A Socorro Student Hoax Confirmed?

Alleged UFO landing at Socorro, NM, 1964

On September 23, 2009, UFO investigator Anthony Bragalia wrote a Blog entry that generated huge controversy within UFOlogy. I wrote about it in my Psychic Vibrations column of March/April, 2010. I wrote:

The famous Socorro “UFO landing” case of April 24, 1964, has been proclaimed by leading UFOlogists, such as Jacques  Vallee and the late J. Allen Hynek, as among the best ever recorded. Policeman Lonnie Zamora allegedly witnessed two humanoids standing outside a landed craft, which then flew away with a loud roar. The object’s landing pads allegedly left behind four indentations in the ground, and nearby vegetation was scorched and burning. Could this classic UFO incident have been a hoax perpetrated by students at the New Mexico Institute of Technology? That’s exactly what UFOlogist Anthony Bragalia, who usually argues the pro side of UFO discussions, claims.... 

Officer Lonnie Zamora

In a September 23, 2009, blog entry, Bragalia wrote, “The Socorro UFO Hoax Exposed! (Famous 1964 sighting was a college prank).” The principal support for this conclusion was found in a scribbled reply to a letter by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling to Stirling Colgate, a noted physicist who also served as president of New Mexico Tech. The 1968 letter recently discovered in Pauling’s papers has Pauling asking Colgate, purely as an aside from other matters, about the famous UFO incident that occurred in Socorro, just a short distance from his campus. Colgate’s brief and enigmatic reply was, “I have a good indication of the student who engineered the hoax. Student has left. Cheers, Stirling” 

While there were a few others in the New Mexico Tech community who also hinted at knowledge of a hoax, the matter was never proven, and how such a hoax might be pulled off was, unfortunately, never explained. The noted UFO skeptic, the late Philip J. Klass, visited Socorro in 1966 and interviewed Zamora and others who had first-hand knowledge of the incident. Klass was puzzled by how little interest there was among the scientists at New Mexico Tech in what might be the first genuine alien encounter in recorded history, occurring literally in their backyard. Klass wrote, “When I pressed one member of the community to explain his apparent indifference, he suggested that I ‘nose around a bit,’” and he went on to explain that the town was seeking to attract tourists to strengthen its economy. Klass also noted the curious lack of symmetry in the “pad prints” supposedly left behind, illustrating how unsuitable such an unstable design would be for any craft. Klass concluded that the incident was a hoax to 'put Socorro on the map,' a collusion probably involving Zamora, the mayor, and a few others. If that is the case, Socorro has not been nearly as successful at milking UFO notoriety as another New Mexico town named Roswell. The assumption that the incident was a student hoax instead of one perpetrated by publicity-seeking town leaders changes Zamora from an 'active participant' to 'victim of the hoax,' which frankly seems more plausible.

Stirling Colgate (1925-2013)

Now Bragalia has written, The Ultimate Secret of  Socorro Finally Told. He says that Dr. Colgate, now age 86,  has very recently provided additional information:

“It was a prank and I was very concerned for Officer Zamora.”
“No one would come forward on this, they were all embarrassed.”
“So many things were pressuring me and still are about this.”
“I did not feel that I could add anything by pressuring the students, and recognized it as a prank.”
“The students were embarrassed about the possible harm that could have come to Zamora (from the prank.)”

 But how exactly was it done? Bragalia writes,

Beauty is often found in simplicity. And so it is with Socorro. For all of the speculations about the hoax involving such things as tethers, remote control and flame throwers - it needn't be and wasn't. In the August 8^th email from Stirling Colgate, he opened up even a bit further about how the students had hoaxed Lonnie. I had of course always wanted to know from him just exactly how the deed was done.  How did the students do it?
I stated to Colgate that he must know how they did it- and directly asked of him:
 “How did they do it? What was the craft made of?”
His short but telling reply:
“A candle in a balloon. Not sophisticated.”
I also asked of Stirling how many were “in on the hoax?” Again, a short reply received:
“I’d say about 3-6”

Two students standing in white lab suits - the "aliens" - and one driving the speeding car to lure Zamora, the intended victim of the hoax, to the spot where the hoaxers needed him to be. If you want more details, read Bragalia's piece.

Is this proof that the incident was a student hoax? Not yet, but we're getting closer. To me a guy like Dr. Colgate has a lot of credibility in "telling it like it was." Now that almost 50 years have passed since the incident, and Zamora has passed away, it is time for those involved to step forward and proudly confess their role in one of the greatest hoaxes in the history of UFOs.

News from Across the Galaxy - MUFON "Blockbuster" Fizzles!

