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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Another Crashed UFO in New Mexico? - Richard's Room 101

So entrenched has the 1947 Roswell crash become in the minds of many UFO researchers, that it is often overlooked that the Roswell incident was not actually the first crashed saucer story to enter the public consciousness. That distinction belongs to another alleged UFO incident in the New Mexico desert. This time near Aztec, a small town in the upper western portion of the state, hundreds of miles away from the Roswell crash debris field found by Mac Brazel’s on the Foster Ranch in the summer of 1947. 

  

In his 1950 best-selling book Behind The Flying Saucers gossip columnist Frank Scully alleged that a flying disk had been found on a ranch 12 miles from Aztec, New Mexico, in 1948, the year after the alleged Roswell crash. In Paul Kimball’s 2003 documentary Aztec 1948 UFO Crash UFO researcher Nick Redfern summed up the alleged events at Aztec: “The jest of the Aztec tale is that in 1948 a flying saucer complete with anywhere between 14 to 18 bodies crashed in Aztec, New Mexico and was recovered in high secrecy by the US government.”

   

According to Scully, he was told about the Aztec crash by a man he called “Dr. Gee”, who was supposedly a specialist in magnetic anomalies working for the US government at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where famously the Manhattan Project to develop the Atomic bomb had been centred. Dr. Glee explained to Scully that the alien vehicle used some kind of magnetic propulsion system to levitate and that this was the reason he was brought in by the US government.

  

In his book and talks, Scully claimed that Dr. Gee had been flown out by helicopter to the New Mexico desert in April 1948 to look at the wreckage of a flying saucer that had crashed there. The Doctor also allegedly told Scully that the deceased bodies of the spaceship’s alien crew, who were described as small humanoid beings just over three feet tall, were also found at the crash site. The bodies of these creatures were said to be hairless, with soft downy skin, and two of the crew may have still been alive for a short time after the impact of the crash. Later accounts of the Roswell incident would also involve the recovery of similarly described deceased alien beings. In their 1994 book The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell authors, Kevin D. Randle and Donald Schmitt wrote: “Stringfield, from his sources, said that he was able to draw a number of conclusions. According to Stringfield, the beings are humanoid, three and a half to four and a half feet tall … There was no hair on the head … In fact, there isn’t much hair on the bodies.” 

  

As well as the biology of the aliens found at the two crash sites, there are also similarities between the Roswell debris found by Mac Brazel a year earlier and the lightweight but durable metal the Aztec saucer was said to be constructed from. In Behind the Flying Saucers Scully wrote: “It looked like aluminium, but wasn’t of a metal known to this earth.” 

  

Another similarity to Roswell are the pictorial symbols similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics alleged to be on the inside of the Aztec craft. The son of Major Jessie Marcel, who was one of the men sent by Colonel Blanchard to investigate the debris found by Brazel on the Foster Ranch, also reported seeing strange purple writing that resembled hieroglyphics on pieces of the Roswell debris. In his book The Roswell Legacy published in 2007 for the 60th anniversary of the Roswell crash, Jesse Marcel Jr. described what he remembered being shown by his father back in July 1947. 

  

“As I looked at the piece, with the light reflecting on the inner surface, I could see what looked like writing. At first I thought of Egyptian hieroglyphics, but there were no animal outlines or figures. They weren’t mathematical figures either; they were more like geometric symbols-squares, circles, triangles, pyramids, and the like. Approximately one-fourth of an inch tall, they were imprinted on the inner surface of the beam, and only on one side. They were not embossed into the I-beam but seemed more like part of its surface.” 

  

The parallels between the alleged alien creatures and materials described by Aztec and Roswell witnesses are intriguing. In The Roswell Incident, published in 1980, the authors Charles Berlitz and William Moore even speculated that the Aztec crash story was a garbled version of the Roswell crash. 

  

There are some big problems with the credibility of the Aztec crash story, however. Scully’s book was debunked in two articles in True magazine published in 1952 and 1956. Written by San Francisco Chronicle reporter J. P. Cahn, the two articles revealed that Dr. Gee, who he named as Leo GeBauer, and Scully’s other main source Silas Newton, were in fact two slick oil conmen who had hoaxed Scully. 

