Stephenville UFO Flap, pt. 5 - Other Sightings in the Region

While the Stephenville sightings goes on hold until for a bit (the main media activity is now talking to almost everyone in town), other sightings from around the region become linked to the story. In northwestern Louisiana, Shreveport television station KSLA ran this report (video link) (text link) a woman who videotaped a UFO the night of the Stephenville sightings (presumably January 8) in Shongaloo, Louisiana (290 miles east of Stephenville). The videotape, of several white lights with a middle red light is shown to a local "aircraft enthusiast" who identifies the lights as a twin-engine plane. He doesn't answer the report that the object hovered for some time, but I also suspect he would say that is a trick of perspective.

Closer to the epicenter, there is the expected rise in sightings. MUFON has collected numerous reports from Texas, including one on January 8 in nearby Comanche, any of which can be read in their database available at the MUFON site. The question will be, whether this spreads further, as flaps in the past have become larger or more sustained waves.

Update (January 18): Linda Moulton Howe interviews a man from Dublin, Texas, near Stephenville, who says he saw a huge UFO twice during the week before the mass sighting, and once after. He told his story after the flap was in the press. You can read the interview (with photos) at Howe's site (though it will go behind a pay-registration wall after a while) or you can listen on Whitley Strieber's radio show Dreamland.

Update (January 21): Other UFO sightings in Texas being reported because of the Stephenville example.

Update (January 22): Walter Andrus says a UFO was seen over San Antonio on January 8, the night of the Stephensville sightings. Other sightings in Texas still come such as this one. Here's one from January 20.

Stephenville UFO, pt 4 - MUFON Prepares to Investigate as the Fever Turns into a Flap

January 16, 2008 - ABCNews puts the number of people claiming to have seen the UFO at over 30. By now, major news organizations have correspondants on the scene. Read here for more details on that, and the $5000 reward one of the witnesses is offering for a photo.

The next expected development is MUFON sending an unusually large investigative team this weekend. MUFON Texas Senior Investigator Steve Hudgeons is interviewed by San Angelo Live!, which you can listen to here. Findings from that investigation may take time. Though we should expect media coverage of the MUFON investigators talking to people and addressing the community. Realizing that MUFON is about to become a much more household name, the organization has set up a MUFON YouTube account to post their own videos and news media videos associated with the Stephenville case.

I'm using the word flap again because according to that interview with Steve Hudgeons, MUFON is now getting numerous UFO reports in Texas, apparently 19 since the incident broke in the media.

Meanwhile, a pilot who was flying in the area has suggested the sightings may have been due to military flare activity. Within the UFO community, this has become almost as detested an explanation for UFO sightings as swamp gas, weather balloons, or Venus. This is due to the explanation being offered for the Phoenix Lights episode in March, 1997. There, thousands of people stopped to watch lights over the city of Phoenix, Arizona. The case, both as a sighting and as a historical case, is complex, but in summary, after much military hemming and hawing and ridicule by state officials, the military declared that flares, dropped from an exercise, were responsible for the sightings. It does seem likely that the largest group of sightings, which were videotaped, may have been due to flares, but some dispute that and others point out that sightings were made in the area earlier in the evening of a structured craft. This was in turn followed in 2007 by a retired military pilot claiming to have seen a large UFO over Arkansas, only to immediately turn around and call the incident flares. The fact that this story was primarily run in WorldNetDaily, an openly politically hard-right media outlet, followed by a very quick debunking by the pilot, did not help matters. So this explanation is not a popular meme in the community. Completely randomly, also in shades of the Phoenix case, the city secretary has taken to wearing an alien mask as a humor response to the events (link has picture). This recalls former Arizona Governor Fife Symington's dressing of an aide as an alien in order to defuse a press conference on the Phoenix Lights. Ten years later, after ridiculing the people who reported sightings, Symington claimed to have seen the Phoenix UFO himself. So the mask thing isn't going over well, either.

On top of that, a random report on SETI has merged with the intense interest in the Stephenville sighting. Oakland, California television station KTVU ran a piece on January 15 that mentioned SETI possibly receiving an alien signal.

Whoa.

