The Mysteries of Dulce, New Mexico Explored on The Paracast
Special Announcement: The Paracast is heard Sundays from 6:00 PM until 9:00 PM (Central Time) on the GCN radio network.
The Paracast Humbly Requests Your Donations: Although ads help cover a small part of our expenses, the income they produce is never enough, and we don't want to overwhelm the show with them, so we hope you'll be willing 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. No contribution is too small (or too large
. We have a Donate link on our home page, below the logo and audio player. There's also a Donate link on our forums, right below our logo. Or just send your PayPal donation direct to sales (at) theparacast (dot) com.
You Can Now Order The Official Paracast T-Shirt: You asked, and we answered. We are now taking orders for The Official Paracast T-Shirt and a collection of other specially customized merchandise. To get your T-Shirt, just pay a visit to our new online store at Welcome to The Official Paracast Store to select your size and place your order. We now also offer a lineup of other premium merchandise featuring The Paracast logo.
Sunday, October 10, 2010: 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 hosts interview long-time researchers in the field, to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.
Join us as we explore the realms of the known and unknown, and hear great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This Week's Episode: Dulce. The very word conjures up hellish visions of "Nightmare Hall, bubbling vats filled with human body parts, evil reptoids killing spec op troops invading their underground lair. But is there anything to these fantastic rumors? In this episode, co-host Christopher O'Brien presents Anthony Sanchez, who reveals shocking info about Dulce from a retired Colonel who claims to have worked there.
Christopher O'Brien's Site: Home - Our Strange Planet
Anthony Sanchez's Site: UFO Highway - www.UFOHighway.com
Coming October 17: Can voices from the beyond be recorded? What are they trying to tell us? This week co-host Christopher O’Brien presents Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) expert Michael Esposito, who takes us beyond the sonic threshold.
Christopher O'Brien's Site: Home - Our Strange Planet
Reminder: Don't forget to visit our always-active Discussion Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal (and note our new Internet address): The Paracast Community Forums.
Research or Repetition?
By Gene Steinberg
One thing is sure in journalism: If you repeat a story often enough, in the same publication (online or print), or in several publications, it will soon take on a life of its own.
In the UFO field, there are loads of cases that sustain themselves mostly on legend. Consider the Mantell UFO incident, where a pilot died in a plane cash, while reporting in pursuit of a UFO. While this sighting was taken quite seriously in the old days, even by famed UFO researcher Major Donald E. Keyhoe, a conventional explanation seems quite plausible.
In a special report on the case written years later by UFO researcher Kevin D. Randle, he concluded: “Given what we now know, and that we have been able to access the accident records, that we know more about altitude sickness and hypoxia, and with the descriptions of the object available, it is clear that Mantell chased a Skyhook balloon. He climbed above the proscribed altitude without oxygen equipment, lost consciousness, and died in the resulting aircraft accident.”
In 1948, Skyhook research balloons were mostly secret, so that possibility wouldn’t have been obvious to people who originally investigated the crash. Indeed, one popular explanation had it that Mantell was actually chasing Venus, mistakenly believing it to be an object flying in our own atmosphere.
While lots of UFO literature still regards the Mantell incident as unsolved, or an unfortunate death while in pursuit of a UFO, it seems clear that this particular case has a far more conventional explanation.
However, stories of this sort are difficult to set aside. Someone will inevitably come along, do some casual research into early UFO sightings, and resurrect the intriguing possibility that ET was somehow involved.
The problem is that it’s not always easy to separate the paranormal from the conventional. Worse, when strange events are recalled decades after they supposedly occurred, getting accurate details is often extremely difficult.
The Roswell crash, whatever the cause, is an example. Unless there is some sort of paper trial of documents, even personal diaries, to support one’s recollections, it’s hard to know how those memories might have changed over the years.
Indeed, until the best-selling book from Charles Berlitz and William Moore, “The Roswell Incident,” appeared in 1980, rumors of UFO crashes in the late 1940s arose from time to time, but were never confirmed.
To be fair to those who have spent years diligently gathering evidence about the Roswell case, I have to tell you that I knew Berlitz reasonably well in those days. He was a masterful storyteller, with a twinkle in his eyes, and I always felt he only half-believed the information presented in his paranormal books. Indeed, I helped him research material for one of his books in the mid-1970s, and even got a credit for my efforts, but payment consisted of a few free lunches and little more.
As for Moore, once he admitted engaging in disinformation about flying saucers for the government some years later, it became extremely difficult to take his work seriously.
I do not say that ET didn’t crash in Roswell, NM in 1947, or that something else of an unworldly nature didn’t occur. But combing through endless interviews of regular people with imperfect memories, perhaps corrupted by tall tales, rumors, not to mention popular culture, it’s very hard to know where the truth lies.
Even though the Roswell researchers are still in the game, each year makes it less likely we’ll ever get to the bottom of this mystery. That is, unless we truly discover a real-life counterpart to TV’s “Warehouse 13,” where genuine artifacts of a flying saucer crash actually turn up. Or the claims of Philip Corso, in the book “The Day After Roswell,” are actually confirmed.
Meantime, just repeating what you see and hear doesn’t mean that any of it is true. That’s why your Paracast hosts suggest you be skeptical about everything, even when the report isn’t about something paranormal.
