Mike Rogers Says that he is "No Longer to be Considered a Witness to Travis Walton's Supposed UFO Abduction"

 On March 19, 2021, Michael H. Rogers posted the following image to his personal Facebook page:

What exactly does this mean? Mike Rogers was the guy driving the truck at the time Travis Walton reportedly ran out into the woods toward a UFO, and was abducted by aliens.

Now on Rogers' Facebook page, he refers to "Walton's supposed abduction," but is rather vague about exactly what that means. Several people, including myself, have asked Rogers to please clarify what he is saying. Jay Michael asked him, "Are you saying the event didn't happen, or you no longer want to be associated with it?", Rogers replied "I want nothing more to do with Big-T specifically. The event most definitely happened, from our perspective anyway." Whatever that means. 

Replying to a post saying, "It is unfortunate that after all of these years you have chosen to say that the abduction never happened," Rogers said "I am not saying it didn't, Chuck. We witnesses all took polygraph tests, remember. All I have said is 'supposed'. Like in Yippee Maybe. All I mean by supposed is like 'still steaming pasture pie' maybe." So maybe the abduction did happen, and maybe it didn't. And maybe it's a still-steaming pile of manure.

Later, Rogers writes, "I am sure I will loose (sic) a lot of friends over this, but I hope not. I have been waiting a very long time to say this...  I am very tired of holding this in."

In a reply to this same posting on the Facebook group Desert Hart Paranormal, Rogers says, "Travis tried to keep a new remake of the movie a secret from me. He has always had his big secrets that he has kept from me. It angered me. I tried over the last two weeks to reason with Big-T, but of no avail. I don't believe Travis is an honest person, and therefore I want nothing to do with him." This brings to mind what Steve Pierce, another member of the woodcutters' crew, said about Travis:

Travis is the most ignorant, stupid person I've ever met in my life. He ain't got enough sense, you know the book he wrote, he couldn't have wrote that book by himself. He ain't got enough common sense to write that book." (It was widely rumored that John G. Fuller, author of The Interrupted Journey and other rather sensationalist books, was Walton's ghost writer.) 

Pierce also says that he never liked Travis in the first place, and explains why..

Some are suggesting that this is just a spate involving money between former friends, in fact, in-laws (Travis Walton is (or was) married to Mike Rogers' sister. I hope this is not just another episode of Family Feud.).

However, Rogers' statement can be interpreted another way: He seems to be saying that he will no longer vouch for Travis' account of the event. Travis' story is either a "real" alien abduction, or else it is a hoax. There is no other reasonable possibility. Rogers was in a position to know with certainty whether or not it was a hoax. In fact, if Travis' story is a hoax, Rogers must have helped him plan it and pull it off.

On March 20, Travis Walton wrote on Rogers' Facebook Page "In his sudden attacks on me he wants attention and it's working." To which Rogers replied, "Travis Walton, You hope? But they are right, get off my page, or I will get even more truthful. All I tell is the truth about you, Big 'liar' T."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update May 8, 2021:

Travis Walton:

I, Travis Walton, apologize to Mike Rogers (and any others who might have been offended by the exchange) for negative things I have said about him during the last few years.

I asked Rogers,

Does this mean that you are, once again, "considered a witness to Travis C. Walton's supposed abduction of November 5, 1975"?

He replied,

I always was Travis Walton's main witness, Robert the unrelenting skeptic. How could I not be? I was just trying to get his undivided attention, and it worked. 

OK!

Bill Cooper's Conspiracies - Aliens, 9-11, and Q-Anon?

Conspiracy theorist Milton William Cooper (1943-2001) is well-known to longtime UFOlogists, although he might not be so well-known among relative newcomers. His significance extends out well beyond UFOlogy, into political conspiracy culture, where his influence is still felt today.

"Nearly 30 years after its [1991] publication,
“Behold a Pale Horse” remains a bestseller"

I was just recently made aware of a very important article published in the Arizona Republic last October 1, titled ‘Behold a Pale Horse’ planted seeds of QAnon conspiracy theory, by Richard Ruelas and Rob O'Dell. The article had been posted to Facebook by the longtime UFO researcher Norio Hayakawa, who lives near Albuqurque, New Mexico. Hayakawa used to be an associate of Cooper, when Cooper's conspiracies centered on UFOs and aliens, before Cooper moved on to 'secret Government' conspiracies. Hayakawa wrote,

Bill Cooper was also a troubled individual, deep inside. There was a dark side to his complex personality – – he was extremely short-tempered and had a problem with alcoholism. When he first started giving lectures at UFO meetings and conferences (beginning in 1989), he insisted that one day he had witnessed a sub-merged disc-shaped object rising out of the sea while on a Navy ship during the time he was in military service.

