Steiger, Brad. Project Blue Book (Ballantine Books, 1976).
Vallée, Jacques. Messengers of Deception (And/Or Press, 1979).
Warren, Donald I. “Status Inconsistency Theory and Flying Saucer Sightings,” Science (November 6, 1970).
Parra incident Yelling, without his shirt and with a terrified look on his face, Jose Parra, an eighteen-year-old jockey from Valencia, Venezuela, arrived at a police station in the early morning of December 19, 1954, and related his hair-raising tale of how a hairy little man tried to kidnap him.
A rendering of the Parra incident by artist Hal Crawford
Upon his arrival, Parra was detained by Mr. Lopez Ayara, Commissioner of Criminal Investigation, until he calmed down. Detectives detailed to examine the place where the incident supposedly happened found tracks which they were not able to identify as either those of a man or an animal. Parra, out doing road work to lose some extra poundage, stopped near a cement factory on the highway, where he was surprised to see six little “men,” all very hairy, who were engaged in pulling boulders from the side of the highway and loading them aboard their disk-shaped craft, which was hovering less than nine feet from the ground. Parra, startled and frightened, started to run away to call someone else to watch the sight.
At this point, one of the little men spotted Parra, and pointed a device at him which gave off a violet light. Parra was unable to move and stood by helplessly while the little creatures ran to their ship and leaped aboard. The craft then disappeared into the sky.
One hour after Mr. Parra’s experience, a brightly lit disk was seen hovering a few feet from the ground near the Barbula Sanitorium for Tuberculars at Valencia. Two hospital employees saw the object at different times, one at about twelve midnight and the other at about 3:15 A.M. The man who witnessed the earlier incident notified no one for fear of disturbing the hospital patients. The man involved in the latter incident attempted to approach the craft for a better look, but it moved away and disappeared into the sky.
—APRO
Pascagoula (Mississippi) abduction On the evening of October 11, 1973, while fishing in the Pascagoula River, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker claimed they not only saw a strange, egg and saucer-shaped object, but were abducted by three creatures. The beings floated from the object, captured both men, and took them up into the craft where they were subjected to a medical-type examination. When the examination was over, the men were returned to their original location.
Drawing of the space ship, as described by Hickson and Parker
The craft was described as blue-gray in color, saucer-shaped, and had two portholes. Hickson said it made a sustained “buzzing” noise and had a flashing blue light. The aliens were described as mummy-like with crab-like pinchers for hands, a pointy nose, and pointy ears. These creatures floated out of the saucer and moved around like robots, according to Hickson.
According to Hickson and Parker, they didn’t know what to do, so they had a couple of drinks. Hickson, who would claim he wanted no publicity, first sought out reporters, but could not find any. He finally went to the local sheriff and told the story. Within hours it was front-page news.
One of the mummy-like aliens, as described by Hickson and Parker
Dr. James Harder of APRO (the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization) and former U.S. Air Force scientific consultant Dr. J. Allen Hynek of CUFOS (the Center for UFO Studies) rushed to Pascagoula to interview the men. Harder used hypnosis in an attempt to learn more about the abduction. When he completed his sessions, Harder told reporters that he believed the tale. Hynek agreed.
Controversy raged. Skeptics demanded a polygraph examination and Hickson took one. But the operator, a man from New Orleans, had not completed his training, and so the results were questionable. Philip Klass, as well as others, suggested the test was invalid. Klass also noted that Parker had a nervous breakdown and never took the test.
In October 1975, about two years after the event, Hickson was invited to participate in a UFO conference held in Fort Smith, Arkansas, on the condition that he would take a second polygraph examination. He agreed.
Upon arrival, however, Hickson declined to take the test on the advice of his attorney. Some said it was because it would be administered at the local police station and should have been held on neutral ground. Police officers said that part of the effectiveness of the test was to have it given at the police station. Whatever the reason, Hickson refused to take the test, and many believe it compromised his credibility. And there were other problems with the case.
