19th Century Chupacabras

While thumbing through one of my paranormal books the other night, I came across a familiar story. A group of sheep farmers were upset because something was attacking and killing their livestock. The creature was not, however, eating the sheep. According to witnesses,  it was biting their jugulars and, apparently, draining them of blood. If this sounds familiar to you, hold your assumptions for just a second. The above the story comes not from Puerto Rico in 1995, instead Charle Fort relates the account in his book Lo! (which I of course read in The Book of the Damned) written in 1931. Fort tells readers:

In the month of May, 1810, something appeared at Ennerdale, near the border of England and Scotland, and killed sheep, not devouring them, sometimes seven or eight of them in a night, but biting into the jugular vein and sucking the blood.

As far back as 1810, something  was roaming the countryside, draining livestock of blood. Fort goes on to describe how a large “dog” was killed. At which point the killings ceased. That this is anything more than a convenient explanation seems obvious to Fort. He has already spent much of Lo! showing readers how a satisfying answer to a problem, no matter how much data is ignored, is almost always preferable to a real mystery. He tells of more sheep killings in the same manner:

For about four months, in the year 1874, beginning upon January 8th, a killer was abroad, in Ireland. In Land and Water, March 7, 1874, a correspondent writes that he had heard of depredations by a wolf, in Ireland, where the last native wolf had been killed in the year 1712. According to him, a killer was running wild, in Cavan, slaying as many as 30 sheep in one night. There is another account, in Land and Water, March 28. Here, a correspondent writes that, in Cavan, sheep had been killed in a way that led to the belief that the marauder was not a dog.

This correspondent knew of 42 instances, in three townlands, in which sheep had been similarly killed—throats cut and blood sucked, but no flesh eaten. The footprints were like a dog's, but were long and narrow, and showed traces of strong claws. Then, in the issue of April 11th, of Land and Water, came the news that we have been expecting. The killer had been shot. It had been shot by Archdeacon Magenniss, at Lismoreville, and was only a large dog.

Other towns seemed to have encounters with a same, or similar, creature. This time it was a bit different in that no matter how many “dogs”, who were most assuredly the culprit, were shot it did not stop the killings. Fort tells us:

See the Clare Journal, issues up to April 27th—the shooting of the large dog, and no effect upon the depredations—another dog shot, and the relief of the farmers, who believed that this one was the killer—still another dog shot, and supposed to be the killer—the killing of sheep continuing. The depredations were so great as to be described as "terrible losses for poor people." It is not definitely said that something was killing sheep vampirishly, but that "only a piece was bitten off, and no flesh sufficient for a dog ever eaten."

The scene of the killings shifted.

Cavan Weekly News, April 17—that, near Limerick, more than 100 miles from Cavan, "a wolf or something like it" was killing sheep. The writer says that several persons, alleged to have been bitten by this animal, had been taken to the Ennis Insane Asylum, "laboring under strange symptoms of insanity."

It seems that some of the killings were simultaneous near Cavan and near Limerick. At both places, it was not said that finally any animal, known to be the killer, was shot or identified. If these things that may not be dogs be, their disappearances are as mysterious as their appearances.

The creature’s reign of terror was far from over. By 1905, similar attacks were occurring in England. Fort relates:

There was a marauding animal in England, toward the end of the year 1905. London Daily Mail, Nov. 1, 1905—"the sheep-slaying mystery of Badminton." It is said that, in the neighborhood of Badminton, on the border between Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, sheep had been killed. Sergeant Carter, of the Gloucestershire Police, is quoted—"I have seen two of the carcasses, myself, and can say definitely that it is impossible for it to be the work of a dog. Dogs are not vampires, and do not suck the blood of a sheep, and leave the flesh almost untouched."

It’s not hard to see the similarities between the nature of the attacks on these sheep and the later attacks by the ‘Chupacabra’. Is it possible that this could have been done by the same kind of creature? In some of the cases sighted by Fort, the mysterious phenomena went away without the “resolution” of having killed a dog or wolf. Ending as strangely as it began. This habit of mysterious phenomena starting and stopping suddenly is really par for the course. UFOs are often sighted in “Flaps” or “Waves”, so to is Bigfoot. Perhaps we are dealing with some kind of natural phenomena which is cyclical in nature? This idea is certainly not unique to me and in fact I believe I first read it in Keel’s books.

