Interview with Tom Dongo

by Brent Raynes

Tom Dongo of Sedona, Arizona, has written seven books on UFO & paranormal phenomena. He has appeared on both national and international TV documentaries, and has lectured widely in the western part of the USA. He has investigated many fascinating cases and has had many fascinating first-hand experiences as well. Anyone wishing to communicate with Tom may contact him by writing: Tom Dongo, P.O. Box 2571, Sedona, AZ 86339

Editor: I first became aware of your work back in Aileen Garoutte’s—now many people know her as Leneesa—in the pages of her magazine The Missing Link, and you often had a column in there and dealt with very interesting phenomena—most of it right around where you live in Sedona, Arizona.

Not only were you a researcher but you also early on became aware of the psychic elements of these phenomena.

Tom Dongo: Right. I’m still heavily involved in that.

Editor: Also, like myself, you’re originally from Maine.

Tom Dongo: Right.

Editor: That makes you a Maine-iac.

Tom Dongo: Yeah. (laughs)

Editor: You wrote in Alien Tide how I guess your first UFO encounter was when you were 22 living up in rural Maine and saw an unusual ball of light moving around in the forest.

Tom Dongo: A red light. Real weird.

Editor: On three consecutive nights, and I think on the third one you wrote it landed.

Tom Dongo: Yeah, it landed. In front of my house there was a big valley, about ten miles across, and it went down and it didn’t come up, so I drove down there. I didn’t find it, which I learned later on was a stupid thing to do. That’s how a lot of people have missing time. I don’t think that I had any.

Editor: So that was your first encounter I guess with the UFO phenomenon?

Tom Dongo: Yes.

Editor: When you really began to get into the investigations I think, if I follow this right, you began to have kind of like poltergeist activity—or what many would call poltergeists.

Tom Dongo: Well, I was at the Berkley Psychic Institute at Santa Cruz and we did a lot of astral and worked with poltergeists and the whole broad spectrum of psychic stuff. It involved just about everything. We’d sit in a circle, a dozen or so or more, and just see what happened, and sometimes it was pretty wild.

Editor: I had done a review of your book Alien Tide in Alternate Perceptions, which was fascinating, and then you sent me a copy of Merging Dimensions, which you wrote with Linda Bradshaw, and there was so much phenomena, and a lot of it indicated rather strongly at psychic and even inter-dimensional connections. Is that pretty much where you’re at now, a decade later?

Tom Dongo: Yeah. I don’t know why it is but whatever I do involves psychics. My own abilities are pretty acute. So it gets even more interesting and I have friends that are extremely psychic, and one of them has actually worked for the government at Los Alamos. They’re very good psychics, so sometimes I’ll get together with them and ask them what do you think? I might already have an idea, but I’ll ask them for their opinion—just to see if I’m somewhere on the track.

Now this stuff I had told you about earlier, that’s going on at the Navaho reservation—I’m writing a big story now that Leneesa is going to post and it’s going to go in a couple of magazines, here in northern Arizona (they’ve already agreed to print it), but it’s some of the weirdest super-paranormal activity that I’ve ever run across. It all happened in one place and in a two or three month period in the winter of 2003. I’m trying to get funding for a five year research study on the Navaho Nation. I have Navahos who are willing to kind of take it up there. I’d be like a consultant. So if something does happen I’d get involved in it. But it would be their deal.

So anyway I’m trying to get funding to do a five year research thing up there, and it would probably be around $55,000. or more. There never has been UFO research on the Navaho Nation, which is about 30,000 square miles. A lot of stuff happens up there, mainly I think because these people are very poor, very few of them have cameras, so the phenomenon that happens up there they do it just for that reason. Because not everybody has a camcorder or a tape recorder, so they can get away with whatever they’re doing, and that was the case in 2003.