This claim has never been collaborated by any other witness except himself. But he had already included this story in the book. I am not saying that he did not see the disc-shaped object. He could have seen it. The bottom line is that by the time he wrote his book, he had long come to the conclusion that all UFOs are man-made objects created by the government.

I never met Cooper personally, but I heard him give several talks at UFO conferences. I clearly remember him telling that story about how a USO (Unidentified Submersible Object) allegedly rose up out of the water one night, in full view of everyone on his ship. In his book he says, "I had seen a flying saucer the size of an aircraft carrier come right out of the ocean and fly into the clouds" (p. 19).

Bill Cooper

I also witnessed Cooper in action, interacting with people in the lobby, and in small groups. I found him to be a most unpleasant character, who had an air of belligerence about him. Later I heard stories about how Cooper allegedly got into an actual fistfight at a conference with longtime paranormal Bigfoot advocate Erik Beckjord. (Each was something of a hothead.) I asked Beckjord if that was true; he confirmed that it was.  

Cooper was killed on November 6, 2001, when the Apache County Sheriff’s Office attempted to serve him with a warrant for aggravated assault. Cooper allegedly pulled a gun on a neighbor. When the officers approached him, Cooper fired at them, gravely wounding one officer. The other officers returned fire, immediately killing Cooper. Authors Ruelas and O'Dell write,

When authorities killed William Cooper in a burst of gunfire outside his hilltop home in eastern Arizona, he was an author and radio host who had attracted a rabid following among UFO buffs, prisoners and the militia movement. For them, his book, “Behold a Pale Horse,” and nightly shortwave radio show lifted the veil on how the world actually works.

Through his death in 2001, Cooper’s legacy was cemented. He was seen as a sage and legend. His book would become a defining text for conspiracy-minded people. What might have otherwise been seen as an amateurish hodgepodge of ideas earned gravitas once its author was gunned down.... Nearly 30 years after its publication, “Behold a Pale Horse” remains a bestseller, finding new audiences for whom Cooper’s warnings — of a cashless society, a socialist order that devalues work, the confiscation of weapons, global leadership usurping the sovereignty of the United States — still resonate.

In another part of that article, written last year, Ruelas and O'Dell actually interviewed the now-famous "Buffalo Horn Man" who would later invade the U.S. Capitol on January 6, finding him to be a disciple of Bill Cooper:

Buffalo Horn Man is a disciple of Bill Cooper.

One adherent, Jake Angeli, has intentionally made a spectacle of himself by appearing at Arizona protests wearing a fur hat topped with horns and carrying a weathered sign that reads, “Q sent me.” Angeli said he has researched the secretive groups he believes control the world — Illuminati, Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg group, among others — and felt validated by finding Cooper mentioned them in his book.

Angeli said that the government needed to kill Cooper to silence him.

“When you really do enough research, it all ties together,” he said.

 

The authors make a good case that Cooper's ideas are a foundation for the currently-popular conspiracy theories that make up Q-Anon.

Nor is Q-Anon Cooper's only legacy. The authors point out that

In June 2001, Cooper would make a prediction that would earn him the legacy as the man who predicted the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Cooper pulled on historical threads of tragic events and tied them to what he saw as the government and media colluding to make a boogeyman out of Osama bin Laden. Cooper predicted an awful event would soon occur in the United States and that the country’s leaders would blame it on bin Laden.

On Sept. 11, 2001, the day his prophecy was realized, Cooper stayed on air for 10 hours. According to audio archived on the Cooper tribute website, BeholdAMessenger, in the initial hours after the attack, Cooper theorized the towers of the World Trade Center came down by controlled demolition. That theory would become the center of future conspiracies suggesting the 9/11 terrorism attacks were an inside job by the U.S. government.

That would make Bill Cooper the Founding Father of the "9/11 Truth" movement, which posits a nefarious "false flag" operation behind the attacks. And Timothy McVeigh, the mastermind of the attack on the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, was also apparently a disciple of Bill Cooper.

Cooper's 1991 book Behold a Pale Horse is a mishmash of absurdities. A few of these should give you the flavor of it. It is impossible for any thinking person to take it seriously:

• UFOs apparently kidnapped an entire Vietnamese village during the Vietnam War (p. 25).
• "Between January 1947 and December 1952 at least 16 crashed or downed alien craft, 65 alien bodies, and 1 live alien were recovered...a large number of human body parts [were] stored within both of these vehicles" (p. 196-7).
  
