While awaiting more plastic page protectors I have tried to sort out the United States folders as some were at the point of bursting.
There are currently 11 folders:
Historical -any alleged claims up until 1949
1950-1954
1955-1959
1960-1965
1966-1969
1970-1972
1973
1974
1975
1976-1979
1980 -
Although 1980 on is sparse that is because I am dealing with cases not from Hopkins, Jacobs, Mack, Carpenter and others. I should note that having been a supporter of Hopkins I do have a bunch of his MUFON talks in print plus a lot of IF (Intruders Foundation) newsletters so that side of things is not ignored and are still part of the overall archive and may need to be moved into a 12th folder for ease of access.
Hopefully by Christmas of this year I should have acquired as many summaries or case notes as I can and after that will only do an occasional archive update.
From one bulky file (see below) to 11 more organised ones is a lot of work (unfunded I may mention).
Isabel Davis, was co-founder with Ted Bloecher and Lex Mebane of the highly rated Civilian Saucer Intelligence of New York in 1954.
Isabel Davis was also co-author with Bloecher of Close Encounters At Kelly and Others of 1955. That, sadly, is all we know about here. Many of the original, serious, investigators tended to get the job done and that was it. So far removed from today's media hunting Ufologists out to become a celebrity and make money.
There is correspondence between Davis and Bloecher at the NY archives and this might reveal more about here. Unfortunately, being in the UK means that I cannot access the archives.
If anyone can fill out Davis's bio please get in touch.
Five years ago a very strange object—maybe a thousand feet long, oblong, shiny and fast—streaked across space, tens of millions of miles from Earth. Its course and speed indicated it had come from outside the solar system. A visitor from another star.
Above: Avi Loeb (c)2022 respective copyright holder
Astronomers dubbed the thing ‘Oumuamua—Hawaiian for “scout”—and started arguing about it.
On one side are an overwhelming majority of scientists who don’t know what ‘Oumuamua is, but aren’t willing to speculate as to what it might be.
On the other side, are a much smaller camp led by Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who argues that we should at least consider the possibility that ‘Oumuamua is an alien spacecraft.
Why One Harvard Astronomer Believes This Asteroid Is an Alien Ship
Now Loeb is asking the next logical question. How many other ‘Oumuamuas could there be in and around the solar system? In a new study that appeared online on Sept. 22 and hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed, Loeb and his coauthor Carson Ezell, also a Harvard astronomer, concluded there are as many as 4,000,000,000,000,000,000 (or 4 quintillion) of them.
Each is a visitor from another star, and each, possibly, artificially created.
That might seem like a lot. But the solar system is vast. And the space between our star system and our closest neighbor, Proxima Centauri, is even more vast. Actually finding any of those 4 quintillion possible mysterious objects for closer study could be really, really hard.
To be clear, Loeb isn’t claiming there are quintillions of alien craft zooming around our corner of the Milky Way. After all, he’s never said that ‘Oumuamua is definitely a robotic probe or crewed craft—just that we should be open to the possibility.
So what Loeb and Ezell calculated isn’t the population of alien craft. It’s the population of possible alien craft or other possible artificial objects. Leftover ET rocket parts. Unexplainable fragments of alien technology beyond our understanding. That kind of thing.
The math is simple. “One can use recent rates of detection of interstellar objects and known capabilities to estimate the density of similar objects in the solar neighborhood,” Loeb and Ezell wrote.
They started with all the objects astronomers have detected that have come from outside the solar system. These are objects that, in other words, could have originated with or near an alien civilization just beyond the sight of our probes and telescopes.
There are four: ‘Oumuamua, of course, but also the interstellar meteors CNEOS 2014-01-08 and CNEOS 2017-03-09,plus the interstellar comet Borisov.
That’s four interstellar visitors in eight years. Loeb and Ezell factored in just how much of the galaxy we can observe with our instruments—which is not much—in order to arrive at an estimate of how many more objects like ‘Oumuamua might be out there in the darkness, having arrived from a neighboring star system.
They actually came up with two numbers. One for all interstellar objects, including those that are zipping randomly around and across the solar system and aren’t likely to pass within view of our instruments. That’s a staggering 40,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (or 40 decillion).
The lower number, 4 quintillion, is for objects that seem to be directed toward the “habitable zone” of the solar system, close to the sun. That’s where Earth orbits, and where astronomers have some chance of spotting a passing object.
That lower number is the exciting one, and not just because the closer objects are much easier to detect. They’re also the objects that are most likely to be extraterrestrial craft. After all, they seem to be aimed in our direction. They’re objects with a purpose.
But even Loeb isn’t proposing there are 4 quintillion objects exactly like ‘Oumuamua. That object is notable not just for its apparent origin, but also for its size. It’s big enough to be a very large, crewed spacecraft. Judging from the interstellar comets we’ve detected, there’s a good chance that most of the interstellar objects in the habitable zone around the Sun are tiny—likely no bigger than 3 feet across. There are probably a million of the latter for every single ‘Oumuamua-size object, Loeb explained.
That still leaves a lot of potential ‘Oumuamuas out there, somewhere in the habitable zone of the solar system. Each one a possible alien craft, if you share Loeb’s open-mindedness.
