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