The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters

by Story, Ronald

  My mental body contains the knowledge of all of my past experience, whether in this life or a previous one. I think my brain can be likened to a computer. The mental body then becomes the software. The brain is a processor for both new information and information stored in my mental body. The storage process is probably based on holographic principles as described in Michael Talbot’s 1991 book, The Holographic Universe. In our waking state of consciousness we don’t usually have the access codes for past life experience. This information is normally trapped behind the veils between our conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind. However, if we choose to do so, we can find methods to pierce those veils. When we pierce the veil to our unconscious mind we gain access to a modem that can connect us to universal consciousness.

  My spiritual body is part of the great spirit that pervades all that is. Some people call that great spirit God. Some define it as Love and Light. This pervasive spirit has become part of my world. It is in each of us whether our choices are mostly unselfish or selfish. Some form of this spirit is in the animals and the trees and even in the planet. I have been taught to believe this spirit is eternal.

  Everything in the universe evolves, whether it be a galaxy, a solar system, a planet, or a person. When we do harm to any part of the universe we adversely affect the evolution of the universe. When we pollute the water, kill the animals, cut the trees, and fill our lungs with smoke we do harm to God.

  The present transformation of the planet is a major step in the evolution of the solar system. The reason that the spirit is in our physical bodies on this planet is changing. Throughout recorded history we have been here to make choices. These choices tend to polarize the soul, our energy bodies, toward service to others or service to self. I have been taught that on this planet many souls are now sufficiently polarized through free-will choices to be ready to graduate to the next level in their evolution. They are ready to get on with the task of developing unconditional love. This planet is evolving to become a place where people develop unconditional love of others. Billions of spiritual beings, our guides, are here to assist. This transformation marks the end of the human experience as we have known it, and it marks the beginning of a more loving and peaceful experience.

  Not only is our planet being transformed, but our physical bodies are being genetically altered. Evidence from my UFO research indicates that some of our souls will reincarnate into a body that has a larger brain and greater telepathic ability. Descriptions from several of my friends who have met their hybrid offspring on alien vehicles include a head with larger eyes and perhaps a 2000-cc brain. My friends who have learned to communicate telepathically say the new bodies have greater telepathic ability. We are soon to join a Galactic Society, and telepathy is the normal means of communication among the many intelligent species that interact with each other.

  UFO researchers who specialize in people’s onboard experiences say that the number of such experiencers is in the millions, perhaps 10 million just in the U.S.A. Most seem to have multiple hybrid offspring. We are told that these hybrid physical bodies, compatible with expanded consciousness, house the souls of both their human and their Zeta Reticulan relatives. They also seem to be compatible with this biosphere as evidenced by many children’s circles, where hybrid children play in back yards with human children. I wonder when they will be allowed to live on the surface of this planet with adults in their awake state of consciousness.

  I have high hopes for our future, although I do recognize that the great changes I see occurring involve great stress. These rapid changes also provide great opportunity for meaningful choices and great opportunity to express unconditional love. I see both human and ET influence to encourage all national leaders to choose peace. This is a prerequisite for establishing a demilitarized world. I see courageous national and world leaders working to safely eliminate nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. I see people with great influence working to help us overcome the destructive habits to which our society has become addicted. I see new thought entering the churches, holistic medicine entering the mainstream, and a more efficient and healthy diet being chosen by many.

  More people are recognizing that a growth-driven economy with ever-increasing material wealth is not a sustainable path to happiness. In order to avoid a worldwide environmental crisis we should stop taking all we can get from mother nature and leaving the excess profit to our children. We should adopt the sustainable mode of living of the indigenous peoples who take only what they need from mother nature and leave the rest.

  As we acquire the consciousness necessary to join the galactic society, we need representatives elected by all mankind. I think we need world leaders who can help us realize we are all members of one planet. With this broader perspective we can devote more energy to the evolution of our souls, and we can avoid the strife and inefficiency that accompany extreme nationalism and materialism.

