The man who claims he brought pastors from around the country to a secret UFO disclosure meeting in the Tennessee mountains has revealed what he believes is a missed clue in the latest batch of files declassified by the Pentagon.
In February, six influential Christian leaders met with a group of former government insiders and military personnel who allegedly had access to classified UFO data and knew about the Trump Administration’s plans to disclose the information publicly.
Evangelist Tony Merkel claims he was contacted by these operatives, and he helped organize the gathering in a private cabin hidden in the mountains.
Merkel, Pastor Joseph Bishop Zupetz and Alan DiDio of the Revival Nation Church were among the influencers in attendance who said they were shown several images of extraterrestrial beings and UFOs, including one of a squid-like alien with long limbs.
Merkel described how the pastors were shown specific images of beings, which he believed appeared to be ‘interdimensional’ in nature, telling the Daily Mail that the creatures seemed to be ‘shifting’ in the pictures,
In other images he claimed he and the pastors reviewed, having both a physical body but vanishing ‘between realms’ at the same time, like a ghost or spirit.
‘The thing that stood out the most to me, I would say, is how physically present some of this stuff was. And then some of the other stuff appearing to be almost in a middle ground… almost like it’s physical, but not totally physical,’ Merkel described.
‘That’s how I took what I was looking at, because what I was looking at didn’t seem like it was all physically here.’
Merkel compared an image he saw of one object to a video of a craft spotted over the Atlantic Ocean in 2020 (above), which was revealed in the July 10 UFO files release which described it as a ‘somewhat deformed balloon’
Images included in the UFO files released by the Pentagon have been compared to angels flapping their wings
Merkel said the images allegedly shown to the pastors reinforced his understanding of a 1967 US Air Force document which was declassified in the government’s July 10 UFO files drop.
Merkel has claimed that his theory of ‘interdimensional beings’ is supported by a single page from the Air Force’s review of Project Blue Book, a program that investigated the nature and origin of UFOs in the 1950s and 1960s.
He cited a specific passage which stated that the military could find no evidence that sightings of strange craft were piloted by ‘space travelers.’
However, the document added that an investigator, whose name was redacted, eliminated all the other causes for these sightings, ‘leaving him “extra-terrestrial” as the only one remaining in many cases.’
‘That doesn’t make sense to us,’ Merkel said. ‘But, if you’re thinking back in 1967 to now, is it possible that the original idea of extraterrestrial didn’t mean space travelers?’
Merkel’s argument hinges on the document appearing to treat ‘space travelers’ and ‘extra-terrestrials’ as two separate concepts.
If the Air Force used ‘extra-terrestrial’ simply to mean a visitor from another planet, he reasoned, its rejection of ‘space travelers’ would appear to contradict the investigator’s conclusion.
Merkel therefore believes the older term may have referred more broadly to a non-human intelligence (NHI) existing beyond the physical world, or in another dimension, rather than a being that traveled to Earth through space.
However, the document does not explicitly mention other dimensions, and Merkel’s theory is purely his interpretation of its wording.
The Pentagon began releasing the first files related to UFO encounters and the search for alien life on May 8
Tony Merkel said a private meeting with intelligence officials revealed images of beings described as existing in two places at once (Stock Image)
He claimed some of the beings appeared to be ‘shifting’ in the pictures, simultaneously possessing a physical form while seemingly vanishing ‘between realms’ like a ghost or spirit.
Merkel elaborated that he believes another realm may overlap with physical reality, allowing objects or beings to move between the two.
‘There is something, at least something there, and I think it overlays our reality in a way that’s hard to comprehend,’ he said.
He then connected that belief directly to the wording in the Blue Book document.
Among other images which caught him off guard, Merkel said, was one of a solid, mechanical-looking pill-shaped craft in the sky, visible behind bare tree limbs.
The UFO appeared more rigidly designed than reported sightings of smooth metallic flying saucers recognized in pop culture.
‘It didn’t strike me as something that was nice and perfectly smooth, like you see in sci-fi movies. It seemed like it had intent and a design behind it that just wasn’t so simple to look at.’
Merkel compared the object to a video of a strange craft spotted over the Atlantic Ocean in 2020, which was revealed in the July 10 UFO files release without any significant context, aside from describing it as a ‘somewhat deformed balloon.’
However, Merkel acknowledged that the alleged images lacked enough context to establish what they depicted and that his interdimensional explanation reflected his own interpretation.
‘That’s how I took what I was looking at, because what I was looking at didn’t seem like it was all physically here,’ he said.
In late February, President Trump announced that the Pentagon would be releasing all secret files related to UFOs and the search for alien life, just as the intelligence ‘operators’ had warned Merkel and the pastors he would.
A 1967 document in the Air Force review of Project Blue Book appears call ‘space travelers’ a separate being from ‘extraterrestrials’
Those files began to be released on the Department of War’s website on May 8. So far, five batches of UFO files have been disclosed, containing thousands of documents, videos and pictures supposedly showing unexplained phenomena.
However, critics have widely slammed the releases as containing little to no definitive proof of whether the craft seen are real UFOs or if the US government has made contact with non-human beings.
While members of Congress, including Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee, have claimed he has been shown shocking evidence of alien life during classified briefings, no such evidence has reached the public.
The White House, Pentagon and NASA have maintained for decades that no physical proof of UFOs has ever been found, and the military has dismissed most sightings as common objects such as birds, balloons or camera glitches.
In comparison to what he called the Pentagon’s ‘messy’ release of the UFO files, Merkel called the secret pastor meeting in Tennessee the complete opposite.
‘The meetings were well thought out, well organized. [The operators] knew exactly the information they were trying to share with us. They were prepared to answer questions,’ he shared.
Merkel claimed that none of the information which was disclosed to the pastors has been included in the first four UFO file releases.
That includes an image of another ‘extraterrestrial’ which Zupetz described to the Daily Mail as a humanoid squid-like creature.
‘They were very tall, they had very long appendages, some of them almost looked, and this is a crude way of saying it, almost like humanoid squid-type things,’ Zupetz said in June.
The Daily Mail could not independently confirm that the meetings took place. Merkel said he helped organize two meetings and was in attendance for one of them.
The disclosed UFO files contained information on Project Blue Book, a program that investigated the nature and origin of UFOs in the 1950s and 1960s
A video released in the first wave of UFO files appeared to show a glowing object resembling an ‘eight-pointed star’ with uneven arms that has been compared to a craft from biblical times
The Project Blue Book document has caused Merkel to wonder whether the government uses the word ‘extraterrestrial’ to actually mean something non-human or ‘extra’ that exists in our world, closer to the modern term NHI.
Pictured: Evangelist and podcast host Tony Merkel, who organized the meeting between US pastors and intelligence insiders
Key Trump Administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, chairwoman of the committee to disclose UFO secrets, have both tied the appearances of NHI to biblical entities instead of alien beings.
Luna has repeatedly said witnesses her committee has interviewed have described what they saw as ‘interdimensional’ beings that had similarities to angels in the Bible, defied the laws of physics and were able to move outside of space and time.
Merkel, who examines both religious and paranormal activity on his podcast, argues that the government allowed pop culture and the nation’s growing interest in science fiction in the 1960s to redefine the word extraterrestrial in order to draw attention away from the beings they were secretly investigating for decades.
‘We’ve seen throughout history, governments control narratives. It’s called propaganda. It’s used in every major situation that any government tries. They use propaganda to make sure they control the narrative best they can,’ Merkel said.
‘And so at what level of all this disclosure is purposeful conclusion or purposeful confusion being disseminated?’
