UFOs and Egg Nog

Copyright 2012, InterAmerica, Inc.



The January/February 2012 magazine The Atlantic
has an article – The Nutmeg Bender by Wayne Curtis [Page 31] – that reports how the ubiquitous spice, nutmeg, produces (in regular quantities) hallucinogenic effects on the people ingesting it.



“…nutmeg has been ‘reported to mediate visual, auditory, tactile, and kinaesthetic hallucinations (notably the sensation of floating)’

…the Benedictine abbess Hildegard of Bingen noted the mind-altering effects of nutmeg all the way back in the 12th Century.”

The writer, Curtis, reported that another writer, after having some nutmeg “when walking…felt as though he was “floating to his destination.”

Curtis also cites Malcolm X (in his autobiography) writing, from his prison experience, that “a penny matchbox of nutmeg had the kick of three or four reefers.”

And after trying spoonfuls of nutmeg, Curtis, himself, felt a slight floating sensation, and days later still feeling “as though a mild electrical current is passing through my brain.”

In the UFO literature there is little or no mention of nutmeg or other food accoutrements eaten by those who’ve reported UFO or alien encounters: the Hills, Travis Walton, Hickson and Parker, et al.



That is, no UFO researcher queried or queries what foods UFO witnesses had or have partaken of before their “experience.”

What did Betty and Barney Hill eat before their New Hampshire trek home in 1961?

What were Hickson and Parker eating while fishing off the pier in Pascagoula?

What did Walton and his co-workers eat just before he was “abducted”?



No one asked?

One might assume that the crew accompanying Mr. Walton and Walton, himself, had access to weed (marijuana) and even used it on occasion.



Did they do so the night that Travis Walton was, allegedly, pulled into a flying saucer?

Or did they have food that has side-effects, like that of nutmeg, in their lunch pails?

Of course, LSD and opiates, generally, have been suggested for UFO visions and encounters.

But no one has researched – and it’s too late to do so now – what foods UFO abductees or those, like the people in Jose Caravaca’s “distortion” events, had partaken of before their experiences.

Something as common as nutmeg is found in cakes, egg nog, and other main dishes.

Could such an ingredient have produced the visions and experiences that we follow as UFO encounters of a tangible kind?

Further on in The Atlantic, a piece by Cullen Murphy ( a name used in a noted Seinfeld show about a Nazi advocate whose name and persona George Constanza adopted to amusing consequences) – Torturer’s Apprentice [Page 72 ff.] – cites this caveat by philosopher John Locke:

“…no matter how much certainty is in our hearts, human beings cannot know for sure which truths are true, and that believing we can leads us down a terrible path.”



This is what happened in the UFO incidents cited here (and others): researchers believed what they wanted, but never really asked all the questions that needed to be asked, even something as simple as “What did you eat right before your UFO sighting/encounter?”

RR

Anti-Semitic Socorro?

Copyright 2012, InterAmerica, Inc.

One of our readers discovered a United Press article [4/20/64] about the Socorro sighting which you can read by clicking on the link here:

UPI
From UFO Digest

In that article, the false Socorro symbol is proffered:



This is the symbol that Hynek, the Air Force, and Ray Stanford tried to foist off on the public and media as the insignia that Lonnie Zamora saw.

Their contrived insignia didn’t fly as ufologists and researchers subsequently discovered the original drawing that Officer Zamora provided:



But there is an interesting aspect of the concocted, fake insignia:



The contrived symbol resembles an image used by anti-Semitics, as in the cover for the despicable Protocols of Zion:



Why did they select and promote use of the Zion symbol they wanted the public to see as the insignia of an unidentified craft?



Or is this just a mere coincidence?

RR

The Socorro Imbroglio: ET, Hoax, Mistaken Observation, or ?

Copyright 2012, InterAmerica, Inc.



I’m sorry to regurgitate the Lonnie Zamora/Socorro sighting of 1964 but it keeps rearing its head, even when we attempt to take only an element from it – the insignia that Officer Zamora said he saw.

