US Ufology’s Alien Zoo

Truth is not really a commodity that one should expect to find too much of at US UFO conferences and similar gatherings in this day and age.  Whether it’s the annual Ozark (Mountain) UFO Conference in Eureka Springs, AR, or the annual International UFO Congress in Fountain Hills, AZ, such truth as there may be at such events is well leavened with fantasy, fiction, and –dare I say it?– quite a bit of good old fashioned fabrication and fraud.

There are, of course, some dedicated and honest UFO researchers invited as speakers at these conferences but, make no mistake, the UFO celebrities who are most eagerly sought as the leading presenters on these occasions are often the showbiz performers of the wild and wacky world of “ufology” that’s presented on TV or Coast-to-Coast AM.  The subject has largely become the realm of UFO true believers whose basic premise, with little proof, is that the aliens are here, not just among us, but crashing their flying saucers, abducting our womenfolk, and even influencing or controlling some kind of New World Order connived at by our government --which, they say, has shamefully concealed “the truth about UFOs” from the people for over sixty-five years.

There is too the annual MUFON Symposium.  MUFON stated mission is the “scientific study of UFOs for the benefit of humanity through investigation, research, & education.”  One would certainly hope that this approach included the exposing of the many fraudulent claims that abound in the field of US ufology and clearly showing them up for what they are.  There have been MUFON directors in recent years that did seem intent on that goal but unfortunately their skepticism didn’t always endear them to the membership.  Sometimes such leaders get challenged or pushed aside.  And when it comes to selecting speakers for the annual MUFON Symposium, you will find that some of those chosen are the very same UFO celebrities who have been peddling the same highly dubious stories of alien contact for years.         

I do sympathize with the organizers of UFO conferences.  Undoubtedly the inclusion of UFO celebrities and well-known performers on the program attracts larger audiences.  The stars of Coast-to-Coast AM and some who have featured in UFO documentaries on certain TV channels are obviously leading contenders. It’s really a matter of economics rather than the truth. The more outrageous the stories of alien contact or the more sensational the UFO claims, the better it is for the conference. That’s what audiences want.  

I am reminded of the presentation by a certain “Professor” John Searl at a UFO conference in Amsterdam several years ago.  This old fraud delighted the audience with his claims of having invented the “Searl Effect Generator” (SEG) which delivered a constant 11 kWh of free energy with no input whatever. Unfortunately sinister government agents had raided his premises, stolen all the SEGs and burned the place down. However everyone was invited to sign up for the generators and, once he could re-establish a new production line, you would be able to purchase them.  He also claimed to have built his own flying saucers and tested them.  Unfortunately, the last of these had flown off out of control into space and so, sadly, he was quite unable to show anyone these wonders. Audience feedback forms submitted after the conference showed that the “professor” had scored the very highest marks. Almost everyone loved his talk and asked for more of the same!

So it seems evident that truth is sometimes a very minor consideration at these conferences.  Such gatherings are really more like Star Trek conventions where everyone pretends that it’s not fantasy. Party-poopers like yours truly are sometimes treated with disdain by the true believers and it’s been made clear that I’ve simply failed to enter into the spirit of things.  How dare I say that an object which is being claimed as a genuine “UFO artifact” is merely a piece of scrap metal and its owner knows damn well that it is!

Let us take a look at the grays and the rest of the alien zoo sometimes trotted out at UFO conferences by some celebrity speakers.  At the April 2013 Ozark UFO Conference in Eureka Springs, AR, UFO superstar Linda Moulton Howe gave us chapter and verse on the alleged alien races that she claims are visiting our planet.   She called her talk “Taxonomy of Extraterrestrial Biological Entities (EBEs)” and she presented various images of the EBEs, together with illustrations and documents leaked from alleged government sources about the types of EBEs interacting with Earth –past and present.

Linda described the five known kinds of EBE alien races as follows:-

(1)  The Ebens.  These are peaceful aliens from the planet SERPO in the ζ Reticuli star system (G2 & G3 binary stars, not unlike the Sun, but most unlikely to have any planets --GW) and they seem to be about as friendly as hobbits.  They are supposedly the aliens whose flying saucer(s) crashed at Roswell, NM, in 1947. The Ebens have apparently been on good terms with successive US governments –or maybe secret groups in the military.  There have been various co-operative projects with them and they apparently like New Mexico whose terrain and climate is similar to that of SERPO.  It was apparently Ebens who briefly abducted Betty & Barney Hill back in 1961.

