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Interview-Alternate Perceptions Magazine, May 2016


An Interview with:
Jorge Martin:
An Exclusive Interview with Reinerio (Rey) Hernandez of the Dr. Edgar Mitchell Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial Encounters

by: Brent Raynes






Rey Hernandez (Left) and Dr. Edgar Mitchell (Right)


Reinerio (Rey) Hernandez: Rey is one of the four Co-Founders of FREE (The Dr. Edgar Mitchell Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial Encounters). The other four co-founders are the late Dr. Edgar Mitchell, Dr. Rudy Schild, an Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics at Harvard University, and researcher Mary Rodwell. The Executive Director of FREE is Dr. Rudy Schild. Rey and his entire family are “Experiencers” of UFO related contact with non-human intelligence and all have seen many UFO crafts close up. Rey has also had a series of NDE related events over a three day period, Dec 21-23, 2012. Previous to these events Rey was an atheist and a material rationalist. He has since undergone a total and complete transformation and is deeply spiritual, a firm believer in a universal creator, and that humans are eternal spiritual beings. He is currently employed as an Estate Tax Attorney with the IRS, US Dept of Treasury. He was previously an Adjunct Professor for 6 years at the New School for Social Research and the City University of New York. He was also the Director of the Center for a Sustainable Urban Environment at the City University of New York and the Director of the Office of Community Environmental Planning for the City of New York. He has attended Rutgers College, Cornell University and was a Ph.D. Candidate at U.C. Berkeley in City and Regional Planning. He was also the recipient of a National Science Foundation Ph.D. Fellowship at U.C. Berkeley. Rey resides with his family in Miami, Florida.



Brent Raynes: You're the co-founder of FREE, the Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial Encounters. How did this all begin?

Reinerio Hernandez: On the website I've posted about some of my experiences. It all started in March of 2012 and it was a miraculous healing that occurred in our living room where basically we were going to euthanize our dog the next day because she had a stroke and became totally paralyzed. My wife had been praying all night and then that morning, when she went to carry the dog downstairs to go to the bathroom, she saw like a little UFO craft in the corner of our living room. It was two feet wide by three feet in height. It looked like an upside down U, metallic looking, with two green lights in the middle of it.

She knelt down and started praying, at which time the two green lights started blinking. Then after that point she wasn't panicked but she wanted me to come downstairs, so she started yelling for me. After two minutes of me totally ignoring her she went upstairs and yanked me out of bed. She didn't tell me what it was about. We were walking down the stairs and she was like maybe three stairs ahead of me and when she got to like the middle of the living room I was almost at the bottom step and she totally disappeared with the dog. It was like she was gone instantly.

Then it was total mind control that took place. I was like someone who didn't care that my wife disappeared. I turned to the corner of our living room and floating about four feet from the floor was what I call a plasma being. I call it a being because it controlled my mind.

It was two to three feet wide by about a foot and a half in height. Rectangular shaped, but it didn't have any edges because it was pure plasma – pure energy. It was multi-colored and translucent. Then I did something that was totally irrational. I looked at that plasma being, I waved my hand at it, and I said to myself, 'Ah bullshit. This is what you got me up for is this crap?' Then I turned around and I walked upstairs and I laid down in bed and immediately I was blacked out. And then 45 minutes later I woke up and now I was fully conscious and I remembered everything that had happened, and so I was like 'Holy cow, what the heck just happened?'

I ran downstairs and I stopped right at the same spot where I had stopped the first time and my wife, at the same spot where she was taken, all of a sudden reappeared and she was dancing in the middle of the living room floor saying 'The angels cured her! The angels cured her! Hallelujah Hallelujah!' And then the dog was running around the whole living room, jumping up and down, but even before she became paralyzed the dog was like an old lady with very severe arthritis, barely walking, and now she was like a teenager jumping up and down. I was like, 'What the heck just took place?'

I asked my wife what had happened. She said, 'Well you were right there. The angels cured her.' I said, 'I didn't see any angels.' I described what I had seen. She said, 'I didn't see that,' and she described something else. So it was two totally different stories, and it wasn't until many months later – maybe six months later – that someone told me about this concept called missing time.

For my wife, she had gone downstairs. She had looked down and all of a sudden the dog was completely cured. She has no concept of those 45 minutes where she was gone. And that was our first experience.

Brent Raynes: You hear a lot of stories like of a wife who is seeing an alien by the bed or a craft right outside the bedroom window and she tries desperately to wake up the husband but it's a futile effort. He seems to be totally out of it, which is something that's abnormal for him. In your case it was similar, but far more interactive.

