The UFO Stimulus

[Gene Steinberg]

Last comment:

What people appear to be referring to here in their own examples are not close encounter cases but lights in the sky or far away daylight objects. While these can be profound for those present who see them they are not getting us closer to what the stimulus is. In these examples the reliability of the witness has nothing to do with it. I believe everyone has the capacity to faithfully but the interpretations are only of value to the individual who may imbue them with as much significance as they like.

What I am referring to on this thread is the much more powerful experience of Hynek's CE definitions of objects seen less than 500 feet away and or the witnessing of humanoids/entities. These cases repeatedly come with very intense emotion and do mark people in much more significant ways. I'm talking about the ship you see hovering directly overhead that are so close that you can see the rivets or that smooth clean surface, the structured craft seen hovering in a field forty feet away from your parked car or in one my personal favorites from Wendy O'Connors' audio collection where the ship covers the entire width of the highway, appears to be made out of a spider webbed honeycombed structure and the two humanoids outside it that are greeting the witness look like giant catfish from the waist up and appear to be breathing using some surreal gill structured object on their backs. These cases speak directly to saying something much more specific about the nature of the stimulus.

The lights and objects seen at a distance may have a myriad of explanations for believers and skeptics alike, but the close encounter experience is the thing that screams out "alien" and is what I'm exploring in terms of trying to understand the nature of both the stimulus and it's response. As we have the report and the powerful experience that has altered a witness we perhaps can try to better ascertain the nature of the stimulus by examining more closely the nature of the response, its impact and who exactly the witness is.

Examining the nature of perception and how it works, what affects it biologically & sociologically and how different people may be more prone to seeing things certain ways may offer better clues than talking about the much more commonplace and leas detailed distant object or light. Not to take away anything from how that may have affected individuals who have had such experiences but those generic sightings do not carry the same weight as the Polish farmer in Emilcin who gave a ride on his horse and cart to two small purplish humanoids who raised him up into their craft, covered in tiny propellers on spires, using a platform and pulley system.

So this is an opportunity to look more closely at the interaction between the stimulus and the response. For the ETH crowd this case is all about aliens from space but it's as nonsensical as humanoids exchanging water for tasteless pancakes. What kind of creatures need propellers or would use a pulley system to raise up their human guest for his medical exam while he stares in awe at the large black birds that are twitching held in some kind of suspended animation.

In these cases we perhaps can gather up much more information about the nature of how the stimulus is interacting with a man who has no real education or exposure to media to colour his views of what aliens or alien ships look like. We can learn from close examination of such cases.

Human beings are the interpreters of these unique events and they need the emphasis as we have only their "alien" story to work with and them.

Another superlative observation, Burnt.

This is so much about what is lacking with a lot of UFO research, which focuses on events and not so much the witness.

 

[Constance]

Everything we see is a projection in the mind of the observor.

. . . However, a group of witnesses together can increase the odds of accuracy.

Without boring people with specifics,I saw a solid flying object around 50 metres away from the window of the plane I was flying in.Clear daylight,no obstructions,I don't drink and have never used drugs.The affect on me was WTF!.I wracked my brains trying to rationalize what I saw.Didn't know then,still don't know now 15 years later.I'm Mr Average in every way and don't think the object was there for my benefit,I just happened to see it.

Ron, your experience is strikingly similar to my own first ufo sighting (winter of 1990) in both the apparent nature of the visible stimulus and in my response. The object was first called to my attention by my daughter, then 3 1/2 years old, pointing through the window over the starboard wing of a Delta airliner flying at night over the western shore of Lake Michigan between Chicago and our destination, Milwaukee, sixty miles north. The object was an intensely brilliant white light encased in what looked like extremely thick glass and located just off the wingtip of the plane. It apparently paced the plane from a position near the wingtip [given the time between Annie's calling my attention to it and my looking out the window and seeing it]. The size of the light itself filled the cabin window. My first thought (absurd) was that this must have been a lighthouse light out in the water off the lakeshore. I was not at all 'freaked out' by this sighting (nor was my daughter). I remember it vividly in detail and only realized on later reflection that it could not have been a lighthouse light operating at the altitude of the plane (and shining its light toward the shore). I did find the sight itself to be amazing, indeed beautiful, but I did not feel that we were singled out for this perception. I do remember that as we left the plane three crew members, including the captain, stood together near the cockpit evidently studying the faces of the departing passengers, and that none of the passengers, nor the crew, were speaking.


