During the 1960s "jokester" John A. Keel reported on such accounts. The big promoters through mass media paperbacks were Brad Steiger and Joan Whritenour. "The sandman" and many other fancy names were given to these lumbering creatures that were seen in conjunction with a UFO sighting or entering and leaving a flying saucer. Steiger (Alien Meetings) even reported on a crashed UFO and hairy humanoid ("sasquatch-like") running from it in Turkey of all placers. despite almost thirty years of searching I can find no original report. In fact, a few of Steiger's accounts start and end with him.
Just as Charles Fort mis-reported on incidents and gave sources in which his accounts never actually appeared and some of his reporting can be seen as "big fibs" so Keel and Steger -and others- produced reports that may have had a few grains of truth in them but, as I have repeatedly written over the years, the accounts were "sexed up" -making them sensationalist and something to hook the readers.
Let's not forget that the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organisation (BFRO) also had accounts faked for Matt Moneymaker's own reasons. You deal with Bigfoot and UFOs then anything can be passed around as fact. Even sea serpents and UFOs.
My late friend Joan Amos was a nice lady but had some strange theories. All the missing domestic cats we hear about were in fact taken by aliens and mutated into the large black cats reported in the media -she even had a report from someone claiming to have seen a panther-like cat leaving a UFO. Joan also had interests in subjects ranging from whether the original people of Cornwall were Egyptians (long and complicated subject), the paranormal and much more. I never believed half of what we discussed and Joan knew that so she did the best she could to gather material to send me to see what I thought. She knew I was sceptical and open minded.
The point here is that you never dismiss any claims but examine all the information that comes to you and then check and counter-check until you decide for yourself. I could write that I believe Travis Walton or Betty and Barney Hill after all the checking but is that proof? No. I would be going by anecdotal evidence because I was not there and no one else was present but the percipients.
As for Bigfoot (the plural is "Bigfoot" as in "The reports of Bigfoot" NOT "Bigfeet" which makes it sound like ill educated gibberish that debunkers can laugh at) well, there is no such thing in the UK and there never has been and I have studied rare books as well as popular ones over the decades and even talked to and known people in areas where these accounts come from and they have never heard of such things. This began after the U. S. Bigfoot programmes hit the internet. Same with "dog Man" -popular culture taking over from reality when the right, susceptible people are involved. On a trip to Cradle Hill, near Warminster in the late 1970s, Franklyn Davin-Wilson and I were hardly out of the car two minutes when people got glowing faces and hyper and asked "Can you sense it? The whole atmosphere is different here!" When a satellite flew over and someone excitedly yelled "Look -it's them!" I pointed out that it was a satellite and, boy, was the response negative but they were susceptible minds.
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The funny thing is that I always look into something with an open mind and when I kept reading UK Bigfooters stating that "no one in science" would look at the evidence I contacted them and told them I was a naturalist and interested in looking at what evidence there was. The lady running the group really tore into me as a debunker and made a lot of other negative statements yet I had never met her or been in contact with her before. I messaged her privately and she apologized but not openly on the group therefore anyone who might have come forward was put off as I was a debunker outed by their leader.
Next was a fella who had collected Bigfoot evidence in an area he was keeping secret -despite his use of a pseudonym to keep things secret it took me 30 minutes to find out who he was and where he was. I asked politely what the physical evidence was t6hat he had collected and he told me and he even had a video posted of it: a stick found in the middle of woodland where coppicing had taken place. It was a "Bigfoot knocking stick". He went into a full argument with me after I pointed out that it was just a stick and there was nothing to prove someone had not thrown it for a dog or, simply, it had just fallen there. No. The length was right and there was no way a stick like that could be found in woodland. So I asked what other evidence he had? He came back with another speech about the stick. The fella was obviously not that bright so I decided to not respond. A stick in the woods is a stick in the woods. I later found out he took my lack of response as the arch debunker (me) having no answer to his stick evidence and he even called it a great victory.
