The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters

by Story, Ronald

  —J. ALLEN HYNEK & RONALD D. STORY

  Chalker, William C. (b. 1952). Bill Chalker is one of Australia’s most prominent UFO researchers and has written extensively on the subject.

  William Chalker

  Born in Grafton, New South Wales (NSW), Australia, Mr. Chalker was educated at the University of New England, graduating with an Honours Science Degree (B.Sc. Hons.) with majors in chemistry and mathematics. Since 1975 he has worked as an industrial chemist, laboratory manager, and quality manager. He is also a contributing editor for the International UFO Reporter and coordinates the NSW UFO Investigation Centre (UFOIC).

  Chalker was the Australian representative for the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) from 1978 to 1986 and NSW state representative for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) from 1976 to 1993.

  His first book, The OZ Files: the Australian UFO Story, was published in 1996.

  Address:

  P. O. Box W42

  West Pennant Hills

  NSW, 2125, Australia

  E-mail:

  bill_c@bigpond.com

  POSITION STATEMENT: Although the UFO problem has been under scrutiny for several decades, only the last few years have seen any real major advances in the study of the subject. It is fast becoming a serious area of scientific study, and only recently has it started moving beyond the area of casual inspection. Even though civilian groups have conducted an often remarkable documentation program during the past few decades, only in the past few years has the UFO subject been worthy of legitimate scientific study.

  Clandestine inquiry has been replaced by serious open inquiry, and a solid data base has been established. It is this documented data that science should seriously examine.

  While the present data does not support any one clear hypothesis of origin and nature of the UFO, it certainly indicates without question the existence of a new empirical phenomenon.

  Localized flaps that are ongoing can bring UFO research under the scrutiny of direct experimentation, which can provide us with the repeatable phenomena that legitimate science accepts. Personal experience has shown that such research activity yields considerable data, and it is this sort of data that will thrust UFOs into the mainstream of scientific inquiry.

  —WILLIAM C. CHALKER

  channeling Considered to be a form of interdimensional communication in which a nonphysical intelligent being—not necessarily but often extraterrestrial—speaks through a human being in some form of trance. Channeling is one form of telepathy, which is not a new phenomenon, although it does figure prominently in modern New Age literature. Instances of inspired revelation and spiritual communication can be found in the Christian Bible, as well as in the scriptures of almost all human religions, globally and historically.

  —SCOTT MANDELKER

  Chariots of the Gods? (Econ-Verlag, 1968). Swiss hotelier Erich von Däniken, in this, his first and most widely circulated (reportedly 40 million copies) of many books on the ancient astronaut theme, seizes upon every megalith, every seemingly technological vestige of lost civilizations, practically every known myth or religious tale that mentions gods from heavens, to make a case that conventional theories of history and archaeology cannot explain the evolution of human intelligence. Though he doesn’t know who they were, or where they came from in space, those “gods of the distant past” who were extraterrestrial visitors “annihilated part of mankind” to produce Homo Sapiens. He gives partial credit for his findings to a rediscovery of “knowledge that was hidden in the libraries of secret societies,” groups he doesn’t name or mention again beyond the introduction.

  —RANDALL FITZGERALD

  chupacabras The anomalous entity known as el chupacabras—the “Goatsucker”—has been described by witnesses as standing between four and five feet tall and covered in greenish brown or blackish gray fur, with spindly arms ending in claws, powerful hind legs enabling it to jump over fences, a thin membrane under its arms that have been described as “wings,” and glowing red eyes. A proboscis emanating from the creature’s mouth, allegedly employed to suck its victims’ blood, has also been reported.

  Artist’s impression of el chupacabras, the “goatsucker”

  Mutilations had been reported on the island of Puerto Rico since the 1970s with the depredations of the notorious “Moca Vampire,” but it was not until March 1995 when the strange animal mutilations would replay themselves in a way that would attract media attention to the locality of Saltos Cabra outside Orocovis, Puerto Rico. A number of farm animals had turned up dead on the property of Enrique Barreto.