Re Burnt's statements above, I disagree with the first one: "Everything we see is a projection in the mind of the observer." Like other animals preceding us in eons of evolution, we sense the actual environing world/niche we live in by virtue of affordances provided by our evolving senses (what we see, what we hear, what we touch and smell, what we feel, and what we can think), all of which originated in and evolved out of the natural world of which we too are expressions, developments, events.

I think that Burnt's second statement quoted above contradicts the first statement. We do perceive a common macroreality, described to various extents by classical physics and chemistry and also by the biological and ethological sciences. But each of us (including many animals closer to us in evolution) experiences the encountered, tangible, common world we coexist in from existentially limited perspectives {specific locations and situations, experienced within our own temporality and sense of temporality, and within our species' limited access to the EM spectrum}. We see within the naturally given limits of what we can see. Thus what we perceive are the phenomenal appearances of things available to us through our sensoria, our consciousness, and our reflections on what we experience in time. Neither we nor the birds, the fishes, the bees, the dolphins perceive 'things in themselves'. We will most probably never know the nature of the universe or cosmos (or multiverse) in itself. We've known this since before Kant, but Kant's thinking engineered a revolution in the grounds of human epistemology which phenomenological philosophy has developed, and which anyone who wants to approach an understanding of consciousness and mind should read. Primary insights of phenomenology beginning with Kant have been misunderstood in common parlance to suggest variously that we 'invent' the world we live in and seek to understand, or that 'reality' exists only in the 'mind', or that we are cogs in an immense computational operandum within which we only think that what we experience is real, that 'reality' is only virtual. Consciousness studies is the field that in our times merges both scientific and philosophical disciplines in the immense task of defining what consciousness and mind are. For discussion of which, if you are interested, see the thread entitled Consciousness and the Paranormal.

 

[Randall]

Last comment:

Why is that? You make some excellent comments.

 

[Wade]

In these cases we perhaps can gather up much more information about the nature of how the stimulus is interacting with a man who has no real education or exposure to media to colour his views of what aliens or alien ships look like. We can learn from close exaimination of each case.

I wouildn't argue with this sentiment but the only thing is that scenario was available many ages ago in biblical times and we THINK we know what the outcome of that was, in other words the stimulus may have very well brought on a spiritual experience where one felt they had communicated with the holy spirit because that arguably was the only point of reference they had in which to explain their experience. if such a person that you decribe can be found today and they describe their expereince akin to a religious/biblical experince are not we back to square one ? there will be those that would argue that outcome should be thrown out because we should know better as we are modern men of science not faith and we like our stimuli in humanoid or insectoid form not deities.

 

[Randall]

Without boring people with specifics,I saw a solid flying object around 50 metres away from the window of the plane I was flying in.Clear daylight,no obstructions,I don't drink and have never used drugs.The affect on me was WTF!.I wracked my brains trying to rationalize what I saw.Didn't know then,still don't know now 15 years later.I'm Mr Average in every way and don't think the object was there for my benefit,I just happened to see it.

Can you give us a description, or if you have already described it in another post, can you link us to where your description is? Sometimes we all need a reminder and I don't find the specifics boring at all!

 

[Constance]

I wouildn't argue with this sentiment but the only thing is that scenario was available many ages ago in biblical times and we THINK we know what the outcome of that was, in other words the stimulus may have very well brought on a spiritual experience where one felt they had communicated with the holy spirit because that arguably was the only point of reference they had in which to explain their experience. if such a person that you decribe can be found today and they describe their expereince akin to a religious/biblical experince are not we back to square one ? there will be those that would argue that outcome should be thrown out because we should know better as we are modern men of science not faith and we like our stimuli in humanoid or insectoid form not deities.

