The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters

by Story, Ronald

  —RICHARD HALL

  OBE (out-of-body experience) Like the NDE, this is also an experience of conscious separation from the physical body while retaining full or partial awareness. OBEs are responsible for a significant portion of ET contact events, and many contactees with spiritual messages claim to have been given their teachings by ETs while in an out-of-body state. There are many mystic practices, especially in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, that train the practitioner to achieve conscious out-of-body travel.

  —SCOTT MANDELKER

  P

  Palenque astronaut In the ancient Maya city of Palenque (on the Yucatan Peninsula, in the state of Chiapas, Mexico) stands a seventy-foot-high limestone pyramid called the Temple of the Inscriptions. Until 1949, the interior of the structure had remained unexplored. But when the Mexican archaeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier noticed finger-holes in one of the large floor-slabs, he raised the stone and discovered a hidden stairway that had been deliberately filled in, centuries ago, with stone rubble and clay. After four years of clearing away the blockage, Ruz and his workers had descended sixty-five feet into the pyramid, where he came upon a secret tomb. Little did Ruz know that twenty years later this discovery would be used as one of the “proofs” of the existence of ancient astronauts.

  What has attracted the attention of ancient-astronaut proponents is the stone carving that decorates the tomb lid. Erich von Däniken describes it this way: “On the slab [covering the tomb is] a wonderful chiseled relief. In my eyes, you can see a kind of frame. In the center of that frame is a man sitting, bending forward. He has a mask on his nose, he uses his two hands to manipulate some controls, and the heel of his left foot is on a kind of pedal with different adjustments. The rear portion is separated from him; he is sitting on a complicated chair , and outside of this whole frame you see a little flame like an exhaust.”

  Could it be that the Palenque tomb lid actually depicts a man piloting a rocket? The notion becomes less plausible once the various elements that make up the overall design are examined separately, in detail. Notice first that the “astronaut” is not wearing a space suit, but is practically naked. The man in this scene is barefoot, does not wear gloves (both fingernails and toenails are illustrated), and is outfitted in nothing more than a decorative loin cloth and jewelry. In other words, he is dressed in typical style, characteristic of the Maya nobility as to be expected at around A.D. 700. Actually, this is the tomb of the Maya king Lord-Shield Pacal, who died in A.D. 683.

  The details of his royal history are well established. The glyphs carved on the frame of the sarcophagus lid, as well as other glyphic evidence found in other temples at the Palenque site, trace his ancestry and give the exact dates of when he was born, when he ruled, and when he died. When the illustration on Pacal’s tomb lid is oriented vertically instead of horizontally, we can see that the “rocket” is actually a composite art form incorporating the design of a cross, a two-headed serpent, and some large corn leaves. The “oxygen mask” is an ornament that does not connect with the nostrils, but rather seems to touch the tip of Pacal’s nose; the “controls” are not really associated with the hands, but are elements from a profile view of the Maya Sun God in the background; the “pedal” operated by the “astronaut’s” foot is a sea shell (a Maya symbol associated with death); and the “rocket’s exhaust” is very likely the roots of the sacred maize tree (the cross), which is symbolic of the life-sustaining corn plant. The whole scene is a religious illustration, not a technological one, and is well understood within the proper context of Maya art.

  —RONALD D. STORY

  References

  Story, Ronald. The Space-Gods Revealed (Harper & Row/New English Library, 1976).

  ———. Guardians of the Universe? (St. Martin’s Press/New English Library, 1980).

  Von Däniken, Erich. Chariots of the Gods? (Souvenir Press, 1969; G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970).

  Palmer, Raymond A. (1911-77). Ray Palmer or R. A. P., as he usually signed his editorials, was the original UFO buff. In his book The World of Flying Saucers (1963), skeptic Donald Menzel called flying saucers virtually a Palmer creation. While that is something of an exaggeration, Palmer’s enormous influence on the early history of UFOlogy can hardly be underestimated. Yet, by the 1970s his name was little known beyond the small circle of hardcore buffs. David M. Jacobs’ The UFO Controversy in America (1975), which is generally considered to be a fairly complete UFO history up through 1974, mentions him only in a footnote. What happened?

