Seriously, A New UFOlogy. Seriously...

Another intent to remake UFOlogy, and they are serious. Here they are: The Serious New UFOlogy Institute. Words like "serious" and institute" are heavy and pregnant with meaning, well, you know, serious. They have a paper, authored by Paul Budding: BEYOND THE LIVING MYTH… AND FROM SERIOUS ‘OLD’ UFOLOGY TO SERIOUS ‘NEW’ UFOLOGY

The group admires  Richard Dolan's work and gives him plenty of credit, a very good thing. But something about any organization, especially with the words "serious" and "institute" both in their name, makes me want to run in the other direction. By definition, organizations are things, (er, "institutes") that defy my wanting to join them. (Or, er,  take them seriously.)  That's my nature.

The Institute of Serious UFOlogy (I can't help but get a bit of a Monty Python vibe when I read that title) contrasts serious old Ufology with serious new UFOlgy. No longer concerned with collecting UFO accounts, the new serious UFOlogy is only concerned with: what are [UFOs] they?  Excellent question, and I share their opinion the ETH isn't a given. It isn't a given, but it is a good possibility. It's also possible there are many answers all at once, because UFOs seem to be many things all at once. An ET here, an ultra-crypto-terrestrial there, a rogue government Dr. Evil thing over there. Or even the demons and Djinn and dark energies called up by semi-pathological rocket scientists.
 
The institute is concerned with the "Living Myth" of the ETH:

The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH) equates to a Living Myth. Many people love the feeling of awe and fascination that goes with the UFO Phenomenon and therefore they will not give up ETH. Giving up ETH would amount to giving up on archetypal awe, fascination, mystery etc. Therefore scientific and academic Ufology lacks confidence in itself precisely because the mythological projections onto the field contain so many archetypal contents and unconscious assumptions. Hence the field senses its own biases and makes it impossible to establish consensus within itself. Indeed for ETH to be the correct explanation there would have to be a coincidence of the myth equating to the reality of the phenomenon and vice versa.  

Much is true of the above. Budding writes the institute does not "condemn" the Living Myth, just that it needs to be excised in order to get an accurate  picture. But at what point does one decide the living-myth-projections-unconscious-assumptions et all are to be discarded? Like it or not, and obviously there are some UFO researchers who do not, there is a whole mess of confusing, seemingly magical at times, and certainly huge WTF moments within UFO events. Discarding those because they're part of a "living myth" taints the research. Now you're left studying only a bit of the thing. How can it be expected that one will find something of validity using that method?

To their credit they acknowledge that it is reasonable to assume there are many concurrent theories that are fairly equally true:

However, as already said, it is possible that no single theory can explain the whole phenomenon. Just because ‘X’ is true doesn’t mean that ‘Y’ is false in this case. Oddly enough there is an obsession for one theory answers: whether they are debunkers, ETH proponents or advocates of other dimensions, or those advocating an earth/human based answer.

It doesn't matter if it's Bigfoot, UFOs, ghosts or any number of anomalous events; many people demand a "one theory answer." Are UFOs solid craft or high strangeness events, are abductions fantasy or alien (ET) caused, is Bigfoot flesh and blood or paranormal, and so on. Black and white theories that are of a compact size, leaving no room for those gray baskets.

 As with the disclosure and other movements, the new serious ufology is brightly naive in thinking that skeptics, scientists and politicians will be open and accepting of UFOs once the phenomena is presented, well, seriously:

Politicians would be forced to show the field respect if Serious Ufology really was able to clearly demonstrate its differentiation from the Living Myth. This necessitates that serious physicists and technologists study the phenomenon.

No one will be "forced to show the field respect" because the field will never get respect. The existence of UFOs -- and their occupants -- are known among the politicians controllers of the world, as well as many in other areas. The details may or may not be known, but the fact of UFOs is. There are concurrent forces at work: one, the phenomena itself. Call it trickster or something else, the UFO phenomena -- which includes the high strangeness/"living myth" stuff -- has a built in function that ensures it remains marginalized. The second concurrent force are the agendas of those humans (above mentioned controllers) who have their own reasons for playing games with the rest of us. As cliche as it sounds, good old cover-ups, conspiracies and disinformation are the human created responses to the UFO presence.

