Sightings of alleged UFOs occur pretty often, but it's rare indeed for one to affect scheduled air traffic. We should not be surprised, then, to find that such an event has made the news. What was the mysterious object that allegedly hovered over Hangzhou's Xiaoshan Airport, China's ninth-busiest, on the evening of July 7, 2010? At about 8:40 pm local time, a UFO was reported by a flight crew that was preparing to land. As a precaution, flight controllers delayed or redirected eighteen flights.

As is often the case, conflicting and confusing accounts of the UFO incident make it difficult to determine exactly what happened. Reporters want an exciting story, and UFOlogists want to win converts. They will typically grab onto any photo or video that is supposed to represent the object and report as fact practically any claim that is made regardless of its source or veracity. Many images of the alleged airport UFO--images that were supposed to show the UFO over Hangzhou but obviously showed a different object--soon began circulating in news stories and on the Internet. Most frequently seen is an impressive-looking rectangular object, from which a beam of light shines out underneath (see the accompanying news report at http://tinyurl.com/273h68h). At first I thought the image was the reflection of an interior fluorescent light fixture, as may be seen when looking out a window. After studying the other photos in this series and reading some of the online discussions, I agree that it's probably an exposure of a few seconds showing a helicopter with flashing lights, shining a searchlight on the ground. In any case, because these photos were posted to the Internet a year before the sighting, they obviously have nothing to do with the July 7 incident. Other photos accompanying news accounts of this incident show a rocket launch, probably that of the Russian Progress M-06M supply ship launched to the International Space Station on June 30.

However, it is significant that the brilliant Venus in the evening sky at that time, was nearing its maximum brightness before setting about two-and-a-half hours after the sun. One would think it impossible for a group of educated and seemingly rational people to mistake the brilliant planet Venus for a UFO, but experience shows otherwise. "No single object has been misinterpreted as a 'flying saucer' more often than the planet Venus. The study of these mistakes proves quite instructive, for it shows beyond all possible dispute the limitations of sensory perception and the weakness of accounts relating shapes and motions of point sources or objects with small apparent diameters," wrote the well-known pro-UFOlogist Jacques Vallee in his 1966 book Challenge to Science.

A brief video snippet of the "UFO" about twenty seconds into a Chinese-language news report on the incident shows a tiny, bright dot against a dark sky (see http://tinyurl.com/2c9ft7o). It might be a camcorder image of Venus, although the slight fuzziness on the left side may possibly result from an off-axis image. Alternatively, it might instead show the plumes of a distant rocket launch. Without more information, we cannot say for sure. Officials said that the object did not turn up on radar. Ruan Zhouchang, spokesperson for the Xiaoshan Airport in Hangzhou, said through an interpreter, "There was an unknown object seen in the skies over the airport. So according to our regulations we had to close the airspace. Aircraft movements were suspended from 8:45 pm to 9:41 pm." However, the photo accompanying that news report, supposedly showing the object, appeared to be that of a high-altitude contrail (see http://tinyurl.com/2vd2zuz).

A 2001 incident occurring at the Barnaul Airport in southern Siberia sounds very much like the incident at the Xiaoshan Airport. The Agence-France Presse reported from Moscow on January 27, 2001:

An airport in southern Siberia was shut down for an hour and a half on Friday when an unidentified flying object (UFO) was detected hovering above its runway, the Interfax news agency reported. The crew of an Il-76 cargo aircraft of the company "Altaï" refused to take off, claiming they saw a luminescent object hovering above the runway of the [sic] Siberia's Barnaul airport, local aviation company director Ivan Komarov was quoted as saying.

As in Hangzhou, nothing appeared on the radar. UFO investigator Eric Maillot--from the Cercle Zetetique, a French rationalist organization--looked into this case. He discovered that the time and direction of the UFO matched the position of Venus. And because the crew reported seeing just one bright object, not two, Maillot concluded that the "UFO" reported by the crew was Venus and not some separate object (www.ufologie.net/htm/afp270100.htm).

An official investigation by Chinese aviation experts was launched into the incident at Xiaoshan Airport. They concluded that the object probably was "an airplane on descent reflecting light" (see http://tinyurl.com/2bw272q), one which apparently kept descending for an hour or more. They said it might also have been an "unexpected flying vehicle," whatever that is. Imagine how embarrassing it would be to have to conclude, "Air Traffic Controllers at one of our major Chinese airports mistook Venus for an unknown hovering aircraft."

Whatever may or may not have hovered above Hangzhou, a feverish UFO excitement seemed to grip the region. On July 14, from about 8-9 pm, a UFO was reported in Shaping Park in Chongqing. This sighting also sounds very much like Venus. But according to the Chinese newspaper Southeast Express, at about 11:30 pm on July 9, two men in Xiamen reported seeing "dozens of vertical luminous beams" in the sky. According to one witness, identified only as Mr. Wang, "At first, there were only five of them, hanging very low in the sky, but after a short while, the number increased to about fifty, and they were higher and higher, just like a stave hanging in the sky." The story was accompanied by an impressive-looking photo showing hovering yellow lights in a mostly-cloudy and not-yet-dark sky (see www.whatsonxiamen.com/news13305.html), but it's not clear if the illustration is supposed to be an actual photo of the incident or a reconstruction using photo editing software (even if claimed otherwise, it's probably the latter).

Several explanations for this sighting come to mind. Witnesses may have seen a display involving searchlights or lasers from a distance. I witnessed once--and only once, in my many years of sky-gazing--a rare phenomenon of a mock-Jupiter, essentially the same thing as a mock-Sun or "sun dog," which looks like a vertical ribbon hanging in the sky. I glimpsed it only briefly before an approaching front of cirrus clouds covered it. Possibly the witnesses may have seen a very rare phenomenon of that sort, although I suspect that the clouds containing the ice crystals that were creating the phenomenon would have obliterated the sky before the object count got to fifty. Or, since this account contains very few details and does not contain the full name of any witness, the whole story may be made up. Such are the circumstances one often encounters when one starts to critically investigate UFO claims.

*...*

In the July/August issue of the Skeptical Inquirer, I reported on the stinging comments made by James Carrion when he resigned as head of MUFON, the largest UFO group in the United States. He described the UFO phenomenon as being based in "humans deceiving humans," which is no less than rank heresy to the mostly hardcore UFOlogists in MUFON, to whom UFOs must be extraterrestrial spacecraft. Now Carrion has announced the formation of the Center for UFO Truth (CUT), which according to him is "not a UFO organization nor is it affiliated in any way with Ufology. Instead CUT is a historical research organization focused on examining the question long ignored by historians: was the UFO subject purposely created by the United States and its allies as part of a cold war operation and perpetuated to this day for national security reasons?" (see http://tinyurl.com/UFOtruth).

Almost as soon as this announcement hit the Internet, some of UFOlogy's wolves started howling at Carrion, as he described in his next blog posting, "Blasphemy Will Get You Stoned." He also relates what happened when he presented his theory of psi-war UFO deception at the UFO Crash Retrieval Conference in Las Vegas in 2009. "I realized that presenting a human theory for the origin of UFOs at a UFO conference is tantamount to blasphemy."

I don't think that Carrion is going down the right path here. I don't see how the CIA could have manipulated Kenneth Arnold, Ray Palmer, and the other founding fathers of UFOlogy, or why they would want to. I think that the UFO subject owes its existence not to spy wars but primarily to processes that Charles Mackay described in his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. However, it is entirely possible that some governments (including our own) may have exploited the public's existing belief in UFOs for their own ends. I commend Carrion for having the courage to go his own way, and I wish him well. Even if his journey doesn't lead to "UFO truth," I'm sure he'll turn up some interesting stuff along the way.

By a very interesting coincidence--if it is a coincidence (cue sardonic laughter)--a book just published in the United Kingdom makes the same kind of argument as Carrion: that the U.S. government has been secretly promoting belief in UFOs. This goes against the conventional UFOlogy belief that the government is trying to cover up the existence of UFOs. Mark Pilkington, a writer and filmmaker living in London, is author of Mirage Men: A Journey into Disinformation, Paranoia, and UFOs. According to the publisher's blurb, "Mirage Men explores the strange and symbiotic relationship between the U.S. military and intelligence agencies and the community who believes strongly that UFOs have visited earth." The review in the U.K.'s Daily Mail says, "According to Pilkington, the campaign to promote the idea of UFOs was masterminded in the Fifties by the head of the CIA, Allen Welsh Dulles. More recently, many of the leaked fake documents and bogus stories seem to have come from the U.S. Air Force's Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI)" (see http://tinyurl.com/28oknqb). Of course, by the 1950s, flying saucers had already promoted themselves quite effectively to the public without any help from the government, and Pilkington's claim that the famous UFO contactee George Adamski was a victim of CIA deception--complete with alien impersonators in fake saucers--is implausible in the extreme.

Still, it is undeniable that one of the early directors of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), the most influential UFO group of the 1950s and '60s, was Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, who was also the first director of the CIA. Another early NICAP director was former CIA "psychological warfare" chief Colonel Joseph Bryan III, and there were at least two other NICAP directors in the CIA (see http://tinyurl.com/NICAP-CIA). Were UFOs just a personal interest of theirs, or were UFOs related to their CIA work? Enough persons with a CIA or other intelligence background have turned up in UFO circles over the years to make the question an interesting one. Even the well-known skeptical believer, the late Karl Pflock, was a former CIA man.

These men should not be confused with what seems like a small army of deceivers and impostors who claim to have intelligence and/or a military background that turns out to be simply made up. For example, a man originally known only as "Source A," who claimed to be a high-ranking Navy officer, gave "confirmation" of tales of U.S. military officials meeting with extraterrestrials. He was recently identified as Richard Theilmann, an impostor who apparently never served in the Navy; he wore a chest full of medals that he never earned (see http://tinyurl.com/SourceA).

More puzzling is the confession of UFOlogist William Moore, co-author of The Roswell Incident and The Philadelphia Experiment, who famously told the audience at a MUFON conference in 1989 that he had been recruited by intelligence agencies to spy on the somewhat unhinged UFOlogist, the late Paul Bennewitz. If Moore is telling the truth, this supposed spy mission makes no sense. If he's not, why would he make up a story that has caused everyone in UFOlogy to revile him? Of course, that assumes that Moore was acting rationally, and in UFOlogy rationality is often in short supply.

I was aware of Martin Gardner at least since I was in high school in Illinois during the 1960s. I hung around as much as I could with friends who were interested in science and philosophy, and in such circles Gardner was already considered a demigod, at the very least. I forget exactly when I first read his Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, but I was enormously impressed by it. He covered so many subjects in such detail, using such impeccable logic. (From a current standpoint, what’s sobering is how many of these fads and fallacies, thoroughly debunked almost sixty years ago, are still peddled, usually in nearly the same form!)

I first met Gardner at one of the very early CSICOP functions in New York City in 1977 or ’78. He was still living in New York at the time (appropriately on Euclid Avenue in Hastings-on-Hudson). CSICOP held several press conferences to offer itself as a resource for responsible science journalism, as well as to denounce the often-uncritical coverage of “paranormal” subjects in the media. This was long before CSICOP sponsored any public events. I had been working fairly closely with the noted UFO skeptic, the late Philip J. Klass, one of the founding fellows of CSICOP, who helped me get involved with the organization and its activities. Gardner attended all of the CSICOP events in New York City but never spoke to the public or to the press. I remember being awestruck to have the opportunity to meet, and get to know, this soft-spoken, extraordinary man.

I was even more awestruck when he suggested we go down to the hotel restaurant to have lunch together. I realized even at that time that this was an extraordinary privilege. I asked him about his training in mathematics, expecting to hear him rattle off a list of studies and degrees. “I didn’t take much math,” he replied. “I studied philosophy.” I expected to hear that mathematical puzzles flowed effortlessly out of his brain, but that was also not so. He explained that he was not an expert in mathematical puzzles or even a big fan of them; he just kept writing them up because that was what the readers of Scientific American wanted, and typically he was just one puzzle ahead of the magazine’s deadline. We also discussed the famous Cottingley Fairy photos, which had fooled Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and how at that time UFOlogist Jerome Clark, then an editor at Fate magazine, was claiming the photos as proof of some sort of “alternate reality.” Gardner wrote about that in the notes and also in a postscript to his essay “The Irrelevance of Conan Doyle,” published in Science: Good, Bad and Bogus. He also wrote there about my own hoax article suggesting that the Cottingley Fairies were Winged UFO Occupants: “It was printed in Official UFO magazine, October 1977, by editors too stupid to realize that Sheaffer had his tongue in his cheek.”

Later Gardner asked me if I wanted him to mail me his UFO files, saying that I would make better use of them than he could. I gladly accepted his offer. The files were not extensive, consisting mostly of clippings from newspapers and magazines of the 1950s and ’60s, but they contained a number of hard-to-find items. I gratefully merged them with my own files.

