And, even better, it is published in Japanese.
Category Archives: UFO book
High Calibre UFO case involving pilot…released for first time by the Churchill Archive
From The Daily Telegraph, May 27th 2012
Quote:
The UFO sighting that convinced a Government minister
One of the most tantalising ever accounts of an apparent encounter with a UFO – deemed so credible it apparently convinced a British minister – can be told for the first time.
By Jasper Copping
It is one of the most tantalising ever official accounts of an encounter with a UFO – deemed so credible it even convinced the government minister who investigated it.
Now, for the first time, the sighting of a flying saucer by an RAF fighter pilot and the subsequent high level inquiry it prompted can be revealed.
The sighting occurred in 30 July 1952, when Flight Sergeant Roland Hughes was on a training flight over West Germany in a de Havilland Vampire FB9.
As he was returning to base, he reported being intercepted by a “gleaming silver, metallic disc” which flew alongside his aircraft before speeding off. The mystery object was also detected by RAF radars on the ground, which recorded it travelling at speeds far in excess of any known aircraft.
Hughes reported the sighting to his senior officers who sent him to see Duncan Sandys, the then aviation minister, to brief him personally.
Following the meeting, Sandys went on to tell senior civil servants he was convinced by the airman’s story.
The UFO sighting is not only one of the most detailed by a serving member of the armed forces but also shows how seriously such reports were taken by the authorities. British governments have historically downplayed the suggestion that such sightings have been investigated.
The existence of the sighting has emerged in papers released by the Churchill Archive, at Cambridge University. The centre contains the papers of Sir Winston Churchill, as well as Sandys, who married the former prime minister’s daughter, Diana.
In one document – written a few days after the interview with the 23-year-old Hughes – Sandys tells the government’s chief scientist, Lord Cherwell, about the meeting and states that he found the airman’s account and the supporting evidence from radar “convincing”.
The sighting came shortly after a number of similar “flying saucer” reports from US airmen and Sandys added: “I have no doubt at all that (Hughes) saw a phenomenon similar to that described by numerous observers in the United States.”
Lord Cherwell had dismissed the US sightings as “mass psychology”, but in his memo Sandys takes him to task for this attitude and makes clear his position on the existence of UFOs.
The minister, who was later promoted to Defence Secretary, went on: “Until some satisfactory scientific explanation can be provided, it would be most unwise to accept without further question the view that ‘flying saucers’ can be dismissed as ‘a mild form of hysteria’.” Sandys also wrote that there was “ample evidence of some unfamiliar and unexplained phenomenon”.
The documents are among thousands released by the archive in recent years. Their disclosures were uncovered by David Clarke, a Sheffield Hallam
University academic, while he was conducting research for a new edition of a book he has written on UFO sightings for the National Archives.
By chance, shortly after his discovery, Dr Clarke was contacted by the fighter pilot’s son, who had read the earlier edition and wanted to share information about his father’s sighting.
Roland Hughes had died in 2009, aged 79, but had recounted his version of events to his son, Brian, who passed on the account to Dr Clarke, as well as his father’s log book, in which he had noted the sighting and subsequent meeting with Sandys.
The incident will now feature in the latest edition of the book, to be released in September, following the release this summer of more government UFO files from the National Archives.
In the airman’s account, relayed via his son, he was in one of four aircraft from No. 20 Squadron, of the RAF’s 2nd Tactical Air Force, returning to RAF Oldenburg, in northern West Germany, flying in formation at high altitude in clear visibility.
He reported seeing a sudden flash of “silver light” in they sky high above him which rapidly descended towards him until he could see that it was a “gleaming silver-metallic disc”.
The airman said its surface was shiny, “like tin foil”, and “without a single crease or crinkle in it”. He could see, with “astonishing clarity”, the aircraft’s “highly reflective and absolutely seamless metallic-looking surface”. He estimated its size at 100ft across – “about the wingspan of a Lancaster bomber”.
It flew alongside him for several seconds before flying off at great speed.
None of the other three pilots saw the object – it is thought because they were all executing a “banking turn” at the time and would not have been looking in the right direction – but radar on the ground had picked it up.
Six days later, Hughes – who later worked as a commercial airline pilot – was sent to RAF Fassberg, another base in northern West Germany, to give his account to senior RAF officers and Sandys himself, who was visiting. The minister’s first question to Hughes was how many beers he had had the night before.
After the sighting, Hughes – who was known as Sam, after a character created by Stanley Holloway, the actor and comedian – was nicknamed “Saucer Sam” by colleagues, who painted a cartoon of a flying saucer on his jet.
Brian Hughes, 45, a Ministry of Defence civil servant based at Bovington Camp, in Dorset, said: “We knew about the sighting in the family when we were growing up but my father didn’t talk about it a lot. We learned about it more from prompting him.
“He was very matter-of-fact about what he saw, just describing the details. He never did any research into UFO or flying saucers and didn’t have any interest in the supernatural of science fiction.
“If it was someone other than my father who had told this story, I would be sceptical. He once said to me ‘People think you’re mad if you say you’ve seen a flying saucer – I’ve only ever seen one once; I’ve never seen one since.'”
Dr Clarke, who is sceptic on UFO issues, said: “There is absolutely no doubt that something was seen by Hughes. He is not making this up. But the only honest position to take is that we don’t know what it was. But there could be some sort of scientific explanation, before you start jumping to conclusions about alien visitors.”
Unquote
This story, with a photo of the pilot, is at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/9292417/The-UFO-sighting-that-convinced-a-Government-minister.html#
More cases, with up-to-date compelling theories, are detailed in this new UFO book…
“UFO – Strange Space on Earth” by Whitehead & Wingfield – published by Wooden Books, Glastonbury. ISBN 978 I 904263 75 5, and in the US by Walker & Co/Bloomsbury USA
“I want to believe…”
OK, fine, but if you’re buying into some of the snake oil that’s on offer, it should at least come with a Health Warning.
