THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
August 11, 2013
UFO Researcher Don Ecker Catches Up on The Paracast!
The Paracast is heard Sundays from 2:00 AM until 5:00 AM Central Time on the GCN Radio Network and affiliates around the USA, and online across the globe via download and on-demand streaming.
Why It's Important for You to Donate to The Paracast: Although ads help cover a small part of our expenses, the income they produce is never enough to pay your humble hosts decent wages. Also, we do not receive any revenue from the ads placed on the show by our network or local stations. So we hope you're able to help fill the gap, if you can, to help us cover increasing server costs and other expenses -- or perhaps provide a little extra cash for lunch and utility bills. No contribution is too small (or too large
. It’s easy to send a donation. We have aDonate link on our home page, below the logo and audio player. There's also a Donate link on our forums, at the bottom of the sidebar on the right. Or just send your PayPal donation direct to sales (at) theparacast (dot) com. And if you’ve had a problem getting to our Donate screen, please try again. We just fixed a serious PayPal access problem, and it should wor k properly now.
Attention U.S. Listeners: Help Us Bring The Paracast to Your City! In the summer of 2010, The Paracast joined the GCN radio network. This represented a huge step in bringing our show to a larger, mainstream audience. But we need your help to add additional affiliates to our growing network. Please ask one of your local talk stations if they are interested in carrying The Paracast. Feel free to contact us directly with the names of programming people we might be able to contact on your behalf. We can't do this alone, and if you succeed in convincing your local station to carry the show, we'll reward you with one of our special T-shirts, and other goodies. With your help, The Paracast can grow into one of the most popular paranormal shows on the planet!
Please Visit Our Online Store: You asked, and we answered. We are now taking orders for The Official Paracast T-Shirt and an expanded collection of other specially customized merchandise. To get your T-Shirt now featuring our brand new logo, just pay a visit to our online store at The Official Paracast Store to select your size and place your order. We also offer a complete lineup of other premium merchandise for your family, your friends and your business contacts.
About The Paracast: The Paracast covers a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions across the planet.
Set Up: The Paracast is a paranormal radio show that takes you on a journey to a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions. The Paracast seeks to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.
Join long-time paranormal researcher Gene Steinberg, co-host and acclaimed field investigator Christopher O'Brien, and a panel of special guest experts and experiencers, as they explore the realms of the known and unknown. Listen each week to the great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This Week's Episode: Gene and Chris play catch-up with Don Ecker, long-time UFO investigator and host of the Dark Matters radio show. During this session, Don will, as usual, pull no punches as he tells you about his long history in the field, along with his frank reactions to people and organizations, where he holds no prisoners. You'll also hear his responses to listener questions.
Chris O'Brien's Site: http://www.ourstrangeplanet.com
Dark Matters Radio Show: Dark Matters Radio - Downloads | CyberStationUSA On Demand Programming
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. We recently completed a major update that makes our community easier to navigate, and social network friendly.
Faking It
By Gene Steinberg
To some, the UFO mystery is all about misidentified conventional objects, such as aircraft, balloons, planets, stars, or outright hoaxes. It doesn’t matter that the objects have been tracked on radar, photographed and, at times, left trace evidence of their presence on the ground. They cannot possibly exist, so it’s all about fakery.
Now it doesn’t help matters that some people do perpetrate UFO-related hoaxes. It doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen. Sometimes it’s just about reporting a light in the sky that isn’t really there, or describing something that engages in those uncanny maneuvers for which UFOs are famous -- or infamous. And don’t forget the people who claim to have had repeated up-close and personal encounters with ET.
But some hoaxes can be more elaborate. In the old days, people might toss frisbees in the air, suspend a toy spaceship or a garbage can cover via a thin string. Of course, you hope they were smart enough to retouch the photos, or the movies, so the string wouldn’t be visible. On the other hand, it’s also true that some low-budget Hollywood movie makers were just as careless.
Nowadays, faking a UFO film is far easier, and doesn’t even require any physical objects. We have cheap video cameras and smartphones that are capable of near-professional quality videos. A little digital trickery in a photo or video editing app, and it might take a professional photographer, a movie editor of special effects expert to understand how it was done. Of course, most fake photos or videos are all too obvious.