After Gardner moved to North Carolina, I never saw him in person again. But we remained in touch on a number of subjects. I remember one time when I contacted him for information about a specific cult. He said that the most knowledgeable critic of that group was a certain individual who I had never heard of. “But be careful in your dealings with him,” Gardner said. “He is obsessed with this cult, and he has a history of unstable behavior.” I cautiously followed up on his lead and discovered that, as usual, Martin had gotten it exactly right.

Looking back on his career, perhaps the most surprising thing is not only the quantity and the quality of his output but the fact that all of it was written without benefit of a computer or word processor! I cannot write anything worth publishing unless I revise it three or four times. He had an amazingly clear writing style: everything Martin Gardner wrote, no matter how technical, is explained so well that the average reader can understand it, and every conclusion he reaches follows directly from the information he just set forth.

Some of the late founding fellows of CSICOP, whose names today are household words, had egos the size of Texas, if not Alaska. This stands in enormous contrast with Martin Gardner, a man for whom they all genuinely proclaimed their admiration yet was nonetheless one of the most sincere and likable human beings I have ever met.

Boylan explains:

The Cabal within NASA know that there is a colony of Star Visitors living within Cabeus A Crater. The Cabal’s secret objective is to use the LCROSS and attached rocket stage to obliterate the Star Visitor settlement residing within that crater.... I note that the Cabal is indeed engaged in unlawful war crimes and attempting to position the United States, and by extension, all Earth nations, in an act of war against star civilizations. Since this is not a true act of the United States Government but a rogue act by Cabal infiltrators within NASA, then the official government of the United States, and by extension the United Nations, would repudiate this action as unlawful once its true intent becomes known.

To try to head off this disaster, Boylan attempted to send a message through unspecified special channels to warn President Obama and Vice President Biden, “who normally oversees the government’s Star Visitors programs.” Unfortunately, the message did not get through because it was intercepted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is a “Cabal asset.” So Boylan sent a telepathic message to Star Nations High Council, asking if they would like him to organize a “Joint Psychic Exercise [JPE] to redirect LCROSS and Centaur rocket away from the Moon.” Receiving a reply in the affirmative, Boylan announced the following: “Twenty days from now we will engage (along with Star Nations) in a Joint Psychic Exercise to divert the LCROSS space probe and accompanying Centaur rocket away from crashing into the Star Visitors lunar colony within Cabeus A Crater. That Joint Psychic Exercise will take place simultaneously globally on October 8 (the day before supposed impact).”

Boylan called this the “Joint Psychic Exercise to deflect and disintegrate LCROSS space probe and its Centaur booster rocket” and gave the hour in each time zone for his followers to perform their feats of psychic action-at-a-distance.

However, a week before the launch, NASA changed its mind about which crater to impact. NASA scientists decided that the main crater, Cabeas, was more likely to contain significant amounts of water, and they directed LCROSS and its Centaur rocket to the new target. So the energy from the future Joint Psychic Exercise probably went back in time, causing NASA to direct its impact away from the Star Nations visitors. Or else Boylan’s urgent message finally got through to Star-Visitor-Overseer Joe Biden, who averted an interplanetary war by moving the LCROSS target. But Boylan himself seems unaware of the re-targeting or at least did not mention it on his Web site.

Precisely at the predicted time, the Centaur rocket, followed quickly by LCROSS itself, both undeflected and undisintegrated, slammed into the lunar crater Cabeas at a speed of about 40 km/s. Nonetheless, Boylan proclaimed the exercise a success, claiming that the probe and rocket were “deflected” from the Moon and “disintegrated in space.” Boylan explained how he projected himself astrally through time and space and (still apparently unaware of the probes’ retargeting) “went out psychically to LCROSS and Centaur booster as they were streaming towards the Moon. Next I enwrapped LCROSS in a telekinetic force and redirected it onto a course to the left so it was aiming towards one Moon-diameter’s width left of the Moon’s left side. Then the same was done with the Centaur booster rocket.” But merely to deflect the objects was not enough:

I engaged first one, then the other, with strong dissolution energy to unbind the Strong Force bonds holding their atoms together as molecules. [That, however, is an electromagnetic bond, not a nuclear one.] Moving from top to bottom, I un-did the Strong Force bonds, causing the component materials of these space vehicles to come apart at the molecular level. This process also safely dismantled the advanced munitions which were secretly aboard these space vehicles... . This was confirmed this morning by Star Nations, whose members were also at work on these two space vehicles during our JPE, to assure thorough deflection and disintegration. Thus the star folks lunar colony within Cabeus A Crater is safe from overhead bombardment.

Perhaps this explains why no ground-based telescopes observed any dust ejected from the collision.

Attack of the Drones? Starting in 2007, pictures of weird, spindly shaped UFOs started to turn up in UFO Web sites and magazines, usually submitted anonymously. Looking like a cross between a wire basket and a ceiling fan, “drone UFOs” started popping up all over the place.

The first such photos supposedly came from a fellow in Bakersfield, California, known only as “Chad.” In May of 2007, he submitted a total of six drone UFO photos to the Coast-to-Coast AM Web site, which posted them. He wrote, “My wife and I were on a walk when we noticed a very large, very strange ‘craft’ in the sky.... The craft is almost completely silent and moves very quickly.... I see this thing very often.... It is almost totally silent but not quite. It makes kind of ‘crackling’ noises.... It moves almost like an insect.” The object in the photo had five protruding arms, one much longer than the others.

Before long, a second set of drone UFO photos was allegedly taken at Lake Tahoe near the Nevada-California line, submitted anonymously to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) and posted on their Web site. This craft had four arms, two significantly longer than the others. Soon six more anonymous drone photos from Capitola, California, were posted on the Internet by a person calling himself “Rajman.” This one had some sort of “alien writing” on it. A few days later, somebody known only as “Stephen” produced three drone photographs supposedly taken at Big Basin Park, not far from Capitola. The object is somewhat distant, and details are hard to see. About ten days later, a guy named “Ty” submitted twelve drone photos, supposedly taken at Big Basin Park the same day as Stephen’s and seen by his cycling group. Ty’s photos are amazingly close-up, allowing one to see every gear, sprocket, and spike in clear detail. After that, a few more pictures trickled in from here and there, but the fad for photographing drone UFOs seemed to have run its course. Somebody calling himself “Isaac” wrote a letter explaining how he used to work on a classified project called “Caret” that utilized captured alien technology to produce antigravity. He also produced what he purports is a technical manual, portions of it heavily redacted, showing parts that seem to have come from a drone UFO.

In 2008, a woman in London who said she was with the “Open Minds Forum” contacted California private investigator T.K. Davis. She wanted to hire him to find out who photographed the drones, as thus far every photographer has only given a first name. She didn’t want to be identified, either. She had emailed Rajman with some questions, but he closed his e-mail account after only a brief reply. So Davis and his colleague Frankie Dixon headed to Capitola to identify the specific telephone pole seen in the photo. The whole affair is starting to sound like a Humphrey Bogart movie.

On September 10, 2009, the Telegraph of London published a strange photo with a story titled “UFO or Pterodactyl over Argentinian Lake? A Strange Object Photographed over a Lake in Argentina Has Been Described as Either a Flying Saucer or a Flying Dinosaur.” The somewhat blurry photo, taken with a cell phone, shows a round object with five arms or spikes protruding from it, causing anyone who has been watching the carnival described above to immediately exclaim, “It’s a drone!” The photo was taken by Rafael Pino (at least this man has a first and last name!) who says he was driving his truck when he spotted the object and stopped to snap three photos. However, one alert reader in Argentina wrote, “It does look like a windshield cracked by a rock.” An analysis of these photos on the blog Forgetomori (http://forgetomori.com) suggests that “indeed, the ‘UFO’ is apparently in the same perspective in all photos, as if it didn’t really move. Note that in the second photo, the line of horizon is tilted ... but the UFO’s rightmost ‘spike,’ which is actually a crack, is still parallel to it. So, a cracked windshield looks like a good and obvious explanation.” By the way, there’s a lot of interesting investigative material on Forgetomori, whose motto is “Extraordinary Claims, Ordinary Investigations.” But many of the investigations seem well beyond the “ordinary,” so I suggest you have a look.

Yet another photo of a spiky drone from the Netherlands was quickly identified by several readers as a “Waldorf box kite,” which indeed does have the same spiky shape. Of course, the clear and detailed, but anonymous, drone photos from California are not the result of cracked windshields or kites but probably are courtesy of Photoshop or similar software. In fact, some computer graphics whizzes have already produced impressive animated videos of drone UFOs. For one fine example, see the admittedly hoaxed video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBEYc5OUUtw. Seeing is no longer believing, if indeed it ever was.

Richard H. Hall, a UFOlogist of long standing, passed from the scene after succumbing to cancer on July 17 at the age of seventy-eight. Hall served in the U.S. Air Force and attended Tulane University before taking a job with the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in Washington, DC, in 1958. At that time, NICAP was the largest and most influential UFO group in the U.S. Hall eventually became NICAP’s assistant director, working under NICAP Director Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe (1897–1988), one of the founding fathers of contemporary UFOlogy, whose sensationalist magazine articles and books, such as Flying Saucers from Outer Space, helped create the public’s belief in alien visitors.

Hall is best known as the author of The UFO Evidence (1964), a compendium of carefully selected best cases in the NICAP files. Upon publication, the book was sent to every member of Congress in hopes of attracting interest in the UFO mystery. When Keyhoe was ousted from NICAP in 1969, Hall followed, leaving full-time UFOlogy to take jobs as a technical writer and editor. He remained active with other UFO groups such as MUFON and the Fund for UFO Research. He also wrote numerous published articles on other subjects, especially Civil War history.

Dick, as he was always known, was a strong supporter of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis for UFOs and had a reputation for contentiousness. He was often feuding not only with skeptics but with many UFO believers. The few times I met him, Dick was polite but clearly had a very low tolerance for UFO skepticism. Like so many in the UFO field, he believed that the evidence was “out there” for anyone to see if only they would open their eyes. That his UFO Evidence falls far short of the requirements of science was something Dick Hall was unable to understand.

But there is one space-related issue troubling Mr. Bigelow, one on which he feels the need to obtain, even at potentially great cost, the best counsel available: UFOs. It is not clear whether he fears that UFOs will interfere with his future orbiting hotel chain or if he believes that UFOs harbor some secrets of propulsion or anti-gravity that his engineers might someday be able to put to good use. Whichever it is, Bigelow has contracted MUFON, the largest UFO group in the U.S., with potentially very large sums of money for the pursuit of first-hand UFO information. Indeed, longtime UFO activist Ed Komarek is suggesting that Bigelow’s goal is nothing less than an “alien reengineering project.”

Bigelow has a long history in the matter of UFOs and “paranormal” subjects. He was the principal sponsor of the Las Vegas-based National Institute for Discovery Sciences (NIDS) from its founding in 1995 until it was placed on “inactive status” in 2004. The NIDS Web site is still up (http://www.nidsci.org) but apparently has not been updated since 2004. It reports on a number of UFO investigations, alleged cattle mutilations, and other far-out stuff. The best-known and most controversial project undertaken by NIDS was its purchase of a supposedly “haunted” ranch in Utah (reported in this column back in May/June 1998), which some describe as a “Hyperdimensional Portal Area” or “Stargate.” The ranch is said to be infested by an alien or paranormal shape-shifting creature known as “Skinwalker,” taking its name from Native American legends similar to European legends about werewolves. NIDS researchers investigated the ranch starting in 1996. They compiled an impressive collection of what might be termed “ghost stories” but, in spite of having access to sophisticated electronic equipment, failed to obtain any actual proof that anything unexplainable was going on. For a collection of wild claims and stories about this ranch, check out http://www.aliendave.com/UUFOH_TheRanch.html. Rumor has it that MUFON will now take over the investigation of this “haunted” place.

It might be most accurate to describe MUFON as “the largest remaining UFO group in the U.S.” since there used to be others of at least its size. Founded in Illinois in 1969 by Walt Andrus, it was originally known as the Midwest UFO Network. Geographically, it was positioned between its better-known rivals the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), headquartered in Washington, D.C., and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) in Tucson, Arizona. However, each of these UFO groups maintained its own far-flung roster of investigators and “scientific consultants” so that any group might have a presence more or less anywhere. Andrus had originally been affiliated with APRO but got into a feud with its directors, the late Coral and Jim Lorenzen, and struck off on his own. With the demise of its rivals, MUFON found itself the last man standing. It reformulated itself as the Mutual UFO Network and picked up many of the fading groups’ most active and valuable members.

Walt Andrus remained at the helm of MUFON until his retirement in 2000. I met Andrus at the National UFO Conference in Phoenix in 1984. He was an irascible man who appeared untroubled by doubts about UFOs and who was barely able to tolerate skepticism in any form. He described my 1981 skeptical book The UFO Verdict as “an insult to the intelligence” of the reader. During the Andrus years, MUFON publicly booted out a number of its most prominent investigators for the sin of being too skeptical about one UFO case or another that Andrus was determined to defend, most notably Ed Walters’s absurdly unconvincing hoax UFO photos from Gulf Breeze, Florida. Probably Andrus found that the publicity over the Gulf Breeze photos was helping MUFON gain members, and thus criticism of the case was unwelcome within MUFON no matter how solid and factual.

