Spheres and Orbs

 Screen shot of video footage cleared for public release and shared by Dr. Kirkpatrick during Wednesday’s Senate hearing on UAP, filmed with electro-optical sensors on board an MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Middle East (Credit: DOD/AARO). In this film clip a silver spherical object moves across the frame. Given the source - the military and the government - this is a hard to debunk clip. 

From the same Senate debrief came this chart revealing "spheres" were pretty common.  In the last 2.5 years, numerous videos taken by witnesses across the globe have captured anomalous darting, spherical "orbs" but not the ghostly kind. They are objects seen and photographed darting around, making strange no-typical stops, directional changes, etc. 

THE UFO THAT WASN'T: Project 1794 aka "Avro Aircraft" aka "Project Silver Bug"

 The images were hits in newsreels, magazines, and all attempts at debunking any and all reports of unidentified flying objects. Long before there was any such project envisioned military and governments claimed they had "flying saucers" and they were really just radical experimental designs. 

In late 1956 and 1957 the USAF entered a contract with the Avro Aircraft Ltd. company to design and construct a working prototype of an aircraft able to transcend some specific or particular issues. The AF was aware of the limitations of existing traditional landing and take-off situations - long runaway, wider runways, needing thicker and thicker substructure construction for the increased weight and loads of aircraft.  They liked the idea of vertical take-offs and landing and explored numerous designs in early helicopter and vertical takeoff craft. 

In February of 1955 "Project Silver Bug" seemed a viable solution. In the report to the USAF of that date they explained that the resulting disc shaped craft was not influenced by science fiction or accounts of objects in the skies but from designers and technical types trying to answer the Air Force's specified need for "dispersed base operations." They needed a craft that could get in and get out without the long runway hindrance.

A result was PROJECT 1794 aka Project Silver Bug.

If you look closely at this one cutaway of the conceptional design, you can see the basic design that oddly will be used later in some crashed UFOs scenarios. 

I do not believe these were the products of copying downed alien craft; they would have worked better if that were the case. Sadly, the end result seen in old films is a less than stellar demonstration of an object struggling to stay level at only three feet of altitude.

37th High Strangeness: 37th Parallel and Bizarre Activities

Does the parallel reveal a more bizarre history than other locations? The map seems to change depending on the amount earth curvature goes into the map. Some show a line at the Kansas-Nebraska border while others show the same line at the Kanas and Oklahoma borders. Bad geography or something else?

Landmarks on the 37th parallel include --

Santa Cruz, California; Gilroy, California; Madera, California; Ubehebe Crater in Death Valley; 

Colorado City, Arizona; the Four Corners at the intersection with the 32nd meridian west from Washington (the only place where four U.S. states meet at a point); 

Cairo, Illinois; 

Bowling Green, Kentucky; and 

Newport News, and Hampton, Virginia. It enters the Chesapeake Bay at the northernmost tunnel entrance / exit of the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel and the southernmost point of Old Point Comfort on the former Army base, Ft. Monroe.

The question may be: is there a less US-centric way of looking at the issue? Based on all US cases they appear to occur within the 40-30 parallel range.  This seems to reflect cases from Asia and Europe as well. 

Where would the South America, African, and Australian cases fall?  Would a similar grouping be found there?  What might those results indicate? What could be learned from looking at it globally?

In the 1950s and 1960s reports of UFOs they tended to be seen them moving NW to SE or the reverse. SW to the NE was another frequent route. Were they using a circumpolar path?  Are there similar trends in other nations that might add to this information and provided some additional clues?

Fringe Topics: Barbara Bartholic and the Reptilian Overlords

Barbara: The Story of a UFO Investigator  (June 27, 2003) represents one element of ufology that is considered "fringe."  It is a hard to find book and the author has now passed.  

The description of the book is short. "My research began with hosting the Heaven's Gate people before they were Heaven's Gate. I went on to work for seven years with Jacque Vallee. He was portrayed as the French scientist in the movie, 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind.' Vallee and I traveled around the U.S. and around the world researching cattle mutilations, UFO sightings and abductions."

One unnamed reviewer noted more details: "James Bartley: Alien Abduction Research lost a true pioneer with the passing of Barbara Bartholic. Although Barbara’s work has gone largely unheralded (except amongst the many people she helped) her legacy lives on in the form of cutting edge research amongst her protégés and an understanding amongst serious researchers of the primary role played by the Reptilians in alien abductions. Barbara laid the groundwork for a deeper understanding of the Reptilian Overlordship. Indeed Barbara coined the phrase “Reptilian Overlordship.” Barbara delved deeper than most abduction researchers. She didn’t turn away from confronting or unsettling information. I am proud to say that I was a protégé of Barbara Bartholic..."

The book available at Barbara: The Story of a Ufo Investigator : Barbara Bartholic : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The work emerges from a time in the late 1990's and early 2000's when there was a large group who believed there were "Reptilians" among us and who were taking over and replacing leaders, scientists, etc. To this day various videos and reels can be found with lurid titles about "reptilian eyes" in human faces and many variations on the theme.