Certainly, the cost of admission to the 21st century UFO fakery school is not high. You can buy Apple’s professional grade Final Cut Pro X video editing app, used in the television and movie industries, for $299.99. Adobe Photoshop, the premiere image editing app, used to be expensive, but you can rent the new Creative Cloud (or CC) version on a monthly basis for $19.99. All right, it stops working if you fail to renew your subscription, but you can do get your phony UFO photos finished in minutes, or a few hours, and let the subscription expire.
Unfortunately creating hoaxes of this sort isn’t a crime. You can’t get arrested for faking a UFO sighting, or the evidence thereof, unless, of course, somebody was injured, or you cheated someone out of their money on the basis of a UFO-related claim.
As I said, the conventional wisdom has it that UFOs don’t exist, so no harm done. Indeed, some might find it entertaining. Some months back, we interrogated a would-be movie maker on The Paracast who set up a YouTube site devoted to UFO films. Most of them were obvious and clumsy fakes, but the person in question didn’t seem to care. It was all a source of income to him, so I’ll leave his name out of the article. Most of you know who he is.
But it’s not just telling tall tales and providing fake evidence that occurs far too often in the UFO field. There are some people who get involved and claim false educational, military or employment experience to make them seem credible. Alas, this sort of thing also happens in the outside world, and I recall a story or two about someone getting a high profile job on the strength of a falsified resume. Of course, any company that prides itself on hiring qualified people should do the proper due diligence. Evidently they sometimes fall down on the job.
Those of you who have followed The Paracast for a while recall the unfortunate case of the notorious Philip J. Imbrogno. He once even co-authored a book with the late J. Allen Hynek.
Well, one of our friendly skeptics, Lance Moody, felt that Imbrogno was making maybe too big a deal of his alleged degrees from MIT. There was, for example, a prominent photo of him with an MIT T-shirt. Of course, you can get those shirts in lots of places, but Lance had had a feeling in his gut that something was a little off, so he did a little checking.
It turned out that Imbrogno’s degrees didn’t exist. MIT’s representatives told Lance and others that Philip J. Imbrogno, no matter how you spelled his first or last name, never received an MIT degree; he wasn’t a student either.
Our good friend Don Ecker, host of the “Dark Matters” radio show, and a former police detective, examined Imbrogno’s claims of being a Vietnam veteran who served in the Army’s Special Forces. Imbrogno went back on a promise to provide a copy of his DD214, a document that contains the details of someone’s military service in the U.S. Armed Forces.
Imbrogno hasn’t actually confessed to these offenses, and has mostly disappeared from the UFO field. However, as with others who made false claims of their knowledge, experience, and abilities, it is always possible he’ll just sit it out for a few years, and attempt to resurface as if nothing had happened. There are actually people who believe that The Paracast, Lance Moody, Don Ecker, and others who helped uncover this blatant deception, were out to get Imbrogno.
However, it’s also true that we eagerly welcomed him to the show on several occasions. We never asked him to prove that his background was genuine. It was just something people accepted, unless there was reason to be skeptical.
Now let me put my cards on the table: The late Jim Moseley, one of my closest friends, was a reformed UFO hoaxer. But the 20-something and 30-something version of Jim was a lot wackier than his older counterpart. He didn’t do lasting harm to the field, and his youthful transgressions were mostly forgiven.
Unfortunately, the UFO field is littered with people with fake doctorates and other fanciful credentials. I recall the late George Hunt Williamson, an alleged witness to the controversial George Adamski flying saucer contact. Williamson presented a fake doctorate and even took on fake names, such as Michael d’Obrenovic and Brother Philip.
While I suppose some might find such shenanigans entertaining in some perverse fashion, people who don’t accept the possibility that UFOs are real will simply trot out the stories of these fakers, use a broad brush, and claim that this is all too typical of the UFO field. We all suffer as the result of such dirty tricks.
Copyright 1999-2013 Making The Impossible, Inc. 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!