Steve Sawyer, a “ufologist” on the fringe of the UFO community, without blog or web-site, who parasitically attached bromides to others’ sites and blogs or inserts infrequent commentary at UFO UpDates, insists that the Stanford “mythology” that Officer Zamora was induced to draw an insiginia/symbol that was different from what he actually observed.

We’ve addressed the issue over and over again, as have others who visit here.

And we concluded that the story of a concocted symbol, to thwart hoaxers from duplicating Zamora’s observation, was a shill by the Air Force, Hynek, and ultimately Ray Stanford’s treating it as real occurrence, to throw off UFO investigators; that is, the disinformers wished to side-track UFO researchers, because the symbol is the vital clue as to what Zamora actually saw.



Mr. Sawyer perpetuates, or tries to, the concocted mythology, because he’s an intrepid supporter of the views held by the UFO old-guard, and wishes to remain in their good graces for some obtuse reason, not quite clear to me and others.

Here’s Zamora’s quoted observation:



That aside – we dismiss Mr. Sawyer’s sad attempts to keep the UFO phenomenon attuned to the ET scenario as espoused by UFO geezers – let’s see what we have experienced of late about Socorro…

Anthony Bragalia bludgeoned me yesterday [2/7/12] with his litany of circumstantial “evidence” that Officer Zamora was “punked” – Bragalia’s word.

Mr. Bragalia says that Officer Zamora was a cop who hassled New Mexico Institute of Technology students so they set out to create a UFO hoax to get back at him.



Mr. Bragalia has marshaled, I admit, some intriguing material that indicates a hoax may be a possibility.

And a hoax has been on the Socorro table since the sighting (in 1964).

We, like others – David Rudiak among them – dismiss the hoax hypothesis as ludicrous.

The observation by other witnesses takes Bragalia’s pyrotechnics and balloon scenario out of the reach of possibility.

Moreover, Mr. Bragalia hasn’t got a confession from any hoaxer, even after much diligence to find one.

He has found hints, but no one will admit to hoaxing the 1964 event, even after forty-eight years.

Mr. Bragalia’s “theory” is exquisite in its wayward presentation but too convoluted to pass muster with sensible people.

It is a fiction hoping to pass as fact.

Then we have those who think that Zamora observed an extraterrestrial craft, which is supported by other observations in the same time-frame: La Madera et cetera.

I accept the possibility but have leaned toward the idea that Officer Zamora observed a Hughes prototypical lunar lander that went astray, as explained by this man:

From the History Channel

Our hypothesis can be found earlier here, at this blog,, and at our RRRGroup blog, among other places, for those still interested at this point.

There was an Indiana University engineer who recalled a story he read in a magazine, in the 60s, about a balloon escapade by a paper company, a balloon excursion that went awry and came down in New Mexico.

We looked for that magazine article fro a very long time, and everywhere – internet archives, library archives, et cetera – to no avail, although some paper company logos do look like Zamora’s symbol -- the one he drew – the real one!



(In that vein, a contributor to our blog – Matthew Gilleece – found Hughes logos that also looked like the Zamora symbol drawing.)



My point here is that a seminal UFO sighting is rife for interpretation and debate still, after all thse years.

And why? Because it has elements that can be seen to support a number of explanations.

The ET explanation isn’t easily ruled out, in context of other sightings at the time.

The hoax scenario is a possibility and has been one since 1964, supported by much circumstantial material found by Anthony Bragalia recently.

The IU engineer’s balloon tale is still slightly open as I see it.

And my Hughes Aircraft/Toolco/CIA/Raven prototype misadventure remains viable for those who really understand what was going on the New Mexico area in 1964 pertaining to space adventures and experimentation.

But the bottom line for me has been that symbol - - that insignia that Lonnie Zamora saw and drew.

The problem is that the drawing has been compromised by the Stanford story and its promotion by such peripheral UFO stalwarts as Steve Sawyer.

