Ufologists who support the ETH can easily find cases which appear to point to it as a possible explanation, but the main weakness of such cases is that the testimony never seems to be confirmed by independent witnesses. Where there are said to be such witnesses, their testimony remains mysteriously unavailable, as in a number of incidents I have discussed in previous issues. If there really are well-witnessed, inexplicable UFO incidents, there can't be many of them. Perhaps someone would like to furnish us with a list of them?
THE RECENT crisis in BUFORA, involving the resignations of key members,
highlights one of the perennial problems of ufology - the tension between
the majority, who believe in the flying saucers and see UFO organisations
as having a duty to entertain them and to reinforce their beliefs, and the
minority who prefer to carry out objective investigations of apparent UFO
incidents with a view to discovering the truth about them.
This latest bust-up has prompted me to have a root through back issues of
Magonia and its predecessors, MUFOB and Merseyside UFO Bulletin. There are
many items concerning the fights and feuds in British ufology and they
nearly all have the same cause. It is simply that there always have been
intelligent and sensible people interested in UFO reports who fail to
realise that formal UFO organisations exist for the benefit of those who
believe in the flying saucers. When such UFO organisations get hold of an
interesting case, they invent details to spice it up, then present it in
various forms to entertain their fellow believers. Objective
investigations and rational explanations are definitely unwelcome.
Pseudoscience is preferred to science, as science is too difficult and its
application is all too likely to lead to true explanations, which can be
very boring, and can undermine the faith of those who attend daft lectures
and buy gee-whiz books.
There is nothing new about the turmoil in BUFORA and there is nothing new
about Malcolm Robinson's policy of including cranks, publicity seekers and
the mentally unbalanced in his lecture programme. What is unusual, though,
is that there are increasing numbers of UFO researchers who are no longer
prepared to tolerate the activities of such people. In the old days one
could attend a UFO conference and see sceptics, objective researchers and
cranks happily sharing the same platform. The cranks got all the applause,
of course.
Now some of the saner ufologists have decided that enough is
enough. But, one wonders: Why did they ever even contemplate joining
BUFORA in the first place? BUFORA has always had among its members many
eccentric and gullible people, pseudoscientists with fake PhDs, "Captains"
who never went to sea, and other oddities. Yet some people persist in
believing that organisations like BUFORA can be reformed if only a few
sane people join them. In his resignation letter, BUFORA Press Officer Dr
David Clarke wrote: "As a working journalist of ten years I felt I could
be a great asset for the association, and was initially under the
impression that my experience and skills would be valued by council. I
anticipated working closely with council members to promote BUFORA as the
premier national UFO study group, committed to high standards and setting
a responsible example to other groups, individuals and the outside world."
Magonia's predecessor, Merseyside UFO Bulletin, was started because I and
a few others found BUFORA and its affiliates to be insufferable. And that
was way back in 1968. The Bulletin followed on from MUFORG Bulletin, which
I had started as a member of that group (which was affiliated to BUFORA)
in 1966. Sceptical and sensible members of the group contributed
interesting items to MUFORG Bulletin; the believers and head-bangers
contributed nothing, but complained loudly about its content. They
apparently wanted vaguely uplifting stories about blond-haired Venusians,
together with the occasional technical piece about anti-gravity drives for
flying saucers. The rows that resulted when the believers did not get what
they wanted could be amusing, though. In 1969, I wrote, concerning MUFORG
and MUFORG Bulletin:
Towards the end of 1966 we got even more controversial. In September I
went to the BUFORA Northern Conference in Bradford and heard Mr Arthur
Shuttlewood holding forth for two solid hours about the Warminster
phenomena. My scathing review of this event, in the October 1966 issue of
the Bulletin, brought two indignant letters in support of Shuttlewood for
publication in the December issue.
However, in that December issue we really excelled ourselves. Alan Sharp
wrote a lyrical piece, "Moonlight at Warminster", which practically
suggested that observers there were victims of their own overwrought
imaginations. We also published reviews of the BUFORA Annual General
Meeting, written by Dave Hughes and Paul Hopkins. Both reviews were highly
critical, with plenty of sarcastic comments. I must admit, though, that
Hopkins puzzled me at the time by complaining in his write-up that he had
to pay 3/- [3 shillings = 15 pence!] for "temporary membership" in order
to be admitted. I had also attended the meeting, but I just walked
straight into the hall, assuming that the people clustered around the
table were merely intent on buying the UFO books and magazines inevitably
offered for sale at such events!
