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UFO DATA Magazine
International UFO Conference 2008
Some say that time is speeding up, that
as we hurtle towards 2012 the second hand is sweeping round faster
and faster. Seeing as it seems like no time at all since the Roswell
60 conference a whole year ago, I might just agree with that. It’s
hard to believe that twelve months have passed since we all gathered
at the Parkside Hotel in Pontefract, West Yorkshire.
Proceedings began at 10am with some
disappointing news. Our first speaker, Rosalind Reynolds, had not
arrived. Rosalind had been in a car accident and while she was not
seriously hurt, she was badly shaken. Everybody at UFO DATA Magazine sends her
our best wishes.
Philip Mantle stepped up and admirably filled in,
giving a great, impromptu talk about the recent ‘Roswell rocks’ fiasco.
Some time later, a Dr Ronnie Milione
contacted Philip and the subject of these rocks came up. Milione said
that he had a friend at the Brookhaven National Laboratory that would be
able to analyse them.
The analysis came back to Philip from a
Dr Ronald Rau and, despite there being several grammatical errors in the
text, it was on Brookhaven-headed paper and the reports appeared
technical enough to the layman. Philip had several email exchanges with
this Dr Raw and he was surprised when the scientist agreed that a UFO
crash could have caused some of the results found in the lab tests.
It soon became clear, though, that
something was amiss. Philip was contacted by several respected UFO
researchers, who warned him that Milione was a well-known fraudster. It
also emerged that while there was a Dr Rau at Brookhaven, he retired
many years ago. Also, he was not a geologist, but a high energy
physicist. Dr Rau contacted Philip and assured him that he had no
knowledge of the tests sent to him by Milione.
PPhilip was extremely angry at the hoax
that had been perpetrated upon him and legal proceedings are under way.
As an aside, Philip revealed that the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) had
contacted him and were concerned that they had just signed up Milione as
one of their representatives! Philip advised them about Milione and it’s
likely they will release him from their organisation.
The fiasco has had a positive outcome,
however. A legitimate scientist from the States has visited the Roswell
site and has personally gather samples and will test them, promising to
forward the results to Philip.
Questions from the audience asked about
radiation, geology and if Philip believed a UFO crashed at Roswell, to
which he replied that he did, having spoken to many researchers and
people such as Jesse Marcel Jr.
Ask anybody to name a town connected
with UFOs and top of the list will be Warminster.
Kevin Goodman has made the UFO history of this small,
Wiltshire town his life’s work. His lecture, delivered in a humorous and
endearing style, unveiled his lifelong obsession.
Back to Warminster and events there
really took off in 1965-1966. A place called Cradle Hill seemed to be
the best location to see UFOs. It was right next to a military base,
which was only a mile or so from the town and on Saturday nights, fifty
or sixty people could attend the regular skywatches
held there. Lights in the sky were often seen, such as the famous
‘Amber Gambler’.
Kevin then presented some photographs by
Bob Strong. One photo, Kevin explained, was a flare and another was
merely a kink in the negative. He also showed us some photos and maps of
the area to allow us to get a ‘lay of the land’.
Then we came to the infamous photograph
taken by Gordon Faulkner of the so-called Warminster Thing. It is a
classic disc-shaped object, oft reproduced in newspapers and magazines.
Kevin explained that we generally only see the grainy enlargement of the
object and that, in the original photograph, ‘The Thing’ is hardly
discernible. In 1980, Faulkner admitted that he had faked the photograph
with a cotton reel, only to later recant this and say the image was
genuine.
Arthur Shuttlewood, meanwhile, claimed
that he was being contacted by aliens via a telephone box. He was
also visited by ‘Aryan’ people at his home. Crop circles also
appeared in the area and were purported to be UFO landing sites.
In the early 1970s, a Fleet Street
reporter, Ken Rogers, moved into the area. He was an admitted UFO buff
and would go on to edit the Warminster UFO Newsletter.
By this time, Shuttlewood was fully ensnared by the UFO subject and,
as mentioned earlier, his books became ever more metaphysical and
‘New Age’ in nature.
It was in the 1970s that Kevin became
fascinated by the UFO enigma. When he was fifteen, Kevin was under the
impression that UFOs were solely and American phenomenon. He was
surprised to discover that the UK had its fair share of UFO lore. As a
young man, he would visit Warminster and stay at Star House, the centre
set up by Peter and Jane Paget. Kevin and his friend were allowed to
stay in the newly-opened self-catering section for the princely sum of
fifty pence per night.
From Star House came The Fountain Journal, a
subscription-based newsletter edited by the Pagets, Jane’s mother
and Arthur Shuttlewood. After just three issues, Shuttlewood pulled
out and the journal went into decline. The Pagets asked subscribers
to pay a £100 lifetime fee. Not surprisingly, nobody took up the
offer and it is a good thing, because
The Fountain Journal only
lasted for ten more issues!
Returning to Star House later in the
year with his friends, Colin and Chris, Kevin became sucked into the
Warminster phenomenon. He and his friends went out on skywatches and did
some audio recordings at Cradle Hill. They were intrigued to find
strange, clicking sounds on the tape (in his book,
UFO Warminster: Cradle of Contact,
Kevin describes the sounds as ‘thumping’, more akin to a heartbeat than
a clicking). They tried again with a different tape recorder and heard
the same sounds. On the third attempt, they descended into an old,
concrete grain silo, sixteen feet underground. They recorded silence for
five minutes and, guess what, the same clicking sounds were on the tape.
Kevin cannot explain it to this day.
One foggy night, the group were standing
by the white gates that sit adjacent to Cradle Hill when they became
spooked by something. They decided to retreat back to Star House and
fully expected the door to be unlocked, as the Pagets ran a more or less
‘open house’ policy. The door wouldn’t budge. They knew that somebody
was in, but know amount of hammering at the door or yelling brought an
answer. Then it started raining. They looked around the house for
another door or an open window and it was then that Colin was pushed
over by an unseen force. Kevin found a window and began climbing
through. Imagine his ire when he had climbed halfway through and Colin
and Chris entered through the unlocked front door!
A year later, Chris and Kevin returned
to Star House. They were in a room at the top of the house and had a
good view of the countryside from the window. Suddenly Chris leaped up
and ran to the window. Kevin joined him and they watched a silver,
cigar-shaped object cross the sky from right to left. Kevin had a decent
camera and snapped off three exposures, keeping the camera as steady as
he could.
Peter Paget offered to have the film
developed for them, but Kevin declined. A week later, he collected the
photos from the chemist (as you did back then). No UFO could be seen in
any of the exposures. He had the photos enlarged, but there was still no
sign of the anomalous object that they had seen so clearly. What was
going on? Both he and Chris had clearly seen the UFO and Chris had
pointed out that people on Cradle Hill were gesticulating towards it.
Unfortunately, Kevin no longer has the negatives and he regrets rashly
throwing them away so many years ago, given what can be achieved with
modern image processing software.
In the late Seventies, Arthur
Shuttlewood separated from the Pagets and became allied with another
group called UFO-Info. The
Fountain Journal ceased publication when the Pagets left
Warminster for pastures new and UFO-Info also folded a short time
later.
