UFOs, Paranormal, Pseudoscience Thread

[Old Man Mike]

Hello IE. I thought that a first post back would be best in a topic I've spent 45 years researching. Here are a few bits for whatever they might be worth:
1. The USN releases of films are the tip of an iceberg. Everyone in military intel takes them seriously. The objects are not Sci-Fy movie fancy but plenty good enough to calculate exact distances, altitudes, velocities, accelerations, and determine sudden non-inertial stops. All of these calculations lead irrevocably to the conclusions that these are the products of technology (not atmospheric light phenomena) and we can't determine how such physical flight characteristics can be managed. These bits of information are considered solidly true because they have been determined by multiple simultaneous instrumentation readings plus pilot testimonies.
2. Due to all that, the Congress insisted that a study group would be set up within the intel community, and (astoundingly) that citizen experts be included. If this was 10 years ago, I could well have been one such researcher considered. As it is, my best UFO-researcher buddy, engineer Robert Powell, has been seen as the most appropriate choice. If they go through with this, Robert would bring my expertise in UFO phenomenology (the characteristics of flight etc embedded in the reports) along with the data of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies to those meetings and work. The intel community has been acting "normally" however, dragging feet until the public and Congress loses its attention span, and one imagines that they'll keep on their own path without the citizen expertise.
3. Personally, I've co-authored a paper using isotope analysis (to see if a metallic object has a non-solar system isotope ratio in one or more metal constituents.) It is in the editor's hands but has been essentially approved.
4. If I present the following hypothesis in words which do not use the term extraterrestrials or any similar words, such as: "Has there been evidence which supports the hypothesis that technological objects displaying flight characteristics in our skies for which our aerotechnologies at the time were not capable?" The answer to that hypothetical is YES. Because YES is the leading answer to that research question, it is then the option for the inquirer to continue to think about that or not. Searching beyond that answer to deeper causes leads one past the available data, but one plays hob trying to come up with (intellectually honestly) a theory which actually covers the data without resorting to the so-called ETH. In approximately 1970, the outstanding atmospheric physicist Dr. James McDonald (U of Arizona) made a list of all those more mind-expanding hypotheses, and said that none of them could be said to be proven, and that, in that sense, all were unsatisfactory. However, he said, the extraterrestrial hypothesis was "the LEAST unsatisfactory" as it at least covered what we were actually seeing.
FWIW OMM

 

[BobbyMac]

Hello IE. I thought that a first post back would be best in a topic I've spent 45 years researching. Here are a few bits for whatever they might be worth:
1. The USN releases of films are the tip of an iceberg. Everyone in military intel takes them seriously. The objects are not Sci-Fy movie fancy but plenty good enough to calculate exact distances, altitudes, velocities, accelerations, and determine sudden non-inertial stops. All of these calculations lead irrevocably to the conclusions that these are the products of technology (not atmospheric light phenomena) and we can't determine how such physical flight characteristics can be managed. These bits of information are considered solidly true because they have been determined by multiple simultaneous instrumentation readings plus pilot testimonies.
2. Due to all that, the Congress insisted that a study group would be set up within the intel community, and (astoundingly) that citizen experts be included. If this was 10 years ago, I could well have been one such researcher considered. As it is, my best UFO-researcher buddy, engineer Robert Powell, has been seen as the most appropriate choice. If they go through with this, Robert would bring my expertise in UFO phenomenology (the characteristics of flight etc embedded in the reports) along with the data of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies to those meetings and work. The intel community has been acting "normally" however, dragging feet until the public and Congress loses its attention span, and one imagines that they'll keep on their own path without the citizen expertise.
3. Personally, I've co-authored a paper using isotope analysis (to see if a metallic object has a non-solar system isotope ratio in one or more metal constituents.) It is in the editor's hands but has been essentially approved.
4. If I present the following hypothesis in words which do not use the term extraterrestrials or any similar words, such as: "Has there been evidence which supports the hypothesis that technological objects displaying flight characteristics in our skies for which our aerotechnologies at the time were not capable?" The answer to that hypothetical is YES. Because YES is the leading answer to that research question, it is then the option for the inquirer to continue to think about that or not. Searching beyond that answer to deeper causes leads one past the available data, but one plays hob trying to come up with (intellectually honestly) a theory which actually covers the data without resorting to the so-called ETH. In approximately 1970, the outstanding atmospheric physicist Dr. James McDonald (U of Arizona) made a list of all those more mind-expanding hypotheses, and said that none of them could be said to be proven, and that, in that sense, all were unsatisfactory. However, he said, the extraterrestrial hypothesis was "the LEAST unsatisfactory" as it at least covered what we were actually seeing.
FWIW OMM

OMM is back like Jordan! Good to see your fonts!

