On July 24, psychologist R. Leo Sprinkle, Professor Emeritus of the University of Wyoming (also an APRO consultant), conducted hypnotic trance sessions. What follows is a summary of Dr. Sprinkle’s findings:
“…Mrs. Smith suffered much as she relived the experience. The behaviors, e.g., weeping, moaning, tossing her head, shuddering, and shaking were evident to those of us who observed her, especially as she seemed to relive an experience of a fluid material covering her face.” Sprinkle then goes on to recount Louise’s claim that her pet parakeet, according to her claims and the claims of others who observed the bird, refused to have anything to do with her after the UFO experience. Others could approach the bird and it would not react wildly; however, whenever Louise came close to the bird, the bird would flutter and move away from her. The bird died within weeks after the UFO experience.
Mona Stafford “…responded well to the hypnotic suggestions, and she was able to describe impressions which led her to believe that she had been taken out of the car and that she was alone on a white table or bed. She saw a large eye which seemed to be observing her. She felt as if a bright white light was shining on her and that there was power or energy which transfixed her and held her to the table or bed. She experienced a variety of physiological reactions, including the impressions that her right arm was pinned or fastened, her left leg forced back under her, with pain to the ankle and foot; pressure on the fingers of the left hand, as if they were forced or squeezed in some way; a feeling of being examined by four or five short humanoids who sat around in “surgical masks” and “surgical garments” while observing her. At one point, she sensed that she was either experiencing out-of-body travel or else she was waiting outside of a large room in which she could view another person, probably a woman, lying on a white bed or observation table. She perceived a long tunnel, or a view of the sky, as if she had been transported to an area inside a large mountain or volcano. Although she wept and moaned and experienced a great deal of fatigue as a result of the reliving of the experience, she felt better the next day; she expressed the belief to me that she now had a better understanding of what happened during the loss-of-time experience.
“Mrs. Thomas had been rather quiet during the initial interview in March 1976, although it was obvious that she is perceptive and aware of other people’s attitudes and feelings. Like the others, she has lost weight, but she has also experienced some personality changes. She dresses a bit more colorfully now, and she is more willing to talk and to share her ideas with others. She, too, experienced a similar reaction during the hypnotic techniques: She apparently was responding well to suggestions to go deeper; when she relived the UFO experience, she experienced a great deal of emotional reaction. Her main impression was that she was taken away from her two friends and that she was placed in a “chamber” with a window on the side. She seemed to recall figures which moved back and forth in front of the window of the chamber as if she were being observed. Her impression was that the observers were four-foot-tall humanoids, with dark eyes and gray skin. One disturbing aspect of the experience was the memory that she had some kind of contraption or covering that was placed around her neck, whenever she tried to speak, or think, the contraption or covering was tightened, and she experienced a choking sensation during these moments. At first, Mrs. Thomas interpreted the memories as an indication that she was being choked by hands or that she was being prevented from calling out to her friends; later, however, she came to the tentative conclusion that an experiment was being conducted, and the experiment was to learn more about her intellectual and emotional processes. She recalled a bullet-shaped object, about an inch and one half in diameter, being placed on her left chest; she previously had experienced pain and a red spot at that location.
“During the polygraph examination, and during the initial hypnotic sessions, each UFO witness was interviewed separately from the other witnesses. After the initial description of impressions, the women were invited to attend the additional hypnosis sessions so that each woman could observe the reaction of the other two women. During these sessions, there was much emotional reaction, which seemed to arise from two conditions: the compassion of the witnesses for their friend who was reliving the experience and releasing emotional reactions to the experience; also, it seems as if the description by one witness would trigger a memory on the part of another witness, even if the experiences seemed to be similar or different.