In 1978, the BBC produced a documentary
about UFOs and they visited Warminster. Arthur Shuttlewood was
invited to participate and he grudgingly accepted. The documentary
spent two nights on Cradle Hill with Arthur. The first night, he was
very tight-lipped with them, but on the second, he opened up and
began telling some of his more implausible stories, such as being
levitated by a ‘white being’. Of course, the BBC broadcast this
‘sensational’ account and the public ridicule ensued.
In 1994, Ken Rogers published his book, The Warminster Triangle..
It looked at UFOs, the paranormal and general Forteana, including a
1912 sighting of a ‘fast aircraft’ seen flying over a nearby town.
Arthur huttlewood died in 1996 and
Kevin noted that almost everybody had fond memories of the man.
In 2005, Steve Dewey and John Reis
released their book, In Alien
Heat: The Warminster Mystery Revisited. It is a sceptical analysis
of the events in the town and Kevin recommends it, written, as it is, by
two people who have been to Warminster and taken part in skywatches and
interviewed witnesses and ufologists alike.
Warminster is a very special place for
Kevin. He has started holding anniversary skywatches on Cradle Hill and
people come from all over the country to attend.
While Warminster’s heyday may have been
in the 1960s, UFO sightings still continue to this day. In 2006, a woman
was out walking her dog and saw five red lights moving quickly towards
Cley Hill, a hill fort and barrow near Warminster. The lights formed a
triangle and shot off at high speed. Kevin looked into this sighting and
could find no explanation for what the woman (and her dog) saw.
Why did so much happen at Warminster?
Kevin has a personal theory. In the 1950s, the Clean Air Bill was
passed. Atmospheric pollution began to decrease and the skies became
clearer. The 1960s were the height of the Space Age and public interest
was enormous. This period was also the dawn of mass air transportation,
with more aircraft than ever crossing our skies. All these factors,
Kevin believes added to the Warminster mystery.
Kevin was asked by an audience member
about Arthur Shuttlewood’s ‘UFO detectors’. Kevin, of course did
remember these devices that picked up electromagnetic field
variations and beeped accordingly. They were not very reliable and
were prone to go off even when an identical detector beside it
remained silent. Kevin had also alluded to a contactee experience he
believed he had had. Kevin was unsure of what had actually happened,
so did not like to comment further.
Kevin’s talk was excellent. His book, UUFO Warminster: Cradle of
Contact, is a great read and highly recommended and his website
can be found at
www.ufo-warminster.co.uk
After lunch (and my nabbing of a signed
copy of Kevin Goodman’s book!),
Wing Commander Alan Turner MBE entered the conference hall. Wing Cdr
Turner is now disabled, so could not stand at the lectern. He still
managed to keep the packed room enraptured by his talk.
He began with an explanation of how
radar works. A radio pulse is sent out and the return signal is captured
in a cathode ray tube. Every fifteen seconds, the sweep is updated and
the previous blips begin to fade. This gives the radar operator the
relative speed of the aircraft. The closer together the blips, the
slower the plane is going. The farther apart they are, the faster.
In the 1960s and 1970s, radar screens
had to be viewed in the dark and there was no computer software to
remove extraneous information, such as birds, storm fronts etc., as
there is today.
Alan showed us a map of the southern
portion of the UK and how it was divided into distinct radar zones. RAF Sopley, in Hampshire, was part of Southern Radar and they used
Type 264 radar equipment. Alan was the duty supervisor and he had
three radar controllers at separate consoles. Each of these
controllers had an assistant. On top of this were three more
assistants, a supervisor and a cook.
In the summer of 1971, six blips
appeared on the scopes. It was about 2pm and the returns were headed in
a south-easterly direction. According to the height-finder radar, the
closest blip was at an altitude of 3000 feet (914 metres), while the
furthest was at 60,000 feet (18,290 metres). The distance from the first
to the last blip was about 40 miles (64.4 km). The only type of aircraft
that could climb to such a height in only 40 miles was the
English-Electric Lightning.
In all, over a period of about
twenty-five minutes, about forty blips appeared on the scopes, headed
south-east and vanished. Alan said that there was no way so many
Lightnings would be sent out in such a fashion. It would leave UK
airspace defenceless against the Warsaw Pact. This was the height of the
Cold War remember.
Alan checked around and his colleagues
at the RAF confirmed that they had nothing airborne at that time. He
also found that at least five other radar stations had detected the
objects. Two Canberra light bombers were returning from Germany. Alan
requested that they check out the radar returns. The pilots also had the
objects on their radar and they headed towards them.
As they approached, one of the pilots reported that an object
on his scope had ‘climbed like the clappers’. Nobody saw the objects
with the naked eye and Alan has no explanation for what caused these
radar returns.
As is standard procedure, a camera
records takes photos of the radar screens at regular intervals and Alan
took the images and locked them in the base safe. Afterwards, he and his
colleagues wrote up their reports about the incident.
Three or four days later, Alan was
called in to his CO’s office where he was interviewed about the incident
by men in civilian dress. They were polite and friendly and Alan thinks
that there was nothing sinister about being told not to speak about what
he and his colleagues saw on the radar scopes
In 1975, Alan was stationed at RAF
Wattisham when his commanding officer told him that he had heard back
from the MoD and that the incident was regarded as ‘unexplained’.
Since Alan came forward with his story,
great interest has been shown in the media and he has done many
interviews in newspapers, magazines and on various radio shows around
the world. The night before the UFO DATA conference, he was contacted by
a former colleague who told him that he clearly remembered the incident.
Others have also begun coming forward, many from different RAF bases,
and are beginning to talk about this and other incidents.
Alan concluded by saying that if the MoD
ever released the images from the radar screens, he believes that
they would be altered to show nothing out of the ordinary.
Questions from the audience included a
query about the size of the objects. Alan explained that the radar could
not differentiate sizes. A small aircraft would return the same size
blip as a Jumbo jet. He was also asked if he had any ideas about what it
was that the radar picked up. He does not know, but he does not discount
the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis. The galaxy is so huge, he said, that
there must be intelligent life
out there capable of reaching our planet.
Finally, Alan was asked if the radar
returns could have been caused by an SR-71 ‘Blackbird’ or U2
reconnaissance aircraft. Alan explained that when those aircraft were
due to overfly UK airspace, a code word was given so that the radar
stations knew that the aircraft was friendly. No code word was given
that day at Sopley in 1971.
Alan’s lecture was fascinating and the
fact that a former wing commander is prepared to speak at a UFO
conference about his experiences is a huge step forward for the subject
as a whole.
After Alan’s talk, UFO DATA Magazine co-editor,
Gary Heseltine took the stage for a special
presentation. He told the audience that because of his status as a
police detective, he gets extra attention from the media. On the whole,
he said, the mainstream media do not give the UFO subject the coverage
it deserves, but when somebody like Wing Commander Alan Turner comes
along, they should take notice of him. Gary is very impressed with
Alan’s story, noting that he served for six years in the RAF and knows
the ins and outs of what goes on in the forces. Gary has spoken to large
numbers of people about UFOs, including pilots, policemen, military
officers etc, and feels that reports from such witnesses should be taken
very seriously.
He then went on to cover the Belgian UFO
wave of 1990, when a triangular UFO was intercepted by F16s of the
Belgian air force. The fighters got a radar lock on the object, which
suddenly descended five thousand feet in only three seconds. The object
performed a ninety degree turn, pulling thirty Gs, a
manoeuvre totally impossible by today’s aircraft. The Belgian air
force concluded that the UFO was an unknown,
intelligently-controlled vehicle. How can the media ignore a news
story like that?!