This stuff that happened in 2003 included three completely different species or types of extraterrestrials, hundreds of orbs, like the Marfa—I kind of compare them to the Marfa (TX) lights. I think they’re the same thing. I mean, it’s happening all over the world now. The glowing orbs. But the difference up there—these things are actually aggressive. The first time I’ve ever heard of that happening. They came right up to the house and people who lived a couple hundred yards away could look out and see these orbs all around the house and over the house, and people in the house could see them going around and over. One night while that was going on a family had a really profound abduction experience. The aliens came in the house, after they had gone to bed. They could hear them rummaging around. Then lights moving around the house and then opening and closing cupboard doors in the kitchen—pots and pans rattling—and their stepdad was in another bedroom, and he was making moaning and groaning sounds, which he never does. He normally just sleeps like a rock. They could see lights going back and forth underneath their bedroom door and the door started to open, so they pulled the covers over their heads. They could see lights around the room through the covers—they remember they were floating—then after they came back to their beds, wherever they went, the guy jerked the covers down and there were two sets of orange eyes looking at them, and then I think they passed out from fright. The next thing they knew it was morning or daylight. The whole thing was over.

It also involved something that I’m not going to touch with a ten foot pole. Black witchcraft. Skinwalkers. This happened dead center in skinwalker activity. It’s a long story. But that was also involved. There are a couple of skinwalker groups in that area, nearby. Do you know what they are, Brent?

Editor: They’re kind of like medicine men who believe they’re shape shifters.

Tom Dongo: Yeah, they’re shape shifters too. They can shape shift into a coyote, owl, eagle, and a human like creature. That movie Independence Day when the alien ship got shot down and the one alien ran, that was exactly a shape shifter. Their knees bend backwards. That was a skinwalker. Somebody really did their homework.

So anyway they’ve had pretty clear evidence of skinwalker activity in that area and I’ve had so many people warn me not to mess with that now I’m not going to. In fact, I started writing a book about it, and I’m going to give it up. I got well into researching a book on the skinwalkers and I’m just going to drop it. It’s just too much power for me to mess with.

Editor: But apparently these people are interacting with the UFO element too?

Tom Dongo: Yeah. There were three different kinds of aliens, and there was the orb. Where they lived they could see ten miles. There was grass, a few trees here and there—just basically open. Scrub brush here and there, and they could see groups of aliens walking around and one girl had direct interaction with one group of them, and none of them were particularly friendly. They weren’t malevolent either, but damned close. She actually had direct contact with them. She’d be out in the desert and would run into them—meet them.

Editor: And these were all Navaho Indians?

Tom Dongo: Yeah. They’re all full-blooded Navaho Indians. Right in the middle of the Navaho Nation.

Editor: What kind of beings are we talking about here?

Tom Dongo: Well there were three types. The real short ones, about three feet tall, and they were human like. They couldn’t see their features, but they saw them out around their car one night. The next type—that the girl was dealing with there—they’re about five and a half feet tall. I think she said they had gray skin, and big almond shaped eyes. They weren’t particularly friendly. And one type, about seven feet tall—they never did see the face of the real tall one, but they could speak English. One of these guys ran into him one night. He had a hood on, and he would not look at the Navaho guy. But he could speak English, and it was in a place that nobody would be. They live in such a remote area that there’s no chance that a tourist or camper would have been out wandering around.

Editor: And the tall ones would actually speak to them, verbally?

Tom Dongo: Yeah. They could speak perfect English.

Editor: But the other ones would use like telepathy?

Tom Dongo: Yes. Telepathic.

Editor: And you’ve been up there and interviewed a lot of these people yourself?

Tom Dongo: Right.

Editor: I know you have pretty evolved psychic abilities. What kind of impressions did you perhaps pick up?

Tom Dongo: Well I’ve had other people get involved in this too that were psychic and it’s pretty strange stuff. It really is. These three types of aliens, like I say, weren’t particularly friendly, and the skinwalker element was involved in it somehow. I haven’t been able to piece it altogether. But things would levitate in the house and spin, and one guy was outside one night and a big axe lifted up off the ground and started spinning and went way up in the air and then came back down. There was a heard of wild mustangs that live in the same valley—about 60 of them—and they could hear the whole herd of them running sometimes—like something was chasing them. They said they were running just like something was chasing them.

And they had the Navaho Nation police come out and the police saw this stuff too.

Editor: And this is in Arizona?

Tom Dongo: Yeah.

Editor: Did you get any unusual photographs while you were there?

Tom Dongo: No. Actually the night I went up I saw some of it—I saw the orb—it was pretty dramatic, but it was so cold—it was incredibly cold—up there in that elevation. I don’t know what it is. About 5000 or 6000 feet? I’ve been in Maine when it was 30 below zero and it wasn’t as cold as that. We could only stand outside an hour and we were frozen. But we did see the orb.