These reviews resulted in some "more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger" letters from
BUFORA officials [they didn't just ignore their critics in those days] and
a great shouting match at the January 1967 MUFORG meeting, which sought to
establish whether or not the contents in the December issue were
justified. The shouting died down after about half an hour and the result
was generally agreed to be a draw. (1)
When I left MUFORG nobody took on the task of editor and the group
gradually disintegrated as its sane members found better things to do with
their spare time.
In 1970, John Rimmer wrote:
Then there's the BUFORA in-group. Very interesting this one. It should be
required study for organisational psychologists. The plots and
counter-plots are Machiavellian. I find them fascinating, but I am the
sort of sadist who finds self-destruction fascinating. . . . Yet the
BUFORA people are all honourable men, why do they behave in this way?
Chiefly, I think, because they have run out of ideas. Because they are
sterile, devoid of any new ideas, incapable of adjusting a way of
thinking. This leads to pomposity, a deep, self-assured feeling that any
criticism is the work of an inferior intellect. . . .
Face it! The average
ufologist wants to go to a group and hear someone telling him about the
space people. If he's over twenty-five he wants to hear about the nice
space people. If he's under twenty-five he wants to hear about the nasty
space people. The last thing he wants to do is study and investigate, or
pay out any of his easy earned money so that others can. Even the
investigation is limited. If you accept, as most do, that the UFOs are
space craft there is little you can do except panic and wait for them to
announce themselves. And most people are doing this very well indeed. (2)
This article was "noted with some dismay" by Richard Beet of the Surrey Investigation Group on Aerial Phenomena in the next issue (Vol. 3, No. 4) of Merseyside UFO Bulletin, and he went on to emphasise the need for organised groups. However, in ufology, organised groups just do not work; they serve largely to entertain believers and to spread disinformation about common misperceptions and unusual phenomena. I believe that one of the main mistakes made by those UFO organisations who start with the intention to be objective is in allowing anyone to join, instead of operating a strict, even if informal, selection procedure. Such groups would be small, but would surely be more effective and more respected. There are not many sensible and intelligent folk who take a healthily sceptical interest in UFOs. As Peter Brookesmith put it, it is "dark and lonely work, but someone has to do it". (3)
References
1. Harney, John. "A Personal View of the Sixties", Merseyside UFO
Bulletin, 2, 6, November-December 1969
2. Rimmer, John. "The Death and Life of British Ufology", Merseyside UFO
Bulletin, 3, 3, June-July 1970
3. Brookesmith, Peter. "Dark and Lonely Work", Magonia, 52, May 1995
David M. Jacobs. The Threat, Simon & Schuster, 1998. £16.99, $23.00
This book has so far generated some derision, but little comment.
Jacobs,
a professor of history at Temple University in Philadelphia, has been
researching UFOs since 1966, but is not a man to rush to conclusions. His
1975 book The UFO Controversy in America was a proper academic study which
tried to sit on the fence, though it showed signs of falling off on the
ETH side. By the late 1970s he "could no longer deny that witnesses were
seeing something extraordinary and probably not from Earth". In 1986 he
performed his first hypnotic regression. Since then he has regressed over
a hundred abductees, and in recent years he has come to believe he has
thereby "uncovered information that allows UFO researchers to solve the
UFO mystery".
We have heard this claim many times before. Unfortunately, all of the
definitive solutions to the UFO mystery have been different, and mostly
mutually incompatible.
Jacobs believes that aliens are unable to reproduce
themselves properly, so they are abducting our women and forcing them into
a breeding programme intended to create human-alien hybrids who will
eventually take over the world. Huge numbers of busy aliens must be
engaged therein: he estimates that more than a million Americans have been
abducted, perhaps as many as five million, sometimes regularly: one woman
"had as many as 100 abductions during a one-year period" (and to her
distress her family and friends refused to believe her). Their genetic
science is so advanced that they can even use women who are postmenopausal
or who have had hysterectomies. Some hybrids are already sufficiently like
us that they can mingle with humans unnoticed for up to a few hours. As
students of urban legend will have guessed, while on Earth they like to
travel about in unmarked vans and black helicopters. Even if the world's
scientists wake up to The Threat, they may be too late to prevent it,
since "The Change" (when "they" will start to rule openly, apparently) is
coming in not more than two generations, perhaps in as little as five
years.
The trouble is that this is one of those theories that, if true, should
never have got into print. The ruthless aliens are supposed to have
already reached the stage where they can do what they like with us, and
since they monitor abductees closely (through their implants, he suggests)
they must know that he has learnt their secrets: surely then they would
have silenced him (or did they allow him to publish as a double bluff?).