Whatever we think we "know" in our time, and however we "like our stimuli," members of our species far back in our prehistory have, like us, lived within horizons of the visible world, both locally and, these days, in terms of the current extent of the distance we can perceive in spacetime within our still-expanding universe. Like our forebears, we 'know' to some extent the actual environment in which we find ourselves existing, but we have long been impelled to speculate about that which exists beyond the horizons of what is visible to us and measureable by us. This persistent human condition is the primordial source of ontological thinking, the desire to 'know', to comprehend, the whole nature of the 'reality' within which we are apparently contained.

You compare the spiritual and 'religious' speculations of our forebears with the way we currently speculate relative to ufos and, more broadly, relative to the wide range of para-normal experiences that have been recorded in human history, and I think the comparison is valid. Our conceptions of the possible significances of our marginal, liminal, experiences change historically, but they all originate in human experiences that cannot be accounted for objectively. Materialist/physicalist/objectivist science still avoids this entire dimension of human experience and thought, so imo it's unlikely to be helpful in answering the questions that occupy this forum.

 

[Burnt State]

Why is that? You make some excellent comments.

(Ok this is the last one, as you deserve an answer for all your sincere efforts in the field. And because you can really take criticism and smile forwards.

Randall, your inbox is still dysfunctional.
Wish I could stay longer but this is not a space for me. Though I do enjoy dialogue with you and many other good people on the topic here in the forum. You have a clear and logical head about things.

But I'm not interested in dealing with inbox harassment from some members as it's a time killer and would rather stay away from spaces that are so filled with backbiting and egoistic emotion. I discuss most things ufo like in private zones without emotion or ego and just thought I would come back to see what's going on. While I really enjoy you and Wade and Soupie etc. and many other sincere posters here, I have no time for bullshit or getting caught up in emotional tantrums. But you and others have made some excellent observations here and I will continue to follow those at a distance.

Best to you and all,
Robert)

***apologies to all for interrupting this thread. I hope Ron Away provides more details on his sighting and it's impact on him.

P.S. Wade, no we are not back at square one, it only confirms for us how culture can shape the perceiver and their interpretations of Anomalous Stimuli. Some people today are still seeing angels and others alien craft. This tells us a lot about who they are and very little about the stimuli...but what if we could find a less socialized witness...what could they tell us about the stimuli via their own interpretations? That'a why Emilcin is so interesting to me.

And what if we could investigate a large collection of C.E witnesses to see what they had in common pre and post sighting? This might inform us not only about who the more likely witness is but if we know about how they've been socialized and culturally informed perhaps we can tease out something about the stimulus.

But as Soupie has accurately pointed out the greater likelihood is that we are simply ill equipped biologically to perceive anything close to what the true nature is of the external stimulus. I mean we can't see the gender or species of butterflies the way other butterflies can and so whatever the ufo stimulus is it very well may be simply outside the scope of our senses to accurately identify it. Until we get measuring devices that go well beyond our evolved sensory apparatus we may simply always be talking about gods descending from the heavens or aliens from space because sociologically that makes the most sense to us. But it's probably got nothing to do with either.

Thanks Wade. ...it's so easy to get drawn back in. Adios.

 

[Randall]

Ok this is the last one, as you deserve an answer for all your sincere efforts in the field. And because you can really take criticism and smile forwards ...

Wow, thanks for the words of encouragement, but I thought you just meant your last comment on the thread rather than on the forum itself. I understand it can be frustrating at times and my break really helped. So hopefully yours won't be permanent. In the meantime, I sent an invite for you to join the Private USI Member thread here. It's just Ron and I in there for now. I haven't even been able to find an option to fix the problem you describe, but you can always send private email to me at USI, and if you still like to write and don't want to deal with anybody ( but me ) giving you a hard time, the site can always use some good content. So whatever you decide, best wishes and don't forget you don't have to be a total stranger

 

[victimized]

When human life lives a normal living experience, and then phenomena is experienced then the only realization to the condition is what condition as a living experience is abnormal or artificial as a consideration to a living experience.

The only abnormal condition is an occult mind, the only abnormal life experience is the occult experience, and the occult experience is a choice that does not belong to the condition of humanity.

The occult choice as known by us all is applied by the organization or brotherhood who took over the control of life on Planet Earth. They formed values for a condition that they wanted to introduce to a natural life and this choice was conversion of the nuclear of stone....or as we all know science.