Could the above reports be of an actual Chupacabra in the 19th century? By all accounts it certainly bears a strong resemblance. As with most of this Fortean/Paranormal stuff, we are left only to wonder and marvel at the interesting accounts left to us. 

High Strangeness

A good portion of my childhood, and most of the origins for my interest in paranormal/fortean topics, stems from The X-Files. So most weekends while doing homework, I have the show on in the background thanks to it being on Netflix.  I watched one of my favorite episodes this past weekend. The episode is called ‘Jose Chung’s From Outer Space’. It centered around an author, Jose Chung played by the late Charles Nelson Reilly, who was sent by his publisher to write a book on an alleged alien abduction event which Mulder and Scully had also investigated. The episode is not only a fantastic example of what makes the X-Files great; it has humor, mystery, celebrity guest stars, but it is also does a great job representing all of the related weirdness which is inexplicably related to the UFO enigma.

In the episode, which I highly recommend you watch, you have military abductions, alien abductions, inner earth new-age religions being founded, military personnel impersonating aliens and flying “UFOs”, and Men in Black! About the only thing not included, probably because it was already a jam packed episode, is the poltergeist or “ghost” activity that sometimes follows or precedes UFO encounters.  A good catch-all term for the related phenomena which occurs in tandem with UFO sightings and alien abductions is ‘High Strangeness’.

Dr. J Allen Hynek, of “swamp gas” fame, first used the term in a paper which he presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in December 1969. Hynek assigned cases a “strangeness” index as means of offering some kind of classification for UFO reports. Hynek further clarifies and defines this concept in his 1974 book The UFO Experience wherein he states that high strangeness is “a measure of the number of information bits the report contains, each of which is difficult to explain in common-sense terms.”  

Stories and personal accounts which involve “High Strangeness” have always fascinated, especially when it comes to the investigators responses towards this aspect of the phenomenon. I was looking over some specific MUFON case files from the 90’s when I came across a really weird encounter which someone had, related below, but there was a caveat before the report which bothered me. In setting up the witnesses encounters, the investigators note that “Background paranormal events have not been included in this report.” I don’t wish to go off on a tangent, but since we know nothing about what may or may not be behind this phenomena, why not include all points of data? (I suppose that is the Fortean in me coming out).

Anyway, after reading some of the witnesses experiences, I couldn't help but wonder what in the world they had left out? As it stands some of her stories certainly qualify as high strange even with MUFON investigators leaving out the “background paranormal” events. Here’s a link to all of her experiences, but I wish to focus on one really bizarre encounter the witness had with an entity she called “Marcus”. Her account is as follows:

The witness was awakened to see an entity, in the form of a human(oid) male floating to the right side of the foot of her bed.  She indicated that when she saw the entity she knew that it was male, and that she knew who he was.  She was told, in a nonverbal manner, that his name was "Marcus", and he was there for her. She felt that their relationship was, in some way, very close.

She described the entity as being tall, and approximately human in appearance, but with a catlike face.  She described his appearance as "a cross between Worf (on Star Trek) and the beast "Vincent" in the TV show Beauty and the Beast". He appeared to be dressed in a manner that suggested to her a military officer from an earlier time period, with an apparent breast plate arranged in a chevron design.

The entity held his hands out to her, palms up, and she instinctively knew to put her hands in his.  She indicated that she then rose up, and he pulled her in closer to him.  [CL Note: She indicates that she was under the covers when the entity appeared.  If this was a physical movement, it is not clear how the bed covers were removed.]

At that point she felt that they were within a ball of light, and as if they were "dancing".  She didn't remember any sound, and was not sure whether or not they were still within the room, but felt that
there was not enough space within the room to have "danced" in the manner which they presently were.  Thus, she feels that they must have been somewhere else while this interaction occurred.  She indicates that this "dance" felt more like a "complete spiritual union", than physical motion to music (the traditional definition of dance). She did not feel that there was music present.

