Bad UFOs: Skepticism, UFOs, and The Universe

Failed Prophecies, Successful Grifting

2026-10-09T07:56:07.233-07:00

So, there is a lot of talk in UFO circles these days about Chris Bledsoe, who issues "prophecies" that he receives from The Lady, a Heavenly being who might be the Virgin Mary. Unlike most religious Prophets, Bledsoe ties his Prophecies to sightings of "orbs" and other UFOs.

Unfortunately for Bledsoe, the star Regulus is blue, not red, and it doesn't wander around into "alignments."

For several years, Bledsoe has been Prophesying that some momentous event would occur in 2026. The 2026 prophecy centers on a claimed message from a divine or interdimensional entity he calls "The Lady" (or "The Lady in White"), involving a celestial alignment and a global shift in human knowledge. Originally scheduled for Easter Sunday, he acknowledged an error in his astronomical calculations, and now predicted that the Age of Aquarius (or something like that) would begin on October 7. Which date has come and gone, yet the world seems the same as before this "new knowledge" arrived.

Bledsoe was a popular guest at this year's Contact in the Desert UFO gathering, where you could do a workshop with him for just $29.99, or better yet an "intensive" for just $49.99.

However, we now have a brand-new Bledsoe Institute, launched right on top of the failure of his Egyptian prophecy. It explains,

The Bledsoe Institute for Research is a nonprofit working to understand the language emerging from the orbs of light, and the ways all living things communicate.

It invites you to become a "founding angel" by making a donation.

Hal Putoff of the Disclosure Foundation (left) hanging with Chris Bledsoe.

Dr. Avi Loeb's "UAP Science Advisory Council" has Same Government Status as Rocker Tom De Longe's "To The Stars."

2026-10-01T12:48:28.508-07:00

So, we have been wondering what, exactly, is the status of Dr. Avi Loeb's so-called 'UAP Science Advisory Council'? Well, apparently it's one of several groups that "advise" the intelligence community about UFOs (UAPs), but arre not sponsored by the government.

Aaron Lukas is the Deputy Director of National Intelligence. He recently posted the following on X:

So Dr. Loeb's UAP Science Advisory Council is one of several such groups, and some of them are, frankly, rather loopy. In the Disclosure Foundation, we find many of the usual suspects, among them:

Christopher K. Mellon, formerly of Tom DeLonge's "To The Stars".
Astrophysicist Dr. Eric Davis, who claimed that a poltergeist followed him home from the Skinwalker Ranch.
Dr. Avi Loeb, naturally.
Physicist Dr. Harold Puthoff, who tested Uri Geller's magic powers back in the 1970s, and found them to be genuine.

As well as an assortment of big movers and shakers who can undoubtedly sniff that there is money to be made in "Disclosure."

But we know all about "To The Stars" academy, having been following it from its start, and visiting its "Flagship Retail Store" several times.

TTSA's "Flagship Retail Store," Encinitas, CA, during its heyday.

Rocker Tom DeLonge (left) of Blink-182, and founder of TTSA.

DeLonge writes a children's' book about nudity, sold at his Flagship Retail Store.

A model of the spaceship that TTSA proposed to get us "To The Stars".

Tom DeLonge knows a lot about aliens. Dude, where's my saucer?

But all good things must come to an end. Around New Year's Day of 2021, TTSA seemed to be unraveling. Suddenly no more was heard from Mr. DeLonge, whose "Flagship Retail" store had suddenly closed without explanation.

So far as I am aware, Tom DeLonge is no longer associated with To The Stars, although he created it and hired the likes of Elizondo, Mellon, Puthoff, Semivan, etc.

Good night!

About those "Orbiting Flashes" of Dr. Villarroel

2026-09-24T20:52:21.774-07:00

Viewers of NBC News on Sept. 22 were treated to some spectacular claims about artificial objects that might have been in orbit around the earth before Sputnik. Dr. Beatriz Villarroel repeated her now-viral claims about 'vanishing stars' - stars that appear on a red-sensitive photographic plate, but not in the blue-sensitive one. As if this were something remarkable.

Dr. Villarroel provided images to NBC News from the Palomar Sky Survey, showing stars on a Red Plate, and the same stars on a Blue Plate. Some of the stars are missing on the blue plate! Wonder of wonders!!

Dr. V. has circled some 'missing stars' between the Red and Blue plates, which she assumes to be mysterious objects orbiting the earth before Sputnik. Does she expect the objects on the two plates to otherwise be the same? If so, why did astronomers even bother to photograph star images in two different colors?

Frankly, anybody making this claim does not understand why two different color plates are used in the Sky Survey.

It is not to add color or sparkle to the effort. Rather, it is to measure a star's relative brightness in two different colors, which gives us its color index, and hence its temperature and spectral class. Indeed the color of a star is determined by its relative brightness on each plate. That is why two different colors are used. Astronomers want to determine the "Color Temperature" of a individual star, which reveals a lot about the star's makeup. The astronomer measures the apparent brightness of a star in red and blue light. Then the calculation of B-V (blue minus red) brightness tells us what spectral class this star belongs to. The image below illustrates why astronomers took images of star fields using two different color-sensitive plates.

Stars have colors,which in turn tells astronomers its temperature (from Slooh).

A star that is very red (Type M) will shine brightly on the red-sensitive plate, but may not show up at all on the blue plate, while the very blue stars (Types O, B, and A) might not be seen in the red. That's how the sky survey works.

The 18 1/2 inch Alvan Clark refractor at Dearborn Observatory, from 1860.

Way back when I took astronomy classes at Northwestern University, we learned the fine art of using glass plates for astrophotography, using this venerable 19th Century gem, the 18 1/2 inch Alvan Clark refractor at Dearborn Observatory (and yes, this class was taught by J. Allen Hynek). Nobody uses glass plates any longer, today it's all electronic imaging (which of course did not exist almost 60 years ago). Below is an image of the famous Hercules Cluster (M13) I took on a glass plate circa 1969, using the Alvan Clark refractor. What look like scratches on the plate are in fact alien space probes.

So, enough of this nonsense about 'missing stars!!'

Has Dr. Avi Loeb been Bluffing all this Time?

2026-08-28T21:31:52.819-07:00

Dr. Avi Loeb is an astrophysicist at Harvard University. Nobody is questioning his credentials as an astrophysicist, but his penchant for jumping to wild conclusions about UFOs (UAPs) has made him something of a joke among serious astronomers. In 2025 the interstellar object 3I-ATLAS entered our solar system from the depths of interstellar space. Dr. Loeb started saying that it might be an interstellar spacecraft, perhaps sent to check up on earth? He co-authored a paper which said,

As largely a pedagogical exercise, in this paper we present additional analysis into the astrodynamics of 3I/ATLAS, and hypothesize that this object could be technological, and possibly hostile as would be expected from the ’Dark Forest’ resolution to the ’Fermi Paradox’.We show that 3I/ATLAS approaches surprisingly close to Venus, Mars and Jupiter, with a probability of ? 0.005%

Of course, when 3I/ATLAS reached its closest approach to the sun, it swung around and continued on its hyperbolic path out of our solar system, never to be seen again. Loeb had said basically the same thing earlier about the first interstellar object, 1I/Oumuamua, possibly being a spacecraft.. .

In July Dr. Loeb wrote, “Why I Agreed to Lead the UAP Science Advisory Council for the U.S. Government”. In it he writes,

A month and a half ago, I was visited by a representative from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). He raised a simple question: “Would you be willing to establish and lead a new advisory council for the U.S. Government on the science of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). I responded: “You had me at `hello.’

In support of President Trump’s directive on UAP transparency, I was tasked by ODNI, the White House, the Pentagon’s All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the FBI and the Intelligence Community, to establish and lead the new UAP Science Advisory Council. The council reports to the UAP Governing Board which includes representatives from the above-mentioned organizations. Its goal is to advise the U.S. government on how to resolve the nature of UAP.

Small problem: there is no actual evidence, other than Loeb's word, that this really is a 'Government UAP Council.' I realized that the provenance of this Council seemed a bit woozy, but, well, sometimes academics are like that. Many of us thought that Loeb was a poor choice to head up the Council, given his penchant for jumping to absurd conclusions. But politics is like that sometimes, we thought.

To my knowledge the first person to raise the question in a serious manner was Alex Zorin. On Aug. 14 he wrote on X,

??The FBI, in response to my FOIA request, says they have "no record" of a so-called "UAP Science Advisory Council."
@ProfAviLoeb previously claimed in a blog post and reporting by @BrandiVincent_of DeefenseScoop that he was tasked by the FBI (among others) to organize such a body. At the time, I noted there was no record of a FARC charter as legally required, and no official government announcement. And I suggested Loeb misunderstood a casual conversation to be something it was not,...
I'm still waiting on replies from the other agencies Loeb claims "established" the board — a board no one seems to have any record of existing.

I reached out to one of the members of the Council who I knew, and asked him the question about Government sponsorship. He was at first dismissive of the question as a crazy conspiracy theory. He then explained that they have a regular Zoom meeting with a friend of Avi, who works for the government. I told him, that sounds to me like the "Trust me, bro" arguments of so-called "UFO whistleblowers." He said he would ask Avi about this. I have not heard back from him.

On one of Dr. Loeb’s public postings on X about his Government Council to study UAPs, I asked the question: “Dr. Loeb, do you have any documentary proof that your Council is, in fact, an official government panel?” There was no reply.

I brought this to the attention of New York Post reporter Steven Greenstreet, who is like a bulldog when he gets his teeth into a story. Greenstreet looked into the question of whether Dr. Loeb’s Council was, in fact, an official government organization. He later wrote on X,

I reached out to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to ask about Harvard Professor Avi Loeb's UFO council and its relationship with the government.

He asked them, “Is the UAP Science Advisory Council an official government group? “. Their reply was, “No, the UAP Science Advisory Council is an informal group of experts who have provided their views to ODNI officials.” Ouch!

So there you have it. Documentary evidence that Loeb's "Government UAP Science Advisory Council" is not a government agency, with only anecdotal evidence that it is. Why are you trying to fool us, Avi? Did you think that you could get away with it forever, that no skeptic would ever start digging? Why don't you go back to your telescope, maybe Spaceship 4I/LOEB will be here soon?

Steve Pierce confesses theTravis Walton UFO Abduction Hoax

2026-08-16T05:29:37.386-07:00

The Travis Walton "UFO abduction" back in 1975 is one of the best-known and most widely believed of all UFO cases. It was depicted in the movie Fire In The Sky. Serious researchers have known for a while that the case was a hoax. Now Steve Pierce, one of the woodcutters in the truck with Travis, not only admits the hoax, but explains how it was done.

In August of 2026, researcher Ryan Gordon traveled to the 'abduction site' with Pierce to try to untangle the confusion. Gordon published a YouTube video to document their discussions about the case. He writes,

On November 5, 1975, deep in the chilling timber of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests just outside of Heber, Arizona, a logging crew experienced an event that would cement itself in UFO history forever. What started as a routine day in the woods ended with 22-year-old Travis Walton vanishing without a trace for five agonizing days and allegedly taken aboard an extraterrestrial spacecraft. But as the years have passed, cracks in the world's most famous abduction story have begun to show. What really happened in the forest that night?

In this exclusive and gripping deep-dive interview, producer Ryan Gordon sits down with original logging crew member and eyewitness Steve Pierce to unravel decades of mystery, rumor, and shocking revelations.

The video begins with Pierce and Gordon at Turkey Springs in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. This is where the woodcutters were working on their forest service contract. It is also where Travis Walton claims he was "abducted," leading a group of researchers there, amid absurd claims about 'radioactive trees' and the like.

But a little reflection tells us this cannot be true. The woodcutters normally returned home using Black Canyon Road, a primitive but direct route through the forest, starting before it gets dark. However, on Abduction Day, Mike Rogers, the crew chief and driver of the truck, had the crew work until it was dark. He then chose to return via the Rim Road, a forest road they had not taken before. At the intersection of another road, they reportedly saw a UFO. Rogers stopped the truck, and Travis ran out to see the UFO. When Travis was reportedly struck by a beam of light from the UFO, Rogers hit the gas and sped away from the site, reaching a speed of 60 MPH on Rim Road, until they decided to stop and go back to try to find poor Travis, which of course they could not.

The Gentry Tower as seen from the road in daylight. Travis Walton's "UFO."

At the site of the Gentry Tower, Pierce says that he is "100% certain" that this was Travis Walton's UFO. A brief description of the case as we now know it:

The hoax was planned by Travis Walton and Mike Rogers. The other woodcutters (including Steve Pierce) knew nothing of it at the time.
There was a third hoaxer working in the Gentry Tower. He shone a searchlight on Travis, to make it look like he was being "zapped".

More recently, Travis has been claiming that the beam from the UFO 'killed' him. Fortunately, the aliens took him aboard their craft, and restored him to life.

Mike Rogers died this past February. According to his daughter, he made a deathbed confession of the Travis Walton hoax. Rogers had "confessed" this in 2021 in a phone call with Ryan Gordon, but then retracted his confession soon afterward. Rogers also reportedly "confessed" to his daughter to having hoaxed the famous Phoenix Lights using balloons or something, which is preposterous. Those "lights" traveled 400 miles in less than an hour, so they were obviously aircraft. Frankly, this detracts from the credibility of Rogers' other confession, although I still don't doubt it..

Steve Pierce at the Gentry Tower.

Forest Service CL-100 lookout tower (same model as Gentry Tower in Apache-Sitgreaves Natl. Forest)

The National Enquirer was offering $1 million for "proof that UFOs come from outer space." The Walton/Rogers crew was hoping to win that prize, but fell short. However, they received instead $2,500 each for '1975's most extraordinary encounter.'

"Transients" in Palomar Sky Survey - Probably from Aliens!

2026-04-14T13:29:00.000-07:00

Of late the UFO community has gone into a frenzy over some papers written by astronomer Beatriz Villarroel (with co-author Steven Bruehl, also Gary Nolan, and others), claiming to have found "transients" on Palomar Sky Survey plates taken (mostly) between 1949 and 1957. These are being interpreted as something mysterious, probably aliens putting things in geosynchronous orbit, objects that have since disappeared.

A good summary of Dr. Villarroel's methods is in this paper by Isabela Melamed, Not Seeing the Star Cloud for the Stars. She writes,

Within a 10×10 arcminute section — about the size of a dime held at arm’s length — they spotted nine stars, only to see them disappear 30 minutes later in the subsequent blue-sensitive plate.

This was bizarre — stars don’t vanish that fast. No known phenomenon explains it. Villarroel proposed a bold hypothesis: could the nine transients be reflections from non-terrestrial artifacts in geosynchronous orbit, perhaps extraterrestrial?

Caption from Dr. Villarroel's paper: "Four exposures of the 3 ×3 arcmin region of sky centered on the triple transient identified in July 1952. Upper left: The POSS I red image on July 19, 1952 at 8:52 (UT) containing the triple transient just above center. Upper right: A 10 m exposure POSS I blue image of the same region taken immediately afterward with no evidence of the triple transient. Lower left and right: POSS I red (left) and blue (right) images taken two months later (September 14, 1952) showing the transient still gone. Adapted from Solano et al. (2024)."

Frankly, anyone using that argument for the existence of anomalies obviously does not understand why the Palomar Sky Survey (and many others) imaged in red and blue. Astronomers want to determine the "Color Temperature" of individual stars, which reveals a lot about the star's makeup. The astronomer measures the apparent brightness of a star in red and blue light. Then the calculation of B-V (blue minus red) brightness tells us what category this star belongs to.

From Slooh

It is not surprising at all that some stars seen on the red-sensitive plate do not appear on the blue-sensitive plate, and vice-versa. Very red stars (type M) emit very little light in the blue part of the spectrum, and probably would not be seen on the blue-sensitive plate. The same would be true of stars Type O or B, which would probably be faint or invisible on the red-sensitive plate.

I am wondering if Dr. Villarroel or her colleagues performed the obvious, reverse search. That is, examine the blue-sensitive plate for "transients" that do not appear on the red.

When I was taking astronomy classes at Northwestern about a hundred years ago, we learned the following phrase to help us remember the different spectral types of stars:

O, Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me.

You can't say that any more!

Finding Skeptic Con-Man in the Epstein Files, Part 2.

2026-02-11T15:19:00.000-08:00

(Continued from Part 1)

Finding Skeptic Con-Man in the Epstein Files, Part 2.

Seckel asks Epstein for a "secured credit" loan of $8 million (!). Epstein seems to be willing to offer 6 million.

To: Al seckel
From: Jeevacation@gmail.com
Sent: Tue 12/7/2010 6:52:54 PM
Subject: Re: Question
What collateral is the issue
Sorry for all the typos .Sent from my iPhonc

On Dec 7, 2010, at 1:39 PM, Al seckel vrotc:
Can we make it 8 million in secured credit? Just easier. What would be
your loan rate?

From: Jeevacation To: Al seckel a Sent: Tue, December 7, 2010 10:38:26 AM Subject: Re: Question 6 million Sorry for all the typos .Sent from my iPhone

On Dcc 7, 2010, at 1:35 PM, Al seckel wrote: Serious question for an opportunity: For a 3.5 mil loan for one year... How much actual and real secured collateral would you need (amount of value)? What would be your loan rate? Is this possible? This is actually a real question. Appreciatively, Al

What is the context of this unusual negotiation?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Jeffrey Epstein <"jeevacation@gmail.com>

To: Al seckel < >
Sent: Tue, June 15, 2010 8:37:08 PM
Subject: Re: sunday guests
always
On The, Jun 15, 2010 at 10:27 PM, Al seckel <
Sean Carroll, Caltech physicist
http://en.wikipedia.orgiwiki/Sean M. Carroll
http://mposterousuniverse.com/self.html
> wrote:
Joe Kirchvink, Caltech geology professor, friend since 1982. fun, smart, wacky.
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/%7Ejkirschvink/
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/%7Ejkirschvink/PEbio I .htm

On Apr 17, 2009, at 1:17 PM, Al seckel wrote:
Jeff,
Good to talk to you this morning on this subject, as it is one I am entirely comfortable
with. ;-)
The list I sent you yesterday has the criteria of thinkers, out of the box. These are amongst
the very brightest people that I know, where I enjoy listening to them, and they
say insightful things along with a deep understanding of the subject matter.
Intellectual judgment along with intellectual ability. The two don't always go
hand-in-hand. This is also a list of people who have a certain type of intelligence,
but may not necessarily have social intelligence, i.e, they are a bit awkward.
Jay is incredibly skilled socially compared to some of the people on this list. Just fyi. I
personally am not bothered by social awkwardness, but this is your thing, and
you would like a good mix, and that is understandable. Criteria will just be
different then.
You brought up Jay. This is a good example. Jay does listen, and then tends to offer up his
own views. I very much enjoy interacting with Jay, and he is a close friend, and
although I may not always agree with him, he does always offer up ideas that are
interesting and worth thinking about. That's why I put him on the list. He has a
certain way he maps the world and he is also very well read and informed. This is
not an argument about Jay, just why I put him on the list. I would also put
Nathan in the same category as Jay. Doesn't listen much, pontificates, don't
always agree with what he says, but he tends to say things that are provocative
and interesting. He has an interesting way of mapping the world too, and is well
read and informed. I enjoy bantering with both of them, and count them as real
friends that I have known and hung out with for many years.
Some of the names listed are titans of intellectual ego. Steven Wolfram being amongst the
worst of them. Others are very shy and socially and fashion awkward, but are
amongst the very brightest and informed that I know, and will run intellectual
circles around some of the names on this list.
I very much like the idea of your asking people on this list to contribute names of the ten
"brightest" people that they know. This list would provide an excellent set of
references.
Please note, that although I have a diversity of thinkers, I have distinctly avoided people
who map the world in a magical way, and would encourage us to avoid "magical
thinkers.

From: Jeevacation <jeevacationafromailicom>
To: Al seckel
Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009 5:16:16 AM
Subject: Re: Re:
Sent from my iPhone
On Apr 16, 2009, at 6:33 PM, Al secke otc:
Anyone you don't know on an immediate list, ask me or google
them. All are good friends of mine for years, but these very high end
circles travel together, so you should be very familiar with almost all
of them. And, a few that you don't know, are off the charts, and in
some respects smarter than the ones that are familiar... ;-) They just
didn't seek the limelight. I have marked these people with an
asterisk. Not everyone on this list is a scientist.
There is no order to this list (this is a cross-section off the top of my head). I can
think of more names if I put my mind to it, but lets start here:
I am happy to discuss anyone here
Nathan Mhyrvoid *Catherine Mohr  *Jay Walker
Christof Koch  *Terry Sejnowski  Danny Hillis
*Bran Ferren  Vilamur Ramachandran  Lisa Randall
Frances Arnold  Jesse Dylan  Larry Page Elon Musk
Stephen Wolfram  Steve Juvertson *Pablo Ho
Jaron Lanier  Craig Venter  paul Kirkaas  Yossi Vardi
*Eric Mjolsness  *Mike Douglas  Dean Kamen
*Shelly Glashow  *Derrick Ashong  James Cameron
*Ronald Crowley  *Jeffrey Lehman  Christine Maxwell
*Brock Pierce  *Rich Roberts  *Lee Stein  *Gerry Sussman
*John Conway  Dan Dubno (just because he is very interesting)

From: Jeffrey Epstein < jeevacation@gmail.com>To: Al seckel

Sent: Thursday, April 16, 2009 2:56:34 PM
Subject: Re:
of course
On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 5:55 PM, Al seckel wrote:
Ah, you have actually asked my specialty. Seriously. Ok, different
disciplines and business too?
From: Jeffrey it m>
To: Al seckel
Sent: Thu y„ : : PM
Subject
could you give me a list of who you think would enjoy a get together in florida„
smart , out of the box types

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wow, look at this...Epstein is suing two individuals - SCOTT ROTHSTEIN and BRADLEY J. EDWARDS, and goes to great lengths to prevent Al Seckel from giving a deposition on the case!
(Edwards is an author who wrote Relentless Pursuit: My Fight for the Victims of Jeffrey Epstein, and several other books like this.)

Apparently Edwards has subpoenaed Seckel to give a deposition, and Epstein is desperately fighting against this! What is Epstein afraid that Seckel will say in a deposition, to file pages and pages of high-priced lawyers' citations and arguments to prevent Seckel's deposition from taking place????