In August, 2008, Gary met with a
television production company based in London. They told him that they
were interested in doing some programming based on the UFO subject. The
mother of one of the producers had claimed to be an
abductee and this was the impetus for making the series.
Gary devised and will present an
eight-part series about serious
UFO stories. The company is keen to produce this series and is waiting
for financial backing. Watch this space!
Philip Mantle also confirmed that a UFO
DATA television programme could be in the offing. Exciting stuff.
Russel Callaghan stepped up to the podium after the
break. It has been five years since the sad passing of Graham Birdsall
and Russ recalled the conferences staged by Graham and
UFO Magazine. He noted that this year’s conference had the first
increase in ticket prices for twenty years, explaining that this was
necessary due to the expense of bringing in speakers from overseas.
He commended the Parkside Hotel for providing
UFO DATA Magazine with a
great venue for the conference.
YouTube has provided people all over the
world with a great vehicle for distributing their UFO videos. Of course,
most of the UFO footage that appears on YouTube is either of very low
quality, fake or both. It has proven to be both a useful tool for
ufologists, but at the same time, a boon for hoaxsters.
Russ recommended using DV tapes for
filming rather than camcorders that come with DVD, hard drives or
flash memory. He has found that digital tape provides the best
quality.
Moving on, Russ commented on the recent
MoD releases, noting that, being written by UFO researchers,
UFO DATA Magazine had
reported the Milton Torres story, where, in the Fifties, he was a
fighter pilot and was ordered to shoot down a UFO, months before the
Ministry opened its files. A big thank you to David Cayton for
getting that story to us.
Russ accepts that the MoD needs its
secrets, after all, they are charged with the defence of our country.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) allows the public to ask for any
UFO files the government may possess. This is great in theory, but in
practice, it can be both illuminating and frustrating in equal measure.
Recalling the infamous Condign Report,
Russ explained that the MoD refused to allow
UFO DATA Magazine to release the report on CD to its readers unless
we paid them a huge fee. The report (and all MoD literature) is
covered by Crown Copyright, you see. Russ thought this was kind of
ironic, given that much of the material in the report was lifted
from external, copyrighted sources!
At least the MoD releases have sparked
public interest in UFOs and the conference was covered by both the
Paranormal Channel and Sky News.
Russ remembered when UFO Magazine received the
Martyn Stubbs NASA footage. This would go on to be the subject of
the award-winning Smoking Gun
video. Bruce Burgess, the documentary maker of
Dreamland fame (and more
recently, the excellent
Bloodline), had arranged to meet Russ and Graham Birdsall at the
Laughlin conference in Nevada. They were to visit NASA and do all
sorts of things to promote the
Smoking Gun video with Burgess. When they arrived at the hotel,
a fax from Burgess was handed to them saying that the visit to NASA
had been dropped without explanation.
Russ also recalled the time when he
appeared on GMTV for UFO
Magazine. He took along the Martyn Stubbs footage of the STS-75
‘tether incident’, along with some other UFO footage, and arrived
early for the show. Everything seemed okay. Then there was a ‘mix
up’ with the clips and the same UFO footage was shown twice. The
Stubbs clips were not broadcast at all. Russ said Eamonn Holmes hit
the roof. He was furious. The gallery claimed to have ‘lost’ the
STS-75 footage.
That may well be true, but it happened
again, when Russ appeared on
The Big Breakfast! Why didn’t the broadcasters want the public
to see the STS-75 footage?
This year, UFO DATA Magazine contributed to the Channel 5 series,
Britain’s Closest Encounters.
Russ, Philip and Gary gave up a lot of time and material for their
parts in the programme concerning Alan Godfrey. In the end, they
only got seconds of on-air
time. Russ was very critical of the programme, particularly the way
the producers linked PC Godfrey’s UFO sighting to the case of
Zigmund Adamski, a Polish immigrant miner, who was found dead in
Todmorden a few months before Alan’s incident. PC Godfrey was the
officer called to the scene, where Mr Adamski was found atop a pile
of coal in a coal yard. Russ explained that Alan has long said that
there is no connection at all between Zigmund Adamski and his UFO
sighting. They are both mysterious, yes, but they are not connected,
except by Alan’s presence.
Russ was also critical of the way the
programme treated Captain Ray Bowyer, the pilot who, along with several
of his passengers, saw two huge UFOs near Guernsey in 2007. Ray has
flown the same route for years. He knows what he saw, yet the
programme’s ‘experts’ claimed to know better. It is no wonder that
pilots are cautious about coming forward with sighting reports. The late
Graham Shepherd, an airline pilot for years, almost lost his job when he
spoke about his UFO encounter.
Then we had the Sharon Rowlands footage
from Bonsall in Derbyshire. Her footage, once touted as
extraordinary evidence, is nothing more than an out of focus light
source. The footage shown in the programme resolves in the last four
seconds to show us that it is an aeroplane, nothing more. Despite
this, an ‘expert’ declares it to be a lamp post!
Russ recalled the time when he and
Graham Birdsall visited Bonsall. Local UFO researcher, Omar Fowler,
had phoned UFO Magazine
saying that he thought the footage showed a plane, but they went
anyway. As they approached Sharon’s house, she was out walking her
dog. Graham called out to her and she set off running away from
them, refusing to speak to Graham and Russ.
The story goes that she was offered
£20,000 for her tape. That’s not true, explained Russ. Famed UFO
programme maker, Bob Kiviat was offered the film, but he declined and
there was no way he would ever pay such an amount of money.
After Russ’ talk, we were treated to an
extra guest, as
Colin Saunders, an aircraft engineer,
told the audience about his family’s UFO experience. He and his
family were driving home after a meal in Warwickshire in March 1999.
They saw some red lights hovering by the side of the road. As they
approached, the object morphed into a saucer or cigar shape and then
into a triangle. Colin produced a model of what he saw, complete with
flashing lights.
He considers that what he saw was a
‘nuts and bolts’ craft, being about the width of the conference hall
from about a hundred feet away. A hedge blocked their view and when they
passed them, the object was gone. Then they saw it again in the
distance, moving away. He would say the UFO was at least the size of a
football pitch and moved in complete silence.
The final speaker of the day was
Dr Roberto Pinotti from Italy. He is the director of the
Centro Ufologico Nazionale (CUN). His lecture was accompanied by slides
which went a little bit awry towards the end, but that didn’t mar the
enjoyment of his fascinating talk.
According to Roberto, the Italian press
is not too bad when it comes to ufology and they cover UFO reports
regularly. That these stories are rarely heard outside of Italy is down
to the language barrier, he speculates.
Roberto explained that Italy has had
many UFO flaps and showed a graph with peaks in 1950, 54, 70, 78 and
1979. There was also a minor wave in the 1990s. Roberto told us of some
Italian UFO cases:
In 1947, a professor was in the Italian
Alps when he came across two alien entities. They paralysed him, climbed
into their craft and took off.
A series of photos were shown that
Roberto explained were faked. They depict a saucer landing and a ‘being’
emerging. They were nothing more than models, as explained by Roberto.
