Alien Abductions In Sci-Fi

With Halloween around the corner I've been rewatching some of the scariest films I remember from my childhood about the alien abduction phenomenon. I shared my thoughts about these films on Facebook and thought those social media posts were thoughtful enough to record on this blog.

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INTRUDERS

Tonight’s film is ‘Intruders’ based on the late Budd Hopkins’ book about cases of alleged alien abduction. It is terrifying because it is based on experiences that people actually believe happened to them… and I’ve got no reason to disbelieve them… though it raises complex questions about what the word “real” actually means… can something exist without being physical, and therefore not have to obey the normal laws of physics that govern the physical universe? Is there a non-physical world that has its own separate laws? Are these alien abductions an example of these two linked but separate realities colliding? Is human consciousness a kind of bridge allowing this? These are some of the questions I will be considering as I take a look at some of the films and classic literature in this sub genre of UFOlogy.

Watch it HERE.

THE UFO INCIDENT

Next up on my Alien Abduction filmography list is ‘The UFO Incident’, a 1975 television film based on the bestselling book ‘The Interrupted Journey’ written by John G. Fuller. It documented the Betty and Barney Hill alien abduction case, the first widely publicised UFO close encounter of the fourth kind.

While I believe that the accounts of alien abduction experiencers are legitimate because of the large numbers of witnesses experiencing the same thing. The large numbers, perhaps as many as 5% of the population are alleged to be abductees, also makes me question if this is a physical phenomenon or not. In other words do these accounts of alien abduction represent “nuts and bolts metallic spacecraft” piloted by “flesh and blood” alien beings who have travelled to Earth from another planet in the physical universe, or, is something else happening? 

The lack of physical evidence had led me to conclude that although “real” in the sense that the experiences were not delusions or imaginary, that alien abductions must be a paranornal or non-physical phenomenon? In other words that a real external intelligence is interacting with human consciousness but no one is physically taken onboard an alien spacecraft. That alien abductions have more to do with ghosts and demons than extraterrestrials was my conclusion.

However the Hill abduction makes me want to rethink this conclusion for two reasons. One the famous “Star Map” Betty Hill recalled being shown onboard the UFO, which she drew and was discovered after years of research to (potentionally) match the postions of real stars, Zeta I and II Reticuli. 

The second reason is the dress Betty was wearing on the night of the alleged  alien abduction. Betty claimed under hypnosis that a large needle was inserted into her stomach, according to the alien beings this was a pregnancy test. Stains on the dress Betty was wearing in the region where the needle was allegedly inserted is evidence that something physical happened to the Hills.

Whatever the phenomenon of alien abductions represents, it appears to be able to move between the physical world and the metaphysical world in a similar way to how we can travel between land and sea.

One last note. Even if you are sceptical about alien abductions, ‘The UFO Incident’ is an excellent film, telling a very real love story. It would just as easily be a good choice for a Valentine’s film as a Halloween film and stars James Earl Jones (Voice of Darth Vader) who just recently passed away. 

Watch it HERE.

COMMUNION 

Probably the first Alien Abduction film I ever saw. I remember my dad having an audio book of the original book written by Whitley Strieber, read by Planet of the Apes actor Rodney McDowell, this was probably the first time I was ever scared by something being read from a book. 

Watching the film again and having recently read the new edition of the book, it is clear to me that the encounters are not always (if ever) in the physical world. Instead they occurred in a dreamworld. But these are no ordinary dreams as they have a real physical impact such as injuries. Also other witnesses report having similair experiences in the 1980s before series like the X-Files popularised stories of alien abductions. 

SETI are currently looking for radio signals from extraterrestrials in far away solar systems. Perhaps we are receiving messages from them, but not in the form of radio signals. What if the aliens can communicate via sending signals directly into the human mind? Perhaps using human imagination and expectations based on our folklore and popular culture to take form in dreams. Perhaps even using the human nervous system to create sensations like pain that can cause physical injury.

Watch it HERE.

Listen to the audio book HERE.

QUATERMASS AND THE PIT 

Perhaps the best ancient astronaut film. Before Erich von Däniken wrote Chariots of the Gods and popularised the idea that ancient aliens visited Earth in the past, Nigel Kneale got there first in Quatermass and the Pit. Originally a six part television series on the BBC it was later remade as a film by Hammer Studios and given the title “Five Million Years To Earth” for its American release.

While not an Alien Abduction film, the backstory is that ancient aliens abducted primitive apemen five million years ago, experimented on them to increase intelligence and the result were early humans. 

Ridley Scott referenced this film in the film commentary on the blu ray release of Prometheus, an ancient astronaut film that borrows far more ideas form Nigel Kneale’s script than the books of Erich von Däniken. The 3D holograms seen in the Engineer spaceship in Prometheus echoing a scene in Quatermass and the Pit where a “ghost” is seen by a soldier (offscreen) in the alien spaceship.

Considering that there are nearby stars which are much older than sun, it is possible that intelligent life evolved on planets orbiting these stars milllions of years before life started on Earth. Statistically it is more likely that aliens could have visited Earth in the remote past and gaps/leaps in mankind’s decelpment from apes to modern humans could be explained by alien engineers experimenting with human DNA. We are currently splicing DNA from plants and animals together. So why not? After all, until Charles Dawin’s Theory of Evolution the accepted explanation for most of human history for mankind’s existence was that the “Gods”, which became “God” in the later monotheist religions, created humans in their own image. So the concept that beings from the sky/stars created mankind is actualy an ancient one. 

RONEY: Quatermass - it’s a pentacle.

QUATERMASS: What? 

RONEY: Those marks. One of the ancient cabalistic signs. They were used in ancient magic(k).

From ‘Quatermass and The Pit’ (BBC, 1958-59). Later remade and adapted into ‘Five Million Years To Earth’ (Hammer Films, 1967)

DOCTOR WHO - THE DAEMONS

Doctor Who’s unofficial remake of Nigel Kneale’s ‘Quatermass and the Pit’ and my personal favourite Doctor Who story. I think this must have been my first exposure to the Ancient Astronaut Theory that Ancient Aliens have been helping humans develop for the last 100,000 years or more.

Perhaps the most interesting concept borrowed by the Doctor Who writers from Nigel Kneale’s script is the concept that Magick (yes with a “k” on the end to differentiate the real power to manipulate reality from magic, which is simply a conjuring trick) could be developed into an advanced  science with practical applications.

Eyewitness accounts of odd symbols resembling Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs on wreckage/debris from alleged UFO crashes like the one at Roswell in 1947 are well known inside the UFO field. What if instead of writing these were occult symbols? What if instead of using physics to travel through space the aliens have developed an alternative science based originally on what we would call magick? 

Chemistry is an example of a science that began as a pseudo science. The treating of illnesses with magical potions. This was the beginning of treating illnesses with specific drugs to remedy a particular disease or other health problem. 

There is a certain amount of theatrics involved with cases of alien abductions. Why would the aliens want to scare the people they are abducting? The aliens should be capable of tranquillising the subjects of their experiments, so that they would have no distress or memory at all of anything happening. The way we do with animals, for instance, if a large and dangerous zoo animal needed to be seen by a vet.

It is widely believed in paranormal research circles that poltergeists feed off human fear and anger, and that the best thing to do if you are experience such a haunting is to simply ignore it until the poltergeist runs out of energy effectively. Could the aliens seen in abductions be using similar paranormal energies generated by negative human emotion to travel between different dimensions? Perhaps a non-physical realm where the laws of physics do not apply, making interstellar travel possible?