As you might expect, in the midst of a huge public and media interest in a mass UFO sighting, the news that aliens may be contacting earth perked up more than a few ears. Numerous observers were baffled by the report, both by the tone of the report (relatively light given the earth-shaking news) and that no other media were mentioning this. My suspicion was that this was a matter of confusion, involving a signal SETI received last fall, and tonight my suspicion appears to have been borne out. Not that this will help matters, as despite the media (and I suppose public) linking of SETI and UFOs, the camps are for the most part somewhat hostile, a relationship going back decades and in part fueled by the cancellation of federal funding for SETI due to Senator William Proxmire's belief that it searched for "little green men with misshapen heads." As you can imagine, in the context of a big UFO sighting, this hiccup involving SETI will only further some notions that the story of a signal was accurate, but silenced.

This is all happening because many people are following this story intensely, and are waiting for new developments.

Stephenville UFO pt 3 - OK, now its getting weird

January 15, 2008 - The story has taken a turn to the strange

As a UFO story, it continues to get picked up by more media, and it has become common conversation amongst people I know.

But today's newest elements come from Bud Kennedy at the Star-Telegram. In his piece today, he notes that on December 11, 2007, a Scottish evangelist recorded a prophecy on a Christian prophecy website, Elijahlist. This states, as follows,

Texas, USA--received on 11-11-07

I see Texas ablaze and a stunning star, like the star from the east rising over the land. I hear the Spirit of the Lord saying to: "Watch for cosmic signs and wonders in Texas." He said there will be a cosmological phenomenon that scientists cannot explain, and the media will carry as front-line news.

People will begin to ask about "the Light." They will remember the Child in the manger; the Lord is calling His Church to tell them about the Child in the manger and the Man of the Cross. For a period of four months--from Christmas to Easter--there will be a window of opportunity for salvations, signs, healings and wonders in Texas, and this season of extraordinary favor and grace will manifest and be confirmed in unusual cosmic occurrences.

Then Mr. Kennedy reminds us that Stephenville was involved in one of the Great Airship sightings of 1897. And according to Texas Monthly magazine, it wasn't just any airship sighting, but it was involved with the Aurora crash, a crashed UFO story that predates Roswell by 50 years. In the Stephenville sighting of that day,

The editor of the Stephenville newspaper claimed that the airship hovered so close to the town that he was able to yell out a request for an interview, which the extraterrestrial pilot denied.

History appears to repeat.

The airship mystery is adopted by many ufologists as being a precursor to what are now called UFO waves. And the Aurora crash (see here for Kevin Randle's conclusions that the story was a hoax) is probably the second most famous UFO crash story after Roswell.

Prophecies coming out of the blue. A history of infamous UFO sightings. This is all starting to get that feel, of a little high weirdness of the type John Keel made famous in his book The Mothman Prophecies. We'll see how it develops.

Stephenville Flap, part 2: The Other Lore and Explanations Kick In

Remember that just yesterday I said: "The story has no discussion of aliens, outer space, or anything fringe or kooky."

January 14, 2008 - As the AP (picked up by CNN) makes this little town at least momentarily famous by fairly "just the facts" reporting, as MUFON prepares to send an investigative team, the local paper that initially broke this story profiles the the local UFO expert (free registration required) who has become part of the case. He says he also saw the UFO that night, but this isn't his first sighting, having shot a UFO video in the same general area in 1995. He discusses some initial investigation of astronomical characteristics that night, ruling out the moon. You can jump over to the profile to also read about his book on UFOs and the author's ESP abilities, and his sighting of photos and chemtrails on January 9 (the night following the sighting).

I'll say no more about that, other than to note that chemtrails are in strong competition with orbs and rods as some of my least favorite paranormal memes.

Update: Well, here's a no surpriser. The UFO "expert" going on about chemtrails, has a past of fraudulent claims about his background.

Update (January 25): Looks like Stephenville is sick of the guy too.

Update: A blogger local to Stephenville posts his explanation, that the sighting is of military aircraft and flares, which he cedits to the the local reserve base at Fort Worth. It should be noted, however that while he could not rule out aircraft from other units, the reserve officer previously mentioned says no aircraft from his unit were in the area on January 8.

Stephenville, Texas - A UFO Flap in the Making

January 10, 2008 - The Stephenville Empire-Tribune reports that two days earlier, four local residents saw strange lights in the sky, a UFO they refer to as a ship. One is a pilot. They also report the "ship" was pursued by fighter jets.

