CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE EXTRATERRESTIAL KIND –

HALLUCINTION, IMAGINATION OR FACT?

 

By: A.D. Johnson, 6SaC (My class/form)

 

 

( Above: A sketch of the second photograph taken by Paul Trent in 1950.)

 

 

 

Sections

1. ANCIENT EVIDENCE?

Does the Bible contain stories of strange craft? Some people believe so – people like Erich von Däniken claim to have evidence for the theory that extraterrestrials visited us many centuries ago.

 

2. SOME CASES

Strange lights in the sky – thousands have been reported in local newspapers over the years – some reach the national news. Can they all be easily be explained away?

 

3. MADMAN?

Some of the cases I have come across sound so bizarre that they are laughable but is there really anything in them?

 

4. PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE?

A few pictures, but what do they really show? Are they all fakes?

 

5. STRANGE CASES

This section contains some cases which are, to say the least, intriguing and they seem to have no entirely satisfactory explanation.

 

6. PROBABILITY OF EXTRATERRESTIAL LIFE

What do some of the scientists think? Could it, and, indeed does it , exist?

 

7. CONCLUSION

What can be concluded overall?

 

 

1.        ANCIENT EVIDENCE?

 

 

Since before Christ, people have talked of strange lights and objects in the sky. Many people believe that the Bible contains many accounts of encounters with UFOs. One of these accounts is told by Ezekiel in Chapter 1 of his book in the Old Testament. This account is particularly interesting because of the amount of detail it contains. Here is some of that account:

 

“….. a stormy wind came out of the North with a fire infolding itself and a brightness round about it….. And out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures…. they had the likeness of man. And every one had four faces and every one of them had four wings. And their feet were straight and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf’s foot: and they sparkled like the colour of burnished brass….” (Spacemen??)

 

Their wings were joined one to another; they turned not when they went; they went everyone straight forward…. they had the face of a man and they four had the face of a lion on the right side… and an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle …. and they four had one likeness.”

 

“And over the head of the living creature there was the likeness of a firmament like the colour of terrible (or ice) crystal stretched forth over their heads above. And under the firmament were their wings, straight, the one toward the other …. And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great water. When they stood, they let down their wings…”

Could this be the scene that Ezekiel is describing?

 

 

 

 

Maybe this is taking the interpretation too far, taking into account certain ambiguities in the translation and the fact that there is no solid evidence to substantiate the account. Nonetheless, I think you will agree this is an intriguing theory.

 

One staunch believer in the theory that extraterrestrials visited us many centuries ago, is Erich von Däniken – he has written books about his own personal beliefs including “Chariots of the Gods?” and “Gold of the Gods”.

 

In the Nazca desert there are strange lines, some parallel and some also make trapezoidal shapes – but the shapes they make up can only be seen from the air and it is that leads von Däniken to believe that it could only be an airfield for extraterrestrials – but this is one of his least bizarre ideas. Why is it that the majority of ancient gods are said to come from the sky? – he argues. He thinks that many of the numerous ancient cave paintings are sculptures depict spacemen with helmets and the like. One such example of this is a plaque which was discovered in Palenque Mercies. I cannot remember where it was. Cannot read. It is an elaborate piece of engraving with much detail and the man on it is peering into something and it looks like his foot is on some sort of pedal (or so von Däniken says) and the man seems to be adjusting something with his left hand. At the bottom of the engraving there are some wavy lines. Von Däniken claims that the engraving depicts a pilot in his rocket – the wavy lines mentioned are the flames from the rocket.

 

Von Däniken has travelled the world over in search of evidence to fuel his arguments – his full theory is this:

 

Way back in the ancient mists of time extraterrestrials came to Earth and artificially fertilised some higher developed female apes, put them in to suspended animation and then departed. Some years later, they returned and repeated the procedure. They did this several times – eventually producing Homo Sapiens (modern man). It is a fact that there is an evolutionary gap between apes which walk on all fours and man – suddenly bipedal. Von Däniken claims that structures such as the statues on Easter Island could not have been built by the inhabitants or by people of time. Von Däniken has become obsessed with his theory and consequently has twisted certain facts to fit his theory. In “Some Trust In Chariots” numerous fallacies are pointed out in Von Däniken’s theory – the statues on Easter Island could, and indeed, have been, built by the inhabitants. A certain professor Hennesey shows that Von Däniken has got some of his facts wrong. For instance, Däniken claims that the Giza Pyramid weights 31,200,000 tons and that is made of Granite – the Professor shows that is actually made up of about 2,300,000 soft limestone locks each weighing about 2.5 tons making the Pyramid about 5,750,000 tons. Moreover, the rock was quarried from very near by, not miles away as Von Däniken claims. Also Von Däniken claims that rope did not exist when the Pyramid was built – it did! – it can be seen in many museums! Also many of the photographs in another of his books “In Search of Ancient Gods” are ones of known forgeries.

 

When all these facts are taken into account, what is left? There is still the fact there is an evolutionary gap and also another interesting theory.

 

 

Coming to slightly more recent times, there are still cases of sightings of strange objects and the like: In 1897 a Kansas farmer reported that on night at about 10.30 he saw an airship descending on his cow – but a little distance away from his house. The airship was hovering 30 feet above the ground. It was cigar shaped and about 300 feet long with brilliant but transparent undercarriage. In it he said there were “six of the strangest beings I ever saw”. They turned a beam of light directly on him and then a 30 feet turbine wheel began to turn slowly and the airship rose up smoothly. He was accompanied by his son and tenant and the three men noticed that a cable had been put around of a heifer’s neck and the occupants hoisted it aboard.

 

He learned later that the head, hide and legs of the animal had been discarded in a neighbouring farmers field. What could explain this strange case?

 

Going a little further back in time, in March 1676, Edmund Halley (of comet fame) received an U.F.O. report from an Italian mathematician who described a “vast body” which was estimated to be at height of 40 miles and which made “a hissing, rattling noise”. It crossed right over Italy with an estimated speed of 160 miles per minute – 9600 miles per hour. Halley could find no explanation for the object.

 

Why should people have made up these stories? After all, there was not massive publicity and vast sums of money available for sensational stories in those times!

 

 

In the last 20 years, Astronomy has advanced considerably what with the Voyager probes, computer enchantment of pictures from optical telescopes and all manner of new advances techniques. Because of this, it was only in 1970 that a certain star – Sirius B – was photographed successfully. The star itself was not discovered – at least for the Western World – until last century. It is the stellar companion of Sirius – the Dog Star – which, by the way, is the brightest star visible in the northern sky). Somehow, a certain sub-Saharan tribe called the Dogon have known of its existence for hundreds of years. They not only know it exists, they know quite a lot of its physical and geometric characteristics. They describe Sirius B to be one of the smallest and heaviest type of stars – it has recently been discovered in reality that it is a White Dwarf – the smallest and heaviest type of stars (of those which are visible anyway). They describe it as being “so heavy that all combined Earth beings could not lift it” – in actual fact, a cubic foot of the material from which a star is made weights 2000 tons – not very light. If this is not enough for you, they also say that the star describes an elliptical  orbit every 50 years – this was now been confirmed. They understand that the star turns in its own axis – pretty good for an ancient tribe! They think that this upholds everything – this cannot be confirmed of course! They also say that its orbit determines the calendar – Sirius A was used as the basis of the Egyptian calendar.