One last thought … it is suggestive that the alleged covert group set up by the US Government to study the alleged UFO wreckage found at Roswell in 1947 was called Majestic 12 … as in Magic or Magick 12. 

HAWTHORNE: Oh, you could go on all day and all night showing us pretty pictures. I mean, horns have been a symbol of power ever since

DOCTOR: Ever since man began? Exactly. But why? All right, Captain Yates, the curtains. Now creatures like those have been seen over and over again throughout the history of man, and man has turned them into myths, gods or devils, but they're neither. They are, in fact, creatures from another world.

BENTON: Do you mean like the Axons and the Cybermen?

DOCTOR: Precisely, only far, far older and immeasurably more dangerous.

JO: And they came here in spaceships like that tiny one up at the barrow?

DOCTOR: That's right. They're Daemons from the planet Daemos, which is?

JO: Sixty thousand light years away on the other side of the galaxy.

DOCTOR: And they first came to Earth nearly one hundred thousand years ago.

From ‘Doctor Who: The Daemons’ (BBC, 1971)

FIRE IN THE SKY

Probably the scariest of the Alien Abduction films, ‘Fire In the Sky’ is based on the alleged (the other witnesses passed lie detector tests) experiences of Travis Walton as described in his book ‘The Walton Experience’. If not for this case I would probably separate cases of alleged alien abduction and the UFO sightings into two distinct and separate types of phenomena, one involving “nuts and bolts” physically real but unknown aircraft. And the other real only in that it involves something (possibly intelligent) external affecting (possibly communicating) with the human mind. In the case of the latter, whatever it is using popular culture, folklore and religious beliefs to construct a lucid dream so real that it can cause physical injury on the experiencer.

…However, unfortunately it isn’t that easy to separate UFO sightings and alien abductions, and Travis Walton’s experience perhaps best documents why.

Walton was seen being struck by an energy beam from a UFO by multiple witnesses. It was clearly a physical object not a dream or hallucination. 

Perhaps then the UFO occupants can choose between many different communication channels to make contact with humans, much in the same way we decide between having a face to face meeting, or making a phone call or arranging a Microsoft Teams or Skype meeting. The only difference being that the UFO occupants can use consciousness itself as a communication channel when face to face encounters are not necessary or possible. 

Watch Joe Rogan interview Travis Walton HERE.

ROSWELL

Docudrama about Major (Later Lieutenant Colonel) Jesse Marcel, who in 1947 was the Intelligence Officer for the 509th Composite Group (509 CG), a bomb group of the United States Army tasked with the operational deployment of nuclear weapons. And in 1947 still the only such operational group at that time. It was the 509th that conducted the atomic bombings in Japan that ended the Second World War. Let that sink in for a moment. This group was about as elite and as important to defence as it possibly gets. 

Now consider this … it was the Major Jesse Marcel who as the Intelligence Officer of the 509th was the first army officer to investigate an alleged “Flying Disk” crash in Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947. And after seeing the wreckage confirmed it was wreckage from a flying saucer. This story was then realised to the press and went viral around the world, including the major British newspapers like The Times!

… Then the next day… the United States Army apologised and said it was all a big mistake… it was just a weather balloon. How anyone could possibly believe that someone with the background and position Marcel had could possibly make such a mistake boggles the mind. The story becomes even more ludicrous when you realise th at following this alleged mistake of comic proportions Marcel was promoted. It just doesn’t make any sense.

About 30 years later Marcel and dying, he finally broke his silence and confirmed it was not a weather ballon. It was what he originally said a “flying saucer”, a term which since 1947 had become synonymous with alien spacecraft. And the United States Army was forced to admit that the weather balloon story was indeed just a cover story as Marcel claimed. The new official account was that what was recovered was a giant sized, high altitude Mogal survaliance balloon, part of a top secret project to spy on Russia and determining if that had developed their own Atomic Bomb (which they finally did two years later in 1949). For me this still doesn’t make sense. A balloon is a balloon, no matter how big or top secret it is. I think I was about ten when I first heard this story in the 1990s, since then the offical story has just grown even more hard to believe. Nonsense about 6ft tall crash test dummies from the 1950s being confused with child sized dead aliens seem in the 1940s. Now people from a military town can’t tell the difference between dummies and dead aliens? 

I don’t believe it. I’ll believe Marcel.  Just think about logically, if it wasn’t for the implications, I don’t think anyone could possibly believe the ballon story.

Watch it HERE.

ALIEN

My favourite film. On the documentary that accompanies the DVD realease, the director Ridley Scott explains that the complex lifecycle of the Alien creature was based on real parasitic wasps, who inject their embryos into caterpillars which paralysis their host until the lava are ready to burst out. Combined with the “used future” look that Ridley Scott borrowed from the writer Dan O'Bannon’s first film ‘Dark Star’, the complex life circle of the alien gives the film a sense of realism lacked in the B movie space monster films of the 1950s that ‘Alien’ owes much of it’s film DNA to.

Another seed of reality that would go I noticed by most filmgoers in 1979 was the location of the alien planet in the film, Zeta II Reticuli system. The same star system where the humanoid “grey” aliens responsible for the Betty and Barney Hill abduction in the 1960s allegedly originated from.

Weirdly, the life circle of the fictional alien in the film in some ways echoes the bizarre reproductive experiments reported by alleged alien abductees under hypnosis in the real world. These experiments involve the hybridisation of humans with aliens, using human women as incubators before the unborn hybrid is removed and finishes gestating in an artificial womb onboard a UFO. Such bizarre stories are easily the most fringe and controversial aspect in an already fringe enough topic… but the stories are consistent.

Assuming these stories reflect something that is a physical reality and are not an attempt to communicate using symbolism via visions and dreams, what do these accounts potentially tell us about the greys and their motives for abducting people? 

Could it be that like the fictional alien in the Ridley Scott film, the greys can only reproduce by fusing their own DNA with that of another species and using this other species as a host to gestate their offspring? 

Zeta II Reticuli system is estimated to be twice as old as our own sun. Any potential life originating from there then, could potentially be twice as old as life on Earth, which could include intelligent life. Any intelligent life that left their home planet millions of years ago could possibly evolve to make hybridisation with other species possible. It would be the fastest way to adapt to the environment of a new planet and also avoid the fate of the Martians in HG well’s novel ‘The War of the Worlds’, where the Martians all died from exposure to Earth’s microbes that they had no immunity to. 

THE FOURTH KIND

The Fourth Kind is a disturbing film to watch, but very interesting. If aliens are travelling from other solar systems to Earth, it is impossible for them to be coming in nuts and bolts spacecraft travelling slower than the speed of light. UFOs are seen too often and seem to be reacting to current events on Earth too quickly. For example the first Atomic Bomb was detonated in 1945 and within two years in the same region flying saucers turn up, seemingly investigating our nuclear weapon tests. If these objects came from another solar system they would need to be at least approx 4 light years away. Meaning it would take a radio signal at least that time to reach our nearest neighbouring solar system. Then travelling at light speed take another four years to get to Earth. That’s eight years total. As UFOs were being seen in 1947 (and earlier) in the American Southwest and were seemingly interested in nuclear weapons, it would seem to indicate they could send signals and travel faster than light to get here two years after the first Atomic Bomb test.

While travelling faster than light is impossible in our physical universe, other universes could potentially have different laws of physics that allow objects to travel faster than light.

So if such a parallel universe existed it could be used as a kind of cosmic motorway. The only problem is how could an object travel between parallel universes?