January 11, 2008 - The same paper, from the same staff writer, reports that more people are reporting seeing the strange object or lights, including a constable and an ex-Air Force navigational specialist. A local naval reserve officer believes he can solve what is now a full-blown mystery.

January 13, 2008 - A new report states that MUFON investigators will be arriving to interview witnesses and talk about the sightings. The naval reserve officer believes the sighting was a misidentification of an aircraft under certain lighting conditions.

January 14, 2008 - A local UFO eyewitness, enthusiast, and lecturer does an interview on a paranormal radio show about his claim to have sighted the January 8 UFO. Meanwhile, CNN has picked up the story and is bringing it to millions of readers. The story has no discussion of aliens, outer space, or anything fringe or kooky.

I'm going to try and continue to see what develops here, and if or when other aspects of UFOdom become involved, or what the media does with this.

The UFO as Political Smear

I've already blogged about US Presidents and presidential candidates with UFO interests or connections. One of these is Dennis Kucinich, whose UFO sighting came to a head after it was mentioned in memoirs by his friend Shirley McClaine. While the initial interest in the topic is understandable, the subsequent revisiting months later by the Wall Street Journal is puzzling.

Well, not really. First off, UFOs in politics has become an increasingly popular topic in the media and amongst internet readers. Second, the Wall Street Journal was already a bastion of right-wing media in the US before it was bought by Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News. On the one hand, Murdoch knows how to make money, as Billy Cox suggests by noting that the article was straightforward and got a lot of attention, and he has made a lot of money off UFOs (with little-known media properties like The X-Files, Independence Day as well as hosting UFO shows like Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction and Sightings on the Fox Network).

But a credible subtext of the piece, given its timing days before the presidential primary season is: Democrats are crazy people. While it would not matter much regarding the low-polling Kucinich, the story (combined with Bill Richardson's, who recently ended his presidential campaign, promotion of Roswell and UFOs on and off the campaign trail) has the potential to create guilt by association. It's a political smear, specifically at Kucinich but in general at the more progressive end of the Democratic party Kucinich attempts to represent.

A similar piece crossed my desktop today, from antiwar.com, entitled "James Woolsey: Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind." The piece is a hit piece on one of the architects of the Iraq War and a member of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). The first half focuses on Woolsey's history of interest in UFOs, after having had a sighting himself in the 1960s, and associating this interest with his failures as head of the CIA. This is the background, in turn for demonstrating Woolsey's lying and conspiring to create a war in Iraq, a war in Iran, and his efforts to start what he calls "World War IV." Here, there is no subtext, the obvious point is that Woolsey is paranoid and obsessed with the unreal, be it in UFOs or in WMDs.

Last year also saw interest in another alleged use of UFOs as a political weapon, this time by George Bush I's CIA against newly elected President Carter. I am somewhat skeptical of that story, though there are some hints that it may have happened. Louis Farrakhan's contactee-esque story of being taken into a spaceship and being warned of the 1986 American attack on Libya is also mentioned prominently when attacking his claims or activities.

The association with the subject generally seems to go in one direction only. Just as with academics who study the topic, other than as folklore or popular culture, advocacy or even interest in the topic can damage (though likely not be the sole cause of dooming) a politician. By contrast, this interest will find someone ready to embrace a well known figure, even if they are already known as a fringe politician or figure, such as in the case of Canada's Paul Hellyer.

Spooky Laws

Matt Soniak at mental_floss posts on five cryptids that have managed to get state or national legal protection, even though the scientific community does not find sufficient evidence for their existence. These laws protect Bigfoot, Nessie, the Mi-Go (ok, the Migoi of Bhutan, not H.P. Lovecraft's Fungi from the Former Planet Known as Pluto) from poachers or other harm.

While perhaps the highest profile, these are not the only laws or government decisions that touch on Spooky matters.

One of the more famous is the US Presidential Determination that rules the Groom Lake facility, aka Area 51, out of the bounds of US legal action and oversight. This order, which has since been annually reaffirmed by Pres. Clinton and Bush II, quashed a lawsuit brought against the US government by former employees, or their next of kin, regarding toxic contamination and sickness. While not specifically about UFOs, it does touch on one aspect of the subject. Edit: It also now appears that Groom Lake now has an airport designation, one more thing to bring it in line with the rest of the world.

