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| Key Words: | ParaNet, UFO, Ufology |
(8012) Fri 24 Sep 93 10:19a
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Ecker
St:
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Close Encounters of the Call-In Kind
09/21/93
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
Life-sized cardboard cutouts of Capt. Kirk, Mr. Spock and Dr.
McCoy greet visitors who descend the stairs to the studios of Cable
Radio Network. Every Sunday night, from the basement of a Sunland
shopping center, a program called "UFOs Tonight" is beamed up and
out across America.
The host is Don Ecker, the self-assured, well-versed research
director of an obscure journal called UFO magazine. His guest this
evening was William Paul Cone, a psychologist who has worked with
30 patients who have told him of abductions by extraterrestrials.
Debbie from Littlerock was the first caller:
"What, exactly, is confabulation?"
Cone did his best to explain. Confabulation, he said, is a
mental process by which people remember events that did not
actually occur-the creation of a fictitious memory that has all the
power of fact.
"To them," Cone said, "it's reality."
But Debbie from Littlerock wasn't quite satisfied. Why is it,
she wanted to know, that some memories "feel like they come from
the back of my head, and some are on the inside of my eyelids?"
Doctor, she pleaded, isn't there some way to distinguish fact
from confabulation?
*
Now, there's a question for our time: What is fact and what is
fantasy? Cone, of course, told Debbie that the answer is, generally
speaking, no. You usually can't tell, not unless there's hard
evidence to demonstrate otherwise.
Confabulation, obviously, can be a valuable tool for a newspaper
columnist, but let me assure you that I'm not haunted or otherwise
affected by memories of abductions by ETs. And although it may be
boring to say so, my assumption is all the aircraft I've seen were
produced by Earthling technology.
Most of us, I suspect, are agnostics on this subject: skeptical,
but open to the possibilities.
But if you believe Don Ecker, the believers are numerous. Radio
ratings may be a special form of confabulation, but Ecker's been
told he has more than 1.5 million listeners every Sunday night.
Unlike some other "UFOlogists" who seem willing to believe just
about every assertion made in the name of ETs, Ecker presents
himself as a skeptical believer. He's an ex-Green Beret and ex-cop
who suggests that "the ET hypothesis does seem to be viable."
Ecker interprets a national poll as suggesting that at least 5
million Americans believe they have encountered extraterrestrials.
Cone, the psychologist, suggested that the poll's findings were
more ambiguous.
On "UFOs Tonight," alien abduction is a typical subject. So are
suggestions that pop culture like "Star Trek" and "Close Encounters
of the Third Kind" are part of a grand scheme to gradually
introduce us to the truth about alien visitors. So are allegations
of government cover-ups of supposed crashes of alien spacecraft.
The commercial breaks are filled with ads for UFO videos, UFO
magazines and newsletters and tapes of previous "UFO Tonight"
broadcasts.
With all his talk about confabulation, Cone might have seemed a
hostile guest. He also warned of UFOlogists who may "CONTAMINATE"
people's memories by suggesting that strange memories may be
explained as alien abduction.
But to the contrary, Cone assured listeners that his patients
and other people he has interviewed have persuaded him that there
is something legitimate to their claims of ET encounters. "I'm
absolutely convinced that there's some basis to the phenomenon. . .
. What it is, I can't say."
Off the air, Cone said that growing interest in extraterrestrials
"has been good for business." Many patients, he said, had avoided
telling other therapists of their memories for fear that they would
be thought crazy.
The phone wasn't ringing much. Ecker's audience seemed more
interested in outer space than the space within our skulls. The
second caller was, again, Debbie from Littlerock, this time asking
about what to tell children who say they have been abducted by
aliens.
Don't get overly excited about it, Cone said. Don't reinforce
the trauma. People who believe they've been abducted by ETs, the
psychologist advised, need to keep this in perspective. Don't let
it ruin your lives.
*
Only when Ecker exhorted his listeners to call, with 30 minutes
left in the show, did his phone console finally light up like a
spaceship.
There was Don from Glendale, Ann from Redondo Beach, Herb from
Burbank, Vince from Tucson, Susan from Sherman Oaks, Mike from El
Monte. . . .
Alan from Ventura told Ecker he'd just stumbled across the show
for the first time.
"Why would the government cover up something as grandiose as
this?" he asked.
The UFOlogist advanced a theory: "What makes the planet go round
and round?"
"Gravitational forces," Alan suggested.
Ecker chuckled. The answer, he said, is oil.
Now just suppose that the aliens brought us new, clean
technologies and energy sources that would render the oil giants
and the car manufacturers obsolete? Now wouldn't the government
want to cover up something like that?
At least I think that's what Ecker said.
I hope I'm not confabulating. It's on tape.
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
--- WM v3.01/92-0356
* Origin: STARGATE BBS. New York NY 718-519-8042 (1:278/714.0)
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(6613) Sat 16 Oct 93 9:50a
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Evil Aliens
St: 6821>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mississippi UFO Victim Says Beings Were Evil
10/14/93
THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL - Memphis
JACKSON - A man who claims he was abducted by a UFO 20 years ago
while fishing with a friend now says he believes the beings were
recruited by Satan.
Calvin Parker, 39, said the beings who took him and Charles Hickson
from the bank of the Pascagoula River on Oct. 11, 1973, did not have
supernatural powers and traveled in space ships, or perhaps time
machines.
"I think they are demons. I feel like it's evil. It could come from another
world, but I think it's kind of interdimensional in this one," Parker, of
Bay Springs, said Tuesday.
Parker and Hickson claimed they were fishing by the Pascagoula River
when they were plucked up by occupants of a flying saucer, subjected to
a physical examination and freed in a dazed state.
Hickson, 62, has said he is sure the creatures he encountered were
robots, although he sensed a living presence on the ship. "We had
definitely two different experiences," Parker said.
The abduction story became a worldwide sensation after Hickson and
Parker contacted the Jackson County Sheriff's Department.
Parker said he's started a company, UFO Investigations based in
Mandeville, La., to study such phenomena and help other people who
have gone through what he experienced. He also is writing a book,
he said.
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
--- Maximus/2 2.01wb
* Origin: UFOria (Clifton, VA) 703-803-6420 (1:109/369)
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(6614) Sat 16 Oct 93 9:52a
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Ufos & Collard Greens
St: 7191>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10/13/93
READING EAGLE; READING TIMES
RACC lectures
UFO researcher Robert Hastings is scheduled to deliver a lecture
at Reading Area Community College on the ""hidden history'' of
unidentified flying objects.
During the lecture next Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. in the Berks Room
at the college, Hastings will present evidence that he claims proves
the existence of UFOs.
Hastings says this information once was hidden in the secret
files of the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the FBI and the
U.S. Air Force.
His presentation will be the opening program in the Foundation
for Reading Area Community College 1993-94 lecture series.
All the programs are free and open to the public.
Other programs in the series include poetry readings by A.
Wanjiku H. Reynolds, author of ""Cognac and Collard Greens,'' on Nov.
17 at 7:30 p.m. A poetry workshop is scheduled from 2 to 4 p.m. that
day.
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
--- Maximus/2 2.01wb
* Origin: UFOria (Clifton, VA) 703-803-6420 (1:109/369)
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(6615) Sat 16 Oct 93 9:55a
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: New Foia Policy
St: 6959>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ISSUES NEW FOIA POLICY
On October 4, President Clinton and Attorney General Reno rescinded a 1981
rule which encouraged federal agencies to withhold information requested
under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) whenever there was "a
substantial legal basis" for doing so. In its place, agencies are directed
to apply a "presumption of disclosure." A memorandum from President
Clinton urged agencies to take a fresh look at their administration of the
FOIA, to reduce backlogs of requests, and to enhance public access to
information. (See below for the full text of the memorandum.)
In a memorandum sent to heads of departments and agencies, Attorney General
Reno stated that
...we must ensure that the principle of openness in government is
applied in each and every disclosure and nondisclosure decision that
is required under the Act....It shall be the policy of the Department
of Justice to defend the assertion of a FOIA exemption only in those
cases where the agency reasonably foresees that disclosure would be
harmful to an interest protected by that exemption. Where an item of
information might technically or arguably fall within an exemption, it
ought not to be withheld from a FOIA requester unless it need be.
At a Department of Justice briefing, Associate Attorney General Webster
Hubbell acknowledged that there was a huge backlog of FOIA requests, and
said the Department of Justice wanted to hear of the problems requestors
were having. He said that the Department would review all pending FOIA
lawsuits, but would not provide additional funding to fill FOIA requests.
When asked about FOIA access to electronic records, John Podesta, White
House Staff Secretary, replied that agencies would work with users to get
information to them in a usable way. He added that OMB, the White House,
and the Department of Justice were all committed to making information
available.
One person at the briefing asked about privacy issues, and noted that the
FBI would not search for records on an individual because of concerns about
privacy. Hubbell replied that the FBI should ask the individual first, but
that the new FOIA regulations presumed disclosure. He added that the
Department of Justice would discuss the matter with the FBI director.
***********************************************
TEXT OF FOIA MEMO ISSUED BY THE WHITE HOUSE
The White House
Washington
October 4, 1993
MEMORANDUM FOR HEADS OF DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES
SUBJECT: The Freedom of Information Act
I am writing to call your attention to a subject that is of great
importance to the American public and to all Federal departments and
agencies -- the administration of the Freedom of Information Act, as
amended (the "Act"). The Act is a vital part of the participatory system
of government. I am committed to enhancing its effectiveness in my
Administration.
For more than a quarter century now, the Freedom of Information Act has
played a unique role in strengthening our democratic form of government.
The statute was enacted based upon the fundamental principle that an
informed citizenry is essential to the democratic process and that the more
the American people know about their government the better they will be
governed. Openness in government is essential to accountability and the
Act has become an integral part of that process.
The Freedom of Information Act, moreover, has been one of the primary means
by which members of the public inform themselves about their government.
As Vice President Gore made clear in the National Performance Review, the
American people are the Federal Government's customers. Federal
departments and agencies should handle requests for information in a
customer-friendly manner. The use of the Act by ordinary citizens is not
complicated, nor should it be. The existence of unnecessary bureaucratic
hurdles has no place in its implementation.
I therefore call upon all Federal departments and agencies to renew their
commitment to the Freedom of Information Act, to its underlying principles
of government openness, and to its sound administration. This is an
appropriate time for all agencies to take a fresh look at their
administration of the Act, to reduce backlogs of Freedom of Information Act
requests, and to conform agency practice to the new litigation guidance
issued by the Attorney General, which is attached.
Further, I remind agencies that our commitment to openness requires more
than merely responding to requests from the public. Each agency has a
responsibility to distribute information on its own initiative, and to
enhance public access through the use of electronic information systems.
Taking these steps will ensure compliance with both the letter and the
spirit of the Act.
(signed) William J. Clinton
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
--- Maximus/2 2.01wb
* Origin: UFOria (Clifton, VA) 703-803-6420 (1:109/369)
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(7059) Mon 18 Oct 93 3:02p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Ig Nobel - A
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CELEBRATING THE IG NOBELEST OF THEM ALL
The Scientific Method: There's Madness in It
10/11/93
Newsday
HE COULD MAKE a radio out of a coconut, but the Professor from
Gilligan's Island could never figure out how to get home to pick up
the Nobel Prize he was destined to win. Still, he's more famous than
most Nobel Prize winners. Proof of that came one night last week
when Russell Johnson, the actor who played the Professor, shared a
stage at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with two actual
Nobel laureates, along with a bunch of live chickens and someone who
looked a lot like Albert Einstein.
There's a dirty little secret among scientists - some of them
have a sense of humor. It all spills out at MIT once a year as some
of America's scientific elite, and some goofballs, take part in the
Ig Nobel Prizes, timed to coincide with the announcements of those
other awards for science, literature and peace. In a tradition
dating all the way back to 1991, the Igs, a production of MIT and a
science humor publication called The Journal of Irreproducible
Results, are awarded to individuals "whose achievements cannot or
should not be reproduced." Previous winners have included Michael
Milken for economics and sperm bank patriarch Dr. Cecil Jacobson for
biology.
Before the start of this year's "Third First Annual Ig Nobel
Ceremony," a loudspeaker announcement begged, "Ridiculing science is
reprehensible. Please will you all go home." Obviously relishing an
evening of politically incorrect silliness, the audience of some
1,200 scientists and MIT students, many wearing white lab coats or
Halloween costumes, stayed put. They were soon rewarded with the
opening procession of "Dignitaries and Ignitaries," including honored
delegations such as the Non-Extremists for Moderate Change from
Finland and the Intergalactic House of Fruitcakes.
Onstage was a group of "Authority Figures," including Albert
Einstein (played by Alan Lightman, author of the best-seller
"Einstein's Dreams," in a fright wig) and two actual Nobel Prize
winners from Harvard, William Lipscomb (chemistry, 1976) and Sheldon
Glashow (physics, 1979), who, rumor had it, was warned by his wife
not to do this again. Three other Nobel laureates sent taped
remarks.
The crowd greeted the real Nobelists warmly, but went berserk at
the introduction of Johnson, now holding the title Professor
Emeritus, Gilligan's Island. Johnson, who looks more like the
Skipper now, stood smiling during a long, partly standing ovation.
Some audience members cried, "We love you."
Following the ceremonial tossing out of the first Harvard joke
(not worth repeating), and the dash onto the stage of a groupie who
had won the first Win-a-Date-With-a-Nobel-Laureate contest and hugged
the stately Lipscomb, the presentations began.
The Ig Nobel Prize in Psychology went to Harvard's John Mack and
Temple's David Jacobs for their actual conclusion that "people who
believe they were kidnaped by aliens from outer space probably
were." Accepting on their behalf, Kevin Steiling, who in real life
is an assistant attorney general of Massachusetts, reminded the
audience that "kidnaping is a federal offense."
The Ig Nobel Peace Prize went to Pepsi of the Phillipines, for
announcing the wrong winning number in a contest, "thereby inciting
and uniting eight-hundred thousand riotously expectant winners and
bringing many warring factions together for the first time in their
nation's history."
The prize for literature was awarded to the 976 co-authors of a
medical research paper in last month's issue of the New England
Journal of Medicine entitled, "An International Randomized Trial
Comparing Four Thrombolytic Strategies for Acute Myocardial
Infarction." It was accepted by Dr. Marcia Angell, executive editor
of the prestigious journal.
An Ig in Consumer Engineering went to Ron Popeil, inventor of the
Veg-O-Matic, the Pocket Fisherman and the Inside-the-Shell Egg
Scrambler. An alleged consumer of every Popeil product was escorted
off the stage after pointing at Nobelists Glashow and Lipscomb and
screaming, "I have an inside the egg egg scrambler! You see these
guys? They don't know how that works! They have no idea!"
The awards were interrupted periodically for Heisenberg Certainty
Lectures (named for the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, one of the
foundations of 20th Century physics). The certainty was that each
lecture, delivered by the Authority Figures on subjects of their
choice, would not last more than 30 seconds - strictly enforced by
a soccer-style referee with whistle.
In his half-minute lecture, MIT economist Paul Krugman informed
the audience that Ross Perot is wrong: "That great sucking sound
isn't coming from Mexico. It's coming from outer space. Space
aliens are stealing American jobs." Russell Johnson used his 30
seconds to end a 25-year-old mystery: The Professor was able to make
radios from coconuts but not get the castaways off the island because
he had been educated at MIT.
Eleven Igs were presented in all. Jay Schiffman, inventor of
Autovision, a projection device that makes it possible to drive and
watch TV at the same time, sent a note refusing his Visionary
Technology award. Protesting the award were members of MADWWT -
Mothers Against Driving While Watching Television. The Chemistry Ig
went to the folks who created the method for putting perfumes in
magazine ads. Robert Faid won the Mathematics Ig for his computation
of the exact odds (more than 8.6 trillion to 1), that Mikhail
Gorbachev is the antichrist - the Ig committee itself announced the
odds for computer tycoon Bill Gates at a takeable 8 to 5.
The evening's final winners, Drs. James F. Nolan, Thomas J.
Stillwell and John P. Sands, Jr., wrote a paper for The Journal of
Emergency Medicine entitled "Acute Management of the Zipper-Entrapped
Penis." Nolan, who actually showed up from Pennsylvania, remarked,
"I was here to save my generation from penile injury." The ceremony
concluded with a group of Nolan's supposed patients, most wearing
sweatpants, singing about their travails to the tune of "We Are the
World."
At a post-Ig reception, Johnson stuck up for those who aren't
real scientists but play one on TV. Nobel laureates may be more
important, he said, "but we still have our place." Nobel winner
Lipscomb said, "Science should be fun." and Marc Abrahams, the
editor of the Journal of Irreproducible Results and Ig master of
ceremonies, summed up the evening: "It went very quickly. No one
died, there were very few injuries and we had no kidnapings. We were
very pleased. Why are you badgering me this way?"
Art: AP Photo - Russell Johnson, the Professor of `Gilligan's Island^
breaks up on being served a tray of Spam at the Ig Nobel festivities
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
--- WM v3.10/92-0356
* Origin: STARGATE BBS.<InfoNet NY Control>718-519-8042 (1:278/714)
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(7060) Mon 18 Oct 93 3:02p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Ig Nobel - B
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Misappliance of science - the ignoble prizes AWARDS Dotty antics in
Boston may prove that some scientists really are mad
10/17/93
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
AS THE Nobel Prize winners were solemnly named last week, a much
less reverent ceremony of a similar kind was taking place in Boston.
These were the Ig Nobel prize givings, originating from Alfred
Nobel's fictitious brother Ig, and awarded annually by the Journal
of Irreproducible Results, a sort of scientific equivalent of
Private Eye, which gives awards "for achievements which cannot -
and should not - be reproduced".
Since the validity of a scientific experiment depends on whether
it can be repeated, and an experiment which cannot be is worthless,
this gives some idea of the science that is being honoured by the
followers of Ig Nobel.
Some of it is intended as a spoof, while some (occasionally) is
bizarre but true. "You have to read them and make up your own
mind," says the journal's editor, Dr Mark Abrahams, a computer
scientist.
The most amusing prizes are those awarded to solemn people who
talk nonsense. This year's Mathematics Prize went to an expert on
"Biblical numerics" who has "proved" that Mikhail Gorbachev is the
Antichrist.
"I am absolutely serious about this," says retired nuclear
engineer Dr Robert Faid, of Greenville, South Carolina, "and I am
surprised that people would make a joke of it. I have shown from
the history of the 'kings' (general secretaries) in the Soviet
Union and from the Book of Revelations that there is an
860,609,175,188, 282,100 to 1 chance that Gorbachev is the
Antichrist who will return to power by overthrowing Yeltsin and who
will then overwhelm the West by violence."
Dr Faid's prediction is based mainly on highly complicated
arithmetic involving the spelling of Gorbachev's name in several
languages and combinations of the Number of the Beast, 666, with
its opposite 888, the Number of Jesus. Few ordinary people will be
able to follow it, but Dr Faid, who has a considerable following,
is convinced of his case.
The Ig Nobel Prize for Literature was equally diverting. The
articles in most serious scientific journals are usually signed by
two, three, or perhaps half a dozen people. A double-digit number
of authors is rare. But on September 2 this year the New England
Journal of Medicine published an article on heart disease that was
signed by no fewer than 972 authors. An editor of this journal was
persuaded to come to the Ig Nobel ceremony and admit that each of
these authors was responsible, statistically, for exactly two words.
A book of vast pomposity by two university professors - John Mack
of Harvard Medical School and David Jacobs of Temple University -
won the Prize for Psychology. It claimed that "millions" of people were
being kidnapped by aliens from outer space.
"Their reasoning is most ingenious," said Dr Abrahams. "As I
understand it, they claim that people are being snatched from their
beds, taken through solid walls and smuggled aboard UFO ships. The
entire kidnapping process is therefore invisible. Since it is
invisible it cannot be disproved. And since it cannot be disproved
it must be true."
The highlight of the ceremony, which is regarded as a general
excuse for serious scientists to let off steam, was the birth of a
new liberation movement. But it was not humans or even animals the
audience was being urged to protect. It was protons, the cores of
atoms, which are going to be smashed in huge numbers when the #7
billion Texas Super-Colliding Atom-Smashing Machine starts
operations.
A noisy crowd appeared in the gallery brandishing a banner. These
were members of the Proton Liberation Organisation, the new PLO. As
their leader declaimed: "Billions of subatomic particles will be
threatened every picosecond {every trillionth of a second}. Stop
the carnage!"
Several onlookers affirmed that this was one of the best JIR
ceremonies since they began in 1955.
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
--- WM v3.10/92-0356
* Origin: STARGATE BBS.<InfoNet NY Control>718-519-8042 (1:278/714)
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(7258) Thu 21 Oct 93 6:27p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: It Won't Go Away ! 1/
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UFO's - The Mystery That Won't Go Away
11/22/91
Larry King Live
KING: Real or not, whether or not you scoff or shiver - flying
saucers are a part of our culture. The stories of weird goings-on
are consistent and often credible, but the proof is always
seemingly out of reach. Decades of frustration haven't stopped the
true believers from trading conspiracy and cover-up theories that
get more and more bizarre. Now why does the UFO's controversy
persist? What is really going on here? The phenomenon is the
subject of a new book by cultural historian Keith Thompson. The
book is titled Angels and Aliens: UFO's and the Mythic
Imagination. Keith is an independent scholar and researcher. He's
at our studios here in Washington. In Los Angeles - Don Ecker,
research director of UFO Magazine. He believes the Government is
hiding the truth about UFO's.
Keith, your book is saying, `A plague on all their houses'?
KEITH THOMPSON, Author, `Angels and Aliens': I don't need to
put the plague there. I think the plague is there already, and let
me tell you what I mean by that. I saw that in this subject
certain things weren't being discussed for quite a while and what-
It occurs to me that 40 years after this phenomenon emerged as the
flying saucer phenomenon our interest in it has consistently taught
us much less with certainty about aliens than about ourselves.
No one had really, you know, documented how our interest in the
phenomenon consistently reveals a great deal about what it means to
be human, what it means to live a human life. But that's generally
covert and what's generally at the surface is this ongoing
back-and-forth debate between both sides - both of which sides
typically are enmeshed in dogmatic one-dimensional viewpoints.
And first of all, let me say I think there's something
extraordinary going on in the UFO phenomenon. I think there is a
fundamental reality to it. What that reality is, I don't know, but
I suspect it's beyond our current ability to grasp it.
KING: You sound like-
Mr. THOMPSON: And therefore both sides - both sides -
consistently need to rationalize it into some conceptual system
that works for human beings.
KING: You sound, Keith, like an agnostic in a world of
believers and atheists.
Mr. THOMPSON: I have found myself in that position. You know,
one of the things that I have come to realize is that if ufology -
the research field of UFO's - can be likened to a dysfunctional
family in the sense of this constant back-and-forth fighting, I was
entrusted to be the sort of secret-keeper of the dysfunctional
family, because everyone I talked to in my interviews on both sides
said, `You know, I can tell you about him. Now, you can't quote me
because this is libelous but, you know, he's working for the
Government.' Or, `He's in cahoots with this,' or `He's crazy.
Now, you can't quote me.' And I was consistently invited to share
this secret - the various kinds of secrets - around what is, you
know, really a kind of paranoia on both sides.
KING: All right, are you saying, then, anyone who says
definitively `There are flying saucers; I went up with them; I met
the little people; the Government's hiding it' or anyone who says
definitively `There's nothing out there; forget it; nothing's in
the universe; we are it' - both of them have put themselves in
corners, can't prove either side of that corner, and they're kind
of a little whacked?
Mr. THOMPSON: Well, that's what I've tried to document in the
book, and the key word is `definitive.' Any viewpoint that offers
itself as the definitive viewpoint has been offered many, many
times before. For example, one particular side says, `We're just
about ready to blow the lid on the Government coverup.' That was
first stated in the late 1940's and it continues to be stated. It
may be true this time, but it's been stated many times before.
KING: Like `The world's going to end a week from Tuesday.'
Mr. THOMPSON: I think it's Wednesday.
KING: OK. Don, how would you defend what Keith has said so
far, as research director of UFO Magazine?
DON ECKER, `UFO' Magazine: Well, Larry, Keith is in many
respects absolutely correct. This is a house divided. It has been
for quite a while. We have to break the ufologists down into
several groups. Unfortunately, I hate to say this, but we have one
group that are two or three taco's shy of a full combination plate.
We have another group that are, apparently, aliens. And what I
mean by that, they can manipulate time and space - the space inside
somebody's wallet and the time that it takes them to empty it. And
then we have a bedrock of serious UFO researchers - people that are
actually trying to get to the truth - and that's what we do in UFO
Magazine.
We take a look at all sides and we try to find out exactly what
is going on. We don't doubt for one minute that there is a
phenomenon and we don't doubt that the most workable hypothesis is
the one of possible extraterrestrial visitation, but we're not
locked into that. There is a mystery here. What we're saying is
it deserves to be studied. It deserves to be looked at. And it's
apparent - and we have documented proof - that the Government is
hiding something.
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
--- Maximus/2 2.01wb
* Origin: UFOria (Clifton, VA) 703-803-6420 (1:109/369)
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(7259) Thu 21 Oct 93 6:27p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: It Won't Go Away ! 2/
St:
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KING: All right, now, your documented proof, if we could be
brief, is what?
Mr. ECKER: OK, for example, this past spring I was in Tucson,
Arizona, at an international UFO conference. During the course of
this conference I had a chance to meet Dr. Marina Popovitch, who is
a Soviet researcher over here in the United States. At that period
of time I had a chance to interview her over two days' period and
the very last day that I was speaking to her I asked her about a
rumor that I had heard in a book that I had read by another
researcher back on the East Coast by the name of Zachariah Sitchin.
The book is Genesis Revisited, and he intimated in this book that,
during the course of a Soviet space mission back in 1988-1989,
something passingly strange happened in the orbit of Mars with one
of these Soviet probes, and I asked Dr. Popovitch if there was any
truth to it.
Well, I got a fantastic story out of this that came all the way
from the halls of the Soviet politburo and, also, the Soviet space
center and Glavcosmos. Now, I asked her what exactly were the
facts that she brought back. Well, according to Sitchin, number
one, the Soviets had received several photographs from this space
probe-
KING: I'm going to ask you to be as brief as possible. Are you
saying that the Government knows about- our Government knows about
these photographs? We've exchanged them with the Soviets?
Mr. ECKER: Well, I have- I brought one with me, Larry. I
brought a photograph that has never been released outside of the
Soviet Union that was given to Dr. Popovitch, and I have it here.
What happened was this probe-
KING: Can we see it?
Mr. ECKER: Yes, I'm going to hold it up right now.
KING: All right.
Mr. ECKER: {Holds up photograph} This probe, all right, was in
the orbit of Mars and it was to perform several scientific
experiments.
Is this better?
KING: Yes.
Mr. ECKER: OK. It was to perform several scientific
experiments- and, excuse me, I have it upside-down.
KING: All right- Don't help me either way, by the way, but go
ahead. {laughs}
Mr. ECKER: {laughs} Right. OK. {Indicates printing at top of
photograph} This is, incidentally, Russian writing up here. What
it says is `FOBOS II' and then the number- the computer numbers.
But what this showed was that there was a very large metallic
cylindrical object-
KING: Right.
Mr. ECKER: -that this probe photographed, which you can see
right underneath the moon-
KING: Couldn't that be debris of some kind or something
floating in space?
Mr. ECKER: Well, yes, it could be, except for the size. The
size computed out to 25 kilometers long. That's 15-1/2 miles.
KING: OK, now, when you see something like this, Keith, how do
you react?
Mr. THOMPSON: Well, I react by- Personally, I have great
respect for Don and his magazine. He's one of the better- He's
thoughtful and intelligent and so forth.
KING: Obviously.
Mr. THOMPSON: Now, let me say, though, that the photograph- And
it may be exactly what he's saying, but the point is, year after
year, decade after decade, photographs have been presented which
fall between- fall in a category which are not accepted by the
scientific establishment. They may be real but, nevertheless- So
the photos become part of a modern mythology.
Mr. ECKER: Well, he's absolutely correct, Larry. He is
correct. There have been many, many photographs over the years
that have proved to be fraudulent. However, what we have to look
at are what facts would support this? What did the Soviets,
themselves, say? Now, according to Dr. Popovitch, when she spoke
to her contacts not only in Glavcosmos but also within the Soviet
politburo - and she's a very highly-placed person in Soviet society
- it came out that Premier Gorbachev and President Bush held this
at the very top of their agenda in their meeting at Yalta- or, I'm
sorry, Malta. Yalta was a few years ago. The story was so-
KING: In other words, they've discussed this photograph?
Mr. ECKER: Yes, that's correct.
KING: You know that for a fact?
Mr. ECKER: This is what I was told by Dr. Popovitch from her
contacts.
KING: OK. All right, let me get a break and then I want to
come right back and pick up on this with Keith Thompson - his book
is Angels and Aliens - and Don Ecker, research director of UFO
Magazine. This is Larry King Live - Richard Simmons on Monday.
Don't go away.
{Commercial break}
KING: Our guests are Keith Thompson, author of Angels and
Aliens, and Don Ecker of UFO Magazine. We're going to go to your
calls. We have limited time tonight, unfortunately. We want to do
more on this.
I would say this, Don. What's your theory on why the
Government would cover up?
Mr. ECKER: Well, there are any number of theories, Larry.
KING: Give me one. Give me one that you like.
Mr. ECKER: OK, something about the social fabric tearing apart.
I think they're afraid of it if, in fact-
KING: Every administration believes that? Every NATO person,
every person who knows about this shares that belief?
Mr. ECKER: It's hard to say whether they all know it or believe
it. I think, as time has gone on, the coverup, for whatever reason
it was initially begun- and incidentally, this entire era began the
time the National Security Act was signed into law.
KING: Uh-huh. So you buy the coverup theory?
Mr. ECKER: Oh, without a doubt. Without a doubt.
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
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(7260) Thu 21 Oct 93 6:27p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: It Won't Go Away ! 3/
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KING: OK. Pensacola, Florida, hello.
5th CALLER: {Pensacola, Florida} Yes, I would like to know why
so many UFO investigators believe the Walters UFO pictures of Gulf
Breeze, Florida, are real, when it's been shown so many times in
the media that they could have been faked through double exposure?
KING: Keith?
Mr. THOMPSON: Well, actually, many years now after those photos
have been examined the UFO community is coming around to recognize
the likelihood - very strong likelihood - that those photographs
are faked. And why did it take such a long time? There's a
fundamental- you know, a fundamental love and fundamental being
pulled into this over and over and over in the UFO field that
somehow is the need to believe.
KING: Medford, Oregon, hello.
6th CALLER: {Medford, Oregon} Howdy. I would like to know why,
with the millions and millions of self-focus videocameras and .35
millimeter cameras, all of the so-called photographic evidence of
UFO's is always out of focus, blurry, and pretty poor quality?
Mr. ECKER: Well, Larry, I'd like to answer that.
KING: Sure.
Mr. ECKER: That's not necessarily true. As a matter of fact,
one of the people that UFO Magazine has known for quite a while,
out in Yucaipa, California - the UFO video clearinghouse - has
thousands of tapes. Many of them have come in from people with
camcorders and there's absolutely- In many of these cases these are
very clear. Now, as to whether they're a true UFO, of course, is
something else. As we all know, many times people have mistaken
things.
KING: Yes.
Mr. ECKER: But there is still that 10 percent.
KING: Do we know why, Keith, they always land in `Kyacook,
Iowa,' and never Washington?
Mr. THOMPSON: Well, they do land in sparsely-populated-
KING: Outside of `Kyacook.'
Mr. THOMPSON: That's right and, theoretically, always on the
back porch of someone named `Billy-Bob.'
KING: That's right.
Mr. THOMPSON: That's the popular mythology. And in fact, they
do avoid- They do seem to favor sparsely-populated areas.
KING: And guys named `Billy-Bob.' They like them.
Mr. THOMPSON: That's right. {laughs}
KING: Ouwerkerk, Holland, hello.
6th CALLER: {Ouwerkerk, The Netherlands} Hello, Ouwerkerk. I
hope to see you in Wetten, Dass with Thomas Gottschalk.
KING: Yes, he's invited me. I've agreed to go on. What's your
question?
6th CALLER: OK. My question is, what do you think about the
crop circles in Europe?
Mr. THOMPSON: Well, I think they're extraordinary-
KING: Oh, that turned out to be false, right?
Mr. THOMPSON: Well, there were a couple of guys who confessed
to doing-
KING: Yes.
Mr. THOMPSON: -to committing a couple of hoaxes.
Mr. ECKER: Well, Larry, as a matter of fact, in our last issue
we had an updated news story. As a matter of fact, we sent a press
release to CNN, to your show, and to a number of other press
agencies, explaining how this was absolutely and patently
impossible that these two guys had performed all these crop
circles, and we've never heard back from anyone. For example, last
year-
KING: Do you agree with that, Keith?
Mr. THOMPSON: That's what consistently happens in the field,
which is that when a couple of guys come forward and admit to
faking a couple of anything, or are exposed as faking, then the
debunkers can use that to say, `Well, the whole thing is probably
fake, the whole thing-'
Mr. ECKER: Absolutely. Absolutely correct.
Mr. THOMPSON: -but in fact, there are too many that simply
can't be explained.
KING: What do you gut-believe?
Mr. THOMPSON: My gut-belief is that we're dealing with
something that is much larger than we are and that every attempt
will grab- you know, every attempt to explain it will grab some
part of it but, in the long run, every theory we have about it will
reveal more about us in the long run.
KING: Back with more of Don Ecker and Keith Thompson on Larry
King Live. Don't go away.
{Commercial break}
KING: We're running close on time. Keith, why do you believe
the Government may know this and not reveal it?
Mr. THOMPSON: I think what the Government may well not be
revealing is they don't have the answers, either. If this is a
phenomenon that can transcend time and space, if aliens can pull
people out of their beds and out of their cars with impunity, the
very idea that we think the Government is still monolithic and must
have all the answers- If they don't have the answers, they're not
going to admit it.
KING: Don, is this the decade we learn for sure?
Mr. ECKER: That's hard to say, Larry. But, you know, we have
to take very quickly a real close look at this. Five hundred years
ago next year, Columbus left Europe and found a new world. It took
him months to get over here. Today, we do it in hours. Why? Do
we have faster sailing ships? No, we have different technology.
KING: Yes.
Mr. ECKER: And in our recent humanity here on this planet - and
we've had civilization for roughly 10,000 years - we've only had
atomic power for 46.
KING: Yes.
Mr. ECKER: Now, who knows what we're going to have in the next
few? I think more is going to come to light, yes.
KING: Thanks a lot. Don Ecker is the research director of UFO
Magazine; Keith Thompson, the author of Angels and Aliens.
>>> EOF <<<
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(8008) Fri 22 Oct 93 11:02p
By: John Amsler
To: All
Re: Groom Lake Land Grab!
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Las Vegas Review-Journal
931020
Planned Land Acquisition Criticized
A spokesman for Citizen Alert, a statewide environmental group,
said Tuesday she is upset with plans by the Air Force to withdraw
more public land for a buffer zone around a secret Groom Lake
Stealth aircraft base, 35 miles west of Alamo.
"Nellis Air Force Base has 3 million acres of land, and where do
they want to build their top secret base? Right on the border,"
said the spokeswoman, Grace Bukowski, the group's military
project director.
Gary Ryan, acting director for the Bureau of Land Management's
Las Vegas District, confirmed that the Air Force was interested
in withdrawing 3,900 acres of public land for the buffer zone.
The proposed withdrawal is in addition to 89,300 acres of the
Groom Range that the Air Force obtained in 1984 amid charges by
environmentalists that the land was posted and patrolled by Air
Force security without legal authority.
Bukowski said Citizen Alert has written the Bureau of Land
Management, Gov. Bob Miller and Nevada's congressional delegation
requesting that public hearings be held and that the Air Force
prepare an environmental impact statement with public
participation.
"The whole thing is, who are they afraid of? Are they afraid of
American citizens? Are we still living in the Cold War era?"
Bukowski said.
- John Amsler
Public Access BBS
(702)-383-9939
Las Vegas, Nevada
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(8391) Sun 24 Oct 93 4:14p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Right To Know About Ufos
St: 8783>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An Alienable Right to Know About UFOs
Byline: ROGER SIMON
05/31/92
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
As a public service and because young people are usually too
small to do me physical harm, I occasionally like to analyze their
views.
A few days ago, I received the following letter from Andrew David
Cole, age 12, who lives in Lutherville, Md.
