Coast to Coast - Photos and Physical Evidence

 

I’ve been looking for cases in which there is something more than just witness testimony. Such is a case from May 27 of this year from White Hall, Illinois. The witness said that he had awakened in the night and looked out the window. He said that he saw a bright orange object with six or seven lights to the northeast. The object then shot up into the sky. There was no sound and that the UFO originally looked to be cigar shaped, but later seemed to be more saucer shaped.

But that wasn’t the end of the event. The next morning, he drove out into the field where the UFO have been. He found a circle of flattened wheat. He said that the object had flattened all the wheat the same direction without breaking a stem.

He also reported that his dog reacted to the sighting. He said that his dog became paralyzed. He said, “She was just frozen.

There are pictures of the landing site as well as the illustrations made by the witnesses. You can see the photos here:

https://www.ufosnw.com/newsite/orange-craft-with-6-or-7-lights-takes-off-leaves-ground-trace/

On November 14, in Redmond, Washington, a woman saw a strange almost disk-shaped object. She didn’t hear a sound and was with her husband who also saw the UFO.

While this might seem to be just another UFO sighting, she did take a video of the object. The photos can be seen here:

https://www.ufosnw.com/newsite/strange-shaped-metallic-object-seen-videotaped/

 

Over the Susquehanna River near Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, on April 28, last year, the witness was taking a walk early in the morning. The witness stopped near the boat launch and looked up, seeing a blue light over the water, coming from the Shamokin Dam power plant. The witness took out a cell phone that was set in the camera mode and set to “live.” The image on the phone is moving, but the witness was unable to transfer that to the website. Instead, there is a simple picture of the bright blue, spherical light. You’ll find the information here:

https://www.ufosnw.com/newsite/bright-blue-spherical-light-seen-over-river-photo-taken/

 

Staying in Pennsylvania, a woman near Palmerton, said she was leaving for work early in the morning of August 20, 2021, when she took a picture of a rainbow with her iPhone. She thought it was “extremely vibrant and wanted a picture of it. She said that there was a black streak in the picture, under the rainbow. She said that when she enlarged the picture, she couldn’t see any structure or form but did not believe this showed an airplane, or according to her, “… or any type of man-made craft.”

After a brief analysis, William Puckett said that he agreed with her. He didn’t think the streak was made by an aircraft and does believe it to be a real object. It was not an artifact created by the camera. You can see this here:

https://www.ufosnw.com/newsite/black-streak-found-in-background-of-photo-under-rainbow/

 

Finally, in Canada on August 18 of this year, a woman, who was the first to see the object and pointed it out to the others. It looked, to her, like a fireball going from west to east. After 10 to 15 seconds, they said the object was circular, was bright orange, and made a circular motion a couple of times. It finally disappeared behind some clouds. But, in keeping with the theme here, they did take a video of the object after the first 15 seconds of viewing. Unfortunately, I don’t have a link to this video. And, I’ll note one other thing, it seems that orange is becoming the dominate color in many of the sightings.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Peter Robbins

 

Peter Robbins was my guest this week. As I explained, I invited him on after I had read a posting in which he was defending Travis Walton. I think most of you know by now that Walton and Mike Rogers have been in a bit of a disagreement about the validity of the Walton abduction. My conversation with Peter, before the show, evolved to the point where we thought it might be more interesting to talk about the investigative process. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/46239415

We did delve into the Rendlesham Forest case, though that hadn’t been my intention. We got some insight into how Peter was drawn into the case and his thinking over the years. We didn’t talk much about Larry Warren and his involvement, though we do touch on some of that.

Peter Robbins

One of the things that we did sort of dwell on was the number of nights of the event. I had just finished a rewrite, update, and revision of my two decades old book, Project Moon Dust. Like many others, I have been confused about the number of days for the event, but had straightened that out in my mind. The problem was that the episode for which Rendlesham Forest is known began on the night of December 25 but carried on until after midnight on December 26. That was day one. Day two began in the evening of December 26 and carried on until after midnight on December 27. The last part began on the evening of December 27, though activity carried on until after midnight, everyone views that as December 27. As I say, confusing.

Peter told of his first trip to England and to Rendlesham Forest in which he witnessed some of the strange things that happen there. John Burroughs had told me that strange things were happening there before the December 1980 events and continue on until today.

