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INTRODUCTION As I have shown in Dimensions and Confrontations, there is indeed a genuine UFO phenomenon and it constitutes one of the many mys- teries that nature offers us. In my view it represents an opportunity to practice some good science and to become aware of levels of conscious- ness we had not previously recognized. But the current proliferation of spurious materia] that confuses the real issues bothers me. It should be analyzed and exposed for what it is: at best, a dangerous delusion, the germ of new cults that would extinguish the light of reason and free inquiry; at worst, an attempt to draw attention away from the real nature of the UFO phenomenon, a deliberate effort to drive serious research into the quicksands of speculation. Not only have individual visionaries come forward with the definitive revelation that UFOs came from Venus, Clarion, Hoova, Zeta Reticuli, or hundreds of other places, but an entire cottage industry has grown around groups dedicated to the "study" of fantasies channeled by our kind space brothers from such unlikely places as UMMO or the Plei- ades. Organizations with mysterious sources of money are now spring- ing up with dozens of local chapters all over the United States and Canada, and indeed, all over the world. They hypnotize witnesses. They hold seminars and conferences; they edit expensive books and video- tapes; some even run their own presses. Their activity blurs the real nature of the phenomenon and complicates its study. It adds another factor of confusion to the bewilderment of sincere witnesses who won- der what they have seen and who are looking for a helping hand. Things would not be so bad if the only hoaxers came from the luna- tic fringe. Every field of endeavor has such borderline fanatics—even well-established and dignified disciplines like physics, with its entour- age of perpetual motion inventors, astronomy with its retinue of hollow- earthers, and medicine with its proliferation of quacks. But there is more. Those who spend time in the field—analyzing traces left by the UFO phenomenon, interviewing witnesses, and assembling a study of the underlying patters—have now stumbled on evidence of a quite different sort: some of the most remarkable sightings are actually complex hoaxes