The nearby town of Rachel, Nevada, boasts a “Little A’Le’Inn” and a small but continuous stream of tourists looking for UFOs. The state of Nevada has even designated the local road, State Highway 375, as ”The Extraterrestrial Highway.” A cottage industry of Area 51 experts and alleged witnesses, similar to that of the Roswell, New Mexico, incident, seems to be a permanent part of UFO lore.
Russian satellite photo of runways at Area 51
The U. S. Air Force has resisted allowing this once-secret installation to be scrutinized close-up by uncleared people with no need-to-know. In response to the unwanted worldwide publicity, the government recently expanded the 60-square-mile property to include nearby hills, in an effort to deny would-be observers any high ground from which to photograph tests in Area 51. The government also employs contracted security guards to prevent unauthorized entry to the posted area, and prominent signs warn intruders away with the statement: “deadly force is authorized.”
Despite these government attempts, determined UFO buffs have recorded intriguing telescopic videos that show bright lights hovering and zipping about Groom Lake in maneuvers that seem impossible for conventional aircraft. It has been suggested that these pictures may indicate tests of VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) craft, laser-assisted launch systems, particle-beam weapons, or other developmental projects that combine these or other technologies.
Not surprisingly, the government has also resisted legal efforts by citizens to disclose Area 51’s activities. A lawsuit concerning alleged pollution injuries in Area 51 brought the following response on September 20, 1999: In Presidential Determination 99-37, President Clinton said, in part, “I find that it is in the paramount interest of the United States to exempt the United States Air Force’s operating location near Groom Lake, Nevada, from any applicable requirement for the disclosure to unauthorized persons of classified information concerning that operating location.”
A search of the literature on the World Wide Web provides many speculative articles on the possible uses and significance of Area 51, as well as detailed satellite photographs of the base.
—ARLAN K. ANDREWS
Arnold sighting The “modern age” of “flying saucers” began with the sighting by Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947. Arnold, a civilian pilot, was flying over the Cascade mountains in western Washington State, when he reported seeing nine shiny objects in a chain-like formation flying at an estimated speed of 1,600 miles per hour.
Kenneth Arnold and his plane
Arnold was thirty-two years old at the time, and the owner of a fire-control equipment company based in Boise, Idaho. He took off from the Chehalis, Washington, airport at 2 P.M. flying his own single-engine plane. He was searching for a lost Marine C-46 transport; a $5,000 reward had been offered for its location.
After about one hour aloft, Arnold trimmed out his aircraft and simply observed the terrain. He described the sky as clear and the air smooth.
Upon entering the vicinity of Mount Rainier, a sudden brilliant flash lit up the surfaces of his plane. Startled, he began scanning the sky to locate the source. The only other aircraft in sight was a lone DC-4 far to his left and rear, too far away to have been the source of the flash. The flash occurred again, and this time he caught the direction from which it came. To his left and to the north he saw nine brightly illuminated objects flying in a chain-like formation from north to south.
A recreation of the scene according to Arnold’s description (Drawing by Susan Swiatek)
Arnold was no stranger to this territory, as he had flown in the area many times before. This was one aspect of the sighting that made many people take it seriously. Not only was he a “solid citizen” and a respected businessman, but an experienced mountain pilot as well; and he saw something that was truly unusual to him.
The objects appeared to come from the vicinity of Mount Baker and were staying close to the mountaintops, swerving in and out of the highest peaks. Noticing this, Arnold was able to calculate their speed. The distance between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams was forty-seven miles and the “objects” crossed this distance in one minute and forty-two seconds. This translates into 1,656.71 miles per hour, nearly three times as fast as the capability of any aircraft at that time. (The top speed of the F-80 “Shooting Star” was 605 mph, and the top speed of the F-84 “Thunderjet” and F-84F “Thunderstreak” was 620 mph.)