We did talk about investigations and Peter talked about his learning methods while associated with a New York police detective and later with Budd Hopkins. He talked about following one aspect of the case until it played out and then following another and of course, another which is interviewing the witnesses. He was building the case on multiple legs. What he was talking about is what I call multiple chains of evidence… pictures and radar and landing traces and witness testimony. The best cases have these multiple chains of evidence.

On a side trip, I mentioned the illustrations of the aliens made by Pat Roach after her abduction. I thought it interesting, and apropos of nothing at all, that her artistic talent increased under hypnotic regression. I also 

thought appropriate I gave her a green felt tip pen to make the drawings. You can see the difference yourself.

Finally, we talked about the death of James Forrestal, who was the first Secretary of Defense. We did examine the history that went into the creation of the Department of Defense, and how Forrestal had served in the public arena until his mental breakdown. Although history tells us that Forrestal committed suicide, Peter suggested the evidence he examined suggested murder. He makes a compelling case for drawing that conclusion.

Next week, I’ll be talking with Dr. Abraham (Avi) Loeb about his Galileo Project and the detection of the object that he is convinced is an alien artifact. Should be an interesting discussion.

Chasing Footnotes - Kelly Hopkinsville, Part Two

 

This latest started as a “Chasing Footnotes” segment in which a paper about critical thinking included a short note on the Kelly-Hopkinsville alien encounter. The footnote suggested that the witnesses had been drinking and linked to a book by Isabel Davis and Ted Bloecher. That book actually said the opposite. I wrote to one of the paper’s authors and he responded by saying the mistake had been corrected. You can, of course, read all that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/08/chasing-footnotes-kelly-hopkinsville.html

However, in the comments section, there were those who didn’t believe the story and thought it nonsense. I have to admit that the thought had crossed my mind as well. It is an incredible story that seemed to make little sense. John Steiger wrote that the case had been carried as “unidentified” by the Air Force. That didn’t seem right to me and in fact, the Air Force didn’t even carry it as a real case. It was one of their ‘info only” with no real evaluation.

John wrote back, saying, “I'm sorry if the information from Mr. Clark's UFO Encyclopedia is inaccurate, but this is what the latest edition reports. In any event, Kelly-Hopkinsville remains as an intriguing encounter yet to be fully and adequately explained.”

Jerome Clark (Jerry) wrote in his UFO Encyclopedia, 3^rd Edition, “Yet even the Air Force, not known to lend a sympathetic ear to reports of UFO landings and humanoids, lists the case in its “Unidentified” file.”

Well, now there is a problem. As noted, the Air Force doesn’t provide much commentary on the case, other than to make a big deal about how they didn’t investigate it. This is a fine hair to split because there was an investigation but it wasn’t made by a member of Blue Book. It was carried out by a reserve officer on temporary duty at Campbell Air Force Base, Kentucky. He heard about it while driving into work and contacted his superiors who told him to look into it. Not an official investigation for Blue Book, but an investigation by an Air Force officer, nonetheless.

The Hopkinsville Folder in Project Blue Book.

Brad Sparks had compiled a long list of Blue Book Unidentified cases, using lists originally created by me, by Don Berliner, and other sources. The Kelly-Hopkinsville sighting is on the list. However, Brad had expanded the list by adding cases the Air Force had labeled as something else but that didn’t seem to be explained by the Air Force investigation. Brad’s is not an official list of Air Force Unidentified case but is a valuable resource.

Allen Hynek, in his book, The UFO Experience, wrote, "Still, the case is carried in Blue Book files as 'Unidentified'." This is probably where Jerry got the idea that the case was listed as “Unidentified.”

Here’s where we are on this aspect of the case. The Air Force, technically, did not investigate. They dispatched a reserve officer who had called in after hearing a news broadcast about the sighting. His statement, which appears in the Blue Book file is dated 1957, or two years after the event. You can find the Air Force documents on the case here:

https://www.fold3.com/image/6972750

The inspiration for contacting Major Albert and getting a written statement, was the Kelly-Hopkinsville sighting was about to blast into the public mindset. Isabel Davis and Ted Bloecher were preparing a long report on the case. This new activity, or interest in the sighting was, by coincidence, just a few weeks before the Levelland events took place.

What we can say is this. The Air Force did, technically, investigate the landing and did unofficially check it out in 1955. In fact, those at Blue Book went out of their way to deny an official investigation. However, they do have a file on it, but it is not part of the main index of cases. It does show up as “Additional reported sightings not cases".

