I was quite sure that in one of my books I dealt with the 1947 "CAV" CE3K incident from South America.
It seems that I did not. I did mention it in Some Things Strange & Sinister and produced a line drawing to help visualise what was described
_____________________________________________
Near Lima, Peru. Night time, 1947 Investigators: A.P.R.O.
Mr “CAV” came upon a grounded, shiny disc-like object on a highway outside of Lima. Stopping his car, “CAV” approached the object on foot only to be approached by “…two incredible amoeba-like” AEs that “looked like bananas joined together. Their skin was sandy-coloured with a towel-like texture”. In height the AEs stood at around 5 feet 5 inches (approx. 1.6 m).
A voice, in English “…as if from a speaker” (and which he understood) suddenly broke the silence and told him that they (AEs) were sexless and to demonstrate this they divided themselves like amoeba. “CAV” was taken on a tour of the rather barren-looking interior of the craft. He was then escorted out and watched as the craft departed.
The witness suffered loss of volition and appetite as well as total exhaustion.
This is all we know of the incident. Although investigated by representatives of James and Coral Lorenzen’s Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (A.P.R.O.), this case never appeared in their ground-breaking 1967 book, Flying Saucer Occupants or their 1969 book UFOs: The Whole Story.
Even Gordon W. Creighton’s chapter on Latin American encounters in the book The Humanoids (1968) does not list this case. Back in the 1970s James Lorenzen did confirm the case was dealt with by A.P.R.O but that was as far as I got.
Is it possible that the case was just too weird for the more conservative Ufologists to handle or put their name behind? Most people will be familiar with the case from the book by John A. Keel, Strange Creatures From Time And Space –an author not too concerned with the weirdness of his subject matter.
Today, of course, “CAV” would be taken to a hypnotherapist or “abduction specialist” and undergo hypnotic regression. However, in 1947, hypnosis was a thing of horror movies. It is doubtful “CAV” is even alive today if he was in his twenties in 1947 he could now be in his eighties.
What is so striking is the fact that AE encounters in association with UFOs was unheard of in the 1940s and I cannot find any popular movies from that period in which AEs of this type appear from which “CAV” could have been influenced. The description has not, as far as I am aware, been repeated since. The description of the interior of the craft looking barren seems to be in-keeping with the appearance of the AEs.
This case really does need further research and I am hoping that somewhere there exist A.P.R.O. records with a full case report.
For High Strangeness this case deserves a 3 rating (5 being the highest possible).
The reason why this case may not be better known is down to the later Richard Greenwell, at the time a South American investigator for APRO. Greenwell spoke fluent Spanish and so, even though the interview was twenty years later, he had the opportunity to get more details.
Richard Greenwell
When you interview an observer/percipient you do tend to ask trick questions or leading questions to see whether they are lying or fantasy prone. Greenwell, if his account is accurate, did this but was almost a little insulting towards CAV -although the latter seems to have taken it all in his stride and even emphasised that he did not know the answer to some questions asked. Usually someone fantasy prone will add to their account. CAV did not.
One thing that is striking is that CAV was very clear that he had no idea and was not claiming that what happened was real. Nor was he claiming that it was an hallucination -however, he stated a number of times that for the peace of his mind he hoped it was an hallucination as that he could live with.
Greenwell did not hide the fact that he thought it was all in CAVs head -re-iterated in a follow-up in Flying Saucer Review. You can be sceptical in an investigation but when you let your own personal opinion cloud your conclusion -which Greenwell did- then things go wrong. To prove that the event was an hallucination or was real, CAV offered to pay his own travel and hotel expenses to be put under investigation by APRO specialists. Greenwell made it very clear that APRO should reject the case. For their own reasons (not wanting to upset Greenwell or because the case was too weird the Lorenzens followed Greenwell's advice.
The outcome must have been a blow to CAV who, let's face it, had his story recorded and put in the collection and was then dumped as his story did not fit in.
END NOTE Since this was written more than a decade ago (longer actually!) I have scoured every source possible and added to the file. I intend to do a complete write up and if anyone else has any information on this case then please get in touch!
I have a copy of Binder's Flying Saucers Are Watching Us and I will need to check it to see whether there is any reference to this report. Vallee quotes Binder's syndicated cartoon series which is not acceptable as a source. In fact, I can find no references to this report in the literature and that includes the Lorenzens' Flying Saucer Occupants.
Vallee and his poor recording of sources as well as inclusion of alleged reports he never seems to check the credibility of or sources is one of the biggest problems I have with his work. It is shoddy and completely unscientific and puts his books into the "pot boiler" style category.