Special Announcement: The Paracast is heard Sundays from 6:00 PM until 9:00 PM (Central Time) on the GCN radio network.
The Paracast Humbly Requests Your Donations: Although ads help cover a small part of our expenses, the income they produce is never enough, and we don't want to overwhelm the show with them, so we hope you'll be willing 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. No contribution is too small (or too large
. We have a Donate link on our home page, below the logo and audio player. There's also a Donate link on our forums, right below our logo. Or just send your PayPal donation direct to sales (at) theparacast (dot) com.You Can Now Order The Official Paracast T-Shirt: You asked, and we answered. We are now taking orders for The Official Paracast T-Shirt and a collection of other specially customized merchandise. To get your T-Shirt, just pay a visit to our new online store at Welcome to The Official Paracast Store to select your size and place your order. We now also offer a lineup of other premium merchandise featuring The Paracast logo.
Sunday, October 10, 2010: 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 hosts interview long-time researchers in the field, to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.
Join us as we explore the realms of the known and unknown, and hear great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This Week's Episode: Dulce. The very word conjures up hellish visions of "Nightmare Hall, bubbling vats filled with human body parts, evil reptoids killing spec op troops invading their underground lair. But is there anything to these fantastic rumors? In this episode, co-host Christopher O'Brien presents Anthony Sanchez, who reveals shocking info about Dulce from a retired Colonel who claims to have worked there.
Christopher O'Brien's Site: Home - Our Strange Planet
Anthony Sanchez's Site: UFO Highway - www.UFOHighway.com
Coming October 17: Can voices from the beyond be recorded? What are they trying to tell us? This week co-host Christopher O’Brien presents Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) expert Michael Esposito, who takes us beyond the sonic threshold.
Christopher O'Brien's Site: Home - Our Strange Planet
Reminder: Don't forget to visit our always-active Discussion Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal (and note our new Internet address): The Paracast Community Forums.
Research or Repetition?
By Gene Steinberg
One thing is sure in journalism: If you repeat a story often enough, in the same publication (online or print), or in several publications, it will soon take on a life of its own.
In the UFO field, there are loads of cases that sustain themselves mostly on legend. Consider the Mantell UFO incident, where a pilot died in a plane cash, while reporting in pursuit of a UFO. While this sighting was taken quite seriously in the old days, even by famed UFO researcher Major Donald E. Keyhoe, a conventional explanation seems quite plausible.
In a special report on the case written years later by UFO researcher Kevin D. Randle, he concluded: “Given what we now know, and that we have been able to access the accident records, that we know more about altitude sickness and hypoxia, and with the descriptions of the object available, it is clear that Mantell chased a Skyhook balloon. He climbed above the proscribed altitude without oxygen equipment, lost consciousness, and died in the resulting aircraft accident.”
In 1948, Skyhook research balloons were mostly secret, so that possibility wouldn’t have been obvious to people who originally investigated the crash. Indeed, one popular explanation had it that Mantell was actually chasing Venus, mistakenly believing it to be an object flying in our own atmosphere.
While lots of UFO literature still regards the Mantell incident as unsolved, or an unfortunate death while in pursuit of a UFO, it seems clear that this particular case has a far more conventional explanation.
However, stories of this sort are difficult to set aside. Someone will inevitably come along, do some casual research into early UFO sightings, and resurrect the intriguing possibility that ET was somehow involved.
The problem is that it’s not always easy to separate the paranormal from the conventional. Worse, when strange events are recalled decades after they supposedly occurred, getting accurate details is often extremely difficult.
The Roswell crash, whatever the cause, is an example. Unless there is some sort of paper trial of documents, even personal diaries, to support one’s recollections, it’s hard to know how those memories might have changed over the years.
Indeed, until the best-selling book from Charles Berlitz and William Moore, “The Roswell Incident,” appeared in 1980, rumors of UFO crashes in the late 1940s arose from time to time, but were never confirmed.
To be fair to those who have spent years diligently gathering evidence about the Roswell case, I have to tell you that I knew Berlitz reasonably well in those days. He was a masterful storyteller, with a twinkle in his eyes, and I always felt he only half-believed the information presented in his paranormal books. Indeed, I helped him research material for one of his books in the mid-1970s, and even got a credit for my efforts, but payment consisted of a few free lunches and little more.
As for Moore, once he admitted engaging in disinformation about flying saucers for the government some years later, it became extremely difficult to take his work seriously.
I do not say that ET didn’t crash in Roswell, NM in 1947, or that something else of an unworldly nature didn’t occur. But combing through endless interviews of regular people with imperfect memories, perhaps corrupted by tall tales, rumors, not to mention popular culture, it’s very hard to know where the truth lies.
Even though the Roswell researchers are still in the game, each year makes it less likely we’ll ever get to the bottom of this mystery. That is, unless we truly discover a real-life counterpart to TV’s “Warehouse 13,” where genuine artifacts of a flying saucer crash actually turn up. Or the claims of Philip Corso, in the book “The Day After Roswell,” are actually confirmed.
Meantime, just repeating what you see and hear doesn’t mean that any of it is true. That’s why your Paracast hosts suggest you be skeptical about everything, even when the report isn’t about something paranormal.