Editor: What did it look like?

Tom Dongo: Well standard—probably 2 or 3 feet across. A glowing white light flying around the trees. They said they make noises like cars going through the trees. I’m not sure what they meant by that. But they actually made sound.

Editor: That’s pretty bizarre. Does the Sedona area continue to have the same kind of ongoing activity it did when you wrote Merging Dimensions and Alien Tide?

Tom Dongo: It has dropped off a lot. There’s still some terrific UFO sightings here but the activity has really dropped off, and I think the reason is because there’s so many people here now. There’s people everywhere.

Editor: I know in one of your books you described that like many people you had been drawn to the Sedona area. You compared it to Close Encounters of the Third Kind with the Devils Tower. I know that you began to develop psychically prior to going to Sedona but that seemed to be a part of your psychic evolution or something I guess? I wondered if maybe you could talk a little about that?

Tom Dongo: Well I seem to have the ability to penetrate dimensions and I can, if there’s an incident, I can go into it psychically, and kind of explore it a little bit. I also have an acute remote viewing ability. Very acute. I’m a natural remote viewer and we’ve tested my ability. A psychologist in Durango, Colorado, tested me about ten years ago, and I was about 80 percent accurate. I was here in Sedona and he was there in Durango, and he held up objects and what not and I got about 80 percent of the stuff exactly right. So I use these abilities to gather information that a lot of other people can’t. And like I say I get with other psychics who sit with me and we compare notes and ask them what they see and I think in that respect I’m able to gain information that other people can’t, and so far I think it has been pretty accurate.

I do occasionally do readings for people that want to talk to dead relatives or whatever and I’m usually extremely accurate. Extremely accurate.

Editor: I know you’ve got a lot of feeling about the inter-dimensional element. In Alien Tide you described a man who described in the Sedona area seeing like a floating window in the air and several nine foot tall Bigfoot type creatures nearby that he felt were guarding it, and how someone later, in the same general area, another man also saw the same type of thing. Neither man knew each other.

Tom Dongo: I know what you’re talking about. I haven’t read that book in ten years. The other guy was actually a retired Air Force colonel (his name and other details Tom gave about him shall be withheld since we don’t have permission to go public with that information—editor). I had quite a few conversations with him.

Editor: And he saw the window and the nine foot tall creatures?

Tom Dongo: Well actually R (name withheld) saw a UFO fly right into the rock. It was flying along (and) when it should have crashed it just went right into the rock like it was water. That basically is his experience. And then M. (name also withheld) had exactly the same experience about a week before that. I was at a book signing and I was on the phone with R and M comes in and I handed the phone over to him and I said, “M, this guy had the same experience you guys did two weeks ago,” and he talked for about an hour on the phone. The universe works in mysterious ways.

Editor: Yeah, synchronicity there.

Tom Dongo: Right.

Editor: But they both had the Bigfoot thing?

Tom Dongo: I can’t remember. That was probably M. That was a different thing but it was the same guy.

Editor: Do you still do the photography? About ten years ago you had about 300 anomalous pictures on file.

Tom Dongo: I still easily have one of the world’s best collections of paranormal photographs—they’re of real objects. They’re not defects. The ones I keep are not lens flares or some defect in the film or whatever. And now it’s digital. Now the best stuff is digital, and digital—rarely is there anything you could classify as a defect. There’s a woman here in Sedona, Nancy McKinney, and another one, Tami Pennington, have taken incredible photographs with digital cameras, and the guy that invented digital photography looked at them and he basically said “Whatever the cameras are taking pictures of they’re real objects.”

Editor: Of course, a lot of your photographs had some objects had like structure and you even had beings, people who were suddenly there in front of your camera that you didn’t see at the time. Maybe you might have sensed them. One that comes to mind was the person with like orange eyes.

Tom Dongo: Yeah, when I do lectures that’s the one the crowd likes the best every time. That was taken at the Bradshaw ranch. There was no person there, and this person showed up with glowing orange eyes.

Editor: Is Linda Bradshaw still involved?

Tom Dongo: No, she moved out to Thompson Falls, Montana about five years ago and I’ve completely lost contact with her. She took on a whole new life.

Oh, another thing on the Navaho story. They were followed by white pick up trucks. It scared the hell out of me because I had just been warned by somebody in the government to watch out for new white pick up trucks. They’re real dangerous, and then the Indians started being followed by white pick up trucks. It scared the hell out of me. But it only lasted about two days and it stopped.