The objects, furthermore, had a strange appearance, which Arnold said he could observe plainly (though this point is questionable, since he was observing from an estimated distance of twenty-three miles); they had wings, he said, but no tails. One was almost crescent-shaped, with a small dome midway between the wingtips; the others were “flat like a pie pan and so shiny they reflected the sun in a mirror.” Their motion was also weird: “like speedboats on rough water” or, to use Arnold’s most famous phrase, “they flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.” The duration of the sighting was two to three minutes.
A tracing of Arnold’s original sketch for the U.S. Air Force
After giving his original account to newsmen at Pendleton, Oregon, airport, the story soon broke worldwide, over the radio and via the press. The news reporter who is generally credited with coining the term “flying saucer” is William C. Bequette, who at the time worked in the newsroom of the Pendleton East Oregonian. (See the POSTSCRIPT to this entry for more information on this.)
Arnold originally described the objects for the Air Force as being nearly round but slightly longer than wide. But, in the book he wrote with Ray Palmer there appears a drawing of a quite different shape, looking almost like a crescent moon with a small, speckled circle located midway between the wingtips.
Photo of a model of one of the objects Arnold reportedly saw
For fourteen years, Arnold had refrained from endorsing any special theory to account for his sighting. He steadfastly rejected any possibility of a mirage or illusion of any sort, insisting that he saw something that was flying through the air, just as he was, at 9,500 feet. But, what is not widely known is that Arnold is a “repeater,” i.e., he claims to have seen several more UFOs since his famous sighting in 1947. In Flying Saucers magazine of November 1962 (edited and published by the late Ray Palmer), Arnold took a position which must have shocked many who relied upon his original sighting as corroborative evidence for the extraterrestrial-spaceship theory to account for UFOs. He wrote:
After some fourteen years of extensive research, it is my conclusion that the so-called unidentified flying objects that have seen in our atmosphere are not space ships from another planet at all, but are groups and masses of living organisms that are as much a part of our atmosphere and space as the life we find in the depths of our oceans. The only major difference in the space and atmospheric organisms are that they have the natural ability to change their densities at will.
And, in a special issue of Look magazine devoted to flying saucers, Arnold was quoted as saying: “The impression I have held after observing these strange objects a second time was that they were something alive rather than machines —a living organism of some type that apparently has the ability to change its density similar to fish that are found in our oceans without losing their apparent identity.”
After reviewing such bizarre testimony, perhaps there is little wonder why the U.S. Air Force could not explain what Arnold actually saw on 24 June 1947. As in all cases of alleged UFO sightings, no matter who investigates the case, the investigator is severely limited by the testimony of the witness. Astronomer J. Allen Hynek (who served as the scientific consultant to the U.S. Air Force’s Projects Sign and Blue Book from 1948 to 1969) first thought that Arnold saw a fleet of jet aircraft and that the estimated distance between the objects and the witness, was wrong.
Debunkers have paraded a long list of explanations over the following half-century including clouds, mirages, balloons, earthlights, hallucinations, and hoaxes.
More recently, the theory has been offered by J
ames Easton—and endorsed by Martin Kottmeyer—that what Arnold actually saw was a flock of American White Pelicans, which were much closer to Arnold than he realized. The behavior and appearance of the “objects” as described by Arnold seem to be more consistent with this answer than anything else.
(1) Appearance
(wings, but no tails);
(2) Formation (“very similar to a formation of geese”);
(3) Flight characteristics (“they fluttered and sailed, tipping their wings alternately and emitting those very bright blue-white flashes from their surfaces”).
Arnold also stated that he “…did not get the impression that these flashes were emitted by them, but rather that it was the sun’s reflection from the extremely highly polished surface of their wings.”
But, the Arnold sighting was an exciting story in 1947, and the one that triggered public interest and official U.S. Air Force involvement in the UFO controversy. It is also a sighting that is technically unexplained.
—RONALD D. STORY
References
Arnold, Kenneth, and Palmer, Ray. The Coming of the Saucers (privately published, 1952).
Arnold, Kenneth. Flying Saucers (November 1962).
