Banned From The UFO Collective Google Group

[marduk]

How about we reboot it?

How about we stop giving a crap about what researcher X said about experiencer Y to sell Z number of books...

And just came up with some novel, testable, ideas?

 

[Heidi Lemmer]

Re: Dr. Lima's article on the treatment of abductees

This reads like an apology for Hopkins and hypnosis. It is not what I would describe as an unbiased clinician's response. Dr. Lima, who graduated from the Albert Einstein school of medicine, and her Truth Reports do not inspire the kind of critical support patients need. The paper itself does not read like an independent research paper studying patients. In fact it actually quotes Hopkins as a legitimate source for how to categorize abductees. Far from an unbiased approach this paper is just making arguments for hypnosis and reads like a response to criticisms of Hopkins and Jacobs. That makes it hard to move forward when this is the rhetoric of the past. How about an actual real life patient study that starts with facts instead of beliefs?

Edit: further research links her to Alex Jones, the Church of Scientology, remote viewing of UFO ships and claims that O'Bama's healthcare plan will kill people. Sounds pretty fringy to me, and not good fringe, more like tinfoil fringe. If this is ufoevidence's approach to science then they need to better vet what they post.

I should have followed up on her affiliations before posting that link, thanks for doing that burnt. There is quite a bit I agree with in what she wrote but I'd rather have someone without all that baggage to have written it.

 

[Randall]

What about Travis Walton?

Topics In Ufology - Travis Walton

 

[marduk]

Topics In Ufology - Travis Walton

I didn't know this bit, thanks!

"Other circumstances that cast doubt on the story are that according to a local official, the Walton family had a history of interest in UFOs stemming from several sightings, including one in 1964 by Duane Walton ( Travis's brother ), and that Travis had unsuccessfully tried to gain media exposure in order to highlight the experiences. This alone is not damaging, but It was also discovered that in May of 1971, Walton had plead guilty to stealing payroll cheques and forging signatures in order to cash them. So the picture suddenly becomes one of an admitted fraud trying to gain media exposure for UFO stories who just happens to go missing and claim to be a victim of alien abduction.

Given the circumstances above it is natural to suspect a hoax, but there is even more. Walton and the crew stood to gain up to $100,000 for submitting their story to the National Enquirer. The Enquirer only paid them out $5000, but the movie, Fire In The Sky, went on to gross $19,885,552 in ticket sales during its 4 week run in theatres. Then in 1994 a VHS home video version was released and in 2004 a DVD version was released. Book reprints, movie posters, interviews and countless retellings in ufo literature have also sustained the story over the decades. As of 2012, Walton was still signing books and making appearances at ufology gatherings. So there is no doubt that the Fire In The Sky franchise has been successful. How much Walton and his crew have personally gained remains unclear, but it is reasonable to surmise that it has probably provided some modest returns over the years."​

 

[Stagger Lee]

$5,000 couldn't be enough in almost a 20 year period, to not have at least one witness come forward and say "Yep, we made it all up. We were kids" Just saying, seems odd to me.

 

[Burnt State]

$5,000 couldn't be enough in almost a 20 year period, to not have at least one witness come forward and say "Yep, we made it all up. We were kids" Just saying, seems odd to me.

That's the part that gets me with cases like this one and the Allagash abduction story. They both involve an isolated group of people which makes for easy confabulation. With the Walton story it would be hard to believe that everyone has signed some type of pact and that they are all still getting a cut. If that was the case then more of them would be making public appearances. Instead there is only one of the men who does appear on podcasts here and there talking about his own multiple contact experiences - it all sounds quite silly actually.

The other way the hoax would work is that Walton and perhaps brother concocted an event in the woods that no one else was in on, as they were all facing murder charges regarding Travis' disappearance - pretty high stakes for a hoax.

The other unique features of course includes the wildly original story of alien contact that Travis tells. It has not altered one iota all these years compared to other abduction/contact tales where the stories shift, alter and turn into contactee messenger/prophet pieces. Walton has not done this. Yet Walton still won't appear on the Paracast? What's going on there?