PLAINTIFF'S MOTION TO OUASH SUBPOENA AND FOR PROTECTIVE ORDER TO PREVENT DEPOSITION OF ALFRED SECKEL
Plaintiff Jeffrey Epstein moves the Court, pursuant to Rule 1.280 and Rule 1.410, Florida Rules of Civil Procedure, for entry of a protective order and an order quashing a subpoena commanding non-party Alfred Seckel to appear for deposition in Los Angeles, California on May 23, 2011, which subpoena Defendant Bradley J. Edwards ("Edwards") has noticed over the Plaintiffs objection. The grounds for this Motion are: 1. On or about April 7, 2011, counsel to Edwards noticed the deposition of Mr. Seckel, despite the fact that counsel to Edwards was advised by Plaintiffs counsel that Mr. Seckel has no knowledge of any issue in this case and is barely known to the Plaintiff at all. A copy of the Notice and Subpoena is attached as Exhibit A.
2. The Plaintiff seeks an order quashing the subpoena and entry of a protective order to prevent the taking of this deposition indefinitely because Mr. Seckel has no relevant information about this case and to allow the deposition would effectively condone harassment

What follows are a half-dozen pages of legalese. This is beyond weird!!

https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA01103276.pdf

Finding Skeptic Con-Man Al Seckel in the Epstein files (Part 1)

2026-02-03T20:35:00.000-08:00

Now that the Epstein files have been (reportedly) fully released, I knew that Seckel must be in them. Seckel organized a "Mindshift" Science conference on Lolita Island, and he married the sister of Ghislaine Maxwell. The question is, what is in there?

"Jeffrey Epstein and Al Seckel have assembled a diverse and eclectic intimate group of exceptional thinkers and achievers to discuss various topics...."

I wrote about Seckel two years ago, "The Strange Life and Death (?) of Al Seckel." (You should read that first if you're unfamiliar with the Seckel saga.) I first met Seckel at the 1984 CSICOP Conference, held at Stanford University. He was then an enthusiastic young man of twenty-six, (falsely) claiming to be a graduate student in “physics” and “history of science” at Cal Tech. (In reality, Seckel never completed a single year of college.) He sought me out because I had been a co-founder of the Bay Area Skeptics (along with the late magician Bob Steiner) just two years earlier. Seckel explained that he was in the process of founding a similar group, the Southern California Skeptics (SCS). He wanted to discuss our experiences, and get my advice. Later, he arranged for me to give the first lecture to the Southern California Skeptics.

I put a question mark after Seckel's reported death in France in 2015, which has been widely reported but never officially documented.

My search of the official DOJ Epstein Website for "Seckel" returned 1,376 results. It is obvious that many of them contain duplicate information; I have tried to manage this as best I can. So some important information might possibly be left out, although that seems unlikely. Much of their correspondence concerns agreeing on a time for a telephone talk. There are also the errors of OCR, especially around a blanked-out region. I find it funny that the email address Epstein was using was "jeevacation@gmail.com". I can imagine what kind of vacation he might have in mind! 😂 At one point (repeated in several documents), Seckel says to Epstein, "You are obviously having way too much fun," but does not specify what kind of fun he means.

What happened with the Southern California Skeptics? We find the following testimony from Bart D. Hibbs:

Seckel impersonating a real scientist
I am an engineer at AeroVironment in Simi Valley, CA.
I have known the plaintiff Al Seckel since approximately the mid 1980s. In approximately 1984, Al Seckel founded a skeptical group to counter various pseudoscientific beliefs in popular culture. This group was called the Southern California Skeptics (SCS). In
approximately1987, I was appointed by the Board to take over the role of SCS Treasurer from the previous treasurer John Edwards, and continued in this official role until the group suspended its activities sometime in 1990. Between 1987 and 1990 I was officially listed as
the SCS treasurer on all SCS mastheads. I reported to the SCS Board on a regular basis
about the finances of SCS. Al Seckel was present at these meetings, along with other SCS
board members. I also regularly attended the meetings of SCS. I rarely see Al Seckel
anymore.
During the time that I was SCS treasurer, I personally handled all the finances and
accounting of the SCS. This task included keeping track and recording all income/expenses
of SCS, as well as check writing privileges for various SCS expenses. I made copies of all
checks, all bank deposit receipts (which included cash deposits from the basket to collect
donations during the meetings). All of this I entered into an accounting program on my
computer, and the results of the accounting were given to the SCS board at the Board
meetings, and accurate and true annual accounts were published in the LASER, the official
Newsletter of the group. I took this job very seriously, and did it myself. Al Seckel never
tried to influence me in any way in doing the accounting, was not involved in the
accounting, and I was never "under his control" as some people have falsely claimed. I am
my own person and do my own work.
While I was treasurer of SCS, at no time was there any significant income into the group,
and legitimate expenses seemed to always quickly consume any income that came in,
despite the fact that the group was run on a very tight shoestring. Any income to SCS was
quickly eaten up by expenses that related to mass promotional mailings, subscriber
mailings, printings of the flyers and other promotional literature, printing of the LASER
(the official journal of the group), subscriptions, book purchases, banquet and conference
costs, costs of the Beckman Auditorium, and other legitimate SCS expenses. On several
occasions, SCS was short funds to cover the expenses that had to be outlaid. At this point,
Al Seckel would step in and put his own personal funds into the SCS account to cover the
SCS account so that it would not be overdrawn. As SCS was always operating at a slight
loss, Seckel would rarely, if ever, reimburse himself for the money that he outlaid to cover
SCS. Other Board members also contributed some funds to keep SCS afloat. Seckel did not
"loot the skeptics out of existence" as has been falsely claimed.
The rumors that have been related to me that Al Seckel had somehow been inappropriate,
misused, or taken funds from the SCS accounts for his own personal benefit are completely
contrary to my experience and knowledge. I cannot say this more emphatically, as the truth
is just the opposite! I know of no foundation to these claims at all. The claim made by Pat
Linse that Al Seckel received $60,000 from SCS (during my tenure as treasurer 1987-1990) is absolutely false and without merit. I never saw those kinds of funds in the Skeptics at any time.
The accounting books of SCS have always been open to anyone that asked. These books
had copies of all checks deposited, originals of all checks written, copies of all deposit
receipts, all SCS bank statements, and a computerized accounting of all transactions. All of
this was prepared solely by me. A true and correct copy of the SCS accounting books were
provided to Elie Shneour, Phillip Klass, and CSICOP. I cannot recall anyone else that ever
asked me to examine them. I kept them in my possession until approximately a few years
ago, when lack of space and any interest in them, made me decide to throw them out. This
is a decision I did entirely on my own, and I did not consult with anyone about it, as SCS
had closed down its operation well over 10 years previously. This is what I informed Al
Seckel when he contacted me recently for copies of the SCS accounting books.
Finally, there have been allegations that Seckel somehow "fabricated" the accounting
books to make them appear as if he did not "loot the skeptics." I know of no reason to do
this, as the legitimate accounting books showed just the opposite: that he helped keep the
Skeptics financially afloat, rather than looting it. In addition he never accessed the
computer on which I kept the records without my presence. The computer was almost
always at AeroVironment so he could not have gained access to it without my knowledge.
I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of California that the
foregoing is true and correct.
Executed this day of December , 2007 , at Simi Valley, California.
Bart D. Hibbs

Concerning the alleged financial improprieties within SCS, the late, highly-respected Pat Linse, co-founder of the Skeptics Society, told a different story. As she explained to Michael Shermer, the other co-founder:

An amicus curiae brief on behalf of 72 Nobel laureates in support of the appellees in Edwards v. Aguillard, the case testing the constitutionality of Louisiana’s “Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act.” That brief was organized, in part, by the Southern California Skeptics, a local group that, along with many others, emerged after the successful growth of CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific nvestigation of Claims of the Paranormal—now CSI, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry). Pat had much more to tell me about how that brief came about, and especially the inner workings of the local skeptics group and why it collapsed the previous year because of the personal shenanigans of the organizer [Seckel].

As for the attendees' list for the Mindshift conference, Seckel writes the following:

Sure (all are confirmed and booked with the exception of Nathan below):
Al Seckel
Murray Gell-Mann
Gerald Sussman
Christof Koch
Frances Arnold
Leonard Mlodinow
Ron Reisman
Pablos Holman
Brock Pierce
Baron Reichart
Paul Kirkaas
Dan Dubno
Nathan Mhyrvold (waiting, trying to coordinate his schedule to come)
I had earlier asked a three other friends of mine to attend, but they had other
commitments, but will another time:
Danny Hillis
Ed Witten
Kip Thorne

Seckel asked,

if you can give me a date (I assume the location would be your island), what do I
offer them, in terms of travel arrangements?

Epstein's reply was:

everything„ hotel airfare, food

Seckel and Isabel Maxwell, speaking at the WEF, 2011

Apparently, at one point Seckel asks Epstein about "finding" his "research work" (Ha!) :(obviously "funding" - Seckel keeps apologizing for typos, blames his phone)

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 9:38 AM, Al seckel < > wrote:
Do you stilt want to do you gathering?
And, would like to know if you would be interested in finding, even in part, my research work...
If this is even a remote possibility, let me know what you would need.

Then it gets interesting. Epstein seems to be angry that he has already sent money to Seckel, who still wants more(!):

From: Jeffrey Epstein <jeevacation@gmail.com>
To: Al seckel < >
Sent: Wed, December 8, 2010 11:00:26 AM
Subject: Re: MIKE IS STILL ON CALL, HE HAS BEEN WAITING 45 MINUTES FOR YOU.
II have lent you 25k paid isabels trip, given you the last 10k wired to mike with the understanding that most of the pages would be gone by nov, ten thousand was wired to him on the 20 th november. to call me and tell me the servers will go down if he doesn't get more money is ludicrous.

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Al seckel < wrote:
Christ,
This is just not what I need this morning, as I got a rate (as I told you) for cash. Trying save you $$$.
On call with WEF now. Can't speak. Call me in 30 minutes:

From: Jeffrey Epstein <"eevacation@gmail.com>
To: Al seckel < >
Sent: Wed, December 8, 2010 10:30:32 AM
Subject: Re: MIKE IS STILL ON CALL, HE HAS BEEN WAITING 45 MINUTES FOR YOU.
he received a wire transfer from me„ this is silly„ i would like to ask him .his bank knows that the wire came from me„ he is going to get a 1099 for 20k so far.
On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 1:27 PM, Al seckel > wrote:
He asked me not to give it out. WHAT do you want me to do??? I have asked him repeatedly. You can ask him, but he won't. He doesn't want to work that way. He doesn't even know I gave you his bank info. HE WOULD EXPLODE"

From: Jeffrey Epstein <jeevacation@qmaitcom>
To: Al seckel < >
Sent: Wed, December 8, 2010 10:25:44 AM
Subject: Re: MIKE IS STILL ON CALL, HE HAS BEEN WAITING 45 MINUTES FOR YOU.
I would like his number please . asap/
On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 1:24 PM, Al seckel > wrote:
I have to now be on a scheduled call with the WEF. If you gave me your phone number, as I don't have your Santa Fe number, and a time he can call, then it can be arranged.
Don't force him, you have no hold, and he will walk. his services are in too high demand.

From: Jeffrey Epstein < jeevacatior@gmail.com>
To: Al seckel < >
Sent Wed, December 8, 2010 10:20:53 AM
Subject: Re: MIKE IS STILL ON CALL, HE HAS BEEN WAITING 45 MINUTES FOR YOU.
I expect you to give me his direct contact. i do not use conference services , for private calls. ever

From: Jeffrey Epstein < jeevacatior@gmail.com>
To: Al seckel
Sent: Tue, June 15, 2010 8:37:08 PM
Subject: Re: sunday guests
always
On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 10:27 PM, Al seckel
Sean Carroll, Colwell physicist
https://en.wikipedia. r /wiki can M. art It
• ' . fun, smart, wacky. would you be up for a call early evening on sunday?
wrote:

I am wondering who "MIKE" is 😏. Obviously these two are unwilling to risk putting any real content of their discussions down in writing. And I don't believe for a minute that Epstein's "servers" would come crashing down unless he wired more money to Seckel!

End Part 1. I am ending this posting here not because I have finished the task, but because the task is so large that I fear I might never be able to finish it. Judging by file counts, I am less than 10% of the way through the "Seckel" hits. Stay tuned for more.......

Skywatcher UAP Class Studies Bird Flock

2025-05-28T18:51:00.000-07:00

Hello, dear readers! I haven't posted anything in quite a while, not for any good reason, but because I didn't want to step into that foolish "Disclosure" mess. David Grusch, who it was once believed would blow apart the whole 'UFO coverup,' hasn't produced anything in several years except more unsupported claims. Luis Elizondo skipped out on a Congressional UAP briefing to attend the Alien Festival in McMinnville, Oregon, where he was a paid speaker (he first claimed to be "sick"), thereby showing where his real priorities lie. And Ross Coulthart says that one crashed UFO was so large it couldn't be moved, so they constructed a major landmark over it! Anyone who believes any of these "Disclosure" clowns is seriously deficient in critical thinking. Steven Greenstreet wrote on May 19,

Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna) scheduled a classified briefing in order to give 3 UFO "witnesses" a chance to pony up and provide their alien evidence.

All 3 of them skipped the briefing, claiming to be "sick". Beyond parody.

Image by Steven Greenstreet

I'm writing this today about UAP class 1 - Tetra, presented by Skywatcher, a group that describes its mission as:

Skywatcher provides advanced aerial intelligence and protection systems. Founded by former military and intelligence professionals. @SkywatcherHQ

Now, watch this video, their 'scientific analysis' of these "UAPs". Those are birds, dude!

Here is an entire fleet of UFOs (excuse me, "UAPs"), according to Skywatcher!

"Drone" Madness - Drones VS. Astronomers!

2024-12-12T18:55:00.000-08:00

The Science (?) of UFOOLogy takes many strange twists, but here is one I didn't see coming. For decades, people seeing, and misidentifying, stars, planets, and airplanes were reporting them as 'alien UFOs.' But suddenly, they aren't aliens any more - they're drones!

Dude, that is an airplane, not a Mystery Drone!

It all began in 2019, when "Multiple Destroyers Were Swarmed By Mysterious ‘Drones’ Off California Over Numerous Nights. The disturbing series of events during the summer of 2019 resulted in an investigation that made its way to the highest echelons of the Navy.." This, however, did not have much influence on the public until 2021. The main video released of "Pyramid-shaped UFOs", and cited by UFO promoter Jeremy Corbell (and others) was later shown to be an airplane flying past Jupiter, and the stars of the constellation Scorpius. The apparent pyramid shape of everything (!) was shown to be an effect of bokeh, or 'how the optics represents an out-of-focus object'

Now news reports of "drones" hovering over certain areas at night are everywhere, just like the classic Flying Saucer "waves" of yore.

UFO historian and researcher Jeff Knox wrote on Facebook of this photo,

This is peak stupidity by one of the Twitterverse's biggest UFO accounts. Lue crew. Sadly, many very popular accounts and pseudo-journalist (like Marik [von Rennenkampff ] ) who just published an article on The Hill) are promoting this same utter nonsense. This is what the disclosure community has these days....air planes they think are cloaked UFOs.

Longtime UFO researcher Barry Greenwood added, "The right-angle turn appears to be a simple pivot of the camera rather than the object itself turning."

The point needs to be made that there are many different kinds of "drones", of different origin and purpose. Some belong to the military, some belong to law enforcement, others to civilians. Some have horizontal propellers, enabling them to hover in one place. Others are more like conventional fixed-wing aircraft, but smaller because they do not carry a pilot (like the RQ-7, below). As is the case with UFOs, identifying or "solving" one series of drone sightings does not necessarily have any bearing on other sightings. However, the "solved" drone incidents described below are very instructive of what is happening in some cases.

Something isn't right here, other than the usual incoherent reporting. I want to know WHY the military has never brought down, or recovered, one of these supposed drones. For that matter, I don't think they have ever even tried! Surely the military has every right to bring down any unidentified and unauthorized craft encroaching on its territory, and has the means to do so. Some news reports are saying it would be illegal to shoot at drones. While that is true for you and me, if you are a military commander defending a position, you have every right to engage unknown and potentially harmful intruders. (Although it would not be necessary to shoot bullets at it. They can bring it down by interfering with its electronics.) Then they could study it to determine its origin, and perhaps its purpose. The military cannot take the risk of letting unknown, possibly hostile, craft operate over its territory. It could have weapons, explosives, surveillance, biological agents, etc. Yet they seem completely uninterested in bringing one down to investigate. Perhaps because they already know what it is.

The RQ-7 Drone, as is being regularly flown by the Army out of Ft. Huachuca in Arizona.

I decided to turn to my best source for all things military and astronomical, Maj. James McGaha (USAF retired). He is an astronomer, as well as a longtime skeptical researcher of UFO claims. James is the owner of the Sabino Canyon Observatory just outside Tucson. He also operates the Grasslands Observatory, south of Tucson, close to the Mexican border.

James McGaha

James is a former pilot who flew C-130s at Air Force bases around the world. When I asked James about the latest drone mania, he noted that several astronomers had come to him, asking the same thing. What he said next, however, surprised me: there really are drones circling military bases and other places of interest, but they are our own! Here is what he said.

One night in 2012, James was doing some imaging at Grasslands. Modern astrophotography typically utilizes not one long exposure, but a series of shorter exposures that are then combined via software, extracting the maximum detail. He saw an object approach from the direction of Ft. Huachuca, the US Army Base at Sierra Vista, Arizona, which is only about twenty miles from Grasslands. The drone operator apparently saw his big telescope, and decided to "orbit" it. (James suggested that perhaps with the observatory roof rolled back, the big scope looked like a cannon. But one would expect that a drone pilot around Tucson could recognize an astronomical observatory, in the astronomy capital of the US!) As might be expected, this ruined all of his images. James contacted Ft. Huachuca to complain. They admitted that the drone was theirs, but invoked 'national security' to justify its intrusive behavior. James, who knows all of the rules governing military flight operations, told them that justification applies only when they are operating in a Military Operations Area (MOA), which they were not. Apparently they agreed - Ft. Huachuca is still flying drones, but now they fly past the observatory without stopping. When James sent this photo to me, he wrote,

We were imaging NGC 2359 (Thor's Hammer) with a 180mm astrograph. You can see the green trail (constant on light) and strobe lights flash 4 times

James McGaha, MS, FRAS

3-21-2012: One of the images from Grasslands Observatory of NGC 2359 ruined by "orbiting" RQ-7 drone

A few months later, similar drones were seen around the Sabino Canyon Observatory in James' back yard. This is quite close to the entrance to the Sabino Canyon Recreation Area, east of Tucson. These appeared to be the same drones seen at Grasslands, about fifty miles away. Then, drones appearing to be of a different origin were seen at Sabino Canyon. These flew over the mountain peaks, then down the other side - well within the capabilities of drones like the RQ-7 (and successor models). These drones, too, took an interest in James' observatory, ruining some images.

Sabino Canyon Recreation Area (photo by author).

From their direction of arrival and departure, James concluded that the drones were coming from an airport at Marana, Arizona, a place frequently used for military training - for example, parachutists. James has himself received training there. There don't seem to be any other possibilities. He contacted the FAA, which adamantly refused to acknowledge any drones flying out of that airport.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about Pinal Airpark in Marana:

Pinal Airpark (Evergreen International Aviation) is located just north of Marana in Pinal County. Many commercial airlines send their airplanes to this site for storage. It was well known in the 1970s and 1980s as an air base for the CIA. The airport was said to be a U.S. Forest Service air tanker base, but when a series of forest fires broke out in the mountains surrounding Tucson in the early 1970s, Airpark officials had to admit that these planes were not Forest Service tankers. Locals had asked for them to put out the fires. Airpark officials said these were actually paramilitary cargo planes. Access to the Airpark is stringently monitored.

Based on the above, it seems entirely reasonable to suspect some kind of 'sneaky business' is going on in Marana!

James related one more Drone Encounter he had in 2023. He was in the national forest near Tucson, shooting at targets (which is perfectly legal so long as certain safety precautions are observed). He set up inside a dirt circle atop a hill, often used by shooters. From there you cannot see what is happening at the bottom of the hill.

Concentrating on his targets, he became aware of some large object nearby. Looking up, he saw a huge quad-copter drone hovering about 100 feet directly over his head. But who did it belong to? Walking over to the road leading down, with the drone following him, he saw a big, official-looking SUV, with some men taking out equipment and setting it up. It was the Border Patrol, testing some very expensive drone whose manufacturer hoped to sell it to them for border surveillance. It was about 5 or 6 feet in diameter. Its propellers were each about 12" long. James explained to them that it is not legal to hover the drone over someone's head, nor to use it to follow or harass people. He never did find out if the BP purchased any of those drones, but looking at news reports from the border, I suspect that the answer would be "no."

Levitated Linda Sues Netflix over New Documentary!

2024-11-18T12:54:00.002-08:00

Netflix has a new three-part documentary about the 1989 "Manhattan Alien Abduction" of Linda Napolitano. (Originally the incident was known as "The Brooklyn Bridge Abduction," but that brought up connotations of swindlers who reportedly would try to sell naive immigrants the Brooklyn Bridge.) "A woman claims to have been abducted from her bedroom in Manhattan. This docuseries explores whether it was an elaborate hoax — or proof of alien life."

I was going to write a review saying something like this:

Here is a UFO documentary that is more honest than most of them. It examines the UFO abduction claims of Manhattan resident Linda Napolitano (who sometimes used the pseudonym "Cortile"). Her story is preposterous for many reasons, but famed UFO abductionist Budd Hopkins (1931-2011) was absolutely convinced it was genuine. This documentary series is better than most UFO-themed ones because it considers the evidence both for and against Linda's claims, even if it does lean somewhat toward accepting the bizarre claims as authentic.

But I put that idea out of my head when I saw that the star, Linda, is suing Netflix! Holy Moley! 'UFO abductions' have been out of fashion for a number of years now; they peaked in the 1990s and are seldom discussed seriously today. If anything, Linda owes Netflix a debt of gratitude for breathing new life into her practically moribund case.


Netflix shows Linda being levitated out her apartment window and into the UFO.

