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MUFON LA Jumps the MUFON Ship—Now the "UFO & Paranormal Research Society

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Christopher O'Brien

Christopher O'Brien

Back in the Saddle Aginn
Staff member
[A harbinger of things to come? When the model become outmoded, time to change the model! — chris]

Article HERE:

The very popular MUFON LA (Mutual UFO Network) chapter of scientific investigators and people interested in paranormal research is re-configuring as a new group that will still meet monthly in Studio City.

The MUFON meetings have met for years at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Studio City monthly with guests that have included people discussing time travel, government conspiracies, UFO abductions, alien contact, Bigfoot and other other-worldly phenomena. At least 50 to 100 people attend each meeting.


Steve Murillo, a real estate agent and pilot, said that the group is no longer associated with the overall national MUFON group, based in Colorado, but the membership locally will meet now as the UFO & Paranormal Research Society, and encompass members from Santa Barbara to San Diego that come to these meetings.

The UFO & Paranormal Research Society is dedicated to the study of UFO, paranormal and related phenomenon so that people may better understand the Universe and our role within. The group is open to anyone with an open mind.
 
Wow, I'd like to know more about this split (but can readily imagine 20 reasons for it). I have to say, coming into this scene late, I was very impressed to see the quality of original contributors to groups like NICAP, APRO and MUFON. They were loaded with members having scientific credentials across a spectrum of disciplines.

Why do these groups fail? Money always matters, but is it because UFOlogists make terrible administrators? Territorial bickering and ego posturing seem to poison things, and the work of searching for UFO answers gets left in the dust.
 
I don't know much about mufon in general but it seems to me the la chapter was rather progressive and more broad minded in their outlook at the ufo phenomenon. Does not mufon as a whole come across an an organization that's stuck in a rut as far as their approach?
 
Top twenty challenge? I couldn't do it without cheating:
  1. Policy (covers almost everything)
  2. Personalities
  3. Money
  4. Territoriality
  5. Independence
  6. Embarrassment (Mile High Club?)
  7. Paranormal preferences
Within Policy, let's just include MUFONs tendency to make UFO reports vanish.
Now they've lost a whole city!
 
Sentry said:
Top twenty challenge? I couldn't do it without cheating: Within Policy, let's just include MUFONs tendency to make UFO reports vanish ...

Now they've lost a whole city!
Click to expand...
OK ... I think we're on a roll:

The Top Twenty Countdown Continues:
  1. Policy (covers almost everything)
  2. Personalities
  3. Money
  4. Territoriality
  5. Independence
  6. Embarrassment (Mile High Club?)
  7. Paranormal preferences
  8. The Bigelow fiasco
  9. The takedown of the original volunteer run MUFON forum
  10. Too many people with bad hair
  11. Purporting to be scientific while failing to consistently demonstrate valid science.
  12. Project Omega alien detector snow job Part 1 | Part II
  13. Over 700 people can't be all wrong ( or can they ) !
We're getting there ... just 7 more to go :D !
 
Oh well - happy days - an actual thread on this where one can ask questions about it! :)

In fact, after viewing a UFO program on television and hearing within the program that someone who had an unusual experience contacted MUFON to have it investigated, I decided to search out MUFON and came across the LA MUFON website with info on their 3rd Tuesday of the month meetings in Studio City. By the time I had gotten this far it was May and the next meeting was going to have a guy named Gary Wade talk. So.....after watching a lecture by Gary Wade on YouTube as suggested by the LA-MUFON website, I toodled myself up to Studio City on said Tuesday evening.

Pretty impressive audience size. Gary Wade - not so much impressive. Kinda scary in fact. A woman left mid-way and as she left cast me a glance for some reason and rolled her eyes. She must have sensed a kindred spirit because I was feeling pretty much the same way. There's a saying in German that translated into English means one is 'reaching for the door' in a situation one finds oneself in that becomes uncomfortable. Yep.

But what is really significant about this meeting on May 21st was that when I arrived I was told that the lecture fee was $15, but if I paid just $20 I would get MUFON membership and could attend all future events for $10 or some such - a lower fee. If I thought I was going to attend more than just that evening's lecture, the membership seemed a good idea, so I signed up. I filled out the paperwork and was told that when I left I could pick up my membership card - it would be on the table as I went out the door. Okay.