  

The Aztec incident has been revived somewhat in recent years by a book by Scott Ramsey, a UFO researcher and successful businessman from North Carolina. One anomaly highlighted by Ramsey that should give sceptics pause for thought is a mystery road off of Hart Canyon which leads to what he believes was the crash site, a deforested area surrounded by trees with broken branches as if something had flattened the area. The mysterious dirt road doesn’t appear on any road maps of the area until around 2003, and it is unknown where the road came from or who made it. Ramsey suggests that the road was made by military personnel attempting to extricate the Aztec saucer after it was forced to make an emergency landing at Hart Canyon. This might seem like wild speculation, however, there is some physical proof at the alleged crash site that something happened there in 1948. 

  

Adding to the mystery is a concrete slab sticking up out of the ground at the alleged crash site. Like the road, there are no records or reasons why it should be there in the middle of nowhere. Ramsey believes the slab was made by the military to support one of the legs of a crane used to carry out the crashed saucer. Laboratory tests have also shown that the concrete slab dates to around 1948, the year of the alleged saucer crash.

  

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The Mummy Returns: Illuminati Cloning? - Richard's Room 101

Do the global elite, sometimes called the Illuminati, plan on using cloning and other emerging technologies to give themselves immortality?

   

It is commonly believed inside conspiracy circles that the Illuminati secret society network that is allegedly working towards establishing a world government (New World Order) is thousands of years old, with its origins in Ancient Egypt and Babylon. The big problem with this belief often pointed out by sceptics is that it doesn’t make much sense that anyone would spend their entire life working towards something they would never see completed to benefit from.

   

But what if they knew that they could be brought back to life someday?

 

In the second Star Trek spin-off series Deep Space Nine, a species called the Vorta are given eternal life, of a sort, by their masters the Changelings in return for administrating a vast interspecies galactic empire called The Dominion. Whenever a Vorta dies, he or she is instantly resurrected via cloning. In the dark sci-fi series, we watch one Vorta called Weyoun die several times, only to be brought back, sometimes in the same episode.

  

Paralleling Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek universe, since 1997, when a team of British scientists announced that they had successfully cloned Dolly the sheep, there have been many rumours that humans have also been cloned. Perhaps the most bizarre of these claims is that President Obama could be a clone and not just any clone, but the resurrected ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten, who the President does bear a striking resemblance to.

   

The father of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, Akhenaten had a far greater impact on world history than his more famous son. The “Heretic Pharaoh” abandoned the traditional Egyptian gods in favour of worshipping a single deity, Aten, who was associated with the sun. Because of this, some historians credit Akhenaten as being the creator of the world’s first monotheistic religion. This might explain why the Illuminati would choose Akhenaten above other more famous Egyptian royalty to be brought back to life. It has even been speculated that the sun god religion started by the Pharaoh could be the secret religion of the Illuminati practiced today. For more information about this read Freeman Fly’s “Obama clone of an Egyptian Pharaoh” page on Freemantv.com. 

  

Whether or not “Atenism” was really the first religion to worship one god, there is something we can be sure of. Like all Ancient Egyptians, Akhenaten would have had no doubt about living again after his death: something which is made theoretically possible by the mummification process which preserved this ancient Egyptian Pharaoh’s DNA for cloning. 

  

While there is a resemblance between Obama and the Ancient Egyptian King, Obama does not have the elongated features that Akhenaten is depicted as having. This could be because these features are environmental rather than genetic in nature, but there is no consensus on why the Pharaoh is shown with such unusual-looking features. 

  

With controversy still surrounding the US President’s birth certificate, perhaps it isn’t surprising that conspiracy theories about Obama’s ‘real’ origins should pop up, but this isn’t the only clone conspiracy theory linked to the 44th occupant of the White House. 

  

In 2009 Fox News reported that an Indonesian magazine photographer, Ilham Anas, was collecting pay cheques appearing in advertising because of his strong resemblance to the President. 