Budd Hopkins was a recognized leader among UFO abductionists, In June, 1992, an invitation-only "abduction study conference" was held at MIT, under the faculty sponsorship of physicist David E. Pritchard. I attended, along with a number of major UFOlogists: John Mack, David M. Jacobs, Bruce Maccabee, etc. The justification of the conference was, apparently, that those who "discover" supposed alien abductions using hypnosis had built up sufficient confidence that their collection of alien abduction evidence was now strong enough to convince the world. Even MIT!

So it was at this conference that Budd Hopkins first presented to the world what he called "the most important UFO abduction case that I've ever worked on." What is unique about the supposed abduction of Linda "Cortile" is the claim that it was independently witnessed by at least four other persons, including two detectives watching from the ground below. Supposedly they gazed in astonishment as the UFO, with Linda now on board, soared up above the rooftops of Manhattan, then plunged into the East River near the Brooklyn Bridge, on which it allegedly caused several automobiles to stall. Linda subsequently reported nose bleeds, and an X-ray seems to show an implant in her nose.

The following month Hopkins regaled the 1992 MUFON Symposium in Albuquerque with more about the case. This time Linda herself was there. There was the supposed corroboration of these two anonymous men - claimed to be New York City policemen working "under cover" - who he admits he has never met. When the story they gave about their supposed police assignment failed to check out, they sent a second letter, changing their story to claim that they were actually "security agents" guarding a very high-ranking diplomat (supposedly UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, who wouldn't say anything about this.). Cortile claims that these two "agents" first visited her in her apartment, then later kidnapped her twice in broad daylight as she walked in the neighborhood. They allegedly drove her out to a supposed CIA safe house on the beach in Long Island. There "agent" Dan supposedly dropped to his knees to worship Linda with religious fervor, calling her his "Lady of the Sands," but later attempted to kill her by holding her head under water at the beach. Fortunately, she was rescued in the nick of time by the other “agent,” Richard. Later Linda gave Hopkins love letters allegedly from Agent Dan, who promised to marry her if he could ever escape from the mental institution to which he said he had been committed. Some of these letters were studied by a graphologist, and determined to be in Linda's handwriting.

With the situation getting more bizarre each day, a private conclave of prominent UFOlogists was called in October, 1992 to discuss the case. Linda told them that she was a descendant of Joan of Arc, who was burned at the stake in 1431, at the age of nineteen. (There is no evidence that Joan of Arc ever gave birth.) Ufologist George Hansen wanted to request a formal federal investigation of the incidents in which Linda was allegedly kidnapped, assaulted, battered, harassed, and nearly drowned by two supposed agents of the U.S. government. He charges that Budd Hopkins, along with Walt Andrus of MUFON and Jerome Clark of CUFOS, strongly objected to any investigation, on the grounds that it could be “politically damaging” to UFO research. Hence any attempt to ferret out the identities of the two mysterious agents would simply alarm the agency responsible, making it even more difficult to track down the supposed agents. Bottom line: there are no witnesses to this supposed abduction.

Budd Hopkins married Carol Rainey (1949-2023) in 1996. Carol was a documentary film maker specializing in science-related documentaries. (With the benefit of hindsight, that marriage was doomed from the start, as science and Budd Hopkins didn't mix).

A woman claims to have been abducted from her bedroom in Manhattan. This docuseries explores whether it was an elaborate hoax — or proof of alien life.

As Shivangi Sinha explains in Cinemaholic,

Initially, Carol Rainey believed Linda Napolitano’s story and observed her husband, Budd Hopkins, as he guided Linda through hypnosis sessions to retrieve memories of her alleged alien abduction. However, over time, Carol’s doubts began to grow, and she increasingly questioned the validity of Linda’s account. She felt Linda’s story might be exaggerated and began scrutinizing the evidence more closely. Carol investigated witness accounts related to Linda’s experience but found them inconsistent and lacking in credibility. She also suspected that some of the letters Linda had provided as evidence were fabricated. This skepticism eventually extended to Budd’s approach, and Carol openly critiqued his investigative methods. She expressed concerns that Budd may have overlooked inconsistencies in Linda’s story, leading her to question his objectivity in documenting and publicizing the case. Her stance, which became increasingly vocal, led to tensions in their professional and personal relationship.

But it gets worse. Carol assisted Budd in editing his book about the case, Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge Abduction (1997). This book is not generally available today, apart from a few very expensive used copies, but it can be read in the Internet Archive Library. It is 400 pages of a preposterous, meandering tale that anyone with half a brain will immediately recognize as fiction. As Carol wrote later,

It was highly dramatic, paced like a thriller— full of otherworldly treachery, forbidden love, UFOs over Manhattan, twenty-two witnesses, a heroine whose red blood cells were immortal, lusty and dangerous Secret Service agents, a Prince from afar, gifts of many fur coats, chases on foot, more forbidden love, an X-rayed alien implant, Linda’s abduction into a spacecraft accompanied by an important world leader, her abduction into a spacecraft with other members of Budd’s abductee support group, and her abduction into a spacecraft accompanied by a famous Mafia don. Then, later, as the story continued to unfold (long after the book’s publication), Linda’s presence in the lobby of the World Trade Center when the planes hit and her bloody, barefoot escape over shards of glass. Although…not all of those events reported above by Linda Cortile had been selected by Budd for inclusion in the book. I knew about them, but they weren’t in the book.

Worse yet, Hopkins "continued to tout the major significance of the case long after he knew that Linda had lied to him on multiple occasions," according to Rainey. Here is a good summary of the controversies surrounding this case.

Carol also wrote in that same piece:

Leslie Kean had begun her exploration of UFO abduction by allegedly vetting the Linda Cortile case (from Hopkins’ book Witnessed). After doing her own review of source material and interviewing both Budd and Linda, she concluded that it was a sound, well-researched case.

Kean soon became a disciple at the feet of Budd Hopkins.

As the Dean of UFO Skeptics, Philip J. Klass, said to me (I wrote this down to share with with Carol Rainey), "Every time I saw Budd Hopkins he was surrounded by a group of beautiful abductee women. And the 'Queen Bee' of them all was Linda Napolitano. If I were to switch over to the 'other side,' maybe I could be surrounded by women the way that he is." Klass has a long discussion of Levitated Linda's case in his Skeptics' UFO Newsletter #22, July 1993, as well as in several other issues. My own observation, based on everything I have seen about this case: the erotic attraction between Budd and Linda was too obvious to ignore.

Budd and Carol

"On Oct. 28, 2024, two days before the Netflix documentary’s planned release, Napolitano filed a complaint in New York against Netflix, as well as various individuals and production companies involved in the documentary, plus the estate of Carol Rainey.

Napolitano filed the complaint along with two other plaintiffs: Peter Robbins, a former colleague and friend of Hopkins, and the estate of Budd Hopkins. Robbins is also included in the documentary."

Having seen the many, many absurdities being promoted in this case, and given that the pro-Linda side is given at least as much promotion and respect as Carol's skepticism, on what grounds could Linda possibly sue Netflix over this?

"According to the complaint, Napolitano and Rainey are falsely pitted against each other.

“(Napolitano) was not remotely close to be like or appear as the person that is on screen, never had any bone to pick with Carol Rainey,” the complaint reads, “but was set up as such a villain for purposes of controversy and conflict, all of which was a patently and deliberately false portrayal to support the false narrative of the truth.”

Napolitano’s attorney, Robert Young, told TODAY.com in a phone call on Oct. 30 that she and Robbins feel they were “egregiously deceived” by the documentary’s producers.

“They would have never entered into any production or description of what happened to Linda that was going to be questioned and subject to such denigration and aspersions against their good names and character,” he said. “They’re not happy.” "

If you can sue to stop the release of a documentary on the grounds that the parties portrayed in it are "not happy," then no documentaries on any controversial subject could ever be made!

On November 17, plaintiff Peter Robbins and his cat participated in a Zoom meeting sponsored by MUFON's San Diego chapter. That's me in the upper left corner. Next to me is Wil Wakely, head of MUFON San Diego. I like Wil, but I think he needs to be a bit more skeptical. 😏

Peter didn't mention the lawsuit. When I asked about it, he replied that as a litigant, he is not supposed to discuss the details of the case, which is true. He noted only that the lawsuit alleged unfair business practices, and would be heard next month in the Manhattan courtroom of the New York Supreme Court.

Some of this material was taken from my book UFO Sightings. Also see my 2011 Blog posting, Abductology Implodes.

Guest Blog - Martin Kottmeyer's musings on Matthew Bowman’s "The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill"

2024-11-02T20:44:00.001-07:00

VS.

“FAR MORE LOGICAL THAN A DREAM”

Some critical and personal musings on Matthew Bowman’s The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill: Alien Encounters, Civil Rights and the New Age in America, Yale University Press, 2023, 278pp.

Bowman’s new version of the Hill abduction is a mostly good book. He provides considerable amounts of new biographical background about their lives prior to the ufo event that made them celebrities in the ufo culture. He had access to the papers surrounding the investigation of the primary ufo event and this adds many details and nuances to what was witnessed. We know from Bowman that Barney saw the ufo entities bathed in a “shadowless blue light,” a lovely evocative phrase that never made it into Interrupted Journey. He pays more attention than most to Betty’s fears that they had been exposed to radioactivity from the craft, bringing information that five years after the event she was writing scientists about her concerns that her recurrent bouts with pneumonia and how sick Delsey, their dog, was and asking them about “certain radiation dangers connected with ufo sightings.” She also indicated that the initial call to Pease AFB was prompted by wanting protection over what dangers they had been exposed to. He considerably fleshes out the story of Betty’s later obsession with ufos and how she claimed to have hundreds of sightings into the 1970s and beyond. Bowman indicates she also told ghost stories and embraced New Age beliefs which he excuses as valid reactions to their rejection by establishment science and the authorities.

Strange to say though, Bowman himself brackets the book with his own rejections – “I do not believe the Hills were abducted…” (11) He is skeptical of the explanations given to the ufo event and “the story of the abduction seems to me to lack proof beyond the Hills own hypnotically recovered memories, a genre well known to be fraught and malleable. And a story of medical examination and interstellar travel seems too simple for the realities the Hills claimed to glimpse.” (223)

That expression “realities” seems to carry a New Age meaning and it is somewhat eye-opening that in the middle of the book just before recounting the dreams that Betty wrote down in the days after ufo sighting and her realization of possible radiation exposure, he describes them as “a comprehensive narrative, far more logical than a dream.”(89)

And I can only term that a disappointing development for Betty’s dreams very much seem like dreams to me, surreal and quite irrational. She is thrust in the navel with a large needle and experiences pain. Her examiner is surprised by this and is able to stop it simply by a wave of the hand. The leader gives Betty a book, but his crew points out that he shouldn’t have done that and they take it back. How could the leader forget such a significant policy point that they shouldn’t provide proof of their secret and criminal acts? And what about the business with showing her the star map and asking Betty if she knew where Earth was on it. Was this supposed to be sarcasm? A rational person would make a gesture to show where Earth was on it and their home or simply tell her that they had a policy against that. The story is not logical at all.

This brings me to a larger disappointment. In looking through the notes, I saw that at one point he cites Brookesmith and Pflock’s Encounters at Indian Head, but I find it very hard to believe he read it. His text does not engage with several important criticisms appearing in that book. Brookesmith’s paper in particular demands attention for the analysis of what Bowman calls the ‘thumbnail arithmetic’ researchers indulged in two months after the drive that led to the claim that there was ‘missing time’ – the “two lost hours” emphasized in Fuller’s subtitle. Brookesmith points out that their distance estimate was wrong – based on an “as the crow flies” number that ignores the route was extremely winding and even reverses direction at one point. Let’s also reiterate that the Hills themselves did not notice the discrepancy at the time when they reached home, something that modern depictions almost invariably falsely portray. Brookesmith’s paper makes other observations that one can hardly believe Bowman would ignore mentioning like the fact he, like others Bowman discusses, thought the interracial marriage was a matter for extended comment. Brookesmith also points out the genital warts that Barney reported are a common STD.

I have a paper in the Indian Head book that spells out those illogical aspects of the dream I mentioned above. Though I don’t object to Bowman referring to my earlier work as giving a bad science fiction interpretation to Betty’s dreams, I had expanded my analysis to include showing how some of the odd elements of the examination – the nail clippings (hardly a usual medical procedure), skin scrapings, and the so-called pregnancy test seem to specifically echo matters seen in the investigation of radioactive fallout. This connects up to Betty’s concern of radiation exposure which lines up to how dreams typically reflect the ongoing anxieties a person is feeling.

That paper also includes my rebuttal to Jerry Clark’s sometimes hallucinated criticisms against “The Eyes That Spoke” which Bowman echoes in describing my rhetoric as having a supposedly triumphant quality. It is Clark himself who places things in a warring frame – note point 4 in “The Eyes Still Speak” – my own attitude was the proper one of thrilled discovery.

Bowman also recycles Kathleen Marden’s more recent observation that “The Bellero Shield” does not actually have large slanting eyes; instead bony ridges around its eyes extend along the side of its head.” How this gets rid of the resemblance seems somewhat nebulous to me. Baker’s sketch includes bone structure around the eyes. https://www.nicap.org/reports/hillartist2.htm ,
Junior also seems to have that bony ridge:
https://www.facebook.com/la.wan.353/posts/pfbid0ui45Qaf8mPj8g3AizWnj4iFYxfrhFX5SNxg3ZkvAf7UwfQFxdoXWU1WkY1PJSpMAl

More directly to the point, though, there still remains that the wraparound appearance of the eyes evident in Barney’s sketch in Interrupted Journey and use of the wraparound eyes expression in talking to the Lorenzens are not abandoned. It was that resemblance that led me to research the matter of the airing of “The Bellero Shield” to see if it was even possible for there to be an influence.

0Had Bowman read Encounters at Indian Head, he should have known that Clark’s remarks had been responded to. Though Bowman elsewhere seems to adhere to a form of journalistic objectivity and balance, not telling both sides here reinforces the sense he simply never read the book. (He never mentions Betty's appearance at this notably significant symposium directly spawned by the Hill's story.) I feel Bowman also should have remarked on if he thought the radiation fears were as relevant to the dreams as I argued, both here and in Brookesmith & Pflock’s book:
https://ia801007.us.archive.org/.../Magonia_Supplement_No...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MY BETTY HILL FILE:
Karl Pflock and Peter Brookesmith, eds., Encounters at Indian Head: The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Abduction Revisited, Anomalist Books, 2007, 309pp.
“Betty Hill's Medical Nightmare,” Magonia Monthly Supplement #12 February 1999 pp. 1-3.
https://ia801007.us.archive.org/.../Magonia_Supplement_No...
“The Eyes Still Speak,” The REALL News, 6, #5 June/July 1998 pp. 1, 6-9.
http://www.reall.org/newsletter/v06/n05/index.html
“Suppressing a Smile,” The REALL News 13, #1; January/February 2005, pp. 1, 3, 13-14.
http://www.reall.org/newsl.../v13/n01/reall-news-v13-n01.pdf
May 15, 2023: Betty Hill’s “Junior”
https://www.facebook.com/la.wan.353/posts/pfbid0ui45Qaf8mPj8g3AizWnj4iFYxfrhFX5SNxg3ZkvAf7UwfQFxdoXWU1WkY1PJSpMAl
August 10, 2020: Inka Dinka Clue
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2666360483606199&set=a.1392021771040083&type=3&theater
January 28, 2022: Five Errors Made by Betty Hill in a 1998 Interview
https://www.facebook.com/la.wan.3538/posts/3114687135440196
[Roughly the time Jerry asked Betty about “The Bellero Shield.” Her memory was demonstrable fallible.]
February 10, 2017: Betty Hill was not prescient about amniocentesis https://www.facebook.com/la.wan.3538/posts/1848923582016564
Bowman leaves her claim uncontested on page 160 that that big needle is "now in everyday use in big city hospitals."
“Probing Exosemination,” The REALL News, 10, #3, March 2002, pp. 1, 3-5, 7
http://www.reall.org/newsl.../v10/n03/reall-news-v10-n03.pdf
[Barney Hill made the first anal probe claim! Curiously Bowman, though quoting Webb on the matter, doesn't celebrate his priority status.]
September 12, 2019: Why the Betty and Barney Hill Alien Abduction Experience Does NOT Involve Folie Á Deux
https://www.facebook.com/la.wan.3538/posts/2390097841232466
February 8, 2020: Hocus-Pocus and the Importance of Eye Contact
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2519739104935005&set=a.1392021771040083&type=3&theater
Includes images of the Bellero Shield alien and Barney Hill’s sketch.
Doubtless there are others I am forgetting…

Dr. Bruce Maccabee (1942-2024)

2024-05-15T15:12:00.000-07:00

Word has just come in of the passing of the optical physicist and UFO researcher Bruce Maccabee at the age of 82. Bruce was very well-known in UFOlogy for his detailed analysis of many UFO cases, including the McMinnville UFO photos, Kenneth Arnold's sighting, the Phoenix Lights, the Gulf Breeze photos of Ed Walters, the New Zealand films, etc. He worked with all of the major UFO organizations: NICAP, MUFON, FUFOR. He also found time to hang out with, and argue with, the likes of Phil Klass and myself. You can read all about Bruce's investigations on his Website.

Dr. Bruce Maccabee

I knew Maccabee from the time when we both lived in Silver Spring, Maryland (about 1975-1980). He was a sincere fellow who was convinced, for reasons that are hard to understand, of the authenticity of certain very dubious UFO cases, and he would boldly set forth his arguments. We were both interested in astronomy, and sometimes we would drive outside the suburban sprawl to set up our telescopes under darker skies.

Somehow Maccabee got his hands on the original negatives of the McMinnville UFO photos (apparently the news organization had them in its files from when they were first published, until Maccabee inquired about them - about 25 years later! The negatives have since been returned to a Trent family member.) Bruce invited me to spend an afternoon with him in a rented photographic darkroom, where we ran print after print from the original negatives, at different magnifications, exposures, etc. I have made high-resolution scans from those prints, and made them available to researchers. Maccabee argued strongly that the object was large, and far from the camera, while skeptics like myself argue that it was a small object, suspended by strings from the telephone wires above it. The late Joel Carpenter made a convincing argument that Trent's UFO was in fact an old truck mirror, hanging from strings thrown over the overhead wires.

The Trent photos as a stereo pair, by "Blue Shift" on ATS. The "UFO" is seen to be small, and relatively close.

Maccabee's UFO photo analyses seemed fairly reasonable, up to a point. That point was passed when he got involved with Ed Walters, the perpetrator of a series of UFO photos from Gulf Breeze, Florida. These photos were so obviously bogus, and Ed's stories so preposterous, that no serious person could possibly believe them. But Bruce disagreed. The Tampa Bay Times wrote a review of the book by Ed Walters and his wife, The Gulf Breeze Sightings (Feb. 25, 1990):

One's first reaction to the pictures is that they must have been faked. (A colleague of mine commented, "I'd search the guy's house for Chinese lanterns.") [RS: you can't make this up. Exactly this has happened, and a 'Chinese Lantern' was indeed found!]. Yet they have been endorsed as authentic by Bruce S. Maccabee, a government research physicist, whose report is contained in the book. Maccabee, after investigating the sites and the cameras as well as the photos, concluded that there was no evidence of a hoax.

"Having studied these sightings "every which way' for more than a year," Maccabee writes, "I have concluded that they are proof of the existence of UFOs. But what is proof for one person is not necessarily proof for another. What would convince you? You have to make up your own mind.

"The investigation is not yet complete. Ed was abducted on Dec. 17, 1987, and again on May 1, 1988. The investigation into what happened during these and previous abductions is ongoing."


One of Ed Walters' UFO photos from Gulf Breeze, Florida.

I can't get into all of the details about the Gulf Breeze photos and sightings here. Tim Printy gives us an excellent overview of what is wrong with the Ed Walters story. There has also been controversy over payments to Maccabee from Walters' publishers for his favorable photo analysis, suggesting to some that Maccabee's endorsement was 'bought.' I don't think this is the case, because first of all the amount was not exactly life-changing, and secondly, Maccabee gave every indication of being sincerely convinced of Mr. Ed's veracity.

Bruce's wife Jan Maccabee apparently had a "weird experience" of something like a 'predator' while hunting in the forest.

she became aware that a weird visual “effect” was moving rightward across her field of view at an apparent distance of maybe fifteen to twenty feet. She described it as if looking through "saran wrap." Perhaps a more apt comparison would be like looking at a mirage above a hot road. She compared this distortion of the scene as being somewhat like the effect of the invisible creature in the PREDATOR movie!

I never met Jan, because she and Bruce didn't get together until after I was already in California. This posting has since been removed from Bruce's website. It is discussed on Reddit here.

Even more bizarre, in 2022 a video was posted (also since removed) of Bruce Maccabee (apparently assisted by his wife) offering to sell an original copy of the Patterson Bigfoot film.

Daniel Perez reported in the March 2023 edition of Bigfoot Times that 80 year old Dr. Bruce Maccabee in Ohio is selling a first generation copy that he acquired from Eric Beckjord. In this article, Daniel says that according to Patricia Patterson, she lent Eric the film to make copies but he returned one of those copies to her instead of the original. Sounds like the ownership of it is going to be the subject of a legal dispute. Asking price, $16 million.

The film reportedly showed never-before-seen details at the end, apparently involving a "littlefoot". The voice of the man I heard on the video promoting it was nothing like the feisty Bruce Maccabee I used to know. He sounded hesitant and mentally confused, which is not uncommon for an 80-year-old man. Perhaps somebody saved a copy of the video so we can see it? I knew Beckjord, who died in 2008. I am not aware of him claiming to possess the original Patterson Bigfoot film (a film he studied to death and practically worshiped), but frankly this shenanigan does indeed sound like something that Beckjord would do. And I do remember Beckjord turning up in Silver Spring, talking with Bruce and Phil and I. So I don't know what the end of that story is, and who removed the video promoting it.

Disclosure Warriors Uncover a Vast UFO Coverup Conspiracy: Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia!

