Our favorite Fortean author

Nick Redfern is (not) arguably the best writer of Fortean phenomena we have come to know.

He has a score of terrific books about things strange and stranger.

Click here for a compendia of his oeuvre

Roswell Witnesses [REDUX]

A New Yorker piece in the January 25th, 2010 issue by Daniel Mendelsohn about literary memoirs [Page 68 ff.] should be essential reading for those who think that the Roswell witnesses provide proof of an alien space craft crash near their town in 1947.



Discounting Freud’s remarks about the mendacity of memoirs, Mendelsohn provides this about memory (and the recounting of past events):

“…[people] always manage to turn…memories into good stories – even if those stories aren’t quite true. Anyone who writes a memoir doesn’t need psychology experiments to tell him that memories can be partial, or self-serving, or faulty.”

Mendelsohn goes on to relate instances where events he was privy to were added to and re-constructed by others who inserted themselves into the events, believing that they were actually involved. (Not quite Freud’s mendacity but just as errant when it comes to truth.)

Many Roswell “witnesses” have been caught lying outright about their participation in the 1947 incident. Others, now old and subject to natural mental diminution and senility or dementia, have created scenarios in which they are an integral part.



UFO tyro Joseph Capp [UFO Media matters] is a Roswell witness crusader who extols witness accounts as if they were handed down by the hand of God, ignoring the reams of material by psychologists, law enforcement, and neurologists that indicate witness accounts are some of the most flawed elements in event reconstruction.

All people, and especially older people, are also flummoxed by the Smiley Blanton Syndrome, which is where separate events are amalgamated into one event, with elements and remembrances intertwined in such a way as to create a new “reality.”



In Roswell, something happened that was strange, even convoluted, exacerbated by a few persons, Mac Brazel, Walter Haut, and Jesse Marcel Sr., who were almost hysterical during the 1947 period, followed by a gaggle of UFO investigators who were just (and many still are) as hysterical many years afterwards.



We think several things happened near Roswell in July 1947: a missile launch that went astray perhaps, a Mogul experiment that ended up in the mix, a (possible) flying disk accident, and/or a “secret” military event that was brief but significant.



Any two of those possibilities would provide gist for the Smiley Blanton Syndrome, and evoke faulty memories years later by those who were involved or at the edge of any of the events.

In the rush to augment or prove their extraterrestrial inclinations, many UFO researchers, all with limited qualifications to be called “researcher” on the face of it, have tried to use witness testimony to bolster their ET predilections.

But as many true experts on memory and witness testimony, such as Daniel Mendelsohn, “prove” with actual scientific data and experiments that people deliberately or by natural mental deficiencies mis-remember past events, ufologists and wannabes (such as Capp, Rudiak, Randle, et al.) continue to proffer Roswell witness testimony as proof positive that something foreign to this Earth crashed in the New Mexico desert in 1947.



And those ufologists wonder why they are scoffed at or seen as loonies. They are in a state of denial far worse than that of the witnesses they exploit.

It’s beyond sad; it’s insane…..

Contactees – A (short) Review by Adrian Wells

$15.99 at bookstores everywhere. [See press kit in earlier posting here, below]

A book that I couldn’t set aside. Nick Redfern provides relevant information and pertinent minutiae about those now considered to be part of the UFO fringe. I found details that many of us (UFO aficionados) have never read, or heard, before, and all in a serious, sometimes breezy style that makes Mr. Redfern a delicious writer to read.

The flying saucer pantheon of contactees is presented by Mr. Redfern respectfully, even when it is obvious that he doesn’t believe a word of their obtuse tales.

One could have hoped for more photos of the contactee culprits, but since many died long ago, and copyright issues often prevent using photos found in the public arena, Mr. Redfern’s descriptions provide a visual idea of how they appeared, to followers and those suspicious of their elaborate saucer sagas.

Mr. Redfern does offer photographs of locations and artifacts that he’s taken himself, and that fleshes out many of the 22 Chapters (plus) in this entertaining and thoroughly research book.

More importantly, it seems to me, are the common threads that run through the stories related by the Contactee hierarchs: George Adamksi, Truman Bethurum, Orfeo Angelucci, George Van Tassel, Daniel Fry. And one common thread is use of the Planet Venus as the home-base for most of the entities that afflicted these contactees. Another thread is the FBI’s mingling in many of the affairs contrived or related by these men.

