ET Pen Pals

I’ve been getting back into the habit of more regular updates here at Forteania and as such I’ve been racking my brain to dislodge various paranormal topics which I haven’t really dealt with before in the past. Today I wanted to talk to you dear readers about a very fascinating topic: Alien/Automatic writing. Personally I’ve lumped these two seemingly disparate topics together because I don’t actually think they’re all that different upon further inspection.

As a bit of a background automatic writing, also known as psychography, is a supposed psychic ability whereby a person produces writing words/symbols without actually physically having written them. Generally this is achieved by an outside, supernatural, force. (Thank you wikipedia!) Automatic writing, or spirit writing as it was also called at the time, seems to have shown up right about the time of the Spiritualism Movement of the late 19th century. This website seems to suggest that women used automatic/spirit writing as a means of breaking out of societal norms, who am I to argue? But that’s neither here nor there for what we’re talking about today.

Alien writing seems to have come around about the same time as the contactee movement, although there maybe some overlap with the earlier spiritual/theosophist writings who technically communicated with what would be called “ETs” which they considered to be Ascended Masters of sorts.

Explanations and origins aside, here follows a few example of the myriad that have been reported by experiencers over time. What little information is available on their accounts is also included. All credit to this information goes to Alien Abduction Experience and Research.

First is from Manuel from Minnesota: 

The above script is from Manuel some kind of an abductee from Minnesota. I don’t really know much more about his experiences besides the writing.

I remember that I forgot to reply to you concerning the 'alphabets'. I found a writing from December of 1998. I am including in this note as an attachment. Also am including one more 'circle' actually it is a quarter circle, with an animal-like figure in it. There are different 'families' and each has its own way. And then there are 'the experimenters' a family unto themselves. The 'experimenters' are what are known as 'greys'. Someone told me they are referred to as the 'Zeta Reticuli'. She wasn't someone I felt comfortable even being in the same room with... as it is with most people who 'enjoy' expounding about implants and experiments and giving birth to hybrid alien babies. I have this unexplainable urge to get away from them, or ask them to leave. Kinda like the feeling that the energy is not anything I want even near me... unlike those that are clearly upset by the whole thing... do you see what I mean. Like the difference between a propagandist and a victim of the propaganda...? By the way, in writing all I did in my big note about my experiences I have been freed of a lot of pain and anger. I came to realize in my writing you that I was really quite angry and fearful... I never realized just how scared I really was. I do now. And it has helped me to start looking at the matters in a whole different light. I have pushed people away, in the process of trying to find understanding. I hope I can open even more, at least enough to hold on to discrimination while honestly evaluating and sharing.

Next up is from a man named David:

David from Texas explains, "This writing is very special to me. I use it mostly for sacred purposes. I cannot remember a time when I did not know this language. I write it very fast, but it takes me forever to translate it to English, mostly because it does not lend itself to translation to English very easily." "Most of the words have no parallel in English. The English language, while having a beauty in its precision, does not contain the depth of meaning and color that this language does. The nearest illustration I can provide is, for example, with the word "love." In Koine Greek, as you know, I studied Greek and Hebrew at Seminary, the word "love" has at least three or four words used to describe it:  Eros which is physical love; Phileo which is brother love; Agape-Godly which is also love." "In English, we have just the word "love." Shades of meaning and depth of color are missing from the English language." "I sent samples of this writing to a friend who specializes in ancient languages. I also gave a copy to a friend who is in military intelligence, a cryptanalyst and linguist. He thought it was similar to Russian or Greek. Being familiar with Greek, I can see where some of the elements resemble Greek, but they do not fit into the schema as do the Greek letters that would have a linguistic correspondence." "I can read Russian to some small degree and I can see evidence of Cyrillic in it, but cannot say it is a known Russian language, of which there are over 150 Russian dialects. I have heard at least twice as many conclusions as there have been people analyzing it."

"My earliest memory of writing this language goes back to when I was in the third grade. My older sister tells me that I have been speaking this language since before I went from crawling to walking."

The interesting thing about David’s writing is that it looks somewhat similar to the “Martian” writing of Hélène Thome, who using automatic writing, was allegedly in contact with beings from Mars. Her story was written about in the book From India to Mars which can thankfully be obtained for free on the internets.

Thome's "Martian" writing

One last example I wish to take a look at is from Nathan:

Nathan wrote, "Here is some alien writing. I also speak alien from the home planet of Ethna. I've been doing this all my life. Unfortunately, I stopped for a long time due to people (family) thinking I was crazy and sending me to a psych doc who put me on 22 pills a day, and still did it . . . so I stopped, because they said I was crazy and delusional." "Recently, I just went off my meds . . . they only made me very ill to the point I could hardly function! This also messed up my mind really bad. But the good news, since I've been of them a few months, I have recovered 100%. I am growing in psychic powers such as telepathy! I also started writing down this writing and channeling. Anyways, take a look, tell me what you think."

