The Apparition at Knock Ireland, 1879.

The intention of this post was to shift gears from the run of UFO-related anomalies that have preceded it. As you will read, I have only partly succeeded in that. To set the stage, I should state for those who don't already know it that I am a practicing Catholic [albeit a pretty "far left" one] and therefore have no built-in prejudices against the possibility of miracles nor apparitions. As an old scientist, however, I am in line with most Church authorities as being highly skeptical of Marian apparitions, believing most of them to be unsupported claims of people who desperately need their shaky faith-levels bolstered. I believe that the Church sanctions only five Marian apparitions as veridical [I may be off in my number but the number is a small one].

This post was inspired by the purchase of the pictured book from our famous/notorious bookseller-to-the-UFO-community, Bob Girard. Bob doesn't believe in any of this "christian" stuff himself, but has curiosity about all things anomalous. He therefore offers, occasionally, unusual and sometimes very rare items on a variety of "Fortean" type topics. I didn't need a history of Mary, but Bob stated that this book had an appendix which was the first report of the witness testimony to the Knock apparition. THAT was interesting, and so I bought the book. This post is my attempt to you to pass on what was in that appendix.

The picture above is a colorful if not very accurate rendition of the sight. The most particular change which should be made would be painting the scene at night and in the rain. The bright aura which surrounded the figures would then stand out more impressively. I'm not going to retell the person-by-person coming and going, because it doesn't seem important. Suffice it to say, that a couple of people saw the images in dusk/daylight, night rapidly fell and the rain came, and several other witnesses, told by one of the early sighters came out to view the apparition while the skies were dark and ultimately rainy. The apparition was like a three-dimensional life-like sculpture which never moved [sort of like what we would call today a very well done holographic projection of a skill probably still a bit beyond us today]. The apparition lasted a few hours and was gone before morning. The event happened on August 21, 1879.

The event gets its strength from the early testimonies of more than a dozen residents of the small village of Knock. These testimonies were taken not long after the event and with churchmen present along with the questioner. Particularly of interest to the modern field investigator is the fact that not all testimonies precisely agree [showing a great deal of independence in the witnesses] while perfectly agreeing as to the main outlines of the event. The witnesses were all well known people in this village, and they were considered credible persons beyond reproach. Many of the witnesses didn't know what to make of the apparition and were far from forming some kind of instant cult. The picture at the left is one of the witnesses. It is labelled [on an internet site picturing some later book on the subject] as "Mary Byrne". This is probably not true. The main family name in the village was spelled "Beirne" and this is probably the elder Margaret Beirne rather than the 26 year-old Mary. This is not essential to our tale, but it demonstrates the simple goodness of going to the earliest closest sources possible. Mary and Margaret Beirne [there were actually two ladies named Margaret who witnessed] were among the 14 witnesses whose testimonies were recorded in the book cited above. [8 females and 6 males, ranging in age from a six-year-old to a lady of 75.] A thumbnail listing of the elements of their testimonies has been included below.

The "sociology" of this little parish is worth a mention. The priest was one Bartholomew Aloysius Cavanagh --- no doubt what ethnic stock he. Cavanagh himself had a deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin. In fact it is rumored in other books that not only was he devoted to Mary but had visions of her himself at earlier times. [this is not confirmed in the book that I own, however]. But it is puzzling that when one of the women called on Father Cavanagh with the news that people were seeing a vision behind the chapel, he never left his house to go see. The book says that he misinterpreted his housekeeper's words to mean that the vision had come and gone, and rather bitterly rued the circumstance of not venturing out in the rain. Nevertheless, perhaps it was better evidence-wise that he was not there. The people made up their own minds without an "authority figure" on site.

The witness testimony is extremely strong in my eyes with much excellent agreement on the main points, and most of the differences being due to apparent omissions, probably caused by poor and impatient interviewing. Having read the statements, I can see why the Church considers Knock to be substantial incidence. But in my mind I am not sure WHAT SORT of substantial incident it was.

My grid-list of the features of the 14 witness statements is above. If I had anything like this in a UFO case I'd consider it one of my best. Thirteen of the fourteen witnesses, it appears to me, were obviously looking at the same thing. The fourteenth, Patrick Walsh, was not at the site but was observing a golden globe of light high above the chapel [which apparently those folks fixated on the ground-level images did not notice]. The common elements in the apparition were three figures: St. Joseph, The Blessed Virgin, and a "bishop" interpreted by half the people as St. John, standing three-dimensional and brightly colored, very life-like, and surrounded by a bright aura. To the right was an Altar on which was a Lamb, head turned towards the group. Debated among the witnesses [later] was the Cross seen by some and not by others, behind the Lamb. Some people described a sparkling starry light surrounding this area. Only one witness claimed to see hovering Angels whose wings fluttered.

Of tremendous importance to the utter strangeness of the experience are two further related phenomena. The oldest woman was deeply moved at the sight, and went over the separating ditch and right up to the images. They continued to look alive to her, albeit not moving. She threw herself at Mary's feet and attempted to kiss them. Her hands and face went through the image despite its solid look. At least one other witness went close to the images at the same time and saw the older lady attempt this. Secondly, this lady stated that it was not only this which stunned her, but that despite the hard rain, the area around the images was dry--rain did not reach it somehow. At least four other witnesses testified to this enigma. What do we make of THAT?
Knock's story spread pretty quickly [even the inclusion of it in this book was rapid as the book came out in January of 1880]. The apparition never returned, but in January and February "extraordinary stars and globes of flame" appeared on or near the church steeple. One person claimed to see a vision of Mary within one of the lightforms.