Arthur C. Clarke famously said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Could aliens be using what we would call magick (yes with a “k” to differentiate real magick from fake magic conjuring tricks) to open portals into other dimensions? This might sound absurd, but a lightbulb would appear to be magical to someone who had no knowledge of electricity. I’m only suggesting that there might be something to magick which could potentially be developed into another science one day. Perhaps a science of the Mind or Consciouness. 

With this in mind it is interesting that one of the aspects of real world alien abduction mythology which is highlighted in the film is the phenomenon of alleged screen memories. These are distorted memories of real events subtly altered either by the sub consciouness mind to make the memories accessible without driving someone insane, or, perhaps artificially altered by the aliens encountered during abductions to hide their activities. Put simply instead of remembering an alien, abductees remember other mundane things instead in their place. In the film the aliens are replaced in the memories of the protagonist by an owl, something which is widespread in real abduction accounts. Which is interesting because the owl has long been an important symbol in ancient religions. The owl was associated with the Ancient Greek godess of wisdom Athena. And even today owls are still allegedly ‘worshiped’ in outlandish rituals by the quasi secret group the Bohemian Club.

It could simply be that the large black eyes of owls lend the creatures to being good standins for the black eyed grey aliens mostly associated with abductions. But an alternative explanation could be that owl and other esoteric symbolism is somehow being used to generate somekind of energy or power (for lack of a better similarly as this psychic power may not  be energy in the scientific sense of the word that can be measured) which is used to phase in and out of our physical universe in ways we don’t yet understand.

In 2000 Guardian newspaper journalist Jon Ronson and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones secretly filmed the “Cremation of Care” mid summer ceremony conducted at the secretive Bohemian Grove. Watch The Secret Rulers of the World - episode 2 which was shown on Channel 4 HERE.

Radio Replay - 27th July 2014

 
Could ghosts be 3D psychic recordings? 

 

Are humans the descendants of apes genetically modified by ancient astronauts? 

 

Was the Rendlesham Forest incident really a mind control experiment? 

 

Just some of the topics touched on in this interesting discussion.

The Betty Hill Star Map - Richard's Room 101

On the night of 19/20 September 1961, on their way home to Portsmouth, New Hampshire from a short break in Canada, something happened to Betty and Barney Hill that began a new controversy in UFO research that continues even today. While modern polls show that as many as four million Americans could believe they might have been abducted by aliens, back in 1966 when the first book detailing the Hill case The Interrupted Journey was first published, the New England couple’s claims of alien contact were almost unheard of. There had been the famous Contactees of the 1950s, men and women who claimed they had been visited by the human-looking occupants of flying saucers with warnings about nuclear war and environmental concerns. But the experiences of the Hills were completely different, reporting beings that were obviously not human, and had no such messages.

   

Instead under hypothesis, the Hills told of how they were kidnapped and experimented on by short humanoid beings aboard a “cigar-shaped” craft that had pursued the couple that September night as they traveled home on Route 3 between Lancaster and Concord. The alien abduction phenomenon was born. 

    

There are two major explanations often given to explain the Hills’ recollections under hypnosis. The first offered by some psychiatrists is that the Hills’ abduction experience was a hallucination brought on by the stress of being an interracial couple during the end of the segregation era in the United States. But this explanation was discounted by Betty Hill, who said the couple’s interracial marriage caused no significant problems with their friends or family. This was echoed by Dr. Simon, who also thought that the Hills’ interracial marriage didn’t influence the couple’s abduction account in any way. 

    

In 1990 Martin Kottmeyer suggested in his article “Entirely Unpredisposed: The Cultural Background of UFO Abduction Reports “ that Barney’s account of his abduction experience under hypnosis might have been influenced by an episode of the popular science fiction anthology series The Outer Limits, entitled “The Bellero Shield”, which was broadcast twelve days before Barney’s first hypnotic session. This episode featured an alien being with large wraparound eyes reminiscent of the eyes of the alien beings described by Barney under hypnosis. In his article, Kottmeyer wrote: 

   

 “Wraparound eyes are an extreme rarity in science fiction films. I know of only one instance. They appeared on the alien of an episode of an old TV series The Outer Limits entitled “The Bellero Shield”. A person familiar with Barney’s sketch in “The Interrupted Journey” and the sketch done in collaboration with the artist David Baker will find a “frisson” of “déjà vu” creeping up his spine when seeing this episode. The resemblance is much abetted by an absence of ears, hair, and nose on both aliens. Could it be by chance? Consider this: Barney first described and drew the wraparound eyes during the hypnosis session dated 22 February 1964. “The Bellero Shield” was first broadcast on 10 February 1964. Only twelve days separate the two instances. If the identification is admitted, the commonness of wraparound eyes in the abduction literature falls to cultural forces.” (Entirely Unpredisposed: The Cultural Background of UFO Abduction Reports, Martin S. Kottmeyer)

     

When asked about The Outer Limits TV series Betty claimed to have “never heard of it”. Kottmeyer also pointed out that the medical tests the Hills described were reminiscent of scenes in the 1953 science fiction film, Invaders from Mars. 

   

Clearly, there are superficial similarities between the ‘Bellero alien’ from The Outer Limits episode and the oval-headed beings described by Barney and Betty, but there are significant differences between the two also. The Hill aliens were dressed in black, shiny uniforms and were “somehow not human”. The ‘Bellero alien’ in contrast was dressed in all white, and while humanoid, was very clearly non-human. 

   

While it is possible that some of what the Hills ‘remembered’ under hypnosis could have been influenced by the science fiction films and TV shows of the 1950s and 60s, the best evidence that Betty and Barney Hill didn’t make up or imagine everything they said under hypnosis, is the star map drawn by Betty Hill. 

    

In 1968, Marjorie Fish of Oak Harbor, Ohio read The Interrupted Journey. Fish was an elementary school teacher and amateur astronomer. Intrigued by the “star map”, Fish wondered if it might be “possible to determine which star system the space travelers came from. Assuming that one of the fifteen stars on the map must represent the Earth’s Sun; Fish constructed a three-dimensional model of nearby Sun-like stars using thread and beads, basing stellar distances on those published in the 1969 Gliese Star Catalogue. Studying thousands of vantage points the only one that seemed to match the Hill map was from the viewpoint of the double star system of Zeta Reticuli. 

      

This was significant because the distance information needed to match three stars, forming the distinctive triangle Hill said she remembered, was not generally available until the 1969 Gliese Catalogue came out. Five years after Betty Hill drew the star map. 

     

Fish sent her analysis to Webb and agreeing with her conclusions, Webb sent the map to Terence Dickinson, editor of the popular magazine Astronomy. Dickinson did not endorse Fish and Webb’s conclusions, but for the first time in the journal’s history, Astronomy invited comments and debate on a UFO report, starting with an opening article in the December 1974 issue. For about a year afterward, the opinions page of Astronomy carried arguments for and against Fish’s star map. Notable was an argument made by Carl Sagan and Steven Soter, arguing that the seeming “star map” was little more than a random alignment of chance points. In contrast, those more favorable to the map, such as Dr. David Saunders, a statistician who had been on the Condon UFO study, argued that the unusual alignment of key Sun-like stars in a plane centered around Zeta Reticuli (first described by Fish) was statistically improbable to have happened by chance from a random group of stars in our immediate neighborhood. 