(2)  The Archquloids.  These are gray aliens with beaky noses like the ones who allegedly met President Eisenhower at Holloman AFB, NM, in 1964.  They are basically cloned Ebens but with different appearance. 

                                                               

(3)  The Quadloids.  These are cloned from two other species and include reptilian aliens (“lizards”) and praying mantis style insectoids.  See picture above.

(4)  The Heplaloids.  Not much is known about these but, unfortunately, due to a typo their whole race has been mislabeled (this should have been “heptaloids” –GW).

(5)  The Trantaloids.  These are dangerous insectoids -- so for goodness sakes watch out!  MJ-12 called them HAVs –Hostile Alien Visitors and they come from the ε Eridani star system. One was reported captured in Canada in 1961. They are the ones who have been carrying out most abductions.

Linda also showed a number of drawings depicting some of these aliens such as the Quadloid shown above. This is an artist’s impression of a 7 ft. reptilian which supposedly abducted and raped a woman in the Midwest in 1991.  Other abductees have, supposedly, encountered quite a few of these reptilian aliens in the Midwest during the last 25 years.

We were told of a telephone call from a mysterious informant asking “Do you want to see a videotape of this creature?”   Soon afterwards, this man was found dead and the alleged videotape had vanished (why am I not surprised? --GW)                                                                                                                                                 

 At this point let’s pause and ask whether or not we have completely entered into the realms of fantasy and, for that matter, rather poor quality science fiction.  Does Linda Howe really believe in what she is telling us?  Certainly it sounds as if she does, and sometimes she is heard to speak in that strained emotional voice which she uses to tell us that Planet Earth is in imminent danger of invasion or destruction by hostile extra-terrestrials.  Whether or not audiences believe these scary fantasies I simply cannot say.

So where did all these fantasy tales of five alien races originate?  That’s not very hard to find out:  it’s from the “Project SERPO” material which was put up on an Internet website starting in 2005.  Pages of material from sources known as “Anonymous”, “The Caretaker”, “Adviser #1”, etc., come from transcription of an alleged tape recording of an alleged presidential briefing of Ronald Reagan at Camp David in 1981 (forgers of sensational alien claims love to produce “presidential briefing” documents such as the MJ-12 papers!).  The absurd jokey dialogue with Reagan reads like a poorly written script from SNL.  The only people with real names mentioned here are Reagan and his CIA director, William Casey.  The SERPO stuff was, of course, put out after both were dead, in much the same way that supposed members of MJ-12 were all dead by the time that forgery was first put out by William Moore and/or AFOSI disinformation agent Richard Doty.        

Linda didn’t give us one of the main strands of this Project SERPO science fiction.  That tells how in 1965 the US had an exchange program with the Eben aliens. The US government carefully selected 12 military personnel: ten men and two women. They were trained, vetted and carefully removed from the military system. The 12 were skilled in various specialities. In the northern part of the Nevada Test Site, the Eben UFO landed and those 12 Americans left. One alien entity stayed behind on Earth. The original plan was for our 12 people to stay 10 years and then return to Earth.

But something went wrong. The 12 remained until 1978, when they were returned to the same location in Nevada. Only seven men and one woman returned. Two had died on planet SERPO in the ζ Reticuli system, 39 light years away from Earth.  Four Americans, including these two, had decided to remain there, according to the returnees. Of the eight that returned, we are told all have since died. The last survivor died in 2002.  Unsurprisingly, everyone involved in the alleged SERPO exchange is now dead, as so often is the case with alleged witnesses of alleged UFO crash/retrievals and other such claims of alien contact.  You just have to believe all this on the say-so of some invisible informant who calls himself “Mr Anonymous”!

And, soon after that Project SERPO material first appeared on the Internet, who should pop up but Richard Doty writing in UFO Magazine to “confirm” most of what “Mr Anonymous” had said about the Eben exchange program and the 39 light year trip by 12 Americans to planet SERPO.  It wouldn’t surprise me if Doty himself was “Mr Anonymous”.  In any case, to believe a single word from either Doty or Anonymous would be extremely foolish.       