John Schuessler took over MUFON until his own retirement in 2006, succeeded by the much younger James Carrion. I heard Carrion speak to Mensa last year in Denver and chatted with him afterward. Clearly more cautious than Andrus and not so hostile to skeptical questions, Carrion admitted to a great deal of uncertainty concerning UFOs and would not even make a defense of the Roswell crash claims. His position is essentially the same as that of the late J. Allen Hynek, former scientific advisor for the U.S. Air Force’s Project Bluebook: he is sure that UFOs represent something unknown and significant but does not claim to know what.

Since it became a national organization (now headquartered in Colorado), MUFON has appointed state directors, subdirectors, and investigators, as well as establishing local groups that sponsor lectures and meetings. Throw a dart at a map of the U.S., and wherever it may land, MUFON will have some person whose responsibility it is to investigate a UFO report at that location. While MUFON may seem large, it is very thin. With 2,500 members spread nationwide, this means that an average-sized state will have about fifty members, most of whom do nothing except receive the publication. In reality, 80 to 90 percent of the members of a volunteer organization typically contribute little if any useful work, which shows how thinly spread organized UFOlogy is.

It is exactly this matter of “a volunteer organization” that Bigelow is seeking to change. Bigelow’s proposal is to generously fund the efforts of MUFON investigators to enable them to respond quickly to alleged UFO incidents. The agreement between Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) and MUFON sets up a “Star Team Impact Project” (SIP), with an initial funding period from five months to a year, with the option to renew for a second year. Investigations will be limited to cases where physical effects of a UFO are reported or where “living beings” are allegedly sighted or where “reality transformation” is said to occur. “Lights seen in the sky” do not qualify for paid investigation, a decision with which Hynek would have surely agreed. Anyone who is already a MUFON investigator can apply for a position with SIP, although new or inexperienced investigators are expected to demonstrate their skills by performing investigations of routine UFO sightings before moving up to SIP. Additionally, Bigelow is in the process of contracting up to fifty scientists, who are expected to be on the scene within twenty-four hours after significant UFO incidents, to perform state-of-the-art investigations of whatever artifacts or data the SIP investigators may obtain. All of the investigators’ travel expenses will be covered, as well as a paid stipend of $100 per day of investigation. Incentive payments and bonuses are also available for those whose contributions excel. The results of SIP’s first few months of investigations are scheduled to be presented at MUFON’s annual convention in Denver this August.

While Bigelow and MUFON are no doubt expecting great results, perhaps even dramatic breakthroughs, from investigations of UFOs in near-real time, this “Star Team” is not, however, the first attempt within organized UFOlogy to create a “rapid response team” to quickly investigate reports. In an article in Playboy (December 1967), Hynek proposed (and later implemented) a national toll-free UFO Hotline to be “manned 24 hours a day by competent interrogators capable of recognizing a true UFO report from a prankster’s report.... If the report passes preliminary and immediate screening, headquarters notifies the local police and they rush to the scene.” He explained how he expected solid and irrefutable UFO data “within a year of the initiation of such a no-nonsense program.” But in a moment of perhaps unguarded optimism, Hynek added, “if the UFO-1000 program is sincerely and intensively carried out for a full year and yields nothing, this, in itself, would be of great negative significance. Then we could go back to the ‘real, common-sense world’ of pre-UFO days—shrugging it all off with ‘There must have been a virus going around.’”

In an interview in Saga UFO Report (August 1976), Hynek explained how his national hotline was working out: “In an unprecedented move, the FBI printed an article of mine in their monthly bulletin [February 1975]. We furnished them with a special toll-free number which they can call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Every night we get at least one call ... we contact one of our 300 regional representatives, and they go and interview the witnesses. Geiger counters, soil samples, physiological effects, etc., are all involved in the investigation.” Hynek gave no explanation of why he had not given up on UFOs as he earlier said he would if a year-long study yielded no solid evidence.

Other “rapid response” efforts to catch UFOs have likewise been attempted. Peter Davenport’s National UFO Reporting Center has been collecting UFO reports on its telephone hotline since 1974, many from law enforcement and emergency service agencies, yet UFO proof continues to elude them. In 1977 France’s CNES, their equivalent of NASA, created the agency GEPAN to officially sponsor investigations of UFO reports. It, too, failed to come up with anything really convincing, and CNES terminated all UFO investigations in 2004. In the late 1990s, when according to news reports Mexico City was being inundated by a Saucer Blitz, Mexican UFOlogist and TV personality Jaime Mausson organized Los Vigilantes, who were supposed to be ready to respond to saucer reports with cameras and such at very short notice. They never obtained anything of significance, so far as I am aware. Obviously Bigelow and MUFON must expect that their “rapid response” efforts will bear more fruit than these others did, although I cannot see any reason to expect them to have any greater success than others who valiantly chased the UFO will-of-the-wisp.

Belief in UFOs and visitors from other worlds remains high today despite decades of sensational claims unaccompanied by proof. A child born at the dawn of the UFO era becomes eligible to collect Social Security this year. The face of UFOlogy has changed much in these past sixty-two years, but it has not faded away as some rationalists naively assumed it would. Indeed, its mutability is indicative of the strength of the myth, not of its weakness. Here I examine how the UFO movement has changed over the years and what it has become today.

In The Beginning (1947—1973)

In the beginning there were sightings, and those sightings began with private pilot Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947. As soon as news stories appeared reporting Arnold’s claim that he saw nine airborne objects that flew “like a saucer if you skip it across the water,” others began reporting seeing the “saucers” too (a curious development, since Arnold did not say that the objects looked like saucers—they looked like boomerangs, he said—but skipped like saucers, a subtlety lost in the public’s imagination). Soon sightings of “saucers” were pouring in from all around the country and from around the world. Sightings occurred in waves, which appeared to be fueled by media reports. A wave would typically start in one location, but as soon as news reports began to carry the story of the localized excitement, sightings activity would pick up nationally. Great waves of UFO sightings occurred in 1947, 1949, 1952, 1957, 1965—67, and 1973.

With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that the last large-scale national wave of UFO sightings occurred in the fall of 1973. The reasons for this are not clear. One common-sense explanation is that after more than twenty-five years of sensational sighting reports ultimately leading to nothing tangible and no new evidence, the public’s fascination with saucer sightings was wearing out. One prominent UFOlogist, the late Karl Pflock, later suggested quite seriously that extraterrestrial visitors actually did arrive around 1947 but departed sometime after 1973, and all subsequent UFO sightings were bogus. My preferred explanation is that this was right around the time that the majority of U.S. homes acquired color television, resulting in fewer eyes directed skyward, in addition to the ennui factor. Whatever the reason, the “buzz” was gone for mass waves of saucer sightings. Individual and even localized clumps of sightings continued to occur and to be reported in the news, but somehow they were no longer contagious. “Lights in the sky” no longer were a “shiny new thing,” and the public required something else to generate excitement about UFOs.

Abductions Gradually Replace Sightings (1966—1995)

Something genuinely new under the UFO sun occurred in 1966: the publication of The Interrupted Journey by John G. Fuller, a book detailing the alleged UFO abduction in rural New Hampshire of Betty and Barney Hill. The book reads like a thriller, telling the tale of an interracial married couple driving rural roads late at night, seemingly pursued by a UFO. Upon returning home, Betty began having nightmares about being abducted by aliens. The Hills belatedly concluded that there was “missing time” and came to believe the abduction dreams may have reflected reality. Barney was under much stress prior to the “abduction” and got worse afterward, so the Hills sought therapy from a well-known psychiatrist, Dr. Benjamin Simon. Under hypnosis, they each told a UFO abduction story that largely matched Betty’s nightmares (which Barney had heard her repeat many times).

The Hills’ story became a sensation, serialized in Look magazine, and was made into a TV movie, The UFO Incident. Soon others began making similar abduction claims. The famous Travis Walton abduction story, depicted in the movie Fire in the Sky, aired a few weeks after The UFO Incident aired. Typically, these abduction stories followed a general pattern: You are driving in a rural area at night. You see a light in the sky that seems to be coming closer. You become frightened, and you are unable to recall exactly what happened next. A UFO researcher helpfully puts you under hypnosis, and you suddenly recover repressed memories of an alien abduction. The paradigm of the Hills’ abduction prevailed during the 1970s. Persons out on lonely roads late at night risked, in addition to usual earthly perils, abduction by extraterrestrials.

The face of UFO abductology changed dramatically with the 1981 publication of Budd Hopkins’s Missing Time. No longer was it necessary to venture out on lonely roads late at night; UFO aliens might come right into your own bedroom to snatch you, and you were helpless to resist. More books, articles, and TV shows followed, and soon a new paradigm for abductions was established. Aliens became a presence akin to ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night. You don’t go out and stumble upon them—they find you. Moreover, the theme of repeated abductions, typically beginning in childhood, establishes a personal relationship between abductee and abductor. No longer is abduction simply the result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, as was supposedly the case for Hill-style abductees. Instead, the abductee (overwhelmingly female) became a special kind of person with a mystical, cosmic-lifelong bond connecting her to unknown cosmic forces and beings. Most current abduction stories contain claims that rudely violate common sense even beyond the dubious idea of alien visitations. Often the creatures and the abductee are said to levitate or fly, to pass through solid objects, or to simply teleport themselves from one location to another. Hopkins has actually suggested, in all seriousness, that the aliens have the ability to make themselves and their victims invisible to better preserve the stealth of their operations. Given such claims, plus the frequently sexual nature of the abduction experience, the correlation with dream states and sleep disorders is obvious.

By the early 1990s, abduction mania had become a significant social phenomenon. It resonated well with other concurrent manias, including “recovered memories” of alleged Satanic Cult molestations, large-scale daycare molestations, etc. In 1992, CBS-TV ran an entire miniseries based on the claims in Hopkins’s book Intruders, fueling widespread fears of sinister alien forces. Hopkins and his colleagues were so confident about the “scientific” status of their findings that in 1992 they arranged an Abduction Study Conference at MIT, hosted by physicist David Pritchard, in which I participated. While the participants were heavily slanted toward the pro-abduction view, there was a significant presence of skeptical professionals, and instead of solidifying the abductionists’ claims, the conference highlighted their glaring weaknesses. Hopkins and his colleagues used the conference to first reveal details of a spectacular alleged multiple-witness abduction case that occurred late one night in Manhattan. This case became the subject of Hopkins’s 1996 book Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge Abduction. However, independent pro-UFO researchers were unable to confirm the ever-shifting claims of multiple witnesses to the alleged abduction, and the abductees’ ever-spiraling and ever-changing tales of encounters and intrigue became increasingly difficult to believe. The case that Hopkins and his colleagues had “bet the house” on, expecting it to finally establish their claims, ended up as a humiliation.

As might be expected, UFO abduction mania gradually faded as a force within UFOlogy. When abduction fever was rising, excited UFOlogists believed that it would finally deliver what UFOlogy has always wanted: validation of their personal belief in extraterrestrial visitors. But with the clear recognition that in the early 1990s the abductionists had taken their best shot and missed, UFOlogists gradually became disillusioned with abduction claims, realizing that they would ultimately fail to deliver. Thus, subsequent abduction claims failed to generate the same level of excitement. UFO abductions continue to be reported, alleged abductees continue to be hypnotized, and abductee-related support and research groups continue to operate. But abductees are seen today by many UFOlogists as something marginal and/or passé and are no longer looked to as the most promising area of UFO research.

“New Age” vs. “Science Fiction” UFOlogy

The major fault line in UFOlogy today is the division between what can be called “New Age” UFOlogy and what its proponents call “scientific” UFOlogy but is in reality “science fiction.” Both are junk science and consistently ignore Occam’s Razor (all other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best). Proponents fail to reconcile whatever hypotheses they invent with the rest of the body of established scientific fact. While the dividing line between the two groups is not hard and fast, and some UFO claims will contain elements of both, most major UFOlogists and UFO groups will fit clearly into one group or the other. “New Age” UFOlogy is dominated by women and “Science Fiction” UFOlogy by men, although you will find members of both genders in either group. We can think of members of the first group as fans of Oprah, the second as fans of the SciFi Channel. “New Age” UFOlogists often seem oblivious to the very idea that anyone should have to prove their claims, as if people are expected to simply accept unsupported accounts of extraterrestrial interactions (as is routinely done in such circles). If you expect to see any kind of proof, you need to hang out in different UFO circles.

The Late Betty Hill poses with a bust of the alien creature she says abducted her.

“New Age” UFOlogy grew out of the “contactee” tradition of the 1950s, which is not based primarily on claimed “evidence” but instead on personal revelations. Contactees reportedly talk to extraterrestrials and receive cosmic wisdom from them, never offering convincing “proof” of such communications. Today’s “New Age” UFOlogists largely claim to receive extraterrestrial messages via telepathy, channeling, dreams, or other subjective experiences, continuing the contactee tradition of having a personal relationship with the UFOs and their occupants. “New Age” UFOlogy often uses religious terms and themes, typically promoting the idea of an immanent cosmic, metaphysical change in the Earth and in peoples’ lives: the “age of Aquarius,” the “end of the Mayan Calendar,” or some other ill-defined term that largely parallels the concept of the millennium in conventional Christian eschatology.

