Today's "Ghost Hunters", "Cryptozoologists" and Ufologists Stand on Their Shoulders

My brain is going.

I realised that I had not been preserving Franklyn Davin-Wilson's files on Astronauts and UFOs, Astronomers and UFOs, Mars Mysteries, Unidentified Orbital Objects etc.

Apparently, most of it I have moved into plastic wallets but what I haven't are being moved today.

Of course, Franklyn's work ended with his death in 1984 and some of the work I promised him just before he died, that I would get "out there". Some of it I have -my "If You Invite People To The Party" (UFO Contact?) included a lot of his Signals From Space material (updated) and I mention his name and work whenever I can.

I hate thinking about the trouble I went through to save his archives but the other option was just to let it all end up in a skip. Easier for me that way but for some reason I do stupid things🤨 And one day maybe the work will be looked on as pioneering -and it was because no other Ufologist was doing this type of work nor "Signals and UFOs" that I was doing.

I think of Arthur Constance, self educated and who was a pioneer in British Ufology and how all of his work ended up in council bins or pilfered by "friends" and then never heard of again.

Even though he set up the UKs first civilian UFO group (the Flying Saucer Club of Great Britain) in 1952 and saved the British Flying Saucer Bureau, did the first technical analysis of reports and cooperated with the Air Ministry, went on the be a big wig in BUFORA and much more, Graham F. N. Knewstub is unknown to today's Ufologists. No idea what happened to his files.

Terry Cox in the 1970s was doing a lot with infra red photography and UFOs but what happened to he and his work I have no idea since Ufologists showed no real interest in anything technical.

Most Ufologists these days have no idea that Ivan T. Sanderson wrote anything other than, perhaps, something about Unidentified Submarine Objects (USOs) -and decades before that became a "thing". They have no idea that he was a zoologist, explorer, as well as presented wildlife items on TV shows in the United States. He was the one who behaved scientifically in the case of the Minnesota Iceman case wanting to gather more data and confirm facts while Bernard Heuvelmans not just jumped the track but put the case into ridicule. Sanderson was the first investigator to get to Flatwoods and investigate and talk to the witnesses -all that forgotten. He also wrote THE book on hairy hominoids before Bigfoot, yeti and others became a real pop culture phenomenon.

There are many others whose files we have lost and whose work now only exists in books and magazine articles.

Even John A. Keel, whose writing I loved but he added a lot of uh 'facts' had an extensive collection.

And the paranormal field had Harry Price the man who investigated the Borley rectory and much, much more and faced every attempt at character assassination and debunking his work (he was no saint) by some pretty jealous competitors and armchair critics with a puff on his pipe.

Shane Leslie whose book Shane Leslie's Ghost Stories is fascinating.

Elliott O'Donnell -the author whose books I literally grabbed from the Southmead Public Library while at school and digested. The writing style and accounts were eye opening!

Harry Ludlam who is today on a list of "lesser known authors" for goodness sakes and many others; now forgotten because Generation Idiot requires all sorts of mumbo jumbo instruments that have never been submitted for scientific testing, anything with a light that flashes so someone can scream "Its answering -its in front of me!" and digitally fake or simply fake while filming.

So long as every single home and building in the world has a portal or gateway to Hell and poltergeists as well as shadow people, demons and much more who the F cares if it isn't real -P. T. Barnum earned a good living (like certain authors and You Tubers today) by the rule that "There's one (sucker) born every minute. A rule that became the Warren family crest it seems.

If you just want a scare and entertainment then park your arse on your sofa and guzzle down the pizza and enjoy the show. But if you want to learn the truth then READ. Buy books -some are available to read for free online these days. Learn. UFO history can be complicated so buy a copy of something like Haunted Skies. I could recommend my own (well, only if you insist) fully referenced books with very rare (often thought lost) photos and subjects covering cryptozoology, ghosts, weird mysteries and, yes, UFOs.

We are in a new era of illiteracy where dogma is accepted. 30 minutes of false facts in a video are accepted as facts.

Do not be sheep. Find out the truth for yourself!

Alien Encounters, or, How One Academic Proves You Need Not Do Any Research To Get Some Publicity

  McGill University used to have a good reputation for research. Sadly, the years have not been good to it or so it seems. A well known university with access to all the research you can find online and all the books it must hold...

Have you heard of its Office for Science and Society -"separating Sense from Nonsense"? Well, I do know one thing: Joe Schwarcz, Phd writes a lot for its website. Basically, its like a social studies department but giving itself a grander title.

Sadly, as I have already pointed out, Schwarcz's articles on various subjects cannot be taken seriously. That is not an accusation I make lightly. There were some articles I was interested in ...until I found one titled Alien Encounters.

In this post Schwarcz refers to the encounter at Kelly and the Sutton family. It's a complex case that he skirts over details on (but, hey -"UAP" are big at the moment so he probably wants some of that attention) and is "inaccurate" but does end with: "What actually happened that night remains a mystery but no trace of an alien encounter has ever been found". In other words he dare not actually look at the details of the case and give an honest opinion based on that.

When he comes to the Betty and Barney Hill case which I have, as everyone knows, tried three times to shake the authenticity of and failed, Schwarcz writes: 

"While the veracity of the Hills’ close encounter of the third kind is suspect, there is no question that the publicity the supposed event eventually received spawned a host of alien abduction reports".

So they were making it all up? Lying? And what of all the extra independent evidence surrounding the case?  No matter it seems as Schwarcz appears to base his version of the Hills encounter on a badly researched internet site.

This piece was throwing out integrity to get the "pop hits" because it was almost reminiscent of the debunking pieces published in the 1950s and 1960s. "Sorting the Sense from Nonsense"  in this case ought to be replaced with "Talking Nonsense and Ignoring Research".

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history/alien-encounters?fbclid=IwAR2fDCJpZjLRXzLq1-bmN7sSs0jw6kShcA50vKEfxAimQcyPuU_vENx1--Q

Then I saw Schwarcz's chosen image for the piece. "A pictures speaks a thousand words".

And Schwarcz's is mocking UFO encounters?