As noted in a previous Galactic news dispatch of June 4,

The upcoming MUFON symposium in now promising "Blockbuster UFO Discoveries!"  They won't reveal what these are: you'll just have to register for the Symposium to find out. I'm sure they need to hype it like that to fill the seats. The non-member registration price has been raised to $329, up from about $225 last year (I can't find the exact figure), and the location has been changed from southern California, a tourist mecca, to northern Kentucky, not exactly a major tourist destination.

Well, today was the day. The Schedule at the Symposium read,

Sunday August 5
9:00am-4:00pm	National Air Force Museum at Wright–Patterson Air Force Base
4:30pm-6:30pm	National Release of “Blockbuster” UFO discovery

UFO zapped by radar in Kingman, AZ

And what was the "Blockbuster"? According to Jack Brewer in The Examiner,

researcher Harry Drew took the podium in Covington, Ky., explaining he is convinced he has located two sites where alien craft landed or crashed in 1953. The sites are in the vicinity of Kingman, Ariz. Drew explained he believes the craft were brought down by triangulated radar running at boosted power to extend range. According to Drew, military personnel quickly retrieved and cleaned up the wreckage. The archaeologist and historian apparently included photos of the sites in his presentation, as well as presented information contradicting past accounts of the case and alleged crashes.

supposed UFO recovered at Kingman

Wow! More stories about saucers that crashed sixty years ago! It's a Blockbuster! (Actually, it's very Old News: a Google search of UFO CRASH KINGMAN 1953 returns 160,000 hits!) Brewer adds, "Don't shoot me, I'm just the piano player."

The Blogosphere was quick to dismiss MUFON's grandstanding. The UFO and Conspiracy website GodlikeProductions quickly sported a thread, "MUFON 'Blockbuster' Announcement Peters Out Without A Bang."    The Following the Nerd "Paranormal" Blog said, "The big build up to an earth shattering announcement from MUFON yesterday that they would rock the UFO community to their core proved to be more than a disappointment."

But if anyone has a True Blockbuster up his sleeve, it must be Steven Greer, who has kept it uncharacteristically quiet. In a previous Galactic News Dispatch on July 29, I noted

Steven Greer of CSETI announces that "The Disclosure Project and CSETI has teamed up with Emmy award winning filmmaker Amardeep Kaleka to make an historic new documentary on Disclosure, Contact and the suppression of New Energy." However, "No major studio or media group will touch this story : It is simply too explosive and world- changing for large corporate interests to embrace." So he is collecting nickels and dimes (and hopefully plenty of dollars, too, from folks just like you.) And it looks like he is very close to meeting his goal.

At that time I hadn't seen Greer's Blog posting of July 28. In it he announces meeting the fundraising goal for that movie. But he still needs more money! Why?

There is a chance that we may be able to include in the film “Sirius” the scientific testing of a possible Extraterrestrial Biological Entity (EBE) that has been recovered and is deceased. This EBE is in the possession of a cooperative institute desiring further scientific evaluation of the possible ET. We cannot reveal at this time the location of this being or the name of the person or persons who possess it.

Dr. Jan Bravo- who is a STAR Board member and a fellow Emergency Physician- and I have actually visited the group that possesses this EBE and have personally and professionally examined the being. It is indeed an actual deceased body, and most certainly is not plastic or man-made. It has a head, 2 arms and 2 legs and is humanoid . We have seen and examined X-Rays of the being. Its anatomy however is not homo sapien (modern human) or any known hominid (predecessors to humans).
As you can imagine, the security and scientific issues surrounding the further testing of this potentially explosive and world- changing evidence are mind-boggling. However, we feel we simply must proceed expeditiously but cautiously. The cost of doing proper MRI testing, full and dispositive  forensic-level DNA testing and carbon dating with other isotope testing are considerable and certainly not currently funded. We must rule out other hominids, bizarre genetic defects and so forth. But it is most certainly an actual biological specimen – and it may be – well, what it looks like.

In fact, nobody seems to have noticed this remarkable claim until one commenter, Bjorn Tolouse, posted a thread about it on the JREF forums. As I noted in a comment on the last News posting,

all Greer needs to do is pick up the phone and call Ray Santilli, the guy who produced that hoax "alien autopsy" video. "Ray, this is Steven Greer. Remember how much money you made on that fake alien autopsy film? Well, I have a REAL dead alien - how much money do you think we could get for a video of that?"

Then on a truly tragic note, Greer writes on his Blog on August 6 that the father of the Sirius filmmaker, Amardeep Kaleka, was among those gunned down in the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin. The mind boggles at such senseless slaughter.

