AlienCon Pasadena 2023

So Long, AlienCon: Sasquatch Syndicate's Final Chapter at the World's Greatest Unexplained Event

Every great run has a last chapter. The trick is not knowing it's the last one while you're living it — and then looking back later and being grateful you showed up fully, without holding anything back, for every single moment of it.
AlienCon 2023 in Pasadena was that chapter for the Sasquatch Syndicate.

Five conferences across the years. One brutal pandemic gap that nearly ended the event entirely — and came close to ending a lot of things we all cared about. A community of truth-seekers, stargazers, researchers, skeptics, believers, and beautiful weirdos who gathered year after year in the name of the unexplained. And then, quietly, the circuit closed. The History Channel and the Ancient Aliens team took the event regional, and the full AlienCon experience — the one with the vendor halls and the Artist Alley and the panels and the photo ops and the specific electricity of ten thousand open-minded people all in the same building at the same time — came to an end.

We were there for the finale. We brought everything we had.

And we brought Dawayne Zazeski — who had absolutely no idea what was about to happen to him.

Getting There: Alaska Airlines, Burbank, and the Sheraton
Alaska Airlines flew the Sasquatch Syndicate crew from Seattle down to Burbank — the right call for a California event, efficient and comfortable and exactly the kind of travel that gets you where you're going without drama. The Sheraton was home base for the weekend: solid, well-located, the kind of hotel that keeps the operation running smoothly so you can focus your energy on the floor.

Setup day came first. The booth doesn't build itself, and getting into the Pasadena Convention Center a day early to lay everything out — displays, merchandise, research materials, banners that have traveled with us to more events than we can count — is the unglamorous scaffolding that makes everything else possible. The team moved through it with the practiced efficiency of people who have done this enough times to have opinions about the optimal order of operations.

By the time the doors opened on March 4th, we were ready. More than ready. Five conferences into this relationship with AlienCon and its community, we felt at home in that space the way you feel at home in a place that has given you good things repeatedly over the years.

What AlienCon Was — And Why We'll Miss It
Before we talk about the weekend itself, it's worth taking a moment to explain what AlienCon actually was to anyone who never had the privilege of attending one.

Created by A+E Networks in partnership with Prometheus Entertainment — the production company behind Ancient Aliens on the History Channel — AlienCon was precisely what it sounds like and also considerably more than that. Yes, it was a convention for people who believe in, research, or are simply fascinated by extraterrestrial life, UAPs, ancient astronaut theory, cryptids, and the full spectrum of phenomena that the mainstream prefers to keep at arm's length.

But it was also something rarer: a room where those conversations were treated seriously. Where investigators and journalists who had devoted careers to documenting the unexplained stood on stages and shared findings that the six o'clock news would never run. Where witnesses could speak without apology. Where curiosity was not a liability but the entire point.

The 2023 edition marked the first full return to in-person format since 2019, before COVID had shut everything down and tested the resilience of every event in this space. A+E brought back the full experience — panel discussions, original programming, autograph and photo sessions, exclusive merchandise, and over 100 vendors ranging from authors and aura readers to crystals, custom apparel, and more. The speaker lineup included Giorgio Tsoukalos, investigative journalist George Knapp, former Defense Intelligence Officer Jay Stratton, and best-selling author Erich von Däniken, among others.

It was, in every sense, the band back together for one more show.

We knew it. The community knew it. And everyone showed up accordingly.

George Knapp: A Conversation Worth Every Second
If you spend any time at all in the world of unexplained phenomena — whether you come at it from the UFO angle, the cryptid angle, the paranormal angle, or any of the dozens of fascinating lanes that feed into this broader highway of inquiry — you know the name George Knapp.

The chief investigative reporter for KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, Knapp has been recognized with Edward R. Murrow Awards, two Peabody Awards, and 24 Pacific Southwest Regional Emmy Awards. He is widely credited with bringing UFO conspiracy theorist Bob Lazar to prominence in 1989, catapulting Area 51 into the public consciousness in a way that has never fully receded. He has spent decades investigating what others dismiss, documented what others won't touch, and maintained journalistic credibility through it all with a rigor that commands respect even from people who disagree with his conclusions.

When the Sasquatch Syndicate got time with George Knapp at AlienCon 2023, we used every minute of it wisely.
We thanked him. Genuinely, from the floor up, we thanked him — because what George Knapp has done for this field over forty years has made it possible for organizations like ours to exist with credibility. He normalized the conversation. He proved that serious journalism and serious inquiry into the unexplained are not mutually exclusive. He showed that the public deserves to have these stories told well, and he has told them better than almost anyone.