August 11, 2013
UFO Researcher Don Ecker Catches Up on The Paracast!
The Paracast is heard Sundays from 2:00 AM until 5:00 AM Central Time on the GCN Radio Network and affiliates around the USA, and online across the globe via download and on-demand streaming.
Why It's Important for You to Donate to The Paracast: Although ads help cover a small part of our expenses, the income they produce is never enough to pay your humble hosts decent wages. Also, we do not receive any revenue from the ads placed on the show by our network or local stations. So we hope you're able to help fill the gap, if you can, to help us cover increasing server costs and other expenses -- or perhaps provide a little extra cash for lunch and utility bills. No contribution is too small (or too large
. It’s easy to send a donation. We have aDonate link on our home page, below the logo and audio player. There's also a Donate link on our forums, at the bottom of the sidebar on the right. Or just send your PayPal donation direct to sales (at) theparacast (dot) com. And if you’ve had a problem getting to our Donate screen, please try again. We just fixed a serious PayPal access problem, and it should wor k properly now.Attention U.S. Listeners: Help Us Bring The Paracast to Your City! In the summer of 2010, The Paracast joined the GCN radio network. This represented a huge step in bringing our show to a larger, mainstream audience. But we need your help to add additional affiliates to our growing network. Please ask one of your local talk stations if they are interested in carrying The Paracast. Feel free to contact us directly with the names of programming people we might be able to contact on your behalf. We can't do this alone, and if you succeed in convincing your local station to carry the show, we'll reward you with one of our special T-shirts, and other goodies. With your help, The Paracast can grow into one of the most popular paranormal shows on the planet!
Please Visit Our Online Store: You asked, and we answered. We are now taking orders for The Official Paracast T-Shirt and an expanded collection of other specially customized merchandise. To get your T-Shirt now featuring our brand new logo, just pay a visit to our online store at The Official Paracast Store to select your size and place your order. We also offer a complete lineup of other premium merchandise for your family, your friends and your business contacts.
About The Paracast: The Paracast covers a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions across the planet.
Set Up: The Paracast is a paranormal radio show that takes you on a journey to a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions. The Paracast seeks to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.
Join long-time paranormal researcher Gene Steinberg, co-host and acclaimed field investigator Christopher O'Brien, and a panel of special guest experts and experiencers, as they explore the realms of the known and unknown. Listen each week to the great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This Week's Episode: Gene and Chris play catch-up with Don Ecker, long-time UFO investigator and host of the Dark Matters radio show. During this session, Don will, as usual, pull no punches as he tells you about his long history in the field, along with his frank reactions to people and organizations, where he holds no prisoners. You'll also hear his responses to listener questions.
Chris O'Brien's Site: http://www.ourstrangeplanet.com
Dark Matters Radio Show: Dark Matters Radio - Downloads | CyberStationUSA On Demand Programming
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. We recently completed a major update that makes our community easier to navigate, and social network friendly.
Faking It
By Gene Steinberg
To some, the UFO mystery is all about misidentified conventional objects, such as aircraft, balloons, planets, stars, or outright hoaxes. It doesn’t matter that the objects have been tracked on radar, photographed and, at times, left trace evidence of their presence on the ground. They cannot possibly exist, so it’s all about fakery.
Now it doesn’t help matters that some people do perpetrate UFO-related hoaxes. It doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen. Sometimes it’s just about reporting a light in the sky that isn’t really there, or describing something that engages in those uncanny maneuvers for which UFOs are famous -- or infamous. And don’t forget the people who claim to have had repeated up-close and personal encounters with ET.
But some hoaxes can be more elaborate. In the old days, people might toss frisbees in the air, suspend a toy spaceship or a garbage can cover via a thin string. Of course, you hope they were smart enough to retouch the photos, or the movies, so the string wouldn’t be visible. On the other hand, it’s also true that some low-budget Hollywood movie makers were just as careless.
Nowadays, faking a UFO film is far easier, and doesn’t even require any physical objects. We have cheap video cameras and smartphones that are capable of near-professional quality videos. A little digital trickery in a photo or video editing app, and it might take a professional photographer, a movie editor of special effects expert to understand how it was done. Of course, most fake photos or videos are all too obvious.