The page from the Blue Book Index that shows this was not a case.

The argument, I guess, degenerates to this. Was it labeled as “unidentified” by the Air Force and the answer is, “No.” Did the Air Force label is as a “Hoax”? Again, the answer is, “No.” Did Allen Hynek write that the case was “Unidentified”? “Yes.” That wasn’t the official explanation by the Air Force, however.

And that’s where we are. The Blue Book ignored the case until they were forced to investigate… but it wasn’t an official Blue Book investigation, though that is really just a matter of semantics, and more of a lie than anything else.

I will not offer an opinion on the case other than to say that it was one of the strangest to be reported and there currently is no good terrestrial explanation for it.

A special thanks to Brad Sparks for helping me sort all this out.

X-Zone Boadcast Network - John Greenewald on UAPs and Alien Abduction

 John Greenewald was the guest for A Different Perspective, now not just a podcast, not just a radio show, but also a television spectacular. I wanted to chat with John about the June 25 UAP report and the information that he had suggesting there was a classified version that was 17 pages long. I wondered if that was an additional 17 pages, but John said that he wouldn't be surprised if the classified version of the report that included the original nine pages. He wasn't sure that it did.

John Greenewald

We discussed the idea that this was something of a dodge. Congress had required a study of the UAP (I mean UFOs and shouldn’t we all just reject this UAP nonsense) and a report within six months. We thought they hadn’t taken the requirement seriously until we all began to make a big deal out of it. Toward the end of the six months, they realized they had to present something, and the result was the nine pages. John talked about his efforts, through FOIA, to learn more about the classified material that was going to be presented to Congress, but his efforts were stymied. You can listen to the discussion here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/46083978

In the final segment, I asked John about his opinions of tales of alien abduction. Neither of us are fans of this subset of the UFO field. We believe that too often there are terrestrial explanations for many of the abduction stories. John did say that he had been intrigued by the Barney and Betty Hill abduction.

The interesting part of the discussion, however, was the recent conflict that erupted between Travis Walton and Mike Rogers. John said that Rogers had admitted that the case was a hoax. I was of the opinion that Rogers hadn’t actually said that, only saying that no one had seen Walton abducted. They had seen him struck by the light and knocked down, but they didn’t see the actual abduction because they all fled, returning sometime later to search for Walton.

Later, after the show, John sent a link to an interview that Rogers had given to Ryan Gordon. In it, though Rogers does seem to dance around a bit, he talks about creating a hoax. He seems to suggest, or attempts to suggest, that they took advantage of some sort of actual event, but really doesn’t make much sense. You can read what Rogers said here:

https://badufos.blogspot.com/2021/07/crew-chief-mike-rogers-confesses-travis.html?m=1

 I’ll attempt to follow up on this. The Rogers’ statement seems to be the real first cracks in a story that has lasted for, literally, decades. I will point out because it is relevant, that both Walton and Rogers have been arguing about some personal matters for several months. I did review this earlier and you can read about that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/07/x-zone-latest-on-travis-waltons.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/03/did-mike-rogers-repudiate-travis-walton.html

Next up is Peter Robbins, if I can get the details worked out. Many I thought we would talk about investigation and how to separate the truth from the fiction

Coast to Coast - Triangular UFOs

 

As we all know, triangular shaped UFOs are being seen on a regular basis now. You have to wonder if there has been some improvement in the alien ships, or if there are different races using different sort of craft, or if this is a result of our technology. I think I have a partial answer for that.

On June 19 of this year, the witness in Leesburg, Florida, said he was outside about seven in the morning when he heard an aircraft approaching and then flying directly overhead. He said that it looked dark, more black than charcoal, was triangular with two structures protruding from that rear. He wondered if it could an F-117 or possibly an F-22 but it didn’t look like either of those. He thought it might be a new type of stealth aircraft but thought it might be a UFO. The UFO was in sight for about five minutes.

On June 16, the witness in Streetsboro, Ohio, was walking his dog about 9:30, when he noticed three bright lights hovering. They eventually morphed into a single bright light. He said that it seemed the light was rotating. He said that after about two minutes, another UFO arrived, this one looked as if it was being chased by a fighter. He said there was an extremely loud explosion that made him wonder if the fighter had broken the sound barrier. The UFOs made no sound. The witness said that it was all recorded on video and that he would upload it to the Internet. If I find a link, I’ll post it to my blog.

