# Mantis Beings - Best of Coast to Coast AM - 8/23/26

An episode of [The Best of Coast to Coast AM](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1206175991), 24 Aug 2026, 18 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/61c1535a-56bb-431a-ad6b-ae2b00350f5c/03415c64-4b6a-47fc-92ed-b4b0009ad348/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=b95f0c24-c199-4939-b52c-ae2b00350f65

Guest Host George Knapp and Professor David Luke, Ph.D. discuss various ways of communicating and experiences with Mantis like beings. The encounters are sometimes while on DMT and Ayahuasca. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
[0:04] Speaker 2: Professor David Luke. The survey takes maybe half an hour.
[0:07] Speaker 2: What are the kinds of questions? You don't have to
[0:09] Speaker 2: give me specifics, but how do you sort of guide
[0:12] Speaker 2: yourself where you could weed out sort of pranksters who
[0:15] Speaker 2: might want to mess with the results and determine, Hey,
[0:17] Speaker 2: this person had a real experience. Real I'm saying that
[0:20] Speaker 2: with air quotes around it.
[0:23] Speaker 3: I mean, ultimately we can't be one hundred percent short.
[0:27] Speaker 3: The way in which people respond to the questions give
[0:30] Speaker 3: some indication. There are also the kind of algorithms on
[0:36] Speaker 3: the data collection survey platform which suggests that some maybe
[0:42] Speaker 3: bogus responses, like they look at IP addresses and things
[0:45] Speaker 3: like that. So you can never be fully sure with
[0:48] Speaker 3: these kind of subjective reports, but generally we see that
[0:52] Speaker 3: there's usually more signal than noise in the data and
[0:57] Speaker 3: that the forms a coherent story which fits with the
[1:02] Speaker 3: evidence we have so far. So that's what we're hoping for, and.
[1:06] Speaker 2: The evidence so far. Is there something that jumps out
[1:08] Speaker 2: at you and experience that just knocked your socks off
[1:11] Speaker 2: and you're going, wow, haven't heard that one before.
[1:14] Speaker 3: So for me, some of the big surprises were hearing
[1:17] Speaker 3: about people's experiences in childhood. And I'm not going to
[1:21] Speaker 3: go into that one too much, but I'd had that
[1:23] Speaker 3: account from a friend actually, who was sat in one
[1:27] Speaker 3: of my talks about d MT and I was talking
[1:29] Speaker 3: about mantids and she was saying, oh, wow, I never
[1:31] Speaker 3: took DMT, but I had an encounter with mantids in
[1:35] Speaker 3: my childhood that was recurring. And so these stories are
[1:41] Speaker 3: interesting in their own right because, you know, they suggest
[1:45] Speaker 3: that you don't need to be under the influence of drugs,
[1:48] Speaker 3: and that children are in some ways, you know, more
[1:53] Speaker 3: reliable witnesses because they haven't been open to all of
[1:58] Speaker 3: the kind of cultural memes and yestions that we might
[2:01] Speaker 3: necessarily have as an adult, and.
[2:04] Speaker 2: They generally tell the truth.
[2:05] Speaker 3: I would imagine, yeah, yeah. And the thing about these
[2:10] Speaker 3: kinds of accounts is people don't tend to share them
[2:14] Speaker 3: so often because they think people think they're mad. And so,
[2:19] Speaker 3: in my privileged position in doing this research over all
[2:23] Speaker 3: these decades, I often have people come and tell me
[2:26] Speaker 3: their stories and they'll say, look, I've never told anybody this.
[2:29] Speaker 3: My friends, my family, my loved ones, because I'm worried
[2:32] Speaker 3: they'll think I'm crazy, but you would understand. And so
[2:35] Speaker 3: I have the privilege of hearing lots and lots of
[2:38] Speaker 3: people's strange experiences.