That last little bit of information about the medication somehow interfering with the communication channels sounds like something Greg Bishop talked about Dr. Mario Pazzaglini telling him. Here is an excerpt of an interview Bishop did with  Dr. Pazzaglini for his now defunct zine The Excluded Middle (an anthology of which you should purchase here). The idea, as I understood it, was that the medication interrupted whatever was allowing the person to have contact with the alien intelligence.

In the end what are we to make of this writing? Does it have any inherent value? I can’t say for sure. I’m interested in the writing as yet another fascinating puzzle piece in the grand scheme of Forteana. Like almost everything else in this arena, I don’t know how real it is. But it’s certainly fascinating. As usual if you’ve got anything to add hit me up in the comments section.

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!

Demonic UFOs

Alternatives to the ETH are always really interesting to me. If you've read this blog at any time in the past you are likely aware of the fact that I'm always looking into different explanations for the origins of the UFO and its occupants. The Cryptoterrestrials as proposed by Mac Tonnies, Jacques Vallee's theory of UFOs as some form of psychosocial control, and John Keel's Ultraterrestrials are all different avenues that I have looked into and spent a lot of time reading about. I've dedicated an equal amount of time blogging and writing about each of these alternatives in the past as well. However there is one area that I've only done a little bit of reading and research into; the idea that occupants of UFOs are demonic in the Judeo-Christian sense. The reason for this is that I really find the theory a bit too limiting and it feels a little like some confirmation bias is going on. 

Still in the interest of fairness, and to not exclude any idea, I began to read a recent thread on ATS that delved into this topic. And with a title like Secular Researcher's Findings that UFO Activity is not Extraterrestrial in Origin, how could I resist? Likewise in the offline world I had a bit of synchronicity with this topic which I will go into a little latter in the post. But first let's get to thread from ATS. In the interest of fairness I feel that I should state upfront that I definitely do not agree with the posters conclusions. I feel that he's grasping at too many disparate pieces in order to tie his theory together and don't personally accept this theory. However I am bringing the information to you attention because I don't think there is anything wrong with entertaining an idea. And I figure you should never shut your self off to any avenue.

The poster went through a lot of work in order to gather together the information necessary to formulate their thesis that the UFO phenomena and Alien Abductions are merely demonic deceptions meant to present a new gospel and cause people to turn away from the Judeo-Christian faith. They came to that conclusion based on couple of things; people that experience the UFO phenomena, especially Alien Abductees, typically end up experiencing psychic phenomena, many early UFO researchers, such as Jacques Vallee and John Keel, had come to the conclusion that the answer to the UFO was not the Extraterrestrial, and finally that the galaxy is just too large for the prospect of interstellar travel to be anything more than just a pipe dream. With these things in mind, the poster ultimately states the following as their final assessment of the situation;

The Facts of what we know to be true:
1. Aliens are inter-dimensional/Spiritual beings.
2. They do not use interstellar travel.
3. They are malevolent.
4. Their aim is to deceive man-kind.
5. The film industry is helping to prepare us for a "grand deception".
6. "Alien Abductions" stop in the name and authority of Jesus Christ
7. "Alien Abductions" match the abilities of fallen angels as described in the Bible.
8. "Aliens" bring primarily deceptive anti-biblical messages, as is reported by abductees and contactees.

Conclusion:

"extraterrestrials" are intentionally evangelizing people to an alternate spirituality(new age)and are demonic in origin.

I will let that information stand on it's own. Again I don't believe that this is what is going on. I do recommend that you check out the thread for yourself because there is some great debate that is going on back and forth from both sides of the argument. I appreciate that this poster is willing to acknowledge that UFOs seem to encompass many paranormal events, but I don't agree with the conclusions that he reaches. Interestingly enough he is not the first person to reach this kind of conclusion. Writing in his 2010 book, Final Events and The Secret Government Group on Demonic UFOs and the Afterlife, Nick Redfern tells the story of a group comrpised of Government officials called the Collins Elite that eventually reached the same conclusion. 

The group studied the phenomena by interviewing UFO witnesses and alien abductees, the Collins Elite would eventually leave the ETH behind completely in favor of a very dark, and demonic view of the phenomena. In a very short summary the group believed that the UFO was just the latest way for this dark demonic force to deceive our species for the purpose of gaining access to our souls so that the demonic enemies could quite literally harvest some kind of unknown energy from it for purposes that were unknown and not well understood. 

I would definitely recommend reading Final Events in order to get the whole story on this strange group and the even stranger conclusions that they came to. Once again I don't necessarily agree with the conclusion that the Collins Elite came to about the provenance of the UFO, but for argument sake we don't really know enough yet in order to rule anything out completely. Many in the Collins Elite felt that perhaps we were being farmed in some fashion and I can't help but to be reminded of Charles Fort classic quote: “The Earth is a farm. We are someone else's property.”