  Part of the problem lay in Palmer’s wild and unpredictable imagination. He was likely to say or do practically anything and would not be contained by prudence or respectability. Then there was his sense of humor. He left even his admirers with the uncomfortable feeling that he might be pulling their leg. In the 1960s, UFOlogist Jim Moseley made a pilgrimage to the Wisconsin farm on which Palmer spent most of his later years. Palmer asked Moseley rhetorically, “What if I told you it was all a joke?” In a speech to a UFOlogical convention in Chicago shortly before his death in 1977, Palmer warned his audience not to believe everything he said. Serious UFOlogists had a lot of trouble with his attitude, and they often tried to pretend that Ray Palmer did not exist at all. But he did.

  As a child, Palmer suffered severe injuries, which left him dwarfed in stature and partially crippled, but he never allowed these handicaps to stop him. In the 1930s and 1940s Palmer was editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures. two of America’s bestselling science fiction magazines.

  Each issue of the magazines began with a long editorial by Palmer, which was often more imaginative than the stories it was supposed to introduce! In 1944 there was what John A. Keel has called “a significant prelude to the 1947 flap.” Amazing Stories published a tale called “I Remember Lemuria,” written by a Pennsylvania welder by the name of Richard S. Shaver. Shaver told of a secret underground world peopled by Deros (detrimental robots), who caused most of the world’s troubles by controlling men’s minds with rays projected from their underground caverns.

  According to Keel, “Palmer was amazed when he was buried under thousands of letters from people claiming they, too, had experiences with the Dero and that Shaver was telling the truth.” Keel may be overstating the reaction, but “I Remember Lemuria” did get a great deal of attention from readers. Several other stories about this underground world were published under Shaver’s byline, though they were heavily written by Palmer, whose writing style was unmistakable. Palmer even devoted an entire issue of Amazing Stories to what he called “The Shaver Mystery.” Palmer no longer said these underground-world stories were fictitious; now he claimed that they were products of Shaver’s “racial memory.”

  While “the Shaver Mystery” temporarily upped the sales of Palmer-edited publications, they did not find favor with all science fiction fans. Many began referring to the series as “the Shaver Hoax.”

  Palmer was one of many who was intrigued by Kenneth Arnold’s reported sighting of a “flying saucer” on June 24, 1947. He wrote about flying saucers in his editorials. But Ziff-Davis, the publishers of Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures, were not nearly as enthusiastic. They were stung by the “Shaver Hoax” criticism and disturbed by some of Palmer’s activities on behalf of flying saucers, and, besides, sales were not what they had hoped. In 1948, Palmer left Ziff-Davis in a disagreement over an a1l-UFO issue.

  That same year, in conjunction with Curtis Fuller, he started Fate magazine, a publication devoted to the exploration of strange phenomena. The first issue contained a bylined article by Arnold, defending his flying saucer sighting from criticism and ridicule.

  During this same period, Palmer became involved with the most controversial incident in his UFOlogical career, the Maury Island hoax. Two men, Harold Dahl and Fred Crisman, claimed that they had seen a flock of flying saucers while boating off Maury Island, near Tacoma, Washington, in June 1947. They got in touch with Palmer, who sent no other than Kenneth Arnold out to investi
gate. Arnold thought the story was too big for him, and he contacted the Air Force. Two intelligence officers were sent to interview Crisman and Dahl. On their return flight, their plane crashed and both were killed.

  An investigation of the crash found nothing out of the ordinary and concluded that the entire Maury Island incident was a hoax. The investigation also concluded that Palmer had actually encouraged the hoax and was, indirectly at least, responsible for the death of the two officers. Palmer put a different interpretation on the incident. He hinted darkly at some sort of “coverup” and “conspiracy” and said that he wanted “no more blood on his hands.” This was the first or one of the first times that the “conspiracy of silence” theme was injected into UFOlogical thinking.

