Ufology Research

And you wonder why the topic of UFOs isn't taken seriously by the scientific community. Oy.

In his latest book, Stan Friedman makes the blunt statement that SETI is a cult, and that its adherents are "silly." (His term.)

Today, I was reading through the latest UFO-related news by my loyal and trustworthy knowbot "Binky," and read the following missive from EXOPOLITICS.com (headed by Alfred Webre):

VANCOUVER, B.C. - My Vancouver-based colleague Jon Kelly
[www.yourinnervoice.com] is an expert at backwards speech analysis,
and he has been my guest on several radio programs at Vancouver Coop
Radio CFRO 102.7 FM www.coopradio.org [www.coopradio.org], discussing
applications of backward speech analysis to current events.

[snip]

Jon Kelly now raises a key question for Exopolitics in his recent
American Chronicle interview (below), when he is asked:

"RNN: You have listened backwards to the speeches of people
describing contact with space craft from other civilizations. What
did you find out?

"KELLY: When President Jimmy Carter told reporters late last year
that he didn't think flying saucers were the vehicles of space people
visiting the earth, I played his speech in reverse and heard the
words "Saucer. Went out naked. Going out. They'll put it in him".
Although it was part of his campaign promise, this message made me
wonder if the President had more personal reasons for sending Alfred
Webre to SRI in the 1970's in order to release the government's
secret research on extraterrestrials. From my reading of the message
it describes Carter as a potential abductee."

So there we have it. According to an expert on backwards masking and other esoteric and New Age practices, Jimmy Carter was anally probed by aliens.

Oh, and just in case someone asks: Yes, I really do own a tinfoil hat. It's presently resting just a few feet away from me in my study as I type this, along with my collection of Marvin the Martian parephrenalia.

Finally, the much-anticipated "magnum opus" by Stan Friedman has finally reached store shelves in my area. And it sold out almost immediately.

Flying Saucers and Science (New Page Books, Franklin Lakes, NJ, 2008) is his summary of why he believes "UFOs ARE Real!" and why the scientific community has failed to be scientific in its treatment of the subject. In his book, Friedman answers the most common questions he has been asked during interviews, radio and TV shows and during his hundreds of lectures around the world. "Why haven't they landed on the White House lawn?" is one of my faves.

Review coming.

Yes, I've finished entering the 2007 Canadian UFO cases into our database. It's now in the hands of Geoff Dittman, who I'm sure is crunching data as we speak. No, I'm not going to say what the final number was yet, because we will be sending out a news release once things have been analysed a bit.

I will let a few things out of the bag, though. There were some curious trends this past year. For example, many, many sightings involved orange objects. This in itself may not seem significant, but it is, because this is the first year that this colour was so often cited. Usually, we're looking at white or red being the most often described, but for some reason, this year, it's been orange (and to a slightly lesser extent, yellow).

While out and about this past summer weekend, we visited a used bookstore, and I found two gems in good condition. One was Leonard Cramp's Piece For A Jigsaw III, the third part of his autobiographical account of UFO experiences and his construction of devices through knowledge imparted to him by the aliens. It's a lot of fun with lots of schematic drawings, photos and news clippings documenting his efforts. The other was a copy of David Jacobs' Secret Life, in which he laid out his thesis for malevolent alien abductions. What was most interesting about this copy is that it's heavily annotated by its previous owner, with underlines throughout many passages. Best of all, the noted passages, complete with dog-eared pages, are probably the least relevant of Jacobs' comments, such as brief summaries of notorious abduction cases that Jacobs had nothing to do with. Details of the abductions he investigated and studied weren't annotated at all.

Other things to note: Chris Reid will be hosting the premiere of Mysterious Manitoba, the new talk show on CJUM FM (101.5) on Wednesday, June 25, 2008, at 8:30 pm. He has invited me to sit in with him as a "regular," as we'll be talking everything from UFOs to ghosts to monsters and other Forteana. This will be my formal return to CJUM, since I had a UFO talk show on the station (called UFORUM) back in 1976! I co-hosted with Roger Matas, once with CJOB and now PR guy for the City of Calgary.

Finally, with this year's Canadian UFO Survey, I have finally run out of physical storage space. Where do I put this year's foot-high pile of Canadian UFO reports, since my filing cabinets are full?