Reinerio Hernandez: Yes. It was sort of like, 'All right kid, we're going to put you to sleep and in 45 minutes we're going to wake you up after we're done with your wife and dog. Then you can come back.' So that was the initial experience, and there were numerous ones afterwards. Afterwards I just went crazy on the internet looking for answers. Previously I had had zero interest in the paranormal, ET's, UFOs and stuff, and even back then in the very beginning I didn't make a definite association with UFOs, though I thought initially that it was something paranormal.

But over the months that followed, we had experiences that established with certainty that we were dealing with what is known as UFO phenomena because in July 2012 my wife saw her first UFO and later in August she had a series of up close UFO encounters and saw 3 very tall human looking beings dressed in white monk-type robes floating about 15 feet away from her for about 30 seconds.

In August 2012, I was outside one night waiting for a friend to come by and give me some papers and while waiting I had remembered about this guy that I had seen on Youtube who supposedly called down a UFO in the daylight. There was like a little tiny speck of dust that he recorded with his camcorder. So I said to myself what the heck and I gave it a try. I wasn't really very serious at first, but then I started to get into it and I got very serious. I was like, “I want to see the beautiful angelic craft that my wife saw, the beings she described as angels, how you cured our beloved dog. She described you as having stain glass windows like those of our church.” And so I went on and on for awhile like this. Then I stopped and turned around and saw nothing. Then I repeated it again and repeated it again, trying to call down this craft. Then after 15 minutes I said to myself, “I'm freaking going crazy. Here I am calling down a UFO craft. I need to get rid of this stuff or else I'm going to go insane.”

Then immediately this gigantic football stadium sized craft appears like five feet from the roof of my neighbor's house from the bottom of the craft. It went up like a 100 meters and back like 600 meters, like two or three football fields it went back. Then I heard a voice, in my head, in my daughter's voice say, “Daddy, you and mommy have seen UFOs. Next time you guys see a UFO you call me. All right daddy? Don't forget. Don't forget.”

My daughter never said that. It was these ET's that put it in my head. So here I am at the window calling my recently turned 10-year-old daughter to come outside to see this football stadium sized craft that was less than 30 feet away from me.

A normal parent would not do that, but it was total mind control. So then my daughter and I were out there for 15 minutes watching this huge, gigantic craft.

Now it wasn't materialized. Let me explain to you what it looked like. It was like thousands and thousands of oblong, which are very lengthy circles, streaks of light, that formed the whole skeleton of the craft, and then inside the craft you saw all these white plasma streaks moving around, like energy all over the place, and it was semi-translucent.

The night was completely cloudy. You couldn't see a star in the sky.

So 15 minutes later my friend comes with his wife and their 17-year-old daughter. They leave their car right in the middle of the cul de sac and they run to us and my friend says “Rey, what the heck is that?” I said, “You know what the heck it is.” He goes on, “Oh no, it can't be. It can't be.” So then he tried to explain it away with crazy hypotheses. Then after like a couple of minutes I started laughing because I wasn't going to tell him that I called it down. I knew what it was, and I was basically in my head telling these entities, “You better come up with some better stuff than this because they don't believe you.”

Then all of a sudden, the light patterns completely changed. Those oblong streaks of light just immediately stopped and they were replaced by thousands and thousands of stars that were like 10 times the size of Venus. They were flickering on and off about 2-3 times per second. Then they would be powering up and powering down, powering up and powering down, and then everyone knew what happened. Then my friend immediately says, “Oh we've got to go. We've got things to do.” And in my head it was like, “What, are you freaking crazy man? If you take a picture of this we'll be on the cover of Time magazine for the next 20 years.” But no, I did not say this. This is what I should have said if I had my rational mind. Instead I acted the opposite like it was no big deal that he left at that time. That's what a logical mind should have said. But I did not do this. I instead said, “I understand. I know you are very busy.”

Our minds were totally under control. Then after 45 minutes of seeing this craft with my daughter, I felt like I was being attacked by hundreds of mosquitoes.

So I grabbed my daughter's hand and I said, “Let's get inside. These mosquitoes are killing me.” So we go inside the house and my wife was acting like drugged up. I know something happened with her. Maybe she was taken during that time period, and the dog, maybe to see how the healing was doing. The door was wide open and she did not even come out late at night looking for my daughter or asking what I was doing outside. I found her waiting in the living room.

