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April 12, 2015 — Shop Talk 2015 with Burnt State

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I'm 43 and got my first book on UFOs in 1979. I now completely understand why certaineople are jaded and burnt out on the subject. The reasons are well known & have been listed numerous times on these forums. It's to the point where MUFON is an embarrassment and people (like myself) are embarrassed to have ever been a part of it.

Then there are supposed videos that would definitively prove that there are indeed UFOs (Ray Stanford), but as luck would have it, he won't release any of it.
 
Hi Sue! Very interesting and pertinent ideas in your post there, thank you for taking the time to contribute! " So while the masses of anecdotal evidence in the UFO field may tell us about the people involved in the anecdotes and the times they lived in, it may too contaminated by the sheer humanity of it all to tell us much about the phenomenon itself - or even if one was involved."

Well, actually there is an academic field which has to deal with this type of evidence all the time, with no opportunity to gather 'better' data - history. For decades i have been fascinated by the work of Carlo Ginzburg, who deals with the world-views of peoples tortured by the inquisition. Of course the trouble here is that pretty much all he has to work with is documents drawn up by the inquisitors, who are tremendously biased against the people Ginzburg is studying. Ginzburg uses a number of theoretical tools in order to deal with these biases; he outlines his techniques and sources in his book Ecstacies. I have this book but sadly i cannot recognize what language the pertinent info. is written in, so i have been stymied in trying to pursue this group of theoretical tools lo these many years.

Ginzburg's most popular work, and a great introduction to this type of historical analysis, is The Night Battles. eek! Just saw that Night Battles was published in 1966! It takes forever for these academic ideas to become available to us plebians, tremendously vexing. Analyzing a number of abduction narratives from this framework would likely throw much light on the topic and hopefully give rise to new lines of research.
 
Thanks Constance. Okay Mr. State, one thing I guess I should point out here is that you're talking to somebody who is the biggest aerospace enthusiast You will probably ever meet. I am extremely well-versed in the subject of aircraft and spacecraft. I have 25 years of experience in aerospace education and aerospace museum work and worked as a consultant for NASA/JPL. My job for them was to help the Galileo Mission Outreach eam put together a CD ROM that explaind the mission. Ironically the fact that I was not formally educated as an aerospace engineer turned out to be an asset. It turns out that a lot of engineers have difficulty explaining things in plain simple terms. You can believe me when I tell you that I took great lengths to try and eliminate anything earthly that could of been mistaken for those "craft". I realize that some of the reports in Project Sign had all kinds of shapes involved in them but I don't believe what those people were seeing were connected to the actual craft .
Think of it this way. Imagine there's a cat burglar in the neighborhood. They come on the radio and say "a man wearing an orange jacket and a blue hat has been breaking into homes." Suddenly the police get reports every time someone hears or sees something. The police will ask for a discription and tend to throw out discriptions that aren't constant. It's that simple. If you want to try to take each discription into account you will get nowere fast. You will come to the conclusion that the circus is in town.
In other posts in this forum I have laid out my "refugee" hypothesis. It involves one or more vary large multi generation design ships. Scientist and futurist today have speculated on how people from Earth May need to leave it some day in the face of some planet killing event and find a "new" earth. The movie interstellar deals with a storyline something like this. The problem with my theory and my view for some people is that it's not vary "paranormal". It's just normal for those people coming here. Of course, understand that I am NOT at all close minded to other theories and possibilities. But what I am close minded about is that, the "things" that were being seen were actual flying craft of some type. Going along with my hypothesis of the refugee aliens what people were seeing were scout ships. People like to speculate that "The aliens" (if they were aliens) were super super advanced and super super sophisticated to almost a supernatural level. And of course anything is possible. I personally don't think they were that advanced. Most people who studied this during that time have concluded that there were Three types of objects being seen; The disc shaped lifting body shaped vehicles were all the same except for one, there was one they said was shaped a little more like the "heel of the shoe" and there were consistent reports of that "heel ship". The other is the "blue light" which may have been seen even by pilots during World War II (FooFighters) I believe this to be some type of autonomous probe like thing.
The first book written by Donald Keyhoe gives a very valuable insight into the thought process and analysis during that time. I know that a lot of people want to suggest that these things were just some earthly secret aircraft. Trust me when I tell you this, I wish that were the case ,because to be honest with you, the idea of aliens coming here or even as refugees is a little scary, even if it is also somewhat exciting. Other theories such as "breakaway society's" and other weird things that I've been suggested aren't any less spooky to me.
If they were of US design then that design would've found itself some place down the road but it never did ( till the mid-70s). The hottest thing they had back then wwad the F-86 and the F-86 continued to be the hottest thing all the way through the Korean War. The biggest secret plane we had in 1947 was the X-1. Since I am not into believing in the "Evil Secret Government Idea" I don't think this country had secret "super technology" that we've never seen before. That is why I am not quite as strong a believer that the government was harboring the Alien saucer secret as much as people think they were. While they certainly didn't tell us everything they know I don't think they knew as much as we think.

