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.
Assume that you have a multiple witness UFO sighting. Which of the following two accounts of that sighting would seem more credible to you?
Account #1 - All of the witnesses agree on exactly what they saw / experienced.
Account #2 - While the witnesses all agree that they saw / experienced something, they offer different descriptions of the event.
If you chose Account #1, you're wrong.
People experience things differently, and they focus on different things, with the end result being that each person's account of a shared event is going to be like a snowflake: it will be unique.
A good case in point is the 1953 Santa Barbara Channel UFO sighting, where Kelly Johnson and his wife saw a UFO from the ground in Agoura, California, at the same time as a Lockheed crew saw the UFO while flying over the ocean. The case is recounted in my film Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Sightings, which you can view here (you can read the original statements here).
Johnson described the UFO as elliptical in his report. Chief Flight Test Engineer H. L. Thoren, however, who was aboard the plane, described it as a "flying wing".
Which one was more accurate? That's a question open to reasonable debate, although to me the clear answer is Thoren, who was closer, and in a better position to observe the UFO in more detail. But the key point here is that the fact that Thoren and Johnson offered different descriptions of the shape of the object doesn't undermine the credibility of the case; it enhances it, because that is what can be expected when different people see the same thing (especially, as in this case, when they see it from different vantage points). What's important is that they agreed on the main point - that there was a UFO, and that it acted in a certain way.
Indeed, it would be suspicious if Thoren and Johnson had agreed on every detail - that would be an almost certain sign that at best they had "gotten their stories straight" beforehand, and at worst that they had made the whole thing up from the beginning.
In short, the perfect witnesses are the ones who get the big picture right, even as they differ on particular details; they are not the ones who agree on every element of a sighting, and you should be wary of anyone who demands that kind of consistency from witnesses, because they simply don't know what they're talking about.
A programming note: I'll be interviewing James Carrion, the former International Director of MUFON, for The Other Side of Truth podcast on February 15th, to be aired on the 16th. We'll be talking about the current brouhaha at MUFON, of course, but we'll be concentrating on something of far more interest and importance, namely the relationship between the various intelligence agencies and the civilian groups and Internet forums devoted to the UFO subject. For some background information, check out James' most recent blog post, How To Take Down a UFO Organization 101.
If you have any questions you want me to ask James, feel free to leave them as a comment. No promises, but I'll see what I can do.
As I have now posted all of Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Sightings on YouTube, I figured I might as well post them all here in order, from beginning to end.
An enhanced and revised version is in the works, and will be available in Brazil in Portuguese soon, and then in English from Redstar Films, but here is the original, from 2007, originally broadcast in Canada, and then in New Zealand.
I appeared on the EastLink TV program Atlantic Filmmakers again this past year, and as always my good friend Scott Squires brought up the subject of UFOs and the paranormal. The first three-and-a half-minutes of this clip contains that exchange.
My good friend, ace British paranormal researcher Dave Sadler, of the Unknown Phenomena Investigation Association, will be joining me Sunday evening for a no-holds barred conversation about the state of paranormal research in the United Kingdom, why he hates psychics, UFOs, ghosts... and whatever else pops to mind. I'll have it posted by Monday at the podcast, and here at the blog.
Here's a clip of some footage from Ghost Cases with Dave explaining the background of a ghost story from the Bridestones, near Congleton.
Dave's most recent book, "Paranormal Reality: Ghosts, UFOs and Pussy Cats", can be purchased here.
Modern rule and its metaphysics are extraordinarily resilient, so the difficulties of such resistance cannot be overstated. Those who attempt it will have difficulty funding and publishing their work, and their reputations will suffer. UFO resistance might not be futile but it is certainly dangerous, because it is resistance to modern sovereignty itself. In this respect militant UFO agnosticism is akin to other forms of resistance to governmentality; however, whereas sovereignty has found ways of dealing with them, the UFO may reveal an Achilles heel. Like Achilles, the modern sovereign is a warrior whose function is to protect—in this case, from threats to the norm. Unlike conventional threats, however, the UFO threatens humans’ capacity to decide those threats, and so cannot be acknowledged without calling modern sovereignty itself into question. To what extent that would be desirable is a large normative question which we have bracketed here. But taking UFOs seriously would certainly embody the spirit of self criticism that infuses liberal governmentality and academia in particular, and it would, thereby, foster critical theory. And indeed, if academics’ first responsibility is to tell the truth, then the truth is that after sixty years of modern UFOs, human beings still have no idea what they are, and are not even trying to find out. That should surprise and disturb us all, and cast doubt on the structure of rule that requires and sustains it.
