UFOs (and related) Text Resources Thread

[Laird]

Courtesy of The Daily Grail comes the IndyWeek interview with David J. Halperin How to See a UFO with David J. Halperin.

Halperin’s basic premise is that, while UFOs aren’t real, UFO sightings inarguably are, and that’s worth studying.

[T]he UFO believer and the UFO debunker are both part of the phenomenon. Everyone who engages with the idea of UFOs is, in one way or another, expressing unconscious thoughts, fears, and hopes.

Have you heard the John Lennon story? In the summer of 1974, Lennon’s companion May Pang had just finished showering, and John was walking around the apartment naked. John calls to her, “Come look at this.” They go out on the balcony and see this disc-shaped object pass overhead. They take repeated photographs, which turn out to show nothing.

In later years, almost every time Lennon or Pang are asked about this, they mention that they were naked as if that’s a crucial part of the story. And I think that it is. When is the last time that a naked human couple was confronted by a numinous presence? You see where I’m going?

“And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” Genesis 3:8. What I see in that story is something—and I’ll use the Jungian word—powerfully archetypal. I think for them, it was a completely unconscious reenactment of the Eden story.

[Laird]

30 years later, we still don't know what really happened during the Belgian UFO wave by Jeva Lange at The Week.

At first, the witnesses claimed, all you noticed were the lights.

They were so bright you could read by them, so brilliant that a policeman described them as "like lights on a huge football field." Only gradually did you notice the object they emitted from — a hulking triangular shape, with three enormous spotlights pointed toward the ground, and a red, flashing light at its center. "The whole thing," recalled the policeman, as if barely able to believe it himself, "was floating in the air."

It was a clear November night in 1989, near the town of Eupen, Belgium, which sits some seven miles from the German border. Heinrich Nicoll, the policeman, and his partner, Hubert Von Montigny, called their dispatcher to report the object they'd stumbled on while on a routine patrol. "Suddenly, they told me they were seeing a strange object in the sky," Albert Creutz, who was on the receiving end, told Unsolved Mysteries in a 1992 episode. "It made no noise. We joked about it and said it might be Santa Claus trying to land."

But by the time the evening was over, at least 30 different groups and three separate pairs of police officers would allege to have seen the unidentified flying object. And they wouldn't be the last. Belgium's months-long "UFO wave" culminated 30 years ago today — on March 30, 1990 — in a physics-defying chase through the skies over Europe as two Belgian Air Force F-16s pursued mysterious objects on their radars that they couldn't even see.

[Laird]

NARA Tentatively Confirms 200-Page FBI File on NICAP Organizer by Jack Brewer on The UFO Trail blog.

The existence of a 200-page FBI file likely pertaining to NICAP organizer Nicholas de Rochefort was acknowledged by the National Archives and Records Administration in a March 12, 2020 email. The file was compiled as part of an internal security investigation conducted between 1955 and 1964, according to the email, which also stated an initial assessment confirmed de Rochefort is, in fact, the subject of the file.

In 1954 de Rochefort sought U.S. citizenship, and in 1956 the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena was incorporated. He passed away due to cancer in 1964.

We recently explored de Rochefort, his activities, and a 29-page FBI file pertaining to him obtained through the FOIA. He was active in anti-communism movements and organizations, and described by his former employer, the Advertising Council of Washington, D.C., as a "good propagandist", per an FBI report contained in the file.

So what does all this tell us about Nicholas de Rochefort, NICAP, and the evolution of the American UFO genre? Many questions remain, and more seem to arise. However, it seems increasingly improbable de Rochefort was passionately interested in flying saucers, at least not for the reasons many might like to think.

NICAP has long been suspected of being organized, infiltrated and/or undermined by the intelligence community. Perhaps, as we continue to chip away at these decades-old mysteries and obtain new FOIA docs, more will become apparent about actual motives for such activities and involvement. In learning such things, we may not only learn more about 20th century UFO orgs and culture, but implications for the 21st century as well.

Changed my email and re registered and it seems now I can't post a new thread. Is this correct?
Thanks
Is Karmarling still on here from years ago

[Laird]

Changed my email and re registered and it seems now I can't post a new thread. Is this correct?
Thanks

Nope, it's not correct - you should be able to post a new thread. What (if any) error message are you getting?

Is Karmarling still on here from years ago

Yes, though not so regularly as in the past.

[Laird]

Is Karmarling still on here from years ago

Yes, though not so regularly as in the past.

I see my mistake. I took that as a question, but it was a statement. Ha. I'll message you privately.

British UFO Research Association - BUFORA

web site, with journals and publications going back to the 60's

A link here to their UFO Handbook

https://bufora.org.uk/GUIDE-TO-UFOs.php

[Laird]

More mainstreaming of the UFO conversation:

US Congress holds first hearing on UFOs in decades, Pentagon official shows video from F-18 'UAP' encounter, an 18 May, 2022 Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) news article from the Associated Press (AP).

The US Congress has held its first hearing in half a century on unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and no, there is still no government confirmation of extraterrestrial life.

Testifying before a House Intelligence subcommittee on Tuesday, Pentagon officials did not disclose additional information from their ongoing investigation of hundreds of unexplained sightings in the sky.

But they said they had picked a director for a new task force to coordinate data collection efforts on UFOs, or as the government prefers to label them, "unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs)".