Go on YouTube and look up Astronaut Gordon Cooper's UFO encounters. I didn't know him personally but I have friends who did and the guy is solid as a rock and not crazy.

As for foreign countries such as (what was left of) Germany or Russia creating craft like that the same thing applies. If the Soviets were capable of building anything like that ,they wouldn't have used Migs all the way up through the Vietnam War. Also the idea that things like that were created to scare people is completely absurd. Why build a flying saucer to scare people in the US when you could just fly a Russian bomber over to scare us. People in those days weren't afraid of flying saucers because they didn't associate them with aliens till the 1950s. And if you read Keyhoe's book or other material from that time you will see that most civilians thought the flying discs were of US design to begin with. Even personnel at Muroc Air Force Base (now Edwards) filed reports! Why would they do that for something they understood?

I guess in the end what I am saying is that while there IS plenty to study and plenty of phenomenon to wonder about I believe that this particular Mistry is worth deeper study and research. An analogy I will use this. The JFK assassination vs the RFK assassination. Robert F Kennedy's assassination was not delved into nearly as much as his brothers and there are so many more unanswered questions about that particular event that have never been answered or explained. Roswell is sort of the JFK of UFO study, meanwhile a bigger Mistry has been glossed over that may yield much more information about what was going on.
BTW I've really enjoyed this little discussion and I don't know about the rest of you, but I can't wait to hear the next show. ;)
There's a lot in here so I'm going to try to treat the essentials as I see no reason to support a consistent single craft or two craft scenario coming out of the refugee mother ship as much as it has a lot of appeal:

Gordon Cooper: The Roswell Slides Steal the Show!
I think that post leads to a more critical consideration. Just because they're astronaut, does not mean they can't catch the fever. Cooper is not strong proof of much except the excitement and conviction that comes with seeing unique things in the sky and space.

Air force base witnesses:
as Project Sign outlines there were competing theories being held at various bases. Some were ETH believers and others felt that ET visitation was nonsense. It's important to consider that there's a lot going on post WWII including fear and paranoia, Russian scare tactics, news of the ghost rockets, and then globally bits of UFO sightings are hitting radar. Secret US projects are ubiquitous with some in the know and others knowing nothing. This situation and all it's tensions appears to have maintained for quite some time. You get see there's a perfect storm here for many things to be see and following the dropping of some atomic bombs you can see how such things might even attract the attention of outsiders - possibly.

A sample of the problem and why Sign is not the be all and end all, but just a sampling of the modalities of thought given what people were seeing:
Even what people were seeing we're condensed into just saucers with some fins on the back, but then Sign identified four classes of objects, and @Constance will find this interesting, even Charles Fort was cited as proof of ongoing visitation well prior to 1947, as a means to provide a secondary opinion that was not ETH based by Sign's authors, when their ETH was rejexted by their masters and who could not help citing Fort to allude to the fact that it was ET, for ET had been here before they alluded. I'm not saying that the project leads were cooking the books, just that they were faced with some incredible cases, including the up close and and high drama kind, objects black, white, sliver, disc shaped, rocket shaped, balls of light, funnel shaped objects with contrail & without, with fire sucking in and out, with sparks and with portholes and windows. I see no real great consistency.

But let's look at the silence:

"But in the summer of 1947 the formal operation called Project Sign was not yet in existence. Reports of flying disks were coming from everywhere, but the investigation of these reports was disorganized. The Pentagon, through Schulgen, responded first as the natural focal point. AFOIR-CO was given the initial responsibility in the person of Lt. Colonel Garrett.

He, Taylor, and Schulgen began to try to get their bases to investigate notable cases and forward the reports. They also enlisted the FBI, who assigned Special Agent S. W. Reynolds as the liaison. They began working furiously on this throughout July, involving Wright-Patterson now and then by direct communication with McCoy.