The (in)famous Villas Boas case gets several viewpoints – the well-known Fontes account, Mac Tonnies’ observation, and the (possible) CIA contrivance.

Those ufologists who’ve looked into the contactee stories are enumerated and given ample note by Mr. Redfern – Greg Bishop, Colin Bennett, Regan Lee, Adam Gorightly, Jim Moseley, Bob Short, Leon Davidson, and Timothy Green Beckley among them.

Crop circles get a nod, and much peripheral but significant material supplements the contactee gist that Mr. Redfern delineates.

Readers will find much to chew on in this 256 page book, and they will find tasty tidbits along with a UFO entrée that totally satisfies

Mr. Redfern also includes an Index, one thing that many UFO books ignore.

The book is a must for UFO devotees and would make a wonderful Christmas gift for those who like to read about strange behavior by persons with a patina of normalcy even as they create scenarios too bizarre to believe.

Fiction can’t compare to what Mr. Redfern presents in this marvelous book. But are all the Contactee stories really fiction? That’s something you can decide.

Nick Redfern (on his "Contactees" book)

Contactees, Cryptoterrestrials, and Mac [Tonnies]

Nick Redfern's latest book: CONTACTEES

Press Kit

Rest in Peace Officer Lonnie Zamora

Mac Tonnies gone?

Greg Bishop notifies readers of UFO Mystic that the brilliant and young Mac Tonnies has died (of natural causes).

This is a loss to science, science fiction, and ufology that is immeasurable.

We only knew Mac indirectly, but considered him one of the bright stars of ufology and all things avant garde.

This is a great loss.

Rest in peace, buddy…..

Nick Redfern's tribute

In defense of the Socorro hoax hypothesis by Zarkon II

Anthony Bragalia’s recent postings about the Socorro/Zamora sighting of 1964 have raised hackles among the UFO mainstream.

Mr. Bragalia presented a scenario that strikes at the heart of ufology’s belief-system: that UFOs and flying saucers are extraterrestrial craft, piloted by alien life-forms or robotic creations.

When that belief system is questioned, no matter how obliquely, UFO’s “believers” move aggressively to squelch the heterodoxy.

This is what happened when Mr. Bragalia had the temerity to suggest that the 1964 Socorro sighting was a prank promulgated by students at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.

Ufologist Ray Stanford became particularly exercised by Mr. Bragalia’s assertion(s). Why?

Mr. Stanford’s “fame” in the UFO community – he has none in the real world – rests on his intrepid “investigation” of the Socorro episode, almost immediately after it occurred.

His book about the sighting has become a UFO Bible of sorts for the Socorro event and its aftermath.

If someone were to rebuke Mr. Stanford’s “research,” he would be left without the legacy he has accumulated for the past forty-five years. So one can understand his pique and desperate attempts to protect his turf.

David Rudiak, another ET die-hard, also came out of the woodwork to take on Mr. Bragalia’s thesis. Mr. Rudiak is nothing if not thorough in his attention to minutiae of various UFO accounts – Roswell and Socorro among them.

Where Mr. Rudiak goes wrong, and he is off base in his ET bias when it comes to Socorro, is that he overlooks the mundane aspects of the Socorro details as related by Lonnie Zamora: the blue-flame of the propulsion that landed and lifted Zamora’s craft; the “beings” seen outside the egg-shaped craft, wearing white overalls; the flight pattern of the craft as it lifted and flew off; the indentations left behind, in the sand; the “roar” that accompanied the thing, et cetera.

The Zamora craft wasn’t exotic enough to be an alien craft.

Ufologist Frank Warren posted a kind of rebuttal to Mr. Bragalia’s exposé. One of the points made by Mr. Warren was that other egg-shaped UFOs were spotted before and after Zamora’s sighting.

What Mr. Warren didn’t note was that egg-shaped craft have been listed among UFO reports often, but none with an insignia, unique to Zamora’s UFO, nor any that had beings outside them, wearing human-like clothing. And none had produced the “roar” that Officer Zamora heard.

Mr. Warren is offended by Mr. Bragalia’s direct assertion that the Socorro event was hoax, ostensibly and admittedly a premature assertion since Mr. Bragalia hasn’t produced (yet) the person behind the prank or the methodology of their prank.