Alexander Wendt (Ohio State University) and Raymond Duvall (University of Minnesota), in Political Theory, Vol. 38, No. 4, August 2008.
A note about the Shag Harbour segment - the portrayal in the film extends beyond what is officially known and reported, and includes references to anonymous testimony given to researchers about what happened after the initial incident, as related to the Navy's efforts. This aspect of the case remains highly controversial, to say the least. I made the editorial decision to include it in the narrative because it's part of the story, and I trust the accounts relayed to me by key researchers, while not necessarily accepting the information contained within as legitimate. As with almost any UFO case, however, there is the official story... and then there always seems to be an "unofficial" story. Sometimes those turn out to be accurate (the RB47 case, for example), and sometimes they don't. With the Shag Harbour case, research continues.
A note: the top 9 cases were voted in as described by the narration. As I've made clear in a number of interviews since the film was released, I exercised my editorial discretion to bump the case that came in at #10 in the voting, and replace it with the Nuremberg report, as an avatar for all of the cases that pre-date the modern era of UFO sightings, which dates from 1947 and the Kenneth Arnold sighting. As researchers like Jacques Vallee have pointed out, the phenomenon has been with us much longer than the past six decades.
UFOs (or Flying Saucers, as they were originally known), have had a significant impact on modern popular culture, perhaps most notably in film and television, but also in music. In this episode of The Other Side of Truth, I have constructed a playlist of some of my favourite Flying Saucer related music, from the sublime to the ridiculous, and all points in between. Enjoy!
P.S. Hat tip to my good friend Greg Bishop for the inspiration!
In this excerpt from the November, 2000 interview I conducted with Stan Friedman, he talks a bit about his speaking career, and how he deals with audiences, and then he gets into his views on science, and why it needs to be more accessible to non-scientists. He also reveals what he, Benito Mussolini, and Peter Jennings, all have in common.
In this episode I'm joined by Greg Bishop for a discussion that starts out about psychics, and then veers off into a host of other areas, from spirituality and consciousness, to what kind of message we should be sending to extraterrestrials, to the David Jacobs / Emma Woods brouhaha (it won't be quite what you think), to how music and art are fundamental to understanding ourselves, to Henry Thoreau and John Lennon and Sigur Ros, to... well, a whole bunch of stuff. Interspersed throughout our ramblings are some songs that fit the tenor of what we're discussing, which is a first for any of my podcasts. All in all, its not an interview, but rather a conversation between two best friends about life, and how to live it... and maybe, just maybe, even UFOs.
In this excerpt from a lengthy pre-interview I conducted with Stan back in November, 2000 (in what was a very noisy office), he talks about the Bible and religion as it relates to his belief that the Earth has been visited by extraterrestrial beings.
Rather than emphasizing our strength and wisdom in a message to more advanced civilizations, I suggest a more humble approach. I think the most powerful message that we could send to beings on another world is that we are a young civilization. We are in our technological adolescence. We are struggling. We are uncertain that we’re even going to survive. And yet, we have enough hope that we are willing to send a message and listen, maybe a hundred or a thousand years, with the hope that we’ll get a reply.
On the one hand, the type of message that Dr. Vakoch is describing makes eminent sense to me. On the other hand, however, given that we have no idea what we might encounter "out there", caution should be the order of the day.