If we can agree on what the actual symbol was, we might be able to trace it back to its originators: ET, NMIT hoaxers, a paper company, or Howard Hughes….

RR

What UFO species should we be studying?

We have a slight dilemma here, and it’s this…

Some of our rabid visitors wish to pursue, forever, the Roswell incident. (We don’t.)



Some like Alien Abduction stories. (We don’t.)



Some like archived anomalies seen in the sky. (We don’t.)



UFO lights in the night sky or shiny UFOs in the daytime sky have fans.



Encounters with strange beings or weird aircraft are popular fare for some.



Some believe that UFOs are a psychological operation (or psy-op) of governments and/or military constructs.



And then there are those who think the whole UFO phenomenon (or phenomena) is a neurological or psychological aberration, reconstructed from mass media imagery.



Thus we have a fragmented topic that needs, we keep writing, specialization or a division stratification not unlike that in biological classifications: phylum (or phyla), genus, species, et cetera.

We’d be interested to know what UFO category is your favorite, or the one that you think needs the most attention.

RR

UFOs: Distortion and/or Insanity?

Copyright 2012, InterAmerica, Inc.



While some us think that UFO encounters – not UFO sightings per se – may be hallucinatory in essence, others (Jose Caravaca, Jacques Vallee, and some visitors here) believe that witnesses to UFO or UFO-like landings and encounters are dealing with real tangible or near-tangible events.

Who or what creates those “events” is up for grabs – some saying the “who” are extraterrestrials and others (Caravaca and Vallee) thinking the who or what is something a bit more esoteric than ETs.

My contention that mental aberrations account for some if not all of the events is questionable by virtue of what one finds when they look for aberrational images from those who can be said to be on the cusp of insanity or actually insane.

That is, if one examines the output -- writings, drawings, art and other “creative” outpourings by those adjudicated by psychiatry or commonsense to be off kilter mentally – one can only conclude that those who’ve reported UFO encounters are not mentally incapacitated in the same way as those who are permanently hallucinatory.

However, one can make the case for temporary insanity, but that seems, to me, to be a stretch too.

I think that UFO encounters may be exactly what they appear to be: interactions between something absolutely bizarre, maybe even other-worldly, and normal human beings.

For example, here are drawings and art work by people on the fringe of reality, mentally.

These images come from these two books:





(And one can find many more examples of hallucinatory art via a Google search using “outsider art” as the search criterion.)

The images:



















Now here are some paintings by Henri Rousseau, who wasn’t insane, surely, but had an immature, naïve imagination when it came to his artistic output:







Would someone, with a similar mental make-up, have visions that made him or her think they had an other-worldly encounter?

Perhaps. That angle might be profitably pursued.

There was one drawing, by a six-year-old, Sasha Powers of Truro, Massachusetts, that I find interesting:



That is not outsider art but, rather, an example of some imagery that influenced this child, or a recounting of something she experienced perhaps.

But, all-in-all, one has to consider that UFO encounters differ significantly, from the images of those who have aberrant mental conditions, and therefore UFO encounters need to be taken at face value rather than be evaluated psychologically or neurologically.

I hate that that may be so, but mental quirks don’t seem to apply, at least not in the psychotic arena.

But there is the possibility that something else, besides a total mental break-down, is at work, something less than paranoia but something not quite right either – something that only a few experience while the whole of mankind doesn’t.

What that mechanism is may be Caravaca’s Distortion explanation, but why distortion at all?

It doesn’t make sense, logically, aberrantly, or in any other way….so far.

RR

Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and UFOs

Copyright 2012, InterAmerica, Inc.

The great, depressive philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, like other philosophers (Plato, Berkeley, Hume., Kant, Fichte, et al.) thought that reality was built on the world we see (or experience) – phenomena and the world as it really is – noumena.



I’m not going to get into a philosophical discourse here, as philosophers are only little less nutty than psychiatrists, but the idea, the thought, that we humans are subject to various realities, at least two, comes into play when we find proposals like that of Vallee and Caravaca about what is going on when UFO encounters take place.