  Researchers found strange three-toed footprints covering the ground and ruled out an attack by a feral dog or cat, since canines and felines have four toes. Further analysis proved there was an 18-inch distance between footprints, suggesting that whatever creature they belonged to was bipedal rather than quadrupedal. Its weight was estimated at between 120 and 140 pounds.

  In August 1995, Madelyne Tolentino of the coastal town of Canóvanas would have the distinction of being one of the first witnesses to the creature. Ms. Tolentino became aware that a strange creature was approaching the house at a moderate pace, allowing her to take a good, long look at the aberration. Whatever it was stood four feet tall and had a pelt covered in a mixture of colors ranging from brown to black and ashen gray, as if it had been burned.

  On September 29, 1995, the creature killed an assortment of rabbits, guinea hens, and chickens at a farm in Guaynabo, P.R. A week later eyewitnesses claimed to have seen a beast “hairy like a bear” in Canóvanas again. On October 29th, Canóvanas mayor José “Chemo” Soto led a series of nightly hunts for the creature, equipping his posse with nets, tranquilizing dart guns, and other non-lethal means. It represented the first response against the bloodsucking visitor from anyone in an official capacity. The balance of 1995 was filled with senseless animal deaths and a choking feeling of terror among rural residents.

  A case could perhaps be made for paying little attention to the chupacabras if it had remained circumscribed to the island of Puerto Rico. But in February 1996, the chupacabras killed forty-two animals in Miami, Florida. Eyewitnesses in northwestern Miami reported seeing a creature walking erect and covered with thick matted hair at the scene of the attacks. The “Florida leg” of aberrant predatory activity ran from February through July 1996.

  Mexico’s turn would soon be next: in May 1996, Teodora Ayala Reyes, a resident of the village of Alfonso Genaro Calderón in Sinaloa, became the chupacabras’ first human victim, presenting what appeared to be “burn marks” on her back, exactly where the creature had clawed her. The seaside village was further wrenched out of obscurity after reports of a colossal bat-like creature stalking the area became widespread. All manner of farm animals were being found dead by their owners.

  Reports soon followed from Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras and as far south as the Amazon Basin. Guatemalan farmer Vicente Sosa thought he had seen a black dog with a long tail that suddenly increased in size, becoming a red-eyed beast with enormous eyes. Researchers visited the site of a chupacabras attack on chicken coops in the Estanzuela region, and remarked on the high radioactivity readings found in the area.

  The southern U.S. soon produced its very own chupacabras sightings. In mid-May 1996, Sylvia Ybarra went out to her backyard in the Texas town of Donna only to find that her pet goat had been killed by three inflamed puncture wounds to its throat. The animal had been felled near its shed.

  The events surrounding the chupacabras’ initial eruption into popular awareness are now many years behind us, allowing for a less heated atmosphere in which to debate its origin and even its existence. Skeptics refused to look at the evidence, offering the same tired explanations for the mutilations (feral dogs, apes, Satanists), but never explaining the face-to-face encounters with humans or the odd radiation signatures found in Puerto Rico and Central America.

  —SCOTT CORRALES

  Clark, Jerome (b. 1946). Jerome Clark has been active
in UFOlogy since the early1960s and is a much-published writer on UFO and Fortean subjects. He is also a songwriter (with Robin and Linda Williams) whose compositions have been recorded by Emmylou Harris, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Tom T. Hall, and other country, folk, and bluegrass artists. He has a wide range of historical, cultural, and literary interests.

  Born in Canby, Minnesota, Clark attended South Dakota State University (Brookings) and Moorhead State University (Minnesota), majoring in English and political science. Between 1976 and 1989 he was an editor of Fate magazine. Since 1985 he has edited the International UFO Reporter, the magazine of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies. He is the author of two editions of The UFO Encyclopedia. The first was published in three volumes between 1990 and 1996. The UFO Encyclopedia: The Phenomenon from the Beginning, the second edition, appeared in two volumes in 1998. Clark has won a dozen literary awards for his writings. In 1992 he won the Isabel L. Davis award, bestowed by the Fund for UFO Research, for his contributions to rationality in UFO study. He has written some fifteen books.