Meanwhile, there are the witnesses. Remember us? Speaking of which, if the "new serious ufology" isn't concerned with collecting new UFO events, how will they recognize the ever shifting manifestations of UFOs? Questions and ideas about UFOs will never be addressed, because they're not being looked at. Soon the new ufology -- sorry, the new serious ufology -- will become the stagnant serious ufology. Before becoming the new old ufology, when another takes its place.

TORCHWOOD TONIGHT!

At long last, the new Torchwood, back this time on STARZ. I could say all kinds of things about Torchwood, but others have done it much better, particularly the excellent Monster Island News. MIN has plenty of posts on the latest regarding the new incarnation of Torchwood. So visit MIN for posts, interviews and  pics -- including the Captain Jack Harkness action figure bust -- and get ready for tonight's episode.

The Morphing Insect Black Helicopter

One recurring UFO related dream is the morphing helicopter or plane image. The setting is anywhere, usually urban, usually night, but daytime and pastoral settings occur as well. I look up in the sky, sometimes it's quite active up there with plane and or helicopter activity, sometimes, blimps -- anyway, all man made, mundane objects. Then it becomes clear that one or two of these planes morph into UFOs. At that point in the dream, I realize the planes, helicopters and so on are not the harmless everyday objects we assume them to be, but UFOs, and worse, there is always a very sinister intent to these things. Sometimes the UFOs are operated by humans, yet at the same time, they're not quite human. Aliens in human disguise, or humans that have become traitors to humanity. What's interesting is that, while the intent is very, very clear -- aliens, their presence, their actions -- I can't see them. They are still invisible, still under cover, still hidden. Humans posed as "us," acting as a buffer or decoy, yes, but the aliens themselves remain, as always in my memory as well as my dreams, unseen.

So last night I have another one of these dreams. This time it wasn't so surprising at all; I just finished reading Nick Redfern's Real Men in Black, and was listening to Coast to Coast with guest Robert M. Stanley. (Close Encounters of Capitol Hill, Covert Encounters in Washington, D.C.) And, I've just started Colin Bennett's Flying Saucers Over the White House.

Night time, big city, like Portland. I'm with Jim. As dreams will, while we're in Portland, apartments, traffic, we're also at our house (Eugene, small, quiet) anyway, we are outside, and above our house/tall buildings, we see a black helicopter flying very low above us. It's a hundred feet or less above us, and it is so black! The color of this thing has an emotion -- it's not just a color, it's an energy, a being. And it's malevolent. I do not like it one bit; we're both scared to death. This black -- deep, deep energy crawling black helicopter -- is after us. The black helicopter is fuzzy, in parts, that's how alive the entire thing is, including, especially, the color. In fact, the helicopter is like a giant black wasp or insect. 


Jim and I dash into a cab, and as we're riding away, we can see the helicopter following us. As we watch, the helicopter morphs into a blimp. I have a moment of calm: "Oh, it's just a blimp, " and the fleeting idea that the helicopter was some kind of publicity thing for the blimp. Then the blimp appears, but something is off. It doesn't look quite like a blimp. The logo or company name isn't one I recognize, and the blimp looks weak, like a cheap imitation. It looks kind of flimsy and small for a blimp. Then I realize that it's not a blimp at all, just more camouflage. We get scared all over again. As soon as I realize it's not a benign blimp, it turns into a UFO. A massive, looming UFO with no good intent.

Original public domain image source:Helicopter by Peter Griffin

"Clown Selling" : Circus Offers Therapy for Clown Fear

Wasn't sure where to post this exactly, so I'll just put it here. (Er, clown "selling?" ) Anyway, speaking just for myself, I don't exactly have a fear of clowns; I just find them disgusting, creepy and dishonest. But if you suffer from a fear (as compared with just plain old disgust of sleeze, cheese and nastiness) you can now get clown therapy, or some such: BBC News - Circus offers 'clown-selling' for people's big-top fear. And oh hell, yeah, I am a bit scared of them too.

Alien Art Genre: Moon and Concrete

Alien Art Genre: Moon and Concrete

Invisible Aliens in Boston: A Dream Inside a Dream

James Rich, Sentinels, acrylic on board

(edited to add: it was pointed out to me that this is my second Boston dream; I had one a week or so ago where Jim and I are in Boston, looking at the harbor, gently mocking the accent: "Boss-tan Haaar-ba" while looking at the beautiful, soft water, reflecting pale pink lights. No idea why Boston has been popping up. I've never been there, don't plan on going there, no family is from there...)