As July wore on into August, Garrett, Schulgen, and Reynolds became confused by a lack of interest and pressure emanating from the high echelons of the Pentagon. The previous year they had gone through an investigative furor about a subject that they considered to be similar to the flying discs, when hundreds of “ghost rocket” reports came out of Sweden and other European countries. In 1946, the top brass had exerted continuous pressure to find an answer, but now it had gone completely quiet. This puzzling void has been termed “the silence from topside.” It was very peculiar to Garrett and the FBI.

Their mutual suspicion was that the very highest officials knew what this phenomenon was already (Swords, 1991)."


So there are definitely interesting things taking place:
internal projects not for public consumption, nor for the FBI's consumption and so again we see that one hand does not always get informed with what the other is doing. But one thing that is for certain, people are seeing some very strange things all over the world, with a concentration of rockets in northern Europe and a great number in the US including a number of spectacular cases reported after Arnold, but preceding him. There is little if any commonality amongst cases just groupings and classes of shapes. There are many experimental craft being flown and lots of folks are reporting flying wings and other odd shaped craft. There's a wealth of these homegrown images that @junius posted in the question bank for the Randle show. Formation flight reports mix well with these experimental possibilities. Post war paranoia must be assisting things no?

So I would also highlight three other points:
There is an epidemic taking place of sightings and we should not deny either the validity of the witness nor the role panic and fear in creating emotion in the witness. Just because you don't recognize it doesn't make it ET though many witnesses claimed ET, or it's just not of this earth.

Knowledge of debris re-entry, how to even begin to investigate such a phenomenon, and trying to collate and reconcile what's ache ponying in the airspaces of Europe, US and other sightings must have caused its own scientific curiosity and search for explanation. That the Project Sign leads are quoting Charles Fort tells you the nature of the influences at work. The classic Chiles-Whitted case can be looked at today more skeptically as debris re-entry as opposed to a portholed rocket. These scientists took what the witnesses said and then had to make scientific sense of it - that will produce its own results.

Finally this case from Sign:

"On February 18 at about 5 P.M., I was standing near my hog-pen about 100′ east of my house, when I heard the pheasants raising a disturbance and the chickens all rushed to the chicken-house.

I looked around toward the house to see what was causing it and saw something hovering just above the house. I ran toward the house, and it then lowered over the north end of the house and settled toward the ground. I was then very near it, approximately 6′ when it stopped about level with my face, and just wobbled around for an instant, fire belching out of it and sucking back in. The thing was about 4′ long, shaped something like a funnel.

There was a pipe sticking out the back of it, and once as it wobbled around, the pipe was sticking right at my belly. Suddenly there was a lot of sparks showered from it, and the fire increased as if a fuse might have lighted, and it took off in a north-westerly direction very fast, gaining altitude as it went. My wife heard it leave and ran out where I stood, and we watched it go, leaving a trail of smoke all the way. Suddenly there was a great cloud of smoke in the sky, not more than 40 seconds after it left my yard, and in a few seconds or more, we heard an explosion.

I then stepped off from my house to where it had been, and it was five steps. Yes, it was hot, I could feel the heat from it. Had I not been washing my car prior to the occurrence, wetting the ground, there would have been a bare spot in the yard where the thing started up because there was a great rush of fire from it when it left. It must have been quite high when it exploded. [Cox, 1948]"


How do we make sense of this strange witnessed event of such a low class technology - a fire breathing funnel complete with pipe and sparks? It's reminiscent of Cash Landrum and it's just plain bizarre, yet the witness is clear and straight. When I look at all of this I'm not prepared to dismiss ET outright, as what witnesses see is so strange, but I also have to consider the human mind as playing a definitive role in the outcomes, suspicions and with what was both witnessed, and believed.

This milieu would surely have a major effect on those investigating and reporting as Sign gave way to Grudge or also known as the battle of believers vs. non-believers. The mystery persists and I do think looking backwards at what went on helps us to get a clearer sense of how we got here. Those early reports and projects do tell us a lot, would've loved to have read The Estimate.
 
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Okay well, I checked out those links from Sentry's response to my earlier Cooper Story citation I didn't catch his response and I feel bad that I didn't respond back so I'm glad you put my attention to it thanks :) Unfortunately one of Sentry's links took me nowhere and that was the one dealing with Stills from the Cooper Film. Do you have know other links I could try that would show me those still shots? The other a Bluebook reference is one that I want to go over and look at In is context.