• He names as CIA agents Stanton Friedman, John Lear, William Moore, John Keel, Charles Berlitz, Bruce Maccabee, Linda Moulton Howe, Philip J. Klass, James Moseley, Wendelle Stevens, J. Allen Hynek, Whitley Strieber, and Budd Hopkins, among others (p. 228-9). I feel slighted to have been left off this list, all the Best People are on it. 😩
  
• "At some point, President Kennedy discovered portions of the truth concerning the drugs and the aliens...President John F. Kennedy was murdered by the Secret Service agent who drove his car in the motorcade and the act is plainly visible in the Zapruder film" (p. 215).
• "We currently have, and fly, atomic-powered antigravity-type craft in Nevada." (p. 221).
  
• "There are areas on the Moon where plant life grows and even changes color with the seasons. This seasonal effect is because the Moon does not, as claimed, always present the exact same side to the Earth, or to the Sun." (p. 221)
  

Much of the book is composed of material coming from somewhere or someone else. Chapter 15 of Behold a Pale Horse consists of a facsimile image of the notorious hoax document "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." However, in an introduction Cooper explains "any reference to "Jews" should be be replaced with the word "Illuminati"; and the word "goyim" should be replaced with the word "cattle". Nonetheless, he claims that "Every aspect of this plan to subjugate the world has already since become reality, validating the authenticity of conspiracy" (p. 267).

Chapter 11 is "Coup de Grace. High Crimes & Misdemeanors. Treason Committed by the Joint Chiefs. Phone Conversation with Randall Terpstra" (p. 183). I almost fell out of my chair when I first saw that, because I knew Randy Terpstra. Our paths had crossed when we both worked for what was then called IBM's ROLM Systems Division in Santa Clara, California, approximately 1986. After we met and I'd told him a little about my skeptical writings, especially UFOs, Terpstra began hinting at knowing a lot of things in terms of intelligence secrets and such. Of course he coldn't say much. I remember one time mentioning to him my interest in Numbers Stations, apparently used by governments to send messages to spies in 'deep cover' (or perhaps to spoof the adversary into believing that spies are embedded there?). He claimed to know all about them, what agencies use them, where they transmit from, etc. But he didn't say much.

 

Cooper recorded his phone call from Terpstra, and put a transcript of it in Behold a Pale Horse. He apparently also sometimes played the recording in his lectures or workshops. Terpstra told Cooper tales about "Identified Alien Craft" that the government was, of course, covering up (p. 186). I cannot imagine why he thought that Terpstra's phone call, with its unsupported claims, proved anything at all.

About 85 people attended Cooper's funeral, some having traveled a long way. One of the speakers there was Norio Hayakawa, who said,

The world will always remember Bill Cooper as an egotistic, paranoia monger.  Indeed, to many he was perhaps an arrogant, obnoxious, choleric, self-aggrandizing, rude, vitriolic and vengeful person.  Perhaps he was all of this and much more.  But no matter how negative his personality is described to be, we must admit the fact that he did indeed make a tremendous impact among hundreds, if not, thousands of his listeners, whether in front of his astounded lecture audiences or through his “shocking” radio programs....

Besides his other numerous negative traits, Bill had an uncontrollable alcoholic problem. But despite his eccentric, obnoxious personality, deep in his heart I believe that he wanted to be a good person.  Unfortunately he brought an end to his tumultuous life by his self-fulfilling prophecy through his violent act.  My heart goes out to Annie and the children.  (My heart also goes out to the young deputy who was seriously injured in that confrontation. Bill will have to answer to God for that.)  May God forgive and bless the soul of one Milton William “Bill” Cooper.”

Happy, Crazy UFO New Year!

Well, it's finally 2021, and so that means the crazy old year has run its course, and a new crazy year is beginning. So what is happening in the Land of UFOOlogy as we begin this new year?

"To The Stars Academy" (TTSA) is unraveling. For whatever reason, its best-known people have bailed out. Luis Elizondo, Chris Mellon, and Steve Justice have all announced their departure from TTSA. Biologist Garry Nolan had bailed out previously. Elizondo told George Knapp on Coast-to-Coast AM that “TTSA, it’s no secret, also focuses on its entertainment division and, you know, let’s face it, guys like Chris Mellon and Steve Justice and myself, we’re not entertainers.”

