Ufology

[kensei]

Amongst the claims of extraterrestrial encounters, i have not noticed any reports of violence commited on any person; they always seem curious, if somewhat heavy handed, in human relations,but not hostile. This is counter intuitive to the way i imagined;just about every supernatural or paranormal manifestation has associations with physical or verbal assault, or even homicide. Psychiatrists would no doubt consider this a psycho drama driven by unconcious anxiety or fantasy. Does a non violent and sometimes indifferent nature of E.T s suggest another more realistic source?.

Suggest you Google "Human mutilations by aliens." Violence to humans is rare but not completely absent from the phenomenon.

[Scorpio]

Amongst the claims of extraterrestrial encounters, i have not noticed any reports of violence commited on any person; they always seem curious, if somewhat heavy handed, in human relations,but not hostile. This is counter intuitive to the way i imagined;just about every supernatural or paranormal manifestation has associations with physical or verbal assault, or even homicide. Psychiatrists would no doubt consider this a psycho drama driven by unconcious anxiety or fantasy. Does a non violent and sometimes indifferent nature of E.T s suggest another more realistic source?.

[Scorpio]

I've only just really caught up with this thread!
Ufology is a subject about which I have very mixed feelings and about which I find it impossible to come to any firm conclusions.
On the logical side there is so much that militates against UFOs and their appearance. The unimaginably vast distances involved even from the nearest possible sources of intelligent and technologically advanced life make the travel times involved absurd. Assuming there is not any technically evolved form of life in our own solar system (not to dismiss the possibility of less highly evolved lifeforms) then the nearest possible source (assuming said lifeform evolved on a planet orbiting a star) is Proxima Centauri, at an average distance of 4.2 light years.
So even if a lifeform could achieve anywhere near light speed with all the attendant problems that would bring (depending on their physical form) then a round journey to Earth would be a minimum of about 9 earth years. I cannot see the sense of a lifeform travelling for at least 4.5 years (possibly considerably longer) and, when they arrive, flitting about in our atmosphere for a brief period, being seen by a few people and then heading off again. Of course some accounts suggest much closer interaction such as abduction stories but I have to say that these stories, especially with their common motif of intrusive procedures, often of a sexual nature, say more about the psychology of the abductees than the physical reality of what may have happened.
These reservations are set within the limits of what we know of physical science. Once we get into the realms of speculation and pseudo science (often invoked in an attempt to provide a mechanism to allow travel over the vast distances involved) such as wormholes, faster than light travel, telepathy, etc. then it is very hard to judge the merits of these cases. To be maybe overly sceptical, it should never be forgotten that there can be considerable financial incentives to having a good UFO story to market. Indeed some writers have made a lucrative career from the subject. A good comment on this is the Jonathan Creek episode "The Omega Man," which I recommend.
However, having said all that I come back to the conviction that not all those who see or experience something UFO related are deluded or poor observers. And some of the filmed episodes of UFO sightings I have seen are so bizarre and so obviously NOT a normal airplane or a freak weather condition that I am left guessing.
Many of the supposed explanations of UFOs - especially those that involve pseudo science and the paranormal - I am very sceptical of. But there have been a large number of experiences, some of them recorded on film or photo, which I find very hard to explain in a convincing way.

The lucrative nature of Ufology is an interesting relative aspect of the phenomena, as are abduction claims. The Betty and Barney Hill case is the only one which i have read about. Zeta Reticulli and all that.

[kensei]

Chris- Think of our own human race, and how much more advanced we of today are in our technology from our stone age ancestors. That's a difference of tens of thousands of years. What if there are intelligent races on other worlds who have been around for millions of years longer than us? Where would they be technologically right now? You mention that you are aware of the theories of wormholes and other ways in which intergalactic travel might be accomplished, bending time and space so that light years might be traversed in an instant. The science behind those theories is sound and not "pseudo science", we just don't have the technology yet to acheive it. Maybe somebody else does. You used the term "paranormal" in association with "pseudo science." I think there is a tendency to make the word "paranormal" synonymous with "supernatural." Paranormal simply means outside the norm, something we are not used to but which might some day be explained by science. Supernatural means outside the laws of science and physics. I think that something like true magic, if it exists, would be the only thing that could truly be called supernatural. The technology of aliens far more advanced than us that allows them to travel here would be considered paranormal now, but might one day be completely understood.