George received the gratitude with the easy grace of someone who has heard a lot of things in a lot of rooms and doesn't require applause for doing what he believes is right. That quality — the groundedness, the lack of ego about work that deserves enormous ego — is part of what makes him such a remarkable figure in this community.

The Sasquatch Syndicate is better for having had that conversation. We carry it forward.

Jeremy Corbell: Filmmaker to Filmmaker
Jeremy Corbell occupies a fascinating place in the universe of unexplained phenomena content creators — and we mean that as the highest possible compliment.

Corbell is an American contemporary artist, filmmaker, and ufologist who gained prominence by producing documentary films and podcasts on UAPs, most notably his 2018 documentary Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers, which premiered on Netflix in 2019. He came to filmmaking sideways — through martial arts, through illness, through a camera pointed at someone who then, as he describes it, simply spilled the beans. He has described his filmmaking origin as accidental: "I wasn't a filmmaker, never studied film. It was a way for me to talk with people and try to understand this conundrum."

That origin story resonates deeply with anyone who has come to storytelling through passion for a subject rather than through formal training. The Sasquatch Syndicate was not built in a film school. It was built in forests, at witness kitchen tables, in podcast studios cobbled together from determination and whatever equipment was affordable at the time. You follow the story first and figure out the craft as you go.

Jeremy understood that immediately. The conversation between him and Chuck about the filmmaker's journey — how you find your subject, how your subject finds you, how you earn trust from people who have kept secrets for years — was one of the most energizing exchanges of the entire weekend. Two people from completely different corners of the unexplained universe, discovering that the methodology is the same: show up, listen harder than you talk, and never stop believing that the story matters.

The Weaponized podcast he co-hosts with George Knapp has become essential listening for anyone serious about the UAP conversation. We told him so. We meant it.

David Childress: Books, Bigfoot, and a Shared Corner of the Map
David Childress has been writing about the unexplained since before most of our current audience was born — and his work on Bigfoot specifically gave the Sasquatch Syndicate plenty of material for a conversation that could have gone on for hours and was limited only by the competing demands of a very busy convention floor.

Childress brings a global perspective to cryptid research that few others can match — the idea that Bigfoot-type creatures appear in the folklore and witness accounts of cultures on every inhabited continent, that the Pacific Northwest phenomenon is not an isolated American curiosity but one thread in a very old and very wide tapestry of human encounters with something that doesn't fit the approved zoological catalog. That framework resonates with everything the Sasquatch Syndicate believes about the importance of taking witness testimony seriously across cultural boundaries.

We talked books. We talked evidence. We talked about the specific quality of accounts from people who have no cultural incentive to fabricate a story and every social incentive to stay quiet about what they saw. And we walked away from that conversation with new reading material and a sharper sense of why the global context of Bigfoot research matters.

Ken Gerhart: Fellow Traveler, Fellow Researcher
The unexplained research community is large and getting larger — but it is also, in its serious core, a relatively small world. You run into the same committed investigators at event after event, each of you working your corner of the map, and when you cross paths the conversation picks up wherever it left off.

Ken Gerhart of Alaska Triangle knows his corner of the map in a way that commands genuine respect. The Alaska Triangle is arguably the most compelling and least fully explored Bigfoot territory in North America — vast, remote, documented with encounters that go back generations of indigenous testimony, and still producing new accounts with remarkable regularity. The sheer scale of the wilderness available for something to remain undiscovered in Alaska puts even the Pacific Northwest forests to shame.

Running into Ken at AlienCon 2023 was one of those moments that reminded us how good this community is when it's operating at its best. Different followings, different geographies, same mission: take the witnesses seriously, document carefully, and push the conversation forward with integrity.

The Sasquatch Syndicate booth may have drawn the larger crowd — we're not going to pretend otherwise — but the conversation with Ken was exactly the kind of peer exchange that makes events like AlienCon worth attending beyond the fan interactions. We need each other. This field is better when serious researchers compare notes.

Monty: When the Seeds You Plant Come Back Grow
In 2018, at an earlier AlienCon, a boy named Monty came to the Sasquatch Syndicate booth with his father.

He was a kid. The kind of kid who asks questions that are too specific and too thoughtful for his age, who has clearly spent time thinking about something that most people around him aren't taking seriously. He was curious about the research. He wanted to know about the methodology. He had probably already watched every available piece of Sasquatch content he could find and was ready for the next level of conversation.