Nr Niagra Falls, NY State
January 1958
Passport To Magonia, Vallee pp. 15-16
citing Otto Binder's ("Otto Bell") Cartoon series Our Space Age (syndicated feature)
The observer, Mrs D, was trying to find an exit off the highway in poor visibility. Her account reads:
"A large shape was visible, and a slim rod at least fifty feet high was illuminated and getting shorter as if sinking into the ground. My motor slowed down and as I came closer my car stopped completely. I became panicky and tried desperately to try and restart it as I had no lights. My first thought was to get out and see what was happening but I suddenly saw two shapes, rising around the slim pole which was still growing shorter. They were suspended but moving about it. They seemed to be like animals with four legs and a tail but two front feelers under the head, like arms. Then, before I could even gasp the things disappeared and the shape rose and I then realised it was a saucer, it spun and zoomed about 10 feet (3m) off the ground and up into the air and I couldn't see where it went.
"My (car) lights suddenly came on. I started the car and it was alright. I pulled up to the place, got out with a flashlight and walked over to where it had been sitting. A large hole was melted in the snow about a foot (30cm) across the grass and was snowing on it. The grass was warm but nothing was dug up around there."
Above: not the most credible of sources. If anyone has the actual piece that Vallee quoted from please let me know.
I realised that I had not been preserving Franklyn Davin-Wilson's files on Astronauts and UFOs, Astronomers and UFOs, Mars Mysteries, Unidentified Orbital Objects etc.
Apparently, most of it I have moved into plastic wallets but what I haven't are being moved today.
Of course, Franklyn's work ended with his death in 1984 and some of the work I promised him just before he died, that I would get "out there". Some of it I have -my "If You Invite People To The Party" (UFO Contact?) included a lot of his Signals From Space material (updated) and I mention his name and work whenever I can.
I hate thinking about the trouble I went through to save his archives but the other option was just to let it all end up in a skip. Easier for me that way but for some reason I do stupid things🤨 And one day maybe the work will be looked on as pioneering -and it was because no other Ufologist was doing this type of work nor "Signals and UFOs" that I was doing.
I think of Arthur Constance, self educated and who was a pioneer in British Ufology and how all of his work ended up in council bins or pilfered by "friends" and then never heard of again.
Even though he set up the UKs first civilian UFO group (the Flying Saucer Club of Great Britain) in 1952 and saved the British Flying Saucer Bureau, did the first technical analysis of reports and cooperated with the Air Ministry, went on the be a big wig in BUFORA and much more, Graham F. N. Knewstub is unknown to today's Ufologists. No idea what happened to his files.
Terry Cox in the 1970s was doing a lot with infra red photography and UFOs but what happened to he and his work I have no idea since Ufologists showed no real interest in anything technical.
Most Ufologists these days have no idea that Ivan T. Sanderson wrote anything other than, perhaps, something about Unidentified Submarine Objects (USOs) -and decades before that became a "thing". They have no idea that he was a zoologist, explorer, as well as presented wildlife items on TV shows in the United States. He was the one who behaved scientifically in the case of the Minnesota Iceman case wanting to gather more data and confirm facts while Bernard Heuvelmans not just jumped the track but put the case into ridicule.
Sanderson was the first investigator to get to Flatwoods and investigate and talk to the witnesses -all that forgotten. He also wrote THE book on hairy hominoids before Bigfoot, yeti and others became a real pop culture phenomenon.
There are many others whose files we have lost and whose work now only exists in books and magazine articles.
Even John A. Keel, whose writing I loved but he added a lot of uh 'facts' had an extensive collection.
And the paranormal field had Harry Price the man who investigated the Borley rectory and much, much more and faced every attempt at character assassination and debunking his work (he was no saint) by some pretty jealous competitors and armchair critics with a puff on his pipe.
Shane Leslie whose book Shane Leslie's Ghost Stories is still fascinating and recommended.
Elliott O'Donnell -the author whose books I literally grabbed from the Southmead Public Library while at school and digested. The writing style and accounts were eye opening!
Harry Ludlam who is today on a list of "lesser known authors" for goodness sakes and many others; now forgotten because Generation Idiot requires all sorts of mumbo jumbo instruments that have never been submitted for scientific testing, anything with a light that flashes so someone can scream "Its answering -its in front of me!" and digitally fake or simply fake while filming.