In 1954, there were more than a thousand
sightings and Italy’s most influential magazine (their equivalent to Time or
Life) featured UFO stories heavily. In October of that year, a press
photographer captured a UFO on film. Two cigar-shaped objects flew
over Florence and were watched by thousands of people. A football
match was interrupted as the craft flew over head. The objects
released smaller craft. Local newspapers went ‘crazy’ about the
incident. ‘Angel hair’ was found and analysed by a university in the
first official investigation of the substance in the world. It was
found to be made of various elements, but it was unstable, so
deteriorated rapidly.
On November 1st, a woman was
walking in the countryside when she encountered an object in the
fields. It was a flattened cone shape, like a Chinese hat. Beings
came out of the craft and spoke to her in a language she did not
understand. Despite this, she was not afraid at first. Soon
afterwards, though, she became scared and fled. She told of her
encounter and others went to the area to find traces on the ground
where the object had been. More witnesses came forward, saying they
had seen the object taking off. The police interviewed the woman and
found her to be very sincere. Roberto believes this is one of the
most important cases from Italy.
In Tuscany in 1962, a witness has a
Close Encounter of the Third Kind (CE3K) with robot-like entities. A
drawing was provided which resembled another case which Roberto would
come to later.
During this period, the Italian air
force began using the same UFO sighting report forms that were in use by
Project Blue Book in the United States. They consist of twenty-seven
questions and the same form is in use to this day.
In the 1960s, an important political
figure in Italy had a daylight sighting of a UFO. He was in his car with
his wife and daughter, driving to the seaside near Rome. They were
followed by a disc-shaped object. Terrified, they returned to Rome and
the politician passed on his report to the Italian Secret Service. The
details of the incident were only released by chance.
More sightings from the 1960s include
ones from the Adriatic Coast, an object similar to the famous ‘Adamski
saucer’ and a flying triangle intercepted by Italian jet fighters in
1966.
In 1973, three aircraft spotted an
unknown object over Turin airport. The same year, the air force picked
up unknown objects on radar and an air force sergeant saw a UFO.
In 1974, a boy took two photos of a UFO
and Roberto said they were judged to be genuine.
Roberto’s lecture continued like this
for a while, with case after case from Italy being mentioned, but not
reviewed in-depth. To include them all would take far too long, but they
made for interesting listening.
In the 1930s, Italian dictator,
Mussolini, became interested in UFOs. There had been many reports of
aeroplanes encountering strange objects in the skies over Italy.
Believing that other European nations were behind these unidentified
craft, Mussolini set up a secret group to research the UFOs. The aim
was to capture some of this technology for Fascist Italy. The head
of this group was none other than Guglielmo Marconi. During this
period, blueprints for an Italian ‘flying saucer’ emerged, only for
this and all other UFO research to be seized by Italy’s Axis ally,
Nazi Germany.
Italy’s research into UFOs in the 1930s
made the country the first in the world to officially investigate UFOs,
according to Roberto, beating the USA by a decade.
The English version of the CUN website
can be found at
http://www.cun-italia.net/welcome.htm
Sunday’s line-up began with
Brian Allan, who gave a fascinating lecture on
so-called ‘portal areas’, locations that appear to have large and varied
instances of paranormal phenomena. Brian meshes science with magic and
the paranormal to great effect, linking quantum mechanics to magical
spells and more.
In a way, our experiments in quantum
physics are a way of doing this, but utilising our understanding of
technology. The Large Hadron Collider in Cern, Switzerland, is a way for
our scientists to explore the subatomic or quantum universe. The Holy
Grail of quantum physics is to discover the Higgs Boson, the so-called
‘God Particle’, that, if the models are correct can answer some of the
fundamental questions in nature, particularly the question of why matter
has mass when it is essentially made up from ‘massless’ subatomic
particles.
If we can get to the bottom of how the
universe ticks, we could create traversable wormholes, much like those
seen in the popular movie and TV series, Stargate. In that instance,
physical technology is utilised to open a wormhole to another place in
the universe, but it may also be possible to do the same thing by other
means.
The drug, dimethyltryptamine, also known
as DMT, is thought by many to be a way to open portals to other planes
of existence. Many users experience similar experiences while under the
influence of the drug, often taken in the form of ayahuasca, a
foul-tasting tea used in South America. Users often report conversing
with ‘aliens’, seeing UFOs and many other strange things.
This leads Alan to the notion that
physical existence is irrevocably linked to the conscious mind. He told
the story of when Captain James Cook moored his ship beside a lonely
island. The natives could not see his ship and were astounded to see men
emerging from thin air. They had never seen a ship before, so their
minds had no frame of reference. To them, the ship only ‘appeared’ when
they touched it. This reminds me of the
Anthropic Principle, which states that matter does not exist in a
physical form until it is perceived. The ship didn’t exist for the
islanders until they touched it.
Alan then showed us a picture of a
tesseract, also called a hypercube. A tesseract is a three-dimensional
representation of a four-dimensional form (or in the case of the
picture, a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional
representation of a four-dimensional form – ouch!). While it is
difficult to understand what this means, Alan believes he once underwent
a shift in consciousness that allowed him to experience the tesseract
from the inside out. It made a lasting impression upon him.
Moving on to ‘portal’ or ‘window’ areas,
Alan briefly reviewed the so-called Skinwalker Ranch in Utah. This was
the subject of a terrific book by Colm Kelleher and George Knapp, based
on the investigations of the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS).
NIDS bought the ranch and recorded many instances of unexplainable
phenomena, ranging from UFOs to orbs to ghosts to poltergeist incidents
and more.
One thing portal areas have in common,
Alan explained, is the reporting of orbs. He has seen them with the
naked eye, so they could not be dismissed as dust or moisture, as many
orb photographs are.
Other notable portal area ‘events’
include them lying on ley lines, the sighting of jet black,
coffin-shaped objects or strange entities, such as mothmen, owlmen, ETs
and more. Animal mutilations are also reported more in portal areas; low
frequency humming is often heard, like the Taos Hum and the Largs Hum.
Another example of how this ‘magical’
side to the universe has been engaged with is The Philadelphia
Experiment, in which the USS Eldridge was made to disappear for a period
of time before returning with shocking results – if the stories are to
be believed. When the ship reappeared, men and equipment were found
fused into bulkheads.
A similar result came out of the
experiments of John Hutchison, a Canadian researcher and discoverer of
‘the Hutchison Effect’. Hutchison was trying to recreate the experiments
of Nikola Tesla and found that sometimes, by applying methods that are
somewhat unclear, he could levitate objects, change the structure of
objects and even cause dissimilar objects (such as wood and metal) to
merge into one another. Hutchison is a controversial character and there
are as many people who believe he is a fraud as those who stand by his
research.
Back to the beginning – the very
Beginning! Alan thinks that the dawn of our universe, the Big Bang, was
actually a portal bursting into our universe and creating it as it
expanded.
The Bible tells us that in the beginning
there was the Word. Could words and phrases i.e. sounds have created our
universe? Everything in the universe has a frequency, a
vibrational frequency. Experiments in manipulating frequencies have
been conducted that appear to have created light, sound and water
out of a vacuum. Tesla noted that everything is ‘vibration,
resonance and frequency’. Imagine if he had the technology at his
disposal to make his intellect a reality.
Sticking with the Biblical theme, Alan
showed us the Tetragrammaton, depicted in Hebrew as
יהוה.