Earlier at the Ozark UFO conference Linda Howe had been nominated as the first recipient of the Lou Farish Award for Excellence for 2013.  This was said to be in recognition of her tireless UFO research during the 25 years that the Ozark Conference has run.  Some of that might have been deserved, but her research this year on the taxonomy of EBEs seems to have mainly consisted of looking up the various alleged species of aliens on the highly dubious Project SERPO website ( www.serpo.org ).

On the same day that Linda Howe spoke at Eureka Springs we also listened to veteran futurists, Drs J.J. and Desiree Hurtak whose combined presentation was a remarkable double act.  They have been researchers in the field of UFOs for 40 years and J.J. is author of ‘The Book of Knowledge, The Keys of Enoch’ the channeled bible that he always carries with him. Their subject was called “Exobiology: Explaining Life throughout the Universe”.

 This wonderful dog and pony show was an extended ramble through the wilder shores of ufology revisiting many of those old favorites like Bob Lazar, Philip Corso, beaky-nosed aliens landing at Holloman AFB, Wendelle Stevens, contactee Carlos Diaz, that old fraud Bill Uhouse, grays, reptilians, ζ Reticuli, and film of multiple UFOs over Mexico.  Although many of these claims have been totally discredited, it is evident that they remain part of the great corpus of American UFO mythology that has been built up over the years and will not go away.  There were also interesting snippets about observations made by Edgar Mitchell, Rupert Sheldrake and more orthodox figures like Edward Teller, Buzz Aldrin and Ben Rich.  However, the Hurtaks far outdid Linda’s five alien races by claiming there were “54 Alien Races we have inventory of” as divinely revealed to J.J. by “Master Ophanim Enoch” in the 1970s.

Last UFO celebrity of that day to deliver his presentation at Eureka Springs was veteran Mexican UFO researcher Jaime Maussan whose talk was entitled “Videographic Evidence of UFO Sightings in Mexico”.  Jaime proceeded to show dozens of photos of lights in the sky over Mexico most of which could have been just about anything.  Whether or not there were some genuine UFOs among them was anyone’s guess.  He also showed videoclips of other daytime objects in the Mexican skies some of which were almost certainly distant balloons which Mexicans are very fond of releasing.  And of course there was other film footage of UFOs from a variety of dubious sources, such as alleged contactee Antonio Urzi and Billy Meier.

Over the years Jaime Maussan has promoted a whole succession of UFO hoaxes and bogus UFO footage. He sold one such tape of an alleged daylight UFO to a TV network for a reported $120,000.  In his 1993 video production with Lee Elders, “Messengers of Destiny”, he falsely claimed that the planet Venus, filmed close to the blacked out sun’s disk at totality during the solar eclipse of July 11, 1991, over Mexico City is a huge metallic UFO. Not true!  He supported the Billy Meier UFO Fraud and showed photos of Meier’s hoaxed flying saucers.  For years Maussan has been supporting the absurd “Jonathan Reed” hoax alien video story, with its rubber alien and fake UFO.

Finally, rather than a photo of Jaime himself, I’ll include here a picture of his “alien creature” supposedly captured alive in a steel trap in Metepec, Mexico, in 2007.  The creature was said to have been very aggressive (maybe it was one of Linda’s trantaloids!) and took hours to kill by holding it underwater in a ditch.  If Jaime is still promoting this as a genuine alien creature it wasn’t mentioned in his 2013 presentation.

This particular hoax was exposed in 2010 when Urso Moreno Ruiz, who is a taxidermist, revealed that it was just the corpse of a skinned squirrel-monkey which had been prepared by him.  The alleged farmer Mario, who said he had caught it, was Urso’s uncle and he had sold the corpse to Maussan for 300,000 pesos ($23,000).  Whether Jaime Maussan was a victim of this hoax or whether he was complicit in it remains unclear.  In any case, he strongly maintained that this was a genuine alien creature --and maybe he still does!