But Mr. Bragalia has only posed the possibility – one that has been raised before – that the Socorro episode was hoax-oriented, and Mr. Bragalia has mustered some interesting circumstantial evidence to support his hypothesis.

However, the Socorro sighting is so entrenched in the ufological psyche as an extraterrestrial landing (for repairs it seems) that any hypothesis outside the ET one will be attacked viciously and illogically, as is the case when any belief system is challenged.

I suggest Eric Hoffer’s insightful book “The True Believer” [Mentor Books, NY, 1951] to make my point.

And to see how hoaxes work, the Curtis D. MacDougall book “Hoaxes” [Dover Publications, NY, 1940/1958] for details about the mind-set of those perpetrating hoaxes and those who fall for them.

Ronald Millar’s “The Piltdown Men” [Ballantine Books, NY, 1972] also tells how grat men can be duped by hoaxes and hoaxers who are less skilled then they should be when it comes to discovering how a hoax operates.

In the world of ufology and UFOs the gullible are legion. And when it comes to the sacred cows of the UFO literature – the Arnold sighting, the Trent photos, Roswell, Socorro, and even Rendlesham, the UFO believers will do anything to make sure that anyone or anything that undercuts the “extraterrestrial” premise of those sightings should be stomped out and eliminated from any dialogue about UFOs.

The Bragalia hoax hypothesis has legs, of a kind, it is shaky perhaps, but not moribund and not unsound, if what he has uncovered has any merit whatsoever.

And when it comes to UFOs, nothing should be so sacrosanct that it can’t be thrown on the table for review and civil discussion. Otherwise, we shall find ourselves with a fascistic approach to truth-seeking; that is, only the orthodox shall prevail and anything that goes against that orthodoxy should be quelled at all costs – even if it means a diminishment of the truth.

New Zecharia Sitchin book

Zecharia Sitchin’s latest book, “The Earth Chronicles Handbook” (Inner Traditions / Bear & Company 2009) is available

As you know, Sitchin has published numerous books that collectively make up the Earth Chronicles series - a historical and archaeological adventure into the origins of mankind and planet Earth. This latest release serves as an encyclopedic companion to provide a navigational tool for the entire series. Entries are coded to indicate, at a glance, their cultural origin and contain summations and commentaries that reflect Sitchin’s unique insights into the past.

I thought this new release would be of interest to some of our readers.

If you'd like more information, you can contact: http://www.sitchin.com/

A New Nick Redfern Book

Our Friend Nick Redfern has a new book we highly recommend. Go to Nick's site for more about the September release:

Science Fiction Secrets

UFOs: A change of scenery

Elsewhere (http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com) we hinted that some UFO notables (Kevin Randle, Dick hall, Jerry Clark) seem to have abandoned UFOs for other interests.





Mr. Randle said, No, he just had other interests, and Jerry Clark said he wasn’t obsessed with early Christianity as we stated but had other “intellectual” interests, which included The Old West, that Mr. Randle also took an interest in, which spurred our asking him if UFOs had lost their cachet for him and other UFO researchers.



We note that Hall’s Civil War studies and the Clark/Randle slippage into stories of cowboys and the Old West have got to detract from their UFO research; it just has to since, one can’t study all things or many things and do well by that which they have hung their reputations upon….in this case UFOs.

We find that the UFO old-guard, except for Stanton Friedman (and a few others), have pretty much thrown in the towel as far as the UFO phenomenon is concerned.



We can’t blame them. UFOs are a non-issue for almost every normal person on the planet. UFOs just don’t factor in anyone’s life, if they have one.

UFOs are unsatisfactory as a scientific pursuit or even a hobby. They (UFOs) have become boring and saturated by their past – what they may have been, not what they are.

Flying saucers once awakened a curiosity that was commensurate with other mysteries that intrigue mankind, but since the elusive flying thingies didn’t provide a denouement, much as the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot haven’t, UFOs (flying saucers) have become and are an idle interest for only the most inane truth-pursuers.

The newer UFO guard, Paul Kimball, Nick Redfern, Greg Bishop, Mac Tonnies, et al. have also moved on, to other interests or life-styles.