2024-02-07T10:51:00.000-08:00

We have just recently witnessed one of the funniest episodes of UFOlogical stupidity in recent memory: Some of UFO's top Disclosure Warriors dramatically announce they have uncovered a "secret cabal" manipulating Wikipedia articles about UFOs. Matt Ford of the Good Trouble Show posted this dramatic announcement on TwitX on January 21:

This was followed up the next day by the following:

TODAY 530pm Pacific. @RobHeatherly1
joins us as he exposes the Secret Cabal of debunker Wikipedia Editors run by a non-profit 501(c)3 targeting Wikipedia pages on UFOs with a written statement by @LueElizondo

So there we have it - these Disclosure Warriors, including the esteemed Lue Elizondo himself, dramatically announce to official Washington, and to the world, that they have uncovered a major "Cabal" covering up UFO truth! So dramatic!!! Elizondo claims to have headed up the Pentagon's AATIP UFO investigation program, which unfortunately never had any budget. He later worked with Tom DeLonge, who promised to build spacecraft that would go "To The Stars." Here is what Lue had to say about GSoW:

Guerrilla Wikipedians must be good saucer pilots, since they are "wreckless."

The only problem is: this is a "Cabal" that was never "secret" in the first place! Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia (GSoW), headed up by skeptic Susan Gerbic, has been around since 2010. I wrote about it in this Blog in 2012, and again in 2013. It was the subject of a major article in Wired magazine in 2018, among other places. So anyone who thinks they have uncovered a "Wikipedia secret cabal" has the investigative skills not of a Sherlock Holmes, but of a Mr. Magoo. Here is a video from 2020 of Susan explaining what GSoW is all about.

Disclosure: Technically I am a member of GSoW, although I have not participated in it very much. I did add some info to a few pages, and I have uploaded a number of my photos to Wikimedia Commons that might have relevance to UFO history.

Susan Gerbic, with her camera as always, making friends with the Dinosaur in the Creation Museum in Santee, California in 2012.

These UFO warriors seem to think that the skeptical Wikipedians are just arbitrarily changing article texts, and creating misleading articles. What they don't seem to understand is that Wikipedia has rules. You need to have citations, you also need to avoid copyright infringements, self-promotion, etc:

To maintain the highest standards possible, Wikipedia has a strict inclusion policy that demands verifiability. This is best established by attributing each statement in Wikipedia to a reliable, published source (but see Rules 7 and 8 on excessive self-citing).... All articles in Wikipedia should be impartial in tone and content. When writing, do state facts and facts about notable opinions, but do not offer your opinion as fact. Many newcomers to Wikipedia gravitate to articles on controversial issues about which people hold strong opposing viewpoints.

There is a "talk" page for many articles, to discuss or debate the application of these rules to the contents of that page. These sometimes turn into big debates for controversial articles, so if you have a problem with something you read in a Wikipedia article and want to change it, you'd better be able to solidly back up your claim. Given many UFOlogists' propensity for making exciting but unfounded claims, it is frankly no surprise that the articles they write would run afoul of Wikipedia rules, and end up removed or re-written.

Meanwhile, for any UFOlogist who believes that GSoW has been inaccurate or unfair in what it wrote in a Wikipedia article - then challenge them on the article's Talk page. If you can make a good case that they are not correct, it will get changed, and the change will remain. Plus, you can brag to all your friends about how you defeated the nasty Debunkers on Wikipedia. But I don't see this happening, and I think we can figure out why. 😉

The Strange Life and Death (?) of Al Seckel (Part 2)

2024-01-08T21:36:00.000-08:00

(Continued from Part 1)

Seckel was enjoying a lot of success posturing as an “expert,” or at least as a “collector,” of illusions, primarily visual. He spoke before many audiences, wrote (or plagiarized) articles and books, and traveled across the globe to share his presentations. Many of the illusions Seckel presented were invented by the magician Jerry Andrus (1918 – 2007). Andrus was a well-known and well-loved figure in the skeptic community, as well as with magicians, and often spoke at skeptic conferences. I learned that, following Andrus' death, Seckel's Eye Wonder wanted to buy the rights to all of Andrus' illusions and other works. I recommended against it.

In 2004 Seckel was invited to give a TED talk on visual illusions. His Bio calls him an “expert on illusions.” It notes,

"A previous version of this biography described Seckel as a "cognitive neuroscientist," which was not accurate".

However, Seckel’s 2010 TEDxSCS talk “[Y]Our Mind's Eye” describes him as “Cognitive neuroscientist Al Seckel, formerly of the California Institute of Technology.”

Denice Lewis, 1988

After two divorces, in June, 2004 Seckel married Denice D. Lewis, who was reportedly "Europe's highest paid catwalk model" for over a decade. They move into a custom home in Malibu that rented for $13,500 a month. She files for divorce just four months later. (Probably he told her “I’m a scientist” and “I’m rich,” both of which were false.)

Seckel successfully postures not only as an “expert” on illusions, but also as a futurist and visionary, giving many talks. His financial status was always rather dodgy, but he somehow managed to keep borrowing enough from Peter to pay Paul.


Al Seckel and Isabel Maxwell speak at the World Economic Forum (WEF), 2011

In 2007 Seckel married Isabel Maxwell, daughter of the late billionaire fraudster Robert Maxwell, and sister to Ghislaine Maxwell. She had many connections in the world of high tech.

In January, 2011 Seckel organized a “Mindshift Conference” on Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous private island. The participants were Murray Gell-Mann, Christof Koch, Catherine Mohr, Gerald Sussman, Frances Arnold, Leonard Mlodinow, Paul Kirkaas, Brock Pierce, Ron Reisman, Pablos Holman, Dan Dubno, and Reichart Von Wolfsheild. Isabel was there with him.

"Jeffrey Epstein and Al Seckel have assembled a diverse and eclectic intimate group of exceptional thinkers and achievers to discuss various topics...."

Sometime around 2010, Seckel and Isabel moved permanently to France, living for a while in a Chateau that was owned by a friend, and moving around to other places. Seckel and Isabel repeatedly use the excuse that they are "destitute" to avoid traveling to the US for court depositions and hearings involving their bankruptcy filings and other ongoing court cases.

Al Seckel & family join Stephen Hawking
for a Zero-G flight.

Seckel had been suing skeptic Tom McIver for "libel," i.e., revealing some of Seckel's frauds and impostures. In 2013 McIver contacted journalist Mark Oppenheimer, who had interviewed Seckel a few times previously concerning atheism, humanism, etc., and had attended some of Seckel's parties. In 2000 the interview was for an article on atheist history. Seckel was one of the early officers of Atheists United in Los Angeles, which is still active today. Seckel was with that group when it broke off from the atheist group founded by Madelyn Murray O’Hair, who was very much a control freak.

McIver suggested that Oppenheimer interview Seckel again, to look into the many accusations of financial impropriety. Seckel apparently did not like the questions that Oppenhiemer was asking, and the article's October, 2014 publication was cancelled because of legal threats from Seckel. Seckel realized that Oppenheimer would not be writing a puff piece (like most journalists nowadays do), and cut off all contact with him.

The Article that Ended Seckel's Career as a Con-Man, and Perhaps his Life. (July 20, 2015)

Finally, On July 20, 2015: Tablet online magazine publishes Mark Oppenheimer's article on Seckel, "The Illusionist." Tom McIver describes the significance of this article:

Article focuses on Seckel’s obsession with befriending, socializing with, and gaining the confidence of celebrities and powerful and influential people in science, academia, entertainment, media, and the entrepreneurial world, often hosting them at his eclectic parties. Among his guests not mentioned elsewhere on this timeline: biologist David Baltimore (Nobelist, Caltech president), billionaire Elon Musk (PayPal, Tesla Motors, SpaceX), actress Sharon Stone, and musician Slash. Mentions that Gell-Mann, Koch, and Shimojo no longer endorse Seckel, and that Pearce Williams' wife was pleased he has been exposed as owing money to them. Also mentions that it is "remarkably easy to find people who believe Seckel took their money," naming several. Quotes Gerald Sussman as saying "I don't feel good about it" when asked if he'd given money to Seckel, implying he had. Mentions that Seckel now trying to sell Robert Maxwell's papers, without success. Includes quote from Denice Lewis that their divorce was never finalized (and Seckel denying they had been officially married). Notes that Seckel's attorney in Seckel v. McIver (Nicholas Hornberger) admitted that Seckel never paid his legal fees.

After publication of the Oppenheimer article, Seckel’s career as a wheeler and dealer among the rich and famous would be over. After reading this account of one person after another complaining that Seckel had cheated them of significant sums of money, no serious person would ever again enter into a business deal with Al Seckel.

The Oppenheimer article dropped an even bigger bombshell – Denice Lewis told him that she and Seckel were still legally married! Their divorce was never finalized. Therefore, Seckel’s marriage to Isabel Maxwell was never valid, a fact she apparently did not know until then. You can imagine how she reacted to this!

The world didn’t hear much about Seckel for a while after this. Then suddenly on Sept. 19, 2015, a memorial website appears for Seckel, saying

Al Paul Seckel, who died at the age of 57 near his home in France, is best known for helping to make optical illusions a household name throughout the world.

No time or place of death, or cause of death, is given in this anonymous announcement. Who wrote it? Isabel? Possibly even Seckel himself? Seckel’s alleged death was noted in various internet postings, but not in any actual news reports. As time passed, the paucity of details on the fate of Al Seckel became widely noted and remarked upon. No death certificate was ever presented, even to this day (and many people tried to find it). It was widely speculated that Seckel did not die but went into hiding, perhaps with the assistance of Epstein’s circle. But apart from rumors, there was no evidence whether Seckel was alive, or dead.

Then, finally on April 14, 2022 the Daily Mail headline blared,

EXCLUSIVE: 'A hand and a foot were missing, probably eaten by wild boars.' Mysterious death of Ghislaine Maxwell's con-man brother-in-law is finally declared a suicide SEVEN YEARS after he jumped to his death from a 100-ft. cliff in France
Al Seckel's disappearance in 2015 has finally been solved – he flung himself off a high cliff outside a picturesque French village
Seckel claimed to be the husband of Ghislaine Maxwell's older sister Isabel, but in fact he had not divorced his third wife
It was originally believed that he might have faked his own death when a major expose about how he conned buyers of rare books was about to be published
His body lay unnoticed for weeks before it was finally found on July 1, 2015
'It was the smell of putrefaction that eventually led to the corpse,' former deputy mayor Roland Garreau told DailyMail.com.
'A hand and a foot were missing, probably eaten by wild boars or foxes,' Garreau told DailyMail.com
By RORY MULHOLLAND IN SAINT-CIRQ-LAPOPIE, FRANCE, FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 10:52 EDT, 14 April 2022 | UPDATED: 10:52 EDT, 14 April 2022

Seckel eaten by pigs? Maybe I do believe in Karma.

But this is the only news source to offer any information about Seckel’s fate. The article contains what it calls Seckel’s “death certificate,” but it actually appears to be a statement from the Mayor’s office, partially handwritten, based on a police report. It is not a formal certificate as is found in vital records.

At present I would say that the “preponderance of evidence” suggests that Seckel probably did die in France in 2015, but I wouldn’t say that it is established “beyond a reasonable doubt.” On the one hand, it is entirely reasonable to think that a person who has just suffered a devastating , irreparable setback might become suicidal.On the other hand, remember that Seckel's reported death was inexplicably kept secret for two months, then reported anonymously. There is also the lack of a formal death certificate. When dealing with the likes of Jeffrey Epstein, Al Seckel, and the Maxwells, it is reasonable to believe that somebody might have gone to a lot of trouble to deceive you.

During the 2021 trial in New York City which found Ghislaine Maxwell guilty of sex trafficking and other charges, Ghislaine's sister Isabel was seen, faithfully attending every session and supporting her sister in every way.

I’m wondering when we will see a Netflix documentary series about Seckel, maybe “The Great Illusionist?”

Isabel Maxwell arrives at her sister's trial, 2021.

(End)

[Much of the material used in this report is drawn from Tom McIver’s exhaustive "Seckel" compendium]

The Strange Life and Death (?) of Al Seckel (Part 1)

2024-01-05T14:49:00.000-08:00

This article veers just a bit from our usual dose of UFOlogy to talk about a man who was both a skeptical activist and a con-man, whose exploits sound like the script of an implausible movie – except it all really happened. Al Seckel was (or perhaps still is?) a very strange and interesting character. He founded the Southern California Skeptics in 1985, as a local affiliate of CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, now just “CSI”). He claimed to be a “physicist,” sometimes a “cognitive neuroscientist,” but never completed even a year of college. He claimed to be a graduate student working on a PhD in physics (and History of Science) at Cal Tech in Pasadena, but had actually just been ‘hanging around’ there (during which time he became friends with the famous physicist Richard Feynman, and arranged lectures for the Southern California Skeptics at Cal Tech). Soon accusations of financial improprieties were swirling around Seckel, although CSICOP didn’t pay much attention, and reflexively defended ‘their guy’ from attacks. The attacks mostly came from critics of CSICOP - Erik Beckjord, James Moseley, George Hansen - but in this case the critics were correct. When Seckel’s deceptions finally led to the collapse of the Southern California Skeptics, he disappeared from sight (supposedly because he was dying of leukemia, or else cancer). Seckel did actually have leukemia, although his illness didn’t occur until after SCS had already collapsed. He later made a complete recovery.

Seckel surfaced again a few years later as a TED talker and a famous scholar of optical illusions, writing (and sometimes plagiarizing) books and articles, again claiming bogus degrees and affiliations. He rubbed shoulders with many famous people, and after two divorces Seckel (somehow!) married supermodel Denice D. Lewis, who previously had dated George Hamilton, Dodi Fayed, and Pierce Brosnan, among others. (The marriage only lasted a few months.) Later Seckel married Isabel Maxwell, the daughter of the billionaire media mogul (and disgraced fraudster) Robert Maxwell, who has a more famous sister named Ghislaine. Seckel became an associate of the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, in 2011 organizing a science-related conference on Epstein’s (in)famous private island (although no sexual improprieties have been alleged concerning this conference). About 2011 Seckel and Isabel moved from California to France, apparently to better escape creditors and avoid testifying for their pending bankruptcy. Then in September, 2015, Isabel publicly announces that her husband Al Seckel was dead, having fallen off a cliff in France two months earlier. (Why she would wait two months to announce his death has never been explained.) However, no documentary evidence of Seckel’s reported death was then produced – although we may have something like that now.

From Jeffrey Epstein's Website

And that, in a nutshell, is the crazy story of Al Seckel. Skeptic Tom McIver, who had been sued and harassed by Seckel’s lawyers for exposing Seckel’s frauds, maintains a complete chronology of Seckel-related events at https://undeceive.weebly.com/, from which much of this information is taken.

I first met Al Seckel at the 1984 CSICOP Conference, held at Stanford University. He was then an enthusiastic young man of twenty-six, claiming to be a graduate student in “physics” and “history of science” at Cal Tech. He sought me out because I had been a co-founder of the Bay Area Skeptics (along with magician Bob Steiner) just two years earlier. Seckel explained that he was in the process of founding a similar group in Southern California, and wanted to discuss our experiences, and get my advice. Soon afterward, he invited me to come down to Pasadena (I was then living in San Jose) to deliver the very first lecture for Southern California Skeptics, held at Baxter Auditorium on the Cal Tech campus in Pasadena. To motivate me, Seckel told me that his friend Richard Feynman was very interested in hearing what I had to say about UFOs! I certainly could not turn down such an opportunity. My talk was well-received, but there was no sign of Feynman. Oh, something came up, Feynman couldn’t make it, Seckel said.

The flyer Seckel made to promote my inaugural talk for the Southern California Skeptics

On a later trip that I made to Los Angeles, I visited Seckel in his home, in Pasadena or thereabouts. It looked ordinary from the outside. However, the inside was filled with a dazzling assortment of valuable antiques. Not 1920s furniture, or anything like that. Instead, furniture pieces that were apparently hundreds of years old, looking like they were imported from castles and estates in Europe. I had not seen anything like that before (or since!). Seckel explained that he was an antiques broker, buying and selling such pieces for clients. Of course I was impressed. Later it turned out that Seckel was embroiled in many lawsuits concerning ownership of these valuable antiques.

I was among the many people plagiarized by Seckel. I wrote an account of a "clever dog" tested by the Bay Area Skeptics, published in their July, 1987 newsletter. "Clever animals" - a horse, or a dog - can supposedly do arithmetic and answer questions far beyond the mental ability of any animal. But invariably, they can only perform when in sight of their trainer, as we found was the case with the Clever Dog Sunny. Seckel called me, saying he wanted to use that story in the newspaper column he was than writing for the Los Angeles Times. I agreed, but I had no idea that he was going to write me out of the story completely, presenting it as his own (which was impossible, since he was not there). Seckel also appears to have appropriated a story from James "The Amazing" Randi, published without attribution. I also understand that Seckel swindled Randi out of a sum of money, although I never inquired about the details.


One of Seckel's articles in CSICOP's Skeptical Inquirer. He claimed credit for organizing this statement of Nobel Laureates.

For several years Southern California Skeptics (SCS) seemed to be a big success story, and CSICOP gladly trumpeted Seckel’s apparent successes. Seckel publicly debated creationist Duane Gish, and claimed to have soundly boxed his ears. He claimed to be the inventor (later, claimed co-inventor) of the Darwin Fish (like the Christian fish symbol, but sprouting legs). But soon problems became evident. In December, 1987 the State of California revoked SCS’s nonprofit status because Seckel had failed to file the required financial forms. Nonetheless, Seckel continued to represent SCS as a “nonprofit” organization for years. SCS’s checks bounced, and money disappeared. Pat Linse (1947-2021) was a volunteer with SCS, later working as an artist and editor for Skeptic magazine. She warned CSICOP about Seckel’s shenanigans, but was largely ignored. After SCS had collapsed in 1990, two years later Michael Shermer founded the Skeptics Society, based at that time in Pasadena, and bringing in many of the same people who had been part of SCS, even continuing the monthly lectures in Baxter Hall originally organized by Seckel. However, by this time Seckel had moved on from skeptics’ organizations, finding bigger fish to fry. Seckel had nothing to do with Skeptic magazine or with Shermer, who has always run the Skeptics Society as a proper organization.

Soon, Seckel had re-branded himself as the “world’s leading authority on visual and other types of sensory illusions”, claiming, at various times, academic affiliations with Cal Tech, or Harvard. He founded IllusionWorks, and later EyeWonder publishing. During his career as an expert on visual illusions, Seckel wrote (or plagiarized) many articles and books, gave many lectures, and rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous, including Murray Gell-Mann, Marvin Minsky, Nathan Myhrvold, Larry Page, Arno Penzias, Steve Wozniak, Stephen Hawking, Matt Groening, Mike Farrell, Arianna Huffington, Paul MacCready, Burt Rutan, Craig Venter, Richard Branson, Robin Williams, Sergey Brin, Peter Diamandis, James Cameron, among others.

Famous guests at a party in Seckel's home

About this gathering in his home, Seckel wrote,

This was one of the great intellectual gatherings that I held in my home in Pasadena in the 80s. In the back row (starting from the left) was the distinguished microbiologist Dr. Elie Shneour, then Manny Delbruck (wife of Max Delbruck, the "father of molecular biology") and noted comedian and former late night television host Steve Allen. Bottom: Legendary engineer Paul Macready, myself, Nobel Laureate Francis Crick (co-discoverer of the structure of DNA) and my friend John Edwards.

I knew Elie Shneour (1925-2015) from skeptic meetings in San Diego and elsewhere. He was obviously a very brilliant man. Yet he defended Seckel’s reputation until his death. And he was not the only one – several other skeptics have somehow continued to defended Seckel’s reputation. The Dean of UFO skeptics, Philip J. Klass, defended Seckel almost reflexively, until finally admitting in 1994 that Seckel had lied about his academic background. Michael Shermer had written to Klass, "If I never hear from him or about him again it will be too soon. I have never met anyone who can evoke such venom from so many people. A week does not go by that someone doesn't tell me another horrible Seckel story."

Seckel leased a Ferrari (but ended up owing $70,000, which was never paid). He rented expensive houses in Pasadena, Malibu and elsewhere, and ending up owing $100,000 for the one in Malibu. The list of people suing Seckel for non-payment was quite long. One of Seckel’s biggest legal battles was with Ensign Consulting Ltd., in which an investment fund claims it was conned by a self-described "master illusionist" who persuaded it to invest in rare books and art—including a portrait of Sir Isaac Newton—and then absconded with more than $543,000 and a bunch of the loot.

[Continued in Part 2]

Netflix's "Encounters", Episode 2, Promotes Sensational Claims but Ignores Answers

2023-10-12T20:27:00.001-07:00

In the previous posting, we examined how the first episode of Encounters presented the 2008 sightings in Stephenville, Texas in loving detail, but ignored the already-known explanation for all of it. Second verse, same as the first!

Episode 2 of Netflix's Encounters (one of whose Executive Producers was.Steven Spielberg's Amblin Television) covers the alleged 1994 UFO and alien sightings by as many as 62 school children (but no adults) at the Ariel School in Zimbabwe. A great deal has been written about this case, I won't try to repeat that in any detail.

One of the children drew this Spaceman, with his Spaceship.

As described in UFO Evidence,

On 14th September, 1994, a UFO streaked across the sky over Southern Africa. Two days later, something landed in a schoolyard in Ruwa, Zimbabwe, with three or four things beside it, according to journalist Cynthia Hind. This was witnessed by 62 schoolchildren, who had little or no exposure to TV or popular press accounts of UFOs. Cynthia Hind interviewed them the day after the encounter and made them draw pictures of what they had seen.

The case has since gone on to become a classic. The Harvard psychiatrist and UFO abductionist Dr. John Mack (1929-2004) came to Zimbabwe two months after the incident, and spent two days at the school interviewing the children, and the school staff. Interestingly, while there were about 250 children playing outside at the time, only 62 claim to have seen it. Not all 62 children were interviewed by Hind or Mack. (It should be noted that Cynthia Hind was a dedicated UFO author and investigator.)

What might have been causing such extraterrestrial excitement? A "UFO streaked across the sky over Southern Africa" on Sept. 14? Newspaper reports described it as a "meteor shower," but there was no meteor shower. Not until several weeks later was it determined that the object widely seen across southern Africa was, in fact, the fiery re-entry of a Zenit-2 rocket that had launched Cosmos 2290. This then-unexplained sighting had caused a great stir and great UFO interest across the area.