There were constant changes in the details. Although researchers believe that minor alterations in a story are natural, these went beyond that. These changes seemed to be in response to criticisms and appeared to be an attempt to smooth out rough spots in the story. To skeptics, such inconsistencies suggest a hoax.
The landing site of the UFO was only a few hundred yards away from and in full view of a heavily traveled highway. No one ever came forward to corroborate the story, or to suggest that he or she had been on the highway and saw the UFO.
Although Parker has generally remained quiet about the events, Hickson has moved on to more contacts. His tale began to take on more attributes of the tales of typical “contactees,” in that he claimed to be in contact with the alien creatures.
In the final analysis, most of those who accept extraterrestrial visitation as a fact also accept the Pascagoula abduction at face value; whereas most skeptics and debunkers believe this case is a hoax.
—KEVIN D. RANDLE
References
Blum, Ralph and Judy. Beyond Earth: Man’s Contact with UFOs (Bantam Books, 1974).
Randle, Kevin D. “Pascagoula (Mississippi) abduction” in Story, Ronald D., ed. The Encyclopedia of UFOs (Doubleday/New English Library, 1980).
Passport to Magonia (Henry Regnery, 1969). Jacques Vallée sees the UFO phenomenon as a metaphysical programming process to prepare us for higher consciousness. In this path-breaking book he makes a compelling case that all religious apparitions, mystical experiences and UFO sightings rely upon the same mechanisms, sharing similar effects on the human observer, varying only to the extent that the projections are interpreted within the prevailing cultural environment. If it were possible to construct three-dimensional holograms with mass then most religious miracles and UFO sightings could be similarly explained. He raises the prospect that humankind is being exposed to deliberately staged and faked apparitions intended to program our imaginations and accelerate our evolution as a species.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
Pflock, Karl T. (b. 1943). A former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense, CIA intelligence officer, and senior congressional aide, Karl Pflock is now a writer, consultant, and UFO researcher. His articles on UFOs have appeared in such journals as Omni, Fortean Times, the International UFO Reporter, The Anomalist, Fate, the MUFON UFO Journal, Cuadernos de Ufologia (Spain), and the MLTFON 1995 International UFO Symposium Proceedings. A popular speaker, he was named 1998 UFOlogist of the Year by the National UFO Conference.
His interest in UFOs is virtually lifelong, stemming from a crashed-saucer story he overheard at the age of five or six and a multiplewitness sighting in which he was involved in the early 1950s.
In the late 1960s, he was the first chairman of the National Capital Area (investigative) Subcommittee of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). He has carried out independent research on UFO-occupant sightings and contacts and allegations of UFO-connected animal mutilations, but is best known in contemporary UFOlogy for his controversial work on the Roswell incident.
Karl T. Pflock
His Roswell in Perspective was published by the Fund for UFO Research in 1994, and an even more definitive work, Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe, was published by Prometheus Books in 2001. He is also collaborating with James W. Moseley, editor of the newsletter Saucer Smear, on Shockingly Close to the Truth! Moseley’s UFOlogical memoirs (to be published by Promet
heus in 2002).
Address:
P.O. Box 93338
Albuquerque, NM 87199 U.S.A.
E-mail:
[email protected]
POSITON STATEMENT: UFOs are real—that is, as yet unexplained phenomena. Moreover, many solid unknowns involving reports of strange craft and sometimes living creatures and/or physical evidence leave us with but two choices, hoax or real essentially as reported, while some admit of a psychological explanation as well. In these instances, if what occurred was real and reasonably accurately reported, they must have been encounters with products of nonhuman intelligence and, in some cases, the intelligences themselves.
Based on the data, I’m subjectively certain we have been visited by nonhuman intelligent beings—to my ‘50s-conditioned mind, most likely from an extrasolar planet of our galaxy. However, we do not yet have proof of this—as opposed to very strong evidence pointing to it—though such proof very well may be in the data already in hand, as yet unrecognized as such.
