Evidence to support the ETH is so thin on the ground that we are already scraping around for something worth printing in this bulletin. Yet in the USA it is taken for granted that it is the most sensible hypothesis for explaining puzzling - and many not so puzzling - UFO reports. The lack of physical evidence does not discourage the ETHers. They can easily mould official documentation and witness statements into ETH-shapes to keep the believers happy.
Standardised,
nuts-and-bolts aliens
If the ETH is to be taken seriously then its
proponents should be able to produce serious evidence to
support it. Most abduction researchers seem to favour
paranormal theories to account for the experiences they
describe. As the paranormal hypothesis can explain
everything it explains nothing, as anything mildly
puzzling can be described in this way, thus relieving one
of the necessity for any further thought or
investigation. In other words, it is merely a form of
intellectual laziness.
Some
abduction researchers, though, have no time for the
paranormal: they are nuts-and-bolts men. One of them in
particular, David Jacobs, is now convinced that he has
the explanation for the strange activities of the alien
abductors. They are breeding human-alien hybrids who are
being prepared to take over the world. This could happen
very soon. (1)
David Jacobs
and Budd Hopkins have become notorious for their work on
producing a standard version of the abduction experience.
They also insist that abduction experiences which conform
to the standard pattern are objectively real events and
that the aliens are physically real creatures.
Through
the walls
However, if they are physical beings then they should
not be able to ignore the laws of physics, as we do
routinely in our dreams. In a dream, walking through
solid walls often presents no great difficulty, whereas
in waking reality, common sense, common experience and
the laws of physics tell us that this is impossible. It
is important to emphasise here that when abduction
researchers such as Jacobs and Hopkins talk about people
being taken from their beds or their cars into UFOs, they
are not talking about the out-of-the-body experience (or
astral projection, as occultists call it) but a physical
transfer of the abductee from bedroom to UFO, passing
through any intervening physical barriers as easily as
one walks through a patch of fog.
They can't
be framed
They get quite upset when people refuse to believe
this, so Jacobs has tried to do something to resolve the
matter, with rather amusing results. As many people are,
allegedly, frequently abducted from their bedrooms he
decided to make use of video cameras to try to
catch" the aliens in the act. (2) The abductee,
Melissa Bucknell, slept with a video camera connected to
a VCR pointed at her bed. There were no abductions for
several nights until one morning when she slept late and
she was abducted after the tape ran out! On another
occasion she slept on the living room couch to get away
from the noise of her neighbours arguing upstairs - and
was again abducted.
The video
camera was tried with other abductees and, if you haven't
already guessed, they were never abducted when sleeping
within the field of view of a working video camera. They
claimed to be abducted when they slept elsewhere or when
there was a power failure, or when the camera developed a
fault. One abductee felt the urge at 5.30 a.m. to get out
of bed and turn off the camera. She remembered seeing
Small Beings who were standing just outside of camera
range directing her to do it. (3)
In Britain,
Christopher Kenworthy and his fellow researchers have
tried a similar experiment. Some of the subjects
remembered being abducted, but when the tapes were played
back they were seen to have been in bed all the time.
However, on two separate nights which tally with their
abduction memories, two of our experimenters were seen
getting up and leaving the bedroom. In both cases they
look asleep as they walk. In both cases they are missing
for exactly three hours and 27 minutes. And then, still
asleep, they walk back in and climb into bed. (4)
Now, these
experiments no doubt provide plenty of useful material
for psychologists, but they tell us nothing about aliens.
The failure to obtain physical evidence to support
abduction stories leaves Jacobs unfazed, although he does
despair of convincing a disbelieving world of the reality
of alien activity before it is too late.
Competent
hypnotists
A major problem, as Jacobs sees it, is that many
abduction stories are either false or are genuine but
badly distorted. The solution is to use only competent
hypnotists. Jacobs makes it clear to us in his latest
book that he is a competent hypnotist. (5) This is known
to personnel managers as self assessment. As an
independent ufologist, Professor Jacobs has no line
managers to appraise his high opinion of himself and his
work. However, his colleagues think he is barmy, though
he puts it more eloquently, if less succinctly: "When I
talk about the subject to my colleagues in the academic
community, I know they think that my intellectual
abilities are seriously impaired." (6) As it is reasonable
to assume that most of his colleagues are fairly
intelligent, perhaps he should listen to them.
Secrecy
In order that the project being carried out by the
aliens can proceed smoothly, secrecy is essential. Thus
there must be no physical evidence or physical
manifestation that would convince sceptics that something
extraordinary is happening. To see what this would mean
in practice let us consider the actions which the aliens
need to take to abduct someone from a car and then return
him without causing other people to suspect that anything
is amiss.
