A Skeptic at the 2018 UFO Congress, Part 3

The first speaker on Friday was Allis Druffel, daughter of the longtime UFOlogist Ann Druffel, who at age 91 was not able to make it in to the Congress. I was surprised when I learned that Allis would be a speaker, because I was unaware that she was active in UFOlogy. I first met Allis, who now holds a Master of Vocal Performance degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, when we did a show together in San Jose in 1996. It was Gilbert and Sullivan's Utopia, Limited; she was the Princess of Utopia, while I was Sir Bailey Barre, a slippery British Barrister character.

Allis talked about some of the famous cases for which her mother was the primary investigator. The Tijunga Canyon Contacts. The classic Rex Heflin photo, which Project Blue Book concluded was a "hoax." She emphasized the "smoke ring" supposedly procuced by the UFO in Heflin's final photo, although similar smoke rings have been photographed in many places, produced by fireworks, cannons, and chimneys. She talked a lot about her mother's book Firestorm, about the life and tragic death of the controversial UFOlogist, Dr. James E. McDonald. She also told of her mother's investigations of the Rev. Harrison E. Bailey of Pasadena, who claims that two aliens entered his home, hiding behind Halloween masks. He produced a silly photo of a supposed alien in a Halloween mask, hiding behind a chair, but Ann Druffel found it credible. I replicated the Reverend's photo quite convincingly using a Halloween mask and pantyhose draped on a chair, and sent it to Ann Druffel. I told her that the aliens had visited me, too. She didn't reply.

Cropped cast photo of the 1996 production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Utopia Limited, in San Jose. Allis is seated at right, wearing her crown. I am standing at left.

Afterward I had a chance to talk with Allis, who remembered me and, of course, our production. I told her that when I first heard that her mother was writing a biography of Dr. McDonald, I was somewhat concerned, because many people were making irresponsible statements about Philip J. Klass 'driving poor Dr. McDonald to suicide.' Now it is true that Klass and McDonald were adversaries, with Klass scrutinizing McDonald's expenditures on has government contracts, that sometimes veered a bit into unauthorized UFO investigations. But Ann Druffel makes it clear that neither Klass nor any other UFOlogist had anything to do with McDonald's tragic suicide, which was triggered by his wife leaving him, a strain that McDonald simply could not bear. In fact, Druffel (who did interview Klass) tells some of the same anecdotes relating to Klass and McDonald that Klass himself told me, and to my best recollection she tells the story quite the same as he did. I told Allis I can recommend Firestorm very highly as (so far as I can tell) an accurate history of a very significant chapter of the history of UFOlogy. By the way, McDonald's papers are now available in the archives of the University of Arizona, for dedicated historical researchers.

Nancy du Tertre

Nancy de Tertre bills herself as "the Skeptical Psychic," which is an interesting oxymoron. But what she said in her talk, titled "Remote Viewing the Extraterrestrials," was anything but skeptical. She talked about the history of Remote Viewing (Uri Geller, etc.), and the different kinds of RV - CRV, ARV, ERV, etc. before getting to her own version, TSP, "tested" ESP and clairvoyance.

Is this what was Remote Viewed on Mars?

Most RV work does not involve aliens, she said, but some has. Joe McMoneagle was tasked with Remote Viewing Mars in the year one million B.C.; he saw aliens, and a civilization in ruins. Remote Viewer Pat Price found four secret UFO bases on earth, including Mt. Hayes in Alaska. Daz Smith remote viewed the Roswell Crash (many years later, since time doesn't matter to Remote Viewers), and saw two aliens inside the craft, and two outside.

She also disclosed that her new technique of TSP allows her to "bio hack" the mind of an alien, not merely to read that mind, but to actually be that alien. As in Being John Malkovich, I suppose.

Donald Schmitt - lots of Roswell books (but no Roswell slides)

Next to speak was the famous (or infamous) perennial Roswell investigator, Donald Schmitt. The title of his talk was "Did J. Allen Hynek Know the Truth About UFOs?", and by "the truth," Schmitt means "aliens."