Satellite guru Ted Molczan recorded this visual observation of the rocket's fiery re-entry.

Charlie Wiser has written a very detailed account of the Ariel School incident, from a skeptical perspective. I wrote about this case in 2016, some of which is reprinted here. The French psychologist Dr. Gilles Fernandez reviewed all of the written and recorded material concerning the children's interviews. He wrote that

Interviewing children has been the subject of numerous scientific papers and experiments, adaptations and creations of interview standard protocols, in psychology or criminology, to well avoid or minimize biases that occur when such interviews (or questionnaires) "pollute" the evidence. Cynthia Hind's interview methodology with children is very far from these standards.... Cynthia Hind and an adult (Headmaster?) debrief and discuss "other planets", "space travel", etc. while children are in the room and hear everything ...

Cynthia Hind interviewed the children all together, not separately

Fernandez notes that the children were not being interviewed individually, but instead all together:

The child must be interviewed individually (again following proper procedure). Now, in the video-recorded excerpts above, it is striking to see that children are interviewed in a "line" from four to six. Sometimes other children are in the background and listen to another child being questioned. The adults talk to each other or "debrief" while the children are still very close and present ... Also, children hear what others say (including adults), and therefore are likely to influence each other. Even worse, a child who has seen very little or nothing, sees his classmates details and that this is something that greatly interests adults (verbal and non-verbal rewards). This could encourage them to participate in the "game".

These collective sessions have therefore enabled children to hear each other and even to copy each other, caught in a game where they see adults and a nice lady interested in the narratives. We must therefore deliver in our turn, not be excluded or unwelcome in this "game" that took place. This potential participation or having participated give a certain homogeneity to the stories and therefore reported details ...
Also, Cynthia Hind conducting the interview is constantly interrupting the children and not allowing the free narrative. We must also wonder if the fact that the interviews as drawings sessions were held in the school, this did not lead them precisely, encouraged or "biased" them to make what would be compilations of stories ... kinds of school events, where, for example, the child thinks he must absolutely answer questions, produce a drawing, the adult (or authority here) will be waiting for answers and therefore it happens.

Then, as if the problems in the interrogation technique were not bad enough, Fernandez notes

Finally, and this is rarely mentioned or noticed, there was also a session where the children were invited [by Hind] to draw on the board this time around-and not just on paper. Again, this does not back it literally "to send the child to the table" ? And it is still in my opinion a methodological error: the child is placed as in a school exercise status, "forcing him to produce" adult authority and waiting for something (and "authority" that the reward verbally or non-verbally) ... John Mack also, two months later, again invited children to draw ..

Dr. Fernandez' article detailing all of the problems with Ms. Hind's and Dr. Mack's interviews is well worth reading (in French, which Google can translate).

But then, unexpectedly, Encounters shows us a fellow named Dallyn (all of the students were identified by first name only. Later he was identified as Dallyn Vico) who claims to have made up the entire ufo/alien story to get out of class. He claims it was a “shiny rock” and somehow supposedly persuaded the other students they were seeing spacemen. To say that this guy was disbelieved on social media would be an understatement, and I don't believe him, either. Journalist Nicky Carter interviewed Dallyn Vico and other students two weeks after the event in 1994. At that time he made no mention of making anything up. He said that he had seen the "meteorite" the night before, and the object he supposedly saw at the school looked like that, so he thought it was a meteorite, too. Asked if he believed that people could live on other planets as well as earth, Dallyn replied "yes."

Dallyn Vico in 1994

In a second interview in 2008, Dallyn said,

I believe that the Ariel sighting, although we do not fully understand what happened, there was something definitely that did occur there that was out of the ordinary... I looked up into the sky and I saw these lights in the sky, but they weren't fixated in one area..."The lights were flashing like different colors, blue, red, yellow, purple. But they would like flash and then disappear and then they would flash again, but maybe a kilometer or a large distance in the air. They would reappear and flash again, in a different area.

He made no mention of his alleged role in any of this. When the story told by an alleged witness changes in such a major way, that person is a liar. Either he was lying before he changed his story, or else he is lying afterward. Which it is doesn't matter.

So what actually triggered the Ariel School incident? It is difficult to say for sure. But let us recall that this is far from the only incident of apparent mass contagion or mass hysteria, especially among children:

"The Voronezh UFO incident was an alleged UFO and extra-terrestrial alien sighting reported by a group of children in Voronezh, Soviet Union, on September 27, 1989. The area has been popular with UFO-hunting tourists.

"According to TASS, boys playing football in a city park "saw a pink glow in the sky, then saw a deep red ball about three metres in diameter. The ball circled, vanished, then reappeared minutes later and hovered". The children claimed to have seen "a three-eyed alien" wearing bronze coloured boots with a disk on the chest, and a robot, exiting the object.According to the children, the alien used a ray gun to make a 16-year-old boy disappear until the object departed."
"In 1959 Papua New Guinea was still a territory of Australia. June of that year saw the spectacular sightings by Father William Gill, an Australian Anglican missionary, and 37 members of his Boianai mission. Gill made notes about the experience, which the media obtained. Stories appeared in August, causing a sensation...One above the hills west, another over- head. On the large one two of the figures seemed to be doing something near the center of the deck, were occasionally bending over and raising their arms as though adjusting or “setting up” something (not visible). One figure seemed to be standing looking down at us (a group of about a dozen). I stretched my arm above my head and waved. To our surprise the figure did the same.... Hynek and Allan Hendry, the the [CUFOS] center’s chief investigator, concluded the ‘lesser UFOs’ seen by Gill were attributable to bright stars and planets, but not the primary object. Its size and absence of movement over three hours ruled out an astronomical explanation." While this account does not involve children, the fact that Father Gill was the spiritual leader of this religious community makes it very likely that his followers would simply agree with what he claimed they saw. Chapter 22 of UFOs Explained by Philip J. Klass discusses this case, and gives compelling reasons why these claims should not be taken seriously.
More recently, "On Monday October 2, 2023, news reports from western Kenya told of a bizarre condition that had swept through St. Theresa’s Eregi Girls’ High School. At least 62 students were hospitalized after exhibiting uncontrollable twitching of their arms and legs, including rhythmic muscle contractions and spasms. At times the girls were reported to appear as if possessed by spirits and complained of headaches, dizziness, and knee pain. Many were unable to walk and had to be taken in wheelchairs to waiting ambulances. The strange outbreak occurred in the town of Musoli, about 230 miles northwest of Nairobi...Samples of blood, urine, phlegm, and stool were taken, along with throat swabs. All proved to be unremarkable. By Thursday, Kenyan health officials also ruled out the role of infectious disease and instead concluded that they were suffering from “hysteria” in response to stress from upcoming exams." Psychologist and skeptic Robert E. Bartholomew suggests that it was "mass psychogenic illness... Motor-based outbreaks are most common in less developed countries. They evolve more slowly, often taking weeks or months to incubate. They typically occur in the strictest schools where there is tension between students and administrators or some other conflict. Under such prolonged stress, the nerves and neurons that send messages to the brain become disrupted, resulting in an array of neurological symptoms such as twitching, shaking, convulsions, and trance-like states. This is the same type of outbreak that affected the young Puritan girls in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 and led to the infamous witch craze." Which brings us to:
Saducismus Triumphatus by Joseph Glanvill might be thought of as "The Scientific Study of Witchcraft," as it attempted to prove the reality of witchcraft on purely empirical grounds. In the 1689 edition, we read that in 1669, reports reached the Swedish king concerning a large-scale outbreak of witchcraft in the village of Mohra. The king dispatched some commissioners, both lay and clergy, "to examine the whole business." They found that the Devil had apparently drawn hundreds of children into his grasp and had even been seen "in a visible shape." After a careful investigation, they found no fewer than seventy adult witches in the village, who had managed to seduce about three hundred children into the practice of black magic. The commissioners interviewed each of the children separately (they were wiser than John Mack), and found that "all of them, except some very little ones" told stories that were highly consistent, of being supernaturally carried away to the witches' fest, riding through the air on the backs of animals (see chapter 7 of my book UFO Sightings, which can be purchased on Amazon, or "borrowed" from the Internet Archive library.).

So, whatever you choose to call it, "mass hysteria" and "social contagion" are not at all unlikely as explanations for bizarre incidents such as this.

Netflix's "Encounters", Episode 1, Leaves Out Something Important - The Explanation!

2023-10-01T18:32:00.003-07:00

So much has been happening in UFOOLogy of late, stuff that is so silly and so widely-reported elsewhere, that I can't see any reason to write about it. Many have finally woken up to the fact that David Grush and other "whistleblowers" tell dramatic tales, but have no proof at all - a situation that has persisted for decades. (In the 1970s and 80s, Len Stringfield of MUFON was telling almost identical tales - also without proof). The Peruvian "alien mummies," presented to the Mexican Congress by Jaime Maussan, are being soundly and deservedly mocked as the frauds they are. These mummies have been known to be non-alien for at least five years now; so anyone involved in their promotion either didn't do any research, or else didn't care and wanted to promote fakery.

Which brings us to the new series Encounters, which premiered on Netflix on September 27. There were high hopes among UFO proponents for this series, one of whose Executive Producers was.Steven Spielberg's Amblin Television. I suspect many were disappointed. I have only seen the first episode so far, and found it tedious and boring. Its primary case is the well-known and widely-witnessed incident from Stephenville, Texas on the night of January 8, 2008. Far more time was spent telling us how people felt about what they saw, than trying to analyze what they saw.

It's strange that Encounters would put so much emphasis on the Stephenville case. There is no longer any mystery about what happened in Stephenville on January 8, 2008. UFO skeptic and retired Air Force pilot James McGaha investigated, and submitted his findings to Skeptical Inquirer editor Kendrick Frazier, who published them in the January/February, 2009 issue. The article is on-line here. It turns out that the sightings occurred inside a "MOA", a Military Operations Area, where military training routinely goes on.

The FAA informed McGaha on January 18 that a group of four F-16s from the 457th Fighter Squadron entered the operating area at 6:17 pm local time. A second group of four F-16s entered the same area at 6:26 pm. They departed at 6:54 and 6:58, respectively. The time the aircraft were flying in the MOA accords with the time of the sightings....

What were the aircraft doing? McGaha says they were flying training maneuvers that involved dropping extraordinarily bright flares. The LUU/2B/B flare is nothing like the standard flares you might think of. These flares have an illumination of about two million candlepower. They are intended to light up a vast area of the ground for nighttime aerial attack. Once released, they are suspended by parachutes (which often hover and even rise due to the heat of the flares) and light up a circle on the ground greater than one kilometer for four minutes. The flare casing and parachute are eventually consumed by the heat. At a distance of 150 miles, a single flare can still be as bright as the planet Venus. McGaha also describes the testimony of a medical helicopter pilot, a retired U.S. Army pilot, flying that night, who saw the lights. He said: “I saw multiple military aircraft, with some dropping flares, in the area of the Brownwood 1 MOA.”

That episode also showed us radar returns, supposedly demonstrating the presence of unknown objects inside the MOA at that time. What does this mean?

These raw data contain 2.5 million points of noise and scatter. MUFON’s report selected just 187 of these points to contend that radar had tracked a huge “object” at least 524 feet in size, traveling near the Western White House (the Bush ranch, which is fifty miles southeast of Stephenville). “MUFON’s radar analysis is nothing more than cherry picking the 187 targets out of 2.5 million points of noise and scatter to make a track moving forty-nine mph for over one hour,” says McGaha. “This analysis is absurd!”

Case closed. The Stephenville case was a flare drop, essentially a repeat of the flare drop responsible for the second part of the famous Phoenix Lights in 1997. That flare drop also occurred in a military training area. The writers of Encounters either chose to leave out the obvious explanation, or else did not bother to even look for one. After all, why risk losing a really good "unexplained" case by looking for explanations?

A blurry UFO photographed by a Stephenville witness, weeks after the main sighting.

I'll try to watch Episode 2 of Encounters soon, if I feel I can stomach it.

Another Famous Flare Drop - The UFO From 29 Palms

May 23: NBC News reports on the UFO From 29 Palms

Back in May, the major news media were filled with breathless accounts of a "mass UFO sighting" in the California desert, at Twentynine Palms two years earlier. Now, that fact alone should have raised one's eyebrow, because it is well-known that this is the location of a major training base for US Marines. So it'd be reasonable to suspect from the beginning that the Marines had something to do with this.

But the Usual Suspects were hyping the incident as if it were something utterly amazing:

Multiple videos appear to show a UFO flying over Camp Wilson in Twentynine Palms, California. The videos were recorded in April 2021 but only recently released by Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp during an episode of their podcast, Weaponized.

Corbell and Knapp said that at least 50 people, including dozens of Marines, reported seeing the triangular object with lights on its edges. The object was in the air for about ten minutes and prompted a response from military officials, who dispatched helicopters and dozens of trucks to the area.

Jeremy Corbell's Podcast

It sounded too good to be true, and indeed it was. Research by Mick West of Metabunk and John Greenewald Jr. of The Black Vault showed that there indeed was a big training operation involving flare drops going on during the night in question, and that photos taken of the flare drop match perfectly with photos by those who believed they were seeing UFOs. Like the Stephenville incident, and the Phoenix Lights incident, a military flare drop has again been shown to be the cause of a highly-publicized UFO case.

While this UFO case was all over the news, I was listening to an oldies radio station, and they played a 1947 hit by the Andrews Sisters, The Lady From Twentynine Palms. It tells about one young lady:

She left twenty-nine broken hearts
Broken in twenty-nine parts
Now there are twenty-nine fellas complainin' to their moms
About the lady from 29 Palms

She got twenty-nine Cadillacs
Twenty-nine sables from Sach's
They came from twenty-nine fellas who never had their arms
Around the lady from 29 Palms

The point being that, with so many unmarried young men in the Marines in Twentynine Palms, an attractive available woman might be showered with gifts by all the men pursuing her.

So it occurred to me that this UFO ought to have its own version of the song. With a little help from my Muse (that's like a Moose, only smaller), I settled on this, as a beginning.

It had twenty-nine flashing lights
Gave twenty-nine people a fright
And now it's on the news for twenty-nine nights,
It's the UFO from 29 Palms!

Perhaps you can think up some more verses?

More Credible Eyewitness Testimony about Crashed Saucers & Dead Aliens!!!

2023-07-06T11:09:00.004-07:00

Since UFO "confidential sources" and "whistleblowers" are now all over the news, let's examine some cases you might not have heard about. "Psychic" spoon-bender Uri Geller recounts how he was supposedly taken by his good friend Dr. Wernher Von Braun to see the alien bodies from a saucer crash.

Friends I saw them with my very own eyes I was there in a refrigerated vault with Dr Wernher Von Braun, I had an encounter with them when I was 5, there are none human built vehicles, there are bodies and there are living aliens among us. The Israeli government knows about everything I have seen so does #NSA. I had photos which I took with my #MINOX camera that were stolen from my 57th apartment in NY. Wait until I find the negatives.

Wow! That always happens when somebody gets a good, clear photo of UFOs or aliens - something "happens" to the photos! Is this credible? Robert Salas, of "UFOs and Nukes" fame, says he believes Uri . So there you have it! I'm wondering if Hal Puthoff has anything to say about his old colleague's claims?

Uri Geller says this Tik Tok video of a living alien is authentic!

[Update July 9: Scott Brando of ufoofinterest reminds us that back in 2020, he showed us that this "alien video" is an acknowledged 'artistic creation' by Shaban Havuzsalim. ]

Those of us who are not UFO newbies are well aware of the times when we have been through all this before. Most significant were the many claims of the well-known UFO researcher Leonard Stringfield (1920-1994), who worked with NICAP, MUFON, and CUFOS. In the 1970s, Stringfield began chasing down claims of "crashed saucers," and it seems that the more people heard about his investigations, the more people he heard from to make such claims. Here is an excerpt from a 1978 interview of Stringfield:

on several occasions in the past 30 years UFOs have crashed and the bodies of dead entities have been taken from them. The bodies have been examined and preserved. My sources describe the beings as from three to four feet in height and of humanoid appearance ..... What I have been getting lately are growing numbers of reports from reliable military people who claim to have seen all this firsthand.... There's a 1948 crash, another from 1951 or 52, something in 1953, one in 1958, and two incidents in the 70s.

This was published forty-five years ago, almost a decade before the current celebrity "whistleblower," David Grusch, was born.

Here Stringfield says that he has a total of 24 different sources, although only four are first-hand witnesses. When Jacques Vallee spoke with Stringfield in 1989, that number of "first-hand" sources had reportedly increased to 37.

And what has happened to all these "informants," and the secret ET projects they supposedly worked on? Did it all just 'evaporate' into the haze of history?

Of course, Stringfield was not the only one to gain attention by claiming knowledge of Crashed Saucers and dead aliens. In 1974, Robert S. Carr made headlines by telling stories about alien bodies in the deep freeze at Hangar 18 of Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio. And of course, the famous hoax in Frank Scully's 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers, claiming that a saucer crashed near Aztec, NM in 1948.

So, you can see why those of us who are familiar with UFO history are pretty much all saying, "Same old, same old!" in this matter.

And now, just for fun, here is the Flying Saucer Physicist, Stanton T. Friedman, predicting impending 'Disclosure' in 1968, fifty-five years ago!

from the Dallas Times Herald

He Sees Dead People. "The Key – A True Encounter" By Whitley Strieber

2023-06-29T11:04:00.001-07:00

Now that Whitley Strieber has come forward to talk with Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp, taking advantage of the current UFO infatuation to peddle his usual woozy stuff, it made me recall the review I wrote of Strieber's later book, The Key. I am wondering how much of Whitley's wacky claims Corbell and Knapp even know about. Do they still think that Strieber is credible?

By the way, in this interview posted June 27, Whitley says, "I think we're right on the edge of the truth coming out, I think we're very close" to UFO Disclosure. Let's add this to the long, long list of Disclosure predictions. Maybe this time he'll be right? 😂

Jeremy Corbell, Whitley Strieber, and George Knapp.

( My review of Strieber's book, The Key – A True Encounter. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin Group 2011. ISBN 978-1-58542-869-4. 256pp, $15.95)

Reprinted from The Skeptical Inquirer, July/August, 2011

He Sees Dead People

In 1987 Whitley Strieber, already well-known as a writer of fantasy and science fiction like Wolfen, The Hunger, and other tales published the supposedly non-fiction book Communion about his ongoing encounters with ET-like beings he calls “the visitors.” It was on the New York Times bestseller list for many weeks, followed up by Transformation in 1988, and then by numerous other paranormal-themed books, some admitted to be novels, others not. Imagine if Steven King had written a masterful horror novel, but claimed that all of the ghostly goings-on really did happen to him, although he could offer no proof of any of it. That’s where we stand with Strieber.

Whitley with his late wife, Ann Strieber, in 2012.

In The Key, Strieber writes, “my experience between 1985 and 1993 with creatures that appeared to be alien was associated with a surprising side effect, which was simultaneous contact with the dead, who would appear along with the visitors, and not as ghosts.” What a pity he didn’t mention those dead people when he wrote about “the visitors” in Communion or Transformation.

The Key begins in 1998 when Strieber says that, late one night during a long and grueling book promotion tour, a mysterious man unexpectedly knocked on the door of his hotel room. Against his better judgment he let the man in, who proceeded to engage Strieber in “the best conversation I’ve ever had,” described as “deeply, profoundly new” and “richly textured.” What did this ordinary-looking man, who came to be called “The Master of the Key,” have to say? Gems like “The energetic body has a spin, or vibration. This can go infinitely fast. It can reach beyond the speed of light, and exit time altogether.” Or, “All being includes all elements of the earth, and thus all are part of all bodies. We are the consciousness of the planetary level that it has spent all of its life evolving, each and all of us.“ The Master would seem to be on the fast path to a Nobel Prize in physics, except for being disqualified by his admission that he was dead.

There is also some dark conspiracy about Mars that is only hinted at in statements like “Mars was murdered by you.” As for crop circles, they are “two dimensional portraits” created by dead people. The Master also warned “Warmth being retained near the surface by greenhouse elements results in cooling aloft. A massive and extremely powerful convection can arise that results in a storm so great that it changes the climate permanently. The next ice age will begin soon, and this will lead to the extinction of mankind.” Strieber is the co-author of the ridiculous eco-disaster novel, The Coming Global Superstorm, along with Art Bell, the late night conspiracy talk show maven, from which was made the movie The Day After Tomorrow.

As you might surmise from a skilled storyteller, The Master walks out the door, and disappears mysteriously into the night. Say what you want about Strieber’s credibility, but he does know how to turn a fine phrase, and how to spice up a story. Still, Strieber, the Master’s ventriloquist, comes across as a rather loopy and preachy social activist, but as the late George Adamski surely realized, nobody would care about his political statements unless they actually came from the Venusians. And however preachy, at least The Master isn’t as long-winded as John Galt.

Strieber had more to say about seeing Dead People when he spoke to the International UFO Congress in 2012.

Streiber returned to the theme of contact with the dead that he first began to promote in his book The Key. Dead people, he says, dress in a brown monk's cowl, "Jesuit clothing." Some of the visitors think it is possible for mankind to Evolve, while others apparently are not so optimistic. That is why the visitors are so cautious and stealthy. Afterward, mankind will be changed completely, and come face-to-face with the dead. Strieber still says he does not know exactly who "the visitors" are, but he knows that The Dead play a large role.

(This book review also appears on my Debunker website, along with another piece describing my Close Encounter with Whitley Strieber in 1988.)

8 Foot Tall Aliens Land in Las Vegas Back Yard!!!!

2023-06-13T09:45:00.002-07:00

So, you've probably seen wild stories about this on the news:

"Big, shiny eyes. Towering nearly 10 feet tall. 100% not human." the Los Angeles Times.

"Vegas police respond to report of '10-foot creature' in yard after green flash across sky." CNN.

"Aliens among us? Vegas UFO report latest in UAP sightings investigated worldwide." USA Today.

And many other places. UFO stories are good for "clicks", for ratings, and the wilder, the better.

Note the time stamp: 2023 May 1, 06:49 UTC

But let's look at this carefully. From this video, it is obvious that the object is a brilliant meteor fireball. I've seen many such videos before, and even a few such fireballs with my own eyes. Now in this copy of the video, we can see the time stamp (for some reason George Knapp's Channel 8 seems to have chopped it off in their copies). And when I saw the time stamp, I realized, since the American Meteor Society records such fireballs, this gives us something to investigate.