In going through the pile of Canadian UFO cases from 2007, I came across several which were detailed compilations of many events. Some were observations of UFOs and lights, some were of "creatures" and "shadowy" beings that unnerved witnesses, and some were classic hauntings. Some UFO witnesses were clearly multi-Fortean, covering all kinds of mysterious phenomena. Basically, if something weird was going to happen, it was going to happen to them.

This crossover between different types of Forteana led me to alter my investigation style and strategy shortly after I first began my studies back in the 1970s. I kept encountering UFO witnesses who also had ghost encounters, or poltergeists, or who dowsed or read tea leaves, or whatever.

Back then, the "nuts-and-bolts" hypothesis of UFOs did not allow for spiritual phenomena, and this was primarily responsible for the rift between American and European ufology. (This exists in some fashion still today.)

But my realization of the link between Forteana quickly made me adjust my style and allow some tangential investigations. This is why my first commercially published book, Unnatural History, covered a wide spectrum of Fortean events in Manitoba, including UFOs, ghosts, sasquatch and lake monsters. I research all these ostensibly disparate phenomena that have been reported in the province, and have amassed a large amount of material. My files cover many cases, and my clippings do as well.

(Actually, I find it rather odd that current paranormal investigation groups haven't tapped into my files, nor the works of Roy Bauer, Jim Nickels, Randy Rostecki, T.G. Hamilton, and others.)

However, with life getting rather busy and family responsibilities upon me, I had to over the years focus more on a single genre within Forteana, namely the UFOs. This is not to say I abandoned my studies into hauntings and paranormal events, simply that I devoted more time in one direction.

This leads me to the point of this particular post: I have renewed my activity on two fronts - media and paranormal investigations. In regard to the former, I have just partnered with Chris Reid (formerly of CJOB radio) to co-host a weekly show on the paranormal on CJUM FM, Wednesday nights beginning June 25. (cjumfm.com)

The second part of this is that completely by happenstance, I learned of a series of hauntings that have been occurring in a certain building in Winnipeg (which I cannot name). I was invited to make inquiries and just this morning had a tour of the building accompanied by two of the witnesses, both professionals in their fields. The case involves not only doors rattling, cupboards opening of their own volition, stairs creaking, and other poltergeist activity, but also spectral images of old women in turn of the century garb, black showy figures, the voices of children laughing and running up and down hallways and also voices saying "Help Me!" in otherwise empty rooms. Our investigations will be continuing, although I am keeping this out of the public eye at the request of the building's tenants.

Oh, and yes, I'm still working on the UFO Survey. I just found about 40 more cases that need entering.

Sigh.

I just received a note through Transport Canada that a helicopter pilot saw a UFO yesterday.

The object was seen on June 12, 2008, at 2140Z (1440 local or 2:40 pm) in British Columbia, at 482901N 1231619W. The location was somewhere over the Strait of Juan de Fuca between Victoria and Port Angeles, WA. The object was described as a "black object... moving slow to NW and then disappeared." The altitude of the object was thought to be 1500 ft.

There isn't enough info in the report to make a proper evaluation, since the object could have been anything. However, you'd think a helicopter pilot would know the difference between a bird, a balloon and a truly unidentified flying object.

I just got the news release and I have to say, I'm impressed. Doritos has just made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for the first advertising campaign directed at extraterrestrial consumers.

They ran a contest for people to make their own TV ad, and the winner will be broadcast into space using a powerful transmitter.

They noted:

"The signal is directed at a solar system just 42
light years away from Earth, in the 'Ursa Major' or Great Bear
Constellation. Its star is very similar to our Sun and hosts a
habitable zone that could harbour small life supporting planets
similar to ours."

Specifically, the star system receiving the message will be 47 UMa, in the Big Dipper. It is a yellow dwarf star, and according its Wiki entry, it is a "solar twin, star approximately 46 light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major. As of 2002, it has been confirmed that two extrasolar planets orbit the star. Because of this, 47 Ursae Majoris was listed as one of top 100 target stars for NASA's former Terrestrial Planet Finder mission."

I hope Budweiser sees the potential here. The aliens will need something to wash down the chips.

University of Leicester news release:
http://www2.le.ac.uk/ebulletin/news/press-releases/2000-2009/2008/06/nparticle.2008-06-12.7228690325

I'm not the first (and certainly not the last) to comment on Jeff Peckman's appearance on Letterman last night. Despite exhaustion from a hard day of work, I stayed up long enough to watch the debacle.

