The
Reliability of
UFO
Witness
Testimony
Edited by
V.J. Ballester-Olmos
Richard W. Heiden
UPIAR
The
Reliability of
UFO
Witness
Testimony
Edited by
V.J. Ballester-Olmos
Richard W. Heiden
UPIAR
© 2023 Vicente Juan Ballester-Olmos & UPIAR
Cooperativa Iniziative e Studi UPIAR s.c.
Corso Vittorio Emanuele II n. 108 - 10121 Torino - Italy
info@upiar.com - www.upiar.com
Printed by Progetto Immagine - Torino
ISBN 9791281441002
DEDICATION
Para Lucas: naciste pequeño pero llegarás a ser grande
V.J. BALLESTER-OLMOS
To Betty, the love of my life. During the past 30-plus years she has too often had to share me
with my interest in UFOs
RICHARD W. HEIDEN
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION by V.J. Ballester-Olmos with Richard W. Heiden
9
FOREWORD by Dr. Leonard S. Newman
19
I. CASE STUDIES
23
Chapter 1. Memory Games: A False Recall Episode
V.J. Ballester-Olmos
Chapter 2. The Phoenix Lights: The Fallibility of Human Perception and Memory
Tim Callahan
Chapter 3. Missile Flights and Fantasies
James T. Carlson
Chapter 4. Meeting the Abductees: Betty Hill, Richard Price & Others
Peter Huston
Chapter 5. Investigating Ball Lightning Eyewitness Reports
Dr. Alexander G. Keul
Chapter 6. Very Close Encounter with a UAP in Levitation
Éric Maillot and Dr. Jean-Michel Abrassart
Chapter 7. The Real Raël, UFO Contactee and the Last Prophet
Claude Maugé
Chapter 8. The MUFON-ian Candidate: The Gulf Breeze UFO Case as Political Contest
Craig R. Myers
Chapter 9. The Pascagoula Abduction: A Case of Hypnagogia?
Dr. Joe Nickell
Chapter 10. Misinterpretations of Fireball Swarms from Satellite Reentries
James Oberg
Chapter 11. When Testimony Becomes Testament: The Case of Raël, UFO Prophet,
and the Question of Witness Reliability
Dr. Susan J. Palmer
Chapter 12. The Legendary Cash-Landrum Case: Radiation Sickness from a Close Encounter?
Dr. Gary P. Posner
Chapter 13. The Weinstein Catalog: Ufological Bullion or Fool’s Gold?
Tim Printy
Chapter 14. The Changing Case of Próspera Muñoz: An Abduction Remembered Over 41 years?
José Ruesga Montiel
Chapter 15 Lunar Terror in Poland: A Doctor’s Dilemma
Wim van Utrecht
Chapter 16 On the Credibility of the Barney & Betty Hill Abduction Case
Nigel Watson
Chapter 17. Metamorphosis: Claimed Witness Accounts of the Great Lakes Fireball
of December 9, 1965
Robert R. Young
25
39
45
61
77
94
107
121
137
141
153
166
180
189
205
220
229
II. PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
239
Chapter 1. On Eyewitness Reports of Extraterrestrial Life
Dr. Thomas D. Albright
Chapter 2. Close Encounters of the “Other” Kind: On the Psychology of “Alien Abductions”
Dr. Jorge Conesa-Sevilla
Chapter 3. Dissociation and Alien Abduction Allegation
Dr. Olivier Dodier
241
257
266
Chapter 4. Alien Abduction: Takeaways
Dr. David V. Forrest
Chapter 5. Hypnotic Regression and False Memories
Dr. Christopher C. French
Chapter 6. Aliens, UFOs, and Personal Schemas
Dr. Stanley Krippner
Chapter 7. Clinical Approach to UFO Sightings and Alien Abductions
Hélène Lansley and Dr. Thomas Rabeyron
Chapter 8. Manuel Jimenez and the Perception of UFOs: Hypotheses and Experiments
Claude Maugé
Chapter 9 Cognition and Memory Distortion behind UFO Testimonies
Dr. Subhash Meena and Dr. Surabhi Das
Chapter 10. Clinical Evidence in the Italian Phenomenon of Alien Abduction
Dr. Giulio Perrotta
Chapter 11. From “I Witnessed…” to Established Hypothesis: UFO Cultures and Contexts
Dr. Scott R. Scribner and Dr. Gregory J. Wheeler
Chapter 12. Forensic Cognitive Science and the UFO Phenomenon
Dr. Matthew J. Sharps
275
283
295
299
313
331
339
355
368
III. ON WITNESS TESTIMONY
385
Chapter 1. UFOs: The Role of Perceptual Illusions in the Endurance of an Empirical Myth
Manuel Borraz Aymerich
Chapter 2. Calibrating the Instrument: How Reliable Is Eyewitness Testimony?
Dr. Thomas E. Bullard
Chapter 3. Bizarre Accounts: Remarkable Missile Sightings from the Canary Islands in the 1970s
Dr. Ricardo Campo Pérez
Chapter 4. Some Considerations About the Behavior and Reliability of UAP Eyewitnesses
Luiz Augusto L. da Silva
Chapter 5. UFO Myth Propagation before the Arrival of Social Networks
Marcel Delaval
Chapter 6. Witness Reliability: Accuracy - Reliability of Pilots - Personal Honor
Dr. Richard F. Haines
Chapter 7. Memories Are not Documentaries: The Weakest Link in the Chain of UFO Evidence
Jochen Ickinger
Chapter 8. Three Simple Tests of Eyewitness Reliability
Ulrich Magin
Chapter 9. Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony in Extreme Close Encounters:
“Abductees” and “Contactees”
Dr. Daniel Mavrakis
Chapter 10. Satanists, Aliens and Me
Dr. Richard Noll
Chapter 11. The UFO Testimony Reliability from 2000 GEIPAN Reports
Xavier Passot
Chapter 12. Data are Worth a Thousand Accounts
Julio Plaza del Olmo
Chapter 13. The Objectivity of Witnesses and the Subjectivity of Testimonies
Cláudio Tsuyoshi Suenaga
Chapter 14. Aliens Are Good to Talk With
Dr. Luise White
387
402
419
433
440
447
454
467
472
488
497
504
513
524
IV. EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
529
Chapter 1. Alien Delusions: Some (Real) Clinical Cases
Dr. Carles Berché Cruz
Chapter 2. Memory Distortion in a Social Judgement: People who Report Contact
with Aliens are More Susceptible
Dr. Stephanie Kelley-Romano and Dr. Amy Bradfield Douglass
Chapter 3. It Was as Large as the Full Moon
Hans-Werner Peiniger
Chapter 4. When a Fire Balloon Transforms into a UFO
Hans-Werner Peiniger
Chapter 5. Bedtime Alien Abduction Stories: A Checklist to Detect its Dreaming Nature
Michael Raduga
Chapter 6. Fantasy Imagery and UFO Testimonies
Raoul Robé
Chapter 7. Abilities and Limitations of Eyewitnesses Assessed on Atmospheric
Entries of Meteoroids and Artificial Satellites
Dr. Jean-Pierre Rospars
531
537
551
556
562
570
585
V. ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACH
603
Chapter 1. Inside a Spaceship: Cognitive and Social Aspects of an Alien Contact
Ignacio Cabria
Chapter 2. Alien Big Cats and UFO Testimonies: Similarities and Questions
Dr. Frédéric Dumerchat
Chapter 3. Belief in Aliens and the Imaginary: A Transdisciplinary Approach
Carlos Reis
605
VI. METRICS AND SCALING
649
Chapter 1. Measuring the Subjectivity of UFO Testimony
V.J. Ballester-Olmos and Miguel Guasp
Chapter 2. The Reliability of the UFO Sighting Story
Marc Leduc
651
VII. EPISTEMOLOGICAL ISSUES
671
Chapter 1. On the Fallacy of the Residue
Dr. Félix Ares de Blas
Chapter 2. Scientific Case Studies: Research Guidelines for Dealing with the Lack
of Reliability of UFO/UAP Testimonies
Dr. Leonardo B. Martins
673
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
697
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
711
615
632
656
681
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
INTRODUCTION
Some enchanted evening, You may see a stranger…
And somehow you know, You know even then
That somewhere you’ll see her, Again and again
Oscar Hammerstein1
Preamble
On June 24, 1947, nine objects shaped “like a pie plate … cut in half with a … convex triangle
in the rear”2 were sighted from a private airplane by businessman Kenneth Arnold in
Washington State, USA. The press coined the term “flying saucer” and it was accompanied by
a huge journalistic coverage, giving rise to an avalanche of reports with objects described
purely as saucers or discs, unlike what Arnold depicted to the Air Army Intelligence. The rest
is history.
The short-lived, panic-type epidemic (“wave” in the ufological jargon) that followed this
seminal sighting in America was not isolated in time, though. It had had many antecedents in
the preceding 50 years, both in USA and abroad. For example, the 1896-1897 flow of “airship”
reports, the 1910s “phantom ship” scare, the 1930s mystery airplanes, or the 1946 “ghost
rockets” invasion. There is ample literature on those topics.3
Those celestial sightings are part of a continuum that runs back to the history of mankind, full
of astronomical and atmospheric and optical phenomena taken as wonders and prodigies due
to ingenuity, ignorance, and religious beliefs of population. The mystical interpretations of
surprising and terrifying occurrences in ancient times have coupled with contemporary UFO
observations to paint a tapestry of events that logically work against an extraterrestrial origin.
The first flying saucer visions materialized from hidden fears of war from the US citizens. It
was immediately followed by innumerable popular books, immense media attention, millions
of magazine articles, and lots of movies that helped build a worldwide, contagious case. In
modern times, people’s perplexity with unrecognized planets and stars, fireballs, aircraft, and
a thousand other potential sky and biosphere stimuli, plus the inevitable quota of hoaxes, has
been read and interpreted in a unique spirit: spacecraft coming from other worlds.
In the last seven decades, millions of people have reported seeing flying saucers or UFOs (now
politically-correctly renamed UAP). The most reliable statistics for a scientifically controlled
database estimate that only 2% of UFO reports remain unidentified after investigation, but the
percentage is zero for any phenomenon defined with “strong consistency.”4
From 1947 onwards, lack of verifiable, anomalous physical evidence for the most dramatic
manifestations of a “phenomenon,” untraceable permanent patterns in UFO data, and the
disputed alien nature for the immortal UFO “residue,” as well as ongoing research, suggest a
psychosocial hypothesis for the phenomena.5 In short, as far as UFO close encounter claims
are concerned, all seems to be in the mind; the alleged incidents forming a global-scope legend
or folklore in progress.
1
“Some Enchanted Evening,” South Pacific, 1949.
https://pulp.hypotheses.org/1180
3
V.J. Ballester-Olmos, “UFO Waves: An International Bibliography,” https://www.cnesgeipan.fr/sites/default/files/UFO_Waves.__An_International_Bibliography__November__1___2015.pdf
4
https://www.cnes-geipan.fr/fr/actualites/baisse-cas-d
5
Thierry Pinvidic (ed.), OVNI. Vers une Anthropologie d’un Mythe Contemporain. Bayeaux (France): Editions
Heimdal, 1993.
2
9
Introduction
Nuts-and-bolts ufologists still holding their classical views, notwithstanding, other UFO
believers have shifted their beliefs into a paraphysical, paranormal, and esoteric framework,
necessarily to accommodate the apparition of supposed spaceships and alien entities with the
absence of the required physical proof.
From the pioneering work of H. Münsterberg6 up to Neil deGrasse Tyson,7 the concept of
witness reliability has been in question. Psychologists, psychiatrists, and social scientists have
also entered UFO investigation. What mental phenomena would engender remarkably unusual,
non-hoaxed imaginings? Literature in this field is already extensive, citing visual illusions,
lucid dreams, sleep paralysis, temporal lobe epilepsy, hypnopompic and hypnagogic imagery,
fantasy-proneness, dissociation, altered states of consciousness, false memory, post-traumatic
stress, and hallucinations, as well as a number of psychopathologies.