Like the majority of the American people, I believe in the reality of UFOs and that a significant proportion of the strange unidentified objects that are seen in the skies over this country and in other parts of the world are something of a truly mysterious nature. That is, maybe, of extraterrestrial or interdimensional origin, rather than all just secret military aircraft, drones, misidentifications, natural phenomena, hoaxes, etc. However, between this initial cautious position of mine and the widespread belief that UFOs are definitely extraterrestrial spacecraft piloted by small gray aliens (with either a hostile agenda, or perhaps a benign one, towards the inhabitants of planet Earth?), there is one mighty leap of faith involved.
The UFO True Believers have made that leap and many feel totally certain of the alien presence here. We should all look carefully at the evidence on which their beliefs are based and whether the widespread alien myths of today have any sound basis in fact. Some people have rather vague ET beliefs which are based on the general concept of creatures from other planets that has been presented to us in Hollywood movies and in comic books and science fiction over the years. Others with a more definite interest in the subject listen to Coast-to-Coast AM radio and suchlike, read UFO magazines, visit certain well publicized websites dealing with such matters, and attend UFO conferences that are held all over America.
So far, so good, but here comes a word of warning. A very significant proportion of the material that has been presented via the above media is without doubt fiction, fabrication, fantasy and falsehood. That would be all very well if these stories of alien contact and the like were presented with some kind of warning but most often they are not. Perhaps a health warning, like that found on cigarette packs, along the following lines, would be in order: Many claims of alien contact, UFO photographs, video footage and stories that are presented here contain fiction, fantasy, and faked material. Consumption of too much of this and belief in it may lead in some cases to paranoia, gullibility, loosening of one’s grip on reality, and irrational behavior.
Before howls of protest arise at my suggestion, I should point out that there are also many honest, serious researchers in the UFO field for whom I have nothing but admiration. The trouble, especially for those who are new to the subject, is that it’s not always easy to distinguish between the honest researchers and those people who should definitely not be believed. Just because a person making a fantastical claim of alien contact is plausible, well-educated (sometimes with a science degree, Ph.D., or similar), likeable, and a polished presenter, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he or she is telling the truth. As with con men and con women, the reverse is often true.
There are quite a few UFO celebrities who have come forward with claims of alien contact over the last sixty odd years. During the 1950s and 1960s these were mostly “contactees” who told stories of their meetings with extra-terrestrials in flying saucers and of their trips to other planets either in our solar system or in other star systems. There have been more than 50 of these and their extraordinary claims are mostly just fantasy and science fiction.
To improve on their claims of alien contact some of the better known contactees, such as George Adamski and Billy Meier and others, produced dubious photographs purporting to show flying saucers and sometimes blurred images of their extraterrestrial friends. These alleged ETs almost always had human form since it’s easier to serve up a photo of an unknown person and then claim it is an alien. Photos of “aliens” that are totally unlike humans are much more difficult to make look convincing and I know of none that is considered by any serious researcher to be “the real thing”.
At this stage I believe that it is useful to list some cases of alleged ET contact that serious UFO researchers have firmly consigned to what I call the “7F Basket”. The “7F” signifies falsehood, fiction, fantasy, fraud, fakery, folklore and flapdoodle.
Here are ten examples of well known cases that can be firmly consigned to the 7F Basket of ufology:-
(1) Contactee George Adamski and his tales of flying saucers in which he flew to Venus and round the moon. Likewise other 1950s/60s “contactees”.
(2) The Billy Meier megahoax featuring “beamships”, contact with ETs from the Pleiades, hundreds of faked photos of UFOs, Semjase, etc., etc.
(3) Bob Lazar’s 1989 claims of back-engineering flying saucers acquired by the US military at “S-4” (Area 51) & aliens’ use of Element 115 propulsion.
(4) Ray Santilli’s “Alien Autopsy” scam of 1995. Footage of an alleged autopsy carried out on a dead alien was fraudulent and faked in the UK.
(5) Robert Dean’s false claims re “The Assessment” document at SHAPE (1964). This never existed. Also tales of an alien battle with US forces, etc.
(6) Linda Cortile’s ongoing alien abduction soap opera in NYC (1990s) was concocted by her and fed bit-by-bit to abduction researcher Budd Hopkins.
(7) Ed Walters’ 1987 UFO photos at Gulf Breeze, FL, and his alleged alien contact story. (This led to a UFO flap there where people did see UFOs)
(8) Whitley Strieber’s “Communion –A True Story” (1987). This abduction tale is, without doubt, horror fiction that took place solely in Whitley’s head.
(9) The “CARET drones” (from 2007) Internet hoax created by “Isaac”. Supposed ET technology but actually bicycle parts and many faked photos.
(10) “The Other Roswell” story of a 1955 UFO crash near Del Rio, TX, by Robert Willingham. His claim is undoubtedly fantasy presented as fact.
That’s just ten cases for the 7F basket but it’s probably only the tip of the iceberg. OK, some of you will say, we know that many of these are false cases but it doesn’t mean that there aren’t any genuine cases of alien contact. No, it doesn’t, but my complaint is that some researchers, magazine editors, MUFON writers and some UFO conference organizers go on promoting these fraudulent cases as if they were genuine. Again and again, as if nothing had changed, and without any “health warning”; these are just UFO myths.
I noted the difference between cases where we have only the word of the contactee or experiencer and cases where other evidence is offered such as photographs. Unfortunately such photos almost invariably prove to have been faked. With Billy Meier’s “Wedding Cake” UFO photos one could clearly discern that the UFO base was constructed using a garbage can lid of a type which is common in Switzerland (see F1). Similarly, with Isaac’s “CARET drones” –presented as genuine “self-activating machines” using ET technology by both Linda Moulton Howe and Whitley Strieber– it can be seen that some of the CARET drone components are recognizable as bicycle parts (see F2 below). In addition to that, an article soon to be published in the MUFON Journal will show that fractal analysis of the CARET photos proves them to be fakes without a shadow of doubt.
