Can You Learn Anything From UFO Photos?, part three.

I got stuck with this case file in my hand and couldn't get rid of it, so I'll do the post on this famous film.

This is the Great Falls Montana film of 1950. It's a story worth telling in some detail.

Nick Mariana was a radio announcer and a minor media personality, who also owned a minor league baseball team in Great Falls, MT. One day he was visiting his ballpark [during the season] and was just looking over the empty stands anticipating the next game. Surveying the pure blue skies just before noon, he discovered that they were not empty. Two metallic ellipses [disks] were flying there. They were going slow. Mariana called his secretary out to be a co-witness. As she watched, he sprinted down to his car in the parking lot, grabbed his camera and began filming {Some write-ups of the case say the secretary saw the disks first and called Mariana but that detail is of little relevance}.

Mariana shot about thirty feet of film, all he had in the camera. In doing so, he slowly panned the camera, keeping the two objects nearly central to the frame. He was used to his camera and the shots were well done. He had the film developed and immediately began to show people [in the press and at a couple of clubs] what it looked like.

Here are two close-in-sequence frames [ one in pretty much normal shading for the pre-noon sunny day; one darkened to bring the two objects out clearly]. Encouraged by the good reception that he got from friends and local people, he informed the local USAF base [Malmstrom] and they came to visit. Mariana and the secretary were interviewed, both being judged solidly dependable people, and Mariana gave up the film original to them without objection. His attitude about this changed later.

The film had a good sweep of action associated with it, and the objects passed over and behind a few structures. They did not pass in front of any, however, leaving analysts only guessing at actual size, distance, speed. Nevertheless, this was a good film "opportunity".

Wright-Patterson's Project Grudge didn't think so. Unfortunately for Great Falls/Mariana, the Commanding Officer of Air Materiel Command at the time was [then] Colonel Harold Watson, a good soldier, but one of the biggest jerks that the USAF ever produced when it came to UFOs. Watson and his Grudge underlings [Lieutenant JJ Rodgers and Captain Roy James] were so antipathetical to the idea that they disregarded the job at hand even to disobedience of direct statements of USAF Director of Intelligence, Charles Cabell [without his knowledge of course.] Watson and Rodgers "handled" Mariana's film by dismissing it as "too dark to see anything and analyze". Well, you're seeing it yourselves. Watson and Rodgers lied.

Watson then did worse. He enjoyed getting big name news personalities to interview him, and being "quotable". This time it was renown news and radioman Bob Considine. In that interview, Watson blasted everything about UFOs, especially the witnesses and the sympathetic writers [think Keyhoe]. He was particularly harsh with Nick Mariana to the point where Mariana said that the subsequent article by Considine cost him several supporters for his ball team. Mariana ultimately sued over this loss. When Ed Ruppelt came to WR-PAT, he heard all the laughing scuttlebutt about this, and that Watson was fond of bragging that "he had completely snowed Bob Considine".

Mariana wasn't laughing. Added to his anger from the mockery, he said that he found that his film had been shortened by Project Grudge, about thirty frames clipped off the front end. There has been a huge debate about this. This is what I think happened : the film comes into the project. Rodgers sends it to the film lab without any particular care nor enthusiasm [this was exactly his persuasion about UFOs according to Ruppelt]. At the lab, the tech cuts off a piece for easy analysis, looks at it, decides it's not worth much [especially given the vibes coming from Rodgers and Watson], and sends it back. The "sample" is either filed or trashed or just lost in the shuffle. When Ruppelt took over the project about a year later, he couldn't even find a file on the case.

Mariana could have been correct about this "subtraction" from his film. The first frames were also the most important since that was when the objects were closest. Mariana says that part of the film showed "disks" not just lighted forms like disks. We actually have a third-party arbiter on this point. Mariana had shown the film to others in Great Falls before surrendering it to Malmstrom. One of these showings was written up in the Great Falls Leader the following day of the meeting. Here's the quote:

"He showed the film to the Roundtable last night. Members attending said the films show something, obviously not airplanes, in the air. They appeared to be two flattish, circular disks about 8 to 10 feet across and flew from the ballpark to disappear beyond the General Mills tanks." The everyday folks say: Disks.

Late 1951 came along and there was a sea-change concerning UFOs. Cabell had discovered the malfeasance of Watson and Rodgers about Project Grudge. Watson got reassigned, and was replaced by Colonel Frank Dunn [top], a good open-minded officer. Rodgers was slid sideways at the Wright-Pat Intelligence group, now called Air Technical Intelligence Center {ATIC}. In his place after a brief stint by a good young officer [Jerry Cummings], entered UFOlogy's favorite USAF guy, Edward Ruppelt. These men, whether they "believed" in UFOs or not, believed in doing a good job.

At the Pentagon the change was just as dramatic. Officially there was no such thing as a "UFO desk" but in practice there certainly was. Into that seat went Major Dewey Fournet [top], a very competent and UFO-sympathetic officer. Above him in the chain leading to the Director of Intelligence himself, were two very UFO-enthusiastic colonels, Bill Adams [above] and Weldon Smith. Dewey had a lot of pro-UFO "insulation" to do his work.

The UFOs cooperated, and the summer of 1952 saw a huge wave. Pentagon interest was high. Fournet, along with support from persons like Stephon Possony [directly in the DIs central office], began to study UFOs in creative ways. His biggest idea was to study UFO cases showing motion [such as formation flying] which forced the analyst to admit that what was being witnessed had intelligence behind it. Among the cases he was interested in was Great Falls. In October of 1952, Colonel Dunn of ATIC wrote a VERY diplomatic letter to Nick Mariana asking to use the film again. Mariana, still angry about the Watson treatment, demonstrated his real character by allowing it. Thus the film came back to ATIC and beyond to the Naval Photo Interpretation Center [NPIC] for analysis in a serious manner. NPIC at that same time was spending far more analysis time with the much more complicated Tremonton, Utah film, which Dewey also requested.