We see the same with "British big cat" reports. We know that there is only one such cat in the UK but we have photos wild boar, possibly (? too far away) a horse in a field about a half mile from the photographer, video footage of a great dane and various other dogs not to mention enough footage of domestic cats to keep any cat lover busy for a day. You can highlight the diagnostic features or clean a photo up to show what animal was seen -nope. You are a debunker
Paranormal entertainment videos -100% of which are fake anyway- you have people in the dark in a decaying, crumbling old building or tunnel and something falls and it is "thrown" or to put it in the vernacular "How on earth did that get thrown?" It wasn't thrown. It was a piece of a crumbling building falling. Floor boards in a house constructed mainly of wood and ever creak or thud is sign of "something" being present. No one wants to hear anything other than that (for the record I have seen poltergeist and "ghostly" figures within 5 feet of me so I am no debunker).
In Flying Saucer Review, Volume 20, No. 1, July, 1974 is an article by Berthold E. Schwarz, MD, Berserk: A UFO Creature Encounter. UFO and Bigfoot sighted and a lot of other factors -much not revealed until years later by investigator Stan Gordon. The later material shows that the case is explainable and if you want to find out more about "Ruth Syndrome" check out my book UFO Contact? which explains it in full. In fact, there is an incident involving the main percipient, Stephen Pulaski, that could not have happened but is woven into the story. I very politely explained to Stan Gordon the possible explanation and I was being careful as this was his main case. Never heard back from him again.
Here is the problem. I have spent 30+ years investigating and researching until finding out that the case was inaccurately reported or simply fake. Indeed, one case I started on in 1977 and did not close the file on until 2010. I file it away and move on. To get to the , as far as we can prove, genuine reports we have to look at the fake or misreported; Solved move on. Do I then curse the heavens over the amount of work I've put into the case for it to have been wasted time? No. that is investigation and research.
Flying Saucer Review has, since it began, promulgated cases and reports that it knew were proven to be hoaxes and under Desmond Leslie the, uh, odd "jolly" was mixed into the pot; the Braemar, Scotland giant humanoid report being one of these. Never happened yet still quoted today and even little bits added to the account.
If someone tells me that they saw a UFO and that they were abducted I do not ridicule or dismiss. I listen. I get all the details. No, I do not say "You need to be put under regression hypnosis!" The person does not describe an entity such as a Grey, Insectoid or whatever but a very unusual one. Here I will check back through my volumes of reports from around the world to see if similar entities have been reported -I did this and found entity types in little known cases that matched up. Most of the accounts are stored in my head so I'll try to recall anything similar first. If you find five reports separated by decades and continents and so obscure that very few know about them let alone the sources...you have something.
There are reports classified, simply because they involved UFOs and entities, as hoaxes. You look into those and suddenly you find that percipients were smeared and all sorts of rumours started and in the 1950s a quiet whisper of "You know, we think he is a fag" starts the ball rolling. Even a married man or, say, a scout master: hey "a fag working with kids, know what I mean?" It's all documented. In this day and age corruption and racism and other questionable practices are accepted by big UFO groups ( we know which ones).
Back in the 1980s a very well known American Ufologist contacted me -I still have the letter- and told me outright that he was trying to track down dirt on another Ufologist who was rumoured to "have had a sex change" (ie Trans). The information was wanted to smear the person and I made quite sure that the "truth seeker" got a good, very blunt response. Even in the early 1980s when I was gather material on Betty and Barney Hill Ufologists in the UK (as in the U.S.) were responding with "Well, they are a mixed race couple" and "Well, she married a black man" and I grew up in an area where that was not unknown so my responses were a tad blunt -I suddenly see why I was not that popular😂
Checking on a percipient's background is a basic and sexual orientation or ethnicity is never considered. So if you find that the percipient is above board you also check to see if there were UFO reports in the area at the time he had his alleged encounter. When it comes down to it if you are dealing with one percipient your conclusion is based on his/her testimony and you never close a case but always keep an eye out for future similar accounts.
Even if someone says that the entities encountered on a craft were similar in appearance to a cucumber with four legs and two arms you go through the same checks. Never Ever do you dismiss a report because "it involved a group of kids who saw UFOs" because that does not mean it is not a genuine account. Were locals asked about UFO activity in the area at the time? No? Then you cannot dismiss the report. And when you state that you destroyed the written account sent to you -you should be shunned by serious researchers.
