I was asked whether I was not being a bit hard on Ufology in my post yesterday. No. Believe me, if I wanted to tear a new hole in a certain UFO organisation I could and that would be citing many references.
I had hoped that
UFO Contact? might give Ufology a bit of a wake up call. Seriously, I doubt beating these people over the head with a baseball bat would get a reaction. Let's look at a few home truths here.
If you want to contact, say, the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) do not look at their official site. You will find a link to complete an online UFO sighting form. You will find a prominent link to make a donation. There is even a link for the media -now
that is very important. I remember a time when you could find the contact details of MUFON directors and other 'staffers' easily. To actually track down someone who is "in charge" you need to do what I had to do: track them down via social media!
Then you have to remember that you are not just a witness to an event as far as these groups are concerned: you are a commercial commodity. Firstly, "Why don't you subscribe to our journal?" Then, if the sighting is good enough well, you could get pushed forward as part of one of their media pushes -and if you know what is going on then you
know this is going on.
Now, yesterday, I spent over an hour watching what MUFON calls "
The Best MUFON UFO Video Submissions Of 2018. (January - April)" -with comments muted. It is 1 hour 21 mins of out of focus/in focus clips of Chinese lanterns, balloons, aircraft, stars and even lightning so no wonder comments were disable. Any scientist seriously thinking about looking at the evidence will see that video, laugh out loud and think "kooks!"
"MUFON’s goal is to study, track and gather data on daily UFO encounters from around the world.
“As the world's oldest and largest UFO phenomenon investigative body we aim to be the inquisitive minds' refuge seeking answers to that most ancient question, ‘Are we alone in the universe?’”
And the UFO media darlings tend to resemble and give off the air of used car salesmen and bunko men. The will cite the "solid cases" endlessly -
Thomas Mantell who did not die chasing an extraterrestrial space ship. It was a tragic accident and all the facts are openly known and have been since at least the 1960s -the truth was known in the 1950s but promoted as a UFO incident.
The Aurora UFO crash never happened. It has been proven and why the story originated is also very well known.
I do not have time to waste on Roswell -the material is in the US National Archives and exactly as described.
Time and time again you hear the same old 50, 60 or 70 years old case cited and this is because the media darlings can claim it was genuine -you prove other wise decades later. Most members of the public believe the 'experts' and, hey, TV and fantasists have 'proven' the government is lying about all of this. These are the people who watch video recordings of meteorological balloons exploding and believe the Government is secretly releasing chemicals into the atmosphere.
Somewhere, in the mid-1980s, when it came to UFO research and investigation things went very wrong. Believe me, when I wrote
UFO Contact? I had no idea what I would come across and it did not put investigators in a good light.
Now, excluding all the "Grey" alien abduction hysteria fuelled by the evangelical paranoia of people like David Jacobs, look back to reports before Greys became "de rigueur". How many of the cases of alleged alien abduction or Close Encounters of the Third Kind can you think of involving "black" percipients/witnesses?
Barney Hill
Harrison Bailey
Anyone else? How about the many -
many- who witnessed the objects and entities along with Father Gill in Papua, New Guinea in 1959?
Let's look at this. Barney Hill and his wife, Betty, were accused of outright lying, fraud, being hysterical and much more. In 1973, when I began looking into these cases I mentioned the Hill case. Norman Oliver of BUFORA and Cos-Mos, spoke highly of the case. I found a couple people who "hmmed" and "ahhed" and some believed the abduction was merely a false memory the couple shared after being traumatised when a group of white young racists attacked them. Do you know what the majority responded with? "Well they are a mixed race couple". No, seriously. I was even hearing this is 1979 and 1984. Apparently I had to make my own mind up what the "they were a mixed race couple" inferred.
Let's get this straight. "White", "yellow, "Black" or aubergine or blue-skinned (there are blue skinned people) you are Homo sapiens. A human being. The Human Race is the only one, that we know of, existing on Earth. The whole "mixed race" thing is a nonsense -rather like someone being "racist" -against their own species? To be honest, as a young man I had no idea what was going on -I lived in a multicultural, working class area and went to school with India, Pakistani, Afro-carribean, Italian and other kids. Some had (sigh) "mixed race" parents. Don't recall any claims of being snatched by flying saucers though.