  —DONALD M. WARE

  Washington National radar-visual sightings This extraordinary series of events occurred in the vicinity of Washington, D.C., on July 19-20, July 23, July 26-27, July 28, and July 29, 1952. In the midst of a summer heat wave (tied in later with an attempt to explain the Washington sightings and radar returns as being caused by temperature inversions), radar controllers, ground observers, and pilots and crews of both civilian airliners and military jet fighters experienced a “mini-invasion” of UFOs, which created headlines around the world.

  The ten-day episode began shortly after midnight on July 19-20, as the Civil Aeronautics Agency’s Air Route Traffic Control (ARTCC) radar operators at Washington National Airport picked up seven unknown targets on their screens (the first at 11:40 P.M., July 19), which appeared to be in the vicinity of Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, fifteen miles south-southwest of Washington National. The targets appeared to be traveling between 100 and 130 miles per hour, although their motion was described as “completely radical compared to those of ordinary aircraft.” They would hover in one position at times and also dart up and down. When two of the “objects” suddenly streaked off the screen, air traffic controller Edward Nugent requested his supervisor, senior controller Harry G. Barnes, to look at the scope. After one look, Barnes in turn called over two more experienced controllers, Jim Copeland and Jim Ritchey, who verified the observations. Technicians were also called in to check the equipment for possible malfunction which was determined not to be the case, and Barnes then contacted the airport control tower, confirming that the targets were present on their scopes as well. Andrews radar operators also picked up strange blips on their scopes, which correlated with those being tracked by Washington National.

  The first visual confirmation came at 3:15 A.M. (July 20) from Capitol Airlines flight #807, southbound from Washington National. The pilot, “Casey” Pierman (a seventeen-year veteran with the airline), sighted seven objects, where radar showed them to be, which he could not identify. The objects, which were observed for twelve minutes, were described by Captain Pierman as bright lights. “They were like falling stars without tails,”he said, and two of them traveled at tremendous speed.

  Allegedly a once classified USAF photo showing six UFOs over Washington, D.C., on July 20, 1952. The oblong luminosity (center) is supposed to be the exhaust trail of a jet fighter sent to intercept the objects.

  At times, some of the targets sending back radar returns were invisible to planes in the area, but a second confirmation came from Capitol-National Airlines flight #610, inbound from Hemdon, Virginia, reporting a light, which followed the plane to within four miles of the runway. Ruppelt reports that: “…ARTCC called for Air Force interceptors to come in and look around. But they didn’t show, and finally ARTCC called again—then again. Finally, just about daylight, an F-94 arrived, but by that time the targets were gone. The F-94 crew searched the area for a few minutes but they couldn’t find anything unusual so they returned to their base.”

  On July 26, at about 10:30 P.M., strange blips were
again picked up on radar, and again tracked simultaneously by ARTCC radar, the Washington National control tower, and the radar station at Andrews AFB. There were four to twelve targets, moving between 100 and 120 miles per hour, spread out in an arc around Washington, D.C., from Herndon, Virginia, to Andrews AFB in Maryland. United Airlines flight #640 confirmed one colorful light visually and personnel at Andrews reported “three strange lights streaking across the sky.” After a two-hour delay, two jet interceptors from New Castle Air Force Base, Delaware, arrived in the area and began a search for the objects. As before, most of the targets were invisible except on radar, but one pilot did pursue for two minutes four bright lights, which he could not overtake even at full throttle. After about twenty minutes, the jets ran low on fuel and returned to base.

  On July 29, Major General John A. Samford, Air Force Director of Intelligence, held a major news conference at the Pentagon. He stated: “There has been no pattern that reveals anything remotely like purpose or remotely like consistency that we can in any way associate with any menace to the United States.” And that “the radar and visual sightings …were due to mirage effects created by a double temperature inversion.”

  However, all four operators at the CAA Radar Traffic Control Center at Washington’s National Airport, who tracked the UFOs on those harrowing nights in July 1952, consistently maintained that they had good, solid returns from something—not mirage effects with which they were all familiar and could easily recognize—that had never appeared before or since.