Whether it be astronauts or Air Force personnel or even Edwards Air Force Base personnel no single account proves anything nor does refuting them disapprove anything.
Please let me reassure you, I haven't swallowed my own Kool-Aid. I am not at all dogmatic about my view.
Trust me, I'm the last person that's going to say something like "you see Gordon Cooper believes in flying saucers it must be true!" However aerospace professionals, astronauts people involved with aircraft tend to make somewhat more credible witnesses or at least more observant to me than some others. But just because a person is an astronaut doesn't mean I'm ready to jump on his bandwagon. Edgar Mitchell is a UFO believer but that doesn't mean that I'm going to start quoting him. My Cooper reference was more along the lines of suggesting that they were seen as an aerodynamic phenomenon. Yes I know that there are 20 different explanations for what they could be. Please allow me the mistake of assuming that these things were flying machines or spacecraft because it IS a legitimate hypothesis AND remember I have an airplane/space enthusiast.

One thing you mentioned was various descriptions leading to the idea of many different types of sky objects. When I initially looked into this, what I was looking for was a consistent thread. At first the inconsistent reports of different colors bothered me, but then I began to realize that, that makes sense because a highly polished surface will take on the characteristics of what it was reflecting. As for shape inconsistencies; again if you look at a disc shape from different views they look different. Of course there are going to be conflicting reports because as time went on more and more "saucer" hysteria kicked in . This is why I was mostly interested in reports that took place in the initial two or three weeks. After that, all bets are off because the hysteria kicked in and everybody is seeing saucers. But I agree there was a lot going on and that just means I have to look deeper into all of this and keep an open mind because I'm not afraid to be wrong.

My refugee hypothesis is simply my view of one possibility. I don't believe I've ever heard anybody suggest that. If a person goes along with the visiting aliens theory A person may conclude that beings can zoom back-and-forth at faster than the speed of light or through warped space or some other ultraexotic means. Other people seem to be suggesting that there is an alien superhighway with hundreds of aliens representing dozens of races zooming back-and-forth and order to mutilate cattle and probe kidnapped humans.
My view is simply a suggestion of another possibility that doesn't involve Warping space, faster than light travel or creepy weird cattle hating ET Science geeks.
It's just a viewpoint I have.
Someday maybe I'll travel up North and have a beer with you and tell you my OTHER hypothesis; (not that others haven't thought of this ) that the Flying Disk people also could have been The descendants of people from Earth who were kidnapped thousands of years ago taken to another solar system and those earthly descendants just happen to return to their ancestors "homeland" in 1947. But, i've already given Gene enough ideas for his next book ha ha Ha ;)

Listening to the show especially the last episode, it seems that some people are tired of the flying saucers, aliens and UFO TV and want to move on to something more exotic and more interesting. There seem to be a lot of ideas about what all of this is about. My view is what it is.... I could be wrong and I could be right. But one thing I will tell you is that this is discussion has given me the inspiration to really dig deeper into this and find out as much as I can and learn as much as I can -keeping an open mind -because to me the possibility of this being true is fascinating.
 
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Whether you think this is nonsense or something of substance, one thing you have to admit is it is interesting if you haven't seen it before ( i'm guessing with this crowd probably everyone has lol)
You won't find an "lol" from me sub. Keep digging through material, keep reading. I realize it can be frustrating at times but there's a few of us around here that like to talk nuts and bolts on ufo's. If I remember right Cooper wasn't the only astronaut to see something, but I'll have to look that up.
 
Here's a cool article Have US Astronauts Seen UFOs? - UFO Evidence
So, where does this leave the astronauts? Has this nation’s spacefarers confronted the unknown in space?

The answer is a resounding “yes”. The problem is that the mass media usually fails to widely distribute any such experiences.

And, as a whole, U.S. astronauts appear to have maintained a united front --- stoutly denying than any valid UFO encounters have taken place. Following a news conference in March, 1996, devoted to artifacts in space, particularly the famous “face on Mars,” Apollo Astronaut Alan Bean told the media, “It’s not true. No one, certainly not me and Pete Conrad, who I was with the whole time, saw anything that suggested ancient civilizations.” NASA spokesman Brian Welch added, “Everything we found, we made public.”