When I leave - just as Gary Wade is talking about most people in the world being abductees (sorry - just not my thing - especially not my thing is the fuzzy thinking) - I come to the table and it is awash with membership cards. Clearly a good night for signing up new members. I take my card and off I go.

Next day or so I decide to go on the LA-MUFON website to find out who the speaker is on the June meet-up date and discover the website is no more. Poof! Gone. Instead, in the website's place, is this Loren Ipsum Meet-up site and I can attend an after-meet-up meet-up at a Big Boy in Studio City for chit-chat. Okay - because now I am a bit curious. I've just been recruited for MUFON membership - and paid a money to a group in good faith - and the group that recruited me has just split from MUFON and now what? (Switch-and bait?)

So I go to the Big Boy Restaurant in Studio City. Interesting. The MUFON rep - seems like a nice lady - Nikki Wall, MUFON, Director, Public Relations, Assistant Organizer - introduces herself and this is my first experience of exactly what MUFON folks might be like. She gives her UFO background - as we all wind up doing as introduction. She is an 'investigator' - and there is a couple present who apparently are having lots and lots of paranormal activity at their house . This is being 'investigated' by Nikki - she is their MUFON investigator. It seems this particular house is having routine visitations by UFO's and a whole raft of things (words and ideas) start getting mentioned that I am not familiar with - and it reminds me at this point of being at a religious meeting where there is an underlying 'narrative' that everyone knows about and accepts and is the basis for all conversation. It was a steep learning curve but I was getting the drift. There was a general invitation to everyone to come to the location to see the "inter-dimensional beings' and stuff. :eek:

Anyway, when my turm comes around to say howdy and give some background I do mention my sparkly experience in Hawaii - mentioning the 'sparkly tree' event I saw reported on in the UFO show - I'm grabbing at straws. Nikki isn't too helpful - except to say that the 'sparkly tree' incident reported on in the show is 'very famous' and stuff. Oh. Now I know.

Then I go for the obvious - because the human mind does so like a mystery - and point blank ask about the fact that I just joined MUFON and now its something else and what is that? Nikki has no real explanation except to say that there was a disagreement with MUFON itself and this LA group has other ideas about what they want to do. But now there is no LA-MUFON group to attend. Maybe I'm not interested in paranormal stuff (I'm not). Why recruit me - and a ton of others - on a night when they knew they were separating from MUFON? Strange, no? Nikki then says that the FaceBook page will be coming down and so forth. Okay. Politics. And secrecy. Does no one see the irony?

So now it's the UFO and Paranormal Research Society of Los Angeles. I did ask Steve Murillo via messaging why those interested in something different didn't just splinter off into a new group - why take the whole LA-MUFON and morph it into something else. The answer was no answer at all except to say that I was welcome to exchange my MUFON membership card for a UPARS card. Thing is, Studio City is only a 20 to 30 minutes away - the Orange County MUFON is a good 60 minutes plus drive - so this political 'take over' is very inconvenient.

I understand there is a kind of UFO store in Santa Monica that might be a meet-up site for MUFON interested people. Has gotten me thinking. I am really interested in a scientific minded group.
 
People have already mentioned it in this thread but I think the main problem people have with MUFON is that it aquires info, but doesn't give back info. Not sufficiently anyways. So its value to the public, or at least the members, is far less than it should be.
 
Jimi H. said:
People have already mentioned it in this thread but I think the main problem people have with MUFON is that it aquires info, but doesn't give back info. Not sufficiently anyways. So its value to the public, or at least the members, is far less than it should be.
Click to expand...

Then where do you go to have discussions - reasonable and rational and gingerly skeptical without preconceived ideas - about these things being reported all over the place? Any suggestions?
 
I'm across the pond so I'm afraid I wouldn't know where to go.

But it is indeed very difficult to find organizations or online discussion forums with members that balance the middle ground. It is almost always either full-on alien idolatry, or stiff upper-lip closedmindedness. Not a lot of middle ground to be had..

PS: Your name, is that from the Blake poem? "Tyger, Tyger burning bright, in the forests of the night."
 
Jimi H. said:
I'm across the pond so I'm afraid I wouldn't know where to go.

