As a child growing up in suburbia, I remember scraping together my allowance money, supplemented by coke bottle refunds, to buy the latest UFO books from the grocery store. They appeared intermittently on the paperback rack next to the Harlequin romances and the Louis L'Amour westerns. Their lurid titles and blurry photos made the books endlessly fascinating. The strange reports of flying saucers zipping across lonely night skies sparked my young imagination. It was an imagination already made feverish from too many Godzilla movies, bad Sci-Fi, and the endless expanse of uninhabited tract housing. Soon I was fully expecting to see a UFO every time I looked up.
Eventually I grew out of my fixation on aliens and moved on to other, less obsessive interests. However, now that I'm older I have begun to recognize the value of obsession. I think it's probably a healthy response to life in our fast-forward, flash-cut society. With this in mind, I decided to take another look at the UFO phenomena.
What I found in my reading was a mythology as complex and fully realized as anything the Greeks ever thought up. Of course, this isn't a new revelation. The psychologist Carl Jung spotted it back in 1959 when he wrote Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. His book didn't do much to influence the direction of UFO investigations. Over thirty years later the field of UFO research and speculation has developed into a dense fog of unverifiable claims, paranoid ravings, hoaxes, mass hysteria, spurious research,and media hype. If Jung was alive today his head would spin faster than those saucers.
So, without passing judgement on whether UFOs are real or not, only with the understanding that people are sincere in their beliefs I tried to look into that fog. To paraphrase physicist Richard Feynman: "We stuck our foot into a swamp and it came up muddy."
UFOs have been around a long time. One of the earliest accounts of a
flying saucer sighting was recorded over 3,400 years ago in the annals of
the Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III. In the papyrus documents is a
description of a group of fiery circles that were seen in the sky over the
pharaoh's army. If aliens have been visiting the earth for thousands of
years maybe at some point they gave us a helping hand.
Erich Von Daniken made this suggestion in his enormously popular book Chariots Of The Gods?. Colossal prehistoric monuments such as the pyramids, Stonehenge, the Nazca Lines, and Easter Island seemed to be beyond the ability of savages and so must have been the work of extraterrestrials. Daniken's work was pop archaeology at its worst and critics easily shot holes in his theories pointing out that Daniken was simply not giving prehistoric people any credit.
The question of ancient astronauts has not gone away and other writers have looked into it as well. Probably one of the best researched books is Robert Temple's The Sirius Mystery . In it he explores the possibility that aliens from the Sirius star system visited the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians. Tantalizing but inconclusive evidence of the visit is preserved in the religion of the African Dogon and Bozo tribes. These tribes evidently posses sophisticated knowledge of the Sirius system that would have been impossible to obtain without modern high- powered telescopes.
Another scholar working a similar area is Zecharia Sitchin whose translations of Sumerian writing have led him to believe that humans are a genetically engineered race put on this planet by aliens from a 12th planet in our solar system called Nibiru. This 12th planet supposedly orbits the sun in a vast elliptical orbit that brings it through the solar system once every 3,600 years. Sitchin lays it all out in his book Genesis Revisited and his epic five volume Earth Chronicles beginning with The 12th Planet.
The modern age of UFO culture began on June 24, 1947 when pilot Kenneth Arnold witnessed a formation of silver disks skipping through the air over Mount Rainier. His report was widely circulated by the print and radio media sparking interest in UFOs around the world. Just two weeks later another event took place in New Mexico that has been at the root of more than half of todays UFO mythology.
On July 3 a rancher near Corona NM found the wreckage of something
very unusual. Scattered across a large area were bits and pieces of a thin,
lightweight, silver material. It was extremely strong and flexible with
strange hieroglyphic-like writing on some of the pieces. The rancher
collected some of the debris and took it to the nearby Roswell Army Air
Field. Intelligence Officers were dispatched to the site where they
collected the fragments and returned them to the Air Field. On July 8 a
press release written by the base's Public Information Officer was sent to
the newspapers which claimed that the Air Corps had recovered a "flying
disk." The release was retracted later the same day when the Army stated
that no flying disks were found. Instead, what had been recovered was the
radar reflector from a weather balloon. Was it the work of an incompetent
PR officer or the ultimate cover-up? There is not much room to maneuver
between these two explanations and the cover-up side of the fence is
home to a spectacular array of exotic conspiracy theory and myth-making.