I hadn't been thinking particularly of UFOs, aliens, my own experience, or listening to C2C late at night while drifting off to sleep, nor reading a UFO related book; all things I do on a regular basis. If anything, the past day or two, while working like mad on the house, inside and out, and enjoying our walks, I've been mindful of the importance of stepping outside of all the UFO-paranormal-esoteric-Fortean realm that swirls around me. I realize you can never escape it, and that's not the idea anyway. It's not a dichotomy, no contest here about anything adversarial. Just a balanced perspective so one doesn't get sucked down into an unhealthy and murky place.

And I still managed to have the following dream last night, despite my intentions:

I'm very excited because I've been invited to Boston to meet/collaborate with a well known UFO researcher. (won't say who, he's big time in waking life, though he doesn't live in Boston.) As dreams are wont to do, "Boston" (which I've never been to) is just a town or two away from me here in Eugene, Oregon. At the same time, it's also very far and a huge city and I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed but also excited. I go to where the researcher -- Joe X,lets call him -- works, which is a sort of university type setting, sort of huge apartment complex, sort of grade school. In fact, I see some of my co-workers and a few students from my waking life day job. Seems the school where I work has moved and they're already setting up offices for September. 


I have to sort of chase down Joe X, lol, he's so busy and it's hard to catch up with him. People are stopping him every few moments to talk with him, he's very popular and everyone wants to have some time with him. He reminds me of one my waking life professors and in the dream, the two people kind of morph back and forth. Joe X sees me and waves me over to catch up. As we walk (rapidly, lots of people, lots of hubbub) to a conference room he tells me "Lots of researchers have plenty of stories to tell about the witnesses they've worked with, the data they've collected, but I want to hear from the researchers themselves about their own experiences. There's not enough of that going on. So Regan, I want to hear about your whole thing: the orb, missing time, the aliens..." 


I tell him that's a good point and I'm interested in that as well, but as for my own story, I've told it plenty of times, no one wants to hear it again. I've put it out there already. Joe X tells me that not everyone's heard it, there's always a new audience and venue, and he bets he can get to deeper levels about my experiences.


We go into the conference room -- comfortable but funky, old, like an old university setting would be -- still lots of people just coming and going all around. Joe X starts asking me my UFO experiences, and then, the aliens. And I start to get very frustrated as well as a bit panicked. I don't like this and I'm frustrated because I can't remember seeing any damn aliens. I've sensed them, had communications with them, felt their presence (verified by others) but not seen them. Why, why, I ask Joe X, can so many witnesses remember these things but I can't? He is very kind and supportive and steady, just keeps at it. Then abruptly, I "see" in my memory, little bits of what "they" look like. Just an image of a hand, or a foot, or a glimpse of some part of them. I'm surprised because, for one thing, they're tall, not the short grays that's typical. They're somewhat gray like in appearance, meaning those spindly buggers, but tall, six feet or so. They're a sort of tan, dark beige or sand color, not white or gray. I still can't see all of them, completely, but it's the closet I've come to actually seeing aliens in my dreams.


I say to Joe X that in my other dreams, I can never remember what they look like. And even now, I tell him, in this dream they're still being elusive. "Even in my dreams, I can't remember!" I tell him in exasperation.


Later, walking around this place, I run into one of the teachers I work with. She asks me about my summer and if I did anything fun, I tell her I went to Boston. She says, well, that's huge, tell me more! I say, well, it wasn't really anything, it was just a day and a night, then I was gone. As I walk away, I realize that I just told a co-worker I had been to Boston, but I didn't go to Boston, I just dreamed that I did. I just told her I thought my dream was reality. Now I have to think of something to tell her if she asks about it again. I'm very worried about how it looks, that I think a dream was reality. Then I wake up, and for a few moments, still have that thought, worried about telling her I didn't really go to Boston, just dreamed it. Until I realize, that was a dream too -- I only dreamed that it was reality. 

The Key - Shows - Coast to Coast AM

Bit of synchronicity, after my previous post about Strieber's The Key. He'll be on C2C Sunday night with host George Knapp to discuss this very book.

The Key - Shows - Coast to Coast AM

Women Of Esoterica: Question Has Been Posed:" Is Whitley Strieber Advocating Implants?"

Women Of Esoterica: Question Has Been Posed:" Is Whitley Strieber Advocating Implants?"

