The Psychic Spy Who Chatted With an Alien

In the late 1970s, the U.S. Army quietly funded one of its strangest projects. Codenamed Gondola Wish, the unit was tasked with training “remote viewers”—people who claimed they could leave their bodies, travel with their minds, and spy on Soviet targets without ever leaving a chair. The man behind it was F. Holmes “Skip” Atwater, a military intelligence officer with a taste for the unconventional.

Over time, Gondola Wish evolved through a carousel of codenames—Grill Flame, Center Lane, Sun Streak—and eventually merged into what became known as the Stargate Project. Millions of dollars went into exploring whether psychic phenomena could give the U.S. an edge in the Cold War. The answer turned out to be “not really,” but the fact it was ever tried is a historical curiosity all on its own.

Decades later, Atwater sat down on the Shawn Ryan Show to recall his career. And this is where things swerved from Cold War history into pure X-Files. He described leaving his body, finding himself on a grassy knoll, and encountering what he claimed was an alien. Not only that—he says he boarded its ship and even held a conversation with it. At one point, the alien apparently reached for a Rubik’s Cube to explain concepts beyond space and time. Whether you see that as a profound metaphor or the world’s most confusing toy demo is up to you.

Critics called the interview rambling and incoherent. A fair few listeners dismissed it as an elderly man telling tall tales. But even the skeptics admitted one thing: the U.S. Army really did bankroll psychic spying, and the man talking about aliens really was the founder of that unit. The alien may be questionable, but the job title was real.

So what are we left with? On one hand, the story of a decorated officer who pioneered one of America’s strangest military experiments. On the other, a tale of interstellar conversations that would make even Fox Mulder raise an eyebrow. Maybe Atwater touched something beyond human understanding. Or maybe Gondola Wish was always destined to drift into fantasy. Either way, it makes for one hell of a story—and it proves once again that sometimes the truth is stranger than the Cold War.