American Meteor Society map showing observers' locations. Trajectory was east-to-west.

The American Meteor Society states, "We received 21 reports about a fireball seen over AZ, CA, NV and UT on Monday, May 1st 2023 around 06:48 UT." This exactly matches the time stamp on the above video. There is no doubt remaining, what people saw that night, all across the Western states (and not just in Las Vegas), was a brilliant fireball. Watch the video on that AMS page, and you will see how absolutely brilliant the meteor became for just a second.

What about those 8-foot-tall aliens reportedly seen in the back yard? Well, it turns out that Angel, the guy who claimed to see the aliens, now has a YouTube channel named "Alien Society 51." On it, he tells his yarn about how two giant alien creatures supposedly invaded his back yard. Here is another interview with him, where he tells how the alien went into his fork lift. Believe it, if you can.

Honest, I'm not making this stuff up!

Some people are suggesting that a circular pattern in the gravel in his yard was left by the saucer landing, although Angel did not strongly make such a claim. In any case, photos from Google Earth reveal that this pattern already existed more than a year before the supposed incident.

In January, 2022, a twitter account called "Alien Society 51 NFT" was created, and some have attempted to link it to Angel. NFTs ("Non-Fungible Tokens") are a type of digital ownership certificate, pertaining to works of art. While a few people have profited greatly from such "investments," they remain highly speculative. That NFT account never went beyond its initial posting. Other than the name similarity, I have not seen anything to connect "Alien Society 51" to "Alien Society 51 NFT."

When a transparently bogus story like this makes national headlines, usually without a hint of skepticism or investigation, it shows the sorry state of UFOOlogy, and so-called "journalism," today.

Story of Dramatic New "UFO Whistleblower" Begins to Crumble

2023-06-07T19:35:00.001-07:00

So, unless you have been living under a rock these past few days, you have seen the breathless, uncritical news coverage about the latest "UFO whistleblower" making extraordinary claims. His is a former Intel guy named David Grusch, who has recently been turning up all over the credulous media, making claims of 'secret government crashed UFO retrieval programs.' How to know which reporters are credulous and foolish? That's easy: if they ran with this story on the basis of no evidence at all, that's them. And Grusch admits all this is only hearsay - he says he hasn't seen any crashed saucers, or even any photos of them. Or of the alien bodies that he says were found inside......

David Grusch

It began with an article in The Debrief by Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, "INTELLIGENCE OFFICIALS SAY U.S. HAS RETRIEVED CRAFT OF NON-HUMAN ORIGIN." Where have we seen those names before? Yes, the authors of the now-discredited 2017 New York Times story that launched the UFO mania about Tom DeLonge, Lu Elizondo, etc. (Kean is now also a major promoter of belief in Spiritualism and ghosts, but that is the subject of another posting.)

The problem for Kean is that her 'respected source' can't keep his mouth shut. "Government Whistleblower Claims U.S. Has Recovered Alien Bodies, Is Covering It Up."

I don't care what lies he is telling other people, what he told us is TRUTH!

This has caused Leslie Kean to back away from her earlier, breathless endorsement of Grusch's tales. John Greenewald, Jr. of The Black Vault writes,

Kean states that the "UFO whistleblower"'s claim about "dead pilots" and bodies from the "non-human craft" was never discussed with her, she doesn't want to talk about it, nor would she have published it.

How could you not have heard about that during the vetting process, and why would you not publish something that could change the human race if you felt the source of your story was credible and his claims were true?

In other words, Kean is saying, "My source only lies half the time." 😅

And the more interviews Grusch gives, the more wild stuff comes up. In an interview with the French newspaper le Parisien, Grush said,

In 1933, a bell-like craft, around ten meters in size, was recovered in Magenta, northern Italy. It was kept by Mussolini's government until 1944 when it was recovered by agents of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, a former US intelligence agency). Ironically, it predates anything the public has heard about for decades, such as Roswell, etc. I was authorized to talk about it by the Department of Defense's Office of Prepublication and Security Review.

Well, if Hitler could have his Nazi flying saucers, why can't Mussolini have his, too?

Nazi flying saucer

UFO grifter Dr. Steven Greer wrote,

Dr. Greer met with this whistleblower in March 2022 in Culpepper, VA and has been providing him with information about facilities and operations.

So Greer claims that he has been providing information to Grusch, and not the other way around! "In fact, Dr. Greer mentored this key whistleblower David Charles Grusch." To which Grusch replied,

I have not been mentored by anyone, and my public disclosure has been done independently under my own free will. I emphatically request that Steven Greer cease using my name to promote his personal agenda”.

But it is beginning to appear that Grusch's entire tale might be just be recycling the same old stories we've been hearing for years. Citing comments made elsewhere, Area503 notes on Twitter that

Grusch's insider information comes from Hal Puthoff's employee at Earth-Tech International: Eric Davis??

No wonder
@DoD_AARO
found his testimony to lack credibility.

This is getting downright silly now.

As more 'connecting links' between the old cover-up tales and the new begin to be noted, Jack Brewer adds,

Looking like Kean's "multiple insiders" are Elizondo, Puthoff, Davis... because of effing course they would be. If so, what a complete waste of time, of which these people should be ashamed of themselves.

In other words, these are the same, familiar old claims, from people who have been involved with Bigelow, TTSA, etc. The collapse of the current extreme Disclosure mania will surely rank as one of the worst black eyes in the history of UFOOlogy. Persons seeking to hasten the general acceptance of UFO belief by hastily embracing welcome (but dubious) claims will have damaged that acceptance almost beyond repair, once the dust settles from this fiasco.

UFO newbies apparently have no idea that this "Disclosure tease" has been going on for more than seventy years, and always comes up empty. Every few years (at least), some new set of rumors begin to swirl, usually based on some dramatic claim, that 'government secrecy about UFOs will soon be ending!'. But of course, it never does. You can't "stop" something that never started.

"Trinity UFO Crash" Story Crashes - and Vallee Melts Down!

2023-05-19T17:54:00.001-07:00

Those who follow developments in UFOdumb are probably familiar with the book Trinity, The Best-Kept Secret, self-published by Paola Harris and Jacques Vallee. I wrote only a little about it early last year. It's the story of a supposed saucer crash in New Mexico in August, 1945 not far from the site of the Trinity nuclear test, the world's first. It's primarily based on the accounts of two young boys who supposedly witnessed the saucer crash, saw still-living aliens, and then watched as the army carried it all off.

The Second Edition

Paola Harris and Jacques Vallee

When the book was first published, to say it was not well-received by serious researchers would be an understatement. Longtime researcher Kevin Randle interviewed both authors in 2021, and wrote,

I’ll just point out that Vallee and Paola said that there was no documentation, the physical evidence that was talked about didn’t exist in today’s world, other than a couple of pieces that, when analyzed didn’t demonstrate an extraterrestrial origin.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement. Others were less generous. Bryan Sentes wrote on the Skunkworks Blog,

On finishing Vallée’s and Harris’ Trinity, the reader would be forgiven if they wondered if the “Jacques Vallée” who co-authored this book were the same “Jacques Vallée” credited with writing Revelations or the recently re-issued Passport to Magonia. Where the last volume is, at least in certain circles, highly-prized for being inventive and groundbreaking and Revelations is a focussed, critical examination of the stories about alien abduction, crashed flying saucers and dead aliens, secret alien bases and cattle mutilation, Trinity is an unfocussed, raggedly-composed, eye-rollingly credulous mess of a book.

It would be a tedious exercise to catalogue its manifold failings. While Vallée speaks of himself as a scientist and even imagines scientists reading the book (286), Trinity is no work of science, scholarship, or even investigative journalism. Indeed, it reads like a first draft, in sore need of a thorough editing for content and structure, let alone a proof-reading.

And Jason Colavito wrote,

The San Antonio crash story is rather unbelievable, even by UFO standards. According to the most common version of the story, Jose Padilla and Reme Baca, then aged 9 and 7, witnessed a nearly thirty-foot-long spacecraft crash into the desert. They ran to the crash site and saw two little men emerge and begin running about in a panic. One of the boys took a piece of debris from the crash site. Then, the U.S. Army arrived, built a road out to the crash site, and retrieved the spaceship. The boys never knew what became of the little men from inside the ship.

Illustration of the crashed UFO at Trinity by James Neff, based on the boys' description.

So the Trinity UFO Crash story was on pretty thin ice, from the time of its release in May, 2021. But now it has been blown apart completely. A very diligent researcher named Douglas Dean Johnson has dropped a whole boxcar of dynamite on the yarn, and blown it to smithereens. Johnson did the research that Vallee and Harris should have done before publishing this outlandish tale.

I first heard of Johnson about two years ago, when he sent me material critical of the UFO claims of Ray Stanford. Now he has published a very careful and detailed refutation of the principal claims of the Trinity Crash story, mortally wounding it. He writes,

This article, Crash Story: The Trinity UFO Crash Hoax, and the linked Crash Story File series, are based on my journalistic investigations (extending over three months, as of May 1, 2023). I present extensive documentation establishing that all three of the claimed “eyewitness” sources – Baca, Padilla, Brophy -- have propagated lies and/or fantasies that are absolutely fatal to their credibility. Because I have demonstrated, in my opinion, that the three primary sources have all engaged in multiple gross fabrications, it would be folly to attach any credence whatever to any of the oft-conflicting versions of the UFO crash-recovery events that they have described....

the Trinity UFO-crash story is a tale dreamed up by a serial pretender, Remigio (Reme) Baca, AKA "Ray Baca," now deceased– who faked a history as a political "kingmaker" and senior aide to a governor, and fabricated a story about viewing an ultra-secret government file about his fake UFO crash. Baca enlisted a man who faked a history as a police officer and wounded veteran, Joseph Lopez (Jose) Padilla. These two fakers hijacked the names and personas of a real policeman (Eddie Apodaca) and a real governor (Dixy Lee Ray) as characters in their shoddy work of fiction.... The tale has grown and morphed over a 20-year period. The current Vallee-Harris presentation incorporates claims that flatly contradict early statements by Baca and Padilla that have been overlooked, ignored, or forgotten.

The New Mexico State Policeman who supposedly witnessed the crashed saucer, Eddie Apodaca, was still serving in the US Army in Europe in August, 1945. He did not become a state policeman until 1951.

Johnson's findings were for the most part embraced by the UFO community. Journalist Billy Cox, a staunch UFO promoter, wrote "Based on three months’ worth of scouring public records, contemporaneous newspaper articles, myriad podcasts and consultations with experts, Johnson’s fact-checking revelations are absolutely devastating." And Kevin Randle wrote that Johnson's research "should be the stake in the heart of this tale."

For a few weeks, everyone wondered - what would Vallee and Harris say about this? Would Vallee admit his mistakes, apologize, and move on? Harris herself of course said nothing, then on May 15 she published a reply from Vallee to Johnson on her website. Vallee writes that the history of UFO research

is littered with interminable fights, meaningless boastings and pretentious proclamations, more often designed to denigrate an opponent than to elevate a debate.

The attack against the work that Mrs. Harris and I have conducted in New Mexico since 2018 with the guidance of a scientific research team is a case in point.

There was no "attack" in anything Johnson wrote; he was simply noting the discrepancies between what V&H wrote, and verifiable facts. And Lord knows that one must never dispute "the guidance of a scientific research team"!! Vallee continues,

The accusation of naivety and negligence against us made in « Crash Story » is inaccurate: As the primary author, I only used the recorded data originating from Reme Baca when it could be compared and verified against other statements of fact. Why support the fictitious tale that our book relies primarily on Baca’s version of the story ? That is simply inaccurate.

To which Johnson replies with a quote that is in both editions of Trinity:

From "Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret" (1st Ed. p. 317; 2nd Ed. p. 337): "The primary reference to the events described here [in Trinity] is a monograph by Reme Baca and Jose Padilla, entitled, Born on the Edge of Ground Zero..."

So Vallee apparently does not even remember what he wrote about his own sources.

One clear demonstration of Vallee's "naivety and negligence" was how he ignored all the Red Flags about the research of Ms. Paola, who did not have a reputation for careful research; in fact, quite the opposite. The UFO Watchdog told us all we need to know about her over ten years ago. She told a UFO conference that "Billy Meier is the real deal." She was hailed by Michael Salla as a "Pioneer" of Exopolitics. What is "Exopolitics"? It deals with the "Political Implications of the Extraterrestrial Presence." They have no doubts about ETs being here - it is fact!

In fact, Ms. Paola is so far into "Exopolitics" that she is teaching a course in the "Exopolitics Institute," titled "Exo-109 – Messages from Space – Past and Present Contact." From the course description:

This course takes us back to the early days of contact and the messages given to early contactees. It examines the geopolitical structure of the world in a cold war era. It focuses on the giant Rock conventions and the mission of people like George Van Tassel , Howard Menger and George Adamski. Then the course will shift to present day human alien contacts in both Italy and Latin America. Contactees such as Sixto Paz, Ricardo Gonzales and Luis Fernando have given us messages about the shift that is taking place and the current evolution of man in the context of an inhabited cosmos.

Got that? The messages from the Space People given to "Classic" contactees like Adamski and Menger were authentic, and so are those of later contactees, as well. How Vallee could simply ignore such absurdity strongly suggests that his discernment, his reasoning, is not what it used to be.

Reading Vallee's autobiographical volumes Forbidden Science, it is apparent that the Vallee of old was not one to simply accept fantastic tales, and he was told plenty of them over the years. He would react with sort of a bemused smile, and a suggestion that their story might be more compelling if they had any actual evidence. In 1977 I wrote in the Skeptical Inquirer a rather dismissive review of Vallee's book The Invisible College, which teaches "Metalogic." Given the opportunity to reply, Vallee wrote a few calm lines, noting that "a great deal of my time is spent precisely in exposing the contradictions of contactee stories," and he ended it with a silly poem he wrote about the recently-deceased Dr. Donald Menzel. He was unflappable under criticism, which is so different from the Vallee we see in this current screed

Also, in reading Forbidden Science, one is constantly reminded how close Vallee was with his wife Janine, who died in 2010. Her death must have been a tremendous blow to him. One suspects that Janine's death, combined with age-related mental issues, has left Vallee in a rather vulnerable state, prone to being unduly influenced by others. The fact is that Vallee, come September, will be 84, and mental confusion and decline is extremely common among persons of that age. It would be ironic if Vallee's reputation in UFO history were to be largely determined by this absurd screed written in his dotage. It is reminiscent of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his foolish embrace, in his old age, of the Cottingley Fairies.

Update May 20, 2023: Douglas Dean Johnson has done it again!

He has just published a new article titled Caught in the Act - The Reme Baca Smoking-Gun Interview.

Less than a year before going public with what became the Jacques Vallee-Paola Harris story of the 1945 crash of an avocado-shaped UFO, Reme Baca was tape-recorded peddling a very different story about a boyhood encounter that he and Jose Padilla had with a very different sort of UFO: a tale of their discovery of a classical flying saucer, crashed-- in 1946. And that's just the start.

Reme Baca contacted Roswell author Tom Carey peddling a different "crashed saucer" yarn. This one took place in 1946, not 1945, and involved different circumstances. Johnson posts the recording and the transcript. There is no 'wiggling away' from this one.

I wonder what rationalization Jacques Vallee will use to dismiss this one? 😄

A Flying Saucer Named Floyd

2023-04-17T22:52:00.002-07:00

In honor of the 57th Anniversary of a truly "classic" case, I am posting an analysis from my book UFO Sightings (Prometheus Books, 1998). This analysis was first published in my 1981 book The UFO Verdict (also Prometheus, which can be "borrowed" online from the Internet Archive library), and was republished with only minor additions and updates.

In the late 1970s I made a very Deep Dive into this case, which was being promoted big-time. Here is the result.

A Flying Saucer Named Floyd

We now turn to the story of a famous flying saucer whose name is Floyd. Very few flying saucers can boast of proper names, but that is not the only reason that Floyd is famous. Floyd reportedly was chased by two sheriffs policemen for eighty-six miles through Ohio and Pennsylvania just before sunrise on the morning of Sunday, April 17, 1966 . They say it played cat-and-mouse with their car even as they traveled at speeds of up to 103 miles per hour. Several other Ohio and Pennsylvania officers say that they saw the object too. The late Dr. James E. McDonald, an atmospheric physicist who launched a crusade for scientific recognition of UFOs, considered this case to be one of the most impressive on record and he has endorsed the Floyd papers as "an outstanding contribution to present knowledge of the UFO phenomenon." [1]. Allen Hynek (dubbed by several national magazines the "Galileo" of UFOlogy [2]), cited this case in his book The UFO Experience as the prime example of a "close encounter of the first kind." Floyd received his name from Deputy Sheriff Dale F. Spaur, 34, of the Portage County, Ohio, Sheriffs Police. He tired of referring to the object he reportedly sighted as "?" and began calling it by his own middle name. Coining this name for the UFO doubtlessly proved to be quite a time-saver, because Deputy Spaur had to repeat his story many times in the weeks following the morning that he and Deputy Sheriff Wilbur Neff, 26, reportedly chased an unknown object. The number of semi-independent witnesses to this incident (linked only by radio) is truly impressive. If all of these "reported" observations can be verified as actual observations, consistent in time,speed, and direction, then the UFO chase that began in Portage County, Ohio, must be regarded as one of the strongest possible proofs for the reality of the UFO phenomenon.

In the weeks and months leading up to the "Great UFO Chase of April 1966," the country was in the grip of a wave of mounting UFO excitement. Sightings had begun in the summer of the previous year, and the momentum was slowly building. The news media had been filled with reports of UFO sightings, gradually leading up to the "Incident at Exeter" wave in the fall of 1965 (chapter 10). During the winter sporadic sightings continued, only to explode in March of 1966 with a rash of sightings in Michigan. Nearly a hundred people, including police officers and college students, reported seeing glowing objects hovering over fields and marshes. Hynek hastened to Michigan, where he reported that "the entire region was gripped with near hysteria" about UFOs. Making the rounds with some police officers, Hynek confessed that "occasionally even I thought I glimpsed 'it,'" so heavily UFO-laden was the atmosphere. Police officers excitedly radioed "I see it" back and forth from car to car. Stopping at an intersection, they frantically gestured skyward, indicating a "moving" object, only to have their multiply-witnessed UFO shot clown by astronomer Hynek as the bright star Arcturus. [3]

On March 25, just three weeks before the Floyd incident, Hynek created a nationwide sensation by proposing "swamp gas" as an explanation for many of the Michigan sightings. Michigan Congressmen Gerald R. Ford and Weston Vivian, outraged by the Air Force's handling of the sightings, demanded a congressional investigation into the matter, a demand that was widely echoed by journalists and radio-TV commentators. It is against this turbulent background that the stage was set in April 1966 for the Ohio UFO chase. The major investigative role in this case was played by William B. Weitzel, a philosophy instructor at the University of Pittsburgh. At the time he was chairman of NICAP's Pennsylvania Unit No. l. The previous year Weitzel had received much attention for his investigation of the famous Beaver County, Pennsylvania, UFO photograph, taken by the Lucci brothers, which Weitzel pronounced to be "one of the most valid of the UFOs on record." (However, three years later, the chief photo analyst for the Condon Report, Dr. William K. Hartmann, had no trouble duplicating these photos by holding a plate on his hand, and illuminating it with a flashlight. Subsequent investigation has left little doubt that the Beaver County photos are in fact a hoax. But there is no record of Weitzel withdrawing his endorsement of them. Shortly after the famous Ohio chase, when Weitzel showed Spaur the as yet unrefuted Beaver County photographs, Spaur pronounced the hoax UFO in the photos to be "almost identical to the one we saw." [5] )

Unfortunately, Weitzel's enthusiasm for the UFO phenomenon caused him to overlook some obvious inconsistencies in the evidence and, worse still, to be blind to significant changes in the witnesses' stories as time passed. Nonetheless, Weitzel's interpretation of the Ohio UFO chase is universally accepted among serious UFO investigators as being the definitive account. Yet before I made my own analysis, no one appears to have taken the trouble to critically examine Weitzel's account of the incident, for if one had one could not possibly have overlooked the highly significant inconsistencies it contains. On Sunday morning, April 17, 1966, at 4:50 A.M., Portage County Deputy Sheriffs Dale Spaur and Wilbur Neff were at the scene of a traffic accident along Route 183 near Atwater Center, Ohio, where an automobile had smashed into a utility pole. The driver had been injured. Spaur and Neff had called in an ambulance and a tow truck, and when these had departed the policemen had remained for a short while to talk with the repairman who was working on the damaged lines. Sunrise was just under an hour away and, even though it was still quite dark, the purple glow of dawn was steadily brightening in the east. The sky that morning was quite clear, and the brilliant planet Venus was shining like a searchlight in the east-southeast. Near its maximum elongation from the sun, the bright morning star was a beautiful and striking sight to early risers. About 4:50 a report came in over the police radio that a woman in Summitt County, to the west, had reported seeing a strange bright object, "higher than a streetlight but lower than an airplane," reportedly headed east, toward Portage County. (The sheriff's police of the various counties operate a statewide radio linkup, and hence can listen in on reports that do not originate in their own county.) From the description of the object and from its supposed direction of "travel," it seems quite likely that the UFO the woman reported seeing was simply the planet Venus. Misidentifications of this type are quite common, as UFO proponents readily admit, especially during periods of intense UFO excitement. The three men good-naturedly joked about the reported UFO sighting; the "weird ones" are really out tonight, Spaur observed.

