INVESTIGATING UFOs Probing A Phenemenen wrapped In mysteryINVESTIGATING UFOs Probing A Phenomenon wrapped in mystery 66 The average UFO report isn’t worth the paper it's written on,” an Air Force officer in the Pentagon told me back in 1966. At the time | scoffed at the statement, assuming it was just part of the sinister conspiracy to downgrade and dismiss the UFO phenomenon. But gradually | came to realize that the statement was painfully accurate. Few UFO reports, even today, contain enough substantive information fora valid analysis. The art of writing reports is still a puzzle to many civilian UFO investigators. The result is a flood of paper and red tape which tells us nothing whatsoever about the UFO witnesses themselves and very little about the actual case being investigated. Before Project Blue Book was dismantled in 1969, Air Force investigators often dismissed baffling cases with the terse remark: “Insufficient informa- tion.” ‘A major part of the problem was created by the Air Force's own official questionnaire (form FTD 164) which was closely copied by most of the civilian UFO investigators and their various organizations. The form is practically worthless. It looked impressive in its seven page format but it was obviously designed by pilots and astronomers for a singular purpose: to extract only information which would make it Possible to identify the unknown as a conventional object or mundane astronomical phenomena. It asked the witness to make impossible estimates of speed, altitude, angle from the horizon, etc., without defining important factors such as the exact position of the witness and the local terrain. Early in my own investigations | discovered that the average witness could not even pinpoint true north—even when he or she had lived in the area all their life. It is common for a witness to say that the object appeared in the east, say, and traveled to the southwest when actually | found that it had appeared in the west and traveled northeast! Estimates of altitude are much more difficult to make, even for experienced pilots. And at night it is almost impossible to judge the altitude of an object (usually just a light) of unknown size. Everything becomes relative. For example, a jet airliner traveling at 500 miles per hour at 30,000 feet appears to be moving rather slowly to a witness on the ground, while a Piper Cub rattling along at 60 miles per hour at treetop level seems to be moving at a much faster speed. In my files, |, have reports by police officers who claimed the object they saw must have been traveling at a speed of at least 2,000 miles per hour. One report by an elderly man in Florida claimed he saw an object take off at a speed of 5,000 miles per hour! If you are a battlefield veteran you know that the experienced eye can actually see a cannon shell in flight and even estimate roughly where it is going to land. Artillery shells lumber along at a fairly slow speed—700 to 800 miles per hour. Bullets and high velocity shells travel much faster and can't be seen with the naked eye. In order to see a fast moving object, particularly at night, it must either be gigantic in size or it must be a great distance from the observer. An orbiting satellite, for example, can be traveling several thousand miles per hour but is visible because it is hundreds or thousands of miles from the observer. Therefore, estimates of UFO speeds are usually inaccu- rate and altitude estimates are questionable unless the object appears near something of a known altitude—such as a mountain or a conventional aircraft. The knowledgeable investigator also carefully checks direction with a compass, allowing for normal magnetic variations in the area, from the exact position of the original sighting. (It is surprising how few investigators bother to do this.) Ninety percent of the time you will find that the witnesses were completely wrong in all their estimates, particularly if they were in a moving vehicle at the time of their sighting. We are on safe ground only in the com CONTINUED ON PAGE 50 John Keel, one of America’s foremost authorities on flying saucers, looks toward the future as UFO investigators’ priorities gradually become more “people-oriented” UFO REPORT 43INVESTIGATING (Continued irom page 43) paratively rare cases in which a local radar station got a reading on the object or when, as has happened in several instances over the years, the witnesses were able to track the object with a theodolite, a surveying instru- ment which measures angles and di- rections accurately. White air Force investigators were bent on “proving” that the witness had seen the planet Venus or a weather balloon, the average civilian inves- tigator is biased in the opposite direc- tion. He's usually trying to prove that the witness saw some type of alien spaceship. This bias leads to all kinds of misrepresentations