In February, another person claimed to see lights of many colors and then three dark arches, within the center of which was an image of Mary. Later claims such as these have never been robust. Still, they helped push forward the growing legend of Knock, and shortly people were making pilgrimages from all over Ireland in hopes of seeing a personal Marian vision.

Of course this is not all that some were hoping for and so Knock also became the destination for many ill and disabled persons looking for cures.

Still today people go to Knock hoping for personal miracles, and one notorious fool regularly claims that he's getting messages from the BVM all the time, and consequently predicting spectacular new appearances, which to the vast majority of persons who then go to see, never happen. All this is much to the distress and disgust of the Church hierarchy, who believe that this person is ruining the faith that people have invested in the original event.

But what actually happened back in 1879?? I have about as close to zero doubt in my head that the images seen were "real" as described as I'm allowed by my intellectual honesty to have. But still: what was this?? From an "objective distance" the phenomenon looks like a piece of displaced space. It is as if a physical set of extremely well-done images were standing somewhere "else" and they and the space surrounding them "slipped" into an interface with our own. What??!! Well, it's not exactly unknown as a hypothesis for several other types of anomalistic mysteries. It might explain the sort-of-there sort-of-not-there aspect of this. It might explain the "rain not wetting the images". It might even explain why no one felt that they received any spiritual message during the event.

But I'm way-Out-Proctor now, so there I'll leave it.

They Know Where We Live

The illustration above is of two distant astronomical bodies accidentally offering us a striking alignment, which can't help but inspire in us some emotion and a sense that there is some "meaning" there. There is, of course, "scientific" meaning in such physical manifestations, and in the past, persons wished to assign personal or even cultural meanings [astrologically] to such things as well. But imagine if just one of those objects were at astronomical distances and the other close-by. If close enough, that geometrical arrangement could be seen in its "perfection" only from a very specific location on the Earth's surface. If it "performed" a bit, keeping its striking alignment intact, one might say that the moving object was performing just for you. That situation in the UFO case pile is what this post is about.

Some time back, in an 11/6/2009 post, I mentioned these sorts of UFO cases. My friend calls them "micro-displays". I use the term "astro-alignments". The case that convinced me that such things occur and are not random creations of just a very large number of reports, was the Lake Ronkonoma NY incident mentioned in that post. In that case, the UFO appeared to a group of astronomers [of all people] and seemed to deliberately and precisely circle the planet Saturn, then breaking off to half-circle the Moon. The tremendous difference in distance between The Moon and Saturn means that the object was not around both of them, and thereby was making an artificial alignment about at least one. The object's brightness and the fact that it was not reported by any other astronomers means that it was not around either astronomical object, and was in fact very close to the astronomers. It was, therefore, putting on a particular display, and almost assuredly just for them. To do that, it had to know exactly "where they lived" [i.e., where they were precisely and at that time], in order to do the trick. And the agents behind the UFO behavior had to know this precision from a large distance away since there was no "close encounter". This level of detailed knowledge at great distances is a bit disturbing, and it indicates a tool in creating full control of whatever the situation is that might explain a lot of "perfection" in their ability to manipulate each encounter without making give-away mistakes.

The "excuse" for this post is that recently the same friend who created the nickname micro-display found another one ["Arizona 2011"] and coincidentally I stumbled into an old one ["Beverly Hills 1973"]. There might be as many as 30 of these things now in my files --- doubtless dozens more exist. The Beverly Hills case is an old-style "star-circler" type from the MUFON journal SKYLOOK. The witness felt a "presence" then looked up to see two "stars" but one began to move and made a circle about the real star before shooting off. The most interesting aspect of this is the feeling of presence or, in other words, "urge to look". Normally, this would be hard to chalk up to anything but coincidence, but now that we have cases which indicate that a distant UFO can be fully cognizant of your business at-a-distance, that possibility of making a mental [or other] contact with you at that distance doesn't seem as far-fetched.

The Arizona case is more spectacular, but more worrisome evidence-wise. Here four big circular lights frame the inside edge of the crescent Moon, and, following that display, several small lights occupy the interior inside edge. Well, that's great for alignment. The problem is that some investigation must be done with whatever optical equipment this witness was using to check whether or not false light images can be produced inside it. If such investigation was done in a serious manner, and it was found that no reflections or whatever could duplicate the phenomenon reported, then the case hangs on the reliability of the witness. [and could, therefore be a good case]. The case would be especially impressive as a tightly organized display for an amateur astronomer.

These alignment incidents are significant to our understanding of UFOs, I believe. They are signs of how advanced the alien [or whatever-it-is] technology is, and why essentially no mistakes are made. They are signs as to how effective their sensing technology is at distance, and more bogglingly an apparent "communication" ability at-a-distance, as well. Some of this sounds like Psi to me, but not necessarily. [we need to admit to ourselves that the UFO we see may not be the only UFO in the encounter. The legendary NSA photo analyst, Art Lundahl, told Jim McDonald: The UFOs that worry me aren't the ones we can see, but the little ones that we cannot.] Creepy all around.

Close Encounters of the Second Kind, physiological effects, part ultimate.

This will be an inadequate wrap-up of a small adventure which has been more fun for me than I thought it would be. But since my files have run out, and I don't want to begin a whole new search for CE2ps on the net, let's call this a day. What if anything did we find out?? I'll give a few "soft conclusions" and everyone can make their own.