Officers Spaur and Neff then got into their car, Cruiser P-13, and drove off. They started "east" on Route 224, or so Spaur said in his testimony to the Air Force. [6] But he must have meant to say west, because he never would have reached the starting point of the chase had he actually gone east from the scene of the accident. Spaur confuses east with west a second time when he tells of encountering an old car by the side of the road two miles "east" (actually west) of Route 183. This may seem to some to be nit-picking, but the accuracy of Spaur's ability to recall directions is of crucial importance to his later testimony, when he describes the UFO as appearing at nearly every point on the compass. This east-west mix-up, made twice and not corrected until a transcript of the interview had been prepared ("I was a little mad at this point" is how Spaur later explained the error; Neff was present, but failed to correct him), demonstrates that we must allow room for error in Spaur's recollection of the reported behavior and travel of the UFO. Traveling west (not east) on U.S. Route 224, the the police officers saw a car parked on the other side of the road. They made a U-turn. and pulled up behind it. Cruiser P-13 was now facing east. Deputy Spaur walked up to the car while Neff remained behind, standing next to their cruiser-standard police procedure. Scouting the area, Spaur looked behind him - to the west - and reportedly saw a bright object in the sky coming as if from the wooded area on the side of the road. Spaur called out to Neff, who also observed the object. It appeared to be coming toward them. It reportedly passed overhead, making a noise like an "overloaded transformer." In Spaur's earliest written UFO testimony, signed just hours after the chase, he suggests that the humming that was attributed to the UFO "might have come from a power line." But in later versions of his story, all doubt concerning the origin of the sound appears to have vanished. During the chase itself, the object reportedly made no sound whatsoever. Upon first sighting the object, Spaur was "mildly surprised,” according to Weitzel. He mused that this must be the UFO that he had heard so much about. But when the object appeared to come toward them, the two officers became frightened and scrambled back into the car. They reported that the object, large and glowing, had stopped in the east, directly ahead of them.

There is good reason to doubt that the object moving from west to east was as low and as close as the deputies reported, for it was sighted by another witness more than a hundred miles away. The declassified Project Blue Book records contain a report filed by a woman in Vandalia, Ohio, to the southwest of Ravenna, describing a starlike object that "swiftly" crossed the sky, traveling from west to northeast. A possible discrepancy exists in the time of the report, which is given as 5:30 A.M., some twenty-five minutes later than the time of the deputies' sighting. But because of the great similarity of the two reports, and their proximity in location and time, it seems likely that both describe the same event.

Apparently a brilliant meteor streaked across the predawn sky, visible over a wide region. It did not pass just over their heads, as Spaur and Neff believed, but was many miles up. Experience has shown that it is impossible for anyone to be accurate in judging the distance from such an object. Witnesses will often report "close encounters" with objects that later turn out to have been many miles away. Klass cites several incidents of this tvpe. One of them involves an experienced airline flight crew that reported a near-collision with an object that turned out to have been a brilliant daylight meteor, at least 125 miles north of their position. [7] So bright was the object, Spaur says, that the entire area around their car was lit up. Since it was now 5:07A.M., less than forty minutes before sunrise, there is no doubt whatsoever that the area around their car was indeed lit up, though not necessarily by any UFO. Only the brightest stars, those of the first (and possibly second) magnitude, remained visible at this time. Venus, however, nearly five magnitudes (ninety times) brighter than a first-magnitude star, was still shining like a beacon in the east. By a remarkable coincidence, this is exactly where Spaur reported the UFO was hovering. If a genuine UFO had indeed been present, the deputies should have seen two bright objects in the east at this point, Floyd and Vénus. But they saw only one. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Floyd was Venus, at least at this point. The planet Venus does not, of course, zip rapidly from west to east, but there is no compelling reason to believe that a single object was responsible for every aspect of this complex UFO sighting. (In fact, there are some excellent reasons not to believe this, as we shall see.)

The officers had been alerted a few minutes earlier that a UFO was supposedly in the vicinity. Add to this the nationwide hysteria that had prevailed for the past few weeks, and you have the optimum psychological conditions for sighting UFOs. Every planet and every airplane is scrutinized as a potential interloper. The two men must have taken their eyes off the object that moved from west to east as they scrambled into their car. When they looked up and saw Venus ahead of them, they mistakenly concluded that it was the same object they had just sighted. From the time they entered the car, until after they crossed the Pennsylvania line, their attention was riveted to a brilliant object in the east-southeast: unquestionably the planet Venus. Spaur hit the button on his microphone and radioed back to headquarters that the unidentified object, "the one that everybody says is going over," appeared to be hovering in front of their car. The radio operator asked Spaur if he was carrying his service revolver. He was. "Take a shot at it" was the helpful suggestion. (The radio operator later explained that he thought the object might be a weather balloon, and that a bullet might bring it down.) Spaur decided against that course of action, because he believed the object to be "as big as a house," and he didn't want to risk angering it. After ascertaining that they did not have a camera with them, the two deputies were ordered to keep the object in sight until a camera car could be dispatched to photograph it.

Spaur put the cruiser in gear, inched forward a little, and then a funny thing happened. Floyd appeared to inch forward too. This should not surp1ise us if we remember that celestial bodies appear to "pace" a moving vehicle. Every child at some point asks his parent why the moon seems to be "following" their car, and it is a wise parent who can explain, in simple terms, that a distant body like the moon or Venus shows no noticeable displacement due to the motion of the vehicle, as nearby objects do, and hence appears to follow the observer. (This explanation, however, appears to be beyond the comprehension of some of the well-known "scientific" UFO investigators, who naively interpret every reported following of a vehicle by a bright celestial bodv as a "close encounter of the first kind.") No matter how fast Cruiser P-13 approached the object, Floyd appeared to move away at exactly the same speed. Spaur, a former race-car driver, quickly picked up speed and roared after the object. The Great UFO Chase was on.

This is the route taken on the morning of April 17, 1966 by two Portage County, Ohio police officers, who chased a supposed UFO into Pennsylvania at speeds of up to 103 MPH. The direction of travel of the officers almost precisely matches the apparent direction of Venus, suggesting that they were in fact chasing that brilliant morning star.

The two policemen raced eastward on U.S. Route 224 (which later merges with Ohio Route 14) at speeds up to 103 miles per hour. Floyd, ever obliging, appeared to follow this road exactly, reportedly just a few hundred feet in front of their car. For over twenty miles the• reportedly chased the object due east, over an almost perfectly straight road. Yet nowhere along Route 14-224 did they report seeing Venus. This was truly a remarkable feat of non-observation. Deputy Neff reported that between Atwater Center and Deerfield Floyd kept a bearing somewhat south of east. This exactly describes Venus's position, which was then at an azimuth of about 115°. Meanwhile, a very understandable confusion between Route 14 and Route 14A sent the camera car down 14A, miles away from the position of Cruiser P-13. Had the two police cars actually met, one suspects that the chase might have ended a great deal sooner than it did. Shortly after passing Atwater Center, Spaur observed that the UFO bad "gained altitude," which is exactly what Venus was gradually doing. From the initial sighting at 5:07 to the time they reached Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, at about 5:45, Venus rose from an elevation of 12" to 19". Anyone watching Venus during this interval would have seen it rise slowly and steadily. This is exactly what Floyd is said to have done during that interval. At Deerfield Circle, Spaur says that he had to pass between two big trucks: "between a tractor and a trailer" is how he describes it. Yet neither of these drivers seems to have noticed a giant UFO, "as big as a house," which reportedly passed just a few hundred feet over their heads. The two deputies likewise encountered "occasional traffic" (in Weitzel's phrase) between Canfield and Columbiana, around which they had to maneuver at very high speeds. But again we have no indication that any of these other drivers saw anything at all unusual. Crossing from Portage to Mahoning County, on the bridge over the Berlin Reservoir, the UFO reportedly "picked up probably another 150 feet." (Venus had risen a little too.) Floyd allegedly wavered from the south side of the road to the north side, and then back again as they entered Mahoning County. However, a careful examination of a map reveals that the road curves to the south, then north again, at this point. This will cause an object keeping a fixed bearing to behave exactly as was described. Indeed, every change in direction attributed to Floyd appears to correspond to a turn made by the UFO chasers.

At Canfield, as the deputies turned south-southeast on Ohio Route 14-46, the UFO was reported by Neff to "come across in front of us" over to the left side of the cruiser, then afterwards return to the right side. This again suggests to anyone who examines the map that the object kept a constant bearing. After turning south on Route 183, Spaur reports that the object appeared to be due north. Venus cannot, of course, appear in the north, any more than a policeman driving south at breakneck speed can possibly see an airborne object directly behind him (which, by the way, would then be chasing him, causing one to wonder why, if this account is correct, Spaur did not stop and set up a roadblock). Spaur's mixup of his directions, and his later "improvements" to his original UFO narrative, serve to caution us against taking such reported details too literally. As soon as they made the next turn, and headed east, Floyd promptly returned to his favorite position in the southeast, exactly where Venus ought to have been seen. It is well known that UFOs are supposed to stop automobile engines, short out headlights, and cause radio equipment to fail, but Floyd displayed none of these disagreeable characteristics. Not only did cruiser P-13 perform like a tiger, cruising smoothly at 103 m.p.h. despite the UFO's alleged nearness, but its radio operated perfectly, so well, in fact, that officers throughout Ohio listened to every detail of the chase. Not surprisingly, many of them looked for the object, and some imagined that they saw it too. Police Chief Gerald Buchert of Mantua, Ohio, was twenty miles north of where Floyd was reported to be. But when he went outside. he thought he saw it too, and he even managed to obtain a photograph. Afterward, Weitzel was keenly disappointed to discover that Buchert's supposed UFO photo turned out to be nothing more than a processing defect. Buchert described the position of his UFO with respect to the moon (which was then a thin crescent, low in the sky). It matches perfectly with the known position of Venus. But Weitzel hesitates at concluding that Police Chief Buchert's UFO was in fact Venus, because the UFO was reported to wobble around a little. Floyd. meanwhile, if it really were where Spaur claims it was, would have been more nearly due south and would have appeared to Chief Buchert to be just skirting the horizon if it were visible at all. It would not haw been at the 10°-plus altitude he reports. To the south, in Salem, three police officers drove to the top of a hill in the hope of seeing the UFO, which was reportedly heading directly into their town. They, too, incorrectly believed P-13 to be approaching on Route 14A, when it was in fact nearly ten miles to the north on Route 14-224. But it does not matter that the Great UFO Chase never reached Salem, for these officers claimed that they saw the object too. They reported seeing three jet airplanes, coming from the north, chasing the object at a terrific speed.

Weitzel ignores the obvious absurdity of equating an object supposedly thousands off feet in altitude traveling south at jet-airplane speed, with something reportedly just above the ground, traveling east no faster than an automobile. Instead, he cites the Salem report as further confirmation of Spaur's observations. Even more improbable is the report coming from police headquarters in Salem, telling of an airplane pilot's voice, loud and dear, which reportedly burst in over the police radio, saying, “l'm going down for a closer look... it's about forty-five feet across." [8] The Salem incidents demonstrate the intensity of the UFO hysteria that exploded into a fever pitch in Ohio that morning. As Spaur and Neff passed Canfield, the UFO reportedly gained altitude once again (as did Venus, the object they have still failed to notice). Outside East Palestine, Ohio, near the Pennsylvania line. Patrolman Wayne Huston was listening to the chase on his radio. He realized that P-13 was not far from his present position and was closing in fast. Spaur told Huston where to look to see the UFO, and Huston duly acknowledged seeing it. Huston reportedly watched the object approach from the northwest - which Venus could never have done - but Weitzel makes this same claim about Pennsylvania Officer Frank Panzanella, a claim I subsequently found to be quite incorrect. It can be shown, however, that Huston's account of the object's approach is internally inconsistent. Huston claims that he first sighted the object when cruiser P-13 was about five miles away. But he told Weitzel that the UFO appeared to pass overhead in a matter of seconds, leaving him little opportunity to observe the object. If Huston actually did spot Floyd when it and its pursuers were reportedly five miles away and if the object's speed did in fact match P-13's 80-85 m.p.h. velocity at this point, Huston would have had the object in view for at least three and a half minutes. This would give him plenty of time to observe the object carefully and to describe its appearance over the radio, for he was standing outside his police cruiser, extension microphone in hand. But since he reports that the object approached in '"seconds," leaving no time to study its appearance, either Huston's account of the object's approach is seriously in error or else he could not have been observing the same "Floyd" that Spaur and Neff were reportedly chasing. Weitzel ignores this contradiction in his search for confirmation, as does Hynek, who considers Huston's account of the object's approach to be the most critical part of the case. Huston, alone in his cruiser OV-1, joined in the chase as Spaur and Neff roared by. He said that he probably never would have caught up to them if they had not been delayed in traffic on the narrow, winding road. None of the occupants of the cars that slowed them down (who were of course unaware that a wild UFO chase was in progress in the next lane) has ever come forward to confirm the allegation that a giant UFO flew just over their heads, being followed by two speeding police cars. Coming into Chippewa, Pennsylvania, near Beaver Falls, Huston reports that the chasers were again forced to slow down in traffic, because of a 6:00 church service that was about to begin. Not one of these fine and sober early-rising citizens subsequently reported having seen a giant flying saucer, as big as a house, buzzing the top of their church steeple. [9]

Approaching Brady's Run Park, near Beaver, the UFO chasers encountered so much traffic that they were forced to stop. Huston turned on his siren. A Volkswagen had exited from the park, triggering a traffic signal. Three trucks were approaching the traffic light, now red, from the east, and two more trucks waited at the light, ahead of the two cruisers, forcing them to suddenly screech to a halt. (Floyd, ever obliging, was reported to slow down and wait whenever his pursuers were delayed in traffic.) None of these other six drivers seemed to take the slightest notice of the giant UFO which, if the officers' account is to be believed, flew not far over their heads. [10] Shortly after the three officers crossed the state line, the UFO was reported to have elevated a little more, achieving its greatest altitude of the en tire chase. It also became difficult to see. This is not hard to understand. As Venus rises higher in the sh, the sun also rises, making the planet more difficult to see against the brightening sky. When they crossed the state line, the sunrise was only five to ten minutes away. Venus is bright enough to be seen even after sunrise, but around sunrise the planet becomes much more difficult to see. No longer conspicuous, one must search for a moment in order to find it. Thus at this point in the chase they lost sight of Floyd. Spaur expressed the fear that it had eluded them for good. Spaur was driving in unfamiliar territory. He had to rely on Huston's instructions, telling him where to turn and when to slow down. This left him little time to watch the UFO. "We thought we'd lost it," Spaur later reported. "This will be it, we're going to lose it right here," they thought. The Great CFO Chase might weil have ended here. But Floyd (or Fate) had other plans. A half-hour earlier, around 5:20 A.M., Conway, Pennsvlvania, Patrolman Frank Panzanella left a restaurant where he had stopped for a cup of coffee after finishing a night's duty. As he drove up the hill on 11th Street in Conway, heading northeast, he reportedly saw an object to his right (in the east) which looked like a "reflection [of sunlight off a plane." He stopped upon reaching the top of the hill (he was still inside the town) and noted that the object was not moving. Panzanella then turned around, came back down the hill, and parked his cruiser at the Atlantic service station on 10th Street and Route 65, where there were fewer nearby buildings. He watched the object for about thirty minutes. From this position, the rooftop of a nearby house provided an excellent reference that has enabled later investigators to pinpoint the apparent position of the object. lts elevation when first sighted was only about 11 degrees, and it remained just a few degrees south of due east.

Panzanella's testimony is also touted bv UFO proponents as an independent confirmation of the observations of the other policemen. After all, he had not been listening to the frenzied UFO chatter over the Ohio police radio channels. But they ignore the fact that the object sighted by Panzanella was reportedly observed to the east of Conway, Pennsvlvania, at the same time that Floyd was reportedly hovering above the hood of Cruiser P-13, which was still in Ohio to the west. Even the staunchest UFO enthusiast would find it difficult to explain how an object supposedly in Ohio might be seen to the east by someone in Pennsylvania. Whatever it was that Panzanella saw (a high-altitude balloon is a good possibility), it could not possibly have been Floyd, if Spaur's account of the object's position is correct. This irreconcilable discrepancy poses an obvious difficulty to those who wish to prove that a UFO was actually being chased. How to resolve it? An erroneous statement will do nicely. Weitzel asserts that Panzanella first sighted the object in the southwest [11] (he later changed this to "west" [12]), even though the map in his own report to NICAP plainly shows otherwise - east. Weitzel also claims that Panzanella drove dawn the hill to avoid a "collision." This seems improbable in light of that officer's April 17 interview with reporter Tom Schley, in which Panzanella said that, when he sighted the UFO from the top of the hill, he "hadn't thought much about it at the time." [13] Weitzel's statements flatly contradict the signed testimony that Panzanella gave to NICAP, which unambiguously indicates the object as being in the east, and makes no mention whatsoever of any near-collision. That a person driving northeast (which is indeed "uphill," exactly as described) could hardly fear a collision with an object supposedly coming from the southwest seems never to have been noticed. Even if we accept the claim that the object did indeed arrive from the west, it reportedly arrived far too soon for it to have conceivably been Floyd, because Panzanella's sighting began when the UFO chasers were still dozens of miles to the west. That Panzanella's account of the reported direction of the object's arrival should be so grossly distorted in a way that just happens to better fit in with Spaur's account casts strong doubt upon the similar testimonv - arrival from the northwest - attributed to Huston. It also raises some very interesting questions: Who is responsible for these misrepresentations, the investigators or the witnesses? Did the witnesses actually change their stories, or were they altered without their knowledge or consent? Did Panzanella perhaps gradually change his story with each retelling, subconsciously wishing to please those persons who were conferring celebrity status upon him? Or was it deliberately misrepresented to make it fit better with the "known" facts? This incident provides an excellent example of how the accounts of UFO sightings to be found in even the most respected and supposedly reliable UFO sources are often grossly in error. When all of the facts appear to fit together so well, it may be because some of them have been reshaped. Near Rochester, Pennsylvania, UFO chaser Dale Spaur had finally lost sight of the object. The sun had just risen, and Venus faded meekly into the sunlit sky. But after emerging from a series of bridges and tunnels, first Huston, then Spaur claim to have seen Floyd once again. But it wasn't the same Floyd: "it had lost probably half its altitude," Spaur reported. [14] This is most significant. When Venus faded to near-invisibility, the UFO chasers transferred their attention to some other object, almost certainly to the same object that Panzanella, now only about five miles away, was watching. At this time Venus had an apparent altitude of about 20 degrees. If Floyd-Venus were to lose "half its altitude," that would put it near the 11 degree apparent altitude of the object reported by Panzanella.

The Great UFO Chase passed through Freedom, Pennsylvania. and entered Conway. Spaur's cruiser was running low on gas. They spotted Panzanella sitting in his cruiser, parked at a gas station on the other side of the road. The two automobiles made U-turns, parked behind Panzanella, and the three men got out. Panzanella at first was hesitant to admit that he'd been watching something unusual, until Huston exclaimed, "We've been with it all the way from Ohio!" The four policemen watched the object, and later sketched its position with respect to a nearby rooftop TV-antenna, the thin crescent moon, and Venus, which was still faintly visible. Hynek and other UFO proponents make much of the fact that Floyd was reportedly seen at the same time as Venus, implying that the object being chased could not possibly have been that brilliant planet. But they neglect to mention that the simultaneous sighting of the two objects did not occur until the very end of the chase, after the UFO had reportedly "lost half its altitude." Prior to this time, Venus was supposedly not seen at all; only Floyd was visible. This, of course, is absurd. Why should Venus only be spotted after it had faded to near-invisibility after the sunrise and be totally ignored at the beginning of the chase, when it was the most conspicuous object in the heavens? Another compelling reason for believing that the deputies were chasing Venus is seen when the path thev chose is plotted on a map. As a result of the UFO chase, Spaur's cruiser P-13 ended up forty-nine miles east and twenty-five miles south of its original position. This corresponds to an average direction of travel of 117 degrees (to the east-southeast). The average apparent azimuth of Venus was 115 degrees during this same interval. Thus we see that the UFO chasers followed a route exactly as if they were chasing Venus; approaching an intersection, they would turn onto whatever road took them closest to the apparent direction of that brilliant planet. What was the object to which the UFO chasers transferred their attention after Venus faded from prominence? The overwhelming probability is that the object was a high-altitude research balloon launched by some university or research agency. Such balloons can travel many hundreds of miles, and they can be almost impossible to trace. The accounts of the object almost perfectly describe the appearance of such a balloon. Upon first seeing it, Panzanella said he thought the object was a reflection of the rising sun off an airplane; reflections from a balloon look quite the same. The period of maximum visibility of such a balloon is, of course, just before sunrise or just after sunset, when the balloon is in direct sunlight because of its altitude but when the sun is below the horizon for ground-based observers. On several occasions I have seen high-altitude balloons under these circumstances, and their appearance is nothing short of dramatic: a dazzlingly brilliant star, shining by reflected sunlight in a bright twilight sky. Panzanella's observation that the object slowly increased in altitude exactly describes the familiar behavior of a balloon being warmed by the rays of the rising sun; the gases inside gradually expand, causing the balloon to rise slowly. Deputy Spaur later told the Air Force investigators that, as they stood watching Floyd from the gas station in Conway, Panzanella reached the radio operator in nearby Rochester. He requested that the airport be contacted to see if a jet interceptor were available to take a closer look at the object. When the response came back that two planes were supposedly going to be sent up (they never were), the UFO reportedly accelerated straight upward-as if it had heard what had been said-and quickly disappeared. "When they started talking about fighter planes, just as though that thing heard every word that was said, it went (psshew) straight up. And I mean it didn't play no games, it went straight up," Spaur reported. [15] This of course strongly suggests that the object was under intelligent control and did not wish to be closely examined.

