The Roswell Slides Have Been Leaked Online

[Constance]

Burnt State, I have experienced cognitive dissonance. In my case the causal factor was the status of the narrator combined with the narrative he was telling.

John, that would be a good thesis sentence for a brief essay in which you elaborate on what you mean by the 'status of the narrator' relative to a narrative. Hope you'll go on to clarify your meaning. Perhaps I can provoke you to begin by asking you whether the unreliability of some narrators means for you that all narrators are unreliable.

 

[Burnt State]

Burnt State, I have experienced cognitive dissonance. In my case the causal factor was the status of the narrator combined with the narrative he was telling.

I wasn't thinking about you personally as opposed to what you may have witnessed, but I'm always interested in the power of a storyteller, or how simple words, can in fact emotionally and/or psychologically alter people. In spending some time with paranormality and UFO studies i've noticed that the idea of the alien and the talking dead can really shift mental paradigms.

One of my favourite moments of cognitive clarity comes at the end of Mirage Men when consummate storyteller Bob Emenegger plays us an alien tune on the piano - a lovely moment of finesse for an excellent & informative movie.

 

[Burnt State]

Finally, I wonder how many of you have cottoned on to what "Ostension" is and the reason why John Lundberg calls himself this on this forum which he joined only very recently to see what was being said about the Roswell Slides. Having lived many years ago in Holy Catholic Ireland I am very aware that "ostension" is the displaying of the sacrament at the altar during the mass so that it could receive the adoration of the communicants who have come up from the congregation. In these secular days some may be unaware that the sacrament is the bread (or communion wafer) and the wine that communicants receive. Transubstantiation is the change whereby, according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, the bread and wine used for the communion sacrament become --in actual reality-- the body and the blood of Christ.

Not that many people, even Catholics, actually believe this today, but the parallel here to the displaying of a "genuine" alien body --or at least a blurry photographic slide of one-- at a meeting of Roswellian UFO True Believers in Mexico City is not lost on some of us. That's a real piece of Perception Management for you --if it comes off-- and this exercise will, we assume, fill the coffers of celebrated UFO prophet Jaime Maussan.

To finish off that definition of transubstantiation, what the devotees are now looking at, that unleavened bread and wine with its drop of water, now changes into the body and blood, with only the accidents remaining. For the believer, the accidents, that fake body and fake blood, those ritualized standins for the devotee's belief system to be complete, is essentially what the circlemaker is doing.

By living the ritual, making the art, they point out the emblems of belief for the believers, but are they aware that what they are looking at is a representation, only a set of accidents? Whose responsibility is it to point out the true nature of the believers' belief system? Atheists like to point things out to the religious. Artists have always pointed out certain features and aspects of belief systems. Sometimes they include the consequences of such beliefs while allowing the viewer to make up their own moral minds about social situations. Sometimes they just make the image.

What John Lundberg appears to be up to is engaging in specific ritual processes to transform the legend into a reality. Ritual practices that may substitute for reality may also call reality into being, and this turn may generate believers. The shaman manages the belief systems of the tribe. In our modern era, the tribe can stop to ask questions any time or they simply to choose passively to believe in what they perceive. In this way consumerism is all about perception management. I like it when artists point out our relationships to different social situations as Frida Kahlo often did.

If people choose to consume the Rosewell Slides because their belief systems override their ability to think critically or ask better questions; then, people get what they ask for. The other option is always there: choose your own reality, make your own art, build myths as you need them, share creativity that is generous.

Lundberg defines ostension this way on his site, "Entire legend plots can be reduced to an allusive action. If a narrative is widely known individuals may become involved in real life activities based on all or part of that narrative. This is ostension in action; when legend alters or shapes the behavior of people. Real events patterned on an urban legend, fact mirroring fiction.

In a nutshell? To folklorists, ostension is the real-life occurrence of events described by a legend. Legends we live."

There is another suggestion that lies just below these practices which is that perhaps the ritual makes the legend alive, may even draw at the Roos of the legend to bring it out into the open, but to what extent, in what manner and to what degree it may reveal its truths, if there are any, is open to discovery and interpretation. Some may feel cheated. Some understand what is happening and go along with it anyway.

Does the Catholic feel cheated when they consume the accidents that remain of their belief system?

 

[Ostension]

Constance, the meeting was conducted under the Chatham House rule, so I’m unable to elaborate.

Burnt State, we were talking to Bob Emmenegger about spies and he revealed that he had composed the music for the 70s US TV show Lancelot Link Secret Chimp. After we’d finished our interview with Bob we were walking out of his office and past a piano in the hall, Grant Wakefield our cinematographer asked if Bob could improvise a song for the film, and he did it in a single take. It was a great moment and I'm pleased it made it into the final cut. It’s a brief moment of levity in a sea of oppression.