   

Skeptic Robert Sheaffer, in an accompanying article, said that a map devised by Charles W. Atterberg, about the same time as Fish, was an even better match to Hill’s map and made more sense. The base stars, Epsilon Indi and Epsilon Eridani, plus the others were also closer to the sun than the Hill map. Fish counter-argued that the base stars in the Atterberg map were considered much less likely to harbor life than Zeta Reticuli and the map lacked a consistent grouping of sun-like stars along the lined routes. 

    

Another interpretation of the star map was offered in 1993 by two German crop circle enthusiasts, Joachim Koch and Hans-Jürgen Kyborg, who suggested that the map depicted planets in the solar system, not nearby stars. The objects in the map, they said, closely match the positions of the sun, the six inner planets, and several asteroids around 1960. This would parallel other abduction accounts where witnesses claim to be shown such depictions, though admittedly often elaborate and unmistakably our own solar system.

   

Barney Hill died in 1969 and Betty in 2004 and both stuck to their abduction account until the time of their deaths. While it is possible elements of their story were influenced by the Cold War science fiction films of the 1950s and 60s; the star map, if Fish’s interpretation is correct, couldn’t have been based on prior knowledge.

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1986 UFO Cases

The 1980s were a boom period for UFOs with bestselling books like The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore and input from Stanton Friedman, Timothy Good’s Above Top Secret and Whitley Strieber’s Communion. There were also movies and TV series like Steven Spielberg’s ET: The Extraterrestrial, Predator starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Cameron’s Aliens, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and documentaries such as Unsolved Mysteries.
 
And if all that wasn’t enough in 1987 US President Ronald Regan even spoke about "an alien threat from outside this world" in a speech to the United Nations, and that same year the major US soap opera The Colbys featured a storyline in which the character Fallon reported being the victim of an alien abduction! In a guest article for this blog UFO author and historian Rupert Matthews wrote: "The Colbys TV series and Whitley (Strieber) book launched the abduction phenomenon into the mass media. Suddenly the television, magazine and newspaper world could not get enough abduction stories. Many researchers took to hypnotic regression of witnesses in an effort to get more details and more coherent versions of events. Sadly some researchers had little or no training in hypnotic treatments and made some key errors of technique that would later discredit their findings. Nevertheless UFOlogy in the later 1980s became dominated by abduction stories obtained largely by hypnotic regression. It seemed that the answer to the entire UFO riddle might finally be within grasp of researchers."
 
The decade also ended with Bob Lazar's famous allegations that he had worked at the secret Nevada Area 51 or Groom Lake base back in the late 1980's on a back-engineering program involving captured alien saucers. There’s no doubting then that the 1980s marked a turnaround in the popularity of the UFO subject after years of declining interest in UFOs following the US Air Force’s decision to close down their UFO investigation Project Bluebook in 1969.
 
One year that seems to stand out is 1986. What with it being 25 years now since the UFO events of that year I asked Nick Redfern, who blogs for UFOMystic, if there were any good 1986 cases I should research. Nick replied: "Probably the only two good ones I can think of for that year, is one which was a Jumbo Jet sighting of a UFO over Alaska. I'm pretty sure a Google search will find it. And I know there was a very good Brazilian military UFO chase/sighting in that year, and that the US Defense Intelligence Agency released its files on the case a few years ago, so they may be at the DIA website, as they have their FOIA-UFO files posted there."
 
A Google search found an AP article entitled "FAA Presses Investigation of Lights Seen Over Alaska" about the Jumbo Jet sighting Nick Redfern had told me about. The sighting took place on November 17, 1986 and involved an encounter between a Japan Airlines Boeing 747 freighter aircraft and three UFOs as it flew over Alaska, en route from Iceland to Anchorage.

According to the crew, "two small objects and one huge Saturn-shaped object were in sight and on radar for more than 30 minuets". The unidentified lights were "yellow, amber and green" and the largest one "showed up on the plane's weather radar".

The pilot changed course and altitude multiple times in an attempt to explain the unidentified objects and VHF radio communications were garbled at the time of the sightings.
 
In 2006 the pilot, Capt. Kenju Terauchi, was interviewed by two Kyodo News journalists about the sightings. The interview was picked up by various UFO websites. Here is an extract from the interview on UFOcasebook.com:

"Suddenly,” Terauchi said, "600 meters below, I saw what looked like two belts of light. I checked with the Anchorage control tower. They said nothing was showing on their radar." But something was emitting those lights, and whatever it was seemed interested in the jumbo, for it adjusted its speed to match to match the plane's – "like they were toying with us," said Terauchi.   That went on for seven minutes or so. "Then there was a kind of reverse thrust, and the lights became dazzlingly bright. Our cockpit lit up. The thing was flying as if there was no such thing as gravity. It sped up, then stopped, then flew at our speed, in our direction, so that to us it looked like it was standing still. The next instant it changed course. There's no way a jumbo could fly like that. If we tried, it'd break apart in mid-air. In other words, the flying object had overcome gravity."

 
But the strange events of flight 1628 were not over yet for Capt. Terauchi and his crew. UFO authority Richard H. Hall wrote about the third "gigantic" UFO Terauchi witnessed that night in the second volume of his The UFO Evidence:

About 5:30pm, while in the vicinity of Fairbanks, AK, Capt. Terauchi checked a white light behind the plane and saw a silhouette of a gigantic spaceship. It was walnut-shaped, symmetrical above and below, with a central flange. Capt. Terauchi said, “It was a very big one, two times bigger than an aircraft career.” At its closet point, the large object cast such a bright light that it illuminated the cockpit, and Terauchi could feel heat on his face. Radio communications again became garbled during the close approach. The veteran crew became frightened by the large object and requested permission to change course. After the course change they looked back and saw the object still following them. Increasingly fearful, they requested a descent to get away from the UFO (“We had to get away from the object.”) After they descended and turned again, the object disappeared. The FAA at first confirmed that several of its radar traffic controllers had tracked the B-747 and the large object, and that US Air Force radar had also done so. Later official statements backed away from this and tried to a ascribe the radar targets to weather effects. On December 29, 1986, the FAA issued a report saying, We are accepting the descriptions of the crew, but are unable to support what they saw.

More recently the Japan Air Lines flight 1628 sighting was featured on the History Channel's UFO Files series in an episode entitled "Black Box Secrets" and the case has gained a reputation as being perhaps one of the best UFO sightings ever.

Another good pilot aircraft sighting in 1986 happened on May 11, in Sedona, AZ. A pilot, Robert H. Henderson, and his wife travelling in a Cessna 172 saw a dome-shaped object make a head-on pass at them and fly beneath their plane at an estimated 1,200 mph.
 
There were a concentration of sightings in Brazil in 1986, including many physiological effects cases between March 19 and June 15. The best of which was the UFO chase case Nick Redfern had mentioned. The Telegraph ranked this case, known as São Paulo sighting after the airport where the UFOs were tracked from, number eight in a 2009 "list of 10 of the most famous UFO incidents in history". Telegraph contributor Sasjkia Otto wrote in the newspaper that on the night of May 19, 1986 “around 20 UFOs were seen and detected by radar in various parts of Brazil. They reportedly disappeared as five military aircraft were sent to intercept them."
 
The São Paulo case was discussed openly by high ranking Brazilian officials. It was first reported by Colonel (Ret.) Ozires Silva, president of the state-owned oil company Petrobrás, who was flying on an executive Xingu turbo-prop, when he and the pilot saw and pursued the mysterious lights for about 25 minutes. The incident was covered widely in the Brazilian media at the time, leading to a press conference at the Ministry of Aeronautics in Brasilia on May 23, with air traffic controllers and air force pilots involved in the scramble mission.