This is, according to Hebrew myth, the lost name of God. In our alphabet
it is YHWH – Yahweh or Jehovah. It is said to be a powerful word when
spoken properly and this brought us back to the spells of magicians and
the notion that the physical world can be affected by specific sound
frequencies.
Probably the most famous story about
using sound to affect the environment is that of the Pied Piper of
Hamelin. In this famous old tale, the Piper uses his flute to rid the
town of its plague of rats. The townsfolk then refuse to pay him and,
using his flute again, abducts the children of the town, luring them
into a cave, never to be seen again. One child could not keep up and
returned to the town to tell the tale. The story varies depending on the
source, with some of them having two kids escape, some having the
children lured into the river and at least one (the one I heard at
school) having the children lead to a face of rock, which they then
enter while the piper plays his flute.
Was this an example of portal transit?
Did the Pied Piper use musical frequencies to open a doorway to
‘somewhere’?
Allan told the legend of the Reverend
Robert Kirk. Kirk was walking on Doon Hill (sometimes called Fairy
Hill) in Aberfoyle, Scotland, in 1692, when he collapsed and died.
The story goes that it is not Kirk’s body buried in his grave, but a
duplicate provided by ‘fairies’, the real Robert Kirk having been
taken away by them. It is said that Kirk reappeared at the
christening of his son, hoping to be released from his fairy
captivity, only for it to go a bit pear-shaped. Kirk vanished once
more and was never seen again. It is thought by some that Kirk may
be a gatekeeper between our world and the fairy world, basically an
interdimensional doorman at the portal between realities.
Some famous people have claimed to have
glimpsed beyond our dimension and into other realms. Dr John Dee, that
jack-of-all-trades for Queen Elizabeth I, was said to have used the
method of scrying to view alternative realities. He would gaze into
obsidian and other crystals and, he claimed, ‘angels’ would speak with
him. He would write down these dictations in the Enochian language he
said angels spoke.
Aleister Crowley, the famous occultist,
was said to have opened a portal and conversed with a being called Lam,
who may or may not have been an Enochian angel. The thing about
Crowley’s representation of Lam is that he looks a heck of a lot like a
Grey alien! Brian believes there is a connection between the Greys,
demons and the so-called Reptilians. It is possible that they can be
summoned. Yes, we’re back to incantations again. Crowley was alleged to
have successfully summoned demons at his house on the shores of Loch
Ness in the early 1900s. A few years later and the loch would become
famous for something else entirely. Could Loch Ness be a portal area
artificially opened by Crowley’s ‘magic’?
Later, Crowley would join the Ordo
Templi Orientis (OTO) and within only two years would be the head of
the British and Irish chapters. He travelled to America and opened a
lodge, which had members including Jack Parsons, founder of the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, and L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of
Scientology.
1947 became something of a ‘window
year’, with lots of things happening (the dawn of modern ufology,
Roswell, the CIA is formed, the IMF is formed, the US Air Force is
formed, the sound barrier is broken, the WTO is formed, the first
transistor is made and tons of other stuff). Brian believes this may be
because in that year (the year of Crowley’s death), Parsons and Hubbard
may have attempted to artificially open a portal and it backfired,
enabling something to pass into our world. This something was a
homunculus, an agent or a demon from elsewhere loosed into our reality
and triggering many of the things that have passed into our history.
This brings us to Brian’s favourite
subject, Rosslyn Chapel, near Edinburgh. Brian believes that a portal
exists at Rosslyn and that there are clues designed into the chapel’s
construction that can unlock this mystic doorway. He believes that the
key lies in red light, what we could call a laser. One of the stained
glass windows casts a red light and Brian thinks that something should
be hanging from the ceiling of the chapel to catch the light and produce
a beam in front of the altar. In 1998, Brian was visiting the chapel and
experienced what he believes to be energy from the portal. It had a
profound effect on him. He also thinks the portal was partially opened
in 2005.
What is behind the portal? Brian said
there are various theories, but he believes it might be a ‘reality of
information’. A psychic once told him that Rosslyn exists 99.9% in our
reality and 0.1% in another dimension. The quote by Arthur C Clarke came
to mind: “Any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable
from magic.”
Brian firmly believes that today’s
quantum physicists will become the new magicians that will allow mankind
to finally traverse the universe.
Details of Brian’s book, TThe Hole in the Sky can be
found at
http://hiddenmysteries.com
After a coffee break (and, boy, I needed
one after Brian’s lecture – rikey it was good!)
Peter McCue began his talk about what he has termed
hyperscepticism. This is when a different yardstick is applied to
extraordinary events than they would to a more mundane occurrence. If
you see a car crash, for example, nobody will disbelieve you, but say
you saw a UFO crash, then that’s a whole different kettle of fish. Often
sceptics will use the famous Carl Sagan fob off: “Extraordinary claims
require extraordinary evidence”, meaning “I don’t believe you!”
According to a sceptic, paranormal
events cannot occur. Peter believes such events are commonplace. We all
know people who have had some sort of paranormal experience, be it a UFO
sighting, seeing a ghost or having a premonition of some kind.
Now, scepticism itself is not a bad
thing, in fact it is essential, but hypersceptics, according to
Peter, often border on the delusional. There are three main types of
people: Credulists, who don’t have enough scepticism and believe
practically everything they are told; healthy sceptics, who take a
normal approach, investigating seriously and coming to honest
conclusions; Hypersceptics, who dismiss everything, even if their
alternative explanations are as unlikely as the original claim.
One case close to Peter’s heart is the
Clapham Woods Mystery. Clapham Woods lies in West Sussex and has
been a hotbed of paranormal activity for many years. In the 1960s,
there were many UFO sightings in the area. In the 1970s, several
dogs went missing in the woods and others would become distressed,
only to return to normal after leaving the area. Paranormal events
occurred, with apparitions being seen, presences being felt, big
cats being spotted and many other strange goings-on. Going back to
Brian Allan’s talk, he referred to Clapham Woods as a ‘window area’.
Occult activity was also reported, with
one group, the Friends of Hecate, being prominent. Conducting animal
sacrifices in the woods. A walker once found a demonic mural in a barn
in Clapham Woods. In 1982, author, Toyne Newton, received a
letter from a Friends of Hecate initiate suggesting that human
sacrifice had gone on and that the disappearance of a vicar was
connected. The Reverend Harry Snelling had disappeared in 1978 and
his body was not found until three years later. There have been
several deaths in the area in the 1970s and 1980s, boosting the
woods’ notoriety.
When Peter investigated, though, he
found that a local gamekeeper had admitted killing the dogs that had
gone missing, blaming them for scaring his birds. He sees the mystery as
a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, with the area’s occult status
drawing in those with an interest to take part in occult ceremonies.
Indeed, signs of occultism can be found all over
Clapham Woods, with pentagrams and other symbols carved into trees.
UFO hyperscepticism comes in three main
types, said Peter: Naive – where the sceptic is ignorant of the subject
and accepts the views of other sceptics; Delusional – where the sceptic
is aware of the evidence but will not accept it; Synthetic – where the
sceptic makes public sceptical statements, but privately believes
otherwise.
Stanton Friedman believed that Dr Donald
Menzel, a noted UFO sceptic, was a secret believer, having seen a UFO
himself in 1949.