“Certain similarities were observed: a feeling of anxiety on the part of each witness regarding a specific aspect of the experience. For Ms. Smith, it was the wall and the gate beyond which she was afraid to move psychologically; for Ms. Stafford it was the eye which she observed and the impression that something evil or bad would be learned if she allowed the eye to control her; for Ms. Thomas, it was the blackness which seemed to be the feared condition or cause for anxiety. Each woman seemed to experience the impression that she had been taken out of the car and placed elsewhere without her friends and without verbal communication. For Ms. Smith, the lack of verbal communication was most distressing, although she had the feeling that she would be returned after the experiment.
“Differences were noted in that each woman seemed to have a somewhat different kind of examination, and in a different location. Ms. Smith did not have a clear impression of the location, although she did recall a feeling of lying down and being examined; Ms. Stafford had the impression of being in a volcano or mountainside, with a room in which a bright light was shining on a white table with white-clothed persons or humanoids sitting around and observing her; Mrs. Thomas recalled impressions of being in a dark chamber, with gray light permitting a view of the humanoids who were apparently observing her.”
In his conclusive paragraphs, Dr. Sprinkle reports:
“In my opinion, each woman is describing a real experience, and they are using their intelligence and perceptivity as accurately as possible in order to describe the impressions which they obtained during the hypnotic regressions session. Although there is uncertainty about their impressions, especially in regard to how each person could be transported out of the car and relocated in the car, the impressions during the loss-of-time experience are similar to those of other UFO witnesses who apparently have experienced an abduction and examination during their UFO sighting.
“Although it is not possible to claim absolutely that a physical examination and abduction has taken place, I believe that the tentative hypothesis of abduction and examination is the best hypothesis to explain the apparent loss-of-time experience, the apparent physical and emotional reactions of the witnesses to the UFO sighting. An interesting subsequent event is that the women were reexperiencing their physical symptoms that had followed the January 1976 sightings. When I called them on July 26, the women said that they were suffering some of the same kinds of symptoms, e.g., fatigue, listlessness, sensitivity to skin, burning feeling on the face and eyes, fluid discharge, etc.
“I tried to reassure the ladies that it is not an uncommon experience in hypnotic regression that persons—after reliving earlier emotional experiences—may reexperience some of the symptoms which accompany those emotional reactions.
“I believe the case is a good example of UFO experiences, because of the number and character of the witnesses…and because of the results of further investigation through polygraph examinations and hypnotic regression sessions.”
—CORAL & JIM LORENZEN & R. LEO SPRINKLE
Keyhoe, Donald E. (1897-1988). A graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy and the Marine Corps Officers School, Major Donald Keyhoe (USMC Ret.) was a Marine aircraft and balloon pilot during World War II. After a night crash in the Pacific, he was temporarily retired from active duty. During this period he was Chief of Information, Civil Aeronautics, Department of Commerce (now the Federal Aviation Administration). Having previously established himself as an aviation journalist, Keyhoe resumed his writing career after the war.
He was asked to become the director of the Natio
nal Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in 1957, and served in that capacity for thirteen years. During the period from 1949 to 1973, he wrote several bestselling books on UFOs in which he championed the government coverup/conspiracy theory. His first article on the subject, “Flying Saucers Are Real,” caused a sensation when published by True magazine in its January 1950 issue. His five books on UFOs are: The Flying Saucers Are Real (1950); Flying Saucers From Outer Space (1953); The Flying Saucer Conspiracy (1955); Flying Saucers—Top Secret (1960); and Aliens From Space (1973).
POSITION STATEMENT: Air Force Headquarters, following a high-level policy, still publicly denies that UFOs exist, convinced this is best for the country. But for years the Air Force has had full proof of UFO reality.
During my long investigation of these strange objects, I have seen many reports verified by Air Force Intelligence, detailed accounts by Air Force pilots, radar operators, and other trained observers proving the UFOs are high speed craft superior to anything built on Earth.
Behind the scenes, there are strong efforts to create an official program to attempt communication with UFO aliens and learn the purposes of the long surveillance and to take steps toward peaceful contacts if there is no serious physical bar.