According to some UFO researchers, after the crash at Roswell flying saucers began dropping like flies over the American deserts. In Frank Scully's 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers it is revealed that four saucers had crashed in the years following Roswell. Sixteen alien bodies were recovered along with an intact vehicle. They were then transported to Wright-Patterson AFB where they remain stored in Hanger-18. Other writers have made similar claims in reporting crashed saucers in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, and Northern Mexico.
In the 1980's these stories were re-investigated by Stanton Friedman and William Moore. Friedman, in his book Crash At Corona, came to the conclusion that they were true. Additionally they, along with TV producer Jaime Shandera, uncovered a supposedly top-secret government document called MAJESTIC 12 which seemed to confirm their findings. MAJESTIC 12 describes the existence of a panel of twelve scientists and military officials that was formed by President Truman to investigate UFOs and report to the president. The document goes on to say that four alien bodies were recovered from the Roswell site. Serious questions about the documents authenticity have been raised which leads some to believe that it is either a hoax or sneaky government disinformation.
In southern Nevada the Air Force operates a super secret testing
range that includes one of the longest runways in the world. The base is so
secret that the government refuses to acknowledge its existence. It is
referred to by outsiders as Groom Lake, Area 51, or more exotically as
Dreamland. The only photographic evidence of the base is from a Russian
spy satellite. There are no roads leading to the base making it accessible
only from the air. Dreamland is used to develop and test experimental air
craft including the recently revealed Stealth planes.
Because the base is under such tight security and so little is known about what goes on there UFO researchers are uncontrollably drawn to it. Their imaginations are free to speculate endlessly about what is hidden in its hangers. Two people who have contributed significantly to the Dreamland lore are George Knapp and Bob Lazar.
Knapp was originally a TV newscaster in Las Vegas who in 1989
reported a story Lazar told to him. Lazar was a physicist who had been
employed as a civilian scientist at Dreamland. He claimed to have been
part of a team whose job had been to reverse-engineer a flying saucer
affectionately called "the Sport Model" that was being kept on the base.
Lazar had blown his security clearance by telling friends about his work
and fearing for his life decided to go public with Knapp. Subsequently
Lazar was convicted of pandering after doing some security work for an
illegal Vegas brothel. A thriving cottage industry has since grown up
around the base with souvenirs, newsletters, and organized tours to the
edge of the restricted area.
If the government is in possession of aliens and their spaceships then why won't they tell us? One answer is that if it were publicly known that a superior intelligence was visiting the earth the population couldn't handle it and mass panic would break out. This doesn't hold much water with most UFO researchers and some of the more adventurous conclude that the government is actually in collusion with the aliens.
In 1988 a report surfaced on the CompuServe and Paranet computer
networks that threw a big wrench into the UFOlogy works. Written by
William Cooper, formerly in U.S. Naval Intelligence, the document
described the contents of a Top Secret briefing he had seen while in the
service. According to Cooper, the government not only had recovered
saucers and bodies but also live aliens. Contact had already been made
with an alien ambassador named KRLL. As part of a treaty agreement the
aliens were providing the military with exotic weapons technology in
return for permission to abduct civilians and build underground bases in
America.
In Cooper's book Behold a Pale Horse, he describes the conspiracy in great detail as well as agitating the UFO community to no end by accusing almost every researcher of being a government agent. Cooper also claimed that a shadow government was actually running the country using its pact with the aliens to stay in power. J.F.K was supposedly assassinated for threatening to blow the cover. Even more ominous was his claim that the aliens had been meddling in human politics for hundreds of years. By using secret societies such as the Masons and modern variations like the Trilateral Commission the aliens work to create a one world government which will make it easier for them to control and harvest humans. Cooper's research seems to parallel many of the beliefs found in America's growing Patriot movement.