The characteristics of hyperscepticism
are: mockery, presupposition, prejudicial language (calling researchers
‘UFO buffs’, for instance), a lack of interest in the broader subject,
adversarial arguments, equating sequence with causation (saying the
media influences witnesses etc.) and playing to a sceptical audience.
The Skinwalker Ranch in Utah (as
mentioned in Brian Allan’s lecture) is named after the Native
American shapeshifting medicine man. It lies in the Uintah Basin,
which itself has a long history of UFO reports and animal
mutilations.
Peter ran through the highlights of the
case on the ‘Gorman’ ranch (the family’s name had been changed by
Kelleher and Knapp for their book). The family bought the ranch and
immediately things began happening. UFOs were seen, strange creatures
prowled their land and other paranormal events. In desperation, they
sold the ranch to NIDS, but stayed on as caretakers. NIDS documented a
great deal of what the Gormans had reported, adding animal mutilations,
magnetic anomalies, strange holes in the ground and deliberate vandalism
of their equipment by unseen forces.
A review of the book, The Hunt for the Skinwalker,
by Magonia magazine was
scathing, according to Peter, reduced to derision and mockery. Peter
contacted George Knapp, who replied to him saying that such
reviewers are why scientists prefer to remain anonymous when
conducting paranormal research.
In conclusion, Peter remarked that while
scepticism is healthy, don’t overdo it.
After lunch it was
Gary Heseltine’s turn to take to the lectern. Gary is a
serving detective in the British Transport Police and has had an
interest in UFOs since he had a sighting when he was 15. He saw lights
in the sky that he could not explain and as they moved over the town, a
power cut ensued.
Gary’s lecture concerns something,
though, that he has not really spoken about before – alien abductions.
He begins with a potted history of the abduction phenomenon, covering
the most famous cases.
In 1957, a Brazilian farmer called
Antonio Villas Boas claimed to have been abducted by four alien beings
as he was ploughing a field one night. The creatures,
described as five-feet tall, wearing grey coveralls and helmets and
having blue eyes, dragged him into their egg-shaped craft, where he
had sexual intercourse with a female being that he felt intensely
attracted to.
Boas’ case was one of the earliest
abduction stories and he defended it to his death in 1992.
In 1961, Barney and Betty Hill were
driving home to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, when they encountered an
unidentified flying object. They were led aboard the craft where medical
procedures and other tests were undertaken. Betty was shown a star map
with lines connecting the systems, some lines denoting trade routes and
others routes of exploration.
The Hill case became the template
against which all other abduction stories were examined. Barney died in
1969, but Betty insisted the abduction really happened until her death
in 2004.
Arizona logger, Travis Walton, and his
six crewmates had finished work for the day in 1975 and were driving
home to the small town of Snowflake. On the way, they encountered a
glowing UFO about twenty feet in diameter. They stopped the truck and
Travis ran out to get a closer look. His friends watched as a beam of
light shot from the craft and struck Travis, leaving him apparently
dead. Panicked, the logging crew drove away before returning after a few
minutes only to find both the UFO and Travis gone. A huge search ensued,
but no sign of Travis could be found. He showed up five days later,
still wearing the same clothes and seeming terrified
Travis said he had been taken on board
the UFO and encountered short creatures with domed heads and large, dark
brown eyes. He tried to fight them off and they left of their own
accord. Travis, it seemed was free to roam the ship and he found a
planetarium. He even exited the craft to find himself in a hangar with
several other, similar ships. A human-like figure led him to a table,
where a mask was placed on his face and he passed out.
Travis and his friends have passed
several polygraph tests over the years and maintain to this day that the
events happened as they claimed.
The 1980 Alan Godfrey case is the only
abduction case that Gary has researched in depth. He thinks this case is
important because as well as Godfrey’s testimony, there are several
independent witnesses that saw something strange in the sky at the same
time in the local area.
Gary then ran through a brief timeline
of Alan Godfrey’s experience. On November 28th, 1980,
Alan was in his patrol car in Todmorden, West Yorkshire. He was sent
to check out reports of cattle wandering around a local council
estate. He saw a bright light in the road ahead and thought it was a
bus. As he got closer, though, it became clear that this was not the
case. He found himself looking at a rotating object, hovering over
the road. He sketched the craft in his notebook. There was a burst
of light and he found himself driving further along the road with no
sign of the UFO. He returned to the police station and later found
that he was missing about twenty-five minutes of time. The sole of
one of his boots was split and he had an itchy, red mark on his
foot.
Later, he would undergo hypnotic
regression, where he said that he was taken from the car and led onto
the craft. Here, he saw robot-like creatures and a humanoid wearing a
black skull cap. Gary has studied the video tapes of Alan’s hypnosis
session and has concluded that they were well conducted. Alan was not
lying. He had nothing to gain from making up his story and, indeed, his
experience has had a negative effect on his life.
Gary mentioned a couple of the pioneers
of abduction research: Bud Hopkins and the late Dr John Mack. Mack had
concluded that many abductions go back to the victims’ childhood. Alan
Godfrey had spoken of seeing a blue ‘tennis ball’ in his room as a
child. Other have reported these blue orbs both in their bedrooms and
other places, such as while driving.
As a police officer, Gary is interested
in evidence. What evidence is there to support claims of alien
abduction? There is witness testimony, physical evidence (such as marks
on the body, implants etc.) and animal mutilations. Gary believes that
there is enough circumstantial evidence to prove the existence of alien
abductions
Turning to his PRUFOS database, Gary
selected eight cases he felt were worthy of study. The incidents
occurred between 1966 and 1996 (I have copied the following from the
PRUFOS website -
www.prufospolicedatabase.co.uk):
March, 1966 – 0410 hours. Location -
Wilmslow, Cheshire. An on duty uniformed officer, PC COLIN PERKS was
on foot patrol on Alderley Road in the above town when he saw a UFO
moving across the sky at an altitude of only 30 feet and that it was
only 100 yards from him. He described it as being 30 feet in
diameter and as bulky as a double decker bus. He said, “There was an
eerie, greenish-grey glow in the sky. Then I picked out an object
about thirty feet long and built up in three sections with the top
looking like a dustbin lid. It gave off a high pitched whine. I was
paralysed. I just couldn’t believe it.” The duration of the sighting
was five minutes before it disappeared. His police report was
forwarded to the MOD who did visit him to investigate his story. On
Duty sighting. 1 Officer. Source - UFO Flying Saucers over Britain
by Robert Chapman. Mayflower Books 1999. Page 43 and PRUFOS.
September, 1966 - 0300 hours. Between
Potters Hill and Bristol Lulsgate Airport, Avon and Somerset. PC
LESTER STENNER and a colleague were driving along a quiet road when
suddenly they saw an oval shaped UFO approximately 100 feet off the
ground above the road ahead. At the same time the object appeared
the engine of the police vehicle died as did the headlights. Also
the streetlamps lining the road went out. The object just appeared
and remained motionless for about 10 seconds when it disappeared. As
soon as the object had gone the headlights, street lighting and
engine came on. The officers described the object as being around
100 yards wide by 50 feet and made no noise whatsoever. The officers
did not report the incident fearing ridicule. UFO CLASSIFICATION –
CE1 (CLOSE ENCOUNTER 1ST KIND/EM). On Duty sighting. 2 Officers.
Source: The PRUFOS Police Database.
24th October, 1967 - 0400
hours. Location - A3072 between Okehampton and Holsworthy, Devon.
