The Watts riots of the 1960s seem clearly linked to a spike in UFO activity, but when riots struck Miami in mid-January 1989 and in Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict near the end of April 1992, no spike in UFO activity was visible. Post hoc, one can say that only riots in Watts seem linked to UFO spikes and that other race riots in the sixties generated no response. Perhaps it was special in some way, but why that should be is not is not immediately apparent.
The most puzzling development occurred during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The emotional highpoint seemed to occur in the wake of the confession of wrongdoing by the President in the summer of 1998. Angry discussions of the shame it had brought to the country prompted me to check the National UFO Reporting Center’s database for activity. The site’s home page remarked “September has been an incredibly active month for UFO reports, including mass sightings of blue-green fireballs across the United States.” The next month a message was posted reading, “A UFO wave sweeping the country characterized by mass sightings of spheres and fireballs continued throughout October.” In November, the description is upgraded even further: “Our report database (updated Nov 21) continues to document an incredible UFO wave sweeping the country.” This description was retained through January 1999. Seemingly this was proof positive of the paranoia theory, but then the number of reports continued increasing well after tempers calmed down. Numbers slowly mount to a peak in the fall of 1999 and then fall from December through the start of the new Millennium. (NUFORC, August 2000) Critics wonder if this was really a flap or if there it was some form of collection artifact of Internet growth—a new link from a popular site bringing in more people or some such development that just coincidentally started in at the time of the scandal. The situation is thoroughly confusing.
Another issue that draws comment is the absence of Blue Book era sized flaps since 1973. Was there some factor that suppressed the creation of flaps other than pride? This seems plausible in terms of changing perceptions about the nature of the saucer menace. Where the fifties was dominated by concerns saucers were secret weapons and the sixties by fears of invasion, the seventies ushered an era of speculations that UFOs were a charade and perhaps harmless. The movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind in particular advanced a vision of aliens as children of light and awe which was a polar opposite to the paranoid fantasies that dominated the prior decades. Such changes would act to reduce fears about what unexplained lights portend and subvert the superego—think parental oversight—aspects of earlier UFOlogy. Obsessions with Roswell and abduction in later years decreased interest in interpreting aerial puzzles in favor of talk about conspiracies and dream interpretation.
While this might seem to render the theory immune to further test until such time as we see a return to enthusiastic belief in reconnaissance and invasion, further work can yet be done in the area of foreign flaps. Was France’s Great Martian Panic of 1954 connected to the fall of Dien Bien Phu and the pullout of troops from the IndoChina war? What caused the Latin American Wave of 1965? What of the British Scareships of 1912-13?
Criticisms of paranoia theory have been few and generally obtuse. It has been called unfalsifiable, but a pattern of high UFO activity congruent with events of pride such the Persian Gulf War, the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the Moonlanding, the Red retreat of the Korean War, etc. would quickly sink the theory in the eyes of any theorist. A pair of people wondered about the absence of Bullard’s 1988 paper on flaps in the discussion. Simply, Bullard did not advance any theory. His paper boils down to the proposition, “Silly season theory is wrong, ergo UFOs are real.” But IFOs are real, too, and he offers no explanation why either changed in frequency when they did. Jerome Clark singles out the explanation of the 1952 wave as “incredible,” using the phrase “a hysterical reaction to a steel strike” to describe his understanding of the theory. In fact, mass hysteria was rejected as an explanation of flaps generally in the first presentation of the theory. There are no details on why he feels it doesn’t bear consideration. Philip Klass has termed the theory “simplistic” and can show anyone that silly season theory has been common among the skeptical.
That the theory is simplistic is true enough and it is by design. The possibility of multi-factor approaches giving better insight has not been denied, but focused argument on a single factor has advantages over tangled commentaries invoking the interaction of multiple elements. At this stage, some standard elements may not be relevant and it seems best to test the limits of applying this new element before bringing back in excuses for the confusion we have seen in this subject.
