'X' Zone Broadcast Network = Robert Sheaffer

You might say that I view Robert Sheaffer as the resident skeptic on the program because, while we disagree on many topics, we can discuss those disagreements in a civilized fashion. This week, he and I talked about some of the current topics in the world of the UFO. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/46641154

In the last few months there has been a discussion about the Travis Walton abduction and we began with that topic. Mike Rogers has said that he was through with Walton, that the story was a hoax, that the UFO sighting was real and that no one saw Walton abducted. Rogers also reversed himself on a number of these points.

Robert Sheaffer

Sheaffer and I talked about the story that Philip Klass had offered Steven Pierce ten thousand dollars to say that the story was a hoax. Sheaffer was of the opinion that the original claim had come, not from Pierce, but from Rogers. Sheaffer, who had researched the story in the personal papers of Klass held in an archive, said that he seen a transcript of the first telephone call between Klass and Pierce. This came about after the allegation about the bribe was made in a book. From the transcript, Shaeffer said that it seemed both men had been surprised by the allegation. Sheaffer was certain that no such offer had been made.

I did ask if a tape of the conversation existed, but Sheaffer wasn’t sure. Apparently, there are some tapes in the archive. Sheaffer said that not all that long ago someone had asked for permission to review the material, but was told that the archive was closed and would be for about a year. That, of course, didn’t answer the question. Given the controversy, it would be nice if the tape did exist, but in my experience, I have been accused of altering tapes, editing tapes, and leaving out critical statements when a witness was confronted with words that he or she didn’t like… even when they heard themselves uttering the phrases, they claimed they hadn’t uttered.

Just last week, I talked with a person familiar with the story who said that the offer was made in a Western Union Telegram, which could render the telephone transcript as irrelevant. There seems to be no evidence that Klass had ever used Western Union to make such an offer. That allegation seemed to be stretching the point to breaking.

We did get deep into the weeds about the exact location of the abduction part of the Walton incident with a suggestion, that has been raised by others, the site has been moved so that a fire watch tower could be used to create the light show for those in the truck with Rogers. Of course, Rogers, when I spoke with him didn’t accept the idea.

I also wanted to talk about some skeptics accepting any solution to a sighting no matter how ridiculous that explanation might be. Although I used Levelland as an example, we did talk about the Lubbock Lights. Sheaffer said that an analysis of the photos showed that two of the pictures, when set one on top of the other suggested that the lights had not moved in relation to one another. For those who wish to learn more about that, you can read it here:

https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread906605/pg1#pid15505257

I have, in the past, discussed these pictures at length, including my interview with the photographer, Carl Hart, Jr. You can read that posting here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2006/08/carl-hart-and-lubbock-lights.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2019/01/historys-project-blue-book-lubbock.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/04/carl-hart-jr-lubbock-lights.html

Sheaffer did mention the Coast Guard pictures taken in 1952. There has been an explanation offered for what caused the lights. Here Sheaffer took up a skeptical argument, meaning that he was skeptical of the explanation.

The Salem, MA, Coast Guard Picture.

You can find more information at his blog:

www.BadUFOs.com

Finally, we talked about the artifact, either natural or artificial that had passed through the Solar System not all that long ago. I’ve talked with Dr. Loeb about it on this show a couple of times and you can listen to those shows here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/07/galileo-project-and-avi-loeb.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/01/x-zone-broadcast-network-dr-abraham-avi.html

Next week, I’ll be talking to Rob Mercer about his discovery of some of the Project Blue Book files and the fact that he found a complete index with all the names in it. In the publicly released version, all the names had been redacted. 

Carl Hart, Jr., The Lubbock Lights Photographer has Died

 

John Steiger alerted me to this and it is something that I should have noted last year. Carl Hart, Jr., the teenager who took the iconic Lubbock Lights pictures, died on September 24, 2020, in Lubbock.

He was born in Lubbock, attended the Lubbock High School and graduated from Texas Tech University. He was a first-generation Eagle Scout and had a passion for scouting during his life.

Carl Hart in 1951.