  In 1989, after years in the Chicago area, he moved back to his hometown, where he now lives and works.

  Address:

  612 N. Oscar Ave.

  Canby, MN 56220

  U.S.A.

  E:mail:

  jkclark@frontiernet.net

  POSITION STATEMENT: After a lifetime in this subject, I have concluded that the extraterrestrial hypothesis is one reasonable tentative approach to putting the best-documented and most puzzling UFO reports into a scientifically defensible conceptual framework. By such reports I mean those with credible multiple or independent witnesses, instrumented observations, and physical evidence.

  In this context the most crucial cases are not the most exotic or scary, but those with which actual science can be accomplished—usually close encounters of the second kind. In that sense, a single well-investigated landing-trace case is worth a thousand intriguing but evidentially empty abduction narratives.

  I am also convinced that besides what might be called the “event phenomenon,” there is an “experience phenomenon” which bears only a superficial relationship to the former. We lack a good vocabulary for, or even any real understanding of, a class of human experience—call it “visionary” for want of a better word—in which ostensibly supernatural entities are encountered. All we know is that such experiences are not objectively “real” in any conventional sense of the term; they just seem that way, and vividly so, to those who undergo them, and thus, since they are unlike ordinary hallucinations, they are genuinely mysterious. They mirror the cultural moment’s notion of what a “supernatural experience” might be; thus, today the entities are extraterrestrials, whereas once they were fairies or demons or angels.

  It is entirely likely, in my opinion, that daylight disks tracked on radar and exotic entity encounters experienced by individuals are two entirely separate, unrelated classes of phenomena. The first involves an event (it can be demonstrated that it happened in the world), and the second involves an experience (which can never be conclusively shown to have happened in the world).

  I am in no way arguing for a paranormal hypothesis here. All I am saying is that certain sorts of human experiences are only dimly understood, if that; and that—where the UFO phenomenon is concerned—some of these contribute to the noise around the signal, which may be the intrusion of somebody else’s technology into our planetspace.

  —JEROME CLARK

  Clear Intent (Prentice-Hall, 1984). Lawrence Fawcett and Barry Greenwood rely on 3,000 pages of previously classified documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act by eight military and civilian intelligence agencies, to construct a historical pattern of federal government involvement in UFO investigations. They also provide the first American version of an incident which occurred in 1980 at the Bentwaters Air Force Base in England involving an alleged night landing by a UFO witnessed by numerous U.S. Air Force security personnel.

  —RANDALL FITZGERALD

  Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Columbia Pictures, 1977; written and directed by Steven Spielberg.) A trend-setting UFO classic, starring Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Francois Truffaut, and Teri Garr.

  More than a classic, Spielberg’s monumental film is an exuberant rendering of contact with extraterrestrial visitors. It achieves an ingenious blend of “human interest” and sense of wonder that few can match. As reviewer Paul Clemens put it: “Close Encounters…is quite possibly the most important film of our time. The most important because it encompasses all. The entire human race, our planet, our universe…our destiny.”

  In the story, the protagonist (Roy Neary, played by Richard Dreyfuss) is confronted with the greatest mystery—culminating in the greatest imagined event—of our time, during the course of his mundane duties as a power company repairman. It turns out Neary’s quest (instilled telepathically, it seems, by the aliens) proceeds in parallel with a secret group of scientific and military types, who are also hot on the UFO trail.

  The film represents perfectly the symbiotic relationship between alleged science fact and science fiction. Spielberg even retained Dr. J. Allen Hynek (whose coined phrase served as the movie’s title) as a technical advisor on the film to authentic essential “facts” of UFO lore. Then, the film later had an apparent effect on what kind of “real” UFO-aliens were reported.