Aliens - as a group - were reptilian and bent on world domination through inflicting as much pain on abductees and humans as possible. They entered into evil pacts with the government to secure underground space for living and testing. This led, it was believed, to a vast confrontation of military and aliens underground Dulce, New Mexico.

Finally, the book was the work of Barbara Bartholic (Author), Peggy Fielding (Contributor).  Bartholic was Tulsa, Oklahoma's well recognized UFO investigator and researcher.  She used hypnosis and regression techniques as analytical tools. When troubled people who suspected UFO abduction in their pasts, learned of her work,  they were (says the book blurb) relieved that there is someone whom they can call out to for help. 

Bartholic, who was nationally, even internationally, known for her work in the field, also produced a number of video documentaries and written materials covering the UFO experiences of people from all over the U.S. 

Peggy Fielding is a writer and teacher of writers. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma and taught writing at Tulsa Community College. She has degrees from Central State University in Edmond, Oklahoma and the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, R.P. She is the author of several nonfiction books, two novels, hundreds of short stories and articles in local and national magazines.

It is interesting to compare this work with the work of Dr. John E. Mack, an American scientist who studied personality and related fields at Harvard, who traveled globally to study the ufo/abductee phenomena. 

There is Skeptical and then there is Skeptical

 As a researcher who has poured over original documents, digitized copies, and explored many an archive and newspaper morgue, I have a broad understanding of the role of skepticism as it applies to the field of the unexplained.

J. Allen Hynek wrote in the early 1970's that the official stance to odd things reported was "such and such cannot happen" and therefore "it did not happen."  The process of scientific exploration was sidelined.

Reviewing some past rebuttals in the historic record reveals some common behaviors.

1. Reject the Idea of anything out of the normal. This is clear when reports and news accounts are rejected and rebutted without anyone actually investigating. 

2. Offer up A Substitute Explanation. It does not need to fit just throw it against the wall and see if it sticks.

3. Repeat as Needed.

In recent years, this routine has reappeared. This time the hecklers have expanded to social media, pod casts, etc.

Scenario #1- Person X shares a strange object they saw in the skies to an online social platform. Immediate responses showing the people had not read the entry in total (with mentions of directional changes, etc.). The posts - "it's a satellite"; "rolling eyes" graphic; "I knew the conspiracy nuts would show up!"

Scenario #2 - Person on Y shares a strange object and they KNOW what it was. The galactic overlords have arrived!  They post an image that is clearly Starlinks, Falcon 9, etc. Yet, despite the informative posts they refuse to listen and accuse those voices of trying to silence the truth.

In many ways these are similar situations. In ech case is a lack of an open mind, willing to learn, test new ideas, and find facts.

Too much at either end of this spectrum is unhealthy to expanding human knowledge. The extremes are where the concept of "faith" or "science" takes over in oddly similar religious-like devotion. The skeptics worship a never changing science and the other extreme believes anything.

Target somewhere in the middle....

Hudson Talks Oklahoma UFOs on Un-X News

 https://www.youtube.com/live/vi9jWdp-RlI?si=hxPfBA_HtMegw4Ys

Live interview, Friday, June 28, 2024

"Interrogation Forms": A Reflection of the Attitude to Witnesses

From the initial days of the US UFO story, there is ample evidence that the FBI and Military investigative services interviewed people about what they had seen. The FBI was brought in because they were concerned with the security clearances of individuals and because they had helped to investigate the backgrounds of many government workers it was natural they be involved.  From the start they people - military and civilian - were not interviewed they were "interrogated."   There was no "interview form" but there was an "interrogation form" that would be recreated and improved several times during the 1950's.

According to the Cambridge English Dictionary the term "interrogation" is defined as "a process of asking someone a lot of questions for a long time in order to get information, sometimes using threats or violence..."

Modern meanings, include those from the The Handbook of The SAS And Elite Forces: How the Professionals Fight and Win. (Edited by Jon E. Lewis. p.186-Tactics And Techniques, Evasion, Capture and Escape. Robinson Publishing Ltd 1997. ISBN 1-85487-675-9), that defines it as - "Interrogation (also called questioning) is interviewing as commonly employed by law enforcement officers, military personnel, intelligence agencies, organized crime syndicates, and terrorist organizations with the goal of eliciting useful information, particularly information related to suspected crime. Interrogation may involve a diverse array of techniques, ranging from developing a rapport with the subject to torture" (Wikipedia).

In essence, the process of interview and interrogation come from opposing ends of a spectrum of soliciting information.

Interrogation presumes hidden facts, motives, and actions. It presumes guilt.

Interview is a structured conversation where one participant asks questions, and the other provides answers. The purpose is to collect information, facts, data, and evaluates the skills of the observer and the nature of the observed event.

Was it any wonder the initial UFO history was fraught with problems?  Many assumed witnesses were Soviet operatives or closet communists set to destabilize a government. Many assumed the craft were secret Soviet ships designed to lead an invasion. The authorities ALWAYS drove home the HOAXER, the CRACKPOT, and the DRUNKS as a primary causative for the sightings. 

Ridicule did the rest...