  Captain Ruppelt later remarked that: “On each night that there was a sighting there was a temperature inversion but it was never strong enough to affect the radar the way in versions normally do. Hardly a night passed in June, July, and August in 1952 that there wasn’t an inversion in Washington, yet the slow-moving, ‘solid’ radar targets appeared on only a few nights.

  “So the Washington National Airport Sightings are still unknowns.”

  —RONALD D. STORY

  References

  Hall, Richard H., ed. The UFO Evidence (NICAP, 1964).

  NICAP, “Washington National radar/visual sightings” in Story, Ronald D., ed. The Encyclopedia of UFOs (Doubleday/New English Library, 1980).

  Ruppelt, Edward J. The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (Doubleday, 1956).

  Story, Ronald D. UFOs and the Limits of Science (William Morrow/New English Library, 1981).

  The New York Times (July 22, 1952).

  UFO Investigator (NICAP, July 1972).

  Watch The Skies! (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994). Curtis Peebles provides a historical review of the flying saucer myths which evolved since 1947 and have spawned conspiracy theories and dangerous, cultish fanaticism. He demonstrates how the myth of a Roswell saucer crash emerged and how an Air Force sergeant created a fictitious MJ-12 government group complete with faked secret documents to ingratiate himself with a pretty female UFO researcher.

  —RANDALL FITZGERALD

  Watchers, The (Bantam, 1990). Longtime UFO investigator Raymond Fowler relates in this book how he uncovered his own memories of lifelong abductions by aliens and odd phenomena afflicting his family stretching back three generations. A scoop mark he finds on his lower leg, similar to one described by abductee Betty Andreasson, leaves Fowler convinced “the scar is the result of a biopsy taken as part of the aliens’ ongoing genetic research within families of human beings.”

  —RANDALL FITZGERALD

  waves (or flaps), UFO Periods of time when reports of UFOs amass at well above average rates are variously termed “waves” or “flaps.” Both terms possess connotative prejudgments. Waves suggest a natural semi-rhythmic phenomenon or the arrival of masses of people, as in the waves of an invasion or waves of immigration. Captain Edward Ruppelt of Project Blue Book defined flaps as “a condition or situation, or state of being of a group characterized by an advanced degree of confusion that has not yet reached panic proportions” and is thus diagnosing a psychology problem, a crazy time. (Ruppelt, 1956) The presence of two terms to denote these times of accelerated UFO reporting behavior reflect the absence of consensus in UFOlogy’s attempts to understand what is behind the simple arithmetical truth that UFO numbers change rather than remain constant over time.

  It is not immediately obvious why the UFO phenomenon should not be a more or less constant occurrence over time whether one regards them as real or illusory. If they were alien transports connected with a survey of the planet or a study of mankind, the natural expectation would be that their presence should be methodical and unceasing. If they were accidents of circumstance or cognitive error, one would expect their occurrences to be fairly stable across time in a manner similar to the way traffic accidents remain numerically stable from year to year without showing periods of several-fold increases.

  THE FIRST THEORY

  The earliest forms of the Reconnaissance Theory of flying saucers only had to account for the 1947 wave of sightings. Given the extraordinary development of the atomic bomb a couple years earlier, it was somewhat natural to wonder if the equally new phenomenon of flying saucers was somehow connected. The idea was taken seriously in government intelligence circles; at least seriously enough to set up a UFO reporting net in the region of the Eniwetok bomb test. It failed to turn up anything. (Gross, 1986) Donald Keyhoe was a prominent spokesman for this theory and expanded on it with attempts to offer additional evidence in support of it. He observes there had been “a steadily increasing survey after our atomic bomb explosions in New Mexico, Japan, Bikini, and Eniwetok,” and a second burst of activity after explosions in Soviet Russia. Attention was focused on the U.S. since it was “the present leader in atomic weapons.” (Keyhoe, 1950)