[2:41] Speaker 2: I don't know if you heard the introduction with this
[2:43] Speaker 2: friend of mine, Stuart Davis, who produced an account called
[2:47] Speaker 2: Man Meets Mantis about his experience New Year's Eve years
[2:50] Speaker 2: ago eight foot tall mantis that he meets and it
[2:53] Speaker 2: had profound changes on his life. And suddenly he starts
[2:56] Speaker 2: seeing mantises everywhere, and everyone in his life starts seeing
[2:59] Speaker 2: mantis is at wedding all over the place. Maybe just
[3:01] Speaker 2: more aware so they start looking for them, or maybe
[3:05] Speaker 2: there's something else to it. I don't know. But in general,
[3:07] Speaker 2: of the responses you've seen so far, are they positive
[3:11] Speaker 2: encounters or imagine it was very frightening for Stewart and
[3:15] Speaker 2: very frightening for other people who see one of these
[3:18] Speaker 2: things eight feet tall up closer personal, But in general,
[3:22] Speaker 2: can you can you give me a sense of what
[3:24] Speaker 2: you're hearing?
[3:26] Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's one of the things that I have
[3:27] Speaker 3: looked at, and overall there's a kind of overwhelming positive
[3:33] Speaker 3: response to the experiences, which is reassuring. At least, you know,
[3:38] Speaker 3: people aren't coming away from these experiences feeling traumatized. There's
[3:42] Speaker 3: a very small number of people, you know, saying that
[3:46] Speaker 3: it had a negative impact on them, and the overwhelming
[3:50] Speaker 3: majority is saying it had a positive, sometimes very positive
[3:54] Speaker 3: effect on the on their lives, So that that's the
[3:57] Speaker 3: good news story.
[3:58] Speaker 1: At least.
[4:00] Speaker 2: In the alien abduction scenarios, people are taken against their
[4:03] Speaker 2: will and often over the decades experiences. In general, they
[4:07] Speaker 2: say that there are things done to their memories, to
[4:10] Speaker 2: their minds, so they can't remember all the details. Are
[4:13] Speaker 2: people responding to your survey? Are they able to recall
[4:16] Speaker 2: details of the encounters? Is their gaps?
[4:21] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[4:21] Speaker 3: Primarily, people tend to report these quite vivid experiences and
[4:26] Speaker 3: that they have a lasting memory, perhaps more vivid than
[4:31] Speaker 3: ordinary daily experiences. And interestingly, in fact, very few people
[4:37] Speaker 3: frame their experience in the context of an alien abduction experience. So,
[4:42] Speaker 3: given the way our surveys set up and the reach
[4:46] Speaker 3: of our network, the majority of people having these encounters
[4:50] Speaker 3: via psychedelics, about half to two thirds of them, and
[4:54] Speaker 3: then the remainder tend to occur in what we might
[4:58] Speaker 3: call other non psychedelic altered states, so dreams, sleep paralysis, meditation, yoga,
[5:06] Speaker 3: near death experiences, and so on, body experiences, and they
[5:12] Speaker 3: seem to account for the majority of the rest of
[5:14] Speaker 3: the experiences, and a very small number of people have
[5:17] Speaker 3: framed it as an alien abduction or UFO encounter experience,
[5:22] Speaker 3: so they're not often framed within that context. And people's
[5:27] Speaker 3: recall a memory of these experiences is quite vivid.
[5:33] Speaker 2: And I assume there is communication. A lot of the
[5:36] Speaker 2: DMT experiences that I've read about, there's back and forth,
[5:39] Speaker 2: and sometimes there's repeated conversations with the same beings. I'm
[5:44] Speaker 2: curious if there's a way to generalize what the nature
[5:46] Speaker 2: of the communication is. Are they interested in oceterero it's
[5:49] Speaker 2: more the other way around, us interested in them, and
[5:52] Speaker 2: whether or not they share information with us about what's
[5:56] Speaker 2: going to happen, or what individuals should do, or what
[6:00] Speaker 2: do you think is there a way to encapsulate that communication,
[6:04] Speaker 2: if there is any.
