A Skeptic at the 2012 International UFO Congress - Part 3

Written after the close of the Thursday sessions:

The Thursday sessions began with Peter Robbins, who was the personal assistant to the late Budd Hopkins, giving "A Personal Appreciation" of the late abductionist. He read from some of Hopkins' publications, and gave his own as well as others' recollections of Hopkins. He related the highly-dubious tale of how Linda Napolitano, Hopkins' favorite abductee, supposedly used a stun gun to escape a guard trying to keep people inside the WTC towers after the first plane hit, dashing out amid the broken glass. I didn't hear the whole talk, so I don't know if he mentioned the criticisms of Hopkins' methodology and integrity from his ex-wife Carol Rainey. I suspect not, and I suspect he also did not mention James Moseley's anecdote of how when he walked by Hopkins at a UFO conference, Budd gave him the finger. He did say that Hopkins "did not suffer fools gladly." The problem was, anyone who disagreed with Hopkins in any significant way was branded a 'fool.'

 

The Matreyia's "Gathering Circle of Light."

David Sereda told us all about the "Breakthrough" in "Faster than Light Communication with ET." It's easy when you use the "hidden harmonic codes of the universe." The secret? It's all done with crystals. The Great Pyramids are also "crystal oscillators," since they're made of stone, and stone contains crystals. They were used to send faster-than-light messages to the stars in Orion's belt. Sereda has discovered more about electricity and magnetism just using magnets and a voltmeter than did Faraday and Maxwell combined. You can buy the CD of Sereda's Harmonic Contact with the Pleiades for just $25.

In the vendor's room I enjoyed hearing a bunch of double-talk about the Matreiya, the World Teacher, who is living in the world today, but who has a secret identity, like Batman. I was told that in recent years, the Matreiya had done numerous TV interviews, but without revealing who he is. So you might see some guy on TV talking about UFOs or whatever, without ever realizing that you are seeing the enlightened one.  British author Benjamin Creme, who plays a sort of John the Baptist heralding the new savior, says that a bright "star" that mysteriously appears and disappears all over the world heralds the Matreiya's "immanent public appearance." They have lots of implausible photos of "the star" (one is obviously the Norway spiral UFO, a failed Russian rocket launch). If you see a bright star that you can't identify - it's his!!

Roberto Pinotti runs Italy's equivalent to MUFON, CUN. He showed many photos of UFOs from Italy and nearby countries, many of them Golden Oldies in black-and-white, including flying cigars, and Mother Ships. He seems especially fond of USOs (Unidentified Submerged Objects). It almost felt like I had fallen into a Time Warp and was listening to a talk by Major Keyhoe in the 1950s. This was a good talk for a nap.

Lynne D. Kitei, M.D., gave a very scatterbrained and rather emotional talk about the Phoenix Lights, which she seems to have adopted as her very own Cause Celebre. She told Indian legends about the area. She has seen the "orbs," or "lights," numerous times, as well as the famous mass sighting. What I never understood was why she keeps peddling the second sightings of the Phoenix lights, the Maryland Air National Guard flare drop, as if it were unexplained. It turns out that Bruce Maccabee found that the lights she had photographed were in a different position than others'. So while everyone else photographed flares, Lynn Kitei apparently photographed Real UFOs. Some of her orbs appear to be not airborne, but lights on the ground. When she is not photographing orbs, she is seeking Entanglement, atonement, AT ONE MENT, an UP, and a transformation. Can you say "New Age?"

Steve Pierce (left), Travis Walton, John Goulette

Travis Walton brought out, for the first time, two of the guys who were present when he was "abducted," Steve Pierce and John Goulette, although 25 minutes was squandered watching video clips from TV programs, and from the movie version of Travis' yarn Fire in the Sky, so they didn't have to exert themselves too hard. Travis said that it wasn't far to the 'abduction' site from the work site, as the movie makes it seem. When they saw the UFO it was less than 100 feet away. Steve described the sound it made: beep, beep, and said it lit up the sky. He said he didn't go out the next day with the police to look for Travis, he hid in his girlfriend's house. (The police, when told that Travis had 'disappeared' in the woods with a UFO, naturally assumed these guys had killed him and were making up a ridiculous alibi. Of course, Travis was hiding out someplace for five days, while his mother urged the police not to look for him.)

Travis made a big thing about the accusation that Philip J. Klass had offered Steve a bribe of $10,000 to say that the 'abduction' was a hoax, that I recently wrote about. That accusation originated with Travis' pal Mike Rogers back in 1978. When Klass read the book where that claim was made, he phoned Pierce, who told him that he thought the abduction was a hoax, but he could not prove it. Klass recorded this phone interview, as he did every significant interview, and later sent a copy to Karl Pflock upon request. Pflock quoted other comments made by Pierce suggesting a hoax. But that was not Steve's story today: absolutely yes, Klass tried to bribe me. He flew out to Texas to wine and dine me and try to persuade me. He kept following me, I had to move to like three different states, to get away from him. Of course, there is no proof that this 'new version' of Pierce's story is correct, no photos of Klass and Pierce together, no documents of any kind to back up this implausible tale.

Walton returned to the theme that Klass was a paid government disinformation agent (an idea the audience readily applauded and obviously believed). He read from the purported FBI files released about Klass, which I believe to be genuine (more on that in some later Blogging). The FBI considered prosecuting Klass on two occasions for unauthorized release of secret information. Klass was a longtime senior editor of Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine, and not for nothing was it knows as Aviation Leak. Walton told another implausible tale about a guy who contacted him claiming to have witnessed the UFO abduction from another ridge, but this guy turned out to be some sort of government agent in cahoots with Klass.

During the Q&A, my voice will be heard on the session recording, relating Pierce's earlier suspicions that the case is a hoax, and asking him why he changed his story. He claimed he didn't. Pierce explained that what happened was, he got into a feud with Mike Rogers, and so in anger he grumbled it about that the case was a hoax, but that was not true.