UFOlogy A Serious Analysis Part 2

File: UFO190

About the same time, in Lyons (France) three men and a women supposedly descended from an airship or spaceship and were captured by a mob. These foreigners admitted to being wizards, and were killed. (No mention is made of the methods employed to extract the admissions.) Many documented UFO sightings occurred throughout the Middle Ages, including an especially startling one of a UFO over London on 16 December 1742. However, we do not have room to include any more of the Middle Ages sightings. Instead, two "more-recent" sightings are contained in this section to bring us up to modern times.

In a sworn statement dated 21 April 1897, a prosperous and prominent farmer named Alexander Hamilton (Le Roy, Kansas, U.S.A.) told of an attack upon his cattle at about 10:30 PM the previous Monday. He, his son, and his tenant grabbed axes and ran some 700 feet from the house to the cow lot where a great cigar-shaped ship about 300 feet long floated some 30 feet above his cattle. It had a carriage underneath which was brightly lighted within (dirigible and gondola?) and which had numerous windows. Inside were six strange looking beings jabbering in a foreign language. These beings suddenly became aware of Hamilton and the others. They immediately turned a searchlight on the farmer, and also turned on some power which sped up a turbine wheel (about 30 ft diameter) located under the craft. The ship rose, taking with it a two-year old heifer which was roped about the neck by a cable of one-half inch thick, red material. The next day a neighbor, Link Thomas, found the animal's hide, legs and head in his field. He was mystified at how the remains got to where they were because of the lack of tracks in the soft soil. Alexander Hamilton's sworn statement was accompanied by an affidavit as to his veracity. The affidavit was signed by ten of the local leading citizens.

On the evening of 4 November 1957 at Fort Itaipu, Brazil, two sentries noted a "new star" in the sky. The "star" grew in size and within seconds stopped over the fort. It drifted slowly downward, was as large as a big aircraft, and was surrounded by a strong orange glow. A distinct humming sound was heard, and then the heat struck. A Sentry collapsed almost immediately, the other managed to slide to shelter under the heavy cannons where his loud cries awoke the garrison. While the troops were scrambling towards their battle stations, complete electrical failure occurred. There was panic until the lights came back on but a number of men still managed to see an orange glow leaving the area at high speed. Both sentries were found badly burned...one unconscious and the other incoherent, suffering from deep shock.

Thus, UFO sightings not only appear to extend back to 47,000 years through time but also are global in nature. One has the feeling that this phenomenon deserves some sort of valid scientific investigation, even if it is a low level effort.

33.3 SOME THEORIES AS TO THE NATURE OF THE UFO PHENOMENON

There are very few cohesive theories as to the nature of UFO's. Those theories that have been advanced can be collected in five groups:

a. Mysticism

b. Hoaxes, and rantings due to unstable personalities

c. Secret Weapons

d. Natural Phenomena

e. Alien visitors

Mysticism

It is believed by some cults that the mission of UFO's and their crews is a spiritual one, and that all materialistic efforts to determine the UFO's nature are doomed to failure.

Hoaxes and Rantings due to Unstable Personalities

Some have suggested that all UFO reports were the results of pranks and hoaxes, or were made by people with unstable personalities. This attitude was particularly prevalent during the time period when the Air Force investigation was being operated under the code name of Project Grudge. A few airlines even went as far as to ground every pilot who reported seeing a "flying saucer." The only way for the pilot to regain flight status was to undergo a psychiatric examination. There was a noticeable decline in pilot reports during this time interval, and a few interpreted this decline to prove that UFO's were either hoaxes or the result of unstable personalities. It is of interest that NICAP (The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena) even today stillreceives reports from commercial pilots who neglect to notify either the Air Force or their own airline.

There are a number of cases which indicate that not all reports fall in the hoax category. We will examine one such case now. It is the Socorro, New Mexico sighting made by police Sergeant Lonnie Zamora. Sergeant Zamora was patrolling the streets of Socorro on 24 April 1964 when he saw a shiny object drift down into an area of gullies on the edge of town. He also heard a loud roaring noise which sounded as if an old dynamite shed located out that way had exploded. He immediately radioed police headquarters, and drove out toward the shed. Zamora was forced to stop about 150 yards away from a deep gully in which there appeared to be an overturned car. He radioed that he was investigating a possible wreck, and then worked his car up onto the mesa and over toward the edge of the gully. He parked short, and when he walked the final few feet to the edge, he was amazed to see that it was not a car but instead was a weird eggshaped object about fifteen feet long, white in color and resting on short, metal legs. Beside it, unaware of his presence were two humanoids dressed in silvery coveralls. They seemed to be working on a portion of the underside of the object. Zamora was still standing there, surprised, when they suddenly noticed him and dove out of sight around the object. Zamora also headed the other way, back toward his car. He glanced back at the object just as a bright blue flame shot down from the underside. Within seconds the eggshaped thing rose out of the gully with "an earsplitting roar." The object was out of sight over the nearby mountains almost immediately, and Sergeant Zamora was moving the opposite direction almost as fast when he met Sergeant Sam Chavez who was responding to Zamora's earlier radio calls. Together they investigated the gully and found the bushes charred and still smoking where the blue flame had jetted down on them. About the charred area were four deep marks where the metal legs had been. Each mark was three and one half inches deep, and was circular in shape. The sand in the gully was very hard packed so no sign of the humanoids' footprints could be found. An official investigation was launched that same day, and all data obtained supported the stories of Zamora and Chavez. It is rather difficult to label this episode a hoax, and it is also doubtful that both Zamora and Chavez shared portions of the same hallucination.