So long as every single home and building in the world has a portal or gateway to Hell and poltergeists as well as shadow people, demons and much more who the F cares if it isn't real -P. T. Barnum earned a good living (like certain authors and You Tubers today) by the rule that "There's one (sucker) born every minute. A rule that became the Warren family crest it seems.
If you just want a scare and entertainment then park your arse on your sofa and guzzle down the pizza and enjoy the show. But if you want to learn the truth then READ. Buy books -some are available to read for free online these days. Learn. UFO history can be complicated so buy a copy of something like Haunted Skies. I could recommend my own (well, only if you insist) fully referenced books with very rare (often thought lost) photos and subjects covering cryptozoology, ghosts, weird mysteries and, yes, UFOs.
We are in a new era of illiteracy where dogma is accepted. 30 minutes of false facts in a video are accepted as facts.
McGill University used to have a good reputation for research. Sadly, the years have not been good to it or so it seems. A well known university with access to all the research you can find online and all the books it must hold...
Have you heard of its Office for Science and Society -"separating Sense from Nonsense"? Well, I do know one thing: Joe Schwarcz, Phd writes a lot for its website. Basically, its like a social studies department but giving itself a grander title.
Sadly, as I have already pointed out, Schwarcz's articles on various subjects cannot be taken seriously. That is not an accusation I make lightly. There were some articles I was interested in ...until I found one titled Alien Encounters.
In this post Schwarcz refers to the encounter at Kelly and the Sutton family. It's a complex case that he skirts over details on (but, hey -"UAP" are big at the moment so he probably wants some of that attention) and is "inaccurate" but does end with: "What actually happened that night remains a mystery but no trace of an alien encounter has ever been found". In other words he dare not actually look at the details of the case and give an honest opinion based on that.
When he comes to the Betty and Barney Hill case which I have, as everyone knows, tried three times to shake the authenticity of and failed, Schwarcz writes:
"While the veracity of the Hills’ close encounter of the third kind is suspect, there is no question that the publicity the supposed event eventually received spawned a host of alien abduction reports".
So they were making it all up? Lying? And what of all the extra independent evidence surrounding the case? No matter it seems as Schwarcz appears to base his version of the Hills encounter on a badly researched internet site.
This piece was throwing out integrity to get the "pop hits" because it was almost reminiscent of the debunking pieces published in the 1950s and 1960s. "Sorting the Sense from Nonsense" in this case ought to be replaced with "Talking Nonsense and Ignoring Research".
Then I saw Schwarcz's chosen image for the piece. "A pictures speaks a thousand words".
There are some good points in this video interview, The sort of thing we used to have discussions about when Ufology was actually interested in reality (or some Ufologists were and this is before I left Ufology in the 1980s as a veteran!).
Orson Welles
"How might people react if aliens landed?" The response is usually "Look at the 1938 Orson Welles broadcast of War of the Worlds and the panic and death it caused!" In fact, that is mostly myth and that successive UFO and other authors -print or blog and even You Tubers (what can you expect there!) continue the myth just shows how lazy people are. Some basic searching helps sort things out and this blog did just that:
Welles himself was sheer brilliance and I am sure that he neither added to the story or denied it!
What might aliens look like? Well, if you go online you see one image after another of "Greys" -not similar to one another but all, of course, genuine "Grey". This shows jus the kind of pap Google, MSN or Firefox throw up at searchers who then dribble away and say "See -Google would not show Greys if they were not real aliens!"
ahem
The other thing you will get are images of microbes and even of whale like, insects type creatures and walking tree and I have to admit at that point my brain farts loudly -especially when these images come from "respectable" scientific blogs or articles by scientists. Probably, these images are used because walking trees and whale like creatures on far distant planets are non-threatening; no one can imagine microbes, something whale sized or even a walking tree thing hopping into their flying saucer and skipping over to Earth. And many astronomers and astrophysicists, including those working in the Search for extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) have a deep seated fear of alien intelligences coming to Earth. I often wonder whether that is why they so ridicule UFO reports based on no investigation or a jokey news comment? This I have dealt with in my books to an extent and to be honest if your are pooping your pants over aliens coming to Earth maybe SETI is not a good (life long gravy train) job for you?
A while back I reviewed The Zoologist's Guide To The Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens by Dr Arik Kershenbaum
"No planet will have a complex form of life that popped into existence all on its own. Whatever life is like on an alien planet, it must have begun simply. Now, it could be that it remained simple; that’s possible. Probable, even, on many planets. But if life is to achieve any kind of complexity, the only way that complexity can accumulate is if favorable changes and innovations are retained and unfavorable ones are lost — and that’s precisely evolution by natural selection."
