It is very difficult to find any really interesting and mysterious unexplained UFO reports, which are worth careful analysis to see if they indicate whether there might just be a possibility that the ETH should be taken seriously. However, recent signs are encouraging. Brad Sparks's re-examination of the RB-47 case, published in Jerome Clark's latest encyclopedia, and a revival of interest in the Travis Walton case, both indicate the possibility of interesting developments in the foreseeable future.
IN 1965 the following statement was made to Project Blue Book:
I, Norman J. Muscarello, was hitchhiking on Rt. 150, three miles south of Exeter, New Hampshire, at 0200 hours on the 3rd of September. A group of five bright red lights appeared over a house about a hundred feet from where I was standing. The lights were in a line at about a sixty-degree angle. They were so bright, they lighted up the area. The lights then moved out over a large field and acted at times like a floating leaf. They would go down behind the trees, behind a house and then reappear. They always moved in the same sixty-degree angle. Only one light would be on at a time. They were pulsating: one, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one. They were so bright I could not distinguish a form to the object. I watched these lights for about fifteen minutes and they finally disappeared behind some trees and seemed to go into a field. At one time while I was watching them, they seemed to come so close I jumped into a ditch to keep from being hit. After the lights went into a field, I caught a ride to the Exeter Police Station and reported what I had seen.
Patrolman Eugene Bertrand accompanied Muscarello back to the field where
he had seen the UFO. At first he saw nothing, but when they walked into
the field the flashing lights reappeared and staged a repeat performance.
Before the lights finally moved off in a south-easterly direction, the two
men were joined by Patrolman David Hunt, who also saw them.
There was a great wave of sightings in New Hampshire in 1965, but this
incident was the most impressive and is the best known. Most of the others
were, quite reasonably, attributed to sightings of aircraft lights, bright
stars and planets.
As this incident got a lot of publicity, the US Air Force was keen to
provide an explanation to reassure the public that it was really nothing
to get excited about. However, Blue Book made rather a mess of it. In a
book published some years after the event, Dr J. Allen Hynek wrote:
Not only is this a fine example of a Close Encounter of the First Kind, but it is a showcase illustration of Blue Book negligence, put-down of witnesses, attempts to explain away the testimony of responsible witnesses with a parade of "official" explanations, and of capitulation on the part of the Pentagon which, months later, had to admit that the case should have been carried as "Unidentified". The file folders in Blue Book, however, still have the original evaluation of "Astro-Stars/Planets" and "Aircraft from Operation Big Blast". (The astronomical evaluation is completely untenable and Operation Big Blast terminated more than an hour before the incident at Exeter began, according to official records.) (1)
Ufologist Raymond Fowler carried out thorough investigations of the case,
as did journalist John G. Fuller, who wrote a book about it. (2) After
conducting a correspondence with the Air Force about the case, Bertrand
and Hunt finally received a letter from Lt. Col. John P. Spaulding,
grudgingly admitting that " . . . we have been unable to identify the
object that you observed on September 3, 1965." (3)
It was suggested that an advertising plane could have generated the
sightings, but investigators, knowing that such aircraft often generated
CE1 reports, checked and found that none of these were flying at the time.
It is, anyway, unlikely that an advertiser would pay for a plane to fly
around at such an unearthly hour.
One of the main sceptical attacks on the case came from Robert Sheaffer,
in his demolition job on ufology, entitled The UFO Verdict. (4) To soften
up the his readers before launching into possible explanations, he uses
one of the favourite ploys of CSICOP sceptics, the denigration of
ufologists and witnesses. He tells them that John G. Fuller " . . . has
recently written The Ghost of Flight 401, in which he asserts that one
major airline has managed to fill some of the empty seats on its jumbo
jets with spirits from the beyond." (5) Not only that but, " . . .
officers Bertrand and Hunt both told NICAP that they had previously read
UFO literature, although Fuller fails to mention this interesting fact."
(6)
Sheaffer suggests that some of the New Hampshire sightings were probably
observations of Jupiter, including, by implication, those made by
Muscarello and the two patrolmen. He notes that some close-encounter
reports have proved, on investigation, to be sightings of astronomical
objects.
If this seems unlikely, we should perhaps consider a case investigated by
Allan Hendry. A waitress arriving home at 3:37 a.m. saw a saucer 25 feet
in diameter, with red, green and blue flashing lights and a cloud haze
around it. She called two other persons who also saw it. There were two
lights next to the object which looked like stars, but pulsated in
different colours like the saucer. The objects were viewed for 50 minutes.
When Hendry checked the part of the sky the witnesses were looking at on
astronomical charts he found that, on the morning in question, a crescent
moon was visible and nearby were Mars and Jupiter in close conjunction.