 

The religion of the Dagon revolves around Sirius B and they say that their gods, the Nommo came to the Earth from Sirius many centuries ago and founded civilisation on Earth. They say that the Nommo are amphibious, fish-like creatures.

 

How can all this be explained? There is absolutely no way that the Dogon could just guess the facts discussed and be so accurate. Why should they worship a people who are said to come from a star (which, by the way, is totally invisible to the naked eye)? Just think that if what the Dogon say was true and the Nommo did visit us all those years ago, it would mean that there is a world, probably largely ocean covered, inhabited by advanced creatures only 8 – 6 light years away – in other words if the Nommo had a way of travelling close to the speed of light then they could reach the Earth in, say, 10 years.

 

It is not just other countries that have seen UFOs in ancient times, Brittain has a few of its own sightings. It is said that the first one seen in Britain was the year 1290 and it was reported in documents which were found in Byland Abbey here in Yorkshire. The documents tell of a disc-like object which flew over the monastery, terrifying the monks.

 

Another strange event took place in 1322. One evening at about 7 p.m. a pillar of fire was seen over Uxbridge. It ascended from the South moving North. Suddenly a brilliant red flame shot out illuminating everything. The event was witnessed by hundreds.

 

Those were just two of the reports of fiery objects and strange discs from times past – in those days weather balloons and aeroplanes did not exist so they cannot be explained in this way but one explanation for some cases might be meteorites which are often mistaken for UFOs and another might be fireballs. Fireballs are pieces of a disintegrating comet and are about the size of cricket ball. They never usually reach the Earth because they burn up brilliantly in the atmosphere.

 

2.        SOME CASES

 

The modern interest in UFOs is widely regarded as being started off in 1947 by a Mr. Keneth Arnold. This was the first report of a close encounter with strange flying object made by a reputable and widely respected observer. The story goes something like this. On June 24th 1947 Kenneth Arnold took off from Chehalis Washington at 2 p.m. – he was a civilian pilot. While flying over Cascade Mountains , as he had done many times before, there was a bright flash which lit up his plane (the sky was clear) and he could not see where it came from – he could only see a DC-4 on his far left, but behind him. There was another flash and then he saw where it was coming from – 9 brightly illuminated objects which were flying North-South in chain formation. The objects appeared to come from the Mount Baker area and they stayed close to the mountain tops.

 

Because of this, Arnold was able to calculate their speed. They covered the distance between Mount Rainer and Mount Adams in 1 minute 42 seconds. This distance was 47 miles thus making the object have a speed of 1657 miles per hour – nearly three times as fast as any aircraft of the time. Arnold described one of the objects as crescent – shape with a small dome between the wing-tips. The others he said were “flat like a pie – pan and so shiny that they reflected the Sun like a mirror.” He described their motion as weird, “like speedboats on rough water”. The story was released to the press and very quickly the term ‘flying saucer’ was used to describe the objects.

 

After this case which has still not been satisfactorily explained, people began skywatching, hoping to see UFOs and perhaps this is why the numbers of sightings of strange objects increased. Because of the new interest in UFOs, the American Government set up Project Sign to investigate reports. This was in 1947 and in 1949 the Project was renamed Grudge and renamed again as Project Blue Book in 1951. It had to deal with many, many cases and when these were sifted through, they were still left with a sizeable number which were unexplainable. It investigated these whilst publicly denying that these cases were unexplainable – the press were fobbed off with unsatisfactory answers. The Pentagon issued a statement saying UFOs were either reflections, low clouds or parts of meteors. Project Blue Book closed in 1969 with the conclusion that there was nothing worth further investigation.

 

Here are some of the sort of cases that Blue Book had to deal with.

 

In 1952 there was a ‘Flying Saucer Flap’ in Washington and on July 26th at 10.30 p.m., radar operators detected objects a few miles away and jets were launched to intercept them. When the jets reached them, the UFOs disappeared. The jets were recalled but the UFOs reappeared again. The jets were again sent after the UFOs but when they reached them, they only saw some strange lights and then the UFOs flew off at great speed. The sightings lasted several hours and it was claimed that they were caused by temperature inversions.

 

 

In the spring of 1967, an 18-year-old youth was driving home through the South Mountains in America one night. At about 11 p.m. he saw a fiery blob in the sky, it came down 10 metres in front of him and about 30 meters up in the air. It was shaped like an inverted bow and was bluish on top and red on the bottom. A white ‘steam’ shimmered around the object and the glow blinked on and off. He felt an intense heat and at the same time, the engine began to sputter and misfire. The radio and headlights went out but the ammeter in the car showed a discharge and the temperature light hot. He continued to drive home and the object followed him only stopping when he stopped at home.

When tested, the car was found to have an abnormal radiation level. The youth said his car never recovered from the incident – its condition just worsened. This is classic type of case.

 

In October 1948 in North Dakota a Lieutenant George Gorman was flying towards his air base. He saw what he thought was light below him – the air base said there were no other aircraft in the region so Gorman decided to follow the light.

 

At 1000 yards he could see it blinking. He set a collision course but at 35000 feet, the object began to descend and it passed across his bow and he made a second and third run at it. The object then dived and he lost it, but Gorman commented that it had a long tail.

 

A fairly convincing explanation for this case seems to be that the pilot chased a Weather Balloon- he probably saw it far off glinting in the sunlight, run into it at high speed without seeing properly what it was and thus punctured it causing it to drop quickly. The long tail he commented on was probably the actual balloon which deflated after he punctured it.

 

There are quite a number of what are called Radar/Visual cases where objects are seen by observers whilst also being detected by radar. The significance of this is obvious. One such case took place in August 1953 in Rapid City, Dakota. A ‘well-defined, solid and bright object, almost stationary’ was recorded on radar and was also reported by a ground observer. The object was at 16000 feet and a jet was sent out to chase it but the object kept running away. The jet returned having run out of fuel and another jet took off and took up the chase. As the pilot got close, he turned on his radar and it confirmed the object as solid. The pilot was scared and retreated.

 

What explanation can be offered for this? What sort of man-made or natural phenomenon could produce an impression on radar equipment whilst glowing brightly and seemingly being intelligently controlled? 

 

Here is another case like the one about the 18 year old youth. In Levelland, Texas at 11 p.m. on Nov 2^nd 1957, a truck driver and his companion saw a 200 foot long object which passed over their truck at speed. As it did so, the truck’s engine cut out and the lights were extinguished. As the object went away, the light and engine came back on again.

 

One hour later, a man four miles east of Levelland saw a 200 foot brilliantly lit object whilst he was driving along. He approached it, and as before, the lights and engine failed and when the object departed, the lights and engine returned to normal.