The aliens
must wait until there are no other vehicles nearby. They
must ensure that other vehicles are not approaching the
area of the abduction. They must take control of anyone
who strays into the area. They must take all
possibilities into account. They must be invisible. Their
saucers must be invisible to radar as well as optically.
They must check beforehand whether the temporary absence
of the abductee would cause problems by arousing the
suspicion of others who are expecting their imminent
arrival at work or for some urgent appointment. So they
must know what all the people in the area, or all those
who could possibly be affected are doing or thinking of
doing. If they are so clever, there is no reason why
anyone should ever know about or suspect their existence,
yet they have become an integral part of popular culture.
Why?
Greys are
the abduction experts
According to Hopkins, Jacobs and their followers, if the
Greys have decided to abduct you there is nothing you can
do to stop them. However, it seems that the Greys took
over the abduction business because various types of ETs
who were given the contract for abducting Earthlings in
the past were not very good at it. They tended to get
into difficulties because they didn't have the knack of
gliding through walls, so had to user cruder methods.
Take the following case, for instance:
In the early part
of 1965 several reports appeared in the Buenos Aires
press of attempts by Martians to abduct people in the
north-eastern part of the country. The following is the
only case in which details are available.
One night in
the first week of February, a man living at Torrent, near
Santo Tomé, called his neighbours to come outside
and observe five luminous objects flying overhead. Then a
transparent craft landed, and from it emerged five
Martians , nearly 2 metres high, each having only one eye
in the centre of the forehead. On their heads were
instruments giving off flashes of different colours. They
entered a farmhouse and tried to seize a man, but
withdrew in the face of the firm attitude of the
villagers, and flew away.
On February 6, however, they
returned and were seen by many people. Once again they
tried to catch a man and failed. He escaped and gave the
alarm. The villagers turned out in strength and fired
their shotguns at the Martians , seemingly with no
effect. (7)
How to
avoid being abducted
Methods devised by Jacobs and his abductees to deter
the Greys have so far proved unsuccessful. But I wonder
if they have ever tried any of the old methods used to
stop the fairies from abducting people? Katharine Briggs
tells us that people had many ways of protecting
themselves against fairies. These included: making the
sign of the cross or carrying a cross, especially one
made of iron; saying prayers or chanting hymns; carrying
and sprinkling holy water or churchyard mould; carrying
bread or salt; ringing bells and whistling; using certain
herbs and plants, such as four-leafed clover, St. John's
wort, and daisies (a child wearing daisy chains was
supposed to be safe from fairy kidnapping). To stop the
fairies entering your house, nail iron horse shoes above
the doors. (8)
Some people
think that the best protection against the Greys is
disbelief. But, as Philip Klass warns, it must be a firm
and sincere disbelief: '. . . UFOnauts will never abduct a
"True UFO-Skeptic" (TUFOS), only those who secretly
believe in UFOs and those who claim they are "not
especially interested in UFOs." UFOnauts can easily
discriminate between a TUFOS and a EUFOS "Ersatz UFO
Skeptic".' (9)
So there you
have it; when the kiddies stop believing in fairies, the
fairies die. And the Greys are just modern-day fairies -
aren't they?
References
1. Jacobs,
David M. The Threat, Simon & Schuster, New
York, 1998
2. Jacobs, David M. Alien Encounters, Virgin,
London, 1996, 258-259
3. Ibid., 259-260
4. Kenworthy, Christopher. "Abduction Evidence", Alien
Encounters, No. 25, 1998, 68
5. Jacobs. The Threat, op. cit.
6. Ibid., 12
7. Creighton, Gordon. "The Humanoids" in Latin
America", Flying Saucer Review: The Humanoids,
Special Issue, October-November 1966, 39
8. Briggs, Katharine. A Dictionary of Fairies,
Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies and Other Supernatural
Creatures, Penguin Books, 1977, 335-336
9. Klass, Philip J. UFO-Abductions: A Dangerous Game,
Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York, 1988, 194
In the previous issue I expressed doubts as to the plausibility of problems with Mike Rogers's logging contract as a motive for perpetrating a UFO hoax. However, Philip Klass still thinks that this is the likely motive, and he sent the following letter:
Because of my
hectic workload, I will deal here only with the Mike
Rogers logging contract with the US Forest Service and
whether he might have "staged" the incident in
the hope of getting an "Act-of-God" extension
for his contract - without suffering the normal 10% cut
in contract price - as well as possibly winning the
National Enquirer $100,000 UFO prize (subsequently raised
to $1,000,000).
