Nexus - 0205 - New Times Magazine-pages

Page Content (OCR)

USAF & UFO's level our bodies reject and fight (through production antibodies) any alien material; this process helps us fight off disease but it also sometimes results in allergic reactions to innocuous materials. On the macroscopic (psychological and sociological) level we are antagonistic to beings that are “different”. For proof of that, just watch how an odd child is treated by other children, or how a minority group is socially deprived, or how the Arabs feel about the Israelis (Chinese vs Japanese, Turks vs Greeks, etc. ) In case you are hesitant to extend that concept to the treatment of aliens let me point out that in very ancient times, possible extraterrestrials may have been treated as Gods but in the last two thousand years, the evidence is that any possible aliens have been ripped apart by mobs, shot and shot at, physically assaulted, and in general treated with fear and aggression. In Ireland about 1,000 A. D. , supposed airships were treated as “demonships". In Lyons, France, “admitted” space travelers were killed. More recently, on 24 July 1957 Russian anti-aircraft batter- ies on the Kouril Islands opened fire on UFO’s. Although all Soviet anti-aircraft batteries on the Islands were in action, no hits were made. The UFO’s were luminous and moved very fast. We too have fired on UFO’s. About ten o’clock one morning, a radar site near a fighter base picked up a UFO doing 700 mph. The UFO then slowed to 100 mph, and two F-86’s were scrambled to intercept. Eventually one F-86 closed on the UFO at about 3,000 feet alti- tude. The UFO began to accelerate away but the pilot still managed to get within 500 yards of the target for a short period of time. It was definitely saucer shaped. As the pilot pushed the F-86 at top speed, the UFO began to pull away. When the range reached 1,000 yards, the pilot armed his guns and fired in an attempt to down the saucer. He failed, and the UFO pulled away rapidly, vanishing in the distance. This same basic situation may have happened on a more person- al level. On Sunday evening 21 August 1955, eight adults and three children were on the Sutton Farm (one-half mile from Kelly, Kentucky) when, according to them, one of the children saw a brightly glowing UFO settle behind the barn, out of sight from where he stood. Other witnesses on nearby farms also saw the object. However, the Suttons dismissed it as a “shooting star’, and did not investigate. Approximately thirty minutes later (at 8:00 pm), the family dogs began barking so two of the men went to the back door and looked out. Approximately 50 feet away and com- ing toward them was a creature wearing a glowing silvery suit. It was about three and one-half feet tall with a large round head and very long arms. It had large webbed hands which were equipped with claws. The two Suttons grabbed a twelve gauge shotgun and a .22 caliber pistol, and fired at close range. They could hear the pellets and bullet ricochet as if off of metal. The creature was knocked down, but jumped up and scrambled away. The Suttons retreated into the house, turned off all inside lights, and turned on the porch light. At that moment, one of the women who was peek- ing out of the dining room window discovered that a creature with some sort of helmet and wide slit eyes was peeking back at her. She screamed, the men rushed in and started shooting. The creature was knocked backwards but again scrambled away without apparent harm. More shooting occurred (a total of about 50 rounds) over the next 20 minutes and the creatures finally left (perhaps feeling unwelcome?) After about a two hour wait (for safety), the Suttons left too. By the time the police got there, the aliens were gone but the Suttons would not move back to the farm. They sold it and departed. This reported incident does bear out the contention though that aliens are dangerous. At no time in the story did the supposed aliens shoot back, although one is left with the impres- sion that the described creatures were having fun scaring humans. 33. 5 ATTEMPTS AT SCIENTIFIC APPROACHES In any scientific endeavor, the first step is to acquire data, the second step to classify the data, and the third step to form hypoth- esis. The hypo-thesis are tested by re-peating the entire process, with each cycle resulting in an increase in understanding (we hope). The UFO phenomenon does not yield readily to this approach because the data taken so far exhibits both excessive vari- ety and vagueness. The vagueness is caused in part by the lack of preparation of the observer - very few people leave their house knowing that they are going to see a UFO that evening. ———— Photographs are overexposed or underexposed, and rarely in color. Hardly anyone carries around a radia- tion counter or magnetometer. And, in addition to this, there is a very high level of “noise” in the data. The noise consists of mistaken reports of known nat- ural phenomena, hoaxes, reports by unstable individ- uals and mistaken removal of data regarding possible unnatural or unknown natural phenomena (by over zealous individuals who are trying to eliminate all data due to known natural phenomena). In addition, those data, which do appear to be valid, exhibit an excessive amount of variety relative to the statistical samples which are available. This has led to very clumsy classification systems, which in turn provide quite unfertile ground for formulation of hypothesis. One hypothesis which looked promising for a time was that of ORTHOTENY (ie, UFO sightings fall on “great circle” routes). At first, plots of sightings seemed to verify the concept of orthoteny but recent use of computers has revealed that even random num- bers yield “great circle” plots as neatly as do UFO sightings. LOOK, F TUST WANS Some space, NEXUS - 32 YEAR BOOK + OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 1991