I'm curious. "UFOs as something paranormal" believers always talk about the "evidence," and how it is overwhelming (and I use "paranormal" rather than "space aliens" even though most of the time "space aliens" is the go-to explanation for believers, but I want to be inclusive here). But on the best cases, where is the evidence that allows one to draw that conclusion? I don't see it... anywhere.
For reference, because many "believer" ufologists like to work with the legal standard of evidence (as opposed to the scientific), let's define our terms. We should be looking for "clear evidence," which Black's Law Dictionary defines as follows:
Evidence which is positive, precise and explicit, as opposed to ambiguous, equivocal, or contradictory proof, and which tends to directly establish to the point to which it is adduced, instead of leaving it a matter of conjecture or presumption, and is sufficient to make out a prima facie case.
Let's add the definition of "best evidence," which is the kind that should be used to establish clear evidence. It is defined as follows:
Primary evidence, as distinguished from secondary; original, as distinguished from substitutionary; the best and highest evidence of which the nature of the case is susceptible.
Combine the two, and you have the minimum standard that one should be looking for in order to support the "paranormal proposition."
Let's go case by case, and start with Rendlesham, which I discussed on Where Did The Road Go recently. What is the evidence that would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that something "paranormal" happened there.
Something new for saucer fiends, as I took a little time off from shooting my new feature film to appear on the Where Did The Road Go show to discuss the Rendlesham and Roswell UFO cases in a not particularly flattering light... and the Shag Harbour case in a somewhat more positive light (at least as something interesting and mysterious). And other stuff...
Meanwhile, Seriah Azkath, the host of the podcast, just sent me this feedback he received on Twitter about my appearance, because he knew it would amuse me.
"You take stupidity to an all time high talking about what UFO cases are more credible than others.Like all you debunkers You attack the person telling the story instead of actually providing any sort of actual evidence. Like retarded parrots You Do nothing but just puke out verbatim some scripted garbage that shows&proves nothing other than you can plagiarize you question Roswell&Rendelshem bc it happened "so long ago" yet you,like the vapid double talking idiotic lawyer you claim you are mention that the Shag Harbour case is a lot more credible bc and I quote : "It happened in the 60's&those witnesses aren't dead like Roswell". The level of hypocrisy in that statement alone should get you kicked off the podcast but I believe the following comment will win the case. You actually said having anonymous witnesses is better&makes this care more credible. My god who anyone takes you seriously is beyond me & just as a kicker you,as a film maker or whatever lawyer, debunker saying the guys from Rend. Forrest saw $ & thats what makes there story less credible proved you're most hypocritical thing ever.I have no prob with the other host but the debunking parrot does your podcast no favors"
For the record, I'm pretty sure I never said that having anonymous witnesses makes a case better because that's not something I would ever say (although I would say that having anonymous witnesses usually makes a case more entertaining because they are the ones who tell the craziest stories). Indeed, if I recall correctly, I was trying to differentiate between the witnesses at Shag which are not anonymous, and whose stories are relatively straightforward and grounded, and those whose stories are wilder but have chosen to stay anonymous, and who therefore can't be relied upon.
An old friend, with only a passing interest in UFOs (he's much more intrigued by ghosts), asked me the other day what I thought about the 10 cases featured in my 2007 film Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Sightings - my own personal opinions of each case, as opposed to the narrative of the film, which was dictated by the choices made by the panel of ufologists I enlisted to determined the top cases (with one exception, noted below), including Kevin Randle, the late Karl Pflock, the late Richard Hall, the late Mac Tonnies, Stanton Friedman, Brad Sparks, Bruce Maccabee, and Nick Pope, among others. I thought about it, and then broke it down for him as follows: 10. Nuremberg, 1561 - A sighting that I added (bumping out the case the panel had voted in as #10) to demonstrate the point that UFO sightings predated the modern era. It happened so long ago that it would be impossible now to determine the accuracy of the report, or whether it was something anomalous, but it's worth noting that reports like it were far from unique. I think it can be chalked up to superstition, literary licence, and a misreading of a natural event. 9. Skylab III, 1973 - I have no doubt that it was a combination of space debris and camera artifacts.