The witnesses had not reported seeing the moon in spite of having
described the sky as clear, apart from a haze around the objects. (7)
Although somewhat exaggerated, the description of the objects was
compatible with an observation of the moon and two planets seen through
haze. However, in the case of the Exeter sightings, it is difficult to see
how Jupiter could be perceived as a row of five brilliant red lights
blinking on and off in sequence. If these reports were not generated by
misperceptions of an advertising plane, a US Air Force exercise, or bright
stars or planets, then it is difficult to imagine what the true
explanation could be.
References
1. Hynek, J. Allen. The Hynek UFO Report, Sphere Books, London, 1978, 154
2. Fuller, John G. Incident at Exeter, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1966
3. Hynek, op. cit., 165
4. Sheaffer, Robert. The UFO Verdict: Examining the Evidence, Prometheus
Books, Buffalo, New York, 1981
5. Ibid., 111
6. Ibid., 112
7. Hendry, Allan. The UFO Handbook, Sphere Books, London, 1980, 77-78
Jenny Randles. Something in the Air, Robert Hale, London, 1998. £16.99
This book is a plea for aircraft encounters with UFOs to be taken more
seriously. To this end Jenny Randles appeals to her readers to avoid the
extremes of dismissing such reports as nonsense, or attributing them to
the activities of ETs in their flying saucers.
Some reports of aerial encounters with UFOs cannot be attributed to stars
or meteors, or atmospheric optical phenomena. This leaves two main causes
of such reports, if we leave out the ETs. These are: atmospheric
electrical phenomena, such as ball lightning and other electrical
phenomena not often observed, so unrecognised by science, and; sightings
of secret military aircraft on test flights.
Apart from the classic cases which are discussed, there is much
interesting and original material, particularly concerning British
sightings. Jenny manages to explain some of the British reports as natural
phenomena, or false impressions caused by unusual formations of aircraft,
such as fighter planes being refuelled at night, giving the impression of
a giant triangle. However, the theory that many sightings are of secret
aircraft, manned or remotely piloted, being developed by British Aerospace
at Warton, Lancashire, based to a great extent on the work of Tim
Matthews, is highly controversial among British ufologists.
Jenny's work has confirmed the general impression that aircrews and air
traffic controllers are reluctant to file official reports of strange
aerial encounters. As she rightly points out, such an attitude is not
beneficial to the cause of air safety.
This is definitely a book for the nuts-and-bolts ufologists to read and
criticise, but it is not written to please the ETHers.
Bruce Rux. Hollywood Vs. the Aliens: The Motion Picture Industry's
Participation in UFO Disinformation, Frog, Ltd., Berkeley, California,
1997. £16.99
Any readers who have enjoyed Martin Kottmeyer's articles in Magonia on the
influence of science fiction films on UFO close-encounter and abduction
stories will appreciate this book. It is rather like a very long Kottmeyer
article.
Rux takes the opposite view to that of Kottmeyer. He tells us that,
instead of UFO stories aping SF films, the SF films imitate real UFO
accounts as part of a government-inspired disinformation project. Although
the blurb warns us that he is writing tongue-in-cheek, by mentioning his
"mock-serious tone", some of his ideas are interesting.
For example, he asserts that films about alien invasion were either
serious or ridiculous, depending on the impression the government or the
intelligence agencies wanted to create at the time. He points out that Ed
Wood's notorious Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) was so bad that it had to
be deliberately bad, and his analysis of the film certainly seems
convincing on that score.
Anyone who wishes to investigate the connection between SF films and the
content of UFO reports will find this book a very useful reference manual.
In your "Walton Again" article (No. 7, September 1998), you assert one of
the sticking points for those who think the Walton incident was a hoax is
the behaviour of his fellow woodsmen in the wake of his disappearance. You
suggest they would have to have been brilliant actors to fool the lawmen
who investigated, implying such folks aren't likely to have such talent.
The truth is, however, highly credible performances by ordinary people are
quite common in criminal/hoax situations, even high-profile ones. For
example, recently the US television magazine show 20/20 reported on the
rapid burgeoning of hoaxed hate crimes - ethnic, race, and gay bashing and
the like. This is a growth field for people perpetrating insurance fraud,
promoting a cause, seeking attention and sympathy, etc., because of our
mutual reluctance to call into question the veracity of victims of such
despicable crimes and the revulsion civilised people feel for those who
commit them.
20/20 illustrated the problem with four cases - a Jewish couple whose home
(ultimately torched), car, and other property had been repeatedly defaced
with swastikas, etc., over a period of months; a black man whose car had
been spray-painted with anti-black slurs; two gay room-mates whose
apartment had been trashed and defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti; and a
black-white couple whose home and other property had been defaced with
hate slogans and set afire. Television news clips and other video were
shown, the "victims" tearful, shaken, indignant - tremendously convincing.
