Patterns in Ufology

A few months back I picked up a (legitimate) copy of John Keel’s classic Operation Trojan Horse, this was made possible by the fine folks over at Anomalist Books who had recently reprinted the book. Prior to this the only copies of the book one could find online had been going for around 80 USD, which is a bit more than I want to pay for a non-textbook book.  But thankfully the newly printed addition is much more reasonable in price and so I highly recommend you purchase and read it if you haven’t before. In the work, Keel begins to layout his “Ultraterrestrial” Inter-dimensional theory of the UFO phenomena that I’ve discussed many times in the past on this blog. 

Additionally, as I rediscovered, Keel talks about an interesting pattern that he began to notice that the UFO enigma displayed. He entitled this the “Wednesday phenomenon” because of the reports that he looked into, the overwhelming majority of the sightings and interactions with the UFOnauts took place on Wednesday nights. Looking at other countries data, Keel found that this same “Wednesday” thing held true. Naturally, he wasn’t stating that all UFO sightings occur on Wednesdays but rather

“This does not mean that flying saucers are out in force every Wednesday night. But when there is a large flap, it nearly always takes place on a Wednesday.” pg 12 Operation Trojan Horse

The years with which Keel looked for this pattern, were unfortunately limited. Naturally I wondered if perhaps anyone else had looked into the “Wednesday” phenomenon more recently, and if so, what had they discovered? Thankfully on Twitter I was pointed over to the UFO DNA blog where the author had taken a second look at Keel’s theory. What he found was pretty interesting.

“The Wednesday Mystery ... Updated

John Keel noted that a disproportionate number of UFO sightings occurred on Wednesday evening. This was true when he was studying them in the 1960's, but was not true over the long term. Remarkably, the peak day for UFO sightings has migrated over the decades, an average of one day per week per decade until the 1990's. Thereafter it moved to Sunday in the 1990's, then firmly to Saturday in the 2000's and the 2010's”

I don’t wish to steal the bloggers thunder, he did a lot of work and there are some really cool graphics at the site so I definitely recommend that you check it out. Discussing the “Wednesday” phenomenon on Facebook, led to a friend pointing out the fact that Jacques F Vallee also did quite a bit of analysis on the UFO phenomenon, specifically looking for patterns. Vallee, who is a computer scientist by training, has been discussed a number of times by me here at Forteania.  

Vallee and a Dr. Claude Poher, eventually published  a paper entitled “Basic Patterns in UFO Observations”, which you can access as a PDF from Vallee’s website. Not to belabor that point too much, they came to a 4 point conclusion that I will list here about the phenomena:

(1) a significant proportion of the thousands of UFO reports analyzed by the authors come from witnesses who have really observed an object in the sky or at ground level; (2) the objects these witnesses have seen have characteristics very different from all identifiable objects and phenomena; (3) the phenomenon is of high scientific interest; and (4) a systematic research approach can be defined.

Jacques Vallee

The conclusions reached by Vallee and Poher seem to have not made much of a difference in regards to Ufology as a whole, or for the general public for that matter who largely don’t give a damn about this stuff one way or another. This idea isn’t unique to me of course; recently Tim Binnall of Binnall of America interviewed Historian/Author Aaron Gulyas about his most recent book, The Chaos Conundrum, when the idea of doing a statistical analysis of the UFO was brought up. 

Binnall and Gulyas both agreed that somewhere within all of those stats may lie some kind of clue as to what the UFO phenomena may be. I would tend to agree for the most part, although I wonder if perhaps we should be looking at the phenomena from a slightly different perspective. Knowing that Keel did his own kind of “stats” research and Vallee later did an arguably much more scientific analysis of the available UFO data, looking at the same side of the data might not prove very useful.

Instead, as Greg Bishop has said a number of times on his podcast Radio Misterioso, we should be looking at the people who have these experiences themselves. I’m not interested in what color the UFO was or what size it was. Rather, I wish to know if the person had recently had some kind of trauma in their life? Had they been experiencing any kind of depression or new stress? Maybe the key lies with the experiencer rather than with what it was they experienced?

Who knows? It’s unlikely that we may ever really discover the answer to any of this stuff, but at the very least we shouldn’t necessarily retread old ground. I say we keep trying new and different things. But what do I know? I’m just a guy with a blog.

That’s all for now dear readers. Until next, stay classy internet!

Mac Tonnies

Two years ago tomorrow (or today depending upon when you read this) on October 18, 2009 Mac Tonnies passed away leaving behind many, many unfinished mysteries yet to be solved. Unfortunately I never had the chance to engage him in conversation, so I can only speak personally about what affect he has had on my views of the paranormal and assorted Fortean topics right before and since his untimely death.

