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Your Paracast Newsletter — September 25, 2022


Gene Steinberg

Forum Super Hero
Staff member
The Paracast Newsletter
September 25, 2022
www.theparacast.com

UFO Author Jason Gleaves Reveals the Favorite Sightings of Noted UFO Researchers Around the World 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.

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This Week's Episode: Gene and cohost Tim Swartz present Jason Gleaves, author of "UFO Encounters: Up Close and Personal," which contains the favorite sightings of a number of noted researchers, "The Ufology Umbrella:: Close Encounters Are Not Enough," and "UFO Photos: Computer Analysis of Worldwide UFO Images Through the Decades." He served in the Royal Air Force, British Aerospace Airbus division, and received a BTEC National Diploma in computer-aided drafting in engineering for Shell Oil industry, and has high expertise in modern civilian and military worldwide aircraft/armaments recognition and visualization. Gleaves has contributed over the last ten years to numerous UFO reports with photographic and video-footage analysis on unidentified flying objects and associated anomalies for many ufologists within the community worldwide, using the latest updated imagery/computer science technology and software available.

After The Paracast — Available exclusively for Paracast+ subscribers on September 25: UFO author Jason Gleaves returns to talk with Gene and cohost Tim Swartz about his hopes for disclosure, which he says is already happening except for government revelations, his personal experiences with UFOs, pop culture and extraterrestrials, and the controversial claims of 1950’s flying saucer contactee George Adamski. Gleaves has contributed over the last ten years to numerous UFO reports with photographic and video-footage analysis on unidentified flying objects and associated anomalies for many ufologists within the community worldwide. His background includes service in the Royal Air Force, British Aerospace Airbus division, and received a BTEC National Diploma in computer-aided drafting in engineering for Shell Oil industry, and he has high expertise in modern civilian and military worldwide aircraft/armaments recognition and visualization.

Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: https://www.theparacast.com/forum/. Visit our new online shop for great branded merchandise at: https://www.theparacast.shop/, and check out our new YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheOfficialParacastChannel

Old Hoaxes Never Die — Revisited
By Gene Steinberg

In a recent episode of The Paracast, we featured Debbie Ziegelmeyer, a UFO researcher who has focused much of her attention on underwater encounters (USOs). She brought forth a lot of useful information to be sure, but she displayed some naïveté about other issues in the field.

So, for example, she apparently accepted the controversial MJ-12 documents as factual. This despite the fact that, as far as I and others who have followed the whole affair over the years have concluded, the papers are fake.

The documents told of a secret committee formed in the 1950s to explore sightings and the alleged recovery of extraterrestrial aircraft. Had it been true, it would have been an extraordinary development, but evidence of their authenticity has been severely lacking.

Now I realize that the late UFO lecturer Stanton T. Friedman, someone I knew for several decades, maintained until the end of his days that they were genuine. But others with actual government and military credentials, such as UFO and sci-fi author Kevin D. Randle, a retired U.S. Army veteran, wrote chapter and verse about what was wrong with MJ-12.

To back up a bit, a telltale sign of where they originated can be found in the Wikipedia entry on the matter:

“According to journalist Howard Blum the name "Majestic 12" had been prefigured in the UFO community when [William] Moore asked National Enquirer reporter Bob Pratt in 1982 to collaborate on a novel called MAJIK-12. Because of this, Blum writes, Pratt had always been inclined to think the Majestic 12 documents are a hoax.”

Aside from formatting errors in the MJ-12 documents, a key clue that it was meant as a hoax — or perhaps deliberate government disinformation — is included in the list of the group’s alleged members.

One of them was Harvard astronomer Donald Menzel, a rabid critic of UFO reality, as expressed in books and articles he wrote on the subject. Now it is true that he served as an intelligence agent during World War II, specializing in deciphering enemy codes. That, however, does not mean that he would establish a fake persona of a UFO skeptic some years later, while covertly working with the government to explore a genuine mystery.

One doesn’t necessarily follow the other, or perhaps it just an inside joke to buttress the skeptical reaction to MJ-12. “See, folks, you shouldn’t take it seriously.”

Now MJ-12 is just one of a number of questionable claims that have been circulated in the UFO field over the years. Maybe it was an effort by Moore, one of the original Roswell researchers, to draw attention to his efforts to explore the incident, or maybe he was a victim too. But he did confess in public to working as a disinformation agent on the subject, focusing in one Paul Bennewitz on behalf of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. The revelation was made during his speech before a MUFON symposium in Las Vegas in 1989.

With a few exceptions, Moore pretty much retired from the UFO field after that.

The long and short is that maybe Moore was partly or solely responsible for MJ-12, or took advantage of its existence. It hardly matters.

What is unfortunate is that it’s just one example of the fakery that remains alive in the UFO field despite being exposed on a number of occasions.

Another example came to the fore during this weekend’s episode of After The Paracast — our premium podcast available as an exclusive to subscribers to The Paracast+ — featuring UFO author Jason Gleaves.

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In his recent book, “UFO Encounters: Up Close and Personal,” Gleaves focused on episodes that impressed a number of researchers from around the world.

One of those people wrote about the long-disproven claims of 1950’s flying saucer contactee George Adamski, someone who wrote about alleged contacts with humanoids from Venus and other planets in our solar system.

Now from what we know about Venus, it’s clear that no human can exist there, since it has surface temperatures of over 800 degrees Fahrenheit.

However, those live action juvenile sci-fi shows on TV, often broadcast on Saturday mornings in the 1950s, did feature trips to Venus, where humans speaking perfect mid-American English appeared. Years earlier, fantasy adventure author Edgar Rice Burroughs (creator of Tarzan) wrote several books featuring a character named Carson Napier, who went to Venus via a rocket ship and encountered an ancient civilization of humans there.

In the real world, we know this is a fantasy, but Adamski was evidently not well schooled in what astronomers knew about nearby planets when inventing his contact claims.

In his book, Gleaves talks about attempts to analyze photos that Adamski presented to prove his claims. But he had evidently not heard of how easily they were exposed. In the semi-famous “Adamski Expose Issue” of Saucer News, a serious magazine published in 1957 from Ufology’s court jester, Jim Moseley, a comparison of two photos was published. One was from Adamski, the other was created by the editors of Yankee, a regional magazine, which came up with a credible duplicate using a Chrysler hub cap, a coffee can and three ping pong balls.

Other analyses of the photos suggest they could also be faked with a surgical lamp; the ball-shaped undersides of the craft were actually G.E. lightbulbs.

Now it is fair to state that Moseley’s magazine, in the early days, never reached more than a few hundred readers, and the chances that anyone remembers it are slim. But the research about Adamski is online, and easily found. It’s truly unfortunate that many people still believe in Adamski and his claims.

To be fair, Adamski no doubt invented the stories of his encounters with Nordic aliens to provide a pop culture context with which to spread his philosophy to his followers. His first book, “Flying Saucers Have Landed,” published in 1953 and coauthored by Desmond Leslie, may have succeeded by arriving at the right time. The flying saucer mystery had dominated the public’s attention, and here was some guy who claimed up close and personal encounters with their pilots.

But that’s not a reason to continue to support such nonsensical claims. It doesn’t give the UFO field the credibility it deserves; it simply provides a needless aura of science fiction.

Perhaps that’s one reason why some researchers suggest Ufology should be dead and buried and replaced with something that will provide a more sensible and scientific approach to the mystery.

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