So, the seeming abandonment of UFOs as an intellectual pursuit by Kevin Randle, Jerry Clark, and Richard Hall -- despite their enervated objections – makes sense to us, and others who know that life is short and UFOs are long….going nowhere, just circling our skies and lives, in a meaningless pattern that hasn’t made sense and isn’t about to, as far as we or anyone can tell….

The Unexplained Mysteries Web-site

One of our favorite sites is Vinit’s Unexplained Mysteries, and many of you also visit the extremely interesting and unique internet venue.

Here’s a link to get you there, just in case you haven’t visited it lately;

Unexplained Mysteries

The Immortality Conundrum

At death, theologians state that the soul of man transmutes to an immortal state of existence.

Humans, when they die, transform from matter to non-matter or spirit.

Science states that humans, when they die, cease to exist, eschewing the conservation of energy theorem that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, just transformed.



Religion touts the perpetuality of life after death.

But what happens when the Universe ceases to exist?

Do religion’s souls also cease to exist then?

Is there a pocket of the Universe or a dimension that doesn’t cease to exist and souls of the departed are shielded from a second death – non-existence?



The issue is unclear obviously.

The trauma of death must surely affect a living soul, if there is such a thing as life-after-death.



What happens to humans who lose the sense of taste for instance? Or the sexual pleasures that human bodies experience in mortal life but would certainly be lost when the body is shed?

What trauma would those who never read about or studied philosophy, death, or related matters experience when they moved from matter to non-matter?

Is the shock of the after-life a kind of Hell or Purgatory, as theologians have it?



Or does complete non-existence occur so that theological matters are moot, inane even?

Let’s assume that there is a life of some kind after death of the physical human form.

Then we are back to our question of what happens when the Universe itself no longer exists.

Or does the Universe or parallel universes become re-invigorated, as Hindu theology proclaims, and a rejuvenation from scratch, as it were, occurs?



Would not a collapse of the Universe (or universes) and a Big Bang Redux be profoundly traumatic, to anything that was sentient?

How would any soul – intellectual soul or vapid soul – handle anything as cataclysmic as a Universe collapse and rebirth?

The idea of an immortal soul, or transformed being (after death) is shackled by the reality of the physical Universe, itself changing, and dying, unless the Big Bang Theory is wrong, and Hoyle’s steady state theory is the reality after all.



But that for another time…

The Philadelphia Experiment [REDUX]

Prelude to the Past

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Paranormal Knowledge

A web site we highly recommend is the Paranormal Knowledge site which can be found by clicking here:

Paranormal Knowledge

UFOs, Christianity, and Quantum

What is the one element that UFOs, Christianity, and Quantum have in common?

That they are each, basically, inscrutable; they make no sense when reviewed in depth.

No one knows what UFOs are. Even though many have a mundane explanation, the fundamental phenomenon remains elusive and unknown, maybe even unknowable.

Christianity is mired in mystery. Did Jesus of Nazareth actually exist? Was He Christ? God? Are the Gospels fiction or fact?



Quantum mechanics is rife with riddles and weirdness. The physics of quantum is a hodgepodge of bizarre theory and mathematics that no one really understands, although some physicists pretend to.



(There are other mysteries – Bigfoot, the Loch Ness thing, what happened to Amelia Earhart, who really shot JFK – but those mysteries don’t have the complexity or raft of commentary and research that UFOs, Christianity, and Quantum have.)

What is the core reality of the UFO mystery? That is the question that most ufologists ignore, caught up in the peripheral aspects of sightings and UFO episodes.

In Christianity, the core questions revolve around Jesus/Christ. Was he God incarnate? Was there a Resurrection? And so on…



Christianity’s questions were raised right at the beginning of the Common Era, even before the pronouncements of St. Paul, circa 35 A.D.

Those questions remain intact today.

Quantum theory has settled on one question: What is the Higgs Boson – the so-called “God particle”?




Quantum Mechanics essentially began with Max Planck’s 1900 energy hypothesis. And one hundred and eight years later, quantum remains fundamentally unclear, despite some peripheral elements that have been “proven” by experimentation.



The UFO mystery essentially began to be seriously scrutinized after the Kenneth Arnold sighting in June 1947.

A little over sixty years later, the UFO enigma is still intact and primarily unknown.