It was about three years ago or so that I first started listening to Tim Binnall's Binnall of America podcast. At the time, as I have recounted on this blog and elsewhere in the past, I was a pretty hardcore ETH kind of guy. So people like Greg Bishop and Nick Redfern really got under my skin. After all they were espousing such, as far as I was concerned, almost heretical ideas that maybe just maybe the occupants of UFOs weren't the little Grey guys that I knew them to be. But perhaps worst of all was this Mac Tonnies fellow that I heard originally on Binnall of America. The episode in question was from about two years prior to when I heard it, back when Tim would occasionally spread the interviews over the course of multiple episodes.

The first part of Mac's interview was acceptable for me, I didn't really take any great umbrage with it. The interview focused on his book After the Martian Apocalypse which discusses the idea that perhaps there are more to some of the anomalous features on our sister planet Mars than meets the eye. Or that have been given their fair share of serious attention by NASA scientists. But as I was going to learn, Mac deftly maneuvered the sometimes fine line between Hoagland-esgue “every rock must be artificial” kind of rationale and the fundamentalist skepticism that seems to seep out of NASA in regards to the likelihood of there being ancient alien artifacts anywhere in our solar system. In “classic” Mac Tonnies fashion, he simply said that there just may be something worth investigating on this planet it may not be what we think it is, whether we are skeptic or believer, so why not go and find out?

Again, I was OK with this. Hell I wasn't even sure who this Hoagland character was that he was referring to anyway. And besides, I had long been fascinated by the apparent “pyramids” that were on Mars. So as far as I was concerned this Mac guy was pretty OK. That is until he did the unthinkable. In part two of this interview, Mac dared to offer a challenge to the “hallowed” ETH. His alternative theory? Some entity that he called a “Cryptoterrestrial” that, if you can believe it, made it's home right here on Earth with us! The occupants of UFOs were supposed to be an indigenous species? No way! I was absolutely not amenable to this idea at all. And yet at the same time I couldn't stop listening to this blasphemer. He was so eloquent and spoke with such knowledge. You could tell that he knew a lot about the topic. That he wasn't just completely coming out of left field with this “working hypothesis” as he referred to it as.

It wasn't long after this podcast that this Mac Tonnies character seemed to be popping up everywhere I turned around. He was on paranormal show, after paranormal show. And without fail, his Cryptoterrestrial Theory would inevitably come up. Each time he offered the same, deceptively tempting caveat to his theory; it was testable. Not unlike how he treated the Martian Anomalies arena, the reason the Cryptoterrestrial Theory grabbed Mac's imagination was that, you could actually go out and look for them. It would be a relatively easy theory to disprove. After all, the ETH hadn't gotten us any closer to “solving” the UFO enigma. So wasn't it time to try something new?

I couldn't believe that people were still having this kooky character own, it wasn't bad enough that he was daring to suggest that somehow the ETH had failed us, but to go on and offer an alternative I just couldn't handle it. It was far too much. But then Mac came onto Greg Bishop's Radio Misterioso radio program in July 2009 in order to talk more in depth about his Cryptoterrestrial Theory. The program, which you can still find to listen here and I encourage you to do so, allowed for Mac to make the case for his Cryptoterrestrial Theory. Slowly as the hour and forty minutes started slipping by, I found myself intrigued and I really began to question the long-standing assumptions that I had about what could be behind the UFO mystery. At around the half hour mark, Greg asks Mac if he could read a sample of his Cryptoterrestrial Book (which at the time Mac had been working on for the last couple of years). The following represents all of what was great about Mac Tonnies. And with the excerpt the final nail in the ETH-only coffin was hammered, at least as far as I was concerned:

Every few nights I get out my laser pointer and indulge my cats in a frenetic game of "chase." Cats are natural hunters, and they're effectively incapable of not looking at the quickly moving red dot that I project onto the carpet, walls, or any piece of furniture that happens to be in its path.

To my cats, the red dot possesses its own vitality. It exists as a distinct entity. While they may see me holding the pointer, they can't (or won't) be distracted by such things once the button is pressed and the living room is suddenly alive with luminous vermin. So they chase it. And chase it. And, if they get close enough, even take swipes at it -- in which case I make the dot "flee" or disappear in what seems like a concession of defeat (which, of course, only further arouses the cats' predatory curiosity).

All the while I'm controlling the red dot, I'm taking pains to make it behave like something intelligible. Just waving the pointer around the room wouldn't be any fun. So I make it "climb," "jump" and scuttle when cornered -- even though the laser's impervious to obstructions.