Despite these assurances, many researchers remain unconvinced. Rumors have persisted for years that the astronauts --- nearly all military officers susceptible to being silenced under orders --- may have seen something more on the moon than rocks and dust. A According to transcripts of the technical debriefing following the Apollo 11 mission, astronauts Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins told of an encounter with a large cylindrical UFO even before reaching the moon. Aldrin said, “The first unusual thing that we saw I guess was one day out or pretty close to the moon. It had a sizable dimension to it...” Aldrin said the Apollo crew at first thought the object was the Saturn 4 booster rocket (S-IVB) but added, “We called the ground and were told the S-IVB was 6,000 miles away.” Aldrin described the UFO as a cylinder while Armstrong said it was “...really two rings. Two connected rings.” Collins also said it appeared to be a hollow cylinder which was tumbling. He added, “It was a hollow cylinder. But then you could change the focus on the sextant and it would be replaced by this open-book shape. It was really weird.”
 
Someday maybe I'll travel up North and have a beer with you and tell you my OTHER hypothesis; (not that others haven't thought of this ) that the Flying Disk people also could have been The descendants of people from Earth who were kidnapped thousands of years ago taken to another solar system and those earthly descendants just happen to return to their ancestors "homeland" in 1947. But, i've already given Gene enough ideas for his next book ha ha Ha ;)

Listening to the show especially the last episode, it seems that some people are tired of the flying saucers, aliens and UFO TV and want to move on to something more exotic and more interesting. There seem to be a lot of ideas about what all of this is about. My view is what it is.... I could be wrong and I could be right. But one thing I will tell you is that this is discussion has given me the inspiration to really dig deeper into this and find out as much as I can and learn as much as I can -keeping an open mind -because to me the possibility of this being true is fascinating.
Well, I'm always up for a beer and UFO talk as I don't know too many folk who can engage in that kind of bar talk around where I hang out, always too busy shooting pool to debate the ETH. So that would be a welcome change of pace. I would be surprised though if Nick Redfern hadn't already written up the refugee angle - if not I'm sure he'll have it written up by the end of the week. It's worth developing as a theory if you can wrangle in all the many diverse and very loose threads that accompany the UFO narrative circa 1947 and beyond. There's the necessity of obfuscation and the attention to our own human cultural narratves of the time that plug in nicely to your theory.

The tale of UFO aliens taking humans off planet and then returning them to earth "adjusted" is the central plot line for one of my all time favourite sci-fi movies, Quatermass and the Pit. Please watch if you don't know it and let me know how it jives up against theory #2.

Thanks for sending me back to Sign again and reengaging that era. It really is a ripe time period as many familiar paradigms seem to be asserting themselves and demonstrating how competing factions within the PTB structure are generating the future directions. The wheels within wheels appear to be turning even then, and those managing perceptions are certainly keeping their perspectives and possible insider knowledge to themselves.

Good searching and seeking.
 
You won't find an "lol" from me sub. Keep digging through material, keep reading. I realize it can be frustrating at times but there's a few of us around here that like to talk nuts and bolts on ufo's. If I remember right Cooper wasn't the only astronaut to see something, but I'll have to look that up.
The litany of Astronauts having seen things is fairly lengthy, much of the original sources of what they saw remains unconfirmed, though many photos and rich quotes abound. Suspicions regarding converstaions with mission control suddenly switching to private channels, coded language, supposed recorded dialogues confirming ET observing them all point to the possibilities of strange encounters. But there's also misidentification and simply a total lack of knowledge of what could be seen when you're literally in outer space. I really like the description of the hollow tube you posted, which then transforms - it's the type of image that cries alien. If you troll through this link you'll see that same incident redescribed. I also included a second link to a text that tries to chase the footnotes down so to speak, as Randle said last episode, some fascinating material in there as well.

24 Hour Operation Sysop - Tom Mickus Toronto FREE NASA.txt - This document is a compilatio

Walking Through Walls and Other Impossibilities - Milton E. Brener - Google Books
 
The litany of Astronauts having seen things is fairly lengthy, much of the original sources of what they saw remains unconfirmed, though many photos and rich quotes abound. Suspicions regarding converstaions with mission control suddenly switching to private channels, coded language, supposed recorded dialogues confirming ET observing them all point to the possibilities of strange encounters. But there's also misidentification and simply a total lack of knowledge of what could be seen when you're literally in outer space. I really like the description of the hollow tube you posted, which then transforms - it's the type of image that cries alien. If you troll through this link you'll see that same incident redescribed. I also included a second link to a text that tries to chase the footnotes down so to speak, as Randle said last episode, some fascinating material in there as well.

