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Sun 17th Jan 2010 - John Carpenter on Leonard Stringfield

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The noise in the background a few times sounded like kids playing. Instead of assuming anything paranormal I'll guess Mr. Carpenter has children first. ;)

I am waiting for the pic of the Gordon Cooper info as well. I was always under the assumption he was not there and only handled the pictures for the incident involving a UFO. You would think by now we would have that info as I would guess it has been at least 2 weeks since that interview took place.
 
bluecat said:
Hmm. An alien with four fingers and no thumbs.

Just for fun, hold your thumb against your palm and, just using four fingers, try to pick up a pencil or open a door.
Click to expand...

That's what the abductees are saying because they only see four digits, we don't know they're "fingers" per se. If the the two digits on the ends have saddle joints like thumbs then they'd be highly dexterous indeed (and that's assuming they actually have bones and not something more exotic like say cartiledge suspended in fluid or something).

The notion of cultural contamination seems to have come up (or been hinted at) several times in this episode and here in this thread. It's something I wonder about quite a bit. Debunkers use it as a ready-made tool of dismissal but I think it gets far more credit than it deserves. For instance, when Gene brought up DR. WHO and John was essentially clueless I was somewhat taken aback. Shouldn't he KNOW this? If you're a serious investigator in this subject, shouldn't you have as much sci-fi knowledge as possible just so you can use it to rule things out? And if John doesn't know as an investigator, how does that reflect back on the odds of the abductees knowing?

Now admittedly, that may be a tall order. There's alot of scifi out there. ALOT. Most of it derivative garbage. For instance, I recently stumbled across an anime series from the 80s called "Borgman" (for those who might be interested it's crap, don't waste your time). It revolves around aliens (the Youma or "demons") trying to invade earth, not in space ships but by permenantly imprinting their dimension onto our own. As it stands they can only create small, temporary pockets of their reality in ours by manipulating magnetic fields.

Goofy kids stuff, right? But wait, wasn't David speculating about almost exactly that possibility on page 1 of this thread? So maybe not so goofy...

Cultural contamination... quite the bugga-boo.
 
Ezechiel, says: What we seem to have no place for—or we have lost the place for—are phenomena that can begin in the unseen realm, and cross over and manifest and show up in our literal physical world.

What a great and accurate insight. "yes or no," "black or white," "right or wrong." It is either a figment of your imagination or it's objectvely real. There is no middle ground. That's the way many people think.

I think there are not only degrees of reality but our ability to recognize what is real when we see it is debatable.

Of course, you are right about the "4-finger" question. But, still, it is difficult to image how a being could function without opposing thumbs.

BlueCat
 
Leonard Stringfield was a very interesting character. His "Status Reports" are fascinating to read. I particularly enjoyed the one that chronicled the goofy encounter he had with a couple of very klutzy apparent MIB type agents. It reads like something out of Get Smart. A good part of the whole UFO literature seems to be records of contrived events that look more like some wacky "theater" than anything else, and Stringfield's story of being followed by a very odd pair of... people is one of my favorites.

I found the Status Reports on the Earthfiles site some years ago. They are in the archive section, which I have not had access to for a few years since I let my membership lapse. Oh well. I highly recommend reading them, but I do not recommend paying $35 or whatever it is to LMH. Maybe they can be found elsewhere.

Very nice job on recent shows, guys! The Paracast continues to be a class act.
 
Thanks a lot guys, I really enjoyed this episode. I agree with some of the others on here that some of the stories seem a bit unlikely (the hard copy of the body retrieval at Fort Dix comes to mind). That having been said, the details of the abduction studies he did near the end of the episode were very interesting! I'm fascinated by any talk about the interior of these vehicles and speculation as to how they might function. Anybody on here who shares that interest might really enjoy Michio Kaku's book "Physics of the Impossible". I've just about finished it, and instead of making me more skeptical I'd say his book almost makes me believe in the possibility of these phenomena even more strongly. Although I do wonder why these things keep dropping out of the sky....
 
bluecat said:
Of course, you are right about the "4-finger" question. But, still, it is difficult to image how a being could function without opposing thumbs.
Click to expand...

Like I said above bluecat, just because the abductees call them "fingers" doesn't mean that's what they are.
 
Ezechiel said:
ROFL this is totally hilarious thanks for the chuckle berry !!!
4653470603_11f30c92bd_b.jpg
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Okay, guys. A little off-topic, but... Geez, I think this is the first time I've ever asked anyone else this, but, I watched the landing live, my dad let us stay up all night watching. I was all of 4 years old! After 41 years... I gotta ask others with like interest...

Who else here thinks it would be just so fucking cool to walk on the surface of the moon?

I mean, seriously! Imagine how cool that would be? Now, imagine smoking some really good hash, and THEN walking on the moon, with your significant other and maybe a few close friends hopping around with you, while listening to the Dark Side of the Moon in your space helmet, with a really good set of Ultimate Ears earplugs. Damn. Don't think I'll ever get a chance in this life...

OKAY!! I WANT TO COME BACK AND DO ANOTHER TURN!

LOL. Life: SOAK IT UP!
 
The trouble with StringField's work is that while it's all interesting, with no hope of verifying identities and backgrounds it amounts to no more than anecdotal evidence.
And while I'm very hesitant to use the "D" word, I do think there's a strong chance he might have been the target of a disinformation campaign.

Beware of helpful inside sources.
 