Science, builds buildings and machines to replicate natural imagery as a status of being informed and recorded atmospheric information that they became aware of. The review of occultism states that males, drugged by taking chemicals of plants, called somas, in trances researched information on a changed brain chemical interaction.

Due to this circumstance, our life was then attacked by the unnatural condition that they introduced....science.

If you cannot review simple information then why bother thinking about the UFO condition, when the natural life demonstrates by how it is experienced, that phenomena is caused, the cause and effect is to attack only due to the condition.......the unnatural ground conversion wavelengths with the multitudes of nuclear power plants. Therefore the attacks have no reference to natural life, only the fact that the effects of science attack the natural life.

 

[Ron Away]

In response to Burnt State and Ufology.
I was flying to the state's from the U.K..I can't sleep anywhere other than a bed and even though part of the flight was through the night I was awake reading or watching t.v.I was sat by the window slightly forward of the wing on the left hand side.Day had just broken and I was glancing out of the window looking at the beautiful blue sky and wispy white clouds.I noticed slightly below our height and approximately 50 metres away something poking through a thin layer of cloud.I can only describe it as being like a jet black coloured Obelisk.My immediate thought was that it was a skyscraper and that I must have fallen asleep on a plane for the first time ever and we were over a city.I glanced at the flight display for the passengers on board and we were at over 30,000 feet and partway over the Atlantic.I was sat alone and quickly looked to see if anyone near by could see this object.They were asleep.I watched the object for the time it took us to pass,it appeared to be stationery huge black and pointing upwards.I know this description is poor I just can't think of any other way to describe it.I lost sight of it as the wing obscured it from view behind me.To this day I have no idea what it was.My interest in the paranormal before this began and ended with Dr Who as a child.This incident kick started my interest..
I was a serving police officer at the time and never reported officially what I saw for fear of losing credibility.I only ever told a couple of friends.
I understand this account proves nothing and I could be making it all up(Im not) but I accept what others may think as you don't know me.

 

[Soupie]

"There are twelve black dots at the intersections in this image. Your brain won’t let you see them all at once."

 

[Randall]

"There are twelve black dots at the intersections in this image. Your brain won’t let you see them all at once."

That's one of the best I've seen! I tried a number of different sizes and ways of looking at the image, and the most reliable for me is to scroll the top rows out of sight so that only the bottom row of dots is visible at the edge of the browser window. Then I can clearly see 4 dots at once, but as soon as I scroll to the second level the effect starts kicking in. How might this apply to the UFO stimulus? Not sure. I've heard of craft that appear to have a girder like construction with lights attached, not unlike something one might see at a concert.

Perhaps an array like that could fool the eye into seeing it differently than it really is, or maybe it might apply to other camouflage, or perhaps the way UFOs sometimes move in angular patterns might improve their ability to be evasive. I don't know. How do you think it might relate to the question? One thing that is certain is that the dots are there. So literally using them as an analogy to UFOs would result in still having to admit they're there, but that maybe they aren't all perceived the way we think we're perceiving them.

 

[victimized]

That's one of the best I've seen! I tried a number of different sizes and ways of looking at the image, and the most reliable for me is to scroll the top rows out of sight so that only the bottom row of dots is visible at the edge of the browser window. Then I can clearly see 4 dots at once, but as son as I scroll get to the second level the effect starts kicking in. How might this apply tot eh UFO stimulus? Not sure. I've heard of craft that appear to have a girder like construction with lights attached, not unlike something one might see at a concert.

Perhaps an array like that could fool the eye into seeing it differently than it really is, or maybe it might apply to other camouflage, or perhaps the way UFOs sometimes move in angular patterns might improve their ability to be evasive. I don't know. How do you think it might relate to the question? One thing that is certain is that the dots are there. So literally using them as an analogy to UFOs would result in still having to admit they're there, but that maybe they aren't all perceived the way we think we're perceiving them.

The occultist/scientist builds a machine.

Their theory...I want energy at the beginning.

They state that the biblical documents detailed this condition, when it was only a review of being attacked, due to a voided atmospheric body.

The occultist thinks about the theory and imposes that he will cause the reaction where energy first began.

The state of reality as a review states....no stone, no metals and no machines when energy was first formed.