I'm being interviewed in DC for Nat Geo "Secret History of UFOs"

Finally, in between the near-continuous re-runs of Chasing UFOs, you may have noticed that a new program has turned up in the National Geographic Channel's UFO rotation: The Secret History of UFOs. This is the show that I and a number of other skeptics interviewed for, as well as a lot of non-skeptics, too. The show follows the familiar formula for UFO documentaries: the UFO believers gush on and on about their amazing sighting, the object must have come from another world, etc., followed by a short explanation from a skeptic suggesting that there may well be a rational explanation for it. On the show we see skeptics James McGaha, Tim Printy, Matt Baxter, and Bryan Bonner, as well as myself. Especially entertaining is David Jacobs, who tells about "the threat" (the title of one of his books) that alien abductions pose to the human race. And there is nothing we can do to stop them! Still, it's a better show than Chasing UFOs!

London Olympic UFO?

In some videos of the opening ceremonies of the London Olympics, an unusual object is seen. It appears to be glowing, and perhaps transparent. An article by Tom Rose in The Examiner has attracted a lot of attention. The above article references the following YouTube video:



The above video is "second-hand,"  taken from a broadcast. So I would not trust it very much. However, the following video posted to YouTube does appear to be first-hand, that is, directly from the news video. And it does indeed show the object, so I will assume that the object has not been added to the video or hoaxed in any way. So what is it?



It seemed likely that the object is the Goodyear blimp. As commenter Chris Jisi posted to the Examiner article above,

It's the Goodyear Blimp Spirit of Europe II, an American-made 130-foot-long "Lighship," which is lit by an internal bulb. With the Goodyear banner removed, as per the rules of the Olympics about no commercial advertising, it could look very much like a UFO.

This sounds very convincing, but can we find any additional support for it? Let's look at the photos on the British website of the Goodyear Blimp, some of which are uploaded by Mobile users:

Blimp Photo 1

Blimp Photo 2

Blimp Photo 3

 Remember that these photos are taken from the website of the Goodyear Blimp. And I think those people know their own Blimp when they see it. The resemblance between this object, and the unknown object in the video is obvious.

Case Closed: The object was the Goodyear Blimp.

News From Across the Galaxy, July 29, 2012

Niburu is visible above the Chemtrail layer!

This just in: the world will NOT end on December 21, 2012, but it may end in 2013. The well-known proponent of Exopolitics, Alfred Lambremont Webre, has just made a startling announcement. The alleged mystery object Niburu is not just a planet, but a "brown dwarf" star, and it will make its closest approach to the sun (perihelion) sometime in 2013.  However, the reason we have not been able to see it is that its path is hidden by Chemtrails! But hiding Niburu is not the only reason that the government has allegedly been spraying mystery chemicals high in the air: "Chemtrails Hide the Niburu Flyby while Depopulating & Brainwashing," according to Webre.

Futurist Alfred Lambremont Webre will present a compelling working hypothesis at the Consciousness beyond Chemtrails Conference in Los Angeles, August 17-19, 2012 whose speakers include actress Roseanne Barr who ran for the Green Party nomination for President in 2012 and is a strong opponent of the U.S. government's secret Chemtrails program.

If such a brown dwarf star were to actually enter our solar system, the result would be Chaos City. It's a good thing that Niburu is just a made-up object.

The "Phoenix Lights" have repeated themselves over Michigan. Military exercises in the northern part of lower Michigan have resulted in widespread UFO reports. Fortunately, this time it didn't take months or longer to establish what was happening.

http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/07/major_military_training_exerci.html

Steven Greer

Steven Greer of CSETI announces that "The Disclosure Project and CSETI has teamed up with Emmy award winning filmmaker Amardeep Kaleka to make an historic new documentary on Disclosure, Contact and the suppression of New Energy." However, "No major studio or media group will touch this story : It is simply too explosive and world- changing for large corporate interests to embrace." So he is collecting nickels and dimes (and hopefully plenty of dollars, too, from folks just like you.) And it looks like he is very close to meeting his goal. The film is described as follows:

The Earth has been visited by advanced Inter-Stellar Civilizations that can travel through other dimensions faster than the speed of light. What we have learned from them about energy propulsion can bring us to a new era, but those in power have suppressed this information in order to keep us at their mercy.

 If all goes well, the film could be released as soon as December, 2012. Let's hope that it gets finished before we are all done in by our encounter with Niburu in 2013.

Implants and Aliens and Scalpels, Oh My!