8. Yukon, 1996 - This case relies solely on eyewitness testimony, and while there are multiple independent witnesses at different locations, there also seems to be a reasonable explanation that I accept. 7. Malmstrom AFB, 1967 - This case has generated more publicity than any of the others within ufology, if not the general public (Rendlesham is much better known there), largely because of the feud between "UFOs at Missile Bases" proponent Robert Hastings and James Carlson, the son of one of the officers allegedly involved in it all. I think they deserve each other, because they are both bonkers in my book. Focusing on the case instead of the feud, I don't buy it. I like Bob Salas (the primary witness) as a person, and think he is an honest man, but I also think that while he's made a genuine effort to remember things as they happened, he's got it wrong. When I interviewed him in 2006, he told me that he underwent hypnosis to recover his memories of the incident, which always rings alarm bells with me. There are no other witnesses or documents which corroborate his story - and there should be. Where are any of the soldiers who were topside who reportedly saw the UFO? I admire Bob for his advocacy of a nuclear free world, but I can't buy Malmstrom as anything other than a missile failure due to prosaic reasons, and some tall tales that he has absorbed as a truthful narrative.
6. Shag Harbour, 1967 - This case has multiple independent witnesses, all of them of impeccable character, as well as an official government investigation that called it a UFO. There are other stories that go much further, of underwater objects monitored for days by the US and Canadian navies until they flew off, but those rest on anonymous sources, and there is no documentation (although the stories were told to my friends Don Ledger and Chris Styles, whom I trust to have related them accurately - still, the stories and the witnesses can't be verified by others). What that leaves us with, I think, is a genuine mystery, but one that may or may not be as otherworldly as ET proponents would claim. It remains unsolved in my books, and very interesting. 5. Santa Barbara Channel, 1953 - The famous sighting by Kelly Johnson and his wife at their home in Agoura, CA, at the same time as a crew of top Lockheed pilots and flight engineers saw the "object" whilst flying over Santa Barbara Channel. They all wrote reports that still exist, so we can read in their own words about what they saw. There are some inconsistencies, but a general common narrative is possible to glean from it all. My friend Lance Moodyhas suggested that they mistook lenticular clouds for a structured craft, which I just don't buy (and neither did Johnson et al, who considered that possibility at the time of the sighting and ruled it out), but that doesn't mean I think that it was space aliens. The quality of the witnesses mark this one out as a good case, and I think it's still unexplained. 4. McMinnville, 1950 - I have always been convinced that it was a hoax. Not much more that I can say. 3. Rendlesham, 1980 - Another controversial case. There's no question that multiple witnesses saw something on two nights in late December, 1980. That's something everyone can agree on... and it's about the only thing! Skeptics like Ian Ridpath say that the US military men under Charles Halt misidentified a local lighthouse, and others suggest that the military police officers on the first night misidentified local police cars. But I'm not sure either of those jibe with the reports of the witnesses, particularly Halt, who was the deputy base commander and recorded the second incident on a tape recorder. The far out claims that have lately surfaced from Jim Penniston and John Burroughs, two key witnesses from the first incident, have further muddied the waters. Skeptics think that it just shows they're liars trying to cash in on the New Age element within ufology; believers look at their claims of telepathic communication and say that it absolutely fits with coming into contact with some advanced intelligence from another planet. This case is often called Britain's Roswell, and I think that's accurate, but not for the reason most people use the term. Like Roswell, I think it's a Rorschach test on what people think about the ETH. Either way, you'll see what you want to see. Sitting in the middle as an agnostic, I see a case that has already become so encrusted by mythologizing from both sides that it will never be solved. My gut tells me that the witnesses might have seen something weird, but they might also have been mistaken - and that's as far as I would ever go. 2. Tehran, 1976 - Still stands the test of time as an unsolved case. Genuinely mysterious. 1. RB47, 1957 - Since my film came out this long-overlooked case has enjoyed a renaissance of sorts, with skeptics trying on a number of occasions to offer a plausible explanation (which was one of these point of the film - to encourage people to examine these cases and try to come up with answers). Tim Printy tried the hardest in his SunLite publication, but it didn't ring true to me any more than the original USAF answer that it was all a misidentified commercial flight, hundreds of miles away. I showed Printy's explanation, and others, to surviving RB47 crew members I know, including Bruce Bailey who appears in the film and had his own encounter with a UFO a couple of years later, and they all thought it just didn't wash. I still consider this a truly mysterious case that remains unsolved, despite the best efforts of honest skeptics. So there it is. The only cases in the film that I find genuinely interesting and still unsolved are #6, #5, #2, and #1. Rendlesham is just too Roswellized for me to either credit or dismiss. The others I consider either solved, or too tenuous to merit any further consideration. Paul Kimball
Dave Sadler filming an episode of Ghost Cases at the Bridestones, May 2009.
