Famous Belgian UFO Photo A Fake

[Frank Stalter]

I think everyone on both sides now admits that the photo is a hoax.

That certain zealots still have their doubts is hilarious to me.

Kean showed a photo of herself holding the slide and to be honest I don't remember the source. I will try to find it. She definitely spoke of what a wonderful piece of evidence it is (or, I guess,was). My memory is that she used the term "holy grail" but perhaps she just called it a treasure or something.


Lance

I could be wrong . . . you know how unreliable witnesses are . . . but the hoaxers still had the model and proudly showed it off as proof of the hoax.

When it's not whole myth with UFOs, it's exaggeration and embellishment . . . not terribly unlike the American Old West. Lots of myth and tall tale telling there too, but no one would tell you the American West never happened.

You know the line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance . . . . "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

I prefer facts and they are out there.

 

[Randall]

But there are 'holy grails' in the Ufology field: Roswell, Rendlesham Forest, Kecksburg, The Phoenix Lights, the Belgium Triangles, the Trindade photos, the famous abduction lists are as long a list. All these are used, exploded, exploited, cashed in on, and used to create intense belief systems. They are iconic, no?

There are better cases than others, but the promotion of any particular case as a "holy grail" is an expression I first ran across in skeptical articles, and it's not uncommon for such writers to use other religious allusions, euphemisms or comparisons in order to infer a parallel between ufology and religion, and usually this is done in a less than admiring way. Also, the legend of the Holy Grail stems from a fictional poem written in the tenth century that was influenced by a class conflict between the aristocracy and the monarchy. Modern ufology bears no such resemblance.

Perhaps there may be one ufologist or another who has referred to some case or another as a "holy grail" in response to the kind of question you posed above, or in an offhanded and entirely casual manner, but I've yet to run across it. If had to pick a modern day Holy Grail for ufology, the Roswell debris, the Kecksburg object, and the Rendlesham object are good candidates. There is also an interesting quote by Canadian scientist Wilbert Smith:

"Our Canadian Research Group has recovered one mass of very strange metal. I was found within a few days of July 1, 1960. There is about 3000 pounds of it. We have done a tremendous amount of detective work on this metal. We have found out things that aren't so. We have something that was not brought to this Earth by plane nor by boat nor by any helicopter. We are speculating that what we have is a portion of a very large device which came into this solar system ... we don't know when ... but it had been in space a long time before it came to Earth; we can tell that by the micrometeorite embedded in the surface."​

In these cases we're dealing with alleged material evidence of sufficient quantity to determine an other worldly origin, not merely photos or documents.

 

[Burnt State]

The legend of the Holy Grail stems from a fictional poem written in the tenth century that was influenced by a class conflict between the aristocracy and the monarchy. Modern ufology bears no such resemblance.

I don't know - I think there is a class conflict going on between skeptics and believers. As I've stated in other threads it does seem very akin to a religion as seen in the shared fevered pitch sentiments expressed in the forums and elsewhere. Cults kill themselves to join the UFO craft hidden in the comet; debunkers cite swamp gas is to blame - all hail science!

There is also an interesting quote by Canadian scientist Wilbert Smith:


In these cases we're dealing with alleged material evidence of sufficient quantity to determine an other worldly origin, not merely photos or documents.

Ok, but is this the same guy as:

"Wilburt Smith claimed to have communicated with extraterrestrial people via several means including radio communication, "tensor beam", and indirectly through channeling by others. His archived correspondence and public presentations describe much information of a technical and scientific nature inspired by the people “topside”."

B/C I'm not there too much for channelers or what they believe. His math around what he calls the 'tempic field' is beyond me, but I don' think I can put much stock in anything anybody said they analysed that came from Roswell.

 

[Randall]

Ok, but is this the same guy as:

"Wilburt Smith claimed to have communicated with extraterrestrial people via several means including radio communication, "tensor beam", and indirectly through channeling by others. His archived correspondence and public presentations describe much information of a technical and scientific nature inspired by the people “topside”."

B/C I'm not there too much for channelers or what they believe. His math around what he calls the 'tempic field' is beyond me, but I don' think I can put much stock in anything anybody said they analysed that came from Roswell.

Smith did not come across to me as a "believer" in every claim as is implied above. Rather, he seemed open minded enough to propose scientific exploration of the claims made by these "others". He also had valid scientific credentials. I'm also not aware of any statement made by Smith that the material he had referred to was specifically from Roswell. In one instance I think he mentions that some material came from around the time of the DC sightings. I agree with you that we should be dubious about the claims of channelers. To my knowledge, there has been no new and verifiable information that could not have been found out easily by anyone here on Earth. In other words, we've had no real life K-Pax.

 

[boomerang]

I think everyone on both sides now admits that the photo is a hoax.

That certain zealots still have their doubts is hilarious to me.


Lance

Both statements seem true. But largely irrelevant to the Belgian incidents overall.