We Investigate History Channel’s ‘Project Blue Book’ and Have a Talk with a Viking Seer at Comic Con 2018

Last year the History Channel went big with their presentations at Comic Con.  They had a freaking viking funeral out on the harbor and it was a huge production to watch unfold.  I’m guessing something of that magnitude is probably logistically crazy to put on, so I’m not too surprised they seemed to scale things back this year. That being said, they still had some innovative activations.  Their primary focus seemed to be on the return of the hit series “Vikings” and the promotion of their new series “Project Blue Book.”  Naturally, we visited both activations.  Check them out down below.

First let’s talk about the show relevant to our interests.  “Project Blue Book” is a new series from producer Robert Zemeckis that delves into the real-life government investigation of UFOs and extraterrestrials in the ’50s and ’60s.  The project was launched by the U.S. Airforce and spearheaded by astrophysicist Josef Allen Hynek.  The new series looks to be taking a dramatized look at the events that were explored by Hynek and has a real ’50s X-Files style vibe to it. The series will star Aiden Gillen as Hynek and Neal McDonough as the General who sends him on his quest and comes to see Hynek as a potential problem. You can check out the trailer down below.

In the activation we were invited to take part in an interview that was supposed to replicate the type of interviews that were given during the Project Blue Book investigations.  We sat down with two interviewers who questioned my encounter and tried to determine whether or not I was a dirty Commie.  After the interview they would give your description of events to an artist who would attempt to recreate what you saw.  Unfortunately,  I didn’t have a cool story, but I did have a lame UFO sighting I was able to share.  I told the investigators about the time I was in the mountains late at night and saw a light darting back and forth across the sky in a very irregular way.  It was riveting. But that actually happened to me and it did freak me out, so it stuck with me.

With my interview complete, I was guided by the General into a special debriefing room where there were three walls that lit up and displayed artist renderings from events that were investigated during the ’50s and ’60s.  Along with the renderings we heard audio from the show describing the event and it was all really chilling.  Afterwards we were moved into the command center.

Here we were instructed to send our own personal message out into space for any potential extraterrestrials to read. They didn’t exactly explain how this was happening, but according to their site my message is now 10 million miles away.  I’m guessing they didn’t actually do anything with the message.  And what was my message?  “You are not alone.”  Overall I thought this was a pretty cool set-up and found it to be actually really creepy and got me interested in seeing how this show is going to turn out.

After our alien investigation we went and sat with the Seer at History Channel’s “Vikings” activation.  If you’ve never watched the show, surprise, it’s about vikings.

For “Vikings” this year they had brought the character of the Seer to the convention.  The Seer is basically like an oracle who does prophecies and all that, but also has the misfortune of being disfigured and blind.  Truly ironic.  The process for the activation was pretty simple.  First we were ushered into the tent by this creepy fellow who beckoned us in with a most unsettling finger gesture.

Then inside the tent we sat dangerously close to the Seer who then used runes to divine our future.  We were told to ask either questions about the show or personal questions.  Since, I haven’t watched the show since season one I decided to ask a personal question.  I could only think of two: A question about my financial future or a question about whether or not Brock Lesnar would actually give up the Universal Title.  I decided to go with the boring financial question and let’s just say, I think I’ll be doing pretty good next year.

It was a simple activation, but the guy playing the Seer was excellent and really great at responding with off the cuff stuff.  The whole experience was a fun mood piece, but a huge departure from a viking funeral.