THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
April 30, 2017
www.theparacast.com
Anomalist Allen Greenfield covers Masonic Rites, UFOs and More on The Paracast
The Paracast is heard Sundays from 3:00 AM until 6:00 AM Central Time on the GCN Radio Network and affiliates around the USA, the Boost Radio Network, the IRN Internet Radio Network, and online across the globe via download and on-demand streaming.
SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY A PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! We have another radio show and we’d love for you listen to it. So for a low subscription fee, you will receive access to After The Paracast, plus a higher-quality version of The Paracast free of network ads, and chat rooms when you sign up for The Paracast+. We also offer a special RSS feed for easy updates of the latest episodes, the Paracast+ Video Channel, episode transcripts, Special Features, Classic Episodes and there’s more to come! We’ve just begun to add podcasts and videos from Paul Kimball’s “Other Side of Truth.” Check out our new lower rates, starting at just $1.49 per week, plus our “Lifetime” membership and special free print and eBook book offers! For more information about our premium package, please visit: Introducing The Paracast+ | The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio.
This Week's Episode: Gene and Chris present veteran anomalist Allen Greenfield. He is a published author on Masonic rites, UFOs, esoteric spirituality and psychic phenomena. Having done considerable field research and lab work in all of these areas he subscribes to the “Many Worlds” interpretation of Quantum Theory, and thinks that the explanation for phenomena as diverse as ghosts, Near Death Experiences, spontaneous cases of the reincarnation type, men in black, shadow people, cryptids etc. is in the overlap among so called “branes” (that’s b-r-a-n-e-s) or alternate worlds impinging upon our consciousness, a concept he has advocated since the late 1960s. Gene and Allen have been close friends for well over five decades.
Chris O’Brien’s Site: Our Strange Planet
After The Paracast -- Available exclusively to Paracast+ subscribers on April 30: Allen Greenfield returns to regale us with his incredible storytelling ability and offbeat sense of humor. It starts with a trivia question and moves to a look at the issues regarding MUFON and the issues involving non-member access to its UFO sighting database. Greenfield explains how the UFO field was divided in the early days and reveals how one prominent contactee was rumored to have anti-semitic leanings. The discussion moves to a presentation of Biblical history and Allen’s response to the question of whether there is evidence of visits by advanced beings or ancient astronauts.
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums.
Challenging Conventional Wisdom About Classic UFO Cases
By Gene Steinberg
The other day I received a press announcement about yet another new book from Nick Redfern. But this forthcoming title is notable because it is meant as a sequel to one of his best works, “Bodysnatchers in the Desert,” which provided an alternative and very credible explanation for the Roswell UFO. The new book is entitled, “The Roswell UFO Conspiracy: Exposing a Shocking and Sinister Secret.”
Another Roswell book?
In describing the subject matter, Nick writes, “As many people know, although I fully believe there is a real UFO phenomenon, I am not convinced that aliens crashed at Roswell. I suspect some kind of secret experiment — with a human crew — is the likely answer.”
Now the job of reinventing the wheel about Roswell has also been taken up by Kevin D. Randle, someone who has studied the case for over 30 years. In “Roswell in the 21st Century,” Kevin revealed that some of the assumptions made about the case didn’t hold up after a thorough reinvestigation of the evidence. Treating it as a cold case, he went through his data and observed certainties become uncertainties.
He was, for example, unable to find much in the way of support for claims that alien bodies were seen in connection with the crashed object. Indeed, Kevin concluded that something did occur in Roswell, but he was no longer able to assert that the object was a spaceship from another planet. Was it a test aircraft? Kevin is not taking that point of view, or any final point of view.
Indeed, I was prepared to just set Roswell aside until I got the announcement about Nick’s new book. I will give it his due, and, if you listeners are curious, we’ll have him back on The Paracast to discuss his new research.
Whether Roswell involved a test aircraft, a balloon or something else that’s totally conventional, it’s worth setting it aside and getting on with exploring the real UFO mystery. By that I mean the cases that remain unexplained, involving phenomena that we do not yet understand.
But the Roswell case isn’t the only only one that seems rather less credible in light of recent developments. Not so long ago, I ran into a newspaper story in which an alleged UFO abductee recanted his claim that he was captured by aliens while canoeing with his friends.
The so-called Allagash Abduction occurred in Maine on August 20, 1976, and involved two brothers, Jim and Jack Weiner, and two friends, Charles Foltz and Charles Rak. The case was chronicled in a book from UFO author Raymond E. Fowler.
It began with a UFO sighting. The details of the alleged abduction were evidently recalled during hypnotic regression sessions. But Rak is now claiming that the abduction simply never occurred, although he still claims he and his friends saw a UFO.
In a newspaper report from a Maine newspaper dated September 10, 2016, Rak claimed, “The reason I supported the story at first was because I wanted to make money.”
Now Rak stands alone in recanting the story. The other witnesses evidently still insist they were genuine abductees. Besides, it’s not as if this quartet actually became rich and famous as a result of the case. But with doubt raised as to its authenticity, it certainly deserves a new look to reconsider the evidence.