[6:06] Speaker 3: So that's one of the things we will be looking
[6:08] Speaker 3: into in more detail. I can give you a detailed
[6:11] Speaker 3: response to that, but I think it's a little bit
[6:14] Speaker 3: of a mixed bag. Pro Primarily, when people do have communications,
[6:20] Speaker 3: it seems to be a kind of direct communication, so
[6:23] Speaker 3: they're speaking kind of telepathically, so the communication is kind
[6:28] Speaker 3: of implied or kind of just known. There isn't always
[6:33] Speaker 3: a communication. Sometimes the manteed seem somewhat indifferent or kind
[6:39] Speaker 3: of benign, but in a kind of neutral way. Sometimes
[6:44] Speaker 3: there are communications, you know, perhaps explaining what they are
[6:50] Speaker 3: doing or who they are, or about the future, but
[6:54] Speaker 3: often that it's left unsaid experience, and often those experiences
[7:04] Speaker 3: are benevolent, usually some kind of healing involved. So there
[7:12] Speaker 3: is a sense overall that, you know, the kind of
[7:15] Speaker 3: positive encounters, but they're not always giving so much away.
[7:21] Speaker 2: You know. There's been experiences I've read about, and some
[7:24] Speaker 2: of these people I've known personally remote viewers, psychics who
[7:28] Speaker 2: have projected their consciousness out there, including some stories about
[7:32] Speaker 2: DMT users who encounter beings, intelligent beings sort of in
[7:38] Speaker 2: an intrusive way, surprise them and the reaction is get
[7:42] Speaker 2: the hell out of here, you're not welcome. Anything like that.
[7:48] Speaker 3: Again, I haven't dived into it too much. There is
[7:54] Speaker 3: a sense in which not so much intrusion, but like
[7:57] Speaker 3: these experiences are unexpected, and so that can leave some
[8:04] Speaker 3: amount of Bathman and people feel like that they're in
[8:07] Speaker 3: the experience, and yeah, it just kind of happens to them,
[8:12] Speaker 3: and they don't tend to have too much agency over
[8:15] Speaker 3: what's going on, or at least that they're not reporting
[8:17] Speaker 3: it significantly. I'd need to dive into it a bit
[8:21] Speaker 3: more sure.
[8:23] Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate you that you're sharing with us what
[8:25] Speaker 2: you can and still sort of in flux.
[8:27] Speaker 1: I understood. Yeah.
[8:28] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[8:30] Speaker 2: Do you have debunkers, skeptics, professional troublemakers who oppose this
[8:36] Speaker 2: kind of research in general and will do anything they
[8:38] Speaker 2: can to cast doubt on it, muddy the waters kind
[8:40] Speaker 2: of thing.
[8:42] Speaker 3: Not especially I do occasionally have encounters with skeptics, and
[8:48] Speaker 3: if we just talk about the data, that isn't really problematic.
[8:52] Speaker 3: It's often in the interpretation of the data we may differ.
[8:57] Speaker 3: But I don't think that any of my skeptical colleagues
[9:01] Speaker 3: would be too vocal about the actual act of collecting
[9:05] Speaker 3: the data in the first place. I think you know
[9:07] Speaker 3: that we want less ignorance, not more so. And to
[9:13] Speaker 3: be honest with you, I don't have too much resistance
[9:16] Speaker 3: to my work, which is surprising. I think people either
[9:19] Speaker 3: just tend to ignore it or kind of engage with
[9:22] Speaker 3: it privately rather than adjusting it publicly, which is a
[9:26] Speaker 3: bit of a pity.
[9:28] Speaker 2: In some of your notes that you set, you talk
[9:30] Speaker 2: about people who have these experiences, psychedelic experiences, and reality
[9:36] Speaker 2: feels more real than ordinary reality. And I can tell
[9:39] Speaker 2: you that there are days when I feel like this
[9:41] Speaker 2: reality isn't real at all, And it's not because of
[9:44] Speaker 2: DMT or something. It just feels that way. And I
[9:46] Speaker 2: wonder if my consciousness is often some parallel universe what
[9:50] Speaker 2: they needed my attention more than this one. But these
[9:53] Speaker 2: people come back to a more drab reality. Are they
[9:56] Speaker 2: disappointed and want to return back there as soon as
[9:59] Speaker 2: they can?
[10:01] Speaker 3: That I couldn't tell you, But it usually is life
[10:06] Speaker 3: enriching these experiences on the whole. That's a general tendency.