The infamous “wedding cake” UFO
So strong is the almost religious desire to believe among the UFO True Believers that sometimes they will concede there is a bit of fakery involved but insist that the story as a whole must be true. That’s been the case with Adamski, with the Meier hoax, and for quite some time with Santilli’s “Alien Autopsy” fraud. Even as these cases start to unravel and the stories were being altered to counter any proof of fakery, some true believers would hang on to their belief regardless. To my way of thinking, once some part of an alien contact story, or its supposed photographic evidence, is shown to involve deception, then the likely conclusion is that it is all deception.
CARET drone
Another aspect of beliefs held so fervently by UFO True Believers is that the same people may also tend to embrace wild conspiracy theories. Of course many of the alien contact stories are heavily bound up in conspiracy theory and anyone (like me) who questions the truth of such claims has sometimes been accused of being a government disinformation agent bent on suppressing “the truth”. That ridiculous idea is just about as crazy as the well known conspiracy theory which claims that 9/11 was engineered by the “sinister Bush/Cheney/CIA/NSA clique” and that the high-rise buildings in New York destroyed on 9/11, were actually primed in advance with thermite charges by government agents. According to this mad scenario, it was that which caused their collapse and destruction, rather than the airplanes hijacked by al Qaeda terrorists and flown into the WTC towers.
If one pauses for a moment to consider just how absurd some of these beliefs are, one could probably be justified in saying that the paranoia so much in evidence here is potentially a mental health problem. Conspiracy theories –whether it be 9/11 or the JFK assassination, or the alleged murder of Princess Diana– seem in recent times to supplement the beliefs of the more extreme UFO True Believers. Some conspiracy theories like this are served up at UFO conferences just as if they were a natural extension of the UFO subject.
And besides conspiracies, we can include a number of other mysterious things that some people have tried to link with the UFO phenomenon: cattle mutilations and crop circles, to name but two. There are of course some persuasive arguments to link such phenomena to UFOs but equally one should be aware that, in the case of crop circles, fakers and hoaxers are aware of it and sometimes tailor their productions accordingly. Many crop circle formations in Britain have been designed and laid down by their human creators over the last 20 years specifically to appeal to the UFO beliefs of certain prominent researchers. In particular, the “Pi” crop circle formation of 2008 encoded that mathematical constant accurately to nine decimal places with a view to entrapping any researcher with a numerical problem solving ability. As anticipated, some naïve researchers immediately claimed that the crop circle must be of ET origin, or, at any rate, not the work of humans. (Considerate of aliens to use decimal notation, wasn’t it?)
The three makers of the Pi crop circle include a friend of mine, ‘Raven’, whom I’ve known well for about 20 years. One of his colleagues in making this formation was ‘Jaybird’ who has been one of the most prolific British circle-makers since 1990. I studied the crop circle phenomenon in the UK for several years and I can categorically say that the Pi circle and the vast majority, if not all, crop circles there in recent years are of human origin and are not made by ETs, UFOs, or even “self-activating machines” built in a secret lab in Palo Alto, CA, using ET technology (see F2 and F3 below).
Pi crop circle
To compound the CARET drones hoax deception, the invisible Internet “Isaac”, who has never actually shown himself in person, incorporated the ‘Pi’ crop circle design in one of his alleged Top Secret CARET laboratory documents and supplied it via the Internet to Linda Moulton Howe. She evidently believes that all this CARET stuff is genuine ET technology. Once more the dangled carrot was avidly accepted. I should point out that Raven and Jaybird are not in collusion with Isaac and surely the latter should at least pay them some royalties for use of their magnificent Pi circle symbol. Similarly perhaps, Open Minds TV, who now use the Pi crop circle symbol as a logo for Open Minds magazine?
For those who ask why shouldn’t one believe the various claims made in the ten false cases which I cited above, I would ask whether for instance they believe the Nigerian gentleman who is always sending me and others e-mails promising to pay $50,000,000 into one’s bank account –details of which he requests are sent to him in advance. Or the wonderful e-mail which arrives out of the blue telling you that you are the Winner of the UK Lotto draw in Johannesburg, South Africa, and you are approved to collect $2,500,000.00 if you apply for it (the catch, which becomes apparent later, is that there is a processing fee of several thousand $ which must be paid in advance). I suppose there are people who believe these scams are genuine and there are also people who are determined to believe in the great hoaxes of ufology.
But surely, I’m asked, what possible reason would X or Y, say, have for making these false claims of alien contact? Sadly, the motives for making a false claim most often boil down to the simple business of making money. Billy Meier had quite a business going selling lovely color photos and books of photos of his alleged Pleiadean beamships hovering over the Swiss hills. He also sold recordings of the strange noises these supposedly made. Not only was there money in it but he became the prophet or leader of a group of disciples who believed in his tales of alien contact and supposed Pleiadean philosophy. Other UFO “contactees”, like Rael, have formed cults or sects and some have published best-selling books that have netted considerable sums. Admittedly not all make money from their claims of alien contact but that’s usually not for want of trying! And, of course, I must admit there may be some who do genuinely believe in what they perceive happened to them.
When it comes to the 7F basket and the many false tales of alien contact, we should distinguish between the originators of the false claims and those who shamelessly promote them despite knowing that evidence has been faked and the stories are largely untrue. The latter are very much like the snake oil salesmen of the American West a hundred years ago and more. The product has changed, of course, but tales of alien contact, flights to other planets, ET crop circles, and “self-activating machines” are just as marketable as snake oil once was. The new product finds a wide audience via TV and radio, the internet, magazines, and websites that offer such fantasies dressed up as fact.