The reason that I’ve included a photo of Jaime’s “alien creature” is simply because it’s quite impossible to find photos (rather than sketches) of any of the creatures from alleged alien bestiaries hyped by the UFO celebrities.  It might well lead one to think that all these aliens –the ebens, the trantaloids and various beings of the claimed 54 alien races-- are no more than mythical creatures that belong solely in the realms of fantasy and science fiction. Maussan’s absurd skinned squirrel-monkey makes me feel quite nostalgic for that wonderful alien monster of the 1990s, the Chupacabra, so feared by the inhabitants of Puerto Rico and so hyped up by some US ufologists at the time. The chupacabra is no longer mentioned at UFO conferences and I’d like to think that was because everyone has now accepted the entirely convincing explanation for it put forward in Benjamin Radford’s brilliant article in the Fortean Times of February 2011 entitled “HR Giger’s Reel Monster”.  The chupacabra was an alien creature inspired by the monster in the movie Species (1995) that evidently escaped from the cinema screen into some people's reality back then. 

In saying that today’s UFO conferences have become festivals of fantasy, fiction, and not a little falsehood, begs the question of whether such was the case in previous years. The best answer is: “Yes-- more or less so”, since the UFO subject has always been riddled with the false claims of contactees, hoaxes, disinformation, forged documents and faked photos quite apart from all the fantasy and fiction that I mentioned above.  If mainstream ufologists at least attempted to disavow such nonsense the subject might one day be taken seriously by scientists, or even politicians.  As things stand, UFO “Disclosure” events in Washington are inevitably doomed to failure because the evidence presented is minimal and it relies mainly on the testimony of a few UFO celebrities and other individuals who many consider to be kooks.

I suggested in a previous article that ufology itself would be brought into disrepute by inviting proven hoaxers and fraudsters to be speakers at UFO conferences.  In particular, I said that inviting Larry Cekander and his bogus “Bob White UFO Artifact” to the Ozark UFO Conference might do just that.  However, the fact is that the subject has already been in disrepute for years and that is why scientists, the press and the majority of the American public do not take the UFO community or its spokespersons very seriously.

George Wingfield.                 

May 2013

"I WANT TO BELIEVE"

OK, fine, but if buying into some of the snake oil that’s on offer, it should at least come with a Health Warning.

Like the majority of the American people, I believe in the reality of the UFO phenomenon and that a significant proportion of the strange unidentified objects that are seen in the skies over this country and in other parts of the world may be something of a truly mysterious nature.  That is, possibly, of extraterrestrial or interdimensional origin, rather than all just secret military aircraft, drones, misidentifications, natural phenomena, hoaxes, etc.  However, between this initial cautious position of mine and the widespread belief that UFOs are definitely extraterrestrial spacecraft piloted by small alien humanoids (with either a hostile agenda, or maybe a benign one, depending on one’s belief system), there’s one mighty leap of faith involved.

The UFO True Believers have made that leap and many feel totally certain of the alien presence here.  We should all look carefully at the evidence on which their beliefs are based and whether the widespread alien myths of today have any sound basis in fact.  Some people have rather vague ET beliefs which are based on the general concept of creatures from other planets that has been presented to us in Hollywood movies and in comic books and science fiction over the years. Others with a more definite interest in the subject listen to Coast-to-Coast AM radio and TV channels, read UFO magazines, visit certain well publicized websites dealing with such matters, and attend UFO conferences that are held all over America.  

So far, so good, but here comes a word of warning.  A very significant proportion of the material that has been presented via the above media is without doubt fiction, fabrication, fantasy and falsehood.  That would be all very well if these stories of alien contact and the like were presented with some kind of warning but most often they are not.  Perhaps a health warning, like that found on cigarette packs, along the following lines, would be in order:  Many claims of alien contact, UFO photographs, video footage and stories that are presented here contain fiction, fantasy, and faked material.  Consumption of too much of this and belief in it may lead in some cases to paranoia, gullibility, loosening of one’s grip on reality, and irrational behavior.