In 1996, Newman and Baumeister8 promoted a discussion to help provide alternatives to the
false “are they crazy or liars?” dichotomy. It was a clever proposition and this book attempts
to continue this open discussion.
Aim
The acceptance of a true anomaly behind UFO sightings lies in the dogma that the testimony
of witnesses is absolutely reliable, even if the stories told are abnormal by mainstream science
standards. But this is far from certain; it is merely a presumption that matches the fantasies of
the proponents. Single witnesses and shortage of material verification lie in the antipodes of
how real-life works. Not only are there no error-free witnesses, but people’s imagination and
prejudices can play unforgettable games on them. Peter Rogerson once alluded to “the usual
doctrine of the inerrancy of eye-witness testimony.”9 UFO study presents us with a dilemma:
disbelief vs credulity. The first is a minor sin (as it self-corrects with evidence). But the
second—affecting most ufologists today—is a major obstacle to progress, because: how do
you amend a blind belief in the nonexistent? This is what this book is all about.
The core of the enunciated phenomenon is not in automated or technological recordings (none
of the myriads of photographs, films, videos, and digital imagery is valuable either) but on
naked human testimony. In our considered opinion, future research efforts are to be focused on
this raw material. That is the raison d'être of this group work, to exploring causes and functions
of such visual chimeras. But not only that. How do anthropologists, historians, philosophers,
physicists, and other scholars observe the “phenomenon” of UFO reporting? This book
addresses this issue as well.
In this conjuncture, the present book’s purpose is to ascertain the opinion currently held by
UFO study specialists and/or academics on the worth and reliability of propositions of
extraordinary UFO narratives claimed to have been lived in reality. The plan is to hold a fresh
6
On the Witness Stand. New York: McClure, 1908.
No matter what eyewitness testimony in the court of law, it is the lowest form of evidence in the court of science.
The Amazing Meeting, Keynote Speech, 2008.
8
Leonard S. Newman and Roy F. Baumeister, “Toward an Explanation of the UFO Abduction Phenomenon:
Hypnotic Elaboration, Extraterrestrial Sadomasochism, and Spurious Memories,” Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 7,
No. 2, 1996, pp. 99-126.
9
Peter Rogerson, “Neither sceptical nor scientific,” Magonia Review Blog, April 30, 2014.
https://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2014/04/neither-sceptical-nor-scientific.html
7
10
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
inquiry from a wider spectrum of expertise. We purport to exhibit a state-of-the-art in the
scientific examination of UFO tales, measured mainly, but not exclusively, from the
perspective of social sciences.
It is not our objective to judge the behavior, ethics, motivation, or intention of UFO witnesses.
We are just trying to assess the value of testimonies of weird tales when these do not harmonize
with palpable evidence.
As UFO literature shows, many thousands of supposed witnesses do not report simple lights in
the heavens but swear to have encountered machines that had touched down and were
physically near. They remember it as a vivid, real experience—landing of objects with
humanoid crews who on occasion also abduct their observers and practice malicious medical
procedures. The assertion that these accounts are, in fact, extraterrestrial visits from alien races,
is a false teatro acted in front of us all that merits urgent intervention of experts in psychology,
as none of these situations has ever been substantiated by proof to convince society—least of
all scientists—that they happened as reported. In sum, something that affects people,
sometimes cruelly, cannot be left in the hands of charlatans, gullible people, fanatics and
believers, UFO writers, UFO sects, or the UFO entertainment industry. It is a field mainly for
social scientists.
If this ensemble of “experiences” is not untrue and merely fictional, what else is it? Can it be
classified as a sickness that needs a cure or medical care? Literature has it that several
psychological conditions generate similar stories or tales like the ones we have described. But
is it possible to lay down the factors that yield or facilitate this class of alien encounter
experience? Can we list them to help defining the problem?
Looking for an Etiology: AED
The alien encounter disorder (AED) is a non-pathological, short-lived, non-impairing, nonrepetitive cognitive disturbance characterized by the “vision” of a flying object coming out of
the blue, approaching the witness, hovering or landing at close range, with (optionally)
emerging creatures showing absurd behavior, and taking off again speedily in a short time. The
alleged contact may sometimes include communication (mental or oral), physical interaction,
kidnapping, or abuse. There is a deficit of recurrent features in dimension, shape, dynamics,
colors, noise, odor, aftereffects, etc. On the contrary, at the end of the day there are as many
descriptions as informers, like particular cases of individual sociogenic episodes.
The usual situational and environmental features that boost and enhance the perceived
occurrence of this unreal, but real-to-the-subject event, comprise a combination of these setups:
* loneliness (single or dominant witness)
* isolation
* outdoors scenario (driving, in the fields, or alone in a rural home)
* mostly nocturnal experience (~85%) (non-sleep-related), occasional daylight experience
* while engaged in normal activities
* standard reporting (not recovered via hypnosis regression)
* media-inducement (publicity of similar events)
* overexposure to UFO literature
* closeness to active ufologists
11
Introduction
We are confident that the described candid encounters with visiting aliens are delusional
experiences. These must necessarily be associated to common triggers. We presume that, in
addition to the factual conditions listed above, certain personal or particular psychological
conditions have to concur as well. Those precursors must be identified for diagnostic purposes.
Generally, this emotional condition occurs and vanishes, never to come back, but leaves a track
of enduring false recollections, except in abduction claims, where an alleged abductee may
claim repeated experiences.10,11 What is the mechanism behind it, one that crosses borders and
cultures? Are the press, book, movie, and TV industries relevant in the spreading of this
iconography? Most probably. This kind of abnormal cognitive episode has similarities and
differences with other known psychological processes. It is akin to a dissociative disorder. On
the other hand, it importantly differs from sleep paralysis, or the common bedtime occurrences
of visitation episodes12,13, as it manifests in the waking state at times when the subject is
engaged in ordinary activities. It is one endowed with a very specific and essential scenario:
the image of the arrival of extraterrestrial vessels with occasional beings performing idiotic
behavior that soon board their celestial ships before disappearing.
To date, a poverty of psychological examination of “eyewitnesses” prevents us from
determining if an array of certain common conditions, symptoms, or factors preexisted to what
it is claimed as valid “observations.” They need to be identified and scaled for due recognition
of cause to effect.
The theoretical condition we propose lies between the thresholds of the common observational
errors and the conscious frauds and hoaxes. It contains a “creativity” input that can be defined
as the subject’s own awareness on the elaboration of a virtual, unreal reality. Assessing the
value of this creativity in someone’s mental process, simple misinterpretations rate much lower
than AED, while complex confabulations rate much higher than AED. It could be illustrated
as follows:
Misinterpretation< AED <Confabulation
Measurement of subject’s creativity for UFO CE event recreation
10
Kathleen Marden, “The MUFON Experiencer Survey: What it tells us About Contact and the Implications for
Humanity’s Future,” in Proceedings of the 2018 MUFON UFO Symposium. Cherry Hill, New Jersey: MUFON,
Inc., July 2018, p. 151.
11
This would indicate that abductees suffer from a deeper psychological or psychiatric self-created trauma than
observers to “normal” UFO landing sightings.
12
David J. Hufford, The Terror That Comes in the Night. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.
13
Andreas Mavromatis, Hypnagogia. The Unique State of Consciousness between Wakefulness and Sleep.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1987.
12
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
A justification might be in order: rare diseases can affect as few as hundreds of people in the
world, and yet those syndromes have a name. Distinct from generic paranormal visions and
even from the stereotype of most UFO sightings (strange-looking lights in the sky), we estimate
the set of UFO close encounters represents from 104 to 105 cases around the world’s geography
and language map.
Mental health professionals might recognize this as a new kind of dissociative disorder, a new
class of false memory, or other conditions. But this one possesses very special and peculiar
contingencies. We leave it to experts to frame it as required. Our only aspiration here is
basically to highlight a very definite, particular occurrence that needs to be tackled on
psychological grounds.
This disorder, for which certain people “experience” the landing of an extraterrestrial
spacecraft that sometimes even comprises extreme manifestations as being kidnapped, leaves
a deep impact on the “observer,” who sometimes also exhibits fear or anxiety symptoms. If the
most dramatic close encounters, like abductions, were predicated on a previous mild/severe
mental disorder, cognitive dissonance, stressful situation, etc., that would account for the posttraumatic stress syndrome apparently discovered in some subjects. It was not a vis-à-vis
meeting with aliens that provoked it. It was a subject’s prior state of mind that generated the
imagined frightful experience, not any real kidnapping event. On this point, we also wish to
signal that the impact of falsehood on the ensemble of extraordinary testimonies and narratives
should not be disregarded.
There is an intricate, grey region stretching from hoaxes—accompanied by further inaccurate
recollections and exaggeration—to the plain truth of actual events. Can the creation of UFO
close encounters have its origin there? By its exceptional, distinct, and implausible
idiosyncrasy, we doubt that there exists a memory of an unreal vision that explains the
extraterrestrial visitation. It connects indissolubly to the flying saucer mythology, which has
developed in a given time of history in a given cultural and social environment.
Contributions
A controversial topic by definition, diverging conceptions have surfaced, as expected, and the
current compilation diaphanously reflects the situation today of the investigation into the UFO
witness testimony. We did not elect to produce a monolithic volume. In fact, this book gathers
together different sensibilities: some authors still leave the door open to any radium in the
pitchblende, any signal among the noise. Those thoughts are not to be neglected, reflecting a
most controversial issue. In our opinion, true research will finally accomplish the net solution
that UFOs come from inner space, that they are just visions from within. The editors trust that
this “view from the top” will render enough data and knowledge to advance the research field.
A comment on the presentation of papers. We heartily believe that content is far more precious
than style. In that light, we have allowed for a certain freedom to authors in the way they choose
to list their footnotes, references and/or bibliography. To force a complete uniformity would
unnecessarily castigate our contributors, especially in a field where a unique set of globally
accepted standards does not exist. We cannot admit the dictatorship of the bureaucrat-editor.
Having said that, all papers conform to some pre-established, minimum formatting and writing
guidelines, for the benefit of the reader.
Historically (in the last 75 years), collating the share from defenders of the alien source for
UFOs with the skeptical response, the latter has been infinitesimal, and this is why the editors
13
Introduction
have proactively invited some papers to refute a few major UFO stories. Yet this is not a debate.
We look forward to showing the hidden face of the subject. Worldwide, UFO items in the
general press amounting in the millions, pro views versus negative views can be probably
assessed as 105 to 1. Dealing with more formal articles published in influential UFO journals
and thematic bulletins and magazines, we would estimate the pro to con share to be 103 to 1
(0.001 rate).
In the 2000s, the world’s population has been overdosed with UFO documentaries stimulating
the belief in aliens without any solid grounds, just for the sake of sensation and thrills. On
several TV channels, well-paid script writers have inundated viewers with fantasy-filled films
where pseudo-investigators swamp an innocent audience with shoddy disinformation, where
every piece of history becomes UFO lore. People—with no assessing criteria—consume those
programs and tend to develop false mental sets and beliefs more akin to religious beliefs than
scientific fact.
The consequence is an alarming excess of pro-UFO materials facing any audience, both
laypeople and academics, in spite of the overwhelming outcome that painstaking work by
saucer addicts has not yielded any material proof. On the contrary, rational investigation by
skeptical-minded researchers has demolished important milestones in the most reputed UFO
ammunition collected by UFO enthusiasts, but it is generally buried in the turmoil of alien
credence.
This collective book is admittedly oriented towards balancing this situation, although
researchers directly or mildly supporting an unconventional origin for UFOs also participate in
this volume. This opus is skewed towards the psychological rendering of UFO testimonies that
apparently avoid a prosaic character, in line with academia-based UFO work, where its pro to
con relationship would be 1 to 9 (journal papers14) or 1 to 5 (for theses and dissertations15).