 

[Burnt State]

Constance, the meeting was conducted under the Chatham House rule, so I’m unable to elaborate.

Rules of the mythologist I suppose?

Burnt State, we were talking to Bob Emmenegger about spies and he revealed that he had composed the music for the 70s US TV show Lancelot Link Secret Chimp. After we’d finished our interview with Bob we were walking out of his office and past a piano in the hall, Grant Wakefield our cinematographer asked if Bob could improvise a song for the film, and he did it in a single take. It was a great moment and I'm pleased it made it into the final cut. It’s a brief moment of levity in a sea of oppression.

It's a stunning closer to the film, and not surprising that it's a single take. Like the UFO sighting the rarest moments are the best moments. Like endings to po-mo poetry, the residual energy of the main thrust of tension transforms into a sudden electric burst of flowerfire: blossoms like lightening. It left me with a smile.

Hope the Kaufman piece takes it up a notch even further. You select the right material, the kind some people like to put you to the coals for. Some shaman get turned on, same with magicians. The trick is to work like Banksy, undercover out in the open in Palestine. How come you keep surfacing?

 

[Ostension]

How come you keep surfacing?

I think I keep a pretty low profile. I only agreed to do one interview for the release of Mirage Men and I've just turned down an invitation from Christopher O'Brien to appear as a guest on The Paracast. I've been away from the paranormal field for a while, working on the Kaufman Lives film. My personal interest in the Roswell Slides, an email from Sentry and George Wingfield's invitation to say "hello" were the reasons I surfaced here.

 

[Burnt State]

I think I keep a pretty low profile. I only agreed to do one interview for the release of Mirage Men and I've just turned down an invitation from Christopher O'Brien to appear as a guest on The Paracast. I've been away from the paranormal field for a while, working on the Kaufman Lives film. My personal interest in the Roswell Slides, an email from Sentry and George Wingfield's invitation to say "hello" were the reasons I surfaced here.

ok, then don't mind me while I go and talk about the idea behind mytholgoists on another thread. It's a hot flare up topic this area though there were some that sided with the value of the situational artist as you were described elsewhere. Others scream disinfo agent and gov't collaborator.

I can't find anywhere to watch The Mythologist whole - a distributor?

Too bad about not going on the Paracast - I think there's a very interesting dialogue to be had around the role of ostension, social reactions, the history/value of such human practices as well as their role in bringing myths to life. Even time to explore Mirage Men and those who make mirages, and the King Of Deception? Illusion? Perception?, Mr. Kaufman. Maybe you will reconsider in a year or less? Agitation is good for the soul they say.

 

[George Wingfield]

Hi, Burnt

Rituals, Ostension, Transubstantiation, Sacraments …. I had quite forgotten for a moment that these guys, Lundberg & Co., operate what could best be described as a religious supplies service. This started out with the production of “miracles” such as crop circles but went on to cater for sacred spaces –usually crop circles—in which weddings, bar mitzvahs and other rituals could be held. Maybe even the odd Satanist Black Mass?

There is also the more secular side of this business which caters for companies and corporations to have customized crop circles produced for advertizing and publicity purposes. The logical extension of this lucrative service is to supply holy relics, alien corpses (customized dummies and/or photos/videos thereof), UFO fly-bys, psychokinetic displays and such things as ectoplasm, etc. Maybe even apparitions of the BVM??

Some of these items such as little dead aliens and holy relics could be supplied with certificates of authenticity assuring the punters that they are absolutely GENUINE. I do remember that years ago John and Rob insisted that their crop circle formations were the GENUINE phenomenon and that croppies should not be taken in by cheap imitations. On one occasion Linda Howe interviewed Rob Irving for Coast-to-Coast in one of his crop circles and he assured her it was GENUINE and one of the most wonderful paranormal things he had ever seen. (I did warn Linda that Irving himself had made it but she wasn’t having any of it and ignored everything I said.)

My suggestions that these activities amount to circlefaking, ufofaking and alienfaking were strongly denied on the unspoken grounds that there are no such things as paranormal crop circles, paranormal UFOs and small gray aliens from Zeta Reticuli. That’s all bunkum and such realities belong only within belief systems that have been contrived by certain UFO prophets and turned into religions or cults.

Like Mormonism, or, say, George Adamski’s flying saucer cult of the 1950s, there is usually a starting point for such religions. A prophet like Joseph Smith or Adamski will have gone out into the desert or the mountains, communed with an angel or with the Space Brothers, and returned bringing his followers mysterious Golden Plates or, in the case of Adamski, plaster casts of Venusian’s footprints. Some would suggest that there was a similar starting point for the current UFO religion and that it should be known as Roswellism. Here, Roswell believers maintain, the wreckage of a flying saucer together with small aliens dead (and maybe one or two alive?) were whisked away and concealed by the wicked military and the US government. The Roswellism that has developed since 1980 has its own creed that basically states (1) I believe in the extraterrestrial flying saucer crash of 1947 at Roswell (2) I believe in EBEs (3) I believe in Majestic12 (4) I believe in the government cover-up. (5) I believe in Alien Abductions (6) I believe that Aliens have been mutilating our cattle. (7) and so on.