Before howls of protest arise at my suggestion, I should point out that there are also some honest, serious researchers in the UFO field for whom I have nothing but admiration.  The trouble, especially for those who are new to the subject, is that it’s not always easy to distinguish between the honest researchers and those people who should definitely not be believed.  Just because a person making a fantastical claim of alien contact is plausible, well-educated (sometimes with a science degree, Ph.D., or similar), likable, and a polished presenter, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he or she is telling the truth. As with con men and con women, the reverse is often true.

There are quite a few UFO celebrities who have come forward with claims of alien contact over the last sixty odd years.  During the 1950s and 1960s these were mostly “contactees” who told stories of their meetings with extra-terrestrials in flying saucers and of their trips to other planets either in our solar system or in other star systems.  There have been more than 50 of these and their extraordinary claims were usually just fantasy and science fiction.

To improve on their claims of alien contact some of the better known contactees, such as George Adamski, Billy Meier, and others, produced dubious photographs purporting to show flying saucers and sometimes blurred images of their extraterrestrial friends.  These alleged ETs almost always had human form since it’s easier to serve up a photo of an unknown person and then claim it is an alien.  Photos of “aliens” that are totally unlike humans are much more difficult to make look convincing and I know of none that is considered by any serious researcher to be genuine.

At this stage I believe that it is useful to list some cases of alleged ET contact that serious UFO researchers have firmly consigned to what I call the “7F Basket”.  The “7F” signifies falsehood, fiction, fantasy, fraud, fakery, folklore and flapdoodle.         

Here are ten examples of well known cases that can be firmly consigned to the 7F Basket of ufology:-

(1)  Contactee George Adamski and his tales of flying saucers in which he flew to Venus and round the moon. Likewise other 1950s/60s “contactees”.

(2)  The Billy Meier megahoax featuring “beamships”, contact with ETs from the Pleiades, hundreds of faked photos of UFOs, Semjase, etc., etc.

(3)  Bob Lazar’s 1989 claims of back-engineering flying saucers acquired by the US military at “S-4” (Area 51) & aliens’ use of Element 115 propulsion.

(4)  Ray Santilli’s “Alien Autopsy” scam of 1995.  Footage of an alleged autopsy carried out on a dead alien was fraudulent and faked in the UK.

(5)  Robert Dean’s false claims re “The Assessment” document at SHAPE (1964). This never existed. Also tales of an alien battle with US forces, etc.

(6)  Linda Cortile’s ongoing alien abduction soap opera in NYC (1990s) was concocted by her and fed bit-by-bit to abduction researcher Budd Hopkins.

(7)  Ed Walters’ 1987 UFO photos at Gulf Breeze, FL, and his alleged alien contact story.  (This led to a UFO flap there where people did see UFOs)

(8)  Whitley Strieber’s “Communion –A True Story” (1987). This abduction tale is, without doubt, horror fiction that took place solely in Whitley’s head.

(9)  The “CARET drones” (from 2007) Internet hoax created by “Isaac”. Supposed ET technology but actually bicycle parts and many faked photos.

(10) “The Other Roswell” story of a 1955 UFO crash near Del Rio, TX, by Robert Willingham.  His claim is undoubtedly fantasy presented as fact.

That’s just ten cases for the 7F basket but it’s probably only the tip of the iceberg. OK, some of you will say, we know that many of these are false cases but it doesn’t mean that there aren’t any genuine cases of alien contact. No, it doesn’t, but my complaint is that some researchers, magazine editors, MUFON writers and some UFO conference organizers go on promoting these fraudulent cases as if they were genuine. Again and again, as if nothing had changed, and without any “health warning”.  These are just UFO myths. 

I noted the difference between cases where we have only the word of the contactee or experiencer and cases where other evidence is offered such as photographs.  Unfortunately such photos almost invariably prove to have been faked.  With Billy Meier’s “Wedding Cake” UFO photos one could

clearly discern that the UFO base was constructed using a garbage can lid of a type which is common in Switzerland (see F1).  Similarly, with Isaac’s “CARET drones” --presented as genuine “self-activating machines” using ET technology by both Linda Moulton Howe and Whitley Strieber-- it can be seen that some of the CARET drone components are recognizable as bicycle parts (see F2 below). In addition to that, recent fractal analysis of the CARET photos shows that they were faked by combining digital photos using Adobe Photoshop or similar.