 

[Cackalacky2.0]

The Nimitz videos and other recently released videos and accounts are truly mind blowing to me. The trans medium flight, no control surfaces or exhausts, extreme accelerations…. Got to be not of this earth.

 

[Irish#1]

Welcome back OMM. We’ve missed you.

 

[tko]

Welcome back young man, fascinating stuff. I honestly thought "they" got you. I appreciate your insights and Harry Hiestand is happy you're back as well.

 

[Bishop2b5]

I'm still so skeptical of all the UFO stuff. I'm 99% certain that there's intelligent life out there. I'm just unconvinced that they've visited us and almost certain that if they have, they could do so easily without us detecting them. So many past UFO sightings were nothing more than military testing and the military pushing the UFO angle as camouflage. I'd love to be convinced, but I need to see a LOT more than what's been shown so far.

 

[Old Man Mike]

With all due respect, Bishop, (and I mean the respect part), you don't really have the knowledge to know what you're talking about. The comment about military and camouflage utterly waves off close encounters. Plus it shows no awareness of the mass of sightings by those military themselves nor other elite experts (such as the hi-tech balloon experts.) Nor statements in released FOIAs where the intel community (right up to Directors of Intelligence) state that they don't have answers for the cases and that they do not arise from the research bases work. Did you know that Kelly Johnson reported a UFO? Clyde Tombaugh? Secretary of the Navy in the 1950s? Deke Slayton while flying in the 50s? I can name a hundred more easily.

You don't have to be "convinced." You just have to get a little humility and open your mind and dump hard negative opinions. THAT allows the people actually doing the work to proceed without any social negativity towards them seriously doing it. And believe me, it is exactly the mass of ready-to-remark negativists which creates a burden against which the researchers don't even want to bring the subject up in general conversation. Americans say that everyone has their right to their opinion. True. No one would reasonably argue otherwise. If one really CARES about truth though, one also should keep ones opinions about things that one hasn't studied pretty quiet. America has ripped itself apart over the past decade lavishly displaying that behavior on topics far more important to the well-being of the democracy than UFOs, much to our loss.

As to UFOs: "Credible people have seen relatively incredible things."
Major General John Samford, USAF Director of Intelligence, 1952.

 

[Bishop2b5]

Mike, I'm quite open to being convinced, and I appreciate anyone doing serious research into the matter. However, I come from a science background (primarily biology and physics) and am thus skeptical of any claims until I've seen conclusive (or at least compelling) proof. That I or others don't have satisfactory explanations of sightings isn't proof they're aliens. I'm not convinced they AREN'T aliens either. I just haven't seen compelling evidence to settle the matter yet. An actual craft in our possession that's undoubtedly beyond anything we can do technologically, or an actual alien in front of a camera would be convincing.

 

[Old Man Mike]

I'll bet that you open-mindedly maintain a respectful acceptance of many many things that you have no laboratory quality proof of. No one's talking about lab-bench proof in these statements--- heck, even honest scientists don't use the Proof word hardly ever. That's not the way of science. We hypothesize; we look for data; we offer best supported hypotheses even if they are not in line with our original; we almost never ram the Proof word down a colleague's throat. Proof is something that philosophers go on about, but since the times of the idealist philosophers, pretty much can't agree that they have Proof of anything --- even the philosopher's own existence gets questioned/doubted. An interesting self-examination is to ask oneself what one believes in yet has no proof. Then ask oneself what one insists on someone else providing "proof." Why are some things in one category and others relegated? This isn't about Proof --- not if one is an objective scientist. This is about why we are requiring much more support (note I did not say Proof) from some things/concepts than others in our own heads. It reeks of deep biases or fears.