In May, 2009, I was in England filming four episodes of the television series Ghost Cases. After we were done, my co-host Holly Stevens and I stayed on in Europe for three weeks on vacation (England, Scotland and the Czech Republic). While in London, I attended a lecture by Dr. Michio Kaku at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) on the 28th of May, and took the opportunity to ask him a question about his view that we might be in the midst of an intergalactic conversation, and not even know it. This short episode of The Other Side of Truth features that exchange.
You can listen to the full lecture and Q & A here.
About a month ago, I was interviewed by Rob Walker of the New York Times Magazine for an article he was writing about the idea of a "digital afterlife", with a specific focus on my friend and collaborator Mac Tonnies, who passed away in October, 2009. The article, titled "Cyberspace When You're Dead", is now available here, and it's a fantastic piece of writing, offering a thought-provoking look at what is, and what someday may be. It also offers a timely and poignant reminder of the impact that Mac had on so many lives, an impact that I'm confident will continue to grow in the years to come. I admit that as I had a tear in my eye as I read the part about Mac's three watches, which his parents were kind enough to give to Greg, Nick and me. We were all incredibly touched.
Walker placed my contribution at the end, just before he gave Mac the final word for the piece. In a way, I feel like Mac and I are together one more time, partners, as he would say with a wink and a nudge, in crime... which, ironically, proves the point of the article, and the validity of Mac's ideas.
An excerpt:
I found myself wondering, oddly enough, about what Mac Tonnies’s take might be. The last of his friends to whom I spoke was Paul Kimball, a filmmaker who lives in Nova Scotia. He met Tonnies online about a decade ago; they corresponded for six years before meeting in person, when Kimball came to Kansas City to interview Tonnies for a documentary. They ended up becoming close, even collaborating on a play (swapping drafts via e-mail) that was staged at the Boulder International Fringe Festival.
Among their shared interests, it turns out, was the relationship among technology, consciousness and mortality. Their play, based on a science-fiction story Tonnies had written in college, involves two women who turn out not to be, strictly speaking, creatures of organic matter: one is an artificial-intelligence program, the other a human consciousness uploaded into a form that could survive a centuries-long space journey. The very title of Tonnies’s Posthuman Blues blog, Kimball points out, hints at ambivalence about these subjects. But that was the place, he says, where his generally private friend “revealed himself,” post by post. The fact that the blog persists, in public, is what makes it distinct from, say, a journal Kimball owns that belonged to his grandfather and that has been read by perhaps 20 people.
The day before we spoke, Kimball continued, he had linked to an old Posthuman Blues post on his Facebook page, seeking reactions from his own online circle. “So I’m still having this conversation” with his friend Tonnies, he told me, “even though he’s been dead for more than a year.” Eventually, Kimball added, such situations may be routine. “We’re entering a world where we can all leave as much of a legacy as George Bush or Bill Clinton. Maybe that’s the ultimate democratization,” he said. “It gives all of us a chance at immortality.”
After talking to Kimball, I ended up watching a couple of interview clips of Tonnies on YouTube. In one, he discussed “transhumanism,” the techno-scientific quest to transcend the traditional limits of the human animal, death included, whether through merging with machines or fiddling with our genes. Skeptics or opponents of transhumanism are missing the point that it’s well underway, he argued: medicine is transhuman, in that it thwarts mortality. While I didn’t find this wholly convincing, I will concede that it was interesting to find myself in a position to listen to his arguments at all. It made me wish I could offer Tonnies my counterpoints — but of course I can’t. So I’ll give him the last word. “I like to think of death as a glorified terminal illness,” Mac Tonnies said, and will continue to say, for as long as this particular collection of bits remains available for someone to watch and listen to. “If we can escape the boundaries of death, maybe we’ll be O.K.”
The Boulder theatrical version of Doing Time can be accessed in this post, wherein I offer some thoughts about the play, and the process of creating it. Alas, Mac passed away before we finished the screenplay that we were working on, but I've finished it based on our early drafts, and it looks promising to shoot in 2011.
I'm in Los Angeles right now on business, and tonight I'll be on Radio Misterioso with host Greg Bishop and Walter Bosley, discussing the world of the weird and the strange, and, if we feel really frisky, Mark Pilkington's new book, Mirage Men. You can tune in at Kill Radio.