So strong is the almost religious desire to believe among the UFO True Believers that sometimes they will concede there is a bit of fakery involved but insist that the story as a whole must be true.  That’s been the case with Adamski, with the Meier hoax, and for quite some time with Santilli’s “Alien Autopsy” fraud.  Even as these cases start to unravel and the stories were being altered to counter any proof of fakery, some true believers would hang on to their belief regardless. To my way of thinking, once some part of an alien contact story, or its supposed photographic evidence, is shown to involve deception, then the likely conclusion is that it is all deception.

Another aspect of beliefs held so fervently by UFO True Believers is that the same people may also tend to embrace wild conspiracy theories.  Of course many of the alien contact stories are heavily bound up in conspiracy theory and anyone (like me) who questions the truth of such claims has sometimes been accused of being a government disinformation agent bent on suppressing “the truth”.  That ridiculous idea is just about as crazy as the well known conspiracy theory which claims that 9/11 was engineered by the “sinister Bush/Cheney/CIA/NSA clique” and that the high-rise buildings in New York destroyed on 9/11, were actually primed in advance with thermite charges by government agents.  According to this mad scenario, it was that which caused their collapse and destruction, rather than the airplanes hijacked by al Qaeda terrorists and flown into the WTC towers.

If one pauses for a moment to consider just how absurd some of these beliefs are, one could probably be justified in saying that the paranoia so much in evidence here is potentially a mental health problem.  Conspiracy theories --whether it be 9/11 or the JFK assassination, or the alleged murder of Princess Diana-- seem in recent times to supplement the beliefs of the more extreme UFO True Believers. Some conspiracy theories like this are served up at UFO conferences just as if they were a natural extension of the UFO subject.

And besides conspiracies, we can include a number of other mysterious things that some people have tried to link with the UFO phenomenon: cattle mutilations and crop circles, to name but two. There are of course some persuasive arguments to link such phenomena to UFOs but equally one should be aware that, in the case of crop circles, fakers and hoaxers are aware of it and sometimes tailor their productions accordingly. Many crop circle formations in Britain have been designed and laid down by their human creators over the last 20 years specifically to appeal to the UFO beliefs of certain prominent researchers.  In particular, the “Pi” crop circle formation of 2008 encoded that mathematical constant accurately to nine decimal places with a view to entrapping any researcher with a numerical problem solving ability.  As anticipated, some naïve researchers immediately claimed that the crop circle must be of ET origin, or, at any rate, not the work of humans. (Considerate of aliens to use decimal notation, wasn’t it?)

The three makers of the Pi crop circle include a friend of mine, ‘Raven’, whom I’ve known well for about 20 years.  One of his colleagues in making this formation was ‘JayBird’ who has been one of the most prolific British circle-makers since 1990. I studied the crop circle phenomenon in the UK for several years and I can categorically say that the Pi circle and the vast majority, if not all, crop circles there in recent years are of human origin and are not made by ETs, UFOs, or even “self-activating machines” built in a secret lab in Palo Alto, CA, using ET technology (see F2 and F3 below).

To compound the CARET drones hoax deception, the invisible Internet “Isaac”, who has never actually shown himself in person, incorporated the ‘Pi’ crop circle design in one of his alleged Top Secret CARET laboratory documents and supplied it via the Internet to Linda Moulton Howe.  She evidently believes that all this CARET stuff is genuine ET technology. Once more the dangled carrot was eagerly accepted.  I should point out that Raven and JayBird are not in collusion with Isaac and maybe the latter should pay them some royalties for his imitation of their magnificent Pi circle symbol.

Similarly perhaps, Open Minds TV, who now use the Pi crop circle symbol as a logo for their Open Minds magazine?

For those who ask why shouldn’t one believe the various claims made in the ten false cases which I cited above, I would ask whether for instance they believe the Nigerian gentleman who is always sending me and others e-mails promising to pay $50,000,000 into one’s bank account –details of which he requests are sent to him in advance.  Or the wonderful e-mail which arrives out of the blue telling you that you are the Winner of the UK Lotto draw in Johannesburg, South Africa, and you are approved to collect $2,500,000.00 if you apply for it (the catch, which becomes apparent later, is that there is a processing fee of several thousand $ which must be paid in advance).  I suppose there are people who believe these scams are genuine and there are also people who are determined to believe in the great hoaxes of ufology.