 

Another man from Texas Technical college 9 miles away had exactly the same experience.

 

Coming much nearer home, and to somewhat more recent times, in Nelson on March the 9^th  1977 at 3.10 a.m., Brian Grimshawe and Jeff Farmer were driving through the town after dropping off friends. They saw an object which came out of a cloud over a nearby hill. The object moved toward them becoming cigar shaped. The two men said it was as big as a double – decker bus and orange light was pouring out of the centre of it. As the object came closer the car’s lights dimmed and went out. The object hovered for some minutes and despite the fact that the men were scared, they decided to stop, get out and have a closer look at it. Immediately they felt a force down on them which made them tingle all over – like an electrostatic force. Grimshave and Farmer were frightened and got back into the car, but when Grimshawe tried to restart the car, it would not. The car only restarted when the object moved away. The men sped away and at work later on, they got bad headache which lasted for some time. Also, Grimshawe developed a weeping in one of his eyes- it lasted several weeks.

 

The last two are classic cases – observer driving along – sees object – goes closer – light/or engine go dead – object moves off – car returns to normal. 

One explanation which may apply to these two and many other reports of strange lights seen in the sky, and, indeed, at close proximity, is that of Ball Lightening. It is not fully understood that Ball Lightening (BL for short) is – some scientists still don’t accept that it exists. This is understandable as it had never been properly observed under laboratory conditions.

BL has some very interesting and weird properties and it is though to be made up of gas plasma. Plasma is the state of matter above gas – it is what stars are made up of. It is not known how it is produced but it seems it can be produced almost anywhere at any time. It is obvious to associate BL with electrical storms but also some have commented on the increase in UFO reports with the increase in number of high voltage power lines and high power television transmitters – could BL be produced by high voltage generators?

 

Going into some of the characteristics of BL, it is remarkable how well some of its characteristics seem to explain some UFO reports. It is often seen in clouds or dropping down from them – are not a lot of UFOs? It can measure from the size of a pea to several hundred meters – easily covering the size of most UFOs. It seems the BL is commonly spherical in shape but can be seen to be discoid or ellipsoid . both common shapes of UFOs.

 

Even more remarkably it can penetrate solid walls and tiny cracks easily.

 

The way it can move is also extremely odd: outdoors it can move very fast, zig-zag, turn suddenly, stop instantly, undulate against wind. The path it takes is often curved and because it could be made up of plasma, it could be charged electrically and thus perhaps drawn to and along power lines and maybe even to large metallic object such as cars. Again this is another common feature of quite a number of UFO reports. It is often silent but can also hum, hiss and crackle – yet again a familiar nature of UFOs. BL can even have a smell – like that of ozone and even a sulphurous odour. This is perhaps a less common feature of UFO reports. It can blink on and off and disappear by going out suddenly or even violently exploding. BL can interfere with electronic equipment – make radios go dead? Where radar is involved, plasma makes a better target than even solid objects – it is electrically charged and an oscillation of the signal is set up producing a stronger reading on the radar – the operator could easily overestimate the size of a BL UFO. Also some BL might not be of strong enough intensity to emit light but it will still reflect radar signals as described above and thus it would seen that there was an invisible UFO. Sudden dissipations of the plasma in BL would change the UFO to immediately disappear – another common occurrence in UFO cases.

 

It has been noticed that a LASER containing Nitrogen is red in colour when on low energy but on high energies the Nitrogen LASER is blue – this could mean that BL could be made up of Nitrogen plasma – blue and red are common colours reported for UFOs. Also, it is thought that BL is sustained by microwaves it produces – this is a form of heat (microwave ovens!) and it is often the case the heat is felt by observers who get close to some UFOs.

 

All in all, it seems that if Ball Lightening does exist, it could explain a very sizeable chunk of the ‘strange light’ UFOs. 

 

 

3.        UFOs in space? 

 

 

It has been claimed that when men have ventured into space, they have been followed by UFOs – every astronaut that has been in space is said to have reported, a sometime or other, seeing ‘bogies’ (UFOs). Here are some instances:

In 1963 the Mercury mission reportedly picked up strange voices on the radio whilst over Hawaii. They were later said to have been examined with the conclusion that the conclusion that they spoke no known Earth language.

 

In 1965, in Gemini 7 photographs were supposedly taken of an UFO which followed them and these pictures were said to show the UFO’s propulsion units.

 

In 1968 Apollo VIII was supposed to have been attacked by a UFO; their instruments went haywire. The astronauts of the Apollo craft are said to have been attacked with high frequency sound and dazzling light. The UFO then disappeared and the situation returned to normal. Soon after another UFO is said to have been buzzed the craft and this time astronauts were supposed to have suffered hallucinations, trembling hands, migraines and loss of memory for 11 minutes. The UFO then vanished.

 

In 1969 when Apollo XI landed on the Moon, it is said that a UFO hovered overhead and that two other UFOs landed nearby but then took off again.

 

These are just a few of the stories which are supposedly told by astronauts. Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a widely respected UFO investigator who worked on Project Blue Book dismissed all of the sightings by astronauts – some accounts were fictions and others were distorted by the press. It seems that all the sightings which took place in the space program can be easily explained. Here are a few explained.

 

On February the 20^th 1962 whilst in his Mercury capsule the pilot saw three objects follow and overtake him at varying speeds. On later flights, astronauts saw them – indeed they could create whole snowstorms of the objects by banging on the walls of their capsules!

 

On June 3^rd 1964, Jim McDivitt photographed some strange objects – a cylindrical UFO with arms sticking out and an egg – shaped object which some think was his own booster rocket – left in space after it had separated. He took some pictures from a movie camera and stills from this film were released accidentally. They were blown up into pictures of what seemed to be a very convincing UFO, but McDivitt denied seeing anything like it. It turned out the pictures showed reflections of lights in the window.

 

The reported chasing of Apollo XI in 1969 was nothing – a photo of a fragment of insulating material which was taken just after 3^rd stage separation was widely publicised as UFO. A series of UFO photographs reportedly taken by Buzz Aldrin were fakes by a Japanese magazine and alleged radio conversations transcribing the attack at an UFO was also a hoax.

Pete Conrad, an astronaut who has been up in space a number of times, claims that none of the astronauts have seen anything inexplicable whilst up in space. Many people claim that there is a cover up here to stop widespread panic, but in fact every photograph taken in the missions for publication and also many, many voice transcripts are available.

 

 

People can often be easily fooled by good hoaxes and by natural phenomena which do not occur very often. For instance, on August 10^th 1972 a large meteorite skimmed the Earth’s atmosphere and a very convincing home – movie was taken of the event – it looked like a spaceship.

 

On August 15^th 1966 in Cantilena a man took a moving film of what looked like a very convincing disc – shaped object travelling at about 150 miles per hour. The film was sent to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California where the pictures were computer enhanced showing that the disc-shaped object was not disc shaped at all – it was plane-shaped! The man at Cantilena had taken a home movie of a plane.