It was a year ago that Mac Tonnies passed away. Greg Bishop and I will be on Radio Misterioso this evening, Midnight to 2 am AST, remembering our friend. Join us!
Of all the films I've made, this is one of two that I wish I could do over again, primarily because it helped resurrect the Aztec UFO hoax, which should have stayed dead and buried (same reason for the other I would do over, Do You Believe in Majic). I learned a valuable lesson - a documentary filmmaker doesn't necessarily need to take a neutral stance, particularly when what he's being told is nuts. As the years have gone on, I've realized that even-handedness is about presenting the truth, and not about treating both sides as if they are equally valid when they clearly are not. But I was young(er) and less experienced back then, and didn't want to be seen as anything other than fair. Mea culpa.
Still, it's nice to see my old friend, the late Karl Pflock, who I think covers the Aztec hoax as well as it could be covered. He also brings up the Farmington Armada, which is the one case from the Aztec region that people should discuss, but it's just not sexy enough, because it doesn't have a crashed flying saucer and 16 dead little aliens.
The film was shot for less than $15,000 (and piggy-backed on the production of Do You Believe in Majic), which shows in the production value at points, and the reliance on interviews, but it's something of which I'm proud.
Alas, it would be nice if the distributor's write-up actually reflected what was in the film. Instead, the write-up is clearly designed to sell the film to the "aliens are here / crashed flying saucer" crowd, which is somewhat disingenuous, given the fairly even-handed point-of-view the film takes. Marketing in the film industry has absolutely nothing to do with truth.
A couple of other things:
The film was shot in 2003. Still no results from the core sample that Scott Ramsey took and was having analyzed.
None of the documents that Scott showed me referenced a flying saucer crash at Aztec. None. Not even remotely.
He never did give me the name of the anonymous witness he refers to in the film. When he says he told me about him, it was just what this guy had allegedly told Scott. I was never given the opportunity to confirm any of what this person supposedly said, or even that the person actually existed, despite requesting to do so.
Finally, here's an interesting anecdote from the production, which my crew members still find amusing. We were doing some filming down near Socorro, at a wildlife sanctuary (where Scott said there might have been a flying saucer crash...), and across the road were two guys, who had parked their van and gotten out with binoculars and a camera. Most of the time they were looking at various birds, but every now and then they would look over at us, something I've gotten quite used to over the years - if you have a large video or film camera out, people tend to stare, and wonder what you're filming. Anyway, after a few minutes, Scott came over to me and told me he thought the two guys might be government agents following us! He made a big deal about taking down their license plate number, and said he was going to get a friend to "run" them. Then he suggested that we turn our camera around, and start filming them. I politely refused, and a minute or two later told my guys to pack up. We had what we needed (just some b-roll that was never going to be in the film), and I was a bit weirded out by Scott, not for the first time. I'm saving the rest of the stories for the Aztec chapter of my memoirs!
For my views on the Aztec hoax, I encourage everyone to type "Aztec" into the search engine for this blog, which will take you to all of the posts I made after the film was released.
The planet is only about three or four times as massive as our home world, meaning it probably has a solid surface just like Earth. Much more important, it sits smack in the middle of the so-called habitable zone, orbiting at just the right distance from the star to let water remain liquid rather than freezing solid or boiling away. As far as we know, that's a minimum requirement for the presence of life. For thousands of years, philosophers and scientists have wondered whether other Earths existed out in the cosmos. And since the first, very un-Eearthlike extrasolar planet was discovered in 1995, astronomers have been inching closer to answering that question. Now, they've evidently succeeded (although to be clear, there's no way at this point to determine whether there actually is life on the new planet).
Remember the day, and the name: 29 September, 2010 - Gliese 581g.
Does this mean aliens from Gliese 581g are visiting Earth? Of course not. But it does point out, yet again, why the extraterrestrial hypothesis for the UFO phenomenon, of all the "paranormal" hypotheses on offer, makes the most sense - by far.