   

The idea of a world leader being cloned strongly echoes the 1978 film The Boys from Brazil, in which Adolf Hitler is brought back to life as a teenager living in the 1970s. In this story, it is Joseph Mengele, the infamous Nazi Doctor notorious for his experiments on twins during WWII, who clones the Nazi Fuhrer in the sick hope of reviving the Third Reich.

  

The obvious problem with using cloning as a means of bringing the dead back to life is also explored in the film. A copy no matter how perfect is still just a copy. The boys Mengele creates may have the same DNA as Hitler, but without the life experiences of the Nazi Fuhrer, they are still completely different individuals. 

   

One answer to this problem would be to download a person’s consciousness into a computer until a new body is ready. This concept is used in the science fiction series Lexx, where one of the chief antagonists is a mad scientist called Mantrid who has transferred his “life essence” into a computer in order to survive the death of his body. 

  

Other science fiction series have also used this idea as a plot device. In the reimagined series of Battlestar Galactica, a race of biological robots identical to humans called Cylons use “resurrection ships” to download into a new body aboard one of these space vessels upon death.

   

Like human cloning “consciousness downloading” is another concept that began in science fiction, but could soon be a reality. In July 2012 the mainstream media reported that a Russian entrepreneur had contacted a list of billionaires offering them eternal life in return for funding a hi-tech research project called “Avatar”. The goal of which was “transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality” by the year 2045.

  

With the announcement on 9 March (2013) that the first genetically engineered humans have already been born, it is clear science fact is rapidly catching up to science fiction. The idea that an American President could be a clone of an Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh may sound like a clever spin on The Mummy films, with technology replacing black magic. But it would appear that the Ancient Egyptians may have been right about mummification guaranteeing them eternal life after all.

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Doctor Who and Transhumanism - Richard's Room 101

Transhumanism is a movement that advocates advancing human evolution via artificial means, such as genetic engineering, cloning, and other emerging technologies. Proponents see certain aspects of the human condition such as old age and sickness as unnecessary and therefore undesirable. By merging with technology Transhumanists believe humans will be able to evolve into a new race of Transhumans free from these weaknesses. 

 

  

While it might sound like pure fantasy, since 1997 when a team of British scientists announced the cloning of Dolly the sheep, science fact has quickly been catching up to science fiction. On 9 March (2013), it was reported that the first genetically engineered humans have been born, sparking debate about the morality of science being used to guide human evolution: a subject first explored in Doctor Who in 1966 with the creation of the Cybermen. 

  

After Terry Nation withdrew his Daleks from Doctor Who, it was decided to introduce new star monsters to the series. But who or what could come close to replacing the Daleks? That was the difficult conundrum then script editor Gerry Davis posed to the unofficial scientific advisor to the series Kit Pedler as Doctor Who approached its fourth season. 

  

Reflecting on his own fears as a Medical Doctor of “dehumanising medicine” Pedler delivered in spades. Pedler imagined a race of human beings who had been forced by circumstances beyond their control to slowly replace most – if not all – of their vital organs and limbs with steel and plastic replacements. Ultimately even replacing large parts of their brains with computers and neurochemically programming out their emotions altogether. In effect, surgically erasing all traces of their humanity and transplanting it with cold technology and uncompromising logic. Pedler and Davis called these new nightmarish life forms Cybermen. 

 

In the 1974 Target Book adaptation of the first Cyber-story, The Tenth Planet, Gerry Davis described the fictional origins of the Cybermen: 

 

“Centuries ago by our Earth time, a race of men on the far distant planet Telos sought immortality. They perfected the art of cybernetics, the reproduction of machine functions in human beings. As bodies became old and diseased, they were replaced limb by limb, with plastic and steel. Finally, even the human circulation and nervous system were recreated, and brains replaced by computers. The first Cybermen were born.” 

 

Somewhat ironically, though, despite this apparent evolutionary leap forward Pedler reasoned that such beings would be driven solely by the most primitive of biological instincts … the will to survive whatever the cost. A frightening contradiction that made itself felt much more prevalently later on when Pedler and Davis decided to revisit the initial concept behind the Cybermen for the BBC series Doomwatch in the Seventies, oddly enough in an episode starring second Doctor, Patrick Troughton. Far from battling the Cybermen, though, on this occasion, Troughton does everything he can to become one of them! In the words of Troughton’s character: “I keep trying to tell them machines can’t catch diseases!” 