 

Perhaps one of the best yet unintentional hoaxes of this century was the one perpetrated by Orson Welles in 1938 in his radio production of the H.G. Wells classic science fiction novel, ‘War of the Worlds’. Many people thought that the play was real and the Earth was really under attack from the Martian Intruders and they fled their homes accordingly. Some people even claimed seeing the Martians!

 

All these facts must be taken into account when considering the validity of UFO claims but even when this has been done, there still remain a good deal of cases which are still unexplainable – a few of this type will be examined later on.

 

4.        MADMEN?

 

 

In the 50’s and 60’s it is well known that there was an international UFO flap and it is this period which has produced cases so bizarre that they are laughable. The reason why these cases were made up is obvious – there were massive payments made by press and television for sensational stores especially where they were accompanied by photographs.

 

One of these such cases was one related by Howard Menger of New Jersey who claimed to have been visited by UFOs from an early age. In June 1946 a UFO  landed near his home and two men and a beautiful woman (whom he said was five hundred years old) got out. They told him how to use special mental powers he possessed so as to ready himself for important future events. He said he was told that he was not to talk about his experiences until 1957 and at that time several witnesses claim to have seen him talking with Space People, some at whom posed as ordinary Earth People. Once, having just been on the radio talking about his reputed encounters, he met a striking blonde girl called Marla whom he married after divorcing his first wife. He then claimed that Marla was an extraterrestrial. After this, in later visits by his extraterrestrial companions, it was revealed to him that he himself was a Saturnian re-incarnated in the body of an Earth baby! He and his wife have written books and in them Manger emphasises that the Saucer People are an older, kinder and wiser race and that they mean our planet nothing but good. He claimed that once he was taken to the Moon by these people and he bought back some strange rocks – he said that they were moon potatoes! !

 

Another case of this type is that told by Albert Bender who founded the International Flying Saucer Bureau (IFSB) in 1952. He closed the Bureau in 1953 after saying that he had been involved in a series of disturbing events – the nature of which he did not reveal until some years after their occurrence.

 

In the last issue of the IFSB’s magazine ‘Space Review’ Bender said that the UFO enigma had been solved – their source was known. He said he could not print the full story as he had been advised otherwise. He also advised other UFO investigators to be very cautious.

 

All that was known at the time was that Bender had supposedly been visited by ‘The Three Men in Black’ (discussed later on). Some considered this to be a giant hoax, a publicity stunt. Friends of Bender became hostile as he refused to say anything. In 1962, though, Bender supposedly related his story in ‘Flying Saucers and the Three Men’. He was derided for this book as it read like the best science fiction.

 

He told of strange encounters with eyes glowing like torch bulbs and once, three figures materialised before him. They were men and told him that UFOs were on Earth for a purpose – to take chemicals from the sea. The men gave Bender a coin -sized disc. They said that when he wanted to contact them he had to hold the disc in his hand, turn the radio on and say ‘Kazik’ three times.

 

He said that in his next encounter, he was transported to a large circular room. In the room, there was a being who said that they (the beings who had been bothering Bender) had men in high places such as the Pentagon and that they could, if they so desire, destroy the world at the flick of switch. Bender was shown scenarios on some sort of 3-D viewing machines and one of the scenes showed a hideous monster which Bender said was the true form of the aliens.

 

Bender claimed that on the aliens’ home planet the inhabitants were one of three sexes: male, female or neither. The ones of neither sex, he said, was the leaders.  This home planet was many light years away from Earth, Bender said.

Once, Bender was taken to the aliens’ base in the Antarctic and there he met a leader who said that the aliens had been visiting the Earth since 1945 and were staying for 15 years from that time. During their period on Earth, many Earthlings had been carried off for exhibits and experimentation and they said that Bender would befall the same fate if he got in their way.

 

Back on Earth, Bender claimed to have been further visited by the aliens. Once, a hideous 10-foot-tall green creature materialized in his armchair, so he says. On another occasion he was told to keep his radio-disc hidden and when it disappeared he would know that the aliens had finished their mission. The disc disappeared in 1960 and so Bender was able to tell his whole bizarre story.

 

Perhaps a less incredible and more widely accepted close encounter with men from other worlds is the one related by George Adamski. This case received wide coverage and the UFO involved in it is, I think, one of the classic shape which most people think of. His story goes as follows.

 

On November 20th, 1952, in California Adamski was out UFO hunting with friends. They saw a cigar – shaped UFO approaching and Adamski said that it had come to see him and he asked his friends to leave after having driven to some nearby mountains. Adamski had his telescope and camera with him. Suddenly, there was a flash in the sky and all saw it. Adamski saw the craft move toward him, he photographed it through the telescope but then it dropped out of sight and Adamski assumed the craft had returned to its mother ship. This was not the case, though; he saw a man standing at the entrance to a ravine some distance away and the man was beckoning to Adamski. Adamski went over to the man who took four steps towards him. Adamski was now within arm’s length of a man from another world (or so he says) and all sense of caution left him. He estimated the man to be about 5’6″ and weight about 135 pounds, being aged about 28. The man had a round face with high cheek bones and he had golden hair. They started talking but understanding this man was difficult as his English was not good. Despite this difficulty, Adamski learned that the man was from Venus and his race was worried about radiations emanating from the Earth. The Venusian warned Adamski not to get close to the ship but Adamski forgot and wandered under its flange and his arm way jerked up and suddenly thrown down again and Adamski claims he had no feeling in the arm for weeks afterwards. Soon after this, the Venusian left him and the saucer took off.

 

Whilst all this was happening, his friends had gone to a vantage point above the scene of the event and watching it through a telescope.

 

It was also reported that the Venusian left footprints which had inscription on them which Adamski believed was a message for Earth people. He also claimed that on a later occasion he was taken on a trip to the Moon by the Venusian and he saw animals, vegetation and even people there! 

 

His six friends made testimonies to say that what they had said was true.

 

The main discrepancy in this case is the suggestion that life exists elsewhere in our own solar system. Venus seems a very unlikely place to be inhabited by humanoid (this literally means man-like) creatures because for one thing, its atmosphere is so different from ours, containing clouds of Sulphuric Acid and the surface temperature on the planet is very high – hot enough to melt lead. How could life exist on such inhospitable world? Also, the Moon has no atmosphere at all and it has been mapped thoroughly and studied closely – it’s regarded as lifeless world so how did Adamski see vegetation and people there?

 

 

A sketch of the Venusian scout ship which Adamski claims to have seen on several occasions.

 

5.        PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE?

 

 

There are two pages of photographs at the end of this section which are numbered according to which piece of text they relate to in the following sections.

 

It seems that out of the photographs I have seen, the majority either look like faults on the film, hub caps or similar objects thrown into the air or blurred shape showing little detail. The most convincing photographs seem to turn out to be fakes, on the whole. This section does contain one photograph which, although it does not look fantastically convincing, has been rigorously tested by many experts and is considered to be genuine.