[10:13] Speaker 3: These experiences can be so profound and metaphysically challenging that
[10:18] Speaker 3: people don't tend to be in too much of a
[10:20] Speaker 3: hurry to go back there. There are those kind of
[10:24] Speaker 3: seekers who may return, you know, quite frequently, and thus
[10:33] Speaker 3: a kind of a bit of a case of what
[10:34] Speaker 3: we call spiritual bypassing, so that there's like you're not
[10:38] Speaker 3: really integrating whatever comes up in the experience fully and
[10:45] Speaker 3: you're just kind of reaching for the cosmic blast off button.
[10:50] Speaker 3: So we do find those kind of people, but there
[10:55] Speaker 3: are strange things occur in those circumstances. So sometimes people
[10:59] Speaker 3: who repeatedly returned to high doses of DMT find that
[11:04] Speaker 3: they they don't get there anymore. They feel like they've
[11:08] Speaker 3: been blocked to the experience and that there are no
[11:12] Speaker 3: entities to encounter, and on some occasions they're even given
[11:17] Speaker 3: messages like what are you doing coming back here?
[11:20] Speaker 1: You go away?
[11:22] Speaker 3: You know, just go and get up with it, you know.
[11:25] Speaker 2: As a follow up to those who've had these experiences
[11:28] Speaker 2: when they're conscious at wake and not taking DMT, do
[11:31] Speaker 2: you are you going to be able to follow up
[11:33] Speaker 2: and then do some physical tests to see if they're
[11:35] Speaker 2: their natural DMT is spiking or something like that, or
[11:38] Speaker 2: is that that words pursuing.
[11:40] Speaker 3: That would be an ideal situation. It is possible with
[11:45] Speaker 3: the technology these days, to identify, you know, underlying d
[11:50] Speaker 3: MT levels. It's been very little of this research conducted.
[11:54] Speaker 3: It's quite difficult to do to find the labs with
[11:58] Speaker 3: the facilities and the expenses. Is not enough funding for
[12:01] Speaker 3: this kind of research, unfortunately, but it would be a
[12:05] Speaker 3: really brilliant piece of research to observe people having unusual
[12:11] Speaker 3: experiences and monitor their underlying indigenous DMT levels. That research
[12:17] Speaker 3: has not really been conducted as yet, which is unfortunate.
[12:22] Speaker 3: But should there be some rich benefactors out there would
[12:26] Speaker 3: like to fund that research, it could be done.
[12:29] Speaker 2: You know, of course, there's a d MT in Ayahuasca
[12:32] Speaker 2: tourism that's sprung up in the last a few years,
[12:34] Speaker 2: and it's really boomed in some countries. And somebody just
[12:37] Speaker 2: puts out a shingle that says he's a shaman and
[12:39] Speaker 2: come on down and let's mix up a batch, and
[12:42] Speaker 2: you know, the results are mixed. A lot of people
[12:44] Speaker 2: with PTSD, war veterans and things report coming out of
[12:48] Speaker 2: it feeling so much better and their lives are changed
[12:51] Speaker 2: for the better. Others who sort of approach it as
[12:54] Speaker 2: a party or something, I mean, it's risky, it's a
[12:57] Speaker 2: powerful These are powerful substances and can cause harm if
[13:01] Speaker 2: you don't treat it with respect.
[13:02] Speaker 3: I would imagine, Yes, absolutely, the risks are mostly psychological,
[13:08] Speaker 3: but it's it's not without risks. And one of the
[13:11] Speaker 3: projects we have is called the Challenging Psychedelic Experience Project,
[13:14] Speaker 3: and we explore people's extended psychological difficulties, and people can
[13:21] Speaker 3: have long term negative psychological fallout from these experiences which
[13:26] Speaker 3: last days, weeks, months, even years. They're in the minority, thankfully,
[13:32] Speaker 3: but a significant number of people do have extended challenges
[13:36] Speaker 3: and they usually come out of it the other side
[13:40] Speaker 3: ultimately better with kind of insight and actually value those
[13:47] Speaker 3: difficult psychological experiences in a positive light. But it can
[13:52] Speaker 3: take a long time, and it can be quite debilitating
[13:55] Speaker 3: in the time it takes to recover and integrate those experiences.
[14:00] Speaker 2: So, looking down the road, after all the responses and
[14:04] Speaker 2: surveys are in and you've had time to analyze the results,
[14:07] Speaker 2: and you write it up and submit it, I guess
[14:10] Speaker 2: maybe a peer review journal or something like that, what
[14:13] Speaker 2: does it ultimately tell us about reality itself? What can
[14:16] Speaker 2: we learn from this?