This sense of physicality seems to be the element that makes chasing the laser so engaging -- both for the cats and for me.

I can't help but be reminded of our continuing search for assumed extraterrestrial vehicles. UFO sightings demonstrate many of the same aspects of a typical feline laser hunt: mysterious disappearances, "impossible" maneuvers and a predilection for trickery -- the apparent desire to be seen despite (or because of) a technology presumed to be far in advance of our own. More than one UFO researcher has noted that UFOs behave more like projections or holograms than nuts-and-bolts craft . . . an observation that begs the nature of the intelligence doing the projecting.

According to astrophysicist Jacques Vallee, UFOs are part of a psychosocial conditioning system by which perceived "rewards" are doled out to reconcile for the dearth of irrefutable physical evidence. The phenomenon -- whatever its ultimate nature – obstinately denies itself, thus enabling the very game it's intent on playing with us.

We see that sudden spark of red light; we pounce. This time we'll catch it for sure.

I think it was this passage, perhaps more than anything else, that struck the exact right chord for me. Only it wasn't an immediate change. The “ETH-only” part of me held on for a few more months. It seemed that Mac was only getting bigger and more (well deserved) attention from the more “mainstream” paranormal community. On September 28, 2009 Mac made his appearance on Coast 2 Coast AM. As far as paranormal shows go you can't get any better than this. For the entire four hours, Mac waxed poetic on his Cryptoterrestrial Theory and his Martian Anomalies work as well. It was without a doubt one of the better C2C's in recent memory.

Sadly less than one month after this, Mac Tonnies passed away in his sleep. Still left unfinished, among so many other things, was the manuscript for what would be his last work The Cryptoterrestrials. Luckily for the world at large, his writing was able to be saved by his mother and we now have the privilege to read the work of this Fortean legend. The book was published in March of 2010 and it was only a few months later when I was able to finally pick it up. With the help of this book, along with a short list of other books by authors like Jacques Vallee and John Keel, I came to change all of my preconceived notions about UFOs and the paranormal in general.

I may never have had the pleasure of talking with Mac, or meeting him, but more so than most people that I have known/met in my life, he has inspired so much of my thinking. Mac may have been taken far sooner than seems fair, but at least he has left behind a legacy of great, original thinking. 

Listed below are just some of the shows Mac appeared on. Also be sure to check out his site and blog. Finally if you haven't read his books, The Cryptoterrestrials and After the Martian Apocalypse (which you all but have to get the ebook version of), I can't recommend them highly enough.

Radio Misterioso

The Paracast

Binnall of America part 1, part 2

Mac on Coast 2 Coast

Magazine article updates!

I've mentioned a number of times on this blog in the past that I had been working on an article for a UFO magazine. If published, it would be my first article in such a medium. Needless to say I was pretty excited to get it finished. In addition to writing the article I was requested to get some illustrations made, so I roped Ashley into doing those for me. Well last night (finally!) I was able to send off the article and illustrations, and at this point I am only waiting to hear back from the editor if it will indeed be published. If it does I will certainly let you guys know which one it is, also if this works out (and even if it doesn't) I have to say that the process has certainly been a learning experience.

Much like this blog and of course my article over at Binnall of America, I have been trying to both improve my writing skills (which I hope have gotten better) and perhaps learn a thing or two. Hopefully we will hear back, sooner rather than later about the article. If not, I will simply try again. Also I have recently taken the plunge back into the dreaded 'facebook'. You are more than welcome to friend me if you wish. I suppose that's about all I have for tonight.

Oh before I forget one last little thing, I'm just about half-way through reading Steve Volk's Fringe-ology (which I can't recommend highly enough) so expect a review here in the next couple of days. Until next time this is your friendly neighborhood Fortean Philosopher saying, stay classy Internet!

Great Daily Resources (or these sites don't suck)

There have been a few posts in the past that have demonstrated how I got frustrated with the Alien/UFO section on ATS, which if you haven't read yet you can find here and here. The conclusion that I came to after the first of the posts was that I will look for resources that I enjoy and that actually teach me a thing or two. Because beyond hopefully coming to a better understanding about Fortean topics, I'm really hoping to actually learn something from this endeavor. Because, if I'm not learning anything, really whats the point? So with this in mind allow me to take this post to plug some of the better resources for learning that I have come across thus far. Among them are some of the biggest influences on my current model of how the Fortean functions. These are sites that I check on a daily basis.(Also they are in no particular order by the way, they are simply in whatever order that I happen to remember them in).