 

 

Photograph 1

 

This photo was reportedly taken by a pilot in the Avensa Airline in 1965 whilst he was on a flight from Barcelona to Maiquetia Airport. He said he was certain it was ‘one of those “Flying Saucers’. In 1971 the photograph was studied an APRO consultant (Arial Phenomena Research Organisation) and he said the image was too sharp for it to be one of a large distant object. The object’s shadow was far less dense than the plane’s so the object’s shadow must have been drawn on.

The photograph was supposed to have handed in to APRO by a Mr.Delio Rebas of Trujillo, Venezuela with a letter, but an engineer is Caracas (Venezuela) confessed that the photograph was fake – he had made it by placing a button onto an enlargement of an arial shot, burning the shadow out of the ‘saucer’ and then rephotographing the arrangement.

 

Personally, I thought this photograph looked very convincing.

 

Photograph 2

 

This, too, I think looks reasonably convincing – it is a fake made by painting a model saucer with luminous paint and then photographing it in a darkroom.

 

Photographs 3a and 3b

These are actually colour photographs (but they have been photocopied) and they were taken by Paul Villa in Albuquerque, New Mexico on 16^th June, 1963. He claimed that the UFO carried nine beings from the Coma Bernices constellation. He claimed he talked then for an hour and a half.

 

Ground Saucer Watch is an organisation which analyses UFO photographs using advanced computer techniques. They can determine the size of an object on a picture, its distance from the camera and also how dense it is. The GSW tests on Villa’s photographs indicated that they were small objects close up, not large ones at a distance. Then again, GSW has been wrong before but people in the know agree that Villa’s photographs seem too good to be real. 

 

Photograph 4

This one is the second of two photographs taken by Paul Trent at 7.45 p.m. on 11th May evening in 1950 at his farm in McMinnville Oregon. Mrs. Trent first saw the object when she was feeding the rabbits; Mr. Trent immediately got his camera. They described the object as ‘very bright’ and ‘almost silvery’. It emitted no noise or smoke it just seemed to glide, they said. Mr. Trent never thought publicity for his photograph – he even used up the last three exposures on the film before having it developed. He only showed the pictures to local friends, but a local reporter found out about them and came round to the Trents’ house. When he arrived, he found the film negatives under the sofa – the children had been playing with them!

 

The photographs were submitted to the Condon Committee and a Doctor Bill Wartmann wrote a nineteen-page report on the photographs. He found no reason why they should be fake.

 

More sceptical critics disputed the fact that they could be genuine – they said that shadows on the photographs seemed to indicate that they had been taken in the morning and they also said that other farmers should have seen the object. It was later shown that light reflected of a cloud could produce the right shadows in the photograph.

 

More recently, the photos have been subjected to rigorous computer tests – they have digitized to reveal more details. Using a technique called Edge-Enhancement, wires as thin as 0.25 mm (hundredth of an inch) thick can be detected – none were discovered. The tests also showed the object to be as distant as the Trents had claimed – to get this effect on a fake, they would have had to use very sophisticated lighting technique – why should they bother to do this? The computer tests also showed that the object was a bevel – edged disc with a flat bottom and the second photographs showed the object had a strange off – centre tower. Thus, all the physical, geometric and psychological factors seem to indicate a genuine photo.

 

Photographs 5a and 5b

 

These are the first (5a) and third (5b) photographs out of four which a Mr. Rex Heflin took at about 11.30 a.m. on August 3rd 1965 near Los Angeles. He stopped at the Santa Anna Freeway (he was on patrol – a police officer) and was trying to contact his superintendent to inform him of tree limbs which were obstructing a nearby road. The radio had gone dead when he saw what he thought was an aircraft approaching from the left. He then saw that in fact it was a dome – topped disc. He photographed the object three times as it moved slowly in an arch across the road. When it was over on his right, after he had taken the third photograph the object suddenly disappeared leaving a smoke ring, which he also photographed.

 

The photographs were widely publicised and ‘Life’ magazine described them as the best they had seen so far, but the Condon Commission rejected them as being ‘too controversial’! A Mr. Grey of the magazine ‘Flying Saucer Review’ made calculations from an uncropped enlargement of the first photograph. He worked on the angle of the Sun in the sky and the way the shadows appeared – he supported that they were not fakes.

 

Ground Saucer Watch tested them and the computer enhancements showed a vertical linear structure above the UFO (string!). Also, objects, other than the alleged UFO, which were 30 feet or more away from the camera were in focus – the UFO was not properly in focus and so must have been somewhat nearer the camera. So the photographs must have been fakes.

 

Previously the same Dr. Hartmann who reported on the Trent photographs, had shown that the first three Heflin photographs could be simulated by suspending a model from the truck’s roof although he had said this did not prove them to be fakes.

 

Photographs 6a and 6b

 

These are stills from a film taken by Howard Menger – the man who claimed to be a Saturnian. They are supposedly of a saucer which came to greet him. The photographs are not outstandingly convincing and to me give no support to his claims. Indeed, they seem to make them less believable.

 

 

Warminster Photographs

 

Not shown here are some photographs taken at Warminster on March 28^th 1970. The photographs were taken as part of an experimental hoax by David Simpson.

 

The experiment started at Cradle Hill at 11 p.m. when many skywatchers were present (Warminster is a favourite haunt for skywatchers). A high intensity purple spot lamp powered by a 12 volt car battery was shone on the skywatchers from a nearby hill. The spotlight was flashed on and off and a friend of Simpson’s who had a bogus magnetic field detector made the detector sound its buzzer thus making the other skywatchers think there was a strong magnetic field present. The buzzer was synchronised to the flashing of the spotlight thus making it appear more strange. Another of Simpson’s colleagues pretended to photograph the light – in actual fact, part of the film had already been exposed on a previous night some months ago and also the film had been tampered with. Two exposures on the film had a strange image superimposed on picture on the view from Cradle Hill whilst two photographs of the view from Cradle hill were actually taken on the night of the experiment.

 

The two sets of photographs were taken to make inconsistencies show up on them which enable anyone exercising any analytical care to prove them fakes. These inconsistencies were as follows. Firstly, no purple light appeared on any of the photographs. Secondly, the UFO was in a different place from the light – and was bigger and thirdly the streetlamp pattern on the two pairs of photographs of the view of the skyline from Cradle Hill was different indicating that they had been taken on different nights.

 

On the night, Simpson’s colleague had been instructed to let anyone who volunteered to develop the film privately, do this. Someone, who was connected with ‘Flying Saucer Review’ magazine came forward and developed the photographs and thus they were first published in FSR. Mr. Charles Bowen, who examined the negatives for FSR said that the photographs were ‘genuine beyond all doubt’. When a report of the event on Cradle Hill was published, it said that the purple light moved which was entirely untrue. Also the part of the horizon on which the purple light was seen was not even on the picture! Mr. Percy Henell, a photographic consultant who examined the pictures said he could find nothing on the pictures to suggest they were faked.

 

The hoax was allowed to run for two and half years and many reports on the photographs were published including one which showed the strip of four negatives. The images on them were small, but all that was needed to detect the magnification discrepancy was a ruler – the glaring inconsistencies were never discovered.

 

This is a very extreme case of an undetected hoax but just shows how some people can be fooled.