  

In the season two episode In The Dark a terminally ill man Alan McArthur (Patrick Troughton) desperately tries to prolong his life artificially by replacing his dying body piece by piece with experimental life support systems. Although the experiment is successful it has a terrible price. McArthur begins to think of himself as well as other human beings as nothing more than biological machines. Ultimately McArthur plans on cheating death forever by becoming a living brain attached to a dead machine. 

  

It is difficult to appreciate today but the spare-part surgery envisioned by Pedler was a rapidly emerging technology at the time. In 1960, Belding Scribner invented the Scribner shunt, a breakthrough kidney dialysis machine, and in December 1967 the first successful human heart transplant took place at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. While, in hindsight, Pedler’s concerns about these developments might seem premature back in the Sixties and Seventies, are they still so in 2013? 

  

In July last year (2012), the mainstream media reported that a Russian entrepreneur had contacted a list of billionaires offering them eternal life in return for funding a hi-tech research project called “Avatar”. The goal of which was “transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality” by the year 2045. 

  

Perhaps it is more likely, however, that instead of reinventing ourselves limb by limb as Pedler envisioned, the real danger is doing it gene by gene. Like heart transplants and dialysis machines such technology will no doubt save the lives of countless people but we must be cautious that in saving lives we do not begin to think of humans as mere biological machines. As Professor Quist points out in In The Dark human beings are separated from animals by two factors: knowledge of our own mortality and human emotion.

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Talk Radio Europe - Richard Thomas Para-News Book Interview

Is the Bermuda Triangle a good place for an alien base? 

  

Kenny Jones interviews me about my new book Para-News: UFOs, Ghosts, Conspiracy, Cryptids - and More.

A Room 101 Interview with Joy Porter

Joy Porter is Professor of Indigenous History within the History Department at Hull University and the author of Native American Freemasonry: Associationalism and Performance in America, a book the historian was writing when she was one of my lecturers at Swansea University back in 2007. I remember once in class the subject of the Freemasons came up (not hard considering George Washington and many other of the founding fathers of the United States were Freemasons) and after class I got into what must have seemed a bit of a odd conversation to the mainstream academic about secret societies, in particular the bizarre antics of Republicans and Democrats inside the Bohemian Grove. After seeing the Indian Freemasonry book was out, I decided to catch up with my old teacher and ask her some questions about the new book and the role of Freemasonry in the early United States.

Richard Thomas: Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions Joy. The first question I have is how did you go from writing and researching about Native Americans to writing a book about the history of Freemasonry in the United States?

Joy Porter: My first book was a biography of a key Seneca-Iroquois named Arthur Parker and he was a very committed Freemason. That got me thinking.

Richard Thomas: I know you are from Ireland and in one lecture I remember the topic of the Freemasons came up and someone in class said that in Northern Ireland there are a lot of Freemasons in the police and government. What were your initial thoughts, if any, about the secretive organization and did writing the book challenge your perceptions at all?

Joy Porter: To be honest, my knowledge of N. Irish Freemasonry is limited - that'd be a whole other book! My old friend Jim Smyth at Notre Dame has written about it in terms of Irish history- he's your man.

Richard Thomas: Thanks to the internet the Freemasons are famous for their strange rituals and costumes. Did you see any of these, what did you think? And in your opinion is Freemasonry a religion?

Joy Porter: In the US for many men it has served as a religion of sorts, but the organization itself has been very concerned over time to make clear that it is not a religion. This has not prevented organized faiths such as Catholicism from feeling very threatened by it.

Richard Thomas: The perception, of course, is that the Freemasons are an elitist organisation. So I was initially surprised to learn that Native Americans have been involved in Freemasonry for centuries. How did this happen and what were the motives of the white men who brought Native Americans into their lodges and how has this relationship changed over time?

Joy Porter: Answering that took me a whole book! In short, US Freemasonry accepted elite Indians because of the imagined world Indians were deemed to inhabit and because of the Indian relationship to ritual, something Masons respected. Once within Freemasonry, Indian Masons were able to retain aspects of their tribal and pan-Indian identities that they could not develop in the same ways in the non-Masonic world. I argue that the Indian Masonic relationship over time has largely been very positive for Indian and non-Indian Masons alike.