At the press conference the Minister of Aeronautics, Brigadier General Otávio Moreira Lima, said: “Between 20:00 hrs (5/19) and 01:00 hrs (5/20) at least 20 objects were detected by Brazilian radars. They saturated the radars and interrupted traffic in the area. Each time that radar detected unidentified objects, fighters took off for intercept. Radar detects only solid metallic bodies and heavy (mass) clouds. There were no clouds nor conventional aircraft in the region. The sky was clear. Radar doesn't have optical illusions. We can only give technical explanations and we don't have them. It would be very difficult for us to talk about the hypothesis of an electronic war. It's very remote and it's not the case here in Brazil. It's fantastic. The signals on the radar were quite clear."

The Minister also announced that a commission would study the incident. Air Force Major Ney Cerqueira, in charge of the Air Defense Operations Center (CODA), added: "We don't have technical operational conditions to explain it. The appearance and disappearance of these objects on the radar screens are unexplained. They are Unidentified Aerial Movements... The technical instruments used for the identification of the lights had problems in registering them. CODA activated two F-5E and three Mirages to identify the objects. One F-5E and one Mirage remained grounded on alert. A similar case occurred four years ago (1982 Commander Brito VASP airliner radar-visual incident). The lights were moving at a speed ranging between 250 and 1,500 km/hr. [150 to 1,000 mph] The Air Force has not closed the case."

Today São Paulo continues to be a UFO hotspot. In March 2011 a video shown on Brazilian TV of a disc-shaped object hovering in the clouds for a minute or so – before disappearing in a bright flash was widely circulated. The Telegraph writing that: "The television station explained the clip originated from two motorists who saw the object as they were driving near the town of Agudos in Sao Paulo state. They hopped out of the car to shoot the video with their hand-held camera. According to the TV station, the cameramen reported the earth shaking at the same time the unidentified flying object vanished in a blast of light."

In 2010 Brazil's government ordered its air force to officially record any sighting of unidentified flying objects.

There were other sightings in 1986. In Butler, PA, on January 7, a UFO emitted six light beams toward the ground. And around 20 minuets later in Pittsburgh, a silver-gray disk with body lights and mist formed around it was seen hovering above the city, before moving out of sight.

There was also a good landing case in Calalzo di Cadore, Italy on August 15 of that year. Strong physical traces were left at the landing site, and after a two hour memory loss the witnesses reported seeing two humanoid beings.
 
The 1980s then saw an increase in the popularity of the UFO subject, and while blockbuster films such as ET and bestselling books like Communion played a large part in this turnaround, solid UFO cases like those of 1986 were also important.

Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/05/us/faa-presses-investigation-of-lights-seen-over-alaska.html
http://www.ufocasebook.com/jal1628surfaces.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/6041498/UFO-Files-top-10-UFO-sightings.html
http://www.phenopedia.com/index.php/1986_S%C3%A3o_Paulo_UFO_sighting
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/8357480/UFO-spotted-in-Sao-Paulo.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10947856
Richard H. Hall, The UFO Report: A Thirty Year Report Volume II, (Scarecrow Press, Inc, 2001) p.142-143.

UFOs in the 1980s

The following guest article is by Rupert Matthews, author of the book Roswell.

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UFOs in the 1980s

By Rupert Matthews

Back in the mid-1980s the world of UFOlogy was becoming dominated by two quite different facets of the phenomenon. Of the two the more mainstream were the abduction events that were beginning to be reported by an increasing number and range of people. The other phenomenon was popular with the media and general public, but less well favoured by serious UFO researchers: crop circles. Of the two, crop circles dominated the media - probably because of the impressive photos that could be printed in newspapers on slow news days to fill a half page at low cost.

Meanwhile, some researchers were beginning to suspect that some incidents that were reported by the witness as being an alien abduction were, in fact, psychological in origin. Researcher Margaret Fry in the UK produced a number of cases in which a witness reported being abducted and undergoing the usual types of experiences, while others reported that the person supposedly being abducted was, in fact, fast asleep or in once case being operated on under anaesthetic in a hospital.

At the time there was a huge amount of controversy over these cases. Some held that they disproved the entire alien abduction hypothesis and proved that those reporting abductions were simply hallucinating. Others sought to debunk the cases in order to prove the witnesses were lying or that the researchers had fabricated evidence.

Back in 1986 it does not seem to have occurred to anyone that those witnesses reporting abductions while quite clearly not being abducted were dreaming or hallucinating, but that this did not of itself disprove that alien abductions really did happen. It is well know that people often hallucinate that they are taking part in historic events, scenes from movies and the like. Perhaps the people in question had read about an abduction, and then hallucinated about it later on.

In hindsight the spat seems to have been a case of “sound and fury, signifying nothing”.

Equally pointless in hindsight were the press stories that sought to link the tragic crash of the Space Shuttle Challenger to a sighting of a UFO many miles away at the time of the crash. The two were obviously unrelated, and the link seems to have been invented by a journalist looking to boost sales of his newspaper. Sadly it served merely to undermine the credibility of UFO sightings in the minds of some members of the public.

The next year saw the damage to credibility repaired somewhat. The major US soap opera The Colbys featured a story line in which the character Fallon reported being the victim of an alien abduction. The story line had a few features that dramatised the events for a TV audience, but generally followed the sort of events that real witnesses had reported and did much to bring the idea of alien abductions to a wider audience in a sympathetic way.

That same year Whitley Strieber published his book Communion to rave reviews. The book retold what Strieber said were a prolonged series of encounters with a humanoid life form that physically resembled a “grey” alien. The book sold in vast numbers and was an international best seller.

The Colbys TV series and Whitley book launched the abduction phenomenon into the mass media. Suddenly the television, magazine and newspaper world could not get enough abduction stories. Many researchers took to hypnotic regression of witnesses in an effort to get more details and more coherent versions of events. Sadly some researchers had little or no training in hypnotic treatments and made some key errors of technique that would later discredit their findings. Nevertheless UFOlogy in the later 1980s became dominated by abduction stories obtained largely by hypnotic regression. It seemed that the answer to the entire UFO riddle might finally be within grasp of researchers.

The search for new, better and more dramatic abduction cases became increasingly frantic through 1988 and 1989. Publication followed publication as new reports cascaded out and researchers sought to find a pattern to the abductions and the apparently medical examinations and experiments conducted during them.

Thus far, the researchers had been concentrating on the UFOs and their occupants. But in 1989 a man named Bob Lazar came forward to claim that he had spent some time working at the highly secretive American military research base known as “Area 51”. He claimed that the US military were in touch with aliens - which matched the general description of “greys” - and were in the process of reverse engineering alien technology. The claims reignited ideas of a conspiracy between the aliens and certain human organisations (usually the US government in some form) which had lain dormant for more than a decade.

The new wave of conspiracy speculation would soon combine with studies of alien abductions to produce new ideas and theories that would dominate research in the 1990s.
 

 
Rupert Matthews is the author of the book Roswell which is available on Amazon and from all good bookshops. You can find Rupert’s website at www.rupertmatthews.com. He also maintains a blog about the unexplained at www.ghosthunteratlarge.blogspot.com.

A Room 101 Interview with Karyn Dolan

Other than BoA: Audio, of course, the only other 'esoteric' type radio show that I enjoy listening to regularly these days is Karyn Dolan's excellent Through the Keyhole. With her characteristically friendly manner and down-to-earth approach, Karyn's interviews are both fun and informative. Karyn often asks the questions the ordinary, intelligent listener at home wants to ask that, often, other radio show hosts just don't think of. 