6.        STRANGE CASES

 

Out of the many thousands of UFO cases that are reported every year, there are quite a few which seem to defy all explanations. Some of these are related here, one which happened to a woman who lives in Skipton.

 

The Three Men In Black

 

From time to time, people who have had UFO encounters claim to have been visited after their encounter by three men dressed in black. Their clothes always seem to be new and they always seems to drive around in black cars. They show official – looking identification cards to the people involved but when these are checked out they are always proved to be false. People have followed the three men’s car only to lose it, often in circumstances which seem to indicate it has disappeared into thin air. The Men in Black don’t always work in threes, it seems that they have also been known to work singly and in pairs.

 

Rex Heflin, the man who took the photos in the last section claims that he was visited by a man who said that he was from the North American Air Defence command (NORAD) and that this man took Heflin’s original photographs. They were never returned and NORAD said that they had sent nobody to see Heflin.

 

Albert Blender claimed to have been visited by these men and threatened – he gave up his investigations into UFOs – the rest of his story is even more unbelievable.

 

Colonel George Freeman, a spokesman on Project Bue Book said, that a number of cases involving the three men had been checked and he said that they were not connected with the Air Force in any way.

 

In February 1960 a restaurant owner in Grand Blanc, Michigan called Joe Perry took some sharply defined pictures of a dome – shaped object with a green tail. Soon after he was called upon by two men claiming to be from the FBI.

 

Some think that in the Bible, the Star of Bethlehem was a controlled craft and that the three wise men were the men in black – they are both described as dark and oriental looking.

 

It seems that sleuths investigating the assassination of President Kennedy have even come across the three men. What could they have to do with this?

 

Who are the Men in Black? Are they of Earthly or unearthly origin? There seem to be no definite answers.

 

The next case is a famous one which happened to an experienced war pilot, Captain Thomas Mantell of the United States Air Force.

 

In January 1948 on one afternoon Airforce Officer at Godman Field Control Tower saw a strange shiny object in the sky which had also be observed half an hour earlier in Madisonville which was 90 miles away. The enormous object appeared to be intelligently controlled and it emitted an intermittent red glow which puzzled everybody in the Control Tower – they had seen nothing like it before.

 

Captain Thomas Mantell was flying around in the area in his P.51 and decided to follow the object and he gave a running report on his radio which was picked up at the Control Tower. It was 2.45 p.m. when Mantell’s first message came in:

 

‘I’ve sighted the ‘thing’ – it looks metallic and it’s tremendous in size!’

There was silence and then Mantell reported:

 

‘It’s starting a climb. It’s at 12 o’clock high, making half my speed. I’ll try to close in.’

 

About 5 minutes later, Mantell reported that the ‘thing’ had speeded up to about 360 miles per hour and just afar 3 p.m. his plane disappeared into the clouds. The men in the Tower waited Mantell’s next call and seven minutes later he reported,

‘It is still above me making my speed or better. I’m going up to 20,000 feet. If I’m no closer, I’ll abandon chase. ‘

 

This was Mantell’s last report; his plane disintegrated spreading the wreckage over a wide area. Another pilot took up the search when Mantell’s radio contact was cut but the object has vanished.

 

When fragments of metal from Mantell’s plane were found and examined, they showed unusual grooves on them which seemed to indicate that it had to some sort of stress but not like anything known to man.

 

What happened to Mantell’s plane and where did the object go? Some suggested that Mantell had blacked out through lack of oxygen but Mantell was an experienced pilot with a good record and would not have gone beyond his limit.

 

One theory is that UFOs are propelled by intense magnetic force fields and it was a magnetic force which destroyed Mantell’s plane when he got too close. This case has baffled experts and remains unexplained.

 

 

On 10^th September 1954 at 10.30 p.m. in Quarouble, France a certain Mr. Marcus Dewilde was at home when his dog started barking. He went outside ,taking a torch, he thought it might be a prowler. He was aware of an ill-defined shape to his left which was on or near the railway line which ran past his house; he thought it must be a farmer’s truck. He heard a noise to his right and turned round to see two very ‘odd’ creatures shuffling along. They were just over 3 feet tall wearing what he described as ‘divers’ suit’ with huge helmets. They had broad shoulders but no arms – they were heading for the shape on the railway line. He tried to cut them off but was stopped two yards away from them by a paralysing ray which emanated from the shape on the railway line. The two creatures passed within a yard of him and on into the thing on the railway line and after this he was able to move again. The shape took off into the air and went East, glowing red as it did so. The thing could not have been a helicopter, Dewilde told police, as there were too many telephone wires around his house.

 

Hallucination was discarded and the railway line was examined and deep marks were found in the sleepers, an engineer calculated that only a weight of 30 tons or more could have caused the marks. Furthermore, ballast stones next to the sleepers were calcined (shrunk by burning) and this could only have been done by intense heat. 

 

What happened here? What did Dewilde see that night that caused such deep marks on the railway sleepers? I cannot explain this, can you?

 

Whilst doing the project, I have received a good deal of help from a UFO investigator, Anthony Dodd, who lives in Skipton and is a policeman. This says a lot for him already and he strikes me as a very sincere man who looks on the subject objectively and his only interest is to find out what these things are and where they come from. He thinks UFOs are of extraterrestrial origin, he argues that if they were of this world, they would have dominated it by now. It must be strongly emphasised that Tony Dodd does not make money out of his work, indeed, it costs him.

 

Whilst I was talking to him, he related quite a number of cases to me, one particularly interesting one which happened in March last year [1982].

 

One night in Todmorden a man told his wife he was just going out to get some potatoes and she did not see him again. 48 hours later the man’s body was discovered on the very top of a coal tip by police with not a dirty mark on him. There were no foot impressions on the tip – it was as if the man had been dropped on the top of the coal tip. He had no shirt on, only a jacket, but all his possessions were there – it was not a case of theft. On examining his body they found that the back of the man’s head was shaved and he had burning jelly on his neck and left side. He had an expression of terror on his face. The jelly was analysed by forensic people but it could not be identified. The strangest thing was that the policemen had seen strange lights over the coal tip two nights previously.

 

What killed this man and what terrified him so much?

 

Tony Dodd told me of one man who was driving down a county road (down in the South of England somewhere) and he was being followed by a Volkswagen Beetle immediately behind him and a Marina behind the Beetle. The Beetle kept nudging  him along and consequently he kept looking in the mirror. All of a sudden, the Beetle disappeared and he slammed the brakes on and immediately got out. The man in the Marina had stopped, too – he also had seen the Beetle disappear. The two men went back up the road a way but could find no way where the Beetle could have turned off.

 

The question that immediately comes to my mind about this is could the Beetle have been carrying one or more of the Men In Black and was just driving away after visiting someone who had a UFO  encounter?

 

A similar incident occurred when two policemen were waiting on the M62 in a squad car when a car came speeding past at 90 miles an hour (it was in the early hours of the morning). The policemen were set off and were about to overtake the car at 100 when it suddenly disappeared. Soon after the two men became ill but a D-notice (Official Secrets Act) was placed on the case preventing any further investigation of the case.