"Dear Mr. Simon," he begins. "The most terrifying aspect of the
UFO phenomenon doesn't come out of the skies. It's not on a wheat
field in England. It doesn't abduct people for goodness-knows-what
purpose. It's our own government, as well as those of other
countries.
"For many years, the U.S. government has withheld from its
citizens, or so it seems, at least as much UFO information as it
has released."
An articulate young man, I think you will agree. And it made my
heart swell with pride to discover that our grammar schools are
teaching our young people to be as dizzy and paranoid as their
parents.
Andrew continues: "People present when UFOs have landed and when
beings emerged from them have been threatened by government agents
that, if they don't move away and/or if they tell anyone about the
event, physical harm will come to them."
Well, now, Andrew, this is where I would like to interrupt you
for a moment. It is very important to distinguish between fiction
and fact, especially in our mass media society where the
distinction is sometimes blurred.
So remember: UFOs, witches, hobgoblins, Elvis sightings, Murphy
Brown and Dan Quayle are all fiction. Death, taxes and more
profiles of Ross Perot are all inevitable facts.
Got that? OK, let's go on with your letter: "In the 1950s, a UFO
crashed near an Army base in the Southwest and, nationwide,
articles were written about it in the newspapers. . . . Once, in
another desert in the Southwest, a different UFO crashed, and a
family went to investigate. . . . "
Let me stop you once again, Andrew. You raise a point about UFOs
that I have never understood. They are built by superior creatures
from civilizations far more advanced than our own. They have
traveled unimaginable distances in order to meet us. So tell me
this: Why do they pick such goofy places to land?
Why is it always a "Southwest desert" or some remote stretch of
tundra near the Arctic Circle or in a swamp in south Georgia? Why
don't they land in Central Park in New York City? Or on "Donahue"?
OK, back to Andrew's letter: " . . . a different UFO crashed and
a family went to investigate. When they got there, they found four
alien creatures. Two dead, one dying, and the fourth still
standing, having suffered apparently little damage.
"The standing alien was taken back to the military headquarters,
where it lived for a few years before dying of an unknown illness.
I think out of all the countries in the world, Belgium is the only
one that makes public all its UFO information."
Exactly my point, Andrew. Belgium is the world geographic
equivalent of a swamp in south Georgia. Whoever heard of anything
important happening in Belgium except the occasional soccer riot or
the recent disappearance of 250 hectares of downtown Brussels in a
bright blue flash?
"We try to live in harmony with other organisms on this planet,"
the letter continues, "so why not do the same with other planets?
It's basically the same thing. Humans could openly visit whoever's
out there, and they could openly visit us. Why is the government
trying to prevent that?"
Well, Andrew, I can think of three reasons:
1. Our economy would be thrown into chaos trying to keep up with
the exchange rate on Martian pesos.
2. The Andromeda Nebula might demand one of the two new NFL
expansion teams.
3. The crab creatures of Altair Six smell funny.
There is another possibility, Andrew, perhaps one even a student
as bright as you did not anticipate: Perhaps that one alien
creature that survived the crash in the Southwest did not later die
"of an unknown illness."
Perhaps that was just a cover story. Perhaps that creature
escaped, assumed human shape and has lived among us to study our
ways.
Perhaps he has the ability to cloud minds and bend us to his
will. And perhaps he sits in the White House today, confident of
reelection!
I can think of no other explanation.
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(8392) Sun 24 Oct 93 4:14p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: New Age Dawning
St: <6875
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
`Aliens in My Bedroom'
Tiny Newsletter Spreads Word of Close Encounters With UFOs
11/24/88
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
Crude sketches of flying saucers lay scattered across the
dining-room table. Various alien vessels were depicted: Venusian,
Pleiadean and those of the Dahl Universe. There were typewritten
pages as well, firsthand accounts of extraterrestrial encounters.
Charles Forsher sat at one end of the table discussing Jesus
Christ and spaceships. He spoke of television and telepathy.
Finally, he gestured to a woman sitting quietly opposite him.
This woman, he said, can communicate with civilizations on other
planets. She is, he said, "blessed by the divine."
"Yes, I came from another planet," said the woman, Penny Harper,
discussing previous incarnations. "I remember coming to this planet
2,500 years ago. Around the time of Buddha."
Harper and Forsher had been eager to tell their story on a
recent afternoon at Forsher's Westside home. The two met at a UFO
lecture in 1987 and quickly joined forces to spread the word about
distant universes. Working out of a Studio City office, they
produce New Age Dawning, a monthly newsletter of other-wordly
essays. Forsher draws the illustrations, and Harper takes care of
the words.
CIRCULATION OF 500
A year and a half after its first issue, New Age Dawning
circulates to 500 people a month. Only 33 of those readers pay the
$12 yearly subscription fee; Harper gives the rest away at local
UFO meetings.
Yet, the tiny publication has earned some notice. In the "Best
of L.A. '88" issue, the L.A. Weekly cited New Age Dawning as the
"Best Printed Anti-Matter." Meanwhile, editors at a nationwide UFO
magazine are upset by the kinds of articles Harper publishes.
"If someone tells me they were on a spaceship, I say,
`Wonderful. Write it up,' " Harper said. "If someone tells me
they're an extraterrestrial, I say, `Write it up.' There's a trust
between me and my writers."
In the December, 1987, issue, a woman named Karen Lustrup wrote:
"After I had gone to bed on the 2nd of October, 1984, I had three
extraterrestrials in my bedroom. . . . They were tall, human-like,
around 6 feet tall and dressed in silverish tight suits." One of
them "straightened up, and took farewell with the words `I am
TZADOR.' "
In the July issue, Pat Weissleader offered tips on dealing with
undercover government agents who try to wrest information from
people in the know about UFOs. The article- entitled "Paranoid
About the Men in Black?"-suggested that one should tell agents
"things that will make them dismiss you as crazy."
"Tell them the aliens peek into your bedroom at night to see you
naked. Or tell them that you had the alien to dinner and the spoons
have never been the same," Weissleader wrote. "If your phone acts
funny, sing the Oscar Meyer wiener song or breathe heavily; if
someone's there, they'll know that you know."
More recently, Harper has written a series of essays proposing
that evil aliens are secretly drugging the Earth's food supplies as
a way to gain control of the planet.
"It's not real journalism," said Vicki Cooper, co-editor of UFO
Magazine, a slick-covered publication with a circulation of 10,000.
"Penny's trying to open up a forum for UFO interests, but I think
that sort of thing doesn't do much for the credibility of the UFO
field. What should be done is the accruing of testimony and
evidence that can be corroborated."
Harper, 44, with long blonde hair, casually dismissed such
criticism as a lack of universal enlightenment.
"Hey, let people laugh," she said. "I feel very much like
Galileo and Columbus. They probably faced a lot of public
skepticism, but they believed in themselves and they were proven
right. People laughed at Jesus Christ and crucified him. I'm in
good company."
Forsher nodded in agreement.
"It's a duty I have on this planet," Harper said. "I feel like
it's a mission, an assignment to make people wake up and realize
that we really need to live and love in peace on this planet. It's
the message of the extraterrestrials."
That message, in various forms, has become increasingly popular
of late.
Hollywood has led the way. "Alien Nation"-an extraterrestrial-earthling
buddy film-has become a surprise hit at the box office, and director
John Carpenter's new film, "They Live," portrays the Reagan Revolution
as an undercover invasion by aliens. On television, NBC recently debuted a
weekly series, "Something's Out There," about a policeman and his beautiful
otherworldly partner.
Dozens of UFO magazines are published nationwide. UFOs have made for good
business in the telephone industry, as well: Several dial-a-UFO numbers
have popped up.
Despite all this, Harper suspects that most people don't believe in flying
saucers. During the course of a 2-hour interview, her voice remained
quietly earnest as she spoke on this subject.
ELVIS' SECRETARY
Forsher tended to become more excited. At one point, for no particular
reason, he gestured toward a photograph on the wall. It was a picture of
his mother standing beside Elvis Presley.
"She was his personal secretary," Forsher, 42, said.
A moment later, his mother walked into the room offering glasses of
apple juice, but Harper waved her off, too concerned with UFOs and
her newsletter to take time for refreshments.
New Age Dawning comes as stapled, mimeographed sheets with a
photograph or sometimes a spaceship drawing on the cover. The
articles are written by Harper and people she has met through UFO
meetings. It is usually seven or eight pages thick and costs $110
each month to produce and mail.
Part of the costs are paid for by regular advertisers: The "living oracles"
Sean and Michael promote their readings of cartouches (ancient Egyptian
symbols) and a woman named Bonnie offers to teach the ancient Tantra
science.
Harper pays for the rest of the newsletter's production costs-and
supports herself-by teaching occasional UFOlogy classes at such places
as Everywoman's Village in Van Nuys. She holds monthly meetings for
people who say they have been visited by aliens or even teleported aboard
spaceships. Forty to 80 such people regularly pay $5 admission to attend.
Harper also speaks at UFO conventions for $25 to $75 an appearance. But,
she said, she is barely getting by.
"If I wanted to make money, I'd do something else," she said. "I do this to
get the message out to people."
Harper said the inspiration for New Age Dawning came after she
experienced several close encounters. In August, 1987, she said, she was
beamed aboard an alien ship, then deposited 1 1/2 hours later in Glendale.
VOICE INSIDE HEAD
Harper also said she has felt the vibrations of flying saucers hovering in
her front yard. She has had memories of previous spiritual lives spent in
the bodies of aliens.
"In fact, I was lying in bed last night and I heard this guy's voice in my
head," she said. "It's a guy I've been dating. This guy is across town, like
10 miles away. We had a nice little conversation."
Wouldn't some people consider all this insane?
"All insanity means is that you see things in a different way, you don't
agree with common knowledge," she said. "I'm just on the leading edge,
that's all."
In time, she and Forsher hope for a world where everyone, having reached
a state of enlightenment, can communicate with alien beings. These kinds of
people will read their newsletter.
"I think people are hungry for this information," Harper said. "People who
have been on spaceships, when they read my articles, they don't laugh."
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(8393) Sun 24 Oct 93 4:14p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Waking Dreams 1/2
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UFOs From Outer Space of the Inner Mind
03/26/93
ATLANTA JOURNAL AND CONSTITUTION
On Saturday morning, more than 100 mental health professionals
are expected to file quickly and quietly into the Tara Hall
conference room of the Sheraton Atlanta Airport Hotel. Some may
joke nervously, but this is no laughing matter. Most are serious
doctors who spent more than a decade in college to get where they
are - three degrees do not come easily - and there's nothing funny
about risking it all.
Simply stated, UFOs are bad for business.
Faced with patients who tell tales of being abducted by aliens
and intrigued by a recent Roper poll that claims one in 50
Americans believes they've had a close encounter, it is the mental
health professionals who are now asking for help.
Four "UFO experts" will hold "A Workshop on Unusual Personal
Experiences" on Saturday, a very private, invitation-only
conference that will teach therapists, psychologists and
psychoanalysts from across the Southeast how to treat patients who
claim they've been abducted by UFOs.
"For sure, there will be people there who will not accept the
reality of this," said Budd Hopkins of New York, who has written
two books about UFOs and is organizing the seminar along with
Harvard University psychiatrist John Mack, Temple University
history professor David Jacobs, and John Carpenter, a social worker
from Springfield, Mo. "But I also think it's safe to say that many
mental health professionals are puzzled by it all," Mr. Hopkins
continued.
Others are out-and- out hoaxes perpetrated by sick people seeking
attention.
Either way, there's no denying the victims firmly believe
something happened. Consider:
Ricky Monroe of Vidalia, Ga., claims he spent 3 1/2 hours aboard
a UFO last June after encountering an alien in his living room. Mr.
Monroe says he was taken aboard a "scout ship" and toured two
underground UFO bases nearby, and was told by the extraterrestrials
that some 70 species of aliens were currently visiting the Earth.
In 1973, shipyard worker Charles Hickson claims he was taken
aboard a large, oval UFO at Pascagoula, Miss., and examined by a
"roving-eye" type of machine. Although he has repeatedly been
offered money for the rights to his story, Mr. Hickson has refused.
"Making money is not what this experience is all about," he said.
Debbie Tomey of Indiana claims she's been abducted repeatedly,
first at the age of 6, when skin and blood samples were taken, and
then again at 18, when she believes she was artificially
inseminated. Several months later, Ms. Tomey, whose story was told
last year in the CBS miniseries "Intruders," claims she was
abducted yet again when aliens removed a fetus from her body.
Even before this new wave of attention generated by "Fire in the
Sky," nearly 3 percent of all Americans reported they believe they
have had a close encounter with extraterrestrials - many on more
than one occasion.
The American Psychiatric Association refuses to comment publicly
on the subject, and the United States Air Force closed its official
investigation of UFOs (code name: Project Blue Book) in 1969.
"Hey, this is as far out as you can get, and academics do not
take this kind of thing lightly," said Dr. Jacobs, an amateur
ufologist who investigates abduction cases in his off-hours. "At
Temple, I encounter resolute hostility. My colleagues think this is
crazy and stupid and a complete waste of time."
Exactly, says Terence Sandbek, a clinical psychologist from
Sacramento, Calif.
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(8394) Sun 24 Oct 93 4:14p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Waking Dreams 2/2
St: 8818>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"There is zero evidence that any of this stuff is even remotely
credible," Dr . Sandbek said in a telephone interview. "It's just
damn silly, that's all. Since we know there's no intelligent life
in this solar system, we can assume it would take literally
hundreds of years to get here from another galaxy. That kind of
travel is beyond our comprehension. And you expect me to believe
extraterrestrials would come all that way just to pick up a drunken
fisherman in Mississippi?
"All this proves to me is that a Ph.D. is no guarantee against
stupidity."
Meanwhile, Robert Baker, a retired psychologist from the
University of Kentucky, recently completed a paper titled "Alien
Abduction or Human Production?" that debunks the UFO abduction
theory and ascribes the patients' traumas to hallucinations called
"waking dreams." "These experiences are frightening," Dr. Baker
said. "They are scary and they are real, and many therapists may
not know how to treat them properly. But they are not caused by
UFOs."
The hardest hit, however, comes from Carl Sagan, the
world-renowned scientist who dismissed the notion of alien
abductions in a recent Parade magazine cover story titled, "Are
They Coming for Us?" Noting that there is absolutely zero physical
evidence to support the claims of UFO abductees, Dr. Sagan chalks
uptheir experiences to hallucinations.
"If aliens are not partial to Americans, the number {of
abductees} for the whole planet would be 100 million people," Dr.
Sagan wrote. "This means an abduction every few seconds. It's
surprising that more of the neighbors haven't notice. . . . {Yet}
no one would be happier than I would if we had real evidence of
extraterrestrial life."
According to a Roper poll, which surveyed 5,947 adult Americans
in late 1991, nearly 3 percent of those polled believe they have
had at least one of four types of experiences consistent with a UFO
abduction. Those experiences include seeing unusual lights or balls
of light, having an hour or more pass without remembering what
happened, waking up paralyzed with the sense of strange figures in
the room, and finding strange scars on their bodies.
The figures were highest (18 percent) for waking up paralyzed
with a stranger present.
Then again, one in 10 of those polled also reported having seen
ghosts.
Saturday's workshop is the third in a series that drew several
hundred last year in Los Angeles and New York. Organizers
say 150 people have signed up for the Atlanta session. The one-day,
nine-hour seminar is free, and all costs are underwritten jointly
by Mr. Hopkins's Intruder Foundation and the Bigelow Foundation, a
UFO-friendly outfit set up by Las Vegas real-estate developer
Robert Bigelow.
In the sessions, therapists are given tips on how to recognize
the symptoms of a "UFO abductee" (panic attacks, an inability to
sleep, missing blocks of time, etc.) and how to deal with the
memories, which often include horrifying tales of sexual
experiments performed aboard spaceships. In addition, techniques
such as hypnosis and support groups are suggested which may help
patients come to grips with their reactions, one that many
professionals compare to the post-traumatic stress disorders
suffered by veterans of the Vietnam War.
"What happened to these people is not good - it's blood-curdling,"
said Dr. Jacobs. "One person I was helping re-live the experience
through hypnosis just kept screaming in agony. It's frightening and
depressing and a life-changing experience. You don't ever, ever go
back to normal."
Each year, hundreds of bankers and teachers and athletes and
garbage collectors and housewives and CEOs phone places such as the
Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) in Seguin, Texas, and the Center for UFO
Studies (CUFOS) in Chicago to report UFO encounters.
According to MUFON international director Walter H. Andrus Jr.,
a disturbing pattern of repeat abductions has begun to appear,
leading many ufologists to believe that human beings are being
tagged and observed as part of a large-scale science experiment.
"We believe it's for breeding purposes," Mr. Andrus said. "For
women, the abductions start around 3 or 4 years of age and go up
through menopause; men usually start around 10. It looks like a
genetic engineering experiment, which would explain the aliens'
interest in our sperm and reproductive organs.
"Abductees say the aliens are small and frail and unable to
reproduce like we do, and that they are used to produce
half-breeds. They are using us to strengthen their race."
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
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(8772) Wed 27 Oct 93 9:48a
By: Tim Joiner
To: All
Re: Ape Ancestors
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Wednesday, October 27, 1993, Page 8F
Title: "Reinventing Apes"
Attributed to Los Angeles Times, Jeffrey Wells
It may not be a "'Jurassic Park' for 1995," as one producer
predicted, but a planned big-budget "reinvention" of "Planet of
the Apes" is in the works at 20th Century Fox. And Oliver Stone,
Hollywood's ultimate social realist-turned-fantasist, is
expected to take the helm.
Various off-the-record sources confirmed last week that a deal
was near for Stone to develop and, if all goes well, produce
"Apes."
The script, to be written by Australian screenwriter Terry Hayes
("The Road Warrior," "Dead Calm"), won't be based on the Pierre
Boulle novel, an insider says, nor will it be a remake of Fox's
1968 Charlton Heston sci-fi classic.
"It's a total reinvention of the whole thing," a studio
executive relates, adding that the film is projected to cost in
the vicinity of $60 million. "The story that's been mapped out
is almost the complete opposite, timewise, of what the first
movie was. There are no astronauts crash-landing."
It will be set in the distant past, he said, focusing on a race
of alien apes who are Earth's dominant species. They spawn the
human race and program its fate so that a critical point in the
21st century holds the key to man's fate.
Neither Stone, the director-writer behind "JFK," "Born on the
Fourth of July" and "Platoon," nor Hayes returned calls. Stone's
latest project is "Natural-Born Killers," a violent melodrama
based on a Quentin Tarantino script that's now being edited. His
"Heaven and Earth" is to be released by Warner Bros. in
December.
Don Murphy, who produced "Natural-Born Killers" with Jane
Hamsher and is in line with her to produce "Apes," said earlier
this week that the deal isn't locked and refused to elaborate.
But one source, speaking earlier last week, said that the deal
is "a few days away from being finalized. ...Fox is not going to
walk away from Oliver Stone."
... The brain has two hemispheres, just like Jane Russell.
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12
--- GEcho 1.00
* Origin: The Fishin' Hole, Benton AR (501) 794-4072 (1:3821/102) (1:3821/102)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(9021) Thu 28 Oct 93 12:09p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Vegas Ufo Symp
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UFO series brings out believers
10/26/93
THE LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Karen Howard believes. So does a bartender who goes by the
initials "A.B." But, Ida Wright and Mike Friedrichs haven't quite
made up their minds.
All recently attended portions of a month-long symposium on
UFOs at the West Charleston Library that featured six experts on
the subject, including Las Vegas' George Knapp.
The speakers did their best to inform their audiences about
UFOs, strange lights in the sky, spacecrafts, abductions and
unexplained animal mutilations.
"I think it was very interesting, very thought-provoking. I
loved it," Wright said, as the theme from the original "Star Trek"
television series played over a speaker system at the library.
Wright attended the last night of the symposium in which Bill
Moore, author of "The Philadelphia Experiment" and "The Roswell
Incident," gave a lecture.
A companion, Karen Howard, who listened to two guest speakers,
including Knapp, has seen something in the sky several times.
"It's real," she said.
She once saw a metallic object that "had a red and blue light
on it," she said. "There was something, and I am amazed with the
so-called experts who say I'm imagining things. I tried to make an
honest serious report and they laughed at me."
Howard hasn't seen anything in the Nevada sky, not yet anyway.
"I haven't gone out to look either," she said. "I hear there's
some out there in Area 51 (restricted military area near Tonopah)."
Howard, who uses a walker, can't drive. If she could, she
would have attended the entire series.
Both women expressed hesitation about being abducted by aliens.
"I think I'd be afraid like everybody else," Wright said. "I
think the unknown is a little bit frightening. You don't know what
they're going to do so you'd naturally have an uneasy feeling about
it."
Howard added, "I'm not going to sit in the middle of the field
and say, `Come and get me."'
Even if Howard were abducted, "I think it would have been an
interesting experience," she said.
Evelyn Squillari, a reference librarian at Summerlin Library,
organized the symposium.
Patrons "wanted more UFO stuff," she said. "They wanted
different people who had different viewpoints.
"They're amazed the library did something like this. You'd be
surprised how many people in Las Vegas are interested in UFOs. We
can't keep enough books, or magazines, on the shelves. We can't
give them enough information."
Squillari began putting the symposium together 18 months ago.
Originally, she wanted to hold the event in one day with three to
five speakers. But getting the speakers to appear on the same day
proved impossible.
"It mushroomed from four guests to seven," she said, of the
month-long symposium. "It just took off on its own."
For the most part, the crowds behaved, she said.
"I was very surprised we didn't have any debunkers or anti-UFO
radicals _ people who think they're Satan worshipers or anti-God,"
she said.
A man who only identified himself as "A.B.," a bartender who
has researched the UFO subject for 47 years and who has had five
sightings, enjoyed hearing from the experts Squillari brought in.
"I definitely know there are (UFOs) because of the contacts
that I've had," said A.B., who wore a navy blue cap with the
initials UFOR _ Unidentified Flying Objects Researcher.
About 18 months ago, A.B. was driving on U.S. Highway 95 on his
way back to Las Vegas from Lake Tahoe when his car stopped
suddenly.
"The UFO just stopped my car," he said. The object that stopped
him, he said, "was bigger than this (library) building." A.B.
eventually was able to get his car going and return home.
Although A.B. has yet to meet an alien, he believes aliens
abduct humans for genetic research and said he wouldn't be too
scared if a spaceship abducted him.
"I would like to travel from planet to planet," he said.
"That's my goal. I'm an explorer."
Friedrichs, a native Las Vegan who attended most of the
symposium, called the symposium phenomenal.
"I've always been fascinated by the subject," he said, adding
he wasn't sure if there was something out there now.
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
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(9022) Thu 28 Oct 93 12:09p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Dallas Draws Visitors
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Visitors to Dallas sometimes prove to be out of this world
10/25/93
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Dallas is a town that definitely draws visitors. They come from
all over.
Check the signatures on the register at The Sixth Floor exhibit over
at the old Texas School Book Depository and you'll see just where
they come from - every continent, country, city and ZIP code.
And if you were a visitor or a resident returning home, you could
always see signs that you were approaching Dallas. For decades,
travelers could spy the Flying Red Horse atop the Magnolia Oil Co.
Building. You may see it even now if you approach Dallas from the
right direction on a clear night.
These days, though, you are more likely to home in on the big green
building as a clear sign that you're approaching Dallas.
Unless, of course, you're approaching from outside our atmosphere.
I'm not sure what the homing beacon looks like from outer space. But
somebody knows. Some being knows.
This allegedly happened weeks ago, when the summer nights were still
hot and the only way you could get a cool, deep breath was to stick your
head into an icebox and draw mightily on the refrigerated air.
It was a day like any other day. We got a call here on the city desk from
a guy who claimed he had a story to tell.
I'm getting this second-hand, by the way. You'll see why in a minute.
The man claimed he'd been changing a tire on Good-Latimer Expressway,
just east of downtown.
He was alone, he said, except for his dog, Chigger, who, for now, will
have to be regarded as the only living witness.
As the man worked to loosen the lug bolts, he was, he claimed, abducted
by space aliens.
Abducted by space aliens in Dallas. Could it happen?
Most of my childhood was spent in the 1950s. We knew flying saucers
back then. They were spotted all the time - common as dust bunnies under
your bed.
UFOs were so scary that they inspired Hollywood to make such films as
Not of This Earth, The Brain from Planet Arous, Invasion of the Saucermen,
etc. Even today the sightings that were reported in the late '40s and
throughout the '50s are kicked around in UFO circles. People still write
books about them. There's the famous sighting of a fleet of flying saucers
over Mount Rainier, Wash., in 1947 and, coincidentally that same year, the
story of a spaceship that blew up or crash-landed or something at Roswell,
N.M. Why, way back in 1897, there was the incident at Aurora in Wise
County. The story goes that a spaceship hit a windmill and the townsfolk
buried the occupants in the local cemetery. Hoax. Hoax. Hoax. Hoax?
What we're talking about today is the recent alleged incident on our own
Good-Latimer Expressway, hardly regarded as your major interstellar
throughway.
This fellow claimed, as I said, that he was, as good dog Chigger watched,
abducted by space aliens while he was changing a tire. One of our reporters,
trained to be skeptical, spoke ever so briefly to this caller, listened
politely to his story and asked if the fellow had been hospitalized recently.
"No!" replied our caller. "Have you?" (Let's not get into the mental state
of people who write for newspapers - there's not enough room here to
explain things.)
The caller reacted by cutting off the conversation with a dramatic hang-up.
Unfortunately, this left us with a bagful of questions, like, "Are you calling
from orbit?"
Keep in mind that, as I list these questions, I don't doubt for a second that a
person could have been picked up by space aliens in Dallas. I've seen people
in Deep Ellum who looked as if their familial roots were planted not only on
another planet but, perhaps, in another dimension, too.
Our questions we'd have asked Chigger's master:
(1) Did the aliens help with the tire?
(2) Was Chigger ill at ease or was he the one barking out orders?
(3) Did other motorists drive by without stopping because they
saw you were already being helped?
(4) At which point did you realize these were space aliens and not just
ordinary ornately tattooed grunge-wearing, techno-speaking
homegrown cyberpunks?
(5) Have you now or have you ever been a member of the CIA, FBI
or the Texas Legislature?
(6) Do you believe in voodoo, magic, leprechauns or the
Superconducting Super Collider?
(7) Have you ever followed a flashing light over a darkened countryside?
Has a flashing light ever followed you over a darkened countryside?
Were you arrested?
(8) Is there any way you could have been channeling someone else at the
time of this encounter?
(9) Did the space aliens complain about all the torn up roads in Downtown
Dallas?
(10) Is it possible that they are inter-dimensional beings, freed when
DART dug its subway tunnel? When you last saw them, were they walking
away or were they beaming onto a big yellow, rectangular starship with
lots of windows and a pilot who demanded exact change?
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
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(10289) Fri 5 Nov 93 10:07p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Abductions
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Debate from outer space: Skeptics reject ufologists' claims of abductions
01/09/93
Windsor Star
CALGARY - Dr. Laurie Vassos awakens and is shocked to see a short,
grey-skinned creature with huge eyes standing beside his bed.
When he tries to scream, Vassos is suddenly transported out of his home to
the interior of a strange craft. He's up to his groin in a machine that looks
like a medical CAT-scanner.
Two "humanoids" - beings with human-like features - then float him out of
the craft, down a ramp and back to his bed where Vassos loses consciousness.
Next morning, he says in recalling the experience, he is standing naked in
the bathroom when he notices mysterious, tiny red marks on his groin. These
marks disappear after a day.
Vassos, a general physician in Saskatoon, is among thousands of North
Americans who believe they've been abducted by intelligent aliens in UFOs.
He's treating several patients who claim they're also "UFO abductees."
"These are not just vivid dreams," Vassos insists. "My senses are
telling me that (experience) was real."
Vassos recently organized a weekend seminar in Banff on extra-terrestrial
(ET) intelligence. The program attracted about 30 people, including nurses,
a dentist, psychologist, pilot, university students and business professionals.
Psychologist Leo Sprinkle, featured guest speaker at Banff, says the UFO
abduction experience is a real phenomenon beyond present scientific
understanding.
Sprinkle, former professor of counselling services at University of
Wyoming, has used hypnosis since 1967 to help more than 200 people
explore their "UFO memories."
Unlike Sprinkle, most "ufologists" or UFO buffs do not have training in
psychology or other scientific disciplines, or even in professional
counselling. They include occult novelist Whitley Strieber, who wrote the
1987 best-seller Communion, which suggests he was abducted and rudely
examined by "dwarf-like" aliens.
Bud Hopkins is another high-profile American ufologist. He trained as an
artist but, like Sprinkle, practises hypnosis on alleged abductees. In 1987,
Hopkins published Intruders. It suggests hundreds of people have become UFO
abduction victims, as part of a genetic experiment to meld aliens and humans.
People should examine such fantastic claims carefully, say twomembers of
Alberta Skeptics.
The group, which has about 40 members, promotes critical thinking and
skepticism about alleged paranormal occurrences.
"Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence," says Robert
Day, a computer consultant.
Anything is possible, but "it's the lack of proof that makes it unlikely,"
agrees Elizabeth Anderson, who founded the Alberta Skeptics. Day, in a
legally binding contract, offers to pay $2,000 to anyone providing
convincing evidence of ET visitations to Earth. Proof could include
recognition of the event by the Canadian National Academy of Sciences.
Anyone up to the challenge must pay Day $10 per month to keep the
contract in effect. He's not expecting any takers.
Philip Klass, retired senior editor of Aviation Week and SpaceTechnology,
has since 1987 offered to pay $10,000 to every UFO abduction victim
whose claim is confirmed by the FBI.
No "abductee" has even reported a claim.
The UFO abduction phenomenon vaulted into public consciousness in 1966,
with Look magazine's blockbuster, two-issue series about Betty and Barney
Hill.
The New Hampshire couple claimed they'd been abducted by a UFO five years
earlier and physically examined by space beings.
Boston psychiatrist Dr. Ben Simon treated the Hills with psychotherapy,
including time-regression hypnosis to explore their memories. Betty and
Barney told extraordinary tales of being kidnapped and taken aboard a
spacecraft.
During the Banff seminar, Vassos and Sprinkle both cited the Hills' case.
But the Hills' psychiatrist "has stated, on several occasions, that he does
not believe that the Hills were abducted and taken aboard a UFO," University
of Kentucky psychologist Robert Baker notes in his 1990 book, They Call It
Hypnosis.
Simon's expert opinion was that "Betty Hill's memories of the alleged abduction
were based solely on her dreams," whose constant retelling also influenced her
husband's memory, Baker says.
Despite the treating psychiatrist's doubts, NBC-TV in 1975 showed a two-hour,
prime-time movie dramatizing the Hills' abduction.
Baker says the Hills' case was significant, but only because it set the tone an
content for all UFO abduction claims that followed.
Abductions supposedly uncovered through hypnotic suggestion contain the same
components: "missing time, spatial dislocations, physical isolation from the
rest of the world during the event, physical examination inside the UFO, and
interest of the aliens in the earthlings' reproduction system."
Vassos and Sprinkle acknowledged, in separate interviews at Banff, they're
biased about UFO abductions.
"It's obvious I've crossed the line of being an objective investigator. I'm al
an experiencer," Vassos said.
Sprinkle also believes he was, at age 10, taken aboard a spacecraft where a
tall humanoid advised him to learn to read and write well, so he could help
others.
Sprinkle said in an interview that an American Psychological Association
ethics committee has investigated his activities and found no wrongdoing.
However, he was repeatedly warned to stop his "reincarnation workshops,"
where he uses hypnosis to explore people's "past lives or future dreams."
He finally resigned from the University of Wyoming in 1989. "The experts
are the people who've had the experience. So we should listen to what they have
to say."
Yet retired magazine editor Klass notes that Sprinkle, a trained psychologist,
was easily fooled by a young housewife from Phoenix, Ariz.
Christy Dennis, under hypnosis by Sprinkle, described her alien abductors
as being eight feet tall and having golden hair, olive-bronze skin, and "perfec
features."
A 1981 National Enquirer article quoted Sprinkle as saying: "This is one of the
most remarkable abduction cases I've come across." But early in 1982, Dennis
admitted her hoax in a letter to Sprinkle.
Sprinkle said he isn't troubled by debunkers.
"My joy is that some day, they, too, will have these experiences." Banff
participants paid extra for individual hypnotherapy sessions with Sprinkle,
although up until he left the University of Wyoming he hadn't charged for such
services.
Kentucky psychologist Baker says without independent verification, there's no
way, even for an experienced hypnotist, to tell whether subjects are telling th
truth or lying.
A California State University study in 1977 showed that hypnosis subjects
who'd never claimed so much as a UFO sighting can make up detailed abduction
stories that rank with the best told by alleged abductees.
Polygraph machines (lie-detectors) cannot distinguish between a real and a
created, phoney memory, Baker notes. Research on hypnosis has also revealed
a phenomenon called "cueing."
Baker says if the hypnotist has beliefs about what happened, "it is almost
impossible for him to prevent himself from inadvertently steering the subject's
recall in such a way that the subject will remember what the hypnotist believes
The Banff seminar, in retrospect, was structured in a way that made cueing
unavoidable. In the morning, participants listened to Saskatoon physician
Vassos present his UFO abduction story.
In the afternoon, Sprinkle told about his UFO contact, and also affirmed his be
in the reality of the abduction experience.
Only after these presentations did Sprinkle call for a volunteer for hypnosis,
which he performed in front of other already "cued" participants.
A Calgary woman recalled that a UFO used to follow her car as she drove her
children home from a drive-in theatre. Sprinkle readily accepted the story.
Other participants told of UFO abductions, contacts, sightings and out-of-body
experiences.
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
--- GOMail v1.2 [92-0207]
* Origin: StarGate BBS. InFoNet HQ NY 718-519-8042 (1:278/714)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(10290) Fri 5 Nov 93 10:07p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: 1/2 Streiber Tantrum
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Forwarded from "Alt.Alien.Visitors"
* Originally from Robert Sheaffer
* Originally dated 05-27-92 15:35
From: sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer)
Date: 27 May 92 05:07:51 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Message-ID: <dl3kqql.sheaffer@netcom.com>
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors,sci.skeptic,alt.conspiracy,alt.paranormal
... the following appeared in the November, 1988 issue of BASIS, the Bay
Area Skeptics' BBS....
The "Transformation" of Whitley Strieber
by Robert Sheaffer
On September 21, 1988, viewers of the popular daytime television
show "People Are Talking" on KPIX, Channel 5, in San Francisco
saw an amazing thing. Whitley Strieber, author of such popular
works of fiction as "The Wolfen", and "The Hunger", as well as
the best-selling and supposedly true accounts of humanoid
visitation in "Communion" an "Transformation", indignantly
refused to let the hosts of the show do any promotion of his
latest book! No doubt the viewers of that show are still
scratching their heads about such inexplicable behavior on the
part of a guest doing a book promotion tour. As the other guest
on that show, the one who was all but ignored by the hosts, let
me explain why that strange scene happened.
You see, forty-five minutes before air time, I arrived at the
studio and was escorted to the Green Room, where guests are
groomed and prepared. There I came upon Whitley Strieber in the
midst of a world-class temper tantrum. He was indignantly
refusing to go on! He apparently expected to be the only guest,
and to have an entire hour to expound his fantasies about the
humanoid "visitors" who are said to be lavishing their unwanted
attention on him, unchallenged and unquestioned. I later found
out that while he had left instructions with those arranging the
tour that under no circumstances would he appear on any show with
Philip J. Klass, he had not ruled out - at least to them -
appearing with some other skeptic. The producer of "People Are
Talking," Karen Stevenson, a young woman of great firmness and
tact, was sitting there quietly enduring Whitley's verbal
assaults. "I don't know who this man is," complained Streiber,
"and I don't know what he will say!" Apparently he expects all
opposing opinions to be cleared in advance! Karen firmly repeated
that she had made all arrangements with his publisher, and with
his publicist, in accordance with their instructions, and they
had raised no objections. The young woman representing his
publicist sat there quietly and somewhat nervously, obviously
wishing she were somewhere else.
Whitley continued his tirade. Pointing to me, he shouted "that
man is going to go on and challenge my mental health. He's going
to call me crazy! He's with that CSICOP, they're just as nuts as
those new-age people. They have a religion of disbelief." In his
short tirade against the skeptics, who he says are in the habit
of calling anyone who disagrees with them crazy, Strieber called
us "nuts" or "crazy" three times. I pointed out the irony of
this, but it was clear from the reaction of all involved that the
best thing I could say at this point was nothing. I kept silent
for a while, enabling him to resume his tirade. He had received
long letters from Philip J. Klass of CSICOP, he said, that were
"crazy," and made no sense at all. He also charged that the hosts
of the show were bound to misrepresent his experiences by saying
that they are alien visitors, while he has never claimed to know
whether or not "the visitors" are extraterrestrial. Those people
who claim alien encounters are just as crazy as CSICOP, he
charged.