1). CE2ps consist of at least three kinds of things. a]. "paralysis" cases; b]. mild "radiation" burn cases; and c]. cases with effects which are unsurprising for someone simply in the way of some fairly commonplace technological emissions. There are also a large variety of incidents containing effects which are unique or very small in number, such that one wonders how much confidence can be placed in them.

2). The paralysis cases [there are about 39 of them in the pile] are essentially a separated set. That is, when paralysis is involved, there are very few if any other symptoms which come along with it. This is a rare instance where something in this field makes a pretty strong pattern. But there the pattern ends. Paralysis cases occur without regard to craft shape, craft color, or craft at all. They occur without regard to whether there is a visible beam involved or not. This resultant is exactly like a resultant that I found in vehicle interference cases: you can stop a car regardless of craft, shape, color, or beam. This is important though frustrating. It means that the agents behind the UFOs are probably never showing us the active technology itself. When you stop to think about this, and put yourself into the place of technologists who had the ability to do this stealth, AND you wanted general security and only that overtness that you chose to manifest, of course this is how you would play it. The only thing that this REALLY reveals to us, therefore, is that they CAN do it, and it is in their interest only to show us that they can and never how.

3). There are a solid number of "sunburn" cases which are separated from the paralysis cases, but often have other sequelae as well. There are twenty-nine of these. They look like the results of some properly behaving, generally radiating, energy, which probably would have similar effects on anything within the line-of-sight vicinity according to a 1/r-squared physical law. These cases are the product of indiscriminate spherically radiant effects rather than directed effects as in the paralysis. Therefore the easy conclusion would be that these sunburns are "accidents of exposure", while the paralyses are deliberate.

4). The second largest sequelae pile are the "eye irritations and temporary blindnesses". These seem to be like the sunburns in that they seem to be accidents of exposure --- in this case just to very bright light. The sunburns seem to require something in the electromagnetic light spectrum other than the visible, and that may well be microwave. The Russian flyer case seems to rule out UV since his canopy would have blocked it.

5). Other common sequelae consist of humans getting ill in some way : headaches and nausea chiefly [18 and 16 cases]. Since these can occur via a whole variety of things which "shake us up" including [for some folks] just getting extremely excited, these resultants aren't very boggling. Some of them may well be accounted for by the things which I believe account for most of the animal effects cases though: sound. High-pitched sounds can give some people headaches, along with driving some animals crazy, and low-pitched sounds [infra-sound] can make humans very ill and vomiting.

6). The UFOs seem to "do it" therefore by accidental exposure to commonplace radiative energies [light and sound], and by deliberate directed technology of an unknown source which can affect either the individual muscles [unlikely] or the spinal cord or the brain. If the brain, and we have a few cases of what seem to be such direct effects, then that technology could be a staggering ability to influence fine points in the motor cortex or some other such motive area, or, what is simpler for me to consider, a more general effect which blocks nor-adrenalin activity. In either case the technology must be very discriminating so as to block major muscle movement while not interfering with the heart. This means leaving the Brainstem alone.

7). there are a lot of other smaller [statistically] issues which could be chewed on. I'll leave them to some later time if at all [I mentioned that I'm writing this stuff up for IUR so maybe I'll try to tease out more there]. So, the last thing that I'll mention is that it's still basically "disks" and 'balls"/ "globes" that are on display. If you add the vague cases to these two [and it's likely that when someone reports a UFO case as "the object" he usually means a disk or globe], these add up to about 80% of all of them. If one reads three cases very carefully, one can argue that none of the three are describing triangles, and if those three are not, then none of the cases in my files are. That is a round-about way of saying that there may be NO triangles in my CE2p files. [they may be elsewhere, but they seem at least a small minority.]

That's enough. Quite a bit of "discovery" at least for my old weary eyes. Not enough, no doubt, for your young and anxious ones. But insight to UFOs comes very hard. That's why folks like you have to take it from where we oldtimers have left it, and carry-on from there. So I'll lay my tired bones beside the trail for a moment, and then try something else, God Willing.

Close Encounters of the Second Kind, physiological effects, part ten-c..

Last of this set; might be the last of this sort of format I do. The remaining 1990s and 2000s are usually pretty poor quality [again due to the dominance of shallow internet "coverage".] I'll have to think about "the Bother". Those cases wouldn't do much to help analysis of the phenomenon. Anyway: these five are cases # 146-150. 1986-1989.
Some of this group are not too bad. This is thanks to the fact that some UFO investigation, or at least personal interviewing was still going on. Bankston Lake and Dick Haines' Russian air case are fine ones. The Nordic UFO newsletter provides another.

Let's begin with an example of an internet case: Grayling MI. Here four persons were traveling in their car when they saw something hovering in the air off near the woods. The driver pulled off and everybody watched it. Some conversation started but everyone seemed in a "haze". Then, they just drove off as if it was no big deal. No one could remember exactly what the thing looked like. What do we make of that? Probably nothing at all, since it was just an anonymously reported claim.

The Resada CA case isn't a lot better. Though it appeared in IUR, it was placed there as a small space-filler with little detail, and I never happened to bump into any larger file while exploring at CUFOS. Here a "round' dark object with a white fluorescent aura was seen hovering over a powerline and apparently vibrating as it did so. It then shed orange bands of light. The ultimate witness was awakened with a pounding sinus headache, and the noise of animals howling and barking all around the neighborhood. The object made a trailing mist and flew away. Again, little can be said here, but I gave this one a "3" due to the necessity of it impressing Hynek and/or Clark or Rodeghier enough to put in the journal. There must be a report somewhere in the files.

