Alien Con Dallas 2019

​AlienCon Dallas 2019 — Sasquatch Syndicate & Dr. Jeff Meldrum Take Texas

After Pasadena, we could have coasted. We didn't.   The momentum from AlienCon 2018 was real, it was documented, and it was pointing somewhere worth going. The Sasquatch Syndicate had proven something in California — that Bigfoot research had a genuine and enthusiastic audience inside the Ancient Aliens universe, that the crossover between cryptozoology and ufology was not a stretch but a natural overlap that audiences were hungry for, and that when you put the right people in front of that crowd something remarkable happens. The question heading into 2019 was not whether to keep going. The question was how to go bigger.

AlienCon had its own answer. For 2019 the History Channel and Mischief Management took the event east for the first time, landing at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, Texas — a venue that is exactly what it sounds like: massive, gleaming, unapologetically Texas, and built for events that intend to make an impression. This was AlienCon's first time in Dallas, and the city received it the way Dallas receives most things it decides it likes — enthusiastically and at full volume. The event sold out. The crowds were enormous. The energy inside that convention center on a Saturday in early October 2019 was the kind of thing you feel before you see it.

There was a strategic reality to navigate going in. AlienCon's programming focus for the 2019 cycle had sharpened around UFOs and UAP disclosure — topics that were genuinely accelerating in mainstream awareness that year and that the History Channel was positioned to capitalize on. Bigfoot was not the marquee subject. The Sasquatch Syndicate was placed in the artist and show alley rather than the main floor, a configuration that reflected AlienCon's UFO-forward priorities for the Dallas run. We understood the logic. We also understood that placement on a floor plan and impact on an audience are two entirely different things, and we had no intention of letting one determine the other.

So we played our strongest card.

What Pasadena had confirmed was that within the Ancient Aliens audience UFOs were the primary draw and Bigfoot was a very close second. The overlap was real and it ran deep. People who spent their weekends consuming Ancient Aliens content were the same people who had grown up wondering about the forests of the Pacific Northwest, who had watched the Patterson-Gimlin footage dozens of times and never quite shaken the question. That audience did not need to be converted. They needed a reason to find us. Dr. Jeff Meldrum gave them one.

Professor of Anatomy and Anthropology at Idaho State University, author of Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, the most credentialed academic voice in Bigfoot research on the planet, and a man with his own established ties to History Channel programming — Dr. Meldrum as a featured special guest at the Sasquatch Syndicate booth was not a minor announcement. It was a statement. And Dallas responded to it exactly the way we hoped. When the doors opened on October 4th and word spread that Dr. Jeff Meldrum was at the Sasquatch Syndicate booth alongside Chuck Geveshausen — signing autographs, taking photos, and engaging with anyone who wanted to talk about footprint morphology, cast analysis, and the science behind the search — the artist alley ceased to be a secondary destination. It became the destination.

The line that formed at our booth was something none of us had fully prepared for. Fans who had been following the Sasquatch Syndicate podcast for months and years finally got to meet Chuck in person — to shake his hand, take a photo, get an autograph, and tell him what the show had meant to them. Those moments are never routine, no matter how many times they happen. Every person who comes through a line like that is bringing something real with them — a story, an encounter of their own, a question they've been sitting with, a simple gratitude for a podcast that made them feel less alone in what they believe. Chuck met every single one of them the same way he always does: with full attention, genuine warmth, and the absolute certainty that the person in front of him matters. Dr. Meldrum, characteristically, brought his own quiet authority to every interaction — patient, precise, and genuinely interested in what fans had to say. The combination of the two of them at the same table was exactly as powerful as we had hoped it would be.

Before the convention floor even opened, the weekend had already started in the best possible way. Giorgio A. Tsoukalos — the face of Ancient Aliens, arguably the most recognizable figure in the entire paranormal research world — sat down with Chuck and the Syndicate crew before the event with his wife Krix. What followed was one of those conversations that has no agenda and no endpoint and is all the better for it. Bigfoot stories, UFO stories, the places where the two worlds intersect and sometimes become indistinguishable from each other — Giorgio is a man of genuine curiosity and genuine warmth, and having that relaxed, unhurried time with him before the doors opened set the tone for everything that followed. Krix was wonderful company and the kind of person who makes you feel like you've known the whole group for years. It was a genuinely great way to start a weekend.

Our booth was placed directly next to Caroline Cory — filmmaker, consciousness researcher, and one of the most thoughtful voices on the AlienCon circuit. Proximity on a convention floor has a way of creating connections that scheduled meetings never quite replicate, and spending time with Caroline across the weekend was one of the unexpected gifts of the Dallas placement. Her work sits at a fascinating intersection of science, consciousness, and the unexplained, and the conversations that flowed between our two booths over three days were exactly the kind of cross-pollination that makes events like AlienCon genuinely valuable beyond the panels and the photo ops.