  In the early 1950s, Palmer moved to Amherst, Wisconsin, sold his interest in Fate, and started his own publishing company. For years he put out a bewildering variety of books and periodicals, many on occult or other “borderland” subjects. Most of Palmer’s ventures were only marginally profitable. His most successful and longest-lived periodical was Flying Saucers. While this magazine never had a circulation that exceeded a few thousand, it was, for many years, the largest circulation American magazine dealing exclusively with the subject.

  Early on, Palmer himself had abandoned the mundane idea that UFOs came from outer space. He actively promoted the theory that UFOs came from the Shaverian underground world, and that they flew out of the “Hollow Earth” through holes at the North and South Poles.

  Though the UFOs from the hollow Earth idea never really caught on, Palmer’s influence on the popularity of UFOs in America was enormous. He was the subject’s earliest and most consistent publicist. Through Fate, and later Flying Saucers, he continued to print UFO reports at times when it seemed that practically everyone else had lost interest.

  Ray Palmer died on August 15, 1977.

  —DANIEL COHEN

  Paradox: The Case for the Extraterrestrial Origin of Man (Crown, 1977). Irish archeologist John Philip Cohane believes Homo sapiens are descended directly from extraterrestrial colonists who genetically manipulated apes. He bases this conclusion primarily on two observations: inadequate fossil records to indicate an evolutionary link between humans and apes; and humans are “too spiritually refined” to be related to other primates.

  —RANDALL FITZGERALD

  Parallel Time Line The time line which follows is intended to show the history of UFOlogy and SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence) in context with developments in science and technology, and other world events, as well as the symbiotic relationship between UFO-ET events and science fiction.

  Notably absent are new and exciting developments in the world’s religions, whereas the opposite is true in the joint-category of science and technology.

  It is also notable that developments in science have probably influenced the UFO mythology as much as, or possibly even more so, than science fiction.

  —MARTIN S. KOTTMEYER

  & RONALD D. STORY

  References

  Cooke, Jean; Kramer, Ann; and Rowland-Entwistle. History’s Timeline (Barnes & Noble Books, 1996).

  Engelbert, Phillis, and Dupuis, Diane L. The Handy Space Answer Book (Visible Ink Press, 1998).

  Flammonde, Paris. UFO Exist! (Ballantine, 1976).

  Gribbin, John, ed. A Brief History of Science (Barnes & Noble, 1998).

  Hall, Richard. “Chronology of Important Events in UFO History” in Story, Ronald D., ed. The Encyclopedia of UFOs (Doubleday/New English Library, 1980).

  Hellemans, Alexander, and Bunch, Bryan. The Timetables of Science (Simon & Schuster, 1988).

  Imhoff, Susan; MacShamhráin; Killeen, Richard, et. al. Timelines of World History (Quadrillion Pulishing/CLB, 1998).

  Stein, Werner; Grun, Bernard, et. al. The Timetables of History (Simon & Schuster, 1979).

  Story, Ronald D., ed. The Encyclopedia of UFOs (Doubleday/New English Library, 1980).

  Time Almanac 2000 (Information Please, 2000).

  Time: Great Images of the 20th Century (Time Books, 1999).

  Time magazine (Fall, 1992) special issue. Research by Deborah Wells and Ratu Kamlani.

  Trench, Brinsley LePoer. The Flying Saucer Story (Ace, 1966).

  Urdang, Laurence, ed. The Timetables of American History (Simon & Schuster, 1981).

  Vallée, Jacques. Anatomy of a Phenomenon (Ace, 1965).

  World Events: 1000 Events That Changed the World (Rand McNally, 2000).

  paranoia and UFOs Is UFOlogy a species of paranoia? In common usage, paranoia is exemplified by individuals who believe that others are persecuting or spying on them. Such people will describe events and point to evidence that some sort of covert plot is being directed against them. For those confronted with making judgment on these beliefs, the issue is generally one of the individual’s interpretation rather than his facticity. The evidence is real enough, but is the interpretation valid, or is the person applying, in Jacques Lacan’s phrase, “a novel form of syntax” in expressing his experience of the world? The paranoid’s experience of the bond of the human community is troubled, and there is a resultant distortion of his style of thought, with inflation in the significance of trivial things in the environment. A torn letter is taken as evidence of CIA surveillance. That the letter is junk mail is a criticism that will only temporarily faze his confidence in the general frame of his beliefs. The disparity between the strangeness of the claim and triviality of the proof, so striking to the onlooker, is ignored in the need to believe that some power is intent on subverting his life. (Clement, 1983)

