A few note from day 3 of the MUFON conference.
Today was basically an in-depth revisiting of alot of familiar topics.
Stanton Friedman's revisiting of the SETI, scientific community, and UFO community relationships - I thought this would be more of the same as Stan's talks tend tend to be rather similar - with new material mixed in with the old. I was pleasantly surprised in that this talk was entirely new material, very contemporary and very appropriate to many of the discussions we've had over the last several days. He looked at a lot of the comments recently made by Shostak, Hawking, Davies and other physicists, in the light of the UFO evidence. Unfortunately, I thought he took many of them considerably out of context.
Having met a number of the SETI community, I can vouch for the fact that the SETI community and the UFO community treat eachother with considerable contempt. Neither understands the other's viewpoints very well, and most statements cited by either are taken pretty much out of context. The best one was Steven Hawking's comments - very speculative - about how contact would not be too healthy - on the European/Native-Americal model. Contact didn't turn out too well for the Native Americans.
Given the talk by Richard Dolan, with was just as speculative as Hawking's comments, and seemed to have somewhat similar conclusions in some respects, I question how badly one can criticize Hawking's comments. In addition, I have heard people in just about every community make quoteable comments in relatively informal settings - in each case, it was not a formal presentation including supporting data. It was merely a creative mind waxing speculative. Enough on that...
Michael Schratt had some interesting stuff on deep black projects that I thought was really interesting. It strongly reinforced Ricard Dolan's talk last night, which speculated on a separate culture or civilization arising in the deep-black world. Given the information that Schratt has related, which is largely unclassified or declassified info - what else is there still deeply under wraps. The possibilities (and likelihoods) are mind boggling.
I didn't attend Kevin Randle's talk, but instead spent time batting the breeze with others in the MUFON community. One of the joys of these conferences is that you get face time with the folks you only talk with on-line, by e-mail, etc... I had some interesting conversations with several of what I would call, the next generation of UFO investigators - most of them are people in their 30's thru 50's. By UFO researcer standards, this is young... Also, these are the people who are comfortable with computers, who are bringing contemporary technology to UFO research that was sometimes stuck in the 1970s (at least in my view). So it was good to rub elbows with some of the folks who are making the UFO community buzz once again...
The next talk was by Linda Moulton Howe. She always has kewl stuff to say, and much of her talk this time was on new stuff in the Bentwaters case - the 1980 incursion of UFOs into the Bentwaters/Woodbridge military installations in the UK. She had some really interesting developments in the case, including more details on the team who went into the woods to chase the UFO that had been sighted by the guards at the East Gate. There is a lot to know about this case, and in later updates to this blog, I will probably need to add more info on that. In the mean time, just do a web search on 1980 Bentwaters UFO case and I think you will find some really interesting paydirt...
The biggest piece of the story, however, was the introduction of one of the people involved, the two men who confronted the object in the woods. Both had VERY close encounters, with one of them being missing for about 45 minutes, and having that period of missing time in his own memory. The other airman who had gone into the woods after the object, apparently touched a panel of lettering on the thing's side and ended up having a rather massive telepathic data dump into his mind. As a result, they both ended up with a world of grief from the military authorities, being extensively "debriefed" - a rather euphamisticc term. Lots more to say on this, though I have never actually followed the case very closely.
The final talk of the evening was by Nick Redfern, on crop circles. He has done some extensive research into the topic and has produced some surprising new (at least to me) info. One of them is that there appears to be contactee reports coming from the UK in recent years, associated with crop circles. A couple of cases he cited have involved typical UK suburbanites, usually walking thier dog or simiar, when confronted by a rather strange but human-looking being. The "alien" appears to be the typical "Nordic" with blonde hair, superb physique (and even a Scandanavian accent), also wearing the stereotypical "alien" coveralls. The alien provides a message to the unsuspecting person, also perhaps, doing a telepathic download, then vanishes. In one case, the person subsequently saw a UFO flying away, then nothing more.
Nick's talk also talked about the relationship between crop circles, geographically located mostlyu around the Wilshire region, a very ancient region with lots of stone circles, etc. He described how this is also a region with a lot of secret military installations, including at least one massive underground installation. He related one account about how the formation of a crop circle was observed in progress, right within the bounds of one of the ultra-secret installations. Both the fact that it was in restricted area, and that it was observed in progress, spontaneously forming in the material, itself, suggests that this is a very powerful phenomenon that cares little about human political restrictions.
The final part of the crop circle talk was on the hoaxers, or as they call themselves, circle makers - or even "artists." One circle maker apparently has a metaphysical background and it is sugggested that his circle making is a form of channeling - the hoaxing being yet another manifestation of the phenomenon itself. There was also an occult aspect to the crop circle scene - a number of pagan rituals that may have occurred after the crop circle was laid down - or may have had to do with the formation of the circles themselves. The upshot of all these aspects of the phenomenon is that the topic of crop circles is as complex as you can imagine - or more so.
By the end of a long day (I was up way too late the night before, and I'm sitting up wayyy too late right now, too, as I write this), most of us felt pretty fried. We spent the hour or two winding down, just socializing and joking with eachother - a pleasant evening that tells me that the community is quite comfortable with letting its hair down.
And now, it's time for this kid to bag it. Tomorrow begins at 9AM, followed by a long airplane flight home...