In September, 1951, Hart, who was interested in photography, was lying in bed when he saw a group of lights flash overhead. He knew, based on the newspaper accounts, that the lights sometimes returned. When they did, he was ready, photographing two flights. He originally took five pictures but one has been lost.

His pictures have been the subject of controversy since they were published. He was interviewed by Ed Ruppelt, then the chief of the Air Force UFO investigation. And he was maligned by Donald Menzel for perpetrating a hoax.

Hart maintained that he didn’t know what he photographed. On the bad advice of friends, he was told not to copyright the pictures because it would make it seem that he had faked them. Those pictures have been published around the world.

In the mid-1990s, while I was in Lubbock on another investigation, on a lark, I looked up his telephone number. I was surprised that he was still in Lubbock and surprised when he answered the telephone. We had a nice chat about the pictures. He told me that his house was gone, replaced by a Pizza Hut. At the end of the conversation, I asked him what he had photographed. He said that he still didn’t know. I might have been the last UFO researcher to interview him.

Other than this single brush with fame, Hart lived a quiet life in Lubbock. He was 87 years old.

History's Project Blue Book - The Lubbock Lights

Well, I’m in a bit of a pickle here. I confess that I do like History’s Project Blue Book. When I look at it as entertainment with a bit of history thrown in, I find the show to be intriguing. However, when I look at it as a historical document, I see the many flaws in it… not in the story telling, but in the history that it is so loosely based on.

I can, of course, point out the flaws in the Lubbock Lights tale from the beginning when we see a lone man in an airport control tower, to the end where we see Little Finger… I mean Hynek… along with Captain Michael Quinn, told the big secret that would solve the Lubbock Lights as some sort of top secret project. There are hints in the show of real history such as the discussion of the recently installed mercury vapor street lights in downtown Lubbock that were brighter and therefore might be, somehow, responsible for the sudden appearance of the UFOs.

Carl Hart's photographs of the Lubbock Lights.

And, although the electromagnetic effects displayed when the UFOs knock out the lights of Lubbock and later affect Hynek’s and Quinn’s car never happened, six years later in Levelland, Texas, such things did happen. Levelland is just a few minutes from the western side of Lubbock, so we have a combination of these two events that involved multiple witnesses.

I do wonder if some of the criticism from my UFO colleagues might be a tad bit overblown. I mean, they seem to want precision and accuracy here but in other dramas based on history, sometimes get a pass, though they have their own trouble with the truth. I don’t remember such discussions about the lack of reality in the many versions of the Grassy Grass… that is the Little Big Horn. I can’t think of one of them, from They Died with Their Boots On to the ludicrous Custer of the West, that got the history right. (Well, maybe Son of the Morning Star, which I mention here so that I don’t get emails about it.) I do wonder if the historians were as annoyed with those movies as the UFO community is with this. (Which is not to say that my UFO colleagues would worry about such things in those movies, only that others, who have a deep interest in history might.)

The point here is that Project Blue Book is not a documentary. It is a drama, based, very loosely, on the history of Project Blue Book. I mean we could point to the time line that jumped from the Gorman Dogfight of 1948 to the Flatwoods Monster of 1952 back to the Lubbock Lights of 1951.

Quinn, I don’t think, is Captain Edward Ruppelt who was the chief of Blue Book from late 1951 to 1953. Quinn mentioned to Hynek in this episode, that he had flown escort missions in Europe during the war. That suggests Quinn was a fighter pilot. Ruppelt served in the Pacific Theater as a bombardier/radar operator, just to point out one difference between the two. Any criticism of Quinn and his actions in the series shouldn’t be seen as a slight to Ruppelt or a criticism of him.

Taking this sort of trouble with timelines and invention, the appearance of Don Keyhoe in Episode Three sort of proves the point. Keyhoe mentions Roswell, but Keyhoe never talked about crash retrievals. He didn’t think much of alien abduction reports and it seemed he was happier arguing with the Air Force about secrecy. The scene in which he was threatened by the MIB with a pistol to his head was over the top. While they certainly could present Keyhoe’s “war” with the Air Force, this suggestion, to me, was a step or two too far. If I have been directing this episode, I would have not filmed that scene.