If you read my opening post in this recent discussion, you should have noted that I did not say anything about "Proof", but about phenomenology which better fits some hypotheses than others. All that the researchers are asking is that people who have not done a proper level of studying the subject quit bringing up the same "objections" over and over again when they have been addressed thoroughly in a rather vast extant literature. One last thing about "evidence": When the USAF gave the University of Colorado a bunch of money in 1966 to study the UFO "Problem", the scientists on the project almost instantly stated in their meetings that barring a crashed vehicle or an alien in a jar, no insatance of "Proof" could ever be forthcoming. The proper approach therefore would be to collect whatever data WAS possible (similarly to my isotope analysis testing) and see what soft conclusions could be honestly made.

 

[Sea Turtle]

I think a lot of this stuff are things like sun dogs, reflections, swamp gas, secret aircraft and drones, floating lanterns, kites and mylar balloons.

 

[Redbar]

Oh yes! Tongue out, soaring from the free throw line, dunking on anyone who doesn’t bring “A” game!

 

[BobbyMac]

I think a lot of this stuff are things like sun dogs, reflections, swamp gas, secret aircraft and drones, floating lanterns, kites and mylar balloons.

Yes, a lot of it is explainable but there's a good reason you didn't type:

I think all of this stuff are things like...

 

[Old Man Mike]

We have ten thousand cases in UFOCAT that aren't explainable by stupid misperceptions like those. I have around two thousand in my own files. Amazing that anyone would continue to bring such mediocrity up, ... unless of course they were in their usual troll mode on a sports site. Just because some actually care here is an example "Over Minnesota Skies. 1953. Top Secret High Atmosphere balloon scientists and engineers are running a test and monitoring the balloon both in air via pursuit plane and on ground via theodolites. Down from higher altitude comes a small elliptical object white in color (maybe twenty feet in diameter --- this is hard to estimate particularly at the speed that it moved.) The uninvited object approached the balloon at serious speed then revolved around it at unheard of turning ratios for the velocity demonstrated. Then it shot downwards and rapidly (and non-inertially) sharp-angled turned and came back to the balloon. Then it proceeded to do a bit of "show-off" angular turns flying further boggling the research team before accelerating away back upwards." We have the USAF Project BlueBook records concerning this (and other similar instances --- there were about twenty in my files) --- plus a later on-film interview with the project leader for that flight, engineer J.J. Kaliszewski. I have a copy of the interview in my files.

When chief BlueBook officer Captain Edward Ruppelt went to interview Kaliszewski and the others (General Mills had been the military's research arm for high altitude flight during WWII and was still preparing Soviet-watcher balloons prior to the development of the U-2 spyplane) in Minneapolis HQ, he decided to ask stupid questions about causes like Turtle's ridiculous list. Ruppelt said that the science crews were so angered by the stupidity of the concepts that "they almost threw me out into the snow." Kaliszewski later said that these objects came so regularly to pace around their balloon research projects that (given the attitude of Project BlueBook, and BlueBook's inability to give them any enlightening feedback,) they just stopped reporting the incidents to the AF. I have Ruppelt's own UFO files in my basement UFO archives by the way, and the community is delighted to have access and know that they are preserved.

I mention these Balloon research incidents to offer a few points:
1. You have probably never heard of these cases. (despite how powerful they are in indicating the truly anomalous nature of the observations.) Why not? The book UFOs and Government was written by me and six of my friends to answer the question for anyone who might really want to know. The bottomline is that through a set of mainly sociological reasons involving military, academic science departments and fields of research, media uselessness, and even religious fears, the UFO subject was turned from a serious field for exploration into a cheap shot joke.
2. Media flourished in this atmosphere making hay over all the most ridiculous claims, while ignoring the "boring" solid factual cases like the General Mills researchers. This imprinted the Joke Character of the subject and never fostered any intense presentations devoid of the raving loons (on both the enthusiast and the close-minded debunking sides) to present a "clean" (and necessarily lengthy) history and phenomenology of the subject. We see the pond ripples of these effects in the assertions made even on IE by folks who have studied none of this in any depth but think that it's perfectly fine to throw shade at it despite the ignorance. (My life IS occasionally brightened by people who actually begin by asking intelligent fact-seeking questions rather than "I think this is all ... " or I just cannot believe that XYZ ..." or (the classic) "this is simply ridiculous. A bunch of BS by ignorant rural people or housewives or drunks ... whatever, take your pick."
3. If you've never heard of the General Mills cases, you might meditate for a moment on what else you have never heard. I have access to HUNDREDS of bogglers just in my own archives.

