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Your Paracast Newsletter — May 1, 2016


Gene Steinberg

Forum Super Hero
Staff member
THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
May 1, 2016
www.theparacast.com


Micah Hanks Discusses a New UFO Classification Scheme and Secret Societies on The Paracast

The Paracast is heard Sundays from 3:00 AM until 6:00 AM Central Time on the GCN Radio Network and affiliates around the USA, the Boost Radio Network, the IRN Internet Radio Network, and online across the globe via download and on-demand streaming.

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This Week's Episode: Micah Hanks, of The Gralien Report, joins us to talk about a host of topics of interest to us today. First, we look at UFOs, and why old classification systems, in a world of drones and digital imagery, may need to be revamped. Refreshing our mindset about UFOs, Hanks also discusses what evolution may have to do with the way such things are perceived, and even why some may be prone toward a skeptical mindset about them. Also of interest, particularly in an election year, is the subject of secret groups and organizations, and the way they influence current events and world happenings.

Chris O’Brien’s Site: Our Strange Planet

The Gralien Report: Loading

After The Paracast -- Available exclusively to Paracast+ subscribers on May 1: Gene and guest co-host Micah Hanks discuss the use of words that might be off color and why he and Gene don’t do it since they have backgrounds in traditional broadcast radio. During the session, listen to Micah attempting an imitation of Tim Beckley. The discussion moves to remembering the cases of the past. Take the Roswell case, in which some of the debris is brought home by Jesse Marcel, and handled by him and his family. Did anyone ever consider the possibility that there might have been unknown forms of radiation or unknown alien viruses present? We cover some of the history of Roswell, how it all started when Stanton Friedman came across someone’s remembrances of the episode, and led to a best-selling book, “The Roswell Incident,” by Charles Berlitz and William Moore. Gene recalls his early meetings with the former when he was writing books about the Bermuda Triangle, and the Philadelphia Experiment. The discussion concludes with Micah’s observations about UFO abductions and other hot-button reports.

Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums.

Where Are the UFOs?

By Gene Steinberg

Now the conventional wisdom has it that UFOs first arrived in quantity in the years following World War II. They were seen before then, but not nearly as often. So the number of sightings really grew around the time where, in 1947, Kenneth Arnold first observed nine objects flying at a high rate of speed near Mount Rainier in the State of Washington. The private pilot found a measure of fame for being the man who, by his description of the peculiar way the objects moved, helped create the term flying saucers.

Well, from that starting point, more or less came a virtual avalanche of sightings worldwide. While a healthy percentage could be easily blamed on conventional objects or phenomena, a small percentage remained unknown. Skeptics attempted to explain some of these away, usually by ignoring some critical factoid that clearly made it unconventional. It was also suggested that, if we just had some more information, the rest of those sightings might also be explained.

Over the years, there have been complications, such as contacts and abductions, which made the mystery all the more interesting. Add to that confusing. While the contacts might, in large part, have been the result of people making up stories to gain their 15 minutes of fame, the abductions weren’t so easily explained. The supposedly “friendly” space brothers were revealed as something else entirely, beings unconcerned about the harm they were inflicting on what might be thousands, or millions, of innocent people.

Efforts to get a handle on what was going on appear to have mostly gone nowhere. UFO researchers in 2016 in large part seem to be covering the same ground trod by researchers in 1956. The theories are the same, that we are being visited by extraterrestrials from who knows where, and that the governments of Earth have guilty knowledge of what’s really going on.

Sightings appear to come in waves. Every few years, but seldom predictable, there are UFO flaps, often triggered by a single event somewhere. Once the sighting gets wide coverage, you hear about more, many more. It appears that, maybe this time, we’ll get a handle on what’s going on, but after a while, the number of sightings diminishes. Soon it reaches a low ebb and you wonder if the UFOs will ever come back.

Perhaps this is actually a publicity flap. One major sighting encourages more people to do some skywatching, or report experiences that they’ve been keeping to themselves.

Over the years, researchers have latched on to single cases or groups of cases for sustained study. But there remains an unusual emphasis on the older cases. So what happened in Rendlesham Forest in the UK in December 1980? Don’t you think we’d know after 36 years? Instead, we just have the same people repeating the same claims, or embellishing a few facts here and there as possible new revelations.

By far the most important UFO incident occurred almost 69 years ago, in Roswell, New Mexico. It’s the stuff of legend, as you know, the claim that a flying saucer crashed and that the wreckage and perhaps its crew were taken to an unknown military base for further evaluation.

The Roswell crash pretty much went under the radar. First there was a wire service report that a crashed flying disk had been recovered, followed, a few hours later, by a photo showing someone with the remains of a crashed weather or test balloon. It was nothing unusual and the story soon faded away.

The case remained dormant for nearly 30 years until researchers Stanton Friedman and William Moore began to pick up hints here and there, talked to a few people, and soon there were loads of witnesses coming forth remembering what really happened so long ago at Roswell.

Nowadays a number of serious researchers maintain something real happened. Sure, there have been unfounded claims, perhaps exaggerations or outright lies, from people who might have misremembered what happened, or decided to get in on the act. Even then, it’s hard to say how the passage of 30 years, with all sorts of UFO-flavored cultural influences, might have changed someone’s recollection of the actual event.

On two occasions, The Paracast featured the late Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr., who recalled what happened when he, as a child, handled some sort of strange material, with strange letting on it, which was brought home from the crash site by his dad. While there was never a reason to doubt him, why would a military officer take some of the debris of an unknown craft to his home? Forgetting the fact that this would be bad form, in clear violation of military regulations, there are other problems.

For example, wouldn’t there be the danger that this material might be radioactive, or that it might contain unknown chemicals or viruses that might infect humans? Did he wait for the material to be properly tested to be sure it wasn’t harmful before engaging in this foolhardy behavior?

Or perhaps it was nothing more than a weather balloon after all, and thus there was no fear of nasty consequences in Marcel taking a few pieces home to show off to his family. Or perhaps the memories of what really happened weren’t so accurate due to the passage of time.

I am not assuming Roswell didn’t involve the crash of an a possible space ship. I’m just asking.

More to the point, with this focus on older cases, are there no new cases of equal importance? If the UFOs are still here, active on our planet and doing their thing, surely there would be many new cases that warrant study just as intense. Roswell is clearly not the only report of a crashed UFO.

However, it does seem that most of the sightings in recent years involve distant lights, rather than large metallic craft coming in close to offer you a bird’s eye view, or landing, with strange beings exiting. It’s not that they don’t occur, but not nearly as often.

Some suggest the flying saucers left us, and what is reported these days probably has a conventional explanation. But what is seen remains tainted by the UFO legend and is interpreted that way. What about UFO abductions? How often do they occur anymore?

Or maybe our visitors have done their preliminary research, and are now just doing flyovers to continue to observe the primitives of Earth at a distance.

How has the UFO experience changed over the years anyway?

But even if the saucers are no longer among us, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a compelling mystery to explore. Besides, people nowadays are probably not looking to the skies much as they used to. Instead, they stare at their smartphones and are probably oblivious to the strange things that might be going on in the skies above.

I know I spend a little time looking up every night, while walking the family dog, Teddy Bear. But, after all these, years, I’ve never seen much of anything I couldn’t explain. Well, maybe once, but that disappearing light might have been something perfectly normal. Obviously, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t something strange out there. Maybe I’m just looking in all the wrong places.

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