Other writers have picked up on this paranoia and have managed to carry it to an even greater extreme. Attention has focused on the supposed alien bases, which consist of a U.S. military installation on the surface and a vast alien complex underground. George Andrews' book Extra- Terrestrial Friends And Foes contains a description of a joint U.S.-Alien base near Dulce, New Mexico:
"Level 6 is privately called 'Nightmare Hall.' It holds the genetic labs. Reports from workers who have seen bizarre experimentation are as follows: "I have seen multi-legged 'humans' that look like a half-human/half-octopus. Also reptilian-humans, and furry creatures that have hands like humans and cry like babies, mimicking human words.Level 7 is worse, row after row of thousands of humans and humanoid mixtures in cold storage. Here too are embryo storage vats of humanoids, in various stages of development.
I frequently encountered humans in cages, usually dazed or drugged, but sometimes they cried and begged for help. We were told they were hopelessly insane and involved in high-risk drug tests to cure insanity. We were told never to speak to them at all. At the beginning we believed that story."
You can work up quite an appetite crossing interstellar space. This
would certainly seem to be the case if UFOs are responsible for the
ongoing reports of cattle mutilations. Alien attacks on livestock first
came to attention in 1967 when a horse named Snippy was found
inexplicably mutilated. The attacks escalated across the American west
and began to follow a predictable pattern. Usually cattle were the targets
and ranchers would find their carcasses lying alone with their blood
drained and various organs removed with surgical precision. Often strange
lights or unmarked black helicopters would be seen in the area prior to the
mutilations. The loss to ranchers became so severe that in 1979 New
Mexico senator Harrison Schmitt convened public hearings to investigate
the problem.
Various explanations have placed the blame on Satanic cults, the U.S. military, and wolves. The possibility that UFOs are conducting some sort of strange experiment remains one of the most interesting theories put forth in Linda Howe's book An Alien Harvest. Because cows and humans have similar DNA, Howe believes that the aliens are mutilating the cattle to obtain genetic material for their human-alien hybrid experiments. Another possibility that she raises may be that the aliens are monitoring the spread of an unknown toxin through our food chain.
Reports of UFO abductions have caused many a sleepless night across
America. Beginning with John G. Fuller's 1966 book The Interrupted
Journey about the abduction of Barney and Betty Hill, the modern age of
alien kidnappers came into being. The Hill case was the first to be well
documented as well as the first to use hypnotic regression as an
investigative tool. The Hill's story of being abducted off of a lonely road,
having strange medical examinations performed on them, and then being
released after having their memories erased is a classic case. Most of the
abduction reports that have followed contain the same basic elements.
In the 1980's abduction reports began to take a bizarre turn with the publication of two books by Budd Hopkins, Missing Time and its follow-up Intruders. Hopkins was an artist in New York with no medical or psychological training who began uncovering hundreds of abduction cases using hypnotic regression. The abductions that his subjects described were nightmarish and often sexual. Victims found themselves helpless and unable to move while aliens appeared through their bedroom walls. Often sperm and ovary samples would be taken. The aliens seemed to be embarked on a genetic engineering scheme to create a hybrid human-alien race. Afterwards women would find themselves pregnant only to have the baby disappear from their wombs or miscarry in the third month. Hopkin's work stands as a monument to human-alien sexuality. Imagine, if you can, My Secret Garden written by H.P. Lovecraft.
Whitley Strieber was a moderately successful science fiction writer who contacted Hopkins after having some strange experiences at his country home. The material that surfaced under hypnosis became the basis for his best-selling 1987 book Communion. The aliens who abducted Strieber seemed to have benevolent intentions although the encounters were still terrifying. Strieber went on to write a sequel called Transformation and a fictionalized account of the Roswell crash called Majestic.
Extra-terrestrial intercourse became a hot topic in 1994 when John Mack's book Abduction was published amid a whirl-wind of media hype. As a professor of psychology at Harvard University, Mack seemed to lend some credibility to the subject. Unfortunately, he too was an associate of Hopkins and nothing in the book can be verified objectively. Mack's answer to critics was simply, if the victims believed that they had been molested by aliens then it must be true.
If aliens are kidnapping humans they must be extremely busy. Based on a poll of 6,000 adults conducted by the Roper Organization it has been estimated that as many as four million Americans have had an abduction experience. If this number is true then we must be forced to accept that several hundred million abductions have taken place worldwide over the past 30 years. Or maybe it was just a bad dream.