Ah yes one last thing before I leave you; I had mentioned that I had a somewhat synchronistic incident involving this whole 'Aliens=Demons' meme this past week. This past weekend my girlfriend and I were at our local Books-A-Million and as is typical for me I headed over to the 'New Age/Paranormal' section to kill some time. The first book that I happened to pick up was Phil Imbrogno's Ultraterrestrial Contact  which, despite the controversy from last year, I still intend to read. As I was thumbing through, looking at the chapter headings, I found a tiny little square piece of paper which someone had stuck in the book.

Intrigued by what sort of person would put one of these in a book, I decided to visit the website from the paper on my phone. Unfortunately my phone had a really bad signal and so the website was taking a while to load. As I waited for it to come up I wondered if any other books contained a similar paper or if I had some how grabbed the “lucky” one. I checked something like 15 or 20 books but only found similar papers in four of the books. There were three variations of the message on them. The books I found them in were interesting, because personally I don't know if I would of picked the same ones had I been intending to spread this kind of message. I found them in two Zecharia Sitchin books, There Were Giants on the Earth and TheWars of Gods and Men, and the last one was in Jim Keith's Casebook on the Men in Black (which I reviewed here). In any event they all lead to the same website http://www.delusionresistanc.org.

Delusion Resistance is run by a former MUFON investigator named David Ruffino. You can read all about him at the site. As I said I had a very synchronistic feeling when I saw these papers because I was thinking about the ATS thread, trying to write this blog post and just generally gathering my thoughts together. And what should happen but I come upon these papers. It may not mean much to others, but it certainly struck me as interesting. That's all for now, again I recommend that you head over and read the thread and draw your own conclusions. Don't let what I or anyone say influence what you decide or conclude. Also be sure to check out Nick Redfern's Final Events as it's a very fascinating read about the Collins Elite. You can listen to Greg Bishop's interview with Nick Redfern on this topic here. Until next time I will leave you with a quote that I feel is relevant to this topic.

"The UFO manifestations seem to be, by and large, merely minor variations of the age-old demonological phenomenon..."

-John Keel

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

Dr. Karla Turner - Alien abductee and researcher

Alien abduction research is a fairly controversial topic, even among other already controversial Fortean topics. And in the last few years it would seem that the research took a big hit because of the "Emma Woods" fiasco. Essentially two of the biggest names in abduction research, David Jacobs and Budd Hopkins, were called out for some questionable decisions that were made over the "treatment" of a reported alien abductee going by the pseudonym "Emma Woods". But I'm not really here to talk about that issue. If you want to learn more about what all went down you can follow this link for more information.

Instead I wanted to talk about the one alien abductee researcher who was also herself an alien abductee, Dr. Karla Turner. Dr. Turner was a professor of Old English, who in 1988 would undergo a series of bizarre events that would have a dramatic impact on her life and career. Upon experiencing what by all accounts were encounters with alien intelligences, Dr. Turner wrote her first book detailing what she had gone through entitled Into the Fringe. After this was published, Dr. Turner recieved countless letters from others that also claimed to have experienced alien abductions.

She took a few of those stories and turned them into the book, Taken. And her final book was Masquerade of Angels. Dr. Turner had many fascinating theories about the alien abduction phenomena. In his book Wake up Down There! The Excluded Middle Collection, Greg Bishop and Wes Nations interview Dr. Turner. It's a really engaging interview and the UFO field is in sore need of more researchers like Dr. Turner. What's great is that she was never willing to settle down into one particular theory as to what was behind the phenomena itself. Which if you have been a reader of my site for any length of time, you know I'm a huge fan of those that are open to any explanation and haven't settled on any one. During the interview in the book, which I recommend you picking up not just for this interview but for a whole host of other great stuff, Dr. Turner is asked what theory would possibly best assimilate all of the variant data that she had collected. She responded:

My husband and I sat up late one night and said, "Let's throw out all the things we'd like to be. Let's throw out all the theories we know have holes in them. What could we come up with that would unify everything?" It would have to do with these creatures being strictly of Earth origin.... That's the only theory that we could come up with that explained things to our satisfaction. No one ever talks about it, it's just something we came up with to help us deal with things. I'm still very open to other theories. (pg 100 Wake up Down There!)

Unfortunately finding information about Dr. Karla Turner is next to impossible online. Her books are out of print, the one website that had previously existed (http://www.karlaturner.org) has since been taken down. Luckily there are still a few resources for those of you out there that wish to now more about her. S Miles Lewis, of Psiop Radio, wrote a piece for his Elf Infested Spaces (ELFIS) website entitled, "TAKEN INTO THE FRINGE RESEARCHER FOCUS: Dr. Karla Turner". Additionally at the Excluded Middle website, Greg Bishop has up an audio interview that he did with the late Dr. Turner.