First up is a blog that I highly recommend people check out. Paul Kimball's The Other Side of Truth. This blog has a little bit of everything; UFOs, politics, religion, philosophy, and most importantly Paul Kimball's transformation as he stays on top of the Ufological/Paranormal world (but mostly as an observer). Paul Kimball is a film director whose credits are far too many to list, but the main one I would recommend (and do regularly) would be his 2007 film Best Evidence. It collects the 10 best UFO cases, and you would be hard pressed to disagree with the choices he has made.

Next is one I only discovered recently, and that is Who Forted?. This is a blog that takes a look at the realm of the Fortean in the only sane way you can, with a big sense of humor. They definitely seem to know there stuff as far as Fortean topics are concerned, but at the same time they have an excellent sense of humor about all of it. (For example check out their review of Syfy's Haunted Collector Reality TV series.) When not openly mocking people, which I mean come on who doesn't love that right?, they have some really cool stuff up on their site daily. Definitely a must visit daily site.

One of the better Paranormal podcasts in existence is Tim Binnall's Binnall of America. The show, which has been running now for I think 6 years, has literally interviewed everything one in the realm of esoterica that you can think of. And even some folks that you can't think of, or in my case may never have heard of until they came on Tim Binnall's show (Bruce Rux I'm looking at you). The show mostly comes out on a bi-weekly basis and is a definite must listen to.

In addition to an amazing series of interviews, the show also is home to some of the best writing on  fringe topics in the columns section of the site. Leslie, Regan Lee, Richard Thomas, Marla Pena, Richelle Hawks, Tina Sena, Bruce Priddy, and to a lesser degree yours truly the original Closet Anomalist Tony Morrill. With the exception of Bruce Priddy and myself, the other writers have archives that go back years that are full of all kinds of Fortean goodness.

On the topic of podcasts, Greg Bishop's Radio Misterioso is another must listen to. Especially now that Greg Bishop seems to have gotten his old show archives sorted out and seems to be adding them back to his site. Radio Misterioso is great because, in addition to some of the coolest music you are likely to ever hear, Greg Bishop interviews a lot of cool people. The conversations always seem to go in weird and unexpected places, and I can easily say that this show has introduced me to many of the people that have shaped my understanding and reasoning on Fortean topics. Definitely should check on this one daily.

Along those same lines, Greg Bishop writes for another site that some BOA writers and Nick Redfern all contribute to. UFO Mystic is a great place to visit at least semi-daily for all sorts of great writings by Nick Redfern, Greg Bishop, and a seemingly never ending supply of contributing writers. All in all a great site to visit.

As a general all around great resource for news, there are actually two that tie. First is Daily Grail, which isn't just a news site but that is like my favorite part of it. Seriously I check there daily for a great list of crazy Fortean news stories. The second one is very similar to this, The Anomalist. Like Daily Grail, the Anomalist collects all kinds of random Fortean goodies for you the reader to enjoy. You know now that I think about it, Fortean Times also has this same kind of feature. A Daily roundup of weird news.

Well that about wraps it up. The sites that I have listed above are the ones I visit on a daily basis in order to get my Fortean fix. If you have any suggestions for sites that I should visit, please let me know.

No post tonight sorry!

My dad is in the hospital (he's OK it seems), so obviously that took precedence over the blog tonight. Sorry guys and gals, but I will be back tomorrow night with all sorts of Fortean goodness. 

 It's OK Michael I will be back tomorrow night I promise. In other news check Paul Kimball out on the latest episode of Binnall of America here.

Definition of Insanity?

I have often heard that an unofficial definition of insanity is repeatedly doing the same task yet expecting a different out come each time. As an example jumping off a roof hoping that eventually you will be able to fly. Well I have recently decided that I must be insane. I have related a few times on this blog that I on occasion frequent the forums over at AboveTopSecret (ATS). The only topics that I tend to gravitate and respond in are typically the UFO/Alien topics. I mean 'go with what you know' right?

Well with that in mind I went to a thread entitled 'UFOs are Alien: Evidence!'. Now I just couldn't resist going in to that thread and reading what evidence was going to be offered. I was really excited, not because I thought the evidence was going to be particularly compelling (turns out I was right), but because I knew it was going to be eye roll worthy. The original poster opens with this phrase:

A new theory emerged, that the flying discs (that we call UFOs) are all made by our Governments. It is true that our Governments are now able to replicate 'UFOs', but the originals belong to extraterrestrial beings.

Before photography was invented, humans had the cave paintings, cuneiform depictions, written texts and spoken tales of UFOs and extraterrestrial beings.