So who is left? So far no word from Hal Puthof on whether he is in or out. And there still is, of course, TTSA founder and rockstar, Tom DeLonge. This cannot be good news for the "investors" (or "suckers") who bought shares in the company. Of course, TTSA still has their "entertainment" division, which perhaps can whip up sufficient interest in its movies and other performances to keep the company viable. But that seems unlikely to me; competition from Star Wars sequels and prequels will be tough for them to beat. In recent months, DeLonge has been kept out of public view for TTSA, obviously a deliberate policy. I don't have any inside information on what is happening at TTSA, but it would seem to be obvious that Elizondo et. al have concluded that DeLonge is a fool, and is an impediment to having their UFO claims taken seriously. The video below shows exactly what the problem is.

 

 Dude, where's my Saucer?

Government "UAP Report" promised in 180 days!  As explained by CNN,

The director of National Intelligence and the secretary of defense have a little less than six months now to provide the congressional intelligence and armed services committees with an unclassified report about "unidentified aerial phenomena." It's a stipulation that was tucked into the "committee comment" section of the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, which was contained in the massive spending bill.

That report must contain detailed analyses of UFO data and intelligence collected by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and the FBI, according to the Senate intelligence committee's directive. It should also describe in detail "an interagency process for ensuring timely data collection and centralized analysis of all unidentified aerial phenomena reporting for the Federal Government" and designate an official responsible for that process. Finally, the report should identify any potential national security threats posed by UFOs and assess whether any of the nation's adversaries could be behind such activity, the committee said.

Some people are, of course, interpreting this to mean "Disclosure" of aliens, or something. What it probably means is that the Pentagon will take statements they have issued before, weave them into a nice, impressive report, and release it with great fanfare. But signifying nothing.

 

The Black Vault Hosts Complete Collection of CIA UFO FIles. John Greenewald Jr. of The Black Vault has filed thousands of FOIA requests over the years, many of them needing to be pried from government agencies in a process akin to pulling teeth, and published the results. Now John has made a major document dump, UFOs: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Collection. He explains,

Originally, the CIA would only release about 1,000 pages that had been previously disclosed after a FOIA court case in the 1980s. They never addressed the records that were dated in the years after the case.

The Black Vault spent years fighting for them, and many were released in the late 1990s. However, over time, the CIA made a CD-ROM collection of UFO documents, which encompassed the original records, along with the ones that took years to fight for.

In an effort to make sure The Black Vault stayed up to date, in mid 2020, this CD-ROM was purchased to have one particular data dump available for all users of The Black Vault. You will find this below for download in its original state, along with a converted/searchable .pdf format. (Although the CIA claims this is their “entire” collection, there may be no way to entirely verify that. Research by The Black Vault will continue to see if there are additional documents still uncovered within the CIA’s holdings.)

I opened a file at random from the Black Vault's CIA document collection (C05515646.pdf), and this is the first page I saw. Happy reading!

[Update January 13:] Martin Kottmeyer notes that the case blacked out above is almost certainly the one described in this posting by James Oberg, who explains,

King Hassan of Morocco asks Henry Kissinger to identify glowing cylindrical UFO seen moving northward off the North African coast. Kissinger replies might be a meteor or an undocumented satellite on reentry into atmosphere.

Almost forty years later, two amateur satellite trackers use new software and new access to old data bases to validate Kissinger’s hunch and tag the object as the motor assembly of a Russian rocket
stage (1976-074C / 09051) for the Molniya 1-35 launch.

I cannot imagine any reason to censor such a document, except perhaps that the "personal request" came from the King of Morocco.

 

 

Disclosure Strikes Again!

As regular readers of this Blog surely know, as well as anyone else who has been following the UFO scene for more then a short time, episodes of Disclosure Mania are regular occurrences. Many in UFOOLogy get very excited, and proclaim their expectation that sometime very soon, the government will "disclose" what they know about UFOs and aliens. Of course, that never happens. We recently experienced one such episode in July, and  now are in the midst of yet another. Unsurprisingly, it was "UFO Jesus" on November 24 leading the way:

 It was also hinted at on November 13 by UFO filmmaker James Fox,

Well, "UFO Jesus"  hit it right on the head. Something happened on December 2, but it wasn't "disclosure." There was an article by Tim McMillan published on-line in The Debrief, called "Fast Movers and Transmedium Vehicles -  The Pentagon's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force." Like most articles supposedly "disclosing" something, it was a huge disappointment. What did we learn from the article?

• Classified breifings were held recently for Senators by the Pentagon's "UAP" Task Force. But we already knew that.
• Unnamed supposedly high officials "told The Debrief that there was much more going on behind closed doors." Inspecific claims from unnamed persons.
  