I don’t really care what people choose to believe as regards the “alien presence” and claims of alien contact. It is for each individual to decide what the truth is and which researchers are to be trusted. The broad church of American ufology today embraces some honest researchers and also quite a few prominent figures who might be politely accused of selling snake oil. Anyone who doubts this disillusioned assessment of US ufology should read the article Twenty Years in the UFO Fog (see F4) by Don Ecker who, with his wife Vicki, spent many years producing UFO Magazine. He writes:
In the last few years the one troubling thing with UFOs and UFO research has been the incredible lack of critical thinking exhibited by researchers that should know better and the public that doesn’t know better. For many years I’ve heard people within the field grouse that the debunkers and skeptics are ruining research but who are they kidding? Some of the “cases” in recent years that people have touted make me cringe. Stories recently covered in UFO Magazine like Project Serpo that have not one iota or shred of proof and read like the worst case of BAD science fiction … but people WANT TO BELIEVE.
That brings us back to the X-Files picture at the beginning of this article (which happens to feature one of Billie Meier’s fake UFOs). Don Ecker is a good judge of character and he understands the extent to which the UFO subject has been taken over by charlatans selling snake oil. If you read his article you’ll find the names of quite a few of them such as Bill Cooper, Marshall Applewhite, John Lear, Dr Courtney Brown, Lee Shargel, Ed Dames, Mel Noel, etc., etc.
“Does it matter?” some of you may ask. Yes, it does since, like Don Ecker, I consider this is a genuine and legitimate subject of study and that UFOs must come from somewhere. The falsehood, fiction, fantasy, fraud, fakery, folklore and flapdoodle that have swamped the subject for so long devalue the work of honest UFO researchers. More often than not the press treat the subject with amusement or derision, and it is understandable why orthodox scientists steer well clear. Continued belief in false cases of alien contact only impedes the search for a true understanding of the UFO phenomenon.
George Wingfield, May 2012.
Footnotes: Internet Links to referenced material.
F1 http://www.thebiggestsecret.org/home/index.php/articles/ufo-et/meier-hoax/60-meier-hoax/82-meier-mega-hoax-mega-con
also:
http://www.thebiggestsecret.org/home/index.php/articles/ufo-et/meier-hoax/60-meier-hoax/76-meier-smoking-gun
F2 http://www.bikebob.org/Carrots&CropCircles.html
F4 http://www.ufowatchdog.com/20+YEARS+IN+THE+UFO+FOG.pdf
For Wingfield’s further article: Ten Myths of US Ufology see “theufobook” website [this website!] and go to
https://theufobook.wordpress.com/2011/12/
George Wingfield is the c0-author of “UFO – Strange on Space On Earth” – published in 2011 and 2012 and available in book stores across the US and the UK [and now France, in a special French edition] – and on amazon and other websites.
George Wingfield
Ottumwa, Iowa
Mayth 11th 2012
“UFO – Strange Space On Earth” by Whitehead & Wingfield – published by Wooden Books, Glastonbury, UK. ISBN 978 I 904263 75 5, and in the US by Walker & Co/Bloomsbury USA
Do UFOs Have a Multidimensional Origin?
“There were many large cylinders, horizontal cylinders,” answered Vladimir Azhazha as he consulted his notes. “For instance, less than a year ago, on February 13th 1989, between 9:00 and 10:00 pm, such a cylinder flew over a road at an altitude of less than a mile. This happened in the Transcaucasus, in Cabardino-Balcari. It seemed to be metallic, and its length was estimated at about 1,500 feet. Its nose was lower than its tail and it flew at 65 mph.” [Another report by Soviet pilots described it as a large dark blue dirigible-like object with windows.]
Jacques Vallée prompted him to continue. “Were there several witnesses?”
“Actually, it was seen by thousands of people – truck drivers, people in cars. It seemed to have spotlights in front and in back. And some porthole-like openings were visible along its sides. It flew over the city of Nalchik, then drifted down to an altitude of 150 feet, made a turn, and flew off.
“The most interesting fact about this case is that, as the object turned, people saw some fins on its tail. But when the turn was completed, the fins had vanished. We have other case where parts of the objects seem to materialize on the spot.”
Azhaza bent towards us across the table for emphasis. “This is a key characteristic of the phenomenon: it is polymorphous.”
Unsure that he was getting an accurate French translation of that last sentence, Vallée asked Azhazha to repeat what he had just said.
“These objects are polymorphous. They can change shape dynamically in flight.” [From Jacques Vallée’s UFO Chronicles of the Soviet Union –A Cosmic Samizdat.]
Shape changing
The above case is one of many UFO sightings that are summarized in the new book UFO – Strange Space on Earth, by Whitehead and Wingfield. It is an instance of these strange objects being seen to change shape in the sky. This is one reason for thinking that UFOs can manipulate space and time as they travel through the cosmos and that they are of multidimensional origin rather than simple interplanetary or interstellar craft operating in the three dimensions of space with which we are familiar.
Appear to vanish
There are many other cases where UFOs have appeared to vanish in situ. Rather than flying away they have simply disappeared. And sometimes they disappear and reappear in a completely different part of the sky without visibly crossing the intervening space. This was the case with an enormous round object described as “the size of an aircraft carrier” which appeared near Japan Air Lines Flight 1628, a cargo Boeing 747, over Alaska on 7th November 1986.
Captain Kenju Terauchi said the UFO was spherical with an equatorial rim with flashing colored lights running around it. His crew saw it too and also a second object with it. Both objects appeared to stop directly in front of the 747 and seemed to be shooting off lights. The captain said he could feel the heat of these through the window of the cockpit.
The larger object was tracked on the 747’s radar and flew alongside the airplane. During the next 30 minutes the UFO appeared more than once to jump several miles almost instantly. It was tracked by ground radar and, during a ten-second sweep of the radar scope, it was found to have moved from a position 8 miles ahead of the 747 to one about 6 miles behind it.
