As I read a little of this and that I sometimes run across something that I find interesting and wonder why I never knew about it before because so many others seem to--and have been keeping it a secret from me! LOL
My latest "discovery" that so many others already know about is John Keel, the guy who wrote The Mothman Prophecies, which was used very loosely for the Richard Geere movie a few years back. What I didn't know was his investigations of UFOs (bare with me!), and other paranormal events, coining the term Fortean for the "discipline." He also is credited with the "Men In Black" phrase and accompanying description that spawned the movie of the same name. (His "men in black" were not quite like those portrayed in the movie, though.) He has written many other books and articles in his career investigating various odd phenomenon. He died in July of this year.
I read a reference to him in a Dave Barry book (of all places) I picked up last week. So, I looked up a few other references online. His ideas about where UFOs and extra-terrestrials come from is unique and "out there," if you'll pardon the bad pun, and not why I'm writing this. What caught my interest was his conclusions about why so many people think (or believe) they see UFOs and, in some cases, interact with them.
He attributes the "boom" in UFO sightings to one particular story from 1947 in magazine called Amazing Stories. The story was about evil aliens visiting earth and controlling people through "rays." The magazine's publisher began to get a huge number of letters from people claiming that the phenomenon was real because it had happened to them.
"[The magazine's editor Raymond] Palmer had accidentally tapped a huge, previously unrecognized audience," Keel wrote. "Nearly every community has at least one person who complains constantly to the local police that someone--usually a neighbor--is aiming a terrible ray gun at their house or apartment. This ray, they claim, in ruining their health, causing their plants to die, turning their bread moldy, making their hair and teeth fall out and broadcasting voices into their heads. Psychiatrists are very familiar with these 'ray' victims and relate the problem with paranoid schizophrenia. In earlier times, [these people] thought they were hearing the voice of God and/or the devil. Today they often blame the CIA or space being for their woes...Ray Palmer unintentionally gave thousands of these people focus for their lives." (Emphasis added.)
This caught my attention. What if this idea is even partially true? What if the people who wrote down and/or otherwise relayed the myths behind the world's religions were delusional, but only in one specific area? There are many cases of people who have claimed to see or interact with UFOs who are perfectly normal otherwise. We've all heard the stories of the sheriff, retired Air Force Colonel, etc. who report sightings but act no differently than anyone else in every other way, just waiting for the right conditions to tell their story and "give focus" to their lives.
As I hinted, Keel himself reached an odd conclusion about such sightings:
"I abandoned the extraterrestrial hypothesis in 1967 when my own field investigations disclosed an astonishing overlap between psychic phenomena and UFOs . . . I feel that the ultimate solution [to the UFO question] will involve a complicated system of new physics related to theories of the space-time continuum . . . The objects and apparitions do not necessarily originate on another planet and may not even exist as permanent constructions of matter. It is more likely that we see what we want to see and interpret such visions according to our contemporary beliefs." (emphasis added.)
Is it possible to take the conclusions here seriously (in bold), even if some of the stuff he writes otherwise is questionable and/or nuts?
Here's a piece of a description of Keel from ufomystic.com:
"Keel first challenged the extraterrestrial hypothesis with his idea of the 'superspectrum,' which theorized that UFOs were controlled by intelligences that moved freely between wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, appearing and disappearing from the infrared and the ultraviolet. Building on the ideas of little-known researchers like Meade Layne and Trevor Constable, he also proposed the theory (and provided ample evidence for this) that UFO entities were not from other planets, but were most likely native intelligences that had been involved with mankind throughout history and prehistory, and perhaps did not have our best interests in mind."
Crazy, right? I'm not trying to claim otherwise. I just find that sometimes the people on society's fringes are not excluded from getting an accurate insight in their view of things, overlooked by the rest of us because of so much other stuff from them that's not all that normal.
Maybe we all overlap in our views of human nature with the truth in that connected space. For some, that makes up a huge part of who we are as individuals. For others, not so much. But that doesn't mean that a small part of them doesn't make that connection, too, and we can't learn a thing or two--about them, us, and everyone else.