 

[Sea Turtle]

We have ten thousand cases in UFOCAT that aren't explainable by stupid misperceptions like those. I have around two thousand in my own files. Amazing that anyone would continue to bring such mediocrity up, ... unless of course they were in their usual troll mode on a sports site. Just because some actually care here is an example "Over Minnesota Skies. 1953. Top Secret High Atmosphere balloon scientists and engineers are running a test and monitoring the balloon both in air via pursuit plane and on ground via theodolites. Down from higher altitude comes a small elliptical object white in color (maybe twenty feet in diameter --- this is hard to estimate particularly at the speed that it moved.) The uninvited object approached the balloon at serious speed then revolved around it at unheard of turning ratios for the velocity demonstrated. Then it shot downwards and rapidly (and non-inertially) sharp-angled turned and came back to the balloon. Then it proceeded to do a bit of "show-off" angular turns flying further boggling the research team before accelerating away back upwards." We have the USAF Project BlueBook records concerning this (and other similar instances --- there were about twenty in my files) --- plus a later on-film interview with the project leader for that flight, engineer J.J. Kaliszewski. I have a copy of the interview in my files.

When chief BlueBook officer Captain Edward Ruppelt went to interview Kaliszewski and the others (General Mills had been the military's research arm for high altitude flight during WWII and was still preparing Soviet-watcher balloons prior to the development of the U-2 spyplane) in Minneapolis HQ, he decided to ask stupid questions about causes like Turtle's ridiculous list. Ruppelt said that the science crews were so angered by the stupidity of the concepts that "they almost threw me out into the snow." Kaliszewski later said that these objects came so regularly to pace around their balloon research projects that (given the attitude of Project BlueBook, and BlueBook's inability to give them any enlightening feedback,) they just stopped reporting the incidents to the AF. I have Ruppelt's own UFO files in my basement UFO archives by the way, and the community is delighted to have access and know that they are preserved.

I mention these Balloon research incidents to offer a few points:
1. You have probably never heard of these cases. (despite how powerful they are in indicating the truly anomalous nature of the observations.) Why not? The book UFOs and Government was written by me and six of my friends to answer the question for anyone who might really want to know. The bottomline is that through a set of mainly sociological reasons involving military, academic science departments and fields of research, media uselessness, and even religious fears, the UFO subject was turned from a serious field for exploration into a cheap shot joke.
2. Media flourished in this atmosphere making hay over all the most ridiculous claims, while ignoring the "boring" solid factual cases like the General Mills researchers. This imprinted the Joke Character of the subject and never fostered any intense presentations devoid of the raving loons (on both the enthusiast and the close-minded debunking sides) to present a "clean" (and necessarily lengthy) history and phenomenology of the subject. We see the pond ripples of these effects in the assertions made even on IE by folks who have studied none of this in any depth but think that it's perfectly fine to throw shade at it despite the ignorance. (My life IS occasionally brightened by people who actually begin by asking intelligent fact-seeking questions rather than "I think this is all ... " or I just cannot believe that XYZ ..." or (the classic) "this is simply ridiculous. A bunch of BS by ignorant rural people or housewives or drunks ... whatever, take your pick."
3. If you've never heard of the General Mills cases, you might meditate for a moment on what else you have never heard. I have access to HUNDREDS of bogglers just in my own archives.

I'm not trolling. I'm done venting about things. Life is too short to be bitter and angry when things go wrong.

These aren't stupid or ridiculous explanations. They are plausible. Remember that big case in Arizona with the huge UFO lighting up one light after another at night? It looked legit. I was intrigued.
Turns out, the military was dropping flares that night. And when you look at it in that context, that's exactly what it looks like. A lot of times, these witnesses don't know what it is that they are looking at. You also have hoaxes as well.

The best case that I can think of that leaves me perplexed is that one airliner from Japan I think, it was off the west coast of the US or maybe near Alaska and was harrassed for HOURS by a very large object. You probably know more about this case and maybe could discuss it for more clarification.