The witness sketched “Marcus” for our benefits, I admit I do enjoy seeing the person’s representation of the figures they have allegedly seen. Here is here sketch:

I would like to highlight the “aftermath” as the investigators labeled it, because I think it is an important detail which crops up in a lot of these kinds of reports. It’s something which Jacques Vallee pointed out in a number of his books. The investigators relate:

This event appears to be the start of her consciously remembered experiences.  She indicates that since that time, she has been very interested in spiritual topics, reading extensively in the area religion and spirituality, with subsequent interest in the field of UFOs and close encounters.

I don’t know what to make of cases such as this one. It wanted to dance with her? Let’s assume for a moment that it was an ET, could it not find a dance partner on it’s home planet? I’m slightly joking of course, I don’t mean to belittle the witness or her account. Honestly, I’m perplexed by what it is she allegedly experienced. Though she is not the only one. John Keel’s books are full of high strangeness encounters which people have purportedly had. I recently spoke about The Case of Indrid Cold, which is but one example of the variety of high strangeness reports which Keel spoke about.

In his book Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits, and Haunted Places, author Brad Steiger relates another classic example of high strangeness which accompanies a, relatively, mundane UFO sighting. The story is below:

An Iowa farmer named Gary C. saw a UFO one night as he was working late in the field during spring plowing. The next morning over breakfast, he learned that his wife, Melanie, 14-year-old son Jake, and 12-year-old daughter Lisa had also seen the bright object as the kids were getting ready for bed.

That day at school, a man who claimed to be from the state board of education asked to interview Jake. He told the principal of the junior high school that the boy had attracted attention because of his high scores in the state tests and that Jake had been selected to participate in a special educational project ... A call to the state office revealed that they had no one on their staff by the man’s name, and they had no special project for junior high students in progress.

When the principal entered the private room to confront the imposter, he found a puzzled Jake sitting alone. The teenager could only shrug that the special state project must be about space travel, for all the man asked him were questions about UFOS, aliens, and life on other planets. Jake had glanced away from his interrogator for just a moment, and when he looked back at him, he seemed to have vanished.

About the time that Jake was being interviewed by the mysterious stranger at school, out on the farm Gary and Melanie received a visit from two men dressed in black while they were eating lunch. The men identified themselves as agents of a special government task force investigating UFOS and said they had learned that the family had sighted a bright object in the sky on the previous evening.

Melanie and Gary were puzzled, since they had not told anyone of their sighting. The alleged government agents suddenly adopted a threatening manner and demanded that Melanie and Gary turn over any photographs they may have taken of the UFO. The farm couple said that they had taken no photographs, but the two agents refused to accept their denials and threatened that they had better cooperate if they knew what was good for them. “You must cooperate,” the taller of the two men said, “for your own good, the good of your country, the good of your world.”

Later that afternoon, Gary was certain that he saw the two men watching him from the shadows of his machine shed while he fed the cattle on the feedlot. In the farmhouse, Melanie answered the telephone on four occasions to hear nothing but a peculiar static. Finally, on the fifth ring, a voice in a strange accent told her to forget all she knew about UFOs or terrible things would happen to her entire family.

That night, shortly after the children went to bed, Lisa began screaming that some animal had crawled under her covers. When Gary and Melanie investigated, they found nothing, but then Jake yelled that his bed was jumping up and down. As they ran to his room, they could hear the thumping sounds of his bed lifting and slamming to the floor. Such poltergeistic disturbances continued on a nightly basis for nearly a week before dissipating.

What are we to make of these strange tales? Why would strange “government” agents show up after a sighting of a light in the sky? Why would the family see strange creatures and experience poltergeist-like activity following the sighting? It seems obvious that something peculiar is going on. I remain unconvinced that we will ever have an “answer” or solution to the UFO enigma, but I think that by looking into the High Strangeness reports (or the “damned data”) we may come closer to an understanding. Otherwise we will have failed to learn the lesson which Charles Fort attempted to teach. Data, no matter how bizarre or strange, needs to be taken into account. 