This bewildering change of position in the briefest of moments would imply an interdimensional move by means unknown to current day physics. Terauchi called this kind of technology “unthinkable” because the UFOs seemed to manipulate both gravity and inertia.
Right-angled turns when travelling at speed
This case is also summarized in UFO – Strange Space on Earth. It is one of many reports in which UFOs have clearly behaved in ways that show they are not aerodynamic vehicles like aircraft. They have sometimes been seen to make right-angled turns when travelling at speed, indicating a total lack of inertia. Sometimes they are seen to split into two or more parts which fly away in different directions. Or sometimes they release smaller objects which fly around before rejoining the primary.
Having said that UFOs often exhibit polymorphous characteristics of this kind, observers have suggested that this appears to be like a change of phase: there can be particular phases –i.e. physical and/or non-physical states—which the objects can enter and some process allows them to move from one phase to another. By such a process, completely unknown to present day physics, UFOs are apparently able to transit whatever number of dimensions there may be to this world and to other worlds, possibly parallel universes.
ETH – increasingly inadequate as an explanation?
Such observations make ETH – the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis that UFOs are simply physical spacecraft that have been flown here by aliens from the planets of other stellar systems in our galaxy – increasingly inadequate as an explanation. Jacques Vallée, who was once an ardent proponent of ETH, proposed five arguments against it in 1989. Besides the implications of the polymorphism displayed by UFOs which we have already discussed, he put forward the following points:
*First, that the number of close encounters and alien abductions that are reported far exceeds that required for any physical survey of the Earth and its inhabitants.
*Second, that the humanoid body structure of the alleged “aliens” is not likely to have evolved similarly on another planet and it is not biologically well adapted to space travel.
*Third, the reported behavior in thousands of abduction reports contradicts the hypothesis of genetic and scientific experimentation on humans by an advanced race.
*And fourth, the extension of what is currently depicted as “alien visitation” throughout recorded human history demonstrates that UFOs are not just a contemporary phenomenon which many ETH exponents suggest started in 1947 or thereabouts.
Unfortunately much of our thinking on the UFO subject is based on the current myths of US Ufology, which were separately discussed in another article on this website. It is also, to a great extent, conditioned by the media and by Hollywood, whether we like it or not.
Jacques Vallée once tried to interest Steven Spielberg in a possible alternative explanation for the UFO phenomenon. According to an interview on Conspire.com, Vallée said, “I argued with him that the subject was even more interesting if it wasn’t extraterrestrials. If it was real, physical, but not ET. So he said, ‘You’re probably right, but that’s not what the public is expecting –this is Hollywood and I want to give people something that’s close to what they expect.”
George Wingfield
Ottumwa, Iowa
February 1st 2012
“UFO – Strange Space on Earth” by Whitehead & Wingfield – published by Wooden Books, Glastonbury, UK. ISBN 978 I 904263 75 5, and in the US by Walker & Co/Bloomsbury USA
A case from the book – February, 1914.
“Ontario, Canada. A UFO floating on the water of Georgian Bay was seen by eight observers. Human-like entities on the craft held a hose that dipped into the water. On seeing the witnesses, all but one returned inside; the remaining entity was still outside [on the UFO] when the craft took off.”
That incident, dated February, 1914, is included in 100 of the best UFO cases in “UFO – Strange Space on Earth,” published in the US by Walker Books/Bloomsbury USA in January 2012, and in the UK by Wooden Books.
The book is co-authored by researchers, speakers and writers George Wingfield and Paul Whitehead, and is available in bookstores across the US and UK and on amazon. The book will be published this year in French.
Professors Brian Cox and Paul Davies on UFOs and aliens
Yesterday, on January 17th, 2012, acclaimed particle physicist Professor Brian Cox made it clear on BBC2 that UFOs exist as some form of alien intelligence and could appear on earth at any time. There was, he said, no reason why they couldn’t.
He added that because of the likelihood that alien life was commonplace, people like us could be watching a programme like this somewhere in the universe.
Tonight, the programme delved slightly deeper into the subject of aliens.
Professor Paul Davies, who attended meetings of FSR [Flying Saucer Review] in his early days (source – former editor of Flying Saucer Review, Gordon Creighton) said aliens might not use words when trying to communicate with us. They might use mathematics or a physics-based approach instead.
Prof Cox picked up on this later and showed what a disk of information looked like that used maths and physics, not words, to explain information. It looked not unlike images from a maths lesson at school or university.
Another member of the programme’s panel answered the questions “What will aliens look like?” “If they were from a water world, like fish. From a gas giant, like flying whales,” was the response.
Another panel members said aliens would most likely have two eyes, “even if they were short and squat aliens.”
So, no great new ground was broken there, although the panel agreed that some species of aliens could have the ability to detect radio waves via their own biological bodies.
Views about aliens are also expressed in the new book “UFO – Strange Space on Earth”, by journalist and former editor of Flying Saucer Review, Paul Whitehead, and author and lecturer on the subject, George Wingfield, a popular and controversial speaker at UFO conferences in the US.
- “UFO – Strange Space on Earth” by Whitehead & Wingfield – published by Wooden Books, Glastonbury. ISBN 978 I 904263 75 5, and in the US by Walker & Co/Bloomsbury USA
Russia’s navy declassifies UFO records
Extract from “UFO – Strange Space on Earth”
Quote
2009, July 21st. The Russian navy declassified its UFO records. Svobodnaya Pressa reported 50% of UFO cases involved oceans and in one case a nuclear-powered submarine detected six unknown objects following it. Unable to shake them off, it rose to the surface and the objects did the same before flying off.
Unquote
“UFO – Strange Space on Earth” is published globally in 2012. More information from Walker & Company/Bloomsbury [New York] and Wooden Books [UK], and available from bookstores [ independent, chain, and specialty] in the US and the UK and on the internet.