Part II of my interview earlier this month with Kevin Randle, wherein we discuss animal mutilations, a few more points about the "abduction" phenomenon... and some miscellaneous subjects, including a certain Colonel of the Israeli-founded S3!
"Maggots, mutilations and myth: Patterns of postmortem scavenging of the bovine carcass", the Canadian Veterinary Journal article that I reference in this episode, can be read in its entirety here.
Paul Kimball
P.S. Here is a picture of yours truly in June, 2009, inside the secret S3 HQ in Prague!
From time to time, the real world, and in my case the "reel" world, intrudes on my interest in the paranormal, and demands most of my attention. With my first feature film, Eternal Kiss, premiering at the 2010 Atlantic Film Festival next week, this is one of those times.
"I've encountered a lot of people who sound like critics but very few who have substantive criticisms. There is a lot of skepticism, but it seems to be more a matter of inertia than it is of people having some real reason for thinking something else." - K. Eric Drexler
"The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos." - Stephen Jay Gould
On September 8, 2010, I recorded an interview with veteran UFO researcher Kevin D. Randle, most famous for his work on the Roswell case, wherein we discussed two particular topics that he has conducted extensive research in, but has rarely been interviewed about - animal mutilations, and the “alien abduction” phenomenon.
In this segment, Kevin and I discuss “alien abductions” - how it’s not caused by aliens from Zeta Reticuli (or anywhere else), what some of the non-paranormal explanations are, and why the truth has been overlooked by the vast majority of the UFO research community for the past 25 years, to the benefit of “researchers” like David Jacobs and Budd Hopkins, and to the detriment of the people they claim they have been trying to help.
For more information about Kevin’s research into the “alien abduction” phenomenon, you should get a copy of his excellent book The Abduction Enigma, co-authored by Dr. William Cone and Russ Estes.
As you watch this episode, it might seem to you like nothing much is really going on, which is in a sense true, and which is also what happens most of the time with ghost investigation (frankly, it's what happens with any kind of research or investigation). I think this is quite useful to watch in and of itself, which is why I structured the episode the way that I did - so that folks could see what really goes on during these investigations. However, it also leads up to a surpising conclusion that still has me thinking about what might really have happened, over a year later.
Unhappy coincidence? Almost certainly. But, as the Bard said, "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy". When one has been involved in something that they would otherwise have casually dismissed as that "unhappy coincidence" (as I no doubt would have in this case, were I not the one at the center of events), then one gains a greater understanding of Hamlet's caution to Horatio, and the need to leave at least a little room open for doubt.
This is the last episode of Ghost Cases that I'll be posting here, but there are 11 more interesting and thought-provoking stops on the journey of discovery that Holly and I took back in 2008 and 2009. If you want to see the rest of the series, write to your friendly neighbourhood broadcaster and ask that they contact our distributor, Breakthrough Entertainment, to inquire about acquiring the series for broadcast.
"If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong." - Sir Arthur C. Clarke
In today's Huffington Post, Seth Shostak takes a look at the debate between science and religion over how the universe was built.
An excerpt:
The split between religion and science is relatively new. Isaac Newton, who first worked out the laws by which gravity held the planets and even the stars in their traces, was sufficiently impressed by the scale and regularity of the universe to ascribe it all to God.
Physicist Stephen Hawking, who has authored a new book on cosmology (The Grand Design), now says that Newton underestimated his own discoveries. The law of gravity is like "love" to the Beatles: it's all you need. With gravity in place, the cosmos-as-we-know-it was just a matter of hanging out for a few billion years.
However, this approach inevitably begs the question, "who designed gravity?" Isn't it remarkable that this gentle force seems so perfectly suited to the job of assembling a grand and habitable universe?
Steve Mera, yours truly and Dave Sadler discuss our plan of action for the investigation at St. Edith's church, Shocklach:
Steve Mera, cameraman Aaron Gowlett, soundman Dale Ryan Leckie, and Holly, at the White Hart:
Holly at the White Hart:
Holly at the Bridestones:
Steve Mera and Dave Sadler at St. Edith's church:
Holly and I at the Bridestones:
I had a great time working with Dave, Steve and the rest of the crew from the UPIA, and of course my former partner-in-crime Holly, at some truly historic and fascinating locations.