It just seems the more that you dig a lot of these cases, the less airtight they become.

 

[calvegas04]

So what's up with the Ex Canadian Defense minister saying there is up to 80 species of alien and some of them even living among us on earth?

And former Israeli space security chief saying we have been in contact with extraterrestrials from a "galactic federation."

 

[T-Boone]

So what's up with the Ex Canadian Defense minister saying there is up to 80 species of alien and some of them even living among us on earth?

And former Israeli space security chief saying we have been in contact with extraterrestrials from a "galactic federation."

And Tom Cruise.

 

[NDFAN420]

So what's up with the Ex Canadian Defense minister saying there is up to 80 species of alien and some of them even living among us on earth?

And former Israeli space security chief saying we have been in contact with extraterrestrials from a "galactic federation."

My theory is that they're here but, in fact, blurry and very tiny, which is why they always look so out of focus and far away.

The Israeli space chief is just covering for our space lasers.

 

[Cackalacky2.0]

@Old Man Mike , first of all I want to let you know that the ignore function is up and running so please use it as you see fit.

Second, I'm interested in your thoughts on the AATIP program (and its reported successor programs) and Elizondo's more recent revelations with Jeremy Corbel. Is he (Elizondo) credible? Respected in the aerial phenomenon community?

Speaking for myself, my trouble is figuring out worthy of putting trust into. There is so much smoke and mirrors (intentional and for many obvious and legitimate reasons) that it is hard to know who is credible and who isnt. When I learned about the most recently releases and confirmed navy videos, and I saw the trained pilots, multiple staff on board the ship, radar teams, and devices all confirming the anomalies and their "capabilities" it seems incredulous to think these were flares, balloons, or other mechanical devices deployed by any country or even the US against its own military units.

For example, when the pilot who is trained to visually identify opposition aircraft, and what he sees in real time defies his training, knowledge base and is far superior to the technology he is trained to observe, that seems credible to me. And to have that behavior confirmed by highly trained radar personnel in addition to these people working with top of the line radar and detection/monitoring equipment is very compelling. Further for these personnel who are trained to understand exhaust patterns, air maneuvers, and even the most up to date mechanical control surfaces cannot understand how these objects did trans medium flight, instant accelerations, and tight maneuvering without control surfaces or exhaust blows my mind. Even if the US or any other country were even 20 years ahead in development of aircraft that is still secret it seems unrealistic to think that our species created those objects and released them into the public for any reason. I find it harder to believe that any country other than the US has the technology or capability to do so considering they are all currently far behind the US in spending and infrastructure.

So in my humble and ignorant opinion, it seems credible to entertain the idea that these latest anomalies on videos confirmed by DoD to be true are nothing short of non-human in origin.

 

[Old Man Mike]

Those people, regardless of past political positions, are full of crap. The serious research community doesn't buy any of that. What their motivations are for saying such things could be interesting if we had ways of knowing that. Of course the media doesn't want to hear what the UFO research community has to say on any of this, because we'd kill their buzz. The same thing happened with the Phoenix Lights case which Turtle proudly displays as his demonstration of how much he knows about UFO incidents. I'll explain what actually happened there at length later today after a bunch of chores get done. We can then judge the validity of the conclusion" It just seems the more that you dig at a lot of these cases, the less airtight they become." And perhaps it will encourage him to reveal to us other cases which he has dug into, as his statement clearly promises many more, or it wouldn't make any sense to write the words.

 

[Old Man Mike]

To Cack: I'll try to get to this later also.

 

[Sea Turtle]

Those people, regardless of past political positions, are full of crap. The serious research community doesn't buy any of that. What their motivations are for saying such things could be interesting if we had ways of knowing that. Of course the media doesn't want to hear what the UFO research community has to say on any of this, because we'd kill their buzz. The same thing happened with the Phoenix Lights case which Turtle proudly displays as his demonstration of how much he knows about UFO incidents. I'll explain what actually happened there at length later today after a bunch of chores get done. We can then judge the validity of the conclusion" It just seems the more that you dig at a lot of these cases, the less airtight they become." And perhaps it will encourage him to reveal to us other cases which he has dug into, as his statement clearly promises many more, or it wouldn't make any sense to write the words.