in his report. The witness may have just seen a bluish light with a red glow on the upper part but the investigator gets him to admit that the light was circular or discoid (all lights seen from a distance are circular in appearance), asks many leading questions and ultimately ends up put- ting together his own version of the event. The final report is apt to read: “Witness saw a solid object sur- rounded by a blue haze, with a red flashing light on top.” When the report is later translated into magazine arti- cles and books it becomes “a disc- shaped object with blue lights and a red strobe light on the upper surface.” The strange blue light has become a metallic flying saucer from outer space! Unfortunately. the Air Force debunk- ers were often correct when they claimed that a large percentage of UFO sightings were of natural phenomena—weather balloons and conventional aircraft. But, oddly, none of the astronomers and physicists as- sociated with Project Blue Book ever bothered to study the sources of these misinterpretations. For example, a phenomenon known as noctilucent clouds has produced many spurious UFO reports—but the only real study of these clouds has been made in the Soviet Union Noctilucent clouds are brilliantly glowing masses of self-luminous gas which orbit the earth at altitudes rang- ing from 80 to 500 miles. Some are gigantic in size and a ground observer can easily think they are much lower in the atmosphere. They appear in a variety of shapes from spherical to spiral and saw-toothed forms. Back in the mid-1960s Soviet scientists discov- ered that these clouds reflect radio and television waves. The U.S. Air Force attempted to fire instrument- laden rockets into them from isolated bases in Alaska but the results of these experiments were never re- leased. We really know very little about how these clouds are formed. Some scientists think they are related to the Air Glow phenomenon. What's the Air Glow phenomenon? Astronauts orbiting Earth have seen and photographed spherical glows on the dark side of this planet. These spheres are sometimes arranged in neat formations, like rows of soldiers. This phenomenon is rarely seen by ground observers, just as the huge, self-luminous brownish clouds also re- ported by astronauts while looking down at our planet, seem to elude witnesses on Earth. It is probable that in a few rare, isolated instances these phenomena have been mistaken for UFOs. Ball lightning, another rare phe- nomenon, can also produce spuri- ous UFO reports—especially from ships at sea. Ball lightning consists of spherical charges of electricity which appear during storms and sometimes glide along the surface until they touch something and disappear with a loud explosion. They have been known to come down chimneys, circle a room, and fly out an open window or door! In a number of cases, animals and hu- mans have been killed by these dis- charges. Ball lightning at sea appears to be a solid glowing sphere rushing down from the sky and disappearing into the water. Aitnough tew laymen are aware of it, lightning, including ball lightning, does not always travel from the sky to the ground, It sometimes rises from the ground or sea and races upwards into the storm clouds! This lightning-in- reverse can be easily mistaken for a UFO taking off and disappearing into the sky. In the late 1940s government scien- tists became concerned with another kind of natural_ phenomena—glowing green fireballs. They still zip across the skies in the midwest and southwest and we still don't know much about them. They are probably related to bolides—small low-flying meteors. Since they usually appear and disap- pear very quickly most witnesses tend to disregard them rather than report them. Throughout the 1960s, German and American scientists launched hun- dreds of special rockets all over the world, which released great clouds of barium gas into the upper atmosphere. These luminous clouds slowly stretched out, following the patterns of the earth’s magnetic field like iron fil- ings clustering around a horseshoe magnet. Some of these experiments inspired erroneous UFO reports be- cause they could be seen for hundreds of square miles. For some mysterious reason, the UFO phenomenon has apparently taken advantage of the barium cloud experiments, particularly when the space shots were given advance pub- licity. In 1966, a barium cloud shot was announced for August 16th and that night thousands of people turned in UFO reports. The phenomenon was so intense that radio and TV reporters in Arkansas stood in the streets and gave their audiences eye-witness live coverage. A group of scientists in Chicago gleefully collected a large number of reports from Illinois, Min- nesota, and Wisconsin, believing the barium cloud shot had caused the UFO flap. The only problem was: the August 16th shot was postponed at the last