He is then asked: "One of the key ideas in your book is the notion of “convergent evolution.” What is that, and why is it important?"
His response:
"If you observe two animals with similar features — feathers, for instance — you might presume that they inherited them from a common ancestor: the feathered dinosaur that was the ancestor of all modern birds. That’s just regular evolution, where children have similarities because they inherit the characteristics of their parents.
"But sometimes you see animals with traits that they couldn’t possibly have inherited from a common ancestor. For instance, the wings of birds work in pretty much the same way as the wings of bats. But the common ancestor of birds and bats was a small lizardlike creature that lived over 300 million years ago, long before even the dinosaurs. It certainly didn’t have wings, and the large majority of its descendants, including elephants and crocodiles, don’t have wings (thankfully). So those wings must have evolved separately in different lines of descendants.
"Sometimes this “convergence” of traits is for something obviously useful, like wings. But sometimes convergence produces bizarrely similar creatures that share so many characteristics, it can be hard to believe they’re not closely related. The recently extinct thylacine [a large predatory marsupial native to Tasmania and mainland Australia], for example, could easily be mistaken for a peculiar breed of dog, but it’s much more closely related to a kangaroo! And yet living a life similar to that of modern coyotes or jackals meant that it evolved many similar characteristics convergently."
You see what appears to be an oddly moving light in the sky and as it gets closer you see it is a craft. It lands and an entranceway appears. This steps...floats out. What is YOUR reaction? photo of Sarlacc Jellyfish (Chrysaoro achylyos)
If you are feeling a bit "my brain is mushy" at the moment do not panic. It will soon pass. Humans look out at the galaxies arounds us and all we know is Us and the planet we are killing and the way we behave. Therefore, every planet has to evolve like Earth and every species has to evolve like species on earth. Alien life will develop the same as human life and by so many thousands of years will have destroyed itself in war. These aliens will also use our forms of energy or more advanced forms and will use the same type of signal technology humans use.
Wrong and Right in the same breath. We can only base evolution and planets and what we think they will look like based on our limited knowledge of the Earth. Every time someone writes or talks about the new exo-planets we are finding out come the graphic images of the planet's surface and clear skies, water and....well, it's all made up. What scientists detect are tiny spots of light and then through analysing the images guess at the new planet being "rocky like Earth" or a "Gas giant like Jupiter" (ask astronomers about the distant gas giant exo planet that...uh...vanished)
Well, I lose things all the time.
The truth is that we have never seen the surface of these planets and anything added to the information about "probably rocky like the Earth" is pure speculation. If we are able to detect these "far distant" planets using Earth's best equipment the...why are we not concentrating on the planetary systems closer to us which would make logical sense. You look nearby then start venturing outwards -that's how exploration works. But not with SETI. Safest way is to send a signal or look for a signal from as far away as possible and the work "thousands" you can add to the "light years away" the better. Some 55,000 years for our signal to reach the planet in question. Anyone there can respond and after 55,000 years we will get a reply. "We" will not be here and by the time "We" get that reply it is likely that neither will "they" be there.
Fear.
As for the 'fact' that every alien civilisation that becomes advanced creating its own destruction through war "the way we will" the only response to that statement is to call it the height of human arrogance! Humans love killing anything it can including any other living creature and, of course, the planet they are living on and to even insinuate that no other intelligent life form could be better than us and last far longer is sheer foot-stamping by ignorant people. Brian Cox, the physicist or whatever he wants to call himself has openly called people stupid for believing in UFOs and also stated that "there is no life out in space" which is one of the most unscientific statements ever. But then he has always come across as arrogant and egotistical and definitely, as we used to say "Kopf in den Arsch".
The Hubble Deep Field, an extremely long exposure of a relatively empty part of the sky, provided evidence that there are about 125 billion (1.25×1011) galaxies in the observable universe as of 2022.
Here is a quote for you (and Brian Cox): Not that very long ago we were living in a universe with only a small number of known planets and these were all orbiting our sun. But after a new raft of discoveries Scientists confirmed that, as of 21st March, 2022, there were more than 5,000 planets exist beyond our solar system -exo-planets. Skies & Scopes website gives this estimate on planet numbers
"Given that we can’t be completely certain how many planets there are in the Solar System, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that once we look beyond that our estimates get much vaguer. But we are going to have a go anyway.