  In this most common sense, UFOlogy should have been recognized as a manifestation of the paranoid style of thought decades ago. Amid the silly political ploys of UFOlogists like Richard Haines to gerry-mander solved UFO reports out of existence by linguistic fiat, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the U in UFO stands for “unidentified,” not “unexplained.” (Haines, 1987). The word contains an important connotation and suggests a presumption. The flying object has not provided identification of itself. No radio contact. No flight plan. Remember, the term was introduced by the U.S. Air Force. The initial suspicion was that Russian spycraft were breaching U.S. security for unknown ends. The escalation of the hypothesis to suspicion of extraterrestrial reconnaissance retained the presumption of a furtive spying intelligence.

  The manner of presentation of their reality never made great sense, and the Air Force eventually stated that UFOs were not a direct threat to U.S. security. Time has fully borne out that judgment. Civilian UFO investigators, however, argued that even one unsolved UFO report held enormous implications and continued to entertain the interpretation of UFOs as evidence of extraterrestrial visitation.

  Apart from the hoaxes, the physical evidence used to argue UFO reality is as trivial as the things used to support the more personal delusions of other paranoids—lost rings, dimming lights, mechanical failures, unexplained medical ailments, overinterpreted photographs, etc. UFOs never melt cars into radioactive puddles, snatch up football stadiums, invert amino acid in victims, or leave behind slabs of multiquark strong force adaptors when they crash. In short, there is nothing that requires an extramundane explanation. This is not to say that there is always an obvious mundane solution, but even less airy paranoids can ask questions hard to answer. Common sense arguments directed at the strangeness of the frame of belief are generally dismissed. The problem of noncontact, first advanced by the father of UFOlogy himself, Charles Fort, has been termed a debunker’s ploy to subvert UFO research or merely labeled irrelevant.

  No one would question that this or that individual UFOlogist is paranoid, but the collective enterprise has somehow managed to escape the notice of the diagnosticians. By faulting the reality-testing processes of UFOlogy, orthodox science has implicitly exiled it among the psychoses. (Frosch, 1983) It never bothered to explain the UFOlogists’ delusion, however. The oversight is regrettable at least from the humanitarian point of view that on
e should try to understand those he opposes and gain, if not empathy, perspective and depth. But science has also missed the philosophical pleasure of forming an esthetic gestalt of the history of UFO belief.

  The exercise in taxonomy does not result merely in a descriptive conclusion. The realization that UFOlogy is a species of paranoia means that the psychological literature on paranoia will provide insights into the dynamics of UFO belief. Certainly, the most intriguing fruit yielded by a consideration of the clinical profile of paranoia is the discovery that paranoid beliefs are not static facets of personality. They evolve. In fact, paranoia follows a well-defined progression that is remarkable in the “almost monotonous regularity” of its development. It advances through a series of stages that begins with shame and ends in delusions of grandeur. The full schematic runs as follows:

  • A precipitation factor—a social setback or a slight or humiliation

  • A sensitivity to external contacts

  • An asocial withdrawal of some kind

  • Subjective preoccupations

  • Hypochondriasis—the search for medical verification of illness and failure to find it

  • Increased concern, even obsession, with bodily functions

  • Increasing worry—Why? What? When?

  • Irrational revelation-the formulation of a manufactured insight into how the illness happened

  • Somatic delusions and retrospective falsification of the origins of the physical complaint

  • Projection—the belief the illness is caused by an external factor

  • Systematization of the delusion, clarification, shift of anxiety and consequent reintegration of personality

  • Conspiracy logic (interpretation of events as links in a conspiracy) with a widening circle of persecutors worldwide

  • Puzzlement about why persecution has focused on self

  • Delusions of grandeur

  • Recognition of an important mission such as saving the world or being a messenger of God