“Flying Saucers,” a Look magazine special by the editors of United Press International and Cowles Communications (1967).
Story, Ronald D. UFOs and the Limits of Science (William Morrow, 1981).
Story, Ronald D., ed. The Encyclopedia of UFOs (Doubleday/New English Library, 1980).
POSTSCRIPT: In early 1992, I was working as a technical editor on a temporary contract assignment at the Hanford nuclear site in southeastern Washington State, about 70 miles north of Pendleton, Oregon. One Sunday, as I flipped through the TriCity Herald, I noticed an editorial by retired editor William C. Bequette. I thought the name sounded familiar, and a small photo of the guest editor showed him to be just about the right age.
It then dawned on me who this was. I proceeded to look up his number in the local telephone directory (for Kennewick, Richland, and Pasco) and decided to give him a call. When Mr. Bequette answered the phone, I asked whether he was the newsman who had interviewed Kenneth Arnold for the East Oregonian, in 1947, and coined the term “flying saucer.” He said he was.
I just had to ask a few questions for historical interest—and to satisfy my own curiosity—and Mr. Bequette kindly obliged me with a very pleasant 30-minute telephone conversation. I first wanted to know the story behind the term “flying saucer” itself. There has always been a controversy about the Arnold case concerning whether the term “saucer” referred to the object’s motion or shape. Even in Arnold’s book, The Coming of the Saucers, coauthored with Ray Palmer in 1951, the term “saucer” was used only to describe the objects’ motion. The famous quote is: “…they flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.” The shape is depicted variously as a crescent or flying wing, a pie pan, and a giant washer with a hole in the middle. But Bequette told me that Arnold used the term to describe the objects’ shape as well as its motion. He said that Arnold definitely described the objects as “saucer-shaped,” and that is how the term “flying saucer” was born.
I recently read somewhere that Bequette has said otherwise, but I can only repeat what he confirmed to me: that he was indeed the man who coined the term “flying saucer,” which was based on Arnold’s description of both the objects’ appearance and motion. If the reporters and witnesses change and/or confuse their stories—which often happens in UFOlogy—what can you say?
—RONALD D. STORY
Ashtar Command A title used to describe an intergalactic, multidimensional federation of benevolent extraterrestrials, under the supreme jurisdiction of a being named “Ashtar” or “Ashtar Sheran,” said to be a higher dimensional ET ship commander. The phenomenon of physical and/or telepathic contact with Ashtar seems to have begun with the 1950s contactees, and continues globally to the present day.
—SCOTT MANDELKER
astrogenesis This term was coined by the editor of this encyclopedia (Ronald Story) to designate the particular theory that Biblical references to the “Elohim” or extraterrestrial “gods” having created human beings closely parallel the modern conception of godlike beings coming here from outer space.
Even in our enlightened age (at the dawn of the 21st Century) the most intelligent species on this planet (supposedly Homo sapiens) is split on the question of its origins. About 50 percent believe in the received doctrine of official science: Darwin’s theory of evolution as modified by the modern scientific community. According to this view, the magic ingredient to evolutionary development is time. Agreeing with the Bible in that man (or Adam) was derived from the dust of the Earth—after possible seeding from the heavens—most scientists think that given sufficient time, atoms just naturally evolve into molecules, and molecules eventually evolve into thinking anthropoids. All of this occurs through a process of random mutation, natural selection, and survival of the fittest, they say. Admittedly, this is a bit oversimplified; but the key point is that for most self-respecting scientific types, no intelligent intervention is required.
Another view, held by the other half of the world’s population, is that the world and its inhabitants were not the result of accidental forces—but that some form of intelligence was required. Those who favor this idea are divided into various factions, all of which represent some form of special creation.
The religious fundamentalists say that God is the Creator. However, their version of God, the Father, has an uncanny resemblance to our own fathers or at least the common childhood concept. Freud’s theory was that God is indeed the father—writ large—as derived from our own exaggerated concept conceived in infancy.