"So, Earth and the planets of the solar system revolve around the Sun. Which is one star within our galaxy, the Milky Way.
"Whilst our sun alone seems huge to us, the current best estimate is that the Milky Way contains between 100 billion and 400 billionstars(source).
"Estimates vary considerably as it is extremely hard to calculate and so you can find different estimates out there (including this one estimating a trillion stars in the Milky Way).
"If we then take the higher-end figure of 400 billion stars in the Milky Way, how many planets does this mean?
"We know that our Sun has at least 8 planets, but the most recent analysis in Nature journal is that, on average, each star of the Milky Way hosts one planet.
"Therefore we can take the estimate that there are 400 billion planets in the Milky Way".
Sit on that one Brian Cox.
We can estimate and estimates are just that -estimates (I may have over complicated that line). But we know that water and the other material needed for the creation of life on Earth is out there as are, probably, the things to create life as we do not know it. Had science not started by ridiculing observers/percipients (though not from the very outset since some were open to life in space but the conservative members of the community were quick to move in when an official stance was taken -The Robertson Panel in the 1950s (This was a scientific committee which met in January, 1953 and headed byHoward P. Robertson. The Panel came about after a recommendation to the Intelligence Advisory Committee (IAC) in December, 1952 from a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) review of the U.S. Air Force investigation into UFOs, Project Blue Book.The CIA review itself was in response to widespread reports of UFOs, especially in the Washington, D.C. area during the summer of 1952. The panel was briefed on U.S. military activities and intelligence; hence the report was originallyclassified Secret) and The Condon Committee which was funded by the USAF from 1966-1968). Neither was that open to educating the public on the possibility but intentionally to play the subject down, ridicule it and so on -with the help of scientists and Ufologists "on the payroll" (ref: Richard Doty, Paul Bennewitz and William Moore).
I could write more about how many scientists (including Hynek who had his own university and astronomers condemn him over his UFO work) suffered loss of work, contracts and relentless pressure from their peers and others to not be open minded and scientific and use a sceptical eye and look at the data. Study UFO history, folks.
The intelligence community had money to throw around as grants and bribes and oh those so wanted "military contracts" so there were plenty of scientists prepared to not just stick a knife in the back of a former friend and colleague but also twist it around a lot for good measure... oh, and spit on their shoes at the same time.
The AATIP and all those others are just the same old same old. Moving in and knowing just how to subvert Ufology and receive the applause because they have done it so many times before. Ufologists leap on board willingly, pants around their ankles and ready to bend over. Doty paid Ufologist William Moore to lie and deceive Ufology for years. Moore confessed and he was out. Doty has become a Ufology hero attending conventions and meetings and no doubt still plying his trade and why should Ufologists care what his machinations did to Bennewitz? Just like all the suppressing of UFO information bad guys are now the good guys so Doty is now a celebrity. Watch this:
I have read thousands of reports of CE3K/alien entities in coming up to 50 years now, and even if I cut that list down to just 10 reports that I felt sure indicated "something" would that help me to state what "aliens" might look like? No and yes. There are cases in those ten where the entity descriptions match -the percipients in two events did not know each other, were separated by hundreds of miles yet their descriptions of entities match up.
Imagine that landed UFO you see does not have jellyfish like entities but more insectoid ones -ant-like, say? Reason to panic?
________________________________________________
Now let's consider certain other reports and as I detailed in my book Contact! we have entities in what appear to be pressurised or atmospheric suits and helmets -the so termed "Michelin Men" and some reports go back to the 1950s. Most of the observers had no interest in UFOs/flying saucers and a good few mocked those stories "before" and most of the accounts were not in the press and publicly known. These are the sort of facts and correlations Jacques Vallee has not noticed even though some reports are from France.
Entity described in 1954 Marius Dewilde incident _________________________________________________
I had one case of black coloured (or "negative") entities in the mid 1970s and then a case from France pushed that up to two. Again, ongoing research has revealed other such reports. It cannot be guaranteed that all the percipients/observers saw the same entity type but a case from the UK in the 1970s has an entity type that matches up with the "Kelly Cahill" case and, no, unless someone shot forward in time to buy my book or secretly broke into my home to access the files Cahill and the others involved would never -never- have seen the illustration I drew and had the observer confirm as being accurate. Now if you are good at math you work out the odds of that.