Dick Haines' Siberian air case is very good. I am usually highly skeptical of anything from Russia, having seen the most incredible bunk from there, and having read the history of back-stabbing and smearing that many "schools" over there engaged in, but this case is an exception. Here Russian UFOlogy is out of it, and Dick Haines is in his best element of researching "in air" pilot cases.

In the case the pilot [a respected one] spotted a large dark metallic gray cigar, but could get no radar confirmation. He pursued it with his jet. He said that it felt like there was a "presence" to the thing [perhaps a psychic feeling, but perhaps just an understandable subjective excitement]. More objective was the fact that his face began to get quite hot. After his unsuccessful chase, he returned to base and was examined for a damaged layer of skin on his face. His doctors said "a mild cooking" like a microwave. They specifically said "no, not sunburn", but one wonders whether this syndrome isn't something that people would naturally refer to as like sunburn. I place this case in the "sunburn" category with the common knowledge that the designation is only a nickname which no one takes literally.

Tydal Valley Norway is another unusual thing brought to us by the Nordic UFO Newsletter. Two persons were walking in the evening when they saw a brilliant blue-white flattened disk. The thing then changed to a red color, then back to blue-white, then "blended". The light was difficult to look at but fascinating. It shot away at great speed, then returned. It hovered and slowly descended towards a swamp. [go for it, Allen Hynek!!]. The married couple were stunned and silent. Then the thing changed its orientation to a vertical position, rose, and flew directly over their heads. As the thing passed over, their eyes watered, they felt soreness, and they lost their hearing. This loss of hearing took about an hour to be restored. A rather terrific case but only a four due to anonymity. [the witness letter is extremely intelligent, well-crafted, and modest, however].

Bankston Lake MI is one of the last "good ones" and is strangely almost right in my backdoor near Kalamazoo. Here two guys are fishing on the lake. A huge craft, looking like a high-tech USAF "lifting body" aircraft [see John Long's drawing above], but much larger, began to fly over the lake low and slow. The witnesses estimated the thing as football-field length. It had a white light at the front and three red lights running along its sides. The surroundings seemed to get oddly quiet. The front light flashed. Long's blood pressure immediately soared and his eyes watered. The other man's eyes were irritated moreso, having both swelling and discoloration. The effects lasted about two days. I, by the way, don't necessarily view this as a "triangle" case, as it is, for me, much more technologically detailed and shaped like a jumped-up version of old WW2 visionary designs. The famous "black triangles" seem simpler and more sharply shaped than this. [ plus, this flew blunt end first]. But, suit yourself.

Close Encounters of the Second Kind, physiological effects, part ten-b..

Cases # 141-145, 1980-1985. As my father used to say when we were nearing the end of a task: "we're in the short rows, now". [for you city folk, that's country farm-talk].
This set has several incidents which are interesting to me, although none of them are what you might call "typical" CE2p phenomena. The weak case of the five is so because I have only a news story on it. It is an "odd-shaped" object which passes over Sussex UK making a purring sound. At one point it hovers. The point of fascination for me is not any CE2p element. It's the way the thing "left" the scene. It began being erased from one end as it stood there in the air. [This is not the only case of this I've seen, but there certainly aren't many]. It is one of those things which could indicate an unusual "partial or shared" presence of these things with two spaces [our own and its own]. This idea that some UFO cases act as if they are "staring" at us out of another space through a "window" of some kind intrigues me as a hypothesis to deal with certain "was this thing physically present or not?" conundrums. The actual CE2p here is minimal: The witnesses memories of the event are present initially, but began to disappear, only fully returning later.

Boone IA 1985 is interesting. I have only the witness letter to Hynek, but still interesting. This thing was a diamond lightform with about a dozen smaller lights circling it. The witness felt a "presence" about it, but this could be entirely subjective and understandable. The group of lights began shading towards a yellowish pink and sending out vibrations. The witness felt his whole body vibrating and began to walk involuntarily. His color vision quit. The object suddenly just disappeared. Everything snapped back to normal immediately. This is a unique thing so what can we say??

Probably the best case of this lot is Plymouth UK. Here we have two witnesses which is a better start than most. The primary witness was coming to her parents' home [she was 23] late in the evening when she saw lights behind the house. She described the object as shaped like the body of a crab [ a disk-like thing?] With 6 or 7 "broad shafts of light" directed downwards [doubtless adding to the "crab-like" feeling of the thing]. When she placed her hand on her door, a green laser-like shaft of light was emitted and hit her hand. She was burned and felt that temporarily [thirty seconds] she could not move. An OZ-like silence enveloped the area. The laser switched off and she could go on opening the door. The UFO lifted and flew off. Despite immediately going to her sister, they could no longer see the Object. Later UFO investigators found that another woman had been watching something which she described with similar elements [example bright streamers shining downwards] but leaving a different impression of its shape. --- see the illustration ---burnt witness' drawing on the left]. Investigators also found that in some nearby houses the pet animals had panicked at the time. This seems pretty thoroughly looked into and there is a coherent narrative to it. I gave it a "5".

Lake Clifton, West Australia is probably outstanding as there is allegedly an RAAF report but I have only seen the thumbnail of that. This case is a car stalker by a brightly lit orange object. It made passes at the car and each interaction left the driver with his back heating up and his stomach getting nauseous. The thing projected a "smoldering" smell. The thing apparently was sometimes there and sometimes gone, but it is not stated whether that coincided with oncoming traffic. When it left the final time, he was approaching a town and reported to police. I like that a lot when they report immediately to the police --- or in Canada, the RCMP. In those countries/cultures this is almost certainly the sign of a legitimate report.