I recommend that you try to read up about Dr. Turner as much as is possible. For some reason she doesn't get the recognition that I feel she deserves. After all it wasn't until after I had been reading about the alien abduction phenomena for years, before I ever heard the name of Dr. Karla Turner. Likely you are familiar with the other big names in the alien abduction arena; Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs (mentioned earlier), and of course the late Dr. John Mack. But Dr. Turner is, at least to my knowledge, never brought up on TV shows or in discussions about the alien abduction phenomena. Hopefully you can use this post as a springboard to learn more about the late Dr. Turner.

A few more resources:
http://alienresistance.org/drkarlaturner.htm 
http://www.realufos.net/2010/03/dr-karla-turner-on-abductions.html
Also you can go to YouTube and search for Dr. Turner to find videos of her lectures. 

It's all about belief

Earlier today on his Twitter account, Greg Bishop posed an interesting question:

spacebrother To disclosure advocates (and others): Would you trust what is disclosed by the government if it's what you want to hear?

My response was fairly straight forward, and if you have been at Forteania long enough you probably know what I said. I replied:

@spacebrother I think so because I don't think disclosure advocates want the "truth" so much as a confirmation of their belief system

The problem with Disclosure, and other issues in the realm of the Fortean (and in life for that matter) are our belief systems. What tends to happen is that people are more likely to accept only those things that fit easily into their world views (reality tunnels) or whatever belief system that they hold. Or in some cases they will interpret the data coming into their brains through their belief systems. As an example, I over heard two co-workers talking about an experience that one of them had had the previous weekend during a church service. A woman was at the front of the congregation singing a hymn, and the entire congregation was really 'feeling the spirit' as my co-worker put it. Suddenly the woman who was singing let out a loud scream. Evidently she had felt a hand being place on her cheek. The interesting part is that all of the congregation was able to clearly make a hand print upon the woman's cheek, immediately following the event. Now of course for those that had witnessed this event, it was truly a miracle. Perhaps it was even a sign from God.

I'm not arguing as to what may or may not have occurred in this case. I wasn't there so I can't say for sure. What we can take away from this story however, is that people interpret events based on their world views. Since this phantom hand print appeared during a church service, then it was obviously the work of God or perhaps angels or what have you. But if it had occurred during say, a séance? What then? Well in this case it might have been further proof of the medium's contact with the 'other side'. This gets us back to the True Believer vs Pseudo-skeptic issue that I have brought up time after time on this blog. Both sides of the eternal debate are so wrapped up in their beliefs that they have a difficult time entertaining the other person's point of view.

Disclosure is another obvious example of this within the Fortean arena. The Disclosure movement will not stop demanding the 'Truth' from the government until it is released. The problem is they have a very specific idea of just what exactly this 'Truth' is. But that doesn't necessarily translate to what may or may not exist in reality. It seems that unless the 'Government' hands over the alien spaceship that crashed at Roswell, or whatever particular part of the modern UFO that the Disclosure person believes in, they will not be satisfied. This would seem to be because they are not looking for some objective 'Truth' that is grounded in our consensus 'reality' (we just can't get away from this damn word), rather they are looking for a confirmation of their beliefs.

I am not intending on picking on the Disclosure movement. Really we are all guilty of this to one degree or another, we all have a belief system to some degree or another. Now, how much we let it dictate our actions and/or opinions is another matter entirely. Like anything else, perhaps just by recognizing that we have this kind of hindrance to gaining new insight, we can move past it in order to try and learn things. I don't mean to invalidate beliefs, unless they turn out to be incorrect of course, we are entitled to believe whatever we wish.

If you prefer to think that the government has already solved the UFO problem, which I admit is a pretty comforting position to be in (it removes the mystery), then by all means knock yourself out. Personally I would like to refrain from coming down on one side or another. It's part of my life philosophy, which I am in the process of developing because we should never stop growing and learning. I simply try to assimilate as much data as possible on a given topic and then come to a tentative position on the issue. If I later learn something that invalidates my previous opinion I discard it and make a new one. I'm not perfect, so it doesn't always work out. After all I'm only human. But I try a little bit more each day to challenge myself.

I would urge each of you to do the same. Try and be as open minded as possible about whatever is coming into your reality tunnel. The next time a phantom hand print appears on someone, don't be so quick to conclude what caused it (whether religious, paranormal, or perhaps scientific) rather just file it away until you have more data on it. It's hard for us to admit sometimes that we just really don't know a lot about what's going on out there in the world. But it's at least intellectually honest to do so. Until next time, watch out for those handsy spirits!