I use the past tense advisedly. If I am correct that some sightings were observations of such visitors and their vehicles, I suspect they were here and left some time ago—arriving in the early to mid-1940s, departing in the late 1960s or early 1970s. They came here because Sol and his planets seemed cozily familiar. They studied our entire system and us quite closely. Once in a while a couple of grad students got out of hand and buzzed the natives. On occasion some ambitious scientists overstepped a bit and interfered with the locals—the famous and likely real 1961 abduction of Barney and Betty Hill comes to mind. Then they left, leaving us wondering, dreaming, and hoping.
—KARL T. PFLOCK
Phoenix (Arizona) lights At approximately 6:55 P.M. (Pacific Time) on Thursday, March 13, 1997, a young man in Henderson, Nevada, reportedly witnessed a V-shaped object, with six large lights on its leading edge, approach his position from the northwest and pass overhead. In his subsequent written report to the National UFO Reporting Center, he described it as appearing to be quite large, approximately the “size of a [Boeing] 747,” and said that it generated a sound which he equated to that of “rushing wind.” It continued on a straight line toward the southeast and disappeared from his view over the horizon.
This sighting is perhaps the earliest of a complex series of events that would take place during the next 2-3 hours over the states of Nevada, Arizona, and possibly New Mexico, and which would quickly become known as the “Phoenix Lights.” It involved sightings by tens, or perhaps even hundreds, of thousands of witnesses on the ground, and it gave rise to a storm of controversy over what had caused the event.
The next reported sighting was from a former police officer in Paulden, Arizona. He had just left his home at approximately 8:15 P.M. (Mountain Time), and was driving north, when he looked out the driver’s window of his car to the west and witnessed a cluster of five reddish or orange lights.
The formation consisted of four lights together, with a fifth light seemingly “trailing” the other four. Each of the individual lights in the formation appeared to the witness to consist of two separate point sources of orange light.
Artist’s conception by Robert Fairfax
The witness immediately returned to his home, obtained a pair of binoculars, and watched as the lights disappeared over the horizon to the south. He watched the lights for an estimated two minutes, and reported that they made no sound that he could discern from his vantage point on the ground.
Within a matter of minutes of these first sightings, a “blitz” of telephoned reports began pouring into the National UFO Reporting Center, to other UFO organizations, to law enforcement offices, to news media offices, and to Luke Air Force Base. They were submitted from Chino Valley, Prescott, Prescott Valley, Dewey, Cordes Junction, Wickenburg, Cavecreek, and many other communities to the north and west of Phoenix.
Witnesses were reporting such markedly different objects and events that night that it was difficult for investigators to understand what was taking place. Some witnesses reported five lights, others seven, or even more. Some reported that the lights were distinctly orange or red, whereas others reported distinctly white or yellow lights. Many reported the lights were moving across the sky at seemingly high speed, whereas others reported they moved at a slow (angular) velocity, or they even hovered motionless for several minutes.
Illustration by Robert Fairfax
These apparent discrepancies, together with the large number of communities from which sightings were being reported in rapid sequence, raised early suspicions that multiple objects were involved in the event, and that they perhaps were traveling at high speed. These suspicions would be borne out over subsequent months, following extensive investigation by many individuals. The investigations pointed to the fact that several objects, all markedly different in appearance, and most of them almost unbelievably large, passed over Arizona that night.
One group of three witnesses, located just north of Phoenix, reported seeing a huge, wedge-shaped craft with five lights on its ventral surface pass overhead with an eerie “gliding” type of flight. It coursed to the south and passed between two mountain peaks to the south. The witnesses emphasized how huge the object was, blocking out up to 70-90 degrees of the sky.