The last one of this set is Foxboro MA. A "UFO" suddenly appeared and struck the witness with a beam. It was stated to be bigger than a house [I can't believe that Ray Fowler didn't ask what the shape of the UFO was, so there must be a typical Fowler-style "overkill" file on this somewhere]. For the next approximately 30 minutes estimated, the witness was paralyzed. He remembered "mumblings" in his head, and then dropped unconscious. [once again, my file report from Joe Nyman is not Fowleresque or it would be clear if the paralysis lasted for c.10 minutes and the unconsciousness for the rest of the 30/which I'm guessing is really what happened]. The witness had nights of talking in his sleep where he apparently was reliving the encounter. He also had a burn mark on his chest where the beam hit him. "Worst of all" from a UFO investigation perspective, poltergeist experiences began to pop around the home in the days following. These involved things like lights turning on and off, water faucets doing the same, and small objects moving. The witness was thirteen, so he is a prime candidate for the William Roll hypothesis for the "hormone transitional" adolescent unconscious psychokinetic poltergeist causer. Well, who knows?? If such is reality, then the subsequent unconscious PK could have only a marginal relationship to the UFO incident. Regardless, multiplying the number of anomalies always makes it tougher to be convincing. Give me a nice "clean" single-minded UFO case every time, if I have to defend UFOs to anybody.

Close Encounters of the Second Kind, physiological effects, part ten-a.

First five of the next set of fifteen, 1980 era, the last big year for the phenomenon in my files, and then trickles thereafter. Cases #136-140.
No superstars here but three reasonably hopeful ones. Let's begin with the weakest.

This case is called by a friend of mine "Le Chat Agite". It may not be a CE2p at all. The witnesses were walking when a tee-pee-shaped object, glowing and making a tinny sound, floated by. It suddenly went dark and shot away. They were scared at the time but after a night's sleep all that was gone. The next day they walked back the way they had come and encountered a fear-frozen cat along the way. You can read the witness' description to the left. He obviously thinks that the cat's condition might be related to the previous night's UFO, but ....

There is a rural Michigan case where an object moves about in erratic fashion, giving off a bad smell. Then it shoots a lightbeam up into the clouds and follows that path out-of-sight. Animals were going haywire all about.

The Lima OH case was investigated by my friend John Timmerman, but all I have currently in my file is a newspaper story. Since John has entrusted me with his files, there is doubtless more to this, but as of now I'm guessing at a tentative "4". Three witnesses saw a globe with lights encircling it. They had interference on the radio. An orange beam flashed into one witness' eye. He felt heat and was burned, causing him to stumble. The UFO accelerated away. This is an extremely rare incident where one might imagine a directed beam which damaged someone.

The Bloomfield IN case was a dark craft with two bright headlights and a small red light to the rear. It rested in a farm field making whistling sounds. The "headlights" were of that fascinating sort which can be seen by the eye, but do not illuminate any of the surroundings. You can do a lot of speculating on how this could be pulled off, but I've not heard a consensus, as most UFOlogists don't seem to like to get headaches thinking about such things. The craft lifted off and flew directly overhead. The witnesses "felt the quality of the air change". And the farm animals went crazy panicking.

The final case is in the near ocean off Vaasa Finland. This was a situation where one person was returning from the other man's villa to his own home south along the coast. As he proceeded in the motorboat, the other watched from the increasing distance. An orange circular object appeared in the sky, seeming heading directly at the boat [there may have been some engine interference as well; this is not clear]. The man in the boat felt heat, became disoriented, and lost balance, while still trying to evade the object. The object hovered overhead, then appearing saucer-shaped. It then took on a "zeppelin" appearance and shot away. This case is from the small gem, The Nordic UFO Newsletter, which in my experience does good work.

Peeking at Ivan's SITU files: the Flatwoods Monster.

I promised that once the scanner worked again I'd try to get a little tidbit up on the Flatwoods Monster, so here it is. Most of you don't need this but: Flatwoods was an extremely unusual case during the 1952 wave, which happened during September [well after the July peak of the flap] and in Braxton County WV. The witnesses to the main event were one adult, one almost adult, and several teen-age boys. The early sensationalization of the encounter by the press did the credibility of an already hard-to-swallow event no good. The "entity" was painted by the press as a giant monster with grotesque arms and clawed hands --- neither of which existed according to witnesses. This Hollywood Monster in a Hill-billy setting made the event laughable. Much mockery and misunderstanding ensued and does so to this day.

Recently, at least two well-known UFOlogists have taken their turns debunking the "monster" and its ignorant West Virginian witnesses. As I am from a family of West Virginians, I take a fair amount of offense at the slurs, while maintaining my objectivity about the facts of the case itself. Our little "news item" here is because Ivan Sanderson was one of the second wave of investigators to study this event [he arrived about a week and a half after the date]. Because of his involvement, we are privileged to have a still-surviving notebook containing some of his work. What did our intrepid Ivan find??