One of the Navy's latest pictures of a UAP... with a triangular shape.

From Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, on June 9 comes the report of a triangular-shaped object hovering about fifty feet in the air with two steady lights in front and multiple blinking lights on the sides. There were multiple lights on the bottom. The witnesses said the object was slowing rising. Unlike most sightings, the object was very loud. It moved in a zig-zag motion and it would speed up and slow down. The witnesses reported there was video of the object but hasn’t posted it.

Also on June 9, the witness in Arlington, Virginia, was stopped in traffic. In front, at an elevation of 45 degrees and at about 1500 feet up in the sky, were three objects. Each was followed by a long and twisted contrail of about 1000 feet or more. The contrails were identical for each of the objects suggesting they were flying in formation. They were a brown or reddish color rather than the white of a normal contrail.

The UFOs moved in a random pattern, often crossing each other’s path. The witness reported a regular airplane nearby that had its nose wheel in a fixed down position. The witness thought the UFOs might be skydivers or hang gliders deployed to either report on the stricken plane or provide some sort of assistance. However, and according to the witness, the airplane was obviously an airplane and shortly after he saw the plane two of the objects, along with their contrails vanished. Moments later, the third object vanished as well. The witness wanted to take a video but was unable to figure out how to use the cell phone camera.

The witness said that it all happened in daylight and would be surprised if there weren’t other witnesses to the event.

Finally, I found a report posted in the last few days to YouTube that had a discussion of triangular-shaped craft including sightings made during the first Gulf War. You can find it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFL_omb1P_o

The increase in the number of triangular UFO reports might be a result of a change in our technology. Given the look of the stealth fighters and the B-1 bomber, triangular-shaped aircraft are now a part of our technology. That, I think, influences the descriptions provided by witnesses. It is a matter of perception and is a change in the descriptive language as opposed to an increase in the number of sightings.

Remember, in the late 1940s, many UFOs were described as flying saucers or flying disks regardless of shape. We seem to have moved in that direction today where three lights or craft in a formation become a triangular craft. That, at least, is my speculation at the moment, subject to change as the situation changes.

Chasing Footnotes: The Kelly-Hopkinsville Edition

It has been a while since I chased a footnote. These are difficult to find and I usually just blunder into them. This time I was looking at some the documentation about the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter on August 22, 1955.

For those unfamiliar with the case, it is basically an “attack” on a rural farmhouse. There was a report of a UFO landing in the area, which skeptics suggest might have been a bright meteor that didn’t really land anywhere near the house. The perspective of the witness caused him to believe it had fallen, or landed, close by.

Later, the residents of the house believed they saw strange creatures described as about two and a half to three feet tall, with glowing eyes and short legs. Frightened, the men in the house, using a shotgun and a .22 caliber pistol, engaged the target… or targets. According to the reports, they did hit one or two of the creatures but they seemed unharmed. One, knocked from the roof, floated to the ground.

The men and there weapons after the "invasion."

The family, now hysterical because of the encounter, fled the house to report the incident to the police. Several members of law enforcement, and apparently some interested bystanders, drove out to the house. By the time they arrived, the creatures, it seemed, had gone.

The excitement over, the cops and others left. The family went to bed, only to have one of those creatures return, staring through a window. The men opened fire again, and the creature disappeared. By dawn, everything had quieted down.

There was some sort of an investigation and although the Air Force denied they had any part in that, an Air Force major, on reserve duty at Campbell Air Force Base (and before you all write in to tell me there is no Campbell AFB, I will point out in 1955, there was… it is now Campbell Army Airfield) was asked to look into it. True, it was more unofficial than official, but he was told to go out there and he was in the Air Force.

Investigation in the next couple of days found bullet holes in the window screens, expended shotgun shells (three, I think is the official count), and evidence of rounds fired by the pistol. No UFO was found, no footprints were found, no landing traces were found and no Great Horned Owl remains were found (the Great Horned Owl now the preferred explanation for the creatures).

I found, at a website, a partial explanation for the sighting. According to the website, “The ‘aliens’ were in fact, Great Horned Owls, and the eyewitnesses were probably intoxicated during the ‘alien attack’ (Davis and Bloecher, 1978).” You can read it here:

https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4331

Davis and Bloecher refers to the book Close Encounters at Kelly and Others of 1955. This footnote (as they are done in the academic world today) seems to suggest that the information about the intoxicated witnesses came from that source.