Two on duty uniformed police officers, PC CLIFFORD WAYCOTT and PC
ROGER WILLEY had spotted a pulsating flying cross whilst driving
between the above locations. It was seen at low altitude moving
above the treetops of the surrounding countryside. Intrigued they
began to chase the UFO, however they were never able to
significantly gain on it. At times the object slowed to 50 mph and
at one point came to a stop in mid air. The pursuit involved speeds
of up to 90 mph and covered a distance of 14 miles. Whenever they
did gain a little ground on the object it would simply accelerate
away from them. Eventually they reduced their speed fearing an
accident themselves. The closest distance they reached to the UFO
was 400 yards. At one point they stopped at a farm to wake up the
owner so they could gain some corroboration that they were not
mistaken in their sighting. At a later press conference PC WAYCOTT
said, “The light wasn’t piercing but it was very bright. It was
star-spangled - just like looking through wet glass and although we
reached 90 mph it accelerated away from us.” Before the object
disappeared from view they saw a second UFO that was also
cross-shaped, very bright and made no noise. Both officers were
impressed by the relevant speeds of the objects as they quickly
departed, especially the first one. Enquiries at nearby RAF Chivenor
proved negative. Within 48 hours numerous other witnesses began to
report sightings of similar objects. A ‘fiery cross’ was witnessed
above the skies of Glossop, Derbyshire by six police officers. On
Duty sighting. 2 Officers. Source - UFO Flying Saucers over Britain
by Robert Chapman. Mayflower Books 1969. Pages 13-15.
Winter 1975 - 0400 hours. Location—Normanton,
West Yorkshire. A uniformed officer, PC ROBERT TOMLINSON, was on mobile
patrol driving a marked police vehicle on Wakefield Road near Normanton
during the early hours when he saw a huge UFO hovering low on his left.
He estimated the object’s altitude as being in the region of 200-300
feet. It was shaped like a kids spinning top. There were lights all
around the lower rim where there were a number of rectangular windows.
He stopped the vehicle in the middle of the road. He watched it for
several minutes before the object streaked off in the direction of
Wakefield and out of view. Estimated size of the UFO—100 feet in
diameter. On Duty sighting. 1 officer. Source—PRUFOS Database.
Winter 1976 - 0215 hours. Crofton,
Wakefield, West Yorkshire. PC PATRICK TUNNEY was checking on a couple of
shops during the early hours of a winter’s morning when he noticed three
green lights approaching from around a mile away. His first thoughts
were that it was a low flying aircraft. Then he became conscious that
there was absolutely no sound. The lights were horizontal as they flew
toward him at an altitude of only 200 feet. When the lights were
approximately 200 yards from his position they suddenly banked to the
left in total silence and sped off an amazing burst of acceleration. At
their closest point the officers described the lights as green spheres
each the size of a car. UFO CLASSIFICATION – CE1 (CLOSE ENCOUNTER 1ST
KIND). On Duty sighting. 1 Officer. Source: The PRUFOS Police Database.
September, 1987 - 2240 Hours. Location -
M6 Motorway between Junction 28 and 27. Two uniformed traffic officers,
PC STANLEY OSBOURNE and PC DOUGLAS, were driving along the M6 motorway
between Leyland and Shevington at Charnock Richard when a cigar shaped
UFO raced passed them on a parallel course. It was in sight for
approximately five seconds. The UFO was at an estimated altitude of
30/50 making no sound despite the fact that the officers had the windows
down. On Duty sighting. 2 Officers. Source: PRUFOS Database.
1996. Location - Scotland. Following a
999 call two on duty uniformed officers observed a huge gold
coloured egg shaped UFO hovering over fields in Scotland at close
proximity of 200 metres. They viewed the object through binoculars
and one of the officers made a pocket book entry regarding the
sighting. This forms part of a series of three sightings by the
principal officer who is very reluctant to release further details.
On Duty sighting. 2 Officers. Source: PRUFOS/ CONFIDENTIAL.
There was also a case from 1981 in
Somerset, when a police officer saw lights in the sky and there was some
interaction going on.
In conclusion, Gary has been running
PRUFOS for six years and has found that 73% of on-duty sightings are
made by multiple witnesses.
Gary finished up with the photograph of
a strange object near Dudley Castle that featured in the media recently.
He told us that three photos were taken by the 57-year old nanny. The
first was blurred and she deleted that. The second was the one that we
have seen and the third was also blurred. Gary has sent the photograph
to Bruce Maccabee for analysis.
Gary ended by informing us that he is
currently working with Charles Halt with the aim of writing a book about
the Rendlesham Forest Incident.
As usual, Gary’s presentation was
excellent and highly informative.
After the break,
Andrew Russell gave a spirited talk about the Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) and its many perils and pitfalls.
Public bodies are usually forced by law
to respond to FOIA requests, with the only exceptions being cases
where national security could be compromised. Even when FOIA
requests are honoured, they are often censored, sometimes quite
heavily.
Andrew explained that requests must be
very specific (you have to tell them exactly what you want) and the
outcome must be worth less than £600 in labour and materials. After
that, you get charged. If a request cost £599 to fulfil, you get it for
free. If it cost £601, you have to pay £601.
When a FOIA request is received, it goes
into the Updated Disclosure Log. Andrew points out again that it is
pointless putting in a request if you don’t know exactly what you
want from the MoD. When the logs are released to the public, Andrew
notes that many of them go into detail about the request – except
when it comes to UFOs, when usually it just says ‘UFO’.
Andrew told us that of the recent MoD
releases, there were nine files that were never passed to the UFO desk
(DS8), one of which was a UFO sighting over Felpham, West Sussex in
October, 2007.
Aircraft are often seen in the area of a
UFO sighting, such as in the Felpham case, but the FOIA replies
almost always say that no planes were airborne at the time. Are
‘they’ lying or is there a ‘ghost department’ dealing with UFOs?
It is known that ghost departments do
exist, with one famous example being the Force Research Unit (FRU) that
operated in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s. The FRU is alleged
to have been involved in the assassinations of at least fourteen Roman
Catholics in the province between 1987 and 1991. So it is easily
plausible that there is a ghost department that deals with the UFO
phenomenon.
Another chestnut often quoted by the MoD
is ‘Defence Significance’. If fighters intercept a Russian bomber in or
near UK airspace, then this is classed as being of defence significance.
If a fighter encounters a UFO over UK airspace, it isn’t deemed
important. Why?
As for the recent UFO files being
released by the Ministry of Defence, Andrew asks if it is kosher?
Are they really releasing all of the files they have or is it a
controlled release of information? Are we seeing the ‘good stuff’,
or is that to come?
In June, 2008, there were reports in the
media that a South Wales Police (SWP) helicopter had encountered a UFO
over Cardiff. The news stories claimed that the pilots had to avoid a
collision and then took off in pursuit of the object. Andrew contacted
the MoD and they claimed to have no knowledge of the incident. The Civil
Aviation Authority (CAA) and the National Air Traffic Services (NATS)
also said they had received no reports.
Initial reports from SWP had the chopper
chasing the UFO, but they later denied this. Andrew discovered that
Cardiff airport had made planes aware that an unknown object was in the
area and that a police helicopter was refuelling at the airport. SWP
denied this.