One key point is that it appears Rak wasn’t quite as willing a hypnotic subject as his friends. So it’s very possible that he is right, that he did not remember as many details of the encounter as the others, and thus had reason to be skeptical as to what actually occurred.
Now I don’t pretend to know how history will judge the Roswell and Allagash cases in light of these recent developments. It is still possible, I suppose, that either or both involved genuine encounters with unknown craft from other planets.
What it shows, however, is that it’s worth giving the older cases a new look and see how they pass muster. Kevin has been doing some of that work, in part by tracing sighting reports to their original sources. Quite often authors and researchers will rely on one source that, in turn, cites another source. After several generations of the telling and retelling, the details may change in some respects. If there’s any hope of finding a conventional solution, it helps to get the facts straight first.
Yet another case that might be worth a new look is the “original” UFO sighting from Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947. As we approach the 70th anniversary of this classic saucer encounter, just what are we left with anyway?
The details have been told and retold countless times, that Arnold, a private pilot, observed nine shiny objects flying past Mount Rainier. A key element of the case that makes it appear unknown is that the objects were traveling at more than 1,200 miles per hour.
The speed estimate is crucial. According to Wikipedia entry on the case, “Curious about their speed, he began to time their rate of passage: he said they moved from Mt. Rainer to Mount Adams where they faded from view, a distance of about 50 miles (80 km), in one minute and forty-two seconds, according to the clock on his instrument panel. When he later had time to do the calculation, the speed was over 1,700 miles per hour (2,700 km/h). This was about three times faster than any manned aircraft in 1947. Not knowing exactly the distance where the objects faded from view, Arnold conservatively and arbitrarily rounded this down to 1,200 miles (1,900 km) an hour, still faster than any known aircraft, which had yet to break the sound barrier. It was this supersonic speed in addition to the unusual saucer or disk description that seemed to capture people's attention.”
Fair enough, but if that estimate was wrong or exaggerated, and the flying saucers up being much slower, a key linchpin of the case may have been eliminated. This doesn’t mean that those nine objects were conventional. But imagine what would have happened if the Arnold sighting didn’t generate worldwide publicity. Would people have become as focused as they were on the appearance of strange objects in our skies?
At the very least, we probably would not have called them flying saucers.
That said, UFO sightings continue to this very day. You’ve heard about them on recent episodes of The Paracast as we featured such skilled investigators as Stan Gordon and Robert Spearing.
Strange things are still happening, but it is always important to clean up the data, dump the cases that don’t pass muster and pay even closer attention to the ones that remain unknown.
Copyright 1999-2017 The Paracast LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!
April 30, 2017
www.theparacast.com
Anomalist Allen Greenfield covers Masonic Rites, UFOs and More on The Paracast
The Paracast is heard Sundays from 3:00 AM until 6:00 AM Central Time on the GCN Radio Network and affiliates around the USA, the Boost Radio Network, the IRN Internet Radio Network, and online across the globe via download and on-demand streaming.
SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY A PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! We have another radio show and we’d love for you listen to it. So for a low subscription fee, you will receive access to After The Paracast, plus a higher-quality version of The Paracast free of network ads, and chat rooms when you sign up for The Paracast+. We also offer a special RSS feed for easy updates of the latest episodes, the Paracast+ Video Channel, episode transcripts, Special Features, Classic Episodes and there’s more to come! We’ve just begun to add podcasts and videos from Paul Kimball’s “Other Side of Truth.” Check out our new lower rates, starting at just $1.49 per week, plus our “Lifetime” membership and special free print and eBook book offers! For more information about our premium package, please visit: Introducing The Paracast+ | The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio.
This Week's Episode: Gene and Chris present veteran anomalist Allen Greenfield. He is a published author on Masonic rites, UFOs, esoteric spirituality and psychic phenomena. Having done considerable field research and lab work in all of these areas he subscribes to the “Many Worlds” interpretation of Quantum Theory, and thinks that the explanation for phenomena as diverse as ghosts, Near Death Experiences, spontaneous cases of the reincarnation type, men in black, shadow people, cryptids etc. is in the overlap among so called “branes” (that’s b-r-a-n-e-s) or alternate worlds impinging upon our consciousness, a concept he has advocated since the late 1960s. Gene and Allen have been close friends for well over five decades.
Chris O’Brien’s Site: Our Strange Planet
After The Paracast -- Available exclusively to Paracast+ subscribers on April 30: Allen Greenfield returns to regale us with his incredible storytelling ability and offbeat sense of humor. It starts with a trivia question and moves to a look at the issues regarding MUFON and the issues involving non-member access to its UFO sighting database. Greenfield explains how the UFO field was divided in the early days and reveals how one prominent contactee was rumored to have anti-semitic leanings. The discussion moves to a presentation of Biblical history and Allen’s response to the question of whether there is evidence of visits by advanced beings or ancient astronauts.
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums.
Challenging Conventional Wisdom About Classic UFO Cases
By Gene Steinberg
The other day I received a press announcement about yet another new book from Nick Redfern. But this forthcoming title is notable because it is meant as a sequel to one of his best works, “Bodysnatchers in the Desert,” which provided an alternative and very credible explanation for the Roswell UFO. The new book is entitled, “The Roswell UFO Conspiracy: Exposing a Shocking and Sinister Secret.”