Streiber also claimed to be upset about the previous time he was
on the show. Karen recalled that it had gone very well, but
Strieber insisted it was a "stupid" show. She suggested that he
was perhaps confusing it with a show in some other city called
"People Are Talking," of which there are several. No, he
insisted, he remembered it perfectly. The audience at this show
was "stupid", they asked "stupid" questions, and they accused
him of being crazy. "I don't need your show," he continued, "your
stupid show! My book ("Transformation") is number four on the
Best-Seller list. I don't need to do these shows! I'm getting so
fed up with going on shows and having everyone laugh at me!"
Karen emphasised that a live show would be starting very soon, on
which he had agreed to appear, and that he must meet his
commitments. But Whitley still refused to go out and appear or
debate with me. "Let him go on first. I'll just do the final
segment. And DON'T mention my book! I don't want you to mention
my book at all if he is going to be criticising it!" Karen once
again reaffirmed that he had made a commitment. Then Strieber
must have realized that he couldn't win this battle. He gradually
decreased his level of objection, the bluster slowly fading as it
became clear that he was not going to be able to keep me off the
show. "All right," said Whitley, "I will go on - but I WON'T LIKE
IT!" The magnitude of that threat stunned all who were present.
"And I'll never come back!"
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
--- GOMail v1.2 [92-0207]
* Origin: StarGate BBS. InFoNet HQ NY 718-519-8042 (1:278/714)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(10291) Fri 5 Nov 93 10:07p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: 2/2 Streiber Tantrum
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At this point we broke to get on our makeup. The assistant
director of the show, Lisa Tatum, had arrived in the doorway of
the Green Room a few minutes earlier, standing there silently in
obvious bewilderment. Karen excused herself to go talk to the
hosts of the show. The makeup man, who had been listening to all
this from the adjoining room, expressed bewilderment to me about
Whitley's behavior as he applied a light coat of powder to my
face. Returning to the Green Room, in the few minutes remaining
before air time, I attempted to engage Whitley in a substantive
discussion, to disarm his hostility. I succeeded to a small
extent. He objected mightily to CSICOP and everything it stands
for, displaying an extreme hostility to science as well. To him,
both CSICOP and the "new agers" are "fascists", because they both
seek to break down the individual.
We went on stage at this point, got our microphones on, and
waited for the show to begin. Whitley said nothing, and still was
refusing to allow the hosts to mention the name of the book he
came to promote, or to show its cover. We came on camera, and as
I expected, the early minutes of the show were entirely his, to
tell his stories of things that go "bump" in the night, things
that allegedly come into his bedroom, carry him up somewhere into
the sky, and poke needles into his skull and nose to implant
probes. He neglected to describe at least on the air, how the
beings allegedly inserted a long, cylindrical probe up his
rectum, or how the female humanoid was very interested in his
penis, as was recounted in "Communion." The situation must have
seemed at least a little odd to the viewers: here is a guest with
many weird tales to tell, but apparently without any book in
which it is told!
I expected to be given a similar amount of time to question the
plausibility and substance of such claims, but I had only the
briefest opportunity to respond. The two hosts then took the show
to the audience for questions - previewed by them - all of which
except one were directed to Strieber. It became clear that I was
never going to get the time to speak I was expecting. I tried
interrupting a few times, but after speaking only a few words,
the hosts moved on to something else. Clearly, some kind of
"arrangement" had been made, keeping my time to the absolute
minimum, probably because they feared that Strieber might walk
off the set. One questioner asked if Strieber had attempted to
trap, or photograph the visitors. Indeed he had, he replied,
using video cameras, still cameras, and other devices.
Unfortunately, something always goes wrong with the attempt, such
as the camera batteries going dead; "the visitors" seem to
possess the ability to thwart all attempts to document their
presence! I was dumbfounded by a question directed to me by co-
host Ross McGowen, as he worked the audience: "you DO believe
that men have landed on the moon, don't you?" Apparently Whitley
had succeeded in "selling", at least to the show's staff, his
notion that to question his visions of "the visitors" was as
perversely blind as those who insist that the space program is a
fraud! I responded that 99.9 percent of the scientific community
do not accept accounts of the kind Strieber relates.
During the commercial break before one of the final segments,
Karen dashed out onto the set to ask Strieber if he wanted his
book to be "promo-ed". "NO!", he flatly replied. I said that I
would like to have MY book, The UFO Verdict, "promo-ed". Whitley
said, still annoyed, "Yes, go promo HIS book!" This was done,
briefly. In the final fifteen seconds of the show, Ross asked
Strieber from across the room if he wanted to mention his book.
"NO!", Whitley snarled, then paused, and sheepishly muttered,
"it's Transformation." Within seconds of going off the air,
Strieber had left the studio. The 'Prima Donna' was still
furious.
In the final analysis, Strieber's visions of "the visitors"
undoubtedly have more to do with religion and psychology than
they do with anything extraterrestrial. Strieber is far from the
first person in history to experience visions of bizarre beings,
and then become transformed into a tireless evangelist seeking to
convince the world that they are real. Many religions were
founded in precisely this manner; indeed, the very titles he has
chosen for these books about "the visitors" places them firmly in
the realm of religion. There seems little room for doubt that
Strieber firmly believes what he is saying. There is also not the
slightest bit of physical evidence that any of it is true. But
truth has never been a necessary element for making a nonfiction
book a success, as we see from the 1987 success of "Communion" as
a #1 Best-Seller, and "Transformation" now seems headed toward
similar success. As skeptics, this will not surprise us, but as
citizens concerned about the future of education and rational
thought, it gives us reasons for grave concern.
--
Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus Maximus - sheaffer@netcom.com
Past Chairman, The Bay Area Skeptics - for whom I speak only when authorized!
"Every psychic investigator of [the medium] Mrs. Piper was impressed
by her simplicity and honesty. It never occurred to them that no
charlatan ever achieves greatness by acting like a charlatan. No
professional spy acts like a spy. No card cheat behaves at the
table like a card cheat."
- Martin Gardner
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
--- GOMail v1.2 [92-0207]
* Origin: StarGate BBS. InFoNet HQ NY 718-519-8042 (1:278/714)
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(10620) Sat 6 Nov 93 10:24p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: 1/2 Legal To Be A Kook
St: 11409>
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Unusually Fanatical Observers
Ike Struck Deal With Aliens! Trip to Dentist Was Cover for First
Alien-Earthling Summit in 1954! (And if you believe that, too bad you
missed the `Ultimate UFO Seminar.')
05/06/93
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
In a tent full of flying saucerphiles, a startling announcement
suddenly emanates from the doorway: "There's something in the sky!"
The reaction is instantaneous. Telling UFO buffs there's
something in the sky is like shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
The saucer believers stampede outside into the sunny desert,
scanning the heavens for an alien craft. Some see it, some don't.
Finally, a beefy guy with a flowing beard zeroes in on the
otherworldly object through a pair of high-powered binoculars:
"It's a . . . it's a . . . it's a Mickey Mouse balloon."
Heads drop and hearts sink. Another false alarm at "The Ultimate
UFO Seminar," held last weekend in this tiny southern Nevada town,
site of a rash of weird aerial phenomena and even weirder stuff on
the ground.
"Please don't make fun of us," pleads a 31-year-old Orange
County woman at the start of the conference. "We're taking a
serious, scientific approach to this."
Then, after begging anonymity, she confides that short, gray
aliens regularly abduct her and once stole her ovum to breed a
"hybrid child." She knows this because the space creatures showed
her the half-human, half-alien youngster when it was 5 years old.
She also says that unmarked black helicopters sometimes follow
her around Newport Beach.
Remarkably, as the two-day seminar progresses, her tale actually
becomes hard to dismiss. It turns out to be one of the sanest
stories told.
Other "UFOlogists" link aliens with Adolf Hitler, the JFK
assassination and AIDS. They talk about mysterious cattle
mutilations and secret tunnels connecting Nevada to San Diego and
New York. And they insist that creatures from the Zeta Reticuli
star system are conspiring with humans to form a one-world
government.
Their proof is a combination of mainstream media accounts (a
1958 New York Times article about UFOs buzzing Washington, D.C.; a
CNN segment on close encounters with American military personnel),
eyewitness testimony and wild conjecture.
John Lear, airline pilot and disinherited son of the Learjet
family, is the first speaker. Among his revelations (for that
handful of folks who don't read International UFO Reporter or the
Weekly World News): The military has been hiding alien spacecraft
at the nearby Air Force training range since 1947, and President
Eisenhower lied about going to the dentist in 1954.
Ike was actually off striking a deal at the first
alien-Earthling summit: The extraterrestrials handed over a few
saucers and we relinquished "grazing rights," allowing aliens the
freedom to periodically abduct and experiment on humans and cattle.
When President Kennedy later threatened to expose the accord, he
was, of course, assassinated. The gunman, according to Lear's
analysis of the Zapruder film, was Kennedy's limousine driver.
After JFK, Presidents have been told only that, yes, the
military is working with aliens in Nevada, "but that's all you need
to know."
At the end of Lear's talk, the few skeptics in the crowd pick
apart the tale. One scoffer, snickering that Lear "must have broken
the sound barrier one too many times," acts out President Clinton's
briefing:
"OK, Mr. President, we need to go over a few things. UFOs are
real and the Air Force is working with space aliens and flying
saucers in Nevada."
"What???!!!"
"That's it. Nothing you need to know about."
"Oh. OK."
#
By midnight Friday, about half of the 200 people at the seminar
have drifted next door to the Little A`Le'Inn. The tavern, a
converted trailer, is big enough to hold the entire population of
Rachel, which is nothing more than a speck on the map (well, some
maps) between Las Vegas and Morey Flats, site of one of the biggest
underground A-bomb tests in history.
The UFO business has been a boon to the Little A`Le'Inn, which
assumed its current name in 1990 to cash in on the sightings along
Highway 375. Alien bumper stickers, doormats, cigarette lighters,
hats, T-shirts, earrings, paper-towel holders and other trinkets
are all on sale. Menu items include Alien Burgers (not made from
mutilated cattle) and a potion called the Beam Me Up, Scotty (Jim
Beam, 7-Up and a splash of Scotch).
But proprietors Joe and Pat Travis seem to genuinely believe in
interplanetary tourists. Several have even visited the tavern, they
say: One looked human but was definitely from outer space because
he sat near the inn's four slot machines for an entire day without
eating, drinking or using the bathroom.
Other extraterrestrials, according to informed sources here,
give away their true identity by consuming mass quantities of
strawberry ice cream and green Jell-O.
When their alien bellies are full, they hop into saucers and
streak through the sky. In recent years, thousands of spectators,
including TV crews and newspaper reporters, have witnessed the
baffling, glowing objects that seemingly zig and zag above Rachel.
Skeptics say the unearthly lights are easily explained: The
sprawling Nellis Air Force Range is an air-combat training area and
testing ground for secret aircraft, such as the stealth fighter,
says Philip J. Klass, a contributing editor at Aviation Week &
Space Technology magazine.
To the untrained eye, flares, missiles, experimental helicopters
and jets all could be misinterpreted as flying saucers, he says.
The military, too, denies reports of alien beings or spacecraft
at the range: "How would we keep that quiet?" asks Capt. George
Sillia, a Pentagon spokesman.
#
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
--- GOMail v1.2 [92-0207]
* Origin: StarGate BBS. InFoNet HQ NY 718-519-8042 (1:278/714)
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(10621) Sat 6 Nov 93 10:24p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: 2/2 Legal To Be A Kook
St:
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One of the most surprising skeptics, however, turns out to be
the conference's keynote speaker, the reclusive Bob Lazar.
According to UFO lore, Lazar is a physicist who worked at the
Nellis range in 1988, where he saw nine alien saucers in secret
hangars and worked on duplicating their engine systems. He also was
granted clearance to read documents about extraterrestrial activity
in the United States and was allowed to watch one spacecraft fly.
In 1989, he went public with the story on a Las Vegas television
news broadcast and indirectly launched the flying-saucer frenzy at
Rachel. For his trouble, government thugs reportedly shot at him
and erased all record of his stints at Cal Tech, MIT and Nellis.
Authorities also arrested him for aiding and abetting a
prostitution ring, a charge that was later reduced to felony
pandering-to which he admitted guilt.
Nevertheless, in some UFO circles, Lazar is practically Jesus in
the flesh.
When his silver Corvette rumbles into the conference parking lot
Saturday, saucer believers literally sprint to meet him. Cameras
flash and tape recorders whir as he steps into the Little A`Le'Inn
for a glass of white wine. And when he finishes addressing the
crowd in the tent outside, seminar organizer Gary Schultz gushes:
"We should have 10 minutes of silence."
Yet, Lazar spends most of the afternoon debunking his disciples'
theories. When someone asks about a UFO video shot from the space
shuttle, Lazar insists that the "flying saucers" were dust
particles blown across the camera lens by a rocket thruster.
And when another mentions alien abductions, underground tunnels
and one-world government conspiracies, he dismisses the tales as
"borderline insanity."
It might sound refreshingly scientific if Lazar weren't
responsible for the wildest tale of all. In 1979, he says, a
military Special Forces officer inadvertently violated
intergalactic etiquette by carrying a gun into a classroom occupied
by several aliens and 44 U.S. scientists.
When the aliens understandably killed the officer for his bad
manners, other Special Forces personnel-watching the incident on a
video monitor-stormed the classroom. Alas, they, too, were
liquidated. And, for good measure, so were the 44 scientists.
Fortunately, the government didn't have to explain this tragedy
to the public: It had wisely hired scientists who were orphans or
had few family ties.
#
By the time Lazar leaves, a small revolt is brewing at the UFO
seminar. The skeptic contingent-infiltrated, no doubt, by
government disinformation specialists-decides it has had enough of
conspiracies and Element 115, the supposed substance that allows
flying saucers to defy both gravity and time.
"They've got this fuel that can bend time, yet 40 saucers have
supposedly crashed here since 1947? This is the worst airline I've
ever heard of," quips Robert Knight of Bel-Air.
When moderator Schultz denounces the nonbelievers as "pinhead
scoffers," they stalk out of the tent and post flyers for a
"Pinhead Scoffer's Alternative Conference" the next day.
"You can believe in UFOs without having to swallow the other
nonsense," explains skeptic Glenn Campbell, who quit his computer
programming job in Boston and moved to Rachel three months ago.
Knight, for instance, is fascinated by the psychology of the UFO
phenomenon. He notes that claims of aliens mutilating
cattle-removing the animals' sexual organs with "surgical
precision"-are curiously similar to 1890s reports of cattle
abductions by "hot-air balloons with searchlights and ladders."
Likewise, ancient Egyptians blamed stolen livestock on "sky gods."
The abduction phenomenon seems to be some sort of Jungian
archetype, Knight says.
Then again, perhaps cow privates are a delicacy in the Zeta
Reticuli star system-one that alien Wolfgang Pucks are willing to
travel hundreds of light years to obtain. Unfortunately, these
advanced chefs are too stupid to simply kidnap whole cattle and
breed them back home.
Says Knight: "I have a problem with the alien connection here."
Other skeptics are more open to the concept of
extraterrestrials, but favor a cautious, scientific approach. Yet,
it seems even the most rational in this group can still come off a
bit out of orbit.
Campbell, for instance, has written an entertaining "Viewer's
Guide" (price: $15) to the area that is thorough and seemingly
objective. But he has also spent the past three months constructing
a giant, wooden saucer behind the Little A`Le'Inn. And on Saturday
afternoon, he is running around in an alien costume.
Meanwhile, back in the tent, Schultz is ranting about yet
another conspiracy. This one involves Waco, Tex., and the "atomized
powder" he is certain the feds injected into the Branch Davidian
compound to cause its explosion.
The government, Schultz says, should have left the group alone:
"It's not against the law to be a kook."
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
--- GOMail v1.2 [92-0207]
* Origin: StarGate BBS. InFoNet HQ NY 718-519-8042 (1:278/714)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(10622) Sat 6 Nov 93 10:24p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: 1/3 Sonya On Ufos
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
U.F.O.s
07/02/93
Cable News Network
Two believers in U.F.O.'s discuss sightings and the alleged
government cover-up of information about U.F.O.'s. They discuss
sightings and other events that have supposedly occurred since 1947.
GUEST(S): ED KOMAREK, Operation Right To Know; BRUCE MACCABEE,
Mutual U.F.O. Network
SONYA: Thank you, Myron, welcome back. And now for something
completely different, does the United States government bury
reports of unidentified flying objects? Ed Komarek says yes, and
that's why he helped start a group called Operation Right to Know.
How does Ed know? He saw one with his own eyes. Those who believe
that there is a UFO cover-up usually cite an incident back in 1947,
a crash of an object later identified by government officials as a
weather balloon, which UFO advocates say is baloney. They have a
letter to prove it. Bruce Maccabee works for the Navy as a
research physicist. He's also President of the Maryland Chapter of
the Mutual UFO Network. UFO partisans will be demonstrating at the
White House on Monday to protest the concealment of what they feel
is a mountain of data on an abundance of UFO sightings. Mr.
Komarek, tell us about the UFO that you saw.
ED KOMAREK, Operation Right To Know: OK, my situation was a
little unusual. A lot of times, people usually have a sighting,
and that gets them into the UFO subject. With me, I've been
involved, like, 20 years, and I finally got lucky and was in the
right place at the right time, and I was working on a case, oh,
about 25 miles north of where I live, and it involved an encounter
case where a fellow was telling me about his encounters with a
small human type of alien. And what I saw was a bright red light,
came in from the side, sort of like a- at the speed of an
airplane, but it was like a stop sign with, like, a little purple
in the middle, and as it slowed down, it came on in, and as it
slowed down, the bright red light got smaller and smaller. And
then, when it was actually hovering, you could actually see the
other lights on the craft, just like if an airliner was sitting out
there, you know, and not making any sound at all, and so, I tend,
you know, a lot more to believe this fellow, you know, because I
did see it myself, even though I had, you know, no encounters with
the occupants or anything like that.
SONYA: Now, Mr. Maccabee, there's proof, definite proof, that
the government is hiding material?
BRUCE MACCABEE, Mutual UFO Network: There's strong
circumstantial evidence buried in the government's own documents.
The government has been collecting information on the subject since
1947, and we know that official intelligence collection
requirements went out to various agencies including the agencies of
the Air Force and the Army and the Navy, the C.I.A. and so on, as
early as the fall of 1947. And the during the first five or six
years of- up until the early 1950's, the F.B.I. collected a
considerable amount of information as well, and if there was
nothing to it, you would ask the question, why bother collecting
information?
SONYA: Well, I'm not sure whether or not information is really
being collected. I've looked at a number of the documents that,
frankly, are very hazy in terms of what they say, but you've got
guys like Ed Komarek out here. You don't need the government, Mr.
Maccabee. You could just round up guys like Ed, ask them a variety
of questions, and test the veracity. For example, how would you
know if what Ed reported was the truth, or frankly, a figment of
his imagination, or something else out there?
Mr. MACCABEE: Well, I presume if it were just Mr. Komarek
making a sighting report, I probably wouldn't be extremely
interested in the subject. Sorry, Ed, but you know, that's the way
it goes. On the other hand, I presume it was a multiple-witness
sighting.
Mr. KOMAREK: It was.
Mr. MACCABEE: The ones that I'm most particularly interested in
are multiple witness sightings during the daytime when credible,
experienced observers see things which- close enough so that they
can see fine details of structure, and it's clearly not a bird or a
plane or Superman, it's something very unusual, and I know of a
number of sightings like that.
SONYA: Now when you say you know of a number of sightings like
that, you have documented those. Each of these people has been
interrogated by whom, by the way. Who would actually interrogate
people about whether or not they saw UFO's?
Mr. MACCABEE: Well, the Air Force did a lot of interrogations
in the early years, up through 1969, and if one were just to go
back and look at the interviews, even the F.B.I. interviewed people
in 1947. If one were to go back and look at the interviews by the
Air Force and other intelligence agencies, you would find that
there is a considerable amount of detail which is available. It's
just not easy to come by. I, myself, on the other hand, have
interviewed a number of people myself, including pilots, and
they're very credible people, and they describe, quite accurately,
what they can- what they can see.
SONYA: Do they describe what Ed just told you he saw? I mean,
can you, in listening to Ed, get a sense that he's on a similar
track to others?
Mr. MACCABEE: Probably on a similar track, but I would have to-
I didn't know Ed had a sighting. So, I would have to sit down and
talk to him, and anybody else who saw it and try to make
correlations of what had happened.
SONYA: What do you want to know from him, I'm curious? You're
the expert.
Mr. MACCABEE: What do I want?
SONYA: Yeah.
Mr. MACCABEE: What do I want to know from Ed? Well, I would
want to sit down with him and go through the whole thing,
second-by-second, or minute-by-minute, and then, after I understand
what his general description is, go back and look for fine details.
If there are other witnesses, then I would talk very carefully,
ask similar questions of the other witnesses, interview them
independently of Ed, and try to correlate all these stories. Now,
for example, we have situations in Gulf Breeze, Florida, in the
last couple of years, where there have been literally dozens of
witnesses to strange lights and things moving around in the sky.
These people have been interviewed. We have created
triangulations, that is sightings of one thing from several
different locations. It involves not only that, but videotape,
photographs and so on, and all this information, when combined,
leads to the conclusion that there's something unidentified flying
around in our air space.
SONYA: Gentlemen, when we continue, I'm going to ask both of
you the following. I mean, if there is intelligence that is
capable of doing what you have described, coming to this planet,
and wants to be seen/heard, here we are right here. We'll give
them all of the opportunity to be seen and to be heard. Why aren't
they doing it in clearly what is the most obvious way?
212-643-0077. Have you had a sighting? Give us a call.
{Commercial break}
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
--- GOMail v1.2 [92-0207]
* Origin: StarGate BBS. InFoNet HQ NY 718-519-8042 (1:278/714)
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(10623) Sat 6 Nov 93 10:24p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: 2/3 Sonya On Ufos
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SONYA: Welcome back. UFO's, the government keeping documents
secret proving that there were UFO's that landed on this country?
I don't know. Let's go to New Jersey and say hello to Dante.
Welcome.
1st CALLER: {New Jersey} Hello.
SONYA: Yes.
1st CALLER: I just wanted to tell of an experience that I had.
I'm 48 years old now. When I was 12 years old, I lived in
California, and we were on a trip to King's Canyon National Park in
California. I was with my mother, my father, my best friend and
her mother and father. Her father was an excellent photographer.
We sighted a UFO on the way up to the park on this one-lane road,
and we parked by the side of the road, and we sat there on the
hill, and we watched it. Other people stopped and they watched it.
We saw it from mid-afternoon until dusk. My girlfriend's father
took many, many, many pictures, and finally, there were three of
them. They were close. They never landed, but they were close
enough to see their shape, the size, the colors of the lights and
everything like that.
SONYA: All right, then the question really is, Ed, if there are
people from outer space coming to this planet, why aren't they
landing, getting out? The government can't stop them. I mean,
there are people all around that could help prove the validity of
it.
Mr. KOMAREK: OK, it's a very complex situation. You know, of
course, I'm only speculating because I haven't had any encounters
personally with the occupants, or had any discussions with them,
though some people claim to have don't that. Basically, from the
information that I've seen, there are so many different types of
sightings, the different types of apparent craft that are using
advanced forms of propulsion and such a variety of different types
of occupants reported that you have quite a number of different
types with a wide range of agendas and motivations, but there seems
to be a common thread that holds them together, and our
relationship to us, and I think that is that they are probably
concerned about culture shock. In our own country, we've seen
where a more advanced culture has come in contact with a less
advanced, technically advanced culture, and the less technically
advanced culture has been devastated by the new ideas and the new
ways of looking at things, as well as the technology and
everything. So I think there would be, you know, from my
perspective and speculation, there would be a concern, a definite
concern for culture shock.
SONYA: Well, you certainly sound as though you are convinced
about all this. Let's see if Brian in California is. Welcome,
Brian. Brian, are you with us?
2nd CALLER: {California} Yes, I am.
SONYA: Go ahead.
2nd CALLER: Yeah, I have a question about someone who is
involved with this whole situation with UFO's. How does a person
who's interested and wanting to get involved with people who are
doing the investigations go about getting in contact with these
people?
SONYA: Bruce?
Mr. MACCABEE: Well, you can contact the Mutual UFO Network in
Seguin, Texas. I presume if you call Seguin, S-E-G-U-I-N, Texas,
and ask for information, they could give you a phone number that
you could call. I would like to say to the previous lady who made
a report just about two minutes ago, I would be very interested in
seeing the photographs, and she can get a hold of me simply by
calling information in Washington, D.C. and asking the information
person for a phone number for UFO The Fund for UFO Research is
headquartered in Washington, D.C., and will be- The number that
that person gets will ring the Fund for UFO Research.
SONYA: Bruce, let me ask you if you agree with what Ed says. I
mean, frankly, the technology is there. If somebody wanted to get
in touch with us, they can. I'm not so narcissistic that I don't
think that there are other forms of intelligence, and we could use
all the help we could get.
Mr. MACCABEE: Well, that's true, but we don't know what their
agenda is, and it would appear, over the last 40 years, that their
agenda does not involve direct, overt contact. On the other hand,
it's clear that they haven't tried to completely hide themselves.
I presume if they had tried that, then there would not be any UFO
sightings, and nobody would be here discussing the problem.
SONYA: Let's go to Vermont and say hello to Mia, welcome.
3rd CALLER: {Vermont} Hello.
SONYA: Yes.
3rd CALLER: I'm calling from Vermont, and I just wanted to say
that I used to live in Sparks, Nevada. It was the year,
approximately, 1977 when I saw three very, very fast-moving objects
in the blue sky, and I have never forgotten. There was no one that
I could call to share this with, but it was- It was very
fascinating to see these three objects flying so fast.
SONYA: And you're sure, in your own mind, that these were UFO's?
3rd CALLER: Oh, absolutely.
SONYA: Now Bruce, when you talk about the fact that the
government is keeping things back from us, what do you think is the
agenda there, really, why?
Mr. MACCABEE: Well, they probably know something we don't.
First, I'd like to point out that you can always trust Vermonters,
being one myself, so obviously that lady saw UFO's. Second thing
is, we don't know what the government hasn't released. All we can
do is make deductions based on interviews with witnesses. As you
pointed out in your initial statements in this program, there seems
to be evidence that the government actually retrieved crashed
saucer pieces or something like that back in 1947, and then, in my
opinion, went into sort of a dual mode of operation, one was to
control access to the evidence, and the other one was to collect
UFO information. Now here we have a picture of a- These are a
series of photos from videotapes taken within the last six months
by people, one in Gulf Breeze, Florida, another one up in Canada.
Unfortunately, these are not being shown in real time, but rather
as still frames. The one in Florida was particularly interesting.
I think it's the first video we have of a UFO moving along very
slowly, and then all of a sudden accelerating to an extremely high
speed, and going out of the field of the view of the camera faster
than the cameraman could follow it. I estimate that if it were
1,000 feet from the camera, that it was eight to nine feet in
diameter, and within 1/30th of a second, it achieved an
acceleration about 500 G's.
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(10624) Sat 6 Nov 93 10:24p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: 3/3 Sonya On Ufos
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SONYA: Mr. Maccabee, all of this is so interesting because I
think there are many of us who would love to have the opportunity
to also have a contact. When we continue, I'm going to ask you if
there's any way that people could enhance that possibility, and
we'd like your calls. Any comments you have about this, do you
believe this is true, that there's really a government cover-up?
212-643-0077.
{Commercial break}
SONYA: Welcome back. As we continue to talk about this, the
issue of the UFO's, Bruce, is there a way that people could call
the experience to them? I mean, it's always, like, out in the
desert in Nevada or somewhere where there's one or two people
around, but family members or close friends. If I wanted to, could
I set up a certain kind of condition to make it happen?
Mr. MACCABEE: Not that I know of, although some people have
tried that. UFO sightings seem to happen more or less, mostly
more, independently of who happens to be looking. Now, if you're
trying to find a UFO sighting for yourself, you might keep track of
where- what areas of the country or what areas of the world are
having sightings at any particular time, and try to go there. Down
in Gulf Breeze, Florida, between November, 1990 and July, 1992
they- a number of people- had about 170 recorded sightings.
There were so many of the happening down there that I went down
myself in September of '91 and happened to be there on the night
when there was indeed something that appeared in the sky. I saw a
ring of white lights just appear in the sky above Gulf Breeze. It
was very steady and motionless until it started to move a little
bit. We saw it for 70 seconds, and then it just sort of faded out,
and there was nothing there. Rings of light are not supposed to
appear in the sky. That was just one of many sightings like that
in the area. Now those sightings sort of ended last July, in the
sense that, up until July of last year, they were having several
per week, and since July of last year, they've had, maybe a few
dozen sightings total, so the point is, that if you-
SONYA: Well, what's going on, I guess, is really the question,
and let's ask that of Barry from California. What do you think?
4th CALLER: Yes, I had a question for Mr. Maccabee regarding
the spaceship sightings in the area north of Las Vegas around the
town of Rachel, which is known as Area 51, and that's where some of
the more outlandish claims that the government is actually working
on alien technology and there might be an alien presence there.
Would you like to comment? Thank you.
Mr. MACCABEE: Yes. Well, there certainly have been claims that
that area, where highly classified aircraft are tested, might be an
area where they would be testing UFO's if the government is testing
the flight of flying saucers or UFO's. I don't have any guaranteed
evidence that something unusual us going on there. On the other
hand, it's clear that numerous people, including news crews, not
only from the United States, but from other countries, have gone to
that area, and photographed some oddly-behaving, lighted something
or others over the restricted area. Now, I suppose one could
imagine that the Air Force is flying ordinary helicopters or
aircraft and then putting on garish lighting in order to entertain
people who go to the little alien.
SONYA: If I was your wife, Bruce, or your wife, Ed. I don't
know if I would believe all of this stuff. Just very quickly, does
your wife believe this, Bruce?
Mr. MACCABEE: My wife told me that before she met me, she had
not really thought much about it, but after being, sort of, beaten
on, I guess, about the subject for the last almost 10 years, over
10 years now, she's convinced that there really is something there.
SONYA: Either that, or you're a great salesman. Ed, what about
you?
Mr. KOMAREK: Yeah, my wife was pretty skeptical to begin with,
but I think she's just seen so much evidence that is continuously
flowing across my desk, and that I have shared with her, that she's
beginning to believe that there's definitely something to it.
SONYA: Ed, did everybody with you have the exact same
experience in this multiple sighting. Were the details different
at all?
Mr. KOMAREK: OK, this one, it was basically the same details on
the sighting. It got a lot more deeper than what I said, and in
fact, the witnesses don't even want me to talk about it that much,
and so I really haven't reported it to M.UFON. or any other
organizations, because it involves the guy that claims to have
contact with E.T.'s, does not want the information to get out, his
E.T.'s don't want it to get out. That's what he said.
SONYA: What would prove you wrong?
Mr. MACCABEE: What would prove me wrong?
SONYA: Mm-hmm.
Mr. MACCABEE: Well, I have analyzed a large number of
sightings, which I claim are unexplainable in ordinary terms. If
someone can come along and provide convincing solutions to all of
these sightings, that is convincing, perhaps, to an independent
panel, or whatever, then I would have to say, well, I have no
evidence. On the other hand, it would be hard to prove me wrong, I
guess, in terms of a government cover-up, without having the
government spill the beans on virtually everything it is doing.
So, that could be kind of difficult, I would think.
SONYA: OK, now I want you guys to be real careful this weekend,
because there's going to be lots of stuff up in the skies. It's
going to be fireworks, so be cautious about that when you take your
pictures.
Mr. KOMAREK: OK, you all come to our demonstration now, on July
5th.
SONYA: That's right, you're having a demonstration in front of
the White House for the right to know, so that the government
releases the documents, gentlemen, I thank you for being with us,
and I thank you for giving us something to think about. Enjoy the rest
of your day, and have a wonderful and safe weekend.
FURTHER INFORMATION:
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill
1-800-950-NAMI
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(10625) Sat 6 Nov 93 10:24p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Greys Add Color To A Life
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gray men add color to her life
06/21/93
THE KANSAS CITY STAR
Gail Aggen can pinpoint the moment her midlife crisis began.
She was at a picnic five years ago when a thought rocketed out of
nowhere: "I'm 42. My life is probably half over. What am I going
to do with the rest of it?"
The answer? A love affair with little gray men from outer space.
By day, Gail thinks about aliens between typing and filing at a Kansas
City mortgage company. By night, she paints her daydreams-
explosively, in rapid strokes of black, smoke, hot pink and fiery
orange, 51 paintings in the last two years.
She once majored in art but for years had only dabbled in it
until the day she decided that what she really wanted to do with
her life was to paint.
But why aliens, with big gray heads, shiny black eyes, pin-dot
nostrils and slitted mouths? Because "painting other stuff is boring,"
Gail says. Of course.
"This is `Teen-agers will be Teen-agers,' " she says of a painting of
young aliens in sports gear, jogging around a track in a cornfield. "The
secret of the crop circles," it says.
Next stop on the tour of Gail's Midtown home: "Alien Touch," a painting
of a vase of flowers.
"Just a standard still life," Gail says, deadpan.
Oh, sure, right down to the webbing between the fingers on the gray hand
reaching in to pluck the petals.
Then comes "Disclosure Day Bash," the scene of Earthlings and aliens
dancing and snarfing bean dip the day the government finally admits
we've had visitors from other planets.
Next up is an alien kissing a woman who looks remarkably like Gail. A
space ship idles in the background. Title: "A Humanoid in Every Port."'
She pulls out another canvas: "Jump Start." Beings floating in space
attach cables from one flying saucer to another.
"This one's down and we're jumping it with this one over here," Gail
explains. She points to each figure in the painting.
"That's me. That's my cat who died. That's Erich, and that's an alien. And
that's Zeta Reticulum 2:4, the desert planet. We're 200 miles above its
surface."
She ends the tour with the painting that started the series two summers
ago: "Me Being Abducted by the Grays."
She's not sure why she painted it. She wonders sometimes whether
aliens really did borrow her one night as she slept.
"Why else," she says, only half-joking, "would you have the urge to
paint aliens every five seconds of your life?"
Whimsical paintings aside - Did I mention the one of an alien on the
toilet? - Gail has an unshakable faith that we're not alone in the
universe. She shares a lifetime fascination with UFOs with her husband,
Erich, the state section director for the Mutual UFO Network.
Local MUFON members meet monthly in the Aggens' living room to
exchange theories on everything from alien abduction to the power used
to fly those silvery disks. They also turn up regularly in Gail's art,
cavorting with aliens.
"I'm thrilled I finally have the guts to do what I want to do," Gail says.
At midlife, "I could've gone nuts. I could've felt old, fat and ugly. I didn't.
I just said, `I want to paint.' "
Already, she's had her own show at her Wisconsin alma mater. "There
were students there taking notes on my paintings. It was so neat...I wouldn't
trade being 30 years younger or the perfect weight for the rest of my life for
being who I am right now."
Who knows what other excitement is in store for a middle-aged woman bold
enough to chase her dreams? Perhaps her other paintings hold the clue: "Gail
Goes to Heaven;" "Gail's Waking Dream of the Universe;" "Gail Who's Never
Been Pregnant Meets Her Son Aboard the UFO"
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(10626) Sat 6 Nov 93 10:24p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Great Balls Of Ufo
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GREAT BALLS OF STEAM
Byline: Carl Zimmer
Discover, 07/93
David Turner does mostly bread-and-butter chemistry. The University of
Bristol researcher is an expert on steam turbines, and he can, among other
things, describe the conditions inside nuclear reactor turbines and the
possible hazards of an explosion. But recently Turner realized that his
work could help solve a more exotic puzzle. The peculiar chemistry of steam
could help explain a strange weather phenomenon known as ball lightning.
Over the past 200 years there have been thousands of reports of people
seeing these globes of light. The glowing grapefruit-size spheres seem
almost alive, floating down the aisles of passenger planes, gliding down
chimneys, dodging objects in their path. When ball lightning passes close
to people, they claim not to feel any heat, and yet apparently it can
melt a hole in a glass window. It lives for a few seconds or minutes and
then either fades away or explodes.