Another version of special creation, and one that is more compatible with modern science than the views of the religious fundamentalists is the space-god theory—or what I prefer to call “astrogenesis.” This view is, in effect, a space-age Genesis: a creation story featuring mankind as the product of a cosmic experiment being carried out not by the traditional Judeo-Christian God, but by advanced extraterrestrials who, because of attributes acquired during their own long evolution, might themselves be defined as gods.
The popularity of this view in recent times is clearly attributable to author Erich von Däniken, who resurrected the concept (in tandem with the release of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey) three decades ago, and has since sold more than 50 million books on the subject.
While many do not accept all his examples of alleged extraterrestrial evidence, there seems to be growing support for the underlying thesis that extraterrestrial intervention holds the key to our origin and purpose on this planet.
What is the nature of the evidence for astrogenesis? There are two major categories: (1) artifacts and (2) contact myths. The artifacts usually take the form of impressive monuments—such as the Egyptian pyramids and other gigantic stone structures—which seemingly were beyond the capabilities of mere humans to create. Thus, it is argued that advanced extraterrestrial science must have been required. The contact myths, found worldwide, share an intriguing consistency in their tales of super-beings coming from the sky to create mankind and instruct him in how to live.
For some, the theory of astrogenesis brings science and religion closer together. For others, it represents a travesty on both. This writer believes that we should strive to be as objective and open-minded as possible to allow for new discoveries. Keeping an open mind does not mean ignoring the facts, however, as one can see by reading my previous books on this subject: The Space-Gods Revealed (1976) and Guardians of the Universe? (1980). Both studies dealt extensively with the question of alleged extraterrestrial science and found none.
What I found was that if you take each of the examples of “alien technology” (as alleged by von Däniken, et al.) and subject them to the normal rules of evidence, they fall apart. For one thing, the level of technology required for the construction o
f the various artifacts and monuments in question never exceeds the capabilities of Earthmen working on their own in the context of their own cultures. The archaeological “wonders” that are alleged to prove, or at least “indicate,” ancient astronauts comprise a collection of interesting finds, superficially described and taken out of context. In most cases, when looking more deeply into the matter—as opposed to playing the “it looks like…” game—one finds the omission of highly relevant, key information that if known casts an entirely different light on the subject at hand. These “sins of omission” are unfortunately typical of all the leading proponents of ancient astronauts.
So, leaving aside the issue of physical evidence at this time, let us consider the world’s most popular contact myth: the Holy Bible. The implications are enormous. If indeed the Bible does refer to extraterrestrials (which it does, in one sense or another), it tells their purpose and ours. It tells us where we came from, our mission on Earth, and what we can expect in the future—depending on whether or not we follow the teachings of the Bible. If we obey the Ten Commandments (and the other universal laws taught in the Bible) and have faith that Jesus Christ is our savior, we are told that we will not only be saved, but that we can achieve immortality like the gods.
In essence, the Bible is a creation story and operating manual for life on planet Earth. Whether it is interpreted supernaturally or scientifically, one cannot escape its central message—that we are not alone. Nor can anyone deny that here we are dealing with an account of superior extraterrestrial forces coming down out of the heavens to intervene in the lives of mortal human beings. This is literally what the Bible says.
These gods (the Elohim) first create man in their image, and then attempt to impart ultimate principles (or Cosmic Laws) for him to live by. What is promised, if we choose to obey these laws, is nothing less than everlasting life. Put simply, we are given vital instructions on how to achieve immortality—individually and as a species. These laws, such as the Ten Commandments and the lessons of Jesus, constitute the “good” or benevolent God (or gods) versus the “evil” forces (or dark side) of the universe. These laws, known as the “word of God,” tell us how to live in harmony with nature and find our rightful place in a universe of immortal souls. Whatever your interpretation, God and his angels (including the fallen angels) are de facto extraterrestrials and represent ultimate authority, any way you look at it. That is the key point.
The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters Page 18