Then my daughter goes, “Daddy, there were no mesquites outside,” and it was like a hypnotist snapped his fingers and I woke up and I was now fully conscious and in my head I was like, “Holy cow! What the heck just happened!” I ran and grabbed my camera , I grabbed my video recorder, and I ran outside and poof, it was completely gone.

Brent Raynes: Did you have any places on your skin from where it had felt like mosquitoes?

Reinerio Hernandez: No. Nothing whatsoever. No bumps, little rashes. Nothing. It was just in my head that I was led to believe that I was being attacked by mosquitoes.

Later we had the MUFON state director who did a presentation down here in Miami and he talked about this guy who used to work for NASA who was in the woods, out in the Everglades or something like that. He had an audio recording of the NASA engineer. The man was with a friend and they saw a big gigantic orb that was floating a few feet above the ground and as they got closer to the light, he said all of a sudden they were swarmed by thousands of mosquitoes. Then they started running and then all of a sudden the mosquitoes dissipated and then he turned around and there was nothing there. It was completely gone.

So he suspected that those mosquitoes were faked as well. When I heard that story I realized that was how they did that to me as well.

Brent Raynes: It sounds like what are called screen memories, like someone who believes that they had just seen a beautiful deer at the side of the road and then they had missing time, and then they find out that there was more to that memory.

Those are definitely some major experiences.

Reinerio Hernandez: It gets even better. That's just a warm up.

Then the next big thing that happened, either that same night, where I had seen that huge craft with my daughter and my three friends, or the day after, somehow they led me to an NDE video and then I went and ordered like 40 books from Amazon and then for four months straight that's all I did, 12-18 hours a day. All I was doing was just reading these NDE books, one after another, and that occurred for four months straight. My wife thought I was completely insane. The whole time she was telling me that I needed to go to a psychiatrist, that they've got medications for this. But for me it was like I needed to finish the next book. Then when there were like 5 books left, I would order 20 or 30 more from Amazon. I must have read several hundred of books on the subject. I became an NDE expert.

Meanwhile, I never spoke to anybody about it until December 21st, December 22nd, and December 23rd, 2012. Those three days were the first three days that I ever mentioned NDEs and I hit the lottery. Everyone I spoke to had had an NDE. The first one was my daughter's pediatrician, then the next person was this total stranger at church, and then the last person was my father, and my father had had a life review. He pointed upstairs and he said, “Up there time doesn't exist.” I said, “What do you mean time doesn't exist?” He said, “I was up there at least 20 or 30 years.” I said, “What do you mean you were up there 20 or 30 years?” He said, “That's how long it took God to show me all of the good things I've done in my life and all of the bad things.” He was given what they call a life review. He said he experienced all of these things from his own mind like he was inside the body of say a little kid – lets say he was 13 years old and he was beating the crap out of this kid on the ground. He was reliving that, not only from his mind as a 13 year old but also the other boy who was receiving the punishment. He went on to tell me that there is no hell, that God is not vindictive, that God is pure love, that God is also educational – and this was coming from someone who I had thought his whole life was a total atheist. I had only seen him in church twice.

The reason I had told him about what had happened on Friday and Saturday, was because he was very, very ill, he was bedridden, and I thought how he could die any day, so I felt that I needed to tell him. My father did die a few months ago, but this experience occurred in December 2012.

So driving home after leaving my father's house where he told me of his NDE, I looked up in the sky and I said to God and to the ET's, “Congratulations. In a four month period you have managed to totally transform an atheist, material rationalist into someone who has more belief in the spirit world and a universal creator than any Catholic priest in Miami.”

Then after that experience I became very, very psychic and intuitive and I was able to differentiate who has had paranormal experiences. It was like I could feel it. It was almost like being a magnet. I was drawn to these people. That occurred pretty much over the next year after that – year and a half. Now I don't feel it so much anymore. It occurs very rarely,

Then fast forward to May of 2013. I was on my way driving to downtown Miami, in the middle of a traffic jam at 8:30 in the morning, and all of a sudden I got ethereally pulled out of my body. That had never happened to me before, where I was inside this type of reality where I was pure consciousness. There was no body, nothing around me. It was just my mind, and then all of a sudden, there appeared all around me – I was inside a huge spinning wheel. The wheel was gigantic and inside it there were spokes and inside each spoke were different contact modalities, and that's what you'll find in our website, Contact Modalities. And these were different methods or mechanisms where individuals are piercing the veil and are having contact with these non-human sentient beings, like UFO contact, NDEs, channeling, mystical meditation, out-of-body experiences, shamanic journeys, remote viewing, and that sort of thing. It was all these different topic areas that were inside a different spoke of the wheel that was spinning around slowly.

