DAVID PERKINS RESPONDS TO FORUM MEMBERS' COMMENTARIES
Good to hear from all of you! First a "housekeeping" issue. It's not accurate to say "you guys concluded" this or that. Christopher O'Brien and I are not a monolithic
entity. We are each working with our own sets of personal experiences, interpretations, biases and expectations. Although we agree on many aspects of the animal
mutilation phenomenon, we do have significant differences of opinion on other aspects. That's a good thing. A certain dynamic tension is healthy for any form of
productive inquiry. From my point of view, we sharpen each other's thinking about the many murky areas of the mute mystery. The views I express here are strictly
my own. OK that said...
An understandable question that runs through your commentaries is : What evidence would qualify the mutilations as paranormal events as opposed to the work of
clandestine human perpetrators? A detailed answer to that question is beyond the scope of this post, but may I suggest that you read Hunt for the Skinwalker (2005)
by Colm Kelleher and George Knapp. The book details the 8-year investigation of a Utah ranch by a world-class scientific team from the National Institute for
Discovery Science (NIDS). In addition to the cattle mutilations and disappearances at the ranch, the book covers over 100 high strange events such as; a variety of
UFO-type craft, intense poltergeist activity, entities of various stripes (including dog-faced humanoids who smoke cigarettes), Bigfoot-type creatures and other cryptids,
big cats and giant wolves who are shot at point-blank range with no apparent harm, and large holes that open up in the sky which disgorge both craft and creatures.
If these events can't be categorized as "paranormal" then I don't know what can. If this were the only case study of its kind, we could then file it under "Anomalous
Anomalies" or "Crazy Ass Aberrant Outliers" and forget about it. Maybe everyone out in the Uintah Basin is just nuts? Maybe it's bad water or psychedelic ergot in their bread?
Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on one's point of view, the Skinwalker story is more the rule than the exception. The book also chronicles very similar case
histories in Dulce New Mexico and Elbert County, Colorado. Mystery Stalks the Prairie (1976) by Roberta Donovan and Keith Wolverton, describing mutes and
"paranormal" events at and around Malmstrom AFB in Montana, eerily parallels the three case studies detailed in Skinwalker. NIDS also did a thorough scientific report on the mid-1970s weirdness outbreaks in Montana. To one degree or another, I've been involved in investigating all four of these "hot spots" and I've found the aforementioned reporting to be accurate to my knowledge.
Forum member trainedobserver comments that "evidence" such as gas masks, radar chaff, etc. found at mute sites indicates that the mutilations are the work of a
a "well-funded group of humans". Chris points out that such evidence is extremely rare and might possibly be the work of human agencies attempting to mislead
investigators and/or shape public perceptions of the events for reasons unknown. Indeed this is one possible scenario. Chris has also said that there may be
multiple perpetrators with multiple agendas behind the mutilations. I tend to see the mutes as "whole cloth" - one "force" with one basic agenda. Of course the jury is still out on this question.
As for trainedobserver's comment that it is "an incredible stretch" to think that some paranormal cause could produce "counter-evidence as a screen", hey the
entire mutilation phenomenon is a stretch! Maybe that's even the point of it - to challenge us and stretch our thinking abilities. There seems to be a bit of a logic breakdown here. If the paranormal source could produce the evidence in the first place, why couldn't it also produce the screen? We don't even know what the paranormal is, much less what it is capable of.
Whatever/whoever is behind the mutes appears to be quite sophisticated in the "arts" of stealth, deception and manipulation. Whenever one theory gets too "hot"
it seems that evidence is injected into the mix which starts everyone running in another direction: UFOs, helicopters, satanic cult sites, US Government-issue
paraphernalia, etc. The theories thus cancel each other out in the ensuing doubt and confusion and the public can casually dismiss the phenomenon as
irrelevant nonsense. Meanwhile the mutes stay slightly below the radar of the national and international media. I've has several national media outlets tell me
that they were afraid to touch the topic for fear of "getting egg on their face". Is this apparently masterful manipulation of events by "the mutilators" by design, or is it simply a cascade of coincidences?
As the years roll by and the number of mute cases continues to mount, I've found it increasingly difficult to view the mutilations as anything other than
a "paranormal" phenomenon. In case you're wondering, the evidence suggests to me that UFOs are fundamentally paranormal in nature. So... the list of usual
suspects is quite short. What human agency has the resources, expertise and technological capability to act with virtual impunity world-wide for at least 47 years?
What? No human fallibility? Never a mistake? A breakdown? An informant? Really? Frankly I would prefer that the answer was some human agency. Then at least we would have a decent shot at figuring it out eventually. But I don't suppose "the phenomenon" gives a flying cow flop what any of us would prefer, now does it?
It is what it is ... so let's deal with it.
I think Jeff Davis is on the right track in his conjecture that the paranormal is "a by-product of... consciousness." As the NIDS scientists tentatively conclude in the
last chapter of Skinwalker, science is being "forced" to "re-evaluate the fundamental nature of reality itself." Whether that re-evaluation is being unconsciously
instigated by ourselves through so-called paranormal phenomena, or whether it is generated by some intelligence which is truly "other" is, to me,
the real question.