By this time several things were going on: 1). ATIC was doing its own look-see and re-interviewing witnesses. This gave Ruppelt a chance to actually look at the case details. He and the ATIC analysts almost immediately saw that the report was not of Birds, Bugs, or Balloons, but could only be explained away by light from some technology. The potential technology was two USAF jets from Malmstrom in the air at the time. The alternative theory then was that Mariana filmed either reflections off the jets or their afterburners. ATICs opinion on this was pretty simple. Ruppelt said bluntly in his book that they knew all about the planes, knew where they were, and that they were nowhere near the area where the camera was pointed. The original witnesses had already said that they had seen the planes elsewhere in the sky.

2). Don Keyhoe was being clued into both the Great Falls and Tremonton films situation by new public information officer Al Chop on orders from Fournet, Adams, and Smith above him. Keyhoe was given to understand that the intelligence stack at that time was excited about the two films and was pushing to use them as a tool to force a more open attitude about the UFO mystery. Release was possible [with accompanying USAF commentary] as early as the first months of 1953.

3). The CIA was now heavily involved by Presidential order, since August 1st. This led to a long convoluted mess [read the book for the drama], which ended with the infamous "Robertson Panel", above. At this panel, NPIC presented its analysis of both films. Fournet presented his Motions Study. All of this was rejected without any study at all. This stunned Allen Hynek, who attended as a called consultant, and shocked him into an understanding that whatever was going on here it was not science.

Because of the Panel, the "Sea" changed again rapidly and an entirely new and deliberately manipulative policy towards UFOs began. Naturally no release of sympathetic USAF statements on the films occurred.

Later, 1956/7 a movie production company wanting to do a fact-based dramatization of the UFO mystery bought the rights from Mariana to use his film. The movie directors/owners sent the film to McDonnell-Douglas for them to do an analysis [the Pentagon, now a VERY hostile place, was utterly unaware of this]. McDonnell-Douglas handed the job over to Dr. Robert ML Baker of UCLA [above]. Baker did a tremendous analytical job on the film. Suddenly, Greene-Rouse Productions presented ATIC with a monograph of a couple dozen pages of serious physics and geometry to comment upon. Back at ATIC, Harold Watson had been re-installed, in keeping with the new debunk-at-all-costs policy. The head of Project Blue Book was its worst, by which I mean openly dishonest. This was George Gregory. They were caught with their pants down by Baker's study. Baker was properly scientific/academic in his language. He tried his darnedest to make some kind of AF jet reflection fit the geometry, but felt that such an hypothesis was "severely strained" if even possible [and remember Ruppelt's and Mariana's remarks about the planes]. Baker ended up viewing this as a very likely unknown flying object film, but admitted that one could never absolutely prove such a thing. That last remark was the only thing that Watson said he agreed with when he wrote back to Baker.

Later, in 1967, came the Colorado Project, and its photo analyst was William Hartmann. Hartmann was a hard sell, but an honest man, unlike some on the project. Hartmann too analyzed the Great Falls film, and read Baker's monograph. Hartmann's approach to the case was somewhat different, but he arrived at the very same conclusion: not Proof, but very strong indications of a true unknown technology.

Ruppelt/ATIC, NPIC, Fournet, Baker, Hartmann... no mundane explanation; leading hypothesis= two metallic flying disks slowly flying in formation over Great Falls Montana.

What do we learn by UFO photos?? Isn't the above enough??

I'll leave you with a comment from the United States' most In-the-know photo interpreter: Art Lundahl of NPIC. In 1970, Art met quietly with Jim McDonald and Dick Hall in Washington. McDonald asked him about the Montana film. Answering from his days back at NPIC:

"Art said that what he saw on film, the UFO was very impressive. Much clearer than on TV [meaning, if you'd just watched the movie "UFO" you'd get nothing like the actual film]. Showed disks clearly. Said has never since seen the Great Falls films shown in a form as clear as that."

Well, right on, Arthur!!

Folks, I'm absolutely melting in WVA. May take a vacation, may not... see you with more whenever....

Can You Learn Anything From UFO Photos, part two.

As a remark I believe worth making, we humans are pretty bad at relating to the actual circumstances in which others find themselves during incidents of all types. We sit in our 21st century armchairs and critique their behaviors as if it was we there with all our [current] detachment and, we feel, "proper perspective", and even "equipment". By Gum, WE wouldn't have done it that way!! I'll say just two things about real time UFO encounters: 1). "We" don't know how we'd respond, let alone another human being. The case files are full of reports where the observers are so in awe of what they are experiencing that the film-loaded camera "in the back seat" never comes to mind. 2). If the camera-in-the-back-seat DOES come to mind, WHAT sort of camera IS it, and in what condition? Is it even loaded with film at the moment? Does it take "an hour" to prepare for a good shot? It was somewhat late in the game that lightning speed point-and-shoot machines were available, and far later in the game when "everyone" was carrying them around. We need to be a little more open-minded about this "why are there so few UFO shots around, and why are they so poor?" issue. We have what we have. We will deal with that with as few assumptions as possible.