  These observations however do not bear scrutiny. The June-July 1947 wave did not coincide with any bomb test. The first Soviet A-bomb was exploded on August 29, 1949 and was revealed to the world three weeks later. Yet UFO numbers are seen declining consistently from July to October 1949 and the only thing resembling a surge does not take place until March 1950. The concentration of UFOs in the U.S. was true for 1947, but 1954 UFO reports were concentrated in France and still later waves were focused in Spain and Latin America; places that have never been in the forefront of nuclear developments. In February 1951 Keyhoe predicted there would be an upswing in UFO activity in the spring of 1951 due to scheduled atomic bomb tests near Las Vegas, Nevada. UFO historian Loren Gross has already pointed out the period happened to be the quietest on record. (Gross, 1983) The belief that the first waves of UFOs involved the monitoring of atomic bomb developments persists to the present day; as one can see the Raymond Fowler’s book The Watchers (1990) But it rests on no reasoned argument and can point to no successes, either in prediction or interpreting any of the waves since 1947.

  THE MARTIAN HYPOTHESIS

  Around 1952 a new interpretation of waves arose based on the recognition that waves seemed to peak around the time that Mars came closest to the Earth. Researchers in that era favored Mars as the likeliest abode of life, and it made some sense that travelers might time their arrivals to conserve fuel. Numerous predictions were offered. In January 1952, Lonzo Dove predicted the arrival of a saucer armada on April 15-16 of that year. Dove claimed success with a photograph of a huge circular cloud 30 miles across that he took on April 16th. (Dove, 1953)

  The UFO numbers in the Blue Book files, however, tell a different story. There were only three UFO reports for the 15th, four for the 16th, and six on the 17th. Though this is trivially better than the numbers in March, it is pretty small for an armada and not very impressive placed against July’s numbers, which ran in the dozens daily. Edgar Jarrold of the Australian Flying Saucer Bureau predicted 1954 and 1956 would be exceptionally heavy and 1953 and 1955 would be fairly light. He called it right for the light periods, but 1954 was exceptionally heavy only in France, and 1956 saw nothing of consequence. (Jarrold, 1953)

  Aimé Michel first thought the Martian hypothesis was confirmed when a predicti
on he made for a wave in the late summer of 1954 came true. In his second effort he predicted a wave for eastern Europe or the Middle East in October or November 1956. When this was “double refuted,” he endorsed the verdict of the Civilian Saucer Intelligence that the Mars correlation failed. (Michel, 1958) Harry Lord of the Tynesdale UFO Society issued a forecast in 1963 utilizing the Mars theory. He predicted flaps for late ’62 early ’63 (No), early ’65 (No), late ’67 (Yes), late ’69 (No way!) and a large peak in late ’72 (No). (Lord, 1963).

  Jacques Vallée further discredited the theory by pointing out that pre-1947 waves did not conform to the Mars cycle. The space probes to Mars pitched additional dirt on the grave when showed it to be quite lifeless. Richard Hall offered a variant that proposed that flaps correlated with Venus, but it was DOA.

  MATHEMATICAL MODELS

  A number of attempts to predict UFO waves eschew any theoretical justification and simply base themselves on patterns in the data that suggest cyclicity. Keyhoe tried this in his historic article for True. Noting peaks of saucer activity in July 1947 and July 1948, he predicted it would peak again in July 1950. Activity peaked in March that year. (Girard, 1989) In December 1971 NICAP reported on the discovery of a five-year cycle and predicted there would a flap in 1972. That year had 152 reports compared to 137 in 1971 and they proclaimed success in bold headlines proclaiming “1972 Upholds Five-Year UFO Cycle.” By November 1973, however, NICAP was reminded what a true flap is all about: “First Flap in Six Years Resurrects UFOs as National Controversy.”

  Jenny Randles spoke of a 21-month cycle in the Pennine area of Great Britain and confidently predicted May/June 1984 would prove to be rather interesting. By her own later account, 1984 saw only 23 UFO cases and the best clustering happened around April 15 and 25. She found these cases rather interesting, while admitting they may be associated with military exercises. Writing in 1986 she acclaims her prediction came true: “I don’t know how.” (Randles, 1983, 1986)