Secret Weapons

A few individuals have proposed that UFO's are actually advanced weapon systems, and that their natures must not be revealed. Very few people accept this as a credible suggestion.

Natural Phenomena

It has also been suggested that at least some, and possibly all of the UFO cases were just mis-interpreted manifestations of natural phenomena. Undoubtedly this suggestion has some merit. People have reported, as UFO's, objects which were conclusively proven to be balloons (weather and skyhook), the planet Venus, man-made artificial satellites, normal aircraft, unusual cloud formations, and lights from ceilometers (equipment projecting light beams on cloud bases to determine the height of the aircraft visual ceiling). It is also suspected that people have reported mirages, optical illusions, swamp gas and ball lightning (a poorly-understood discharge of electrical energy in a spheroidal or ellipsoidal shape...some charges have lasted for up to fifteen minutes but the ball is usually no bigger than a large orange.) But it is difficult to tell a swamp dweller that the strange, fast-moving light he saw in the sky was swamp gas; and it is just as difficult to tell a farmer that a bright UFO in the sky is the same ball lightning that he has seen rolling along his fence wires in dry weather. Thus accidental mis-identification of what might well be natural phenomena breeds mistrust and disbelief; it leads to the hasty conclusion that the truth is deliberately not being told. One last suggestion of interest has been made, that the UFO's were plasmoids from space...concentrated blobs of solar wind that succeeded in reaching the surface of the Earth. Somehow this last suggestion does not seem to be very plausible; perhaps because it ignores such things as penetration of Earth's magnetic field.

Alien Visitors

The most stimulating theory for us is that the UFO's are material objects which are either "Manned" or remote-controlled by beings who are alien to this planet. There is some evidence supporting this viewpoint. In addition to police Sergeant Lonnie Zamora's experience, let us consider the case of Barney and Betty Hill. On a trip through New England they lost two hours on the night of 19 September 1961 without even realizing it. However, after that night both Barney and Betty began developing psychological problems which eventually grew sufficiently severe that they submitted themselves to psychiatric examination and treatment. During the course of treatment hypnotherapy was used, and it yielded remarkably detailed and similar stories from both Barney and Betty. Essentially they had been hypotically kidnapped, taken aboard a UFO, submitted to two-hour physicals, and released with posthypnotic suggestions to forget the entire incident. The evidence is rather strong that this is what the Hills, even in their subconscious, believe happened to them. And it is of particular importance that after the "posthypnotic block" was removed, both of the Hills ceased having their psychological problems.

The Hill's description of the aliens was similar to descriptions provided in other cases, but this particular type of alien appears to be in the minority. The most commonly described alien is about three and one half feet tall, has a round head (helmet?), arms reaching to or below his knees, and is wearing a silvery space suit or coveralls. Other aliens appear to be essentially the same as Earthmen, while still others have particularity wide (wrap around) eyes and mouths with very thin lips. And there is a rare group reported as about four feet tall, weight of around 35 pounds, and covered with thick hair or fur (clothing?). Members of this last group are described as being extremely strong. If such beings are visiting Earth, two questions arise: 1) why haven't they attempted to contact us officially? The answer to the first question may exist partially in Sergeant Lonnie Zamora's experience, and may exist partially in the Tunguska metor discussed in Chapter XXIX. In that chapter it was suggested that the Tunguska meteor was actually a comet which exploded in the atmosphere, the ices melted and the dust spread out. Hence, no debris. However, it has also been suggested that the Tunguska meteor was actually an alien spacecraft that entered the atmosphere too rapidly, suffered mechanical failure, and lost its power supply and/or weapons in a nuclear explosion. While that hypothesis may seem far fetched, sample of tree rings from around the world reveal that, immediately after the Tunguska meteor explosion, the level of radioactivity in the world rose sharply for a short period of time. It is difficult to find a natural explanation for that increase in radioactivity, although the suggestion has been advanced that enough of the meteor's great Kinetic energy was converted into heat (by atmospheric friction) that a fusion reaction occurred. This still leaves us with no answer to the second question: why no contact? That question is very easy to answer in several ways: 1) we may be the object of intensive sociological and psychological study. In such studies you usually avoid disturbing the test subjects' environment; 2) you do not "contact" a colony of ants, and humans may seem that way to any aliens (variation: a zoo is fun to visit, but you don't "contact" the lizards); 3) such contact may have already taken place secretly; and 4) such contact may have already taken place on a different plane of awareness and we are not yet sensitive to communications on such a plane. These are just a few of the reasons. You may add to the list as you desire.

End of part 2