Ratios of 9.0 to 5.0 in the scientific and university arena vastly opposed to 0.001 in the amateur
press.
Contributors
It might be pertinent to disclose the methodology involved in selecting our roster of
contributors. Over six months we did a comprehensive literature review and searched all known
articles published in scientific journals and books directly or indirectly related to witness
reliability. It was followed by an exhausting hunt of authors’ email addresses. Not a small
number were untraceable. Finally, we submitted a Call for Papers to 348 scholars, academics
and experts, most of them associated with universities. We collected 162 replies, 57 in the
affirmative. Those papers correspond to 60 different writers from 14 different nations.
Invitation was granted based on an existing record of research in this area, not for any beliefs,
sentiments or postures held.
After paper submission, we have surveyed our contributing authors as to their position with
regard to the existence of a UFO phenomenon as a real entity unknown to present science,
based on their extended research experience and study. To that end, three broad, admittedly
very simple categories were established:
14
15
George Eberhart, E-mail to V.J Ballester-Olmos, January 13, 2022.
Paolo Toselli, E-mail to V.J. Ballester-Olmos, January 17, 2022.
14
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
D for Disbelief (skeptical, denialist stance)
A for Acceptance (belief, positive, possible)
NC for Non-Committal (neutral)
The clusters formed by participating writers provided these data:
39
4
17
D
A
NC
The editors expect that the present volume will foster fresh research on issues of UFO
observation and interpretation. Such research will help us to develop a much better
understanding of perception and cognition in both typical and atypical realms. We are
convinced that the “UFO event” is essentially a psycho-sociocultural phenomenon, without
any physical reality (other than misidentification of mundane stimuli). The design of this book,
however, has been open-minded enough to consider work from different or contrary viewpoints
for a richer outlook. Yet we certainly do not pretend that all our colleagues agree with our
judgement or evaluation; after all, this is an unfinished field of investigation.
We believe that a few words—or tabulations—on the book’s authorship will be information
the reader will appreciate. To this end, we have built the following tally of countries from
contributors and contributors by professional specialization:
COUNTRY
NUMBER
COUNTRY
NUMBER
FIELD
NUMBER
FIELD
PSYCHOLOGY
& PSYCHIATRY
25
SOCIOLOGY
NUMBER
1
USA
22
ITALY
2
FRANCE
9
CANADA
2
ENGINEERING
& PHYSICS
9
OTHER
SOCIAL
2
SPAIN
9
INDIA
2
EDUCATION
GERMANY
3
MONACO
1
BRAZIL
3
AUSTRIA
1
UK
2
RUSSIA
1
BELGIUM
2
JAPAN
1
MEDICINE
HISTORY
ANTHROPOLOGY
5
RELIGION
MATHS &
COMPUTERS
5
JOURNALISM
3
MILITARY
3
OTHERS
2
1
1
1
2
This book splits into seven sections, with the following number of chapters by section:
I. Case Studies: 17 chapters
II. Psychological Perspectives: 12 chapters
III. On Witness Testimony: 14 chapters
IV. Empirical Research: 7 chapters
V. Anthropological Approach: 3 chapters
VI. Metrics and Scaling: 2 chapters
VII. Epistemological Issues: 2 chapters
The intent of this introduction is not to inspect, scrutinize or measure up the contents of this
book. We leave that to our wise audience. However, there is an observation that inevitably
surfaces immediately: all chapters in the Case Studies section, reporting about actual field work
(as opposed to theoretical papers) bring negative results on the reality of reported stories. One
would rather anticipate, if the evidence really existed to support true high-strangeness UFO
accounts (like landings, kidnappings, or encounters with humanoids), that researchers would
massively supply papers on extraordinary close-range UFO events where no psychological
interpretation is required. That has not happened. The contrary situation emerged. This is a
real-life fact to ponder.
15
Introduction
UAP Study
With the increasing attention and propaganda about the US Department of Defense UAP
study,16 reports of the type that were numerous in past decades may crop up again, especially
in the USA, where NASA and the AIAA have just decided to inquire into the old flying saucers,
UFOs, now UAP. According to recent published polls, “four in 10 Americans think UFOs are
alien spacecraft.”17 Such is the impact of fanciful, mass-reaching books and TV documentaries.
And it is expanding. The trend is that we could revive the UFO craze of the last century.
Life has cycles and currently we are reliving something that we consider is completely
resolved. Media-ventilated interests, and well-rooted obsessions by a few politicians, scientists,
journalists, and some characters from the intelligence business (not always intelligent), have
combined to resurface a positive climate for another—21st century style—US Government
evaluation of the subject-matter. What has objectively changed to make that happen? Basically,
the sensationalist publicity granted to a few UFO sighting reports (sorry, UAP) from US Navy
pilots. Not so strange, considering that today the number and kinds of man-made flying objects
in our skies is so abundant, as is the use of detection and recording sensors in modern aircraft
that probably require testing and adaptation for non-standard situations.
As a consequence of clearly flawed, biased, and self-interested advice, the United States DoD
is tragically starting from zero. All the know-how acquired in the last decades has been
dumped. No one seems to have learned from prior experience. Decades of major strangelooking sightings solved after scientific and technical scrutiny, or simply by common sense, is
unacknowledged. All this is forgotten. We hope investigators of the DoD UAP research unit,
the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), implemented on July 20, 2022,18 follow
the resolution part of its name.
Hereafter
We encourage social scientists to perform future research by interviewing AED reporters to
identify and discriminate its definitional properties aimed at establishing a proper line of attack.
If there is a diagnosis for factors that boost certain persons to create such mise-en-scène,
professionals must seek it. Some UFO encounters have an idiopathic nature because those who
should have investigated it (ufologists) properly show severe apophenia, perceiving (believing)
meaningful connections among fully unrelated events.
It may be unlooked-for, even funny, to discover that the maximum strangeness posed by UFOs
and UAP does not concentrate in the F for flying or the A for aerial in those acronyms. For it
is the close-to-ground and close-to-observer UFO incidents that lead up to the allegation of an
alien origin. We estimate a current database in the region of ~105 reports worldwide, with
probably 10% of them abduction cases.19 However, in spite of the large difference in
prevalence, scientific literature on abductions is very much abundant (but quite scarce in in16
V.J. Ballester-Olmos, “A Commentary to the 2022 UAP Act,”
https://www.academia.edu/69401447/A_Commentary_to_the_2022_UAP_Act
17
https://news.gallup.com/poll/350096/americans-believe-ufos.aspx
18
https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3100053/dod-announces-the-establishment-of-theall-domain-anomaly-resolution-office/
19
It could be worse. Interpreting a 1998 Roper poll, up to four million Americans would claim to have been
actually abducted by extraterrestrials (Susan Blackmore, “Abduction by Aliens or Sleep Paralysis?”
https://www.susanblackmore.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Abduction-by-Aliens-or-Sleep-Paralysis.pdf).
Precisely speaking, out of ~6,000 queried, 20 respondents said they had been abducted by aliens. (Peter
Brookesmith, “Roper’s Latest Knot: the 1998 Abduction Survey,” Anomalist 8 (2000), pp. 32-38.) Figures today
would be much higher. It could be your nice neighbor next door.
16
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
depth case studies). As raw “landing” or “close encounter” reports are much more frequent, we
feel this field demands deeper exploration, focusing both directing the investigation on
“experience” and “experiencer” and doing theoretical and psychometric work.
From the beginning, “ufology” has been ill-aimed, not hearing early academic advice: “We are
faced with a problem amenable more to the methods of the psychologist than to those of the
physical scientist.”20 Already in the 1980s, some scholars also invited the participation of
psychologists into this area of investigation: “…indirect investigation of new sightings would
be carried out by two field teams, each composed of a physical and a social scientist with
experience in interview techniques.”21 To no avail. Ufologists are obsessed with interplanetary
or ultra-dimensional sources.
Let us return to the beginning and look forward toward the near future. As acknowledged, in
July 1947 there was a flurry of what were then popularly known as flying saucers or flying
discs. Troubled by the new development, the US Air Force began to study those reports—for
better or worse—and named them UFOs. 75 years have passed without any irrefutable evidence
proving that UFOs are anything other than trivial, unrecognized phenomena (IFOs). The
alternative to a physical phenomenon is not the ruse of para-physics, it is non-existence. As a
matter of fact, tales of unexplained cases parallel those of explained cases, that is, statistically
and qualitatively, we cannot discern UFOs from IFOs. We arrive at the ontological principle
of the identity of indiscernibles. To complete this, a robust literature, Ph.D. dissertations,22 and
work in disciplines like psychology, history, anthropology, sociology, or folklore have
solidified a psycho-social theory to account for the occurrence of the UFO phenomena.
In issues of science and knowledge, we cannot be neutral. Man’s evolution is unequivocal. The
Earth is not flat. We have been on the Moon. Covid-19 is a pandemic and vaccines are the only
remedy. The editors of this volume do not hide that over long years of non-stop investigation
on this topic, our stand is not supportive to intelligent extraterrestrial life interacting with
earthlings (much less that humans are being snatched away by aliens). We do enthusiastically
support, however, SETI and CETI efforts. The binomial UFO = alien is unsustainable,
evidence-wise. On the contrary, everything points to a psycho-social movement, a myth in
progress, even a religion in certain quarters. We are convinced that UFO close encounters and
abductions are mainly a sub-discipline of “anomalistic psychology” (as termed by Professor
Chris French).
From our standpoint, the fact that a percentage of participating authors declare a neutral
position or even a positive position regarding UFOs as a potential phenomenon of unknown
origin signifies that substantial additional research is still required to appraise if there is any
basis for unexplained UFO sightings to be an exotic phenomena akin to plasma, or—strictly
concentrating on “close encounters”—if reported events represent some type of eccentric,
neuro-psychological problem still undocumented in the literature. Extraterrestrials discarded,
without hesitation.
20
Dr. Roger N. Shepard, Hearings before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of
Representatives, July 29, 1968. https://tinyurl.com/59w9yz5c
21
Peter Wadhams (Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom), The Journal of
UFO Studies, Vol. II, 1980, page 4. http://www.cufos.org/jufos_price.html
22
Paolo Toselli, “University UFO Theses & Dissertations 1948-2022.”
http://www.cisu.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/ufotheses_by_paolo_toselli_updated_23122022.pdf
17
Introduction
We expect that the present volume will assist current-day UFO/UAP students by adding
essential intelligence needed to examine and evaluate close range incidents under a proper
perspective. We hope we do not need another seven decades to settle this question.
V.J. Ballester-Olmos
with Richard W. Heiden
18
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
FOREWORD
My older sister was recently downsizing a bit (good for her) and came across a bundle of letters
from the 1970s. One was from my father, about a trip to the Amish country that the rest of the
family (he, my mother, my younger sister Alisa, and I) had just taken. “All of us except Alisa,” he
wrote “saw a shiny disk-shaped UFO which suddenly disappeared.”
I have no memory of that incident.
But if you’re a certain kind of person, with a certain kind of belief system, the discovery of this
letter could suggest an answer to some questions. How did Leonard Newman, as mainstream an
experimental social psychologist as one could find, end up studying and writing about UFOs? And
of all things, why the alien abduction phenomenon? Clearly, something significant happened to
him that day in Pennsylvania—something he can’t remember, something he probably doesn’t want
to remember. Spotting the shiny disk was just the beginning, a prelude to a more intimate encounter
with whoever or whatever was inside the spacecraft. Is he actually an abductee? Could writing
about the phenomenon be his way of dealing with repressed memories of his own capture and
subsequent painful and humiliating medical examination?
I don’t think so.