They also model a machine on natural energy reactions to cause what they propose is an energy reaction, yet the machine, part of the model of their theory cannot convert. They test, test and test, yet the machine itself will not convert into the reaction that they believe exists naturally.

In the human owned atmospheric interaction, the stone tries to disappear for the machine reaction and then the atmosphere transmits the signals/manifestations caused by the machine trying to make stone disappear.

Our brains/minds attacked in an unnatural chemical brain condition begin to hallucinate, yet we do not hallucinate the manifestation, we hallucinate due to the changed brain chemical condition. We know that the UFO condition is not a hallucination because in the manifestation, the condition falls out and we then gained the physical evidence of the caused artificial manifestation.

 

[Ron Away]

"There are twelve black dots at the intersections in this image. Your brain won’t let you see them all at once."

So there were 12 of those obelisks outside my plane.Damn!..

 

[Soupie]

How might this apply to the UFO stimulus?

Human perception is bounded. Reality and our species-specific perception of reality are distinct.

Im suggesting in this thread that some—but not necessarily all—encounters with "unidentified flying objects" involve humans interacting with stimuli that our primate perceptual systems struggle to perceive.

The stimulus could be purposefully evading the human perceptual system; the stimulus could be purposefully "tricking" the human nervous system; the high strange appearance of the stimulus could be an unintentional byproduct of its exotic nature; etc.

It's certainly possible that some UFO sightings are indeed of nuts and bolts craft that are essentially advanced airplanes, terrestrial or extraterrestrial.

These are not mutually exclusive potentialities. That is, some UFOs may be of a nature very foreign to Earth-life, while other UFOs may be advanced humans or an advanced ET, human-like species (i.e. biological).

Regardless of current mainstream thinking, I think there is more than enough "scientific" room for both hypotheses.

 

[Jeff Davis]

Im suggesting in this thread that some—but not necessarily all—encounters with "unidentified flying objects" involve humans interacting with stimuli that our primate perceptual systems struggle to perceive.

The stimulus could be purposefully evading the human perceptual system; the stimulus could be purposefully "tricking" the human nervous system; the high strange appearance of the stimulus could be an unintentional byproduct of its exotic nature; etc.

This does in fact seem to be the most common hypothetical consensus. Keel and Vallee both contended hypothetical variations of this precise same thinking, albeit Vallee's progress now points in the direction of consciousness. It seems to come down to the cognitive process of relevant perceptually apparent information, the boundary to which you refer, and whether it's externally or internally guided. Do you have any suspicions in that sense?

When I think about issues like those relevant to all manner of interactive high strangeness like the Missing 411, all manner of humanoid cryptoterrestrials, (aliens, dogmen, bigfoot, ) missing time, elf and alien abductions, etc, I cannot help but imagine that what you refer to as a perceptual binding, is in fact extended to a hypothetical realm of the experientially hidden as well.

What do you think?

 

[Randall]

Human perception is bounded. Reality and our species-specific perception of reality are distinct.
Im suggesting in this thread that some—but not necessarily all—encounters with "unidentified flying objects" involve humans interacting with stimuli that our primate perceptual systems struggle to perceive.
The stimulus could be purposefully evading the human perceptual system; the stimulus could be purposefully "tricking" the human nervous system; the high strange appearance of the stimulus could be an unintentional byproduct of its exotic nature; etc.
It's certainly possible that some UFO sightings are indeed of nuts and bolts craft that are essentially advanced airplanes, terrestrial or extraterrestrial.
These are not mutually exclusive potentialities. That is, some UFOs may be of a nature very foreign to Earth-life, while other UFOs may be advanced humans or an advanced ET, human-like species (i.e. biological).
Regardless of current mainstream thinking, I think there is more than enough "scientific" room for both hypotheses.

I'm not sure exactly what the two hypotheses you're suggesting are, but if reports where craft appear to vanish or morph or appear bizarre are true, then the possibilities are:

1. The craft really is bizarre and we have no idea about how or why it is that way.
2. The craft is a material construct we could relate to on our terms, but is fooling our senses through the use of some sort of active camouflage.
3. The craft is a material construct we could relate to on our terms, but is fooling our senses as a byproduct of the way it works ( e.g. some high energy EM field is influencing our sensory perception ).
4. The craft is a hallucination caused by some natural process ( e.g. The Persinger Earth generated EM field theory, the ingestion of some sort of hallucinogenic by the witness )
5. The craft isn't a craft, but is some sort of rare natural phenomenon ( Earth lights, ball lightning, some rare astronomical event ).
6. The craft may or may not be a craft and the strangeness is the result of a natural misperception of the otherwise mundane.
7. The craft is an intentionally created misperception ( some sort of hoax ).

