THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
May 6, 2018
www.theparacast.com
UFO Researcher MJ Banias Talks About the MUFON Follies, the Flatwoods Monster, and the Alien Agenda 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 an exclusive podcast, After The Paracast, plus a higher-quality version of The Paracast free of network ads, 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 also feature selected podcasts and videos from Paul Kimball’s “Other Side of Truth,” and we are now offering special access to the first two episodes of the ghost haunting show he cohosts, "Haunted." 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: https://plus.theparacast.com/.
This Week's Episode: Gene and guest co-host Michael Allen present a return visit by researcher MJ Banias, a blogger who critically and philosophically examines the weird, the strange and the anomalous. During this episode, MJ will discuss the latest episode of the “MUFON Follies,” a new documentary about the Flatwoods Monster, a creature seen in West Virginia in 1952, and even how he accidentally got involved in debates over the Billy Meier contacts. And what about the alleged alien agenda? MJ was a former field investigator with MUFON, has been featured on multiple podcasts and radio shows, and contributes to Mysterious Universe and RoguePlanet. His work has been included in FATE Magazine, and in a collection of UFO-related essays entitled UFOs: Reframing the Debate.
Chris O’Brien’s Blog: Our Strange Planet
MJ Banias Blog: Terra Obscura
After The Paracast -- Available exclusively for Paracast+ subscribers on May 6: Gene interviews guest co-host Michael Allen about his unusual and sometimes frightening history of lucid or epic dreams and night terrors, as if he were living an entire lifetime in another world. He describes such dreams as entering a white room with a white kitchen, and about the mysterious disappearance, in the dream state, of his friends. Michael also talks about other dreams, including one he refers to as “the void,” involving the non-existence of everything that could exist. Are these paranormal events, or just a reflection of the turmoil in his life when he was a teenager?
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. Check out our new YouTube channel at: The Official Paracast Channel
So Is There Anything New in UFO Research?
By Gene Steinberg
Of late I’ve spent a little time checking out archives of old UFO magazines, dating back to the 1950s. Some of them were in my collection a few decades ago, but I shed much of that library in the process of moving around the country. I’ve kept some of it, but I wish I had given in to my desire to hold onto more.
The main reason that I sought out those old publications resulted from agreeing to researcher Isaac Koi’s request for him to scan the entire library of Caveat Emptor, the magazine I published with my first wife, Geneva, over a number of years. The entire collection should be posted shortly.
In any case, I suppose that I wasn’t terribly surprised to see how little has changed over the years after checking out some of those vintage publications. Sure, technology is far more advanced, and we mostly rely on email nowadays rather than send physical letters via the postal service. Print magazines have largely faded away, replaced by online publications and blogs. Our biggest expense in those days was the printing bill, and it was hard to keep up. Nowadays, I can post my publications, such as they are, electronically.
Forgetting the publishing medium, I was able to read articles about UFOs and, by ignoring the date, imagine they were written today. So little has changed, that I wonder what we have actually accomplished after seven decades.
We still see lights in the sky. Sometimes they take on more distinctive shapes, but many aren’t even saucer shaped.
The basic theories are not very different either. The most common theory is that we are being visited by travelers from outer space, very likely from other star systems. That UFOs appear to be capable of maneuvers beyond the capability of Earthly aircraft makes this seem credible.
Assuming, of course, that we are actually witnessing a physical event and not some sort of projection that may or may not have physical substance.
So after all these years, do the authorities actually know anything beyond keeping information about some of our own aircraft secret for reasons of national security?
When I read that New York Times piece about the Pentagon UFO Study last year, I thought that maybe the people involved were stuck in a time warp, living in ignorance of what had gone before. The press made a huge deal, more or less, about the U.S. government finally taking UFOs seriously, as if Project Blue Book and its predecessors never existed.
All right, Project Blue Book was shuttered with the conclusion that there was no evidence of UFO reality, although hundreds of unexplained sightings appeared to demonstrate otherwise. But it didn’t appear as if all that evidence was used as the basis for evaluating newer UFO cases.
In the end, little was discovered about the phenomenon that we didn’t already know. Blurry aircraft gun camera photos don’t really tell us a whole lot, although it helped to generate some headlines for the subject.
For a while.
There don’t appear to be much in the way of new developments about the basic program, but there is news about FOIA requests from Australian researcher Paul Dean that mentions the “Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Application (AAWSA),” a program that refers to such matters as “Traversable Wormholes, Stargates and Negative Energy.”