The real story is more mundane. At some point in the early 90s, my mother passed on to me a copy
of The Skeptical Inquirer, an issue that happened to contain multiple articles about the alien
abduction phenomenon—specifically, about the growing number of people who had concluded
that they had been taken against their will, roughly treated, and stripped of their dignity by
extraterrestrial beings. It would be reasonable to ask why she had an issue of the magazine in the
first place. But my mother is a voracious, even obsessive reader. If there was nothing else at hand
but copies of Cigar Aficionado or Golf Digest, she would undoubtedly spend a couple of hours
making her way through them despite never in her life having smoked a cigar or picked up a golf
club. So why The Skeptical Inquirer—who knows? And why did she pass it on to me? Because
she was always doing that. She pretty much had to. If she held on to all of her reading material,
she and my father would have needed to rent a warehouse to store it all.
I had just begun a post-doctoral fellowship at Case Western Reserve University with Roy
Baumeister, who at the time was writing extensively about what he called “escaping the self.”
Specifically, Roy argued that the self and its demands—to be liked, to be respected, to be
competent, to be successful—can be burdensome. Too bad, though, because as you’ve
undoubtedly heard, you can’t run away from yourself—except maybe you actually can. Roy made
the case that a number of otherwise paradoxical human behaviors could be understood as ways for
people to avoid having to focus on, regulate, and judge who they are and how they are seen by
others. In other words, they could be understood as ways to escape the self. One of those odd
practices was masochism. As I read those articles about the abduction phenomenon, I became
intrigued with what I perceived to be parallels between the abductees’ narratives of their
experiences and central aspects of masochistic fantasy. More on that later.
19
Introduction
If you’re that certain kind of person, with that particular belief system, you must be saying “Of
course that’s the story he prefers—he’s a skeptic!” And indeed that’s how I would describe myself,
as would many of the contributors to this volume. And we all know about skeptics. They refuse to
believe that anything outside the ordinary could ever happen to anyone; in fact, they don’t want to
discover anything that would challenge their narrow view of reality. Skeptics go out of their way
to avoid the possibility of having any sort of experience that one might call paranormal. They can’t
understand why “believers” would spend so much of their time and energy exploring subjects like
UFOs, and find interest in such topics to be absurd, even contemptible. And they wouldn’t know
an alien if (as the old saying goes) one bit them in the ass.
Well, I’m guessing that I would know an alien if one bit me in the ass—but none seems to be
interested in taking a bite. More to the point, that caricature of skeptics and their fellow travelers
includes at least two misconceptions that really should be addressed. Please read Craig Myers’s
(this volume) account of encountering a spectacle that he simply “could not grasp.” He was stunned
by the sight of “strange shape-shifting blobs of light as they moved back and forth, round and
round, across the night sky seemingly in or behind the clouds,” doing a “dazzling dance.” Does he
come across to you as someone not open to an awe-inspiring, life-transforming experience? Or
does he instead sound like someone excited about the possibility of finally witnessing something
that would upend all of his previous assumptions? Of course, in this case, “the source of the show"
was “a car dealership using giant rotating spotlights to draw attention to a sale.” The point remains
that skeptics are certainly open to awe and wonder and would be just as excited as anyone else to
come face to face with the incredible. Can anyone doubt that Alexander Keul (this volume) would
pay any price to be able to regularly witness ball lightning? Nonetheless, we “cannot simply
believe the stories that anyone tells us, especially those of an extraordinary nature that would force
us to reevaluate established knowledge” (Ballester-Olmos, this volume). And we remain perplexed
by those who “do not even search for reasonable explanations for UFO reports and accuse those
doing it of being debunkers” (Borraz, this volume).
As for the idea that skeptics scoff at those who would express interest in UFOs and in the people
who claim to encounter them, let me state the crushingly obvious. The contributors to this book
include some very smart people. There are all sorts of issues to which they could be devoting their
intellectual energy, and all sorts of scholarly and research contributions they could make. They
don’t have to write thoughtful and rigorous chapters for a book called The Reliability of UFO
Witness Testimony, but that is what they have done. The fact is that most people do not actually
care all that much about UFO sightings and alleged alien encounters, and don’t make it a priority
to learn more about them. The UFO phenomenon is something that enters their awareness
primarily when they happen to come across a television show devoted to the topic while they’re
flipping through channels looking for something else to watch. Not so the contributors to this book.
With whom else could you have an informed and intelligent conversation about the discrepancies
in the description of the Pascagoula abduction (Nickell, this volume) or the video evidence for the
Phoenix Lights (Callahan, this volume)? Skeptics are knowledge-seekers. Admittedly, our
knowledge often leads us to conclusions that are uncongenial to believers, like “the hard truth that
eyewitnesses are capable of extreme errors at odds with the real events and other observers,” and
that there is “abundant evidence that hypnotist and subject can confabulate elaborate stories of
events that never happened” (Bullard, this volume; see also French, Ickinger, this volume). But
skeptics have put in the time and effort that has allowed them to reach those conclusions because
20
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
they believe that UFO-related phenomena are important to study—and “so important that they
can’t be left to the imagination of creative minds. They deserve the assembled intellect and wisdom
of all of the contributors to this volume along with everyone else who honestly wants to know the
truth.” (Haines, this volume).
A note to believers, then: you may see skeptics as being your worst enemies, but at least try to
consider the possibility that they might be your best friends. For example, I do not know of any
data that could confirm this, but I suspect that if a survey were taken of the general public, and
respondents were asked to pick what seemed to them to be the most probable explanation for the
alien abduction phenomenon, the most popular answer would be something along the lines of
“those abductees are ‘crazy.’” Skeptics have provided many accounts of why people might come
to believe that they were abducted by aliens, and how and why they might construct elaborate
memories of the experience. One thing the large majority of them have in common, though, is that
even if they do not necessarily assume that abductees are “representative of the general population”
(Mavrakis, this volume), they also do not assume that abductees are people with severe (or any)
mental illnesses (but see Perrotta, this volume, for a different perspective). In that sense, then,
witnesses, abductees, and other experiencers can expect more respectful treatment from skeptics
than from the average person.
And now, a little more about one of those accounts. Much has been written about how people
might, for all sorts of reasons, wonder if some mental, emotional, or behavioral problem they are
struggling with could have its roots in a strange and disturbing (but unremembered) past
experience; why they might come to entertain the hypothesis that that strange and disturbing
experience involved extraterrestrials; and how a variety of “memory recovery” procedures could
lead to pseudo-confirmation of that hypothesis. But what would account for the readiness of so
many people to embrace and elaborate on the classic abduction narrative? That narrative involves
being restrained or otherwise unable to move; undergoing treatment that most would consider to
be humiliating, including being disrobed, displayed on a table, and having one’s orifices probed
and penetrated; and physical discomfort and/or pain. Most people who have considered the matter
are content with nothing more than the following: if that’s the kind of story floating around the
culture, and if the person facilitating the memory recovery procedure is also familiar with it, then
that’s the kind of story people will tell when they try to recall their abduction experiences. But
there’s a long history in psychology of taking seriously the idea that the stories people tell about
themselves, especially in response to ambiguous stimuli (including memory fragments), can reveal
something about their needs, fears, concerns, and desires. From that perspective, what can we
make of these demeaning, degrading, and debasing abduction stories?
As Roy Baumeister and I noted, a number of commentators have taken the nature of the abduction
narrative as being indirect evidence of the stories’ validity. Because after all, who would want to
believe something like that happened to them? What would motivate someone to construct a
memory like that? What purpose could it possibly serve? Who would wish to have an experience
of that kind? But as we explained,1 there are lots of people who fantasize about very similar
experiences, and even pay lots of money to have them: masochists. Masochism involves bondage
1
L.S. Newman & R.F. Baumeister (1996). “Toward an explanation of the UFO abduction phenomenon: Hypnotic
elaboration, extraterrestrial sadomasochism, and spurious memories.” Psychological Inquiry, 7, pp. 99-126.
21
Introduction
and restraint, humiliation, and of course, pain and discomfort. In our papers on the topic, we
elaborated on what seemed to us to be the remarkable number of parallels between the classic alien
abduction narrative and masochistic fantasy/activity. At the very least, we demonstrated that the
physical and psychological experiences described by abductees are not in fact unprecedented in
human imagination and fantasy. Furthermore, we suggested, it would be reasonable to assume that
whatever needs and desires motivate masochism (which Roy had argued involve a desire to escape
the self) also play a role in motivating people to construct memories of alien abductions.
It would be nice to say that this idea was met with universal acclaim (“They finally cracked the
code!”). Well, not exactly. But in that respect it has much in common with most other theoretical
perspectives on the alien abduction phenomenon. It’s never been clear to us why our analysis has
met with so much resistance, but Noll’s comments (this volume) are surely relevant:
So much of what passes for scientific “explanation” in specific abduction cases involves arguments
by analogy. Abduction stories “resemble” the phenomena of sleep paralysis, Lewy body dementia,
false memories, fantasy-proneness as a personality trait, psychosis-like experiences or whatever—
that sort of claim. We can endlessly pull analogies to scientific or medical phenomena out of our
magical hat (or out of our lower bodily orifice) to soothe our epistemic anxiety, but the proof has
to be in the pudding and it isn’t there.
And so, the work continues, as attested to by the papers in this volume. I’m not sure if there exists
any collection of papers on any topic that can claim to comprehensively summarize everything
that is currently known about it. But this one comes pretty close.
Dr. Leonard S. Newman
Professor of Psychology
Syracuse University, New York
22
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
I
CASE STUDIES
23
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Memory Games: A False Recall Episode
V.J. Ballester-Olmos
Abstract: The event under study appears to be of an exceptional nature. Though initially undefined
by the witness, it was later purported to correlate with a more than modest UFO sighting that
occurred in the middle of the Spanish summer and that remained unexplained due to lack of
information. Subsequent telephone and e-mail interviews with the witness over the years revealed
astonishing new sighting data. A press search yielded an unexpected solution to one part of the
witness’s account. Analysis of the narrative suggests that the event is consistent with a false
memory incident.
Keywords: UFO sighting, UFO landing at sea, Military intervention, False memory, False recall
Preamble
Extraordinary claims are usually revealed to be one of three very different things, depending on
the approach, the beliefs and the scientific culture of the person investigating them: evidence of an
inexplicable and intelligent UFO phenomenon; an example of malicious invention; or a
misrepresentation of the facts by the well-intentioned narrator. Much of the support for the
extraterrestrial UFO myth is based on the ignorance, credulity or incompetence of the ufologist on
duty—often one who is incapable of critically filtering the adventures he hears and then writes
them up as authentic. Facts are not corroborated by repeating the claims of others, no matter how
many photos of the locations and the subject are included, as yellow journalism typically does.
In the present case, a person who claims to have witnessed a phenomenon published in a newspaper
confers on it a series of very strange and unique characteristics. Should we take him at his word?
We only have his personal testimony, although he assures us that two members of his family, some
neighbors and a large number of other people took part. But we have no statements from any of
the other possible witnesses, nor any clues to their identity, nor even any other confirmation of
these remarkable events.
The purpose of this publication is to provide all the available information: the “high strangeness”
version provided by this alleged observer (which lacks corroboration), the published event to
which he links his alleged experience, and an authentic, documented phenomenon that could
potentially solve the puzzle. It raises questions that emerge in most of the weirdest, single-witness
UFO accounts: are the stories true? What position should the investigator hold during the
investigation: blindly believe in an unconfirmed, unproven story, or follow a skeptical approach
to identify an underlying psychological ontology? Undoubtedly, the latter is the preferable tactic,
out of pure logic and common sense, couched in scientific knowledge.
Chronicle of a UFO Sighting
On the night of September 30, 2014, a message from one “José A. Rubio” arrived in my inbox,
which I reproduce here. I have added some details of my own in brackets and have highlighted in
bold some of the most sensational information in the story.
25
I. Case Studies
Dear Mr. Ballester, my query refers to an event that occurred approximately 20 or 25 years ago.
Lately I have come across eyewitnesses like myself to this phenomenon, and we have exchanged
impressions, agreeing in all the details. So, after giving it some thought, I’m going to delve a little
deeper into the subject. The incident occurred in the Mar Menor1 area around midnight. My
mother, a first cousin, and I were chatting on the balcony of the house [town of Los Nietos, Murcia.