Richard Thomas: Given the secrecy involved in Freemasonry, historically how have non-Freemasons in the Native American community viewed Indians who become Freemasons?

Joy Porter: This is an enormous question that is another research project in its own right but in my experience at least, I found limited evidence of Indian folk resenting Indian Masons. But then, I wasn't looking for that data.

Richard Thomas: Many of America's founding fathers were admitted Freemasons. How important do you think Freemasonry was in the American Revolution?

Joy Porter: It had a significance certainly. The best book on the topic is by Steven Bullock.

Richard Thomas: Overall do you think Freemasonry has been a force for good in America, or does the secretive group deserve some of its bad reputation?

Joy Porter: Certainly a force for good in my opinion. Freemasonry upheld the colour line but so did most organizations when this was the norm. It gave a great deal to many communities. I think community-based associations generally are positive as they bring people together but as with any grouping, it will by definition be selective. Associations are as much about who is excluded as who is included but the evidence I found suggests that Freemasonry gave many men over time a sense of solace and brotherhood in a world increasingly bereft of such compensations.

Richard Thomas: Thanks Joy. What are some of the other books you've written?

Joy Porter: I've just published another book with Praeger, Land & Spirit in Native America (2012). It looks at how we comprehend wilderness and Indian land, including Indian "Sacrifice Areas" in the nuclear Southwest.

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A Room 101 Interview with Regan Lee

Regan Lee is a prolific writer, penning columns for UFO Magazine and Binnall of America as well as writing and publishing a book on the Oregon Bigfoot legend. Bigfoot and UFOs might sound like an unlikely combination, researchers in both fields sometimes dismiss each other, but there are some parallels.

One of the many categories of alleged alien beings associated with close encounters is known as the "Animal" type. These are large furry humanoid creatures which closely resemble the famous ape-man. More generally, though, like UFOs far from there just being one definitive answer to the Bigfoot mystery there are probably many explanations.

Some Bigfoot sightings might be explained by the traditional hypothesis that there may still be a species of undisclosed primate roaming the forests and mountains of the world, but other sightings might have more exotic explanations, including extraterrestrial visitors and even beings from other dimensions. In my interview with Regan we discussed all of these possibilities.

Richard Thomas: Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions Regan, I want to focus on your Bigfoot research in this interview. I think I first became interested in Bigfoot because of my interest in Doctor Who, the Yeti or Tibetan Bigfoot are in two classic stories from the series, The Abominable Snowmen and the Web of Fear. How did your own interest in Bigfoot begin?

Regan Lee: I've always been interested in anything Fortean or unusual, in mysteries "of the weird..." I don't remember a time when I wasn't curious about all these things. But probably my interest with Bigfoot really took off when I moved to Oregon, and I came across Bigfoot encounters connected with UFO sightings. Stan Johnson's story, an Oregon LTW (long-term witness), and other similar tales in Oregon, had me go from "this is ridiculous! --Bigfoot and UFOs all in one tale -- to "this is really juicy Fortean stuff!" I think I'm open to the stranger aspects of Bigfoot encounters because of my own lifelong experiences with UFOs and the paranormal in general.

  

Richard Thomas: Have you ever had a Bigfoot sighting yourself, or are there any sightings that particularly impressed you?

  

Regan Lee: I haven't had a Bigfoot sighting myself. I did have one odd experience while discussing Stan Johnson's experiences with someone who knew him. Now, Johnson's story involves psychic communications with the Sasquatch, travels in UFOs, spiritual and religious epiphanies, healings... a sort of UFO contactee-Bigfoot combo. I met Johnson at a UFO conference; he was very charismatic. I literally felt "buzzy" as he was talking; he exuded an energy, that was for sure.

  

So there I am, talking about Johnson with this person, when a cone of light comes down from the ceiling and completely surrounds us. I was seeing coloured lights and everything, feeling very "buzzy" as I call these psychic connections of mine. Sound was muffled, as if cotton balls were stuffed in my ears. I thought I was going to vibrate up towards through the ceiling! When our conversation ended, the cone lifted up, back through the ceiling, and everything was back to normal. I've had a couple of other things like that happen -- not directly related to Sasquatch, but connected in a roundabout way.