The creature as described
by the witnesses.

Since I have a copy of it, I looked it up. I found nothing in the work of Davis and Bloecher to suggest that those involved were intoxicated. However, on page 83 of their book, they wrote, “(Alcohol had been ruled out early by all the official investigators, though not by the public, to judge by the way the accusations still rankled Mrs. Lankford’s [one of the witnesses] mind when I talked to her.)”

Or, in other words, the source cited as evidence for the suggestion of alcohol specifically addressed that point and ruled it out.

In the Project Blue Book files, there is a newspaper report that appeared on August 22 that addressed that issue as well. According to it, “All officials appeared to agree that there was no drinking involved.” The document was signed by Charles N. Kirk, a first lieutenant in the Air Force. Interestingly, a copy of that document, according to Davis, is missing from the Blue Book file. I do have a copy of it, however.

It establishes two things. One is that there was an Air Force officer who investigated (and before you write to tell me, yes, he conducted that investigation two years after the fact, I know this as well). And two, there was a newspaper article, as part of the file (or however it was categorized by the Air Force) that reinforced the idea that there had been no drinking.

So, no, this wasn’t much of a chase. Just from the source claiming that drinking might have been the problem, to the source they quoted that said that there had been no drinking.

I haven’t really dealt with the fact that there were no bird remains found to establish that Great Horned Owls were the culprits. Had that been the answer, and one of the beings was shot from nearly point-blank range, some evidence would have been found. The Air Force officer, Major Albert, who was there later in the morning saw no evidence of the birds.

I will also note that I believe that the skeptics have an obligation to be, well, skeptical of solutions if those solutions don’t work. Some have leaped on the Great Horned Owl bandwagon and I believe that to be premature. As I said, there was nothing found to suggest birds…

And, no, I’m not endorsing the alien creatures theory either. I have to admit that this case is just weird with no similar cases anywhere. You have to wonder why aliens would travel light years and then assault a rural house… You have to wonder why something like this hasn’t been reported elsewhere… And, you have to wonder about the lack of any physical evidence for aliens or birds.

Of course, the point here was to chase the footnote and show that it doesn’t support the information in the document where it was cited. Clearly, the opposite of their claim was true.

PS: I have reached out to one of the authors of the paper but have not heard a response. If I do, I will append it here. 

I have received the following email from one of the authors, Rodney Schmaltz:

Thanks for the email.  The Hopkinsville case is an interesting one and makes for great class discussion.  The error you reference was pointed out to us earlier.  We should have cited Nickell (2006) rather than Davis and Bloecher (1978).  When this was brought to our attention, we immediately contacted the journal and had a corrigendum published.  If you’re interested, here it is: 

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01982/full 

Nickell does not think alcohol is the explanation for the sightings (see Nickell, 2006 – it’s an interesting read), but does say, “I talked with one of the original investigators, former Kentucky state trooper R.N. Ferguson (2005), who thought people there had been drinking, although he conceded he saw no evidence of that at the site.  He told me he believed the monsters “came in a container” (ie., a can or bottle of alcohol).  A visitor to the farm the next day did notice “a few beer cans in a rubbish basket (Davis and Bloecher, 1978, 35).”  We agree that intoxication was not the cause of the sightings, though there is some speculation that there may have been drinking involved. 

Coast to Coast - Current Sightings

Wondering what is going on in the world of the UFO outside my narrow interests, I did a quick survey of some of the current sightings and found some interesting ones that included photographs and video.

On July 29, just about a week ago, a fellow in Topeka, Kansas, was taking video of his neighborhood using a drone. In the video you can see a bright, small object flying about treetop level. The witness said that there were originally four of them but he only caught the last two on his video. Toward the end of the video, one of them begins a climb and there are what looks like puffs of smoke or exhaust left behind. William Puckett at his www.ufosnw.com said that he didn’t think the objects were birds or insects and I have to agree with that. It does seem to be a little transparent to be a solid craft, but it is interesting and I have no explanation for what the video shows. You can see the video here:

https://www.ufosnw.com/newsite/vertical-horizontal-moving-white-objects-detected-by-drone-camera/

On June 3 of this year, the witness in Babylon, New York, said that he was fishing and spotted three separate lights hovering just below the clouds. He said they were in a triangle or straight-line formation. I suspect the confusion has to do with his view of the objects. He said that he thought they weren’t military helicopters and they had no flashing lights. The UFOs remained in the area for about two hours. Two of them then took off, flying in separate directions, at the same altitude and moving very fast. He said that there was no change in the light that was being reflected and that there was no sound. Helicopters, of course, make quite a racket and it is very difficult to hover out of ground effect for more than a few minutes. I know this from personal experience.