—MARTIN S. KOTTMEYER
References
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We Are Not Alone (McGraw-Hill, 1964). New York Times science reporter Walter Sullivan writes the first book providing an overview of attempts by astronomers to intercept extraterrestrial radio signals. He also provides summaries of interviews he conducted with astronomers Frank Drake and Carl Sagan who urged that we reexamine ancient myths, such as those produced by Sumeria and the Hebrews, for clues about ancient astronaut landings which may have influenced the growth of human civilization.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
We Are Not The First (G.P. Putnam, 1971). Australian author Andrew Tomas finds numerous examples of unexplained knowledge from antiquity which indicate that galactic visitors established contact with humans to inspire the creation of civilization. Among the examples he cites: the Mayans had a more precise calendar than we do today; the Dogon tribe of Mali have known for centuries that Sirius has a companion star even though it is invisible to the naked eye; Stonehenge is an astronomical computer built four thousand years ago; and the Catholic Church lists 200 saints who levitated, perhaps utilizing alien secrets of antigravity.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
We Met the Space People (Saucerian Books, 1959). Helen and Betty Mitchell, two sisters in St. Louis, describe their alleged contacts with visitors from Mars and Venus, who appear indistinguishable from male humans, and who warn the sisters to speak out against nuclear weapons. Otherwise, humans will face the same fate as “their ancestors from Atlantis,” according to these Venusians.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
Web sites, UFO/ET-related For all the latest information on UFO and SETI-related subjects, check out the following sites on the worldwide web:
About UFOs and Aliens
www.ufos.about.com
Above Top Secret
www.abovetopsecret.com
Aliens and the Scalpel
www.alienscalpel.com
The Anomalist
www.anomalist.com
Archaeology , Astronautics and SETI Research Association
www.aas-ra.org
Argonaut-Greywolf William & Lori McDonald
www.alienufoart.com
Art Bell
www.artbell.com
Beyond Roswell
www.beyondroswell.com
The British UFO Research Association
www.bufora.org.uk
Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence
www.cseti.com
Citizens Against UFO Secrecy
www.caus.org
Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
www.csicop.org
The Computer UFO Network
www.cufon.org
The Condon Report
www.ncas.org
Deb’s UFO Research Information Clearinghouse
www.debshome.com
Earth Files
www.earthfiles.com
The Extraterrestrial Encyclopedia Project
www.RonaldStory.com
Filer’s Research Institute
www.filersfiles.com
Fund for UFO Research
www.fufor.org
Peter Gersten
www.caus.org
Malcolm Hathorn
www.uforeality.com
J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies
www.cufos.com
David Icke
www.davidicke.com
Inexplicata
www.inexplicata.com
International UFO Museum and Research Center
www.iufomrc.com
Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex
www.kennedyspacecenter.com
Kal Korff
www.kalkorff.com
Ronald Story
www.RonaldStory.com
Mothership
www.ufomind.com
Mutual UFO Network
www.mufon.com
NASA Headquarters
www.hg.nasa.gov
NASA Home Page
www.nasa.gov
National UFO Reporting Center
www.ufocenter.com
Nebula
www.parascope.com
NOVA on UFOs and Abductions
www.pbs.org/wgbh
PEER
www.peermack.org
Planetary Society
www.planetary.org
Project Blue Book FBI Freedom of Information Act
www.foia.fbi.gov/bluebook
Project 1947
www.Project1947.com
Jeff Rense
www.sightings.com
Saucer Smear
www.martiansgohome.com
Dan Sherman
www.aboveblack.com
Zecharia Sitchin
www.sitchin.com
SETI Institute
www.seti.org
Whitley Strieber
www.whitleysworld.com
UFO Roundup
www.ufoinfo.com
UFO Magazine
www.ufomag.com
UFO Magazine
www.ufomag.co.uk
The UFO Store
www.TheUFOStore.com
The Ultimate UFO Resource
www.ufocity.com
Universal Vision
www.universal-vision.com
Katharina Wilson
www.alie
njigsaw.com
Webb, Walter N. (b. 1934). Perhaps best known as the original investigator of the Barney and Betty Hill case, Webb has been associated with UFO research since his own sighting in 1951.
Walter Webb
After graduating from Ohio’s Mount Union College in 1956 (B.S. degree in biology), Webb’s interest in astronomy developed into a career. First he served under the late J. Allen Hynek at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Optical Satellite Tracking program (1957-58). Duties included tracking the world’s first artificial satellites from Hawaii. Then he spent 32 years at Boston’s Charles Hayden Planetarium, Museum of Science, as senior lecturer, assistant director, and operations manager. He is now retired.
Webb has served four national UFO organizations, three of them as an astronomy consultant. For six months in 1995, the UFO Research Coalition (represented by the three major U.S. UFO organizations) hired Webb as its full-time investigator. Currently he writes “The Night Sky” column in the MUFON UFO Journa1 and is the author of Encounter at Buff Ledge: A UFO Case History. His honors include the 1996 Isabel L. Davis Memorial Award of the Fund for UFO Research and an appointment by the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies as its first Senior Research Associate. Both awards recognized Webb’s many years of work in the UFO field.
POSITION STATEMENT: My personal investigations into the UFO matter cover almost half a century. During this time I have been lucky enough to experience my own anomalous sighting. That event alone convinced me that the phenomenon was something real and unknown. Add to this my interviews with several hundred witnesses, many of them claiming close encounters with highly structured and maneuverable objects. Some of these sources even testified to confrontations with humanoid entities associated with landed craft.
My professional science background and firsthand knowledge of known sky phenomena lead me to believe that beyond the huge category of misperceived objects and phenomena, there exists a small subset of manifestations which are totally unique and yet indicative of intelligent activity. I continue to believe only one hypothesis truly can explain the available data. I feel that very strong circumstantial evidence exists supporting an extraterrestrial origin for some of these reported sightings and encounters.
The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters Page 120