Richard Dolan — historian, author, and one of the most respected voices in UFO disclosure research — spent time with us at the booth, and what he brought to the conversation was the kind of historical and institutional context that reframes everything else you hear over a convention weekend. Dolan has spent decades documenting the government's relationship with the UFO phenomenon with a rigor and a sourcing discipline that holds up to serious scrutiny. Hearing him talk through that history in a relaxed setting — not a panel, not a presentation, just a conversation at the booth — was genuinely illuminating. The threads between what he researches and what we document in the field are closer than most people realize, and Dallas gave us the space to pull on those threads together.

Nick Pope brought his own dimension to the weekend. Former head of the British Ministry of Defence's UFO desk, author, and one of the most credible official voices on UAP research anywhere in the world — Nick is also, it turns out, excellent company at a hotel bar after a long day on the convention floor. We found ourselves sitting with him over drinks one evening, the kind of conversation that starts with one topic and wanders comfortably through a dozen others before anyone thinks to look at the time. UFO policy, government disclosure, the cultural moment we are all living through as the mainstream world finally begins to take these questions seriously — and inevitably, Bigfoot. Because with Nick Pope, if you give the conversation enough room it always finds its way to the edges of what is known and what remains genuinely unexplained. That is where the best conversations live.

Now — the aluminum foil hat booth. We would be doing this recap a disservice if we didn't address it directly. Somewhere in the vendor hall at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, a booth was doing a brisk and enthusiastic business custom-fitting attendees with aluminum foil hats designed to block government mind control signals. The vendor was not joking. The customers were not joking. The hats were elaborate, personalized, and in some cases genuinely impressive in their construction. This is AlienCon. This is the full spectrum of what happens when you gather every walk of life under one roof around the shared conviction that the official story is incomplete. Sasquatch Syndicate exists in the evidence-based, methodologically rigorous end of this community, and we appreciate that the community is large enough and generous enough to also include the aluminum foil hat booth without anyone batting an eye. That is, honestly, one of the things we love about this world.

The broader AlienCon Dallas lineup was a genuine who's who of the paranormal research world. Beyond the Ancient Aliens constellation of Tsoukalos, Childress, Travis Taylor, Jason Martell, John Brandenburg, Jonathan Young, and Caroline Cory, the event also featured the entire cast of Ghost Hunters and the principals from The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch — giving attendees unprecedented access to one of the most infamous paranormal hotspots on earth. The programming across all three days covered quantum consciousness, ancient megalithic engineering, government UAP investigations, and the possibility of spacetime portals, spread across more than 150 interactive panel discussions in a sold-out convention center humming with the energy of people who are done apologizing for asking big questions.

The time Chuck spent working alongside Dr. Meldrum through the Dallas run extended well beyond the booth and the panels. Over dinners and late evenings at the Aloft Hotel after the convention floor had closed, the two of them logged conversations that Chuck has described as some of the most substantive of his time in this field — discussions about footprint morphology and pressure dynamics, cast analysis and substrate variables, locomotion theory and the proposed ichnotaxon associated with Sasquatch trackways. Dr. Meldrum is, in the truest sense of the word, a teacher. He brought that same rigor and generosity to Dallas that he brings to his laboratory in Pocatello, and the hours spent in those conversations are preserved in the Syndicate archive and reflected in everything the organization has produced since.

What Dallas confirmed, more completely than any previous event, was the philosophical position the Sasquatch Syndicate had been building toward since its earliest days: that cryptozoology, ufology, ancient mysteries, and paranormal research are not separate disciplines operating in isolated silos, but overlapping territories that deserve to be examined together, cross-referenced, and taken seriously as a unified body of human experience that mainstream science has been too slow to engage with. The AlienCon environment was the perfect proving ground for that idea. Researchers, witnesses, skeptics, broadcasters, and fringe theorists occupied the same hallways, the same panels, and the same late-night bar conversations. Sasquatch Syndicate leaned directly into that overlap, and Dallas was the most complete expression of it we had yet managed.

Mischief Management was paying attention. The audience pull developing around the Syndicate's appearances — the lines, the conversations spilling into adjacent aisles, the crossover traffic between the main Ancient Aliens programming and our corner of the show floor — was something the people who produce these events did not miss. What had begun in Santa Clara as a podcast with a speaking slot had become, by Dallas, something the AlienCon production apparatus was actively factoring into its conversations about where the circuit was heading next.

To the AlienCon and Mischief Management teams — thank you for Dallas, for the placement, and for building something that makes these conversations possible. To Dr. Jeff Meldrum — every event with you adds something irreplaceable to this archive. To Giorgio and Krix Tsoukalos — thank you for your time and warmth before the doors opened. To Caroline Cory — the best neighbor on any convention floor we have ever had. To Richard Dolan — the history matters, and so does the conversation. To Nick Pope — some of the best hours of that weekend happened at that bar. To the aluminum foil hat vendor — we respect the craft. And to every fan who found their way to the artist alley, waited in line, and made it the place to be — that is always you. It is always for you.
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Explore. Question. Believe.

​By Chanelle Elaine Chief Marketing Officer, Sasquatch Syndicate Inc.