Spirits About?

When we first moved into our house, built in 1927, there were some definite remnant energies. I wouldn't say the house was haunted, exactly, but we both felt strong imprints of previous owners. Oddly, the strongest feeling was fairly recent, rather than decades ago. Just not a healthy feeling. And for many years, there was always a negative feeling emanating from the backyard at night. I often felt silly, because it was just a backyard, medium sized, and fenced; nothing out of the ordinary about it. Why in the world would I feel such a strong creepy feeling every time I went outside at night? After many years, the feeling seemed to have dissipated, but it's still there on occasion.

Overall, through the years, things have calmed down -- not that they were ever exceptionally vivid, as with other haunted places I've been in -- and nothing has happened for some time. Until the past couple of weeks. Little things, like knowing damn well I put something someplace, and then, it's gone. And then, a few moments later, it's back. Happened again this morning; my glasses were not there on top of my computer, which irritated me, since I knew I had put them there the night before. (It's where I always put them at night.) Look around, thinking they fell on the floor or whatever, look back to the laptop, and there they are. That kind of thing has been happening a lot recently. I wondered why this, and a few other odd little things would be happening again after many years of calm.

Then I realized: we decided to devote ourselves into redoing our house. Not "remodeling" (too poor and house too funky for that) but lots of work, interior and exterior. Due to finances and health issues, we've ignored our house, inside and outside, and finally decided to direct our energies to fixing this place up. Two weeks ago we started with the roof -- whole thing completely redone. Lots of yard work, cutting back old brush and taking out shrubs and all kinds of stuff. We've been very active in this house recently, as far as fixing it up.  So it occurred to me that it's possible all this activity has stirred things up on the other side.

It'll be interesting to see how this progresses, if at all.

On hidden experience: Synchroniciites!

Mike at hidden experience alerted me to his recent batch of synchronicities: hidden experience.
Love those synchronicity moments; I just had my own batch the past week, mostly involving trivial matters but striking nonetheless for how specific they were. Only one of the moments seemed profound, involving someone many of us know out here in UFO Land, but anyway, read Mike's entries for a dose of mysterious trickster coincidences.

Saucer Sightings: My Not So Invisible Aliens

I haven't posted anything at my Saucer Sightings blog in a very long time. Here's a new post about a dream involving aliens and the still unseen grays:
Saucer Sightings: My Not So Invisible Aliens

It's the Paola Harris Show! Harris Speaks at McMinnville UFO Fest

It's The Paola Harris Show!

Paola Harris at McMinnville, OR UFO Fest 2011

I debated posting what I thought of Paola Harris’s presentation at the McMinnville UFO Festival this past May because I have nothing nice to say. This is what I emailed Deirdre O’Lavery when trying to come up with something about the presentation:

All right, well, I can't seem to write anything worthwhile about old Paola. Except that it was the worst thing ever ... but [I have] nothing articulate or insightful [to add]. I thought I had taken better notes but apparently I was so amazed I had doodled numerous semi-psychotic renderings. Hey, maybe that's what I'll say.

While I don’t agree with the exo-politics movement in UFOlogy, I don’t have anything against it. My issues with Ms. Harris’s presentation isn’t with her views on exo-politics (whatever those are; it was difficult to tell) but with her lack of coherency and her immense ego.

Harris was introduced as “the Barbara Walters of UFOlogy,” and that title was reiterated by Ms. Harris herself, but it became clear to me she isn’t that, but I will say she’s clearly the Sarah Palin of UFOlogy.

So the talk begins, and I am telling you, it was the craziest, most disjointed, manic, ego-fueled thing I've been to. It was so bizarre and surreal that it was funny.

While I’m not much for the exo-politics aspect of UFOlogy, which is what Ms. Harris is all about,  I was interested in Harris’s presentation for a couple of reasons. One, anything to do with UFOs (excluding the uber-psycho skeptics) I’m up for, and two, I was curious to hear about the San Antonio, New Mexico 1945 crash Harris promised to discuss.

The presentation began with  a montage of UFO images -- “sixty-one years of UFOs” Harris told us -- accompanied by Buffalo Springfield's Something's Happening Here. Instead of ending the introduction at that point, it continued with another slew of slides, this time accompanied by some kind of screechy space age music. Harris introduced the images by telling us it’s “sixty-one years” of UFOs but it appeared to be 108 years, since the intro slide read “1870 to 2008.”  It would have been nice to have captions of the photographs; when and where the UFO image was taken, or how the illustration related to what sighting, but all we got were slides. After slides. After. Slides. And then there were the slides.