My good friends at the Unknown Phenomena Research Association produce Phenomena Magazine every month. It's always an interesting read, with case reports, reviews, and other articles, put together by serious investigators who take a skeptical but open-minded look at various types of allegedly paranormal phenomena. Best of all, they provide the magazine for free!
You can download past issues here (#8 features Ghost Cases on the cover), and subscribe here.
In these outtakes from our investigation of the Manchester On-Line radio station in Manchester, England, for an episode of Ghost Cases, UPIA researcher Steve Mera, B.Sc. and my co-host Holly Stevens, B.Sc. demonstrate the proper use of an EMF meter in "ghost hunting" - not as a "ghost detector", as many claim, but as a means for determining possible explanations... and in this case, a public health hazard.
If you're interested in the UFO phenomenon, and you've never read Edward Ruppelt's classic book, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, you can do so on-line here.
You can also download Donald Keyhoe's most well-known book, The Flying Saucers are Real, at Project Gutenberg.
Jerry Clark is one of the few UFO / paranormal researchers that I truly respect - which is not the same thing as saying that I always agree with him, of course. His UFO Encyclopedia is one of the most important works with respect to the UFO Phenomenon, and should be on the bookshelf of anyone who claims to take a serious interest in the subject.
The long debate about the existence or nonexistence of extraordinary phenomena, from supernatural entities and fantastic monsters to mystery airships and UFOs, has long been predicated on an unexamined literalism. Either these things exist, it is presumed, or they are the products of error and deception. To a degree, this is a defensible approach. Beyond that, however, the frame of reference is woefully inadequate, failing to explain vividly felt encounters with otherworldly beings and beasts which over all of history human beings have experienced, even as no compelling evidence of their presence in consensus reality has ever emerged. Clark’s lecture discusses anomalous events vs. experience anomalies, which – though epistemologically unrelated –have a curiously parasitic relationship, and calls for a radical new understanding of the strange occurrences that have plagued, infuriated and fascinated human beings at all times and places.
Well worth watching by anyone interested in paranormal research.
This is the episode of Ghost Cases that I found the most interesting, and which still baffles me over a year later - an investigation of the cemetery and grounds of St. Edith's church in Shocklach, England with our good friends Dave Sadler and Steve Mera from the Unknown Phenomena Investigation Association. Some very strange things happened that evening back in May, 2009, that tested the limits of my skepticism.
Did we experience something paranormal? I can't say for sure. All that I can say is that it was definitely the weirdest night of investigation I've ever experienced. There was so much going on, and we had the opportunity to look for answers, i.e. a possible sound that could account for the horse's hooves that Holly and I heard, or a light source to account for the light that Steve observed, but we couldn't come up with anything. Of course, we also didn't obtain any hard evidence, such as audio or video recordings, of what we experienced.
So, the reasonable person might ask - what conclusions did I draw from all of this?
None, really. I can't explain what happened, nor can I prove it to someone who wasn't there. I'm not sure that I can even prove it to myself.
Is there a rational explanation for everything that happened? Perhaps. However, there's a part of me that says otherwise - a part of me that believes we may have actually encountered something truly anomalous that evening, perhaps even something paranormal.
I fully intend to return to Shocklach church, sooner rather than later, to spend some more time there, and see if the events of my first trip repeat themselves. As Dave Sadler said to me before we got there, it's a special place.
An outtake from Ghost Cases footage. While in Manchester, Holly and I investigated a supposedly haunted radio station (along with Dave Sadler and Steve Mera of the UPIA), and we did a radio interview with Tony Filer and Paul Ripley, who host a paranormal radio show there. Here is an edited clip that shows me for the well-researched, intrepid investigator that I really am!
Because it can't all be deadly serious!
That's Steve to my right and Holly on my left. Tony Filer has his back to the camera, and that's Paul Ripley to the right - you'll see him as the shot pans over.