One well-known group falling squarely in the “New Age” UFO tradition is the Unarius Educational Foundation in El Cajon, California. Founded in 1954, the group’s members believe that vaguely defined “energies” permeate the universe and claim they receive messages channeled from beings on other planets. They teach that “a new golden age for humanity” will begin as soon as we accept the wisdom and love of our space brethren.

“Science Fiction” UFOlogists claim the reality of visitations from extraterrestrials, or perhaps from “another dimension” or some other nebulous realm, based upon the weight of UFO sightings, photos and videos, alleged “trace cases,” abductions, UFO crashes, etc. They eagerly offer “proof” when questioned, but it falls short by orders of magnitudes of the evidence required to support such extraordinary claims. They also typically fail to see how their claims contradict accepted science in very significant ways. When they do acknowledge the conflict, they insist it is time to invent a “new” science based upon the “evidence” of UFO incidents, not realizing the impropriety of having weighty, well-supported, time-tested scientific principles overturned by anecdotes, as if hummingbird feathers outweigh elephants. At the present time, the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) is the largest and best-known organization of its kind in the U.S., primarily made up of “Science Fiction” UFOlogists.

UFO Crashes and Retrievals (1980—present)

A large part of contemporary “Science Fiction” UFOlogy consists of promoting one or more alleged UFO crashes. The first alleged UFO crash to gain widespread attention was in the 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers by Hollywood writer Frank Scully. Based upon the tales told by Silas Newton and Leo GeBauer (said to be an inventor and a government scientist, respectively), it told of a saucer allegedly crashing near Aztec, New Mexico, in 1948, which contained the bodies of several dead aliens. But a thorough investigation by San Francisco newspaperman J.P. Cahn revealed that Newton and GeBauer were actually con men, fleecing investors and getting in trouble with the law, and that Newton’s alleged sample of strange extraterrestrial metal was in fact plain aluminum.

Cahn’s thorough debunking of the Scully book created a stigma against crashed saucer tales, and for decades such claims all but disappeared. But after twenty years or so, the stench of the hoax in Scully’s book had faded somewhat, and crashed saucer tales began to reappear. Veteran UFOlogist Leonard Stringfield began collecting such stories, and by the late 1970s was writing papers about Retrievals of the Third Kind. However, Stringfield never offered any proof for his claims, and his crashed saucer stories were little-known to the general public.

The earliest crashed saucer claim to make it big in popular culture was the alleged crash near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. However, the event was all but forgotten until it was resurrected by the 1980 book The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz (of Bermuda Triangle fame) and William L. Moore. You will look in vain for the word “Roswell” in any UFO book or article published before 1980, even if the subject is UFO crashes. A long series of sensationalist movies, TV shows, books, and so on have made Roswell a household name synonymous with UFO aliens. By the late 1990s, it was clear to anyone who cared about facts that the supposed Roswell crash involved a once-secret balloon-borne intelligence-gathering initiative called Project Mogul. But once such an event, fictionalized or not, becomes embedded in popular culture, it doesn’t matter at all if the “evidence” is proven to be exaggerated, distorted, and/or fabricated. The Roswell legend will live on as long as there are claims of UFOs.

Today, the list of alleged UFO crashes has expanded far beyond the few familiar names like Roswell, Kecksburg, and Aztec. Claims about UFO crashes and their cover-ups make up a major part of contemporary UFOlogy. Since 2003 a “Crash Retrieval Conference” has been held each November in Las Vegas. It is organized by Ryan S. Wood, who claims that there have been at least seventy-four UFO crashes worldwide. All of these incidents have, of course, been successfully covered up by the country in which the unfortunate extraterrestrials fell.

UFO Photos and Videos

Photos of alleged UFOs have played a significant role since the early years of UFOlogy. In the 1950s, the famous contactee George Adamski produced a number of photos of what he said were the space ships of his friends from Venus, some of which were supposedly taken at close range and others using his telescope. However, Adamski’s photos never looked convincing, and few outside his circle of followers doubted that they had been fabricated using quite ordinary objects.

Certain “classic” UFO photos continue to have a wide following today among “Science Fiction” UFOlogists who defend them energetically. The Trent photos from Oregon in 1950 tentatively passed muster with the famously skeptical Condon Report, whose analysis suggested that the object was distant. However, that analysis depends on certain assumptions, and if the photos were fabricated using a truck mirror with a reflective surface (as now seems likely), the assumptions are incorrect. The Brazilian Trindade Island UFO photos of 1958 have been widely touted even though the man who took them was a specialist in trick photography. The Lucci brothers’ photos from Pennsylvania in 1965, famous for being used in many UFO books and magazines, have recently been confessed by one of the brothers to be hoaxes. In recent years, the most famous photos and video are those of the Phoenix Lights of 1997. Widely observed and photographed around the entire region, they undoubtedly represent real objects. And they were indeed real objects—flares dropped by an Air National Guard unit training nearby. (UFO photos typically are taken by—and the object only seen by—one individual or small group, even though the object is allegedly flying near a major city.) However, there now exists a small cottage industry of individuals who write and lecture that they saw the Phoenix Lights doing impossible things, and hence the lights could not possibly have been flares.

While there is considerable interest in UFO photos and videos today, few if any recent images are considered definitive. Nearly all of the recent “unidentified” objects in them appear as simply dots, blips, or lights. The famous Mexican infrared UFO video of 2004 turned out to be simply airborne images of distant oil well flares. Given the near-ubiquitous availability today of cell-phone and digital cameras, many of which are capable of producing videos, it is most curious that we do not have clear, close-up photos and videos of the many reported close encounters and abductions. We do get, however, plenty of photos of blips and dots that could be practically anything. Also, with the proliferation of software such as Photoshop for altering and even creating photos and videos, a photo or video cannot simply “stand by itself” as evidence of anything. For a photo or video to be convincing, we must know a great deal about its origins, the photographer, the location, etc. A number of really clever digital photo and video UFO hoaxes have been created in recent years, but typically they are submitted anonymously via the Internet because the story of their origin would not withstand scrutiny.

Conspiracies Abound

Given the near-universal belief among “Science Fiction” UFOlogists that UFO crashes, secret programs, and even alien captures have taken place, it follows that there must exist conspiracies of gigantic scale with vast resources successfully concealing UFO secrets from the world at large.

There is a widespread belief in an alleged secret U.S. government group known as MJ-12 (or Majestic-12), whose job is to investigate UFO crashes and also arrange their cover-up. UFOlogists William L. Moore and Jaime Shandera announced in 1987 that they had anonymously received copies of government documents purporting to show the activities of a secret UFO crash/retrieval organization. Fearing a possible compromise of government documents, the FBI investigated and quickly concluded that the documents were “completely bogus.” Other problems in the documents were soon noted. For example, one document was typed on a typewriter model that was not manufactured until fifteen years after the date on the document. Many UFO proponents strongly defend the authenticity of these “leaked” documents, but no proof of their authenticity has ever surfaced. Additional MJ-12 documents supposedly continue to be leaked to UFOlogist Timothy S. Cooper, far more than Moore or Shandera claim to have received. These newer MJ-12 papers are even less credible than the original ones. Dr. Robert M. Wood and his son Ryan S. Wood are the principal promoters of the “Majestic Documents” today via their Web site majesticdocuments.com, documentaries, conferences, etc.

The late Philip J. Klass, one of the leading UFO skeptics.

Others hypothesize that NASA is involved in a giant conspiracy to hide UFO data uncovered during its various space flights. Rumors of astronaut UFO sightings abound, supported by misquotations and even outright fabrications. Comments from astronauts concerning sightings of not-then-identified space debris were taken out of context to make it sound as if they saw alien spacecraft. While a few astronauts have been believers in UFO claims (most notably Edgar Mitchell and the late Gordon Cooper), not one astronaut claims to have seen any non-earthly technology while on any spaceflight. During shuttle missions while the astronauts are sleeping, NASA often makes real-time video available of Earth from the orbiter’s cameras, which is shown by some cable-TV services. Some UFOlogists, convinced that there are secret goings-on concerning UFOs and NASA, will record many hours of this uneventful video. Later, they scrutinize the recordings, looking for little dots or blips that to them represent alien spacecraft. Tiny pieces of ice or other orbital debris, sometimes kicked around by exhaust from the shuttle’s attitude control thrusters, are trumpeted as proof of aliens cavorting about while watching our space missions, a secret said to be kept hidden by NASA.

Author Richard C. Hoagland has become famous by promoting claims of many varied space-related conspiracies, mostly involving NASA. Over the years he has claimed that NASA has been covering up knowledge of a face on mars, large alien artifacts on the Moon, anti-gravity forces, and civilizations on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. His Web site, enterprisemission.com, is filled with notions about space conspiracies and “hyperdimensional physics,” which apparently go far beyond anything known to ordinary physicists.

Another major purported conspiracy centers around the claims of reverse engineering of alien technology made in The Day after Roswell (1997) by the late Col. Philip J. Corso. According to Corso, a great deal of today’s familiar technology, including integrated circuits, fiber optics, and lasers, were not actually invented by earthlings but were reverse-engineered from technology found in the alleged Roswell saucer crash. Corso also claims that he alone was able to understand this alien technology, after some of the nation’s top scientists had tried and failed. Corso’s claims have been extensively investigated and debunked by UFOlogist Brad Sparks and others but continue nonetheless to enjoy widespread acceptance, in spite of being entirely without foundation.

One group working to uncover the supposed Grand Conspiracy is called The Disclosure Project (disclosureproject.org), founded by Steven M. Greer, a physician. They claim to have assembled over 400 military and government witnesses to UFO events and projects who are willing to give testimony about them. “The weight of this first-hand testimony, along with supporting government documentation and other evidence, will establish without any doubt the reality of these phenomena” according to Greer. This evidence was presented to the media in a much-hyped press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on May 9, 2001. It should come as no surprise, given the media’s love of reporting sensational claims, that the cover-up allegations of Greer and his colleagues were repeated widely on all the news outlets for at least a few news cycles. After that they simply disappeared, failing to convince even the most sensation-hungry reporter that there was pay dirt under the dust and chaff. Not one of the “disclosure witnesses” could produce a single shred of evidence beyond their own unsupported words, and many of them carry such baggage that believing what they say becomes a Herculean task. Greer’s claims of secret technology involving “zero-point energy,” “anti-gravity,” and even “superluminal” devices serve as red flags to knowledgeable persons that what follows is pure fantasy.

Another interesting contemporary exercise in UFO fantasy involves what is called exopolitics, “political implications of the extraterrestrial presence.” It is the brainchild of Michael Salla, who, with a doctorate in government, travels worldwide to participate in conferences and retreats, campaigning for peaceful relations between humans and extraterrestrials and for an end to the alleged UFO cover-up. Since there is no actual evidence of any alleged “extraterrestrial presence,” this discipline has much in common with medieval disputes concerning angels and pinheads. Nonetheless, it has become a significant player on the UFO scene, and Salla’s Web site, exopolitics.org, receives several million visitors yearly. Exopolitics claims that “hidden agreements concerning extraterrestrial life have been secretly entered into by a range of government-authorized agencies, departments, and corporations. In some cases, these pacts involve representatives of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations whose existence has not been disclosed to the general public.” They insist that such agreements should be made openly.

Promotion of UFO Belief Today

Initially, UFO excitement and belief was spread by news reports over mass sightings—a phenomenon that no longer occurs. Major magazines and books made sensational claims about sightings, which would generate much follow-on publicity. Pro-UFO books by Major Donald E. Keyhoe, Frank Edwards, John G. Fuller, and others became bestsellers and generated much interest and discussion of their claims. UFO groups such as NICAP and APRO appeared often in news stories about UFOs and were depicted as authoritative (rather than as groups devoted to promoting the idea of UFOs as interplanetary visitors).

It has now been over twenty years since a UFO book has become a bestseller and generated nationwide interest and controversy; the last two were Whitley Strieber’s Communion (1987) and Transformation (1988). Today, first and foremost, the entertainment media play a major role in keeping UFOs alive, as well as radio and TV talk shows. News programs play only a very minor role. In the 1990s, cable-TV stations began producing entertainment programs based on popular UFO claims and themes, such as Roswell, the Alien Autopsy, and UFO abductions. In 2002, the Science Fiction (Sci-Fi) channel presented Steven Spielberg’s Taken, a twenty-hour miniseries based on alleged UFO abductions. Soon there were many other entertainment programs featuring UFO themes, which even though presented as fiction many take to be “based on fact.” Entertainment shows were soon bolstered by pro-UFO documentaries in which the skeptical view is given little or no voice and then by UFO “reality shows,” such as The History Channel’s UFO Hunters (2008; see the review in this issue). In that show, several “UFO experts” (all of whom are favorable to the pro-UFO position) investigate UFO claims and invariably find tantalizing evidence yet never any real proof.