But it is indeed very difficult to find organizations or online discussion forums with members that balance the middle ground. It is almost always either full-on alien idolatry, or stiff upper-lip closedmindedness. Not a lot of middle ground to be had..

PS: Your name, is that from the Blake poem? "Tyger, Tyger burning bright, in the forests of the night."
Click to expand...

Given the the 'ariadne' internet thread I followed to this chat site, I thought maybe this was the site that would have some middle-ground. (ufowatchdog, etc.). I jumped right in without reading much - is the conversation here reasonable? But, of course, the real issue is solid investigation. Anyone can spin a story - it's the investigation that is the key to all this.

When I was signing up for MUFON I was straight-off-the-bat asked if I wanted to be an 'investigator'. I hope there is a bit more vetting for such a role, especially given they seem very keen on paranormal stuff. If ever there was a mutable area that responds to the nature of the observer - it is the 'psychic'.

And yes, it is. "What immortal hand or eye.....

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
 
Well, it looks like MUFON-LA - now the UFO and Paranormal Research Society of LA is going the paranormal/psychic route in earnest. The August speaker will be : "Dr. Barry E. Taff, who holds a doctorate in psychophysiology with a minor in biomedical engineering, is a world-renowned parapsychologist who worked out of UCLA’s former Parapsychology Laboratory from 1969 through 1978 as a research associate." He had something to do with "The Entity" - I just looked it up. IMO this is bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, very 'not good'.
 
Well, Tyger, with a name like "Paracast" there may be some here happy with the LA group's new focus.
I leave that area to others. When you go too paranormal, it almost means you never have to really explain anything- it's magic. Almost like matters of faith or relig... no, I'm not going there.
I say investigate all possibilities, and stay away from labels that are going to close doors.
 
Sentry said:
Well, Tyger, with a name like "Paracast" there may be some here happy with the LA group's new focus.
I leave that area to others. When you go too paranormal, it almost means you never have to really explain anything- it's magic. Almost like matters of faith or relig... no, I'm not going there.
I say investigate all possibilities, and stay away from labels that are going to close doors.
Click to expand...

In fact I just looked up "Paracast" and don't I have egg-on-my-face. ;)

In fact I agree with what you say - and my attitude towards the 'paranormal' is as blase as it is because in my world-view soul and spirit do exist as an a priori 'narrative'. Science and spirit are not mutually exclusive - but do have different 'rules'. Science uses 'external' rules, the 'spirit' uses 'internal' rules. Where these meet - and they are currently meeting in cutting-edge science (physics) - there is a tipping point.

Anyone pressing up against anything 'paranormal' is playing with a kind of fire - and with usually soul rather than spirit. The playing is not in a good way, usually, because there needs to be a great deal of wisdom and maturity and command of self to be an accurate interpreter of inner 'phenomenon' objectified.

It's not for nothing that ancient - and not so ancient - paths of inner development counsel against frivolous exploration of these areas. Paramahansa Yogananda, and many other spiritual teachers, counseled to stay away from all things psychic - and there is a reason for that. One esoteric path views 'psychism' as an atavistic capacity that needs to be shut down in order for higher capacities (higher thinking - like intuition) to be able to develop - very much like the primitive instincts in the developing infant, that are necessary at a certain stage (suckling) but need to 'fall away' so that other capacities can develop.

Usually considerable 'purification' (command of self) is necessary before one can traverse the objectified emotional realm without danger of derangement. Consider one of the old texts from out of Theosophy, brought forth by Mabel Collins. LINK: LIGHT ON THE PATH - Part 1 This is the norm - to advocate and undergo a discipline of inner development before any 'phenomenon' are explored or is allowed to manifest. The psychic is the realm of the 'trickster'.

However, what seems evident is that a massive objectification of soul - perhaps - is taking place for many people. Without an understanding of the human being (self-knowledge), the concepts developed are akin to whistling in the dark.
 
Sentry said:
Well, Tyger, with a name like "Paracast" there may be some here happy with the LA group's new focus.
I leave that area to others. When you go too paranormal, it almost means you never have to really explain anything- it's magic. Almost like matters of faith or relig... no, I'm not going there.
I say investigate all possibilities, and stay away from labels that are going to close doors.
Click to expand...

You never go full Paratard :D
 
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