Many explanations have been advanced for ball lightning, including some
from the esoteric frontiers of science. Perhaps a nugget of antimatter lies
at the heart of ball lightning, some researchers have suggested, or a
magnetic monopole-a particle predicted by theoretical physics but never
seen. Or perhaps a lightning ball is a natural nuclear fusion reactor whose
energy we could somehow harness. But the most popular theory of late has
been the tamest one; it holds that ball lightning arises from unusual
conditions in the same thunderstorms that create ordinary lightning bolts.
In a thunderstorm, an intense electric field between the positively charged
ground and the negatively charged cloud excites air molecules, causing them
to lose eIectrons and become charged ions. A bolt of lightning further
energizes the molecules until they become a plasma- a soup of hot, charged
molecules and electrons. Perhaps, researchers have suggested, the
electric or magnetic field created by a small lump of plasma could trap
it in the shape of a ball. Short-lived plasma fireballs have even been
created in laboratory experiments, giving the idea some support.
Yet the plasma model has its drawbacks. A hot ball of gas shouldn't keep
close to the ground the way ball lightning does; it should rise like a
helium balloon, quickly dissipating its heat until it vanishes.
What's more, the reports that ball lightning has a cool surface make no
sense at all if it is a fireball.
But those reports, Turner says-indeed, all the commonly reported traits
of ball lightning-fit nicely into the new model he has proposed. In
Turner's model, ball lightning is a reactor, but not a fusion reactor. It
is a floating, self-sustaining chemical reactor, in which certain
chemical reactions between the plasma and the surrounding air release
heat and others absorb it. As a result, instead of simply dissipating into
the air, the initial heat of the plasma gets recycled back into the blazing
interior of the ball, while the outside of the ball becomes a cool, watery
skin.
The ions making up the plasma, Turner says, fly around crazily, moving away
from the core of the the ball. Certain reactive ions, such as oxygen or
hydroxide (OH), combine almost immediately, forming stable compounds like
water or ozone and shedding their energy as heat and light. But three
kinds of ions are much more stable and don't combine so quickly. They are
positively charged hydrogen and negatively charged nitrites (NO2) and
nitrates (NO3). Their chemistry, in Turner's view, explains most of ball
lightning's properties.
Traveling farther from the hot core into cooler air, these three types of
ions start attracting water molecuIes. (A water molecule has electric
poles; the side of the molecule that has the two hydrogens attached is
slightly positive, while the other side is negative.) As the water
molecules huddle around the ions, they condense to form liquid droplets.
They thereby surrender heat. Some of the nitrites-the least stable of the
three ions-react with some of the hydrogen to form nitrous acid and
release even more heat. These two reactions, condensation and combination,
keep the interior of the ball lightning hot.
But the formation of nitrous acid is also what gives the ball its cold
skin. As nitrites travel farther from the core, the ones that still haven't
turned into nitrous acid keep gathering more water. From his previous
research into steam, Turner knew that swarms of water molecules can have
strange effects. If a nitrite is surrounded by six or more water molecules,
he calculates, it actually has to absorb energy from its surroundings in
order to combine with a hydrogen ion and create nitrous acid; basically it
needs the energy to push the water out of its way. Sucking in heat, the
nitrites now chill their surroundings instead of heating them. Hence the
cool skin.
The skin is watery primarily because of nitrates, the second of the three
ions; they are so stable that they rarely react with anything; instead they
just keep attracting more and more water molecules. Soaking up water like
a sponge, they weigh the ball down, counteracting the lighter-than-air
plasma inside and keeping the ball close to the ground.
They also keep it round-as more nitrogen and oxygen get incorporated
into nitrate-laced drops of water on the outside of the ball, the interior
becomes starved for nitrogen and oxygen, which begin to rush in from the
outside. The imploding wind forces the ball into a spherical shape, even as
it is providing the reactor at the center with fresh raw material.
The third ion, hydrogen, is what causes the ball to wander. Hydrogen ions
that don't combine with nitrites give the skin of the ball a strong positive
charge. The intense electric fields in a thunderstorm can thus push the ball
around. It keeps on wandering until its heat finally leaks away-although on
occasion a balI has been known to rupture and explode more dramatically.
Turner himself has never seen ball lightning but the tidiness of his model
has helped convince him that it exists-something that for a long time was
questioned by some researchers who tended to lump ball lightning with
UFOs, ESP, and other popular but dubious phenomena. When Turner first
read the accounts of eyewitnesses, he too found a lot of the details hard
to believe. But his work has converted him. "As a rule we tend not to
believe what we can't explain," he says. "I believe a lot of the accounts
now because this model explains them."
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(10814) Tue 9 Nov 93 4:32p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Ufos And Gym Shoes
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of UFOs and gym shoes The Aetherius Society believes in
love, healing - and extra-terrestrials
11/08/93
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH London
LAST Thursday was the start of Annual Spiritual Push. Members of
the Aetherius Society gathered in Fulham to draw down the energy
from Satellite Number 3, in orbit above the Earth.
Some 40 or 50 people had assembled in the society's chapel to
catch this energy and transmit it into the world for purposes of
healing and spiritual uplift. The congregation was largely
middle-aged and middle class. Many wore brightly coloured robes and
orb-shaped pendants.
The evening began with the music of Vaughan Williams. Then a
minister urged the congregation to breathe deeply and to visualise
a vibrant white light coming down through the brain. The next hour
was spent chanting mantras and reciting prayers. Afterwards, people
took off their robes, put on their overcoats and shuffled into the
gloomy night. It was 1.30 am. I looked upwards but could see
nothing.
The Aetherius Society was founded by George King, the son of a
Shropshire schoolteacher. On May 8, 1954 he was doing the
washing-up in his Maida Vale flat when he heard a voice warning him
to prepare to become "the voice of Inter-Planetary Parliament".
In yogic trance, King learnt that the voice belonged to a
Venusian named Aetherius. He began receiving regular transmissions
from him, urging co-operation with the space people, which King
passed on to the world, and a small group of believers gathered
around him. King told them the extra-terrestrial beings were
humanoid, taller than us and with "cinnamon-coloured" skin.
In 1958 he received the "12 Blessings" in a transmission said to
come from Jesus. This was described to me by Dr Richard Lawrence,
the secretary of the society, as "an extension of the Sermon on the
Mount".
King, who is now 84, moved to California, where he established
the headquarters of the Aetherius Society. Membership in Britain is
numbered in hundreds; in America in thousands.
In London, the society has occupied the same Fulham Road premises
for 35 years: a shop-front decorated with a fading picture of King,
society literature and posters for courses in healing and psychic
powers. What is so curious is this juxtaposition of the mundane -
the drab suburban street, the nice ladies offering you instant
coffee in porcelain cups - with the exotic: the robes, the talk of
spaceships and Martians.
Dr Lawrence describes the Aetherius Society as "an ecumenical
organisation". It incorporates elements of Taoism, Buddhism,
Hinduism and Christianity, but central to its belief is the
existence of life-forms on Mars and Venus, existing "on a higher
vibratory level" than us.
Dr Lawrence is 40, a neat and energetic figure in a blue blazer
and grey flannels. As a young man he considered entering the clergy
in the Church of England but joined the Aetherius Society while at
Hull University. He now holds the post of bishop.
George King has also moved on. A society pamphlet describes him
as His Eminence Sir George King and lists his many offices. His
knighthood was awarded him in 1980 by The Order of St George, "A
Constantine order, the earliest order of Chivalry in
Christianity,"Dr Lawrence told me.
Many people, I said to Dr Lawrence, might accept the principles
taught by the society of universal energy, love, healing. But they
would balk at accepting extra-terrestrial beings and flying saucers.
"If you believe these are the greatest teachings you have ever
come across, and then you're told they're given by
extra-terrestrials, that's good enough for me," he replied.
HIS belief had been reinforced by personal experience, he said.
While a student he had had to choose between buying a new pair of
gym shoes and some Aetherius Society tapes. He chose the tapes.
Shortly afterwards, he spotted a cigar-shaped UFO in a field, which
disappeared behind a tree. Under the tree he found a pair of new
gym shoes, size 9. "That, to me, was a great sign. One of our
teachings is that what you sacrifice will be laid at your feet."
Marie Norden-Smith, 44, who works for a London finance company,
described herself as "a searcher" who had found "all the different
answers I wanted" in the Aetherius teachings.
Members of the society believe that the spaceships are sent to
help us, to make us better people. "When mankind is ready, and
deserves it, the craft will land," said Jean Berry, a retired nurse.
This cannot happen a moment too soon. Shortly before the service
began on Thursday night, Dr Lawrence told me that the Aetherius
Society took a call from a police station - he would not tell me
which one - saying they had received reports of a UFO above London.
The next day I called Fulham Police station to see if they had
received reports of a UFO sighting at the time. They hadn't, but
they had received 12 calls around midnight about a punch-up. "It
must," said the duty-officer, "have been a bloody good one."
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(10815) Tue 9 Nov 93 4:32p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Ufoic
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UFO group aims to sort the truth from space cases
11/03/93
Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph
Ostensibly, their mission will be to collect
and analyze information; in reality, their task is
somewhat more daunting.
"We're going to walk a fine line between the nuts
and the people who have really seen something," K.
Hunter Gray said.
Gray is president of the UFO Institute of Colorado,
which will hold its first meeting at 7 p.m. today
at Penrose Library. Its mission: to study, evaluate,
investigate and document sightings of unidentified
flying objects.
"We're out to find answers," said Steve Alexander,
the group's founder.
But perhaps even more difficult than finding the
answer to whether the planet is being visited by Little
Green Men is achieving credibility. Alexander is trying
to accomplish exactly that.
"We want to be taken seriously," he said, "and
we're very serious about it."
Both Alexander and Gray appear to be serious about
investigating UFOs, and yet at the same time not look
like they're in orbit themselves. Alexander is a 40-year-old
water plant operator for the city. Gray is the 46-year-old
owner of a commercial cleaning business. Both say
they have seen something they can't quite explain.
For Alexander, that experience happened one night
in 1977 while driving from Leadville to Colorado Springs.
He looked out the left side of his windshield and
"saw something the heck out there."
"I didn't really pay that much attention to it,"
Alexander said. " I thought it was an Army helicopter.
"Here it is 16 years later and now I'm paying
some attention to it."
So recently Alexander put a notice in the newspaper
saying he was starting the UFO Institute - and quickly
found that, indeed, he was not alone.
"Boom," Alexander said. "The phone started ringing."
One of those callers was K. Hunter Gray, who was
trying to figure out exactly what he had seen one
night in September. Gray was standing outside his
home with his wife and young son when he saw a light above.
"All three of us - matter of fact - saw an object
that was going at acute angles," Gray said. "Totally
unlike any aircraft that we are aware of.
"We watched it, I would say, for several seconds.
Then we went inside and talked about it."
The family came up with what some would say was
an extremely wise decision: They decided not to mention
the experience to anybody.
But now more than a month has passed and Gray doesn't
really care what others think. His concern is Alexander's
concern - a need to find some answers.
"We're trying to satisfy an insatiable curiosity,"
Gray said.
Gray and Alexander are aware that some of the reports
they will hear may be more fantastic than others.
Some may say there's no such thing as a serious UFO
report and even Gray acknowledges there are some sightings
that might be treated with, well, skepticism. An example:
"If some guy came along and says: I've just got back
from Mars and I've got slides."
At the same time, the group will take action on
what it classifies as more credible reports.
"A couple years ago they had a sighting at a Sky
Sox game," Alexander said. "Maybe at the meeting
we can do something."
For the purpose of the group is to listen to people,
no matter how far out they may be.
"We're going to be very good listeners," Alexander said.
"We're not convicting, we're not proselytizing,"
Gray said. "We're here to learn."
Do Gray and Alexander think that we are being visited
by aliens?
"I believe that there is something out there,"
Gray said. "I feel there are other civilizations."
"What and who we don't know," Alexander said.
"That's why we're here."
The possibility of alien visitors might scare some,
but perhaps the alternative is even more frightening.
"If we're the only intelligent race, judging what
we've done to our planet and our society," Gray said,
"it is very scary."
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(10816) Tue 9 Nov 93 4:32p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Drake Book Review
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AUTHOR DELIVERS INSIGHTS INTO LIFE SPENT IN SEARCH O EXTRATERRESTRIALS
11/03/93
PORTLAND OREGONIAN
IS ANYONE OUT THERE? Frank Drake and Dava Sobel (Delacorte Press; $22)
"From a distance of a hundred yards at twilight, you might almost
mistake them for human. They'll have their heads at the tops of
their bodies, I suspect, and their eyes in their heads, not far
from their mouths. I think they'll walk on two legs, too, as we do,
but I suppose (they'll) have four arms instead of two. Two just
aren't enough, as far as I'm concerned. Four makes for a much
better design."
The author of those words is neither an unidentified flying
object buff nor a hack writer for supermarket tabloids. He's
astronomer Frank Drake, who invented the Search for Extra
Terrestrial Life -- dubbed with the acronym "SETI" -- when he
directed Project OZMA in 1960. But while Drake fully expects we
will contact intelligent alien life forms before the 21st century
begins, he doesn't expect we'll ever see E.T. strolling through a
terrestrial twilight.
"Many individuals, knowing of my dedication to the search for
extraterrestrial life, expect me to be receptive to the UFO idea,"
he writes, but "I do not believe that UFOs are alien spacecraft."
Drake's skepticism not only includes UFOs and those who claim
contact with aliens -- "not once has any reported contact produced
some new, previously unknown fact . . . that we could verify" --
but encompasses science fiction as well. "Captain Kirk and Mr.
Spock lied to us. The energy required to visit another star
prohibits even the most advanced civilizations from making such a
journey."
Instead of visiting us, "They are going to talk to us, long
distance, by radio. I think they will agree that it doesn't pay to
transport things through space as long as they can transport
information." Radio waves, says Drake, are "the most economical
way" to send information.
A Cornell graduate and ex-Navy electronics officer, Drake found
himself a radio, rather than optical, astronomer by chance. Only
he, at Harvard's fledgling radio astronomy facility, could "make
the machines work."
Although Project OZMA was unsuccessful -- the one seemingly
intelligent signal received during 200 hours of listening
apparently came not from an alien civilization but from a passing
airplane -- interest in SETI grew steadily. With Dava Sobel's help,
Drake takes readers on a fascinating "tour" of the three decades
that followed.
Part autobiography and part SETI history, "Is Anyone Out
There?" intertwines Drake's career, the growth of radio astronomy
and the evolution and current state of SETI. It also examines the
problems and hazards of both interplanetary travel and what might
be called "the science of politics."
Thanks to Sobel's writing skills, "Is Anyone Out There?" is no
dry recitative, but a warm, witty and readily understandable look
at a man and a program whose effect upon all our lives in only just
beginning to be understood.
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(10817) Tue 9 Nov 93 4:32p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: 1/3 Aas
St: 11204>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IN SEARCH OF ANCIENT ASTRONAUTS TROTTING THE GLOBE, SEEKING AN
ANSWER
11/07/93
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
The human-like face seemingly carved into the surface of Mars
made news in August when a NASA mission to photograph the surface
closeup failed. The subsequent protests that the space agency was
covering up the secret behind the formation have died down.
But mysteries such as that formation and innumerable others
on this planet have kept Gene Phillips, 66, of Lake Forest and
thousands of other people in the Ancient Astronaut Society busy for
20 years.
Phillips founded the organization on Sept. 14, 1973, and it
now numbers 10,000 members in 93 countries, including 1,500 in the
United States.
Phillips, a lawyer who does corporate work through the firm
bearing his name and who is president of the society, also is
editor of its bimonthly newsletter, Ancient Skies, written at the
headquarters of the organization at 1921 St. Johns Ave., Highland
Park, which is also Phillips' law office.
What brings together these widely diversepeople, ranging in
age from 12 to 90-plus, is their common zeal to find evidence of
what they believe to be the truth of mankind's past.
Many members believe the human race may be descended from or
was given advanced technological knowledge by astronauts of a
higher intelligence from other planets who visited Earth before
written history.
Other members believe certain human civilizations possessed
sophisticated technology that has been lost and most evidence of
its existence destroyed.
Phillips subscribes to the former theory.
Recently the organization held its 20th Anniversary World
Conference in Las Vegas and attracted about 350 people from 15
countries, including theologians, astronomers, physicists,
archeologists, aerospace engineers, philosophers, clergymen,
doctors, lawyers, accountants, authors and journalists.
In his address, Phillips told them of his belief that only
the ancient astronaut theory can explain the sudden appearance on
Earth of human intelligence.
The theory, first popularized by Swiss writer Erich von
Daniken in his international best-seller "Chariots of the Gods?"
(Berkeley Publishing Group, $4.99 paperback), was the subject of a
1973 PBS television special called "In Search of Ancient
Astronauts," which Phillips saw and found convincing.
On the evidence of his background, Phillips does not seem
like a man to be easily influenced. He is an honors graduate of
Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Va., with an MBA from
Harvard Business School and a law degree from Northwestern
University, where he was an editor of the Law Review and was
awarded the Order of Coif for academic achievement. He is also a
former Air Force officer.
In other words, this man is neither stupid nor a wide-eyed
flake. Nevertheless, when Phillips saw "In Search of Ancient
Astronauts," almost immediately he became a believer.
"What I saw on that television show answered many of my
questions about religion and the origins of humankind," Phillips
said.
Born to a poor family in Beaver, W.Va., Phillips was raised
as a Methodist, converted to Catholicism and has not gone to church
in more than 20 years, except for an occasional wedding or funeral.
By his own admission, he is not a religious man.
Inspired by that television show, he founded the Ancient
Astronaut Society "... to search for evidence to determine whether
Earth was visited in the remote past by intelligent beings from
outer space and whether a highly developed, technological
civilization existed on Earth before our recorded history,"
Phillips said.
That same year, 1973, Von Daniken came to Chicago to speak,
and The Tribune, which had covered both Von Daniken and Phillips,
arranged for them to meet. There was an immediate rapport between
the two men.
"We liked each other right away," Phillips said, "I guess
because we had so much in common." Today, 20 years later, Phillips
and Von Daniken are close friends, Von Daniken is an officer of the
not-for-profit Ancient Astronaut Society, and he operates its
European office in Feldbrunnen, Switzerland.
In a phone interview, Von Daniken said, "Gene was always
very, very correct and fair. Whatever we have done together in the
society and in private, he is perfect.
"In the beginning, he was very enthusiastic. He made the
organization."
Von Daniken added that in the early days, the two agreed that
an international organization would be better than one limited to
the United States. Now both are glad they took that direction,
because European membership has been more active than the U.S.
branch, prompted by Van Daniken's regular television show, "On the
Traces of the Almighties," which airs on the German equivalent of
an American cable superstation.
For the next two decades, Phillips, an outgoing,
well-informed, articulate and often humorous man, searched "for
knowledge and truth," as he said, in remote corners of the Earth
where he examined, photographed and speculated on the significance
of archeological ruins and artifacts.
When not traveling, he reads exhaustively on the subject. His
library numbers 2,500 volumes and continues to grow.
"Evolution does not explain how man could have evolved from
the cave to the stars in such a short time," Phillips said. "And
when you see the immense achievements of early civilizations, you
have to conclude that they had sophisticated technological
knowledge-architectural, engineering, astronomical and
metallurgical, for example. That advanced knowledge had to come
from another source, and that source appears to be
extraterrestrial."
To investigate firsthand and expand upon his theories,
Phillips has taken thousands of color slides around the world at
the sites of what he calls the "remnants of great civilizations . .
. that utilized advanced technology which has long since been
forgotten," in more than 30 countries, including Mexico, Guatemala,
Honduras, Bolivia, Easter Island, Malta, Jordan, Egypt, Russia and
China.
The Sarcophagus Cover of Palenque, found in the ruins of that
ancient Mayan city in Mexico's Chiapas state, for example, is just
one of countless archeological objects or artifacts that confirm,
according to Phillips, the truth of his theory.
The 5-ton slab of stone, 7 feet wide, 13 feet long and 10
inches thick, was identified by archeologists as a cover for the
tomb of the Mayan king Pacal. It bears an intricately carved
picture of what Phillips describes as an ancient astronaut in a
spacecraft using hand controls and a foot pedal to operate the
vehicle. An object attached to the figure's nose is thought by
Phillips to be an oxygen mask, and what appears to be flames beyond
the capsule look to Phillips like rocket exhaust.
"Here's convincing evidence that ancient astronauts visited
the Earth," said Phillips as he points out each pictorial element
on an exact scaled-down reproduction of the sarcophagus cover, one
of numerous original artifacts and reproductions he has collected
over the years and displays in his home.
"And how was it possible to carve so intricate and precise a
design," Phillips asked, "in a culture which archeologists believed
did not to have metal tools? It was not possible. So obviously,
they did have metal, and apparently the archeologists are wrong."
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(10818) Tue 9 Nov 93 4:32p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: 2/3 Aas
St: <10105
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But according to Lanny Bell, an Egyptologist and associate
professor of archeology at the University of Chicago, most
establishment archeologists dismiss the ancient astronaut theory.
Bell, with a doctorate in Egyptology and 30 years of experience and
research in the field, said, "Nobody I know in archeology or
Egyptology believes it. There just isn't any credible, scientific
evidence. One of the problems in archeology is the interesting,
isolated finding, which may be open to different interpretations.
But if you look at it within the context of the development of an
entire culture, the finding becomes understandable."
What would convince Bell of the validity of the ancient
astronaut theory? "If they were to find a mummified astronaut or a
spaceship. Until then, it's all just harmless fun."
In reply, Phillips laughed good-naturedly. "That's mild," he
said of Bell's criticism. "We've been attacked by Carl Sagan, Isaac
Asimov, Thor Heyerdahl. It doesn't bother me. I'm used to it."
Phillips was referring to a 1974 "Nova" show on PBS in which
those well-known popularizers of science presented evidence to
disprove the ancient astronaut theory.
"Von Daniken and his ideas were getting too popular,"
Phillips said, explaining why the big guns of establishment science
wanted his theories destroyed. But even some members of the Ancient
Astronaut Society find it difficult to believe the proposition that
Earth was visited by intelligent beings from another planet.
Member Vince DiPietro, a senior systems engineer and
image-processing expert at the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration's Goddard Space Flight Center facility in Maryland,
is known in Ancient Astronaut circles for the book "Unusual Mars
Surface Features," which he co-authored. Among the formations the
book discusses is the "Mars face," a mile-wide surface feature on
Mars photographed in July 1976 by NASA's Viking I probe. The
formation appears to be a human face, seemingly carved or formed in
stone and looking to the sky.
"The face indicates to me that an advanced civilization once
inhabited Mars and became extinct," Di Pietro said in a telephone
interview. "A half-billion years ago, Mars was teeming with life.
There's chemical evidence to support this. Then life on Mars became
extinct. I believe that life on Earth, because of pollution and the
disappearing ozone layer, could be headed for the same catastrophe."
But does Di Pietro believe that this advanced Martian
civilization or any extraterrestrial civilization visited Earth in
the past? His one-word answer was, "Negative."
This diversity of opinion, according to Phillips, is what
makes the Ancient Astronaut Society so interesting. At their 20th
Anniversary World Conference, a vast array of professional and
amateur experts spoke on such topics as gods in the image of
ancient astronauts, ancient astronauts in prehistoric Ireland, new
research on Noah's Ark, the war between Earth and Mars, and the
spaceships of Ezekiel.
Von Daniken lectured on proof of the ancient astronaut
theory. Phillips presented a lecture using color slides he took at
various archeological sites in Central and South America, Easter
Island and China, showing ruins, glyphs, artifacts and stone
figures that he claims support the theory that some ancient
civilizations were highly developed technologically.
Among the enemies in this quest for scientific respectability
are the supermarket tabloids. For example, when they run lead
stories saying that First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton has adopted
an alien baby or that President Clinton has consulted with the
infirm JFK (and you thought he had died!) about aliens, it tends to
undermine the public's perception of organizations such as the
Ancient Astronaut Society.
"That kind of thing does give a bad name to our activities.
There's a tendency to lump us all together," Phillips said.
But what of Phillips the corporate lawyer, who by his own
count has formed more than 500 corporations for doctors and
dentists?
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(10819) Tue 9 Nov 93 4:32p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: 3/3 Aas
St:
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Ancient Astronaut Society member Jimmy Onan, a construction
firm executive who built and lives in a pyramid-shaped home in
Wadsworth, said, "Gene is one of the sharpest lawyers I ever met.
He's represented me on several occasions, and other lawyers have
told me he's brilliant."
One attorney who would agree with that assessment is John
Bure of Deerfield, who has worked on cases with Phillips. "I've
worked with him on a number of involved, sophisticated corporate
matters. I don't think there's a better corporate attorney in the
state of Illinois. He's technically skilled."
Bure added that Phillips was ahead of his time even in the
simple matter of office equipment. "Way before people had word
processors, he had them," he said. "He was so mechanized."
"It's very unusual for someone to be doing the Ancient
Astronauts with his background," Bure added, explaining that this
helps lend credence to his avocation. But in all the years Phillips
has been involved with the organization, "he's never pushed me to
join, and I appreciate that. He doesn't wear it on his sleeve."
Despite Phillips' devotion to the Ancient Astronaut Society
and his work as a corporate lawyer, his family life has not
suffered.
Married 38 years to wife Doris, they have four adult
children: Carlos, a trader on the Chicago Board of Trade; George,
an accountant in Barlett; Gregory, in the State Department
diplomatic corps in Hamburg, Germany; and Pamela Talley, a
homemaker in Albuquerque, N.M.. Doris and Gene have traveled
together extensively over the years on Phillips' frequent
expeditions to foreign lands.
Doris, of Peruvian-Basque ancestry, is involved in the daily
operations of the society as secretary of the organization and as
Phillips' associate in the editing and publishing of the society's
newsletter, Ancient Skies.
"Our family life is good," Doris said, "because Gene has
always included me in the activities of the society: meeting the
people, going on the expeditions. I'm happy to be a part of the
movement."
Doris' four brothers, who are physicians, encouraged Phillips
to study law when they were newly married and living in Rochester,
Minn., where they met. At the time, Phillips owned a Chrysler auto
dealership, which a friend at the Harvard Business School had
helped him establish.
But at his wife's urging, he decided to go to law school at
Northwestern, bringing them to the Chicago area.
Though Doris is a Catholic and raised the Phillipses'
children in that faith, she said, "My belief in ancient astronauts
poses no religious conflict. In fact, there are many Catholic
priests and other clergy in the society."
Phillips added, "Oddly enough, the religionists have not
opposed us much. Most of our criticism comes from the scientific
community. Eventually, in 50 or 100 years, our theories will be
proven and accepted.
"As a minister told me once, `Well, this just proves God is
bigger than we thought he was.' "
Even the late celebrated J. Allen Hynek, an astronomy
professor at Northwestern who started as a debunker of UFO
sightings, later became a believer in their existence and was
described in his day as "the world's leading expert on UFOs."
Writing of the UFO mystery and of Steven Spielberg's film
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind," in which aliens visit Earth,
Hynek said in his book "The Hynek UFO Report" (Dell, unavailable),
"Spielberg has succeeded in capturing on film the essence of the
UFO enigma, the mounting evidence that intelligence other than our
own not only exists but, in a manner peculiarly its own, is making
itself known to the human race."
To that, Phillips might add, "Amen," if he were a religious
man.
Though Phillips believes strongly that there is life on other
planets, he does not enjoy science fiction. Giving a capsule
critique of the film "2001: A Space Odyssey," he said, "The ending
was too far out."
Next year Phillips intends to retire and devote himself full
time to the Ancient Astronaut Society and also to write a book.
But what of the question that has intrigued Phillips for more
than 20 years and for which there is still no proof persuasive
enough to convince establishment science? The answer, you might
say, is still up in the air.
-> Alice4Mac 2.2b2 E QWK Eval:22Apr93
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(11133) Wed 26 Jan 94 2:46p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Pleasing The Hypnotist
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hypnosis: Memory of make-believe? Whether they cluck like a chicken or
recall a ride on a UFO, hypnotized people are just trying to please the
hypnotist when they supposedly tap into past lives, says a professor who
calls it hokum
01/20/94
The Toronto Star
``You are now living in a different life,'' she was told. ``Living in
another life that you lived before.''
The 22-year-old Carleton University student, who had agreed to be
hypnotized in a laboratory experiment, was already in a trance.
``You are now reliving that other life that you lived once before in a
different time. Who are you?''
From a hypnotic daze burst a voice, deep and masculine, vaguely Oriental.
The male voice seemed alien coming from the body of the female Caucasian.
``I am a Japanese fighter pilot,'' it said.
Animated, quick, the pilot talked about his life in Japan flying planes. He
described the clothes on his back. The year was 1940, he said.
Some say this experiment proves the profound power of hypnosis to alter
consciousness and tap into forgotten memories, even past lives.
Nicholas Spanos says it shows that what is drawn out under hypnosis is a
grand sham.
``You heard me,'' says Spanos, the Carleton professor who conducted the
experiments and has spent his life debunking hypnosis.
``She didn't know that the emperor was Hirohito. She said Japan was at
peace in 1940. They'd been at war with China since 1937. She spoke American
with a Japanese accent. It was all a big fantasy.''
Spanos is said to be the world's foremost critic of hypnosis. He has done
dozens of studies and published hundreds of papers and a book all showing,
he says, that hypnotized people are just trying to please the hypnotist by
co-operating with suggestions, whether it's clucking like a chicken or
recalling a ride on a UFO.
In hypnotherapists' offices across the country, patients are recalling
hidden selves, controversial satanic ritual abuse, repressed memories of
sexual abuse, even UFO abductions.
``If it's weird, hypnosis is probably involved,'' Spanos says.
Hypnosis is accepted by professional associations, including the Ontario
Psychological Association, which says hypnotherapy is widely used.
``It's heightened, focused concentration,'' says Richard Stern, a hypnotist
and family counsellor in Ottawa who uses hypnotherapy to help clients quit
smoking and to deal with emotional problems. ``I
can't say really how it works. I just know it does.''
Stern says a lab is not the place to test hypnosis. ``Subjects are probably
scared. They feel like guinea pigs,'' he says. ``And the type of person
working in a lab is not going to be the dramatic, artistic, emotional type
that does it best.''
According to Spanos, ``there's now good evidence that there's a big
compliance component to hypnosis. People just go along because of the
social pressure of the situation.''
In one experiment, Spanos wanted to see if he could get students to create
a hidden self if they were given the right suggestions under hypnosis.
He obtained an American tape of an interview with suspected murderer Ken
Bianchi under hypnosis. During Bianchi's trance, another personality named
Steve emerged and confessed to the murders. In that case, the therapist
used the same interview procedures he regularly used to diagnose multiple
personality disorder.
People diagnosed with this disorder behave as if they possess two or more
selves, each with its own characteristic moods, memories and behaviors.
Multiple personality disorder patients are usually women and often claim to
have been physically or sexually abused.
This is what the therapist told Bianchi after hypnotizing him:
``I've talked a bit to Ken, but I think that perhaps there might be
another part of Ken that I haven't talked to. And I would like to
communicate with that part. And I would like that other part to
come and talk to me . . .''
Students were asked to pretend that they, like Bianchi, were accused of
committing a series of murders and were undergoing a psychiatric interview.
They were told nothing about multiple
personality disorder.
The students were told to summon another part of themselves, just as
Bianchi had been. Most adopted a different name, referred to their primary
personality in the third person, and at the end of the interviews said they
didn't recall they had alter-personalities.
Meanwhile, a control group of students were told to imagine they were
accused murderers but were never asked to summon another part of themselves.
Not one produced a hidden self.
Spanos believes that the more imagination a subject has, the more vivid the
``memories'' under hypnosis.
In one experiment, 35 subjects enacted past lives.
They were asked about the time they lived in, whether their nation was at
war or peace and who the leader was. Spanos says they frequently gave
inaccurate information.
Another experiment was aimed at seeing if suggestions made during hypnosis
could lead subjects to recall child and sexual abuse in a past life.
Half the subjects were told that history shows children in earlier times
appear to have been frequently and severely abused and mistreated.
Those who were told about abuse reported a higher level of mistreatment
than those who weren't.
Spanos believes his work can partly explain why there has been an increase
in cases of repressed child sexual abuse, multiple personality disorder, or
satanic ritual abuse.
For example, he says that between 1920 and 1970 there were 12 cases of
multiple personality reported in all American psychiatric literature.
Since 1974, there have been thousands.
There are no formal standards laid down for hypnotherapists, he says, and
many ``are using very, very leading interviews and then reinforcing the
imaginings as real memories.
``People start thinking maybe it's true; start imagining, `What if it were
true?' They get very upset. The same may be true for so-called repressed
memories of sexual abuse.''
Spanos says his work helps explain false memory syndrome, where an
increasing number of people's ``memories'' of child sexual abuse are
believed to be made up.
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(13194) Sun 30 Jan 94 5:14p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: A Ufo? Who Knows?
St:
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POLICE GET EARFUL OF DOWNED-PLANE REPORTS
01/13/94
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Something is in the air this week.
On Monday, pilot Michael Everhart, reportedly ran out of gas
and safely landed his single-engine Cessna 182 on a golf course in
Oak Forest.
On Tuesday afternoon, a report of a downed plane turned out,
in the words of a Will County Sheriff's Department watch commander,
"to be bogus."
And later that night, a call from an Orland Park resident
launched a U.S. Coast Guard and Cook County Forest Preserve Police
search for a downed plane that so far hasn't materialized.
What did surface, however-following news accounts of the
initial sighting-were a number of additional reports from people
who said they also had heard or seen the plane in trouble.
The reports varied, said Cook County forest preserve
spokeswoman Hollis Friedman. "One person said, `Yes, I heard a
noise last night.' Someone else said they saw the wheels, another
saw lights. One person said she heard a plane that sounded like the
engine went out and then started again."
Wednesday morning, members of the Cook County Forest Preserve
Police, mounted on five horses and leading five dogs, fanned out
into the woods near 151st Street and Harlem Avenue, near Orland
Park.
Officers canvassed the area for additional tips and,
according to Friedman, received plenty.
In the early afternoon, a Coast Guard helicopter again made a
sweep, putting the search to an end.
A UFO?
"Who knows," said Friedman. "Your imagination can run wild
with what it was or wasn't. But the important thing is we didn't
find anything."
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(13195) Sun 30 Jan 94 5:14p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Dissociative Ufos
St: 13228>
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They're coming to take us away
01/02/94
THE INDEPENDENT - London
[ . . . ]
OBSERVERS of the UFO abduction phenomenon often point out its
similarities to other folkloric encounters specific to particular cultures,
from fairy abductions to visits from demons and angels. "The
extraterrestrial abduction is the modern secular version of the religious
dream, very much like Jacob's Ladder," says psychologist Michael Persinger,
of Canada's Laurentian University.
Persinger, who is one of the few academics to have published papers on
the abduction syndrome in peer-reviewed scientific journals, argues that
UFO abduction scenarios are typically experienced in an altered state of
consciousness, often during restless sleep, a hypnotic trance, or some
other half-awake state.
The "alien" or other entity experienced, Persinger believes, is really
an intrusion into the normal sense of self, which is dominated by the left
hemisphere of the brain, by processes normally unconscious within the right
hemisphere of the brain. Such intrusive entities would be shaped, at least
in part, by the cultural material to which the hallucinating person had
been exposed.
"These are quite normal phenomena," Persinger emphasises. "They are part
of dealing with the complexities and anxieties of the everyday world." But
he argues that some people are inherently more likely to report such
phenomena if their brain's temporal lobes, which often seem to mediate the
experience of right-brain intrusions, are prone to seizures or other sudden
bursts of activity, or if their left brains are naturally less dominant.
"They're usually the more creative individuals," says Persinger. "They're
the ones who are more sensitive to changes in their environment - and
they're usually individuals who are more cognitively female, which means
they're more intuitive . . . and involve or utilise creative processes to
solve personal problems."
Persinger believes that in rare cases, UFO abduction experiences may be
triggered by actual close-encounters with UFOs - which he believes can be
natural electromagnetic phenomena, generated by geological and atmospheric
processes and related to ball lightning. According to Persinger, the
magnetic fields associated with a UFO, at close range, may trigger temporal
lobe seizures and right-brain intrusions, bringing about an altered state
of consciousness in which a UFO encounter or other culturally defined
hallucination is experienced, or creating amnesia upon which the spurious
experience or "memory" of a UFO encounter is later imposed, perhaps during
hypnotic regression therapy.
In any case, the idea that the main cause of UFO abduction stories
should be sought in the minds of abductees is also supported by the
apparent connection between the UFO abduction syndrome and a class of
psychiatric disorders known as the dissociative disorders, whose best-known
variant is Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). "There are several
checklists for symptoms of suspected UFO abductions," says George Ganaway,
a psychiatrist and dissociative disorder specialist of Emory University in
Atlanta. "Those symptoms are remarkably similar to the symptoms we
clinicians use to diagnose dissociative disorders - things such as periods
of missing time, unexplained marks or wounds on the body, the experience of
a presence around you, the feeling that you're not alone, the feeling that
you're being influenced to behave in certain ways . . ."