Come on Mike. Why are you being so antagonistic? I've treated you with dignity and respect. I'm not posting tin foil hat memes or bat boy pics.
I'm not an expert like you evidently are. I used to believe. I got into this stuff 20 years ago but I kept getting let down by hoaxes and other explanations.

I can't remember every example. I do remember digging into:
Roswell

The Aurora Texas incident

The fire in the sky incident

The Communion author

The Denmark UFOs fighting each other story from hundreds of years ago.

Chris Columbus UFO story.

Crop circles

The alien autopsy video

The Russian ufo crash case

Astronauts seeing nearby floating ice mistaking them for distant objects.

The Phoenix lights.

The cases on the Ancient Aliens tv program.

I do believe that we have secret stuff that would explain much of these more recent sightings that are so captivating. Advanced drones. New propulsion systems, Orbital Rods From God kinetic weapons we are working on.

I do hold out 1% chance of intelligent ET life out there. I just don't know what their plan of salvation would be.

 

[Sea Turtle]

Yes, a lot of it is explainable but there's a good reason you didn't type:

I think all of this stuff are things like...

This is fair enough.

 

[RDU Irish]

Makes my day to see this thread resurrected with OMM leading the way.

 

[BleedBlueGold]

Welcome back, Mr. Swords. Have been meaning to buy your book (although, I'd prefer a signed copy haha). I always enjoy reading your posts.

This is one of those situations where Turtle should read more and post less. Like Milk, "It does a body good."

 

[Old Man Mike]

As promised, here is what happened in Phoenix. There are TWO entirely separate things. I'll try to re-live that day for you.

Much earlier in the day (around dusk) than the famous "Lights" appeared in the sky to the south of Phoenix, several witnesses from separate viewing points in the area north of the city, saw a very large black shape approaching from the north. As this thing got nearer, it seemed to be a huge triangle. One of the witnesses at that time was, almost ironically, the Governor himself. He and others reported this to authorities. Another witness, living further north yet was a young man (high schooler?) who liked to watch plane overflights. He trained his telescope on the object, but to his eye it seemed merely to be a group of lighted small aircraft flying in tight formation. He did not report his opinion until much later.

Rumors began to spread that there had been a UFO sighting in the Phoenix area and that the Governor had seen it. As the night wore on, citizens and tourists mulled around out of doors hoping to see "aliens." Unfortunately for truth, and fortunately for the media, the Canadian AF was to the south flying out of an airbase there to perform a flare-drop exercise. Lo and Behold, lights began to manifest in the skies to the south in dramatic fashion. "The Aliens had arrived." This was great fun for most, but not all. Too many people were getting seriously nervous about alien invasion, or neighbor invasion, as persons begin prowling about with guns. Whether there was a real issue there or not (it's happened before at least five times that I know of due to UFO fears/panic), the police were getting calls.

This news went to the Governor's office where it was determined that he should do two things: issue a calming statement, and shut up about his own different observation. His admin assistant, savvy in political public relations, started the press conference by having a staff member in a comical alien suit "invade" the stage, much to everyone's laughter. That all worked well.

What was the UFO research community doing in all of this? Unfortunately no qualified UFO field researcher lived in the area, so no one was immediately on the spot. A UFOriac lunatic DID live there and our worst fears were naturally realized as he took all the media attention claiming stupid but exciting things. The media loved this and milked it for all it was worth. The actual research community did get the factual information about the flare-drop, and once that claim was properly vetted, we immediately declared that the Canadian exercise fully explained the "Lights in the Sky." Can you guess whether the media wanted to feature our information?

But what about the earlier separate claim? The research community was and to a degree still is interested in that. People have been interviewed, airbases have been checked, radar stations queried, and possible flight plans for group flying requested. The Governor, to my knowledge, has stuck to his report though it is/was hardly in his political interest to do so. What did we conclude?

We decided that it was honestly hard to conclude on the triangle part. There is really only one witness on the group flying theory side, but he had the best optics. He reported later than all the immediate reporters, plus no flight plans have been found for such a group flyover that night. On the other hand, no interviewers pressed the Black Triangle claiming witnesses on the point as to whether the thing blotted out the stars or you could see stars in the middle. That piece of data would be critical for the group fly theory.