So, we all sort of agree that some of these things could be handled better, but I do know that they’re making a TV series and not a documentary.

The problem is that my Ufological colleagues seem to hate the show for not being a documentary and are unable to watch it was just a drama. They fear that it will harm the UFO field by the way it is presented, but I think that ship sailed a long time ago… headlines in newspapers in 1947 said that flying saucers had been seen in many states except Kansas. Kansas, at the time was dry. No drunks to see flying saucers.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, a few have suggested that the series might inspire some to look deeper into the UFO phenomenon, to see beyond the superficial. Anything that generates an interest and leads to the truth can’t be all bad. No, I don’t really think this is going to hurt the UFO field. We do that ourselves… MJ-12 anyone? How about the alien autopsy?

So, they got a few things right in this episode. They went off on tangents in some places. But the production values are astounding. They do a good job of recreating the world of the early 1950s… down to all the people smoking.

As for the Lubbock case… they hint at some college professor who has seen the lights and had a picture of them that is reminiscent of the photographs taken by Carl Hart, Jr. in 1951. The professor, draws on the black board (as opposed to a white board) an illustration showing how the Plover, a small, west Texas bird, might have been responsible for the sightings. Except, the Plover do not fly in a V formation and rarely in groups larger than six or seven. Plover do not answer the question of what was seen over Lubbock.

Although the Air Force did write the sightings off as birds, they didn’t really explain the photographs taken by Hart. I had the opportunity to talk to Hart about the Lubbock Lights and the photographs he took. Although I have already posted the following to the blog, given the renewed interest in it thanks to Project Blue Book, I reprint it here:

On February 1, 1993, I had the opportunity to interview Carl Hart about the photographs. What follows is that interview. (For those interested in more about the Lubbock Lights, I suggest a look at my 1997 book, Conspiracy of Silence.) I offer the notes of the interview without commentary (well, not much).

After learning that the man I was talking with had taken the famous pictures, I asked, "Were you looking for the lights when you saw them?"

He said, "Oh, no. Of course, this was summer time and very hot. We didn’t have anything like central air conditioning. I slept with the windows open and I liked to sleep with my head stuck out the window and there they were."

Carl Hart, Jr. in 1951.

"You saw them fly over one time?"

"Oh, I think if I remember there were like three formations... of course they had been in the news here for a week or two before I happened to see them and they usually showed up in several flights when they would so... when I saw them, I went on outside with my camera..."

"Did you get a feel for the size of the objects or how high above you they were?"

"Not really... the only thing I saw was lights. Wasn’t any other objects associated with them. Wasn’t any noise..."

"Now you were questioned quite closely by the Air Force..."

"The Air Force and everybody else."

"Did the Air Force give you a final conclusion of what they thought you had photographed?"
"No, no they didn’t. I never did hear an official version. I heard some unofficial things that came out later... about how they thought I had faked them somehow or another." (Attempts to duplicate the pictures by a professional photographer failed... and because of that, this part of the mystery remains unsolved.)

"Of course, you hadn’t faked them..."

"No."

"You have no idea what they were?"

"I really don’t. I’m not even sure who it was. There was someone tried to duplicate the light in a laboratory by reflecting light off a pan of water where they could cause a ripple run down the water and they could cause them to move and his theory was that it was a cold air inversion and that it had waves in it like the ocean and the sensation of them moving across the sky so I don’t know if that’s what happened or not." (This was Dr. Donald Menzel whose results were published in 1952. Later Menzel decided, without evidence, that Hart had faked the pictures. Menzel, it seems, could not admit that some aspects of the UFO phenomenon were inexplicable.)

"You really have no clue about what you saw..."

"I really don’t. Nothing’s ever come forward to explain those and there wasn’t anything for me to judge them by other than just the lights on the bottom of just one object or group of individual lights... They were lights either on something or individually."

Did you know the professors who had seen the things the first night?"

"Later on, I did. I didn’t know them at the time."