An innate tendency to fantasy may explain some of the elaborate tales
told by UFO abductees, but there is evidence that social factors are also
at work. Most abductees are female, and belong to support groups which
revolve around a charismatic male UFO abduction researcher or therapist.
(Budd Hopkins hypnotises about a dozen female abductees on a regular basis.
) Similar conditions prevailed during the epidemics of demon-possession
among convent-confined nuns and other young women in 17th-century Europe
and America; possessees then tended to flock around male exorcists or witch-
hunters, and the inevitable competition for attention encouraged wild tales
of abuse and outrage. The anthropologist I M Lewis, who has studied and
described the female-dominated cults which spring up around many spirit-
possession syndromes in the Third World, notes that competitive stories of
trauma are found there, too. "There would be a lot of competition between
devotees for attention."
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(13196) Sun 30 Jan 94 5:14p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Ufo Bombers
St:
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NEW YORK MAIL BOMBINGS: Family lived eccentric, reclusive lives
01/03/94
The Ottawa Citizen
Last week, a series of powerful bombs killed five members of an upstate New
York family -- Bob Cooper vividly remembers how pictures "flew off the wall
when six sticks of shrapnel-enshrouded dynamite exploded Tuesday afternoon
two doors away in his apartment complex. He recalls how debris was
scattered into the courtyard and how plaster dust hung thick in the air
when he and a neighbor shouldered through the ruined door at No. 55 Snug
Harbor Court.
What Cooper is beginning to glimpse only now are the largely unknown lives
of the people who had lived at No. 55, Pamela Lazore Lanza and Richard
Urban.
Lanza, 32, and Urban, 42, were among the five people -- mostly members of
her family -- killed Tuesday by a series of powerful package bombs.
What has emerged is a partial portrait of the family, full of fracture
lines and old wounds -- as any family is -- but also moving in eccentric
and reclusive circles far from the traditional suburban pursuits.
Unknown to their neighbors, its members inhabited a world of UFO
research and psychics, and "experiences not always physical in
nature, as a friend put it. And they were freighted, apparently,
with an internal feud of Montague and Capulet proportions.
"The rest of us all know each other -- they tended to keep to themselves,
said Cooper, an electrical engineer. "None of us got to know them very well.
The six bombs -- one of which did not go off -- were delivered within two
hours of one another to a circle of Lanza's family, most of whom are of
Mohawk decent with ties to the nearby St. Regis Reservation.
Within six hours, police had arrested two non-Indian men, Earl Figley, 56,
and Michael Stevens 53, the boyfriend of Lanza's sister, Brenda Lazore
Chevere.
While a full explanation is lacking, there is no shortage of evidence that
in this complex, interwoven circle of lives, its members clearly marched to
their own beat.
Three of the five victims -- Lanza; her mother, Eleanor Lazore
Fowler, and Fowler's husband, Robert -- were described as core
members of a local UFO study group called the Ultimate Frontier
Organization, which believes that extraterrestrial contact is
intertwined with spirituality, including American Indian
mysticism.
Daryl Hardes, a group member who is writing a book on the theory,
said that a major part of it would include the Lazore family's
experiences -- such as seeing a "disk-shaped object hovering over
their house when Pamela was a child, and Robert Fowler's memory of
seeing a deer's face transformed into that of an alien.
But Hardes said that Brenda Lazore Chevere and Stevens would have
nothing to do with the UFO group, and that he never even met them.
Chevere, who is 31, lives at the end of a remote private road in
the town of Victor, about 48 kilometres from Rochester.
"No comment. Go away, she said, speaking from behind the closed door of the
redwood-sided house in the middle of a snow-covered clearing when a
reporter called. Most other family members have been silent, and some,
fearing further violence, are reported to be in hiding.
One man related to the family through marriage, said that Stevens, an ex-
convict who served two years in state prison on fraud charges, had divided
and frightened the Lazore-Fowler family for years.
"He told me a couple of times, `I'll kill you, and not lose a minute's
sleep over it,' said the man, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity.
"He's just mad.
What will happen next, with Figley and Stevens in the county jail pending a
bail hearing today, and the family having largely gone underground, remains
a guess. Stevens' relationship with Chevere,
who was questioned by the police on the day of the bombings and released,
and Chevere's relationship with her family, are also largely unknown.
-> Alice4Mac 2.3b4 E QWK Eval:06Jan94
--- GEcho 1.01+
* Origin: StarGate BBS NY 718-519-8042 (1:278/714)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(13239) Tue 1 Feb 94 12:42p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Okie Abductions 1/2
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abducted By UFOs!
Sooners Report Close Encounters
01/23/94
THE SUNDAY OKLAHOMAN
Richard Seifried was sound asleep on the lonely Black Mesa in the
Panhandle.
Suddenly he awoke to find himself floating out the end of his tent and
up into a spaceship, where he was given a physical exam by short, hairless,
gray-colored beings with fragile necks, long arms and black eyes the size
of grapefruit.
"I went right through the mosquito netting" without tearing it, he said.
Now for the strange part. Seifried's been snatched like this at least
five other times.
Sometimes the beings beamed him off a mountain while he worked for the
Forest Service. Sometimes they grabbed him from home.
Sometimes they scooped skin samples or poked him with tiny needles in a
pattern.
Seifried's not alone. As director of investigations for the Oklahoma
chapter of the Mutual UFO Network, Seifried has come across many Oklahomans
who've had uncomfortably close encounters with strange entities from who
knows where.
Well, that's what they say.
Some who believe in UFOs - in the sense that unidentified flying objects
are advanced aliens from some unknown part of the cosmos - estimate up to
millions of people have been so "abducted."
In Oklahoma, Seifried and his wife, Jean Waller, longtime state director
of the network, know of at least 30 or 40 such people who believe they're
victims.
UFOs - in the sense of things in the sky that did not make sense to the
observer - have been around forever, or at least as long as people have had
eyes and a brain big enough to wonder, "What the ...?"
Seifried has written a book, "Native Encounters," about the history of
UFO things in Oklahoma, one of several unpublished manuscripts by the
retired school teacher.
Interest in UFOs seems to run in cycles, but it's been pretty hot since
the early 1950s, when humanoids began building rockets in earnest. Recently,
a congressman succeeded in launching a government investigation into what
believers say was the crash of a flying saucer in New Mexico in 1947 that
was covered up by the same government.
UFO conventions and meetings have boomed in the past decade.
"I'm interested in anything that's unexplained," James Rea, 18, of El
Reno said, explaining why he showed up at a recent network meeting in
Norman. "I don't really know if I believe them (UFOs) or not. I believe
anything's possible."
Oklahoma has its share of UFO stuff, network people say. Like animal
carcasses with eyes or sexual organs removed or like circles on rural land
that cows mysteriously avoid, all of which some people attribute to
celestial interlopers for lack of other explanations.
Philip Klass blames it on a kind of extra-terrestrial baloney
sandwich beamed directly into people's brains by tabloids, talk
shows, books and movies. Despite the huge numbers of people who
have seen UFOs or their creators, not one lug nut from an
interplanetary craft has been recovered.
Klass, publisher of the Skeptics UFO Newsletter, said the
National Enquirer offered $1 million and a British liquor magnate
offered about $2.8 million for any hard evidence. Zilch.
Klass is a former senior avionics editor for Aviation Week &
Space Technology magazine and still writes for the magazine. If one
alien visit to Earth could be proven, "It would have been the
biggest story I had ever written. In 28 years I have yet to find
that story."
Aside from the elderly woman who died from exposure while
waiting for a spaceship, belief in UFOs had been relatively
harmless, he said. He said most UFO investigators are
well-intentioned people, albeit many with a tendency to avoid
obvious, earthbound explanations.
But this abduction thing, which popped up about 1987, leaves
mild curiosity in the dust.
"It's a UFO abduction cult," says Klass. "This is New Age
witchcraft."
"Pretty Crazy" Images
Whatever it is, belief in UFO abduction is seriously disturbing or
moving to those who think they have been chosen or picked on by aliens.
Like Joel and Carilee Delano. For the Choctaw couple and their two young
daughters, it all began on a clear fall night on a South Dakota highway in
1992 on a trip to Montana.
That's where, the parents say, a mysterious craft that had followed them
for miles made its close encounter and "interacted" with the family. On
their living room wall, framed in oak, hang a half dozen enlarged glossy
photos of what they say is the craft, or at least light from it.
What's obvious is only a chunk of roadway, with three dots or
squiggles of light in the darkness.
Joel's brother called MUFON about it. MUFON suggested hypnosis.
And, like many others, the Delanos discovered under this altered
state that they too had been abducted.
Those abducted often have difficulties with their marriages, as
spouses assume they're Lost in Space without a shuttle. It helped
lead to Seifried's divorce from a former wife.
"I thought this is how you felt before you went into the nut
house," Carilee Delano recalls of her first reaction to her
husband's abduction "memory." After accepting it, the Mary Kay
cosmetics representative began viewing the incident "like it was a
rape."
"This is getting into the Looney Toons area," Joel said,
worrying about what all this sounds like.
During four sessions of hypnosis, at $35 apiece, Joel recalled: "I felt
a levitation up. I felt I was in a room, foggy, my legs paralyzed."
The construction worker saw beings with large heads, thin necks and
"large black eyes staring at me. Images, images, images," he says, gazing
at the wall as he searches for words.
"In my mind it really happened," he said.
Now the Delanos feel the beings were "obviously corresponding
with us." Although they had no specific message, Joel says since
then he's had a lot of thoughts about evolution and creation. The
Delanos are convinced the aliens have been back. Several times.
"I feel we've had visitations here at the house," Joel said.
Strange things like nightmares and flashes in the sky around
their rural acreage provide clues, they say. That plus hypnosis
that revealed "a being sitting beside my bed," Joel said.
Joel, 43, also figures "I was medically altered" because dizzy
spells and a nagging cough he used to have disappeared.
They fear their daughters are involved in this pattern of
experiments and visits, since they have bad dreams too. "You're
helpless," Carilee, 33, said."Our children probably are genetically
altered."
Chana Sue, 9, lacing up sneakers for a basketball game, said she
didn't know what the family saw that night in South Dakota. Her
mother shows a crude drawing Chana Sue did of a pear-shaped craft
with a row of windows on it.
Carilee said that's the craft she saw in a dream. Joel said he
saw that shape while under hypnosis.
Asked how the figure came to her, Chana Sue explained, "That's
always been what I thought they (UFOs) looked like."
Joel's sister once saw an alien in her room in Tulsa and his
mother in Arkansas saw a UFO too.
Emily (not her real name) is another Oklahoman abducted by
aliens. Or who believes she was.
Married with two kids, the 36-year-old maternity nurse recalled
being awakened by a strange red light and noises when she was 7.
She was living in New Hampshire.
Under hypnosis, she further remembered "floating up in a light
with my cousin beside me." She was paralyzed, as beings in the fuzzy
memory "apply pressure to the back of my head" and work with a long
instrument with a ball on the end of it.
During another hypnosis session, she remembered at age 11 waking
to "a dark hand over my face in the middle of the night." She
closed her eyes and prayed, shaking until it was gone. She counts a
total of four alien abductions.
"It's pretty crazy," she says.
-> Alice4Mac 2.3b4 E QWK Eval:06Jan94
--- Maximus/2 2.01wb
* Origin: UFOria (Clifton, VA) 703-803-6420 (1:109/369)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(13240) Tue 1 Feb 94 12:42p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Okie Abductions 2/2
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Memories or Metaphors
Many have stirred these images with the help of Jean E. Byrne, a
Norman nurse who works in home health care most of the time. Byrne
also is trained in massage and hypnotherapy, studying at the American
Institute of Hypnotherapy and at the Association of Research and
Enlightenment.
She said the "scariest part" of hypnotherapy on UFO cases is
"when we work with children. They're just terrified." Kids who
apparently have been abducted by aliens have been known to refer to
them as "Big Boy" or "the one who comes ... at night and takes her
to the ball in the sky."
Dr. Vernon Enlow, Oklahoma City psychologist who uses hynposis,
said there is a raging controversy over "created memories," ideas
subtly planted in subjects' minds by hypnotists.
Byrne said she is aware subjects are very receptive to suggestion. And
these days, "there's so much of what we call contamination," that is
reading, hearing or seeing films about aliens then thinking it happened to
them. "You don't know how much of that is real memory," she said.
Enlow said stories elicited under hypnosis aren't necessarily true, even
though subjects believe them and the therapist doesn't suggest them. They
can be "a metaphor" for something else.
"Hypnosis is not a truth serum," he said. "Hypnotism can sometimes
release a lot of creativity." Any therapist who encounters numerous people
believing UFO abductions would cause him to wonder. Wonder is about all
most people do with UFOs.
Tom Renbarger, 42, graphic artist for the state Department of
Transportation, said his interest in UFO stuff is more "a social
phenomenon."
"I think it sort of fills a need for some people to have something
supernatural or something to believe in," he said.
-> Alice4Mac 2.3b4 E QWK Eval:06Jan94
--- Maximus/2 2.01wb
* Origin: UFOria (Clifton, VA) 703-803-6420 (1:109/369)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(8919) Sun 6 Mar 94 12:14a
By: Glenn Joyner
To: All
Re: 1/3 More Abduction Fare
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From the Dallas Morning News
Wednesday, March 2, 1994
Today - Section C
ABDUCTED BY ALIENS? LIST GROWS
By Nicole Brodeur (Orange County Register)
This is a hard story for C.C. Peters to tell.
She drains her coffee cup a third time, lights a cigarette.
The smoke comes first, then the words.
"When I was 7 years old, I had this dream..." Ms. Peters stops
and levels a look across the kitchen table. "That's what I was told; that
it was a dream," she says. "That's what I believed at the time."
Now, 26 years later, the housewife believes something else: She
was abducted by aliens.
They came to her home in New Jersey, she says. Three of them,
each just over 3 feet tall, appeared at the base of her bed and asked-
telepathically-to play with her toys.
She remembers feeling woozy, then hearing a crunching sound, "like
someone taking a bite out of an apple," and feeling a sharp pain in her
nose.
She remembers floating: out of her bedroom window, over trees in her
front yard and into a round room, where she saw her mother lying on a
floating table, being examined by aliens.
She remembers an alien - a scientist of some sort - taking her into
another room, where "hybrid babies" sat like shoes in boxes in three rows
against the wall.
Finally, she was taken into a room filled with blinding white
light, where she encountered a feminine entity who exuded overwhelming
wisdom.
The next morning, Ms. Peters says, she awoke with leaves and twigs
in her bed. To this day, she believes she ripped them from the treetops as
she passed over them - evidence of her journey.
It's an incredible tale, but a familiar one to the people in the
abductee community, as active and organized as any PTA and growing all the
time.
"Definitely growing," says Debbie Kenna, a Fullerton, California,
hypnotherapist with 75 clients who believe they were abducted. "As more
comes out, people are beginning to educate themselves and become aware
of the possibility of abduction.
"Before, they may have thought they were going crazy."
At monthly support groups, people meet to talk about their
abductions. They also attend conferences and workshops to gather information
on the phenomenon. And the Psynetics Foundation in Anaheim, California,
hosts regular "abductee night," when stories are shared and discussed.
Abductees are all kinds of people. Professional and poor. Vocal
and silent. Believers and debunkers, and those who will wonder all their
lives.
"Abductees always seem to be simple, innocent people who have had
no prior interest in the subject," Ms. Kenna says. "Abduction is like an
awakening; a massive consciousness shift."
For Ms. Peters (not her real name), though, the abduction has meant
upheavals in an otherwise normal life: The daughter of well-to-do, loving
parents, she attended private schools and spent her summers in Europe. Now
33, she lives with her husband and young son in a sprawling home overlooking
Marbella Country Club in San Juan Capistrano, California.
>>>>>CONTINUED NEXT MESSAGE
--- FMail 0.96\E2+
* Origin: The DataBank * Dallas TX * (214)681-2218 * 14.4k * (1:124/7015)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(8920) Sun 6 Mar 94 12:15a
By: Glenn Joyner
To: All
Re: 2/3 More Abduction Fare
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>CONTINUED FROM LAST MESSAGE
"I know all this sounds crazy," Ms. Peters says again. "I know
it. And I keep wondering, `Why me? I'm just a housewife!'"
Most psychiatrists - as well as noted scientist Carl Sagan - believe
alleged abductions are simple hallucinations, bouts of fitful slumber when
a person is thrashing about in bed, half awake but still dreaming of lights
and almond-eyed beings.
"People can be absolutely convinced that aliens are kidnapping
them," says Dr. Robert Baker, professor emeritus of psychology of the
University of Kentucky. "It's an old science-fiction theme."
But Harvard University psychologist Dr. John Mack disagrees. Dr.
Mack, founder of the psychiatry department at Cambridge (Mass.) Hospital and
winner of a 1977 Pulitzer Prize for his psychoanalytic biography of T. E.
Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), has investigated almost 70 alleged abductions
and conducted hundreds of hours of interviews and treatment.
"When memories come back like that, I never have any question that
people are describing something that has authentically happened to them,"
he told the Boston Globe in 1992. "No one has been able to come up with a
counterformulation that explains what's going on."
The number of people who think they've been abducted is hard to
gauge.
However, a 1992 Roper poll of nearly 6,000 U.S. adults showed that
lots of people believe they've had alien encouters. The poll was funded by
Las Vegas developer Robert Bigelow and comissioned by a group of people who
believe in alien abduction, including author Budd Hopkins and Temple
University professor Dr. David Jacobs.
The questionnaire contained queries as benign as "Have you
experienced self-esteem problems?" and as off-the-wall as "Has someone in
your life claimed to have witnessed a ship or alien near you or witnessed
you being gone?"
The conclusion: Two percent of all Americans believe they have
been abducted, many repeatedly, by beings from another world.
Impossible, says Dr. William Cone, a Newport Beach, California,
psychologist who specializes in treating alleged abduction cases.
"There is no data. But I really, honestly think it's very few
people."
A former marriage and family couselor, Dr. Cone developed an
interest in alien abductions after reading Whitley Strieber's "Communion,"
a 1987 best seller that brought the idea of alien abduction into the
mainstream.
"This wasn't my game plan, to spend my career on the fringe," Dr.
Cone says with a smile. "But if you think you've been abducted, you come
to me."
HORRIBLE EXPERIENCES
Abductees compare their experiences to that of rape victims: taken
against their will, undressed and examined by strangers, then returned to
their lives shaken, scared and dysfunctional. Many suffer post-traumatic
stress, sleep and sexual problems, and have trouble maintaining jobs or
relationships.
"There's no self-help book for abductees," Dr. Cone says. "I just
try to make the experience a piece of their life, rather than their whole
life. I de-stress them, give them coping skills and help them to function
as humans again."
Some clients are children, as young as age 4, who tell Dr. Cone of
their trips aboard spacecraft with "snowmen," "doctors," and "little
friends" hovering around them.
>>>>>CONTINUED NEXT MESSAGE
--- FMail 0.96\E2+
* Origin: The DataBank * Dallas TX * (214)681-2218 * 14.4k * (1:124/7015)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(8921) Sun 6 Mar 94 12:16a
By: Glenn Joyner
To: All
Re: 3/3 More Abduction Fare
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>CONTINUED FROM LAST MESSAGE
"The parents are completely freaked out," Dr. Cone says.
Does he believe their stories?
"I don't disbelieve anything. I'm interested in paranormal
experiences, but I have no way of verifying their stories."
The abductees' stories are intriguing in their similarity.
The most common symptom is missing time - one to several hours
when they cannot account for their whereabouts.
Abductees also suffer from sleep paralysis, a condition in which
they remember being awake in bed but unable to move. Some feel heavy weight
on their chests, as if something is sitting on them.
Once paralyzed, abductees see aliens - about 3 feet tall, with
almond-shaped eyes and gray bodies - before them.
The aliens take the abductees from their homes or cars and lead
them aboard a spacecraft, put them on a table in a round room and subject
them to what appear to be medical procedures.
"At times, these `examinations' are very painful," Dr. Cone says.
"Some people have also reported other humans involved in their abductions,
some in military uniforms."
Russ Estes - a San Diego-based producer who, with Dr. Cone, has
interviewed at least 100 abductees for a documentary on the phenomenon - says
the similarities of the stories were "absolutely astounding."
"Granted, the media has brought a heck of a lot of information to
the public, but even the smallest details are highly similar," Mr. Estes
says.
Does he believe them?
"Tough question," Mr. Estes says. "I don't disbelieve them. Most
people have no reason to lie. And why would they subject themselves to
ridicule?"
JUST DAYDREAMS
Dr. Baker, of the University of Kentucky's department of psychology,
believes abduction stories are "a false belief or delusion."
"These are hoaxes!" he bellows in a recent telephone interview.
"Every one of these things that (abductees) take as evidence of something
strange going on, of aliens abducting 3 to 4 million people annually...every
one of the things they argue can easily be explained with a simple
understanding of human psychology.
"We all daydream," he says. "We read a page when we are tired and
can't remember a thing we have read."
Sleep paralysis is common too. "When you're half awake and half
asleep and see, for example, balls of light coming at you from the walls.
These people aren't crazy, because the paralysis is real," Dr. Baker says.
What about scars and scoop marks abductees bear as proof of their
experience?
"Those can be done at night by fingernails and toenails," he says.
"We do that to ourselves all the time. In no way do we have any physical
evidence that it can be established and agreed upon by competent scientists
that we have ever had any visitations by extraterrestials," he says.
All of which means nothing to the members of the Out There Group,
a gathering of 24 alleged abductees ages 10 to 56. They meet every month
in the Mission Viejo, California, home of hypnotherapist Jane Lake.
Some abductees enjoy the experience, Ms. Lake says.
"They feel they are doing something for humanity, contracting with
the extraterrestrials to help us all."
[DISTRIBUTED BY KNIGHT-RIDDER TRIBUNE NEWS WIRE]
--End Of File--
--- FMail 0.96\E2+
* Origin: The DataBank * Dallas TX * (214)681-2218 * 14.4k * (1:124/7015)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(11605) Fri 11 Mar 94 7:48a
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Virginity Thieves
St: 12963>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aliens stole my virginity
03/06/94 THE TIMES OF LONDON
Dark White: Aliens, Abductions And The UFO Obsession by Jim Schnabel, H
Hamilton Pounds 16.99 pp304.
The forms that psychiatric symptoms take appear fairly fixed; it is their
content that changes from culture to culture, epoch to epoch. Hence there are
delusions and hallucinations the world over but what the hallucinated hear and
the deluded believe is heavily coloured and moulded by their context. In the
19th century, if the records of the Bethlehem Hospital are anything to go by,
the psychiatrically ill were preoccupied by sex and religion. Today's patients
are more troubled by hypochondriacal worries about cancer, political
interference involving the CIA, the KGB and the IRA and, to judge by the
contents of Jim Schnabel's beguiling book, by kidnapping and exposure to a
myriad of sexual and gynaecological indignities by aliens from outer space.
The abductees, as Schnabel courteously terms them, currently pour into the
offices of America's psychotherapists, telling stories of dark deeds in sterile
operating chambers aboard gleaming spaceships humming with hi-tech machinery.
His ironic, wry account contains all the classic UFO stories, each one of them
worthy of a Spielberg movie. There is Richard Shaver who, in 1943, began to be
interrupted by strange voices and forced to do things he didn't want to do.
Psychotic? No a strange race of aliens, inhabiting the centre of the earth,
were focusing deleterious rays on the benighted man. Eventually, they took him
down to their underworld where a siren named Nydia tried to get him to engage
in forms of sexual behaviour shocking to a crane-operator from Detroit.
In an earlier age, he might have been dispatched to the local mental asylum,
but the 1940s were to provide the overture for the great UFO opera which plays
to vast houses to this day. Reports were already appearing regularly of
sightings of strange objects and lights in the sky. By the 1960s, reports of
abductions by 5ft humanoids, with putty-coloured heads and a propensity for
conducting medical examinations (with special attention to the reproductive
organs), had reached epidemic proportions. By the 1980s, the accounts had
become utterly ridiculous which did not prevent millions of people believing
them absolutely.
A typical account is that provided by science writer Whitley Strieber, who
described being hauled out of his bedroom by the blue meanies and into a messy
chamber with a vaulted ceiling, where the atmosphere reeked of Cheddar cheese
and the aliens smelled like cardboard and cinnamon and zapped his head with a
needle. Following a rather unpleasant session with a female alien and a scaly
proctoscope, he woke to find himself naked on his living-room couch, whereupon
he calmly went upstairs, cleaned his teeth and went to bed.
Given the well-known psychological law that there is nothing so far-fetched
that a sizeable number of seemingly reasonable people won't believe, the
wildest ufological claims have been accepted uncritically by millions of people
in America. However, society is split. At what Schnabel archly terms "higher
levels of culture", the UFO debate has evolved into discussions, after a few
drinks, of hoaxes, hallucinations, weather balloons and Venus. However, "for
low-rent people who bought tabloids and mistook Spielberg movies for reality",
accounts of women being inseminated on operating tables in spaceships by
pinkish translucent-skinned humanoids with metallic eyes were simply evidence
that out there in the night sky an alien menace hovered.
As Schnabel points out, many eminent psychiatrists have taken a cold,
sceptical look at UFO claims; they have concluded that most of the accounts
reek of paranoid fantasy, manic elaboration and, in many instances, blatant
fraud. Many of the abduction cases involved the use of hypnosis for
verification; under hypnosis, the stories became more bizarre and compelling.
It took until the late 1970s before a sustained assault on the reliability and
validity of hypnosis was mounted. In study after study, subjects were shown to
confabulate and embellish. One critic, Martin Orne, a professor of psychiatry
at the University of Pennsylvania, warned: "If the hypnotist has beliefs about
what actually occurred, it is exceedingly difficult for him to prevent himself
from inadvertently guiding the subject's recall, so that (the subject) will
eventually `remember' what he, the hypnotist, believes actually happened." I
could not have put it better myself.
More careful psychological studies of the personalities of "abductees"
showed a tendency towards high intelligence, high creativity, lowered self-
esteem, emotional immaturity, egocentricity, confusion about sexual identity,
mild paranoia and, in the words of one researcher, "a tendency, under stress,
to slip into `more or less transient psychotic experiences' involving a loss of
reality testing along with a confused and disordered thinking that can be
bizarre". In short, the sort of people that I, as a practising psychiatrist,
spend some of my time, and with modest success, persuading to take a rest, some
medication and another perspective.
What does Schnabel make of these strange accounts? In much of the book, he
hedges his bets, yet he comes down on the side of the sceptics. It is
difficult,
he admits, to ignore the phenomenological, sociological and psychological
links between alien abductions and a host of other unsual experiences, not to
mention sheer mental instability. He concedes that the reported experiences
appear capable of being triggered by stress, a desire for attention, a shot of
mescaline, a hypnotic trance, and involve such fundamentally similar
experiences as bedroom presences, levitation, flight and sexual sensations.
There is, too, the remarkable ability of people to produce information they do
not remember receiving. Even incidental, unconsciously absorbed information can
invade consciousness. Schnabel quotes female therapists who treat Vietnam
veterans for post-traumatic stress syndrome and who have themselves begun to
suffer "flashbacks" about their own "combat experiences".
He is drawn to the theory put foward by Princeton psychologist Julian Jaynes
who, in a remarkable book entitled The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown
Of The Bicameral Mind, argued that, up until the end of the second millennium
BC, human introspection, evaluation and decision-making in unusual situations
were always performed unconsciously by the right side of the brain which
delivered commands in the form of hallucinated voices and sometimes visions to
the obedient left. These voices and apparitions, in the course of time, became
interpreted as the voices and visions of gods initially benign, wise,
omnipotent gods to whose authority all regions and sciences attempt to return.
The myriad extraterrestrial beings are merely the latest in a long line of
elaborations which the human mind constructs and then becomes bemused by. Other
theories haul in the temporal lobe, the phenomenon of multiple personality, the
sexual dimorphism of the limbic system and anthropological views on spirit
possession. In the end, though, confronted by the extraordinary proliferation
of ufological reports coupled with bizarre, complicated and often ludicrous
deceptions involving nasal x-rays, scars, disappearing grey-stained sheets and
sand-and-seaweed-covered struggles on the beach, Schnabel admits defeat.
-> Alice4Mac 2.3b4 E QWK Eval:06Jan94
--- GEcho 1.02+
* Origin: StarGate BBS NY 718-519-8042 (1:278/110)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(11606) Fri 11 Mar 94 7:48a
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: The Year That Was
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SIGHTINGS FOR SORE EYES? UFOS WERE NEWS
01/28/94
THE NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE
In this column's continuing effort to present a broad spectrum
of thought-provoking material based on worthless information that
no one with any sense would deal with, I am delighted to report the
following to you:
1993 was the busiest UFO year in at least a decade, with
sightings increasing in quality, cattle mutilations not rising or
falling significantly but holding steady amidst at least one claim
that there are connections between UFOs and the assassination of
President Kennedy.
Sounds like the stock market report: There was heavy trading
today in future Cattle Mutilations, Abductions by Aliens took a
nosedive while speculators cooled on English Crop Circles, which
were hot last year.
The 1993 UFO Year in Review, which capsules significant and
insignificant events relating to unidentified flying objects, found
that some of the year's most ludicrous claims were that aliens like
Oriental music and strawberry ice cream, feed on human body parts,
and that the government has sold out to aliens and now assists them
in operating their underground bases in the West.
Of course they do. It's obvious some sort of underground
testing triggered the recent earthquake.
As for cattle mutilations: "It's a very sticky sort of thing,"
explained Don Berliner, a member of the executive committee of the
Fund for UFO Research. "These are strangely mutilated cattle, with
body parts removed - such as sex organs, tongues and eyes. The
incisions are high-tech, not ragged as if they were done with a
meat cleaver."
These cattle mutilation stories started in the Rocky Mountain
area some years back and moved around, eventually into northern
Georgia. This is understandable. You know how long it takes us
Southerners to catch on to trends and fashions.
The problem with the cattle mutilation reports, he said, is
that rarely does anybody who's capable and has credibility get to
the scene in time to get any documentation or closeup photographs.
"If you read about it in some small-town weekly, it's too late," he
said.
Another significant problem is this: If there were some
striking UFO sightings near cattle mutilations, there might be
something to go on. But there haven't been. So the bottom line is
this:
"There's enough to make it intriguing, but there isn't much to
tie cattle mutilations to UFOs," Berliner said.
Wow! Is that a relief!
Now, as for English crop circles, that's another matter.
For 10 years or so, very elaborate complex geometric circles
and groups of circles have been appearing in fields of grain in the
southwest of Great Britain - most noticeably around Salisbury, a
town known for its steaks. (Seems a natural for the cattle
mutilations.)
More than a thousand have been recorded. "Some are quite
geometric and extremely well made and symmetrical," said Berliner,
who once spotted two, 50 to 60 feet long each, in dumbbell shapes
in a field on his way to Heathrow Airport, which is nowhere near
Salisbury.
Naturally, believers have explained that aliens are trying to
send messages to us through these well-crafted circles. Which leads
to the conclusion that we're dealing with some pretty stupid
aliens. If they've been drawing circles in wheatfields for a decade
now and haven't gotten a single reply, we can't be dealing with
rocket scientists.
One difference between cattle mutilations and crop circles is
worth nothing. Ah, excuse me, that should read, "worth noting."
(Assuming any of this is worth noting.) That is that crop circles
can be studied. "They don't vanish quickly," Berliner said. Or
decay. Or disappear. Unfortunately, other than a lot of people who
think there is some connection, there's absolutely nothing to tie
circles in grain fields to UFOs or aliens.
Until now, that is. After further review, this column has
concluded that there is a significant correlation between aliens
liking Oriental music and strawberry ice cream and circles in
English wheatfields.
Here's how it goes: The Beatles were English and doubtless once
ate strawberry ice cream. The Beatles sang a song named "Strawberry
Fields Forever." One of the Beatles, John Lennon, was married to an
Oriental who was also a musician. The Beatles were frequently
accused of doing drugs and alcohol, arguably two of the leading
causes of UFO sightings and communications with aliens. Many of the
Beatles' songs, particularly those on their album "The Magical
Mystery Tour" on which "Strawberry Fields Forever" appears, would
lead you to conclude they were in direct communication with aliens
from other planets.
The words in the album's title song clearly state that "The
Magical Mystery Tour is coming to take you away." And in another
well-known Beatles song, there is further proof that communication
was made: "See how they fly like Lucy in the sky. I am the walrus
GOO GOO GOO JOOB."
I rest my case.
As with all UFO theories, Berliner said, it's a "prove it isn't
true" situation. "It's an open-ended subject. Anything is possible
if nobody can prove you wrong."
Go ahead. I dare you.
-> Alice4Mac 2.3b4 E QWK Eval:06Jan94
--- GEcho 1.02+
* Origin: StarGate BBS NY 718-519-8042 (1:278/110)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(11607) Fri 11 Mar 94 7:48a
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Shocking! Shocking! ;->
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't believe everything you hear
01/29/94
THE LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Could it be? A rift in the UFO community?
In its yellow paper "1993 Year in Review," between updates on crop circles
and cattle mutilations, the Fund for UFO Research, Inc. admits that it "feels
morally obligated" to inform the media that _ stop the presses _ there are
charlatans making big bucks off of UFO groupies by peddling "truly outlandish
claims" without "a scrap of supporting evidence."
This, the group acknowledges, harms "serious efforts" to study little
green men visiting Earth in spaceships.
As an example of these wild tales, the fund cites the following: "Crashed
UFOs have been rebuilt by the USA with (or without) the help of alien
technicians. Such craft are said to have been test-flown from secret U.S. Air
Force bases in Nevada. A `scientist' who claims to have briefly worked there
insists he has been harassed by the government for speaking out and had his
educational records erased."
Why, this sounds like a thinly veiled reference to Bob Lazar, lord high
mucky-muck in the UFO movement ever since former Las Vegas boob-tube celeb
George Knapp made him a star years back by giving him a forum for his
flapdoodle in a fawningly uncritical TV interview. Time to jump off the train,
George.
-> Alice4Mac 2.3b4 E QWK Eval:06Jan94
--- GEcho 1.02+
* Origin: StarGate BBS NY 718-519-8042 (1:278/110)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(12968) Wed 16 Mar 94 7:22p
By: Don Allen
To: All
Re: Old Usaf-aircraft/ufo Incident
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Forwarded from "BAMA"
* Originally by John Powell
* Originally to All
* Originally dated 14 Mar 1994, 16:49
The Mystery of McChord Air Force Base, Tacoma
At 6:30pm on 1 April 1959, big four-engined C-118 transport
aircraft of the USAF's 1705th Air Transport Wing roared down the main
runway of McChord Air Force Base, near Tacoma, Washington, and climbed
away into the southern sky. For the four-man crew, this was a routine
training mission - so routine that it was virtually automatic. But just
75 minutes later, all four men were dead - and the C-118 was a mass of
shredded wreckage strewn across the side of a mountain.
At 7:45pm, the staff in the control tower at McChord Air Base
heard a frantic distress call from the C-118's pilot. "Mayday, Mayday!
We've hit something - or something has hit us . . . This is it!" Then
there was only silence. The C-118 had crashed into the side of a
mountain in the Cascade Range, 3O miles (48km) north-west of Mount
Rainier's 14,400ft (4,389m) peak. Air Force crash crews and armed
guards raced to the scene and threw a cordon around the widely scattered
wreckage. Newsmen and others who attempted to come close were warned off
at gunpoint. Explanations and rumours spread like wildfire. Had the
aircraft been testing some new device - hence all the secrecy?
Unlikely, as the C-118 was only a freighter. Was pilot error the
answer? Or perhaps the C-118 had run into a flock of birds, or had been
in collision with a second aircraft.
The Air Force knew that none of these reasons was the real one.
A few minutes before the pilot's distress call, the powerful radars at
McChord Air Base had revealed that the C-118 had picked up three or four
mysterious travelling companions - strange, luminous peaks of light that
darted around the big transport. Gradually, the Air Force specialists
who were investigating the crash began to build up a minute-by-minute
picture of the strange and terrifying fate that had overwhelmed the
aircraft and its crew.
At seven o'clock on that April evening, residents in the area
between Seattle and Mount Rainier had been alarmed by a series of
explosions - mysterious detonations that seemed to come from a clear
sky. Twenty minutes later, the whole region was shaken by an even
bigger bang. At about the same time, several bright, luminous objects
were seen racing across the sky. They travelled at incredible speed and
in complete silence. Many other people witnessed strange flashes and
glows around the horizon.