And when it comes to abduction reports and similar stories of people encountering aliens, there is a category of reports in which there is strong evidence that something is really going on. Pregnant women have had their pregnancies simply disappear- no miscarriage, they simply aren't pregnant anymore. People claiming abduction have been observed to be literally gone from their homes by corroborating witnesses during the time that an incident is supposed to have been taking place. Things like that. It is not all about the psychology of the people involved. And when skeptics say things like, "Why would aliens do such-and-such" or "There is no way that aliens would travel this far only to do this," etc. etc., I have always thought that if we are dealing with aliens we really have to dwell on that word. ALIEN. There would be nothing about them that we are even capable of understanding. Not only would we not have all the answers, we wouldn't even know what questions to ask. Therefore, anything they do here on Earth absolutely does not have to conform to any kind of condition as to what makes sense to us.

[Chris Scott]

I've only just really caught up with this thread!
Ufology is a subject about which I have very mixed feelings and about which I find it impossible to come to any firm conclusions.
On the logical side there is so much that militates against UFOs and their appearance. The unimaginably vast distances involved even from the nearest possible sources of intelligent and technologically advanced life make the travel times involved absurd. Assuming there is not any technically evolved form of life in our own solar system (not to dismiss the possibility of less highly evolved lifeforms) then the nearest possible source (assuming said lifeform evolved on a planet orbiting a star) is Proxima Centauri, at an average distance of 4.2 light years.
So even if a lifeform could achieve anywhere near light speed with all the attendant problems that would bring (depending on their physical form) then a round journey to Earth would be a minimum of about 9 earth years. I cannot see the sense of a lifeform travelling for at least 4.5 years (possibly considerably longer) and, when they arrive, flitting about in our atmosphere for a brief period, being seen by a few people and then heading off again. Of course some accounts suggest much closer interaction such as abduction stories but I have to say that these stories, especially with their common motif of intrusive procedures, often of a sexual nature, say more about the psychology of the abductees than the physical reality of what may have happened.
These reservations are set within the limits of what we know of physical science. Once we get into the realms of speculation and pseudo science (often invoked in an attempt to provide a mechanism to allow travel over the vast distances involved) such as wormholes, faster than light travel, telepathy, etc. then it is very hard to judge the merits of these cases. To be maybe overly sceptical, it should never be forgotten that there can be considerable financial incentives to having a good UFO story to market. Indeed some writers have made a lucrative career from the subject. A good comment on this is the Jonathan Creek episode "The Omega Man," which I recommend.
However, having said all that I come back to the conviction that not all those who see or experience something UFO related are deluded or poor observers. And some of the filmed episodes of UFO sightings I have seen are so bizarre and so obviously NOT a normal airplane or a freak weather condition that I am left guessing.
Many of the supposed explanations of UFOs - especially those that involve pseudo science and the paranormal - I am very sceptical of. But there have been a large number of experiences, some of them recorded on film or photo, which I find very hard to explain in a convincing way.

[Beowulf]

Travis Walton claims he was a reluctant prisoner of E.T's for a while. I get the feeling when listening to Waltons tale, that he is trapped in a fiction in which he can no longer escape from.

Might be disinformation.

[sdreid]

If I recall, one of the most famous unexplained UFO photographs (or series of photos) is also from Brazil. It's the one where the "vehicle" that looks sort of like a blurry picture of the planet Saturn is seen over water and next to a shoreline bluff.