Less famous but more important is JANAP-146. In 1954, the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the US issued a directive that required civilian airline pilots to report UFOs, in addition to missiles, submarines, foreign military aircraft, etc. to the US military. Once this occurred, because this was considered information important for national security, the pilots were not allowed to talk about the sightings in public. Pilots didn't like being interrogated for hours, and then being silenced, so it is no surprise if any stopped reporting UFO sightings.

One law often mentioned is a 1969 addition to the US Code of Federal Regulations, Title 14 Section 1211. As noted by Snopes, this law is often misrepresented as criminalizing making contact with extraterrestrials or their vehicles, when in reality the law is stated to apply to NASA vehicles and personnel, and does not criminalize contact but instead allows for quarantine (which frankly doesn't sound better). The law was repealed in 1991.

In the ghostly realms, there are various state laws concerning whether or not realtors or sellers must disclose whether or not a house is haunted. In 1991, the most famous of these decisions was handed down by the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate division in Stambovsky vs. Ackley. The case involved a house in New York's lower Hudson Valley which had been repeatedly described in the press (with the permission of the owners) as haunted. When the house was sold, the new owner found out the house had a reputation for poltergeist activity, and wanted out of the deal. In the final decision, the court found that the previous press made the house haunted in a legal sense of stigmatized property, regardless of whether a house can be considered haunted from a scientific perspective. Because a haunting cannot be easily determined by a buyer or their inspectors, it is the duty of the seller to disclose the haunting. Since that time, Massachusetts has passed a law that does not require sellers to disclose previous ghostly activity, unless the buyer asks.

Recently, there has been a lot of news about communities deciding whether to allow or to ban psychics, tarot readers, and other diviners. Salem, yes the famous one in Massachusetts, has had a very public fight about the topic, as chronicled (along with numerous other similar cases) in the Wild Hunt.

There are of course various proclamations by the US Congress or state legislatures, never mind laws elsewhere, that designate various days to celebrate religious holidays, and this has at times included the paranormal. I believe New Mexico did this for UFOs a few years ago to promote tourism, and Nevada of course renamed a section of highway near Groom Lake as the E.T. Highway. But these are ceremonial, not involving serious (or semi-serious) law.

That's all I can think of for the moment, but I'll post any other examples I run across.

Update: 4/15/08 - Italian homeowner is suing the former owners for not telling him the house is haunted. Not that it is supposedly haunted, but that it is actually haunted.

NICAP Online Reading Library - UFO Books

The new incarnation of NICAP has opened up a free online reading library. They currently have eleven titles primarily from the heyday of ufology in the 1950s and 1960s. Worth checking out

http://www.nicap.org/onlinebooks.htm

A Not-so-Spooky as Terrifying Conspiracy of Nuclear Espionage in the US Government and Terrorism: Sibel Edmonds Breaks Her Silence

This isn't a Spooky Paradigm story on the face of it. Or is it? It's a conspiracy story, and Edmond's allegations have floated in the world of alternative politics for several years, but now that she has broken her silence and named names (something she did in front of the Congress, only to have the US government give her an unprecedented gag order) it is happening now, and if even the allegations here are true, it is the story of the decade. And as of a day later, not a single US news source is covering this story after it splashed big in the UK.

I don't know how much you know about Sibel Edmonds, so here are two links. One is to the story itself in its most recent iteration.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3137695.ece

The other is from a blog that has been heavily following this story for years.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5518

I will note that she had to go to a non-US paper to spill this, and a day later, no US media sources are touching it. Her story damns both GOP and former Clinton officials, but many in her naming of names are tied to Bush I, Bush II, Reagan, or are otherwise sympathetic or instrumental to the neocon cult. She names the names, or rather puts their pictures up to get around the gag order, as discussed at this link

http://letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com/2008/01/sibel-names-names-in-pictures.html

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2008/01/bombshell-sibel-edmonds-speaks.html

To wit (from the BradBlog post)

Foreign intelligence agents from Turkey, Israel and Pakistan enlisted
the support of high-level US officials in order to acquire a network of moles
deep inside of sensitive American military and nuclear agencies, including "PhD
students – with security clearance [at] Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New
Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear
deterrent."

