Showing posts with label Dr. James Harder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dr. James Harder. Show all posts

Thursday, October 14, 2021

'X' zone Broadcast Network - Jen Stein on Travis Walton

 

This week’s guest was Jennifer Stein, who is responsible for the documentary, Travis, about, what else, the Travis Walton abduction. This came about because of things that Mike Rogers had said, not only on this program, but what he said to others. In one case, Rogers had said that the whole thing was a hoax, only to retract that statement, in a matter of speaking not long after making it. I had reached out to various colleagues to solicit opinions on this, and ended up speaking with Stein. I thought she would make an interesting counter to some of what Rogers had said. You can listen to the program here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/46966498

One of the things we discussed was the Steven Pierce tale that Philip Klass had offered him, that is Pierce, ten thousand dollars to admit to the hoax. You’ll remember just a couple of weeks ago I talked to Robert Sheaffer about that. Sheaffer


had said that he’d read a transcript of the conversations between Klass and Pierce and it seemed that no such offer had been made. It was just some sort of a misunderstanding because of a rumor allegedly started by Rogers. I hadn’t seen the transcripts at that time but Sheaffer was sure that his interpretation was the correct one. Stein wasn’t so sure. I have added the transcripts at the end of this post for those who wish to read them can do so. I’ll be interested in what each of you thinks, having listened to the show and seen the transcripts.

But I also have to mention that there may have been communication from Klass to Pierce through the local police department. So, when Klass mentions they had never met or talked with one another, that was the truth. Once again, we have a conflict about what happened, when it happened and how it happened. It really comes down do who you wish to believe about all this.

I also mentioned that I had no trust in James Harder, having worked with him in 1976 on an abduction investigation. I saw Harder manipulating the situation between the recorded hypnotic regression sessions. He provided the script in the guise of attempting to provide comfort to the witness. He mentioned to me that his job was to validate the Barney and Betty Hill abduction case by finding another, credible case. I would have thought that his job was to find the truth.

He provided information between the sessions that appeared in the next session. He mentioned to the witness that Betty Hill thought she had been physically examined and in the very next session with the witness, the witness said that she knew she had been examined. Stein pointed out that Harder had but one session with Walton and there really had been no opportunity for him to influence Walton’s memories of the event. Stein thought the session was more of a relaxation exercise because, for Walton, the abduction was quite stressful. In other words, Harder’s part of the story was small and probably unimportant.

For those interested, you can visit Jen Stein’s website about Travis, the documentary she produced here:

TravisWaltonTheMovie.com

And for those interested in the Virtual Conference that will be held on November 6, you can find information about it here:

TheObservation.com

Next week, I’ll talking with Nick Redfern about his latest book, Time Travel. And the following week, for those of you who don’t think I was fair when I interviewed Bob Young, I’ll be chatting with Stan Gordon. We’ll get his take on all this, meaning the Kecksburg UFO crash. Stan had been investigating the case for decades.

Click on the document to expand... Klass' transcript of his telephone conversation with Steve Pierce.








Thursday, October 15, 2020

Coast to Coast - Calvin Parker

 

Those of you who visit here regularly know that I’m not a big fan of tales of alien abduction. I believe that the solution for most cases is based here on Earth and that some of the investigation has been less than stellar. I do think that if there are alien abductions, I believe they would be targets of opportunity rather than some sort of longitudinal study conducted over years or decades. As I have said to Kathleen Marden, I’m more inclined to accept the tales told by Barney and Betty Hill, Travis Walton, and Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker.

For those interested, I have interviewed Calvin Parker of Pascagoula fame, a couple of times on the radio version of A Different Perspective. You can listen to those interviews here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2019/03/x-zone-broadcast-network-calvin-parker.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/07/x-zone-broadcast-network-calvin-parker.html

Like many others, I have always been somewhat skeptical of single witness reports, or in the case of Hickson-Parker, two guys telling the same story from the same point of view. That means they were together and there didn’t seem to be any corroborating witnesses. In the case of the latest investigation by Philip Mantle, it seems that additional witnesses have

Calvin Parker

been uncovered, and Calvin and I talked about that in the second link listed above.

But now, however, their seems to be some additional corroboration. Rather than witnesses who appeared nearly fifty years after the fact, there is a document found by Mantle that was written literally hours after the abduction took place. Mantle wrote:

After the book was published [Pascagoula – The Closest Encounter: My Story by Calvin Parker] … I continued my search for any formal documentation related to the incident as any that had been in the possession of Calvin Parker had been washed away by hurricane Katrina. I contacted all of the major UFO groups one of which included the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies in the USA. They were very obliging and sent me a PDF file of what they had on the case. Most of what they sent was newspaper cuttings but buried in the middle of this file was a very curious and possible ‘smoking gun’ type-written document.

Although this document, dated 13th of October 1973, just two days after the alien encounter, is unsigned it was written by Dr. James Harder. We know it was written by Dr. Harder as he was the only person to examine the witnesses which has been confirmed by Calvin Parker. Dr. James Harder’s academic credentials are as follows: BS (Caltech), MS, Ph.D., (U.C. Berkeley). He is a Fellow, AAAS; Life Member, ASCE; and Founding Member, Society for Scientific Exploration. Professor Emeritus, U.C. Berkeley. He was also a director of the UFO research group APRO.

Dr. Harder along with Dr J. Allen Hynek were on site in Pascagoula within 36 hours of the event happening. They interviewed Calvin Parker and Charles Hickson and at a press conference confirmed that they believed what the witnesses were saying.

It is important, in attempting to understand, the relevance of the document, to read first, what Calvin had to say about it:

At the time of my abduction on October 11th, 1973   when the alien reached out to take me on board the ship. From the first time I saw them it was the fear I felt that is hard to describe. I just knew I would not live through this fear. As the alien made contact to my left arm, I heard a whisk of what I thought was air then all at once I got became really relaxed then all the fear was gone. Later on, after being examined by Dr. James Harder I heard him telling Dr Hynek that I had a puncture marks on my arm and later at the hospital I found out that I was given not one shot but two shots the second was while I was on board the craft. This document simply confirms what I have always known and that is both Charlie and I were given injections by these creatures and we had the puncture wounds to prove it.

Rather than me type in what is found on the document, the best course is to provide the document itself so that you can read it here.

Document found by Philip Mantle.


 Although the provenance of the document is not rock solid, the fact that it came from CUFOS and was among Hynek’s papers is relevant. It’s not as if the document appeared from an unknown location in the mail box of a UFO researcher. It does have a certainly level of credibility attached to it.

However, it would have been more powerful had it been signed by Dr. James Harder, and given what is known, it is reasonable to believe that Harder was the author. Given what is known, given the date of the document, it does provide us with some corroboration for the event told by Calvin Parker. It is up to each of us to decide what weight to give to it.