I was once working and could not get to see a witness who reported a UFO landing near Bristol/ I handed the letter from the man to another Ufologist who was sent to chat to the witness. Next day I was told that the witness was "a UFO nutter" -he had described a UFO landing and "something" getting out and walking around it. He was a "nutter" because he reported an entity that the investigator had not even asked for a description of. I was then told the witness letter had "gone on the fire as rubbish" -at which point I was very "vocal" toward the 'investigator'.
In another instance I was dealing with a married woman who had reported UFO activity and having seen entities at least twice. The conversations were not quick Q&As but took time. We were not using hypnosis at the time and so it was careful conversations, listening and noting things. These discussions were taking place at her home with her husband present and at my home -with my grand parents present because that way there was no way improper behaviour could be claimed (the 1970s were a different time). One day the woman did not turn up for a meeting. I had been away on holiday (which turned into UFO investigation) and it seems that things were said to the woman and she ended all contact. At a meeting one Ufologist suggested that my main interest was in sex with the woman. The vocal explosion that followed deafened the person involved and shut up anyone else.
It is something that you need to be aware of and as an investigator/researcher your behaviour toward percipients/witnesses has to be impeccable. CE3K/entity reports were never liked in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s or at any time though, of course, the scan man George Adamski was above questioning -as were many contactees! And it should be noted that a Contactee is not and abductee or encounter percipient.
I use the term Close Encounter of the Third Kind and that is it. No CE4K, 5 kind, 6 kind or any other number. Far more confusion and fantasy has developed over the decades by "New Ufologists" (hoaxers and debunkers) increasing the number of encounter types. CE3K is the only tag you really need and all the data should be included in that type of case report.
One of my ex colleagues, who left the CE3K project fairly quickly as he was unnerved by it all, once told me that he had been to interview a person about a UFO contact. He had not told me or anyone else before and went by himself to a house in a rather run down area and was led into a darkened room. There the (apparently very creepy) person described how aliens were hidden in society but we could only see them for what they were if we got to within a certain distance of them. These aliens were silicon based life forms and it seems my colleague was scrutinised closely to make sure he was "not one of them". Apparently he breathed a sigh of relief when he got back to his car.
The rule should always be, even if the person is known to the investigator, that no one goes to such an interview alone. If the person is known to the investigator there could be later claims of collusion or having fallen for a story. Back-up is needed. In some cases (as I found) a person may sound genuine but meeting them alone and face to face can be dangerous.
"The object changed size and shape" I would never ignore as there are accounts going back to the 1800s of this type of phenomenon and they are not any form, of craft. "The object changed size and shape and then became a person" I would not ignore as that indicates something non-Ufological.
The two above examples can be checked using the literature and even looking at human psychology. You have to be aware of many interpretations and it has taken me since 1974 to get where I am today (I'm not talking about being poor either). Therefore if someone tells me they saw Bigfoot leave a landed UFO and walk into woodland I know what I need to look for.
Will genuine aliens look like "Greys"? Well, before the whole of Ufology rebooted itself and made a huge proportion of old reports into ones involving "Greys" we had short, large headed entity reports but no Greys. The late Anne Druffel even wrote that there were never any Greys in old reports. Will the aliens look like "insectoids"? There are none reported prior to the 1990s. Same with the Reptilians. The "Tall Whites". Am I going to dismiss someone who claims to have encountered such entities? No. I will ask for the evidence or at least convincing testimony.
It is probable that there may have been old style landings and CE3Ks but those involved will not come forward (through fear of ridicule; remember the Hills did not go to Ufologistds and the women in the Liberty encounter did not approach Ufologists but Ufologists went to them and threatened to expose them to the press if they did not cooperate) and those who have are either dismissed if they claim there was no abduction and no Greys or ignored as "cranks". In over 70 years nothing has changed and there are still Ufologists who believe Adamski.
The percipient/witness is the important factor in these cases and they need to be as protected from publicity and ridicule as much as is possible and, as I noted 15 years or so ago (Ufology is now catching up) we are dealing with post traumatic stress disorder in some cases. In the 1980s I describe it in the then terms of "shell shock" and "mental shock".
What should you expect as a Ufologist or investigator-researcher? Nothing. You have to keep an open mind and gather all the data you can and remember that Hopkins, Jacobs and perhaps even Mack, led us along a false path where decades were wasted, percipients abused and where debunkers found all they needed to ridicule the UFO cult.
Expect nothing.