[14:19] Speaker 3: Well, So one of the things we do hope to
[14:20] Speaker 3: do is to explore the nature of these experiences and
[14:23] Speaker 3: compare across people having drug induced experiences with DMT or ayahuasca, say,
[14:29] Speaker 3: relative to those which are occurring in more spontaneous states
[14:34] Speaker 3: or even just wide awake, and to see if there
[14:39] Speaker 3: are commonalities so the first step in the process is
[14:42] Speaker 3: to see, I'll be talking about the same phenomena here.
[14:45] Speaker 3: Is it something about DMT which gives encounters with manteds
[14:49] Speaker 3: which are different to those that people see when they're
[14:52] Speaker 3: not in drug states, And so that will at least
[14:55] Speaker 3: give us an idea that we're talking about the same phenomena.
[15:00] Speaker 3: And then look to see the kind of trends in
[15:02] Speaker 3: experiences that people may have, see if there are commonalities
[15:07] Speaker 3: in the behaviors or appearances of these things, and begin
[15:11] Speaker 3: to just map the phenomenlogical terrain a little bit more
[15:15] Speaker 3: and get a bit of a better understanding. This is
[15:18] Speaker 3: not going to prove anything, I don't think, but it
[15:21] Speaker 3: will give us some of the basic baseline data that
[15:25] Speaker 3: we need to comprehend these experiences in a more concerted way.
[15:30] Speaker 2: And of the surveys you've received so far, are there
[15:33] Speaker 2: sort of cultural indications? Are there countries that you would
[15:36] Speaker 2: hope you would get some responses from but you didn't
[15:39] Speaker 2: hear from it all. I know it's you know, it's
[15:40] Speaker 2: an English speaking world you're sharing this with. I assume
[15:43] Speaker 2: I don't know if you've sent it to in other
[15:46] Speaker 2: languages or other parts of the world or not. But
[15:49] Speaker 2: are there parts of the world you would expect to
[15:51] Speaker 2: get responses from that you didn't get.
[15:53] Speaker 3: I haven't looked at that actually as yet. But yes,
[15:56] Speaker 3: it is English speaking and so you know, it's primarily UK, States, Canada,
[16:02] Speaker 3: et cetera. But we are getting responses globally from the
[16:07] Speaker 3: from those people who speak English elsewhere. But it is, yeah,
[16:11] Speaker 3: it's it's not representative of the whole globe unfortunately, and
[16:14] Speaker 3: I think it would be interesting to explore the you know,
[16:18] Speaker 3: the cross cultural differences in a bit more considered way.
[16:22] Speaker 3: One of the interesting things though, is that you know,
[16:25] Speaker 3: in the UK, up until recently, there's some accounts now
[16:29] Speaker 3: on the south coast because of our climate is changing,
[16:31] Speaker 3: that we don't get prayingmancis in this country. And yet
[16:35] Speaker 3: people in the UK commonly report these encounter experiences, and
[16:40] Speaker 3: so that that is of interest. You know, there's there's
[16:43] Speaker 3: no real good reason from a from a zoological perspective
[16:47] Speaker 3: for people to have these kinds of encounters because they're
[16:51] Speaker 3: not in our in our common worldview, right, other than
[16:57] Speaker 3: in in some kind of archetypal or perhaps like mimetic way.
[17:02] Speaker 3: So there's some interesting questions that do arise from these
[17:06] Speaker 3: encounters in the UK in and of itself.
[17:09] Speaker 2: Wow, that's that's interesting. Well, I was out among my
[17:12] Speaker 2: own prayinggmantis is today keeping an eye on them. There
[17:15] Speaker 2: are sunbathing and laying around naked, and I like keeping
[17:19] Speaker 2: an eye and make sure they're safe. And I'm hoping
[17:22] Speaker 2: that someday they'll put in a good word for me
[17:24] Speaker 2: when the big overlords land in their silver spaceships. I'm casty,
[17:29] Speaker 2: sort of, not entirely.
[17:32] Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
[17:36] Speaker 1: one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
[17:39] Speaker 1: dot com for more

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