Then I understood that all of these things were being looked at by humans as separate but in reality they're not separate. It's all one and what was holding all of this together is what human's call consciousness, i.e., some type of advanced physics that we don't know yet.

Then it wasn't a voice that I heard but it was like information coming inside my head, and the information was that I needed to inform humanity of the relationship between them, these ET's, the spirit world, and consciousness, and that I will be needing assistance, and there are two criteria for that assistance. This is not about making money and secondly I'm going to be needing people with minimal ego.

Then poof, I was back in the car in the middle of the traffic jam. When I got home, in late afternoon, I got an email from Mary Rodwell. I don't know if you've heard of who she is.

Brent Raynes: Yes, she's an Australian researcher.

Reinerio Hernandez: Right. Mary has been working with experiencers for over thirty years and she has a book entitled Awakening which is to me probably the best experiencer book that exists out there by far. Nothing comes close to it, but yet no one knows about it because she is in Australia.

So anyway I get an email from her and she goes, “Dear Rey, I am sorry that I'm responding to an email that you sent six months earlier, but I just got your email today.” So I responded back and I said, “I didn't even tell you about the NDE stuff and all of these other paranormal type experiences that I haven't told you, and what happened today” - and I told her a little about it. She went, “Oh my God, Rey. We need to talk on Skype.”

So we chatted on Skype and she introduced herself and what she does. What happened was is that six months earlier I had no one to talk to. My wife really doesn't want to discuss these things, like they're angels and that's it. End of discussion. You can't talk to your friends, so I had no one to talk to. So I sent an email out to 10 major names like Whitley Strieber, Stan Friedman, Mary Rodwell, people like that. I was just hoping to get someone to talk to, you know? Am I going crazy? What's going on?

So Mary responded to that email I had sent six months earlier. I asked Mary, “Do you often go back 6 months to check your email?” She said, “Rey, I can barely deal with one day's email. I get hundreds of emails. How in the world am I going to go back 6 months?” So I asked, “How do you explain what happened?” She started laughing and she said, “Rey, by now you ought to know what happened.” That these entities waited until I had this experience and then they released it to Mary.

After two or three hours of talking to Mary, we agreed to continue our conversation later, as it was very late at night for me, and the very next day at 9:30 in the morning I get a telephone call. “Hello. Is this Rey Hernandez?” I go yes, who is this? “This is Dr. Rudy Schild.” I didn't know this man. Who? “I'm Dr. Rudy Schild, I'm an emeritus professor of astrophysics at Harvard. Mary sent me your telephone number and email. And she had sent me the experience that you had in that type of matrix reality and I just want to tell you that what you experienced is 100% correct and that Dr. Edgar Mitchell and I have been working over the last 20 years on the quantum hologram theory of consciousness in physics and that theory explains exactly what you went through.” Then he went on in detail explaining that and then he told me that he had been thinking of writing an article that he was going to tentatively title The Modern Miracles, on exactly what had happened to me, and that there are numerous ways to pierce the veil that humans just cannot comprehend but that advanced physics can explain.

So he calls those The Modern Miracles. Then he started spoon feeding me advanced quantum physics so that I would be able to understand it.

We spoke for over 90 minutes. At the end of the 90 minutes, he said, “Rey, these ET's they told you to do something. I volunteer to help you out. I'll be your scientific adviser.” I said, “Rudy, I have no idea what I'm going to be doing.” He said, “When you figure it out, I'll be here. I'll be your scientific adviser. As a matter of fact, write down this telephone number.” He said, “This is the telephone of my mentor.” So I said, “Who is your mentor?” I'm thinking to myself this guy is a retired professor of astrophysics from Harvard. Who is his mentor? He said, “Dr. Edgar Mitchell.”

I knew who Edgar was. I was like scared of calling him. Rudy and I hung up and we agreed to talk later. Like four hours later, I give Edgar a call, like late in the afternoon. He goes, “Hi Rey, I've been expecting your phone call. Rudy had sent me an email early in the morning and then a short while ago we had an extensive conversation about you. Rudy said that you're someone who is serious and that I need to talk to. You only live about 90 minutes from my house. I would like to invite you over. Are you available tomorrow, at 10 o'clock in the morning?”

Brent Raynes: Wow, you were plugged in.