• "Multiple sources confirmed for The Debrief that the UAPTF had issued two classified intelligence position reports, which one individual described as “shocking.” ". Unnamed sources making unnamed "shocking" claims.
• Then we are treated to an embedded YouTube video of a supposed UFO video taken at the Nellis AFB Range by government contractors in 1994, which had already appeared on national TV shows in 1995. The relevance of this video to whatever is supposedly happening in Washington now is: none whatsoever. In fact, if you watch this video from about 7:00 on, it is clearly seen to be a fly, bee, or other insect hovering in front of the camera. You can even see its wings flapping. It looks very much like another famous Fly UFO video, of which Leslie Kean has been a big promoter. 
  

Irrelevant embedded "UAP video" in the article, from Nellis in 1994. Appears to be another Fly UFO.

• "One of the intelligence reports, released in 2018, is said to have provided a general overview of the UAP topic and included details of previous military encounters. According to sources who had read it, the report also contained an unreleased photograph of an “aerial phenomena” categorized as “unidentified.” The Debrief was told the accompanying photo was captured from within the cockpit of an F/A-18 fighter jet with a pilot’s personal cell phone. According to three U.S. officials who had seen it, the photo showed an unidentified silver “cube-shaped” object. The report is said to have indicated the object was “hovering” or completely motionless when military pilots encountered it." So, unnamed sources say that there is an unreleased photo of a UFO from a fighter jet. Wow!!
• But it gets better: "Overwhelmingly, everyone The Debrief spoke with said the most striking feature of the recently released UAPTF intelligence position report was the inclusion of new and “extremely clear” photograph of an unidentifiable triangular aircraft. The photograph, which is said to have also been taken from inside the cockpit of a military fighter jet, depicted an apparent aerospace vehicle described as a large equilateral triangle with rounded or “blunted” edges and large, perfectly spherical white “lights” in each corner. Officials who had seen it said the image was captured in 2019 by an F/A-18 fighter pilot. Two officials that received the report said the photo was taken after the triangular craft emerged from the ocean and began to ascend straight upwards at a 90-degree angle. It was indicated that this event occurred off the eastern coast of the United States. Several other sources confirmed the photo’s existence; however, they declined to provide any further specifics of the incident." So, more unnamed officials commenting on an unseen photograph. Double wow!

McMillan's article gives us an artist's recreation of what the reported "triangular aircraft" looks like:

 Fans of Disclosure and  "To The Stars," like Chris Mellon, praised McMillan's article as "A must-read article for anyone interested in US national security. Excellent work." On the other hand, blogger Jason Colavito wrote "New Article Claims Military Has "Clear" Photo of Flying Triangle Rising from Ocean," calling McMillan's article "a bit shaggy and at times somewhat unclear."

But lo, the very next day McMillan publishes a second article in that same publication, titled "Leaked Photo Surfaces of Purported Unidentified Aerial Phenomena." In it, we see the photo itself, here greatly enlarged:

 The leaked photo of an "unidentifiable triangular aircraft," included in the "UAPTF intelligence position report". 

Frankly, it looks like a balloon to me. The longtime British UFO researcher Isaac Koi noted the amazing similarity of this leaked "triangular UFO" (center) to a Batman Balloon made of Mylar:

Of course, the balloon might have had Superman on it, or Spider Man. We can't resolve it clearly enough to tell.

So this is all it takes to baffle the Pentagon's "UAP experts:" a mylar balloon, and a fly. Thus endeth the latest episode of Disclosure Follies. No doubt many more episodes will follow.

Once again, believers in "Disclosure" end up disappointed.

Here Comes - PROOF!

PROOF is a paranormal-themed TV show. In May of 2019 I went up to Hollywood to be filmed for this show, and frankly had all but forgotten about it. A few weeks ago, I asked myself "Whatever has happened to that show? I guess it did not succeed?"

Well, its first season (and perhaps only season) has just been released on Amazon Prime. At present, it is not available anywhere else. It has thirteen episodes. So far I have only watched Episode 5 (ShadowPeople), which is the first episode I appear in. I also appear in Episodes 6 (Cryptids), and 11 (Weather Control). 

Imagine that, not believing in Shadow People!

The format of the show is along these lines: some rather flaky claims are made by people that serious researchers would haardly find credible. Several of them have paranormal YouTube channels, the kind that millennials watch in the course of doing "research." The proponents have most of the time to present their claims. Then skeptics are given a somewhat briefer opportunity to try to refute them. I was introduced as a "Mathematician and Astronomer." I told them I majored in math at the university, so I guess that makes me a "mathematician." One does use math in writing software, which I've done a lot of. As for "astronomer," I suppose that sort of describes me, although I've always been just an amateur.