At the very least, this appears to address the search for ways to perfect some sort of star travel, which may or may not have any connection with UFOs. But it’s not at all surprising that we might be attempting to develop something more advanced than modified firecrackers to transport humans through space. Being able to visit the planets revolving around another star system in hours or days, rather than decades, would help us explore space with almost immediate impact.
If we can perfect such propulsion systems of course.
I’m personally in favor of stargates, which, if you follow the method described in that sci-fi TV series and its spinoffs, enables you to reach your destination in a few seconds. But it depends on setting up a comparable stargate at your destination. So unless we discovered evidence of extraterrestrials creating stargate networks, we’d have to find a way to transport the destination stargate. By wormholes, warp drive?
None of this, however, would necessarily advance UFO research unless we are somehow using technology acquired, or reverse engineered, from aliens. As with Star Trek, our scientists appear to have mostly been influenced by sci-fi.
Star Trek is a great example, witness flip phones, smartphones and tablets. Our own scientists have explored the possibilities of warp drive.
If there was no UFO mystery, it wouldn’t stop such research.
So we get back to the main topic at hand, which is what we’ve done to advance UFO research. America’s largest UFO group, MUFON, appears to have focused more on spreading the word about the presence of alien visitors, and commercializing its work to boost memberships.
Sure, it takes money to perform such research, and unpaid volunteers usually do not have the resources to do more than conduct interviews with eyewitnesses. Well, unless they are independently wealthy. But having thousands of UFO cases with similar descriptions and evidence hasn’t helped researchers figure out what’s going on.
It only takes a few unexplained sightings to demonstrate there is a mystery that cries out for a solution. Focusing on old cases, decades old, appears to make investigations of new sightings almost irrelevant. At least the new cases usually have living witnesses that can be questioned for additional details that may have been overlooked.
About the best we find in the older cases are indications that some of the evidence that seemed crystal clear years ago isn’t so compelling when examined in retrospect. At least it helps tighten the focus, except that there’s an unfortunate tendency in the UFO field to resurrect old cases, and often ignore data that appears to negatively alter the original conclusions.
So have we approached a dead end, or is there a way to take a new look at the most credible evidence and make concerted efforts to figure out what’s really happening? Probably not!
Copyright 1999-2018 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!
May 6, 2018
www.theparacast.com
UFO Researcher MJ Banias Talks About the MUFON Follies, the Flatwoods Monster, and the Alien Agenda 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 an exclusive podcast, After The Paracast, plus a higher-quality version of The Paracast free of network ads, 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 also feature selected podcasts and videos from Paul Kimball’s “Other Side of Truth,” and we are now offering special access to the first two episodes of the ghost haunting show he cohosts, "Haunted." 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: https://plus.theparacast.com/.
This Week's Episode: Gene and guest co-host Michael Allen present a return visit by researcher MJ Banias, a blogger who critically and philosophically examines the weird, the strange and the anomalous. During this episode, MJ will discuss the latest episode of the “MUFON Follies,” a new documentary about the Flatwoods Monster, a creature seen in West Virginia in 1952, and even how he accidentally got involved in debates over the Billy Meier contacts. And what about the alleged alien agenda? MJ was a former field investigator with MUFON, has been featured on multiple podcasts and radio shows, and contributes to Mysterious Universe and RoguePlanet. His work has been included in FATE Magazine, and in a collection of UFO-related essays entitled UFOs: Reframing the Debate.
Chris O’Brien’s Blog: Our Strange Planet
MJ Banias Blog: Terra Obscura
After The Paracast -- Available exclusively for Paracast+ subscribers on May 6: Gene interviews guest co-host Michael Allen about his unusual and sometimes frightening history of lucid or epic dreams and night terrors, as if he were living an entire lifetime in another world. He describes such dreams as entering a white room with a white kitchen, and about the mysterious disappearance, in the dream state, of his friends. Michael also talks about other dreams, including one he refers to as “the void,” involving the non-existence of everything that could exist. Are these paranormal events, or just a reflection of the turmoil in his life when he was a teenager?
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. Check out our new YouTube channel at: The Official Paracast Channel
So Is There Anything New in UFO Research?
By Gene Steinberg
Of late I’ve spent a little time checking out archives of old UFO magazines, dating back to the 1950s. Some of them were in my collection a few decades ago, but I shed much of that library in the process of moving around the country. I’ve kept some of it, but I wish I had given in to my desire to hold onto more.