On the evening of July 21, 2012, MUFON LA held a benefit in Hollywood for Dr. Roger Leir, a local podiatrist and UFO celebrity best known for removing alleged alien implants from alleged UFO abductees. Leir recently was hospitalized and had surgery, so to help pay some of his medical bills his UFOlogical friends, including Yvonne Smith, Jordan Maxwell, and Whitley Strieber, participated in a four-hour mini-symposium in his honor. It was repeated the following afternoon in Orange County in Costa Mesa, where I went down the rabbit-hole for a few hours. The event had  an upbeat feeling about it, with UFO-related vendors, snack tables, etc. The efforts that the MUFON people, including UFO celebrities, were willing to make to help Leir shows the UFO community at its best.

Yvonne Smith

Yvonne Smith is a well-known hypnotherapist who works with alleged UFO abductees. With the deaths of Budd Hopkins and John Mack, that leaves Ms. Smith as one of the leading Abductologists in the world. A questioner asked her if there are some people who cannot be hypnotized. She replied that anyone can be hypnotized if the hypnotist persists, although some are much harder to hypnotize than others. In my opinion what she said was more or less, "they'll be good and hypnotized by the time I'm done with them!" Perhaps I  am wrong. She also told about an implant that was taken by Dr. Leir from his patient Ron Noel, which according to Leir emits "deep space frequency" radio waves, and has a strong magnetic field. Smith said that this metallic implant was so hard that diamond cutting tools could not cut it. Eventually, a high-powered laser could.

Jose Escamilla is well-known as the discoverer of flying "rods," originally called "Roswell rods," but known to most people as "insects." At this event, Escamilla was talking about his latest discoveries and film project, involving Moon conspiracies. Our moon, he explains, is not a grey-colored object as we have been led to believe. Our moon is a full color body, but NASA has only released black-and-white photos of it. However, an amateur astronomer in Texas named Bill Bryson has been able, using his telescope and a $68 Chinese-made camera, to reveal our moon in all its full-color glory. Escamilla has finally completed his movie about the moon's hidden colors, available at www.theCELESTIALmovie.com. It blows the lid off NASA's conspiracies to hide huge artificial structures, including pyramids and statues, on the moon.

 

Escamilla did not say this at the MUFON meeting, but other sources suggest that both Bryson and Escamilla are claiming that the moon has an atmosphere, water, and vegetation - hence, the "colors" that NASA is covering up!

Steve Colbern is the Chief Scientist at Applied Silicone, and also at Alien and Scalpel Research. I wrote about the latter in my posting about the International UFO Congress near Phoenix in February:

One vendor doing a great business was A&S, "Alien and Scalpel Research," promising "scientific analysis of alien implants and UFO crash debris." I do not know how much they are charging to "scan" a person for alien implants, but I heard complaints from those who signed up about the long wait. One woman described to me her experience with A&S: they took her into the little tent at right, and "scanned" her several times with different electronic instruments. They found three implants. They also told her that she was an alien hybrid, but also had 'angelic" DNA as well. I am truly amazed at what science can learn these days.

Colbern (behind table) facilitates implant-viewing, $2 a pop

 

Colbern continued Escamilla's thread about the Moon Conspiracy. Our moon is as much as 40% "hollow," he said, perhaps because it has been extensively mined, or else because it was constructed (!!) as a hollow shell.

Returning to Smith's earlier comment about Ron Noel's alleged alien implant,  Colbern added that it was made of carbon nanotubes. The aliens use nanotechnology extensively. Implants are typically 3-4 mm long, and 1 mm diameter. Leir added, from the audience, that their magnetic decay occurs over about six weeks after their removal. The isotopic ratios in the implants, according to Colbern, indicate that the objects probably originate about 30,000 light years away, near the center of the galaxy.

Jordan Maxwell, Costa Mesa, CA, 2012

Jordan Maxwell told MUFON about "secret societies." I wrote about a lecture by Maxwell I'd heard in my November/December, 2001 Psychic Vibrations column:

Jordan Maxwell is a jolly sort of fellow who uses simple, folksy arguments to reach startling conclusions. He informed us that we Americans are still living under a system of government and religion that is “Druidic” in origin, and we are still being ruled by England. All of our law is based on maritime admiralty law. Because you were born from the water breaking in your mother’s womb, under maritime admiralty law this makes you a maritime “product.” We think we are American citizens, but in reality all of us “belong” (literally) to the United States, which is a foreign-owned corporation set up in 1868. When your mother signed your birth certificate, this gave ownership of you to the U.S. corporation. Our birth certificates are traded on the stock exchange, where they serve as collateral for the U.S. corporation’s loans from international bankers. (It’s odd, I have looked at many stock quotes over the years, but have yet to see my birth certificate listed.) Originally sold for $630,000, our birth certificates are now worth more than $1 million each. If you look at your name as it appears on official documents, you will find that it is always in capital letters, just like the letters on a tombstone. This indicates that you are dead, under the law: you belong to them.
There is a way to remedy this, of course, and “repatriate” yourself to become a citizen of “America” instead of a product belonging to the “United States.” You can also get your true name back, using both uppercase and lowercase letters. Among the advantages will be that you do not have to pay income taxes, and are no longer subject to the jurisdiction of the courts. Maxwell and his pals can help you to do this, but (as did not come out until the second day) it’s going to cost you. His “repatriation” package sells for a mere $995. A “mortgage cancellation” package costs $1,200, a true bargain considering the size of mortgages here in California. But not all his services are so expensive. Monetary judgments can be set aside for a mere $125.
Dubious etymology is a specialty of Maxwell’s. For example, the Christian worship of God’s “son,” who is risen, is clearly derived from Roman worship of the “sun,” which rises each morning. Son-sun, he repeats, it’s obvious. (Can his audience truly be so simplistic to believe that these words would sound the same to speakers of Latin, Greek, or Hebrew?) “Christ” is really “cristo” or “crisco,” which means “oil,” not anointed. The “Lord,” originally spelled “Lard,” is simply congealed “crisco.” Passover is when the sun “passes over” the equator which marks the beginning of spring.

Maxwell told MUFON that the US government is not actually a government, but a privately-owned company. He was selling a CD for $10 containing the most amazing information that would change your whole life. However, you had to pay $10 to find out what it was. Maxwell said that according to the Bible, not God but The Gods created ADM, not Adam. Many people were already here. The "powers that be" on this world are not humans like us, but they just look like us when they want to. An alien presence is here, manipulating us unseen.

Anne and Whitley Strieber

Whitley Strieber and his wife Ann next took the stage. Whitley is the famous author of Communion and many other works of imaginative fiction, some of which are acknowledged as fiction, while others are misrepresented as factual. He explained that he has an implant in his left ear. After a particularly spooky encounter one night with The Visitors, Whitley felt a "nasal intrusion," and later realized that he had been given an implant in his ear. As he writes in his book Solving the Communion Enigma, "later that day, I noticed a sore lump at the top of my left ear.. from time to time the ear would get red and hot." He went to a doctor who diagnosed a "probably benign cyst" that was "fixed in the pinna of my ear, close to the top,"  and set out to have it removed. However, the implant would not allow itself to be taken:

He started to draw it out - and then the impossible happened. The thing moved, and not just slightly. Despite the fact that it had appeared so fixed in place that he thought it must be embedded in the cartilage, it became mobile and slid under the skin from the top of my ear down into my earlobe.

At this point, the doctor "pulled out and stitched up the wound." (quotes from Chapter 5). Sometime later, the implant returned to its original location, where it supposedly remains today.

Whitley told MUFON that for a time he was worried that the implant might turn him into a robotic spokesman for "them." No scientist is willing to investigate his alleged implant, he said. (Perhaps we can locate a scientist or two willing and able to do the task?) The government fears the disclosure of implants, because it would reveal their impotence in dealing with The Visitors. Implants, Whitley speculated, may be intended to be found, to prevent Disclosure; governments cannot afford to admit that this invasive intrusion is occurring, and cannot be prevented.

Anne Strieber read several accounts of "experiences" that people had sent it to them. Most of these stories involved "implants."

In response to a question about Budd Hopkins (with whom Strieber briefly cooperated, then split from), he replied "Budd Hopkins was not friendly to me," explaining that it was apparently because of their very different perspectives on the alleged phenomenon. (Hopkins, by reputation, was friendly only to those who never questioned anything he said.) The late Phil Klass attributed their split to the fact that you can't have two Queen Bees in a hive; each wanted to be the Big Cheese, and so they had to split. As for his son, who was allegedly abducted by The Visitors as a child, Strieber said that the son, now married and a father, has no interest in "the visitors" at all, and does not want the subject brought up.

Whitley Strieber's left ear

I was sitting up close, right behind the "reserved seats" for the presenters. When Strieber returned to his seat, he was sitting directly in from of me. I realized that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to examine Strieber's left ear, which was about two feet from my face. I did not see any lump or swelling on the pina of his ear, nor did I see any scar from the surgery he claims took place. It simply looked like a normal ear to me. You don't suppose that Strieber simply made up that story about the implant? 

Another view of Strieber's ear

 

In fact, I even got photos from my remarkable vantage point. Do you see any evidence of an alien implant? It seems to me that, assuming this story about his supposed "implant" is true, Strieber could easily allow close-up inspection and photography of his ear, including X-rays, by a specialist who was qualified to distinguish something natural from something artificial. Think of what this would add to our knowledge of alleged "implants!"