It is good to be "Starring" in anything, even if my name is spelled wrong.

In this episode, I talked about sleep paralysis and how it applies to people who think that supernatural entities are barging into their bedrooms and holding them immobile. But who am I to argue with Shauna Grace, who is a "Celebrity Psychic" and "Empath Specialist"???

Other skeptics appearing are Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society in Episodes 2 (Miracles), 4 (Denver Airport Conspiracy), and 9 (EVP), and James Underdown of the CFIIG  in Episodes 7 (Secret Societies), 10 (Demonic Possession), and 12 (Alien Abduction). I arranged to meet up with Shermer at the close of the day's filming, and we had a nice chat.

If you are curious to watch this, Amazon Prime will give you a 30 day free preview, after which you can cancel if you don't like the service. Each episode is 25 minutes long, which I assume was intended to fit into a 30 minute slot with 5 minutes of commercials. Presumably they were hoping to run the series, with commercials, on the "History" Channel or other major cable channel. When viewing it on Amazon Prime, there are no commercials, suggesting that Amazon paid less for the show than the producers were hoping to get, as it won't be bringing in advertising revenue. It's a dog-eat-dog media world!

The Ghost and Ms. Kean

Probably many readers are already aware that the well-known UFO writer Leslie Kean has of late been dabbling in the supernatural, specifically claims of Life After Death. Kean has been co-author of all of those recent New York Times articles about Navy UFO investigations and the like. Her 2010 book  UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record claims to tell us about "‘Unexplained’ Cases" - but only if you ignore all explanations.  Her latest book, published in 2017, is Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence of an Afterlife.

Well, Kean seems to be following the old example of going farther and farther out on a limb. Her latest metaphysical infatuation seems to be a Scottish doctor who lived two hundred years ago, brought back to solid flesh and blood (at least temporarily) by the skills of one Stewart Alexander, a physical medium operating in the UK. Not a lot of public information is available about Mr. Alexander; he seems to be keeping a low profile, choosing his clientele carefully. In one account of one of Alexander's seances published in 2011, we read

Ray said a prayer and a lovely piece of music was played while Stewart went into trance. It was only a few minutes before we heard the first voice come through Stewart. It was White Feather, Stewart’s North American Indian guide. He is the first and last to speak in every séance. He greeted everyone and said, “…for a while we shall endeavor to remove the barrier between our two worlds so that once again, within this place of infinite love, we may converse together. We may once again be together as one united whole.” He told us that he spoke few words because there was so much to be done, and then he was gone.

Christopher was the next to come through. He is very likable and fun. He is responsible for relaxing the atmosphere and soon had everyone laughing. He told us he was there to entertain us as everything was being made ready.

Walter Stinson was the next to come through. Walter is a Canadian by birth and was the brother of the famous Boston physical medium from the 1920s and 30s known to the world as Margery. Stewart told us before the séance that Walter is largely responsible for creating the physical phenomena and is in control of experimentation and further development within the home circle. He is also quite a ladies’ man with a good sense of humor. He uses laughter to raise the energy in the room....

We heard a new sound and Ray explained that a voice box was forming between Stewart and Carol. We were told that Dr. Barnett usually uses a voice box, which is formed from ectoplasm and used to produce his audible voice. (Dr. Franklin Barnett is a 19th-century Scottish physician who worked with American trumpet medium George Valentine) Barnett’s voice finally became audible and he told us that he was speaking through a device that they have created. He told us that it takes a great deal of energy to accomplish this and that often, when he is finally able to vibrate our atmosphere with his thoughts, there is little energy left for the communication. 

That's a pretty impressive assembly. Where would any medium worth his salt be without a North American Indian guide to lead us to the Spirit World?

Recently Ms. Kean was interviewed by Michael Tymn, who writes about spiritualism. She told him that she has "absolutely no doubt, not one iota," that Alexanders' manifestations are genuine.

Stewart demonstrated his unusual abilities over many years with a variety of elaborate physical restraints, visible knee markers, and with his hands held on both sides. His mediumship was scrutinized by many astute investigators in multiple locations in different countries, always in spaces under the complete control of others. Hundreds of people have attended sittings with him over the decades. No major controversies or claims of fraud have been made concerning Stewart’s mediumship in the past forty years. That’s because there isn’t any.....