Anyone who looks into the full range of strange phenomena is forced to admit that UFOs don't make any sense. There is nothing consistent about their behavior except that they seem to be swarming all over the planet without ever leaving a single trace of indisputable evidence. Blurry photos and wooly stories are all we're left with. In Jung's book Flying Saucers he says: "They behave not like bodies but like weightless thoughts."
John Keel was one of the first UFO researchers to look beyond the individual reports and begin to see the larger picture. After years of investigation Keel put forth the radical theory that UFOs were actually terrestrial in origin. He felt that it was an earthbound phenomena that was intimately connected to the people who experienced it. In his 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies Keel writes:
I have adopted the concept of ultraterrestrials- beings and forces which coexist with us but are on another time frame; that is, they operate outside the limits of our space-time continuum yet have the ability to cross over into our reality. This other world is not a place, however, as Mars or Andromeda are places, but is a state of energy.
The state of energy that the ultraterrestrials exist in is described by Keel as the upper reaches of the electro-magnetic spectrum. By shifting themselves down the spectrum the ultraterrestrials emerge into visible light. This would account for the electro-magnetic disturbances that accompany UFOs and the ultra-violet skin burns that close encounters with UFOs bring.
Another investigator who came to the similar conclusions as Keel was French astronomer Jacques Vallee. His research into mythology and folklore showed a remarkable likeness between our modern concept of UFOs and historical ideas of demons, fairies, and other supernatural tricksters.
Combining elements of Keel's ultraterrestrial theory and Carl Jung's ideas on a collective unconsciousness, Gregory Little in his books The Archetype Experience and Grand Illusions presents a unified theory to explain UFOs. His belief is that the ultraterrestrials are spectral entities that have no specific form of their own. When they shift down the spectrum to interact with humans their powerful electro-magnetic fields begin to alter our brain chemistry causing us to hallucinate. Our hallucinating mind taps into our collective unconsciousness to dredge up imagery of flying saucers, little grey aliens, and nightmarish sexuality, all of which are ideas that make up the common mythology of UFOs.
Psychedelic drug research is beginning to shed some light on the
neuro-chemistry involved in hallucination and it may be possible to
initiate a UFO contact experience with drugs. A specific class of
psychedelics called the Tryptamines which are structurally similar to the
neurotransmitter Serotonin seem to mimic the contact experience.
Terence McKenna in his books The Archaic Revival and True Hallucinations describes how a tryptamine drug called Psilocybin can invoke experiences very similar to those reported by UFO contactees. Another extremely powerful tryptamine called DMT is reported to leave users with the impression of strange entities accompanying them on their "trips".
The following is from Peter Meyer's monograph Apparent Communication with Discarnate Entities Induced by Dimethyltryptamine(DMT) published in Psychedelic Monographs & Essays vol. 6 :
Subject M: At one point I suddenly became aware of beings, who were rapidly flitting about me. They appeared as dark, stick-like beings silhouetted against a rapidly-changing kaleidoscopic background. Although I could not make out much detail, I definitely felt their presence.Subject O: ...into the corner, when, slowly, from around the edges they peer towards me, watching, eyes bright and watching in small faces, then small hands to pull themselves, slowly, from behind and into view; they are small white-blond imp-kids...they appeared altogether preoccupied with the task at hand...pouring a golden, viscous liquid through a network of long, intertwining, transparent conduits which led into the middle of my abdomen...
Subject G: ...I saw the "elves" as multi-dimensional creatures formed by strands of visible language...the elves were dancing in and out of the multi-dimensional matrix, "waving" their "arms" and "limbs/hands/fingers?" and "smiling" or "laughing," although I saw no faces as such. The elves were "telling" me that I had seen them before, in early childhood.
The experiences of people under the influence of tryptamine psychedelics bear an uncanny resemblance to the experiences reported by people abducted by UFOs. It is a radical combination, UFOs and psychedelics, but it may soon prove to be a legitimate area of investigation.
Flying saucers is a murky subject. It is easy to get lost in a strange, obsessive world of circular reasoning, conspiracy mongering, spongy logic, and out-right goofy beliefs. Probably the best policy is to stay as far away from it as possible. However, if you do find yourself stepping into the swamp, be skeptical of everything. If you can keep your head above water you will have a delightfully weird experience.
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