The last speaker was the guest of honor, Dr. Roger Leir. He spoke about how science is ignoring all this great evidence he has of alien implants. He also added that, during his recent surgery, he had an out-of-body experience.

So concluded a day of great weirdness, and a good time was had by all.

More Time Wasted with National Geographic's "Chasing UFOs"

While at the two recent conferences in Reno and Las Vegas (see the previous Blog entry), I had occasion to explain to several people that the latest turd-TV offering from the National Geographic Channel, Chasing UFOs, had succeeded in doing something that never has been done before: UFO proponents and UFO skeptics all agree that the show is absurd, a travesty of "UFO investigation" that makes everyone look bad. Indeed, some UFO proponents think that because the show is so bad, it must be a government plot  to embarass UFO researchers!  Hard-core UFO proponent Robert Hastings quite appropriately says the show is "investigation as farce."  He says that its "entertainment-based formula may best be described as Blair Witch Project meets Inspector Clouseau. If the show’s producers are not secretly in cahoots with some intelligence agency to make legitimate UFO research look bad, by association, they have certainly achieved that outcome inadvertently."

was the UFO a spider web reflection?

Episode 3, "Alien Cowboys," is set in Colorado, where they begin by investigating the Tim Edwards UFO video of 1995.  The Chasers are suitably impressed by this video. So far as I know there has been no skeptical investigation of this video. Bruce Maccabee analyzed it, but came to no conclusions about what it is. "Abovetopsecret" user ALLisONE posted a photo comparing the "UFO" in Edwards' video to the sun's reflection on a spider-thread, and so far that's the best explanation I have seen. The changing shape and size of the object certainly suggests a reflection. The smaller white objects (baby UFOs?) are suggested by some to be insects, but to me they look like little dandelion "puffs", small seed packets being scattered in the wind.

They meet with Chuck Zukowski, who investigates alleged "cattle mutilations." I heard Zukowski speak at the International UFO Congress in February, and posted the following in a Blog entry of February 22:

The sessions began Wednesday morning with Chuck Zukowski talking about the joy of slicing up dead cattle that the aliens have already sliced and diced - that way, he can study their handiwork. He showed some gruesome photos, adding that he always brings his three kids when he investigates a mutilation, so that they can help out. He claims to sometimes detect substantial EMF fields emanating from mutilated cows, and speculates that it is a residual field from some alien device. I am wondering why the field does not dissipate away at the speed of light.

Zukowski explained that his website is www.ufonut.com, because this is what people call him. He said that mutilations seem to follow the cattle of certain ranchers, even if the rancher moves. I would think that what follows a rancher is the propensity to attribute slightly unusual predation patterns to extraterrestrials. He has discovered that mutilations and paranormal events are most common at 37 degrees north latitude, creating a belt of weird stuff running clear across the country. In the Q&A session, the question came up as to whether the aliens might be abducting cattle to create a race of "hybrid fetuses." Chuck thought that might be true. Can this be the explanation for the aliens' bizarre obsession with the nether parts of cattle - the creation of an alien/cattle hybrid? Now that truly bends the mind!

Somehow to me the image of Zukowski's three children romping about while he pores over a mutilated cow seemed delightfully surreal, but Chuck assures us in a comment below that his children are young adults, so their presence is surely more understandable. Soon it's time for the three Chasers, plus Zukowski, to put on the "prosthetic devices" and stumble around in the dark looking for mutilated cows, since it's obviously easier to find dead cows at night than when the sun is out. But just as they discover a herd of live cows from its infrared signature (guys, a dead cow won't radiate heat!), another near-encounter with a wild animal, this time a mountain lion, sends them scrambling back with no alien evidence.

They next visit UFO raconteur Stan Romanek, one of the least-credible persons in all UFOlogy. At this year's International UFO Congress I heard Romank deliver one of the most ridiculous talks on UFOs I'd ever heard. I posted:

Stan is the guy who became famous when he posted to YouTube a video of an alien peeping in his window. Soon others were posting alien Peeping Tom videos of their own, many of them better than Romanek's. He told about how he started to have sightings of UFOs a few years back, and soon they were following him around. Before long, big-headed aliens are playing peek-a-boo in the windows of his home. Then the ETs were replaced by as many as nine alien hybrid little girls, who intrude upon his telephone calls, and also play now-you-see-me-now-you-don't. One of them is Lisa's daughter from a previous UFO abduction. Stan gets a few not-quite-clear photos of strange-looking little girls, whose images probably have been Photoshopped to give them ET features.