In May, 2019, I experienced a full form materialization in a seance with Stewart. His communicator Dr. Barnett, who normally speaks in independent voice, walked out of the cabinet, stood in front of me and touched my hair. He then placed both his large hands on top of my head, bouncing them up and down for about a minute and a half. (That’s a long time). These were solid “living” hands. He spoke in his recognizable voice. “I just wanted to let you know that I am a solid human being,” he said. He then returned to the cabinet and disappeared.

She noted how she had written in her Epilogue to Alexander's book An Extraordinary Journey:

The mind can barely grasp the fantastical nature of a human form emerging from ectoplasm, walking, talking, touching, and then receding back to from where he came.  And where is that? Dr. Barnett says he once lived on this earth. Is this materialization proof that we survive physical death? Or does it mean something else? I don’t think we can answer that question with any degree of certainty. But this experience will live with me forever.

The only problem with this is that other, perhaps less careful mediums have been detected in fraud using these very same methods, in some of the same locations. Our sort-of-sister site Bad Psychics reports, Gary Mannion Secretly recorded cheating in the seance room at The Banyan Retreat Spiritualist Centre.  He writes,

Nicolas Whitham from Banyan Retreat (Address: Lake House, Maidstone Road, Ashford, Kent, United Kingdom) has secretly recorded Gary Mannion faking spirit activity in the seance room!

Now Whitman created a website anonymously (which I will not link too) and posted a load of videos, I dig some digging and found out he was behind it, I am guessing he and Mannion had some kind of dispute so Nicolas decided to stitch Mannion up, and break the age old spiritualist code of exposing one of your own.

Basically you get long boring videos of Gary Mannion exiting his spirit cabinet, wondering around the room, touching people on the head, waving a spirit trumpet about ala Colin Fry, But he also gets naked which is rather disturbing!

Kean's spiritualist guru Stewart Alexander has also produced manifestations in that same seance room. In the illustration below, a sitter illustrates what is supposed to have happened in the dark (but not seen) in one of Stewart Alexander's seances.

"With help and advice from Dr. Barnett (in Spirit), the illustration [above] has been created to show what we would probably see if light was introduced during trumpet phenomena." 

 

Here is a really entertaining video of medium Warren Caylor performing in front of an audience, secretly recorded in Toronto, Canada, 2014. I love how he struggles and grunts his way through this!

So it does seem that Mr. Alexander has been producing his 'spirit effects' in the same manner as other mediums whose trickery has already been exposed. Unless Alexander can produce his miraculous manifestations in a way that genuinely precludes trickery, there is absolutely no reason to conclude that any of his "manifestations" are real. But every reason to conclude that Leslie Kean is very gullible. Keep that in mind the next time you read her claims about UFOs (or UAPs) in the New York Times.

And while the Amazing Randi has passed on, and his Million Dollar Psychic Challenge with him, we should not forget that our friends at the Center For Inquiry Investigations Group (CFIIG) in Los Angeles still offer a $250,000.00 award for proof of psychic powers under properly controlled conditions, which is not too shabby.  Any medium or other supposed psychic who genuinely had such powers could pass such a challenge (the specifics of the test are always negotiated very carefully beforehand by both sides), bringing not only fortune but fame, and more importantly, vindication. That person would be in a position to say to the world, "See? I really do have these powers!" And probably have the biggest new story of the century. But the "psychics" we keep hearing so much about scrupulously avoid such testing, because they know they are phonies, and don't want to get caught.

[Update January 19, 2021]: It turns out that Leslie Kean has also been interviewed twice by "Goop", Gwyneth Paltrow's goofy new-agey venture (which sella a "vagina candle" that recently exploded).

 

Remembering the Amazing One (1928-2020)

Probably most readers have already heard about the death of magician and skeptic James "The Amazing" Randi on October 20, at the age of 92. He was probably the best-known, and the most influential of all skeptics. Probably also the most universally loved and admired by skeptics, like a cuddly little gnome. (He wasn't always that short - he got shorter as he aged.) Of course, many believers in psychics and such hold Randi in total contempt - quite unfairly, in my view.

Randi with Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society, and yours truly, at one of the Amazing Meetings.
(Photo by Susan Gerbic.)

I won't try to give you a biography of Randi - there are many places to find that. You can also find out a lot about Randi from the 2014 documentary film about him, An Honest Liar.