But surely, I’m asked, what possible reason would X or Y, say, have for making these false claims of alien contact?  Sadly, the motives for making a false claim most often boil down to the simple business of making money. Billy Meier had quite a business going selling lovely color photos and books of photos of his alleged Pleiadean beamships hovering over the Swiss hills. He also sold recordings of the strange noises these supposedly made.  Not only was there money in it but he became the prophet or leader of a group of disciples who believed in his tales of alien contact and supposed Pleiadean philosophy.  Other UFO “contactees”, like Rael, have formed cults or sects and some have published best-selling books that have netted considerable sums.  Admittedly not all make money from their claims of alien contact but that’s usually not for want of trying!  And, of course, I must admit there may be some who do genuinely believe in what they perceive happened to them.

When it comes to the 7F basket and the many false tales of alien contact, we should distinguish between the originators of the false claims and those who shamelessly promote them despite knowing that evidence has been faked and the stories are largely untrue.  The latter are very much like the snake oil salesmen of the American West a hundred years ago and more.  The product has changed, of course, but tales of alien contact, flights to other planets, ET crop circles, and “self-activating machines” are just as marketable as snake oil once was.  The new product finds a wide audience via TV and radio, the internet, magazines, and websites that offer such fantasies dressed up as fact.

I don’t really care what people choose to believe as regards the “alien presence” and claims of alien contact.  It is for each individual to decide what the truth is and which researchers are to be trusted.  The broad church of American ufology today embraces some honest researchers and also quite a few prominent figures who might be politely accused of selling snake oil.  Anyone who doubts this disillusioned assessment of US ufology should read the article Twenty Years in the UFO Fog (see F4) by Don Ecker who, with his wife Vicki, spent many years producing UFO Magazine.  He writes:

In the last few years the one troubling thing with UFOs and UFO research has been the incredible lack of critical thinking exhibited by researchers that should know better and the public that doesn’t know better. For many years I’ve heard people within the field grouse that the debunkers and skeptics are ruining research but who are they kidding?   Some of the “cases” in recent years that people have touted make me cringe.  Stories recently covered in UFO Magazine like Project Serpo that have not one iota or shred of proof and read like the worst case of BAD science fiction … but people WANT TO BELIEVE.    

That brings us back to the X-Files picture at the beginning of this article (which happens to feature one of Billie Meier’s fake UFOs). Don Ecker is a good judge of character and he understands the extent to which the UFO subject has been taken over by charlatans selling snake oil. If you read his article you’ll find the names of quite a few of them such as Bill Cooper, Marshall Applewhite, John Lear, Dr Courtney Brown, Lee Shargel, Ed Dames, Mel Noel, etc., etc.

“Does it matter?” some of you may ask.  Yes, it does since, like Don Ecker, I consider this is a genuine and legitimate subject of study and that UFOs must come from somewhere.  The falsehood, fiction, fantasy, fraud, fakery, folklore and flapdoodle that have swamped the subject for so long devalue the work of honest UFO researchers.  More often than not the press treats the subject with amusement or derision, and it is understandable why orthodox scientists steer well clear. Continued belief in false cases of alien contact only impedes the search for a true understanding of the UFO phenomenon.

George Wingfield, May 2012. 

Footnotes:  Internet Links to referenced material.

F1  

http://www.thebiggestsecret.org/home/index.php/articles/ufo-et/meier-hoax/60-meier-hoax/82-meier-mega-hoax-mega-con               also:-   

http://www.thebiggestsecret.org/home/index.php/articles/ufo-et/meier-hoax/60-meier-hoax/76-meier-smoking-gun

F2   http://www.bikebob.org/Carrots&CropCircles.html

F3   http://www.dronehoax.com

F4   http://www.ufowatchdog.com/20+YEARS+IN+THE+UFO+FOG.pdf   

Also see Revelations (1991) by Jacques Vallee. Especially read Introduction.

For Wingfield’s further article: Ten Myths of US Ufology  see “theufobook” website and go to webpage:   http://theufobook.wordpress.com/2011/12/