To succeed in communicating with the aliens, we should first end all capture attempts. No nation so far has been able to duplicate the UFOs control of gravity and other technical secrets. Ending the UFO chases would not mean exposing our country to deadly attacks by a fleet of Earth-made UFOs.
Donald Keyhoe
If we had started communicating earlier, we now might know the answers to all the major questions: the purpose of the long surveillance; the kinds of beings involved, if they are humanoid or at least not frighteningly different; the secrets of advanced space travel and many other things of which we have no knowledge today.
There are scientists who warn against trying to communicate and meet with highly advanced beings from other worlds. It is true that such meetings would have a tremendous impact, as the Space Science Board admitted some years ago. Some “doomsday” writers hint at terrible alien actions which could destroy us and our world. They believe that the Air Force and the CIA are hiding some awful discovery the public could never stand.
But today we are already living with the constant danger of surprise nuclear attack by an enemy nation. We know that such an attack could kill millions of people and destroy much of our civilization. Yet we do not live in overwhelming fear.
Whatever the answer to UFO aliens may be, we would not be utterly paralyzed. The American people have proved they can take shocking situations—such as World War II—without collapsing in fear. If prepared carefully—and honestly—they can take the hidden UFO facts, startling as they may be.
(Position statement was adapted from Aliens from Space (Doubleday, 1973; Signet/NAL, 1974) and the 1978 MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) Symposium Proceedings.)
Kinross (Michigan) jet chase On the night of November 23, 1953, an Air Defense Command radar detected an unidentified “target” over Lake Superior. Kinross Air Force Base, closest to the scene, alerted the 433rd Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Truax Field, Madison, Wisconsin, and an F-89C all-weather interceptor was scrambled. Radar operators watched the “blips” of the UFO and the F-89 merge on their scopes in an apparent collision, and disappear. No trace of the plane was ever found.
U. S. Air Force accident-report records indicate that the F-89 was vectored west-northwest, then west, climbing to 30,000 feet. At the controls was First Lieutenant Felix E. Moncia, Jr.; his radar observer was Second Lieutenant Robert L. Wilson. While on a westerly course, they were cleared to descend to 7,000 feet, turning east-northeast and coming steeply down on the unknown target from above. The last radar contact placed the interceptor at 8,000 feet, 70 miles off Keeweenaw Point, and about 150 miles northwest of Kinross AFB (now Kincheloe AFB).
The incident is not even labeled as a “UFO” case in Air Force records; instead, it was investigated by air-safety experts. There were several layers of scattered clouds (one with bottoms at 5,000 to 8,000 feet) and some snow flurries in the general area. Official records state, however, that the air was stable and there was little or no turbulence.
The Air Force later stated that the “UFO” turned out to be a Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) C-47 “on a flight plan from Winnipeg, Manitoba, to Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.” The F-89 apparently had crashed for unknown reasons after breaking off the intercept. In answer to queries from the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in 1961 and again in 1963, RCAF spokesmen denied that one of their planes was involved. Squadron Leader W. B. Totman, noting that the C-47 was said to be on a flight plan over Canadian territory, said “…this alone would seem to make such an intercept unlikely.”
The Air Force suggested that “…the pilot probably suffered from vertigo and crashed into the lake.” Harvard University astronomer and UFO debunker Dr. Donald H. Menzel accepted this explanation, adding that the radar operators probably saw a “phantom echo” of the F-89, produced by atmospheric conditions, that merged with the radar return from the jet and vanished with it when the plane struck the water.
Exactly what happened that night remains unclear, as the Air Force acknowledges, and serious unanswered questions remain. How likely is it that a pilot could suffer from vertigo when flying on instruments, as official records indicate was the case? If the F-89 did intercept an RCAF C-47, why did the “blip” of the C-47 also disappear off the radar scope? Or, if Menzel’s explanation is accepted and there was no actual intercept, why did the Air Force invoke a Canadian C-47, which RCAF spokesmen later stated was not there?