"Were they aware you had taken the pictures?"

"Oh, yeah. I think there were some of the ones felt like I had stolen their glory... They weren’t too receptive of what I had done as best I could recall."

"Have you made any money off this thing?"

"I might have made three or four hundred dollars total over the years."

"The pictures appear in books and magazines all the time."

"I wasn’t aware enough of what was going on to copyright them. If anyone paid my anything it was to save themselves from possible legal problems later on... for several years people would ask before they would use them... My advice from a friend and professional journalist at the time was that if you copyright them somebody’s going to think you faked them and are trying to make money out of them"

Hart did tell me that he doesn’t particularly disbelieve in flying saucers. He said, "I’m kind of open minded on that. If one would show up some place else here, I think I’d accept."

I asked him one last time if he knew what he had photographed.

"I really don’t."

This covers just that one, small aspect of a much larger case. However, you can’t call the case solved if an important portion of it has not been explained. True, some of the sightings were of birds and others might be explained as natural phenomena, but the photographs have not been identified, there is no evidence that Hart faked them, and no reason to reject them.

Oh, and for those interested in such things. Ed Ruppelt, in his 1956 book, mentioned that he knew the solution to the Lubbock Lights but that he couldn’t reveal it. No, not because it was some top secret project but because to do so would identify his source on the matter. He had promised the scientist who came up with the solution not to name him. But in the world today, we know all sorts of things and I know what that solution was… FIRE FLIES…

No. I don’t believe it…

The Air Force and the McMinnville UFO Photographs

For the last several weeks I have been researching my new book and I stumbled across a bit of information that suggests the Air Force was less than enthusiastic in their investigations of UFOs. I wondered what their conclusion of the McMinnville photographs was. These are the two pictures taken by Paul Trent on May 11, 1950 of a disk-shaped object near his farm in Oregon. I’m not going to debate the merits of the pictures here, merely look at the Air Force response.

According to the Project Blue Book files, they came to no conclusion. In fact, they didn’t bother to investigate the case. Here was a sighting with physical evidence in the form of photographs. Even a cursory look at the pictures tells you that they are either an alien spacecraft or a hoax. There really doesn’t seem to be a third explanation because the pictures are too sharp and crisp to suggest some type of indistinct natural phenomenon or an advanced aircraft of Earthly design. But again, that really is an argument for another day.

These pictures, because of the clarity and because of the foreground detail that allowed analysis, should be of interest to an official investigation attempting to learn all it could about flying saucers. You would think that an organization that was charged with that investigation, would want to, at the very least, look at the pictures. Apparently the Air Force couldn’t be bothered with that because, according to the Blue Book files, this case was “info” only. No investigation, no analysis and no conclusion. If you don’t label the case, then you don’t need to account for it in your statistics and most importantly you can pretend it didn’t happen. There are many UFO sightings that are included in the files that are labeled as “info only.”

But that doesn’t mean you can’t offer a solution if asked about it. In 1965, W. Case wrote to the Air Force:

I have recently acquired some information concerning the sighting and taking of two, (2), photographs of one, (1), unidentified object by Mr. and Mrs. [name redacted but obviously Paul Trent] of McMinnville, Oregon.

The Photographs were taken on May 11, 1950 at the [Trent] farm just outside McMinnville, Oregon.

I would appreciat [sic]  it very much if you would obtain and send to the address listed below information and photographs of other and then such incident [sic].

Overlooking the fact that this guy claims to have information, which should have induced a query about what that information might be, the Air Force was uninterested. Yes, I know that it might have been nothing more than rumor or speculation that added nothing to our knowledge, but what if this guy had found another witness, one independent of the Trents? Wouldn’t that be of interest to the Air Force in their search for the truth?

Apparently, the answer would be, “No.” The response was written by Lieutenant Colonel John P. Spaulding, who was the Chief, Civil Branch, Community Relations Division, Office of Information. He explained:

The Air Force has no information on photographs of an unidentified flying object taken by Mr. & Mrs. [redacted but again quite obviously Paul Trent] of McMinnville, Oregon.