Apart from his being completely inaccurately described as a "UFO Expert," the segment with him was appalling in other ways. I would have laid good money that Letterman would have mocked him, but instead, he sat there feeding him reasonable questions.

Peckman stated he had knowledge (or at least, such knowledge that he had been given by Stan Romanek) that there had been at least 4,000 physical trace landings from UFOs, and that the US government had knowledge of "57 different species of aliens." He also opined that UFOs are here to instruct us in better use of "clean energy" technology, like the device he hypes on his own websites.

There was so much wrong with the segment, I can't even think where to begin. The obviously-fake UFO video that Romanek pawned off onto Peckman? The fact that Romanek was described as legitimate, when many serious ufologists wouldn't go near him?

As for the "facts," Peckman was semi-close on the trace cases. Ted Phillips actually had more than 4,000 trace cases on file years ago, and the number may be somewhat higher today. His CPTR website on Angelfire hasn't been updated in a while, but there's a new site (http://www.ufophysical.com/) that seems to have replaced it. It only claims about 3,000 physical trace cases, however.

As for the "57 species of aliens," this is traceable to Clifford Stone, a retired Sergeant from the US Army. At a media conference held by the Disclosure Project, he stated he had firsthand knowledge of military research into UFOs and aliens and that there were

In an interview with Paola Harris in 1998 (http://ufoexperiences.blogspot.com/2005/05/clifford-stone-interview.html), Stone stated:

"A lot of people believed an Independence Day scenario was possible. But in reality, an invasion of hostile forces from Space or from other powers was under way, and I'm not talking about one race, but 57 different races."

57 different races?

"Yes, we have identified 57."

Is this documented?

"Yes it is, but in documents which will never be published, unless they manage to force open the archives. Do you know how we know all of this? There's only one possible way: using so-called 'interactions', or 'interface exchanges'. Anybody who worked in this field and revealed they knew about these secrets was told: 'You have a special mission to carry out'. In any, case, if I told you everything I've done, you'd find it hard to believe me."

No kidding.

Ufologist James Harder, who was interviewed by a California newspaper in 1998 about aliens and UFOs: http://www.ufomind.com/misc/1998/nov/d08-001.shtml, repeated Stone's claims, disseminated them even wider.

Excerpt from article:
For example, a large number of witnesses say there are 57
extraterrestrials while under hypnosis that they would have no way of
knowing otherwise.
"There are 57 members of the Galactic Federation," says Harder.
"Many subjects seem to repeat that number."
According to Harder, the Galactic Federation is similar to the
United Nations except the members consist of extraterrestrial groups.

Stone is not believed by everyone. In a 200 issue of Saucer Smear (http://www.martiansgohome.com/smear/v48/ss011101.htm), James Moseley noted:

STONED AGAIN!

Former Army Sergeant Clifford Stone has become one of the most vocal and sensational supporters of former M.D. Steven Greer, according to recent material on the Net. When we met Stone a few years ago, he was working as a security guard in a shopping mall in Roswell, N.M. We had a pleasant, lengthy interview with him, and he told us of several military ufological angles he was researching regarding UFO secrecy. However, he definitely did not mention any personal experiences with aliens, or anything of the sort!

Apparently the wild-eyed atmosphere of Roswell has finally gotten to the good man, because now he has remembered several personal experiences from years earlier, when he was on active duty around the age of 19. About 1969 (he's not sure of the year), Stone was allegedly on duty in Indian Town Gap, Pennsylvania, when he was called upon to take radiation level readings from what appeared to be a heel-shaped crashed spacecraft. There were four dead aliens inside it, according to Stone's story.

On a different occasion, Stone and another soldier helped a live alien to escape from the military, as they felt sorry for the creature. Stone does not give any details at all about this incident, nor about why he was not courtmartialed if the story is true!

We are told that the first-mentioned incident involved details very much indeed like those given by Roswell witness Frank Kaufmann. This, by Saucer Logic, is confirmation, as it shows that almost identical spacecraft have crashed in at least two widely separated parts of the country! Wheee!