The main reason that I sought out those old publications resulted from agreeing to researcher Isaac Koi’s request for him to scan the entire library of Caveat Emptor, the magazine I published with my first wife, Geneva, over a number of years. The entire collection should be posted shortly.
In any case, I suppose that I wasn’t terribly surprised to see how little has changed over the years after checking out some of those vintage publications. Sure, technology is far more advanced, and we mostly rely on email nowadays rather than send physical letters via the postal service. Print magazines have largely faded away, replaced by online publications and blogs. Our biggest expense in those days was the printing bill, and it was hard to keep up. Nowadays, I can post my publications, such as they are, electronically.
Forgetting the publishing medium, I was able to read articles about UFOs and, by ignoring the date, imagine they were written today. So little has changed, that I wonder what we have actually accomplished after seven decades.
We still see lights in the sky. Sometimes they take on more distinctive shapes, but many aren’t even saucer shaped.
The basic theories are not very different either. The most common theory is that we are being visited by travelers from outer space, very likely from other star systems. That UFOs appear to be capable of maneuvers beyond the capability of Earthly aircraft makes this seem credible.
Assuming, of course, that we are actually witnessing a physical event and not some sort of projection that may or may not have physical substance.
So after all these years, do the authorities actually know anything beyond keeping information about some of our own aircraft secret for reasons of national security?
When I read that New York Times piece about the Pentagon UFO Study last year, I thought that maybe the people involved were stuck in a time warp, living in ignorance of what had gone before. The press made a huge deal, more or less, about the U.S. government finally taking UFOs seriously, as if Project Blue Book and its predecessors never existed.
All right, Project Blue Book was shuttered with the conclusion that there was no evidence of UFO reality, although hundreds of unexplained sightings appeared to demonstrate otherwise. But it didn’t appear as if all that evidence was used as the basis for evaluating newer UFO cases.
In the end, little was discovered about the phenomenon that we didn’t already know. Blurry aircraft gun camera photos don’t really tell us a whole lot, although it helped to generate some headlines for the subject.
For a while.
There don’t appear to be much in the way of new developments about the basic program, but there is news about FOIA requests from Australian researcher Paul Dean that mentions the “Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Application (AAWSA),” a program that refers to such matters as “Traversable Wormholes, Stargates and Negative Energy.”
At the very least, this appears to address the search for ways to perfect some sort of star travel, which may or may not have any connection with UFOs. But it’s not at all surprising that we might be attempting to develop something more advanced than modified firecrackers to transport humans through space. Being able to visit the planets revolving around another star system in hours or days, rather than decades, would help us explore space with almost immediate impact.
If we can perfect such propulsion systems of course.
I’m personally in favor of stargates, which, if you follow the method described in that sci-fi TV series and its spinoffs, enables you to reach your destination in a few seconds. But it depends on setting up a comparable stargate at your destination. So unless we discovered evidence of extraterrestrials creating stargate networks, we’d have to find a way to transport the destination stargate. By wormholes, warp drive?
None of this, however, would necessarily advance UFO research unless we are somehow using technology acquired, or reverse engineered, from aliens. As with Star Trek, our scientists appear to have mostly been influenced by sci-fi.
Star Trek is a great example, witness flip phones, smartphones and tablets. Our own scientists have explored the possibilities of warp drive.
If there was no UFO mystery, it wouldn’t stop such research.
So we get back to the main topic at hand, which is what we’ve done to advance UFO research. America’s largest UFO group, MUFON, appears to have focused more on spreading the word about the presence of alien visitors, and commercializing its work to boost memberships.
Sure, it takes money to perform such research, and unpaid volunteers usually do not have the resources to do more than conduct interviews with eyewitnesses. Well, unless they are independently wealthy. But having thousands of UFO cases with similar descriptions and evidence hasn’t helped researchers figure out what’s going on.
It only takes a few unexplained sightings to demonstrate there is a mystery that cries out for a solution. Focusing on old cases, decades old, appears to make investigations of new sightings almost irrelevant. At least the new cases usually have living witnesses that can be questioned for additional details that may have been overlooked.
About the best we find in the older cases are indications that some of the evidence that seemed crystal clear years ago isn’t so compelling when examined in retrospect. At least it helps tighten the focus, except that there’s an unfortunate tendency in the UFO field to resurrect old cases, and often ignore data that appears to negatively alter the original conclusions.
So have we approached a dead end, or is there a way to take a new look at the most credible evidence and make concerted efforts to figure out what’s really happening? Probably not!
Copyright 1999-2018 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!