Stan injured himself falling off a ladder, and was going to get corrective surgery. However, before the operation he was abducted by ETs, and his injury was miraculously healed, to the astonishment of his doctor. Before finishing his talk, he mentioned in passing that someone had anonymously mailed him actual photos of the true Roswell crash debris, and he flashed them tantalizingly on the screen. Stan Romanek is a one-man paranormal factory, and I suspect these wild claims will just keep piling up for many years.

Afterward while Romanek was at his table in the vendors' room (he and his wife now have three books of wild UFO claims), I introduced myself to him, and gave him my "Bad UFOs" card. I asked him why the aliens were following him around. We chatted very briefly when somebody (probably his wife) must have whispered, "don't talk to that guy." Suddenly it was, "I can't talk to you. You just bad-mouth people. Go away." I attempted to get a photo of him and his wife (others were doing so), but he turned his face away from me (how I regret not getting that image of Romanek avoiding the camera!). He said he'd have his lawyer sue me if I took a photo; I replied that was ridiculous, since he was a public figure in a public forum. So much for "UFO research!"

You guessed it: Romanek joins the UFO Chasers in their special Dark-Exploration Suits, and they stumble around not some desolate place, but in the suburban neighborhood where Romanek lives, looking for Extraterrestrials. I'm surprised they didn't have an Encounter with an ice cream truck. They don't find any ETs, but Ben spooks James by replicating the "peeping Tom alien" video, lying on the ground and holding up an alien mask.

The Roswell extraterrestrial tin can

In Episode 4, "UFO Landing Zone?", the UFO Chasers jump into "a race to investigate these [crash] claims." Well, it's only been 65 years since whatever it was happened at Roswell, so you'd better jump in before the trail grows cold. They stumble around in the dark, as usual, and get all excited over finding a piece of scrap metal, which only at the end is revealed to be "tin." Saucer debris, or the remains of some ranch hand's long-ago lunch? They also breathlessly find a military button, later identified as belonging to the U.S. Air Force. Too bad that the Air Force did not exist as a service until Sept. 18, 1947, more than two months after Roswell, and thus the button could not possibly have anything to do with any operation carried out in July of 1947. Roswell proponent Kevin Randle adds this about the button:

It seemed to be too good. The button I used for the photograph had not been buried, but only exposed to the open air for a couple of decades. It is tarnished to a bronze color. The button they found seemed to be nearly pristine. I would expect that if it had been buried for any length of time it would have degraded more than my button that had not.

The nearly-pristine post-Roswell Air Force Button

What this tells me is that the National Geographic has gone the same way as the Arts and Entertainment Channel, Bravo, History Channel and a couple of others....The point is that National Geographic is now more about ratings than research. It is about audience share and entertainment and not about finding the truth, whatever that truth might be. It is about superficial research that avoids asking the difficult questions or asking those who might actually have an answer.

 Exactly right. Randle also checked with the White Sands Missile Range about the supposed UFO crash video presented by Ted Loman that we see repeated over and over, research that The UFO Chasers could not bother to do. He was told that it was part of “an infrared shot of a Navy missile test." Case Closed, but by Randle, not by The UFO Chasers. 


And yet at this very moment another TV production company is seeking to cast "a new docuseries following Alien and UFO Researchers and Investigators. The show would be similar in concept to Ghost Hunters -- except with UFO and Alien findings." They explain, "We are looking to follow an existing team of Investigators," not even realizing that there is no such thing. Are they doing this because they believe Chasing UFOs to be a great show, or will they do a decent job of investigating UFO claims? I'd like to be optimistic about the show, but as a realist I'd have to say that the odds are against it.

Skepticism at the 2012 Mensa Annual Gathering, and The Amazing Meeting (TAM)

This year the Annual Gathering of U.S. Mensa, the high-IQ society, was held in Reno, Nevada the first weekend in July. It was followed by James Randi's Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas the next weekend. To my thinking, this required a "Grand Tour" of Nevada. Driving up to Reno from San Diego took "only" ten hours, not counting the time spent at rest stops, restaurants, etc. The scenery is glorious along U.S. 395, but the road is slow and I'd recommend taking two days or more for the trip. This was followed by one of the most "desolate" road trips I've ever taken, from Reno to Vegas, about eight hours driving of two-lane highways in the desert, in 110-degree heat (in July), with my car's air conditioner not working. Compared to that, the 5+ hour drive back to the San Diego area was a breeze.