Flatwoods is a very complicated affair and I'll not deliver a "review paper" here --- someday I probably will, but this is what I can do now. Ivan interviewed several of the boys. He did this in isolation from their buddies and their parents [at least to get the initial bulk testimonies.] He found the boys to be intelligent [one of them exceptionally so] and consistent in their general descriptions. Differences when they occurred were in small details. Sanderson, therefore, "bought" the general testimony. He made drawings of elements of the case, two of which are presented here. Please give Ivan a break and don't complain about the browning of the glue that he used 50+ years ago to stick these to his notebook paper. On the drawing above, the ugly whitish blotch in the middle of the monster is my own whiting-out of the worst of a rather bad discoloration. {panic not, my purist preservationists: the whiting out is not on the original but a copy I have made}.

The drawing indicates several interesting things to me: 1). it gives the lie to the Ace-of-Spades Monster idea; 2). the Entity appears much more like a robot or a fancy protective suit than some biological form; 3).the entity turns out to be eerily like the recent descriptions given to Frank Feschino in his revisiting of the case, despite the fact that the witnesses have probably not seen Ivan's artwork for 50 years, if they ever saw it at all. That sounds like a pretty firm attestation to the validity of this report; 4). if this is as accurate as it seems, it thrashes a lot of the debunkers' arguments.

The drawing is meant to convey a solid dark green "body" and a solid red "hood". The internal sphere was "dark" and the beams [emitted from two "things" within] colored blue. Those beams never altered their relation to the body, and always focussed more-or-less levelly ahead, never down at the boys. Exactly how close anyone got to the thing is unclear, but thirty feet is a maximum --- and thirty feet is plenty close enough for a very good look indeed.

This entity may have "activated" at the shining of a flashlight upon it, and moved down the sloping path [hovering above the ground] towards a glowing object, which was, perhaps, from where it came. That object was also a bit "ace-of-spades-like" in that it was a large inverted teardrop of glowing red-hot heat. Its own color was debated by the boys, some of whom thought that it WAS red, and others thought dark, but glowing because it was heating up. This teardrop was big and investigation of the area the next day found a large dried and depressed ground-marking [15' diameter] which was still clearly in evidence when Ivan arrived.

As some people try to write the case off to a meteor/meteorite, this redhot glowing 15' diameter twenty-foot tall "meteorite" makes a dandy anomaly of its own. I wonder who had a strong enough crane to whisk that much nickel-iron out of there overnight?? That hypothesis is, of course, preposterous, and only can be mentioned with a straight face if one utterly discounts the testimonies of those ignorant hillbillies, AND assumes a grand multiple hallucination. It's the sort of thing that, frankly, xxxxxs me off. [Pardon the unprofessionalism]. I believe after having glanced at Ivan's files, and earlier at Gray Barker's files [Flatwoods was, by the way, the only case that he made an honest effort on, and it was his first one], that this encounter is a true one, despite its high strangeness. Some skeptics think that they can take heart in the comfort that the USAF didn't bother to study the case. But even there, they are wrong.

This is NOT from Ivan's files.

The USAF sent no obvious investigation team that anyone noticed anyway, but the Pentagon was very interested in it nevertheless. We know this because of the above released document [actually in the Project Blue Book OSI microfilm all along.] As you can see it is a Routing and Record Sheet which is classified "Restricted" and is asking for a soil analysis. Of What?? Of Flatwoods soil. There was a report that the entity floated down the hill towards the UFO and that "skid-marks" had been initially seen. Whether soil samples from there, the area under the tree, or the depressed-dried area were taken for analysis, this record doesn't say. But it sure DOES say that the USAF's Pentagon UFO desk officer, Dewey Fournet, was interested [see Dewey's designator "Maj.Fournet" in the upper right --- that's where you find who really wrote these documents that higher officers sign --- and Adams was Dewey's boss, and another UFO=ET believer, so this document makes sense].

One last thing: Dewey is pushing for some urgency on these tests. Why?? He tells you that there is a second case that he thinks might be the same sort of thing, and he wants to see if the soil tests are similar. Really??! What's the other case he's excited about? It's not in the document directly, but you could guess from the dates involved --- but we don't have to. Someone scrawled the name in pencil on the form: "Desvergers". [sic: should be Desverges]. Sonny Desverges. The infamous "scoutmaster" case. BUT THE ONLY LANDING TRACE CASE THAT RUPPELT COULD NEVER CRACK. Ruppelt went to his grave knowing that this one wasn't explainable no matter how flaky the witness. Microwaved soil. He even used the case when he talked to groups of new intel officers about UFOs.

Hmmm...Flatwoods. Microwaved soil from the Desverges case. Dewey Fournet pushing his analysts hard. No interest in the Pentagon, eh? Yeh...nonsense...move along...nothing to see here.

Something just for fun --- The SITU mess.

This gives you a little different "peek" at Ivan's files. These are pictures taken by one of my buddies after we had unloaded the monster and actually worked pretty hard on getting books on shelves and the other boxes at least stashed inside my [carpeted and dry] garage. The gallery which follows will show the "Happy Mess" in its near original state. Rummaging about in two of the pictures is a weird entity who also happens to write a blog.

What anomalistic treasures may be uncovered there? My buddy has just written me that an original copy of Oudemans Great Sea Serpent has been found and placed in an appropriately "sacred" location.

Close Encounters of the Second Kind, physiological effects, part nine-c.