  

So after interviewing her husband Richard Dolan, author of UFOs and the National Security State, I was very pleased when Karyn also agreed to answer a few questions for a Room 101 interview. We'll be discussing UFOs, parapolitics, 911, Karyn's evolution as an active media member in the esoteric field, the dynamics of the Dolan family, ET elements in childrens' programming and a whole lot more. 

  

Richard Thomas: Thanks for agreeing to this interview Karyn. I'm sure you and your husband are pretty busy with the recent release of Richard's new book UFOs and the National Security State volume II so it's much appreciated.

  

How did you first become interested in UFOs and other 'esoteric' type topics and where did the idea to do your own radio show come from? Also, do you think you might have ever seen a UFO, or, perhaps had any other kind of paranormal experience yourself? 

  

Karyn Dolan: Thanks so much for asking me, Richard, and thanks for your kind words about Through the Keyhole! I'm so glad to hear that you enjoy it. I started with a guest spot on Live from Roswell, which is hosted by a friend of ours named Guy Malone. He invited me to come on and talk about what it's like to live with a UFO researcher, for a unique take on the subject when everyone else was interviewing the researchers themselves.

  

I had a great time, even though I was really nervous at first, and our ratings were quite good. After a couple more guest spots with Guy, I was offered a show of my own on the Paranormal Radio Network. I hesitated, but decided that I'd probably never get an opportunity like this again; and besides, the worst that could happen was that I'd be bad at it, maybe be a little embarrassed, and my time slot would be given to someone else. It was nothing I couldn't survive, so I went for it, and I'm so glad I did. I got to interview people like George Noory of Coast to Coast AM after just a few months at it, I've met all kinds of really fun and interesting people, and I've learned so much about their research. I never thought about UFOs until Rich told me he was writing his first book; but I'd been interested in other esoteric subjects all my life. Since I was a child, I've read ghost stories, books about vampires and witches and the Loch Ness Monster, and any other unexplained phenomena. I've always been fascinated by anything that couldn't be explained by mainstream science. It proves to me that conventional wisdom, in any subject, is simply not all there is to life -- there's so much more, if we just open our minds to it. 

  

Also, when I was about eight, I discovered a book on Wicca. The thing about Wicca is that no one ever "converts" to it -- people say they finally learn the name for what they've always believed. That's how I felt. Even though I was brought up in the Roman Catholic Church, I've always felt more Wiccan; and that is a religion that embraces all others as valid paths to the Light. Some of the main tenets of Wicca are to harm none, to respect all life, and to take responsibility for your own actions. It also teaches that everyone has potential psychic ability, which appeals to my belief that there's more to life than what appears in the newspapers.

  

And yes, I actually did see something in the sky that I still can't explain. In the summer of 2006, years after Rich's book came out, I was in a coffee shop with my son. We were sitting by the window, watching the full moon rise, when we both noticed a diagonal shadowy line across the moon. It was motionless, and we spent several minutes trying to find something in the shop that could be causing a reflection on the window, and changing our position to see if it moved. All the reflections on the window moved as we moved around, but that line didn't. After about five minutes, it slowly moved forward and upward, and once it was no longer in front of the moon, we couldn't see it against the darkening sky. 

  

We live near an airport so we see planes all the time. This looked similar to a plane, but it had no lights at all and it was perfectly straight. A plane has a raised tip on the tail. Also, no plane ever remains motionless that long. I wondered whether it had only appeared motionless because it was coming toward us, but we were clearly viewing it from the side. I still don't know what that was. 

  

Richard Thomas: While preparing for this interview, I was conscious not to overload you with questions about your husband. Do you ever get a little tired of being compared to Richard or having to answer questions about him? I'm sure you've been asked numerous times over the last few years about when his next book would be out and that must get a little annoying sometimes. 

  

Karyn Dolan: It used to be common for people to talk to me only when they wanted to reach Rich. Since I've been hosting the radio show, and have been attending conferences, talking with people, reading the literature, listening to presentations...now I'm finding that people want to talk to me as well. I get people contacting me all the time, asking if they can come on the show, and I love that. Sometimes, people will ask me to sign a conference poster or something, and that's really fun too. I'm also now a member of the Board of Directors for the International UFO Congress, and have contributed a chapter to a book on UFO and alien images in society which we hope will be published in 2010. So I really feel that I can stand on my own feet in this field.

  

Rich is a brilliant man, an amazing writer and a very talented speaker. He introduced me to this field, and to a lot of the people in it. There are things that each of us does better than the other. At the end of the day, I know that I can't please everyone, so I do my best at whatever I'm doing, and make sure I can still respect myself. I have my own way of doing things and people seem to enjoy it. I'm not Rich Dolan and I don't pretend to be, but I am Karyn Dolan, and I'm very happy with that. 

  

BTW, I never get annoyed by questions about when the next book is coming out. I'm not the one who has to write it, so it really doesn't bother me. :-)

Richard Thomas: In my interview with Richard (I'll mention him just the once, promise), we focused more on what is sometimes called parapolitics, in particular 9/11 and its aftermath. Your husband seemed to be a big fan of Alex Jones' films, especially his latest addition to the InfoWar The Obama Deception.

  

I know your family is primarily associated with UFO research, but given Richard's outspoken take on 911, what are your thoughts on that fateful event? 

  

Also, if you had the chance to ask Obama two questions on Through the Keyhole what would they be? They don't have to be 9/11 or Alex Jones related they could be on UFOs or anything. 

  

Karyn Dolan: I completely believe that 9/11 was an inside job, and I said so to Rich the day it happened. By that I mean that someone in our government either helped plan it, perhaps only knew about it ahead of time and didn't do anything to stop it, or did something that day that allowed the attacks to occur. I believe that the most horrifying thing about that day, and there was plenty of horror in it, was the realization that human life is of no account to those who were supposedly elected to lead us, to look out for us. We are totally expendable, and they will sacrifice us in a heartbeat for their personal gain. That kept me up for a lot of nights after 9/11, and sometimes still does. Rich didn't agree with me at first, but later, as we both watched the investigation and the evidence that was uncovered, he began to believe it as well. What actually happened that day? Setting aside the loss of human life (which was horrific, but clearly of no account to the perpetrators), the World Trade Center was attacked. The two tallest towers and one smaller building were destroyed. So the two most visible parts of the complex were the first to go; that was a shocking visible reminder of the "Terrorist Threat" that was pounded into our awareness over the following weeks, months, years. Yet, the businesses that had offices there, also had offices elsewhere. It didn't really cripple our nation financially, not in the way the newscasters told us it would. The important thing about that was the fear factor. And I think that's a big reason why the towers still haven't been rebuilt, even this many years later. That scar on the skyline is more important in some ways than building the memorial; otherwise, it would be done by now. It's been eight years, for heavens' sake, and the site was cleared quickly -- all the evidence was removed immediately and sold as scrap metal before it could be examined by any forensic specialists. 

  

The destruction of the smaller building, Building 7, has never been satisfactorily explained. The best theory I've heard is that the command center for the events of 9/11 was located in that building, and it was destroyed in order to hide evidence of that fact. I don't know enough to say it's true or not, but it sounds more plausible to me than any of the official explanations that I've heard so far. 