I told this story to a woman I met at the first OSS (Oregon Sasquatch Symposium) in Eugene. She told me that it was "spirit" that had manifested, responding to being called, in a sense. Or responding to the energy generated while talking about Sasquatch in that context. Come to think of it, it was a lot like a very intense ghostly apparition -- a mist or ectoplasm -- I had once experienced in a haunted house.

Richard Thomas: Probably the most famous Bigfoot sighting was captured on the Paterson film. What do you think of the footage?

  

Regan Lee: I saw that film in the theatre the first time in, I think, the late 60s, maybe early 70s. I think it was the Pickfair theatre in L.A. Well, it's one of those things where I keep going back and forth, but I lean towards it's a real film of a real Sasquatch. I have days when I'm not so sure, but I then I go back the other way and say, "Yeah, it's real." Despite the hundreds of attempts to debunk the film, in my opinion no one has been successful in that. Something about the way the creature moves... not so easy to reject as fake. I also believe Bob Gimlin, who I saw at the OSS and just following him through the years. He's either a very good lair or actor or, he's telling the truth. I think he's telling the truth.

Richard Thomas: My own belief is that like UFOs there is no single explanation for Bigfoot sightings, some might be undiscovered animals and others might have some more esoteric explanations. In Doctor Who the Yeti are robots created by an alien intelligence to conquer the earth. You also write about UFOs, do you think there might be an alien connection or something equally strange with Bigfoot?

Regan Lee: I agree with your take Richard. There is a connection with UFOs, what we call aliens, and all kinds of weirdness and Bigfoot. There are plenty of stories of encounters involving Bigfoot and other strange things that forces us to consider them seriously. When I say "there's a connection" I mean that there are stories out there fro witnesses that we have to consider. What that means, is another story. Unfortunately, there are those in Bigfoot research that stick strictly to the flesh and blood angle and ignore or reject there weirder accounts. I have no idea what it all means. Like UFOs, it's tangled, complicated, and no one has the answer. I do think Bigfoot is a lot more than ust flesh and blood -- it's certainly not a simple "giant ape" -- there's a lot more going on here than that.

  

Richard Thomas: I think Mac Tonnies might have been on to something with his Crypto-terrestrial hypothesis to explain UFO sightings. His idea was that instead of beings from outer space, UFOs were really the work of a parallel civilization right here on the earth, possibly another species of human. Have you seen any evidence that far from being lower on the evolutionary ladder, or, a missing link, Bigfoot might be a parallel species to man and might be a lot more advanced than we think? For instance, do you think stories about Bigfoot being able to go invisible might be proof of them possessing superior technology like a Star Trek cloaking device or something similar?

  

Regan Lee: It is tragic that Mac died so young. He was really on to something with his theory. I still hang to an ET explanation for some of the UFO stuff -- but I have been thinking the past few years that it's much more than that, or, more specifically, not only that. Call them Djinn, or whatever, but entities do exist right alongside of us. I think they are more aware of us all the time than we are of them. Sometimes we get glimpses of them, experience them, much to their amusement. I don't know if they control that or if it's just the way it is. I base this opinion on the research and experiences of others but also, on my own direct experiences with entities.

 

I don't think Bigfoot posses literal technology -- like they have machines underground or off in some hidden forest laboratory. Although, Peter Guttilla, in his book Bigfoot Files, relates some very strange stories of Bigfoot, or Bigfoot type creatures, wearing a sort of tool belt with all kinds of electronic gadgets. Lots of other weird stories like that.

I think that, very possibly, Sasquatch posses abilities that allows them to manipulate energy, that causes us to experience things on some level we interpret as, say, paranormal.

Richard Thomas: In 2010 there were reports that Bigfoot had been shot. What was your reaction to this news and do you think we'll ever have definitive proof of the existence of Bigfoot? (I know a Russian expedition made some claims we'll ever have definitive proof of the existence of Bigfoot?