  It reshaped reports of short, big-headed aliens in two demonstrable ways: (1) Before the film, aliens with long, thin necks were nonexistent. After it, they became common. (2) Before the film, the eyes were of a generally human arrangement of pupil, iris, and white. Afterwards, they generally became totally black. The eyes tended to be more tilted and larger than before.

  Though it may be impossible to prove, the “Spielberg effect” is as real as any alien ever reported.

  —MARTIN S. KOTTMEYER

  & RONALD D. STORY

  References

  Close Encounters of the Third Kind ’78 magazine (Warren Publishing, 1977).

  Clute, John, and Nicholls, Peter. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (St. Martin’s/Griffin, 1993; 1995).

  Spielberg, Steven. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Dell Books, 1977).

  Colony: Earth (Stein & Day, 1974). Richard Mooney proposes that humans arrived on Earth as colonists escaping the wreckage of a greater culture elsewhere in the galaxy. But another disaster befell this species in the form of the flood described in the Bible. Stonehenge, the pyramids of Egypt, and other megalithic structures were built to protect the ruling classes from future cataclysms and to determine the new orbital position of the planet and length of the year once the flood waters receded.

  —RANDALL FITZGERALD

  Coming of the Saucers, The (privately published by Ray Palmer, 1952). Pilot Kenneth Arnold, assisted by publisher Ray Palmer, recount Arnold’s 1947 UFO sighting, which made worldwide headlines. The book includes Palmer’s subsequent investigation of other similar reports. Arnold had described the nine bright objects he spotted while flying near Mount Rainier as fluttering in formation, silver wings without fuselages, moving “like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.” Newspaper reporters took that statement and turned it into “flying saucers,” creating a shape and an observational standard against which all future UFO reports would be compared.

  —RANDALL FITZGERALD

  Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) CSICOP is a leading independent organization of scientists and scholars formed in 1976 and active ever since in critically examining paranormal and fringe-science claims (including those concerning UFOs and alien contact) from a scientific point of view. It is based at the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York, and has been headed since its inception by founding chairman Paul Kurtz, professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo. CSICOP’s more general mission is to promote science and scientific inquiry, critical thinking, science education, and reason. It publishes the Skeptical I
nquirer (subtitled “The Magazine for Science and Reason”), a bimonthly journal that presents evaluative and investigative articles and information and perspective on a wide range of topics. Authors include scientists, scholars, and investigators worldwide; the need not be associated with CSICOP. It also holds national and international conferences, assists news media with finding scientific sources and scientifically credible information, sponsors workshops on skepticism, puts out a quarterly printed newsletter, disseminates electronic newsletters, and so on. CSICOP has been strongly critical of those who fail to use scientific rigor in investigating claims and of media that present credulous, unskeptical accounts of UFO claims and other unproved assertions about alien contact. Many scientists, writers, and investigators interested in extraterrestrial intelligence and active in examining claims of UFOs and alien contact have been associated with the CSICOP over the years, including astronomers Carl Sagan, George Abell, David Morrison, Alan Hale, and Edwin Krupp, UFO investigators Philip J. Klass, Robert Sheaffer, and James Oberg (Klass is chairman of CSICOP’s UFO subcommittee), writers Isaac Asimov and Martin Gardner, and many physicists, plus a number of psychologists and social scientists (among them Robert A. Baker, Susan Blackmore, and Robert Bartholomew) interested in the psychological and sociological aspects of these controversies. Robert Sheaffer frequently critically comments on the most recent bizarre claims about aliens and UFOs in his “Psychic Vibrations” Skeptical Inquirer column.

  Noteworthy investigative articles published in SI over the years include Klass’s series demonstrating that the Majestic-12 documents are probably hoax documents, David E. Thomas’s reports on the actual, very earthly origin of the 1947 Roswell “crashed saucer” debris (a Project Mogul multiple-balloon launch), and investigations into other claims and hoaxes surrounding Roswell. Forty of these articles were collected recently in a book, The UFO Invasion (Prometheus, 1997).

  —KENDRICK FRAZIER

  Address:

  P.O. Box 703