Aside from that, the Pentagon building was damaged, but not too badly. There was, again, a shocking loss of innocent lives, but the facility was up and running in a very short time. There is also some indication that some embarrassing financial records were conveniently destroyed. Finally, we were told that the last plane was heading toward the White House, but it never came anywhere near hitting its target. So the public's perception was that our nation's capital, our defense system, and our financial system were all attacked, but truly, no real damage occurred to the systems themselves. A couple of buildings were destroyed, a few more were damaged, some evidence of financial misconduct was disposed of, and it was all covered up by the deaths of thousands of innocent people. We were mostly too stunned and grief-stricken to raise any questions, and anyone who tried to do so was labeled unpatriotic and told to go shopping to stimulate the economy. The real result was fear, which allowed the passage of the Patriot Act and a host of other laws that would never have been tolerated prior to the 9/11 attacks.

There's a huge body of research that's been done on this. I highly recommend David Ray Griffin's book, The New Pearl Harbor, for anyone interested in pursuing this any further. I saw enough to convince me that the official explanation requires more credulity than most of the alternative theories, but I haven't tried to solve the mystery of what actually happened that day. Many others have taken up that task, and I urge everyone reading this at least to consider with an open mind, the evidence these people have amassed before making your decision either way. 

  

As far as asking Obama anything...I don't know that I'd bother. I wouldn't expect to get a straight answer from anyone in his position. He may not even have the answers to my questions. I don't think the person holding the office of President necessarily knows all the secrets; I bet people like Dick Cheney and Bush, Sr. have that information. But if I thought he could or would answer, I'd ask Obama who was really behind 9/11, and what's being kept secret about UFOs. 

  

Richard Thomas: Speaking of parapolitics, what are your thoughts on David Icke? Is he somebody you'd like to interview and have you read any of his books? If so, which ones and what did you think? Personally, I'd love to ask him a few questions myself because, if nothing else, he's lived a fascinating life and I think he has a great approach to life.

  

Karyn Dolan: A friend told me about David Icke years ago, and on that recommendation I went to Icke's web site. My first impression was that the man was a complete lunatic, and I didn't look at it again for about a year. The second time I looked at his site, however, some of his predictions had come to pass. So I looked again, and found that a lot of what he said made more sense than I had thought. I'm still trying to come to terms with the whole "shapeshifting, cannibalistic reptilian/humans in the royal family" thing, but my impression is that he feels the same way. I read something he wrote about that in which he said that he knew how crazy it sounded, but people kept coming up to him all over the world and telling him about it. It gave him the impression that there must be something to it, and he put it out there in case someone else could make some sense out of it. 

  

I think now that it's entirely possible that someone was feeding him ridiculous-sounding stories in order to discredit him; or maybe, just maybe, they're actually true. I'm sure a lot of people will be groaning at how gullible I sound, but the truth is that I haven't looked into it, I don't have the facts, and what do I know? The one thing I do believe is that almost anything is possible. I don't accept stories without proof; but I try not to dismiss them without proof, either.

  

I think now that David Icke is a brilliant, perceptive and courageous man. I would be deeply honored to shake his hand one day, and I sincerely hope I get a chance to do that. The bulk of what he writes, and talks about, is our own ability to take charge of our own lives if we just stand up to those who are telling us we have no power. They're lying, and all we have to do is realize it and say no. 

  

Richard Thomas: Back to Through the Keyhole, do you have a favourite topic of discussion and is there a topic you haven't covered yet you really want to? 

  

Karyn Dolan: There are a few things I've been thinking about. I'm interested in ancient and anomalous structures in the United States, like Coral Castle in Florida, America's Stonehenge in New England, and the ancient mounds in the midwest. People write to me all the time and tell me about their work, and often it's something I never heard of before, that sounds really fascinating. That's the best part of the radio show for me, getting to talk with all of these people about their work, getting to ask the questions that I believe my listeners would ask if they were in the room with us. I especially enjoy it when my listeners ask questions through the chat room, when it becomes a conversation that includes more than just two people.

Richard Thomas: You've been doing Through the Keyhole for over two years now, which interviews stand out for you as the most enlightening or surprising and why? 

  

Karyn Dolan: I think I would have to say that my interview with Lloyd Pye about the Starchild Skull really stands out in my mind, because there's this incontrovertible piece of physical evidence that no one can explain away. No one has proven that it's an alien skull, or that of an alien-human hybrid, but no one has been able to prove that it's a fake, either. It's a real skull, and no one can get around that. It has cellular structure that's consistent with, but still different from, normal bone. The most anyone has been able to object to is where the skull has been since it was brought out of a cave in Mexico, saying its "provenance is unproven." Fine, but that doesn't change the fact that it exists, that it's composed of real bone cells, and that no one has yet identified it. 

  

This really appeals to me because I'm fascinated by forensics, by anatomy and physiology and biochemistry. I studied veterinary medicine for a while before we decided to start a family. I may go back to it one day. 

  

Richard Thomas: I've often heard it said by some that the 'Space Brothers' are coming to save us. If that's true great but I can't honestly say I see any real evidence for this interpretation. If anything the UFO occupants (whatever they are or represent) seem ambivalent or worst maybe even hostile towards us. What are your thoughts on this? Karyn Dolan: I'd love to think that the UFO occupants are benevolent. I just don't feel that I have enough information to justify that belief. I've heard people say that if they wanted to harm us, they would have done so by now. To me, this presupposes that we know their motivations. I don't think I know what they want. They may have very good reasons for waiting a while before they harm us. The fact that they're telling us they don't want to harm us doesn't reassure me, either, since we have absolutely no way to judge whether they're telling the truth. 

  

Of course, they may not be as harmful as we think, either. It's true that they haven't tried to round us all up into their spaceships and eat us, or to simply shoot us all with lasers on the ground. (See how goofy it sounds when you actually say it?) Many people have pointed out that they seem to be studying us in the same way that we study animals. Human researchers shoot an animal with a tranquilizer, abduct it, study it, take tissue samples, and return it to the wild -- sometimes in the right place, sometimes not. I like to imagine the animal returning to its family and debating whether to tell them about its abduction experience. Will anyone believe the story? Will they be ridiculed? Will they forever have to fight harder for a place at the watering hole? 

  

Contact with aliens can be a terrifying and traumatic experience for those who live through it. I have a great deal of sympathy for people who've experienced this, and I can't tell you how much I admire the courage of the ones who choose to share their stories. Because that's the only way we learn about what's happening, and that's the only way others who go through the same thing can come to terms with their own experiences. It's incredibly important, and it's incredibly difficult to do. These people are heroes in my eyes, just for living through what they have and not letting it beat them down. 

  

 I think there is no single answer to this question of whether they mean us harm or good. I believe there are several groups here, I don't know how many, and I don't think they all have the same motivations. So trying to ask, "what do they want?" is an oversimplification, to say the least. It's simply not possible to answer that question without a lot more information, beginning with "whom do you mean by 'they'?" 

  

Richard Thomas: I understand you're not a big fan of the children's BBC series The Teletubbies. You even did a lecture on it for the Crash Retreival Conference in 2007. 

  

The Teletubbies was an incredibly popular children's series in the UK about a decade ago, when it first started. I remember my mum had to try really hard to get my younger sister a toy Teletubby for Christmas once, they would sell out incredibly quickly and people would queue for hours to try and get one. There were even stories of people snatching them from other people's trolies if I remember rightly. 

  

What do you think The Teletubbies could represent that's so dangerous? Do you think this might be an example of predictive programming? 