Is there hope for a UFO denouement? Not if current investigators remain entrenched in internecine squabbles and febrile obsession with old UFO events such as the alleged Aurora, Texas crash of 1897, Roswell, the Hill case, the Phoenix lights, et cetera.



Just as Christianity will never settle on one truth, cannot settle on one truth and Quantum is dealing with aspects of physics that are submerged in a possibly unfathomable reality, UFOs are unlikely to be understood in the present time-frame, with the present contingent of ufologists who are immersed in decrepit research and faulty data.

Nonetheless, UFOs, like Christianity and Quantum, will continue to intrigue a small coterie of persons who are intrigued by mysteries no matter how remote they are for an explanation.

The 1942 UFO Battle for Los Angeles Explained

While many in the UFO community think the February 24-25th, 1942 incident where the United State Army allegedly had a battle with a UFO over the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of Los Angeles…



…the thing that was fired upon was a Japanese balloon, as explained in this paragraph from a 1947 report about balloons during the 1942 time-frame:



Here’s a PDF copy of the full 1947 report, from our UFO web-site:

Controlled-Altitude Free Balloons

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This is interesting...(very much so)

New Earth-like solar system

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Bruce Duensing's Intangible Materiality

Intangible Materiality is a brilliant blog maintained by the mind of Bruce Duensing.



It is dense and daunting, but chock full of insights to what we call The Game of God.

Mr. Duensing doesn’t suggest, overtly, that God (or reality) is playing a game with humankind, but his highly intellectual ruminations tend in that direction.

But it would be remiss of us to try and present an accurate summation of what Mr. Duensing offers.

His material transcends ratiocination, and illuminates in ways that will elude all but the most intelligent among blog readers.

Here is the link…

Intangible Materiality

Wagner footnotes the death of (the) God(s)

Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung” confirms the death of the gods (God), as Nietzsche metaphorically stated also.



God Himself confronted man for the last time during the Hebrew period [circa] 8000 BC.

God’s messengers appeared off and on after that time, but God? He disappeared.

Jesus’ last appearance (and even that “visitation” is iffy) took place when Saul of Tarsus (St. Paul) had his encounter with a disembodied manifestation of Jesus/Christ.



Jesus, after his alleged ascension, made that one contact with mortal man, and that was it. (We think Paul had a psychotic episode, as noted here earlier, but for the sake of argument we’ll concede that Paul was touched by Jesus, even if that “touching” was only immaterial in essence.)

Mary, the mother of Jesus, appeared sporadically over the years after her “death” but the last bona fide appearance she made was at Fatima, Portugal in 1917.



There are those who discount the Fatima visitation, and all the subsequent visions of Mary, such as those in Belgium (Beauraing 1932; Banneux 1933) and Spain (Garabandal 1961-65).

But we accept the Fatima appearance as real, based upon the reactions and eventual religious dedication of the children (Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco) who had the visions. Also there were many eyewitness accounts that didn’t actually confirm a Mary sighting, but did authenticate something strange occurring during the alleged Mary episodes.

God didn’t appear to Muhammed [610 AD], but His messengers did, just as they did to Joseph Smith [1820 ff.] who founded the Mormon religion.



Again. God didn’t appear to anyone after about 800 BC. And Jesus only to Paul (maybe) around 35 or 36 AD.

Mary had appeared sporadically up to 1917, perhaps later but not recently in any way that is dynamic in nature.

What does this mean, and how does Wagner’s magnum opus confirm the death of the gods?

Wagner was, among others, a genius with insight to things and truths that come forth into the Unconscious Mind as an epiphany, even though those insights are never formally recognized by the persons (usually creative artists) who have them.



Wagner didn’t take the Norse “theology” and use it for his music drama; he reworked the theology to show that the gods didn’t just hide themselves from mankind, but died, once and for all time.

The remnants of God remain, and so do His messengers. Even the soul of God lives on – as the Holy Spirit, but God Himself, and His Second Nature, Jesus, are dead.

And Holy Mary, the Mother of Jesus (God)? She may still be alive in some sense, but not in substance as she once was.



The gods have subsided, in relevance, and reality.

Otherwise we humans would be experiencing them, in some overt if intangible way.

How does this affect us when we die? That for another time…..