Eye-witnesses in Orting, not far from the scene of the crash,
told investigators that the C-118 had appeared overhead at about 7:45pm.
All the aircraft's four engines were stopped, and a large chunk of its
tail unit was missing. But, strangest of all, the C-118 was being
followed by a formation of three shining discs. Every now and then, one
of them would break away and dart towards the transport, skipping over
it and veering off to one side at the last moment. It was just as though
the C-118 was being harried by a pack of hounds. Several people in the
Orting area had watched the aircraft and its uneartlnly companions
until they were out of sight. A minute later, two bright flashes ripped
the sky to the north-east. At that exact moment the radio transmissions
from the C-118 ceased abruptly with the pilot's final desperate "This is
it!"
Rescue teams arriving at the scene of the crash found a
nightmare of charred, twisted metal fragments, hardly any of them more
than a foot across, scattered over the whole mountainside. They found
three mangled, dislocated bodies, too, sunk deep into the ground by the
fearful impact. The fourth body, however, was never found. The
aircraft's tailfin and rudder were discovered much later, miles away in
the hills to the north of Mount Rainier.
From the wilderness of torn wreckage, the accident investigators
were able to reconstruct exactly how the C-118 had hit the ground, and
they came up with a number of facts that baffled them completely. For a
start, they calculated that even if the aircraft had nose-dived into the
ground under full power, the impact would not have been great enough to
rip the machine into such a widely scattered sea of small fragments.
But the C-118 had not ploughed into the earth nose-first; it had struck
on its belly, as though something had swatted it out of the sky with
enormous force.
Whatever conclusions the US Air Force reached, it kept quiet
about them, and did its best to lay a smoke screen over the incident.
The uncanny story behind the crash first came to light several weeks
later, when investigators from a civilian research group known as the
Aerial Phenomena Research Organization - which specializes in gathering
information on UFO sightings and related incidents - arrived on the
scene. Their report was published in May 1959, and caused a few red
faces in the USAF's Information Bureau.
Just what really did happen in those last fateful minutes before
the C-118's plunge to earth will never be known. There are all sorts of
rational explanations for what might have caused the crash; extreme
turbulence and "wind shear", which can smack an aircraft out of the sky
without warning, are just two. But there can be no rational explanation
for the silver discs that seemed to be harrying the C-118 to its
destruction.
_UFOs_ by Robert Jackson, (c) 1992 by Quintet Publishing Limited,
ISBN 0-8317-9056-3, pg. 14-15.
--- FMail 0.96\E2
* Origin: * On Topic? What's that? <-> FidoNet UFO Moderator * (1:3623/18)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(12969) Wed 16 Mar 94 7:22p
By: Don Allen
To: All
Re: Another Mib Summary
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Forwarded from "BAMA"
* Originally by John Powell
* Originally to All
* Originally dated 14 Mar 1994, 16:50
The Men in Black
A quite separate human-like entity involved with UFO encounters
is the Man in Black - it seems curious to use the term in the singular,
because they always operate in either pairs or trios. They have blandly
unmemorable faces, dress in well-pressed black suits, wear black hats
and sometimes black sunglasses (which if removed reveal glowing eyes),
drive around in big black limos and, disguised as someone in the
anonymous branch of officialdom (such as the secret services or Internal
Revenue), call on you to make threatening noises a couple of days after
you have had an encounter with the occupants of a UFO; their territory
is apparently restricted to the USA. One of their more irritating
habits is that of stealing items of evidence that would have proved
beyond doubt that your UFO encounter was genuine.
Most of the tales of MIBs seem to be born of paranoia; a few
quite possibly are the product of overzealous government security agents
checking up on things or of souvenir hunters pretending to be such in
order to purloin UFO-related materials. The very first version of the
MIB scenario came from one Albert K. Bender, who the year before had
founded the grandiosely named International Flying Saucer Bureau, a
one-man-and-a-dog organization sans dog. When he closed it down
abruptly in 1953 he claimed to have done so because, although he had
uncovered the ultimate solution to the whole flying-saucer mystery, he
had been heavily leaned on by three MIBs not to divulge it.....or else.
Most of his associates uncharitably assumed that Bender had merely run
out of money for and/or interest in the IFSB but that he hadn't liked to
go with a whimper rather than a bang. Nevertheless, the MIB saga
persisted. The three MIBs who visited Bender (in his later versions
they were accompanied by women clad in skimpy white dresses) stank of
sulphur and told him that they had come from a distant galaxy
"dominated" by an immense burning mass beyond human conception. As soon
as quasars, then thought to be curious very bright stars, first came
into the public consciousness in 1963, the wider-eyed ufologists
immediately began to look to them as sources of extraterrestrial
visitors, and so it was hardly surprising that some later MIBs said that
they came from the planet of just such a star, a matter confirmed by a
number of other ufonauts. Of course, we know that quasars are
incredibly distant and highly energetic galaxies with extremely active
nuclei. This is astonishingly like Bender's original description, but
that may be no more than coincidence. Certainly it's curious that
ufonauts got mixed up about the nature of quasars during exactly the
same period that terrestrial scientists misunderstood the object's
nature.
_Monster Mysteries_ by John Grant. (c) 1992 Quintet Publishing Limited,
ISBN-1-55521-789-3, page 72.
--- FMail 0.96\E2
* Origin: * On Topic? What's that? <-> FidoNet UFO Moderator * (1:3623/18)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(12970) Wed 16 Mar 94 7:24p
By: Don Allen
To: All
Re: Ufo Crash In Brazilian River
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Forwarded from "BAMA"
* Originally by John Powell
* Originally to All
* Originally dated 14 Mar 1994, 16:52
The UFO in the Peropava River, Brazil
According to one account, a UFO that crashed in a river in South
America may still be there. In the afternoon of 31 October, 1963,
nine-year-old Ruth de Souza was playing with some young friends not far
from her home on the banks of the Peropava River, in Brazil's Sao Paulo
province, when she was startled by a strange roaring noise. Looking up
into the sky, the children shrank back in fear. Moving slowly towards
them at tree-top level was a shining disc, and it seemed to be losing
height as it moved towards Ruth's house. Suddenly, there was a loud
thud as the object collided with the trunk of a tall tree that stood in
its path. The disc wavered, then changed course and moved out over the
river, rocking violently. It seemed to be struggling to gain height.
Then, abruptly, it plunged into the water like a stone and vanished.
Mud and debris came bursting to the surface amid an explosion of huge
bubbles. The river seemed to be boiling at the spot where the disc had
disappeared.
Ruth's mother, Senora Elidia Alves de Souza, had also been
startled by the roaring sound. She came out of the house and ran to
where the children were staring at the churning water. A minute later
Ruth's uncle, Raul Alves also arrived at the scene. Like Elidia, he had
heard the noise but had not seen the object. Utterly perplexed, he
could give no answer to the children's questions. He drove to the
nearby town of Iguape and reported the incident to the police. Although
sceptical, they agreed to send officers to the scene.
Fortunately for the children - whose story might easily have
been casually dismissed as a figment of childish imagination - some
fishermen on the opposite bank of the river had also seen the flying
disc. They said that the thing had been about three feet (lm) thick and
between 15 and 20 feet (4.5 and 16m) in diameter.Somehow -- perhaps
because of its roar -- they had got the impression that the disc was
immensely powerful. It had been very bright, like highly polished
aluminium. Its movements had suggested to the fishermen that it was not
manned, but was operated by some form of remote control.
The water at the point where the disc had crashed was about 12
feet (3.5m) deep, but beneath it was a 15-foot-thick (4.5m) layer of
silt. The witnesses agreed that the disc had plunged into the water
with sufficient force to bury itself deep in the mud. It had been
heavy, too; the investigators found that a great gash had been torn in
the trunk of the tree which the disc had struck during its erratic
flight.
The police marked the exact spot where the disc had plunged into
the river. By that same evening, every newspaper in Brazil had got hold
of the story, and the following day hordes of curious sightseers and UFO
investigators descended on the peaceful Peropava. Strangely enough -
possibly because the disc had not come down in a military area - the
Brazilian defence authorities showed no interest in the incident.
On the morning of 2 November a diving instructor named Caetano
Iovanne, with the assistance of two colleagues, made an attempt to
recover the disc. For several hours they searched the murky river bed,
probing here and there among the thick layer of mud, but they found no
sign of the mystery object.
The next day, a second attempt was made by another team of
divers, using special search equipment. They also drew a complete
blank. All they succeeded in doing was to stir up large amounts of mud,
which made conditions on the river-bed even more impossible than before.
Several more attempts were made over the next few days. Mine
detectors were used to sweep the river-bed in the hope that they might
reveal some trace of the metal object buried in the mud - but the thing
had either sunk too deeply in the silt, or it had disappeared
altogether. Someone suggested that it might have been washed
downstream, but because of its perceived size and weight this was
unlikely. Another theory was that it had moved downstream under its own
power. If the disc really was some kind of spacecraft, it was even
possible that it had been retrieved secretly during the night. Possible
but improbable, for any activity would almost certainly have been seen.
The most likely conclusion is that the disc is still there,
buried deep in the mud at the bottom of the Peropava. And the secret of
its true origin will doubtless lie buried with it forever.
_UFOs_ by Robert Jackson, (c) 1992 by Quintet Publishing Limited,
ISBN 0-8317-9056-3, pg. 39-41.
--- FMail 0.96\E2
* Origin: * On Topic? What's that? <-> FidoNet UFO Moderator * (1:3623/18)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(12973) Wed 16 Mar 94 7:26p
By: Don Allen
To: All
Re: Mystery Satellite Story
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Forwarded from "BAMA"
* Originally by John Powell
* Originally to All
* Originally dated 14 Mar 1994, 16:51
The Mystery Satellite of the North and South Poles
The discovery, when it was made, caused consternation in the
United States Defense Department; and no wonder. One of the North
American Air Defense System's tracking radars had picked up what
appeared to be a huge space satellite in orbit around the earth.
What worried the Americans was that the satellite had not been
launched by either the United States or the Soviet Union. For a start,
it was in the wrong kind of orbit. The mystery satellite's path took it
over the North and South poles, whereas the orbits of satellites
launched from the Soviet Union were invariably inclined at 65 degrees to
the equator, which took them over South America and North Africa. Quite
apart from that, there was no booster rocket in existence at the time -
February 1960 - that could possibly have been powerful enough to put
such a satellite into orbit. American space scientists had calculated
that its weight was around 15 tons (15.25 tonnes). For three weeks, the
Americans kept the satellite under surveillance; then it vanished, as
mysteriously as it had appeared.
The "mystery satellite" of February 196O was the first in a
whole series of strange space phenomena which have been baffling
scientists all over the world for three decades. On 3 September 1960,
several months after the first sighting, it was revealed that an
unidentified object had been photographed in the sky over New York by a
tracking camera at the Grumann Aircraft Corporation's Long Island
factory. The object, which appeared to give off a reddish glow, had been
seen several times during the preceeding two weeks. It was apparently
following an east-to-west orbit, whereas most satellites were launched
in the opposite direction, and its speed appeared to be about three
times that of America's Echo 1 "metal balloon" satellite.
The Americans attached so much importance to these mystery
satellites that they set up a special committee to gather as much
information as possible about them. But the committee's findings - if
indeed there were any at all - were never made public, and the whole
affair was forgotten for the time being.
_UFOs_ by Robert Jackson, (c) 1992 by Quintet Publishing Limited,
ISBN 0-8317-9056-3, pg. 20-21.
--- FMail 0.96\E2
* Origin: * On Topic? What's that? <-> FidoNet UFO Moderator * (1:3623/18)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(12974) Wed 16 Mar 94 7:27p
By: Don Allen
To: All
Re: David Jacobs' Comments At Recent Conference
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Forwarded from "BAMA"
* Originally by John Powell
* Originally to All
* Originally dated 14 Mar 1994, 17:20
Phil Klass quoting David Jacobs (PhD) at UFO Expo/NY, 11/93, New York:
"For years and years and years, UFO researchers had big maps on
their walls with push-pins [showing] the latest sighting was
here and [saying] we can see a sort of pattern..."
"There's absolutely no substance to that whatsoever... People
built huge castles-in-the-air theories based just on location in
the old days... We now know that is absolutely meaningless."
"...there's so much you can learn from UFO sightings. UFO
sightings are of the outside shells of objects... A million
more sightings aren't going to solve the UFO mystery... It's
what goes on inside that's important."
"...we used to think this [UFO abduction] was a rare
phenomenon... We now know exactly the opposite...as many as
five million people have had experiences... We used to think
the abduction phenomenon began in 1957, maybe 1961. Now we know
that is not true... It probably began around the turn of the
century. In fact, we can date it with a certain amount of
conjecture to the 1896-97 'Mysterious Airship' wave... That's
probably when the abduction phenomenon began."
"We used to think these beings...came in all different sizes,
varieties and shapes. They were covered with fur; they were
gigantic 9-footers; they wore space suits with glass bubbles
around their heads...some of them were human. Some of them were
more alien-like... Now we realize we are dealing with four
different types [of ETs]."
"...90% of the reports are the small gray alien - large heads,
no hair, no ears, no nose to speak of and a little tiny slit
where a mouth ought to be. Pointed chin, thin neck, thin body,
thin arms and legs... What we have learned is that about 10% of
the reports of what they look like can be divided into
insect-like, reptilian-like and Nordic-like."
"In terms of the insect and reptile [types], we are not 100%
convinced that this is not a matter of labeling...how you
perceive them and how you describe them."
(Number 25, January 1994, SUN, Skeptics UFO Newsletter, Copyright 1994
by Philip J. Klass, 404 'N' St. SW, Washington, DC 20024, published
bi-monthly with a subscription rate of $15/yr.)
--- FMail 0.96\E2
* Origin: * On Topic? What's that? <-> FidoNet UFO Moderator * (1:3623/18)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(12976) Wed 16 Mar 94 7:30p
By: Don Allen
To: All
Re: Uk Ufo Sighting 10/93
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Forwarded from "MUFON_WIRE"
* Originally by Pete Theer
* Originally to All
* Originally dated 14 Mar 1994, 23:12
*****************************************************************************
* MUFONet News Wire *
*****************************************************************************
IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE...or did it?
from The Mail On Sunday, London, England, February 20, 1994, page 13.
By NICK FIELDING and RICHARD HELLER
'HELLO, get me the Defence Secretary! I've just seen a flying
saucer full of Martians firing gamma-ray guns over the Norfolk
Broads.'
'Thank you, sir. Could you please put the details on this
official form?'
It sounds like a script for The Men From The Ministry. But no.
It happened to three responsible citizens who genuinely believed
they had sighted an Unidentified Flying Object.
On October 23 last year, Mark Wilkins, Bill Deuters and Stephen Farrow,
from Dagenham, Essex, went fishing on Rollesby Broad in Norfolk. And,
as usual, they took Mark's Panasonic MC6 camcorder to film their catches.
That day, though, the wind made them abandon the trip at 3 pm. But as they
unloaded their gear Steve suddenly shouted and pointed at 'this bright
light a long way away', he recalls.
Bill pointed the camcorder at it --and could not believe what he saw.
'Through the lens it looked like an intensely glowing object. At first
it was near the horizon. It was coming straight at us over our heads.
As I zoomed in it turned into an intense diamond. Bill stopped filming
after about six seconds--and then all three saw a very bright light move
over them, south to north. They thought it might be a military aircraft,
but it made no noise.
The trio thought no more about it until they played the tape back. It had
captured a bright object which turned into a distinct diamond shape. The
images looked so authentic that they decided to send them to the MoD.
Was it friend or foe? Should the nation's guns be pointed skywards?
Their film went to the official at the nerve centre of our defence against
extra-terrestrials--Mr N. G. Pope, of the Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a.
Horizon
Mr Pope responded to 258 reports of UFO sightings last year. Most were
quickly explained as satellites, aircraft, weather balloons, lightning,
meteorites -- or hoaxes. But not this one.
His brief is very precise. 'The Ministry of Defence's only concern with
UFOs is to establish whether or not there is any threat to the security of
the United Kingdom. To date, we are not aware of any evidence that would
indicate the existence of such a threat,' he told the three men soberly.
Yet, later in the same letter of January 7, Mr Pope could not restrain his
enthusiasm: 'Your video is intriguing and certainly one of the most
interesting I have seen. I have to say that no explanation springs to mind.'
But before he could scramble our fighter defences, Mr Pope had to follow
Ministry procedures. 'It would help,' he continued, 'to have further details,
so I have attached a copy of the form we use to record details of sightings.
Allowing another month or two to set up a Ministerial committee to study it,
the little green chaps would now be in Downing Street. Fortunately, the
three men also sent their video to The Mail on Sunday. And we rushed it to
experts for analysis. At the sophisticated laboratories of Network Security
Management in Mayfair, Jon Walklin, of the company's forensic video section,
was mystified.
'As far as I can determine, it depicts a genuine object,' he said.
Briefing
The Meteorological Office and London Weather Centre said it was not a
weather balloon. The RAF and civil aviation authorities eliminated military
aircraft and North Sea helicopters.
Then Great Yarmouth coastguard told us that the night after the sighting
they had a call ten miles from Rollesby Broad reporting a bright flare.
Should we fight or flee? Why stay calm when it costs so little to panic?
We consulted more experts.
Nerves were steadied by Bernie Forward, a senior inspector at the Aircraft
Accident Investigation Branch at Farnborough, which examined the Pan Am jet
after the Lockerbie disaster. He pronounced the image to be an aircraft.
Colleagues speculated that it could be a prism effect caused by the cam-
corder lens.
And that was echoed by Dr Peter Andrews, of the Royal Observatory,
Cambridge.
Even Philip Mantle, director of investigations for the British UFO Research
Association, thought the image was either an aircraft or an optical effect.
Finally, we sent the video to Martin Hanson, of Panasonic.
'Looks like a camera iris image to me,' he said. A colleague found an iris
of the type fitted to model MC6. When open, the iris -- which regulates the
light going into the camcorder -- created a diamond shape.
The Mail on Sunday believes this explains the startling image. Somehow,
the iris was reflected on to the back of the lens and filmed. But that still
leaves a mystery of the dazzling light the men saw. And Mr Pope is still
pursuing the matter.
As far as the Ministry is concerned, there still might be Something Out
There.
A colleague said last week: 'We cannot explain it. If there is a possi-
bility we can identify it and what aircraft are involved we will,' He has
promised us 'a full briefing' this week.
Until that happens, observers of mysterious objects are requested not to
phone the authorities -- or The Mail on Sunday.
Official advice is to go to bed -- and on no account watch any video by
Steven Spielberg.
(Our thanks go to Mike Mitchell of Mad Mike's BBS in West Lothian, Scotland,
UK, for providing this newspaper clipping via snail-mail.)
*****************************************************************************
* END OF FILE *
*****************************************************************************
--- FMail 0.96\E2
* Origin: * On Topic? What's that? <-> FidoNet UFO Moderator * (1:3623/18)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(14094) Sat 19 Mar 94 10:24a
By: Don Allen
To: All
Re: Artifact Testing, 1/2
St: 14584>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Forwarded from "BAMA"
* Originally by John Powell
* Originally to All
* Originally dated 15 Mar 1994, 22:31
E-T Artifact Testing:
Testing for the extraterrestrial origin of an alleged artifact may not
be as easy as it first appears. Do's and Don't's.
by Stanton T. Friedman
(Mutual UFO Network UFO Journal, Number 308, December 1993, Copyright
1993 by the Mutual UFO Network, 103 Oldtowne Rd., Sequin, Texas 78155,
published monthly with a membership/subscription rate of $25/yr.)
Based upon the enormous amount of research done in connection
with the recovery of crashed flying saucers in New Mexico, it appears at
least possible that pieces of wreckage may come into the hands of UFO
researchers. Rumors have persisted that at least some of the hundreds
of GI's who were involved in the recovery operations may have picked up
souvenirs. For example, dentist John Kromschroeder was handed a piece
of very strange material in the late 1970s by Pilot Pappy Henderson. As
life winds down for those involved in these 1947 events, one might
indeed be faced with the problem of evaluating a piece of such wreckage.
The question is how to go about it.
ASSUMPTIONS
One of the silliest suggestions is that a piece of wreckage from
an ET spacecraft would have to be made from elements not known on earth.
One merely tests for all known elements (not such an easy task). If
none show up, then the specimen is of ET origin. It is implied that if
the specimen contains elements known on Earth, it is not of ET origin.
What is crazy here is that such a suggestion has actually been made by
astronomer Carl Sagan. Yet, it is the astronomers who have been telling
us for decades that their spectroscopic and other measurements of light
radio waves, particulate radiation, etc. coming to Earth from the
distant and near solar system environment, reveal only the elements and
compounds we already know. We are assured that physics and chemistry
are the same out there as here, so Sagan's suggestion is absurd.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR?
I think it is reasonable to look for physical, electrical,
thermal and mechanical properties that are of importance in the
construction of specialized equipment able to perform functions that we
cannot duplicate, even those made of elements we know. Composition of
the material is important, but won't answer most questions.
Obvious properties to determine are melting point, density,
hardness and grain structure, along with tensile and creep strengths,
thermal and electrical conductivity and magnetic susceptibility, both as
a function of temperature and in different directions within the sample.
It is very important to note that many of today's materials have
properties that could not even have been determined 100 years ago,
including radioactivity, superconductivity and fissionability. We could
not have measured isotope ratios, parts per billion of various dopants
or contaminants, or properties at a few degrees above absolute zero.
Development of better superconductors over the past 35 years
gives us some clues. The phenomenon of superconductivity was discovered
in 1911. There were limits in terms of critical temperatures and
critical magnetic fields that greatly limited the utilization of the
very special characteristic of zero resistance to the flow of electrical
current. One breakthrough occurred in the early 1960s which
substantially raised the temperature, still very cold, to which certain
hard superconductors would remain superconducting and enormously
increased critical fields. A few years ago, whole new families of oxide
superconductors were discovered. These had critical temperatures so
high that liquid nitrogen could be used making the cost of construction
far easier and cheaper than if liquid helium were still required. The
peak temperature stayed near the same value for several years, and yet
once again a breakthrough has recently been made and the temperature is
moving up again. In all cases the elements of which the superconductors
were made were ones native to Earth. It is the recipe that matters.
Theory has, in general, lagged behind experiment. There is also a long
way from lab testing of a small piece of exciting new material to the
manufacture of miles of wire at reasonable cost and with no defects.
One must reasonably expect that different pieces of flying
saucer perform different functions. Microintegratcd circuits and
turbine blades do very different things and operate at very different
temperatures. One key factor in the design of any airborne system, no
less spaceborne, is weight. Thus, often the design criteria is not cost
or efficiency, but rather computing power per unit weight, or energy
production per unit weight. I was made particularly conscious of this
with regard to the development of space nuclear power systems. Pounds
per kilowatt, not efficiency was the concern. One reason is that excess
heat normally must be eventually radiated to space. The amount of heat
radiated per unit area goes as the 4th power of the temperature. Thus,
doubling the temperature of the radiating surface decreases the required
area (and weight) by a factor of 16.
An important concern is whether the piece of wreckage is from a
structure or from a specialized electronic or other component whose
function we might not even know. Fiber optics and windows are both made
of glass.
It should also be stressed that any study of the development of
technology shows that technological progress almost invariably comes from
doing things differently in an unpredictable way. A nuclear reactor is
not just a better furnace. A laser is not just a better light bulb. A
microintegrated circuit is not just a better vacuum tube. This concept
is very important because there is a strong tendency to claim that
certain objectives are impossible, when what is actually meant is this
particular method of accomplishing a particular objective doesn't work.
It may be impossible to go faster than the speed of sound with a
propeller-driven airplane. Trips to the moon with single stage rockets
constructed similarly to the very heavy German V-2 rockets would not
have been feasible. Limiting the acceleration of a moon rocket to 1G
would rule out such a mission with our rockets.
--- FMail 0.96\E2
* Origin: * On Topic? What's that? <-> FidoNet UFO Moderator * (1:3623/18)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(14095) Sat 19 Mar 94 10:24a
By: Don Allen
To: All
Re: Artifact Testing, 2/2
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Forwarded from "BAMA"
* Originally by John Powell
* Originally to All
* Originally dated 15 Mar 1994, 22:31
It is also very important to realize that the mode of
preparation of material can have an enormous impact on its properties.
Boiled steak and broiled peas might well turn off restaurant patrons.
Recent work, for example, suggests that the properties of certain steels
can be substantially improved if they are prepared in a high electric
field which seems to orient the grain structure in new ways. Nitrogen
ions can be accelerated into the surface of a material to greatly
increase hardness. This gives very different results than adding
nitrogen to the material when it is being smelted or rolled or drawn.
What characteristics would be particularly important for a piece
of the outer skin of a saucer? One would think that surface hardness,
high strength to weight ratios, and resistance to oxidation, corrosion
and heating would be of particular importance. Electrical properties
(such as conductivity as a function of temperature) might also be
important if the vehicle used some sort of external electromagnetic
propulsion system and/or wanted to control its radar profile.
WHO TESTS AND HOW?
Suppose one has a small piece of material ostensibly recovered
at the Corona site, and wants to test these properties. Where should
one go? Before selecting a testing laboratory, I believe that certain
criteria must be met.
- The lab should be a certified or licensed lab for the tests
that are to be done.
- It must have performed those tests often and on many different
materials so that direct comparisons with "conventional"
materials are feasible.
- The lab must be willing to sign off on test results with a full
description of the techniques and equipment used, the standards
employed, reproducibility and accuracy, and so on.
- The lab must be willing to maintain a no-release policy on
whatever test results are made.
- In advance of testing there must be detailed discussions of
destructive and non-destructive tests and what techniques will
be used, if necessary, to subdivide the samples. Obviously a
destructive test requiring the use of the entire available
sample would be foolish.
- A protocol should be worked out in advance as to the sequence
of testing. Thus a sample may be used for several
non-destructive tests, hardness, density, etc., before being
used for a destructive test. Certain test results may suggest
a different sequence and new tests.
It should be obvious from the above comments that samples should
be examined and tested by licensed commercial laboratories under the
direction of very experienced materials specialists. Having a professor
have a graduate student check things out would seem to violate all the
rules, especially if they say, as has been the case in the past, "Oh, of
course you can't use my name." Test results without full information
are, frankly, almost worthless.
Also it seems necessary that assurance be provided all along way
that no test samples can be clandestinely removed, replaced, withheld or
substituted for. Perhaps this means keeping a videotape record of what
is happening.
It should be noted that fissionable materials such as U-235 and
plutonium are considered accountable materials. Custodians must know
how much of each is located where at all times. Standard specialized
procedures are used by the International Atomic Energy Agency, for
example, to prevent diversion of these valuable materials to clandestine
nuclear weapon programs.
Agreement must, of course, be reached prior to testing on the
intellectual property rights. Who can publish the data? Will there be
any release prior to publication in a technical journal such as Science
or Nature which require peer review? The cold fusion fiasco
demonstrated the need for peer review prior to publication as opposed to
publication via press release.
Perhaps the most important step to be taken before testing
begins is to have a detailed discussion with the head of the testing
laboratory or a team of his experts, whose expertise would be
invaluable. The problem is an interdisciplinary one, requiring a great
deal of experience so that one doesn't, for example, test dirt
spectroscopically instead of using agricultural test procedures.
One must also note that the intelligence and military agencies
of the U. S. government have clearly demonstrated their very strong
desire to cover up substantive material about flying saucers. Therefore,
it is to be expected that they would try to obtain any samples, to
prevent publication of test results, and perhaps to intimidate those who
possess the sample and those doing the testing. Our security must be
excellent. In addition, considerable care must be taken as to how the
news of any truly exciting test results should be broken. The
implications of proof of ET Visitor reality are significant and
numerous.
[Nuclear physicist Friedman lives in New Brunswick, Canada, when he
isn't on the UFO lecture circuit. He is co-author with aviation writer
Don Berliner of _Crash at Corona_, published by Paragon House]
--- FMail 0.96\E2
* Origin: * On Topic? What's that? <-> FidoNet UFO Moderator * (1:3623/18)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(14097) Sat 19 Mar 94 10:27a
By: Don Allen
To: All
Re: Various Recent Bigfoot Sightings
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Forwarded from "BAMA"
* Originally by John Powell
* Originally to All
* Originally dated 15 Mar 1994, 21:30
The Sightings Just Go On and On and On...!
by Mark Francis
[Pebbles; Unusual Phenomena, Literature, and the Arts; Volume 1, #1; RDM
Publications, PO Box 469, Arlington, VA 22210-0469. Subscription rate
of $16/four issues or $30/eight issues.]
How curious it is that while media have chosen to ignore the
virtual non-stop reports of sightings of hominids, Bigfoot and his
fellows across the nation seem to be spectacularly unimpressed. We
begin a series of reports drawn from the pages of the Journal of the
North American Bigfoot Information Network (NABIN) in an attempt to fill
the gap opened by the media's lack of attention.
July, 1992, Washington County, WA:
A young woman was driving near Wylandville at 10:00 PM when she
saw a creature moving on a nearby hillside. She stopped her car
as the creature came down the embankment and walked across the
road. In her headlights she could see that it was seven to
eight feet tall, walking on two legs, and covered with dark,
shaggy hair. It resembled an ape and had long arms. It was
followed by another similar creature, then two shorter ones,
perhaps five feet tall. The witness became frightened and sped
away.
July, 1992, Kootenay Mountains, British Columbia;
Matt Gagnon was driving along a road 33 miles north of Nelson
near Ainsworth Hot Springs when he rounded a bend and saw a
Sasquatch standing 40 feet away. Gagnon lost control of his
bladder due to the shock of seeing the legendary beast. After
the creature ambled away, he regained his composure enough to
examine the area and discovered a partially eaten pine mushroom
near where the Sasquatch had been standing. Rene' Dahinden
filed this report with the "British Columbia Report" for January
25, 1993.
July-August, 1992, near Green Mountain Falls, CO;
Past Bigfoot witness Dan Masias and his 11-year-old daughter saw
Bigfoot again (their first sighting was in January, 1988). The
large, hunched-over creature was "definitely not a bear."
Masias contributed this report to the Colorado Springs
Gazette-Telegraph for December 7, 1992.
August 5, 1992, Elk County, PA:
Three men were camped near the gate to the State Game Lands when
they heard a series of strange noises. They shone a flashlight
in the direction of the vocalizations and saw the legs of a
hairy, bipedal creature with six-inch glistening, black hair.
One of the witnesses grabbed a camera and tried to take a
picture, but the flash apparently frightened the creature, which
ran uphill and began screaming. It then seemed as if a second
creature answered and came running to meet the first. The
witnesses did not see both creatures, but assumed that a second
had joined the first due to the double vocalizations and other
sounds. The vocalizations were loud, extended, and
high-pitched. The witnesses climbed into their truck and
observed a tall, bipedal figure cross in front of them by the
campfire. They stayed in the truck for an hour before vacating
the area.
October, 1992, near Christina Lake, British Columbia:
An outdoorsman reported to John Green and Tom Steenburg at the
Harrison 'Sasquatch Daze' outing that he and a companion were
hunting last October when they saw a Sasquatch near Christina
Lake, approximately 60 kilometers southwest of Castlegar. They
claimed that at first the object looked like a black speck
against the snow. It moved rapidly down the mountain and
through binoculars the men could see it was walking upright on
two legs. Spellbound, they watched as the creature moved
effortlessly through the snow. "It was running bare naked
through three feet of snow. It was big and black. This creature
must have been a minimum of eight feet tall" the witness told
researchers. He added "The adrenaline just pumps through you when
something doesn't make sense. I'll have a mystery in my mind
for the rest of my life." The man was sincere, but did not want
to publicly release his name at the festival.
December 1, 1992, Indiana County, PA:
A man hunting in Brush Valley Township reported seeing a
seven-to-eight foot tall ape-like creature. It was dawn on a
cold day, and the witness had just walked into a wooded area
when he noticed an odor like that of "an open sewer." He looked
up and saw a creature covered with brownish-black hair running
away at a distance of about fifty yards. He shot at it, then
chased it over a hillside; it disappeared into a heavily wooded
area.
April 5, 1993, north of Colton, OR:
Two women were driving home to Redland along Unger Road after
visiting a shopping mall. It was about 10:00 PM, and the full
moon and clear sky made for good visibility. Driving slowly
around a particular curve because she had once hit a deer in
that spot, the driver and her friend saw a Bigfoot-type creature
kneeling by the side of the road. It looked back over its
shoulder, then gracefully stood up and crossed the road in three
steps. The creature was about seven feet tall and covered with
matted, reddish-brown hair. It appeared to have no neck, but it
had long arms that swung by its side.
Ray Crowe and several investigators worked on this case, but the
publishing credit goes to Ray Crowe of the Western Bigfoot
Society.
April. 1993, near Colton, OR:
Following leads at the Colton General Store, investigator Ray
Crowe (who submitted this report) contacted a man who claims to
have seen a Bigfoot during the second week of April in the same
area as the previous sighting [above]. Late one night, as he
rounded a bend, he saw the creature standing at the side of the
road. The creature turned, raised its hands over its head, and
went into the brush. The description matched that given the week
before on Unger Road and might have been the same individual.
--------
Pebbles encourages readers to subscribe to the NABIN Journal or send
written accounts of their experiences to:
NABIN
1923 Glenwood Drive,
Twinsburg, Ohio 44087, USA
--------
THE BIGFOOT DIGEST
by Mark Opsasnick
72 pp., softcover, privately published.
Opsasnick's third offering on Maryland Bigfootlore updates his previous
works _The Maryland Bigfoot Reference Guide_ (1987) and _The Maryland
Bigfoot Notebook_ (1988). This excellent reference guide contains a
wealth of information on Maryland Bigfoot sightings, maps, a chronology
of sightings, and an extensive bibliography of documented Maryland
Bigfoot articles and media coverage.
Copies are available for $10.00 (postage included) from:
Mark Opsasnick
P.O. Box 672
Riverdale, MD 20738
--- FMail 0.96\E2
* Origin: * On Topic? What's that? <-> FidoNet UFO Moderator * (1:3623/18)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(14098) Sat 19 Mar 94 10:28a
By: Don Allen
To: All
Re: Bigfoot Book Available
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Forwarded from "BAMA"
* Originally by John Powell
* Originally to All
* Originally dated 15 Mar 1994, 21:30
THE BIGFOOT DIGEST
by Mark Opsasnick
72 pp., softcover, privately published.
Opsasnick's third offering on Maryland Bigfootlore updates his previous
works _The Maryland Bigfoot Reference Guide_ (1987) and _The Maryland
Bigfoot Notebook_ (1988). This excellent reference guide contains a
wealth of information on Maryland Bigfoot sightings, maps, a chronology
of sightings, and an extensive bibliography of documented Maryland
Bigfoot articles and media coverage.
Copies are available for $10.00 (postage included) from:
Mark Opsasnick
P.O. Box 672
Riverdale, MD 20738
--- FMail 0.96\E2
* Origin: * On Topic? What's that? <-> FidoNet UFO Moderator * (1:3623/18)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(14568) Sun 20 Mar 94 4:58p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Act 3
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The day the silver men landed
03/13/94 THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
ONE OF the great ideological divides of our time crosses a tiny village
green in Pembrokeshire. On one side in the inlet of Little Haven is the Swan
pub with a chalked notice which says with the quiet stiffness of an old
prejudice, "We regret no children or dogs." Across the green the Castle booms
its dissent in painted letters large enough to be read at sea, "Children
welcome."
But we are not here for that. I walked into the Swan and said to the man
behind the bar: "Nobody seen any 7ft silver men recently then?"
He was polishing glasses. "If they ever did see them," he said darkly,
holding a glass up to the light as though it were the Koh-i-noor.
People assume the stories they read in newspapers have the resolution of a
Shakespearean play: each has a fifth act - of reconciliation or revenge - but a
fifth act which is indubitably final. In reality, most stories never get beyond
the third act, and either vanish or are left unexplained. This is such a story.
It started on February 4, 1977, when 14 boys from the local primary school
at Broad Haven saw a silver craft land one Friday afternoon in a field 400
yards from the school. By that evening the local press had interviewed the
headmaster, Ralph Llewhelin ("Referred to as 'Richard' by the Daily Mirror," he
said wearily). On Monday morning, Mr Llewhelin sat all 14 down and, under exam
conditions, made them draw what they had seen.
I saw the drawings. They were remarkably similar and each showed an object
like a plump inverted saucer with a red light on the top. Interviewed singly,
each boy stuck to his story and said the thing had landed for a minute or two,
though when Mr Llewhelin visited the field he found this so deep in mud a lorry
would have got stuck.