Brad Lutts, Mark Edward, Susan Gerbic,
and Ben Radford at the Mensa Annual Gathering

There was only one skeptic-related presentation at this year's Mensa Annual Gathering. It was titled "Waging War on Pseudoscience - Skepticism in Action," and it featured Brad Lutts of the Reno Skeptics (moderator), Mark Edward (magician and mentalist), Susan Gerbic (skeptical activist), and Ben Redford, deputy editor of The Skeptical Inquirer.  Each described their own skeptical investigations and activities, inviting the audience to get involved. There was an overflow crowd, which was as welcome as it was nerve-wracking; I was sitting right up front to help the panel get set up, and I kept getting squeezed by people trying to crowd in. The audience was quite supportive and interested.

Susan Gerbic tells the Reno Skeptics about
her excellent  "Guerrilla Skepticism" on Wikipedia

The evening following that presentation, the Reno Skeptics met in a pub near Mensa's Casino hotels, where we got to meet local skeptics. It looks like a very fine and active group.

"The Amazing Meeting" - TAM - was, of course, "amazing" as always. I won't try to summarize who spoke at the conference, and what the subjects of discussion were, because plenty of information is available on-line about that. A good starting point is here.

I cleared a seat for Randi in the front row as McGaha packs up

As for UFO-related content at TAM, there wasn't a lot. On Thursday before the sessions started, James McGaha presented a workshop titled Astronomy for Skeptics: Investigating "lights" in the Sky. He brought a suitcase full of stuff like powerful green lasers, compasses, a video camera, maps, etc. to illustrate his presentation (that TSA found so suspicious that they broke into his suitcase, took everything out, and examined it. And they did the same thing on the flight back home!) . James spent a lot of time explaining about the different types of compasses and how each one is used, how to determine your magnetic declination from a topographic map, etc. In my opinion, this is going about things the hard way. I asked him, since lots of people today carry smart phones, why not use a program like Google Sky to determine what astronomical object is being seen? (There are plenty of even more sophisticated astronomy Apps for smart phones, but the free Google Sky App is simple and sufficient.) "Those programs are not accurate," he replied. (James doesn't have any kind of cell phone). I replied that Google Sky has always been accurate each time I have used it. I have seen people occasionally get a wrong result when something isn't set up correctly, but once you have installed the program and verified that it is giving correct results, you can rely on what it tells you afterward. Just take out your phone, point it at some bright object in the sky, and you'll know instantly whether it is Venus, Jupiter, Vega, or whatever.

John Alexander (left) and James McGaha

In my earlier conversations with John Alexander, author of UFOs Myths Conspiracies and Realities (one of the better pro-UFO books), he had expressed interest in meeting and chatting with some of the skeptics. Knowing that he lives in Las Vegas, I invited him to come out and meet us for one of our nightly "sessions" in the hotel bar. Dialogue is good! John is properly skeptical of most UFO conspiracy claims, but he is in my view too trusting of "eyewitness reports" by "credible observers." One also needs to pay attention to whether an observer's story has changed over the years (if so, it always gets more dramatic, not less). In the case of the supposed "UFO landing" at Rendlesham Forest, UK, a major case in Alexander's book, the observers' stories have grown over the years from 'lights in the sky' to 'structured craft that landed.'

The only other UFO-related event at TAM was the paper by Ivan Alverado on the analysis of the Billy Meier UFO metal sample. Billy Meier is a man in Switzerland who gets photos of impossible things, like dinosaurs and "spaceships from the Pleiades." His photos are colorful and entertaining, but utterly bogus (see http://www.iigwest.com/investigations/meier/ ). Meier is also a "prophet" who has produced something called the Talmud Jmmanuel that supposedly proves the extraterrestrial origin of the Bible.

Billy Meier and the extraterrestrial hottie, Semjase

In 1985 Dr. Marcel Vogel (1917-1991), a chemist who worked as a Senior Scientist for IBM for 25 years, analyzed a supposed sample of UFO metal provided by Billy Meier. Vogel  dabbled in all manner of New Age woo, like healing with "crystal energy." I saw Vogel give a lecture in 1982 in which he used "applied kinesiology" to prove that holding a crystal against your body makes you stronger (see p. 105 of my book Psychic Vibrations). But Vogel was a paradoxical figure, because his inventions of surfaces for use in hard drives was of enormous value to IBM.

Vogel's analysis, using highly-sophisticated X-ray spectrum devices, supposedly showed that the makeup of the metal sample could not have been created by any known earthly technology. He suggests it may have been created using Cold Fusion. Alvarado's analysis is highly technical - you can read it here - but in a nutshell, Vogel did not properly interpret the X-ray spectrum data, and the sample is made of ordinary substances like aluminum.

TAM 2012 was great fun, and I'm definitely planning to head back there next year!