Talk shows on radio and TV also reach millions of people with their sensational claims and uncritical analyses. Since the 1980s, the syndicated late-night, call-in radio show Coast To Coast AM has reached millions—now on over 500 stations as well as on XM satellite radio. Originally hosted by Art Bell, and now by George Noory, the show offers a dazzling array of wild tales about not only UFOs but cryptozoology, parapsychology, and conspiracies of every sort. Callers often relate their own allegedly paranormal experiences, and it seems that no claim is too bizarre to be given a respectful hearing.

Even some of the biggest names in the broadcast industry have uncritically promoted UFO claims in an attempt to boost ratings. During the summer of 2008, Larry King Live on CNN ran a series of poorly balanced programs about UFOs that displayed shockingly low standards of critical thinking for a major journalist. In February 2005, ABC-TV ran in prime time a two-hour show, “Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs—Seeing Is Believing.” The late journalist, a former news anchorman for ABC News, said, “I began this project with a healthy dose of skepticism and as open a mind as possible. After almost 150 interviews with scientists, investigators, and with many of those who claim to have witnessed unidentified flying objects, there are important questions that have not been completely answered—and a great deal not fully explained.” In spite of all the reporting and investigative resources that must have been available to Jennings, the program contained nothing significant that had not already been reported before, and was just a re-hash on primetime network TV of existing UFO claims and interviews with mostly pro-UFOlogists.

The Future

If the social phenomenon of UFOs tells us anything, it is that the future of the movement turned out differently than its proponents expected. For at least twenty years after Kenneth Arnold’s sighting, believers expected that sometime soon, any day now really, a UFO would land openly—or would crash and be recovered—or otherwise be indisputably revealed. At the very least, believers hoped, the Air Force would end its alleged cover-up of the data it held about UFOs and disclose that information to the public. By the late 1960s, this expectation changed. With mass sightings having gone on for twenty years with no tangible result, UFOlogists’ hopes transferred to UFO abductions providing the desperately sought Holy Grail of proof. When abductions had gone on for thirty years without producing anything tangible, excitement shifted to claims of crashed saucers. The idea of a major “disclosure” coming soon has long been a major hope and expectation in UFOlogy, paralleling the Christian fundamentalists’ expectation of the Second Coming. The respected U.S. News and World Report published in its Washington Whispers column on April 18, 1977, “Before the year is out, the Government—perhaps the President—is expected to make what are described as ‘unsettling disclosures’ about UFOs.” Perhaps the editors had forgotten that same magazine’s cover story of April 7, 1950, “revealing” that flying saucers were in fact a secret Navy project. Every few years, UFO disclosure mania rises to a fever pitch but always subsides.

In the March 1991 issue of Fate magazine, UFOlogist Jerome Clark reviewed two new books on Roswell and excitedly predicted: “Major media—not just the usual tabloid papers—will pick up the story and recount their own investigations, which will confirm the UFOlogists’ findings.” Of course, this never happened. We’re now coming up on the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of The Roswell Incident, and the case has sustained heavy blows by the disclosures about Project Mogul. Subsequent alleged saucer crashes never achieved anything near the level of belief or publicity that Roswell did (at least something did crash near Roswell, even if it wasn’t a UFO). So it’s likely that UFOlogy is ready for the “next big thing.” What that will be is difficult to say. Skeptical researcher Martin Kottmeyer has famously described the UFO movement as “an evolving system of paranoia,” and as such it’s difficult to predict where its paranoia will evolve next. Whatever it may be, we can expect it to offer an element of personal relationship or involvement (like contactees and abductees), to sound exciting and at least a little dangerous, and above all to promise such stunning evidence as to blow the alleged cover-up sky-high. It will have to excite and to entertain simultaneously—a tall order, but one that UFOlogy has been able to fill thus far.

Author’s Note:

Most of the UFO cases and individuals mentioned in this paper have been featured in my “Psychic Vibrations” column in the Skeptical Inquirer, appearing regularly over the past thirty years, where more details are available. Some of these columns are available online. A Google search on any person, book, or UFO case mentioned here will return a great deal of information and background, not all of it reliable. Consider the source in judging the credibility of any UFO claims you encounter.

Some recommended sources of information on contemporary UFO claims are:

• UFO Sightings by Robert Sheaffer (Prometheus, 1998).
• The UFO Skeptic’s Page by Robert Sheaffer, available online at http://www.debunker.com/ufo.html
• “Psychic Vibrations” column by Robert Sheaffer, in Skeptical Inquirer magazine (1977—present), “Give Me Disclosure, or Give Me Death!,” March 2002, “Where the UFO conspiracy theories roam,” July, 2005, “Where have you gone, Commander Quasgaa?” Sept. 2002.
• “The Campeche, Mexico ‘Infrared UFO’ Video” by Robert Sheaffer. Skeptical Inquirer, September/October 2004 (available online at csicop.org).
• Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe by Karl Pflock (Prometheus Books, 2001).
• Book review, “The Day after Roswell” by Brad Sparks. Skeptical Inquirer, March-April, 1998 (available online at http://tinyurl.com/4dtl42).
• NASA Conspiracies and “Astronaut UFOs": See James E. Oberg’s Web site, available online at jamesoberg.com.
• The Klass Files, some collected UFO writings of the late Philip J. Klass (available online at csicop.org).
• The UFO Invasion (Prometheus 1997), a collection of Skeptical Inquirer articles critically examining claims of UFOs, crashed saucers (nine articles on the Roswell claims), alien autopsies, alien abductions, and other UFO cases, plus crop circles.

Captured! is the second major book published about the Hill case this year, which itself is rather surprising. The first volume was Encounters at Indian Head, the proceedings of a once-secret symposium held in 2000, in which I participated (see my report, SI, September/October 2007). Kathy Marden is Betty Hill’s niece and now the executor of her estate. What is more surprising is that Stanton Friedman, known throughout the UFO community for his querulous bombast and immense ego is, despite being given top billing on the cover, in fact the junior author. The book’s Library of Congress entry lists Marden as the primary author. Friedman writes in the preface, “I was especially pleased that Kathy Marden invited me to help out some on this book.” That is no doubt the reason the book is of relatively temperate tone (except for the chapter on skeptics, which carries Friedman’s fingerprints). Marden at least attempts to deal with the arguments of skeptics and other critics, even if many of the answers she gives do not convince. She admits to the existence of certain inconsistencies and difficulties in the story, issues that never seem to have troubled Friedman.

The book’s primary strength is the wealth of new details about Betty and Barney Hill from several sources: Betty’s previously unpublished diary and correspondence, additional quotes from the tapes of the Hills under hypnosis by Dr. Benjamin Simon, plus interviews giving her friends’ and family’s memories of what transpired, including Kathy’s own. Because of this, we see a much richer picture of the Hills than previously available. Our knowledge of Barney especially is fleshed out. We learn that prior to undergoing hypnosis, while Barney was recounting his alleged alien encounter, his face “kept twitching spasmodically to one side.” The picture of Barney that emerges is that of a man under enormous pressure: “The long daily commute to his job in Boston, the necessity of sleeping during daylight hours, his physical separation from his sons,” not to mention the social stigma of a black man in an almost all-white state married to a white woman. All of this took a toll on his health. Is this information relevant to an analysis of Barney’s claimed extraterrestrial experiences? Absolutely, but what exactly does it enable us to conclude? If only the laws governing human behavior were as predictable as those of chemistry or physics!

One major problem in telling the story of the Hills’ adventure is that Marden freely mingles the Hills’ original account with details later supposedly “recovered” by hypnosis. This makes the case sound far stronger than it actually was. For a more careful recounting of the Hill story in its proper sequence, see Dennis Stacy’s paper in the Encounters volume.

One surprise disclosed in the book is “The Dress Analysis.” In a chapter that brings to mind the Bill Clinton investigations, Marden reveals that Betty, upon returning home after her alleged abduction experience, hung up the dress she had been wearing in a closet and left it there, undisturbed, for many years. The lining and zipper are torn, supposedly confirming her account of the aliens forcibly removing it from her, although a number of earthly explanations also come to mind. After a hypnosis session in 1964, she retrieved the dress from the closet and found it covered with a pink, powdery substance. The substance blew away, but “the dress was badly stained.” Samples from the dress were sent to various labs for testing. Several tests unsuccessfully attempted were made to try to replicate the stain using various chemicals, which is supposed to convince us that the discoloration is extraterrestrial in origin, although acid produced a similar stain of a different color. Also detected were “substances with detergent-type properties (not soap).” The most interesting analyses were conducted by the Pinelandia Biophysics Laboratory of Michigan, which specializes in the analysis of crop circles. They found that the stained portions of Betty’s dress would “induce a higher degree of energy in the water” than the unstained ones. No mention is made of just what kind of “energy” is being talked about. Marden concludes that the results “seem to point to the presence of an anomalous biological substance that has permanently altered the substance of Betty’s dress.” I would expect that an item of clothing left undisturbed in a closet for forty years would pick up all manner of interesting biological substances from insects, spiders, mites, mold, bacteria, etc.

Once again, the “star map” Betty Hill allegedly saw on board the UFO is trotted out as “proof” of the story. Selecting sun-like stars from the latest catalog of nearby stars, Marjorie Fish spent many long hours looking for a pattern that matches the sketch Betty Hill drew by posthypnotic suggestion, supposedly replicating a map she had seen aboard the saucer. After much effort, she believed she had found one. The controversy over the star map is so complex that it is impossible to cover in detail here. The detailed counter-argument is in my paper in the Encounters volume, arguments routinely ignored by Friedman, Marden, and all other pro-star-map writers. In brief, it is necessary to “fudge” the data to make the Fish map come out the way it does. One “favorable” star needs to be excluded, and two “almost favorable” stars selectively included, for Fish’s purpose. My conclusion was, “The apparent validity of the Fish map is due to selective inclusion of data and by misdrawing the map to make it appear to match Betty Hill’s sketch.” Perhaps the simplest and most telling argument against the Fish map was made by astronomers Steven Soter and Carl Sagan back in 1975, who pointed out that the apparent resemblance between the two patterns exists almost entirely because of the way the lines are drawn connecting the dots. View the two patterns as unconnected dots, and they appear as different as two patterns can be.

Another problem for the star map believers, for the most part ignored, is that the supposed “match” of Marjorie Fish is not unique. To date, there have been at least four other supposed identifications of the pattern. One is by Betty Hill herself, depicting the constellation Pegasus. A second is by Charles Atterberg depicting nearby stars, but different ones than Fish uses. A third is by two German UFOlogists, who attempt to match it up with our solar system’s major and minor planets. A fourth is by Yari Danjo, who finds the aliens’ home star system to be Alpha Centauri. Marden dismisses Betty’s Pegasus map as “only a coincidence” and dismisses Atterberg’s work as lacking “the solid basis found by Fish.” Actually, Atterberg’s pattern is much closer to Betty’s sketch than the Fish pattern, and accounts for a greater number of stars. The lesson of the star map? Given an almost unlimited number of degrees of freedom in selecting what you will include in your search, what scale you will use, and what vantage point you will take, it is to be expected that quite a number of apparent matches to Betty’s pattern can be found if one is willing to expend enough effort to do so.

The most contentious chapter of the book is titled “Disbelievers and Disinformants.” UFOlogists are convinced that anyone questioning their claims is likely paid to spread disinformation. We are told that the late astronomer and skeptic Donald H. Menzel of Harvard was “probably a member of the Majestic 12 Group controlling classified UFO research” (a supposed group whose existence is “revealed” in some documents of unknown origin that are almost certainly hoaxes). We are informed that “the Hill case in general, and the star map work in particular, have been attacked, sometimes viciously and almost always irrationally, by the small group of nasty, noisy, negativists making up the UFO debunker community.” This sort of rhetoric is commonplace within the UFO community (in addition to being Betty Hill’s niece, Marden is a longtime MUFON official)—those promoting that the claims of extraterrestrial contact and abduction are “scientific” while those trying to refute them are “irrational.” She accuses skeptics of resisting the UFO evidence for the same reason that the Church resisted Copernicus: it would upset their rigid, preconceived worldview. Objections based on the impossibility of faster-than-light travel are refuted by pointing out that if you are traveling at 99.99 percent of the speed of light, you could reach Zeta Reticuli in just six months of elapsed time on a craft. No mention is made of the enormous amount of fuel needed to accelerate to, and decelerate from, these speeds (or of the fact that you must also accelerate to 99.99 percent of the speed of light all the fuel needed for deceleration, unless you want a one-way ticket out of the galaxy!).