I will note that I’m always suspicious of a sighting that lasts for a couple of hours. That suggests, to me, some sort of astronomical or atmospheric phenomenon. However, the disappearance of the objects seems to rule that out. I’ll be looking for more information on this and if it comes available, I’ll update this post.

A photo was taken of a UFO on July 24 near Vacaville, California, when the witness and his son spotted the object. The witnesses watched the UFO for about two minutes before it disappeared. The father said, “The object was black with four lights in a row. It blended into the night sky, but could just barely be seen because of the Moon shining on it. That’s how my son spotted it. It was huge in comparison with Moon as it gave a good size comparison. BTW my son is a 16-year-old high school sophomore and I am a retired USAF Senior NCO currently working as an FAA inspector.”

He added that the picture is of poor quality and you can find the photograph here:

https://www.ufosnw.com/newsite/black-object-with-4-lights-in-a-row-illuminated-by-moon/

I found another interesting video that was taken on July 10 of this year in Grill, Pennsylvania. It was from a home security camera and that the camera was facing to the northwest. The video is a little strange and Puckett noted that it might be a spider web illuminated by the various lights at night. I have no reason to doubt the explanation, but it is an interesting bit of video. I just found the way the object, whatever it might be, moved to be fascinating. You can see the video here:

https://www.ufosnw.com/newsite/security-camera-detects-lights-in-horizontal-pattern/

Finally, on June 14, the witness and sister were outside a coffee shop in Tustin, California when they noticed something odd. They thought they were looking at drones, but instead saw eleven, oval-shaped silver objects flying to the east at a slow speed. The objects remained in a close formation, but would spread out and then return to their original positions. They had a shiny surface on one side that reflected the sun. The objects were in sight for two to three minutes but eventually climbed too high to be seen.

I should point out that these cases are all in the preliminary stages of investigation. They are interesting, especially when there is some additional evidence in the form of video or a photograph. That provides us with the ability to analyze the data without relying only on the observations of the witnesses. 

Four From Planet Five and that Technologically Advanced Civilization

 

Here’s something that I have said for years. When a technologically superior civilization encounters a technologically inferior civilization, that technologicalyl inferior civilization ceases to exist. We have seen numerous examples of this through the course of our history. We don’t have to look very far into the past to see it.

Sitting Bull, the Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man warned the Lakota to leave everything on the battlefield after the defeat of the five companies with George Custer. His point was that they, the Lakota, did not have the technology to reproduce those artifacts, whether they were guns, steel axes and knives, or even the cooking utensils. He knew that an iron pot was better for cooking than a clay pot and a steel ax was sharper than one created from stone. He knew that the Lakota would become dependent on those things and that would alter their society… probably not for the good.

It was in 1960, I believe, that the Brookings Institute published a document in which they made this observation. The superior technology would overwhelm the society without the technology and that would doom that technologically inferior society.

I mention all this now because I just reread a book that my mother bought for me when I was ten. It was a Fawcett Gold Medal science fiction novel entitled Four from Planet Five. It is about four children who arrive at an Antartic research station in what seems to be a spaceship. Clearly, anyone with a spaceship, back in the middle of the twentieth century anyway, had a superior technology.

Normally, this wouldn’t be of interest to anyone into UFOs, and one or two of the things in the book wouldn’t be of interest to those who read science fiction. However, there was something I found on page 59 that might be of interest to both groups.

To quote from the book:

And he had an immense, a fascinated yearning to work with the innumerable possibilities the technology of the children’s race suggested.

“I don’t like any of this,” he commented to Gail. “If they children’s people find out where they are I don’t see how we humans of Earth can survive the contact with so superior a culture. The American Indians collapsed from meeting a civilization not nearly so far ahead of them. The Polynesians died of mere contact with a whale-ship culture. But we’ve got to face something a lot more deadly.”