Another Roswell book?
In describing the subject matter, Nick writes, “As many people know, although I fully believe there is a real UFO phenomenon, I am not convinced that aliens crashed at Roswell. I suspect some kind of secret experiment — with a human crew — is the likely answer.”
Now the job of reinventing the wheel about Roswell has also been taken up by Kevin D. Randle, someone who has studied the case for over 30 years. In “Roswell in the 21st Century,” Kevin revealed that some of the assumptions made about the case didn’t hold up after a thorough reinvestigation of the evidence. Treating it as a cold case, he went through his data and observed certainties become uncertainties.
He was, for example, unable to find much in the way of support for claims that alien bodies were seen in connection with the crashed object. Indeed, Kevin concluded that something did occur in Roswell, but he was no longer able to assert that the object was a spaceship from another planet. Was it a test aircraft? Kevin is not taking that point of view, or any final point of view.
Indeed, I was prepared to just set Roswell aside until I got the announcement about Nick’s new book. I will give it his due, and, if you listeners are curious, we’ll have him back on The Paracast to discuss his new research.
Whether Roswell involved a test aircraft, a balloon or something else that’s totally conventional, it’s worth setting it aside and getting on with exploring the real UFO mystery. By that I mean the cases that remain unexplained, involving phenomena that we do not yet understand.
But the Roswell case isn’t the only only one that seems rather less credible in light of recent developments. Not so long ago, I ran into a newspaper story in which an alleged UFO abductee recanted his claim that he was captured by aliens while canoeing with his friends.
The so-called Allagash Abduction occurred in Maine on August 20, 1976, and involved two brothers, Jim and Jack Weiner, and two friends, Charles Foltz and Charles Rak. The case was chronicled in a book from UFO author Raymond E. Fowler.
It began with a UFO sighting. The details of the alleged abduction were evidently recalled during hypnotic regression sessions. But Rak is now claiming that the abduction simply never occurred, although he still claims he and his friends saw a UFO.
In a newspaper report from a Maine newspaper dated September 10, 2016, Rak claimed, “The reason I supported the story at first was because I wanted to make money.”
Now Rak stands alone in recanting the story. The other witnesses evidently still insist they were genuine abductees. Besides, it’s not as if this quartet actually became rich and famous as a result of the case. But with doubt raised as to its authenticity, it certainly deserves a new look to reconsider the evidence.
One key point is that it appears Rak wasn’t quite as willing a hypnotic subject as his friends. So it’s very possible that he is right, that he did not remember as many details of the encounter as the others, and thus had reason to be skeptical as to what actually occurred.
Now I don’t pretend to know how history will judge the Roswell and Allagash cases in light of these recent developments. It is still possible, I suppose, that either or both involved genuine encounters with unknown craft from other planets.
What it shows, however, is that it’s worth giving the older cases a new look and see how they pass muster. Kevin has been doing some of that work, in part by tracing sighting reports to their original sources. Quite often authors and researchers will rely on one source that, in turn, cites another source. After several generations of the telling and retelling, the details may change in some respects. If there’s any hope of finding a conventional solution, it helps to get the facts straight first.
Yet another case that might be worth a new look is the “original” UFO sighting from Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947. As we approach the 70th anniversary of this classic saucer encounter, just what are we left with anyway?
The details have been told and retold countless times, that Arnold, a private pilot, observed nine shiny objects flying past Mount Rainier. A key element of the case that makes it appear unknown is that the objects were traveling at more than 1,200 miles per hour.
The speed estimate is crucial. According to Wikipedia entry on the case, “Curious about their speed, he began to time their rate of passage: he said they moved from Mt. Rainer to Mount Adams where they faded from view, a distance of about 50 miles (80 km), in one minute and forty-two seconds, according to the clock on his instrument panel. When he later had time to do the calculation, the speed was over 1,700 miles per hour (2,700 km/h). This was about three times faster than any manned aircraft in 1947. Not knowing exactly the distance where the objects faded from view, Arnold conservatively and arbitrarily rounded this down to 1,200 miles (1,900 km) an hour, still faster than any known aircraft, which had yet to break the sound barrier. It was this supersonic speed in addition to the unusual saucer or disk description that seemed to capture people's attention.”
Fair enough, but if that estimate was wrong or exaggerated, and the flying saucers up being much slower, a key linchpin of the case may have been eliminated. This doesn’t mean that those nine objects were conventional. But imagine what would have happened if the Arnold sighting didn’t generate worldwide publicity. Would people have become as focused as they were on the appearance of strange objects in our skies?
At the very least, we probably would not have called them flying saucers.
That said, UFO sightings continue to this very day. You’ve heard about them on recent episodes of The Paracast as we featured such skilled investigators as Stan Gordon and Robert Spearing.
Strange things are still happening, but it is always important to clean up the data, dump the cases that don’t pass muster and pay even closer attention to the ones that remain unknown.
Copyright 1999-2017 The Paracast LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!