24 Hour Operation Sysop - Tom Mickus Toronto FREE NASA.txt - This document is a compilatio

Walking Through Walls and Other Impossibilities - Milton E. Brener - Google Books
Haven't seen a few of those quotes on first link, thank you!
 
As with most UFO reports, some of the NASA stuff is peretty interesting while other stuff doesn't really get my attention.
I had an interesting experience once though. After one of those UFO shows with a "hay NASA explane this" theam. I called one of my NASA contacts to ask how many calls they were getting and they said "things are super weird over here" lol then she said "oh shit!" ..and clicked on me... I'd sure like to know what they know about it.
 
Great show! Sorry I got to it just now. What a pleasure to hear reason applied to this field, especially Gene's assertion that hypnosis proves nothing about alien abductions other than the fact that hypnotic subjects may believe they experienced them.

Both Gene and Chris cite the need for hard scientific data rather than anecdotes about alien visitations. Rather than limiting scientific investigations to external events, science can also be applied to developing physical and psychological data about self-defined abductees themselves.

Chris rightfully says that phenomena about which we know almost nothing are affecting people, and also that some so-called abductees are delusional. However, distorted perceptions and hallucinations occur in persons who are completely sane, often caused by neurological or other physical conditions.

Dr Oliver Sacks, the neurologist of Awakenings fame, described cases in which sensory deprivation caused by sudden blindness made the visual cortex go into overdrive and produce fully three-dimensional creatures to be seen and experienced as if they were real. The brain was so accustomed to visual stimuli that it filled their absence with sensations it created, very much in the way phantom limbs are perceived. Hallucinated entities are not dreamlike and vaporous, they are as solid-seeming as actual physical beings, except they aren't there.

Psychiatry can also identify projections and distortions that create false experiences arising from emotional causes.

It's not likely however that neurologists or psychologists are going to examine abductee claimants unless the person seeks a diagnosis. And the more rarely these cases present themselves to the field of medicine, the more likely doctors will jump to the conclusion that psychosis is causing the experiences, and not blood chemistry or organic brain disorder.

Abductee or experiences support groups welcome everybody with a tale to tell into their circles, where the new member is discouraged from seeking medical help and encouraged to identify themselves as abductees.

As Chris and Gene frequently say, eliminating false reports only increases the reliability of those that can't be explained medically or scientifically.
 
Great show! Sorry I got to it just now. What a pleasure to hear reason applied to this field, especially Gene's assertion that hypnosis proves nothing about alien abductions other than the fact that hypnotic subjects may believe they experienced them.
Yup, that's pretty much the deal. What we believe happened is our reality, even though the experiences may be discontinuous in nature or part of a manic, hallucinatory, schizoidal or dream state. For more interesting and alternative looks at ufology and the abduction phenomenon I'd like to recommend the episode featuring Bruce Duensing on Radio Misterioso and then the one I did on that show some weeks after Bruce. Exploring who the witness is and they intersect with reality as experienced by their sensory systems and motor cortex in a cultural context offers a much cleaner line than hypnosis.

Hypnosis, in the history of ufology, functions as a kind of narrative aid, and it can become quite a collaborative tool instead of an unbiased investigatory one. Still, Barney Hill's session is intensely weird and wicked if you have not heard it. The fear is real there; that's for certain. And curiously the emotion of fear repeatedly plays a role in this specific ufological experience. That needs attention and is explored in the two episodes suggested above.

I also totally recommend listening to Greg Bishop on the Paracast which aired prior to this shop talk episode as it's a good prelude to his upcoming episode with Walter this coming weekend.
 
Still, Barney Hill's session is intensely weird and wicked if you have not heard it. The fear is real there; that's for certain. And curiously the emotion of fear repeatedly plays a role in this specific ufological experience. That needs attention and is explored in the two episodes suggested above.
Why wouldn't they have been targeted and abducted by humans? Being a biracial black/white married couple was highly controversial and NOT acceptable in that time period. Culturally, they would be considered outcasts both within the white and black communities by a large majority, imo. If that area was considered conservative in nature AND they knew people at the Air Force base, well, then it is highly likely they were the victims of human abduction probably with the use of drugs too. IMO.