Weitzel, Hynek, and Blum have accepted as fact the claim that the object shot "straight up" in this manner. [16] If this is true, it would appear to rule out any natural explanation for the object. But this claim directly contradicts the testimony given by all three of the officers available for interview immediately after the sighting, Neff having gone "into seclusion." This contradiction has been ignored by all of the "scientific" UFO investigators, even though this information is readily available in the NICAP files. Indeed, one of these interviews was conducted by one of Weitzel's key UFO collaborators, Tom Schley of the Beaver Count_, Times. In three separate newspaper interviews, which must have taken place within hours of the end of the chase: (1) Spaur said that they watched the object at Conway for about twenty minutes. It was still visible when he and the others went inside to make a telephone call. When they came back outside, they were unable to find it [17] (2)Huston said that when the police officers left, "the object was still hovering." [18] (3) Panzanella said that the four of them stood watching the object until it was "barely visible" after it had risen higher in the sky [19]. Furthermore, Spaur and Neff, in filling out a UFO sighting report. were asked, "Did the object disappear while you were watching it?” Both men answered no.[20] Thus we see that this extremely significant original testimony strongly suggesting that the object was a balloon, has been carefully ignored by UFO proponents. They prefer to have us think that the object behaved as if it were under intelligent control and contained a sophisticated propulsion system, when in fact it faded into invisibility exactly as a balloon does when the sun rises higher. Here we see a second major instance in which a witness in this case appears to have altered his original testimony, or has had it altered for him. It is significant that the testimony is always changed in such a way as to increase the strangeness of the object. This incident should serve as a warning against accepting any UFO testimony too uncritically, especially after it has been repeated many times. Stories told by UFO witnesses, like fine wines, tend to improve with age. After the UFO had faded from view, the four officers stopped at the police station in Rochester, where they spoke briefly with an Air Force officer by telephone. Spaur, Neff, and Huston then returned to Ravenna, the Portage County seat. The stationhouse was bombarded with phone calls and reporters. Although no announcement of the chase had been made, apparently some reporters who cover police beats had been listening on the radio, and the story was quickly picked up by the wire services. William Weitzel arrived later that same day, as did a number of other UFO investigators and newspaper reporters. Interviews were obtained with each of the principal witnesses except Neff. (Neff was quoted in a Pittsburgh newspaper article, however, which also stated that the object "greatly interested Deputy Neff, who reportedly believes in flying saucers." [21] ) Spaur was obviously exhausted, yet he was anxious to cooperate with the investigation. There can be little doubt that Spaur and the other witnesses at this phase were quite sincere in their account of the sighting. They plainly believed that they had indeed been chasing a giant UFO.

In 1966 the Air Force was on the UFO hot seat. There was nothing they would have liked better than to ignore the Great UFO Chase and indeed forget about the whole UFO business, but this was impossible. The great public clamor for answers to the UFO enigma caught the Air Force squarely in the middle. Many persons had accused the Air Force of covering up the supposed truth about the reality of UFOs. The demand for a congressional investigation into UFOs-and the Air Force's handling of them - grew daily. Hardly anyone had a good word for the Air Force on the subject of UFOs (and perhaps deservedly so). They were criticized by some for being too negative about UFOs and by others for even bothering with such things in the first place. And criticism is the one thing that a bureaucracy-whether military, government, or otherwise-simply cannot live with. It is the very nature of the bureaucratic animal to do its utmost to keep popular dissatisfaction with it to an absolute minimum. It knows that when the situation gets too "hot" somebody must be sacrificed, a scapegoat to be offered up in an attempt to placate the public furor. Criticism jeopardizes not only promotions but next year's budget as well. Thus all controversies must appear to be resolved, all questions must appear to be answered, regardless of the actual facts. This is the real reason for the Air Force's often hasty investigations of UFOs, for its practice of grabbing at the first explanation for a UFO sighting to come along, regardless of whether it fits the facts. The U.S. Air Force was not attempting to explain UFOs, to cover them up, or to do anything except to get out of the spotlight. The day after the sighting, Spaur received a brief, low-keyed telephone call from Major Hector Quintanella Jr., head of the Air Force's Project Blue Book. According to Spaur, the conversation began with Quintanella requesting him to "tell me about this mirage you saw." [22] Quintanella appeared to be unfamiliar with many of the significant details concerning the incident, although the story of the chase had been widely reported in the papers and on radio and TV; certainly one would expect the Air Force's chief UFO investigator to keep himself at least reasonably well informed on such significant developments. Spaur was disappointed at what he felt was the brevity and superficiality of Quintanella's telephone interview. Several days later, after an almost negligible investigative effort, the Air Force released its conclusion: the deputies had seen the Echo satellite and had then transferred their attention to Venus, which they then "chased" into Pennsylvania.[23] While this hypothesis appears to be at least partially correct, as the present analysis shows, Quintanella had based his conclusion upon a superficial analysis of a very complex UFO sighting, and he was unable to defend his analysis when it was challenged. In fact, the Blue Book file on this case actually contains a "Memo for the Record" that states, "Definitely not Echo 1 or Echo II. They were over the southern hemisphere at the time of the sighting." Blue Book was unable to establish the presence of any bright satellite over Ohio at that time. The superficiality of the Blue Book investigation is further revealed by their half-hearted attempt to determine the position of the Pegasus satellites. They gave up after two phone calls, convinced that the information was not available. [24] Yet James Oberg was able to locate these records for me without difficulty some ten years later. Neither Pegasus nor any other bright satellites had been visible.

Weitzel and the other UFO proponents correctly jumped all over Quintanella for the many aspects of the sighting he had ignored, for example, the alleged changes in the object's direction and the simultaneous sighting of Floyd and Venus. There was in principle no reason that Quintanella could not have launched an in-depth investigation into the sighting, and after a period of weeks or months he might have produced an entirely satisfactory explanation for every major aspect of the sighting. But the news media pressure was on. The Air Force didn't need the correct answer in six months, when all the headlines would have been forgotten and the crisis would be past. They needed an answer in a hurry, any answer: Congress was beginning to stir! After chatting with Spaur for a few minutes on the telephone, the Air Force would have been perfectly happy to let the incident die right there: superficial investigation, superficial conclusion. But the pro-UFO forces, led by William Weitzel, were stirring up a storm. Ohio Congressman William Stanton began to pressure the Air Force for a reevaluation of the incident, and he was joined by a number of other prominent local citizens. Political clout, the only force capable of prevailing against bureaucratic inertia, began to work its magic: Quintanella would travel to Ravenna to interview the witnesses. It seems that both sides intended to play silly games with this interview. Quintanella came only because he had to, out of concern for the Air Force's public image. He did his best to "snow" Spaur and the other deputies with impressive scientific facts and figures that sounded none the less convincing for being absurd and incorrect. Spaur, meanwhile, had evidently been carefully "coached" by the pro-UFO forces. (Weitzel and several of his UFO colleagues were in the building at the time, but they were not permitted to be present at the interview.) Someone else clearly must have prepared little speeches for Spaur, which he recited in singsong fashion, and not very successfully at that. The ensuing interview, recorded by Weitzel, reveals the depth to which the "science" of UFOlogy can sink when it degenerates into a game and is played by partisans who are more interested in scoring points than in finding the truth. "Venus, Venus," muttered Quintanella as he rattled some papers, "Venus today rises at 02:49 in the morning, and it rises at 110 degrees azimuth and 25 degrees elevation." This is absurd. On the morning of the chase, Venus rose at about 4:00 A.M., at 100° azimuth; the figures he cites are not correct for the day of the interview either. The Major also seems to have forgotten that, by definition, everything always rises at exactly zero degrees elevation! Quintanella was obviously putting on a show to impress the deputies. "It doesn't have to rise low on the horizon," he added knowledgeably, "it can rise high. But it's on the ecliptic, yes, it's always on the ecliptic." Spaur was snowed. "Okay, so it's on the ecliptic," he meekly conceded. (I wonder if either of the two men could have defined the ward ecliptic.) Score one for Quintanella. But Deputy Spaur was not prepared to give up without a fight. He had been provided the ammunition that (it was hoped) would permit him to demolish the satellite-Venus hypothesis, if he could only deliver it without slipping up. "First of all," Spaur boldly began, "as I understand it, a satellite orbits at about seven thousand, three hundred and sorne miles an hour, to seven thousand, five hundred. I may be wrong." He is. Spaur had rattled off the numbers admirably, but he had accidentally left out a syllable throughout his recitation: satellites orbit at seventeen thousand miles an hour not seven thousand. But no matter, because Quintanella didn't know the difference. Score one for Spaur. "Second of all," Spaur continued, any satellite that came as low as Floyd reportedly did would quickly burn up in the atmosphere. This is true, but totally irrelevant, since UFOlogical experience clearly indicates that there is little relationship between the estimated altitude of an unidentified object and its actual altitude.

"Second of all," continued Spaur (he meant "third of all"), "our satellite doesn't stop and go, and go up and dawn." "No, they zig-zag," Quintanella soberly stated. The Major paused for a moment and realized what an idiotic thing he had just said. A correction: they only appear to zig-zag, he somewhat sheepishly restated. Score another for Spaur.

"Second of all" (by now Spaur should have reached "fourth of all"), 'Tm under the impression that Venus rises out of the east as the morning star. Now this is probably another thing that's wrong, I'm not sure." Spaur is quite correct, but he should have stuck to his guns: he who equivocates is lost. "Depends ... depends," Quintanella slyly asserted, "sometimes it'll rise right over you." That is ridiculous, of course, but Spaur was defeated; his pro-UFO allies were not present to come to his rescue. "Oh, okay," he reluctantly conceded. Score another for Quintanella. In the end, the interview counted for nothing. No minds were changed because none were open for an impartial examination of the evidence. Both NICAP and Quintanella stubbornly held to their previously stated positions, each of them refusing to take note of the serious inconsistencies in their own analyses. We are fortunate, however, that the Great UFO Chase has afforded us an unparalleled opportunity to observe both the Air Force's Project Blue Book and the pro-UFO forces in action and to note the shortcomings of each. Although the Air Force happened upon a substantially (though not completely) correct hypothesis to explain the sighting, they did not assemble enough information to justify their conclusions. Hence they were incapable of defending them when challenged. It must be conceded that even though the NICAP forces led by William Weitzel had reached an erroneous conclusion and defended it vehemently, there is no question that the thoroughness of their investigation was more impressive than the slipshod work done by the Air Force on this case.

Even the aftermath of the Great UFO Chase was suitably dramatic. Six months after the incident, on October 9, 1966, the Associated Press issued a story by John De Groot that was widely carried in newspapers from coast to coast. It alleged that the flying-saucer incident had changed Spaur's life into a "nightmare." In it we read that his personal life was shattered by the publicity and ridicule that descended upon him in the wake of the Great UFO Chase. "He is no longer a deputy sheriff. His marriage is shattered. He has lost forty pounds. He lives on a bowl of cereal and a sandwich each day." Spaur was depicted as living in a lonely motel room, estranged from his wife and children, having literally no money left from his meager paycheck as a painter after he paid for his motel room and court-ordered child support. And he blames everything on Floyd: "Saucer... ##@@!' Spaur said bitterly. If he could change any or all of his past life, he reflected. only one thing would need to be changed: "the night we chased that damned thing."

The scene in "Close Encounters" where police cars chase UFOs was obviously inspired by this case.

I do not claim to have any inside information concerning the private life of Dale F. Spaur, either before or after the UFO chase. Nonetheless, it does seem to me that it is all too convenient for a lonely and bitter man to blame all of the troubles in his life on a flying saucer. It cannot be denied that the publicity following in the wake of such a famous UFO incident may well prove to be difficult and upsetting. But to suggest that such an incident alone could be responsible for turning an otherwise healthy family life topsy-turvy is exactly the sort of psychological crutch to which a person in a difficult situation might well cling. There are too many instances in which reports of famous UFO sightings do not cause such disastrous upheavals in the witnesses' lives to lead one to believe that the UFO incident was the only reason for this unhappy outcome. (Spaur's personal difficulties in the wake of his UFO sighting appear to be the inspiration behind UFO-buff Steven Spielberg's portrayal of the Neary family breakup after the father's UFO sighting in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Another scene in this movie, where several police cars chase a UFO across a state line, is an obvious dramatization of Spaur's experience.)

Daniese Spaur filed charges of assault and battery against Dale on August 2, but when the case came to trial on October 17, it was dismissed by the prosecutor, with the costs to be paid by the complainant: Daniese wound up paying $14.90 in court costs. The results of the "divorce" proceedings are even more curious. Daniese Evonne Spaur vs. Dale Floyd Spaur, Court of Common Pleas, Ravenna, Ohio, October 21, 1966: "The court finds that no common-law marriage existed between the parties. Therefore it is adjudged and decreed that this case be dismissed at plaintiff's cast." Apparently Dale and Daniese had never actually been married! [25]

Following publication of the De Groot story, Spaur appears to have completely vanished. In 1972 the Dayton Daily News attempted to locate him for a follow-up story, without success.[26] Spaur reportedly turned up at a meeting of a UFO organization in Cleveland in February of 1975. He claimed to be earning a living as a professional race-car driver in Erie, Pennsylvania. He was still hoping for a reevaluation of his UFO chase. [27] The latest accounts say that Spaur is now living in a small town in West Virginia. (Weitzel had earlier noted Spaur's racing experience, which reportedly "paid off" during the chase. Spaur's enthusiasm for automobile racing might go a long way toward explaining the zest with which he pursued a supposed UFO at speeds of more than a hundred miles an hour.)

Such is the story of the flying saucer named Floyd. It is a classic sighting. It is also full of holes. Dr. J. Allen Hynek rated this case as a "strong unidentified." Hynek writes, "I have presented aspects of this case in sorne detail because although it is just one of a great many similar cases, it is a fine example ... of a Close Encounter of the First Kind." [28] Hynek's evaluation of this case is especially perplexing. During March of 1966 he witnessed firsthand the "near hysteria" (his own words) over UFOs in Michigan, as police officers imagined celestial objects to be brilliant "moving" UFOs. But when the same scenario was repeated a month later in Ohio, Hynek, who was not present this time, reached the conclusion that the policemen must indeed have sighted a genuine UFO! The late Dr. McDonald considered the evidence assembled in support of this case to be "outstanding." Yet none of these recognized UFO authorities seemed to take the slightest notice that Spaur was revealed in the De Groot piece to be a UFO "repeater," a clear sign that a person's UFO testimony had best be taken with a grain of salt. It is remarkable how readily such well-known UFO "experts" can be misled by inaccurate data, inaccurate reporting, and a powerful will to believe. In UFOs and the Limits of Science, Ronald Storv examines and rejects an abbreviated prepublication version of this analysis, maintaining that the Spaur case "stands as one of the 'top ten,' an embarrassment to the Air Force and to the UFO debunkers." [29] If this tattered and torn case is held forth as one of the ten most convincing of all time, it demonstrates dramatically how flimsy the many thousands of weaker ones must be. After reading The UFO Verdict, however, Story wrote me that he has lost confidence in several of his "top ten" cases, and planned to say so publicly.

NOTES 
1. James E. McDonald's endorsement was given to NICAP, October 30,1966. 

2. J. Allen Hynek was called the “Galileo of UFOlogv" by Newsweek, November 21, 1977, p. 97;

   the "Galileo of UFO Studies" bv Oui, April 1977, cover. 

3. Hynek, "Are Flying Saucers Real?" Saturday Evening Post, December 17, 1966, p. 20. 

4. Flying Saucers (New York: Look Special Publication, Cowles Communications, 1967), p. 39.

5. Edward U. Condon, Scientific Study of Unidentified Objects, Case 53; 

   supplement to Ravenna Record Courier, April 18, 1966. 

6. Spaur and Neff's interview with the Air Force's Project Blue Book was 
   taped by William Weitzel, and copies were widely distributed. 

7. Philip]. Klass, UFOs Explained (New York: Random House, 1974), p. 42. 

8. William Weitzel, "Into the Middle of Hell," UFO Reports, October 
   1967, p. 45. 

9. East Liverpool (Ohio) Review, April 18, 1966. Interview with Huston.
 
10. Weitzel, Report of NICAP Pennsylvania Unit No. 1, April 8, 1967.
 
11. Weitzel, Report to NICAP, June 23, 1966.
 
12. Weitzel, UFO Reports, October 1967, p. 41.
 
13. Tom Schley, Beaver County Times, April 18, 1966.
 
14. Project Blue Book interview, May 10, 1966.
 
15. Project Blue Book interview, May 10, 1966.
 
16. Hynek, The UFO Experience, chapter 8; Blum, Beyond Earth, chapter 9.
 
17. Cleveland Plain Dealer, April18, 1966. 

18. East Liverpool Review, April18, 1966.
 
19. Beaver County Times, April18, 1966.
 
20. U.S. Air Force Project Blue Book files.
 
21. Pittsburgh Post Gazette, April 18, 1966.
 
22. Weitzel, UFO Reports, October 1967, p. 44.
 
23. Weitzel, UFO Reports, p. 45.
 
24. Memo for the record, Project Blue Book files.
 
25. State of Ohio vs. Dale Spaur, State Case No. 62775; Court of Common Pleas, Case no. 34849.
 
26. Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, May 26, 1972.
 
27. Joseph Wittemer, personal Correspondence.
 
28. Hynek, The UFO Experience, chapter 8.
 
29. Ronald Story, UFOs and the Limits of Science (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1981),

    p. 173.
 
30. Personal correspondence from Ronald Story, August 6, 1981.

Do Pilots Make 'Relatively Poor' Witnesses?

2023-02-18T15:06:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, that is true.

A lot has been happening in UFOdumb these past few weeks. I didn't write about it because the media coverage was omnipresent, and I didn't really have anything to add to the cacophony. On December 3 I noted that the report required to be sent to Congress on UFOs (or "UAPs") by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on October 31 was late. When it was finally released on January 12, it was a huge disappointment to all. As the Canadian UFO researcher Chris Rutkowski noted on Facebook's UFO Updates,

Yes, the long-awaited AARO report on UAP is out. Long on verbiage but short on case details, as I and others predicted. Including the 144 cases noted in the first report in 2021, this new report notes 510 cases were received by the end of August 2022. One significant point is that there are no details or case breakdowns in this unclassified version of the report.... However, we can see that the AARO UFO case data is just as difficult to parse as that received by civilian UFO groups. The AARO report notes: "...many reports lack enough detailed data to enable attribution of UAP with high certainty."

"Long on verbiage but short on case details." Exactly. The Pentagon now has 510 cases of reported UAPs (UFOs). While this might sound impressive, recall that Project Blue Book, which ended in 1969, had amassed 12,618 reports, and none of them amounted to anything significant, or added to our knowledge of any subject, even after more than 50 years of investigation. Project Blue Book listed a total of 701 cases as "unidentified" (5.6%), many of which have now been investigated and explained by further analysis. (Tim Printy has resolved a lot of these Blue Book "unknowns.") Most of the cases in the DNI report are supposedly "unexplained," which suggests that the investigators really don't understand what they are doing, and have little or no understanding of UFO history.

Now, we are suddenly in the midst of some Balloon Mania (or perhaps, "Ballonacy"), after a Chinese spy balloon was allowed to cross over all of North America, from Alaska to South Carolina, before finally being shot down, and falling into the ocean. Perhaps because Biden's response to this incursion has been characterized as anemic, or even "wimpy," the administration now seems to be rushing to the opposite extreme: find every unidentified balloon over North America, and shoot it down.

An Octagonal balloon.

So far, three more "unidentified" objects have been shot down in recent days, not counting the Chinese spy balloon. According to some accounts, all of these objects have been balloons, which sounds very plausible. Other accounts, however, insist that the objects remain unidentified. As noted in a CNN report, "Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet." Do some pilots really not understand that an object that is lighter than air does not need "propulsion" to remain aloft?? One pilot described a balloon he shot down as "octagonal," a common shape for party balloons. It has also been suggested that the Air Force may have shot down an amateur radio "pico" balloon over Canada. Such balloons are only about a meter in diameter, and carry lightweight electronics powered by solar panels.

Yet the pilots involved in the shootdown were unable to identify the objects sighted, even as they fired a $400,000 missile at what was likely a $12 balloon. How can that be? According to Leslie Kean, the New York Times' trusted UFO author (and ghost promoter), pilots

represent the world’s most experienced and best-trained observers of everything that flies… these unique circumstances potentially transform any jet aircraft into a specialized flying laboratory for the study of rare anomalous phenomena.

She seems to actually believe that pilots are some sort of super-observer, whose reported observations cannot be disputed. Unfortunately, that claim is based on assumptions, not on facts. J. Allen Hynek, the scientific advisor to the Air Force's Project Blue Book, had the opposite view. He wrote,

Surprisingly, commercial and military pilots appear to make relatively poor witnesses (The Hynek UFO Report, Dell, 1977, p. 271)

Space writer and skeptic James Oberg gives us an explanation of this:

I just think we need to keep in mind that fighter pilots are NOT 'trained observers', they are 'trained SURVIVORS". They live to retire and get their pensions by interpreting all visual cues in the most hazardous possible form, as embryonic indications of somebody trying to kill you. They 'don't think twice' in such cases, they are better-safe-than-sorry in their immediate instinctive actions. If it turns out the visual cues were NOT dangerous, at worst there is some embarrassment and teasing, but it beats the alternative -- funerals. I've seen recent cases where they got into dogfight mode over visual stimuli hundreds of miles away -- AS THEY SHOULD, if in doubt at all.

As Hynek and others have repeatedly discovered, pilots are not dispassionate nature-viewers, they are survival-focused specialists in avoiding lethal hazards in the air, and as such they properly interpret visual stimuli in the most hazardous [and closest] manifestation, AS THEY SHOULD. As early as the 1930s scientists realized that pilots were POOR observers of mid-air objects such as meteors and they continue to be poor observers of missile and space events, and we WANT them to be, in order to enhance the chances of them and their passengers staying alive -- better too many 'false-positive' avoidance reactions, than a single false-negative in a genuine collision-course event.

Oberg cites a 1936 article, Air Pilots and "Meteor Hazards" by H. H. Ninger, published in Popular Astronomy (V. 44, p. 45). It notes,

Press reports lead us to believe that air pilots are subject to a rather serious hazard because of meteors. Recently the newspapers carried a startling account of how a resourceful pilot battled a shower of meteors and by an ingenious series of dips and swerves averted what would have proved to be a major disaster had the plane been piloted by a less dexterous hand. The culmination of this amazing feat of aerial acrobatics was a plunge for safety into a canyon. Thus, by the preservation of eleven lives and a valuable aircraft, a new name was added to the already long list of aerial heroes! Only a few months ago, another keen-witted pilot saved himself and his precious of mail by dipping the right wing of his plane to avoid one of those dreadful blazing projectiles in Nebraska. In March, two years ago, two pilots in the southwest related their hair-raising experiences as they found themselves facing an aerial inferno; but fortunately both of them were spared.

The article relates several such more incidents, then goes on to show that the pilots were many miles from the actual location of these meteors. Also, all such visible meteors occur high in the stratosphere, "far above any height ever reached in ordinary flying." So these pilots' breathless accounts of their narrow escape from approaching meteors are, sorry to say, wildly inaccurate.

So the next time you hear someone say that the accounts of unidentified aerial objects told by pilots must be assumed to be accurate, remember that the correct answer is: not necessarily!