minute! So the witnesses in five states must have been watching something else. But what? The barium cloud shot was postponed several more times and was finally held on Sept. 24, 1966. Not a single UFO report was registered on that date! A few serious UFO investigators have made it a point to find and read technical books about the barium cloud phenomena. Too many others, irritated by the Air Force's often absurd expla- nations, still continue to overwhelm the UFO reporting networks with reports of these things. Common meteors zoom- ing across several states have also inspired waves of false UFO reports. Occasionally mischievous youngsters get into the act by releasing hot air balloons consisting of plastic bags heated by candles. Several states have now outlawed such activities be- cause the balloons can cause fires when they finally drift earthward. Cotorado University’s controversial UFO study [The Condon Committee | admitted that genuine hoaxes seemed to be rare. Nevertheless, whenever a civilian UFO research organization came across a case containing puz- zling psychic elements, it has been a long standing practice to cry “hoax” and brand the innocent, well-meaningwitnesses liars and frauds. They failed, however, to realize that the stranger the ingredients in the witnesses’ stories. were, the more likely it was that the reported incidents were true. Mod- ern investigators must be very cautious about crying hoax. Legally, a hoax must be proved either by overwhelm- ing evidence or, preferably, by a writ- ten confession signed by the perpe- trator of the hoax. Otherwise, both the investigator and the organization he represents can be sued for libel. In many instances, local police and repor- ters have deliberately labeled a case a hoax at the request of the witness to protect him from the hordes of amateur investigators and enthusiasts who in- evitably descend upon the scene after the initial report is published. One of the most difficult problems in ufology is proving the validity of actual UFO photographs. Hundreds are taken each year—so many, in fact, that the photography agencies which supply Newspapers and magazines are now very selective in their distribution. They pay the paltry sum of $10 for all rights to UFO photos that are unusually clear and distinctive. Many UFO photo- graphers simply give their pictures away free to UFO organizations or the wire services. The flying saucer photos taken in 1966 by Ralph Ditter, a barber in Ohio, were widely published on the ‘covers of magazines and in many UFO books and publications without him ever receiving as much as a nickel for his efforts. He had tacked the pictures ‘on the wall of his barbershop where they remained for months until a local newspaperman happened to see them. Ditter turned the pictures over to the reporter and signed a release relin- quishing all rights. The wire services picked them up and literally spread them throughout the world. Later, an eager but uninformed local UFO inves- tigator branded the photos hoaxes be- cause the numbers on the film were ‘out of sequence. That is, the pictures were not taken in the sequence that Ditter remembered. Actually, this out-of-sequence phe- nomenon is as mysterious as the UFOs themselves. It has occurred in dozens of cases. Even Polaroid films are numbered in sequence. This num- bering of films is done by an automatic machine and the possibility of the numbers being stamped out of se- quence are aimost inconceivabie. Nevertheless, it is common for the witness's memory to be different from the photographic record. He might re- call that picture Number One was of his child on a bicycle, Number Two was of a UFO hovering over his house, Number Three was of the UFO flying off above some trees, and so on. But on the film picture Number One turns out to be of the UFO flying off over the 52 UFO REPORT trees, Number Two is of the child on the bicycle, and Number Three is of the UFO over the house. It is as if some mysterious force has juggled the numbers—or the witness's memory. This is one of the many reasons why it is so important to examine the witness in depth, something few investigators bother to di Many civilian UFO enthusiasts con- duct conversations rather than inves- tigations. Witnesses must be interro- gated caretully by reviewing each inci- dent and movement on the day of their sighting as well as their movements and actions after the sighting. Some remarkable, often incredible, details crop up during well conducted in-depth interviews. In a Long Island case in 1967, | learned that the witness had started the day by being followed by a mysterious car. When he parked on Main Street in Babylon, N.Y., the car pulled in behind him and its occupant jumped out, pointed a camera at him and took his picture. He thought this was odd but soon dismissed it. Later that same day, he saw a circular object