  

Regan Lee: I didn't believe the story, and I hoped it wasn't true. I am a NO KILL/NO CAPTURE person: very adamant about that. I've offended some in the Bigfoot community by being so... opinionated, I guess, about this, but when it comes to killing another being, I am opinionated. Whatever Bigfoot is, it's clearly highly intelligent, and no doubt as intelligent as us humans. Maybe more so. But the NO KILL stance isn't based solely on intelligence -- as if that's the only criteria. It's a living being, clearly wants to be left alone in the sense it hasn't come out and camped out on the local wildlife management steps-- who are we to go out and kill it, just because we want to? I know all the arguments about doing it for science, and I say: I don't care. It's not justification enough.

 

Okay, I went off on a tangent there. Back to topic. Like UFOs, I don't know if we'll ever get definitive proof that will satisfy everyone within all the infrastructures that Bigfoot exists. Both have remained maddeningly elusive for a very long time. That elusiveness is part of the phenomena. It's supposed to be forever elusive. I'm okay with that but it frustrates others, and some refuse to accept that. It's not hopeless; within that elusiveness answers can be found. It's difficult to explain. It's sort of a state of being.

I just don't think definitive proof will ever be produced because Sasquatch isn't "definitive."

Richard Thomas: For readers who want to begin their own research are there any books you would suggest they read, magazines they should subscribe to, or groups they should join?

  

Regan Lee: I come from a kind of folklore, Fortean perspective, so I'd recommend books that discuss the stranger side of Sasquatch encounters. Researchers like Stan Gordon,Henry Franzoni, Peter Guttilla, Lisa Shiel, Nick Redfern. Lee Harper wrote a book with Ida Kannenberg, My Brother is a Hairy Man. Sali Sheppherd- Wolford's Valley of the Skookum about her experiences with Bigfoot years ago; she's the mother of Bigfoot researcher Autumn Williams. Williams isn't specially about the paranormal or UFOs, she does solid field researcher, but she's open and sympathetic to the kinds of accounts that some others may reject or scoff at. There's Jack Jack Lapserits and Henry Franzoni. I'd also suggest writers like Patrick Harpur, Colin Bennett, George Hansen, who don't write about Bigfoot necessarily, but their views on the paranormal in general and a sort of Gestalt perspective.

  

There are a lot of blogs out there that I like but among the Bigfoot blogs that address the stranger side of things: Nick Redfern has something like, four hundred blogs or so; I like Thom Powell's thomsquatch,Lisa Shiel's blogs , Autumn Willaims at Oregon Bigfoot.com and Melissa Hovey's The Search for Bigfoot, Lon Strickler's Phantoms and Monsters. there are a lot more I can't think of but there are so many dedicated people out there sharing their experiences about Sasquatch and related subjects, it's just amazing.

See if there's a state or local Bigfoot group in your area and join up, depending on their policies. Some are very vocal in their insistence that no discussion of anything paranormal or weird take place. Even if you're not intending to do field research, or believe in a strictly flesh and blood creature, ti's good to take part. I belong to a local Bigfoot research organization that is definitely primary flesh and blood, field research but they're open to other theories; and I joined a few others that aren't local, but good people and again, there's a diversity of members regarding all kinds of experiences. So find the one that fits who you are.

No matter what anyone says about all this; Bigfoot, UFOs, ghosts... no one knows everything and no one has a magic key to unlock the mystery. You are entitled to follow your own truths in all this and make up your own mind. For myself, I change my ideas about things as I continue to both experience events as well as where my studies take me.

Richard Thomas: Thanks Regan, where can readers find your columns and blogs?

  

Regan Lee: I contribute online to UFO Digest, UFO Mystic, Monster Track, Tim Binnall's Binnall of America, Skylaire Alfvegren's League of Western Fortean Intermediates and I run several blogs of my own; Frame 352 is my Bigfoot blog, Mothman Flutterings, Animal Forteana are others. And of course, there's The Orange Orb, Vintage U.F.O. and Saucer Sightings, which deals with UFOs. I've written articles for some of Tim Beckley's books and I write a column for UFO Magazine.

  

Thank you, Richard! You do great work and it's an honour.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA