A Skeptic at the 2018 UFO Congress, Part 1

So, once again I am attending this year's International UFO Congress in Fountain Hills, Arizona, near Phoenix, sometimes billed as the world's largest UFO conference (although Contact in the Desert seems to have overtaken it). I won't necessarily discuss every speaker, or every movie shown, just the more interesting ones.

T. L. Keller

The first speaker on Wednesday, the first day, was T. L. Keller, who worked as a computer systems analyst at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. His talk was titled Spacecraft Carriers – Extraterrestrial or Terrestrial? Assuming, of course, that Spacecraft Carriers (like Aircraft Carriers, but much larger) actually exist. His "research" is based on such credible sources as George Adamski, Michael Salla of Exopolitics, Bill Tompkins, Steven Greer, and Felix Dzherzinsky. (Keller said that he had reservations about Adamski's claims of UFO contact, but British author Timothy Good assured him that Adamski's stories are substantially true.) After all, the UFO that abducted Travis Walton was itself a "spacecraft carrier," by his own account. Keller showed a number of blurry and dubious photos, in addition to Adamski's photos, and the Petit-Rechain hoax photo from Belgium. His hypothesis: Both E.T. and human Spacecraft Carriers exist, using anti-gravity technology. There are human bases on the moon, and on Mars.

Cheryl Costa

The next speaker was MUFON's Cheryl Costa, who started out with an informal presentation of dubious and mostly blurry UFO photos. As for shapes of UFOs, she showed that there are dozens of them. Statistics have shown that the number of UFO reports in recent years has been going up, up, and up. She presented statistics broken down by states and counties. It appears that leisure time and temperate weather correlate with a greater number of UFO sightings (which should not come as a surprise). One result of her statistical analysis is that UFOs are not hanging out around nuclear reactors.

Cheryl said that she talks regularly with Ralph Blumenthal (co-author with Leslie Kean of the New York Times story about "Glowing auras" and the Pentagon UFO business), who promises that there is much more info coming.

Great Big Alien

Dr. Bob Gross

Dr. Bob Gross spoke next. His main claim is that the Kecksburg "crashed UFO" was supposedly an errant film canister from a just-launched Corona spy satellite. It supposedly was maneuvring all around changing direction, and dropped hot debris that started grass fires. He heavily relies on Ventre and Eichler (2015), who had a similar wacked-out theory about an errant missile launch.  Unfortunately for Gross, the once top-secret Corona project files, declassified and released after about 30 years, completely contradict all of his claims. Both of the film buckets were recovered in the Pacific Ocean two days later (and not in a forest in Pennsylvania). But Gross has a ready answer for this: the files were all faked. And of course, no way would the film bucket have sufficient propulsion to enable it fly thousands of miles off-course, and zig-zag all about. The zig-zagging is deduced from eyewitness accounts, which Gross calls "direct evidence." Gross, a relative newcomer to UFOology, has a lot to learn about "reliable witness testimony"!

He says that a "nuclear experiment" was on board, and implies that it was radioactive and dangerous. He already knows that's not true, because we went over this argument a few months earlier. The experiment was a "nuclear emulsion," which is not itself radioactive. It is just a film plate sent up to try to capture cosmic ray strike images. He also claimed that the earth had an artificial radiation belt created by nuclear testing, which would come as a surprise to most space scientists.

 Hollywood writer and producer Bryce Zabel, who spoke to the UFO Congress in 2012, spoke about "Fear and Loathing on the Trail of the Saucers." It was his personal account of 25 years of making many UFO and alien themed programs for movies and TV, including Dark Skies on NBC (1996). His main "bombshell," such as it was, was to reveal the name of the government official who reportedly confessed to working in an a secret underground lab near Washington, DC where aliens are kept. This confession was revealed 30 years ago to Zabel's colleague and partner Brent Friedman, and the name of the government official reportedly was - ta da - John S. Herrington, former Secretary of Energy in Ronald Reagan's second term. Apparently Mr. Herrington is still living, although I was not able to find an email address to contact him for his version of the story. Perhaps some enterprising researcher will be able to contact him to confirm or deny this.