Airships and Secret Inventors

That the UFO enigma didn’t start in 1947 with Kenneth Arnold’s Mt. Rainier sighting is fairly obvious to anyone who has read any UFO literature. The same, or very similar, phenomena has taken a variety of forms over the past hundred years or so. In the 1930’s Scandinavia was home to the so-called ‘Ghost Fliers’ which John Keel wrote about in his book Our Haunted Planet. These Ghost fliers would perform a variety of maneuvers which would seem to defy conventional wisdom; flying at night with no lights, flying in dangerous weather conditions, or killing their engines and seeming to glide before having the engine turn back on. Some time later you had the Ghost Rockets in Sweden in the mid to late 40’s which were whipping and zipping throughout the skies. Micah Hanks has recently written a book which discusses Ghost Rockets in detail, appropriately titled The Ghost Rocket Mystery.

These mysteries are all well and good, representing strange objects occupying our skies for reasons completely unknown to us. Today however I would like to turn the clock back and look at a mystery which occurred some 30 or 40 yrs before the coming of the phantom planes, when our skies hosted another kind of technology that seemed to be just outside of what conventional technology might have allowed. I’m speaking about the great airship mystery of the 19th century, and some in the 20th century, which flew all over parts of the US, Canada, and eventually made its way to Europe.

Jerome Clark discusses the Airship mystery in his, oft cited by me, Unexplained!. He points out something that I think is worth noting;

An outbreak of airship reports occurred along the border of Germany and Russian Poland in early 1892. As would be the case with later airship scares, the Germans were thought to have developed advanced aircraft that could fly against the wind (unlike balloons) and hover for extended periods of time. No such aircraft existed at the time

This idea that, so far as we are aware, no aircraft like those that were reported existed really fascinates me. It’s an idea which we will return to at the end of the post. For now, let us head to California in 1896 where the great airship flap is about to begin. Clark continues;

Beginning in mid-November 1896, numerous witnesses in both urban and rural portions of the state reported seeing fast-moving or stationary nocturnal lights assumed to be connected to airships. Daylight sightings typically were of a device that “somewhat resembled a balloon traveling end on ... and with what appeared to be wings both before and behind the [bottom] light,” as the San Francisco Call  of November 22 put it, or of a “great black cigar with a fishlike tail … at least 100 feet long” with a surface that “looked as if it were made of aluminum,” as the Oakland Tribune of December 1 had it. In some cases, observers reported seeing propellers.

Not surprising to anyone, in his book New Lands (which I read in Steinmeyer’s version of Fort’s The Book of the Damned.), Fort took an interest in sightings of supposed “mystery airships” (as he referred to them) and in one instance he remarked about something which I found rather amusing;

Upon the 28th of April, 1897, Venus was in inferior conjunction. In Popular Astronomy, 555, it is said that many persons had written to the Editor, telling of “airships” that had been seen about this time. The Editor writes that some of the observations were probably upon the planet Venus, but that others probably related to toy balloons, “which were provided with various colored lights”

Evidently, Venus has always been to blame for strange things spotted in the sky! Fort goes on to relate newspaper accounts of an interesting aspect of this phenomena. Fort shows readers;

The first group of our data, I take from dispatches to the New York Sun,  April 2, 11, 16, 18. First of April - “the mysterious light” in the sky of Kansas City - something like a powerful searchlight. "It was directed toward the earth, traveling east at a rate of sixty miles an hour."

About a week later, something was seen in Chicago. "Chicago's alleged airship is believed to be a myth, in spite of the fact that a great many persons say that they have seen the mysterious night-wanderer.

A crowd gazed at strange lights, from the top of a downtown skyscraper, and Evanston students declare they saw the swaying red and green lights." April 16—reported from Benton, Texas, but this time as a dark object that passed across the moon. Reports from other towns in Texas: Fort Worth, Dallas, Marshall, Ennis, and

Beaumont—"It was shaped like a Mexican cigar, large in the middle, and small at both ends, with great wings, resembling those of an enormous butterfly. It was brilliantly illuminated by the rays of two great searchlights, and was sailing in a southeasterly direction, with the velocity of the wind, presenting a magnificent appearance."