Spain] overlooking the beach, when suddenly we saw a bright object descending from the depths
of the starry sky at high speed, leaving a trail of light until it stopped in the center of the Mar Menor
10-50 m from the water. It remained in this position for a few minutes, so we were able to observe
it carefully. It had a spheroid shape although this was not defined due to the light it gave off; the
light it radiated was mainly whitish although laterally it radiated many other shades such as green,
blue, and red, among others. Its approximate size could have been between 20 and 30 m in
diameter and its deceleration to reach sea level from the sky was instantaneous.
Upon seeing this we were surprised and aware that this object was of no known origin and that we
were witnessing something extraordinary, so we ran up to the roof of the building to get a
panoramic view of the entire Mar Menor. After a few minutes, the object moved southward about
two nautical miles [3,700 m] at such a speed that it did so in a fraction of a second, and with
equally instantaneous acceleration and deceleration. It remained at rest until we could see a
Guardia Civil2 speedboat approaching plus another we could not identify. At a distance of about
500 m, they turned on the boats’ spotlights which illuminated the object, but they were unable to
approach because it began an evasive maneuver.
While this was happening, we heard two aircraft fighters (I think they were F-1s) take off from the
San Javier air base [~18 km away], although we couldn't see in which direction they initially
headed.
The object, which had embarked on the evasive maneuver away from the ships, moved north about
five miles [9,300 m] at the same speed, reaching sea level also very close to San Javier. There it
remained until the fighter-bombers flew over it a few minutes later, and then it moved back to the
center of the Mar Menor, where it had initially stopped. It was in that position only for a few
seconds while the jets returned, and finally took off with the same extraordinary acceleration
whereupon it disappeared in the sky, leaving a small yellowish trail in the upper layers of the
atmosphere.
The next day, as is logical, we watched the television news, but nothing was reported. We went to
buy the newspaper, and the event was described by the authorities as a sounding balloon that had
fallen into the Mar Menor. Some years later I joined the Navy; I have personally launched weather
balloons so I can describe them in detail. There was no more news.
This is the full account of the experience. Over the years my curiosity has faded, but recent
conversations with witnesses have encouraged me to get down to work. I intend to visit the archives
of La Verdad newspaper to recover the news, also to contrast the details of the sighting with the
witnesses, and to ask UFO researchers in Spain if they have any data on this sighting. So, having
said this, please let me know if you have any information about it.
1
Mar Menor is a coastal saltwater lagoon located south-east of the Autonomous Community of Murcia, Spain, near
Cartagena. With a surface area of 135 km2, a coastal length of 70 km, and warm and clear water no more than 7 m in
depth, it is the largest lagoon in Spain. The lagoon is separated from the Mediterranean Sea by La Manga, a sandbar
22 km in length whose width ranges from 100 to 1,200 m, with Cape Palos at its southeastern vertex making for the
lagoon’s roughly triangular shape.
2
The oldest law enforcement agency in Spain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Guard_(Spain)
26
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
The witness insisted that it had been a multiple-observer sighting, seen that summer from the
towns of La Manga, San Javier, Los Alcázares, and Los Nietos (where the observer and his
family were located).
The location of the alleged sighting in Spain and the Mediterranean sea. Credit: Google Earth.
For validation, he sent me the fragment of a conversation that he found in an internet forum
dated August 11, 2010:
HELLO, I LIVE IN MAR DE CRISTAL [2.4 km to the ESE of Los Nietos] AND ABOUT 20 YEARS AGO A DEVICE THAT
I ASSURE YOU WAS NOT FROM THIS EARTH WAS SEEN FOR A LONG TIME AND FROM SEVERAL AREAS OF THIS
RESIDENTIAL COMPLEX, EVEN MY PARENTS WHO AT THAT TIME WERE NOT WITH ME BUT WHO WERE IN MAR DE
CRISTAL COULD SEE IT VERY CLOSELY NEAR THE EXIT OF ISLAS MENORES, THEY TOLD ME WHEN THEY GOT
HOME IT WAS PERCHED ON THE SEA A VERY FEW METERS FROM THE SHORE, AND ANYONE WHO WAS IN MAR DE
CRISTAL AT THAT TIME CAN CONFIRM IT BECAUSE PRACTICALLY THE WHOLE COMPLEX SAW IT, EVERYONE
KNEW ABOUT IT.
This is an anonymous testimony that speaks of a case in the Mar Menor around 1990! Another
reader of the same forum reported having seen the same thing from Cabo de Palos (7.3 km ESE of
Los Nietos). When? By whom? But my informant does not “need dependable witnesses since I
saw it with my relatives and remember it perfectly. I have even contacted 20 or 30 neighbors who
remember it.” Yet the only truth—as we will see later—is that over six years of e-mail exchanges
and phone calls, he has never been able to give so much as the name of any other person involved.
Initial Checks and Remarks
From the outset, the declarant assumes the extraordinary nature of the phenomenon and classifies
it as of unknown origin. In fact, by his way of describing the movements of the object, he assigns
it intelligent intent. This indicates that he has clearly drawn a personal conclusion, despite the fact
that he also consults “experts” for their opinions.
My reaction to his first e-mail was to ask him to further refine the date. 20 or 25 years before 2014
would place us anywhere between 1989 and 1994. He responded with certainty that it was in July
27
I. Case Studies
or August, at midnight, and adjusted the period to between 1985 and 1990 (five years earlier than
originally estimated). Days later, the witness wrote that he had managed to locate the event in the
Murcia press: La Verdad, August 16, 1986, page 11:
The very brief news item translates as follows:
In the early hours of last Thursday morning [August 15, 1986], residents of the beaches of the Mar
Menor witnessed for several minutes—more than half an hour, according to the reports collected—
the sight of a UFO that “stopped” in the sky and subsequently moved northward.
The vacationers of the Islas Menores and La Manga [Mar Menor] were those who most enjoyed
the presence of the “flying saucer,” whose appearance sparked a thousand and one comments.
If it is the same event, given that the informant states that it occurred around 12:30 a.m., we could
place the phenomenon at some time between 0:30 a.m. on Thursday August 14 and Friday August
15, 1986. The same newspaper column that broke the news of the UFO “in the early hours of
Thursday morning,” also published a brief note about the unfortunate death of a little girl when
she ran into a glass door that same Thursday afternoon. Our witness claimed to recall with certainty
that the UFO observation happened the night she died. If so, it would have been early on the 15th.3
According to this very poor press report, what happened is far removed from what the witness
claimed. It speaks of a “UFO that stopped in the sky,” not at sea level. That night, Mars was shining
in the sky (magnitude -2.04) at 22º above the horizon in the SSW direction. A little higher (25º)
and to the ESE, was Jupiter, at its brightest (magnitude -2.83). This latter planet would be an ideal
candidate for a misinterpretation, although its movement in the celestial vault is from East-West,
3
Page 18 of the same newspaper—Saturday, August 16, 1986—carried an article by Sánchez de la Rosa entitled “La
pocilga y el ovni” (The pigsty and the UFO), in which a temporal coincidence was established between the viewing
of a film by Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini on TVE (the main channel of Spanish television, “Midnight Movies”)
and the sighting. It so happens that this program was broadcast on Fridays, after midnight, that is, already on August
16. There is a day’s difference between both references, published on the same day in the same newspaper (or even
two, if we consider the “early hours of Thursday morning” as the first hours of August 14, which seems to me too
much margin of error).
28
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
not towards the North, as indicated by the press. An orientation error made by the vacationers that
August?
The sky at 00:30 on August 15,
1986, with Mars and Jupiter
prominently bright.
Stellarium sky chart centered
on Jupiter.
But I am not particularly concerned about finding a solution to a single point of light that summer,
an inconsequential UFO sighting, surely of astronomical origin given its long duration. What is
important to note here is the absence of any mention of the intervention of a Guardia Civil boat
lighting up the object and even less the appearance of two Air Force fighters, features that would
not go unnoticed by any editor. Not only that, if the events had occurred as described by our
“witness,” it would have become national news, not a very brief piece lost in the events section of
a regional newspaper.
In January 2015 I resumed the review of this case. I candidly told my informant that there was
little resemblance between what he told me and what appeared in the press, asking him to find
other sources with full names who could confirm that they were eyewitnesses to the same thing he
witnessed. “I suspect a fabrication,” I told him truthfully. “I have been unable to gather any
information other than some comments from someone who saw the object…It’s funny, but almost
all the witnesses [who?] agree on the same details, and their recall is amazingly clear even though
it’s been so many years,” he replied. Clear? But where are the names? I would add. He said my email had prompted him to keep looking, in the hope that he could send me some additional
information. I told him clearly that the “dramatic version” he had put together lacked
corroboration. His response did not contradict me: “It is true that the most reasonable thing to do
is to look for information in official sources, such as in the reports filed by the Guardia Civil, but
in that respect, I am somewhat at a loss. As for witnesses, I do not think there is more to discover,
although it was a famous event in the area, it was not covered by the media. I have read about
many cases here in Spain and personally I would qualify it as one of the most spectacular.” [My
emphasis]. Finally, I asked him several “technical” questions about apparent and angular
dimensions, distances, etc. There was no answer.
In November 2017, I rediscovered that exchange by checking my pending issues files and I wrote
to him to repeat the questions that needed to be answered. “I sent you an e-mail in response, but it
may not have reached you,” he replied. Despite asking him to forward that e-mail to me, he did
not. “Following your request, I went to the scene and performed a detailed reconstruction,
29
I. Case Studies
including photographs. I positioned the distances and bearings of the object with visual leading
lines contrasted with a nautical chart. They correspond to my version and that of all the witnesses
I have spoken to.” We will come back to them later.
In another message, he stated: “There are no official records of the sighting. I have spoken to a
former colleague from the Guardia Civil post at Cabo de Palos [7 km from Los Nietos] and there
is no report of this alert.” The possibility of consulting the Guardia Civil is zero, as this military
institution does not hold internal documents beyond five years. (1) He also wrote that he was in
touch with three well-known Spanish ufologists. The fact is that there are no longer virgin
witnesses, but some are more so than others. It is evident that my informant is well-versed on the
subject of UFOs. For example, he mentioned a controversy related to the declassification of the
Spanish UFO archives by the Air Force, a process in place from 1990 to 1999 in which I played a
key role (2, 3, 4), about whose debates he was well informed. To show that he knew what he was
talking about, he added, as if it were a plus: “In addition to what I said before, I also had the
pleasure of chatting with Colonel Cámara.”4
In the face of an alleged collective sighting, one must look for reports that occurred on a similar
date and place. But there are no records of a UFO sighting in the Mar Menor in August 1986 of a
phenomenon with the characteristics indicated by the informant. Of course, I did my homework. I
checked my own UFO catalogs, consulted my colleagues, researched on Internet forums: nothing
turned up for that August 15, 1986. It was especially curious because a phenomenon like the one
described must have had many witnesses. There is nothing recorded anywhere, except for the trifle
already reported in the local newspaper. More importantly, it has been verified that there has also
been no press communication from the air authorities about a weather balloon crash as an
explanation for a UFO sighting in almost 20 years.
The claimant says he heard planes taking off from San Javier, 20 km away. But, regardless of the
improbability of such a noise being heard, San Javier is the General Air Academy, not a typical
Air Force base. The aircraft deployed there—the C-101 type—are for training new pilot officers,
are not equipped with radar, and do not fly at night. No fighters take off from there on an
interception mission. So that statement is false. In any case, for that purpose, the closest would be
Los Llanos air base (Albacete), about 180 km away. Besides the fact that it is infrequent for two
aircraft to be launched at the same time in a scramble mission, the minimum process for a Mirage
F-1 to reach the Mar Menor, based on a hypothetical radar detection (from the nearest EVA-5 radar
station in Alicante to the Pegaso center at the Torrejón AFB in Madrid), would not be less than 30
minutes. That the “fighter-bombers” appeared within minutes of seeing the object is another
falsehood, as per the witness’s account, Moreover, there is no case of a “UFO chase” in 1986
among the collection of UFO files held and declassified by the Spanish Air Force, with cases up
to 1995. (6, 7)
As for the national newspapers, a review of the main newspapers of the country has failed to turn
up anything related, either to the striking observation narrated by the informant, or to an alleged
official statement. Nor has anything even remotely similar been reported in nearby countries
bordering the Mediterranean.