In this regard, it should be noted that all photographs submitted in conjunction with UFO reports have been a misinterpretation of natural or conventional objects. The object in these photographs have a positive identification.

Overlooking the fact that he said they had no information on the photographs; he offered a solution for them anyway. If they had no information, how would he know that the object, singular, in the McMinnville photographs had been identified? And why wouldn’t he have offered that explanation in his letter? Wouldn’t that have carried more weight than his blanket statement that was in error? The Lubbock Lights photographs taken by Carl Hart, Jr., have not been positively identified, as but a single example of his misstatement.

The point here is that he said he had no information and then offered information. You either don’t know or you do, but you don’t say you don’t know anything and then refute that in your next paragraph. Yes, he could make the blanket statement about all the photographs are misinterpretations but he then specified these particular photographs. He should have left that last sentence off his reply.

Plagiarism in UFO Writing

I saw, the other day, in the Skeptical Inquirer, an article by Benjamin Radford about plagiarism in paranormal writing. He was suggesting that some “writers” lift case reports from others and report as if they are their own. I know these things happen in the world of the UFO and the one instance that springs to mind is a line written by Ed Ruppelt in his The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. In writing about the fabled Estimate of the Situation, Ruppelt said, “The situation was UFOs; the estimate they were interplanetary!” (Page 58, Ace paperback).

I have seen that very line in several other UFO books. It is a case of straight plagiarism. And while it is true that facts cannot be copyrighted, it is also true that the specific words used to describe those facts can be. You cannot copyright the telephone directory because that is an assembling of fact, but if you add any “sweat equity” to it, that is some creative way to present those facts, then that can be copyrighted.

Or, for our purpose, you can copyright your particular interpretation of facts around a specific UFO sighting, but you cannot copyright the facts themselves. Everyone is free to use the facts of the Roswell case, for example, but they cannot lift, verbatim, the specific words that I use to describe the case.

As I say, Radford’s article got me thinking about this, and what I find in the world of the UFO is not the plagiarism, but the use of case “facts” that simply are not facts. This is the real problem in writing about UFOs.

For example, many years ago, I was writing a magazine article about mysterious disappearances, and I had found the tale of Oliver Thomas who had disappeared from his home in Wales around the turn of the last century. This case sounded suspiciously like that of Oliver Lerch who allegedly disappeared from South Bend, Indiana sometime in the late 19^th century. Brad Steiger had written about Thomas and at that time, meaning long before the Internet and all the electronic sources available, I knew the secret for finding Brad Steiger. I called him to ask about the case and he said not to use it. He had since learned that it was a hoax.

And I learned a lesson with that telephone conversation. Sometimes the information published in the books is not accurate. Sometimes the writer learned, after publication, that a case was a hoax, that the information was wrong in some fashion, or that the spectacular details did not match the facts when the case was carefully examined. In the last few weeks I have published a number of cases like that. The best example is probably the report of a formation of disks seen over Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Although the case was recounted in several books, including those of respected researchers, I learned that the witness was not in Cedar Rapids and the only connection to Cedar Rapids was an article in the local newspaper actually identifying the location as another city in another state but giving all the relevant information.

The point, you ask?

Well, if I hadn’t attempted to take the case to its origins, I would have reported the errors of those other writers and researchers and people would think there was a pre-Arnold sighting in Cedar Rapids. I would have copied the original errors and added to the misinformation. We all now know the origins of this sighting and can give it the attention it deserves (which is just one more of those reported after the Arnold sighting and little else.)

But this wasn’t plagiarism, or as one person suggested, “Plagiarism is using one source but research is using two…” And even with that, I would have still published the inaccurate information because none of the sources I had (five in total) had the original story right.

Here’s the real point. We all have the ability to do this. We all have the ability to take these cases back to the original sources. Too often we just don’t do it. We get the information we want… and it doesn’t matter which side of the coin you find yourself, that is debunker or proponent… and we end the search. We don’t ask that one additional question. We don’t look for that one additional fact. And we can change that.