Barney Hill did not live long enough to become a widely known personality in the UFO subculture. He died suddenly of a stroke in 1969 at the age of only forty-six. Thus, it is difficult to make an independent assessment of his credibility. Betty Hill, however, lived to a ripe old age and became one of the best-known figures in the UFO community, a constant fixture on TV shows, at UFO conferences, etc. Whatever credibility she may have once had soon perished by her own hand. I was present at the National UFO Conference in New York City in 1980, at which Betty presented some of the UFO photos she had taken. She showed what must have been well over two hundred slides, mostly of blips, blurs, and blobs against a dark background. These were supposed to be UFOs coming in close, chasing her car, landing, etc. Marden includes several of these photos in the book. After her talk had exceeded about twice its allotted time, Betty was literally jeered off the stage by what had been at first a very sympathetic audience. This incident, witnessed by many of UFOlogy’s leaders and top activists, removed any lingering doubts about Betty’s credibility—she had none. In the oft-repeated words of one UFOlogist who accompanied Betty on a UFO vigil in 1977, she was “unable to distinguish between a landed UFO and a streetlight.” In 1995, Betty Hill wrote a self-published book, A Common Sense Approach to UFOs. It is filled with obviously delusional stories, such as seeing entire squadrons of UFOs in flight and a truck levitating above the freeway.

Marden attempts to deal with the credibility problem in her final chapter, “Betty Hill’s Fall From Grace.” She explains, “After Barney’s death, [Betty] turned away from careful, objective evaluation, and with subjective enthusiasm began to identify any lights in the sky as UFOs.” However, the newly published material in Captured! suffices to refute this excuse. Betty Hill wrote in a letter dated April 4, 1966: “Barney and I go out frequently at night for one reason or another. Since last October, we have seen our ‘friends’ on the average of eight or nine times out of every ten trips, outside of Portsmouth. . . . Last Saturday Barney and I decided to retrace our trip in the White Mountains, as of September 1961, but this time my parents were with us. As we were returning through the Franconia Notch in the general area of the tramway and Cannon Mountain, one [UFO] moved around the mountain about fifty feet from the ground, in front of us. Its lights dimmed out and we could see the row of windows before it became invisible.” This latter sighting, which would have been April 2, 1966, sounds very much like the reported pre-abduction close encounter of 1961: a UFO with lights and a row of windows flying at low altitude in front of their car and going behind the White Mountains. The believers in the Hills’ account must somehow argue that Betty and Barney’s reported multiple UFO encounters in 1965 and 1966 are delusional and should be quietly dismissed, while the first one in 1961 must be taken with deadly seriousness. Occam’s razor would have us conclude that all of Betty Hill’s reported UFO encounters, with or without Barney present, are equally delusional.

One factor to keep in mind is that we know today far better than we did in the 1960s, that supposed “repressed memories” recovered via hypnosis are extremely unreliable. In the absence of any real physical evidence, the case for believing the Hill abduction story ultimately rests on the credibility of the witnesses, and on the credibility of the hypnosis-recovered memories. Neither inspires confidence.

The first Gulf Breeze UFO photos were published, anonymously at first, in The Gulf Breeze Sentinel on November 18, 1987. These were soon followed by many others, most of them looking laughably bogus, with the Sentinel playing the role of chief UFO booster. It didn’t take long for the identity of the photographer and chief UFO contact to be revealed as local contractor Ed Walters. Author Craig Myers is a reporter for the rival Pensacola News Journal, and seems to enjoy needling the competition’s uncritical, even sensationalist, reporting.

Assigned by the News Journal to do a special report on the UFO hysteria, Myers recounted how UFO buffs would gather at Shoreline Park, near the Pensacola Bay Bridge. Often, they would see a red UFO nearby, which some attributed to a lighted kite, possibly being pulled by a boat. This is where Walters claimed to have discovered several circular UFO landing pads while being interviewed by Myers’s colleague, who later said, “It looked like someone just trampled down the weeds or something.” Ultimately, the UFO issue became very divisive in the community, and Myers gives us an insider’s view of the controversy. In 1990, Walters used his new fame to launch a bid for the Gulf Breeze City Council. Out of a field of nine candidates, he came in “dead last.”

Anyone who is undecided about the Gulf Breeze claims or who may have been swayed by Bruce Maccabee’s pro-UFO analysis needs to read this book. Myers recounts in full detail how the case unfolded, where the battle lines were drawn, and who fired what salvo from what position. MUFON, the largest UFO group in the United States, took an unambiguously pro-Gulf Breeze position. When facts should have gotten in the way of that position, the facts were ignored. MUFON held its 1990 convention in Gulf Breeze to capitalize on the excitement.

Myers was the reporter who interviewed the people who had moved into the house where Walters had been living at the time of his first UFO photos. They found a model UFO, apparently tossed up in the attic, made of styrofoam plates and such. “It was the Gulf Breeze UFO,” writes Myers, and he now held it in his hands. Later, Myers was able to duplicate Walters’s UFO photos almost exactly using the model. Confronted with the undeniable evidence, Walters claimed that the model had somehow been planted in the house by “professional debunkers” who “will do whatever [is] necessary to debunk a case.”

Because the book gives such an in-depth, close-up view of the Gulf Breeze controversy, the story contains many subplots. One is the amusing story of the “Doomsday Six,” six members of a U.S. Army intelligence unit in Germany, who apparently belonged to some sort of end-of-the-world cult. They deserted their posts and traveled to Gulf Breeze for some purpose that was never entirely clear, apparently at the suggestion of a Ouija board!

The book reprints humorist Dave Barry’s satirical essay on his own investigations of the Gulf Breeze photos, in which he recounts his conversations with Walters, who told him weird tales, such as being trapped by the UFO’s paralyzing ray and of hearing strange telepathic voices. The more Barry heard about this case, the more skeptical he became. Most major UFO cases are like that—they sound impressive when one hears just a little about them in sensationalist media reports, but, upon reading the full details of what did (and did not) transpire, the differences between the “UFO incident” and “a real event” become glaringly obvious. Sometimes, Myers stretches his metaphors to the point where they seem to groan back at you right there on the page, and some of his witticisms seem too clever by half. He seems to think he can write like Dave Barry, but, unfortunately, he cannot. This distracts from the serious message of the book. Nonetheless, all reporters who are called upon to write on UFOs and other “paranormal” subjects should read this book for a solid example of hard-headed investigative journalism and proper skepticism.

Howe submitted soil and barley samples to W.C. Levengood, a biophysicist and PhD-Eq at the Pinelandia Biophysical Laboratory in Grass Lake, Michigan, who specializes in the investigation of crop circles. Levengood measured the “charge density plasma pulses” of the samples (whatever they may be). He found that the greatest “energy change” was about 200 feet south of the cow, and zero “energy” in the bounce mark in the ground. He concluded, “Right at the cow, the energy in the plants were also anomalously low. That would fit in because when the cow hit, the initial impact and second landing, the plant energies were neutralized.” Who says that UFOlogy is not scientific? Howe suggests that these “energy changes” might be due to “advanced beam technology,” a kind of tractor beam that aliens allegedly use to pick up and return cows, although it would seem that in this case the batteries or whatever powers the tractor beam must have been a bit weak, setting the animal down with a big thud. (For more on Levengood’s research see “Italian Skeptics Debunk Crop Cir-cle Electromagnetic Radiation Claim,” SI, September/October 2005.)

As if this were not sufficiently amazing, the famous animal that started it all, Snippy the Horse, is back in the news after almost forty years. Snippy, a three-year-old mare in Appaloosa, Colorado, became famous in 1967 when her owner, Nellie Lewis, claimed that she had been mutilated by space aliens. Lewis claimed that the dead horse gave off a sweet scent like incense, that its mane burned her fingers, and that the boots she was wearing were later found to be “radioactive.” No mention was made as to whether poor Snippy bounced when the aliens dropped her off. The Case of Snippy was investigated and included in the famous Condon Report (Case 32), which concluded in true closed-minded debunker style that “There was no evidence to support the assertion that the horse’s death was associated in any way with abnormal causes” (see www.ncas.org/condon/text/case32.htm). Another spoilsport was local veterinarian Wallace Leary, who determined that poor Snippy had been shot twice in the legs with a .22 caliber rifle. This probably would not have killed her, but may well have caused the infection that appears to have left her disabled.

Snippy was the first widely publicized claim of alien mutilation of livestock, and it seems to have started a big trend. Snippy now even has her own Web site (www.snippy.com), which includes a Snippy store selling Snippy merchandise. Recently Snippy’s skeleton was offered for sale on eBay, with a minimum bid of $50,000. However, bidding was suspended when ownership of the bones was disputed (see http://tinyurl.com/y3qutv). No mention was made of whether any bids for Snippy’s bones were actually received.

As scary as all this animal mutilation talk may be, it’s nothing compared to the hunt for the Skinwalker. A new book by Colm Kelleher and George Knapp, Hunt for the Skinwalker, tells the chilling tale. Kelleher is a physicist who formerly worked for the now-defunct National Institute for Discovery Sciences (NIDS), funded by Las Vegas billionaire Robert Bigelow. Knapp is a Las Vegas TV personality who has made a name for himself reporting sensational stories about Area 51 and such. When stories about an allegedly haunted ranch in northeastern Utah reached NIDS, Bigelow decided to buy the ranch to further his paranormal research. (The “Skinwalker Ranch” now has its own Wikipedia entry.

According to Knapp, “For as long as anyone can remember, this part of northeastern Utah has been the site of simply unbelievable paranormal activity. UFOs, Sasquatch, cattle mutilations, psychic manifestations, creatures that aren’t found in any zoos or textbooks, poltergeist events.” He suggests that it may be “the strangest place on Earth.” Some observers trace this weirdness back to an old Indian curse that the Navajo supposedly placed on the Utes. As you know, lots of paranormal problems can be traced back to old Indian graveyards or curses; one Indian graveyard in South Park, Colorado, has been particularly troublesome. One anthropologist quoted in the book describes Skinwalker beliefs as follows: “Skinwalkers are purely evil in intent. I’m no expert on it, but the general view is that skinwalkers do all sorts of terrible things—they make people sick, they commit murders. They are grave robbers and necrophiliacs. They are greedy and evil people who must kill a sibling or other relative to be initiated as a skinwalker. They supposedly can turn into were animals and can travel in supernatural ways.”

The previous owner of the ranch had reportedly encountered numerous unexplained phenomena, such as a bulletproof wolf that could not be killed, and apparently walked off into thin air. Later, three dogs were zapped by something while chasing blue orbs of light in a pasture. All that was left of each of the dogs was a greasy, butter-like glob.

One of the incidents described in the book occurred in August 1997. Two unnamed researchers were perched on a bluff of the ranch late at night, monitoring a pasture. One of them descended into the pasture to meditate, as he believed that this sometimes “activated the phenomenon.” After about two hours, they allegedly spotted a small yellow light a few feet off the ground. They watched as it began to expand. One of them grabbed a pair of Generation III ITT night vision binoculars, while the other reached for a 35mm camera loaded with infrared film. As seen in the binoculars, the light seemed to expand, and take on a tunnel like appearance. At the far end of the tunnel, what started out as an indistinct motion gradually became the head and shoulders of a humanoid creature. It stepped out of the tunnel and walked off into the night. All that remained was the smell of sulphur. Unfortunately, the observer with the camera saw only the circle of light, and doesn’t seem to have taken any pictures anyway. Researchers installed cameras atop telephone poles, but they were attacked and disabled by some invisible force. Another golden opportunity for scientific research, lost forever. . . .

As scary as all this Skinwalker stuff is, it’s nothing compared to the story now being told by Robert Duncan O’Finioan, who claims to have been “brainwashed, conditioned and controlled as part of a highly classified MKULTRA program called Project Talent,” and whose story is now being featured on Jerry Pippin’s mystery-mongering Internet broadcasts (www.jerrypippin.com). Of a thousand others allegedly trained as “child warriors” in 1966, he says he is one of only twenty left alive. He was selected, he says, because of his mixed Native American and Celtic heritage; both of those groups supposedly have unique spiritual and mental abilities, so the combination is unbeatable for making a powerful psychic warrior. His top-secret training, which was very abusive and brutal, supposedly gave him “enhanced physical and psychic abilities . . . including the abilities to hurl someone across the room with his mind, and walk through a solid wall.” His right arm was “hardwired” with an “enhancer” implant, supposedly giving it “astonishing speed and strength.”

Supposedly O’Finioan and eleven other child warriors were flown to Cambodia in 1972 to deliver a “death blow” to Khmer Rouge troops, “using only the combined power of their minds.” A helicopter lands, coming to the aid of a platoon of Marines pinned down by hostile fire. Twelve children disembark, form a semicircle, and hold hands. When their hands are raised, the combined psychic force kills every enemy soldier within twenty miles.

Now O’Finioan says he is beginning to recover conscious memories of all these alarming events from his past, which had long been repressed by the mind controllers. When he underwent a recent MRI scan, not only did it detect an implant deep inside his brain, but the implant caused the MRI machine to catch fire, sending doctors and nurses scurrying with fire extinguishers. This also seems to have burned out the implant, effectively freeing him from MKULTRA’s control. Unfortunately, none of his remarkable physical abilities are demonstrated on the video Ultimate Warrior on Pippin’s site, in which O’Finioan simply talks to the camera and doesn’t walk through any walls. By way of explanation, he says that most of his paranormal abilities belong to his “alternate personalities,” which cannot be brought out on demand. What do his enhanced mental abilities foresee for the future? A giant supervolcano in a western state will rip the U.S. apart, and “very soon.” So if this happens, as you’re being buried in ashes and debris, remember that you read it here first.