4
The pilot of the fighter scrambled hours after the so-called “Manises case.” (5)
30
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
In 2019 I unearthed this case again to remind the witness that he had promised me to author a
comprehensive report, which would better enable its study. “It is true that I have neglected the
matter a bit,” he remarked. Finally, in 2020 I decided to pursue the story to the fullest extent. For
months, a series of e-mails and phone calls went back and forth to seek specifics and expand on
the data necessary for a thorough analysis of the testimony. The witness, José Antonio Rodríguez
Martínez (“Rubio [Blond] is a nickname because I have red hair”), lives in Cartagena and has been
an active military officer since 1996, specifically a Senior Chief Petty Officer of the Navy. The
observation lasted from 30 to 40 minutes, only in that it coincides with what was published by La
Verdad. He pointed out that the object had an “ovoid” shape (previously referred to as a
“spheroid”) and that it was “practically at sea level” (no longer floating in the water but hovering
over the sea). Asked about the angular height above the surface, he argued that he was in an
elevated position and that the perspective did not allow him to make that estimate. As to its
dimensions, these were equivalent to the length of the Guardia Civil patrol boat that approached
it, i.e., about 20 m. “The object seemed solid, although the light that illuminated it did not allow it
to be seen, although its shape could be guessed,” he pointed out in one of our several subsequent
e-mail exchanges.
For a sailor who is supposed to be able to calculate distances, the figure of 500 m away from the
Guardia Civil boat according to his 2014 message becomes a mere “100 m” in a telephone
conversation on August 9, 2020. That is what we might call an excessive and sudden approach!
The informant (46 years of age in 2020) was born in April 1974, so he was barely 12 years old at
the time of observation. This datum is particularly relevant. Moreover, the subject is particularly
well-informed on UFO matters, so his predisposition to confuse and contaminate the actual
recollection and the current story by tacking on additional details is not a possibility, it is a fact.
The Geography of the Story
Witness Rodríguez Martínez sent me some recreations of the sighting, tracing lines to pinpoint the
four successive positions of the supposed object. Seen from Los Nietos, the object descends over
point 1, then moves towards point 2, then moves to point 3, to finally return to the initial area,
point 4, and from there it rose until it disappeared.
31
I. Case Studies
The following map graphically shows the supposed movements of the UFO over the Mar Menor.
Inquiry
On October 9, 2020, the witness contacted me again, with a phone call and two e-mails, including
a graph for the UFO movements, one that was similar to our own reconstruction above, except that
he places point 3 much further away. We agreed to have an interview the next day. I had already
prepared a long stack of seventeen cards full of questions for this purpose. An extensive telephone
interview resulted in the witness providing the following new information:
Why did he pursue this matter in 2014, twenty-eight years after the fact? “Out of curiosity. It was
always in my mind.” Queried about his interest in UFOs he admitted that he had read about UFOs
“since I was a kid,” and was currently a follower of TV shows on UFOs and the paranormal. He
contacted some ufologists for information, but no one was aware of such an incident. Did he write
any report of his own observation? Not until he wrote to me in 2014, “because there was no data
at hand, a vacuum of information [from other sources].” To the problem posed by his youthful age
as an observer of events so far back in time, he said he remembered “perfectly” what he saw and
even recalled things from when he was six years old. “According to what I have read,” he added,
“witnesses remember even though 40 years have passed, I am not a special case.” He guesses that
children “who are more impressionable, register things better” and finally pointed out regarding
the validity of his memory: “to me, these details have always been clear, now I have refined them
32
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
from an objective point of view.” In 2014 he returned to the site and checked: “there is no confusion
in distances or directions, it was an adult corroboration.”
He insisted that his mother and cousin saw and remembered it. Any attempt to interview them was
aborted, his mother “won’t lend a hand, she doesn’t want to know anything about it” and he no
longer had a relationship with his cousin, due to family problems.
As time went on, the witness became more and more precise: “the object was one nautical mile
[1,852 m] from the balcony. The glow of the object in the sea below marked its position and the
height above the water was perfectly visible.” The UFO was about 20 or 30 m above the surface
of the sea. He said he had now remembered “one relevant detail”: “minutes before the patrol boat
approached, another vessel came alongside the object, possibly a fishing boat, as it had highpowered mobile spotlights on deck that illuminated the object.”
As for the size of the object, his references were the two nearby vessels (located at point 2 in the
previous graphs): the fishing boat (with on-deck lighting) would have been about 10 m long, the
Guardia Civil patrol boat, about 15 m long. He calculated that the UFO would have had a diameter
larger than the fishing boat and similar to the Guardia Civil’s boat. I asked him to compare its
apparent size with that of the full moon (0.5º), to verify these data: “I couldn’t, I would be making
it up,” he replied.
“There is one piece of information that was not correct in the report I sent you: the sequence was,
first the fishing boat, which came within a few meters [later in the same conversation, he estimated
50 m] for about five minutes. The Guardia Civil ship did not approach but was going in that
direction and stayed between 500 and 1000 m away.” Rodríguez pointed out that the object “was
always static above the sea, at the same level” and that “at no time did the initial altitude over the
sea change.”
I wanted to determine the full duration of the sighting. As per the witness statements (see the
positions in the charts above):
Point 1 (within 1.9 km): “about 15 minutes.”
From point 1 to point 2 it moved “with instantaneous speed, like a trail of light.”
Point 2 (3.7 km to the SE): “It was a few minutes, between 5 and 10.” Here we have the two boats.
“You could hear the roar of the Guardia Civil patrol,” he recalled. The fighters were taking off and
could be heard (“a different noise from the normal planes on the base”).
Point 3 (at ~14 km): “very brief stay here, about 2-3 minutes.” The fighters were already flying
over the area, “reconnaissance, without approaching.”
Point 4 (at 3.7 km): “just a few moments.” From there, it rose until it disappeared.
In all, the sighting would have lasted about 28 minutes. At first glance, his statement seems rational
and sincere. The witness provided justification for his claim.
Fundamental to this investigation was the search for any confirmatory information published in
local newspapers. It was the noted Spanish investigator Juan Carlos Victorio who found a key
piece, a news item published in the Monday paper of Murcia, La Hoja del Lunes of August 18,
1986, entitled The La Manga “UFO” was a colorful weather balloon. It was released from a
33
I. Case Studies
recreational boat. That brief information from the EFE agency presented the following details
about the case:
The unidentified flying object (UFO) that recently caused excitement on the Murcian coast was a
colorfully painted weather balloon. The amusement that the UFO brought to the holidaymakers
came from J.P. Padilla, who had the idea of launching a balloon from his pleasure boat, as reported
yesterday by a group of friends of the space-probe thrower. The balloon was also equipped with a
device to broadcast radio frequencies.
Unfortunately, neither the date nor the exact time is given, but it surely refers to the event of the
early morning of August 15 reported by La Verdad on August 16. As our witness spoke of
“midnight,” undoubtedly both news items refer to the same incident.
La Hoja del Lunes (Murcia), August 18, 1986.
Analysis
No event is considered to have occurred or to be real without evidence. A story without
confirmation is invalid for all purposes, especially when dealing with a surprising or outlandish
incident that purports to be anomalous. We cannot simply believe the stories that anyone tells us,
especially those of an extraordinary nature that would force us to reevaluate established
knowledge. Let us never forget Carl Sagan’s aphorism: “extraordinary claims require
extraordinary evidence.”
An essential step was to consult with the Air Force as to whether any fighter planes had left that
night from San Javier or from any other base on a mission in that area. Their response was
definitive:
Finally, we can confirm that, after consulting the appropriate sources and on the dates that you
mentioned, there was NO scramble procedure. For any other query we remain, as always, at
your disposal. (8)
The case under study poses (in no particular order of priority or relevance) serious problems:
34
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
● Total absence of eyewitnesses to confirm the claim (saying that they exist is not
equivalent to proving that they exist, not without names); de facto, there is only one sole
witness.
● False information about a supposed official press release.
● There is no trace of information on “his” case, neither published nor in the archives of
local or national UFO researchers.5
● What the local media published in the following hours or days points to the release that
night of an illuminated balloon by an individual, as the object that caused the confusion.
● A case of this importance is unknown among the UFO files of the Spanish Air Force.
● False information about departures of interceptor fighters from the San Javier base, or
any other scramble procedure in Spain in that time frame and location.
● Impossibility of hearing the takeoff of fighters 18 km away.
● Unverified information on direct intervention by the Guardia Civil.
● Doubtful assertion that he coincided with other witnesses of the same event.
● The 28-year delay from observation to first communication.
● The dynamics of the supposed object (the trajectories made) are erratic and meaningless.
● It is very doubtful that, at just 12 years old, he had the ability to determine such a level
of detail for distances and movements of an unknown luminous object.
● The date is remarkably close to the Perseid radiant (July 23 to August 22, with a
maximum on August 12-13) (9), and the observed initial fall of a “bright object from the
sky leaving a trail” could be perfectly attributed to a shooting star, which was subsequently
allied with the appearance of the colorful balloon.
● Last but not least, the claimant’s intense belief in the UFO subject from his childhood.
Faced with an account of the characteristics presented, an unverifiable testimony without any
external corroboration, several hypotheses can be expressed, with different degrees of conscious
involvement by the narrator. The range of complex misinterpretations, immaterial experiences,
even deliberate deception are positive contributors from the perspective of the definitive
psychosociological hypothesis. (10) I prefer to think that, over the years, the witness has
unconsciously transferred extraneous details acquired in his admittedly profuse consumption of
books, magazines and documentaries on UFO matters to the memory of his early observation.
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, the witness, over time, has created a false memory. (11-14)
Ufology is a mine of “clinical” examples of this psychological phenomenon. (15) Recent research
has brought to light that the dilatory effect of relaying the experience and the “belief” effect on the
part of the subject maximizes the production of false memories. (16) Both are major components
in this case study and this author is convinced that their prevalence in UFO cases casuistry is
extremely high.
This case represents the central dilemma in the study of alleged extraordinary events. The initial
sighting, by a child, has transmuted a light or an illuminated object on the sea into a movie about
a near splashdown, with jets chasing the UFO, a Guardia Civil boat approaching and a fishing boat
5
The only news of an object suspended over the Mar Menor in August 1986 is the drawing of a “ship” supposedly
seen by a certain Joaquín Fernández, protagonist of no fewer than 13 UFO sightings and who claims to be “controlled
by those beings.” But the drawing actually refers to a case dated August 1963. J.J. Benítez, Sólo para tus ojos, Planeta
(Barcelona), pp. 117-118. Be that as it may, the two accounts differ substantially.
35
I. Case Studies
focusing its spotlights on an unidentified flying object that continuously changes direction and
flies at an incredible rate of speed. In other words, a quirk of imagination that he has come to
believe and which he wished to share with “experts” to seek endorsement. A more radical
alternative would be that it was a pure invention, something completely unreal, unfounded, a
product of his own mind, which he subsequently linked to a news report in support of his
statements. The dichotomy between imagination and reality underlies the analysis of the most
critical sightings. (17) It is known that visual hallucinations do not require a prior psychopathology
(18) and that the genesis of a hallucinatory experience in non-clinical subjects is related to a
circumstantial event such as grief or an isolated phenomenon. (19) Yet, in this case, it does not
seem to be a hallucination but a false memory, another of the many mental phenomena that are
associated with the fabrication of stories. As a matter of fact, episodes of false memory have been
discovered to be associated with other weird “encounters.” Subjects reporting memories of alien
abductions were more prone than control participants to exhibit false recall.