"They were emotionless" and "They did not seem to care" as well as the ever popular "They knew we were watching them doing whatever it was and just ignored us" are often lines used to describe some entities. Suppose that certain aliens have only one "emotion" and it created an obsessive compulsive disorder to just learn, gather samples and nothing else? Perhaps "they" do not have emotions or any concept of pain -they may well have conquered pain centuries ago- so an "abductee" and his/her reactions may seem very odd to such aliens but on noticing the distress a touch of some kind relieves the pain or stress.
Even if some of the best CE3K reports are accurate we still know nothing concrete about alien life or these "visitors". In one of my books I referred to the possibility of "lurkers" -probes sent out over the centuries or decades to other star systems to hide amongst asteroids or even orbit a planet. These lurkers gather data and send it back to the planet of origin. Now they could be more than just Voyager type craft and could also be able to return to mother craft moving through space or carrying out planetary surveys. The intelligences may look nothing like us or similar to us. For decades I searched every and all records I could for reports of non-humanoid entities in UFO incidents and those I found were either hoaxes (by Ufologists) or newspaper jokes. I was then told that far from dismissing humanoid looking entities they were now deemed far more likely to be what we were looking for. Hey, I have a life time to waste so go for it!
Let us suppose that they, the "aliens", do not look like us? Our radio and TV broadcasts have been beaming out into space since the 1920s at least so they can see our popular culture, concepts etc. Humans will view anything looking different as evil and recall all the horror and sci fi memories. Could some entities be a form of advanced holographic projection? Of course they could and more advanced civilisations are going to look at our top tech and laugh. Some form of holographic contact controlled from a craft is a possibility. There are also reports of entities that seemed and looked robotic in the way they acted. Perhaps that is just how aliens look? Robots are a possibility as are androids constructed to look human-like so that there is less of the fear element in encounters.
The rare -very rare- reports are worth noting. Euporia, Mississippi in 1973 (never investigated due to racist viewpoints) is a case in point:
“Night time (no exact hour). Two UFOs were observed near the above location (Eupora), by several witnesses in a car. One object hovered in the sky overhead while the other landed on the highway just over 100 yards (103 m) from the car ; the car lights and engine now died.
“An AE now appeared from the landed object. This AE had to hold on to a handrail. It had a wide mouth, flipper like feet and what appeared to be webbing between the legs. Even more strange were the feather-like structures on its back which gave the impression of opening and closing when the AE moved.
“The AE now re-entered (?) the object which took off ; the car’s electrics then began to function again.”
I have never heard a description similar to this in all my years handling these reports. The one case that even Ted Bloecher felt needed to be investigated in full was dumped. Pascagoula in the same state was to feature the 'only' CE3K in 1973 (there were other accounts but these were, again, ignored as the observers were "black"). A unique and multi observer case lost.
It is interesting that Ufologists join in with the debunkers in dismissing some of the cases involving stranger, non human entity case while not really accepting any other type either! Again, Ufologists spend years chasing after lights-in-the-sky as extra terrestrial space craft but will not consider "what's in 'em?" I have see UFO 'investigators and the usual bunko boy Ufology celebrities talk about this and that account but when someone mentions "aliens" they giggle or side-step the matter.
Stupidity? Ignorance? Or fear?
UFO conferences used to be full of eager people wanting to talk about their latest UFO reports or encounter cases from abroad (even in the 1970s Ufologists thought UK CE3Ks were so rare that there might be only 3-5 at most if we excluded contactees). Now we have pure escapist fantasy moving in and claims of "I investigate 100 abductions a month in the UK" and it is shocking how many do not know anything about Ufology or its history and while some will claim, say, Jacques Vallee or Budd Hopkins have contributed a great deal to the subject not many have even read Vallee. Few if any have read Ivan T. Sanderson's books. Most have not read any pre-2000 books and a great many have watched all the UFO documentaries (like the fake Skinwalker Ranch series) and read the sensationalist books where almost the only thing true is the author's name (sometimes).
If I explain to someone why the object they photographed or videoed looks diamond shape, and it is a fact, I can expect a curt response or full on abuse!
Science has failed in its main task of looking into UFOs and instead the hucksters and counter intelligence crowd control everything from what people are told to believe to what we are supposed to now call them and Ufology stands there and takes it all in one big whallop. Why would people who have suppressed UFO reports and facts and acted against Ufology lie to Ufology?
In the UK early flying saucer reports were forwarded to the Ministry of Defence and there was an openness. But the new craze was to criticise all military and governments and call then cover up liars while George Adamski conned the gullible, aided and abetted by Ufologists, and raked in the money. "Hmm this flying saucer photo looks a bit out of focus..just say it was the transmogrification transducer coil effect!"