For the last 25 years Roswellism became the basic orthodoxy of organizations like MUFON whose mission statement is “The Scientific Study of UFOs for the Benefit of Humanity”. It is certainly debatable just how scientific MUFON really is and how much it is a faith based organization. Roswellism like any other religion or cult has its prophets and the best known of these are Stanton Friedman, Linda Howe, and Budd Hopkins. Modern UFO belief has several other groupings besides MUFON and many of them are based on New Age ufology. In that category you will find reference to such things as Star Children, the Harvesting of Souls, Benign ET Abductions, Reincarnated Volunteers, Pleiadean Cosmic Healing, the Healing Energy of Crop Circles, Moving to Higher Levels of Consciousness, etc., etc.

I don’t think that anyone can deny that for many “Ufology” has become a faith or religion and if one needs supplies of such things as crop circles or alien dummies one can always turn to John Lundberg’s organization if you know where to find it on the internet.

Some UFO showmen and hucksters like Santilli have done this in the past and it is likely that Jaime Maussan and/or Adam Dew have done just this with the Roswell Slides. Obviously it has generated much interest among the UFO crowd online but there can be very few people who have actually been taken in by this new scam.

 

[Burnt State]

Hi, Burnt

Rituals, Ostension, Transubstantiation, Sacraments …. I had quite forgotten for a moment that these guys, Lundberg & Co., operate what could best be described as a religious supplies service. This started out with the production of “miracles” such as crop circles but went on to cater for sacred spaces –usually crop circles—in which weddings, bar mitzvahs and other rituals could be held. Maybe even the odd Satanist Black Mass?

.......
Like Mormonism, or, say, George Adamski’s flying saucer cult of the 1950s, there is usually a starting point for such religions. A prophet like Joseph Smith or Adamski will have gone out into the desert or the mountains, communed with an angel or with the Space Brothers, and returned bringing his followers mysterious Golden Plates or, in the case of Adamski, plaster casts of Venusian’s footprints. Some would suggest that there was a similar starting point for the current UFO religion and that it should be known as Roswellism. Here, Roswell believers maintain, the wreckage of a flying saucer together with small aliens dead (and maybe one or two alive?) were whisked away and concealed by the wicked military and the US government. The Roswellism that has developed since 1980 has its own creed that basically states (1) I believe in the extraterrestrial flying saucer crash of 1947 at Roswell (2) I believe in EBEs (3) I believe in Majestic12 (4) I believe in the government cover-up. (5) I believe in Alien Abductions (6) I believe that Aliens have been mutilating our cattle. (7) and so on.

For the last 25 years Roswellism became the basic orthodoxy of organizations like MUFON whose mission statement is “The Scientific Study of UFOs for the Benefit of Humanity”. It is certainly debatable just how scientific MUFON really is and how much it is a faith based organization. Roswellism like any other religion or cult has its prophets and the best known of these are Stanton Friedman, Linda Howe, and Budd Hopkins. Modern UFO belief has several other groupings besides MUFON and many of them are based on New Age ufology. In that category you will find reference to such things as Star Children, the Harvesting of Souls, Benign ET Abductions, Reincarnated Volunteers, Pleiadean Cosmic Healing, the Healing Energy of Crop Circles, Moving to Higher Levels of Consciousness, etc., etc.

I don’t think that anyone can deny that for many “Ufology” has become a faith or religion and if one needs supplies of such things as crop circles or alien dummies one can always turn to John Lundberg’s organization if you know where to find it on the internet.

Extactement, Monsieur! Linda has been high priestess for quite some time now. Watching Mirage Men made me feel some sympathies there. Trying to find the lines between belief and conviction are difficult at best. Lots of believers get very angry when the evidence turns out to be mere replicas instead of true blue holy relics. And you are right in that this religious system has been in practice for decades. The mythologists are within the very culture itself. You've listed the various critical strains of these belief structures and their effects have been powerful in the populous.

So the big question, has there been any real action that has manifested as a result of the belief system. Is there only that which resides in the mindstorm of the believer who says the crop circle healed me or that the alien healed me? Do the faithful not agree when they walk into the temple, or the centre of the sacred crop circle to suspend the disbelief, to remember the precepts as they were written down for them by the Gospel writers Berlitz, Moore, Howe and Hopkins? And what about the Gnostic gospels of Turner, Meier, and Marcus who assembled the Celestial Raise?



Now pardon me while I assemble this Venusian dog hair I need to repackage for eBay sales - i'm sure by now some generations will have forgotten all about that holy relic.