(20) In any case, in ufology the dividing line between mystification and false memory is extremely
tenuous. (21)
Moreover, there are people who do tell ufologists stories they have simply imagined. (22) The
range of explanations for “close encounters” is extensive: misinterpretations, teasing, pranks gone
haywire, pathological lies, specific hallucinations, apocryphal memories, sleep paralysis,
hypnopompic and hypnagogic visions, etc. There are various motivations and evaluations. The
participation of professionals from the world of behavioral sciences in the study of the most
spectacular UFO casuistry is absolutely necessary. I have personally compiled more than 1,200
files of such reports from the Iberian Peninsula: there is material for many Ph.D. theses.
The approach followed in the analysis of this information is not new, nor is it arbitrary. It is about
being faithful to what the philosopher Bunge (23) calls methodological rationality, which consists
of questioning (doubting and criticizing) and justifying (demanding demonstration or data,
favorable or unfavorable) in a systematic way. On the UFO issue, this position is indeclinable.
As an epilogue, let me remark that the penultimate time that the observer contacted me was on
January 12, 2021, complaining: “last night they reported about UFOs in the Mar Menor on Cuarto
Milenio6 but they did not refer to my sighting.” I replied frankly that his case, for all intents and
purposes, does not exist, as there is no corroboration. To conclude, before publishing the Spanish
version of this report I have sent it to him, noting that “it was not an alien spacecraft, but it was
not an invention either, it was what psychologists call a false memory… In my opinion, you should
not continue to dwell on this matter. It is advisable to forget all about it and continue with a normal
family and working life.” I want to think that his immediate response, although brief, augurs a
return to normality: “Thanks for everything, best wishes.”
Acknowledgments: To the witness, José Antonio Rodríguez Martínez, for his full cooperation in
the study of this event. To Juan Carlos Victorio Uranga, for astronomical data, geographical
infographics and valuable assistance. To Fulgencio J. Cerón, for newspaper search. To Julio Plaza
del Olmo, for useful comments. To Joan Plana, for aeronautical and Defense data. To Edoardo
Russo (CISU, Italy), for press information on dates coinciding with the Spanish sighting. To Juan
6
Since 2005, the Spanish “Cuatro” TV channel has broadcast a television program devoted to UFOs, the paranormal,
and mysteries, hosted by Iker Jiménez.
36
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Pablo González, for checking CUCO’s database (catalog of UFO Sightings in the Iberian
Peninsula). To Captain M. A. Cuenca López, Air Force Public Information Officer, for information
on the lack of scrambles that day. To Chris Aubeck, for editing.
References
(1) Ballester-Olmos, V.J. and M.A. Benítez. (2020). “Incidente en la costa de Ayamonte, marzo
de 1987.”
https://www.academia.edu/44213938/Incidente_en_la_costa_de_Ayamonte_marzo_de_1
987
(2) Ballester-Olmos, V.J. (1995). Expedientes insólitos, Madrid: Temas de Hoy, pp. 153-236.
(3) _____. (1995). “UFO Declassification in Spain. (Military UFO Files Available to the Public:
A Balance).” In UFOs: Examining the Evidence. Edited by Mike Wooten. Bantley, West
Yorkshire (UK): British UFO Research Association Ltd., pp. 51-56.
https://www.academia.edu/30444424/UFO_Declassification_in_Spain._Military_UFO_F
iles_Available_to_the_Public_A_Balance.pdf
(4) _____. (1997). “Monitoring Air Force Intelligence (Spain’s 1992-1997 UFO Declassification
Process).” In MUFON 1997 International UFO Symposium Proceedings. Edited by Walter
H. Andrus, Jr., and Irena Scott. Seguin, Texas: Mutual UFO Network, Inc., pp. 139-178.
https://www.academia.edu/29413366/MONITORING_AIR_FORCE_INTELLIGENCE.
pdf
(5) Borraz, Manuel. (2008). “Enigmas y la peor de las conspiraciones.”
https://www.academia.edu/42774837/ENIGMAS_el_caso_Manises_y_la_peor_de_las_c
onspiraciones
(6) Ballester-Olmos, V.J. (2017). “Los expedientes OVNI desclasificados–Online.” Ministerio de
Defensa (Ministry of Defense).
http://bibliotecavirtualdefensa.es/BVMDefensa/i18n/consulta/registro.cmd?id=42382
(7) Spanish Ministry of Defense’s Virtual Library, online collection of declassified UFO archives.
https://bibliotecavirtual.defensa.gob.es/BVMDefensa/exp_ovni/es/consulta/indice_campo
.do?campo=idtitulo
(8) Cuenca López, Captain Manuel Ángel, Air Force Public Information Officer (Air Force
Communication Office), e-mail to V.J. Ballester-Olmos, March 17, 2022.
(9) Kronk, Gary W. (1988). Meteor Showers. A Descriptive Catalog, Hillside, New Jersey:
Enslow Publishers, Inc., p. 162.
(10) Abrassart, Jean-Michel. (2016). “Le modèle sociopsychologique du phénomène OVNI: Un
cadre
conceptuel
interprétatif
en
sciences
humaines,”
pp.
9-83.
https://www.academia.edu/29385801/Le_mod%C3%A8le_sociopsychologique_du_ph%
C3%A9nom%C3%A8ne_OVNI_Un_cadre_conceptuel_interpr%C3%A9tatif_en_science
s_humaines
(11) Goldstein, E., and K. Farmer (eds.) (1994). True Stories of False Memories, Boca Raton,
Florida: Social Issues Resources Service.
(12) Loftus, E. F., and J.E. Pickrell. (1995). “The formation of false memories.” Psychiatric
Annals, 25, pp. 720-725.
(13) Loftus, E.F. (2004). “Memories of things unseen.” Current Directions in Psychological
Science, 13, pp. 145-147.
(14) Burnell, Ryan et al, “Memories people no longer believe in can still affect them in helpful
37
I. Case Studies
and harmful ways,” Memory and Cognition (2022) 50, pp. 1319-1335.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-022-01328-9
(15) Ballester-Olmos, V.J., J. Plaza del Olmo, and M. Pullman. (2018). “El OVNI de La Graña.”
https://www.academia.edu/37908857/El_ovni_de_La_Grana
(16) Bouvet, R. (2014). “L’effet des croyances sur la production des faux souvenirs. Etude des
témoignages de phénomènes aérospatiaux non identifiés.” CAIPAN (GEIPAN/CNES).
https://www.cnes-geipan.fr/sites/default/files/31__BOUVET_sli.pdf
(17) Ballester-Olmos, V.J. (2010). “Imagination or Reality? The Landing at Turís.” International
UFO Reporter, Volume 33, Number 1, cover and pp. 3-7 and 22-24.
https://www.academia.edu/39927304/IMAGINATION_OR_REALITY_THE_LANDIN
G_AT_TURIS
(18) Bentall, R.P. (2014). “Hallucinatory Experiences.” In Varieties of Anomalous Experience:
Examining the Scientific Evidence. Edited by Etzel Cardeña, Steven Jay Lynn and Stanley
Krippner. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, pp. 109-144.
(19) Stanghellini, G., Á.I. Langer, A. Ambrosini, and A.J. Cangas. (2012). “Quality of
hallucinatory experiences: differences between a clinical and a non-clinical sample.” World
Psychiatry, 11:2, pp. 110–113. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3363387/
(20) Clancy, Susan A. et al (2002). “Memory Distortion in People Reporting Abduction by
Aliens.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 111, No. 3, pp. 455-461.
(21) Abrassart, Jean-Michel. (2015). “UFO phenomenon and psychopathology: A case study.”
https://www.academia.edu/16448052/UFO_phenomenon_and_psychopathology_A_case
_study_full_paper_
(22) Ballester-Olmos, V.J., and J.C. Victorio Uranga. (2019). “Aterrizaje OVNI durante maniobras
del Ejército de Tierra.”
https://www.academia.edu/40986034/Aterrizaje_OVNI_durante_maniobras_del_Ejercito
_de_Tierra
(23) Bunge, Mario. (1985). Racionalidad y realismo, Madrid: Alianza Editorial, p. 14.
38
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
The Phoenix Lights: The Fallibility of Human Perception and Memory
Tim Callahan
Abstract: The Phoenix Lights, which appeared in the night sky in Phoenix, Arizona on March 13,
1997 were perceived by several onlookers as the leading edge of a large V-shaped flying craft,
which flew directly over their heads. The witnesses described the unlit portion of this UFO as
obscuring the stars above it as it passed, slowly and silently. These witnesses were, for the most
part, reputable and they were not suffering from any delusions; nor were they suffering from sleep
paralysis or any other temporary psychological disruption of either their cognitive or perceptual
abilities. However, videos taken of the lights show them appearing one at a time, hovering close
to the western horizon in a ragged line, then winking out one by one. Research carried out by
psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, as well as by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simmons, among
others, demonstrates the subjectivity of both perception and memory. Shared experiences of an
unusual event are often transformed into a coherent dramatic narrative. Despite admission on the
part of the United States Air Force that the lights were military flares dropped by parachute and
the disconfirming videos taken in 1997, belief that the Phoenix Lights were the leading edge of a
huge UFO remains strong 25 years after the incident.
Keywords: Christopher Chabris, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Hidden gorilla, Hypnagogic
state, Tim Ley, Elizabeth Loftus, Military flares, Tony Ortega, Phoenix, Phoenix Lights, Prescott
Valley, Scottsdale, Inattentional blindness, Daniel Simmons, Sleep paralysis, Mitch Stanley, Steve
Titus, UFO
On the evening of March 13, 1997 numerous witnesses in southern Nevada and in or near Phoenix,
Arizona reported seeing a huge, V-shaped craft soaring slowly and silently over them. Five lights,
one at the point of the V and two others on the leading edge of each wing, marked the craft. This
UFO sighting came to be known as the Phoenix Lights. The initial sighting of the Phoenix Lights
was in Henderson, Nevada, which is a bit southeast of Las Vegas. This was at 7:55 Mountain
Standard Time, March 13, 1997. The witness in Henderson reported he saw a V-shaped object,
about the size of a 747 passenger jet. It had six lights on its leading edge and sounded like rushing
wind. It was traveling northwest to southeast. The next sighting was by an unidentified former
police officer in Paulden, Arizona at about 8:15. He reported seeing a cluster of reddish or orange
lights, four lights together and a fifth trailing light. Through binoculars, he could see each
individual light was made up of two light point sources. The lights eventually disappeared over
the southern horizon. At 8:17 callers in Prescott Valley began reporting an object they said was
solid, because it blocked out stars as it passed. One of these witnesses was John Kaiser, who was
outside with his wife and sons. He said the lights formed a triangular pattern. The leading light
was white, but the others were red. He said they passed directly overhead, banked to the right, then
disappeared to the southeast. While observers in Prescott Valley couldn’t determine their altitude,
it was low. The supposed craft made no sound. Another observer in the Prescott area also saw a
V-shaped line of lights, the first three of which were clustered at the point of V, while two lights
were farther back1.
1
Margaritoff, “The Full Story of the Phoenix Lights,” online link.
39
I. Case Studies
One of those who saw the lights above Prescott Valley was Tim Ley. He, along with his wife
Bobbi, his son Hal and his grandson, Damien Turnidge, initially saw them as five lights in an arcshape. They soon realized the lights were moving toward them. As they did so, the lights, over the
next ten minutes, resolved into a V shape similar to a carpenter’s square, or like two sides of an
equilateral triangle. They, like other witnesses, reported a huge object, discernable not only by five
lights on its leading edge, but as well because it blotted out stars in the night sky as it passed
directly over the observers. Soon the object appeared to be coming right down the street where
they lived, about 100 to 150 feet (30-46 meters) above them, traveling so slowly it appeared to
hover and was silent2.