Synopsis: "As scientific consultant to the U.S. Air Force Project Blue Book, Dr. J. Allen Hynek maintained a top security clearance and secured access to the UFO case files not explained away by the military. Such accessibility should have afforded the astrophysicist with answers not disclosed to the general public due to the constraints of national security and Hynek served the project patriotically for nineteen years. For decades the UFO  community has speculated as to what he truly knew about the phenomenon and did he share such knowledge with his compatriots within the scientific community – his “invisible college” as he assigned them. Or did he take the truth with him?"

Schmitt said that Dr. Condon probably already knew "the truth" in 1947. When Hynek asked Donald Rumsfeld (former Congressman representing Evanston, Illinois, later Secretary of Defense, and a friend of Hynek),  about UFOs, he was supposedly told "You have no right to know."

Did Hynek know "the truth," Schmitt asks in conclusion? He concludes that Hynek probably long suspected, but did not know for sure. (Having known Hynek, I find that ridiculous. For one thing, Hynek was well aware of seemingly-insurmountable problems with nuts-and-bolts alien spacecraft explanations. That's why he gravitated toward 'paranormal' and 'parallel dimensions' theories. See his book, The Edge of Reality.)

Later when I spoke with Schmitt, we compared our recollections of Hynek, and came up much the same. I asked him about the Roswell Slides, and he sounded totally penitent and apologetic about them. He said he relied too much on the "experts," and said he wrote a full and complete apology for that fiasco.

Next came a panel about "UFOs in the Entertainment Industry." Bryce Zabel suggested that Sagan, like probably Klass and Menzel, were members of the shadowy MJ-12 (assuming that such exists!). Somebody asked the panel, "Did anyone from the government ever try to influence your programming?" Bill Birnes claimed that the CIA had his TV series UFO Hunters shut down following its program exposing Area 51 (a claim he has made before). But Zabel had an interesting comment: he said that anytime a producer is working on a show with nonfiction content, somebody - perhaps a family member, or a colleague, or whoever - will try to influence the way the story is presented.

Linda Moulton Howe interviews Nick Pope for KGRA internet radio at the Congress

The final speaker on Friday was Linda Moulton Howe, who spoke on "Military Whistleblower Revelations About UFOs and An Alien Presence." She spoke about the dangers of Artificial Intelligence and "autonomous weapons," especially since 29 humans were (allegedly) killed by out-of-control robots in a robotics factory in Japan. 

UFO abductees, she said, get neural implants from the aliens, causing some of them to feel that their consciousness is being "uploaded." The aliens, who she calls "EBEs," or "EBENS," operate under a completely different system of natural laws, and travel at many times the speed of light. They are "hive minded" and telepathic. The Blonde aliens are the worst, especially the Swedes (apparently there exists a Sweden on some other planet?). 

She talked about the SERPO incident (a supposed personnel exchange between earthlings and aliens), HEPALOIDS, and the TRANTALOIDS, who can turn into Blondes, but are actually ugly insects. The dinosaurs were an 80-million year experiment by EBENS.

As in previous years, a skywatch was scheduled in the evening, led by Ben Hansen using expensive infrared equipment (that he just happens to have for sale). However, the sky was cloudy and nothing much was to be seen, so after a while I went back inside, where the film festival was underway. 

I believe they were showing the second film when I walked in, Not Alone by Scott Deschaine. It was mostly videos of the little fluffs of ice and debris that get knocked around during manned space missions, especially when thrusters fire. He was interpreting them as UFOs that "resemble living things." I was entertained to see comments by that far-out astrophysicist Rudy Schild, Emeritus Professor at the Harvard/Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics at Harvard University, concerning Edgar Mitchell's unauthorized ESP experiments while coming back from the moon on Apollo 14. Supposedly, according to Schild, it should take four seconds for light (or ESP) to travel to the moon, but Mitchell and his communicator shared ESP results in approximately one second. Therefore, ESP seems to travel faster than light.

And I thought to myself, this is very interesting. Here we have an astrophysicist who does not seem to know the speed of light. Or else, an astrophysicist who has no idea of the distance to the moon. At the moon's average distance from earth of about 239,000 miles, it takes light approximately 1.3 seconds to travel from earth to the moon.