  

Karyn Dolan: I don't really think The Teletubbies in themselves are dangerous; but I don't like thinking that small children will see creatures that so strongly resemble alien greys presented in such a positive way. As we discussed earlier, I don't know what the alien beings want, but I don't feel that I have enough information to trust them. Because of that, I don't want kids to start thinking they can be trusted either, not without knowing a lot more about them. I raised the question as to whether their appearance might be a deliberate effort to make the general public more accepting of beings who look something like that, and almost immediately found government documents that supported that conclusion. I first spoke on this topic at the Roswell UFO Festival in 2007, and immediately afterward so many people contacted me with information and leads that I rewrote the presentation with probably twice as much material, and gave that talk at Roswell in 2008. I also presented this material at the Crash Retrieval Conference and at the UFO Congress in Bordentown, NJ. Not everyone agrees with me, and that's fine. I just wanted to get people thinking about it at first, and now I really do think there's something here that's important for people to know about. 

  

I find it interesting that many people have reacted very positively to my presentation, in particular a police officer who works mainly with child victims of sexual crimes. So a man who spends most of his time defending children from predators is totally in agreement with this concept. In fact, he sought me out at the Roswell UFO Festival last year and told me that he watched my presentation on DVD, then went over it again and again in an attempt to analyze the evidence as he would if he were trying to make a case in criminal court. He said that he hasn't been able to poke a hole in my case, and that's very gratifying to me. Had he found evidence to prove that I was completely wrong, I would have wanted to hear about it; but I was glad to know that my work was checked so thoroughly and apparently passed the acid test. 

  

By contrast, only one or two people have told me they disagree with my conclusions, and they were self-proclaimed contactees. I've found that the people who are most insistent that the aliens mean us no harm are those who believe they have had direct contact with these beings. One could say that they're in a better position to know the truth, since they've had more contact than the rest of us; but they're also in a better position to receive whatever information these beings want to give out about themselves, and we have no way of knowing whether the aliens are telling us the truth. Ultimately, I have to ask myself about the aliens -- would they have a reason to lie? Yes, if they are here with the intent to harm us, they would have every reason to lie. Does that mean they are lying? No, it means they might be, and I don't have enough information to prove it either way. 

  

Richard Thomas: Since you first started looking into this, have you noticed any more TV shows with ET elements in them you think could be significant?

  

Karyn Dolan: I actually haven't, since we don't watch TV. I watch The Office, The Simpsons, Heroes and Lost on DVD, but we never watch live broadcasts of anything anymore because I can't stand the commercials. And yes, our whole family loves the Simpsons. The episode in which Homer sees an alien in the woods and is later visited by the X-Files' Mulder and Scully is priceless! I'm just sorry the Lone Gunmen didn't make it into that episode. 

  

Richard Thomas: Aside from the ET elements in children's programming, what other types of big picture issues in Ufology have caught your interest in recent years? 

  

Karyn Dolan: I've been watching the development of physical trace cases that people like Ted Phillips have been working on. I'm also fascinated by the assortment of anomalies that appear together in some of these cases. The Skinwalker Ranch, that George Knapp and Colm Kelleher wrote about, is a great example of that. Researchers found UFOs and cattle mutilations in conjunction with poltergeist activity and Bigfoot sightings. It proves to me that we can't call ourselves UFO researchers and turn our backs on cryptozoology and other fields; these things are all occurring side by side, and there must be some reason for it, which we'll never discover unless we drop the ego and start focusing on the cases. So many people seem to be adopting an elitist attitude toward this field of study, and it's both silly and self-defeating. Yes, we have to weed out the sad cases of people who don't have real information, but claim to have witnessed UFOs in order to get attention. These people do exist. But we also have to be careful not to dismiss or ignore valuable information.

Richard Thomas: I'm not sure how old your children are but are they showing any signs of becoming interested in either parapolitics or the paranormal at all? Given their para pedigree if I was a betting man I'd put serious money on one or more of them becoming big esoteric stars someday. Would you be happy to see this or is a Dolan dynasty of paranormal and/or parapolitical researchers something your trying to actively discourage? 

Karyn Dolan: I love the term para pedigree; I'm going to have to remember that one! Our son and daughter are both are very comfortable with the fact that there's a lot more to the world than what you can see and touch. They accept the reality of UFOs as a given; if anything, they wonder why anyone would doubt their existence. They've already moved on to the next question, which is where they come from and who's flying them. Both are also very much interested in the spiritual world, with a strong belief in the existence of ghosts, spirits, and psychism. We've experimented occasionally with Zener cards and they both did quite well.

Mike is very much involved with parapolitics, as is noted on our website, keyholepublishing.com. Although he's only thirteen, he belongs to a local environmental group and is also a member of Students for a Democratic Society, and recently attended the G-20 protests in Pittsburgh with them as well as a protest against the war in Afghanistan that was held here in Rochester recently. He's already had experience with tear gas. I have mixed feelings about that; mostly I'm just glad he's home safe, but we're also tremendously proud of him for standing up for what he believes in. 

Our daughter, Elaine, is eleven. She's a very talented musician and filmmaker, and makes a lot of funny animated videos which actually got kudos from someone at the Discovery Channel last year. Both the kids are very talented writers, as well, so I wouldn't be at all surprised to see more books being written in this family. 

Every once in a while, I joke about buying an RV, painting it purple and green like the Mystery Machine on Scooby Doo, and driving it around the country to investigate mysteries. We have a big dog now, and there are four of us, so I guess we could do it. But I guess my cats probably wouldn't enjoy it as much. :-) 

I never try to push the kids into anything. I'll nudge them to try something new and broaden their horizons, but they choose their own interests. I'm pleased to see them pursuing UFO research if this is what grabs them, but I'd be just as pleased to see them in a different field. What matters is that they find the thing that makes them want to jump out of bed in the morning and get back to it, and that's different for everyone. We've homeschooled them both for years, and I think it really helped them learn to think for themselves and make a lot of their own decisions in a way that public schools simply aren't able to do. I have the greatest respect for public school teachers, I just think they're overwhelmed with the amount of work they have to do, and the number of students they have to teach, with limited resources. It's so much easier for me, with only my two, whom I've known since before they were born. We can allow more freedom since we have so much more flexibility. Both of the kids have tried public school, by the way, and excelled at it, though both chose to return to homeschooling.

Richard Thomas: Thanks again Karyn, please tell our readers where they can listen to Through the Keyhole and find any websites or blogs you might have. 

 

Karyn Dolan: Thanks so much for asking me, Richard. It's been a pleasure. Your readers can find out more about me and about my work at keyholepublishing.com/karyndolan. All the information about Through the Keyhole and my guests can be found there, as well as links to listen live or to access the archives. The show airs on the Paranormal Radio Network at paranormalradionetwork.org. Archives can also be found at blackvaultradio.com and on iTunes, by searching for Paranormal Radio Network and selecting Through the Keyhole. As I mentioned earlier, I'm now the Media Relations Director for the International UFO Congress. Information on that organization and their yearly conference in Laughlin, NV, can be found at www.ufocongress.com. 

I also write occasionally for Women of Esoterica, at womenesoterica.blogspot.com. Other contributors to this blog include Regan Lee, Lesley Gunter, and Farah Yurdozu. I'm very pleased to be able to work with such excellent writers. 

And for fun, check out this website, which relates to my day job: I'm an assistant to world-class balloon artist Larry Moss. He calls his work "the fine art of folding air," and you can see his work at www.airigami.com. (I'm trying to get Larry to come to Roswell and fly a balloon UFO over the city.)

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