No intelligence document has yet surfaced that reports the radio communications between the pilot and radar controllers, and what each was seeing. Without this information, it is impossible to evaluate the “true UFO” versus the false radar returns and accidental crash explanations.
—RICHARD HALL
Klass, Philip J. (b. 1919). Philip Klass is best known to the general public as the world’s leading UFO skeptic. Dubbed “The Sherlock Holmes of UFOlogy,” by a reviewer, Klass’s books on the subject include UFOs: Identified (1968), UFOs: Explained (1974), UFOs: The Public Deceived (1983), UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game (1989), and The Real Roswell Crashed-Saucer Coverup (1997).
Klass was born in Des Moines and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Upon graduation from Iowa State in 1941 with a B.S. degree in electrical engineering, Klass joined General Electric Company as an avionics engineer. In 1952 he accepted a technical journalism position with Aviation Week magazine (now Aviation Week & Space Technology), and served as Senior Avionics Editor for 34 years before his semi-retirement in 1986. His 1957 article on microelectronics, the first ever published on the subject, predicted its revolutionary impact on the electronics industry. In 1973 Klass became one of only two journalists ever to be named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Klass has also been honored by the Aviation/Space Writers Association with awards in 1972, ’74, ’75, ’77, and ’86. In 1989, he received the Association’s ultimate Lauren D. Lyman Award for a career distinguished by “the qualities of integrity, accuracy and excellence in reporting.” Additionally, the Royal Aeronautical Society (London) bestowed its Decade of Excellence Award upon him in 1998 for lifetime achievement.
One of the original founders of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal in 1976, Klass has served on CSICOP’s Executive Council since the outset, and chairs its UFO Subcommittee. His privately published bimonthly Skeptics UFO Newsletter has more than 300 subscribers across the U.S. and around the world. And he continues to write for Aviation Week & Space Technology, living in Washington with his wife Nadya and their Lhasa apso Shi-Shi.
Address:
404 “N” Street, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20024
U.S.A.
E-mail:
PhilKlass@ao
l.com
POSITION STATEMENT: One of the characteristic fingerprints of pseudoscience is that the passage of time provides no additional basic knowledge of an alleged phenomenon. To date, despite the efforts of many hundreds of UFO investigators, including numerous scientists with Ph.D.s who believe that some UFOs are ET spacecraft, they have not been able to produce any scientifically credible evidence to support their views. All that we have learned is that experienced pilots, law enforcement officers, and even professional astronomers can readily mistake a bright planet Venus, a meteor-fireball, or the launch of a multistage ballistic missile for a UFO.
Philip Klass
In my nearly fifty years as a Washington-based technical journalist with a magazine referred to as “Aviation Leak”—because of the sometimes sensitive material it publishes—I have developed highly placed sources in the intelligence community and the Pentagon. This enabled me to write, for example, the first book describing the then “Top Secret” U.S. and Soviet spy satellites (Secret Sentries In Space, 1971). It would be nearly 25 more years before the U.S. declassified some details of its early spy satellite program; the Russians have never done so.
In my 30-plus years of investigating UFO reports—including many of the most celebrated cases—I have yet to encounter a shred of credible evidence to suggest that any of those reports involves extraterrestrial spacecraft. Nor have I found any evidence of a government conspiracy to cover up the “truth” about UFOs. Had I done so, I would have eagerly published such and graciously accepted my Pulitzer Prize. Rather, I have observed firsthand how Washington is incapable of keeping such secrets for so long, and how once-“Top Secret” documents (now declassified) dating back to the late 1940s make clear that the government knew nothing of any ET crash at Roswell or anywhere else.
When I first entered the UFO field in the mid-’60s, even the pro-UFO organizations like NICAP exercised appropriate caution when evaluating claims from “repeaters,” and especially from “abductees.” Now, no tale is too wild to be embraced by a large segment of the UFO community. How very sad.
The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters Page 55