In the world today, we need to take everything back to the source. When I found myself in Lubbock, Texas, I took the time to research the Lubbock Lights and image my surprise, in the early-1990s, to find Carl Hart, Jr. in the telephone book. Or while in Fort Worth, I went through the newspaper’s morgue, looking for information on old UFO sightings and found some interesting though obviously fake reports of the Great Airship.

If there have been some spectacular or not so spectacular sightings nearby, check them out. Talk to the witnesses. Search the original sources of the information, and let’s see if we can clean up the landscape. If nothing else, we can remove much of the clutter as we move toward some sort of an answer.

I Understand the Skeptics

I have always, in the past, rejected the idea of producing a top ten list of UFO sightings. I thought of it as a trap by the skeptics and the debunkers. They would take the list, find implausible solutions and then report that they had identified the UFOs as something mundane. They wouldn’t care if the solutions made sense or not. They would report that they had solved the cases and UFOs were nothing more than misidentifications and hoaxes.

There is good reason to believe that. Philip Klass was infamous for finding solutions that didn’t fit the facts. In Socorro he suggested it was a conspiracy between the then Socorro mayor and police officer Lonnie Zamora. Klass believed that the mayor had wanted to find an excuse to develop some land he owned and believed a UFO landing there would create a tourist attraction. We have since learned that the mayor didn’t own the land in 1964 and no real tourist attraction was ever developed.

Donald Menzel offered multiple explanations for the photographs taken over Lubbock, Texas in September 1951 but finally settled on "Hoax!" There is no evidence that it was a hoax and when I talked to the photographer, Carl Hart, some forty or so years later, he told me that he still doesn’t know what he photographed.

But there is no evidence of a hoax, unless, of course, you have the Menzel mindset. That is, there is no alien visitation and anything that suggests otherwise is either a misidentification or a hoax.

I now find myself in the same dilemma as the skeptics when it comes to the UFO subset of cattle mutilations. I entered the investigation in the early 1970s when Jim Lorenzen, then the International Director of APRO, asked me (and several others in several other locations) to look into some mutilations in Minnesota. After a week or so there, I had the answers to the questions about those specific mutilations and the extraterrestrial had nothing to do with it.

And in the years since, I have investigated other mutilations and I have kept up with the current literature on mutilations. I have read from both sides of the controversy including the two works that I think of as most important: the Rommel investigation done for the state of New Mexico, and Mute Evidence. I believe that anyone interested in cattle mutilations should have read both works but that isn’t the case. When I asked a proponent of mutilations about it quite recently, she said that she was unfamiliar with them.

Here’s the deal. Every case of mutilation that I have investigated has a rational, terrestrial explanation. Every one.

The answers ranged from scavengers to humans who thought it funny to carve up an already dead animal, but nothing with an extraterrestrial influence. There were suggestions, but those were based on speculation and the observations of those who didn’t understand the process of decay.

Periodically, I would look again at cattle mutilations, believing that as time passed, new information would surface. Instead it was the same sorts of arguments that hadn’t seemed all that persuasive in the 1970s. Ranchers who said they had never seen anything like it in the past. A surgical precision that couldn’t be duplicated by vets or doctors. Laser instruments that suggested a technology that was far beyond ours.

But, in the end, no one could explain why the aliens were doing it. What was the motivation? Why not just take the whole animal and not leave the remains?

As I have mentioned in the past, some one over at UFO UpDates asked for a list of reading material about mutilations and, of course, all those saying that UFOs were responsible were noted. I merely suggested that they also look at Mute Evidence and Rommel’s investigation for the state of New Mexico. I wasn’t advocating a position, merely providing, what I thought to be some useful references.

The response was typical. I was asked how I would explain various anomalies that some investigators had reported. I was asked how I would explain a lack of copper in the blood of the mutilated animal. I was asked how I would explain the lack of scavenger tracks on the ground near the dead and mutilated animal.

Well, the answers were there. Today, I would point to Fact or Fiction: The Paranormal Files on the SyFy Channel. They showed a picture of a dead and mutilated cow and said that there had been no animal tracks around it. But they didn’t mention the bird droppings that were quite obvious on the animal, even in the picture. There are many bird scavengers and no one seems to think of them.