It was all a nonsense. Basically, it all covered an illogical belief that "black people don't see UFOs".
In 1978 I interviewed about three "black" people who had observed odd lights on different occasions. "Probably been on the rum!" was the dismissive remark from someone in the group. No one wanted to go to interview the witnesses
So hearing all of this about Barney Hill made me angry, frustrated and much more. Ignore all the other facts in the case: "they were a mixed race" couple.
Harrison Bailey. Well, there was secondary evidence in his case, however, I have never seen such a thorough job of discrediting someone as in his case. Focus on what you can find to discredit rather than focus on the actual incident.
Yes, I am aware of the later claims of Bailey. There is something I term Post Abduction Syndrome (PAS). There is case after case from the early 1950's up to the 1970's of people involved in alleged alien abduction incidents where there are secondary witnesses to the object sighted and even physical, trace, evidence. These people cannot be shaken from their accounts -most, as with the Hills, were exposed to publicity by Ufologists for their own reasons. For many it was a case of "It happened. Get on with life" and that was it -as far as we know.
Many of these people were private individuals, some had come through the Second World War where fatigue, stress and trauma -and the unexpected- were every day things. Their encounters happened. They were not killed. Get on with life. There was no counselling these people as the best they could expect would be to see a psychiatrist to judge if they were sane. They had to keep things bottled up and only they know how that affected them. There are witnesses who will not go out after dark and flinched noticeably if they see a light they cannot immediately identify -and that was after a close encounter but no abduction.
Everything they grew up believing were jokes, tall tales and rubbish were, in one brief incident lasting a minute or so, blown up in their faces. The psychological aspects of UFO encounters tends to be shoved to one side. It's the meaty, juicy claim that ufologists want -it'll get them the newspaper and TV gigs and maybe even a book. Get the report and details then push the witness aside -something I write about in
UFO Contact?
But PAS...how does a down-to-earth human mind that is used to the daily routine of getting out of bed, washing and dressing, going to work or shopping -all of the everyday things of life-
how does it react and how does it cope with seeing the utterly impossible? They have been told that flying saucers and "little green men" do not exist -but something, some type of craft, has landed nearby, they cannot move and are either escorted or 'invited' inside by entities that are not human.
The mind of the percipient is in complete turmoil no matter how "together" they seem. Who do they tell? Should they tell anyone? If they don't report the incident what about other people it happens to? The immediate thought is reporting to the police -in which case they tend to get dismissed or told to, in the UK, report the incident to the MoD...who are not interested after the 2004 paper. In the United States the USAF will suggest you contact a civilian UFO group such as the Centre for UFO Studies (CUFOS).
And contact with civilian investigators can be even more traumatic -the Scopolamine Kids -James and Coral Lorenzen- in the old days. Investigators betraying witness confidentiality. Selling stories to newspapers to get funding -and the percipient is accused of publicity seeking by the debunkers (because ufologists are not going to openly admit what
they -not the percipient- did. While researching and writing
UFO Contact? I was shocked at what went on. Percipients who reported physiological symptoms had these brushed aside "We'll try hypnosis first!" and, yes, I got very angry at the fact that these percipients who had suffered a major mental trauma were treated in the most shameful of ways. I really felt for them.
With PAS something can manifest with some, but not all (as far as we know), of the percipients -claims of secondary or occasional later contact incidents. Some of this may be due to having seen an unusual light and this triggered a kind of "flash-back" memory -just as military veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can be going about their business quietly and fire-crackers send them right back to an incident. I have seen this with a military veteran who jumped in a ditch when a car passing back-fired -I was tempted to laugh but it takes a split second to realise just how serious this is.
Dozens of investigators, reporters,weeks or months of daily attention and then...dumped. Everyone has what they want. The percipient is then left to live with what happened and try to cope.
The Pascagoula case involving Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker: Hickson made further claims and it is quite clear that he was suffering PAS. Parker, in recent years, has also talked about how he was affected by the incident and how it negatively affected getting jobs and work as he was "that guy got kidnapped by aliens".