I tried to call Stan Friedman to ask about this, but he's unavailable until tomorrow. I called Grant Cameron, who runs the Presidential UFOs website, because he speaks often with the real movers and shakers on retrieval ufology. I asked him about Clifford Stone, and he said: "I don't think anyone takes him seriously." (Cameron also said that he had spoken with Peckman this week before his appearance on Letterman, trying to convince him to make some comments about Hillary Clinton and her interest in UFOs, but he declined, wanting to see how the interview went and play out his own agenda.)

And there, on Letterman, was Peckman reiterating Stone's claims about UFOs and aliens, and being labeled a "UFO Expert."

As if ufology needed less credibility.

I'm continuing to slog away at the 2007 Canadian UFO Survey data. Even spending several hours this past weekend sitting and typing, I'm still just up to August, with about 400 cases so far. It's hard to tell if the total will be higher than last year.

It's taking a while for a number of reasons. First of all, I didn't have a chance to start entering data until April. I should have been entering cases as I got them, but it's been busy. As it is, I'm six months behind the 2008 cases. But I digress...

Another reason is that it takes a while to find all the cases. Many years ago, when we started doing the surveys, those who were investigating UFO sightings in Canada understood what we were trying to achieve and cooperated with us by sending us case summaries or lists at the end of the year. Some investigators still do this, but others don't.

Also, some "ufologists" receive reports from witnesses thousands of miles away, but don't immediately pass along contact info to local investigators or researchers so that the cases can be investigated properly. In going through the 2007 data, I came across several sightings from as close to me as about a mile or two, but without contact info, I can't talk with the witness and investigate. The result is that evaluation of UFO reports involves mining the available information and deducing what was seen based on my experience in investigation and in dealing with UFO case data. It's easier than it sounds; the real unknowns jump out at you, and the ones that are probably stars and planets do too.

MUFON has an advantage that it can notify local State investigators right away so cases can be investigated relatively quickly. CUFOS operated this way too, in its heyday, when police and newspaper offices throughout the US had local investigators' numbers tacked to their blotters and scratch pads.

But Peter Davenport of NUFORC gets so many cases each day he simply can't pass along witnesses' contacts to regional investigators. He's great at providing info when requested, and we've been able to get some really nice reports this way, so he should get a lifetime achievement award in ufology for his diligence and devotion to the field.

So the process of compiling the annual Survey involves locating info on all the Canadian UFO cases during the year, reading it all through, pulling out details like time, place, duration, etc. (amazingly absent from many published accounts), evaluating the cases based on the info and then entering it all into a database.

And this all takes time, especially since I do this during evenings and when I have some free time. (I write that with great amusement.)

Once that's done, I pass it along to Geoff Dittman for number-crunching and web design. Then I have to prepare the written report for the year. It's a long, drawn-out process, and certainly not the exciting part of ufology, and far removed from what Mulder and Scully seemed to do each week.

Apparently, for only $995 (not including airfare) anyone can sign up for this year's CSETI summer camp to learn how to contact aliens via telepathy. In addition, Steven Greer will relate his own experiences with "vectoring" UFOs to respond to his mental commands, and he will offer training in getting in tune with the universe.

Tell you what. For a quarter of that, I can put you up in a guest room and teach you UFO investigation and research techniques, and drive out for a day trip and horseback adventure to visit the Michalak UFO site in Whiteshell Provincial Park. That could even include doing a Morgan Spurlock and eating at McDonalds for the week, if you wanted. If you really wanted, you could try using your psychic powers to keep bears away while you visited the site.

Or better yet, save your money. UFO investigation and research could be officially dead, if the CSETI camp gets sold out, as it probably will.

I was invited to speak at the annual conference of the Professional Writers' Association of Canada, held at the Fairmont in Winnipeg. I would guess that about 100 or so people came from across Canada to hear panels on how to see stories, to whom, and to network. As I'm not a member, I didn't get the entire conference experience, but I was paired with Doug Whiteway on Saturday afternoon to speak on "Writing About the Unexplained." This was a bit odd as Doug writes mystery novels, mostly about the Royal Family, and I wasn't sure how the stretch worked. Nevertheless, we worked well as a tag-team and the room was full. I spent some time talking with Maureen Nadin, an astronomy columnist from Thunder Bay, Sheila Jones, whose book on the private lives of scientists has just been published to good national reviews, and Bill Zuk of AVRO Arrow (and saucer) fame.

I also filed my review of the new James Bond novel by Sebastian Faulks, and am told it will appear next weekend.

And yes, I am still slugging away at the 2007 Canadian UFO Survey.