I think this is pretty good evidence that UFOs are mainly of Extraterrestrial origins. Long before we were able to use 'anti-gravity' flying vehicles, our ancestors witnessed them in the skies.

As far as posts go on ATS its about par for the course. I wasn't entirely sure what the author was trying to convey. I thought that basically he was saying that because we had strange cave paintings and other such early human images of strange things, that they must by definition be ET. Knowing me as you probably do by now, especially if you have been reading this blog for some time, I responded with the well reasoned (of course I might be biased) post below: (Also keep in mind I was posting from work so my initial response was a little short)

Well just because there might have been advanced technologies in antiquity does not necessarily make it ET. It could just as likely have been an advanced human civilization that is currently unknown or suspected to have existed (think Atlantis or Lemuria).

Great response right? I know I'm a genius. All joking aside my point was that simply because we find depictions of what we interpret to be 'flying objects' on rock walls or whatever, doesn't necessarily somehow indicate an ET presence in our prehistoric Earth. Well it wasn't long until the original author was ready to offer a rebuttal. His response:

                        Why, because ETs don't exist?

Now, I don't think that I'm 'in' Ufology the same way that say Greg Bishop, Nick Redfern, or Paul Kimball are. But I imagine that response was akin to being called a disinfo agent or a skeptic/debunker. I have to be completely honest, I was a little flattered. I don't think that is what my response had said, or to be more accurate it wasn't what I was trying to imply. Much like with my posts on here about the UFO phenomena, I just don't think you necessarily have to shout ET every time something strange is brought up. Which brings me to my reply to his question:

No but you don't necessarily have to evoke the 'ET' meme in order to explain things like ancient cave paintings. In his book Supernatural Graham Hancock explores the possibility that rock art was created while under the influence of hallucinogens such as ayahuasca. That wasn't to say that what they were seeing wasn't 'real' but that it didn't exist in our realm of 'reality'. Of course the likelihood of their being ET intelligences in our universe is almost an inevitability. And I am even a fan of the Paleo-contact Theory. However I feel that there is far too much emphasis on the ET part of the ETH. For instance perhaps the technologies that were witnessed by our ancestors could have been of the Cryptoterrestrial civilization that was proposed by the late Mac Tonnies. Sometimes I fell that people need to be more willing to think outside of the 'ET' box. Just my 2 cents.

That isn't anything you haven't heard me say on this blog a million times (bit of hyperbole there for you). And it has gotten to the point where I have said it on ATS to where I almost blue in the face. The original author of the thread (as of now when I am typing this) has yet to reply to my response. Perhaps he gave up, or he wasn't going to change his mind anyway. Which brings me to the point of this post. I have repeatedly stated on ATS my views and opinions on the UFO phenomena and its possible origins to absolutely no avail. And after my final response in this thread here:

Yeah it was the works of Jacques Vallee and John Keel that really got me to open my mind to the multitude of possibilities that may exist out there. You're right in that some UFOs could or even probably are an ET presence of some form or another. The problem as I see it though is that we have been thinking that it was Aliens for over 60 yrs now in this field (you know at least the majority Vallee and Keel notwithstanding) and yet we haven't really learned anything at all. For reasons like that I was really attracted to Mac Tonnies' book, which of course was just an option and even he didn't necessarily believe that was the 'Answer'. Because whatever the ultimate 'answer' ends up being it will likely be something so far beyond our current comprehension that we may have to evolve more to even hope to understand it.

I have decided that I'm not really learning anything from that website, at least not by contributing anyway. I'm not arrogant enough to think I have the right answers or anything. I just hope that I am at least looking at this phenomena with the right attitude. I think that one reason I haven't won any fans over on that site is that I refuse to be pigeonholed. I'm not a believer, but at the same time I'm not a disbeliever. I am simply a Fortean Philosopher. To me the answer, if we can ever even find it let alone understand it, probably lies somewhere in the middle of the believer/disbeliever dichotomy.

And so for the foreseeable future I am done with that website, I don't begrudge the people that would go to it and I still would recommend those that are interested in Alternative News/Views check it out. Just be advised that the UFO/Alien part suffers greatly from the True Believer vs Pseudo-Skeptic thing that much of the Ufological 'field' suffers from. So as always I am left with posting my rantings and ravings here, listening to the few good podcasts that exist out there (RadioMisterioso and Binnall of America), and talking on Twitter to the one person I consider to be friend in this 'field', Paul Kimball. Thats all my bitching for tonight, so until next time I will leave you with a (probably) familiar Charles Fort quote.

“I conceive of nothing, in religion, science or philosophy, that is more than the proper thing to wear, for a while."