Of the seven options above, 1., 2, and 3.. are of primary interest to the core subject matter of ufology ( alien craft ). The rest are of peripheral interest. The question is then: How do we differentiate between what we're interested in and all the rest? The answer is of course, by doing some investigation and analysis of the reports to determine with reasonable certainty which cases are more likely to be alien. Because each possibility has it's own characteristics and properties, it is often possible to separate the signal from the noise, and that is what UFO investigators and analysts do, and they've been doing it since the dawn of the Modern Era.

The chart below spans about five years and takes into account 1,593 of the best cases from 1947-1952. ( source )



So even back in the 1950s there were serious attempts to sort out real craft from other stimuli. However back then there wasn't much emphasis put on the possibility of active camouflage. That is a relatively new concept. Sometimes ufologists, even eminent ones like Vallée jumped to far more fantastical conclusions, like alternate dimensions, instead of recognizing that high-tech camouflage could explain the same perceptual phenomena. It could even explain more bizarre visual sightings like the one @Burnt State mentions here involving what appeared to be a spider-webbed honeycombed looking craft and fish-like aliens.

Because active camouflage is something our own military is presently working on, it's a known factor ( as opposed to more exotic hypothesises ). So when other explanations seem to fail, we still don't have to invoke far-out theories about parallel worlds or the way the mind might be influenced by telepathic waves or whatever. Relatively simple trickery of our senses is certainly possible, and therefore IMO it's the most reasonable explanation for stranger cases. The problem these days is differentiating between which craft are ours and which ones are alien ( if any ), because our own active camouflage tech may be more effective now than what we're aware of.

 

[Soupie]

I'm not sure exactly what the two hypotheses you're suggesting are, but if reports where craft appear to vanish or morph or appear bizarre are true, then the possibilities are:

1. The craft really is bizarre and we have no idea about how or why it is that way.
2. The craft is a material construct we could relate to on our terms, but is fooling our senses through the use of some sort of active camouflage.
3. The craft is a material construct we could relate to on our terms, but is fooling our senses as a byproduct of the way it works ( e.g. some high energy EM field is influencing our sensory perception ).
4. The craft is a hallucination caused by some natural process ( e.g. The Persinger Earth generated EM field theory, the ingestion of some sort of hallucinogenic by the witness )
5. The craft isn't a craft, but is some sort of rare natural phenomenon ( Earth lights, ball lightning, some rare astronomical event ).
6. The craft may or may not be a craft and the strangeness is the result of a natural misperception of the otherwise mundane.
7. The craft is an intentionally created misperception ( some sort of hoax ).

Of the seven options above, 1., 2, and 3.. are of primary interest to the core subject matter of ufology ( alien craft ). The rest are of peripheral interest. The question is then: How do we differentiate between what we're interested in and all the rest? The answer is of course, by doing some investigation and analysis of the reports to determine with reasonable certainty which cases are more likely to be alien. Because each possibility has it's own characteristics and properties, it is often possible to separate the signal from the noise, and that is what UFO investigators and analysts do, and they've been doing it since the dawn of the Modern Era.

The chart below spans about five years and takes into account 1,593 of the best cases from 1947-1952. ( source )



So even back in the 1950s there were serious attempts to sort out real craft from other stimuli. However back then there wasn't much emphasis put on the possibility of active camouflage. That is a relatively new concept. Sometimes ufologists, even eminent ones like Vallée jumped to far more fantastical conclusions, like alternate dimensions, instead of recognizing that high-tech camouflage could explain the same perceptual phenomena. It could even explain more bizarre visual sightings like the one @Burnt State mentions here involving what appeared to be a spider-webbed honeycombed looking craft and fish-like aliens.