Yet Jacobs is obviously completely sincere, and so probably are his
abductees. If one is to dismiss his findings, then it is worth asking how
come he has apparently obtained a consistent body of evidence for
something that is not real?
Firstly, at least some of these cases seem to have begun with a genuinely
inexplicable event. One woman wrote to him: "In 1979 my boyfriend and I
saw a UFO close up and it swooped down low towards us. All I remember was
running, and then we found ourselves in our car and it was six hours
later. I have thought about this incident every day of my life since
then." Unfortunately he does not tell us anything more about this woman,
though one may suppose that he hypnotised her and got her to recall her
abduction.
If so, he would have been making a crucial assumption. When dealing with
the unknown, one ought to consider every possibility. Reports of "missing
time" might, for instance, be caused by people going into trances for some
reason. If so, then it would be futile to regress them, since there would
be nothing lost for them to recall.
In most instances, however, the evidence that the subject might have been
abducted is pretty vague, e.g. a woman who sat in on his university course
"UFOs and American Society" started to feel so uncomfortable that she had
to stop attending. Later they concluded that she had been abducted 13
times in 1994 alone.
In another case, a graduate student could recall having been molested by a
stranger at the age of twelve. Under hypnotic regression, however, the
incident turned out to have been a screen memory for "a routine abduction
event". This anecdote raises all kinds of possibilities that Jacobs
doesn't explore, not least that alien abductions might be screen memories
for ordinary sexual abuse.
Though he says he is careful not to ask leading questions, it is hard to
believe that he does not put his own interpretation on events. He states
that aliens purposely place "instilled memories" in the abductee's mind:
"I have had people remember figures that looked like Abraham Lincoln
wearing a stovepipe hat, men wearing fedoras, angels, devils, and so
forth." A hypnotist with a different agenda might regard the angels or
devils as real, but the aliens as "instilled memories". One woman recalled
being assaulted and raped, a candle pushed into her vagina, and seeing a
vision of people being hacked to death in a graveyard. This could have
been taken as a classic example of Satanic Abuse, but here it is
interpreted as caused by hybrids intimidating her so that she would
co-operate with them.
Then again, some other abductionists believe that
the US military is secretly working with the aliens. Not so, says Jacobs:
some hybrids wear one-piece jump suits that resemble uniforms so "it is
easy to mistake them for American military personnel". One gathers that he
has to set his abductees straight on this point.
What is the proof for all this? Attempts have been made to video abductees
at night. "So far, no abductions have been videotaped. Rather, tapes
reveal people getting up and inexplicably turning off the VCR, or unusual
power outages during which the camera turns off, or the camera simply goes
off mysteriously." Jacobs is also well aware that false memory and
confabulations are common, and devotes a chapter to this difficulty.
Apparently he judges the stories by their similarity. Melissa, the very
first woman he regressed, described how she touched an alien's head and
"immediately felt, love, warmth, and affection emanating from him". But
she did not recall this on her second regression, and no other abductee
has reported having been "required to touch an alien's head and receive
loving emotions". Therefore he concludes that this was a false memory. It
would seem from this that those things he thinks are genuine must be true
because more than one abductee reports them. An example is "Mindscan",
reported by several named subjects, where an alien stares at a woman to
make her sexually aroused, sometimes to the point of intense orgasm. (Does
the hypnotist merely make them recall this, or actually re-undergo it?)
One wonders how far the apparent consistency of these stories is actually
due to the arrangement of the material. In his comments on the sessions
Jacobs frequently uses special terms such as gray, hybrid, The Change, as
also in his non-leading questions ("gray beings, or hybrid?"), but they do
not occur in the quoted extracts from the subjects. One might even ask
whether, if many people had been abducted by aliens, they would
necessarily have undergone similar things?
In any case, such consistency is hardly proof of reality. It is well known
to Jungian analysts that unconnected people in different parts of the
world will have very similar dreams, apparently because everyone's mind
works in the same basic way. Hypnotic regression may just be tapping into
the same collective unconscious. Then again, Jacobs assumes that you have
to select the consistent details out from the admixture with false
memories, instilled memories, and other phantasmata. This would only work
if there really was a consistent body of evidence to be recovered, if all
these subjects had indeed forgotten similar experiences of abduction -
which is not independently proven.