Having been involved in organized skepticism since almost the very beginning, I will talk a little about the man I knew, who I first met in 1977. He was already quite famous at this time, owing to his confrontations with Uri Geller. Yet he was sincerely glad to meet me and spend time talking about UFOs, psychic claims, and other stuff.  He was endlessly entertaining. One thing that I don't think has been emphasised enough was just how entertaining Randi was. In private, Randi was nearly always telling jokes, usually at the expense of some  paranormal claim or promoter. Hanging out with Randi meant nonstop entertainment.

It may surprise many people to learn that Randi was a longtime friend of UFOlogist James Moseley, who was  pretty entertaining in his own right, and didn't take things too seriously. In fact, Randi accompanied Moseley on one of his grave-robbing trips to South America. Moseley wrote about such trips in his very interesting book, Shockingly Close to the Truth - Confessions of a Grave-Robbing UFOlogist. Years on, they both remembered this trip fondly, although they apparently were no longer on speaking terms. Randi was also an old friend of John Keel, promoter of Mothman and other weird tales, howevermuch that might blow some peoples' minds. When I was in Manhattan to speak at the 1980 National UFO Conference, Randi (who was still living in New Jersey at that time) dropped by to say hello. (He didn't register for the conference.) I had been talking with John Keel in the bar, where he seemed most at home. Randi and Keel had a nice moment, a reunion of old friends.

Later in 1980, I moved from the D.C. area to San Jose, California, and soon met Bob Steiner, also a CSICOP Fellow, and a professional magician. Together we founded the Bay Area Skeptics in 1982, and held some very fine organizational parties in Steiner's apartment near Berkeley. Steiner was a CPA as well, and always did Randi's taxes (preparing tax returns for performers like Randi is quite different from doing ordinary folks' taxes). Steiner and Randi got together a lot, even though they lived on opposite coasts. Sometimes I joined them, and it was always great fun.

Bob Steiner with J. Allen Hynek and Philip J. Klass 
(CSICOP Conference, Stanford, 1984. Photo by Gary Posner).

 

In 1982, Randi wrote Flim-Flam, a book about "Psychics, ESP, Unicorns and other Delusions." It has since become something of a skeptics' cult classic. In it, Randi writes about some of his investigations of psychics, of UFO claims, and many other things. My name appears in the index eight times, discussing: the Cottingley Fairies, the Betty-Barney Hill "UFO abduction," claims by Vallee and Hynek, and the testing of "psychic" Rosemary DeWitt.

One rather sad chapter in skepticism that people now seem to have forgotten was how Randi was, in essence, booted from CSICOP about 1990, because he had sort of become radioactive. Randi had been doggedly pursuing Uri Geller and his extraordinary claims since the early 1970s. At first Geller seemed to shrug it all off, as it sometimes frankly gave Geller free publicity. But sometime in the 1980s, Geller's strategy changed, and he began to sue Randi for defamation in practically every court where such a filing could be made. Since truth is a defense against libel, and since statements of opinion are not actionable, and since Geller was clearly a public figure who thus had a very high bar to prove actual malice, Geller never won any payments from Randi. But the court costs of defending against such legal harassment were very high, and it was a very messy affair. Because Randi was a CSICOP Fellow, many of the suits named CSICOP as co-defendant (as many law professors teach their students, "sue everybody" when you file). So Randi was pushed out of CSICOP as a form of self-defense. 

My name appears eight times in the pages of Flim-Flam.

 

 

 

Now on his own, Randi founded the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), which soon became popular in skeptics' circles. Randi wanted me to write a column for JREF about UFO investigations, but I told him I could not do it at the time. I was working full-time as a software engineer in the Silicon Valley, and with family obligations I just couldn't take on anything more. I felt bad about this. Randi did help me get a book review published in Scientific American, my only publication in that journal. They contacted Randi, asking him to write a review of a book about the "Abduction Study Conference at MIT," held in 1992. He replied that he didn't know much about this meeting since he wasn't there, but he told them that I was, and recommended that I be invited to submit a review. I did, and the result was my book review "Truth Abducted," Scientific American, November 1995, Vol. 273, No. 5., p. 84.

JREF soon began holding "The Amazing Meetings" (TAMs), mostly in Las Vegas. I attended several of these, and they were great fun. This was before the Social Justice types began attacking skeptics' organizations for being too male and too white (and apparently for being too successful). As I said, I have been in skeptics' organizations almost from the very beginning, and never even once did I hear anybody say anything to disparage or exclude anyone based on race, gender, etc.

From a "Skepchick" party at TAM8 in Las Vegas in 2010, back when meetings were still fun.
Rebecca Watson, who founded Skepchicks but later denounced TAM as sexist or something, is at center.

These are the things I remember most about Randi. Perhaps I will have more to write later.