In this episode recorded on 12 February, 2011, I discuss a wide range of subjects with my good friend Dave Sadler, of the Unknown Phenomena Investigation Association in the United Kingdom, including the state of British UFO research (and Dave's views on some of its leading researchers), the decline of interest by the public in UFOs vis-a-vis ghosts and other topics within the paranormal, the question of UFO hoaxes, and why at least some of them may not be such a bad thing, and the Berwyn Mountain UFO case from 1974 in Wales. Oh, yes... and why Dave hates psychics... but sees them as useful from time to time.
You can find out more about Dave, his great work with the UPIA, and Phenomena Magazine at the UPIA Website.
Dr. David Clarke, a British UFO researcher, has convinced Col. Ted Conrad, the Bentwaters/Woodbridge base commander during the time of the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident in 1980, to give a complete statement about his views as to what happened, which stand in direct contrast to the views that have been presented over the years by his deputy at the time, Col. Charles Halt.
You can read Dr. Clarke's article here. An excerpt from Col. Conrad's statement:
There were no conspiracies, no secret operation, no missile accident, and no harsh interrogations by OSI [Office of Special Investigations, USAF]. I was in a position to know about the OSI. It was a special organisation with a special mission. They had their own chain of command, but in practice the OSI commander kept me informed of any ongoing investigations they had. Someone reporting unexplained lights would not normally have been subject to OSI attention. They were after serious lawbreakers, including drug traffickers, security risk, and the like.
If I have any regrets, it is that I should have challenged Lt Col Halt’s account of the events on the night of 28 December. However since I wanted to avoid the appearance of shaping the story, I was reluctant to require any changes to his letter to Don Moreland [sent to MoD on 13 January 1981]. Also, I think maybe Don Moreland and I should have met over lunch one day to discuss a better way to handle the information in Halt’s letter. Halt’s letter gave us cover by putting Don on the spot. This left Don with the full burden of the letter and its disposition. When the letter was eventually released from MoD, it generated the frenzy of speculative reporting and the inevitable allegations of cover-up.
In the final analysis, the Rendlesham Forest lights remain unexplained. I think they are explainable, but not with the information we have been able to gather.
Theodore J. Conrad.
Col. Conrad goes on to state: "I also think the odds are way high against there being an ET spacecraft involved, and almost equally high against it being an intrusion of hostile earthly craft."
The traditional pro-ET / peo-paranormal view of the Rendlesham incident can be seen in this segment from my film, Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Sightings, which features Col. Halt and Nick Pope.
What really happened in Rendlesham Forest in December, 1980? I think it remains an open question - indeed, so does Col. Conrad, and so does Dr. Clarke, who writes:
As was the case with the original Roswell incident, there is a great difference between the few certain facts that can be established from contemporary records and the elaborate legend that has grown up around the Rendlesham UFOs. The legend has been nurtured by tabloid headlines and sensational TV documentaries and today is so well known that the Forestry Commission have set up a “UFO trail” in the forest for pilgrims who wish to relive the story in their imagination. As the decades pass attempts to separate fact from fiction become increasingly difficult. All that can be said with certainty is that it is unlikely we will ever know what really happened in Rendlesham forest in December 1980.
Rendlesham has often been referred to as "Britain's Roswell". As Dr. Clarke points out, and as I think should be clear to any objective observer, that appellation is accurate, albeit not necessarily for the reasons that it's pro-ET proponents have suggested.
What happened at Rendlesham almost three decades ago? Some people are convinced that it was an encounter with aliens from outer space. Others maintain that it was a psychological warfare exercise. And a few, against all evidence to the contrary, still argue that nothing much happened at all, except for some over-excited American military personnel letting their imaginations run wild.
I don't know what the answer is - I just know that, for me at least, the explanation has nothing to do with misidentified lighthouses and excessive partying, or a practical joke. People took it seriously back then, and the case should continue to be taken seriously now, as one of the best, and still unexplained, UFO encounters in human history. That doesn't mean that Colonel Halt and his men met aliens from Zeta Reticuli, or anywhere else, but I think it's pretty clear that something out of the oridinary happened to them, and that there has been no definitive answer offered for what it was that fits all of the facts of the case.
That kind of stance angers alien believers and disbelievers alike - which is usually a pretty good sign that it's the proper way to look at things.
Some clips from interviews I conducted for the 1980 Rendlesham Forest case for "Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Cases", which premieres on Space in Canada on May 10, 2007.
Included are UFO Review publisher Stuart Miller, UFO researcher / author / lecturer Stan Friedman, former UK Ministry of Defence UFO investigator Nick Pope, and UFO researcher / author Richard Hall.