Better to blame the Aliens rather than "the humans" that did it. Seriously. That could be very dangerous for them to accuse whomever may have done it, so it was the Aliens instead. Or, they really were seriously hoaxed with drugs and a very bad trip. IMO. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if some wacko UFO people knew of the Hill's.

Btw, how can we hear those sessions? Ahh, I found on youtube.
 
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So that makes the options:
  1. MILAB or assault by human agents
  2. Aliens
  3. Folie à Deux
Whatever it was, something did happen to the Hills. How internal vs. external the experience was, is always difficult to ascertain.

It's interesting how the biracial aspect of this case often figures in the discussion of it. @Posey Gilbert had brought up the feature of race and alien abduction in another thread a ways back and there's an idea from that thread still stuck in the back of my mind. It is an interesting question to be asked here though: Why do so many alien contact/abduction cases, and perhaps even an overwhelming majority of them, feature Caucasians as the the primary subject?
 
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Robert, I'm a big fan of Radio Misterioso. I first heard you on Greg's show. When he posted on Facebook that Bruce Duensing had passed I mentioned the favorable comments you had made about him on the air. The tribute show to Bruce was great.

As for abductees being sincerely terrified, it's important to realize that sincerity is no indication that the fear is caused by the source the person sincerely believes it to be caused by.

The cause could be an experience or feeling the person finds shameful, disgusting, or otherwise threatening to the sense of self, the ego. These experiences happen to everyone in lesser or greater degrees, and are routinely repressed, comings back to haunt us in nightmares, slips of the tongue, and other ways. A classic example is rage felt towards another person that emerges in a nightmare as something attacking us. Another is embarrassment over a sexual encounter one would rather not remember.

But repression sometimes fails, and rather than face the disowned feeling or experience the person may faint, have amnesia for that time period, or invent an alternate scenario for themselves.

In severe cases, one or more parts of the self are dissociated from the self-concept and result in multiple personalities or psychotic episodes.

A knowledge of how psychology works is essential in evaluating reports of alien abduction. In the Hill case, well, married couples have lots of subliminal ways of communicating with each other. And how can we be sure one of them didn't read the other's mind? Until telepathy and ESP are conclusively disproved, that possibility cannot be ruled out.
 
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How hokey can this get??????????????? Seriously, I listened to Barny, and I just can't believe the BS UFO people make over this case. Ridiculous!

First off, I find it highly suspect they have binoculars, and Betty right away starts telling him it's not a plane. She suggests a UFO after he said it was a plane. Then when the people [from the craft] approach on the road and are near the car outside he thinks they might be getting robbed. They have their dog with them, but nothing is ever said about the dog freaking out and barking and growling, etc. Any dog would freak if some weird crap was going on at night like getting robbed. The dog would detect it.

Also, he says he's outside with the people too "floating about". He laughs without fear [drug or alcohol effects?], and then he mentions the UFO BS... That he saw a UFO, and he wished he went with them. Maybe it proves God exists. He says he wasn't afraid. And that's really all he said in that first session.

I don't care to hear any more. Betty started in with the UFO idea. They made this into a huge story, and it could easily be a hoax on anyone's part including the Hill's too.

This is a classic case of media hysteria about anything UFO's back then. But Barny always used the word "men" and even thought one had red hair like an Irishman. He notes the fear he has, because these [Irish] people don't like black people.

Wow, so what's so freaking "real" about this case? Nothing more than UFO media hysteria to hype this story to the maximum. It just goes to show how outlandish these tales become and are now part of our cultural mythology. Pathetic. I think they were used by the media simply because they were biracial, and the media knew this would attract wide attention from such an oddball couple. It's like a carnival attraction to see a wolf man, but it's the freak show staring the black/white UFO contactee "married freaks" instead. It sells newspapers and magazines and books and movies too.

It would be very interesting to learn how this all went public and got into the media. Btw, he was not afraid when he was out floating about seemingly having a good time with the men on the road [the Irish? Aliens?]. Lol.
 
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Great show! Sorry I got to it just now. What a pleasure to hear reason applied to this field, especially Gene's assertion that hypnosis proves nothing about alien abductions other than the fact that hypnotic subjects may believe they experienced them.

Both Gene and Chris cite the need for hard scientific data rather than anecdotes about alien visitations. Rather than limiting scientific investigations to external events, science can also be applied to developing physical and psychological data about self-defined abductees themselves.

