Thursday, April 8, 2010

Flying Saucer Review Volume 5: The Phenomenon.

FSR reported fewer cases in 1959 than in the previous years. Some of that was the phenomenon; some of that was sociology. Part of the sociology was a huge strike in Britain which almost caused there to be no FSR Vol5,#4 at all. [it came out but as a rump issue printed on the crudest of mimeographs]. There were 87 cases. 43 of these were "objects" and 15 were "lights". There was one radar case. Thus 59 cases were those "safe" Keyhoe-an style UFO incidents, or 70%. There were ten picture cases which had not been reported by FSR before. Again, most of these were suspicious if not patently bogus. There were seven Close Encounters of the First Kind, which was, for FSR so far, a large number. Maybe the genuine phenomenon was creeping a bit closer. There were four CE3s, including the greatest UFO case of all time [yep, just my opinion]. There were three CE2s [two traces and one vehicle stopper]. The last four cases were a mixed bag of a lightbeam from the sky, signals on a radio, a transient lunar light, and telepathic communications. Most of this stuff was, as always, very inadequately reported in brief thumbnail fashion. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So what's this "greatest case in UFO history" all about? It is the Boianai, New Guinea case or what is sometimes called the "Father Gill" case. Any case making such a claim must, obviously, excel at two criteria: witness credibility and strangeness. Regarding credibility, it helps if there are multiple witnesses. Here there were thirty-eight. These were a "real" thirty-eight as well, since they were actually interviewed; many of them several times by different persons. [Gill himself; Norman Cruttwell; and J.Allen Hynek to name the three that I know]. It's also a help if the witnesses were unpolluted by UFO knowledge: here in the actual jungle area of New Guinea, the majority of them were probably the least UFO polluted people in the world. Even Gill himself had the most rudimentary of fore-knowledge. Father William Gill was an Anglican missionary, and culturally the only "anglo" involved with the sightings [there were two prominent ones]. The other people were Gill's mission helpers [some of them well-educated] and the people who lived nearby, all well-known by Gill. Adding to the credibility quotient: the incidents occurred within a flap of sightings in New Guinea, chronicled by Cruttwell, but unknown to the villagers, and only vaguely heard of by Gill. And, none of this information was nor is "secret" or held tightly by some self-oriented or case-jealous researcher, but is open to any person who wants to dig into it by making an effort [example: I had the privilege of listening to the audio tapes of J.Allen Hynek interviewing some of the locals himself]. [p.s. it is sometimes hilarious]. The Boianai case has credibility through the roof.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------What about strangeness? The incidents involve a relatively close viewing of an object which looks nothing but technological [domed or platformed disk with "landing pods" and a shaft of blue light, occasionally pointing upwards]. It is silently hovering, and doing so for large amounts of time. "Guys" come out onto the surface and mill about doing actions that are extremely "human" in their movements and form. Every alternative mundane hypothesis is destroyed when the entities exchange responsive waving with the people on the beach area below. [i.e. the only vaguely possible alternative hypothesis was some amazingly good mirage of a distant boat with sailors working on deck---responsive waving to the shore-dwellers puts that in the trashcan]. And then there is an almost unnoticed and uncommented-upon feature: The entire scene in the sky was bordered by an energy-field of some kind. This field acted as if it was separating the craft and occupants from the space around them. It wasn't just an aura. It shaped itself so as to maintain a separation between not only deck and sky, but humanoid and sky as they moved about. Was it a shield? Was it something even more strange, like the effect that the technology was having on our space, as their own materials were [partially?] inserted into it? A CE3 is plenty high on the strangeness list by itself. A silently long-hovering object multiplies that. A force-field which moves with the motion of those entities puts this out-of-sight. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Some people might better like a case like Betty and Barney Hill and I can see why they would argue that way. But for me this one is "The Stone", and the attempts of the debunkers to defeat it have been some of the most ... well, stupid ... and often outrageous ... utterances I've experienced. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FSR published another of the Trindade pictures [same one reversed--why do the idiots do that? deliberately trying to cause confusion in a great case?] [I apologize folks but that sort of unhelpful noise inserted into the system really bugs me.] We can use Trindade's UFO as the illustration for some of the other cases mentioned this year. ---------------------------------------------A single witness case which I like [and I am willing to be called foolish here] is the July 1959 Blenheim, New Zealand CE3 of "Mrs. Moreland" [that's all the name FSR had, and I as usual don't have my files]. She went out to milk the cows when a greenish glow in the sky approached, becoming a UFO with green lights in the bottom of a domed disk. It hovered near her at about fifteen feet high. A light switched on in what was a glass-like upper domed area. "There were two men in it, dressed in fairly close-fitting suits of shiny material. The only thing that I can think of to describe it is aluminium foil. Opaque helmets arose from their shoulders. I could not see their faces. One of the men stood up and put two hands in front of him as if leaning over to look downwards. He then sat down, and after a minute or two, the jets started off again, and, tilting slightly at first, the thing shot up vertically at great speed and disappeared into the clouds. When it did this it made a soft but high-pitched sound." Would that all witnesses were as literate and straight-forward as she.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Another incident of such strangeness that you feel awkward even considering it, was the Domsten, Sweden case of 1958. Here two guys [age 30 and 25] were driving home after a dance when they were confronted with a small saucer [16 feet in diameter and only three feet high]. They got out to inspect, but they found themselves battling with four lead-grey creatures taller than the disk [i.e. about four feet] and shaped like "scones" with no apparent arms or legs. Somehow the appendage-less pastries were not 'armless [OUCH-I couldn't resist it] and tried to drag our heroes to the craft. One mighty punch at the assailants just sunk in elbow-deep and seemed to do little harm. One guy resisted by clinging to a pole, which the scones could not pull him from. They then went for the other guy, and the pole-clinger dashed to the car. Once inside he blasted away on the horn. This discomfited the scurrilous skittles and they retreated to their ship and rose away. Ultimately the embarrassed twosome told their story, and all we can report is that the Swedish investigators say that they are sane. I can't help but think of the Monty Python bit where extraterrestrial confectionaries invade with the intent of winning Wimbleton. Hmmm... maybe it was all as John Cleese said.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just a few quick mentions of other cases with some potential: a). a 1959 case from Grassy Plains, British Columbia had two witnesses experience a CE1 involving a gray, egg-shaped object, which seemed to just disappear on the spot; the case was reported to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which most Canadians do not take lightly; b). a "light" was spotted from the air by pilots and others over Honolulu, Hawaii in 1959. There were five witnesses. The light made a right angle turn and seemed to disappear instantly; c). In 1959, around Oklahoma City, OK a multitude of witnesses watched as an object appearing red and white moved across the sky, then reversed direction in a 180-degree turn. Air Force jets were scrambled for a futile chase; d). In 1958, in Portglenone, Ireland a single witness watched an object seeming to land and take off in his fields. Upon inspection of the area, a tree was sawed off about eight feet from the base. The tree trunk was two foot in diameter; e). In 1959 in Walkerton, Ontario, four policemen saw/reported a predominantly white object [these were two different sets of officers from two view points] which continuously changed colors from red to green to blue to mauve and back to white. The thing seemed to be hovering at about 3500 feet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The doubtlessly phoney Adamski-like photo on the left was presented in FSR as genuine [Trench, the editor, had become an Adamski fan], and it will serve to illustrate the last case reported upon here. This incident was an event in 1956, just now being reported. This was from Dublin, Ireland and was seen by a husband and wife late in the evening. They witnessed a brilliant light moving down out of the sky towards their house. Initially it seemed to be a large ball, like a glowing globe. But then "inside" the light seemed to be a metallic ship. It was a saucer upside-down, with a dome on the top and it seemed to be spinning. IT HAD THREE BALL SORT OF THINGS UNDERNEATH. [Good lord preserve me. I just hate it when this happens.] For those of you who are hip to this you will recognize the three big-ball "landing pods" as the characteristic feature of the disgraced George Adamski hoaxed photos. BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB. Come on, Universe! Make things a little easier!. This case from Dublin, little as I can read, is presented as a perfectly good close encounter by witnesses who seem to be making no extreme claims and seem to be telling a calm credible story---but with a "bad" element in it. And this is not the only time I've been confronted with an object description with the three BigBall pods. What's the answer? I am NOT going to revise my opinion of Adamski--I have a load of material which convicts him. But what else? Are our two Irish folks liars? Did Adamski hear about "good" BallPod cases and make a model to photograph? Did the aliens think that this was great fun and run out some imitators? Did our "little people tricksters" do it? Well, alright, whoever you are--good job, you got me on this one.......you know, "they" ARE "out there" just waiting to mess about.....just as I was in the process of making the last corrections to this, something took me off the internet. Thank you, whatevers, for not dumping the whole post. I AM trying to get you some publicity afterall.

