CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE SECOND KIND, physiological effects part two

In the early years of modern UFOlogy [WWII to 1952], the phenomenon was almost entirely manifested as an analog of military technology [low-aspect planes or missiles, ghost rockets, fireballs]. They flew with our planes, and generally mocked them. But they rarely came close. In 1954 all manner of close-up weirdness broke out. And it WAS close. Odd critters, some of them technological looking, some of them boasting a more folk entity appearance, swarmed all over France and Italy, and spilled over to northern South America. When they had effects on we humans, it was either unsurprising [like eye irritation from a bright light] or it was the main intriguing effect of the CE2p pile to come: paralysis. 1954 "went away"and took its weirdness with it for the most part, and we were back to the aerial flying machines again. But then the phenomenon decided to make a sharp incision [time-wise] with another burst of close encounters. Along came the narrow time-blade of Oct/Nov 1957 and the vehicle effects. Within that period were another set of close encounters less featured by the media and even our own history: the CE2p "sunburn" archons. The following log pages for my CE2p "collection" run us up to that era.
Cases #16-20 in the log are from 1956. There are several things of interest. Lakewood CA is a rare thing in UFOlogy with completely independent witnesses, and thereby solid UFOlogy. But it's CE2p element is of the most mundane sort---temporary blindness due to the brightness of the source. The object was a red roundish thing with "feelers" hanging down from its edge. People in different locations saw it. There is the controversial Night Watchman case, wherein he attempted to get compensation for injury by the craft [and I think did]. At Clackamas OR two policemen saw a bright light which blinded one of them. My favorite is the Gjersonjoen Denmark encounter wherein we have a "stalker" which blocks the road. Witnesses feel "prickling" on faces and subsequently cannot stomach food. The event seems to have both stopped a watch and altered the paint color of the car.
Cases #21-25 bring us to the beginning of 1957. I cannot with intellectual honesty claim any great cases here. Four of the five cases are "animal effects" cases, mostly affecting dogs. I must mention, though, that two of these five come from someone whom I view as a special person. This is L.Taylor Hansen. She [this is a lady despite what some people have thought] was a rather brilliant writer of science columns, and columns about esoteric archaeological knowledge for AMAZING STORIES magazine in the thirties and forties. Her stuff is, to me, very good and challenging. She, in the mid-fifties, became interested in the UFO phenomenon, particularly through some incidents that she herself or relatives or friends had witnessed. Because my experience of her writing gives me confidence in her as an honest scholar/researcher I trust the three cases she published---two of which had CE2p elements and are noted here. But, despite being biased by her lovely mind, I cannot say that any of these five CE2ps is worth shouting about.
Cases #26-30 [the last for today] bring us up to the "Great CE2em Incision" of [mainly] early November 1957. More of this will come with the next page entry whenever I get it up. This set of five has some mind-bogglers and one great case. Milford PA is a CE3 old-style, with an occupant in a transparent dome. I have it in my CE2p file for the exact opposite reason that things should be there. Although the 20-foot diameter, whirring along as it went, came very close to the farm's chicken coop, the poultry showed NO RESPONSE to the thing at all. This was viewed by the witness as utterly impossible. We have another "stalker" case causing eye irritation, which my hunch is a good one; and another "paralysis" case, which is also probably quite stronger than the "3" that my file can give it.

The great case is the James Stokes case of Orogrande NM happening in the wake of Levelland. This is a vehicle-stop and a "sunburn". In fact it is probably the Case which inspired the Roy Neary sunburn in Spielberg's movie. But the greatness of the case comes from its smooth sequence of reporting, witnessing-of-Stokes' "burn", and "testing/quizzing" by the military. In fact, I've rarely been so impressed as to how this story fits together [from the seeing of Stokes by the Lorenzens, the local newswriter, the base personnel, the AF investigator who tries to write him off, etc right down the line]. I give Orogrande a "5" but am tempted to a "6".

Far wilder and more difficult to grasp is the famous Fort Itaipu case from Brazil. A spectacular blasting of the Fort with heat waves causing hospitalizable burns to the guards and heavy electromagnetic effects to base equipment. This case makes almost all the books writing about the wild and wooly side of UFOlogy. I grudgingly go along with its hyped image, just due to the weight of writers before me [most of whom would give it higher rates than my "4".] Why do I hesitate on this one??

My view of Brazilian UFOlogy is that it had a terrifically good and interesting early period, due to the combination of the three great researchers [Simoes, Faria, &Perriera] plus the interest of a few key personnel in the Brazilian Air Force. We lucked out then, and the foundationstone cases of Isla Trindade and Gravatai AFB were revealed. At the latter stages of that period, a young MD met the big three and began his legendary UFO career---Olavo Fontes. The big three always wondered about Fontes [he seemed a bit "enthusiastic" for their harder analytical tastes], but they liked him personally.

After these early "solid" UFOlogical years, the big three got out of the game, leaving Brazil to Fontes and much worse, like fiction-writing newsmen and the standards-less Walter Buhler. From that point forward, I have really no way of assessing the goodness of anything which came out of that area of the world. MANY times cases have been shown to have been just made up there, or heavily embellished. Without better confidence in the investigators and the sources, I can't rate anything very highly. Ft.Itaipu is just on the cusp of my failed confidence---so I give it some nervous benefit of the doubt.

Until we meet again....may all your encounters be pleasant ones.

GOING BUMP

This is just a quick insert into the flow of [otherwise] UFO CE2p cases in order that I don't forget it. It's about a poltergeist experience within my family.