Reinerio Hernandez: Plugged in, man. [we laughed] Then the next morning, I was at Edgar's house 10 a.m. sharp. I spent the whole day at his house and it was like I was in a museum. He was telling me all of this stuff, like when he was a little kid, his favorite pony. He even had his baby clothes that he told me about. He showed me pictures of them. He showed me pictures of the house, some pictures that his mother drew. He told me what his living room looked like. He showed me some of the pictures of the Apollo astronauts that they actually drew. One was sort of like a painting of major stuff that one of the astronauts did for him. He talked about how he grew up. How his parents owned two farming stores in Roswell. I think one was on the north side and the other was on the south side. He was there when the Roswell crash occurred. I think he was a senior in high school before leaving for Carnegie Mellon University. He told me that he had taken flying lessons at the local airport. He said he would help out at the airport and be paid not in cash but in flight lessons. Robert Goddard, the famous rocket scientist and inventor was just a short ride from his house where he lived. He knew the guy. He told me what happened on his flight to the moon, that shamanic type of experience, and he told me that most of the astronauts have told him of paranormal experiences out in space, and that many of the cosmonauts have had many paranormal experiences as well. But that's not widely circulated. When he returned to Roswell he was a national hero and then all of a sudden all of these old timers were coming out of the wood work. “Edgar, can we talk to you?” He said, “Sure.” In private, you know? Then he got to talk to tons of folks that he knew, or the children of these people, and they were telling him all of these stories about the Roswell crash.

So that was the first time he pulled all of the pieces together and became interested in ufology. And he just went on and on with one story after another, and this astronaut and that astronaut, and I was like freaking out. I didn't really know this guy and he was telling me all of this personal information.

At the end of it all, he goes, “Rey, your ET's gave you a mandate.” Like implying he's got his own and I'm like, “Holy cow...” I told him, “Edgar, they didn't give me any mandate. They didn't even tell me what to do. It was like broad, nebulous stuff. I have no idea.”

He said, “Don't worry. You'll figure it out. It always works that way. You always figure it out.” Like something personal with him as well, you know? Then he said, “Rudy and I have already discussed it and we are recommending to you that you form an organization and this is an organization to implement what these ET's gave you and Rudy and I will be your scientific advisers.”

He said, “Don't worry. When you're ready let us know.” So we agreed to continue chatting and over the next two and a half years I had been to Edgar's house more than 20 times.

That same night, I sent Mary an email and then we got on Skype and I told her, “Mary, you won't believe what just happened.” That is how it all started. The four of us established this organization. Me, Rudy, Edgar, and Mary. Mary came up with the name, Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial Encounters (FREE).

Brent Raynes: What has FREE been doing during its active and yet short lifetime thus far?

Reinerio Hernandez: Well, a vast majority of researchers in this field, as you know, are strictly focusing on the "nuts and bolts" approach, focusing on sightings and the historical documentation of governmental documents. However, the focus has NOT been on the experiencer.  Even when these mainstream researchers focus on the experiencer of direct contact with non human intelligence, they do not focus on the vast majority of topics that our FREE survey has focused on. For example, one of our primary areas for questioning was on the topic of psychological transformation of the experiencer--  how have these individuals changed after these experiences? Another area that distinguishes our work is our focus on these areas: paranormal experiences, psychic aspects, ethereal experiences, the spiritual aspects of this phenomena, the family history of contact, and other categories such as OBEs, NDE, Matrix type contact, etc.  We also asked hundreds of questions that are not normally part of field investigations done by MUFON. 

Finally, many researchers focus on one on one investigations. Our approach is not one on one field research but first conducting sophisticated scientific and large anonymous surveys, now over 3,000 participants, and then conducting anonymous interviews with the top 300 cases.  We are also conducting both quantitative and qualitative data analysis through various academic based software--  SPSS for the quantitative analysis and NVivo for the qualitative data analysis.  

Brent Raynes: Rey, I most sincerely applaud you and your fine organization for the serious and industrious scientific and academic handling that you are bestowing upon this very complex, controversial, and challenging field. I recognize that this is certainly a very difficult area of research and investigation for one to properly tackle. To successfully accomplish your objectives is going to require a tremendous amount of work and dedication, which you've already devoted very considerable time and effort towards, and so from my perspective it looks like you and your team of professionals with impeccable credentials are already more than well on your way to producing major accomplishments in a field that sadly, all too often, is riddled with sensationalistic and amatuerish antics and documentation.

I wish you the best of luck and continued success with your ongoing efforts and endeavors.


Thursday, March 28, 2024