 

What happened here? Why was a D-notice placed on the case? Was it the Men In Black (in the car which disappeared) again?

 

Tonny Dodd himself is often on night shifts and, not surprisingly, has seen quite a few strange things himself. Once, he was waiting near a field and he saw a cone of light just over the wall some red lights and a rotating horizontal shaft of light associated with it. At one point, the light came onto the squad car. Tony was with a colleague in the car and they thought the object, or whatever it was, had seen them. The next day Tony went up to field and discovered a strange pile of three stones which had hieroglyphs or something on the stones. He contacted a museum and soon found out that the field was an ancient Roman site. He says that quite a few of the UFOs he has seen seem to concentrate on archaeological sites and when I first visited him in October last year, [1982] they had had 8 sightings in 1 week, 4 in one night alone.

 

Another case that Tony told me of was one where sometime in 1980 a farmer was driving to Asda with his wife and children via Carlton. Two lights, one red, one blue started following them. Gradually, the lights came right up to the car windows and the man, wife and children were terrified. Then, 200 yards from the mast on Calton moor the man did a U turn in a layby and tore off back down the road. The lights followed them again but when the car reached a steep section of the hill, it shot down at speed and at the same instant the light shot up into the air and left them. The man and his family went back home. 

 

A case, which happened to an unnamed woman who lives in Skipton, started in a similar way to this last case. The event took place on Thursday the 4^th of March 1982. The woman concerned is 36 years old and is well educated and well spoken. She runs a business in Skipton with her husband and does not want any publicity over the case. Tony Dodd has investigated this case deeply and revealed some very strange things. It is him I have to thank for all the information on this case and I think that it will set you thinking.

 

On the day in question, she had been at her mother’s house for the day in a seaside tour about 50 miles from Skipton. She set off for home from her mother’s at about 9.30 p.m. – just after watching the 9 o’clock news. She drove back to Skipton, keeping her speed between 50 and 55 miles per hour all the way. She got to Hellifield at about 10.15 p.m. After this, she came to the vast expanse of rugged moorland on the Skipton side of Hellifield where vehicles can be seen approaching from a long way off. She then saw a car coming towards her on the other side of the road, it passed her and she watched it disappear into the distance in her mirror – she was now the only car on the road. Half a mile from Conniston cutting she noticed a blue light which lit up the offside of the car and looking in the offside wing mirror saw two lights, one red and one royal blue they just behind her at a height just above her car. She thought she could also see a number of smaller lights. The lights followed her into the cutting and at the other side a cone shaped beam of light about 15 feet in diameter at the bottom lit up the road. The car was just inside the beam of light and she suddenly felt very cold even though the car heater was still on. She became aware of a sort of silence yet the engine seemed to be revving far more than it should. The strange light followed her for a further half a mile and then she suddenly remembers seeing a lorry coming towards her.

 

When she got home she felt tired and drained but what she did not realise was that she was half an hour late and when her husband told her this, she was visibly shaken and could not explain it – she always had a very good memory and said she had not stopped to buy petrol or for any other reason. She later developed a rash on her back and chest which she considered unusual. In an effort to find out more about what had happened that night, she agreed to undergo hypnosis.

 

On a later date, therefore, she was put under hypnosis by Graham Birdsall in the presence of Mr. Dodd. The two men asked her questions.

 

She first described seeing the lights as described before and she also described having a soft buzzing sound. She then described being very cold – due to the regression technique used in hypnosis, she described everything in the present tense.

 

‘There is a beam of white light shining on my car’ she said.

‘Where does it come from?’ asked the men.

‘Above me’. She also described seeing lights in front of her, some like lots of  worms moving backwards and forwards and one large green one moving up and down and backwards and forwards. She then described feeling very tired and her head lolled over as if she had fallen asleep. She described having something soft and fluffy round her ankles which seemed to be holding her legs down. She said she had a veil in front of her eyes – like a blindfold but she could see a strange light through it which went round and round. After this she was asleep a few more questions but ignored them and then she suddenly put her arms out, her elbow being bent – she said she could not move them because something was holding them. She was asked about the surroundings again but nothing was gleaned from this.

 

The two men decided to stop the hypnosis at this point because it was so late. A second session was held on Thursday 20^th May 1982 when the woman was put in the trance-like state again.

 

She was first regressed back to the night of the event and first described seeing the lights again but then she put her hands behind her back and tried to take something out of the small of her back. She said ‘take it away – it hurts’ and went on further to describe the lights again and having pressure in, and a band round, her head. After this she said ‘They’re wanting information’. The reply to this was that they could have all the information they wanted and the woman replied to this ‘They think that’s funny’. The men asked if ‘they’ had a sense of humour; the woman replied ‘oh yes. They don’t trust us’. Some interesting facts came out then and the woman spoke as if she was in direct contact with ‘they’. This is the gist of the conversation:

 

Q ‘Ask them where they’re from’.

A ‘Distant galaxy’.

Q ‘Where do they live?’

A ‘Zircon or something like that.’

Q ‘Will they show themselves? Tell them you won’t harm them.’

A ‘They say they want to be like a friend – I feel like I’m with someone higher. Just a feeling. Must sit up very straight, very proud – with my head up.’

(She describes having the headache again.)

Q ‘Are they still examining you? Why are they on their guard?’

A ‘They are very gentle people.’

Q ‘Why do you say people?’

A ‘ I just sense it.’

Q ‘Ask them if they are religious’.

A ‘They don’t know what religion is.’

Q ‘Ask if you’re important to them’.

A ‘Yes, yes, yes, oh yes.’

Q ‘Because you’re a woman?’

A ‘It helps – we can communicate better.’

Q ‘Have they got control over us?’

A ‘They could have, but they don’t want it.’

Q ‘Are they protecting us?

A ‘Yes, in a way.’

Q ‘Have we got enemies?’

A ‘Yes, from far away.’

Q ‘Where?’

A ‘Out there’.

Q ‘Ask them why they protect us’.

A ‘Just guardians they’re good.’

Q ‘How long have they been guarding of the Earth?’

A ‘Centuries’. (She said this straight away.)

 

The woman then says that in the eyes of ‘they’, the world is turning evil and that we must be careful where we go in future.

 

Q ‘are they our gods?’

A ‘We call them such – Zeus is the first name, Afarbar.’

Q ‘Ask the if they ever lived on Earth!’

A ‘They came once – in Acrea.’ (Acrea was in ancient Greece).

Q ‘How will they help us?’

A ‘Through special powers.’

Q ‘What special powers?’

A ‘I can’t see anything, but I sense white.’

Q ‘White powers, who are they accountable to?’

A ‘Force greater than them.’

Q ‘God?’

A ‘We call him that.’

Q ‘Ask them if all these strange flying objects we see in this area at night are them?’

A ‘Some are (they), some are evil.’

Q ‘How can we avoid this evil?’

A ‘We can’t . They’re weighing us up, watching, making plans to take over.’