hovering low above some trees on a lonely stretch of road. He did not think the two incidents were related, of course, but | have investigated many “phantom photographer” cases and | believe these mysterious cameramen are connected to the phenomenon in some strange way. Other investigators have uncovered similar incidents in England and, most recently, in Swe- den. TAINNGLE SPECIAL In other cases, | have found that healthy witnesses have suffered in- explicable blackouts or fainting spells hours before seeing a UFO. These blackouts, experienced by people who had never suffered them before, are especially prevalent in UFO contact cases. It is also important to extract a com- plete biography of the witness with emphasis on any unusual psychic or occult experiences they may have had prior to their UFO encounter. I discov- ered that the majority of all witnesses had latent or active psychic abilities and after | revealed this in a series of articles in the 1960's other indepen-. dent investigators around the world confirmed it in their own research. Although many UFO believers choose to assume that most UFO sightings are random chance encoun- ters, the startling truth is that witnes- ses are selected by some mysterious process and that strictly accidental sightings are rare, if not altogether nonexistent. Perhaps the greatest deficiency in the Air Force questionnaire was its neglect to extract the most basic per- sonal information about the witness. It asked only for the witness's name, occupation, and address. However, even the birthdates of the witnesses can be important. (In a series of con- tact cases | investigated in 1967 | discovered that ail of the witnesses had been born on the same date!) Religion can also play a part. Although we now have a huge body of many thousands of reports covering the past 30 years we find that Catholic and Jewish witnesses are extremely rare. Protestants and “fallen Catholics” (those who have drifted away from the active practice of their religion) account for the bulk of the reports. People with American Indian or Gypsy blood in their background tend to see more UFOs than other people. If sightings ‘occurred on:a purely accidental basis, certain statistical laws should be fol- lowed. There should be more Smiths, Browns, and Joneses among the wit- nesses simply because there are more of them in the population. But this isn't the case. People with unusual names like Jabkowsky tend to have more sightings than the Smiths. Although left-handed people are a decided minority, there are more left-handed contactees than right-handed ones. The late Ivan Sanderson once pointed out that people with red or blond hair also seemed more prone to have UFO experiences. The selectivity doesn't end there. Occupations also are of special impor- tance. Schoolteachers, especially those dealing with gifted or, converse- ly, backward children, seem to be in- volved in an unusually high percentage of low-level cases and incidents in which the object pursued a car. This UFO penchant for schoolteachers seems to be a worldwide factor. In my travels | found another special group who are not widely mentioned in pub- lished reports—police officers and night watchmen. While the UFO ob- servations of on-duty policemen are frequently cited by reporters searching for reliable witnesses, a great many lawmen also have unusual sightings while off-duty, as do night watchmen (who are often retired cops). Finally, and most chilling of all, are men andwomen who are civilian employees at military bases or who work at jobs requiring. a security clearance. Bar- bers, farmers, and auto mechanics are decidedly rare among UFO witnesses. In recent years there has been a sharp increase in sightings among doctors, lawyers, regional politicians, and stub- bom, skeptical newspapermen. Obviously the UFO phenomenon has some system of selectivity, and it is highly probable that most of the people picked undergo something more than a mere visual sighting. Something they cannot remember la- ter. Are their minds being re- programmed, as many of the top re- searchers now suspect? The only way we will ever learn what is really going on is by thoroughly investigating the witnesses them- selves. The UFOs are so widespread (the objects must number in the thousands during flap periods) and so active at ground level they must be doing something. Whatever it is, it's obvious they are doing it to PEOPLE. Special people who have been care- fully picked from the mainstream of society and chosen for special treat- ment. Therefore, their descriptions of what they have seen are less impor- tant than what they have experienced physically, psychologically, and mental- ly. The objects are merely the medium for their message, whatever it might be. The Air Force never got anywhere because it was concerned solely with explaining away the descriptions of