So, we tell interested parties that we have more than one hypothesis with viability:
1. Group small planes flying in a tight triangle;
2. A Government Project flying out of some base to the north and turning towards New Mexico;
3. An anomalous craft.

We are "happy" with whichever might turn out to be true. Hypothesis Two has more viability than one might think, as the research group created by Billionaire Robert Bigelow in the 1980-90s (NIDS) tracked many of these sorts of sightings, and made the soft conclusion that they were probably hi-tech government aero-stats or other relatively slow-moving things. These sorts of sightings really don't have enough "strangeness" in them to overly interest the UFO research community, and we chuck them in the gray box unless they do. I have good friends who specialize in the triangle cases, and some of them DO have high strangeness, and those we maintain sharp interest in.

I write all this because I know that some of you are honestly interested, and I wanted to present what it means to actually "dig into" a case and earn, to a degree, an opinion about it.

 

[Sea Turtle]

---

I've had some really weird stuff happen in my life. Here's the one that's easiest to tell.

Summer of '83 we're down at the Lake Michigan lakeshore between Long Beach, IN and New Buffalo, MI. It's about dusk when my friend says he just saw a plane (a light) that was moving normally towards Chicago suddenly go backwards and stop. When he points it out to us, it's looks like normal airplane lights to me. I'm like whatever but I keep following it for whatever reason for about 15-20 seconds and it goes from moving very slowly west towards Chicago to going straight down at a 90 degree, no arc, no loop straight down at a much faster rate of speed then stops. He yells and I acknowledge I see it. Now the rest of the group is interested and all 6 of us watch this light zig zag back and forth at 45 degree angles, straight up and down changing speeds in no pattern... like something a helicopter could do but there is no sound and it seems to be far away, like a jet coming in but still 15 minutes before it's at the airport. It's at this time, we hear very loud jet engines and can make out two jets hauling azz above us, heading straight north over the lake towards this light. You could see the glow of each jets engine clearly. Meanwhile the light we'd been following was still doing it's thing and about now my buddies and I are thinking this is the real deal going down and we start OMGing and freaking out like b!tchez and then it happened. Whatever that was took the feck off - almost straight up and was gone in 2 seconds, covering half the sky before it disappeared. We could hear the jets out there for 20 minutes or so and then went above us heading south.

My cousins from Nashville were staying with my grandparents that week south of Culver Military and when we went down on the weekend, they were telling us how it sounded like a war zone a few days ago when there were jets flying all over the place out of Grissom AFB. It cracked numerous windows in their house that day.

If all that wasn't strange enough, later on I became aware there was a well documented UFO sighting around Indianapolis on the same day which was easy to remember because it was my parents 20th Ann. 6-30-83.

That would have been a good day to have social media.

That's interesting but it could have been ball lightning.

Ball lightning 'may explain UFOs'

Some UFO sightings could be explained by ball lightning and other atmospheric phenomena, says an Australian astrophysicist who studied a fireball event over Brisbane.

www.bbc.com

 

[Sea Turtle]

Welcome back, Mr. Swords. Have been meaning to buy your book (although, I'd prefer a signed copy haha). I always enjoy reading your posts.

This is one of those situations where Turtle should read more and post less. Like Milk, "It does a body good."

I'm allowed to have an opinion on the paranormal and there is nothing wrong with being a healthy skeptic when it comes to incredible claims.

We built the Stealth fighter in the 1970's. I can't imagine the stuff that we and other nations have in 2022.

 

[Old Man Mike]

And the cases from the 1950s that are still as strange? Maybe we time-traveled our unknown hypothesized tech backwards and displayed it then. Yeh. Great analysis.

Bobby Mac: I can't say much about your experience, but the casual wave off that it "could have been ball lightning" is bunkum. The attached reference was from an Ozzie scientist trying to solve a particular Ball-of-Light case which people bugged him about. As a physicist, he tried to go with physics ideas. He mentioned fireballs (close atmospheric meteor burn-outs, which everyone understands, and which, by the way had nothing to do with your case.) The relevance being that his idea (totally unproven as he himself states at the end of his article) REQUIRES there to be a meteoric fireball or multiple ones to create some hypothetical (never measured) "electrical connection" to some fenceline or some similar thing IN ORDER TO SUSTAIN A Ball-Lightning type of plasma. If one cannot credit some new concept such as that, everyone else will continue to believe the physics textbooks which say that the lifetimes of such unstable plasmas are VERY short. (several seconds.) So that new theory doesn't really do well with the Ozzie case, and less so for yours. Please feel free to ignore either Turtle's un-dug assessment on this or mine or both, but that is how my study of ball-lightning sees it.