I am afraid that if Jacobs is right, then nonetheless the scientific
community are not going to take him seriously, so the world as we know it
will be doomed.
Gareth J. Medway
Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping. X-Treme Possibilities: A
Comprehensively Expanded Rummage Through Five Years of The X-Files,
Virgin, 1998. £6.99
Love it or hate it The X-Files will help you identify where the loonies
get most of their wacky ideas from. As the authors say in this book, The
X-Files is the product of a nation that is so betrayed by its leaders that
it has come to believe that there is some cosmic conspiracy at work.
As a consequence, the Greys are to blame for the evils and shortcomings of
US democracy. They are the all-powerful bureaucrats from outer space:
The Greys are also the dead of Belsen (an image The X-Files takes literally), aborted foetuses, shaved experimental cats: all those things we've done, that we should be guilty about, externalised, mythologised, and back to do to us what we did to them.
The activities of Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully have
"progressed" from being earnest variations on popular horror and science
fiction films based on tabloid headlines, to self-conscious,
tongue-in-cheek storylines.
This book provides an episode-by-episode guide which takes you through all
the twists and turns of the plots and how they relate to each other. It is
an entertaining and insightful read and contains many nuggets of
intriguing "facts" from the series. For example, Mulder eats sunflower
seeds in several episodes; apparently these have a protective effect
against vampires and from other potential biological threats against
humanity. I wonder if many parrots are starving due to people imitating
him?
For ufologists and explorers of the unknown this is a fine look at the
interface between fact and fiction; it's also extremely good value for
money. Buy it before they get you.
Nigel Watson
Thanks for the review (15 months late but what the heck) of UFO Crash
Landing? Friend or Foe? I am puzzled why Nigel Watson seems to appear out
of his self-imposed Bermuda Triangle just to review books about
Rendlesham. As such we get a curious impression of his apparent bias
against this case.
To say that Roswell compared with it is "sensible to believe in" is
ridiculous. There we are trying to evaluate a 52-year-old story via
witnesses who nearly all died years ago, seeded with so much modern hype
and invention (the autopsy film, bits of alleged Roswell debris, etc.,
etc.) that there is no hope of getting very far. In so far as we can get,
however, Roswell is clearly not a case "to believe in" for the
overwhelming evidence supports the view that this was a downed balloon
used in the Mogul experiment. That is certainly how I read the evidence at
present and I do not consider Roswell of any huge significance, except
from an instructive and socially historical perspective.
In contrast Rendlesham offers a far better prospect. Why? Most of the
witnesses are still alive and many are now talking. It is possible to
collate what they all say, record what was going on in the area at the
time and try from all of that to piece the thing together into some kind
of picture that approximates to the truth. That is what I do in this book.
To say - as Nigel does yet again without justification - that the book is
merely a "great laugh" and shows (presumably my) "gullibility" is a little
galling given his apparent lack of understanding of this complex case.
For a start, the witness testimony provided - from the likes of Penniston,
Halt and Burroughs - is all first-hand direct from them. That escalates
this book up a notch, surely? I make abundantly clear why I consider them
the most reliable and what problems I have with the comments of both Larry
Warren and "Steve Roberts". Indeed, at no point does Nigel even indicate
that I express grave doubts that Roberts was even involved and am well
aware of the "disinformation" aspect to his story-telling. The innuendo is
I fell for his tall tales when I patently did not. His question as to why
someone from USAF public affairs should want ufologists to accept tall
tales about aliens is answered in the book, by my pointing out that if a
more mundane but covert explanation for the events exists then the
fostering of alien stories on base (and off via ufology) had a positive
effect. It helped to create precisely the climate of sloppy disinterest in
what took place that Nigel now so perfectly demonstrates. I do not
consider my seeing of this to be gullible. But I do suspect that the
powers that be counted on the attitude of British ufology to believe that
if a case smells like an alien contact then it ain't to be trusted or to
be touched with a ten-foot pole.
As for my presentation of multiple scenarios, Nigel likens these to
conclusions as slippery as grease. What he does not say is that my book is
written in the following way. First I report all the evidence, via witness
testimony, the documents, and the physical evidence, presenting the pros
and cons of each (in the process killing some sacred cows like the
radiation and marks on trees). Then I go step by step through the
investigation process as I have always been taught to do. This means
considering one by one the possibilities - from the simplest to the most
bizarre. So we look at mistaken identity (lighthouse, etc.) through
aircraft activity and more debatable military practices (e.g. the Cold
Witness/Cobra Mist experiments) and on to the claims of ufology that the
case is an alien contact. Assessing each option, showing in what way it
works and in what way it does not reflects not so much me keeping my
options open, failing to decide or trying to have it every which way at
once. It is merely presenting readers with the facts and all options and
doing my job as an investigator to try to pick my way through the
possibilities.