Chris rightfully says that phenomena about which we know almost nothing are affecting people, and also that some so-called abductees are delusional. However, distorted perceptions and hallucinations occur in persons who are completely sane, often caused by neurological or other physical conditions.

Dr Oliver Sacks, the neurologist of Awakenings fame, described cases in which sensory deprivation caused by sudden blindness made the visual cortex go into overdrive and produce fully three-dimensional creatures to be seen and experienced as if they were real. The brain was so accustomed to visual stimuli that it filled their absence with sensations it created, very much in the way phantom limbs are perceived. Hallucinated entities are not dreamlike and vaporous, they are as solid-seeming as actual physical beings, except they aren't there.

Psychiatry can also identify projections and distortions that create false experiences arising from emotional causes.

It's not likely however that neurologists or psychologists are going to examine abductee claimants unless the person seeks a diagnosis. And the more rarely these cases present themselves to the field of medicine, the more likely doctors will jump to the conclusion that psychosis is causing the experiences, and not blood chemistry or organic brain disorder.

Abductee or experiences support groups welcome everybody with a tale to tell into their circles, where the new member is discouraged from seeking medical help and encouraged to identify themselves as abductees.

As Chris and Gene frequently say, eliminating false reports only increases the reliability of those that can't be explained medically or scientifically.
I've seen what you are talking about on a show/documentary. Subjects were sleep deprived and I believe had blindfolds on. They started screaming as if someone was trying to slice their throat open because they were seeing creatures/aliens. Pretty amazing and it made me start to wonder.
 
As for abductees being sincerely terrified, it's important to realize that sincerity is no indication that the fear is caused by the source the person sincerely believes it to be caused by.

The cause could be an experience or feeling the person finds shameful, disgusting, or otherwise threatening to the sense of self, the ego. These experiences happen to everyone in lesser or greater degrees, and are routinely repressed, comings back to haunt us in nightmares, slips of the tongue, and other ways. A classic example is rage felt towards another person that emerges in a nightmare as something attacking us. Another is embarrassment over a sexual encounter one would rather not remember.
The fear element is rather curious and in this more manic state it's reasonable for substitution, misinterpretation or reconfiguration to take place when the stimulus is perceived or recorded as nightmarish. I agree that there does not necessarily have to be a 1:1 relationship with actual cause and perceived cause.

But repression sometimes fails, and rather than face the disowned feeling or experience the person may faint, have amnesia for that time period, or invent an alternate scenario for themselves.

In severe cases, one or more parts of the self are dissociated from the self-concept and result in multiple personalities or psychotic episodes.
All of that makes perfect sense and matches examples I've read about.

A knowledge of how psychology works is essential in evaluating reports of alien abduction. In the Hill case, well, married couples have lots of subliminal ways of communicating with each other. And how can we be sure one of them didn't read the other's mind? Until telepathy and ESP are conclusively disproved, that possibility cannot be ruled out.
I think that for those people who literally feel that they are in contact with aliens or feel they've been abducted, a caring, and open minded professional who is willing to listen is what people need, not the FREE group.

Yes, I believe married couples have some varying degrees of telepathy that increase with time, at least my experience has taught me that women would prefer their male counterparts to have at least a minimal degree of psi-power to be seen as somewhat functional. But I don't know about being able to transmit entire narratives. I am not familiar with any couples able to transmit similar detailed messages without some "magic" involved.

I have often wondered whether or not that in cases involving more than one person, specifically heterosexual couples who are not necessarily partners, whether or not a shameful, or disgusting sexual event or assault is the cause. I know that some researchers and psychologists confirm this. But in the case of the Hills where Barney's terrified replay of the genital examination up against the floating wonderment sequence relayed above by DS, I just can't think of an extended shifting narrative that fits. There is an encounter. Are they assaulted on the road perhaps? It's a puzzler, that is not so easily dismissed as DS would suggest. Dismissing it as a carnival show misses out on what else the story might tell us. For them to step forward with their story, given who they were and their position in the community, it must have been a very risky thing to do, that they both most have anguished about. There is a strange story here.

The biracial feature does contribute to the enduring nature of the story thanks to a rather sensationalized media of the times that launched the story into the public sphere for all time. It is a narrative, that like Arnold, Roswell and Walton, are cornerstones of the populist knowledge concerning UFO's. It won't go away, but how many features of it are real vs. invented, for an entire phenomenon has been structured around their familiar sequence of events. Their story is the blueprint of the archetypal narrative now.
 
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