Marius Dewilde after his 1954 encounter at Quarouble, France was not abducted but his close encounter certainly affected him badly.
In the Harrison Bailey case his first encounter seems genuine and there appear to be secondary witnesses to the object seen. It seems very obvious Bailey had a traumatic experience and other percipients never got the negativity that seemed aimed at him -why?
The Papua New Guinea case I heard dismissed time-and-again as involving "superstitious natives" who were ill educated. There were even photographs of Father Gill circulating to show that he, too, was a native person who probably did not understand what he saw. This photograph was of a "black" person -it turns out, Father Gill's assistant because Gill was as "White" as you can be. And the other witnesses were far from superstitious natives.
I recall reading several articles over the years in which the question was asked why "black" people did not report UFOs to the extent that "white" people did. Poor education and other reasons were suggested because either the writers had no idea (in which case their lack of experience meant they could not really be taken seriously) or they suspected but did not want to use that dirty phrase: racial prejudice.
Two groups I worked with had a question on their UFO sightings report forms: one was phrased "Racial background" and the other "Ethnicity". I argued but was ignored. Nationality (in case it is a witness usually living outside -say- the UK) is legitimate but asking about "ethnic background" is not. The incident and what is reported plus any qualifications that are relevant are important not whether someone is "Anglo-British", Chinese or "black".
Go to reports for 1973 -the last really big UFO wave of sightings that has any significance. There are newspaper cuttings and even local TV news items where "black" witnesses are telling reporters what they saw. There are reports of UFO landings and CE3Ks...no full investigation report which means that we have lost evidence. A newspaper clipping or reference to a news item is
not any kind of evidence.
These days the UFO media circus is all over
any witness "cus it's all about the spin, baby". It's all money-spinning potential for the slick-dudes.
In my opinion, Harrison Bailey had two things against him: (1) he was "black" and, (2) he suffered traumatic stress from the original encounter that affected him in later life. If you look at all the facts he was not treated with any respect as a witness but more like a commodity until his usefulness was other. Barney Hill well, you know. All of those Papuans...all of those UFO witnesses who just happened to not have straight enough hair well, you know.
I have tried to look at other angles but the data suggests we lost a lot of very good case because of prejudice -and any type of prejudice needs to be left at home if you claim to be "scientifically" investigating and researching UFOs. We have a chance, while some of those witnesses are still alive, to try to get to them and record what they saw or experienced because once they are gone that information is also gone.
"Too long ago" and "too old a case" was derided as an excuse by Ufologists when given by authorities but it seems blow-hards have claimed it as an excuse. The case I referred to yesterday? "Too long ago"
but if
I in the UK could find "the witness" (yeah, I doubt the report I sent was even read) and
if I could then get 'him' to contact the UFO organisation to report the incident
and fill in a UFO report form
and send it back to them then they might "consider whether it was worth looking into". "**** off!" would have been far more honest.
Oh, and talk about brusque and downright rude responses: my email -I am quite willing to publish that online- was very polite. After 40+ years you learn to be polite and not rude. I had pointed out that I was unsure -due to the fact there were no clear guidelines- whether to send the case notes to "A" or to "B" but noted I had contacted "B" also. To be told that it was disturbing that I did not want to let "B" in one the case shows that the fella is either not able to read properly or cannot keep information accurately in his head for more than a second. He simply, as I suggested, had to ask his colleague whether I had been in touch but why when I made it clear I had contacted his colleague I have no idea.
I pointed out that, since he was out-rightly dismissing the re-investigation, that I would, indeed, see what I could find out but that any findings would not be sent to his organisation but straight to CUFOS. His response I cannot even be bothered reading. I am sorry but puffed up, self-important prigs who flap their gums while sitting permanently on their fat asses are of no interest to me.
It is, therefore, perfectly fine to lose all of this information "because".
We need to correct the prejudiced errors of the past as much as we need to remember that genuine percipients in UFO abductions or encounters (whatever you believe) are
human beings and need to be treated as such rather than as "good media material".
Through Knowledge Truth (or: telling the truth makes you a lot of frightened enemies)