They also tried to duplicate, using various instruments, the precision of the cuts on a mutilated animal and failed to do it. But they did run an experiment that suggested that some of these precise cuts were the result of the natural decomposition of the animal including some seemingly straight line incisions.

Their conclusion, which I’m sure annoyed not only some of the local ranchers but those who studied cattle mutilations, was that there was no evidence to suggest anything alien was involved.

Here’s the real point. Every time I believe that we had ended the conversation, someone says, "Yes, those are solved but what about this new and different case. How do you explain...?"

Usually it is just more of the same. What is anomalous to one is explained in the mundane to another. The solution, I suppose, would be a list of the ten most mysterious cattle mutilations and see if we could find solutions.

There are some truly mysterious cases and I learned of one in England not all that long ago. While mysterious, the solution, I believe, will be terrestrial rather than alien. I won’t say that I would be delighted if is was alien, but if that is the direction it took, then we who argue for the extraterrestrial nature of some UFO sightings would have some good evidence.

In a similar vein, Chris O’Brien, out there in Colorado, in the San Luis Valley is attempting to put up web cameras that could be used to spot the mystery mutilators and any space craft they might be flying. While I sort of trivialize it here, I do think it is a good idea. Anything that is done in an attempt to further our knowledge and to resolve an issue is a good thing. But the question is how long does it go on before he decides that there are no alien mutilators...

Obviously, if he caught something on tape, that would prove his point and we would have a very interesting bit of evidence. But I wonder if the same thing I heard about the lack of "classic" mutilations while Kenneth Rommel was investigating in New Mexico would be said in the San Luis Valley. While the cameras were operating, there just were no classic mutilations in front of them... Or if there was evidence of scavengers in what might look to be a classic mutilation, it would be dismissed because the damage didn’t mirror, exactly, some other mutilations.

The skeptics, I imagine, think the same thing about UFO sightings. They wonder just how many of the once classic cases that are now solved, at least for many of us, have to be defined as mundane before we give up the argument. In the last decade or so, many of them have fallen. I now believe that the Chiles-Whitted case of the cigar-shaped craft that rocketed past their aircraft was a bolide... an extremely bright meteor that seemed to come directly at them and fooled them.

I believe that the Mantell case, in which Thomas Mantell was killed chasing a huge object, is explained by a Skyhook balloon. I base that on the descriptions of the object that were provided by those who saw it as it drifted at 80,000 or a 100,000 feet above the ground.

I do not believe that a Project Mogul balloon is responsible for the debris found near Roswell. That doesn’t mean it was extraterrestrial, only that it wasn’t a balloon. I get to the extraterrestrial by other means and I reject Mogul because it doesn’t work, for all the reasons I have outlined here in the past.

So I understand the skeptics desire to have a list of the ten best cases so they could tackle them. I can easily think of ten cases with multiple chains of evidence but I fear that we have lost the opportunities that those cases would have supplied. We were so busy arguing about whether or not some UFOs represented alien spacecraft that none of us looked at the really good evidence when we had the opportunity.

I also know that some of the skeptics, but by no means all of them, would fail to make a dispassionate argument. They truly believe there is no alien visitation and therefore no evidence can prove alien visitation. Others would take that dispassionate look, but they would insist an very compelling evidence and rightly so.

I have no hope that anything will ever be resolved. Even if the spacecraft landed there would be those who believed it was some kind of fake. These are the same kind of people who believe the moon landings were a hoax, that the president’s birth certificate was faked, and that there is a colony on Mars (where I suspect the really rich will hide when the asteroid collides with Earth on December 21, 2012 and remember you heard it here first).

My real point is that I understand the skeptics frustration with UFOs, but then, I understand the other side of the coin as well. And I understand that nothing will be resolved until we can remove the emotion and belief structure from the equation. Humans haven’t been able to do that in all of recorded history and I doubt we’ll do it here. We can try, but I have little hope.