“We should scour the moon for ancient traces of aliens, say scientists” – Guardian
In what is viewed in some circles as a complete turnaround in the scientific community, some scientists have called for the latest high resolution photos of the moon to be scoured for signs of an alien presence.
It is not an entire change of sentiment by scientists. Their traditional, oft repeated, view, is that aliens live [if they exist at all] far away and have never “visited” our solar system. Thus, man must “search” for them, scanning the heavens for radio or light signals as proof that “they” exist.
[This pleases certain sections of society and academia, because it puts “us” in “control” and sweeps awkward questions underneath the proverbial carpet.]
The traditional view may be considered to be a somewhat outmoded approach and indeed it has been neatly side stepped by Paul Davies & co. The moon, they argue, may have been home to, or a base for, aliens, at any time in many millions of years.
To some, that is a logical step to take if we accept the new convention that life may be widespread throughout our galaxy [but, seemingly, not in our time and/or neighbourhood. Oh no!]
It may have escaped the attention of some scientists…that intelligent life may have evolved many millions of years ago and have spread via whatever means throughout our galaxy.
But not the attention of Davies and Robert Wagner…
The full story, under the sub-headline “Online volunteers could be set task of spotting alien technology, evidence of mining and rubbish heaps in moon images” is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/dec/25/scour-moon-ancient-traces-aliens
A ground-breaking historical perspective of the alien subject is given in the new book “UFO – Strange Space on Earth”, published in the UK in October 2011 and in the US by Bloomsbury Press, New York, on January 17th 2012. It is available on amazon and in book shops now.
"UFO - Strange Space on Earth" by Whitehead & Wingfield - published by Wooden Books, Glastonbury. ISBN 978 I 904263 75 5, and in the US by Walker & Co/ Bloomsbury USA.
Glastonbury declared a UFO hotspot by police
Glastonbury, home of Wooden Books, the publisher of the new “UFO – Strange Space On Earth”, has been declared a UFO hotspot by police, who have received 27 calls in the past four years about “alien events” in the town and nearby Street.
That makes it one of the UK’s hottest draws for aliens and their spacecraft, added the police, who released details of the cases following a freedom of information request.
However, police dismissed some of the reports, suspecting they were drug induced.
The area is considered by some to be a portal to other dimensions and they believe some of the cases may involve fleeting glimpses of alien technology as UFOs move between dimensions or momentarily enter ours.
This interdimensional aspect of the subject is explored in “UFO – Strange Space On Earth”, available in the UK in bookshops now and in the US in the New Year. It is also available on Amazon.
The book is dedicated to the late John Michell, local resident and author of “The View Over Atlantis” and “The Flying Saucer Vision” and other works. The Daily Telegraph noted… “For Michell, UFOs were not simply alien spacecraft, but machines intimately intertwined with forces derived from the alignment of the British landscape – forces particularly in evidence at Glastonbury.”
Little wonder, then, that Glastonbury attracts, or, in its way, helps create, UFOs and their mysterious occupants.
Ten Myths of US Ufology
By George Wingfield, co-author of “UFO – Strange Space on Earth”, published by Wooden Books in the UK in October 2011 and in hardback in the US in January 2012. [More information at amazon.com and amazon.co.uk]
December 14, 2011
According to Art Bell and Brad Steiger (plus various other sources):
● 80% of Americans believe in a government UFO cover-up
● 79% believe ETs have visited Earth
● 64% believe ETs have made contact with humans
● 55% believe life exists on other planets (think about this in view of the previous figures!)
● 37% believe humans have been abducted
● 37% believe ETs have made contact with the US government
I cannot vouch for the accuracy of these figures but I’ve used them to highlight the fact that a large majority of Americans believe in UFOs. Most believe these are spacecraft that bring alien visitors here from other planets and from star systems beyond the Earth. Without saying that they are necessarily wrong in such a belief, here are the top ten myths of US ufology on which these beliefs are based.
(1) The mysterious crash of some flying object in the desert 30 miles north of Roswell, NM, in 1947 was really an alien spacecraft or flying saucer which the US military recovered and hushed up. This craft and some alien bodies –and/or a live alien– were secretly taken to Wright Field, Ohio (later renamed Wright-Patterson AFB) where they were kept and studied.
Roswell crash - artist's impression
This myth could be true but there is no definite evidence for it and there are certainly other possibilities such as that this was a top secret Mogul balloon train used to monitor Soviet nuclear testing.
The Roswell incident of 1947 was quickly forgotten and almost completely ignored until Stanton Friedman and others took a fresh interest in what had happened over thirty years later. Starting in about 1980 various witnesses came forward claiming that they had come across the supposed crashed UFO in the desert and some who said they had seen small alien bodies lying near it. Others claimed to have seen small alien bodies in a building at the Roswell Army Air Force base and that autopsies were carried out on these. It is clear that several of these latter day “witnesses” were rather less than truthful and had merely written themselves into the Roswell story.
Bogus footage
Alleged film footage of an alien autopsy, performed by US Army surgeons at or near the site of the Roswell crash in 1947, was proved to be entirely bogus. The footage was produced and sold to TV companies and also to many individuals by Ray Santilli in London in 1995. It was, without any doubt, fraudulent.
The more recent claim in Annie Jacobsen’s book Area 51 that the Roswell crash resulted from some bizarre hoax perpetrated by Josef Stalin, using genetically-engineered alien-like 13-year old children (courtesy Dr Mengele of Auschwitz infamy) flying in some remote-controlled Nazi airplane to dupe the US into believing in an alien landing is simply ludicrous and totally at variance with known facts. It is certain that the true story of whatever crashed at Roswell was covered up at the time by the US military who claimed it was simply a weather balloon that had been misidentified. From this unfortunate government deceit all sorts of UFO conspiracy theories have grown since the 1980s.
As there is no definite evidence to date that whatever crashed at Roswell was of extraterrestrial origin, we really have to consider the claim is a myth.