Certainly, the cost of admission to the 21st century UFO fakery school is not high. You can buy Apple’s professional grade Final Cut Pro X video editing app, used in the television and movie industries, for $299.99. Adobe Photoshop, the premiere image editing app, used to be expensive, but you can rent the new Creative Cloud (or CC) version on a monthly basis for $19.99. All right, it stops working if you fail to renew your subscription, but you can do get your phony UFO photos finished in minutes, or a few hours, and let the subscription expire.
Unfortunately creating hoaxes of this sort isn’t a crime. You can’t get arrested for faking a UFO sighting, or the evidence thereof, unless, of course, somebody was injured, or you cheated someone out of their money on the basis of a UFO-related claim.
As I said, the conventional wisdom has it that UFOs don’t exist, so no harm done. Indeed, some might find it entertaining. Some months back, we interrogated a would-be movie maker on The Paracast who set up a YouTube site devoted to UFO films. Most of them were obvious and clumsy fakes, but the person in question didn’t seem to care. It was all a source of income to him, so I’ll leave his name out of the article. Most of you know who he is.
But it’s not just telling tall tales and providing fake evidence that occurs far too often in the UFO field. There are some people who get involved and claim false educational, military or employment experience to make them seem credible. Alas, this sort of thing also happens in the outside world, and I recall a story or two about someone getting a high profile job on the strength of a falsified resume. Of course, any company that prides itself on hiring qualified people should do the proper due diligence. Evidently they sometimes fall down on the job.
Those of you who have followed The Paracast for a while recall the unfortunate case of the notorious Philip J. Imbrogno. He once even co-authored a book with the late J. Allen Hynek.
Well, one of our friendly skeptics, Lance Moody, felt that Imbrogno was making maybe too big a deal of his alleged degrees from MIT. There was, for example, a prominent photo of him with an MIT T-shirt. Of course, you can get those shirts in lots of places, but Lance had had a feeling in his gut that something was a little off, so he did a little checking.
It turned out that Imbrogno’s degrees didn’t exist. MIT’s representatives told Lance and others that Philip J. Imbrogno, no matter how you spelled his first or last name, never received an MIT degree; he wasn’t a student either.
Our good friend Don Ecker, host of the “Dark Matters” radio show, and a former police detective, examined Imbrogno’s claims of being a Vietnam veteran who served in the Army’s Special Forces. Imbrogno went back on a promise to provide a copy of his DD214, a document that contains the details of someone’s military service in the U.S. Armed Forces.
Imbrogno hasn’t actually confessed to these offenses, and has mostly disappeared from the UFO field. However, as with others who made false claims of their knowledge, experience, and abilities, it is always possible he’ll just sit it out for a few years, and attempt to resurface as if nothing had happened. There are actually people who believe that The Paracast, Lance Moody, Don Ecker, and others who helped uncover this blatant deception, were out to get Imbrogno.
However, it’s also true that we eagerly welcomed him to the show on several occasions. We never asked him to prove that his background was genuine. It was just something people accepted, unless there was reason to be skeptical.
Now let me put my cards on the table: The late Jim Moseley, one of my closest friends, was a reformed UFO hoaxer. But the 20-something and 30-something version of Jim was a lot wackier than his older counterpart. He didn’t do lasting harm to the field, and his youthful transgressions were mostly forgiven.
Unfortunately, the UFO field is littered with people with fake doctorates and other fanciful credentials. I recall the late George Hunt Williamson, an alleged witness to the controversial George Adamski flying saucer contact. Williamson presented a fake doctorate and even took on fake names, such as Michael d’Obrenovic and Brother Philip.
While I suppose some might find such shenanigans entertaining in some perverse fashion, people who don’t accept the possibility that UFOs are real will simply trot out the stories of these fakers, use a broad brush, and claim that this is all too typical of the UFO field. We all suffer as the result of such dirty tricks.
Copyright 1999-2013 Making The Impossible, Inc. 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!