Along with the reports of these airships were reports of their, mostly human, “secret inventors”. Whenever an airship was sighted, it could almost be guaranteed that someone would step forward having claimed to have met the inventor of these crafts. In his, newly republished, book Operation Trojan Horse John Keel relates a story of one such person who claimed to have met the pilot of the airship. Keel says;

A San Jose, California, electrician named J. A. Heron claimed that the airship pilots enlisted him to make some repairs on the machine. He was taken to a desolate field north of San Francisco for the job and was rewarded by being taken on a flight to Hawaii. He said the craft made the 4,400-mile trip in twenty-four hours. His wife later told reporters that he had been home in bed on the night of the alleged trip.

While I don’t rule out the possibility that people could have made these craft, after all the craft seemed to be just within reach of the technology of the time, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence to support this idea. What are we dealing with in this case then? Are they all hoaxes? Some of them certainly were, it seems that the Aurora, Texas “crash” of an Airship is widely regarded as a hoax. It is also known that there were liar’s clubs and so it’s likely that some of the stories were probably made up. However there seems to be an underlying phenomena that a large number of people experienced at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

One theory for what these “airships” are, is that the Non-Human intelligence which has been interacting with humanity since recorded history (whether they be Ultraterrestrials, Extraterrestrials, or Cryptoterrestrials) have, overtime, adapted their conveyances in such a way as to shape our perception of them. This idea is largely the premise of Keel’s Operation Trojan Horse. The other idea is that perhaps, not entirely unlike a rorschach test, we are projecting our expectations onto a relatively malleable phenomena which is shaped based upon the viewers perception.

I haven’t decided where I land on this issue just yet. I fluctuate between the last two theories I mentioned, and perhaps the reality is somewhere in between the two. The only thing which I can say for certain is that the airship mystery is a fascinating footnote within the overall history of UFOs and Fortean phenomena.

The Case of Indrid Cold

Although Charles Fort’s books were obviously highly influential in developing not only my theories on various paranormal topics, but also how I look at and interpret reality in general, I would be remiss if I didn’t also give John Keel his due credit as well. Though my interest in paranormal phenomena has been a life-long one, it wasn’t until probably 2008 or so that I discovered Fort’s, and a little later, Keel’s works. Their writing styles, the content of the writings, and perhaps most importantly of all the way in which they encouraged a non-dogmatic approach to the topics, helped shape the person you see today. (For better or for worse, I suppose only time will tell). With Keel’s birthday being yesterday, March 25th, it got me to thinking back on some of the stranger tales that Keel related in his works.

One of my favorites is the case of Indrid Cold. While in Point Pleasant, West Virginia digging up information on the various strange occurrences which followed in the wake of the Mothman sighting, Keel meet and interviewed a man named Woodrow Derenberger. Keel tells “Woody’s” story in his famous book, The Mothman Prophecies:

At 7 P.M. on November 2, 1966, he was heading home in his panel truck after a long, hard day on the road. The weather was sour, chill, and rainy. As he drove up a long hill outside of Parkersburg on Interstate 77 a sudden crash sounded in the back of his truck. He snapped on his interior lights and looked back. A sewing machine had fallen off the top of a stereo, but there didn’t seem to be any real damage.

A car swept up behind him and passed him. Another vehicle seemed to be following it. He eased his foot on the accelerator. He had been speeding slightly and thought it might be a police car. The vehicle, a black blob in the dark, drew alongside him, cut in front, and slowed.

Woody Derenberger gaped in amazement at the thing. It wasn’t an automobile but was shaped like, “an old-fashioned kerosene lamp chimney, flaring at both ends, narrowing down to a small neck and then enlarging in a great bulge in the center.”

A door slid open on the side of the thing and a man stepped out. The stranger was about five feet ten inches tall with long, dark hair combed straight back. His skin was heavily tanned. Grinning broadly, his arms crossed and his hands tucked under his armpits, he walked to the panel truck. He was wearing a dark topcoat.

Underneath it Woody could see some kind of garment made of glistening greenish material almost metallic in appearance. "Do not be afraid." The grinning man did not speak aloud. Woody sensed the words. "We mean you no harm. I come from a country much less powerful than yours." He asked for Woody’s name. Woody told him. "My name is Cold. I sleep, breathe, and bleed even as you do."