Case #1: June 1945, Burbank, CA: A good man had returned from the War. His family celebrated that. One day he was out with a favorite relative horseback riding at an urban stable, when the relative took several pictures of different scenes, one of which is above. The young man ultimately was given charge of all of these photos, noticing that this one was "mildly defective" [it wasn't] as it had a smudge or dust particle image marring it [it wasn't]. Years later, while revisiting the photos, the man-in-the-photo looked at the "smudge" closely and found that it was instead a structured object. In fact, at first glance it seemed like a flying object of some kind.

The thought then occurred: could this have been a UFO? If so, in 1945, this would be of added interest.

The trouble with the case is obvious: No one saw this while photographing it. While there is a nice and highly credible story behind the photo, and although the people involved are for all our information the finest sorts, there is no UFO experience here, and truly NO WITNESSES.

In a case such as this [and there are many], the only hope in adding anything to the larger UFO research story would be if the content of the photo was extremely "strange". Even then it would be of only marginal interest. But, in this case, the content of the picture is not particularly strange. This form, unfortunately for our romantic tendencies, is basically exactly that of line-hanging streetlamps of that era. Amazingly like them in fact. The only mystery still in this incident is: analysis of the film can see some lines from telephone poles but CANNOT detect any going to the object. This is a little puzzling, but without being at the scene and experimenting with light and contrast one should really accept the "streetlamp with wires matching the shading of the sky" as the strong primary hypothesis. I'm no debunker, but I am a proper skeptic, I hope. So this is an honest but non-UFO case for me.

An early photo of the summer 1947 wave came on one of the peak days: July 4th. So: case #2, Seattle WA, 7/4/47. There isn't much that I can say about this. It has a solid context, taking place in the heat of a big flap, particularly out on the west coast. Many people saw this particular incident, and the photographer seems to have been an OK fellow. Frank Ryman was a member of the US Coast Guard, when he and others saw a white elliptical object which to them seemed abnormal. The abnormality to them was that the object seemed to be moving across the direction of the wind.

Ryman got his camera which was equipped with a telephoto lens. He snapped the picture above. This was reported immediately to the papers and subsequently the Air Force became aware of the case. As you can see there is little information in the photo. What the photo does is confirm that Ryman and his associates were watching what they said they were watching. So, in that sense the photo is "good". The Air Force looked at this and couldn't make anything of it either. They decided to write it off as a weather balloon. They may have been correct in this, but one would have liked an analysis of the winds at the time [and heights] and confirm that the object was moving with the winds rather than across them as the witnesses thought. NICAP was more "scientific" in that it simply said that the photo lacked enough intrinsic information to make an identification. The USAF could have done a better job, but at that exact time they had their hands full with other cases that they thought might constitute territorial overflights by hostile technology. So, perhaps we can forgive them.

Above are two printings of the two "Rhodes Photos" [at different intensities] taken directly off Project Blue Book hard copies owned by Allen Hynek. We're about as close as we're going to get to the original scene on this one. Case #3: Phoenix, AZ, 7/7/47.

As you see, the alleged flying object is a dark shoeheel-shaped thing with some central lighter area of unknown configuration. William Rhodes, the photographer, said that he had time to get two photos before the thing flew away. I do not know at this moment whether we can claim any other witnesses. Rhodes did promptly take the pictures to the newspapers and they were printed the following day.

These photos interested the Air Force's Project SIGN [Blue Book version 1948] very much. The reason was that the scoop-backed thin-disk had an advanced design predecessor in the glider designs of the Nazi aero-geniuses Horten Brothers' last work. The Wright Field engineers felt that such designs COULD fly, were cutting edge, and just maybe the Soviets had gotten something like that to work. [The Horten Brothers disk glider is at the bottom of the collage above. William Rhodes, an independent engineer type, is the academic-looking gentleman top left].

The major engineer assigned to Project SIGN, and the main USAF player in researching UFOs in these early days, was Alfred Loedding. He is shown above working on his own thin-disk flying machine patent. Loedding was absolutely sure that these lenticular objects could fly, especially if given enough of a power source. The Rhodes photos were possible proof of that. He and an Air Force Colonel personally interviewed Rhodes and confiscated the photos. Loedding felt that Rhodes was a bit of a character [he seemed to want to be felt very "professional" --- like he was trying a little too hard --- despite being a small time engineering consultant], but that generally Rhodes was OK. Rhodes stayed interested in UFOs and SETI for quite a while afterwards, and seems not to have made anything out of his photos. So, probably he WAS "OK".

But what about the photos?? The USAF had an early scientific advisory board containing real heavyweights in many fields. One was the Nobel Prize winning physical chemist, Irving Langmuir. I have no idea as to why Langmuir's talents applied to USAF aero-tech issues, but Langmuir was one of those WW2 scientists held in awe, as if he could do anything. Loedding, during 1948, was traveling on Air Force business near Langmuir's GE establishment, and made a customary stopover to consult the "great man". He showed him the Rhodes photos. BIG mistake.

Langmuir was one of the earliest of those debunkers who had no time whatsoever for what he regarded as "Pathological Science", a term that he invented to conduct howling mockeries of things like parapsychology. His pamphlet on Pathological Science which accompanied such lectures could be viewed as the original seed for the anti-scientific plague today called CSICOP. By 1948, Langmuir had added UFOs to his list of pathological diseases. This is the man to whom Loedding showed the Rhodes photos. Langmuir brusquely dismissed them with a glance as "blowing paper". He also seems to have reported Loedding to the USAF higher ups, as Loedding later wrote that his "stock had never been lower in the Pentagon".