One of the first survivors of the disaster to return to Britain, nurse Debbie Bates, told the Daily Record (December 28, 2004), “'I saw a palmist the day before [in Sri Lanka]. He said, 'Stay out of the sea, big wave coming.' At the time, I thought it was a joke-now I just think it is freaky.” Unfortunately, we don't know how many thousands of people may have received that same warning for days on which nothing unusual happened. Indeed, given the popular custom of visiting fortune-tellers in Thailand and other Asian countries, it seems remarkable that there was anyone left unwarned, unless the prognosticators themselves were equally in the dark. Meanwhile, a prominent Thai fortune teller blamed the tsunami on the “bad luck” of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Pinyo Pongcharoen, president of the International Astrology Association, said that Thailand’s astrological sign was already under the adverse influence of four ill-omened stars and, worse yet, one of the stars was further aggravated by malicious influence from Thaksin’s astrological sign (The Nation, Bangkok, December 28).

People from a nearby camp for the displaced bathe in a river January 26, 2005, in the tsunami-ravaged town of Meulaboh, Indonesia. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Once the tizzy over the mostly clueless fortune-tellers died down, media outlets were rushing to report how animals seemed to have a “sixth sense” causing most of them to avoid the coming tsunami. H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of Sri Lanka’s Wildlife Department, told Reuters, “No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit. I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening.” Even the National Geographic News was reporting (January 4) anecdotes of how “elephants screamed and ran for higher ground” and “Dogs refused to go outdoors.” What is usually not mentioned is that the tsunami was preceded by an extremely powerful earthquake, capable of alarming both man and beast. Furthermore, it does not appear to be the case that wild animals cluster along the ocean’s open shore in the same manner that humans do-they usually prefer to remain hidden in the relative safety of the forest.

Lynette Hart, an animal researcher at the University of California-Davis, explained to the Sacramento Bee (January 14) that many animals are exquisitely sensitive to sounds and to vibrations in the ground. “It may only take one antelope becoming frightened by sensory changes to communicate, 'Let’s get out of here,' and they all go.” Andy Michael, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey, told National Geographic, “What we're faced with is a lot of anecdotes. Animals react to so many things-being hungry, defending their territories, mating, predators-so it’s hard to have a controlled study to get that advanced warning signal.”

Next, just as predictably, the conspiracy theories began to emerge (these usually don't surface immediately, as it takes a while to cook them up). The Egyptian Nationalist weekly Al-Usbu published an investigative report by Mahmoud Bakri on January 1. In it he suggests that the earthquake and tsunami were a consequence of secret nuclear testing by the U.S., Israel, and India: “The three most recent tests appeared to be genuine American and Israeli preparations to act together with India to test a way to liquidate humanity. In the[ir] most recent test, they began destroying entire cities over extensive areas. Although the nuclear explosions were carried out in desert lands, tens of thousands of kilometers away from populated areas, they had a direct effect on these areas.” These alleged nuclear tests “destabilized the tectonic plates,” leading to disaster. A (possibly fictitious) American scientist was quoted saying “the center of an earthquake that took place some forty kilometers under the ocean floor could not have caused such destruction unless nuclear testing had been conducted close to the tectonic plates in these countries, or unless several days previously there had been [nuclear] activity that caused these plates to shift and collide.” A Saudi professor attributed the tragedy to divine retribution for homosexuality and fornication, while various religious leaders warned that it was caused by corruption, the presence of infidels, and other sins (see here).

Abd Al-Baset Al-Sayyed of the Egyptian National Research Center said in an interview on Al-Majd TV on January 16 that NASA had discovered that Earth is emitting short-wave radiation. “When they discovered this radiation, they started to zoom in, and they found that it emanates from Mecca-and, to be precise, from the Ka'ba” (see here). What’s more, they found that the radiation was “infinite.” NASA found that the radiation extends well past Mars, apparently extending to “the celestial Ka'ba,” effectively connecting heaven and earth. NASA, says Al-Sayyed, had this information on their Web site for twenty-one days, but then took it down, apparently as part of yet another cover-up of amazing findings in outer space.

Speaking of NASA, the recent, highly successful Cassini mission to Saturn has returned a wealth of scientific data, especially the Huygens probe that landed on Saturn’s moon Titan, the first such landing on a planetary satellite other than our own Moon. However, NASA conspiracy theorist Richard Hoagland, the chief promoter of the “Face on Mars,” claims he has made dramatic discoveries from its photos, not of Titan, but instead of Saturn’s moon Iapetus, an unusual body having one relatively dark hemisphere and one lighter:

In our opinion, Cassini’s discovery of “the Great Wall of Iapetus” now forces serious reconsideration of a range of staggering possibilities . . . that some will most certainly find upsetting: it could really be a “wall” . . . a vast, planet spanning, artificial construct!! . . . There is no viable geological model to explain a sixty thousand-foot-high, sixty thousand-foot-wide, four million-foot-long “wall” . . . spanning an entire planetary hemisphere-let alone, located in the precise plane of its equator! (See here.)

Hoagland has further discovered that some of Iapetus’s craters appear to be somewhat “square,” and are allegedly lined up along north-south, east-west lines: “Clearly these are not random, 'square craters'-but remarkable, highly ordered evidence of sophisticated, aligned, repeating architectural relief! . . . The impression of a vast set of extremely ancient ruins-most now without roofs, but with ample surviving walls-covered both by 'snow' . . . and whatever the 'brown stuff' is . . . is unavoidable.”

Stressing the near-impossibility of these structures being built by living creatures on the surface of a cold, airless, waterless world, Hoagland leaps to a conclusion that presupposes an even greater engineering impossibility: “what if Iapetus is not a natural satellite at all . . . but a 900-mile wide spacecraft-an artificial 'moon?!'.” He suggests that Iapetus was assembled millions of years ago by some alien intelligence using the principles of Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes, and that many of the craters are in fact “deformed hexagons,” where the moon’s surface is collapsing from eons of meteoritic erosion, revealing the underlying hexagonal supports. My brief summary cannot possibly do justice to the zaniness of Hoagland’s “hollow Iapetus” theory-you need to read the original on his Web site.

It is telling that Hoagland does not discuss the problem that his “hollow Iapetus” theory poses in accounting for that moon’s measured mean density of about 1.21 grams per cubic centimeter, less than our own moon’s but greater than that of Saturn. This is perplexing, since he begins the piece arguing that Iapetus’s relatively low density and slow rotation means that the centrifugal force at the equator would be extremely small. It’s too bad that Hoagland didn't follow through and give us any calculations designed to show how it would be possible for an essentially hollow sphere to have a mean density greater than that of water. He must have realized the fatal flaw this calculation would pose for his wild assertion, which is why he avoids the subject.

A NASA Web site notes: “Cassini’s next close encounter with Iapetus will occur in September 2007. The resolution of images from that flyby should be 100 times better than the ones currently being analyzed. The hope is that the increased detail may shed light on Iapetus’s amazing features and the question of whether it has been volcanically active in the past” (see here). Until then, we can only wonder what Hoagland’s amazing “artificial structures"-which, like all allegedly anomalous objects photographed, are near the limit of resolution of the cameras-will look like with one hundred times finer detail revealed.

Last December 8 The Telegraph of London carried an item written by Uri Geller, the noted Israeli-born spoon bender, about an “alien egg” allegedly given to him by the late John Lennon. According to Geller, he, Lennon, and Lennon’s wife Yoko Ono were having dinner in a New York restaurant one evening when Lennon surprised him with the following account:

About six months ago, I was asleep in my bed, with Yoko, at home, in the Dakota Building. And suddenly, I wasn't asleep. Because there was this blazing light round the door. It was shining through the cracks and the keyhole, like someone was out there with searchlights, or the apartment was on fire. . . . There were these four people out there. . . . They were, like, little. Bug-like. Big bug eyes and little bug mouths and they were scuttling at me like roaches . . . I tried to throw them out, but, when I took a step towards them, they kind of pushed me back. I mean, they didn't touch me. It was like they just willed me. Pushed me with willpower and telepathy. (See here.)

Today, “insectoid” aliens play a significant role in many stories of UFO abductions, which was not the case when Lennon allegedly related this account. So either John Lennon was a pioneering “experiencer” of a now-common alien encounter, or else Geller made up this story long after Lennon’s death.

The next thing that Lennon could reportedly remember, he was back in bed with Yoko, left holding a smooth, metallic egg-like object he subsequently gave to Geller in the hopes that Uri could figure it out. Says Geller, “I have a strong sensation that John knew more about this object than he told me. Maybe it didn't come with an instruction manual, but I think John knew what it was for. And whatever that purpose was-communication? Healing? A first-class intergalactic ticket?-it scared him.” Yet despite all the hype, Geller seems to have made no attempt to initiate any serious scientific analysis of his potentially miraculous “egg.”

A now-classic UFO video was taken on the afternoon of March 5, 2004, in southern Mexico, over the states of Chiapas and Campeche. A Merlin C26/A aircraft of SEDNA, the Mexican Secretariat of Defense, was on routine patrol looking for drug smuggling or other illegal activity. It was using the Star SAFIRE II infrared sensing device manufactured by FLIR Systems of Portland, Oregon. From an elevation of 3,500 meters (approximately 11,500 feet), the infrared sensor system recorded a sequence of unidentified objects, at one point numbering as many as eleven.

These UFOs (like most UFOs photographed) appeared only as bright points of light, showing no detail or structure. But they were different from the run-of-the mill UFO sightings because the objects could not be seen visually but did appear only in the infrared images. Infrared systems such as the Star SAFIRE II detect electro-magnetic radiation in the 3 to 5 micron bandpass, with a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels. Images are formed by the differences in the scene’s apparent infrared radiant intensity caused by temperature differences and emissivity differences, and to a lesser extent reflected energy. Thus, objects hotter than their background appear to be self-luminous. The images can be recorded digitally or on conventional video recording equipment (with lower resolution) as was the case here. Infrared systems are useful for daytime operations, especially in humid climates where visibility tends to be poor, because infrared radiation penetrates the atmosphere better than visible light. These objects were recorded as brilliant objects in the infrared, suggesting that they were emitting enormous amounts of heat. However, due to the nature of the video recording and lack of knowledge of the sensitivity parameters, actual temperatures are impossible to ascertain from the available data.

To get a better understanding of the operation of the infrared recording system, and the situation in which it was being employed, I contacted John Lester Miller, author of more than forty scientific papers and four textbooks on infrared and electro-optical technology. He is also an active member of Oregonians for Rationality. [1] He explained:

The UFOlogists’ concerns about not being able to acquire the objects visually is meaningless. These systems are specifically designed to detect objects that cannot be seen by the human eye. Frankly, it would be a waste of taxpayers’ money to equip a plane with a system that could not detect objects invisible to the eye. If the eye could see everything that the IR sensor can, then it would be far cheaper and more effective to put a few privates in the aircraft with binoculars. But this isn't the case. By exploiting infrared electromagnetic radiation caused by thermal and emissivity differences in a scene, a different landscape is revealed. For example, infrared imagers can easily detect humans and animals at a distance of several miles at night where the eye or CCD sees nothing but darkness. Moreover, being longer in wavelength, typically infrared radiation transmits better though the atmosphere than visible and is exactly why it is now being deployed on commercial aircraft for enhanced vision for pilots.

These images were viewed though one of the worst atmospheric conditions possible. Hot, humid, and partly cloudy at a land and sea interface, during the thermal instability of sunset or sunrise. This represents one of the most difficult atmospheric conditions for accurate imaging. These conditions seriously impair the quality of the images in the visible and even reduce the quality in the infrared. In these stressing atmospherics, it is no surprise that there was nothing visible to the eye and the images are blurred and altered in the infrared. The smaller images below the main images could be reflections from water or ground (common in the infrared) or even mirages. All of these phenomena are typically observed in such conditions. The bending of the light in the atmosphere going though multiple dynamic layers of varying indexes of refractions also call into question the angular indications.

Any representation of a three-dimensional scene on a two- dimensional surface (be it a painting, photograph, television, or infrared scene on a display) lacks absolute range information. It is impossible to infer the range from the image of an object based on brightness or size, unless the brightness and size are well known, the atmospheric conditions are well known, and the sensor settings are known. There are simply too many unknowns to solve the equations. Painters and photographers have long exploited the human predisposition to read range into a two-dimensional scene for both optical illusions and stunning artistic effects. Infrared sensors frequently employ a laser rangefinder option for this very reason, which was not present on the sensor that acquired these images. The only way to accurately determine range is by radar.

Figure 2. The same reported “IR UFOs” at maximum zoom: individual flares from each oil well are now visible.