We gave it to him. Because that's what you do when a kid shows up ready to be taken seriously.

Five years later, at AlienCon 2023, Monty came back.

He was not a kid anymore. He was a young man — older, taller, more formed, carrying the kind of quiet confidence that comes from spending years thinking seriously about something most people dismiss. He found the booth. He found Chuck. And the recognition on both sides of that reunion was one of the most genuinely moving moments of the entire weekend.

This is why you show up. Not just for the established fans, not just for the peers and the fellow researchers and the celebrity guests — but for the twelve-year-old who wanders up to a booth at a convention and has their curiosity met with respect instead of condescension. You have no idea what you're planting. You find out five years later when they come back.

Monty, if you're reading this: you're exactly the reason the Sasquatch Syndicate exists.

Dawayne Zazeski's First Event: A Hazing Story for the Ages

Now. We have to talk about Dawayne.

Dawayne Zazeski came to the Sasquatch Syndicate during COVID the way a lot of unexpected things arrive during COVID — sideways, without a clear invitation, through a conversation that started with something like "can you help with this" and ended with a life pivot neither party fully anticipated.

Chuck reached out. Dawayne came aboard. And somewhere in the middle of a global pandemic, while the world was mostly standing still, Dawayne found himself in what he has described, accurately, as a situation he did not entirely plan for. His own summary of the experience captures it perfectly: "What am I even doing here? Why me?"

The honest answer, which Chuck knows and Dawayne has since come to understand, is: because you're exactly right for it. The right person for this kind of work is not always the one who seeks it out loudest. Sometimes it's the one who gets pulled in sideways and discovers, once they're in it, that it fits.

But Dawayne had not yet fully discovered that at AlienCon 2023. AlienCon 2023 was where the discovery happened. Publicly. In front of a large crowd. With cameras.

It started with the booth. Dawayne was experiencing his first event from the other side of the table — not as an attendee, not as a fan navigating the floor, but as a member of the Sasquatch Syndicate team responsible for engaging with visitors, answering questions, representing the organization, and generally performing the role of someone who knows what they're doing.

He was doing fine. The crowds were great. The fans were warm and generous and full of genuine curiosity. Dawayne was finding his footing.  He was recognized in a way he had not been before - the expert.   The Co-Host from the Sasquatch Syndicate Youtube Show, by a fan literally wanting the baseball hat that Dawayne was wearing right off of his sweaty head.   Dawayne obliged and even signed an autograph with his now famous DZ Signature, and obliged the fan of the Youtube Channel the photo op.  Dawayne had arrived, but he was just getting started.  

And then the media showed up.

When the local television stations arrived — cameras up, microphones live, lights cutting through the convention floor — Chuck made a decision with the calm efficiency of a man who has been waiting for exactly this moment.

He turned to Dawayne, gestured toward the cameras with the casual confidence of someone handing off a baton they've been carrying long enough, and stepped aside. Not a little aside. A go get 'em aside. Center stage on the main floor, under the full neon glow of AlienCon 2023, Dawayne Zazeski found himself blinking into a camera lens wondering how exactly this had become his life.

Chuck found a nearby seat. Settled in. Crossed his arms. And wore the expression of a senior who has just handed the freshman the microphone and is absolutely not going to intervene under any circumstances.

What happened next surprised everyone — except Chuck, who had known all along.

Dawayne handled it. Not just handled it — owned it. He found the words before the nerves could find him. He found the camera like he'd been looking for it his whole life. He found that rare, uncoachable quality that no media training in the world can manufacture: the steady, genuine conviction of someone who actually believes what they're saying. And then — because Dawayne is Dawayne — he made the news crew laugh.

The quick wit landed. The comedic timing was effortless. The local news team, who had arrived expecting a standard convention interview, found themselves in stitches on the floor of the Pasadena Convention Center while a man they'd never heard of thirty minutes ago held the room like he'd been doing this for years.

Chuck, satisfied in the way that only a mentor witnessing a precisely predicted outcome can be satisfied, quietly excused himself to the concession stand. He got a soda. He deserved it. He had seen this coming from a mile away and said nothing, which is the highest form of faith one person can place in another.
​
Welcome to the Syndicate Dawayne. Chuck called it.

Then came Star Magazine from the UK.
If local television is the warm-up, an international publication is the main stage. The questions were different. The format was different. The sense of oh this is a thing that will be read by people in another country was palpable.

Chuck observed from what could charitably be called a supportive distance and what Dawayne might characterize as standing far enough away to have plausible deniability while watching someone figure it out.