 

[Drake_the_Gilliland]

Do I make beer cheese for home made macaroni?

Do we know if anyone is going down to Mexico to watch this ship hit the iceberg?

 

[Constance]

Constance, the meeting was conducted under the Chatham House rule, so I’m unable to elaborate.

Regarding your encounter with cognitive dissonance? or regarding the question George wanted to ask you about hoaxing the Roswell slides?

In either case, the Chatham House rule doesn't seem applicable.

Then again, you might just have been trying to be witty.

 

[Constance]

Constance --Do you really think I would get a straight answer from John Lundberg? I did say that I would like to ask him about the so-called Roswell Slides and gave a phone number if that would be better done offline. Unsurprisingly that overture has been met with a deafening silence. I shall take that as confirmation this new Roswell hoax did indeed originate from him and Irving. And, if I did get any answer, it's very unlikely that he would tell me the truth.

Have you run your theory of the Circlemakers' hoaxing of the Roswell slides in any other ufo forums? It might be appreciated by some of the commentators at Kevin Randle's blog. Only if you're serious, of course.

 

[Ostension]

ok, then don't mind me while I go and talk about the idea behind mytholgoists on another thread. It's a hot flare up topic this area though there were some that sided with the value of the situational artist as you were described elsewhere. Others scream disinfo agent and gov't collaborator.

Burnt State, your opening paragraph is why I usually avoid discussion forums that my work might feature in.

Unfortunately I don't own the rights to The Mythologist, if I did, I would freely distribute it. But, it is available from the BBC archives via the British Film Institute (BFI) if you're able to inveigle your way into either institution.

George, to use your term I always though that it was a delicious irony that the "secular side" of my business was used to finance Mirage Men. Whilst we're on the subject of irony, you mention Linda Howe, to me it was always ironic that Rick Doty agreed to participate in the film the day we met with him to talk about the project and beyond certain agreed parameters was willing to do pretty much anything we asked him to do, but we had to pursue Linda for five years before she finally agreed to participate in Mirage Men. I understood her reticence, given her belief systems and who I am, but I'm very grateful that she did finally agree to participate, as the film would be incomplete if she was absent from it. I think the back to back scenes with Rick and Linda telling their sides of the story are the strongest in the film. Both of their entire interviews are utterly compelling. In the end, the only person who refused to participate in the film was Bill Moore. Once he found out we had managed to get hold of the footage of his infamous 1989 Las Vegas MUFON speech and used it in the film, he threatened to sue us, thankfully we have a very good attorney.

 

[Ostension]

Reality is just a narrative. If you create a different narrative, then you can alter reality.

 

[Constance]

Reality is just a narrative. If you create a different narrative, then you can alter reality.

That's a large crock of the genuine article, John, but obviously a convenient article of faith for you and yours.

 

[DaveM]

Reality is just a narrative. If you create a different narrative, then you can alter reality.

What I would like to know Mr. Lundberg is if any farmers or property owners have fired shots at you for destroying their crops. I know your byline... it's all for my art. Well my art might be coming to your home and defacing the outside of it. Okay if I practice my art??

 

[Drake_the_Gilliland]

That's a large crock of the genuine article, John, but obviously a convenient article of faith for you and yours.

Reality and debate are rarely, if ever, the same thing. Why try to confuse the two?

 

[Creepy Green Light]

Like if these slides were valid, you think the way they would unveil it to the world is through some hokey paid admission in an arena in Mexico type thing hosted by a known fraud/quack (Jaime M.)? No wonder the field of ufology is the butt of all jokes. This debacle of an episode will give skeptics great ammunition to mock us for the next 50 years. Thanks Jaime.

 

[George Wingfield]

Have you run your theory of the Circlemakers' hoaxing of the Roswell slides in any other ufo forums? It might be appreciated by some of the commentators at Kevin Randle's blog. Only if you're serious, of course.

Constance, I will of course post my take on the Roswell Slides hoax on Kevin Randle’s A Different Perspective blogsite but it will probably be a futile quest. Most folk who have realized by now that this thing is a hoax have lost interest, and those that haven’t probably have their own madcap theories which inevitably act as blinkers to anything I might say.

I am indeed serious and have no doubt about the truth of this matter but I guess that’s unimportant since “truth”, we are told, is relative and depends on one’s reality –a roll-your-own reality which is simply a mirage arising from whatever narrative you have chosen to follow. The only consolation is that Kevin Randle is an honest researcher and he is aware that much of modern ufology belongs to the world of human psychology --rather than in the ordered physical universe (which some of us foolishly believe is really out there!) Maybe it’s time I gave up trying to slay dragons??

George

(on St George’s Day)

 

[Constance]

So what do you believe, George? That the universe is really out there or not? It's sometimes hard to tell what you mean from the way you express yourself.