But actually pinpointing these objects, not to mention closely inspecting them, is extremely difficult. It’s so difficult that a close encounter with a passing alien craft is the least likely way we’ll make first contact with extraterrestrials, according to Edward Schwieterman, an astrobiologist at the University of California, Riverside.
“In my view, we are much more likely to detect life that originates outside of our solar system through remote observation than by physical encounters,” Schwieterman told The Daily Beast.
We got lucky with ‘Oumuamua. It’s really big, really shiny, and it passed around 21 million miles from Earth.
But the solar system is more than 9 billion miles across. And it’s another 20 trillion miles to Proxima Centauri. Small and very far away, most interstellar objects—even the ones crossing the habitable zone—will be a lot more difficult to find than ‘Oumuamua. “Space debris is hard to see from far away,” Seth Shostak, an astronomer with the California-based SETI Institute, told The Daily Beast.
Artist’s impression of the interstellar asteroid ‘Oumuamua.
NASA
We’re getting better at it, though. New telescopes including NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope help us look farther into the darkness of the outer solar system, find ever-smaller objects, and separate the local stuff from possible interstellar visitors.
Loeb also highlighted the Vera C. Rubin Observatory that’s under construction in Chile. Set to open in 2023, the observatory with its 3.2-billion-pixel camera should be able to survey the entire southern sky every four days. “A high-resolution image could reveal bolts and screws on the surface of an artificial object and distinguish it from a nitrogen iceberg, a hydrogen iceberg or a dust bunny,” Loeb said.
‘Oumuamua was a missed opportunity. Sure, Loeb is open to the idea it’s an alien probe, but most astronomers aren’t. If we can get a closer look at the next ‘Oumuamua, maybe more scientists will come around to the idea it might be an alien craft.
In theory, we’ve got 4 quintillion opportunities.
************************************
Only 4
quintillion? I thought it might have been more 😏 There was a joke
-it may still be one- that people opt into "theoretical
sciences" because you can speculate and hypothesise about a
great deal without actually having to prove anything.
Avi Loeb seems to be of the theoretical persuasion: Oumuamua was an
inter-galactic space probe (at the least). Yes, there are some
aspects that need to be looked at deeper but no one detected anything
that pointed to it being such. Certainly there were no flourescent
lights declaring "Space probe #876564e6".
I
know, I know: "But, Terry, if that is true and a scientist says
so that validates your work of 50 years!" No. It does
not.
NASA
is launching a UFO investigation and here are Mystic Tel's
prediction: "We were able to identify a large percentage of the
objects but a small percentage escaped explanation and are worthy of
study." We can predict (know) this because NASA is not
going to go near any UFO landing reports or observations of entities
close to a landed UFO. They are not going to re-assess the
Hill, Higdon, Liberty or Walton case because that is dealing
with UFOs. Elizondo and his buddies have tried to subvert
terminology in Ufology so that they control the narrative as secrecy
kicks in even tighter -we are not getting any evidence from AATIP,
AAWSAP or ASWIPE or whatever they want to call their 'study'.
There
are, in the modern era, reports from 1944 up to 2021; not just solo
but 2-3 or more percipients/observers but these will never be looked
at because "it's UFOs" and the fact that there are so many
con men, fakers ands worse in Ufology means that any search and
investigation would need to be very careful and check all details and
Ufology has made that difficult after 70 years of creating
anti-establishment feeling. Also, if NASA looked into an
abduction case it would have 30+ years of Hopkins/Jacobs driven
fakery and even if they bypassed abductions and went just into
landing cases the Ufologists would be jumping up and down and whoring
themselves out to any and every media outlet screaming "See? We
were right! How many $ do you pay for interviews?"
You
would need a team dedicated to sceptically investigate reports and by
sceptical I mean open-minded and following the evidence. Sitting back
and talking about what “high level” observers report or some
dubious official footage is not
an investigation or study really but just another free lunch with
extra merits to add to the curriculum
vitae.
The
same applies to Loeb and his claims. In fact, someone reports
encountering a landed UFO and an octopoid entity is a more solid fact
that can be physically followed up than the statement that our star
system “may have, could have, might of” been passed through by 4
quintillion probes or whatever. It sounds great but here is the
thing: just because you are a scientist and good at the math does not
your theory correct.
In
September, 2022 Scientists
have corrected a significant math error in a theory used to describe
human color perception for over 100 years.Oopsy
This
is all theoretical math with nothing solid to back it up other than
the theorist’s imagination and the math and I would hate to be
hanging off the edge of a cliff and depend on math. If it could be
proven that 1-2 alien objects (constructed) passed through our solar
system I would be happy but with the vast distances between objects
such as asteroid belt, planets, etc.
it is very unlikely that we would spot them -most of our SETI seems
to be far more interested in the “safe” checking out of distance
galaxies and planets.
Now,
were Loeb and his team pushing for something like the launching of
Starlink probes to journey through our solar system and listen out
for/ look for alien signals or technology I would be far more
impressed.
We
know
that a high percentage of UFO reports and encounters can be explained
away easily or after some study.