And how does Nietzsche factor into this?



Nietzsche eschewed religion, science, and philosophy, itself, allowing that we (humans) have explained nothing; such phenomena (as that perceived) is as magical to us now as it was to the most primitive of our species. [Introducing Nietzsche by Gane and Chan, Totem Books, NY, 1998, Page 59]

And Nietzsche’s nihilistic view is applicable to our ongoing discussion about what is happening, really happening, when Caravaca’s “witnesses” have a UFO or UFO-like encounter:

“The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.” [Ibid, Page 35]

Marx is brought into the discussion by Gane and Chan (regarding morality, but applicable for our views here):



“On the one side we have the events, on the other we have human interpretation of these events (but only one version will be correct).” [Ibid, Page 113]

Schopenhauer’s view that “behind the appearance of [things] lies the reality of my will or desire. This will does not exist like my body in time and space – it is not a physical entity at all, but underlies the whole of animate and inanimate nature throughout the cosmos.” [Ibid, Page 9]

“This timeless, non-physical cosmic force doesn’t lead Schopenhauer to the idea of a god," Gane and Chan write. [Page 9]

Schopenhauer’s “will” underlies his pessimistic take on life, and is the cause of human suffering.

But I think we might posit this underlying non-physical reality as, perhaps, the presence that Caravaca gives to the instigators of his Distortion theory and the events that take place within his hypothesis.



Nietzsche would have no part in such a conjecture but he would allow us to ruminate upon it, without disparagement or criticism.

Okay, my point, without further Duensing it, is that thoughtful or creative men and women intuit a reality that transcends – Lecome du Nouy -- or sometimes supersedes – the psychological view -- our material, sensed reality.

This reality intersects with people – UFO encounters, ghostly apparitions, et cetera – and does so, not purposefully, as Caravaca or Vallee has it, but “accidentally” or inadvertently, as when some natural phenomenon adjusts one’s senses or neurological mechanisms. [Persinger]

But Nietzsche would offer that Caravaca’s and Vallee’s views can’t be dismissed out of hand.

So we are left to interject our opinions and thoughts as that is what the Ubermensch does.

RR

UFO Witness Testimony: True or False?

Copyright 2012, InterAmerica, Inc.



The Michalak UFO encounter at Falcon Lake, Canada in 1967, noted earlier here, has dubious value for some of you.

I think it has a patina of authenticity.

Speculating about witness testimony creates all kinds of amateur opinion and brings forth shards of erroneous information from the internet.

However, witness testimony is often, or usually, all that we have when it comes to UFOs.

When someone or a few people report a strange light in the night sky or a strange object in the daytime sky, one can equate the observations with misperceptions of mundane things or one can catalog the observations for what they are: strange lights or objects seen my normal people with normal or near-normal eyesight.

And that’s it. Nothing more can be done with such observations.

Our foray into witness testimony from Roswellians always causes a ripple of contention and debate.



But Roswell’s witnesses, for the most part, didn’t see a UFO, in the sky or on the ground.

Some said they held pieces of “metal” that behaved oddly when toyed with.

Some said they saw a field of debris that was different from what they normally saw in the deserts and farms around Roswell.

Some even said they saw bodies of entities, in the desert, in hangars, and other venues.

But no one saw a UFO or flying saucer, and all the testimony about bodies and strange metal fragments came forth in the late 1970s and early 1980s after some UFO hobbyists started poking around, culling testimony that is besmirched by flawed questioning and psychological projections by the hobbyists.

So Roswell isn’t a platform from which worthwhile UFO testimony can be gotten or evaluated.

Roswell is a potpourri of maltreated memories and contrived imaginings better left to psychiatry and sociologists.

But there are many other UFO-related encounters, like that of Stefan Michalak, or Lonnie Zamora, the police officer who came across a unique craft and attending entities.



There are dozens, hundreds even, of accounts where people have seen something that has come to be defined as a flying saucer, and many of those accounts include entities that rival creatures from fiction.