Because active camouflage is something our own military is presently working on, it's a known factor ( as opposed to more exotic hypothesises ). So when other explanations seem to fail, we still don't have to invoke far-out theories about parallel worlds or the way the mind might be influenced by telepathic waves or whatever. Relatively simple trickery of our senses is certainly possible, and therefore IMO it's the most reasonable explanation for stranger cases. The problem these days is differentiating between which craft are ours and which ones are alien ( if any ), because our own active camouflage tech may be more effective now than what we're aware of.

I think you're applying a heavy filter to the witness reports of UFO and alien encounters.

Sure, many witnesses report seeing a "craft" but many reports are filled with a host of other high strange elements. Some researchers have even gone so far as to say (and I won't be able to provide a quote) that they know a witness report is genuine if and only if it includes high strangeness.

Chalking all of this high strangeness up to being a byproduct of something like EM fields generated by the craft is insufficient in my opinion. Likewise, chalking the HS up to ET camouflage technology seems equally insufficient imo.

Sure, it seems ludicrous to suggest that we are being visited by biological ET in nuts and bolts craft AND that there is a non-biological phenomenon interacting with humans that produces high strange experiences as a byproduct, but it is certainly possible.

Trying to reduce both into each other or both into one may be a mistake, despite the intuitive urge to do so.

At the same time, I'm not prepared to say they are separate phenomena.

 

[Sand]

There are a couple of other scenarios that I don’t believe are captured in your seven.

“...if reports where craft appear to vanish or morph or appear bizarre are true, then the possibilities are:”

-The craft is not a craft but a deliberate illusion initiated by an anomalous source (alien or otherwise)
-The craft is not a craft but a stimulus initiated by an anomalous source (alien or otherwise) that we interpret to be a craft.

This last one might be along the lines of what Soupie and Burnt are suggesting.

 

[victimized]

I'm not sure exactly what the two hypotheses you're suggesting are, but if reports where craft appear to vanish or morph or appear bizarre are true, then the possibilities are:

1. The craft really is bizarre and we have no idea about how or why it is that way.
2. The craft is a material construct we could relate to on our terms, but is fooling our senses through the use of some sort of active camouflage.
3. The craft is a material construct we could relate to on our terms, but is fooling our senses as a byproduct of the way it works ( e.g. some high energy EM field is influencing our sensory perception ).
4. The craft is a hallucination caused by some natural process ( e.g. The Persinger Earth generated EM field theory, the ingestion of some sort of hallucinogenic by the witness )
5. The craft isn't a craft, but is some sort of rare natural phenomenon ( Earth lights, ball lightning, some rare astronomical event ).
6. The craft may or may not be a craft and the strangeness is the result of a natural misperception of the otherwise mundane.
7. The craft is an intentionally created misperception ( some sort of hoax ).

Of the seven options above, 1., 2, and 3.. are of primary interest to the core subject matter of ufology ( alien craft ). The rest are of peripheral interest. The question is then: How do we differentiate between what we're interested in and all the rest? The answer is of course, by doing some investigation and analysis of the reports to determine with reasonable certainty which cases are more likely to be alien. Because each possibility has it's own characteristics and properties, it is often possible to separate the signal from the noise, and that is what UFO investigators and analysts do, and they've been doing it since the dawn of the Modern Era.

The chart below spans about five years and takes into account 1,593 of the best cases from 1947-1952. ( source )



So even back in the 1950s there were serious attempts to sort out real craft from other stimuli. However back then there wasn't much emphasis put on the possibility of active camouflage. That is a relatively new concept. Sometimes ufologists, even eminent ones like Vallée jumped to far more fantastical conclusions, like alternate dimensions, instead of recognizing that high-tech camouflage could explain the same perceptual phenomena. It could even explain more bizarre visual sightings like the one @Burnt State mentions here involving what appeared to be a spider-webbed honeycombed looking craft and fish-like aliens.

Because active camouflage is something our own military is presently working on, it's a known factor ( as opposed to more exotic hypothesises ). So when other explanations seem to fail, we still don't have to invoke far-out theories about parallel worlds or the way the mind might be influenced by telepathic waves or whatever. Relatively simple trickery of our senses is certainly possible, and therefore IMO it's the most reasonable explanation for stranger cases. The problem these days is differentiating between which craft are ours and which ones are alien ( if any ), because our own active camouflage tech may be more effective now than what we're aware of.