Andrew has come to the conclusion that
there is no basis to trust replies to FOIA requests because the MoD is
unable to respond to them accurately. The MoD are answerable to the
public, yet they do not seem to realise this. It is a conspiracy in
practise because it is obvious that the Ministry of Defence knows more
about UFOs than they release to the public.
Andrew’s website can be found at
hhttp://thetruthhides.wordpress.com/
The final speaker of the weekend was
Haktan Akdogan, from Turkey. Haktan is the founder and
chairman of the Sirius UFO Space Science Research Centre in Turkey and
also runs four UFO museums in the country. It is a full-time job for
him. The group’s library has over two thousand books, they hold three
large international conferences each year and they have major press
coverage in Turkey. Sirius has also set up a mobile UFO museum that has
travelled Turkey for the past two summers.
He also showed daylight photographs of
two metallic objects. ktan told us that the Italian UFO Magazine
covered this event, as did the national media in Turkey. He also showed
a video of an interview with retired colonel from Turkey speaking of his
UFO encounter.
Sirius is planning a Turkish version of
the Disclosure Project and Haktan said that he has many military
officers who are willing to come forward. He then played a video of one
of these officers being interviewed on national television. The officer
was talking about an encounter between Turkish F-5 fighters and a UFO
that had both visual and radar confirmation.
Haktan then showed some media clips of
UFOs:
A night-vision shot of a cross-shaped
object over Istanbul which morphed into a triangle in 1999.
Flashing lights over Istanbul in 2003,
which were filmed from two separate locations. The lights were also
seen by many people across Istanbul.
Night-time footage of red and white
lights sending out a beam of light. The sighting was at about 4am
and the object was over a football field in Istanbul. The sighting
lasted several minutes, but the authorities would not allow Sirius
to investigate to footie pitch.
Then we came to the biggie – the footage
that has had everybody talking for the last few weeks. The sightings
took place in 2007 and 2008 and had many witnesses, including the
security guard that captured the footage we were about to see.
Between June and August 2007 and May to
September 2008, the witness captured what, if genuine, is surely the
most astonishing UFO footage ever released. The main bulk of the shots
depict a saucer-shaped object with a dark wedge in its centre. I
suggested it looked a bit like a Cylon Raider from the popular TV
series, Battlestar Galactica and this was also noted in some of the media
coverage. Other clips showed red/orange lights out to see, hovering
above the horizon. The footage zoomed in and out, showing the object
as a point of light and then as the structured form. We also
occasionally saw the Moon in shot.
Haktan explained that the guard was
using only the eyepiece of his camera to view the object and that, to
the naked eye, it appeared only as a point of light. In the shots, the
object sometimes appeared bluish, gold or silver. The witness allowed
Haktan to view the footage and examine his camera, which was of the Sony
brand.
After the 2008 sightings, which produced
more videos recorded when Haktan himself was present, the media
exposure exploded worldwide. Haktan assured us that the videos were
absolutely genuine and had not been tampered with in any way.
As I said earlier, if the Turkish
footage is genuine and not a hoax, and we are not seeing some weird
photographic or atmospheric effect, then it is surely the most
impressive array of UFO footage in the history of the subject.
Haktan’s presentation brought the 2008
UFO DATA Magazine International UFO Conference to a close and it was
another roaring success with a packed hall on both days. Everybody at
UFO DATA Magazine would
like would
like to thank all of our speakers and everybody who attended for
making the weekend such a memorable one and we look forward to
seeing you all again in 2009.
SJ |
Philip explained how he visited Roswell
and was taken out to one of the alleged crash sites, when an
extraterrestrial craft was said to have come down in 1947. He was shown
rocks in the area, which have a strange, blue substance spattered over
them. This substance was jokingly referred to as ‘alien puke’. This
substance, Philip learned was called rystalobite.
Samples were retrieved and Philip brought them home.
He began by giving a potted history of
the Warminster mystery. The phenomena began in the mid-Sixties, not with
sightings, but with sounds. People would hear strange noises in the
town, often sounding like branches scraping across the rooftops. One
chap described the noise as being like every one of his roofing tiles
being lifted off and slammed back down again. A reporter on the Warminster Journal
would become synonymous with Warminster and its UFOs. His name was
Arthur Shuttlewood. Shuttlewood reported the noises and later
sightings as a good reporter would, dispassionately. Kevin explained
that once Arthur had a sighting of his own, his reporting changed.
He was now a firm believer in UFOs and promoted the subject in the
six books he would eventually write, beginning with
The Warminster Mystery in
1968. Unfortunately, Shuttlewood began exaggerating the stories he
heard, particularly in his books, which became increasingly ‘far
out’ and esoteric.
Alan first spoke about his experience at
RAF opley in 1971 at the Stafford Paranormal Society four years ago. He
retired from the RAF in 1995, due to ill health.
Gary referenced the recent releases by
the MoD concerning UFOs. This garnered much media coverage, including
good reports about the Milton Torres incident and the UFO near-miss over
Heathrow by an Alitalia jet. Alongside these good stories, though, the
media also focussed on the more far-fetched stories from the MoD files,
including the one from a lady claiming to be from an alien world of
‘warrior women’, accompanied by sketches of pointy-eared beings and an
‘Amazon’ in flowing robes. Why focus on stories such as this when there
are great reports such as the Milton Torres and Alitalia ones?
Russ has been involved with video
production for many years and knows the subject well. His tips for
posting on YouTube can be boiled down to one key thing: use the best
quality footage you can when uploading. If the video you upload is
pretty poor, then the conversion process by YouTube will make it look
even worse, so use the highest quality original footage you can.
Roberto spoke of his early days in
ufology and a wave of sightings in Italy in 1978-79, when more than
two thousand reports came in. The reports were so numerous that the
Italian air force began a study into UFOs, but Roberto said it was
nothing more than ‘a filing exercise’.
While our technology on Earth is based
around mechanical and electrical systems, he believes that people from
‘elsewhere’ may have technology that utilises words and chants,
what we would have called spells only a few years ago. Could it be
possible that by accessing the vibrational fields of the universe,
one could open a portal to another place in time and space? Or even
a doorway to another dimension of reality? It’s mind-blowing stuff!
Sometimes a sceptic will blurt out
something that gives credulity a whole new level. Take, for instance,
the case of Alan Godfrey recently featured in
Britain’s Closest Encounters.
In that episode, researcher Andy Roberts suggested that PC Godfrey had
somehow entered an altered state of consciousness and had, in fact, seen
a bus! That’s obviously nonsense, said Peter.
With regard to requests about UFOs,
there are two key players: DI55 and DS8. According to Andrew, DS8 is
currently closed to FOIA requests because they are in the process of
releasing their files to the National Archives.
Haktan told us about some UFO incidents
between 2004 and 2008, showing many photographs, some taken in daylight
and some at night-time. Some of them were quite impressive, particularly
one of a ring of lights over the Bosphorus.
Haktan hosts his own television show in
Turkey and had some great arguments with sceptic guests who claimed the
footage was hoaxed. He took the footage to the TUBITAK National
Observation Centre. They conducted a seven hour analysis of the footage
and came to the conclusion that the object on the film was real and
filmed under normal conditions. They said that the object could be
called a UFO. The footage was also analysed by experts in other
countries, including the USA and Portugal, and all the analyses came to
the conclusion that the objects in the video were real.