After that overly long intro, Harris literally spent forty minutes talking about herself while showing several images of the book and magazine covers where she’s appeared in print, as well as photo after photo of her with various UFO bigwigs. “Here I am with so and so...” she announced. Over and over. Forty minutes! Literally. I timed it.

I detected an undercurrent of, not racism exactly, but a cultural ignorance or maybe it was cultural superiority. (Surprising since she has dual citizenship and  lived in Italy for many years.) She showed a slide of Israel, referencing that country’s UFO sightings, informing us that  “They talk Jewish over there.” She showed slides of  UFO researchers --  Jacques Vallee among them --  meeting with politicians in the Middle East and slides of the Muslim Brotherhood, and insinuated there is something insidious afoot about their interest in UFOs. We're  not told why this might be so. This was one of the problems with her presentations: lack of support for her case. (The other problem: her huge ego.)  Harris mentioned several times that she was a retired teacher, something I found simply astounding given her consistent rambling, incoherent, point jumping circus act. But, she did teach in an Italian private school and among her students were “Mel Gibson’s kids,” and other VIPS which Harris felt was a relevant bit of information to share with us.

After more than forty minutes of  It’s The Paola Harris Show, she gets to the 1945 San Antonio, New Mexico (not Texas,) crash. More slides of places and people but with little context.  It was such a rambling and nonlinear WTF mishmash I had no idea what she was talking about and  I didn’t learn anything about this case after her presentation. It was extremely disappointing.

There was also a video of Philip Corso; the video got stuck and there we sat, listening to audio of Corso while Harris looked adoringly on; again, how it connected to what Harris was talking about wasn’t made clear.  (I noticed that Harris conspicuously did not mention Bill Birnes.)

Harris finished with her “12 Protocols” of exo-politics which, it turned out, was really 9 protocols. Or maybe it was 7.  At that point however I didn’t give a damn how may there were. Besides, they weren’t exactly “protocols” as in: don’t use your salad fork when eating fish, but assumptions about the coming of the Space Brothers. The slide got stuck on number 1 and remained there; she either didn’t notice or didn’t care, and at one point said “It says there are 12 protocols but there’s really only 9” which is where I was afraid to look at Deirdre O’Lavery who was sitting next to me, because I knew we’d both lose it.

Glitches happen, but there were so many in Harris’ presentation I had the impression there was no care taken; just a thrown up mess of stuff at the last minute. Even those technical errors could be forgiven if Harris herself hadn't been so inept. Take your pick: her massive ego, her incoherent presentation, her rambling, her lack of cohesiveness, the lack of support for her case, the lack of editing: put it all together and it was one bad, very bad, UFO lecture. I was entertained  but that was inadvertent. It was a completely pointless presentation and absolutely embarrassing. And I’ve seen Stephen Greer speak, so that’s saying something.

UFO Magazine - UFO Magazine Blog - The Echo Flight ICBM Incident: Retired USAF Officer Confirms Receiving A UFO Report Just as the Missiles Failed�

More from Carlson about how there's no such thing as UFOs, over nuke bases or anywhere else, because, there's no such thing as UFOs, etc. etc. etc.

UFO Magazine - UFO Magazine Blog - The Echo Flight ICBM Incident: Retired USAF Officer Confirms Receiving A UFO Report Just as the Missiles Failed�

Blog: Gary Haden's Speculative Realms

Speculative Realms will be dark for the summer, so no new material coming for awhile. But there are plenty of posts to go over while you're waiting for new stuff. I like Haden's blog because he's articulate, writes exceedingly well, and thinks.He's also very detailed; with facts, references, links, etc. Not to say I agree with him all the time -- sometimes I don't at all -- but no matter what thoughts you come away with, you won't be sorry because you've been given a lot to truly mull over. So take a look and, well, see what you think! Speculative Realms

A New Book:Grassroots UFOs: Case Studies from the Center for UFO Studies

This looks like a book I want to read: Grassroots UFOs: Case Studies from the Center for UFO Studies.
It's a collection of stories -- "stories" used in the classic sense, not to imply false -- of UFO witnesses.