Things happened quickly after that. On February 24, a local farmer's wife,
Mrs Coombes, was terrified when a ball of light the size of a football followed
her car. On April 24, she and her husband, watching late-night television, saw
a 7ft shimmering silver man at their window, and in the morning found the roses
dead under the sill.
That same month Ralph Llewhelin arrived at school to find a 25ft winged
thing in his playground - but that was a hoax, the RAF from nearby Brawdy
identifying it as a spare military fuel tank. Meanwhile silver men were still
appearing to the Coombes family .
A cousin out birdnesting was chased by such a figure, the sound of his steps
he said, being like someone treading on dried leaves. The Coombes' eight-year-
old twins, playing in a hayfield they had been told not to enter, saw a silver
man moving with difficulty, but what startled them was that they saw no zips or
buttons on him.
I heard these stories and was struck by the concreteness of the imagery.
When similar things happen in the small hours to 18-stone Nevada policemen
their evidence is usually voluble, but imprecise, as is that of the Mid-West
divorcees who, from time to time, get invited up into the chariots of the Gods;
their testimony emphasises feelings, and is reverent - as mine would probably
be were I also, at short notice, obliged to account for a missing night. But,
in Dyfed, there was even humour.
Mrs Coombes told me she believed her daughter, and afterwards curtains were
hurriedly hung in all the farm windows ("I said to my husband, 'That girl has
seen something' "). She herself later saw a silver craft float towards some
rocks in the bay and disappear into them; she said it was like the top of an
enormous catering tin of jam. That, of course, was in the autumn, jam-making
time.
All summer long TV crews descended on this small corner of the earth,
newspapers referred to "the Dyfed Enigma", and there was even a book. A local
hotel held UFO weekends, and in far-off America President Carter admitted
having seen a flying saucer himself. And then, just as suddenly, it was all
over: there were no more saucers or silver men.
The children have all grown up now and Ralph Llewhelin has retired, but what
is interesting is that he never again talked to any of them about what they saw
that Friday afternoon. For what he remembers, more than anything, is the
difficult position he himself was in .
"One of the boys was the son of a squadron leader and when someone like that
believed 100 per cent in what his boy had said, what was I to say? They
certainly had seen something, they couldn't understand it, and all I can do is
what I did then, leave it to others to explain."
You also have to consider what has happened in the area since 1977. There
had never been anything here to make the national papers, but since then there
have been four unsolved murders, the last of these, of a camping couple, on the
coastal path above Little Haven. In addition, just along the bay, two members
of the IRA were caught making an arms cache. It is no wonder the world has
forgotten the Dyfed Enigma.
Besides, with their backs to the Western Sea, men are holding the line here
against mankind's oldest enemies. Who has time to think about extra-
terrestrials when there are dogs and children to repel?
-> Alice4Mac 2.3b4 E QWK Eval:06Jan94
--- WM v3.10/93-0730
* Origin: Expose Yourself! (tm) (212)691-2679-Real Exposure (1:2 (1:278/319)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(14569) Sun 20 Mar 94 4:58p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Canadian Ufo Vortex
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cosmic `vortex' town hosts 500 UFO enthusiasts
03/13/94
The Toronto Star
BRADFORD - To the untrained eye, this little York Region town
doesn't appear to be a portal to another dimension.
However, true believers in UFOs think Bradford is a port of entry
to dozens of cosmic travellers. That's why they've labelled the
area between Bradford, Uxbridge and Aurora ``the Bradford
Triangle.''
Psychic Joyce Halfin, organizer of a convention yesterday for more
than 500 UFO enthusiasts in Bradford, says the town deserves its
reputation as Canada's UFO hot spot.
Halfin, who claims to be a frequent guest in alien spacecraft
herself, says there's something that draws the psychically gifted
to Bradford.
``Bradford is a multi-dimensional doorway, a vortex to a parallel
universe. My belief is that the vortex just recently opened,
likely in the past 30 years,'' she said.
``That's why so many people have moved to Bradford in the past few
years.''
Halfin's contacts with UFOs have caused her to lie paralyzed in her
bed as lights flashed outside her window, she said.
Halfin said she has been visited by aliens since the age of 6. She
has a sense of humor about it, but rolls her eyes when she's asked
if the UFOs could really be clouds of swamp gas from the nearby
Holland Marsh.
Speakers at the conference said most people who are temporarily
abducted by aliens share similar memories of their encounters.
``Why does the government place this topic in the highest
classification of top secret? My opinion is that what we're
experiencing here is a conspiracy of lies,'' said artist and
scholar John German, a guest lecturer.
``I have become aware that there exists on this planet a vast
quantity of knowledge that is being withheld from us. . . Could it
be that the UFOs are a wake-up call to planet Earth?''
German, like others at the $25-a-ticket conference, was
inexplicably drawn to Bradford. Other local UFO buffs believe
Bradford secretly contains a UFO landing area.
Dozens of books on sale at the conference supported the idea that
small, bug-like aliens are frequent fliers to this planet.
One book, Circular Evidence, provides ``proof'' that mysterious
circles found in farmers' fields are UFO landing sites. The
Ultimate Deception, written by Commander X, offers ``a shocking
disclosure. The most sensational government conspiracy of our time
is finally revealed to the world by a retired military officer.''
-> Alice4Mac 2.3b4 E QWK Eval:06Jan94
--- WM v3.10/93-0730
* Origin: Expose Yourself! (tm) (212)691-2679-Real Exposure (1:2 (1:278/319)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(14570) Sun 20 Mar 94 4:58p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Dark White - Review
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
`Dark White: Aliens, abductions, and the UFO obsession' - Jim Schnabel: Hamish
Hamilton, 16.99 pounds
03/15/94 THE INDEPENDENT
IN THE small hours of 30 November 1989, Javier Perez de Cuellar, then
secretary- general of the United Nations, was being chauffeured through the
Lower East Side of New York when he was abducted by aliens and taken to their
spaceship. By now pyjama-clad, he was subjected to an intimate physical
examination before being returned to the folk whence he came. This bizarre
rumour has filtered up from fruitcakeland to the semi-serious press. As a
result, poor old Perez de Cuellar is harassed by fax, by phone and by
persistent reporters.
The case of the missing secretary-general - the most sensational of the
hundreds of alien abduction tales sweeping the United States - provides the
centrepiece for Jim Schnabel's remarkably detached, almost academic study of
the evolution of the flying saucer myth. He is right to look in detail at the
emergence of the Perez de Cuellar legend because, except for the superstar
element, it is typical.
The tale centres on "Linda", a middle-aged woman who lives with her family
in the Lower East Side. She was convinced that in her youth she had been
abducted by aliens. She had also been plagued by ghosts and poltergeists.
Linda started attending a support group for abductees led by Budd Hopkins,
one of several influential characters who make a good living out of the rapidly
growing flying saucer cult. One day Linda told Hopkins that she had just been
through yet another abduction. He "regressed" her hypnotically - a standard
practise among ufologists - and, bingo, she recalled the event in detail,
including sexual interference.
There the matter would have rested but for a mysterious letter to Hopkins
from two alleged police officers who claimed to have seen Linda and little grey
persons float out of her window and into the spacecraft. In later
communications, the two claimed they were members of the secretary-general's
bodyguard.
Subsequently, according to Linda, these men (who, unsurprisingly, have never
been traced) abducted her on several occasions and they, too, attempted to
molest her. Then, under further hypnosis, she "remembered" that she had been
abducted by the spacemen yet again - and these latest ordeals had taken place
in the company of the then secretary-general of the UN. Next, one of her
friends, another of Hopkins's patients, revealed that she also had been
abducted, along with Linda, Linda's son . . . and Perez de Cuellar.
Abduction tales such as Linda's are, according to Schnabel, increasingly
common in the United States. There is usually an element of sexual harassment,
the abductions are repeated and often the details reflect novels, movies or
earlier accounts of abductions. (In Linda's case, Nighteyes, a sci-fi novel
with a similar theme, had been published shortly before her crucial seizure.)
As well as pseudo-sex, pseudo-science is often involved. There is, further,
a wimpish, pseudo-religious element to a number of the tales collected by
Schnabel. Many aliens command us to make love, not war, to look after the
planet and, above all, be not afraid.
In recent years, Schnabel points out, hypnotism and other dubious forms of
regression analysis have been used in the US to "rescue" lost memories of
sexual abuse in childhood. Tales which Freud would have treated as oblique and
symbolic expressions of deep drives, fantasies and neurotic symptoms are taken
as literally true. It has, according to Schnabel, become usual for ufologists
to employ similar hypnotic techniques and to give similar credence to the tales
that emerge.
What is astonishing is that there is a vast audience out there that is only
too ready to believe such nonsense. Schnabel's next book could focus on the
believers, rather than the "abductees" and the self-appointed high priests of
what seems set to become America's next batty cult. Move over, L Ron Hubbard,
here comes Perez de Cuellar.
Little grey persons from fruitcakeland.
-> Alice4Mac 2.3b4 E QWK Eval:06Jan94
--- WM v3.10/93-0730
* Origin: Expose Yourself! (tm) (212)691-2679-Real Exposure (1:2 (1:278/319)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(14571) Sun 20 Mar 94 4:58p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: The Faithful Convene
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FAITHFUL CONVENE AT UFO SCENE: SHARING STORIES BUOYS BELIEVERS
03/13/94 THE NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE
One man says his son thinks he's gone bonkers. Another man has been told
he's a devil worshiper. One woman had to convince herself that she wasn't crazy
[
For people who believe they've seen UFOs or had contact with extra-
terrestrials, this world can be a cruel place. But at UFO conventions like the
one Saturday at the New Orleans Airport Hilton, where the believers vastly
outnumber the doubters, they get reassurance and sustenance.
"There is a family feeling here," said Katharina Wilson, who has just self-
published a book on her contact with UFOs dating back 26 years. "It's like,
`I'm not alone.' That's a strong experience."
"It's therapeutic to talk about it," said Mary Jordan, an Indiana resident
who says she once was floated out of her house by a UFO. Jordan, 35, also
believes she might have been impregnated by an extra-terrestrial that later
caused her fetus to disappear, four months into the pregnancy.
"I was the first one to wonder if I was crazy," she said. "But I'm to the
point where I don't expect people to believe what I say. I'm telling my story.
Take it or leave it."
The convention, which ends today, is sponsored by Project Awareness, which
brings together lecturers, researchers and people who say they were abducted by
UFOs to discuss the phenomenon.
The more than 300 people attending the convention Saturday swapped stories
of their sightings and contacts with UFOs. The stories rolled off their tongues
as if they had been told many times before.
"I had my first sighting when I was in the Air Force in 1957 at Pease Air
Force base in New Hampshire," said Jim Greenan, beginning his story. Greenan
stood behind a table filled with UFO T-shirts and books he was selling. It is
how he makes his living after being laid off as an aerospace engineer by Martin
Marietta in Florida several years ago.
His biggest-selling T-shirt reads: "We Are Not Alone."
His biggest-selling book is: "Above Top Secret: The World-wide UFO Cover-up.
"
"The government spends billions of dollars a year to keep you from knowing
about this," Greenan said. "It's the biggest coverup in mankind. The government
assassinates people who get too close. Bill Clinton doesn't know anything about
this. But George Bush did. He ran the CIA."
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(14572) Sun 20 Mar 94 4:58p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Senator Grey
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TAKE ME TO YOUR CONGRESSIONAL LEADER
03/11/94 THE NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE
The official biography of Sen. J. Bennett Johnston, D-La., lists his
hometown as Shreveport. But that's just a cover story to throw voters off the
trail of his true birthplace: Alpha Centauri.
Or Pluto. Or maybe Krypton.
The Weekly World News - a supermarket tabloid known for its eye-popping
revelations of 120-year-olds giving birth and Elvis clones running amok - is
outing Johnston as a space alien.
Shocked Johnston staffers found out their boss is really a globe-headed
member of a superior race of beings from another planet earlier this week, when
a reporter from Weekly World News called to say a confidential source had
fingered him.
Johnston needn't feel embarrassed - or alone. It won't surprise anyone
familiar with the ways of Washington, but space aliens reportedly play a
pivotal role in the American political system.
In 1992, Weekly World News exposed the extraterrestrial origins of five
other senators. It also reported that an alien had endorsed Bill Clinton for
president and was angling for a Cabinet position.
The senators, the paper quoted a UFO expert as saying, "stand as a shining
example of what aliens are able to accomplish while working for and with an
inferior species, in this case, human beings."
Johnston, meanwhile, took the news in stride.
"This is not exactly the way I intended to tell my family and friends," he
said.
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(14573) Sun 20 Mar 94 4:58p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Roswell Museums
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saucer legend spawned museums
03/15/94 DENVER POST
ROSWELL, N.M. - Although Guinness doesn't keep a record on such a thing,
this south-central New Mexico city of 44,260 probably leads the nation in the
number of flying-saucer museums per capita.
It has two.
One, right in the heart of a moderately bustling downtown, is the
International UFO Museum and Research Center. It is the town's "mainstream"
flying-saucer museum, with a well-stocked gift shop, plenty of wall-mounted
clippings about UFO sightings, crop circles, alien abductions, and so on. There
also is an impressive flying-saucer mural and a cute, wood-carved 4-foot alien
with which you can have your picture taken.
The second museum, on the outskirts of town, is the "alternative" flying-
saucer museum. Called the Outa Limits UFO Enigma Museum, it shares space - or
did until recently - with a video store. As its primary attraction, it has a
true piece of folk art - a tacky but effectively eerie installation called "The
Blue Room."
Behind a barrier - a sign says "Caution, Restricted Area" - is a crashed,
"life-size" flying saucer, constructed from welded-together satellite-broadcast
dishes. It has a tinfoil-embellished hole in it, from which a doll-like alien
protrudes. Its big eyes stare from its pillow-soft head.
On the carpeted floor around it are more doll-like dead aliens, plus a
rattlesnake with eggs, a rabbit, a spider, some rocks and sticks, and a Marine-
uniformed mannequin. The walls have been painted to look like a New Mexico
mountain range, with specks of tinfoil attached.
Is there room for two museums? Well, as a matter of fact, probably not. "Not
right now, no," confides John A. Price, curator of UFO Enigma Museum. It opened
April 4, 1992; the rival International UFO Museum opened in its prime location
in October of that year. "I'd like to see one survive and someday have one big,
nice museum in Roswell."
But that begs the more pertinent question. Why are there any UFO museums in
Roswell? It all originated with a piece of Cold War folklore - the supposed
1947 crash of a saucer on a remote farm near Corona, N.M., about 75 miles
northwest of Roswell.
As the story goes, members of the U.S. Army Air Forces base at Roswell
recovered the spacecraft's pieces, along with the bodies of aliens. The latter
were shipped off to Dayton's Wright-Patterson air force base in Ohio, where
they were stored - and well may remain today - amid super-secrecy.
There are millions of wacko UFO stories in this big country of ours,
especially in Western states full of mysterious, top-secret military
installations. Roswell Army Air Field was one such place in 1947 - it was home
of the 509th Bomb Group, armed with atomic weapons.
But Roswell's "close encounter" tale has one exceptional element. Walter
Haut, the public information officer for the base, distributed a statement that
began: "The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday
when the (bomb group) was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc ..."
The release came from Col. William H. Blanchard, commander of the base.
High military officials quickly contradicted the statement - they said
remnants of a weather balloon had been found. But for UFO believers, Haut's
press release has become as famous a document as the Declaration of
Independence. To them it is proof that the U.S. government at one time
acknowledged that flying saucers are real. In recent years, UFOers have
published numerous books on the subject; a Showtime movie premieres this year.
Haut now is president of the nonprofit International UFO Museum. And he
often is there to chat with the guests who crowd the place. He's a bit bemused
by his renown. At the time, the incident was almost immediately forgotten after
top military officials said it was a weather balloon.
For 40 years after Haut's famous press release, life went on in Roswell
without any acknowledgment of the crashed flying saucer. Price, now curator of
the for-profit Outa Limits UFO Enigma Museum (admission is $1), has a theory
for this. "They were ashamed of this incident." In 1988, he and his partners
opened the Outa Limits video store at this site - because it was outside city
limits. It had a flying saucer logo, because it was near the old Roswell Army
Air Forces base and "Outer Limits" was a popular sci-fi TV show in the 1960s.
Price noticed a few people stopped in because of his business' name. This
was when Roswell-related books were appearing, and a Japanese film crew had
come to town to investigate the story. So he decided the time had come to
promote the event.
At the 1991 Eastern New Mexico State Fair Parade, he entered his flying-
saucer-with-dead-alien - now the centerpiece of his museum's Blue Room - as a
float. "We didn't know if people would throw eggs at us or clap," he says.
"They loved it."
Meanwhile, Haut, too, was becoming interested in the past, especially after
he had been interviewed for a book. He and another man started the
International UFO Museum and Research Center in 1991.
In early 1992, they found a location on the seventh floor of a bank building
Then, in October, the International UFO Museum & Research Center found its
current space, which it leases from the city for $1 a year. More than 30
volunteers, most elderly Roswell residents, help out. This museum is a source
of community pride.
By the end of 1993, it had 19,000 visitors. Admission is free, though
donations are accepted. And there is a thriving gift area well-stocked with
mugs, caps, shirts, bumper stickers, Frisbees and other memorabilia. "It's just
one of those things where we were in the right place at the right time,"
Littell says.
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(15775) Wed 23 Mar 94 12:42p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Schizo Aliens
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Tinkering With Madness"
08/30/93
TIME MAGAZINE
On the morning of April 15, 1987, as he studied for his college entrance exams,
Gregory Aller had his first visit from the aliens. "This brilliant white light
appeared," Aller, now 29, recalls. "space aliens were directing this. They told
me I was going to become Speaker of the House. Then President Bush and Vice
President Quayle would die. As President I would unite our world with a dying
alien planet whose sun was going out".... He was worried that a sniper was
outside, somewhere, waiting for him."He was so convincing that _I_ was
frightened," says his father Bob Aller.....
Suspecting that Greg was suffering from schizophrenia, Bob and Gloria Aller
sought help from an expert at their alma mater, the University of California,
Los Angeles. Their fears were confirmed....
Om March 14, 1988, Aller signed his first consent form at the UCLA
Neuropsychiatric Institute and became a subject for Phase 1 of Developmental
Processes in Schizophrenic Disorders. Twice a month he received a 12.5-mg
injection of the antipsychotic drug Prolixin Decanoate. The substance took
three months to take effect, but the results were miraculous. "Everything
disappeared," Aller says. Gone were the space aliens, his grandmother's ghost,
the pipe bombs, the sniper....
In the last half of 1989, Greg alternated medicine with a placebo until the
Prolixin was completely withdrawn. "In October and November, I started having
delusions about Ronald Reagan and the space aliens," says Greg. "I thought I'd
seen some space aliens walking around cloaked as humans. Through mind contact,
they told me they wanted me to help them infiltrate the U.S. They were already
infiltrating police departments and the government." .
...."Greg denies any hallucinations or delusions," according to medical records
... Greg explains..."the doctors only said 'Greg, do you think you need
medication?' I always said no because I was worried that the space aliens
wouldn't approve."
[ . . . ]
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(15776) Wed 23 Mar 94 12:42p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: "a Common Irrationality"
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally From: John Powell
Originally To: All
Subject: Memory Tricks
Datum: 11-20-93
Area: Bama
DIAGNOSES OF ALIEN KIDNAPPINGS THAT RESULT FROM CONJUNCTION EFFECT
by Robyn M. Dawes and Matthew Mulford
(The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 18, No. 1, Fall 1993, Copyright 1993 by
the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the
Paranormal, 3965 Rensch Road, Buffalo, NY 14228, published quarterly
with a membership/subscription rate of $25/yr.)
Events and feelings may be better recalled when they occur in
combination than singly, to the point that a conjunction of two alleged
events or feelings may be judged to have occurred with greater frequency
in one's life than one of them alone. One part of a coniunction can
facilitate recall of the conjunction, and hence of another part of the
experience - and combinations of events can be judged to be more
probable than their components (Tversky and Kahneman 1983). The observer
to whom it is reported, however, knows that such a coniunction is
necessarily less probable than any one of its components. Thus, the
observer may attach special significance to such a conjunction.
For example, in supporting a conclusion that post-traumatic
stress from kidnapping by aliens is a major mental-health problem in
this country (allegedly affecting at least 2 percent of the population),
Hopkins and Jacobs (1992) cite the rate of affirmative responses to a
recent Roper Poll question: "How often has this happened to you: Waking
up paralyzed with a sense of a strange person or presence or something
in the room ?" Their rationale for considering affirmative responses
particularly diagnostic of alien kidnapping involves the conjunction of
the two components in the question: "A fleeting sensation of paralysis
is not unusual in either hypnogogic or hypnopompic states, but adding
the phrase 'with a sense of a strange person or presence in the room'
forcefu11y narrows the scope of the question" (p. 56).
As part of a (much) larger study, we asked that same Roper Poll
question of 144 subjects (mainly University of Oregon students and some
townspeople interested in the $20 pay for two hours). Forty percent
answered that this had happened to them at least once. A randomly
selected control group of 144 subjects in the same study were asked
simply how often they remembered waking up paralyzed. Only 14 percent
answered that this had happened to them at least once, (chi-square =
24.26; p < .001, phi = .29). (See Table 1.) The contingency was stronger
for women (phi = .44) than for men (phi = .17), significantly so
according to a Goodman-Plackett chi-square value of 4.74. Nevertheless
it was significant for both sexes (with chi-squares of 25.38 and 4.43,
respectively).
Thus, due to a conjunction effect in memory, the added phrase
"with a sense of a strange person or presence . . . in the room"
actually "broadens the scope" of the question, rather than narrowing it.
Hopkins and Jacobs are, of course, correct in maintaining that the
additional phrase _should_ "narrow the scope." It's just that the phrase
doesn't. What they have discovered, therefore, is not evidence of alien
kidnappings, but of a common irrationality in the way we recall our
lives.
References
Hopkins, B., and D. M. Jacobs. 1992. "How
This Survey Was Designed." In Bigelow
Holding Company, _An Analysis of the
Data from Three Maior Surveys Conducted
by the Roper Organization_, pp. 55-58.
Tversky, A., and D. Kahneman. 1983.
Extensional versus intuitive reasoning:
The conjunction fallacy in probability
judgments. _Psychological Review_, 90: 293-
315.
Robyn M. Dawes is University Professor in the Department of Social and
Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
15213-3890. Matthew Mulford is in the Department of Political Science,
University of Oregon, Eugene 97403.
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(17618) Mon 28 Mar 94 9:35p
By: Don Allen
To: All
Re: Area 51 Newsclip, Ca, 199
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Forwarded from "MUFON_WIRE"
* Originally by Pete Theer
* Originally to All
* Originally dated 28 Mar 1994, 19:06
*@SUBJECT:Area 51 Newsclip, CA, 1993 N
Celestial Cover-Up?
UFO Believer Says U.S. Is Hiding Truth In Nevada Desert
by Carol Masciola
Orange County (CA) Register (date unknown - 1993)
It is twilight and Sean David Morton is driving 90 m.p.h. across the Nevada
desert.
He is headed for a dimension where unearthly flashes appear in the sky, and
the lone local bar serves alien-burgers. He is hurtling toward a sector
where he says extra terrestrials prowl the Earth, mutilating cows, con-
spiring with the U.S. military and watching late-night television.
He is entering the terrifying Area 51.
The government says Area 51 is a testing site for secret airplanes near
Nellis Air Force Base. But Morton insists that it's a U.S.-alien cooperative
where flying saucers are tested and grotesque genetic experiments take
place.
"NASA is a fake. The real stuff is out here," he says.
In the back of his rented van sit seven wide-eyed passengers. Each has
paid $99 to see the flying saucers that Morton says spin through the desert
at night.
The fee also entitles them to an earful of the self-proclaimed prophet's
arcane tidbits about space travel and government cover-ups. He spews them
forth with a lunar gleam in his eye.
Casually, he explains that Area 51's aliens are probably from Krondac,
a planet 800 light-years away.
"They're actually bluish-gray and a little bigger than most people think.
They're 3 to 4 feet tall."
Morton acknowledges he's never seen any aliens, but so-called sources
tell him they're living at Area 51--those little creatures with the
smooth heads and the wrap-around eyes.
His fellow travelers include three students of the paranormal from Mexico
City, one guy with a video camera who sells material to the Fox Network
series "Sightings," an inscrutable Brazilian, and a hairdresser from West
Hollywood, Calif.
Morton, 34, makes his living as a psychic, a healer, a predictor of earth-
quakes and a screenwriter. He just finished a book of prophecy for the next
30 years. He also worked on TV shows about Area 51 for the NBC series
"Unsolved Mysteries" and for Geraldo Rivera's "Now It Can Be Told."
"Hidden here is the technology to end all wars, to end hunger, to provide
an endless supply of energy," he said. "I'm outraged that they're not
showing it to the rest of the world."
Some 100 miles later, the UFO van pulls in for supplies at Ash Springs,
Nev., population 11. Store owner Goodie Goodman immediately recognizes
Morton. He bags groceries and muses.
"I am not a believer because I have not seen anything, but I know
people who have," he says. "You have to understand where we are in
relation to Area 51."
More and more desert. More and more darkness. One of the students nods off.
Suddenly, Morton swings the van off the road, kills the headlights and
leaps onto the road, screaming, "Look, look, look! Over there, over there!
What the hell's that? Oh! It's gone!"
The fellow travelers run out after him. There are lights all over the sky.
Some look like helicopters, some like flares, some like Fibs. Two huge
planes, possibly B1s, swoop close overhead in the dark, barely making a
sound. And something else seems to hopscotch across the sky, leaving an
orange flash at each stop.
"You just saw tiny space jumps," Morton declares.
But skeptics say Morton's the one doing the jumping--right off the deep
end.
"For nearly 25 years, my specialty has been the field of UFOs, as a
hobby," said Philip Klass, a senior editor at Aviation Week & Space Tech-
nology for 34 years and a specialist in aviation electronics. "In all that
time, I've yet to find a UFO case to suggest we have any alien spacecraft
in our skies."
Area 51 is used for testing new covert airplanes, Klass said, and for
staging war games and testing electronic jamming equipment.
Barry Karr, executive director of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, said con
artists are promoting Area 51 to make easy money giving tours and lectures.
"There are about four or five guys running around the country, and they
all have a different shtick about Area 51," Karr said.
Klass suggested that pranksters might be enhancing the military's aerial
show with their own bogus UFOs and that local businesses might be perpe-
tuating the myth to bring tourists to an otherwise uninviting corner of
the desert.
As midnight neared, the van pulled up at the only bar for 85 miles--the
Little A'le'inn, a converted trailer. The signs outside say "Earthlings
Welcome" and "Budweiser."
Proprietor Joe Travis sells Alien Burgers and cocktails called Photon
Torpedo, Solar Flare and the popular Beam Me Up, Scotty (Jim Beam, 7-Up
and a dash of scotch).
"It's not just kooks and idiots that come out here. These people are
genuinely interested," said Travis, standing behind the bar. "We had a
man in here last night from another planet. He didn't tell me, but I knew."
-END-
--- FMail 0.96\E2
* Origin: * On Topic? What's that? <-> FidoNet UFO Moderator * (1:3623/18)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(17619) Mon 28 Mar 94 9:36p
By: Don Allen
To: All
Re: Michigan Ufo Newsclip 199
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Forwarded from "MUFON_WIRE"
* Originally by Pete Theer
* Originally to All
* Originally dated 28 Mar 1994, 19:00
*@SUBJECT:Michigan UFO Newsclip 1993 N
UFO Sightings Match Thumb Reports
Grand Rapids (MI) Press News Service
(Exact date unknown - 1993)
MUSKEGON -- Mysterious lights seen hovering over Oceana and Muskegon
counties Monday night match the description of an unidentified flyihg object
witnessed in Michigan's Thumb area over the last month, officials with an
international UFO organization said Wednesday.
Shirley Coyne of Flint, state director for the Michigan chapter of the
Mutual UFO Network, said there have been at least 16 sightings of triangle-
shaped flying objects in eastern Michigan over the past month. Other areas
reporting UFOs within the last month include Caro, Cass City, Kingsley and
Lake Odessa.
Like those seen in the Muskegon area, witnesses describe the objects as
triangles with round corners, accented with two red lights and one white
light.
She said her organization is investigating the sightings including two home
videos taken of two separate UFOs. One recent sighting was of an object
estimated as 500 feet long, but most involve smaller triangles.
"We've had a lot of reports like that," Coyne said. "What are they? No one
really knows. All we have is a lot of reports."
On Monday, two Muskegon county residents described three lights in the form
of a triangle over Whitehall and minutes later over Muskegon. Since an
article appeared on the sightings Wednesday in the Muskegon Chronicle, that
newspaper has received other calls from residents with similar accounts,
some as far north as Shelby.
All reported seeing a grouping of lights capable of moving very slowly, then
suddenly leaving the area at terrific speed. Area law enforcement officials
and air traffic controllers at Muskegon County Airport said they received no
reports on the sightings.
Officials from the National Weather Service said they received one call from
a person who saw three lights in a triangle pattern Monday over Lake
Michigan.
Linda Andrews, of Whitehall, said she was the person who made the call.
According to Andrews, she and her husband, Robert, were in the process of
dropping their car off for repairs Monday night in Whitehall when they saw
three bright lights hovering over Colby Street.
She said the object they saw was similar to those described by other eyewit-
nesses - but had two white lights and a red light in a triangle- or V-shaped
pattern. Andrews said the red light was made up of three round lights.
She said the lights occasiorially broke away from that formation and the two
white lights almost collided. She said her husband estimates the lights were
1,000 feet above the ground. The object moved slowly to the northeast and
was silent.
"I was relieved to read that others reported seeing it too," she said. "My
husband got a lot of grief at work when he told his friends what he saw."
Although Michigan residents typically report a large number of UFOs, the UFO
Network's Coyne said Florida residents now are reporting many sightings,
especially near Gulf Breeze.
Reports of UFOs are investigated by the Mutual UFO Network.
-END-
--- FMail 0.96\E2
* Origin: * On Topic? What's that? <-> FidoNet UFO Moderator * (1:3623/18)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(17620) Mon 28 Mar 94 9:37p
By: Don Allen
To: All
Re: La Times Abduction Newscl
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Forwarded from "MUFON_WIRE"
* Originally by Pete Theer
* Originally to All
* Originally dated 28 Mar 1994, 19:05
*@SUBJECT:LA Times Abduction Newsclip N
California support group lets abductees share
their feelings, concerns about aliens
by Miles Corwin
The Los Angeles Times (date unknown- 1993)
LOS ANGELES - What do you do if you are abducted in your sleep by a group
of scrawny gray aliens with enormous heads, beamed up to a spacecraft,
placed upon an examination table, probed with enormous needles and lasers,
and then returned to your bed?
If you live in Southern California, you form a support group and share the
experience. But the thorny questions posed at these sessions are far more
complex than those discussed at your run-of-the-mill self-help groups.
How do you determine, one man asked at a recent meeting near Los Angeles,
whether you have been abducted by aliens, abducted by the CIA or were merely
dreaming? When the aliens implant a tracking device in your body, how do
you get it out? After you've been abducted, what do you tell your employer
when you show up late for work?
If you are concerned about something such as abduction security, you cannot
simply approach your neighborhood watch captain for advice. And your family
doctor might be reluctant to explore the "scoop marks" left by aliens
seeking tissue samples. So abductees from throughout Southern California
meet on the last Sunday of every month and discuss these common problems,
buck each other up and relate abduction adventures.
During a break in the meeting, Kim Carlson rushes over to the coffeepot for
a caffeine jolt before she will answer any questions. She is exhausted, she
confides, because she has been staying up late every night to outwit the
aliens who have been abducting her in her sleep. Carlson now will not go
to bed until 4:30 a.m.
During the session, abductees discuss a variety of esoteric subjects.
Snatches of testimony and randlom comments create a bizarre conversational
mosaic.
"Did your alien have a sense of humor?"
"At first I thought I was in an elevator, but then I realized I was in a
small craft detaching to a larger craft."
"I know it wasn't a dream because when I returned, my dog was very hyper
and panting and he usually is very calm."
"There is some sort of work going on between the CIA and an alien faction
to develop a propulsion technology."
Although some of these random comments might seem as if they come from the
lunatic fringe, those who attended the meeting did not seem all that pecu-
liar. Many of them had the mien of typical suburbanites who struggle with
their mortgages, attend PTA meetings and complain about freeway traffic.
But ask them about UFOs, aliens or extraterrestrial abductions, and they
launch into lengthy monologues that some might consider more appropriately
delivered from a psychiatrist's couch.
The support group meets at the home of Yvonne Smith, a hypnotherapist who
sees many of the abducttees as clients. Through hypnosis, she directs their
"regression therapy," where they can re-experience and ultimately come to
terms with the abduction.
She frequently is asked if the abduction experience is "just a California
thing," because residents seem more open to the unorthodox. But abductions
and UFO experiences she says, are occurring all over the United States and
the world. The difference is that Californians are the only ones who
eagerly, entusiastically [discuss their experience].
-END-
--- FMail 0.96\E2
* Origin: * On Topic? What's that? <-> FidoNet UFO Moderator * (1:3623/18)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(3126) Wed 6 Apr 94 1:20a
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Disassociative Fantasies
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They're coming to take us away
01/02/94
THE INDEPENDENT - London
[ . . . ]
OBSERVERS of the UFO abduction phenomenon often point out its similarities
to other folkloric encounters specific to particular cultures, from fairy
abductions to visits from demons and angels. "The extraterrestrial abduction
is the modern secular version of the religious dream, very much like Jacob's
Ladder," says psychologist Michael Persinger, of Canada's Laurentian
University.
Persinger, who is one of the few academics to have published papers on the
abduction syndrome in peer-reviewed scientific journals, argues that UFO
abduction scenarios are typically experienced in an altered state of
consciousness, often during restless sleep, a hypnotic trance, or some other
half-awake state.
The "alien" or other entity experienced, Persinger believes, is really an
intrusion into the normal sense of self, which is dominated by the left
hemisphere of the brain, by processes normally unconscious within the right
hemisphere of the brain. Such intrusive entities would be shaped, at least in
part, by the cultural material to which the hallucinating person had been
exposed.
"These are quite normal phenomena," Persinger emphasises. "They are part of
dealing with the complexities and anxieties of the everyday world." But he
argues that some people are inherently more likely to report such phenomena if
their brain's temporal lobes, which often seem to mediate the experience of
right-brain intrusions, are prone to seizures or other sudden bursts of
activity, or if their left brains are naturally less dominant.
"They're usually the more creative individuals," says Persinger. "They're the
ones who are more sensitive to changes in their environment - and they're
usually individuals who are more cognitively female, which means they're more
intuitive . . . and involve or utilise creative processes to solve personal
problems."
Persinger believes that in rare cases, UFO abduction experiences may be
triggered by actual close-encounters with UFOs - which he believes can be
natural electromagnetic phenomena, generated by geological and atmospheric
processes and related to ball lightning. According to Persinger, the magnetic
fields associated with a UFO, at close range, may trigger temporal lobe
seizures and right-brain intrusions, bringing about an altered state of
consciousness in which a UFO encounter or other culturally defined
hallucination is experienced, or creating amnesia upon which the spurious
experience or "memory" of a UFO encounter is later imposed, perhaps during
hypnotic regression therapy.
In any case, the idea that the main cause of UFO abduction stories should
be sought in the minds of abductees is also supported by the apparent
connection between the UFO abduction syndrome and a class of psychiatric
disorders known as the dissociative disorders, whose best-known variant is
Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD).
"There are several checklists for symptoms of suspected UFO abductions,"
says George Ganaway, a psychiatrist and dissociative disorder specialist of
Emory University in Atlanta. "Those symptoms are remarkably similar to the
symptoms we clinicians use to diagnose dissociative disorders - things such as
periods of missing time, unexplained marks or wounds on the body, the
experience of a presence around you, the feeling that you're not alone, the
feeling that you're being influenced to behave in certain ways . . ."
An innate tendency to fantasy may explain some of the elaborate tales told
by UFO abductees, but there is evidence that social factors are also at work.
Most abductees are female, and belong to support groups which revolve around a
charismatic male UFO abduction researcher or therapist. (Budd Hopkins
hypnotises about a dozen female abductees on a regular basis. )
Similar conditions prevailed during the epidemics of demon-possession among
convent-confined nuns and other young women in 17th-century Europe and
America; possessees then tended to flock around male exorcists or witch-
hunters, and the inevitable competition for attention encouraged wild tales of
abuse and outrage.