I guess Nigel would only have been happy if I had written a book seeking
to prove the whole case collapses as a combination of
lighthouse/meteor/rabbit IFOs. Alternatively, most of ufology would have
been happy (and so would my bank manager!) if I had set out to prove the
aliens had landed in a smoky white spaceship. In some ways I do both. But
unfortunately, the reality of this case is that the evidence is not cut
and dried in any direction. I show why the second night's events are, in
my view, more likely to be mistaken identity. I show why the first night's
story is more open to other interpretations. I also do not just magic out
of thin air the ideas about Cobra Mist, as if I had simply invented this
daft idea about a covert experiment. At no point does Nigel mention the
evidence I unravel about the NASA programme to develop an over-the-horizon
radar on Orford Ness, the scientific puzzles about the changes to the
orbital decay path of a Soviet rocket that night, or the views of space
scientists on the matter. I present this option because, and only because,
it fits a number of the facts surprisingly well. If indeed a by-product of
a defensive weapon was - as I suggest - the accidental discovery of a
crude offensive beam weapon, then I am not in the least surprised if this
was tested on a night when a rocket was burning up on a flight path over
the forest. As I point out in the book, it was the perfect moment to
conduct such a test, because anything that did happen would superficially
seem indistinguishable from what was supposed to occur anyway. Of course,
if airmen then saw the beam in action it would also justify the spinning
of yarns about aliens to ensure that the media and ufologists switched off
from seeking out the more down-to-earth truth. They would either rubbish
the whole case (like Nigel seems to want to do) or go chasing non-existent
spaceships instead.
So, no, I don't know what happened and I am still eager to find out one
day. What I do know is that the truth is far more complicated than Nigel
(or most sceptics) seems to think it was. The case is, in fact, a terrific
one because it has so much going on. There is misidentification,
distortion, exaggeration and probably confabulation. There are government
botch-ups and cover-ups. But at the heart of it there is at least a prima
facie case for suspecting that the nefarious activities of the NSA on
Orford Ness were not unconnected with what took place at the start of this
weekend of confusion.
Roswell was, and is, little more than a few bits of crashed foil and wood
misidentified at the time, later correctly identified but obscured by the
USAF desire not to go public with their experiments of the day. Rendlesham
is ufology in microcosm. Almost the entire subject is there in one case. I
wish I could honestly say that it was all just a bunch of spaced-out
airmen chasing a lighthouse and then fooling themselves for 20 years.
Whilst - as I have never shirked from admitting - some of it clearly is, I
believe there is rather too much going on in the background to claim game,
set and match. Nigel, I fear, made his mind up 15 years ago and I hope he
can at least ask himself the question - might I not be wrong? Anyone who
has read my articles on this case even since Friend or Foe? was published
in January 1998 (see Northern UFO News and International UFO Reporter)
will know that I am constantly reviewing my position as new evidence seems
to constantly develop. As a UFO investigator, the day you stop letting the
evidence dictate what you believe and being willing to change from belief
to scepticism (or indeed vice versa) is the day you ought to quit. It
always puzzles me why keeping an open mind is regarded in some quarters as
a crime worse than making it up prematurely in a way that proves to be
dead wrong.
Jenny Randles, Buxton, Derbyshire
Nigel Watson replies: I am shocked to discover that the Roswell case
amounts to "a few bits of crashed foil and wood misidentified at the time"
whereas Rendlesham offers a better chance of getting to the truth.
Surprisingly, this better, newer and more enlightening case, by Jenny's
own admission, is full of "misidentification, distortion, exaggeration and
probably confabulation. There are government botch ups and cover ups". To
me that could equally be applied as a description of the Roswell case; it
certainly does not sound like a better route to the truth!
The twists and
turns of Rendlesham are of obvious fascination for Jenny. She indicates
that some military operations or experiments were being conducted, and
that the UFO story has been put about to get rid of closed-minded sceptics
like me.
From such a scenario we must conclude that Jenny is acting as a subversive
agent who is actively willing to reveal the secrets of our Government,
just to satisfy her curiosity for the "truth". Where is her social
responsibility? Will she accept that she is an urban guerilla who is
undermining our political, social, military and economic structure? Isn't
that a crime worse than being merely closed-minded?