You can argue that these examples aren’t just of contact but of warfare. Yes, there was fighting between the expansion of the Europeans into the native territories, but it was the superiority of the technology that actually doomed the indigenous peoples. The rifle and pistol were superior to the bow and arrow but the Indians couldn’t make them. They had to rely on the technology of the Europeans and the Americans for those items.

And it wouldn’t have been just weapons. All sorts of items would be introduced and even if the contact had been benign, the end result would have been pretty much the same. The technology would have won.

But the real point is that this concept, which I have quoted often in the past, was out there, in the world of science fiction before the academics had put it down on paper. Oh, there might by other examples of this in the anthropological history of the human race. I just found it interesting that the concept was part of a science fiction novel published in 1959 that has an impact on the world of the UFO.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Don Schmitt and a Variety of Topics

 At the end of the show a week or so ago, I had said that I would be interviewing Robert Sheaffer about his take on UFOs. As we attempted to do just that, we ran into a number of technical issues that had to do with Internet connectivity at his end. He kept fading out and we were only getting about 45% of what he said. It just wasn’t working, so we postponed the show. I’ve invited him back, and we’re working out a date that will be satisfactory for him.

This week, given some changes, I decided to bring back Don Schmitt. We have both been around the UFO field for a very long time. We have many of the same interests and I find conversations with him to be easy and informative. I thought we could talk about Jacques Vallee’s book, Trinity, Avi Loeb’s Galileo Project and then for something completely different, we’d talk about a new book that seems to suggest the Texas War for Independence was based on a big land grab. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/45970787

Although we had begun to talk about Vallee’s book, we detoured into Roswell because the only living witness to the UFO crash at San Antonio, New Mexico, (which I kept adding New Mexico to it so that it wouldn’t be confused with the big one in Texas) had approached Don in the late 1990s. Reme Baca, the witness, suggested something over on the Plains of San Agustin, and according to Don, it seemed that he, Baca, was suggesting he had been there in 1947. Given that neither of us accept a crash on the Plains of San Agustin in 1947, Don wasn’t interested.

Don Schmitt on the Plains of San Agustin

Baca apparently also approached Stan Friedman, who wasn’t interested in pursuing that information either. And, I had a copy of an interview conducted with Baca in 2010 that didn’t impress me. There were anachronisms in it and there was no corroborating detail. In fact, I interviewed both Vallee and Paola Harris, authors of the book a couple of months ago. You can listen to that interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/45140594  

Finished with the Roswell and the San Antonio (New Mexico) crash, we discussed Dr. Abraham (Avi) Loeb’s creation of the Galileo Project. This was an outgrowth of his observation of an object that entered the Solar System from outside, which, I suppose, can be the first confirmed extra-solar object ever discovered. Loeb was of the opinion that it was an alien artifact created long ago by an intelligence on another planet. I had the opportunity to interview Loeb in the spring. You can listen to that, and my commentary on the Galileo Project here:

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

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

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/02/coast-to-coast-dr-abraham-loeb-madar.html

I did want to get to this latest book about the Alamo. As Don mentioned, we both have been to the Alamo a couple of times and are well aware of the history. This “new” theory is that the Texas War of Independence was nothing more than an American land grab… except the Mexican government invited in the Americans as a way of populating this huge area that they, the Mexicans, had taken away from the Spanish.

My reading of history suggests that the war erupted because the Americans in Texas wanted representation in the Mexican government as other states in Mexico enjoyed. In fact, Texas didn’t declare independence until March 2, 1836, about a week after the siege of the Alamo began.

Our point with this was to discuss how investigations can degenerate into debates about facts. I have said for a long time, we are not in a debate about UFOs but in an investigation. I try to go where the facts lead, rather than to the place I want to go. I think our discussion could have provided something interesting comments on the Alamo and the attacks on American history, but, as always, we ran out of time.

Although we had planned on it, we didn’t talk about latest in the Walton abduction case. There are some questions being raised about it that are disturbing, but then, it might just be a matter of perspective. The case has stood for decades with little dissention among the witnesses. You can read a little more about that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/07/x-zone-latest-on-travis-waltons.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/03/did-mike-rogers-repudiate-travis-walton.html

Next up, as we introduce the program to Zoom so that there is both the audio and the visual content, is John Greenewald. He has some strong opinions on the UAP report and just interviewed Avi Loeb about Project Galileo. If you have questions, let me know