Today on The Grape Talks, the wide world of the paranormal, a conversation with Steve Ward.

1960s, Michigan. Teenage boys were engrossed in the fantasy comic book land of alien beings and other science fiction.

Steve Ward was one of those teens. Until one day, much to his surprise, suddenly nearby communities began reporting unexplained UFO phenomena in other supernatural encounters.

Although he couldn't yet drive, this didn't stop Steve from beginning his journey to better understand what was going on in the real world.

That very much resembled what was being represented in the comic books.

He loved to read by Flashlight.

Well, you know, I think I envy those people that call themselves experiencers a little bit,

although some of the experiences sound like something I would not want to partake of.

But for me, it was, I guess, you know, an early interest in science fiction, that kind of thing.

But that sort of led me to, you know, the so-called real strange experiences.

You recall the books of Frank Edwards.

He had those great anthologies, Stranger Than Science, strangest of All, way back in the 60s, I think.

And also followed up by books like Jim and Coral Lorenzen.

They were the ones that founded APRO, which was one of the early UFO organizations, a serious

organization.

That was the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization.

And they wrote some great books called UFO Occupants and so forth. So these are some of the, they kind of broke tradition

with some of the earlier, well, some of the other early researchers like Donald Kehoe that we

know from NICAP, the National Investigations Committee

and Aerial Phenomena. Early on, it seemed like some of the early researchers didn't want

to get into the stranger stuff. They were happy to talk about these strange craft going

around, flying around in the sky all day. But boy, when you started talking about the humanoids, the occupants stepping out of them,

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