We
also know
that people on our planet have had encounters that cannot be simply
dismissed as “imaginary”, “Ruth syndrome”, “dream state”
or “They are bout of their frickin’ gourds!” They have
suffered mentally (including post traumatic stress) and physically
(radiation burns, etc) and traces have been left behind (Falcon Lake,
Canada) and all while out for a quiet stroll down the lane or through
the fields or woods not to mention while simply driving home. And a
number have independent observers and even local radar tracking to
back them up.
That
is far more evidence of an “alien presence” that fairy dust in
space. When people like Loeb stop, assess the actual data we have
then it might means our making some headway. However, what Loeb is
doing is SETI.2 and I would argue it is attention-seeking publicity
for a new “SETI” and the one we already have is bad enough.
Ufology
may be taken in by Elizondo and crew. It may well be taken in and
start quoting Loeb and his 4 quintillion number but it makes no
difference at all to people whose entire world view has been
shattered because they encountered something, here on Earth, that
they were told does not exist.
Above: John Hanson in his office (c)2022 J. Hanson
John Hanson is a retired CID Officer in the West Midlands Police and first became interested in the UFO subject in January 1995, after colleagues sighted a UFO hovering over some trees. This was the trigger for his curiosity; prior to that the very mention of UFOs and 'flying saucers' was impossible for him to accept as having any reality in the modern world.
The publication of ten plus Volumes of Haunted Skies which painstakingly catalogue thousands of reports of UFOs/close encounter experiences by the public from 1940 onward, is a project that John has been working on for many years. His objective is to educate the public and therefore he's published the books at his own expense since the inception of the project.
(c)2022 J. Hanson
Initially, I purchased a volume so that I could at least say that I supported his work. I ended up buying a complete set.
When it comes to CE3K/AE reports I have amassed many, particularly from the UK which was and still is a back water for such things and I expected a few reports of interest since I am a historian but I was surprised. Hanson came up with reports I had never heard of before and many had not been in print before. Each volume presented me with surprises and Hanson managed to do something Ufologists had not bothered with before: he tracked down and spoke to percipients/observers to these cases from the 1950s on.
Above: Hanson with Lt. Col. Halt on a visit to Rendlesham Forest (c)2022 J. Hanson
For this reason Hanson is worthy of mention. Another reason he is worthy of mention is that he has met and spoken to observers who are (or should be) well known to British UFO history and has added much more than we knew before about them, their observations and the aftermaths.
Hanson has also visited Rendlesham Forest and the work he has published on the alleged UFO incident/crash there is far more concise and readable than much of the already existing literature. He has also become friends with the senior officer involved in "The Rendlesham Incident", Lt. Colonel Charles Halt. Hanson has written two dense volumes based on what Halt has revealed -The Halt Perspective and The Halt Perspective 2.
Hanson has also set up the Great British UFO Archives.
The great British UFO Archives (a work still in progress) (c)2022 J. Hanson
More ring binders and plastic document sleeves are ordered as the CE3K/AE archives grows even more. Existing folders are going to need to be divided; the 1960s for the United States was in one folder but it is bursting open so it looks as though it will be split into two: 1960-1964 and 1965-1969.
Today alone I copied off another 100+pp and that took two ink refills (glad I bought the three pack cartridge ink bottles because the cartridges new would have cost over £100 ($100) for the last month.
In fact, tolling it all up the last two months the archives have meant my spends over £500/$500 and that now makes me officially broke for the next few months.
Someone asked (again) why I am photocopying original source pages and not scanning them. Well, again, I have no scanner and a dilapidated PC that will not accept the A4 scanner I have so I have to work with what I have. The important thing is to get all the data together so that it will be a solid data base for the future.
The other question is regarding why I do not simply type up all the material from the sources? Firstly, it is so that there can be no quibbling over hat an original source stated and rather than have someone say "Well, that's what you say the source tells us" it is there in hard copy.
Also, I cannot even estimated how many pages there are in the archive. If the estimate was 3+ years to scan everything I can assure you that without a team of typists working 8 hours a day it would take me (and my arthritic hands) far more than 3 years to type up and I want to do some other than this with the rest of my life! Well, the first 50 years was enough!
What am I going to do with all this material? Well, some of it sneaked into Some Things Strange & Sinister as well as Some More Things Strange & Sinister before the 500+pp of UFO Contact? and the three follow-up books. The AFU in Sweden and Center for UFO Studies in the US have been told that they can pass any queries re. reports on to me to see whether I can come up with something. However, I have given myself to 1st January, 2023 to finish up the cataloguing and then....
And then I will be working on a new book analysing the reports. That's all I am going to write on that here.
In the meantime, before that, I intend to dust off the 1982 UFO Report which, I notice, includes discoveries about UFOs that after 40 years "scientific Ufology" has failed to and that includes defining the UFO phenomena. It is going to be the Report (aka "The Hooper Report") as it was written at that time so it is a historical record of UFO knowledge from that time but also shows how Ufology simply stagnated.
I ought to point out the original report was over 1000+pp and was whittled down to over 500pp. It's big.