 

[Burnt State]

Here's the Paracast thread on Walton: Travis Walton | The Paracast Community Forums

 

[Stagger Lee]

Curious, that Walton wouldn't appear on the Paracast. I agree with some of your points above Bstate.

 

[marduk]

OK, Walton is in my grey basket -- a "maybe."

What about Betty & Barney Hill? I've read a few books, and seen some skepticism, but nothing that really explained it for me.

Or Strieber? Communion has the ring of truth to me, as does some of his responses, as does some of the evidence in Report on Communion.

I bring these two up together because of the possible commonality of a true event, which might have caused both of them to go off the deep end logic-wise after rational answers or support wasn't forthcoming...

Apologies if these have all been discussed/beaten to death before.

 

[trainedobserver]

Walton has never changed his story, although he did fail that "Are you lying?" (or whatever the show was) lie detector test.
The recordings of Barney Hill's hypnosis sessions are hair-raising, but many things about the story don't add up as an ET visitation.
Strieber literally destroyed his life and career by writing Communion transforming it into a living parody of some of his previous stories. Why would anyone do that if they didn't have a incredible conviction about the reality of their experience?

It's hard to really make sense of any of these experiences from the "outside". From all accounts making sense of them from the "inside" is just as frustrating.

Whatever you believe is really going on, I think anyone who has studied UFOs for any length of time has to admit, something is in the business of presenting the UFO Alien/ET mythos to the world as a reality. Non-human beings from another world interested in human beings here, or native agencies at work? How could you tell?

After some 40 years of looking into this subject I'm still as mystified as the day I started.

 

[marduk]

The recordings of Barney Hill's hypnosis sessions are hair-raising, but many things about the story don't add up as an ET visitation.

Why not? Seems pretty straightforward. Craft comes down, they go in for an exam, they have missing time, recovered memories... seems textbook.

Strieber literally destroyed his life and career by writing Communion transforming it into a living parody of some of his previous stories. Why would anyone do that if they didn't have a incredible conviction about the reality of their experience?

I agree... and the subsequent rejection by science and society in general forced him off the deep end to try to find some kind, any kind, of answers.

Non-human beings from another world interested in human beings here, or native agencies at work? How could you tell?

Seems simple to me. We don't see anything approaching this kind of technology in operational use in the field... even after multiple decades.

Hell, the F-177 was initially operational and very secret in 1983, now it's in air shows.

I'm not saying it's impossible... just highly improbable.

I'm not saying these guys are from Zeta Reticuli any more than I'm saying they're from Dimension 9.

What I am saying is that I don't buy the "breakaway civilization" meme one little bit, and I think there's a core truth to some of these experiences.

After some 40 years of looking into this subject I'm still as mystified as the day I started.

Hells ya. Been multiple decades for me, and I'm in the same boat.

 

[Randall]

I'd kind of like to watch this movie again. It truly didn't do much for me when I saw it at the theater when it came out. I have done this with music several times and had it blow me away the second time around.

Prepare to be not blown away. It's always been a good movie, and always will be a good movie, but the increased appreciation comes in small increments.

 

[trainedobserver]

Why not? Seems pretty straightforward. Craft comes down, they go in for an exam, they have missing time, recovered memories... seems textbook.

Well, yeah. Exactly. A textbook alien abduction complete with all the details. The occupants features are atypical however. Something else has always bothered me about the UFO since I was a kid reading The Interrupted Journey. The "flying saucer" wasn't really a flying saucer, it had two wings. The aliens had large noses and behaved like human beings might be expected to act studying wildlife or tending a herd, what our idea of what an "alien expedition" might be like. Other things as well, but you get the idea.

Seems simple to me. We don't see anything approaching this kind of technology in operational use in the field... even after multiple decades.

That is a large assumption that is hard to check with any great certainty.

I'm not saying it's impossible... just highly improbable.

I can't argue with you there. Where UFOs are concerned, most explanations seem improbable on close inspection.

What I am saying is that I don't buy the "breakaway civilization" meme one little bit, and I think there's a core truth to some of these experiences.

I definitely think something is going on. I don't buy into the breakaway civilization or any other one notion explaining all of the UFO and related encounters either. There just is no one size fits all explanation. It's certainly not whatever the buzz word of the year or week might be.