People in Ufology take it very personally when you criticise Jacques Vallee. Most I doubt have even read his books, I was once told "You CANNOT question Dr. Vallee!" Screw you because yes I can.
Ufology has always done this. Harold T. Wilkins an early flying saucer author was a plagiarist and made stuff up and passed it off as fact. Things in his books I have back-tracked to the original sources and found them takenm out of context or even a different twist put on them. But, oh no, you could not criticise him.
Frank Edwards and his books gave out a lot of misleading information as did his radio show but he was a journalist with a buck to make. Yes, I criticised him and for good reason.
Donald E. Keyhoe was a legend and anything he wrote was true and the United States Air Force was lying. We KNEW that because...Keyhoe told us. facts twisted to push his agenda and it is interesting to learn now that he had racist leanings. But I go by what is written and presented and we know he was against Betty and Barney Hill because they were a "mixed race" couple.
John A. Keel -as with Keyhoe's books I enjoyed his work but he added "extras" to stories and again twisted facts because he had books to sell and the fact that he got a lot wrong in Operation Trojan Horse does not matter to Ufologists because they NEVER looked into what he was writing. They never check any sources.
I could go on but Keyhoe, Wilkins and Keel misled and lied to us and yet there was no open criticism of them allowed.
The same happened with Budd Hopkins. Nice guy. Delivering the facts and peer reviewed work. He lied. He knew that he was submitting faked evidence in his books and lectures and misused hypnosis. He corrupted Ufological research for three decades. Every CE3K or "abduction" case was rebooted so that now "Greys" were involved -even in the Hill case it seems!
David Jacobs. Historian. Used hypnosis incorrectly and totally lost the plot but when I criticised him, as I did Hopkins: "You cannot criticise an academic" -Hopkins and Jacobs, of course, "put bums on seats -sold tickets to events and made MUFON etc lots of money.
A small group promote Orbs and rods so that was another big thing. Explain the orbs or criticise the "stars" and "you cannot do that!"
Luis Elizondo and the whole counter intelligence take over of Ufology where they have gotten people to stop calling UFOs by that term -we MUST call them "UAP" -and people are! These are people who have and are suppressing UFO reports and lying and having followers in Ufology attack people who for decades have tried to break into the secrecy. The truth seekers are now the enemy!
Yes I can criticise and ask for evidence just as you can. NO ONE is beyond question when it comes to research whether UFOs or not. Nothing is peer reviewed in Ufology. With my own work absolutely no one is interested in papers on CE3Ks or the other work I have done for almost 50 years now. Therefore I present it in books. No big words (anything like that I explain because it is important that everyone knows what is going on and understands. Every case I write about or present is fully referenced which means that the data can be peer reviewed and the original sources double and triple checked.
Here then is my assessment of Dr. Vallee and it is based on having read his books, watching interviews and reading what people who have met him say.
When I became one of "The New Guard" of Ufology in 1974 I was impressionable. But there was one thing I believed and that was that science needed to get involved in Ufology. Dear old Lionel Beer and his book service quickly supplied me with the two books that were must reading for serious Ufologists and after all the Adamski crap and decades of Contactees being the source of all technical UFO data.
The books were Challenge To Science: The UFO Enigma and Anatomy of a Phenomenon: UFOs In Space and both were written by Jacques Vallee (Challenge To Science being co-authored by Janine Vallee). Vallee, we were told was French. He was a scientist. And France was often far ahead of the rest of the civilised world and the French Academy of Science was, quite literally, the scientific body to be held in awe.
Vallee was a French scientist. That made these books far more alluring than a bag of chips to a young man (I am told that I should have gone from model soldiers to girls but I got side-tracked into UFOs).
Vallee was also young and willing to speak out so kudos to him. I sat down and read both books and tried to discuss them with others but found few had read them mainly because they were "a bit too technical"!
I digested most books back then as much as I do now and I would often sit back later and go over things I had read and early in the morning I was still awake (my sleep pattern is...no sleep pattern!) and suddenly I realised something. I noted errors -in a graph for one thing but other things suddenly hit me.