11 comments:

  1. Prof: "Somehow the appendage-less pastries were not 'armless".

    And to go by the piece's general coherence in the face of potentially chaotic materials you weren't legless while you compiled it!

    alanborky

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  2. I'd admit to half-witless, though.

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  3. Prof: "just as I was in the process of making the last corrections to this, something took me off the internet. Thank you, whatevers, for not dumping the whole post. I AM trying to get you some publicity afterall."

    Ooh, baby! Another garuda bird's being encouraged to stretch his wings and emerge from his shell!

    alanborky

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  4. Prof: "I am NOT going to revise my opinion of Adamski--I have a load of material which convicts him."


    ...and yet...and yet...

    What I'm getting at is, in that remark there's just the slightest hint of something akin to an infinitely remote willingness to contemplate the very slimmest possibility Adamski may've been some poor sap who was run rings around by 'something' on a par with the number of times God ran rings round poor Jonah, (well there he was, as ordered, predicting the downfall of the city of Nineveh, only for him to end up look a right mug when God changes his mind - then the rotten sod goes and kills his beloved plant!).

    These days, though, I'm even more wary of reflexively joining in when people casually denounce these people who seem to've bought into the whole contactee/agent of the aliens package after my 'experience' - so to speak - with Billy Meier.

    I had absolutely no interest in him, didn't even actually know who he was, though kept running into negative references to him, until someone referred to a "ridiculous" time travel photograph of a pterodactyl with a snake being clearly lifted from a book.

    As an artist myself I just had to see it; and it was instantly clear to me, though similar, they weren't the same picture, not even the same artist.

    Then I took a look at both pictures using the standard Microsoft magnifier thing that comes with every pc, ticking the box for 'invert colours'.

    The snake from the book was clearly a two dimensional drawing but, to my complete shock, the snake in the Meier picture, which was hardly visible in normal colour, in inverted colours suddenly took on a 3 dimensionality revealing details you'd never've otherwise guessed were there.

    p.s. That business with 'something' taking you off the internet - that happens to me, too.

    I haven't told the half of some of the experiences I've had to go through, but one way I know when I'm NOT supposed to say anything is when, after two hours of writing something down and being about to finally press 'Post Comment', suddenly something happens and I've lost everything! The first few million times it happens you get seriously pissed off, but after a while you begin to develop this kind of phlegmatic Ned Flanders' style okey-dokilyness.

    p.p.s.

    Are you gettin' the flashing lights, yet, or the mysterious shadows with no apparent source?

    The menacing presence when no one's there?

    Have fun!

    alanborky

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  5. no to basically everything --- i would like to experience some of the haunted phenomena of my relatives, but..zip. Also, no again on Adamski. My file is inches thick on him and the only thing that could save any face for him was if he was partly duped by the intel community. Since you are a fan of Meier, I'll let that go, but "no" also...and I do not have time to argue that stuff out.

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  6. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  7. Hi Michael, being new to the big study and having read a few of these old entries during my search for extra information on the 'Father Gill Case' , I have to express just how impressed I am with your obviously apparent knowledge and experience in the UFO field.
    Rarely since I got hooked on the ETH question about three years ago have I come across such authoritative straight talking on the subject, with no obvious bias either way! ...Well done mate.

    By the way is there any way of listening to those witness interview audio tapes that J Allen Hynek made with the Boianai witnesses?

    Thanks Alex.

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    1. Thank you.

      As to listening to those tapes: I have no idea how to manage that. I actually would like to have both the knowledge and the time to put certain primary source audiotapes "up" somewhere for people to listen to, but I do not.

      Those tapes are of mediocre quality [though in my memory not horrible] and take some listening effort. They are puzzling at first because Allen doesn't know what he's doing and only by hanging in there do you yourself see [quicker than he does] why he's blowing it.

      Because they are tapes owned by CUFOS [and I'm still a Board Member], maybe someday they'll be put on the CUFOS website. Also, memory is jogging now, I believe that we offered a mildly edited [by me] tape of this for a CUFOS "Thank You" gift for people who contributed a certain amount during a fundraiser --- so some cassette form of this exists somewhere.

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  8. Any chance of me listening to those Hynek/Boianai witness tapes?..please.

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    1. Uhhhh.... you must have read my post just above yours, didn't you?

      I suppose you could write to Mark Rodeghier at the Center for UFO Studies and offer him a couple hundred bucks, and maybe he could find the original and sell you a copy. Or go to Chicago and arrange to see him.

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  9. There are two main motives for hoaxing: fun and profit. The second motive is obvious. As for the former, there is a fine line between having a bit of fun and making yourself a laughing stock. The idea is to come up with something over the top, but not so over the top that nobody will believe it. That was, you can sit around with your friends over a few glasses and say, "Would you believe? Some of those gulls actually took it seriously!" The point I am coming to is: with respect to the Swedish account of 1958, why would anybody, let alone two people, make such a story expecting to be believed.

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