Are technologically and socially advanced alien civilizations visiting us with incredible frequency to take skin, blood, semen, eggs, and offspring samples in some massive bioengineering project though? I just don't see it. The mythos purports a level of activity that it seems society could not help but notice and react to in a big way, military, politically, and emotionally. We don't see any of that.

 

[trainedobserver]

"Operational in the field" is a major and very potent argument against government sponsored and sanctioned man-made UFOs. I think NGOs with extra-national goals and concerns could explain why highly advanced platforms would be withheld from military and commercial use, but I can't prove it. We know humans are here, we know we build things, and we know getting over on the other guy has been the major sport since the get-go. There is literally nothing that humans have done or will do that should surprise us. Evil bastards monopolizing the wealth and manipulating the masses to suit the master's needs and goals has been going on since before we started wearing clothes I imagine.

 

[Stagger Lee]

There is a program I watched last night called "Close Encounters" -they covered the Austrailian School Saucer incident '66(?) I was somewhat aware of this incident from previous threads here in this forum, but I'm not fully aware of all the details and always skeptical of cases presented on cable TV- but, I really thought they did a decent job of covering this incident. Even the dramatization and special effects were good. Wether the details were accurate as presented on this program, there seems little doubt a saucer did make an appearance in front of many school kids and some adults. I can't imagine how such an incident was debunked, by whom- or how it was kept quiet.
Seemed like a solid case of a classic saucer encounter.

 

[trainedobserver]

Here is Andreasson describing her experiences. This is much more than an "ET" type of story.

 

[marduk]

"Operational in the field" is a major and very potent argument against government sponsored and sanctioned man-made UFOs. I think NGOs with extra-national goals and concerns could explain why highly advanced platforms would be withheld from military and commercial use, but I can't prove it. We know humans are here, we know we build things, and we know getting over on the other guy has been the major sport since the get-go. There is literally nothing that humans have done or will do that should surprise us. Evil bastards monopolizing the wealth and manipulating the masses to suit the master's needs and goals has been going on since before we started wearing clothes I imagine.

OK, I'll buy the idea that an NGO has perhaps developed exotic propulsion technology and is using it for it's own nefarious purpose. But assuming the NGO is a corporate entity it should conform to some basic economic theory; i.e. keeping it secret and buzzing about our skies produces more profit than selling it to one of the military powers or even for private use.

Think about how much freaking money would be in selling a weapons platform the the US military that could hover or jump to multi-mach instantly... or how much money would be in selling Ford on the creation of private aircraft that could take off from your driveway and zip you directly to work without traffic.

The commercial ideas are endless. The private, secret ideas not so much -- from an economic standpoint.

 

[marduk]

(re: having exotic UFO-like tech fielded in the military) That is a large assumption that is hard to check with any great certainty.

Why?

The only thing I've seen evidence for that is remotely exotic (besides stealth) was the reported use of energy weapons in Panama:
The Panama Deception - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I went to school with someone from Panama that had family claim to get hit with stuff that would look like what was later known as active denial microwave weapons...

But even still they seemed to be large, truck mounted, cumbersome, and of limited use.

I've never even heard of claims of exotic propulsion tech fielded by any military, "Nazi UFO" garbage aside.

The thing about weapons and weapon platforms in the field is they are often deployed in populous areas, and are there for a purpose. They also crash and are recovered with some non-zero margin of error (see the "stealth blackhawk" crash).

 

[trainedobserver]

The commercial ideas are endless. The private, secret ideas not so much -- from an economic standpoint.

That is true. However, if such a group or groups exist, they could be operating outside of or above the world economic system. They may also keep flying monkeys as pets, I don't know.

 

[marduk]

That is true. However, if such a group or groups exist, they could be operating outside of or above the world economic system. They may also keep flying monkeys as pets, I don't know.

OK, how and why? How would they feed themselves? Get raw materials? Put their garbage? Get on the internet? Watch NFL? Get laid? People are people, and people dig people things. That's why capitalism and democracy have been so successful.

What are they, on the dark side of the moon? Oh, they can't be, humanity has the whole thing imaged in high-def.

So where, why, and how?