A second group of witnesses, a mother and four daughters near the intersection of Indian School Road and 7th Avenue, were shocked to witness an object, shaped somewhat like a sergeant’s stripes, approach from over Camelback Mountain to the north. They report that it stopped directly above them, where it hovered for an estimated 5 minutes. They described how it filled at least 30-40 degrees of sky, and how it exhibited a faint glow along its trailing edge. The witnesses felt they could see individual features on the ventral surface of the object, and they were certain that they were looking at a very large, solid object.
The object began moving slowly to the south, at which time it appeared to “fire” a white beam of light at the ground. At about the same time, the seven lights on the object’s leading edge suddenly dimmed and disappeared from the witnesses’ sight. The object moved off in the general direction of Sky Harbor International Airport, a few miles to the south, where it was witnessed by two air traffic controllers in the airport tower, and reportedly by several pilots, both on the ground and on final approach from the east.
After this point in the sighting, the facts are somewhat less clear to investigators. It is known that at least one object continued generally to the south and southeast, passing over the communities of Scottsdale, Glendale, and Gilbert. One of the witnesses in Scottsdale, a former airline pilot with 13,700 hours of flight time, reported seeing the object execute a distinct turn as it approached his position on the ground. He noted that he witnessed many lights on the object as it approached him, but that the number of lights appeared to diminish as it got closer to overhead. Many other witnesses in those communities reported seeing the object pass overhead as it made its way toward the mountains to the south of Phoenix.
Other sightings occurred shortly afterward along Interstate 10 in the vicinity of Casa Grande. One family of five, who were driving from Tucson to Phoenix, reported that the object that passed over their station wagon was so large that they could see one “wing tip” of the object out one side of their car, and the other “wing tip” out the other side. They estimated they were driving toward Phoenix at approximately 80 miles per hour, and they remained underneath the object for between one and two minutes as it moved in the opposite direction. They emphasized how incredibly huge the object appeared to be as it blocked out the sky above their car.
Many witnesses located throughout the Phoenix basin continued to report objects and peculiar clusters of lights for several hours following the initial sightings. One group of witnesses reported a large disk streaking westward over Phoenix at high speed. Others reported peculiar orange “fireballs” which appeared to hover in the sky even hours after the initial sightings.
One of the more intriguing reports was submitted by a you
ng man who claimed to be an Airman in the Air Force, stationed at Luke Air Force Base, located to the west of Phoenix in Litchfield Park. He telephoned the National UFO Reporting Center at 3:20 A.M. on Friday, some eight hours after the sightings on the previous night, and reported that two USAF F-15 fighters had been “scrambled” from Luke AFB, and had intercepted one of the objects.
Illustration by Robert Fairfax
Although the presence of F-15’s could never be confirmed, the airman provided detailed information which proved to be accurate, based on what investigators would reconstruct from witnesses over subsequent weeks and months. Two days after his first telephone call, the airman called to report that he had just been informed by his commander that he was being transferred to an assignment in Greenland. He has never been heard from again since that telephone call.
Most of the controversy that arose from the incident centers around a cluster of lights that was seen, and videotaped, to the south of Phoenix at between 9:30 and 10:00 P.M. on the same night as the sightings. In May 1997, the Public Affairs Office at Luke AFB announced that their personnel had investigated these lights, and had established that they were flares launched from A-10 “Wart-hog” aircraft over the Gila Bend “Barry M. Goldwater” Firing Range at approximately 10:00 P.M. Even the most implacable UFO skeptics admit, however, that irrespective of whether such flares had in fact been launched or not, they cannot serve as an explanation for the objects that had been witnessed by many individuals some 1-2 hours earlier.
Another interesting aspect of the case is the virtual absence of coverage in the print media, save for a handful of articles in local newspapers. The Prescott Daily Courier carried an article on March 14, but the Phoenix newspapers, and the national wire services, provided no early coverage of the event, even though they had been apprised of it.
It was not until mid-June, almost ten weeks later, that the national press took any interest in the incident with the appearance of a front-page article in USA Today on June 18, 1997.
The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters Page 76