the ‘objects. The civilian UFO organizations have never made any progress be- cause they have been concerned with trying to interpret the meaning of the objects, determining their source and attacking the Air Force explanations. Proving the reliability of witnesses be- came more important to them than learning the details of what the witnes- ses actually experienced. A few years ago Dr. J. Allen Hynek devised a “Strangeness” index to compare witness reliability with the degree of strangeness in their report. Unfortunately, strangeness is totally Subjective, like pain, and difficult—if not altogether impossible—to mea- sure. What might seem incredibly strange to one inexperienced inves- tigator might seem almost routine to a more experienced person. Reliability is also difficult to establish. The usual criterion is the person's occupation. But the history of ufology has shown that a town drunk can have a real UFO experience as well as the town’s police chief. The drunk would automatically receive a very low rating on the reliabil- ity scale. The police chief might actu- ally be a conniving, cantankerous, lying old reprobate but his occupation would give him a high rating. Similarly, a, person who has a long history of prophetic dreams and other psychic experiences might be known to the local gossips as a crackpot and would rate low on the reliability scale. But extensive UFO studies have shown that this is also the kind of person most likely to have a genuine low-level or landing sighting. Their psychic ability might also make them susceptible to receiving a telepathic message or undergoing something even stranger. So they would have a high strangeness quotient and a low reliability rating, thus negating their report and unfairly depriving the public of valuable information. Witnesses should be judged only by experts trained in such matters: psychiatrists, psychologists, sociol- ogists, and experienced journal- ists. An experienced lawyer can be a much better UFO investigator than an astrophysicist for example, whose training does not include dealing with—and judging—people. If nothing else, the past 30 years have taught us that technology is virtually useless in UFO investigations. Nevertheless, many civilian investigators still load themselves down with Geiger counters and other expensive gadgets. It is true that excessive radiation has been found at a few UFO sites in the past 30 years, but so few that the odds for stumbling into such a situation are astronomical. Even then, Geiger coun- ters can only indicate the presence of radiation. They can not give an accu- rate and scientific measurement of the radiation. Today experienced investigators carry tape recorders for interviewing witnesses, and a few plastic bags for collecting samples of any substances that might be found at the UFO site. A compass, a star chart for locating the exact position of the brightest stars in the sky at the time of the sighting, and a pocket camera are the only other pieces of equipment you will really need. Elaborately outtitted expeditions lugging walkie-talkies, theodolites, flares, and firearms are a thing of the past. Finally, what should you do with your UFO report once you have carefully interviewed the witnesses and painstakingly typed it all up? Make several copies and distribute them to more than one organization or inves- tigative body. The national UFO or- ganizations have a distressing habit of throwing the reports they receive into a file drawer and forgetting about them. Some organizations even demand ex- clusive rights to all reports they receive. You might as well flush your report down the toilet. If the witnesses don’t want their names used, give their full names, addresses, etc., in your report but include a notation stating that they wish to remain anonymous. If they agree to having their names used, get. the agreement in writing. If you take photographs, buy a pad of model re- lease forms from a camera store and make sure everyone who appears in your pictures has signed a release form; if your pictures are ultimately Published in a magazine or newspaper you could get in a lot of legal trouble if you don't have written permission from the people you've photographed. Back in the good old days, UFO investigating was a relatively easy task. Now Ufology is slowly evolving into an exact science and it is becom- ing more and more complicated. The simplistic extraterrestrial hypothesis is losing ground to the complex paraphysical concept. Investigators are no longer concerned with merely prov- ing that the Air Force is lying, or that UFOs came from outer space. We are trying to find out what is really going on, and what the ultimate meaning of the phenomenon is. So we have to approach everything with the same thoroughness that military Intelligence might use in collecting evidence to find a spy in the Pentagon. *