Cold told Woody to report the encounter to the authorities, promising to come forward at a later date to confirm it. After a few minutes of aimless generalities, Cold announced he would meet Woody again soon. The object descended, the door opened, Cold entered it, and it rose quickly and silently into the night.

You can listen to Derenberger’s account in his own words here, it’s file # 47. Derenberger has been interviewed by a radio station and is offered the chance to tell the story. Derenberger would go on to have other adventures either with Indrid or his kin, visit the planet Lanulos, and eventually write a book called Visitors from Lanulos. Interestingly enough Keel actually wrote the foreword to Derenberger’s book even though he didn’t necessarily believe the man’s story.

The story of Indrid Cold does not end there, however. Keel mentions that a number of times while investigating the Point Pleasant area he received phone calls from mysterious persons claiming to be “Indrid Cold”. Of course Keel was no stranger to mysterious and bizarre phone calls, as many portions of his books dealt with his seeming “harassment” by some informed third-party. This concept is captured in the 2002 Richard Gere film, The Mothman Prophecies, where Gere played a ‘John Klein’. You can see that scene here on YouTube.

In The Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings, which has been republished making it easier to come by, Keel discusses the idea of the “Grinning Man”. Within this category he includes the figure of Indrid Cold. Keel also tells another story of a similar type of entity which two young kids encountered. Keel writes:

A blazing white light "as big as a car" nearly scraped the 550-foot-tall television tower outside of Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, site of the large DuPont explosives factory, on the night of October 11, 1966. A policeman and his wife watched the object move slowly northward and disappear beyond the neighboring hills.

On the other side of those hills. Sergeant Benjamin Thompson and Patrolman Edward Wester, of the Wanaque Reservoir Police, observed the same sight at about 9:45 P.M. as it swooped low over the reservoir. "The light was brilliantly white," Thompson said. "It lit up the whole area for about three hundred yards. In fact, it blinded me when I got out of the patrol car to look at it, and I couldn't see for about twenty minutes afterwards."

Forty miles south of Wanaque, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, two boys had a frightening experience that October 11, at approximately the same time that Officers Thompson and Wester were watching the glowing object cavort above the reservoir. There had been a number of aerial sightings in the vicinity of Elizabeth the previous week, apparently clustered around the New Jersey Turnpike which slices through that city. New Jersey newspapers from one end of the state to the other were filled with UFO reports during that period.

The two boys, James Yanchitis and Martin "Mouse" Munov, were walking home along Fourth Street and New Jersey Street when they reached a comer parallel to the tumpike. The tumpike is elevated and there is a very steep incline dipping down from the busy thoroughfare to Fourth Street. A very high wire fence runs along the street, making it impossible for anyone to scramble up the incline to the tumpike. There are bright street lights on that particular comer.

It was on this comer that the two young men encountered "the strangest guy we've ever seen."Yanchitis spotted him first. "He was standing behind that fence," the youth said later. "I don't know how he got there. He was the biggest man I ever saw." "Jimmy nudged me," Mouse reported, "and said, 'Who's that guy standing behind you?' I looked around and there he was . . .

behind that fence. Just standing there. He pivoted around and looked right at us . . . and then he grinned a big old grin."

Yeesh, that Keel tells a good story. I’ve got goosebumps after reading that account. The story of Indrid Cold seems to evaporate around the same time that the Mothman flies back to wherever he had made his home and after the collapse of the Silver Bridge.

There is an interesting postscript to all of this however. A man on reddit claims to have been contacted by “Indrid Cold”. With this being the internet, I’m inclined to be skeptical, but still suggest you follow this link and read about it on Reddit.

After it’s all said and done, I’m not sure what to make of Indrid Cold. Did Derenberger actually encounter a man from Lanulos that night back in 1966? Was the figure the two kids in New Jersey saw Indrid Cold making his rounds and generally creeping people out? I don’t know. I do know that Indrid Cold, as well as the other myriad creatures and spooks which Keel wrote about inspire me to always keep an open mind, to deny belief and dogma, and to always say, “ Forget the answers! What’s the question?”

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!