Continuing to go down the home stretch now with these things. Cases #131-135. 1979-1980 era. We are just about to witness the precipitous fall-off of these things; just a small "moment" later than that of their other CE2 category "cousins" [ex. traces, engine stops ].
These cases are so-so. Certain British researchers would regard some of them as outstanding, and perhaps they are; that's the advantage of being "at home" with the investigation and its qualities. The Netherly case could be a non-case and the vague CUFOS case also. The only reason that I included the CUFOS case is that there must have been something more to it or Hynek would not have selected it to go into the IUR. The statement that trees withered and the witness got a classic sunburn makes one think that this might be a good case if some documentation were about. Both of these weak cases are small spheres, which, I'll admit, I am a bit of a sucker for. They make me wonder about alternatives to the typical techno-UFO hypothesis --- everything from unmanned probes to bits-of-space affected by distant technology to Jack O'Lanterns from Magonia. I have no difficulty, as most of you know, imagining that several different sorts of things are smushed together in our UFOlogical files. But, to keep setting the record straight on my "undisciplined speculations", I have never wavered from the primary hypothesis for most of the well-documented core cases of UFOlogy being the ETH. Earlier in this blog, you can read the thought processes going into the concept of three types of advanced ET civilizations and their approaches to interfacing with other planets lesser equipped.

The Livingston case is a case which some British UFOlogists regard as the strongest case in Britain. I don't agree with this, preferring some of the radar cases for instance, but people who like the extensive ground traces left in this case, and the apparent correlation with elements of the witness' story, have their points to make. The most interesting parts of this to me are the initial paralysis of the witness, and then the arrival of two little "robot-globes" which make the paralyzed person involuntarily walk with them to the craft. I am also always a sucker when a craft or occupant is described as "semi-transparent" as one then wonders whether that means only partially present in a solid form.

The Exhall case might command higher rating than three, but with nothing more than a notice in Northern UFO News, I can't go there. It's a three on the basis that I have high respect for NUFON and Jenny Randles. The intriguing element of the case is that this is a burn case due to direct contact with a hot steering wheel. As the case is described, one gets the feeling that the field generated by the UFO created "resistance heating" in the wheel, which might give a hint to the type of force involved there.

The final case is Barrowford. Here we have a Jenny Randles investigation, which is always of higher quality than most. Credibility here is, therefore, strong. We have a lot of classic elements in this one: a nice detailed disk, an introductory humming, an OZ environment, a electrical interference with headlights, eye irritation, and then some really high strangeness. The high strangeness involves going unconscious and waking about an hour later driving much further down the road. That's plenty strange alright, but my own favorite part of the case is that the two entities, that the witness saw just while driving by, suddenly "pixillated" and disappeared. Jenny I believe wants to see this as an abduction, but there is no investigative evidence of that, and I leave that guess aside. What there IS CE2p-wise is eye-irritation, bringing up of dream-state imagery, unconsciousness, tiredness upon waking, and a leg bruise. And for me, those fascinating pixillations.

Hopefully, this entry won't pixillate away before you get a chance to read it. I'll return if "they" let me. [The Leprechauns, I mean].

Close Encounters of the Second Kind, physiological effects, part nine-b.

Cases #126-130, 1978-1979 era. Not a lot to brag about here.
There is one case in this group that I rate a "0". Several references to it that I've glanced at in the past view it with a great deal of suspicion and consider it a hoax. [Tyler TX].

There are three "3s". All of these are lower rated because of insufficiencies in their files as I have them. It does not mean that they are not good cases, but only that my files cannot support a strong feeling of credibility as is. The Te Araroa New Zealand case in particular needs something "objective" to support it, as of now all there is is the witness self-publishing on the internet. The report is intelligent and that is to its credit, but the thing is one of those "bedroom awakenings" situations which throw it into the sleep paralysis and carnival-of-the-mind arenas. Plus this claimant is a repeater.

Delta, Ontario is quite similar. It is also self-reported, but at least the claim is of a waking encounter with a modest UFO element to it. Witness is quite paranoid about the thing however, and her feeling that it later affected her pregnancy might be objectively illegitimate, while being emotionally real.

Whereas the two previous cases probably should be rated lower, the Oak Bluffs case probably should be higher. It was an investigated case and my rating only reflects the lack of seeing the actual report. Still, Ray Fowler and Joe Nyman were involved so the details should be good. The weakness in the case therefore is not the paralysis aspect [which is classic] but the attempt of researchers to ram this into a CE4. Taken as a CE2p case with possible CE2e&m collaterals, the case is probably all the way up to a "5". It would be nice to see the original report on this one.

The best case in this group is the Polish case which was sent to CUFOS from a respected UFO investigator there. This case has an Environment-goes-silent OZ effect in it, which always makes one wonder if somehow a "patch" of our world has been isolated in part from the rest of reality. If not that, these cases make one wonder about very specific effects upon the human brain. It is brain-function alteration?, or is it some sort of "force bubble" effect?, or is it an actual slippage into a form of parallel reality in whole or "just" partial interface? ... or....? The case itself involves a nice little technological disk plus a "sunburn" effect. It also has a rare "symbols" element to the report. But to me, the real "game" here is the OZ. What is going on?

Close Encounters of the Second Kind, physiological effects, part nine-a.

Onwards and whicheverways: This will be the first five cases of this particular set covering the 1978-1980 era [#s 121-135 --- this piece=121-125]. We are at the end of the great era of rich high strangeness UFO cases that fizzled out in the latter 1970s or 1980 at the latest. My CE2p files are not necessarily representative of UFOlogy, but nevertheless seem to begin to take a familiar precipitous fall-off at about 1980. As CE2s are concerned, this is not just quality but raw numbers.

This set of five cases is fairly normal still. It contains a good mix of quality, and one "6". The famous effects of "sunburn", paralysis, eye irritation, headache, all have examples in the set.