The background: my mother liked to use nutcrackers to decorate at Christmas time, and one year I created a "game" in which each of her seven kids in turns sent her a present of a nutcracker each week from September to Christmas eve. She accumulated a lot of them and loved it, and over the years the grandchildren would like to come to Gramma's and see all the nutcrackers. When Mother got too fragile to live in that house anymore [which is the current situation], she moved in with one of my brothers and sister-in-laws. Their house is a wonderful old row-house structure which is on the national historical registry list. It is also a site of occasional paranormal manifestations, as people who have read this blog in the good old days will remember.

After Christmas, Mother decided to let any of her kids or grandkids have the nutcracker of their choice as a piece of memorabilia. This was an idea inspired by two of them saying that they would like one or more. This was a perfect idea as the new living space had no room to display them all anyway. So one after another nutcrackers got chosen and left for Michigan, Ohio, Texas, New York, Florida, and scatterings about West Virginia. Quite a few were still left and some were set on a small table in Mom's kitchen, looking fairly much like the illustration above.

Just this past week, my sister-in-law was coming out of Mother's bedroom into that kitchen. The nutcrackers were at the farther end and she was looking in that direction. No other person nor animal was about. With a loud whack the nutcrackers suddenly sprayed all over the kitchen floor just as if something like a nutcracker-sized bowling ball [invisible, of course] had hit them. Startled, my sister-in-law, who keeps track of these events, went over to the table and no explanation was forthcoming. As always with these things, it was like a momentary burst of "mischief" followed by nothing else. There was nothing to do but gather them back up and go on with the day...somewhat more amused.

A Small Re-Start

Well, to anyone who may re-find this weary old blog, I am going to try to occasionally put something up again. My duties caring for my mother haven't changed, but perhaps some easing occurs just with time. And, to stop from going totally foggy, I decided to take a portion of my UFO case files and see if there was anything of note to pass on there. The [very] big UFO history book written by myself and the UFO History Group [eleven of them plus me] is basically finished also, all 600+ pages of it. So those sorts of duties are also out of the way. I hope that these first forays back into the posting business will give you something worthwhile.
The set of case files that I chose to bring from Kalamazoo to Wheeling to work on were the Close Encounters of the Second Kind//Physiological effects. I picked this category because it has always seemed to me to be relatively poorly characterized. If one thinks of CE2Trace cases, you have a fairly immediate understanding of what will be in that pile and a lot of confidence that there are many reasons for thinking those types credible. Same thing with vehicle interference. But for me, the CE2p's are not as immediately clear. They seem in fact to probably contain several rather different things entirely, just lumped into one identifier. My personal files are not voluminous on this material. They are like all my categories the results of idiosyncratic accretions of cases which were historically important for different reasons, given to me by friends as "interesting", accidentally coming along with a cluster of other files, etc. There are a little over 150 of them, and they vary widely in quality as to the depth of the file material. Still, it seems a good "independent group" of files to log and sort through. So this is what I have done here.
I'm going to insert my log pages in the blog one after another [three for this post, and hopefully a lot more later]. You can see [with luck] what I've done. Each case has the typical Date/Place identifiers, plus type of craft, multi-witnessed or not [very few of these are], whether the object made noise, specific case notes and what the alleged physiological effect was. At the bottom right corner of each case listing, I give my own, rather subjective, strength-of-case rating [0-6]. This not-so-brilliant and certainly non-scientific scale goes from Bunk[0] to minimal info[1] to minimal but with an interesting feature [2] to probably a good case [3] to probably good and with an interesting feature [4] to apparently a very solid case [5] to Anchor Case//Bell Cow [6]. "Interesting Features" would be things like instant vanishment, OZ effects, high strangeness. On the first page of the log [above], there are two fours. One is an old case from Queensland Australia wherein the witness collided with what seemed to be an invisible force field. I include the case as a four, because outstanding Ozzie researchers cite it, and I know some of these people and respect them. The second four is of poorer provenance, discovered by me as a witness letter buried in an archive collection. But the witness is very good at detail [and drew the object] and tells a short but rational story. I probably should not rate this as highly as a four, but the letter/style was compelling. Take it with your own preferred amount of salt.
Page two features a case often cited in ce2p catalogs, but which I believe to be bunk. Dr, James McDonald followed this case up personally and felt the witness to be shaky and contradictory. McDonald is usually the right guy to go along with in these matters, so go I. The Sonderborg, Denmark case [a CE3] is fascinating, AND fits certain larger patterns, but I have only Vallee's brief citation from UFO-Nachrichten to go on, and so cannot go for a higher number than two. My instinct tells me that if one of the early solider Scandinavian investigating groups looked into this, or even a good reporter or the Danish Air Force, then this is probably as high as a five. But, I don't know. The stronger case in this group is Kerkrade, Netherlands. This is because it occurred in a good context [a localized mini-flap], is very well described but not flamboyantly so, and fits with the general class of ce2 sightings. There is a wonderful witness letter about this in the old NICAP files. [originally coming from CSI-Los Angeles, and CSI-NY].
Page three features three French cases from the 1954 wave. They, to me, go together so well that they are greatly compelling. In all three cases, the prime ce2p effect is paralysis. This will become one of the two most prominent elements in the ce2p story. [The other is "Sunburn"]. The main thing to take from these cases is the apparent "holding power" of the light or beam. It COULD be coincidence or legerdemain by the ETs, but the state of paralysis seems directly linked to these beams. The September 10 case became quite famous in time, but the others not so much. The September 10 case featured an estimate of downward force by the craft on the railroad ties of greater than 30 tons. Taking all three cases together as reinforcing of one another, I rate this complex as a five. The 1955 case of Williston Florida is also probably a strong one, as the witness is a police officer promptly reporting the event. His "washtub" description seems to refer to a thick disk shape. The ce2p element of the case seems to involve some projected heat, which could throw it into the general pile of "sunburn" cases we will encounter as we go.

So, folks, round one of this little new saga. I hope to put one out about each week---we'll see how it goes. Peace