shavings from the ball, and the atomic number didn’t make sense. She said he had his sights set on the ball.

I ran this by Jerry Clark- the UFO expert who said, Hynek just wasn’t that strategic. And Hynek’s son Paul.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“Your dad never publicly said it was, you know, extraterrestrial. I think he was quoted, and I think this was when he was part of the blue ribbon panel, that none will go so far as to say it's extraterrestrial, they would be putting their scientific reputations on the line. However, the family, who found the ball, said to them, you know, in private, he very much did believe it was something more than that. Do you know if...does that sound like him? Is that possible?”

[Paul Hynek:]
“It's certainly possible. I think what I heard my father say was always, you know, it's hard for someone to speak in definite terms. ‘This is extraterrestrial,’ for example. I think you'd be more inclined to say, ‘This is quite mysterious,’ or ‘I have, I've had a metallurgical analysis done of this, and we can't place it's origin,’ things like that. So I don't know what he said, but I can imagine that he would be a little bit looser in his verbiage with the people that are reported it then in public. Sure.” 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
This anonymous family member said the family knew scientists Hynek and Harder very well, formed friendships with them.

She says maybe the ball was something dangerous from the military that was deactivated…but the family just wanted to know what it was, and still does.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“Did you try to get your hands on the sphere? And did you find it weird, if you did, that you weren't able to? Or that they don't really want to tell anyone where it is? I mean, that would kind of solve it, right? If we could get it and then, have someone examine it today?”

[Astonishing Legends hosts:]
“Yeah, it may not be, as we said earlier, the same sphere. So it doesn't, I don't know that it would solve any mysteries because, and I don't think they necessarily are either at this point, because it could have been swapped in New Orleans. It could have even been swapped in the initial x-ray when it went to the Navy, although the family members were relatively convinced that if it was nearly identical, it had all the same abrasions.

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
The source said, things just got really crazy. With people showing up and wanting to buy the ball. Nan had told me people were camping on the Betz’ property. This source said Gerri found out her phones had been tapped. 

So is figuring out what the ball is now, really worth it?

The Astonishing Legends hosts both said they don’t know what the ball is although they have theories. Like maybe it was in development for some sort of military use and the project was never fully realized. Or maybe it was intended as part of a larger machine. Like why would its only function to be rolling around weirdly? Maybe it had a purpose when attached to other machinery? You just can’t say for sure because we don’t have enough information about what was inside it. But they don’t believe it was from the paper mill. 

I don’t know if I can accept that theory either. It’s still so weird to me that the ball was never, or least not publicly) side-by-side compared to a ball from the paper mill or with the sculptor’s metal spheres. So I can’t jump to those conclusions and as a reporter, I don’t want to just speculate. So what do I do with this?

[Scott Philbrook:]
“Everybody wants to be able to wrap up in a package, this assessment of the players and what they're saying and how it relates to the story. And you just don't always get to do that. Because it's sometimes it's just so complicated and so great. And there's so many overlapping gray areas, that all you can do is just look at all the information. And then, as Forrest likes to say sometimes, live with the question.”

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
They brought something up that I think is really the key in all this. Do you believe the ball acted as the family says it does? Having some sense of self-awareness. Knowing where the edge of the table was? Because if you do, how could it be some ball from the paper mill? Forrest and Scott really believe the family.

I think It’s sort of like when someone says they’ve seen a ghost. If the person is on TV, it’s easy to say, yeah, sure you did. But when it’s your dad or best friend confiding in you, why would they make that up? That’s the vibe I get from those who know Gerri. Yeah, the story is weird, but it happened, because Gerri said it did and she’s not a liar.

Throughout this whole process, I’ve reached out to Gerri and a few other family members multiple times and have mostly been met with silence, and I’ve lost a lot of sleep…

But while I’m at work one day I realize I have a missed call and voicemail.

[Gerri Betz:]
“Hello, Lindsey. This is Gerri Betz Jackson. I got your letter and I’m calling you back. I’m in the middle of...”

She tells me she’s dealing with something important, but I’m not going to give away anything personal.

[Gerri Betz:]
“But some time when I get a chance, it might be next year, I’ll get back with you. Thank you thinking about me. God Bless you, bye bye.” 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
I played it for my editor, Jessica. 

[Jessica Palombo:]
“Oh, wow.” 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“Yeah, so that’s…” 

[Jessica Palombo:]
“So that’s good and bad.”

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“I mean, I’m happy to hear from her and that she doesn’t sound mad at me.” 

[Jessica Palombo:]
“No, she sounded very lovely.” 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“But I’m disappointed, obviously, because this is launching before next year.” 

[Jessica Palombo:]
“Right.” 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“But yeah, so, I called her back, and then she just said, call me next year and we’ll talk about it.” 

[Jessica Palombo:]
“Ugh. Well, that just makes you want to say we’ll have a special episode coming next year, right?” 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“I mean, she’s so sweet that I don’t know if she just won’t say no, and she’s not going to do it. I mean, that’s my gut.” 

[Jessica Palombo:]
“You don’t know for sure.” 

[Lindsey Kilbride:]
“Yeah.” 

So this is the end of Odd Ball... for now. When Gerri feels ready to talk, you can be sure a new episode will show up in your feed. For now, I’m living with the question. 

This is Odd Ball, a production made by supporters of WJCT Public Media, with additional support from Bold Bean Coffee Roasters. If you think projects like this one are worth doing, send a message to my bosses by making a small donation at oddballpodcast.com. That’s also where you can order your own bag of Odd Ball coffee from Bold Bean, or maybe a mug or tote bag. And stay subscribed, because when Gerri wants to talk, we’ll upload a new episode. 

Odd Ball was produced by me, Lindsey Kilbride, with editing by Jessica Palombo. The music is by Matthew Wardell and by the show’s intern, Al Pete.