The San Juan case [temporary blindness, animal effects, weakness, and a beam from the objects], could easily be better than a lowly "1", but all I have is translated newsclippings from Argentinian sources.

Moose River is very intriguing with its car-pacing metallic cigar and its bright red "sunburn"sequelae [plus eye irritation headaches and nausea], but all I have there is a SBI brief report. If Pete Mazzola [chief of SBI] had lived longer, he probably would have established a reputation as a decent UFO researcher, but his tenure was too abbreviated to allow a person such as myself to assess a confidence level in merely a brief report.

I honestly don't know what to make of the Gisbourne NZ case. There are several classic elements [vehicle interference; OZ; paralysis; tingling; nosebleed; numbness], and such makes one want to buy it. On the other hand, the witness says that she thinks she's an abductee [throwing a question of objectivity into the story]. I gave this some "benefit" in that it occurred during a UFO flap, that aspect of things being better attested to by others.

The Star of this set is Kerman CA. Here there is just one witness but he has high credibility and others were involved in close enough ways to make the credibility of the incident solid. There is also a verified doctor's assessment and a good field report. This is a "sunburn" case apparently caused by a red oval-shaped object encountered by the California patrolman. The officer was hit by a projected blue beam, apparently directed purposefully at him. Several persons noticed his "red-as-a-lobster" look as soon as he returned to the station. For a change these sunburned places made physical sense, being only on exposed parts, or parts with only a clothes layer shielding. There was no sunburning on his back nor where he was shielded by the metal of the cruiser. Two of the doctors who saw him suggested that it looked like he had "microwave" burns. Many other persons had reported "UFOs" or mysterious lights to the station that evening. This case, to me, is a solid anchor.

The final case of this set is from Puerto Rico. It emerges from a correspondence with CUFOS and a formal report [CUFOS case form] from an intelligent witness. There were two witnesses, a mother and teen-age daughter. We have some TV interference, a nice detailed disk, smaller globes flitting about it, and a scary feeling which gave them cold chills. The CE2p aspect may be non-existant or it might be real. The mother started shaking during the event and developed a fever the next day. This can possibly be written off to trauma or coincidence, but I report it anyway. The case itself, however, seems likely to be a good case.

That will be it for now. Will get the next five in shortly.

P.S. my CUFOS "boss", Mark Rodeghier, has asked me to write up the general study for the International UFO Reporter [IUR] and as I have been flaking off on that sort of thing due to my duties here in Wheeling, I think that I owe him. The relevance is that the article is another "job" which will eat time...so who knows if it will slow down the blog.

Peeking at Ivan's SITU files.

This will just be a brief note. I think that when I'm "peeking" at Ivan Sanderson's files, I'll use a picture of him "peeking" at the Minnesota Iceman. Today's peek will be at a piece of evidence for the Loch Ness monster. I'm not going to do any analyzing, so it's up to you.

What we're looking at will be the study of the Dinsdale film. [Tim Dinsdale is in the picture above]. I have several very good cryptozoologically-inclined friends [they themselves are not crypto-beasts as far as I know, but suspicious characters nonetheless], who have written some of the best works in the field [George Eberhart, Jerry Clark, and Henry Bauer; I've had a long and collegial correspondence with Gary Mangiacopra as well.] All these guys are interested in Loch Ness, but perhaps no one more than Henry. I've asked him why he thinks that the Monster is real. This is a particularly intriguing question to me since Henry Bauer is one of the most intelligent men, and hardest "sells", that I know.

Henry gave me three reasons at the time. One was the plethora of credible witness testimonies from people he had talked to himself. Another was the occasional mysterious sonar reading. But the big deal for him seemed to be the "Dinsdale Film". This consisted of around 1500 frames of 16mm film shot by Dinsdale in 1960. It seems to show some object making a wake in the loch, but what else can one say?? To try to get a bit "else to say", Dinsdale talked the UK's Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Center into analyzing it. Of course he gave them the original to work with. Much has been claimed for the results of the JARIC which followed. Some folks have seen them as not compelling; most folks see them as "proving" that some large animate object was swimming in the Loch that day.

Shuffling through Ivan's SITU file on Loch Ness, I turned a page and there was what seemed to be an original copy of the JARIC report. How Ivan got an original who knows?? Note, even, that it says "copy 1 of 2" !! Well, knowing that some of you are "romantic explorers" and enjoy seeing the original stuff, I felt it my duty [and pleasure] to scan it and let you look for yourselves. The three-page "thing-itself" follows.

Please read into the report what you see, of course; I am hardly an expert on this. I DO know that it has always been hard for me to "see" much in the documentaries which replay Dinsdale's film. Apparently, it was a bit hard even for the JARIC to do so. But, as you read, they DID see something.

What the report SAYS that their analysis was able to see was a "solid, black, approximately triangular shape". This of course doesn't mean that the "swimming" object WAS a "Black Triangle" but the thought does send one reeling for a moment ... but I don't want to get Henry mad and try to turn Nessie into a UFO, so I'm going with a solid swimming thing that just happened to present a sort-of triangular aspect as it swum away. The speed of this "thing", as Sanderson would have labelled it, was good as a small motorized boat, and the "above water size" large enough to cause a puzzle. But I'm out of my depth [pun sort-of intended] and you should just think it through as you will. My only goal here was to give you another rare chance to see the stuff "behind the stories" for a change.

A swimming Black Triangular USO?? Call Carl Feindt!!! Just joking Henry --- don't throw me off your Xmas card list.