At the time
of the (alleged) UFO incident, Wednesday 5 November,
during the 3 months since Rogers had got a contract
extension on his Turkey Springs contract - taking a 10%
contract price cut - he and his crew had cleared only
roughly one-third of the total acreage. To avoid a
default, Rogers would have to clear twice as much timber
in the next five days as he had cleared in the previous
three months or obtain a contract extension.
On Tuesday 28
October, Rogers admitted to the Forest Service inspector
that he could not complete the job on time and said he
planned to meet with Forest Service contracting officer
Maurice Marchbanks to request another contract extension
(with another 10% price cut).
Question 1.
As of 5 November (8 days later) - the night of the UFO
incident - Rogers had never called or contacted
Marchbanks to request a contract extension. WHY NOT?
On Saturday 8
November 1975, when Travis was still "missing",
Rogers and Travis's older brother Duane, were interviewed
(tape recorded) by ufologist Fred Silvanus. At one point,
Rogers said: "See, this contract that we have [with
the Forest Service] is seriously behind schedule. In
fact, Monday [11 November] the contract is up [i.e. end
date for completing the work]. We haven't done any work
on it since Wednesday because of this thing. And
therefore it won't be done [by 10 November]. I hope they
[the Forest Service] will take that into account, this
problem."
Question 2.
What was Rogers "hoping" the Forest Service
would do? (If they gave him a 5-day extension, he would
not be able to complete the remaining 238 acres.)
Travis and
Rogers claim that the Turkey Springs contract was the
best, most profitable that Rogers had ever had.
Question 3.
If this claim is true, why did Rogers and crew spend so
much time working for other Forest Service contractors,
neglecting Rogers's commitment on Turkey Springs?
(One
possible explanation is that Rogers and crew prefer to
work for less pay and help other contractors avoid
default on their Forest Service contracts - even if it
means that Rogers defaults on his own contract.)
Question 4.
If the UFO incident were true, then it certainly
qualified as an "Act-of-God", i.e., an
extraordinary event that nobody could anticipate. If
Forest Service officials believed the incident had
occurred, they should have offered Rogers at least a
brief extension of his contract without penalty. But they
did not. WHY?
I look
forward to your response to these questions.
Philip J.
Klass, Washington, D.C.
So we are
back to motives again. Did Rogers and Walton contrive a
hoax in the hope that Rogers would be able to avoid a 10%
penalty on his contract, or was the aim to try to win up
to $1,000,000 from the National Enquirer?
This does not
seem to me to be the right way to go about solving this
case. The scientific question is not Why? but How? The
forensic scientist doesn't want to know why the burglar
opened the safe, he wants to know how he did it. If the
Walton affair is a hoax, why was it not exposed years ago
instead of becoming a classic believe-it-or-not story?
Remember, a
hoax would have involved the five other loggers in
Rogers's gang and, probably, Walton's mother, his brother
Duane, and possibly a few other people. There is also the
question of the involvement of the police. If the
incident had happened in Britain the hoaxers would
probably have been charged with wasting police time - a
criminal offence. Surely there are similar laws in
America?
In Skeptics
UFO Newsletter No. 51 (May 1998) Philip Klass comments on
the fact that one of the loggers, Ken Peterson, refused
to sign a paper giving permission (not legally essential)
for him to be portrayed in the film (Fire in the Sky): If
Peterson knew the incident were a hoax, this could
explain his refusal to be portrayed by name in the movie.
But if Peterson knew it was a hoax, why didn't he just
say so? What advantage do all parties to the hoax gain by
keeping it going indefinitely? And how did they sustain
the hoax in the face of intensive questioning and
investigations by police, reporters, and ufologists? What
sort of preparations did they make on the evening of 5
November 1975 to ensure that the police would be
convinced that something serious had happened?
Any ideas,
anyone?
Two
mysterious objects carrying bright lights were seen
travelling between Manchester and Leeds between about
5.00 pm and 5.45 pm on 2 February 1998. They seemed to be
at a fairly low altitude and some witnesses said that
they made a humming noise. There can be no doubt as to
the reality of these sightings because of the large
number of independent witnesses. At least two video
recordings of them were obtained. A detailed report by
Mark Ian Birdsall appears in the May-June 1998 issue of
UFO Magazine. Attempts to identify them have so far been
unsuccessful.
Andy Roberts, in his newsletter The
Armchair Ufologist ( Tough on Ufology - Tough on the
Causes of Ufology ) suggests: "Whatever agency was flying
these craft sent them over built up areas and with lights
on intentionally. They then monitor public opinion via
the press, which gives them the feedback they need."