UFO books and the internet are replete with such accounts.

But what are we to make of such accounts?

I think that what has been presented by those who’ve experienced encounters with craft and creatures are as they have been recounted, caveated by the personal peccadilloes of observation that plague human beings.

But those peccadilloes are minor, and the over all experiences provided are essentially as they are described.

Michalak encountered a machine that caused him some physical pain and markings.



The 1959 Father Gill sighting in Papua, New Guinea is what it is: a sighting by an Anglican priest and his mission staff and members of a object that floated above them, from which entities waved or interacted with the observers.



The sighting may be ascribed to a kind of mass hysteria, but it makes more sense to allow it to be as it was recounted, without the psychological overlay.

The following accounts are detailed in John Spencer’s World Atlas of UFOs; Sightings, Abductions, and Close Encounters [SMITHMARK Publishers, NY, 1992]

The 1979 Mindalore Quezet “abduction” was what it was: a experience of a mother (Meagan) and son (Andre) who, under hypnosis, elaborated on a sighting of this object and its occupants:



Was there an Oedipal element that explains the sighting? Perhaps. Or it was as it later was remembered. (More of this, upcoming.)

The 1970 Imjärvi, Finland encounter, in which two young fellows (Aarno Heinonen and Esko Viljo), while skiing, spotted a saucer-like craft that shot a beam of light to the ground near them, from which a short humanoid creature emerged, wearing a helmet, and glowing like “phosphorous.”



The being held a black box that emitted a light that struck the young men, creating a mist, that beclouded the creature, and the beam of light that went back up into the craft, taking the little being with it.

One of the boys, Aarno, was partially paralyzed, and both fellows had symptoms similar to radioactive poisoning.

(Aarno went on to have other sightings and encounters with space women and men. He became a kind of contactee.)

Did these young men actually have the experience they reported? Their after-event symptoms indicate that something happened, but like Mr. Michalak’s encounter, exactly what?

The 1979 Taylor encounter in Livingston, Scotland, detailed here in an much earlier blog posting,
fascinates me.

Sixty-one year-old Robert Taylor was a forester who, while inspecting some new trees, was confronted by a globular object from which emerged to spiked spheres that grabbed Mr. Taylor by the legs, dragging him toward the large, globular object.



Mr. Taylor lost consciousness, but awoke disheveled and unable to stand comfortably. His truck was mired in mud and he had to walk home.

He suffered a headache for some hours after the incident and had a inordinate thirst that lasted for two days.

His heavy blue serge trousers were torn, ostensibly from the spikes on the spheres that grabbed him.

Mr. Taylor had an unsullied reputation in his community and BUFORA, a British UFO investigative group, found ground traces that seemed to confirm Mr. Taylor’s account.



Did Mr. Taylor concoct his story? Why?

Like Mr. Michalak, Lonnie Zamora, Reverend Gill, and the others noted here, what would be the motive, the reason for such bizarre contrivances?

Did each of these people misperceive a mundane event? Unlikely. Misperceptions with such similarities would create a category of hallucinations that would throw psychiatry in to a dither.

Are each of these encounters, of which there are many, many more, neurological quirks? Again, a neurological etiology would force neurologists to establish a mental substrate that lies outside the sensate reality humans work within, or misconstrue.

Are such stories evidence of Jose Caravaca’s Distortion hypothesis or Jacque Vallee’s ethereal others explanation?



Perhaps. But that would mean something is intertwined with humanity to the exclusion of any other kind of rational reality; that is, something or some presence is fixated on inserting experiences in the minds of common folk, and to what end?

But does the idea that alien visitors are engaged in such foolery make any more sense?

What we are left with is the question of witness testimony.

Is it as it is recounted? I think it is. But I have no idea what it means, nor do I have any inkling of an explanation.

While memory over time fades and/or confabulates, these encounters were reported in situ and do not have the flaw of time to corrupt the descriptions.

What was said to have happened happened.

Now where does that take us I keep asking…

RR