So, what were the Rhodes photos?? We don't know. The Air Force didn't know. Langmuir sure as heck didn't know. Loedding THOUGHT that they were genuine and represented flying disk technology, but we see that he had preconceived prejudices.

What were the Rhodes photos?? Maybe something mysterious. Just not really much there.

Except interesting history about our own prejudices.

Case #4: Norfolk, VA 7/8/47. This case has its mild interests. The photographer, a 14-year-old [red caution flags at highest pinnacles], photographed the thing[s] after a summer school session. The intrigue in the case is that he refused to go along with the "typical" description in the press about flying saucers. He said that the big object was more like a spinning revolving "football" in shape and the little two that followed didn't look like saucers either. He claimed that the object wobbled as it flew and was gray, dark almost to black. There was a glitter around it and it seemed to trail dust or a sort of "white mist". He says that he called to his sister to witness it, but she ignored him.... if there was any sort of competent investigation here, we'd know if that was true. And if he HAD tried to get her to come and look, it would cast a much more favorable light on the case. He had the film developed immediately, but only one of three shots was any good. The newspaper photographers said the film looked good/untampered. The FBI seems to have entered the case in early August, and interviewed the young man. What the FBI investigator seemed to discover was that the objects moved directly over the photographer's house, and that the photographer felt that this was the way that the wind was blowing too. This, of course, seems never to have been checked.

So, it's a "possible", but it's also a "possible balloon". And the main thing for us is the printing message on the newsclip above: No One Else Saw It.

I could have these two cases reversed in time --- this is probably 7/7/47, though some confusion exists. Lets go with Case #5: Louisville, KY, 7/7/47. The photographer here was the staff photographer of the Louisville Times, so he knew his art. Several local residents reported UFO activity that evening, but it's not known if any of the reports were simultaneous, or, therefore, probably the same thing. The photographer, Al Hixenbaugh, stated that he could not tell the exact shape, but that their apparent size was about that of "half an aspirin tablet" [at arm's length, supposedly]. They appeared to be fiery balls with short tails which flew in tandem horizon to horizon. From nearby Paris, two adults and their daughter saw two bright objects that they described as "disks" in the sky that night. This could have been the same event.

All we then know about this is: the case is credible but not necessarily strange. Although parallel "flying" fireballs are a bit rare, they certainly could happen.

Case #6: Morristown, NJ, 7/9/47. This case is from another professional newsman and photographer. I haven't my file on this [for reasons to be mentioned later], so I'll go with memory and a bit of internet support. The picture above shows four objects --- Janssen says that there were six in total, but four was all he got in the picture. Why? He was flying his plane when it happened. Not ideal circumstances to take pictures suddenly. Although the photo shows spherical light blobs, Janssen says that each of these looked to the eye like circular craft with a rim around the middle which was dotted with what could have been "portholes". Needless to say: astonishing if true.

A few weeks later, Janssen was again confronted in the air with two of these things, and at that time experienced engine failure [he also believed that his plane was actually halted in flight by the disks]. When they left, his engines restarted. Janssen thus reports one of the earliest CE2em engine interference cases [this is why I don't have my file --- I shipped the Photos file drawer and didn't think to dip into other drawers where mixed effects might be stowed].

Janssen's two reports are fascinating at a minimum. But where's the investigation? What can we believe? NICAP apparently didn't want to risk saying anything about this case at all, and skipped it entirely from Hall's UFO Evidence.

Case #7: Tulsa, OK, 7/12/ 47. Maybe I shouldn't have included this one, but it was in the files. And the case DOES have several witnesses [at least four named], but with one mediocre shot, and local photographers already claiming that it would be easy to fake it, maybe it's a tough sell. The most intriguing thing to me was that there was the claim that one of the other witnesses testified that he had seen the photographer raise his camera up and take the shot.

This occurred right at the end of the intense Summer of 1947 flap period. Shortly afterwards not only did UFO reports plummet but quickly thereafter the earliest Pentagon information-gatherers on UFOs [Colonel George Garrett and FBI liaison SV Reynolds] noticed a weird silence from very high authority [translation: they were being really pushed hard on UFOs, and all at once it was as if the switch flipped and eery nothing from upstairs. Garrett said: it was as if the top boys had become informed as to what this phenomenon really was, and it was time to back off or shut up.]

The Tulsa case could in fact be a good one due to the multiple witnessing part of this. Regardless of that, Tulsa adds little to our understanding.

Case #8: Harmon Field, Newfoundland, 7/10/ 47. This is a little out of date sequence too, but it's on purpose --- a better case/story to end the day on. The situation here was that air technicians were on break when they saw a disk-shaped object ploughing through the cloud cover, effectively splitting it. It seemed to leave a purplish exhaust behind. One of the technicians, after the event was over, went into the nearest hangar, I believe, retrieved a camera and made one color slide photo of the remaining trail. Everyone then reported to base authorities and filled out formal reports.

What you see above are prints from the original slide. ... the ACTUAL original slide. One day while "having fun" going through Dr. Hynek's personal case files, I found the original Harmon Field slide stapled to the back of the case forms. I am willing to be called a UFO geek at this point, but that moment was a WOW! to me. To hold UFO history right in your hand. Well, Mark Rodeghier and I got Rob Swiatek to take the slide and make some good prints from it and there they are.

The one below is also originally due to Rob [despite the alleged copyright fantasy--- this has been taken purely from CUFOS by whomever that is --- happily we don't care as we honor sharing of information freely. Note also that this photo is ultimately US Government property --- sheez what some folks do]. Anyway, Rob has boosted the contrast heavily to bring out the trail.

So, what do we have here? This is in itself no UFO, it's a trail of an alleged UFO. Some folks have said that it's just a cloud-cutting fireball trail. The Air Force didn't think so. Combined with the witness testimony, they thought that it was just what the witnesses said : a flying disk which either left a powered exhaust trail, or which affected the air to leave the visual trail. This object was said to come into the clouds, split them, and retreat away up through the clouds. The slide seems generally to support the witness testimony.

The Air Force viewed this at that time as potentially of extreme importance. They saw in this case the possible footprint of a Soviet weapon. Wright-Patterson intelligence officers were scrambled to Harmon Field and immediately to report to the Pentagon. It set off a whole series of speculations as to how the Soviets might pull off such an invasion of our airspace. Ultimately the issue cooled down as little could be squeezed from the case.

This is, nevertheless, a photo which is on the verge of providing useful evidence despite it itself not being much of a jaw-dropper. The photo verified a good case report by credible observers [note: multiple] and at a minimum began a debate as to whether a mere fireball could match the characteristics of the total report.

I'm quitting now.... backaches, sweating in 90+ degree heat... miserable "work" conditions. No let-up in the near future here either. I'll try to get onward with this topic as I can. Maybe I'll even get to that picture above [which I thought I'd cover today]. Oh, well, I didn't know what I was talking about it anyway. Take care in the excessive heat, folks.

Book News

Just a note to say that I was just told that two copies of the book are going to be mailed to me soon. I only mention this as it indicates [unless I've fallen into some whack parallel Universe] that the book's being printed already.

As an unrelated aside: the Internet here is acting up --- very spotty for me. I am hoping that this stabilizes. If not it's going to be tough to enter long posts on the blog. Let's keep our fingers crossed [except when typing].

Till later.

Can you learn anything from UFO Pictures??, introduction.

The pictures above say a lot about the question asked. Some people have very unrealistic expectations or demands when it comes to UFO film evidence. I guess that I will say something unpopular, maybe even controversial, although it is one of the guidelines of UFO research carved into the Commandments of CUFOS: NO UFO PHOTOGRAPH IS WORTH ANYTHING EXCEPT WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THE ACCOMPANYING REPORT. It is not only that film never proves anything; film is never the leading element in any UFO report.

Let me create a fictional scenario. Let's pretend that you were on a scientific expedition. Scientists and military people and top quality tech specialists. You are having a nice productive exploration when all of a sudden an apparent UFO begins coming over the sea directly at a nearby island. All manner of your team sees this thing coming and are wowed. The thing cruises in towards the island, takes a little turn around it, and flies away back to sea, having given your team a "friendly" little display of something very mysterious. Well, my goodness. Many highly credible witnesses. They describe a domed disk object clearly unlike our current flying machines. The government tries to close off publicity, but the story leaks out and they have to come clean about the event. High credibility. High strangeness. Great case.

Oh. By the way.... there were several pictures by the expedition's professional cameraman.

Hip readers will know that I am not writing fiction at all, but rather describing the Isle de Trindade case from the International Geophysical Year expedition in Brazil. What I'm trying to impress you with is: the pictures, great as they are, ARE ALMOST IRRELEVANT to the "goodness" of the case. The case rests upon the quality of the observers and their reports. The pictures make it a little easier for us to assent to the mind-expanding experience, but that is OUR hang-up not the real world's. We, as UFO researchers, must rely on the same two standards that Allen Hynek pointed to so clearly 60+ years ago: Credibility and Strangeness IN THE REPORT.

If one takes film evidence as potentially supportive of the basic report, then one's attitude and expectations about film evidence has a markedly different flavor... and despite nay-sayers, produces some rather different and positive opinions about certain film evidence than are usually granted.

.... .... .... .... .... ....

Since this is introductory and not specific case-oriented, I should say something else: readers of this blog realize that I believe the core UFO phenomenon to be the result of the presence of extraterrestrial devices, although many other mundane, semi-mysterious, and even paranormal things stick their noses into our UFO files, causing their confusion. Extraterrestrial Devices [ETDs for short] are at the bottom of many UFO reports, in my opinion, and these devices are employed in a mainly covert way [overt to some single or few persons at a time, but generally "culturally" covert]. In other words, the non-solvability of the UFO mystery is deliberate and well-executed. Looked at that way, one should say that one is surprised that there is UFO film evidence at all, let alone land-and-dance-in-your-face evidence [no matter how many cameras are around]. The filmable evidence would in "my" scenario be "teasers" not validators. Even with that, I believe that when many instances of the film evidence are looked at in proper context, you find that it has told you important things.... just not enough to immediately convince either high-academic deniers nor a comic-book-reading general public.

But let's go on a little further into the history today.

This is the ubiquitous illustration for the Foo Fighter phenomenon of WW2. It appears to be some kind of old photograph, but frankly I have no idea of what. For me at least [some of you may know this photo's story], this piece of film merely serves as visual entertainment to the text it accompanies. As far as I could see, it could conceivably be some legitimate representation of foo fighters, but it looks more like fighter planes with either flak bursts or film defects. The film is useless without the accompanying foo fighter report.

As an illustration it serves some mild purpose in crudely representing a real phenomenon. The foo fighter reality hit allied pilots in c.1944 in the German border area and there is utterly no question about the seriousness with which the US high command took the things. Hap Arnold, our air leader, and Carl Spaatz, our next air leader, received foo fighter reports in England and Washington and knew they had to respond to what might be a dangerous weapon. Arnold's scientific advisor, Edward Bowles of MIT [pictured above], was an expert in radar, radiation, guidance technology, and most-things-physics. He suggested that they needed a scientist on the spot to get better information to solve the riddle of these mischievously taunting balls-of [usually red-orange]-light. He knew just the high-risk-taker recent graduate for the job.

David Griggs was the man. Very intelligent, adventurous, highly physics-trained in atmospheric science, AND A PILOT. Griggs leapt at the assignment. What Griggs found upon arriving at the airfields and flying [as passenger, I don't believe the crews ever let him pilot] several soirees, was a raft of case reports waiting to be told. Griggs gathered all this information and sent it back to Bowles and Arnold. The gist of it was: very real; very mysterious; apparently harmless. No explanation, but seemingly more towards the technological than the "natural". Griggs never believed that these incidents could be explained by some analog of ball-lightning nor St. Elmo's fire. Griggs transferred to the Japanese front, and found the same mystery there.

It seems EXTREMELY likely that someone in these crews photographed the phenomenon. I'd bet money that such photography happened MANY times --- this was not "fooling around"; this was military security. Yet to my knowledge no such photos have been released. This does not surprise me in the least. The mass of the files aren't yet "out" either, though a few are --- but none of Griggs' reports. Top Secret folks. Potential dangerous enemy technology. YOU [and I] have no need to know --- even today apparently

But notice: The foo fighters were real ... whether there were any pictures or not.

What about the Ghost Rockets of Scandinavia just after the War?? Same thing.

The picture above is the iconic illustration for the 1946 Ghost Rocket phenomenon, and the photographer is known and the picture seems just fine. In other words the credibility issue is no issue. Placed as it is in the midst of the Ghost Rocket flap, the whole context of the picture is solid.

But "strange" it "don't seem to be". It's possible that this could be a picture of some sort of rocketing technology, but it is far more likely that it is just a competent picture of a fireball. The Ghost Rocket flap is spread out pretty well across the year 1946 and contains many interesting reports, but the greater number of reports came in on two specific evenings. These evenings had flurries of reports of single fireball-like objects streaking linearly across the skies. And that's what those two clusters probably were: two instances of atmosphere-grazing fireballs. I don't have the dates all together here in WV, but the picture above could have been one of them.

But let's pretend for a moment that this picture IS of technology. It would not add much to our story, would it? The Ghost Rocket Mystery resides in the high-strangeness cases, not in the distant flyovers. To have a piece of film which in itself is strongly evidentiary, the photo[s] would have to be of a very close encounter. THAT doesn't happen. And it doesn't happen, in my opinion, because the "guys" controlling this phenomenon's interaction with us don't want it to. Manipulation... control... agenda.

But Ghost Rockets are a true mystery nevertheless. The Swedish [and American] military certainly thought so.

The Swedish military in 1946 naturally suspected these things to be Soviet/Nazi technology: "new" rocketry swiped from the Peenemunde German engineers [We got Von Braun and some of the eggheads, but Russia got most of the second-tier engineers]. Sweden had recovered an off-course Nazi V2 during the War and so why not the same old problem again? Some reports were distinctly non-rocket-like but many were [there were actually disks reported in the pile.]. The greatest intrigue were the "lake plungers". Objects were reported plunging/crashing into Swedish lakes multiple times... multiple like maybe five or more [I don't have the count in my head but it wasn't just two or even three. Well, perfect! A Soviet rocket goof lying at the bottom of a Swedish lake, ripe for the plucking. Except no trace of any of them has ever been found [unless you count some suspicious "slag" in a couple of cases]. Sweden tried, as evidenced by the picture above. Nothing. IF something plunged into a relatively-easy-to-search lake, but nothing was findable, then that's no fireball, even a very little one.

And it's no Soviet rocket either. But what? Sweden's equivalent of the Shag Harbor case?

I'd like to have photos of Ghost Rockets or Foo Fighters, but I don't. But they stand without them as full-blown mysteries. It was in 1948, I think [1948 or 1949 for sure] that a US Navy attache reported to the Pentagon that the "rockets" still occasionally flew, and that some of the analysts there were considering the extraterrestrial possibility.

Yep. I'd REALLY like a photo of an ETD being hauled out of Lake Kolmjarv. We'd be getting pretty close to evidential there --- particularly if it was Sweden's dedicated scientific and engineering team under Henry Kjellson doing the hauling.

'nuff for now. I'll get through this series at whatever pace life allows. Patience is a virtue, they say. Next time I'll try to take on some specific early post-WW2 [mainly 1947] pictures. Till then, Peace.

Return to Action, I Think. (And a shameless plug).

Hello folks, after a hiatus of two weeks. Even though I was back in Michigan for a while, there was no time to get deeply involved with any reading and therefore nothing much that I could rationalize presenting to you. I don't have much of anything today either except "news". But I'm using that as an excuse to get started again, and give warning that the blog may become more frequent again.

The main news involves "The Book". The cover is above. And what's new is that it is at the printer. Depending on the "place in line" The 600-page [or thereabouts] beast should be seeing the light of day by the end of the month of July or sooner. You could check Patrick's website at Anomalist Books to get the latest.

For those who don't know: this thing began as a dream of several veteran UFO historians [you'll recognize Barry Greenwood, VJ Ballester Olmos, Clas Svahn, Bill Chalker, Jan Aldrich, and insider MUFONers might well know Robert Powell and Steve Purcell. Bill Murphy also worked a lot with the book, as did Richard Thieme. Jerry Clark wrote the Foreword. Patrick Huyghe, great friend of UFOlogy and anomalies in general, is our publisher. Hopefully Patrick will get enough sales to break even on this production. If he does, he'll be the only one who makes anything from it. As usual, we UFO stiffs work for love.

We wanted to break an ugly unhelpful UFO tradition and work on this as a team, recognized as a team, and everyone's name [Bill Murphy said that he did not feel comfortable with the publicity so he is the exception, and we honor him] on the cover. We ARE "The UFO History Team" and this book is our accumulative product. My name's first on this --- I couldn't come up with any counterarguments --- because I wrote the majority of the chapters. Even though true, I could not have done this job without the other guys, nor without Loren Gross' monumental run of History Chronicles to set a skeletal matrix. We proudly dedicate the book to Loren, one of the great unsung UFOlogists [and one of its nicest people].

The book begins with WW2 and goes on to the Ghost Rockets era, and into the big sweep of military and intelligence community involvement through Colorado/Condon and somewhat beyond. The difference is that this story is told almost in its entirety from the "inside documents" of the military. It gives you the opportunity to see what was going on with the guys who were making the decisions, what they were trying to cope with, what they were worried about, why they brutally man-handled Truth and gave us the strange world that we live in today: one of the most robust mysteries ever, yet one which is thoroughly "forbidden" to do serious work upon. We also have three of the world's best to tell you how their countries handled it, and we take smaller focussed peeks into several other nation's activities. The book ends with massive indices, including copies of several of the most significant documents from the text.

Even though I wrote a lot of this, let me be the first to say that there will be mistakes that we, and I, made. This was a huge effort, and we really do not have a foundational history guide to "polish up". This was close to uncultivated ground. How many little details to get accurate? 60,000? We're going to mess up. We tried to reduce speculation beyond the documents to a bare minimum. Still, some will object that we got it wrong. That's history. We're tossing a rather large stone into the pond and the future can re-write its message as appropriate. On the other hand: I like this book very much. For me, it explains almost all of our government's heavy-handed actions over the Blue Book years. I hope that you folks will like it too.

... ... ... ... ... ... ...


Other than that: The SITU archives are in better shape, and were even visited by an old SITU member who wanted to talk about the wonders of upper Michigan and also read the "BOZO" notebooks of Ivan, as a relative of his had seen the Minnesota Iceman "in person". So we did some good there.

My goal for the blog in the near future is to tackle the issue of whether there are any useful UFO pictures, drawing as usual on my own files, as I have shipped that case category here to Wheeling. I do not know if this will be interesting to you or me --- I just dive into these things and see what happens. I've also stumbled across an old journal article [from one of those old magazines I saved from disuse by buying them from the local Old Book Shop] on the interaction of humans with elephants in North America pre-Columbus. I brought my own file on this with me from Kalamazoo, so may be able to make a good post on that once I get organized. This could take a few days. The third floor apartment here was not being cooled, and I was hit with 93 degrees when I walked in a moment ago. My air conditioner is one step up from a piece of junk, so it will take a few days probably for this space to be workable.

In fact, with sweat dripping onto the keyboard, I'll stop.

Get back to you soon.  Hopefully.

TRICKSTER, or just a Fool?

This is a brief thing that I'm going to apologize for first off. I had a, to me anyway, mysterious thing occur, which resembles on the first glance a "trickster" event. Now these are things that happen to other members of my family --- members who are VERY careful about how they evaluate things --- but do not happen to me. Yes, I had a very nice CE1 UFO incident once, but UFOs are denizens of this common old physical universe [most of them] and don't count as paranormal. So my feeling about this story I'm about to relate is: I'm probably wrong and don't know what I'm talking about. But here goes nothing....

Long ago I broke the band on my watch, which was OK by me since I didn't like it on my wrist anyway. I just carried it around in my pocket [it's on the right of the picture above]. On June 7th I went to my quarterly doctor's appointment, and before going in, since my back was feeling a bit "out", I lay down on the lawn and "popped" it. After the appointment was over and I was back home, while unloading my pockets I saw that my watch was not there [and I had dutifully loaded it pre-visit]. Well, I went through the normal routine anyone would --- checking all pockets everywhere multiple times, looking microscopically through the whole area where it would normally be lying on the kitchen counter [multiple times], checking my "soft" chair and even the bed [in case I had lain there a bit before], etc etc. Coming up empty over and over, I thought that it probably had dropped out during the back popping, or in the MDs office somehow, or in the cab. It was likely a lost cause.

On Monday June 11th I went shopping with a friend, and the watch not having appeared either in the pants or shirt pockets or on the kitchen counter in those four days, I decided to take the opportunity and buy another watch [the one on the left of the picture above --- $14, cheap.]

On Thursday June 14th, as I was getting ready to go to lunch with friends and was beginning to fill my pockets ..... there was the old watch just sitting there completely in the open view on the countertop exactly where it should have been all along. This was one of those surreal moments where just for a second you believe that what you are seeing is impossible, so you must not be seeing it. But there the thing was. And there they both are as you can see in the picture.

I've been trying to imagine a sequence of events wherein this was just all a mistake. I searched that countertop a lot and thoroughly. I searched those clothing pockets many times. I filled the same pocket that I always stow the watch in several times and unloaded it in the meantime. I can't come up with a mundane pattern-of-action. To have happened without some "tricky help", that watch would have had to become sequestered in some twisted way down in the pants pocket such that multiple intent searchings did not sense any odd lumps to give away its presence and this continued for several days actions until the thing finally unravelled out of its astonishingly successful stealth cave at the bottom of a pocket, and I unconsciously unloaded it and other things on robot control. Then there it was later, where it should be. Frankly having lived through the searchings, I don't believe a word of that.

But things like this don't happen to me, so ....

Go away and mess with some other folks. You just cost me fourteen bucks.

ICEWATER SERPENT?: Out in the Cold in Iceland.

Ok, some things occasionally grow bigger than they're supposed to. But how much bigger could a freak growth be? That is one of cryptozoology's main conundrums which it often faces. Although the science is pretty definite that we are not going to be seeing giant ants like in the movie THEM anywhere but the cinema, how big could some worm or snake grow?

Many of you will already have seen this recent thing about a "giant worm" in Iceland. Doubtless the internet is swarming with speculation by now. But if you haven't, I'll give you a peek for what it's worth. The story was ignited by the filming of an Icelandic farmer of a strange shape that he saw in a "lake" [I think that this body of water is actually directly connected to the ocean]. That particular lake has had a reputation of having a serpentine monster, so the story had more flavor than usual.

The farmer saw this thing out of his window and began filming. I believe that the story is that he went outside then to get closer for better shots. What I'll do here is let you get an impression of the "thing" as you get closer to it.

As you can see, this "form", whatever it is, stays under the surface for the whole sequence --- it would have been EXTREMELY "handy" if it had broken the surface sometime. The fact that it didn't puts the alternative hypothesis of this being an unusual looking formation of a semi-solid boundary between thin ice sheets in a very strong position. In fact, I would not consider this very mysterious at all, were it not for two facts: 1). The farmer thought that this was quite unusual. To his eye [the best piece of optics in this story], the "thing" was indeed a Thing, and not just riven/slashed ice in a semi-solid lake surface. The fact that this farmer has been looking at this lake his whole life makes one believe that this was at least very unusual. 2). The farmer described the Thing as having a serpentine motion as it "swam". Well, my preference for crediting witness testimony [especially "expert" testimony, as this is a man whose is more experienced in looking at this lake than anybody], makes me pause and say: "Maybe, at least".

As usual, this incident needs a serious field investigation, not just the surface newsy interview of the ABC reporter. Example: How did the thing "go away"? Why did the farmer stop filming? If the form just "breaks up" eventually, the odd slash in the ice theory is THE theory. Once again, "news and entertainment" triumphs over the search for answers.

As mentioned, one of the reasons why this story had flavor is that it possibly melded into the local traditions that this lake had a formidable serpentine monster: The Lagarfljotsormur or Lagarfljotsormurinn, or alternatively, The Skrimsl. The local historian produced the 16th century map above which showed the elongated N/S "lake" to the middle right, with an old inscription saying that in this lake dwelt a giant serpent. So we know the legend stretches back into the Renaissance period, and therefore probably earlier. The cryptozoologist encyclopedist par excellence, George Eberhart, informs us that an early mention of the monster comes to us from 1345. Other sightings have been recorded from 1749, 1750, 1819, and a recent one in 1998. For some mysterious reason Arthur C. Clarke became interested in this legend and wrote to the Icelandic Museum of Natural History about their views. Well, you can imagine what members of that bastion of the establishment felt like saying back to another establishment giant. They issued Clarke a "very vinegary response" that all these sightings have ever been were floating tree limbs et al. Doubtless they had observed that "scientifically" themselves, including time-traveling to 1345 to get the early one. But, what-the-heck, they MAY be right. It's just that they have no right to say so absolutely nor authoritatively.

The Lagarfljotsormur or Skrimsl has been described as a 40'+ serpentine creature with a 6' neck, whiskered face and a long thinner tail. It is supposedly pale-colored. As you can read/see our recent film doesn't match this very well --- maybe it's a baby Skrimsl. The big fellow DID swim with undulations like a snake though so there's at least something in common. Allegedly there is a photograph from the 1998 sighting though I've not seen it.

Somewhere in my research files I have a huge list of sightings of things like this from Gary Mangiacopra, but wouldn't you know it?, it's one of the few basic resources that is still back in West Virginia. So, I'll have to leave the background information as it is. Doubtless many others know more.

Because there was that 16th century Icelandic map which showed the lake with the inscription about its sea serpent, I wondered if that great purveyor of anomalistic map information, Olaus Magnus, had it on his Carta Marina. ..... but I can't find it there. He does have something non-sea-serpentry though.

Up in the upper right corner he pictures some sort of mountain troll, apparently, sawing away on a fiddle, and attracting sea creatures, two of which could possibly be serpentine. Also, there is the mysterious [?] "Criptoporticus" caves burrowed into the hills with no further clues as to their meaning. Troll homes? Well, it is at least fun to think about. This line of "thought" somewhat interests me for several reasons: 1). Iceland is frequently in the news because of stories about their local faeries/trolls and the bad "luck" one might incur if you mess with them; 2). as readers of this blog know, I tend to lean towards a paranormal hypothesis about the better witnessed lake monster situations; and 3). on the ABC news brief, the commentator asked a local biologist what he believed about the Lagarfljotsormur, and the fellow said that he did not believe that it could be a physical monster, because there wasn't enough food supply. The commentator followed on with a single comment about fish, but never picked up on why the fellow said "physical" with a bit of emphasis. It could have been true that the local biologist thought that the thing was real, but NOT "physical". And that would be quite within Icelandic traditions.

Do we have "trolls"/ faerie in Iceland? Icelanders sure think so. And Olaus Magnus may have too. In the nearby Greenland area of the map, he might be picturing a confrontation between a Greenlander and a shorter troll man. Did Lagarfljotsormur have anything to do with them? Maybe. Did they have anything to do with this latest film? I think that the odds are against it, but at least the story brought back up the mystery of that area, and it's possible paranormal connections.