(2) A secret committee of top government scientists and the heads of US intelligence, known as Majestic 12 or MJ-12, was set up in 1947 to investigate the Roswell crash and to research small aliens both dead and alive that were recovered there and in other UFO crash/retrievals.
A roll of film showing supposed secret MJ-12 documents surfaced in 1984. It is likely there was an actual US government committee of this name or similar but its purpose had nothing to do with flying saucers. Most likely a group known as “Magic” was convened to address the problem of possible decapitation of the government should there be a pre-emptive nuclear strike by the Soviets. The project to ensure COG (Continuity of Government) resulted in the building of several secret hardened underground bases in the US, such as at Greenbrier, WV, where members of Congress would have been rushed in the event of a nuclear exchange.
There is good reason to think that actual government documents from that era were cut and pasted to show that “MJ-12” was a group set up to study “EBEs” (extraterrestrial biological entities) and the alien threat. This forgery was then sent to UFO researchers some of whom willingly believed such a deception. Other such more recent bogus papers have appeared since. Now the MJ-12 myth has become firmly rooted in US UFO lore.
(3) There has been ongoing contact between the US government and the aliens. There is a pact which has allowed access to alien technology and UFOs have been developed and tested in secret black projects at Area 51, Nevada, and in underground facilities at Los Alamos National Laboratories, New Mexico.
Old technology
If one believes in (2) above, (3) is obviously a possibility. However stories of alleged meetings between former US Presidents, such as President Eisenhower, and ET aliens are invariably found to be false and the claims of Robert Lazar to have worked on a project where flying saucers were being reverse-engineered at Area S-4 (supposedly part of Area 51) are clearly fraudulent. If the US government really knows the secrets of UFO propulsion, it would not still be spending billions, if not trillions, on old technology jet airplanes and on hydrocarbon fuels for every kind of military purpose if better alternatives were available.
(4) There are underground and also undersea alien bases in the US and the adjoining oceans. UFOs operate out of these hidden bases.
This myth somehow addresses the problem of where UFOs go to when they aren’t alarming folk in some neck of the woods such as Iowa, upstate New York or California. One might suppose that they, or at least the mother ship, stayed in earth orbit until their next foray down to near the Earth’s surface. However the people at the US Space Command’s Space Surveillance Center inside Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs, CO, assure us that very little goes unaccounted for in orbit since they monitor all known earth satellites and associated space junk on a 24/7 basis.
Maybe alien spacecraft can make themselves invisible to radar like stealth airplanes? Maybe, but years before stealth planes were even thought of, various paranoid UFO buffs pointed to supposedly suspicious underground facilities such as that at Dulce, NM, and insisted these were alien bases. There were also reports of UFOs plunging into a lake in Puerto Rico and also into the sea as observed by ships off the US coast. Quite apart from the wild conspiracy theories, there is no convincing evidence for the existence of any subterranean alien base hidden in the continental USA.
(5) The aliens which are most widely reported in the US and other parts of the world are “grays” –small grey (or white) humanoids, seldom over 4 ft tall, with large bald heads and with large black eyes (or eye covers). There are also several other races of aliens.
A “gray” is the archetypal alien depicted on the cover of Whitley Strieber’s 1987 book Communion –A True Story. Strieber had this picture drawn by an artist and ensured it was based on descriptions of aliens given by some of those who claimed to have experienced alien abduction. For roughly the next ten years this image became widely accepted as that of the ETs who supposedly carry out such abductions.
Whitley Strieber's "alien" - an artist's impression
The only claimed photographs of such alien beings are most often blurred and unsatisfactory and they are usually exposed as fakes. Other alien types are reported by abductees and contactees including ones who are said to resemble ordinary humans. Of course, claimed photos of this sort of alien could be, and most likely are, simply photos of unrecognized people.
Reptoids
Other alien creatures are claimed to exist besides humanoids and one sometimes reported in the US Midwest is a “Reptilian”, or “reptoid”, which resembles a lizard or reptile up to 7 ft in height. Again we have no accepted photographs of these alien creatures, only drawings, and this means that, like the other varieties of alien, we can only categorize them as mythical beings.
(6) Alien grays abduct human beings who are usually taken into alien spacecraft (i.e. UFOs) and subjected to medical examinations and procedures. Both men and women can be abductees and often they are subjected to an ongoing series of alien abductions. Some women have been impregnated by aliens and had their babies removed and taken away before full term. These hybrid children are raised by the aliens aboard the UFOs.
Following books written by Budd Hopkins and Whitley Strieber on alien abduction in the 1980s, the number of Americans claiming to have been abducted and taken up into UFOs rose dramatically. Most of the claimed abduction experiences were revealed by the use of hypnotic regression which is a technique like hypnosis intended to uncover hidden memories. The validity of such hidden memories is very questionable and it has been suggested that the memories of an alien abduction experience are possibly something that is implanted in the subject’s mind either consciously or subconsciously by the regression therapist.
If abduction experiences are something other than dreams, false memories or perceptions from altered states of consciousness, that still has to be proved. To maintain that these experiences were real physical ones during which the subjects were taken physically into an alien spacecraft has never been proved and must therefore be relegated once more to the realm of myth.
(7) The mutilated and blood-drained carcasses of cattle, and sometimes other animals, found throughout the US are the result of extraterrestrials in UFOs “tissue harvesting” for genetic purposes. Cattle are beamed up into UFOs and soft tissue is carefully removed –perhaps by hi-tech laser surgery– before their dead bodies are dumped back to earth.
Explanations
It is certainly true that the mutilated bodies of cattle have been found in many different parts of the US since the 1960s if not before. Ranchers and farmers have often been very puzzled by what they find and sometimes insist the damage could not have been inflicted by natural predators.