As we "see" by 2 circumstances. Natural and also hallucination, then we see. As we exist, then we exist in the conditions of change.

If we "hear" by 2 circumstances. Natural and artificial, then we hear.

When we exist as a healthy body, healthy mind....and also as a changed body and a changed mind, then we should ask why?

If we hear naturally and then hear abnormally and the 2 circumstances demonstrate....1. by fact of inheritance, or 2. by fact of artificial interaction then the physical result determines the reality....it actually is happening. If a human hears abnormally due to being physically/chemically altered (called a mental condition), and a healthy human being also hears abnormally, then the only condition that allows the difference is the "artificial condition".

What condition exists as an in between condition on Earth that is not natural and called artificial? Science does, in acts of its own conversion of matter from a higher to lower condition cause an effect of "in between states or transmitted nuclear sounds".

Therefore is it any wonder that the natural living organism is affected by an introduced and artificial condition that changes the natural states that life belongs to on Earth...evolution and natural cooling/fusion statuses?

The ancient occult awareness, from being attacked stated that the hearing of voices was an introduced and abnormal condition to the natural life. It also stated by observations that the rational of the male mind was altered due to the introduced condition. If the chemical brain is changed then thinking changes and so does the hearing of sound.....atmospheric feed back demonstrates by photon recording of voice/image that a human hearing voices is not due to some symptom, it is due to being artificially altered that allows the atmospheric feed back to be heard as a condition.

As the black triangle converting atmospheric body demonstrates...the ancients determined the building of the pyramid by PHI as part of the applied science, along with the temple layout plant to belong to ancient occult practices, with the pyramid having a sun or orb above its point (triangulation)...with an eye...and the eye "sees". The gases when changed in the atmosphere converting as a wavelength to attack the natural gas and ground fusion would demonstrate gases burning, forming different colored lights in the triangulated signal. The darkness of the same triangle at night demonstrates space is caused by the removal of the atmospheric gases in an interaction.

Wisdom...the human mind/brain gaining recorded imagery and advice for invention as a plan/design from the atmospheric image recording and interactive feed back. Suddenly the occult mind gains information for the building of a dark triangulated plane that can cloak itself. Which would demonstrate that the same outcome would occur for the forming of the triangulated signal, where the information came from. The metal interaction would therefore remain hidden in the atmospheric body, until it is caused to be seen.

If you review the different circumstances for the triangulated signal to be seen as a metal object....1 is by plane movement altering the natural atmospheric body, where suddenly a UFO emerges....or when the atmospheric body allows the emergence, which probably would relate to the burning of nuclear fuel, the changing metallic bonds in natural Planet Earth fusion.

If an atmospheric body can produce a manifestation of a metallic object, then you would question the reality of the observation. Yet the observation and the fall out has always been quickly dealt with in secrecy and then the public ridiculed who observed the manifestation and fall out of the object.

As stone is fused with crystalline structures and metal, and out of space also has different forms of stone, then out of space must also have different forms of metal in comparison to Earth's natural fusion.

As particles fall to Earth as dust from out of space, then the dust demonstrates it is neutralized. This observation would be due to the condition of dust on Earth, being nuclear.

What would neutralized larger metallic nuclear particles forms, if not dust....due to the mass of the atmosphere and also how cold it was....causing cooling and then disintegration of the metal/nuclear. As the Earth's atmosphere demonstrates it has heated, then the manifestation would be a real physical observation.

If we are removing the natural fusion of stone...which metal is a part of and then witness metallic O bodies forming ^ in the atmosphere, then it is obvious that the atmosphere is no longer protecting Earth from out of space fall out.

As we all can review the new occult sciences, they want to believe that metal can disappear out of Earth's fusion and then reappear as a held fused stone state after their collider has gained energy. Metal never existed when energy was first formed, nor did stone. Their collider experiments want energy when no metal and no stone existed, do some research on their theories. Is it any wonder than unnatural effects are occurring from their experiments?

Therefore the anomalous effects of occult practices, known as phenomena are real, because the only unnatural circumstance to life being lived on Planet Earth is the choice to convert the natural fusion of Earth's evolution.