Editor: And that happened while you were there?

Tom Dongo: Yeah. While I was involved in it. They lived in Flagstaff, after they lived up on the reservation, and one of the guys, and the room was full of people when this happened—he was looking at a UFO on the San Francisco Peaks and a blue beam of light hit him in the face and his face was all bloody. He went into the bathroom and tried to wipe it off. Then, about a week after that—he smokes cigarettes and it was colder than hell, and he went outside in a t-shirt to smoke a cigarette and he didn’t come back. They went out too and they looked for him for an hour and they were just about to give up and call the police and the guy comes walking out of the woods, with still a t-shirt on, his skin is almost blue he’s so cold. They said, “Where the hell were you? What were you doing?” He said, “Oh, I was in the woods talking to three guys.” Figure that one out.

Editor: Hmm. Did he remember what they were talking about?

Tom Dongo: That’s one of the things I want to do is sit down and talk to him. See these guys all have kids. Have you ever tried to interview people when they have 3 and 5 year old kids? It’s almost impossible. The kids are screaming, fighting, pulling things off the table, so I’ve got to track him down. I want to find out.

Editor: It sounds like you’re thinking possibly a screen memory there.

Tom Dongo: Right.

Editor: Does it seem to be focusing on one Navaho family, or are a lot of different people involved?

Tom Dongo: Well that’s why I want to do this research project. These guys, it happened to them, and they were real willing to talk about it. There were about half a dozen people involved in it. But I’m sure—I’ve heard stories and I’ve heard the rumors about what goes on up at the reservation and they’re not real crazy about talking to white people. But among themselves they talk and they trust me completely now because I’ve gotten to know them and they tell me some of the things that they know. There’s a real need for some research activity up there.

I got about two thousand dollars worth of donations around here and bought a bunch of cameras and camcorders and took them up there.

Editor: It sounds fascinating. How many times have you been up there?

Tom Dongo: Just once. It’s 175 miles from here, one way, so it’s real difficult to get up there.

Editor: Well this is pretty interesting and I appreciate you sharing all of this information. What do you think the future holds or where do you think or hope it’s all taking us?

Tom Dongo: Well there are about ten things that could end life on this planet and I think right now contact with extraterrestrials is our only chance. I really do believe that. Things have degraded so much now that I think that the only chance for us to survive is contact with some extraterrestrial group that will help us.

Editor: Hopefully the right one.

Tom Dongo: Right.

Editor: Well I know that one of your philosophies is “Just look,” you feel like a lot of people spend too much time in front of the television and they wonder why they’re not having these experiences themselves.

Tom Dongo: Get out there and do it.

Editor: You’ve seen a lot of things. You’ve seen a flying disk that flew over Sedona and had lots of other sightings.

Tom Dongo: Well I wrote about this in one of the magazines around here. This happened just a couple of years ago. I had a tour company and I got back from a tour late at night and I looked and there were two enormous orbs of light flying right over Sedona. They were probably 50 feet across and they were flying like they were part of a bigger object, because they didn’t move apart at all. They flew perfectly in tandem. They were probably about a hundred yards apart. They flew right over Sedona. My partner, I banged on the door and my partner ran out with his Sony camcorder and we got eight minutes of footage of this of these things flying over Sedona, and then a light plane—a single engine Cessna probably—flew right underneath one of them. We’ve got this on video. Either it was trying to avoid a collision or it was trying to see what they were. I couldn’t find the pilot because there’s no tower here, so there’s no record of planes landing or taking off. But this was just two years ago. So I wrote a story in Four Corners magazine—it was part of the story I wrote—and I wrote that if anybody else saw this call me, and I put my phone number in there and I didn’t get one phone call. People don’t look up. Nobody else saw it but us.

Editor: So it was over Sedona for a good eight minutes?

Tom Dongo: Probably ten minutes. Flew right over Sedona at a very slow speed. I’d say 30 miles an hour—tops.

Editor: What time of night was that?

Tom Dongo: It was right after dark. It was still pretty warm weather. Probably 8 o’clock.

Editor: There were still plenty of people up.

Tom Dongo: Oh yeah.

Editor: And it’s a tourist town.

Tom Dongo: Yup.

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