My latest "discovery" that so many others already know about is John Keel, the guy who wrote The Mothman Prophecies, which was used very loosely for the Richard Geere movie a few years back. What I didn't know was his investigations of UFOs (bare with me!), and other paranormal events, coining the term Fortean for the "discipline." He also is credited with the "Men In Black" phrase and accompanying description that spawned the movie of the same name. (His "men in black" were not quite like those portrayed in the movie, though.) He has written many other books and articles in his career investigating various odd phenomenon. He died in July of this year.
I read a reference to him in a Dave Barry book (of all places) I picked up last week. So, I looked up a few other references online. His ideas about where UFOs and extra-terrestrials come from is unique and "out there," if you'll pardon the bad pun, and not why I'm writing this. What caught my interest was his conclusions about why so many people think (or believe) they see UFOs and, in some cases, interact with them.
He attributes the "boom" in UFO sightings to one particular story from 1947 in magazine called Amazing Stories. The story was about evil aliens visiting earth and controlling people through "rays." The magazine's publisher began to get a huge number of letters from people claiming that the phenomenon was real because it had happened to them.
"[The magazine's editor Raymond] Palmer had accidentally tapped a huge, previously unrecognized audience," Keel wrote. "Nearly every community has at least one person who complains constantly to the local police that someone--usually a neighbor--is aiming a terrible ray gun at their house or apartment. This ray, they claim, in ruining their health, causing their plants to die, turning their bread moldy, making their hair and teeth fall out and broadcasting voices into their heads. Psychiatrists are very familiar with these 'ray' victims and relate the problem with paranoid schizophrenia. In earlier times, [these people] thought they were hearing the voice of God and/or the devil. Today they often blame the CIA or space being for their woes...Ray Palmer unintentionally gave thousands of these people focus for their lives." (Emphasis added.)
This caught my attention. What if this idea is even partially true? What if the people who wrote down and/or otherwise relayed the myths behind the world's religions were delusional, but only in one specific area? There are many cases of people who have claimed to see or interact with UFOs who are perfectly normal otherwise. We've all heard the stories of the sheriff, retired Air Force Colonel, etc. who report sightings but act no differently than anyone else in every other way, just waiting for the right conditions to tell their story and "give focus" to their lives.
As I hinted, Keel himself reached an odd conclusion about such sightings:
"I abandoned the extraterrestrial hypothesis in 1967 when my own field investigations disclosed an astonishing overlap between psychic phenomena and UFOs . . . I feel that the ultimate solution [to the UFO question] will involve a complicated system of new physics related to theories of the space-time continuum . . . The objects and apparitions do not necessarily originate on another planet and may not even exist as permanent constructions of matter. It is more likely that we see what we want to see and interpret such visions according to our contemporary beliefs." (emphasis added.)
Is it possible to take the conclusions here seriously (in bold), even if some of the stuff he writes otherwise is questionable and/or nuts?
Here's a piece of a description of Keel from ufomystic.com:
"Keel first challenged the extraterrestrial hypothesis with his idea of the 'superspectrum,' which theorized that UFOs were controlled by intelligences that moved freely between wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, appearing and disappearing from the infrared and the ultraviolet. Building on the ideas of little-known researchers like Meade Layne and Trevor Constable, he also proposed the theory (and provided ample evidence for this) that UFO entities were not from other planets, but were most likely native intelligences that had been involved with mankind throughout history and prehistory, and perhaps did not have our best interests in mind."
Crazy, right? I'm not trying to claim otherwise. I just find that sometimes the people on society's fringes are not excluded from getting an accurate insight in their view of things, overlooked by the rest of us because of so much other stuff from them that's not all that normal.
Maybe we all overlap in our views of human nature with the truth in that connected space. For some, that makes up a huge part of who we are as individuals. For others, not so much. But that doesn't mean that a small part of them doesn't make that connection, too, and we can't learn a thing or two--about them, us, and everyone else.
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