● Members of the diplomatic community were given lists of potential
"moles" at the sensitive installations. Edmonds tells the Times: "the lists
contained all their 'hooking points', which could be financial or sexual
pressure points, their exact job in the Pentagon and what stuff they had access
to."

● Well-known US officials were then bribed by foreign agents to steal
US nuclear secrets. One such incident from 2000 involves an agent overheard on a
wiretap discussing "nuclear information that had been stolen from an air force
base in Alabama," in which the agent allegedly is heard saying: "We have a
package and we’re going to sell it for $250,000."

● Nuclear secrets were then subsequently sold by foreign agents to
America's enemies, including Iran, North Korea and Libya.

● Pakistani officials involved in the nuclear black market network have
significant cross-over with al-Qaeda and 9/11. Officials such as the chief of
ISI, Pakistan's spy agency, allegedly sent $100,000 to 9/11 hijacker Mohammed
Atta, and aides of A.Q. Kahn --- who had used the stolen secrets to develop
nuclear weapons for Pakistan --- met with Osama bin Laden "weeks before
9/11...to discuss an Al-Qaeda nuclear device."

● Elements of the US government have repeatedly shut down
investigations into these crimes under the guise of protecting "certain
diplomatic relations."

● The US government has been aware of all of the above information
since at least 2001.

The Bhutto Assassination and the JFK Minutiae

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has been the top global headline, for obvious reasons. But one aspect of the story, interest, and coverage has been somewhat baffling: the specific manner of her death.

No one disputes that shots were fired at Mrs. Bhutto and her vehicle. No one denies that a suicide bomber then attacked killing twenty more people. But much of the focus has been on the exact nature of Mrs. Bhutto's death, and analyzing autopsy, eyewitness, and video evidence relevant to answering that question. This report from CNN is a good example of how much of the media, particularly television, is dealing with the issue. Here's another:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq-DwHXx4oI&eurl

Ok, so what? She was killed in the attack, which everyone admits was complex and multicomponent. Does it matter much if she was killed by a bullet or a shockwave or shrapnel from the explosion? The CNN and other reports suggest that it is a matter of transparency, and makes the government and/or ISI look guilty. There is some truth to that, but other coverage goes beyond that noting that government officials immediately destroyed evidence at the crime scene, starts talking to sources pointing the finger at the Pakistani military, looks at who is most likely involved, or puts the whole Pakistan mess in a larger context. I want to thank Cernig in particular for coverage of this event.

So what's with the fixation on video of the shooter, on the autopsy results, etc.? Yes, part of it is that it catches the Pakistani government out in potentially conducting a cover-up (and for the record, that sounds likely to me). But I have to wonder if some of this comes from the grand-daddy of all assassination memepools in the modern era, the one that gave us an entire subculture devoted to analyzing every detail, the one that gave us the term "lone gunman," the notion of a government assassination investigatory committee, the murder that has come to dominate the identity of its victim, JFK. Have we been taught to look for the grassy knoll, the movement of the head back and to the left (note that in the Bhutto case, this is mirrored by attention to her head and scarf, the movement of which are evidence for a bullet impact)?

Maybe we have, and maybe its a good thing. When another government is involved, the mainstream press is at least open to not simply acting as court stenographers, and what would be called a conspiracy theory if suggested about a domestic event can be propagated without ridicule. This time, the right-wing isn't using the conspiracy theory slur, just attacking Bhutto herself as feudal and corrupt. As Jodi Dean notes in Aliens in America, conspiracy theorizing is a rational response to decentralized information flow.

Update: I'm not the only one making the connection, either the general analogy, or looking at the media treatment. That last one is a good read, as in this excerpt

Now, notice that no one in the mainstream press is screaming, “Conspiracy theory! Conspiracy theory!” in response to the suspicion that Pakistani intelligence agencies might have been behind the Bhutto killing. On the contrary, the mainstream press is actually treating such a conspiracy as a viable possibility.

Yet, whenever someone suggests that U.S. intelligence agencies might have been involved in the JFK killing, the immediate attitude of the U.S. mainstream press is exactly the opposite: “Conspiracy theory! Conspiracy theory!”

UPDATE: I call it a "laser"