Original subtitles

And I'll start it up...

[switch clicks]

[continuous electronic tone]

-...and we'll start generating. -[dial clicks]

[quivering electronic sounds]

[sounds echo and intensify]

-[switch clicks] -[electronic sounds continue]

[sounds fade]

John has a very special mission in life.

He is trying to contact aliens.

[rhythm of taps and beeps playing]

It was started by myself. My grandfather helped me.

I lived with my grandparents in a small cottage in Northern Michigan.

I started building the electronic equipment to make contact

with whatever might be out there beyond the Earth.

It grew to encompass an entire bedroom.

That equipment continued to grow.

In the next two years, it was migrating into the living room.

It became more and more massive.

[music intensifies, bass synth swells]

Most everything I did was self-taught.

I envisioned an idea and completed that vision,

built it into a physical reality.

I was always seeking to explore,

to look beyond what we have here.

I pictured many alien worlds,

imagining what it would be like to make contact.

The moment of sharing extreme knowledge and thoughts

and communication with another species,

is just beyond anything most of us even imagine.

[music fades]

I seem to be picking up a radio signal.

[radio crackles]

[device humming quietly]

Okay, fine.

[humming continues]

[indistinct voice on radio]

[slow, high-pitched ping]

[John] I decided that the best way to try and make contact

was to broadcast a signal into outer space.

I thought the best signal would be music.

[high-pitched ping repeats]

Technically, we were achieving the actual transmissions

from a large tower out in front of my grandparents' home.

[high-pitched ping repeats]

[high-pitched ping repeats]

I sent music into space because it represents

a certain, uh, universal language.

And I'm talking about non-commercial music as such.

I'm talking about jazz, uh, electronic music...

Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Harmonia,

and there were many others.

African music,

Eastern music, which covers a broad area.

Reggae, Afrobeat...

And one of the things I really liked to send out was gamelan music.

It was a really beautiful form.

[reporter] John Shepherd has devoted all his time, money, and energies

to a personal search for outer space aliens.

[John on news report] I send cultural or creative music out into space.

I beam it out for approximately

half a million, million miles out into space.

About twice the distance of the moon.

This is Project STRAT Earth Station One,

broadcasting to you from beautiful Northwestern Michigan.

You are listening to the group Harmonia.

["Watussi" by Harmonia playing]

[electronic pulsing, music fades]

This is Project STRAT Earth Station One signing off from another broadcast day.

If you ETs are out there,

we'd like you to tune in again tomorrow night at nine p.m.

for more cultural music.

This is John Shepherd.

[gamelan music playing]

[John] I don't remember much about my mom.

Things were rough in the early years.

It wasn't the best home environment to raise me in.

My dad left while I was just born,

and my grandma felt sorry for me and took me with her.

I had very little contact with my mother.

She was always a little different than I was.

Almost... Not alien. That's not the right word, really.

Just different.

[gamelan music continues]

The fondest memories were after my grandparents adopted me.

Took care of me, raised me.

[music ends]

[faint traffic noise]

Sometimes taking the course that I have in my life and the path

is like a... maybe a lonely mountain road

to some higher elevation peaks, to see the view,

to check out something most people don't see.

So, you tend to go it alone more.

You don't have much company in this.

[gentle ambient music playing]

[John] I set up this whole operation inside of a small cottage

in the middle of a kind of sparsely populated area.

Small town, you know, rural.

My lifestyle, relative to the local lifestyle,

was quite, quite removed, quite different.

[dog barks]

My mind was in space and in other realms,

where my body was in this local community,

this little... real quiet, peaceful area.

But my mind was traveling, traveling the cosmos.

[ambient music continues]

Uh, probably 12, 14 years old, I realized that I was a little different,

that I was gay.

Growing up gay in Michigan was rather difficult.

That's one of the tougher realities, and especially in a rural area.

You don't get as much, well, shall we say, understanding.

You don't get as much of that.

I think the real tough part to deal with sometimes is loneliness.

You don't go right out and, so to speak, date somebody for very long

that they don't find out you're a little different.

To find someone that is on the wavelength that I am on

and be able to share my life with that person in any degree or way

is nearly impossible. Although I believe it exists.

I believe for everybody there's someone.

[radio static and electronic bleeps]

["Notre Dame" by Harmonia playing]

As time went on, the equipment got consuming most of the house.

It became obvious that we needed more room.

My grandmother and I got together and pooled our funds to build an addition.

It had plenty of room to expand.

The project could be fully realized.

[mechanical hissing]

[music continues]

[whirring]

[electrical crackling]

[male reporter] John Shepherd calls his project "STRAT."

That's an acronym for Special Telemetry Research and Tracking.

[electronic device powering up]

There are 60,000 volts running through his basement,

powering a signal that's beamed straight out into space.

[radio whine and static]

[John] So, I built this two-story-high deep-space transmitter, basically,

a tuned circuit resonator.

It allowed me to reach deeper and further out into space.

Project STRAT had become a major operation.

I was busy developing other kinds of devices for communication.

I never gave up trying to make contact.

And the excitement, for me, was always there,

always the anticipation that something might happen.

We're now going to bring you some Afropop to warm up your evening.

["Harusi Ya MK" by D.O. Misiani and Shirati Jazz playing]

[singer singing in Swahili]

[John] It was always an exploration. It was always a sort of a dream state.

So, I kept going. I kept doing that throughout...

well, 25, 30 years of my life.

[music fades]

Can't say I found a lot of... hard data

that would be of great significance, necessarily, on the UFO front.

But as far as inspiration, creative ideas,

it gave me the chance to do all of that

and to share the results with people, with others.

And it filled my life. It gave it something, meaning.

What remains of Project STRAT is what's stored in this building.

A lot of the equipment is disassembled for storage,

but it's still here in its spirit, you might say.

And this was... [blows] ...one of the data mapping consoles.

[blows]

There were endless components, all kinds of unique things.

Satellite communication equipment,

high-power microwave tubes that used to transmit microwaves.

So, it's lots and lots of stuff that was all parts of the lab,

including the high-voltage transmitter accelerator

that we used for sending signals into space.

So, these are just the remnants, or little leftover pieces of thought.

[chuckles]

[gentle ambient music playing]

Well, having had to give up, due to lack of funds,

was deeply frustrating, almost depressing.

But also realizing that maybe it was time to move on.

I never really had any serious boyfriends

or anyone that I went steady with, that sort of thing.

But in 1993,

I met somebody I really love very much named John Litrenta.

We were both at a club one evening. That's where we met.

When he first walked in the door of the club, I was still there...

I was quite... taken by his appearance.

His look... the fact that he was different.

There was an attraction almost immediately to the way he looked.

[John Shepherd] When I first met John, I had this impression that,

"This fellow's really kind of different. He gives me an interesting impression.

I think I wanna meet this guy."

It just came over me to go ahead and get up the courage

to go over and say hello and introduce myself, at least.

And after that, it just seemed like...

we were, well, we were off and running a bit, I'd say.

We started discussing music

and some of the more obscure things we love about music.

John's character is really warm.

What I really like about him

is that warmth and that understanding that he has.

Once I met him and realized that he was that sort of person:

warm, loving, sensitive, patient.

I was like, "Wow, that's really... That's really something.

You don't find that every day."

And that's what everyone, I think, in this world to some degree seeks

and doesn't always find it.

I was one of the lucky ones.

I feel I found it. Found it in John.

So, contact has been made.

[ambient music continues]

[music continues]

My interest is in finding out the unknown,

and the unknown is just that, unknown.

And you search, and you continue searching because of your desire,

because of that you know there's something there.