I asked Franklyn Daviun-Wilson and we went over the books. I still have, after decades, Franklyn's copies and he annotated the actual pages (in all my books you will see LOTS of post-it notes) because writing in books was an old fashion thing -I have examples from 19th and early 20th century natural history and science books and so on. It was mainly so that you had your own thoughts on the actual page rather than later sitting there and thinking "What page was it I queried? What did I query??". Anyway, here are notes at the front of Anatomy of a Phenomenon:
My own note on Vallee's graph:
When I was putting together data for The UFO Report I threw out Desmond Leslie and George Adamski's fictitious The Flying Saucers Have Landed but felt Vallee's work was still "safe". Then I started finding that I was correcting things like dates, etc. and I realised that this scientist who was bringing UFO research respectability was far from scientific in his approach to gathering and presenting data. it was quite bad.
Of course I did leap at getting a copy, from Lionel again, of Passport to Magonia: From Folklore To Flying Saucers because though I am a "nuts and bolts" kind of fella I am a sceptical researcher. I do not say "Folklore...flying saucers???" I keep an open mind and I read what is presented and then form my own opinion.
Before I forget; Dr J. Allen Hynek gave his approval of Vallee and that helped get Vallee's name "out there" to Ufologists who generally ignored anyone who was not British or American (there is a long list of French Ufologists who Vallee stands on the shoulders of but who are unknown outside of France). Hynek made all the introductions and to read Vallee later talk down at Hynek and display an egotism -he apparently got quite angry and stroppy at one point because someone got interviewed and he was not. All the information is online but Vallee also shows his ego and arrogance at times in his own books.
Passport To Magonia I read through and noted the various UFO related entity cases but then realised a big problem. Sources -or lack of them. A report is given but no source of the account or "a friend told me of..." which needs back-up. Who was this person? Were they a scientist or a lay person? Seeing a "pan-like entity" could have been an altered state incident or even hallucination. Witness confidentiality yes but why should we accept this as a genuine incident?
I have never met Jacques Vallee and so my opinions are not based on whether he is a "pleasant guy" or not. His Catalogue of UFO Landings is pointless as it contains known hoaxes and misidentifications at the very time they were added. Quimper-Corentin, France, 1620: never happened as Vallee described. Alencon, France, 1790: UFO and entity case -never happened and no report in the archives of the French Academy of Sciences as Vallee claimed:and he could have checked!
And to still use known hoax cases and cases proven to have other explanations and cite them as evidence to back up his personal theories. Unforgivable.
For some cases cited there are no original sources given and we are expected to accept those reports and (those very few people who do research) are expected to base work and analyses on these? No. That is not how science works and Vallee who loves to keep pointing out (and hearing others stating) that he is a scientist knows that.
The number of Ufologists who go like giddy girls who have just met their favourite boy band when they state "I met Dr Vallee" or discussed something with Vallee is almost ridiculous. The fact that Vallee's data is included in catalogues without anyone checking it is the worship of dogma.
For years I kept contacting Ted Phillips to try to get some data on all of his Physical Trace evidence and the test results -I have asked his colleague Farrairo- nothing. How can you claim to be gathering scientific evidence on the phenomena (NOT phenomenon) to present to science and yet as far as I can find Phillips submitted no papers or test results for peer review from the 1960s until the time of his death (let's not go to the Marley Woods fiasco). Looking at what I eventually found of Phillips Trace catalogue contained entries that cannot be accepted as evidence. Anything prior to 1900 and up until trace samples began being gathered (1950s to a degree) and that you cannot see with your own eyes or have no test results on is junk data. Useless. Phillips was another worshipper of Vallee and his catalogue listing includes Vallee sourced stories; again the known fakes.
Vallee was the inspiration for the French scientist in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. So what? That fact is cited by Ufologists and wannabe Ufologists on You Tube and elsewhere as if it is one of the greatest achievements ever. A French film director played a French scientist...not named Vallee. Dr J Allan Hynek was a consultant and IN the movie. (that is never mentioned).
Vallee, had he carried out first hand analysis of UFO reports would have seen that there is an unexplained natural phenomenon (I termed UNP back in 1983) and the reports of what appeared to be solid, constructed craft (whether hoax or genuine). Then you have the misidentifications, fraudulent interpretation of known phenomenon and insufficient data due to no investigation taking place. Instead he states that after all these decades he has no idea what "UFOs" are (his connection with some involved in the recent Elizondo affair is worrying) but strongly believes or hopes that they are multidimensional in some way because extra terrestrial "would be boring".
The "great man" has "no idea what UFOs are" but knowing better than the rest of us concludes multidimensional. Which sounds like an egotist with his head up his own ass -the fact that people buy his published and very over priced diaries must be a great boost to his ego.
There is one photograph which, I think, sums up Vallee.
.png)
.jpg)
.jpg)