However, most UFO literature on this subject has ignored the various ways that natural predators and scavengers operate and usually makes the assumption that whatever agency killed the beast was also responsible for its mutilation. This is most often untrue. There are several different reasons why cattle die when out on the range or in remote pastures. These include heart failure, illness, poisoning, collision impact when stampeding, coyote attacks on young cattle, even death by rifle shots from delinquent hunters.
The subsequent “mutilations” (or “bovine excisions” as they are sometimes called) that occur if the carcass is not removed immediately, are usually done by scavengers like turkey vultures (often called buzzards by country folk) which are very common in the US. These huge birds, with a wingspan of up to 6 ft, will quickly spot a fresh corpse and often land on or near it to feast on the soft tissue such as the eyes, and that around the mouth, the anus and the genitalia.
Unsurprisingly the vultures leave little trace of their presence on the ground nearby and they do not tear at the flesh like coyotes. This has led some of those who have looked for possible tracks of predator animals to suggest that dead cows must have been attacked by a UFO or its alien occupants. The claim too made by some ufologists that such cattle mutilations have been carried out “with surgical precision” is seldom what is actually observed.
This may not explain all cases of cattle mutilation in the US but it certainly explains many of them. To prove how these animals have died and exactly what mutilations their bodies suffered probably requires an expensive autopsy by a veterinarian which most ranchers or farmers are unwilling to pay for. If we are to solve this particular mystery, I suggest the cadaver of a freshly slaughtered cow is placed in a remote pasture and kept under surveillance by a webcam, or CCTV camera, perhaps somewhere out in the Midwest. I have little doubt that the images of the creatures we would see eating parts of the wretched beast’s corpse would be turkey vultures and other scavengers rather than any UFO aliens.
(8) The crop circles which have appeared over the years in the US and all over the world are made by the alien occupants of UFOs to psychologically influence humanity and gradually make them aware of the alien presence.
Crop circle - photo by co-author of "UFO- Strange Space On Earth", George Wingfield
Crop circles which first came to public notice in England in the 1980s and were later reported in the continental US and many other countries of the world have often seemed like the mysterious imprint of an unknown agency. When they were something of a novelty it was sometimes suggested that they were made by flying saucers and their alien occupants. There were even cases of UFO sightings either near to or inside crop circles and for some observers a crop circle/UFO connection persists to the present day.
Man made?
In England during the 1990s it became clear that the vast majority of crop circles (if not actually 100%) were being made by people. Small teams of circlemakers, often taking with them elaborate design plans prepared in advance, would go out at night and, under cover of darkness, flatten these geometric patterns in wheat or barley fields. Video film clips of UFOs supposedly producing crop circles in the fields below that were made in England during the 1990s were invariably found to have been faked using computer programs such as PhotoShop.
Similar crop circle patterns that have appeared in the United States are almost certainly made by people too. Nevertheless this myth that they are made by alien spaceships is still often suggested albeit humorously.
(9) Alien Reproduction Vehicles (ARVs) –advanced anti-gravity aircraft—have been operational as part of certain US government black projects for many years. These ARVs are capable of extraordinary speed and manoeuvrability and can easily simulate or appear as ETVs (Extra-terrestrial Vehicles). Observed UFOs could therefore be either ARVs or actual ETVs belonging to the aliens.
Dr Steven Greer made this assertion about ARVs on his ‘Disclosure Project’ website in a document entitled “Special Presidential Briefing for President Barack Obama”. It expresses the belief of some US ufologists that the government has long been privy to the secrets of UFOs and UFO propulsion. It presupposes that crashed UFOs captured by the US government have been reverse-engineered and used to reproduce UFOs as ARVs (as suggested in myth (3) above). Alternatively, these craft have supposedly been built in collusion with the aliens as part of some treaty the government has with them. Either way, if one believes (3) above, it would then be logical to think that ARVs are currently being flown in America.
Treason!?
Where this conspiracy theory founders is the implication that this incredible technology is deliberately being withheld by the US government. As stated above, such UFO technology would, if true and made available, have incalculable benefits far beyond small craft flying secretly in many parts of the world. A new energy source that made hydrocarbon fuels obsolete could completely solve the present economic crisis and bring untold wealth to the nation which held the purse strings. Also, to possess such technology and keep it totally concealed, thereby allowing the US military to sustain needlessly large numbers of casualties, would be nothing short of treason.
(10) The US government will shortly begin disclosure and acknowledgment of the alien presence. This earth-shattering event can only be a few months away. President Barack Obama will soon present and introduce an alien being during an upcoming session of the UN General Assembly.
In recent years several UFO groups, such as the Exopolitics lot and ‘Project Disclosure’ have insisted that we are only weeks away from official disclosure of the “alien presence”. I fear that these people and their various spokespersons, such as Dr Michael Salla, are living in Cloud Cuckoo Land and this is merely an expression of their wishful thinking.
Their deadlines for such disclosure come and go and new deadlines are continually set. They place their faith in shady characters, like Richard Thielmann who was discredited in 2010. He had privately claimed that he was the go-between between a United Nations committee and the aliens. No one should trust people like this, but true believers like Salla are obviously undeterred. Fraudulent claims of this sort should have demonstrated that the alleged forthcoming disclosure by Obama of the “alien presence” was simply another myth.
Will Obama meet an alien?
However, there is little doubt that the Exopolitics folk will be back again with fresh predictions of when the aliens are actually going to come out.
UFO true believers have been saying much the same sort of thing for over fifty years now. The truth, I’m sorry to say, is that we don’t have very much about the aliens to disclose and the aliens, if they exist, have never shown any tendency to appear in public. UFOs are as much a mystery today as they were sixty years ago and, where there is such mystery, conspiracy theories will multiply. It is these that have given birth to the ten UFO myths which I have listed above.
****
“UFO – Strange Space on Earth” by Whitehead & Wingfield – published by Wooden Books, Glastonbury, Somerset, England. ISBN 978 I 904263 75 5, and in the US by Walker & Co/Bloomsbury USA.
The new UFO book 