Q ‘Who is taking over, good or evil?’

A ‘That’s why they are fighting – we’ve attracted them to us.’

Q ‘Is it the way we fight each other?’

A ‘No.’

Q ‘Do our minds have a great influence?’

A ‘Very much so.’

Q ‘Have we ever in the thousand of years ….’ (The woman interrupts suddenly.)

A ‘The wars have nothing to do with it.

Q ‘You’ve read my mind.’

It was very late now and so session was ended. The third session was held on the 10^th June 1982 and lasted from 8.30 p.m. to 12.30 a.m.

Q ‘On the last session, we asked where they came from. They said Zircon. Would you ask them if this their name for it or ours.’

A ‘They say we do not know it.’

Q ‘Ask them if life ends at death.’

A ‘No.’

The men ask about the Men In Black and the woman continues:

 

A ‘They are not of this world; they are evil, evil, evil, evil, evil.’

 

There is a theory that the Earth is hollow and inside there is intelligent race and the men ask her if there is such a race:

 

A ‘There is such a race and they are hostile’.

Q ‘Where do they enter and leave the Earth?’

A ‘I am getting Bermuda Triangle.’

Q ‘Do you have any way of proving who you say you are?’

A ‘We have, but tonight is not the time.’

Q ‘Did an advanced civilisation inhabit the Earth millions of years ago?’

A ‘Yes – they were destroyed in an interplanetary war.’

Q ‘Would you be prepared to give us a demonstration to an invited audience that you are who you say?’

A ‘In our own time.’

 

The session thus was ended and the case is still being further investigated but no more progress has been made yet.

 

The woman involved here has no interest in science fiction nor the UFO field but certain things must be taken into account about hypnosis. Firstly, the Medical Profession are dubious about its use in the investigation of UFO cases as a tool; they see only as a loss of ego-consciousness. The hypnotic state stimulates the imagination and the subconscious mind. A hypnotist, called Bill McColl (?), at California State University, regressed people who were not interested in UFOs and got them to imagine being abducted by one. Their stories sounded remarkably like those of people who claimed really to have been abducted. (This experiment was actually conducted by a Professor Alvin Laurson.) James Harder said that Laurson failed to point out that his subjects could tell lies yet believe they were true and it appeared the memory could be changed purely by suggestion under hypnosis. Also a subject can confuse between reality and fantasy according to Lauson.

 

Despite all the arguments you throw at hypnosis, this case remains interesting. What caused this woman to loose over half an hour of her time? Why did she develop a rash? How much truth is there in what she told of under hypnosis? How did she know of the Man In Black?

 

I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

 

7.        PROBABILITY OF EXTRATERRESTIAL INTELLIGENCE

 

 

This is a very convoluted argument in the scientific world with some saying there must be extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) elsewhere in the universe and others saying this in not necessarily so. There are a great number of factors to be taken into account in this argument which include things like rate of star formation, number of habitable worlds which there are in a given solar system, the number of worlds on which intelligent beings evolve and how long civilisations of these beings last. A number of experiments have been carried out on what sort of conditions are suitable for life to begin. A certain scientist called Dr. Miller made a mixture of gases which were thought to be preset on primeval Earth eons ago. He passed on electrical discharge through it for a week (simulating a primeval thunderstorm) and already amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, and hence life, had been created. Further experiments of this sort managed to produce nucleic acids (part of DNA) which could even reproduce themselves – the very beginnings of life.

 

At first hand, therefore, it seems fairly simple to stimulate the beginnings of life, but what about the eventual evolution of intelligence? Some biologists believe that natural selection promotes the survival of the more intelligent species. Taking into account all the stellar, planetary and evolutionary factors involved in the argument, a number of scientists have attempted to estimate the number of Earth – like worlds in the Galaxy. Carl Sagan of Cornell University believes that they may number as many as a billion with as many as one million technically advanced civilisations in the Galaxy. Other scientists disagree, though Gerit Verscheur of the Colorado planetarium thinks that there are only 10 or 20 civilisations in one galaxy at present. If this was true, it would mean that, by the law of averages, the nearest one would be 2000 light years away – it would take them too long to get here. Or would it? What if they can travel at speeds close to that of light then on a journey where half a time is taken accelerating at 1g (roughly 10 meters per second per second) and half a time is taken decelerating at the same rate thus due to the time dilation effect (according to Einstein) a journey lasting 250,000 years planet time would only last 26 years ship time. But what if same different form of propulsion was used in the extraterrestrials’ crafts – they might be able to cross the galaxy in a few hours. They might have some advanced form of propulsion that would sound unbelievable to us. After all, a couple of hundred years ago who would have believed that man could go to the Moon and back?

 

To sum up, then, it seems that no one can make an accurate assessment of how much life there is out there although most people agree that it must exists in a least simple forms. Scientists can’t say for sure that there is intelligent life in the Galaxy, and even if there were, it seems that because of the vast distances involved, they would have great difficulty reaching us.

 

8.        CONCLUSION

 

I think because the Universe is such a vast thing, there must be many earth-like planets in it and I also think that on a good many of them there will be intelligent life. Because of the very age of the Universe I also think that there must be a fair number of technically advanced civilisations out there – probably some many times more advanced than man. Consequently, I think that they will have devised some method of propulsion which will enable them to cross the vast distances between the stars and galaxies within a reasonable length of time. I think it is quite feasible that these beings have visited us on more than one occasion – and I think I have presented ample evidence for this here. Think how far man’s technology has come in the past 100 years and think how far it could go in the next million years if he does not annihilate himself in futile war. A million years is a mere twinkling of an eye in the history of the cosmos – light from the most distant galaxies takes twice as long to get here.

 

The belief in ETI (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) and the vast number of reports of UFOs is far too great to be explained by any number of natural Earthly phenomena. I’m only surprised that there are not more good photographs of these things, but then again, maybe the good ones have never been released. It would not surprise me at all to find that there has been a widespread conspiracy of ‘silence’ among governments of the world – it is rumoured that here has been more than one UFO crash in America and it is also rumoured that these UFOs contained bodies.

 

I think it would be complacent to believe that man is the only intelligent life form in the Universe.

 

All this aside, though, what if I’m wrong? What if all these cases could be explained by Earthly phenomena (which I doubt) and it was found that the Earth and its life was a rare event in the Universe? Should not it make us treasure this world even more and make us realise it is not a thing to be ill-treated and thus should not it make us change our ways?

 

9.        BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Space Fact & Fiction – Mollie Bowen

UFOs Here and Now! – K.Gösta Rehn

Great Mysteries of the Universe – Roy Stemman

The Unexplained (various issues) –

Flying Saucer Menace (60’s Magazine) –

The UFO Encyclopaedia – Ron Story

 

 

Also Material From:

The Sceptical Inquirer – David Simpson

Horizon (BBC2)

Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World (ITV)

and Awareness (quarterly publication of CONTACT international)

 

Acknowledgement.

 

I acknowledge thanks to Jenny Randles and

 

Very grateful thanks to Anthony Dodd (Skipton)

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