At some points two unidentified objects were reported to have turned up on radar. However the position and number of the radar objects did not even come close to matching that of the infrared ones, so whatever the radar targets were, they were not the same as those recorded on video. This is generally the case when visual sightings of UFOs (or in this instance, infrared sightings) are “confirmed” by radar. Unfortunately, no radar data from the aircraft was recorded, so we must rely on the crews’ recollection of what it showed. The military radar operator in the city of Carmen was contacted, and it was not showing any unknown objects. [2] UFO researcher Brad Sparks, plotting the direction and distance of the aircraft’s radar returns on a map, found that some of them appear to match the position of the Yucatan Highway 186. He suggests that the measured velocity of the radar objects (fifty-two knots, or sixty miles per hour) is quite consistent with the velocity of trucks, and so concludes that some, although not all, of the moving objects spotted on radar are due to trucks on the highway. [3] There are many kinds of objects, both flying and on the ground, that can turn up as targets on aircraft radars and infrared sensors.

The tapes were released to Jaime Maussan, a well-known Mexican broadcaster and UFOlogist who has made a career out of the sensationalist promotion of supposedly “unexplained mysteries.” Maussan’s pronouncements range from the sensational to the absurd. For example, in 2000 he told a UFO conference about “glowing extraterrestrials” being widely seen in Mexico, and claimed to have sighted one of them himself. He also showed a photo of a supposed alien “life form” reportedly encountered by Apollo 11 astronauts on the Moon, labeled “El Hombre de la Luna.” [4] If one wanted an objective evaluation of the objects in the video, Maussan would be last person to turn to. Indeed, a May 17, 2004, editorial in the influential Mexican newspaper La Cronica de Hoy by Raul Trejo Delarbre suggested exactly that.

On May 11, Maussan held a press conference promoting the videos as a sensational mystery. Maussan’s story ran widely in the news media worldwide, including the Associated Press, CNN, Reuters, MSNBC, USA Today, and Fox News. He soon had the videos on his TV show, as well as on a Web site. [5] The Web site is filled with a mixture of information and misinformation concerning the objects. It claims that the “halos” seen surrounding the objects is evidence of a powerful magnetic field. It goes on to wax knowingly about the objects’ “frequency” and “vortex,” as well as their supposed violation of “entropy,” all of which is complete pseudoscientific balderdash.

Unfortunately, many would-be skeptics made hasty pronouncements about the objects, thereby giving all UFO skeptics a bad name. The Urania Astronomical Society of the state of Morelos told the newspaper El Universal on May 13 that the UFOs filmed might be a group of weather balloons. Dr. Julio Herrera of Mexico’s National Autonomous University told the Associated Press that the UFOs were electrical flashes in the atmosphere, a theory that makes very little sense. A few days later, he was attributing them to “ball lightning.” Rafael Navarro of that same university told a press conference on May 14 that the UFOs were luminous sparks of plasma energy. Mexican astronomer Jose de la Herrin stated that the stationary objects could be meteor fragments. UFOlogists were soon gleefully mocking these absurd explanations, making it look as if skeptics were ignorant fools who couldn't recognize alien spacecraft when they saw one. There is nothing wrong with saying, “I don't yet have enough information to know what the objects are, but I am confident that when more facts come in, we'll find a prosaic explanation.”

Figure 3. The flight path of the Merlin C-26/A aircraft. The look-back angle of —134 degrees points toward the offshore oil platforms in the Bay of Campeche. The supposed “radar UFOs” were in the opposite direction, ahead of the aircraft. Some of them were probably trucks on the Yucatan Highway.

By May 20 some skeptical analysts had identified the probable source of the objects: burning oil well flares from offshore oil platforms in the Bay of Campeche. This region is the center of Mexico’s petroleum industry, containing more than 200 wells on nine platforms, many of them close to the city of Carmen. (One of the voices on the video can be heard saying that the objects are “at Carmen.”) At that point it was thought that there had been some temporary burn-off of excess natural gas within the well-but it turns out that the oil well flares burn more or less continuously in this region. The area also has large steam generating plants that pump incredible amounts of hot steam deep into the ground to increase the pressure and ease the flow of oil.

One anonymous “concerned outdoorsman” who works on offshore oil platforms wrote on the environmentalist Web site myoutdoorjournal.com:

Each day while I work, I see flares burning at such a rate that it is almost unbelievable to the human eye. I'm told that all gas sources are being burnt off through the flares just to keep the crude oil flowing from each well. Each production platform consists of at least twelve penetrations drilled into the sea floor reaching to different depths. Each platform has a flare some have two, in which are roaring twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. . . . At night when looking across the bay of Campeche, it looks like a spotted forest fire out of control in the distant far yonder, in any direction you choose to look. The black smoke rolls and it never stops!

On May 26, Capt. Alejandro Franz of the private Mexican UFO research organization Alcione, who is far more skeptical than Maussan and his colleagues, independently came to the same conclusion. A former pilot who has flown extensively in that region, Franz wrote on the widely-read UFO Updates online forum: “Cantarell Field or Cantarell Complex is the largest oil field in Mexico, located 80 kilometers offshore in the Bay of Campeche. . . . The objects (lights) are in a fixed position with a dark background (the sea) while the camera on board is following the lights that are showing in the screen as a very brilliant source of light . . . the lights are coming from steady oil platform flames (passive fire) located in the Gulf of Mexico between 50 and 90 Km from Ciudad del Carmen City where the objects, at least one light as the FLIR or RADAR operator tells is exactly over Ciudad del Carmen” [6]

On the Alcione Web site, Franz provides a great deal of information and many photos concerning the Cantarel offshore oil wells and their continuous flares. No reasonable person could see his photos comparing the flaming offshore platforms with the infrared UFOs from the video and reject the probability that the two are the same.

Franz is mistaken in suggesting that the aircraft was headed north at the time that the videos were taken. The aircraft was headed eastward, at an azimuth of approximately 80 degrees. This is confirmed by an event occurring near the end of the half-hour video, twenty-six minutes in. The crew members are briefly surprised by the image on the Star SAFIRE II of a large, round object. They zoom in, and realize that it’s the moon coming up. “The moon, it’s the moon,” they laugh. The moon rose at approximately 17:20 from their location, at a geo-azimuth of 75 degrees. Because the azimuth of the Star SAFIRE II relative to its aircraft mount is reading approximately -5 degrees (just left of straight ahead), that confirms that the aircraft was on a heading of about 80 degrees. It may or may not be significant that the Sun was at this time at an azimuth of 260 degrees, directly behind the aircraft.

The Star SAFIRE II records the altitude and azimuth of the object it is imaging at all times relative to its aircraft mount. The altitude of the UFOs is within a degree or two of the horizon with respect to the aircraft. The crew said that the objects were at the same elevation, i.e., on the horizon. The pitch of an aircraft in “level flight” depends on a number of factors, including its airspeed, trim, bank angle, the configuration of its flaps, gear, spoilers, etc. If the aircraft had a one to three degree pitch upward from its centerline (typical of normal flight), this needs to be figured into the altitude reading from the infrared sensor. It would mean that a “zero elevation” reading indicates that the sensor is pointed below the horizon, when looking backward.

During the main part of the UFO encounter, the object’s azimuth is reading around -134 degrees, approximately the 7:00 position behind the aircraft. When plotted on a map showing the aircraft’s position and heading, this points in the direction of the largest oil well platform complex in the Gulf of Campeche. From the video, the objects can be seen to be over water, but one cannot judge the altitude of the objects above the water, or their relative motion with respect to the water. When two brilliant UFOs are seen behind fluffy clouds (figure 1), the infrared camera is set to the medium zoom field of view, giving a field of 3.4 by 2.6 degrees. We are seeing the two main oil well platforms. Soon afterwards, the operator selects the narrowest field of view using the E-zoom feature. The field of view is only .04 by .03 degrees, which makes the objects appear about nine times larger. We see the result in figure 2, when individual flames are resolved on each oil platform, revealing nine or more “UFOs.” If you compare this frame to the photo found on the Alcione Web site showing a daytime view of flames on the oil platforms, you will see that they match up quite well.

The objects appear to be moving with respect to the clouds that pass in front of them, giving the objects the illusion of motion. However, the motion of the aircraft with respect to the clouds, as well as the motion of the clouds themselves, causes the highly magnified lights to appear to shift position with respect to the clouds. Since the azimuth of the objects does not change significantly during the time they are being filmed, it is evident that the apparent motion of the objects with respect to the clouds is caused primarily by the motion of the aircraft with respect to clouds, and not by motion of the objects themselves. This situation is analogous to zooming in using a telephoto lens on a video camera, and pointing to a far away mountain. Then, while keeping the camera pointed to the mountain, walk along a treed path. The trees will have apparent angular motion (or optical flow) due to the camera’s movement, while the mountain stays approximately still. When overworked, stressed, disoriented, and confined to looking at a three-dimensional scene on a two-dimensional display, it is easy for the crew to become confused regarding what is moving. All of the UFOs recorded by the Star SAFIRE II are on the left side of the aircraft, toward the Gulf of Mexico, with the great majority of them around -134 degrees.

Discussing the image quality that we see in the UFO video, Miller explained:

Unlike CCDs [charge-coupled devices, commonly-used photo detector systems], all infrared focal planes suffer from sensitivity drifts from pixel to pixel, and periodically require all scene pixels to be normalized. This is generally done by the user commanding it, then a “paddle,” coated with a uniform black coating, is inserted into the field of view. Without this being done, images will possess “Fixed Pattern Noise” and these images all do. The vertical lines and dark splotches are classic infrared fixed pattern noise and limit operator effectiveness. They are not indicative of typical images from this system. Moreover, though these are infrared images, they suffer from the same poor quality that most “UFO” photographs suffer from-blurry, out of focus with incorrect exposures.

In the 1990s a wonderful new technique to grind and shape infrared optics went into production. This is diffractive optics via diamond turning. A fixed fresnel-lens-like circular pattern is cut onto the lens surface (typically the back of the lens). This results in color-corrected optical systems with far fewer lens elements, thus saving significant cost and weight and size. The drawback is that this “ring” pattern scatters a small amount of light. The amount of this scatter is minimal and can be seen only with a bright overexposed image. This scatter from the diffractive optic pattern accounts for the halo effects of these overexposed images.

Unfortunately, the infrared sensor’s recoded output is in a standard commercial video format (e.g., NTSC or PAL). These were the accepted video standards when the equipment was designed. The infrared focal planes have dynamic ranges of thirteen or fourteen bits, but the image-forming electronics compresses this wide range in a nonlinear fashion to make cosmetically appealing images on a six or eight bit capable display, a low-dynamic range for video recording. In other words, a lot of information gets lost. Unfortunately, just like your camcorder, the compression is adaptive based on scene statistics and details, and the settings are not recorded. This, along with other factors such as atmospherics, eliminates such airborne infrared system from recording any precise data, unlike common handheld thermographic and scientific cameras. From a videotape, one cannot glean any radiometric data, as it is all processed in an unknown manner with nonlinear and adaptive algorithms to make a clearly displayed image on conventional television. Also every copy degrades the tape, and every format (DVC, SVHS, VHS, etc.) imposes its own proprietary scaling and changes on the data, making reliable scientific measurement impossible.

The UFO believers who participate in the online UFO Updates forum, which includes many “leaders” of the UFO movement, laughed off the valid explanation of oil well fires as flippantly as they did the absurd ones. UFO author Ray Stanford scoffed at “oil rig flares tracked on radar at near the aircraft’s altitude,” of which neither statement was true: the radar targets were in a different direction entirely, and distant objects near the horizon may well be on the ground. Roswell champion David Rudiak scoffed at “invisible, flying oil wells,” while Alfred Lehmberg suggested that skeptics might as well propose “soaring lighthouses and gassy pelicans.” Others raised the specter of elves, angels, flaming seagulls, etc. Jaime Maussan argued that the flaming oil wells would not have been visible, because they were 125 to 200 km or more distant. He neglected to calculate that from an altitude of 3,500 meters, the horizon is nominally 211 km distant, and that atmospheric refraction typically extends this distance somewhat, depending on meteorological conditions, as also does the height above the water of the flames themselves. [7]

By their reaction, the “leaders” of UFOlogy have shown themselves incapable of distinguishing logical from illogical thought, and science from pseudoscience. The lesson of the Mexican Infrared UFO video illustrates once again the inability of the UFO movement to perform critical thinking.

Notes

1. Miller is the author of the textbook Principles of Infrared Technology: A Practical Guide to the State of the Art (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994) and Photonics Rules of Thumb (McGraw-Hill, 2004), as well as two ancillary versions of Photonics Rules of Thumb (McGraw-Hill 1994 and 2003).
2. Information provided by Jaime Maussan. See virtuallystrange.net
3. See virtuallystrange.net.
4. At the Bay Area UFO Expo, San Jose, California, September, 2000. See “Reptoids and Martians Invade Silicon Valley” by Robert Sheaffer, Skeptical Inquirer, January 2001.
5. See Maussan’s Web site about the videos at ovnistv.tv.
6. See Franz’s original posting at virtuallystrange.net. Alcione’s Web site is at alcione.org.
7. See www.istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Shorizon.htm for an explanation of how to calculate the distance to the horizon as a function of elevation.