The original pusher of Ball-lightning theories for UFOs was Harvard Astronomer Donald Menzel. Later in his debunking career even he abandoned it, knowing full well that it didn't "fly" for hardly any cases. Then the idea was picked up by an electrical engineer at Aviation Week magazine named Phil Klass. (both these guys were real assholes to talk with by the way, but that's neither here nor there --- their ideas should be de=personalized.) Klass pushed his ideas on the University of Colorado's USAF sponsored UFO investigation project in 1966-1968. The project's interior committee notes (I have read them all; they are at the American Philosophical Library in Philadelphia) show the personnel clearly stating that Klass' ideas have no meaningfulness to any but a small handful of mediocre reports.

Now what would a responsible UFO researcher say to you about your incident (giving me a break in that I don't have a full investigative narrative and Q&A to work with --- so, admittedly tentatively):
1. The case looks nothing like Ball Lightning --- too long lived, too high in the atmosphere, too much acceleration straight upwards (The highest that you're likely to see Ball-Lightning is near the top of an atomic blast cloud just after detonation)
2. The sighting is distant, so the shape of whatever this was is tough to guess. Easy mundane solutions for the erratic motion eliminate most known if not all technological answers. There have been many pilot sightings which describe (at closer quarters) erratically moving spheres of light in front of their planes. The classic here is the Captain Hull sighting over Mobile AL in about 1950 --- forgive my guesstimate on things like that, but I really didn't need a second research job when I re-upped for IE, so some specifics will be off the top of my head --- I'll tell you when I do that;
3. These BOLs are not understood, but whatever they are they are not Ball Lightning plasma. Areas on the surface are known for reports of things like this somewhat often. UFO researchers call them "Lightfields." Some of these (Particularly Hessdalen Norway and Yakima WA) have been intensely monitored with high tech instrumentation;
4. So you might have seen a completely ununderstood Earth-based phenomenon (rather a privilege methinks), or you might have witnessed a luminous spherical UFO of even stranger origins. Who can say? We do know, from numerous cases, that these things have dogged flights in ways that are not at all random flying, but, if we are forced to guess, seem much more like "displays" to the pilots witnessing.

 

[BleedBlueGold]

I'm allowed to have an opinion on the paranormal and there is nothing wrong with being a healthy skeptic when it comes to incredible claims.

We built the Stealth fighter in the 1970's. I can't imagine the stuff that we and other nations have in 2022.

Apologies for the antagonistic post on my part.

However, OMM is a literal expert in this field. See his responses to each of your posts. Of course you're entitled to your opinion and I agree we should all be skeptics by nature, but your posts so far are the precise hand-waiving type posts that Mike was referring to. You just did the same thing to BobbyMac. All I meant by my post is that the people on this board take Mike's stance on this particular topic seriously and respectably because we know he's devoted his life to studying it. Again, sorry for essentially putting that in less civil terms yesterday.

 

[Cackalacky2.0]

Apologies for the antagonistic post on my part.

However, OMM is a literal expert in this field. See his responses to each of your posts. Of course you're entitled to your opinion and I agree we should all be skeptics by nature, but your posts so far are the precise hand-waiving type posts that Mike was referring to. You just did the same thing to BobbyMac. All I meant by my post is that the people on this board take Mike's stance on this particular topic seriously and respectably because we know he's devoted his life to studying it. Again, sorry for essentially putting that in less civil terms yesterday.

I find people have opinions about a great many things of which they know little to nothing about and they will belittle, subvert, obscure or obfuscate the more knowledgeable persons on matters of topic. I know jack shit about farming and my opinions on the matter carry little weight relative to a 3rd generation farmer whose family has been fighting big Ag for half a century. I'll defer to them on a lot simply because I know I don't know shit about it. That doesnt mean I have to accept what they tell me and I may dig more on the matter, but it carries much more weight than my own ignorant opinions and I at least accept that.