Dawayne figured it out.  

The interview went well. The questions were answered. The Sasquatch Syndicate was represented with the warmth, credibility, and genuine conviction that it deserved. And afterward, when the cameras were packed up and the notebooks were closed, Dawayne looked at Chuck with the expression of a person who has just completed a rite of passage and is not entirely sure whether to be grateful, annoyed or relieved.  

All the above, probably. All is the right answer.

Welcome to the band, Dawayne. You earned it. The mic is yours.

The Artist Alley Advantage
One of the particular pleasures of AlienCon 2023 was the Artist Alley — a dedicated section of the convention floor where creators, illustrators, and makers set up alongside the main vendor area.

The Sasquatch Syndicate used this to strategic advantage. With presence on both sides of the conference — the main booth and the Artist Alley positioning — we could catch different streams of traffic, engage different types of attendees, and give the team space to breathe while keeping the brand active across more of the floor. It worked beautifully. The cross-pollination between the comic and cartoon work we're developing and the more traditional research-and-merchandise side of our presence gave visitors a fuller picture of what Sasquatch Syndicate actually is — not just an investigation organization, but a creative property with an expanding universe.

The conversations that started at the Artist Alley end of things were a different quality than the ones at the main booth — more focused on the creative process, the hero-team narrative structure, the visual language of the work. Both were valuable. Together they made for a fuller, richer weekend of engagement than any single table could have produced.

The Hugs. The Stories. The Familiar Faces.
Here is the thing about a community that has been gathering around the same organization for five years across multiple conferences: it starts to feel like a family reunion.

The fans who came back. The people who told us they'd listened to every episode. The witnesses who found us at an earlier AlienCon and had been waiting for a chance to tell us what happened in the years since. The couples who had met at AlienCon events and came back to the booth to introduce us to each other. The parents who brought their kids because the kid had discovered the show and needed to see it was real.

Hugs were exchanged. Stories were shared. Some of those stories went directly into the research files. Others just went into the heart, the way experiences do when they remind you that the work you're doing has found the people it was meant to find.

That is what AlienCon gave the Sasquatch Syndicate over five conferences: a community. Not just a platform, not just exposure, but actual human connection with people who care about the same questions we care about and trust us to pursue them with integrity.

A Letter to the History Channel and Ancient AliensWe want to say this clearly and publicly, because it deserves to be said clearly and publicly:

Thank you, History Channel. Thank you, Ancient Aliens. Thank you to the producers, the talent, the production teams, and the event organizers who believed in the Sasquatch Syndicate enough to welcome us into the AlienCon family across five conferences and multiple years.

You gave us a stage. You gave us a community. You gave us the credibility that comes from being part of a platform that takes these questions seriously at scale. And you gave us, perhaps most valuably, the opportunity to stand in a room full of people who were already primed to hear what we had to say and to discover that the conversation about Bigfoot and the conversation about the broader unexplained are not separate conversations — they are the same one.
We remain committed supporters of everything Ancient Aliens and the History Channel does in this space. If you ever need the Sasquatch Syndicate — for content, for consultation, for programming that explores the intersection of cryptid research and the broader universe of unexplained phenomena — we are there. Unreservedly and enthusiastically, we are there.

The circuit may have closed. The community hasn't.

Goodbye, AlienCon. We'll Carry You Forward.
To every fan, every fellow researcher, every witness who found their way to the Sasquatch Syndicate booth across five AlienCon events — we love you. This community is not an abstract concept to us. It is made of specific faces, specific conversations, specific moments of recognition that have accumulated over years into something we did not expect to build and are profoundly grateful to have.

To the AlienCon community that may be finding us for the first time through wherever the regional events have taken you: welcome. The booth may not always be in a convention hall, but the Sasquatch Syndicate is always here. The podcast is here. The research is here. The mission is very much still here.

And to Dawayne: you did great. Chuck saw every second of it, from a comfortable observational distance. He was proud. He just wasn't going to tell you that immediately because where's the fun in that.

The search continues. The community remains.

Sasquatch Syndicate is a Washington State-based podcast and nonprofit dedicated to Bigfoot research, eyewitness outreach, and the pursuit of the Pacific Northwest's greatest mystery. Find us wherever you stream podcasts and follow us for upcoming events and episodes.

A special thank you to the History Channel, Ancient Aliens, and the entire AlienCon family for five extraordinary years. You have our committed support always.

BELIEVE 

By Chanelle Elaine, Chief Marketing Officer Sasquatch Syndicate Inc.