[Scorpio]

Here is an interesting Brazilian case and a good example of sub set of UFO mythology which was spawned by Roswell: the crash.
Some time around the 20th January 1994, an American owned satellite observes an object entering the Earths atmosphere and informs Brazilian authories that the object is due to enter its airspace. Hundreds of independent reports of UFO's over central Brazil at this time offer some circumstantial evidence of this event; But it is near the small industrial town Varginha in eastern Brazil that the tale developes. A local journalist reports a large fire on the edge of town; sources within the military police confirm that a soldier present at this event died within weeks of the incident, while blood test results confirm the an eight percent presence of toxic substances.
Another soldier witness makes a statement claiming that a creature was found at the site, taken to a local hospital and died during procedures. Another creature matching the earlier description (small,ugly, long nailed and dark oily skinned) a is seen by townspeople .
The Varginha fire department confirm that they were called to an incident on the 20th January, but the senior officer denies any UFO'S or creatures. Military authorities claim that reports of a creature was in fact a dwarf couple present at the hospital at that time.

[Scorpio]

I think the first claimed alien abduction was a Brazilian farmer named Antonio Boas in 1957. It's not so widely known probably because it didn't occur in the Anglosphere. You had the so-called contactees before that but they were willingly taking their flying saucer rides.

The Americas have a strange connection with the extra-terrestrial concept that is hard to fathom. Many cultures in Eurasia,Asia, and Africa also have something similar, but not so pervasive. The mexicans in particular seem obsessed with UFO's and the E.T explanation.

[sdreid]

I think the first claimed alien abduction was a Brazilian farmer named Antonio Boas in 1957. It's not so widely known probably because it didn't occur in the Anglosphere. You had the so-called contactees before that but they were willingly taking their flying saucer rides.

[kensei]

Travis Walton claims he was a reluctant prisoner of E.T's for a while. I get the feeling when listening to Waltons tale, that he is trapped in a fiction in which he can no longer escape from.

There is Travis Walton's actual account, and then there is the movie "Fire in the Sky" which wasn't bad but which took an awful lot of liberties as always happens and in fact completely rewrote and fictionalized the part in which he was conscious aboard the UFO. The scene in which he was first taken though, in full view of a half dozen witnesses, was done pretty accurately except for what the UFO looked like.

I've heard several t.v. and radio interviews with Travis and some of the other witnesses to his case. None of them got rich out of it or really even tried to. And bottom line- I fail to see how anyone can be unimpressed by the fact that seven men all passed lie detector tests concerning this case. (Yes, Alan Dallis' first test was inconclusive, but he was later retested and passed.) Admittedly, polygraphs do not establish truth, they establish what the subject believes to be the truth. Why would seven men all bear truthful witness to Travis' story unless they actually watched it happen?

I think I should also say that those men aren't necessarily insisting that they saw an E.T. spacecraft from another planet. They are just describing what they saw in a "I don't know what the hell it was" kind of way. Travis himself, of course, is in a class by himself since he was the only one who says he saw the aliens inside the craft.

[Scorpio]

Travis Walton

Travis Walton claims he was a reluctant prisoner of E.T's for a while. I get the feeling when listening to Waltons tale, that he is trapped in a fiction in which he can no longer escape from.

[Scott Nelson]

Howard Menger, George Hunt Williamson (Brother Phillip).

[Supe]

Bridewell,

I'm thinking 'some' and 'quirky' aren't libelous!

I understand. LOL

Don.

[Beowulf]

You know, I never bought Roswell, and quite few other famous sighting in retrospect can easily be explained by the experimental aircraft of the day. But the lights over Arizona... that's pretty mysterious.

I live in Phoenix Az, at the time of those lights. Unfortunately I was indoors and missed it, darn.

But years later I met up with an old friend who never had an interest in anything mysterious or supernatural. He had mostly an interest in rock music and girls, he played lead guitar.

He told me emphatically he saw the Phoenix lights. He was driving on I-17, along with the rest of the freeway crowd, and saw them. He said everyone slowed down to a crawl and were looking out of their windows. He was afraid he was going to be in a car accident.

I asked him what it looked like, and he said it was triangular and blotted out all the stars and was huge, indicating it covered most of the sky above him.

All I can say for that is he was the most unlikely candidate to tell me that story, which makes me wonder. Of course you've prob read all the important people that saw it and that the local airforce, I think, said they had no idea what it was.

Thousands reported it to the police and news that night and it's frustrating to not have been outside that night. I do wish I saw it, too.