The anthropologist I M Lewis, who has studied and described the female-
dominated cults which spring up around many spirit- possession syndromes in
the Third World, notes that competitive stories of trauma are found there, too.
"There would be a lot of competition between devotees for attention."
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(3127) Wed 6 Apr 94 1:20a
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Ufos And The Bible
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
`Tonight we're discussing the subject of UFOs and the Bible.'
10/18/89
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
Dr. Frank E. Stranges has a unique ministry. His flock is devout, sincere,
faithful and, some would say, heretical. "Tonight," Stranges solemnly told his
congregation one evening, "we're discussing the subject of UFOs and the Bible.
"
And so began the monthly meeting of the National Investigations Committee on
Unidentified Flying Objects, an organization based in Van Nuys that mixes New
Age science with Old Testament prophecy.
As Stranges tells it, some UFOs are gifts from God, angelic visitations sent
to improve the lot of humankind. On this night, Stranges and 25 listeners-most
of them older men and women with gray hair and glasses-talked of God's love
and aliens in a rented meeting room at a motel in Sepulveda.
"You can see why I'm not invited to the Baptist Convention to talk about this
thing," he said.
Stranges is president of International Evangelism Crusades, which he described
as a worldwide ministerial association. A portly man in a silver suit that
matched his gray hair and beard, he bears a vague resemblance to actor Peter
Ustinov.
He smiled often, cracked jokes and charmed his audience.
Reporters at the Soviet news agency Tass, which recently reported that 12-foot-
tall aliens strolled about a park in Voronezh, would love to interview him.
Appropriately, he spoke in the rising and falling cadences of a minister,
clearly inspiring his listeners.
The Bible, he said, records many UFOs-if one is willing to interpret the
Scriptures correctly. "You've got to read the Bible with a spiritual mind," he
explained.
In the Book of Ezekiel the prophet described a flying disc that came from the
north ("a wheel in the middle of a wheel") and hovered over the land. The
color was metallic, he said. And although some translations of the Bible
describe the "eyes" of the apparition, a correct interpretation shows that
Ezekiel likened these openings to "windows." This "wheel" was no mere
vision, Stranges said. It was real. It was God's work. It was a spaceship.
"Ezekiel saw something," he said. "The children of Israel saw something."
When the Jews fleeing Egypt roamed the desert for 40 years, a UFO described as
a pillar of fire warmed the multitudes at night with its glow. "Above them was
this giant pillar of fire," Stranges said. "This was not a natural phenomenon,
this huge spaceship God provided in the wilderness."
Throughout Stranges' monologue the 25 listeners sat quietly, some occasionally
nodding their heads in agreement.
But although some UFOs are agents of good, Stranges went on, others are agents
of evil. He posed an ominous question: If you saw a UFO and space creatures
asked you to come aboard, would you go?
Only a few hands nervously rose. One woman, a practical type, said, "I'd have
some questions."
Then other hands began to rise, the thought of space travel intoxicating the
room. Then a few more. Stranges suddenly cut them off. "Careful now!" he
warned.
"Stand in the light!" a man in the back shouted. "If you stand in the light,
they leave."
Stranges smiled like a teacher whose pupil took the top prize at the science
fair. The man in the back understood. Some UFOs are not sent by God, Stranges
said. Then his jovial mood turned dark. "If they're not of God," he asked,
"who are they?"
"The devil," someone whispered.
"Satan," Stranges said.
The room was uneasily silent for a moment. But the message from the man in the
back was reassuring. To defeat darkness one must, metaphorically speaking,
stand in the light of God, he said. So it is with any evil, be it the evil of
man or of extraterrestrial.
Finally, it was time for a short break. It was Stranges' birthday, and a cake,
cookies and punch covered a table at the back. "Happy birthday to you," the
crowd sang. Stranges smiled modestly.
As quick as he is to declare UFOs real, Stranges will also denounce and expose
what he says are fakes. Some UFO sightings were not really alien spacecraft,
for example, but disc-shaped vehicles built by Nazi scientists who fled to
Patagonia in the waning days of World War II, he says. Stranges says he saw
one of the Nazi flying machines once in Reno, Nev., and recounts the story in
his book "Nazi UFO Secrets and Bases Exposed."
The book on Nazi saucers was for sale that night along with paperback books by
Stranges, including "The UFO Conspiracy" and "Saucerama." The latter, the
yellow cover noted, was the "revised enlarged fifth edition" of a work
copyrighted in 1959. A few people browsed among the books as they ate
Stranges' birthday cake.
Later, Stranges displayed slides and told of unusual events recorded around
the world. There was the time aliens landed in Finland and, in fluent Finnish,
asked five boys to bring them water from a lake. As they departed the aliens
said, "God bless you." Then, Stranges said, their spacecraft turned bright red
and headed for Helsinki.
Don't be fooled by bogus sightings of UFOs, Stranges warned his listeners.
Study the Bible and you will know the truth. "Ye shall know the truth," he
said, "and the truth shall set you . . . "
"Free!" the congregation chorused.
Some would call this crowd wacko. Space cadets all. But it was clear that
Stranges' listeners, who barely spoke all night, were looking for something to
fill their lives and souls. They did not desert their church in their search,
but expanded the scope. Now they looked to the stars.
The crowd stood as Stranges led a prayer, their arms raised in praise, their
voices echoing his words. As the prayer drew to a close he said, "Help me to
be of service to You . . . "
Help me to be of service to You.
"...and to my fellow man."
And to my fellow man.
"God bless you all."
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(3128) Wed 6 Apr 94 1:20a
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Bible, Conspiracy, Ufos
St: 3792>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Science, religion beget bold beliefs
`Dare-to-be-different' flock gathers
Byline: Jim Carrier; Denver Post Staff Writer
08/23/93
DENVER POST
The pope and his disciples were not the only true believers to convene in
Denver.
Meet a different flock of Christians who gathered in Northglenn during the
past four days at the intersection of religion and science:
- Connie Shaw of Johnstown, who is getting messages from a "silver river of
light" emanating from the solar plexus of a rose-smelling apparition she knows
to be the Virgin Mary.
She warns of millions of deaths and Earth upheavals presaging a 1,000-year
Golden Age.
- Troy Reed of Tulsa, Okla., whose channeled visions led him to build a motor
that creates its own power by tapping into the "magnetic field of the universe.
"
- Mass production of the $5,000 to $8,000 machine, capable of powering a
house and rewriting Newton's law of physics, could begin in 1994.
- George Green of Carson City, Nev., who stated last Friday that a sinister
group of 300, known variously as the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission or
the Council on Foreign Relations, plans to kill 175 million Americans by 2000,
in part by transmitting the AIDS virus through television sets. The ultimate
goal: a communist One World Order.
At an ordinary Holiday Inn off Interstate 25, the 11th annual Global Sciences
Congress drew 300 to 400 people to the strangest array of beliefs under one
roof.
Mostly Christian
Part conspiratorial, part New Age, mostly Christian and unusually suspicious
of outsiders, the group included self-proclaimed UFO abductees, farmers who
use radio waves on their soils and themselves, a computer-whiz-turned-
astrologer whose laptop aids her predictions and numerous healers of cancer,
fatigue and other diseases.
"You'll never read about this in your paper," was a common line
from speakers whose stories did stretch the imagination. The
conference concludes today. "We try to bridge the gap between
science and religion. Many times there isn't a great deal of
difference," said Dean Stonier of Thornton, the 69-year-old
congress founder.
Among topics and displays: crystals, homeopathy, radionics, electronic healing,
anti-gravity, pagan magic and psychic phenomenon presented by people "very
close to the edge of present knowledge."
"We present them; you pick them," said Stonier. "We don't
endorse or discredit."
Health focus
A common denominator is improving physical and spiritual health.
Stonier includes in that stew "political health," an umbrella
that allows Eustace Mullins to annually expose what he calls a
Rockefeller-led conspiracy to control us through the Federal
Reserve Bank.
"You'll never get that stuff about the Federal Reserve in the paper," insisted
Stonier.
Mullins spoke Friday on "murder by injection," his contention
that the Rockefellers control the world's pharmaceuticals. In a
wide swipe, Mullins called President Clinton's administration a
shadow government that seeks to kill truth-seekers such as those at
the conference.
Bloody federal actions against David Koresh in Waco, Texas, and Randy Weaver
in Idaho were "test cases to see how the American people would react."
As wild as the stories got, conference-goers seemed willing to
hear them all.
"I think people sense something is going on behind the scenes," said Jean
Geary of Denver.
"It's kind of a dare-to-be-different group," said Darlene
Kutzler of Huron, S.D., who sells air cleaners.
Added Colleen Quinn of Houston, the laptop astrologer: "We're all trying to
figure out our piece in the puzzle."
Many people at the conference found that belief in one theory
often leads to another.
"I say to myself, what is a farmer doing, coming to a thing like this? Seems a
little strange," smiled Francis Schaeffers of Garnavilla, Iowa, who uses
radionics and believes in UFOs.
This year, he learned about secret underground tunnels being dug
on Long Island and elsewhere.
"I'd heard about them, but I didn't know how bad it was," said Schaeffers.
Year 2000 a watershed?
The coming millennium plays a prominent role in Global Sciences,
now that it is less than seven years away.
Both doomsayers and new agers share an unshakeable faith in planetary change
by the year 2000, but both say you can survive if you lead a life of high
principle and love, as they prescribe - a common Old Testament message.
"God promised there will be a remnant who can survive," said
Green, who pushed dome houses and a year's food supply.
"I feel your fear," said Connie Shaw. "Breath deeply. All the light workers
are protected."
Details of the predicted changes are vivid.
Terry Cook, an ex-Los Angeles policeman believes enslavement will happen by
1997, via tiny computer-chip implants in temples or rights hands by an "anti-
Christ."
Creating prodigies
Robyn Quail of Chamblee, Ga., however, is hopeful because extraterrestrials
have been creating prodigies out of rather ordinary people by doubling their
IQs in order to create planet-saving technology.
"Some ETs want to help us through all the changes we're facing,"
said Quail.
Rayelan Russbacher, wife of either a CIA leader or con man, depending on the
source, is convinced that a "group of powerful, evil people" is ready to
control the world.
Lawrence Perry says "they" can control our minds by satellite
transmissions, but a simple copper tube will block the rays.
As for the papal visit a few days before the congress, most at
the conference chalked it up to just another belief system, one
which nursed many of them.
"If we're honest about it, the Bible is a metaphysical document - Christ's
resurrection, water into wine," said Stonier. "Everything in life is beliefs."
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(3129) Wed 6 Apr 94 1:20a
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: "seeded" Earth
St:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No E.T.s on Mars? O Ye of Little Faith
09/02/93 THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
"NASA Face Up to It."
So declared one of the signs held aloft by a protester last week outside the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory. You'd think the scientists waiting for the Mars
Observer to end its silence were having a hard enough time coping with this
billion-dollar boo-boo. Then came the invasion of the UFO activists, united in
the conviction that NASA won't tell us everything it knows about
extraterrestrials.
Specifically, these activists say, NASA officials don't want us to get a
better look at the striking images on the Red Planet that could only have been
created by intelligent beings. A photograph taken by a Viking orbiter in 1976,
they note, reveals a geological shape that resembles a milelong human face.
They've also noted lines and shadows that resemble pyramids, a smiling face
and even Kermit the Frog. Skeptics have scoffed, pointing out such frightening
images as Tammy Faye Bakker's eyelashes and Teddy Kennedy on a bad night.
Joseph Randazzo isn't the kind of "UFOlogist" who attends demonstrations. A
former packager of martial arts films, Randazzo is the Studio City-based
producer of the "Witness E.T." video series and publisher of the 1 1/2-year-
old International UFO Library magazine, available at a newsstand near you.
Conspiracy theories, Randazzo explained, are "just not my thing."
Yet he, too, has little trust for NASA.
*
The official story suggests that the Mars Observer was doomed by a bad
transistor. Randazzo prefers other theories. Perhaps E.T.s from the Pleiades
star system or maybe Orion jammed communications. Maybe our interplanetary
visitors decided to seize our space probe.
It should be noted that not all UFO researchers believe this. Don Ecker,
research director of the Sunland-based UFO magazine and an organizer of the
JPL protest, suggests that the Mars Observer really did just break down. But,
he adds, that doesn't mean NASA isn't hiding something.
At least we can agree that the universe works in mysterious ways. How's this
for a cosmic coincidence: When I met Randazzo for lunch the other day at a
trendy spot on Ventura Boulevard, it just so happened that Carol Rosin was
sitting at the next table. Rosin is the founder of something called the
Institute for Security and Cooperation in Outer Space, a group that used to
lobby against President Ronald Reagan's defunct "Star Wars" defense system.
This made me a little suspicious, but not once did I hear the theme from
"Twilight Zone." Randazzo and Rosin assured me they had never met before-but,
as Randazzo pointed out, you never can tell when E.T.s might be
technologically or telepathically fiddling with our brain waves. Someone out
there may well be choreographing such close encounters.
Randazzo is far beyond the point of trying to convince skeptics that alien
spacecraft make regular stops here. We know "a lot," he says dismissively,
about the slim little gray men with big eyes that are the stock E.T.s of
movies and supermarket tabloids. What really excites Randazzo, it seems, is
the belief that some E.T.s who look no different from Earthlings are now
sharing important information with several human "contactees." What have the E.
T.s told them?
For starters, Earth was "seeded" by ancient astronauts from several galaxies.
Chariots of the Gods and all that. I'm no anthropologist, but Randazzo says
the "seven races" on Earth may be explained by our rich variety of
intergalactic visitors.
"The E.T.s all laugh at Darwin's theory," Randazzo declared.
"Our lineage is not from an ape in a tree. Me and you are made of star stuff."
Indeed, these aliens have confirmed much of the Bible, Randazzo says, right
down to the existence of Adam and Eve.
The Vista school board may be reassured to learn that, but my guess is they'll
keep the E.T. stuff out of their creationist curriculum. Even Randazzo admits
to a reluctance to discuss the "blue people" because it sounds "like tabloid
stuff."
The "blue people," he explained, are a secretive alien race that came to Earth
way back when and live underground. There is known to be a rather large colony,
Randazzo says, beneath Mt. Shasta.
*
Smile if you must. Laugh if you dare. But as I write this, I can't help but
notice the front-page headlines on The Times of Aug. 25. "Mars Probe Still
Silent; Hopes Dim," declares the headline for the lead story. Another story
concerns President Clinton's vacation to Martha's Vineyard. "President Sleeps
Till 10 as Silence Falls Over U.S.," the headline says.
Sometimes, Randazzo told me, the E.T.s visit us "in a dream state."
A few days later, President Clinton would express concern that America is
becoming "entirely too secular."
We should have more respect, the President said, for people of faith.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(9431) Thu 21 Apr 94 11:30p
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Abduction Fizzles
St: Local Sent 9607>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
`Abduction' by UFO fizzles
04/20/94 THE BOSTON GLOBE
EASTON -- The chairman of the foreign language department greeted students
in Klingon. An assistant dean scanned the heavens through a telescope. The
theme from "The Empire Strikes Back" blared across the Stonehill College
quadrangle.
And physics professor Chet Raymo was ready, sifting through the contents of
his overnight bag (beer, Reese's Pieces, sperm sample, change of underwear) as
more than 200 Stonehill students waited for space aliens to abduct him at
midnight Monday.
Tragically, the aliens never showed, ignoring the challenge Raymo issued in
a recent Globe column on the newfound celebrity of John Mack, the Pulitzer
prize-winning Harvard psychiatrist whose latest book, "Abductions," attempts
to document the existence of extraterrestrial life.
A group of students wearing aluminum foil did wheel Raymo away in a
recycling bin, providing an appropriately odd conclusion to the weirdest event
on the Stonehill quad since Bianca Jagger received an honorary degree there in
1983.
But for the study-breaking spectators, many of whom had watched Mack on
"Oprah!" that day, the otherworldly snub was a bit disappointing.
"I guess this means the final won't be canceled," said Kristy Batchelder,
20, a junior enrolled in Raymo's popular class on The Universe.
For Raymo, who showed up for his close encounter wearing a propeller cap,
the UFO no-show was a vindication of sorts. In his April 11 column, he offered
to make his body available to the alien scientists Mack described in
"Abductions," provided they were willing to pick him up Monday at midnight. "I
doubt if anyone will show up to spirit me away -- but I'm prepared to be
astonished," he wrote.
Even without the guests of honor, the scene Monday night was astonishing.
John Golden, chairman of the foreign language department, kept shooting people
with a phaser gun. Gregory Shaw, a professor of religious studies, distributed
literature revealing that Raymo himself was an undercover alien. ("What a
perfect cover Raymo has established, teaching science in this sleepy New
England town!")
Julie Spillane, a 21-year-old junior, showed up wearing antennae
fashioned out of a hairband, toilet paper, and glitter, and confessed that she
was originally from the planet Zeptor.
"It's one of those family secrets," said Spillane. "Sort of an if-I-tell-
you-I-have-to-kill-you kind of thing."
As midnight approached, Raymo chatted amiably with students, warning them
not to get too close to the incoming spaceship. But the only intruders to
arrive were 20-year-old engineering major Michael Paul of Worcester and his
five fellow Tin Man knockoffs, who noisily hauled Raymo back to their dorm.
"Ah, well," said Raymo, who shared his Reese's Pieces with his captors.
"Maybe next time."
Richard Grant, the assistant dean of academic services at Stonehill, was
responsible for much of the pre-abduction publicity on campus. He admitted he
was surprised that Raymo's invitation had gone unheeded, but insisted that
Mack's theories, detailed this week in Time Magazine, could still be valid.
"Gods don't respond to human challenges, and neither do aliens," he said.
"The issue is still open. Definitely open."
The aliens could not be reached for comment.
@ART CAPTION: Julie Spillane (left), who says she is originally from planet
Zeptor, and Molly McHugh wait -- in vain -- for space aliens to abduct
Stonehill professor Chet Raymo.
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(6130) Wed 24 Aug 94 3:10a
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Beyond Outer Limits
St: Local Sent 8421>
------------------------------------------------------------
DEBUNKERS HARRUMPH AT UFO CLAIMS AS BEYOND OUTER LIMITS
Associated Press
06/26/94
So you believe Earth has been visited by unidentified flying
objects and the evidence has been suppressed by the government?
That hypnosis or psychotherapy can enable you to recover memories
from before you were born?
That creatures from outer space regularly abduct humans, subject
them to sexual abuse and use them for breeding experiments?
Well, you have plenty of company, and that makes you a part of
one of the biggest problems in the world of science, astronomer Carl
Sagan and other debunkers of pseudoscientific misconceptions said
Friday.
"It's not that we're grumpy about lost continents or UFOs," Sagan
said -- it's that the world can't afford such scientific illiteracy.
Surveys indicate 25 percent to 50 percent of adult U.S. citizens
"don't know the Earth goes around the sun once a year," Sagan said.
"Almost every newspaper in the United States has an astrology
column . . . and none has a daily science column. Some have a
weekly science column. Why is that?" he asked. "When is the last
time you heard an intelligent remark on science from a president of
the United States?"
He was joined by Philip J. Klass, a UFO investigator and a former
editor at Aviation Week and Space Technology, and Elizabeth Loftus, a
University of Washington psychology professor and expert on repressed
and false memory, at a news conference during the conference of the
Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the
Paranormal.
Klass attacked the claims of alien abduction devotees who believe
that people who suppress memories of being abducted and molested will
be doomed to repeat the experience -- along with their children and
grandchildren.
Loftus, named to receive the committee's "In Praise of Reason"
award on Saturday night, said research has shown that hypnotherapists
can lead people to believe they had experiences that never occurred.
Most of the 740 people attending the convention are psychologists,
said Paul Kurtz, chairman and founder of the committee, based in
Buffalo, N.Y.
On Thursday, John Mack, a Harvard psychiatrist who believes about
90 of his patients have been abducted by space aliens, debated Donna
Bassett, a North Carolina journalist who convinced Mack she was an
abductee and then wrote about her "treatment."
Mack said his patients' stories were so frequent, convincing and
similar that there must be something to them.
"All other cultures allow other beings, other realities, other
dimensions," Mack said.
Bassett said Mack's research was disturbingly uncritical.
"There was no scientific method whatsoever," she said.
Because Friday was the 47th anniversary of the first modern
report of flying saucers, astronomer James E. McGaha described how
that report was debunked.
A pilot claimed he saw nine aircraft that near Mount Rainier in
Washington.
These were nothing more than "mountain mirages," said McGaha, a
retired Air Force major. He showed a black-and-white slide in which
the naturally occurring phenomena appear as small round forms over
mountain ridges. "There is no empirical evidence that Earth has been
visited by aliens," McGaha said. "None."
CAPTION: Carl Sagan -
Pseudoscience and scientific illiteracy hurt, the astronomer said.
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(6131) Wed 24 Aug 94 3:12a
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Glenda's Beloved Hatonn
St: Local Sent 7013>
------------------------------------------------------------
Judge schedules Oct. 3 trial in spaced-out gold coin case
Associated Press
04/22/94
MINDEN, NV A judge has scheduled Oct. 3 for the start of a jury trial to
settle a dispute over $350,000 in gold coins sought by a couple claiming to
communicate with aliens from outer space.
Douglas County District Judge Dave Gamble scheduled the trial, after
previous plans to hold the proceeding in June or July had to be changed.
The civil suit was filed by Eddyjo and Doris Ekker of Tehachapi, Calif.,
who claim to have contact with someone called Commander Hatonn, a tall, Nordic
extraterrestrial who wears "Star Trek" garb.
The Ekkers sued George and Desiree Green for allegedly taking the gold
coins that were donated to the Greens while they were officers at the Ekkers'
Phoenix Institute in Tehachapi. Also named was Leon Forte.
The Greens, now living in Bozeman, Mont., turned the coins over to the
court pending resolution of the dispute. They also filed a counterclaim
action, naming the Phoenix Institute, the Ekkers, and even Hatonn, "commander
in chief, sector flight command, intergalactic federation fleet."
The Ekkers' Phoenix Institute publications state Hatonn orbits the Earth
warning people about intergalactic strife and encouraging them to take
advantage of Nevada's relatively lax corporation laws.
They've incorporated more than 200 companies in Nevada since 1991.
The 1993 Legislature took testimony on the Ekkers' activities during
debate on corporate investment schemes. But lawmakers wound up doing little
about incorporation law loopholes mentioned during that debate.
Ekker has insisted he's not involved in any scheme to bilk people. He has
claimed to be on food stamps and not making money by being listed as a top
officer in the various Nevada corporations.
But Luke Perry of Las Vegas says the Ekkers have taken advantage of
Nevada's corporation laws and have tied up $2 million to $3 million in
investors' funds - including some of his family's money. Perry was named in
the original civil lawsuit filed by the Ekkers' Phoenix Institute, but he said
he has been dropped from the action.
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(6132) Wed 24 Aug 94 12:20a
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: S.u.n.
St: Local Sent
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SCIENCE
07/21/94
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Skeptics corner. Space scientist Jill Tarter of the Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETA) Institute in Mountain View,
Calif., says: "If the aliens would only keep all the folks they
abduct, our world would be a little saner."
That's the type of irreverent talk you'll read in Phil Klass'
terrific Skeptics UFO Newsletter, the nation's only publication
dedicated to disproving the existence of flying saucers. Phil is a
distinguished aerospace journalist (a senior editor at Aviation
Week & Space Technology) who, in his spare time, investigates --
and usually disproves -- wild stories about UFO landings and other
celestial flummery. To subscribe, send $15 to Philip J. Klass, 404
N St. SW, Washington, DC 20024.
-> Alice4Mac 2.4.4 E QWK Eval:09Jun94
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(6133) Wed 24 Aug 94 12:20a
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Ufo Cult
St: Local Sent
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Another landing for `UFO Cult'
07/31/94 Montreal Gazette
CHICAGO - One recent night, 40 inquiring souls entered a University of
Illinois at Chicago classroom; a flier outside the room billed the lecture-
discussion as "UFOs, Space Aliens and Their Final Fight for Earth's Spoils."
Curiosity brought that audience face-to-face with the remnants of a nomadic
community that aroused the media and law enforcement in the 1970s: Dubbed the
"UFO Cult," the group blended spacecraft and spirituality under the offbeat
charismatic leadership of a man and woman known variously as "The Two" and "Bo
and Peep."
They said their souls were from a level above human, a kingdom higher than
Earth. They said the "Kingdom of God" was a real place in the universe whose
inhabitants have travelled by spacecraft as far back as 2,000 years ago, when
one of them came to Earth as Jesus.
And they said there would soon be more spacecraft arriving to take
deserving souls to that higher level. The story made it to the lips of TV's
then-top journalist, Walter Cronkite, and thus to the ears and eyes of
millions.
A flurry of harsh publicity followed - questioning the claims and cultlike
regimen of the group and recounting how dozens of spouses or children had
forsaken families, jobs and possessions to become sheep of Bo and Peep.
The two were identified as former Houston residents Marshall Herff
Applewhite, a divorced college music professor, and Bonnie Lu Nettles, a nurse
and married mother of four. They had cut all ties to those past lives.
As the media glare intensified, the group went underground. But 18 years
later, as members appeared at three Chicago-area locations last week, one of
their fliers declared: "We're Back."
In the college classroom, Evan, June, Matt, Oliver and Sawyer spent more
than two hours explaining themselves. They said their male and female bodies
are merely "vessels" infused with souls from the level above human.
They said they've abandoned their old names, their families, their
possessions and all forms of sexuality, relationships and addictions that had
been part of their "human-mammalian" personal lives.
Amid lengthy rhetoric on everything from the Earth being a "hothouse
garden" experiment created by the Kingdom of God to "Luciferians" who have
dropped out of the kingdom but also use spacecraft in an ongoing campaign to
tempt and confuse humans about good and evil, June uttered arguably the
understatement of the session.
Leaving behind all earthly pleasures to follow them "is one of the hardest
things you'll ever have to do," she said.
Rob Balch, a University of Montana sociologist, infiltrated the group for
two months in 1975 and has continued his research by interviewing former
members.
He said he and a partner worked odd jobs and begged for money to keep
travelling with the group among different camps. However, he said, the group's
regimen has become much tighter, including a ritual in which members at camps
are supposed to report to supervisors every 12 minutes.
"I don't think this is a dangerous cult. It is not in the mold of the
Charles Manson family, Jim Jones's People's Temple or David Koresh's Branch
Davidians," Balch said. "It does not have a violent history.
"But it can be dangerous from parents' perspective. Anybody who joins this
group is going to drop out of sight."
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(6134) Wed 24 Aug 94 12:20a
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Ufos R-us
St: Local Sent
------------------------------------------------------------
UFOS R-US: Believers in extraterrestrial visitors gather, share thoughts,
faith
08/13/94
THE GRAND RAPIDS PRESS
During a western vacation many years ago, passenger Sue Clous
glanced out the car window to see a silver, saucer-shaped object
streaking over trees in the distance.
Only 7 years old at the time, she didn't think much of it.
Unidentified flying objects were, to her young mind, an acceptable
phenomena.
As she has grown into middle age, the 45-year-old Wyoming woman
has not changed her mind on the subject. She still believes UFOs are
real and devotes much of her time to discussing, tracking and
learning about them.
Clous will be on hand today at noon on the steps of the Federal
Building on Michigan Street NW in Grand Rapids to help usher in the
local celebration of the 10th Annual UFO Information Week.
As part of the festivities, she and others will unveil a
rendition of an UFO they made. On hand as well will be some of the
buttons and paintings of space aliens that Clous has created.
"A lot of people think we're kooky, that we are schizophrenic,"
said Bob Moy, a 40-year-old member of the local organization.
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(6135) Wed 24 Aug 94 12:20a
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Watch The Skies! - Review
St: Local Sent
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UFO sightings mirror to postwar America
07/10/94
San Antonio Express-News
Watch the Skies! A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth By
Curtis Peebles Smithsonian Institution Press, $24.95
Despite the sensationalistic title, "Watch the Skies!" is
probably the most insightful, well-researched debunking of the UFO
myth that has yet been published.
Aerospace historian Curtis Peebles examines how the myth has
evolved over nearly half a century, from its first appearance in
the pulp magazine "Amazing Stories" in the 1940s through the
latest conspiracy theories concerning government coverups.
After years of researching UFOs, Peebles is a skeptic who
believes that flying saucer reports are misinterpretations of
conventional objects, phenomena and experiences. But he also
believes the myth is a mirror to the events of postwar America -
the paranoia of the 1950s, the social turmoil of the 1960s, the "me
generation" of the 1970s and the nihilism of the '80s and early
'90s.
Rather than becoming bogged down in trying to prove whether UFOs
are real or not, Peebles examines the myth as a pop culture
phenomenon, showing how many of the most famous UFO stories and
books appear to grow out of earlier pop culture sources, such as
science fiction magazines and Hollywood movies.
People claiming to have had experiences with beings from other
planets are probably enjoying more credibility than at any time in
the past 50 years, especially since the recent publication of
Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard University psychologist John Mack's
"Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens" (Scribners).
Recent films such as "Communion," based on the book by native
San Antonian Whitley Strieber, and "Fire in the Sky," based on the
Travis Walton case in Arizona, use Hollywood special effects to
make extraterrestrials seem much more realistic than they appeared
in the 1950 films that helped shape the myth, "The Day the Earth
Stood Still" and "It Came From Outer Space."
In one of his best chapters, Peebles reveals that Walton, along
with his lumberman buddies, concocted his UFO abduction story to
get out of a contract with the U.S. Forest Service to clear more
than 1,000 acres of timber - which Walton and his cohorts were
unable to do by a deadline without paying financial penalties.
Walton came up with his tale of being operated on in a UFO only
two weeks after NBC aired "The UFO Incident," based on the first
widely reported UFO abduction story, Betty and Barney Hill's "The
Interrupted Journey."
Though Walton failed lie detector tests and was exposed by the
best-known UFO debunker, Philip Klass, the Walton case is still
considered one of the most valid by UFOlogists. "Fire in the Sky,"
now available on video cassette, is fairly realistic and skeptical
of the Walton story until the final, mind-blowing 20 minutes when
Walton is sucked up into an organic spaceship resembling a human
womb populated with big-eyed fetuses. Hollywood claims it is
"based on a true story," but Peebles proves it's nothing but a lie.
More doubt has been cast on UFO abduction stories gathered by
the unlocking of "repressed" memories through hypnosis by another
recent book, Austin author Lawrence Wright's "Remembering Satan"
(Knopf), which examines the controversial child abuse case of an
Olympia, Wash., deputy sheriff, Paul Ingram. Wright explains how
Ingram, under hypnosis, admitted to being part of a Satanic cult
and sexually abusing his two daughters despite having no memory of
the abuse.
Wright reveals how susceptible people are to inventing wild
stories while in a trancelike hypnotic state, which has turned many
recent child abuse cases into modern-day witch hunts.
If hypnotically recalled memories are tossed out of the courts
as legally admissible evidence, it will undermine the stories of
most UFO abductees, whose memories of "missing time" are often
uncovered in hypnotic sessions conducted by UFO believers.
In "Watch the Skies!" Peebles presents the hard facts about many
other UFO tales - the UFO crash in Roswell, N.M., in 1947; the
invasion of Washington in 1952; the Air Force's much-maligned
Project Blue Book; cattle mutilations; alien/human crossbreeding;
and the incredible, right-wing conspiracy theories about "MJ-12."
Peebles finds links between periods of national uncertainty and
popular UFO sightings or "flaps." The McCarthy era was leading to
the Cold War when the first UFOs were spotted in 1947. The Great
Flap of 1952 marked the stalemated Korean War and the development
of the H-Bomb. UFOs flooded the skies in the 1960s, when the civil
rights and anti-war movements threatened to split the country. The
last big flap in 1973 coincided with Watergate.
In the 1980s and '90s, aliens became familiar stars in the
movies -"E.T.," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Star
Wars" - while UFOlogists became obsessed with alien abductions and
right-wing conspiracies. Stories of alien-induced pregnancies and
surgically removed fetuses have eerie parallels to the propaganda
of the anti-abortion movement. But UFOs have become such a familiar
part of the popular culture that mysterious lights in the sky
hardly raise an eyebrow anymore.
Peebles sees the UFO myth as an effort to make order out of a
confusing, chaotic universe. Yet, as he concludes: "We watch the
skies seeking meaning. In the end, what we find is ourselves."
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* Origin: StarGate BBS NY 718-519-8042 (28.8k) (1:278/110)
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(6136) Wed 24 Aug 94 12:20a
By: Sheppard Gordon
To: All
Re: Implanting Ufo Memories
St: Local Sent
------------------------------------------------------------
UFO memories found easy to plant Researchers describe experiments
that show how easy it is to implant ideas through suggestion
07/16/94
The Toronto Star
SEATTLE - Sharon Filip, a Seattle hypnotherapist, vividly
remembers a close encounter with a UFO as a child and later being
kidnapped by space aliens who materialized from thin air.
Chris recalls the trauma of being separated from his parents in a
shopping mall when he was 5 years old and how he was helped by a
kindly old man wearing a checkered shirt.
Both are convinced their experiences are real because they remember
them clearly and in detail. But in at least one case the memories
are completely bogus.
The human brain's ability to create false memories of traumatic
moments, from sexual abuse to encounters with extraterrestrials,
is fast becoming a hot topic among psychologists.
``It is possible with enough suggestion to get people to believe
they had entire experiences that never happened,'' says
psychologist Elizabeth Loftus of the University of Washington in
Seattle. ``False beliefs now involve a lot of people.''
During a recent conference here sponsored by the Committee for the
Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, researchers
described a string of experiments that showed just how easy it is
to implant memories that mimic recollections of real events.
The researchers also argued that experts - psychologists,
therapists and others - are ill-equipped to help patients separate
fact from fantasy.
``Professionals have no `Pinocchio test' (to determine) when
children are exposed to repeated suggestion,'' says Stephen Ceci,
professor of psychology at Cornell University. ``We act as though
we do.''
In the case of Chris, identified only by his first name, his
childhood memory of being lost in a shopping mall was planted in a
laboratory experiment in which Loftus and other researchers used
leading questions to suggest the incident had actually happened.
The memory was completely false but Chris not only came to believe
the event was real, he unconsciously manufactured details.
Even when the research team told him the event was concocted, the
teenager did not believe them.
``I'm not saying every account of alien abduction or sexual abuse
arises this way, but this can help us understand why false
memories might be created,'' Loftus says. ``It dilutes and
trivializes the cases of real abuse.''
The phenomenon can destroy lives when it surfaces in cases of
alleged sexual abuse, when a false memory can tear families apart
and send innocent people to jail.
The younger the subject, researchers contend, the easier it is to
create a false memory through suggestion.
``Kids are disproportionately vulnerable to a whole bag of
suggestive techniques,'' Ceci says.
Tales of UFO abductions, often recalled using the same techniques,
provide some evidence of how the human mind unwittingly
manufactures horrific tales.
Renowned astronomer Carl Sagan, a staunch believer of life in outer
space, says he would love to see evidence that Unidentified Flying
Objects are from distant worlds, ``even if the aliens inside are a
little short, grumpy, sullen and sexually preoccupied.''
But, he says, there is no reason to believe the stories when the
evidence falls apart on close examination.
While some experts like University of Kentucky psychologist Robert
Baker argue that elements of UFO abduction stories can easily be
explained by a list of well-known psychological phenomena, others
like Harvard University psychiatrist John Mack insist the
experiences may be real.
Baker contends, for example, that sleep paralysis can make people
feel terrified while producing hallucinations that provide a
seeming reality.
``When you hypnotize people, you're turning on their imagination.
And when you turn on your imagination, all things are possible,''
Baker says. ``These experiences seem very real. If they didn't
seem real, they wouldn't be hallucinations.''
Baker notes that a number of people who claimed to have been
abducted by space creatures referred to ``missing time'' in which
they were unable to remember what happened for an hour or two.
``The reason they can't remember anything is that nothing
happened,'' he says, adding that many people give the same
description of aliens because of images planted by the media.
Mack, however, counters that many of the claims could not be based
on stories in the media because they were not reported by the
media. ``We are dealing with a phenomenon that cannot be laughed
away,'' he says.
While researchers say the motivation for making up experiences may
range from aspirations to fame, money or some other motive, many
of those with bogus memories may use them as a way to deflect
blame or guilt from themselves.
``We all want to believe that what we remember really happened,''
says Susan Blackmore, a psychologist at the University of the West
of England in Bristol. With false memories people ``can blame
someone else for their problems.''
-> Alice4Mac 2.4.4 E QWK Eval:09Jun94
Origin: 1-800-I-FEEL-OK
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