David Biedny said:
I was trying to get to that point - perhaps these craft are more than just self-contained vessels, they might be some sort of interface between our dimensional construct and something else completely, a concept that's VERY difficult to wrap one's brain around. Perhaps they are powered from an external source, hence, no sound or obvious power/propulsion system.

dB
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While I believe this is a distinct possibility, I do not believe this is what is happening in a captured/crashed craft. If the craft is a portal to another location, then there would be activity in said location and why allow access to said location to us hairless monkeys?

We do not have enough data regarding this portal theory though. Perhaps there WAS activity inside the craft ans it was shut down eventually. We do not have a timeline. Or...

Perhaps the craft IS the space inside and the exterior is a mere physical marker for this craft made of physical space with its own timeline, gravitational field etc. Or...

Maybe space IS subjective and perception is real.

So many fascinating possibilities regarding this line of thinking.

I loved the show by the way. As always great questions. I wish it could have gone more in depth about the "interview" with the creature who visited on his own volition.
 
You need to get John Carpenter back on and talk to him about his abduction research. He spoke about is just a little during the the 2-hour episode, and I wanted to hear more.

He sat in a back room and compared notes with John Mack, Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs?!?!? Boy-o-Boy - It would have been fascinating to be a fly on the wall in THAT session!

Please - get the guy back on the show.

- - - -

You could also ask him how he came up with the name Snake Pliskin. I haven't read thru all the postings and comments, so someone else may have said this same thing.
 
I finished listening this morning and have many of the same thoughts as others.

It was a very entertaining speculative show. It didn't seem like there was much evidence to back up any of Stringfields accounts but doesn't mean they didn't happen. John relayed some of Stringfield's stories as if they were fact which makes me think his bullshit detector could use some work. He seemed anxious to believe some of this stuff at face value, which led me to not take most of his stories at face value.

With no witnesses to follow up, his accounts feel kind of empty and the "same old same old" given that we've heard many similar claims over and over again by people who can't give their sources as well. It is very interesting that Stringfield was asked by the military to keep track of UFO's, seems like that would make him a little bit of an insider and perhaps this gave him the 'street cred' to convince people who were more inside to share information with him. But I'm sure as John also suggested, he was also approached bydisinfo peeps as well.

I'm interested to see what happens with the Cooper document. I think John's expertise in hypnosis and his interactions with abductees is very interesting and worth another show since that is something he can speak about first hand.

I'm going to over generalize but I see 2 models regarding our gov/military's involvement with this stuff and I think all of us are extremely curious as to which of these is more accurate:

1. Our gov has recovered craft/bodies and know some real dirt on this stuff
2. Our gov has jack squat but obviously know this is real and have a bunch of data they've collected
 
I think this is another area where the context is important, and can also be a bit elusive to folks just coming upon the stuff. I was hoping Carpenter would make the specific point that the vast majority of Stringfield's material was gathered well before the late 80s, but I don't think he ever did. Back then, when someone like Stringfield had soldiers and government employees giving him reports that dovetailed well with the abduction research he was aware of, that was a powerful corroboration. Not many people knew anything about either subject. In fact, it can be very useful to divide the public side of ufology into the categories of "before Intruders and Communion" and "after those books." Everything changed in the late 80s, and not just because of those books, but they make a handy reference point. Of course he was aware of the disinformation and other nonsense polluting the field, and he wrote about it. He was no dummy, by any means.

Another thing that looks a lot different to us now is the idea that "They may just be about to spill the beans. Might be any day now." The whole subject of UFOs was younger than most of the people involved in it, and such statements were nowhere near as tedious as they have become in the last 25 years.

I've been looking around the web, and can't find Stringfield's "Status Reports" anywhere except archived at Earthfiles. You can pay $40 and fish dozens of documents out of all the... other stuff there, and then reassemble the reports. They were posted over about a two year period, in reverse order but in parts that were posted in order. It was a bit annoying to read them that way as they showed up over those months, (Stringfield often referenced earlier reports, which of course had not appeared on Earthfiles yet) but now they are scattered in with other documents that sometimes have similar names. It's not much fun. For your $40 you also can access Stringfield's book, Inside Saucer Post 3-0 Blue in something like 12 installments, along with a lot of stuff about Jim Sparks. ;) If anyone knows where that stuff can be found, I'd love to hear about it. I consider it a valuable record of some things that never were very well known, and I'd like to read it again.
 
bluecat said:
Hmm. An alien with four fingers and no thumbs.

Just for fun, hold your thumb against your palm and, just using four fingers, try to pick up a pencil or open a door.

BlueCat
Click to expand...

Lack of opposable thumb puzzled me too until I read the "Allagesh Abductions". According to the abductees, the alien wrist folds in half forming TWO opposable sets of fingers or two sets of "pincers". The grey hand supposedly has two adjacent larger fingers and two adjacent smaller ones. With the wrist folded, the larger fingers act as the "thumbs."
 
drudiak said:
Lack of opposable thumb puzzled me too until I read the "Allagesh Abductions". According to the abductees, the alien wrist folds in half forming TWO opposable sets of fingers or two sets of "pincers". The grey hand supposedly has two adjacent larger fingers and two adjacent smaller ones. With the wrist folded, the larger fingers act as the "thumbs."
Click to expand...

Wow. That's cool.
 
drudiak said:
Lack of opposable thumb puzzled me too until I read the "Allagesh Abductions". According to the abductees, the alien wrist folds in half forming TWO opposable sets of fingers or two sets of "pincers". The grey hand supposedly has two adjacent larger fingers and two adjacent smaller ones. With the wrist folded, the larger fingers act as the "thumbs."
Click to expand...
Let's not mention the mantids. They don't even have proper fingers.
 
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