Similar clips of investigators were aired, leaving no doubt they were
certain of the sincerity of these people. Neighbours and friends were
equally convinced, and lavished donations of food, clothing, money and
more on them. The defaced-car crime sparked a major anti-hate
demonstration.
In the first case, FBI agents launched an investigation and were stunned
when they caught the couple on surveillance video setting fire to their
own home. (These two are in prison, and she's now quite convincingly
claiming they were framed.) The defaced car case was solved only when the
perpetrator bragged to an associate that he'd done it himself so he could
get his car repainted at insurance company expense. A similar gaffe
exposed the allegedly bashed gays, and the other arson case was cracked
only when a sharp-eyed insurance investigator noticed a strong similarity
to previous cases and discovered the couple involved had pulled the same
trick before.
Believable behaviour by crime victims and UFO witnesses is one of the
weakest elements of supporting evidence. While its absence is a warning
flag, its presence should never be given any great weight. Yet it's all
too easy to fall into that trap - and I speak from experience, for
example, having fallen into it with Glenn Dennis of Roswell fame.
That said, however, I agree it's highly unlikely all six of Walton's
fellow woodsmen could have been in on a hoax and yet appeared so
convincing, not to mention keeping their stories straight under the close
scrutiny they received. If - IF - the Walton incident was a hoax, at least
most of them were among the hoaxed.
Karl T. Pflock, Placitas, New Mexico
Thanks for sending me the ETH Bulletin. I have certainly enjoyed the
debate it has encouraged. The striking thing about the issues you have
raised is that people tend to think in terms of PSH versus ETH yet, as
your September editorial notes, the PSH helps us understand popular
beliefs about the subject. Even keen ETH supporters must acknowledge that
the PSH can be a useful tool in separating the "signal" from the "noise".
Instead of that appreciation, ETH supporters tend to dismiss any PSH
out-of-hand as ridiculous, yet they can believe that abductees can be
transported through solid walls!
People who should know better refer to an abductee being ""clean" i.e.,
was not directly familiar with the abduction phenomenon" (John E. Mack,
Abduction, Simon & Schuster, 1994, p. 18). That is like saying a US
citizen is not familiar with the appearance and characteristics of a motor
vehicle. It is also noteworthy that out of Mack's 76 abduction cases he
had only 4 extensively tested by PhD psychologists because such work is
"time-consuming and expensive" (ibid., p. 17). Out of the 4, 1 of the
abductees had to be hospitalised and the other 3 tested within normal
ranges. If 1 out of 4 of his better cases is dismissed in this manner it
doesn't say a lot for the other 72 cases.
Mack concludes that he is dealing with a phenomenon that "could not be
explained psychiatrically" (ibid., p. 20) yet this is on the basis of 4
thorough tests. Furthermore, what are the similarities and differences
between "normal" abductees and those who are suffering from some sort of
psychiatric disorder? Mack insists that you have to "stretch and twist
psychology beyond reasonable limits" (ibid., p. 20) to explain the
abductee phenomenon, yet, on the basis of a few verbal accounts, that have
not been subjected to rigorous testing, he is willing to discount the
whole of prevailing Western science.
Psychology and sociology can at least
be used to deal with our world in a scientific and testable manner; the
ETH is just a belief system that, as the controversy stirred up by this
bulletin has shown, is not inclined to accept explanations or even
detailed examination of hallowed UFO cases.
Nigel Watson, Plymouth, UK
Christopher Allan is fully right in rating the Gill case the best
multiple-witness case on record in the sense of it being to all
appearances reliable and a hard one to construct a prosaic explanation for
that will be satisfying and compelling. When he asks if this is "really
unanswerable evidence of ETH", however, he is confusing insolubility with
evidence for aliens. In the documents of the case Gill clearly states of
the figures on the craft, "no doubt they are human". When Cruttwell probed
for details, Gill indicated that the parts he could see had the "outlines
of normal human beings". Similarly problematic, the beings are walking on
top of the craft while apparently aloft. This runs counter to all the
cases in the literature that have the beings inside their craft behind
doors and windows instead of up on deck. The upward-angled beams of the
craft have no close parallel to other alien craft reports and they have no
obvious function. They don't seem to be tracking birds or aeroplanes.
Nothing of the case makes sense from an ETH perspective. Parts of the case
involve misinterpretations of astronomical objects, but the parts of the
case that involve multiple witnessing of figures on the deck of some sort
of craft cannot reduce to such an explanation without invoking some hefty
improbabilities about suggestibility. I advanced a theory in an earlier
Magonia that it probably involved a boat involved in night fishing. It did
not go down well with a number of UFO buffs and criticism by one fellow
has been endless. At the end of the day when all the thrashing of minutiae
is over, this idea may not convince, but it still seems to me better than
the alternatives.
Martin S. Kottmeyer, Carlyle, Illinois