Quite a different story from most was told by amateur astronomer Mitch Stanley, living in
Scottsdale, a suburb of Phoenix. After looking at the lights through his telescope, he told his
mother, who was present at the time, that the lights were airplanes. According to reporter Tony
Ortega, Stanley’s report fell on deaf ears. Those interested in hyping the story weren’t interested
in his rather mundane explanation3:
After his sighting, Stanley tried to contact a Phoenix city councilwoman who was making noise
about the event, as well as a couple of UFO flim-flam men working the local scene, but he was
rebuffed.
Curiously, despite the fact that many people called various authorities about the strange apparition
and that there are at least three Air Force bases in the general area of Phoenix, no fighter jets were
scrambled to intercept this UFO. These bases are the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, 4.3 miles
(6.9 km) southeast of Tucson, thus about 100 miles (161 km) from Phoenix; Luke Air Force Base,
about 15 miles (24 km) west of Phoenix; and the Air National Guard Papago Park Military
Reservation on the outskirts of Phoenix itself. So, how was it that the United States Air Force
failed to respond to all of these reports, and how did an amateur astronomer report a quite different
event?
Fortunately, in addition to the testimony of many witnesses, we have videos taken of the 1997
incident. They show a series of lights appearing in the sky, one by one, then winking out one at a
time. In one of the videos, the man shooting it exclaims, “Another one just showed up!” In that
video the first three lights form a line, then a fourth appears in such a position as to make an angle.
In another video, this one without sound, one light appears, then another, then more, up to five,
then six lights. These are first in a shallow “v” shape, then a more or less straight line (see Figure
1). Then the lights wink out, one by one. None of the videos shows a solid V-shaped object blotting
out the stars as it moves overhead. In fact, in most of them the lights simply hover, rather than
moving in any discernable direction4.
2
Ley, Interview, online link.
Ortega, “The Phoenix Lights Explained (Again),” online link.
4
Not all the original 1997 videos can be currently consulted, but these have been replaced by other versions currently
available online.
3
40
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Figure 1. Digitally re-created photo of the Phoenix Lights. Credit: Pat Linse (Skeptic Magazine).
These videos support the explanation from the Department of Defense that the lights were military
flares dropped during a training mission5:
The Air Force initially claimed that no warplanes were in the area. Two months later, officials
from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson cited a logbook error and confirmed that
Maryland Air National Guard A-10 pilots completing a training exercise ejected leftover
illumination flares near Phoenix before returning to base. "One of our guys had about 10 or so
left," Lt. Col. Ed Jones told the Arizona Republic, "so he started to puke them out, one after
another."
These military flares are dropped by parachute and thus hover over battlefields they illuminate for
a considerable period of time. Hence, they appeared suddenly in the sky west of Phoenix and
seemed to wink out as they slowly descended behind the Estrella mountain range southwest of the
city.
Given the video evidence of the lights appearing one at a time and hovering in an irregular line
low in the western sky, how did so many witnesses perceive them as a V-shaped craft flying slowly
and silently almost directly overhead? It would appear that much of what witnesses saw resulted
from the perceptual centers of their brains automatically filling in the spaces between the lights to
create a whole object.
Nevertheless, it seems at first incomprehensible that eyewitnesses could observe an irregular line
of lights, appearing one at a time and disappearing one at a time, low in the western sky and yet
perceive them as a V-shaped craft with the lights on the leading edge of its wings, a craft whose
silhouette obscured the stars above it as it passed directly overhead of the observers. Can
perception and memory be that faulty? Most of us, it would seem, labor under a misapprehension
that perceptions and memories work much like a tape recorder, giving us a more or less objective
recording of events we either witness or in which we participate. In a 2013 TED talk, Elizabeth
Loftus, cognitive psychologist and expert on human memory, described in detail just how fallible
5
Patton et al, “Military Flares are Behind Some UFO Sightings,” online link.
41
I. Case Studies
memory and perception actually are6. Dr. Loftus began her talk with the tragic story of Steve Titus.
He was out for a romantic evening with his fiancée when he was pulled over by the police. It turned
out that his car resembled that of a car driven by a man who had raped a female hitchhiker. Also,
Titus somewhat resembled the man. When the rape victim looked through a photographic line-up
she said of Titus’ picture, “That one’s the closest”. Titus was put on trial and the victim testified
against him, saying, “I’m absolutely positive that’s the man.” Titus was convicted but fought back,
contacting an investigative reporter, who found the real rapist. That man not only confessed to the
rape but was found to have committed several others. Titus was exonerated and freed. However,
he had lost his job, his life’s savings and his relationship with his fiancée. Embittered by his
misfortunes, he sued the police. However, just days before his suit was to go to trial, he suffered a
stress-related heart attack and died at the age of 35.
Loftus went on tell that 300 innocent people, convicted based on faulty testimony have been freed
based on DNA evidence. Many of them had been imprisoned for between 10 and 30 years. Loftus
further pointed out that memories can be subjectively altered by how witnesses are questioned. In
one experiment two groups of people were shown the same staged automobile collision. One group
was asked, “How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?” The other group was asked,
“How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” The second group, given the
more visceral description of “smashed into,” estimated the cars’ speeds as significantly higher than
the first group and also reported seeing broken glass lying on the street after the collision, when
there was none.
In another experiment on visual perception, researchers Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simmons
created a video in which two teams, one wearing white shirts, the other wearing black shirts, pass
basket balls to other members of their town team. Those viewing the video are told to count the
number of times members of the team in white shirts passed the ball to each other. Unbeknownst
to them the video has a surprise. While they are busy counting the number of passes made by the
team in the white shirts, a person in a gorilla suit walks into the scene turns to face the camera
thumps her chest, then walks off the stage. Most viewers do not see the person in the gorilla suit.
Then the audience is shown the video a second time. This time a title flashes on the screen: “Gorilla
Incident Second Look.” Now, all those viewing the video see the gorilla walk through the scene7.
Why do those who see the person in the gorilla suit in the second showing of the video miss it the
first time? What is at work here is called “inattentional blindness.” Since the viewers have been
directed to focus on the team wearing the white shirts, they unconsciously edit out those in black
– including the person dressed in the black gorilla suit. The title “Gorilla Incident Second Look”
directs them to look for the gorilla, just as the initial instruction to focus on the team in the white
shirts directed their attention away from it.
So, given certain cues, witnesses will see what is not there – broken glass in the street, when the
staged traffic accident is described as cars “smashing into” each other—and will not see what is
there—a person in a gorilla suit walking through a scene. Our sensations are organized into
perceptions by the perceptual centers of the brain, visual perceptions being organized by the
occipital lobe. Consider that we actually get two sets of visual sensation, one from each eye. Each
of these images should also include a hole created by the blind spots where the optic nerve of each
6
7
Loftus, “How reliable is your memory?” online link.
See “Invisible gorilla” documentaries online.
42
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
eye connects with the retina. The blind spot is effectively compensated for by the fact that our eyes
are not still but are actually looking up and down and left and right. In addition, our eyes are
constantly focusing and refocusing on the scene we are viewing, now focusing on the foreground,
now on areas farther way. We do not, however, see two images with blind spots, and are not usually
aware that our eyes are turning in various directions; nor do we see the images changing with the
shifting of visual focus. The reason we see a single three dimensional image rather than two, a
single image without blind spots, an image with a depth of field most cameras cannot match, is
that this data is organized by the occipital lobe of our brains.
The experiment cited by Loftus and the video staged by Chabris and Simmons also demonstrate
that these perceptions can be distorted by directives, misinformation, emotionality and shared
experiences. When people share their often flawed perceptions of an unusual event, the sharing
results in their perceptions being organized into a dramatic narrative, Those who witnessed the
Phoenix Lights saw something somewhat incomprehensible in the sky over, or at least near, their
city. Tim Ley and his family shared their perceptions of what they individually saw in the night
sky. It is noteworthy that Mr. Ley was interviewed in broad daylight on June 13, 1997 – three
months after the Phoenix Lights appeared in the night sky. Hence, what he witnessed, shared
between him and members of his family, was unconsciously refined over a three-month period
into a structured narrative. More than anything, the sighting of the Phoenix Lights demonstrates
the fallibility of both eyewitness testimony and human memory. It as well illustrates the
storytelling, pattern-seeking nature of both our centers of cognition, and our perceptions. It should
be stressed that the lights were witnessed over wide areas by many people, all of whom were
reputable witnesses. Most of these witnesses, it seems, were not subject to delusional thinking, nor
were they imposing a preconceived agenda on what they saw. These witnesses were not, in the
main, UFO enthusiasts; nor were they suffering the effects of sleep paralysis and the hypnagogic
state, as is often the case with those who believe they’ve been abducted by aliens. Also, they really
did see something unusual in the skies of the southern tip of Nevada and southwestern Arizona,
particularly Phoenix. The persistence of this shared narrative is also worth noting. Did the videos
showing an irregular line of lights coming on and winking out one at a time, coupled with the
admission by the Air Force that these were military flares dropped by parachute dispel the mythos
of a large, V-shaped craft flying slowly and silently over the city of Phoenix, blotting out some of
the stars during its strange passage? They did not. In a local newscast featured on Fox 10 Phoenix
on the 24th anniversary of the 1997 incident, the broadcaster says of the Phoenix Lights, “, , , and
to this day, there is no way to be sure what they were, where they came from or where they went.”8
A good story, particularly an exotic one involving a seeming cosmic mystery, has far more staying
power and generates a greater depth of belief than does mere mundane reality.
Bibliography (All web articles accessed on November 30, 2022)
Campese, Liz. “Inattentional Blindness: What We Van Learn from the Invisible Gorilla
Experiment?” June 30, 2015.
https://www.talkspace.com/blog/inattentional-blindness-what-we-can-learn-from-theinvisible-gorilla-experiment/
“Invisible gorilla” sources online. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY
Ley, Tim. “UFO Witness Tim Ley TV Interview – June 13, 1997.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaQBfgszbDU/
8
See “Phoenix Lights Anniversary” documentary online.
43
I. Case Studies
Loftus, Elizabeth. “How reliable is your memory?” September 23, 2013.
https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_loftus_how_reliable_is_your_memory?language=es
Margaritoff, Marco. “The Full Story of the Phoenix Lights, UFO that Shook the Southwest,”
February 25, 2021. https://allthatsinteresting.com/phoenix-lights
Ortega, Tony. 2021 “The Phoenix Lights Explained (Again)”eSkeptic May 8, 2021.
https://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-05-21/
Patton Phil, Davin Coburn, Erin McCarthy, Joe Pappalardo and Erik Sofge. “Military Flares are
Behind Some UFO Sightings” December 18, 2009.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a4038/4304197/
“Phoenix Lights Anniversary: UFO sighting in Phoenix 24 Years Ago” Fox 10 Phoenix, March
13, 2021. https://www.fox10phoenix.com/video/910728
“Phoenix Lights” Videos. The original 1997 videos (www.dailymotion.com/video/x923j-phoenixlights-1997; www.ufospy.com/phoenix-lights-original-ufo-footage/) are no longer
available online, and those videos that are online are brief, heavily edited shots in
somewhat sensationalized new reports made 20 years after the incident. Notably, none of
these look anything like a V-shaped craft flying slowly over the city of Phoenix. Thus, as
is so often the case, the supposed stunning evidence of a UFO sighting turns out to be vague
and unimpressive on examination.
44
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Missile Flights and Fantasies
James T. Carlson
Abstract: Discusses the numerous disconnects between very consistent witness confirmations
alleged by a single individual and the very inconsistent claims presented by that individual over
an extended period of time. The case study involves an incident in which UFOs reportedly
interfered with the status of nuclear missiles within multiple silos and squadrons at Malmstrom
AFB in the State of Montana, United States of America. These differences later proved to be the
key factor proving the falsity of the claims, because they ultimately provided sufficient cause to
interview all of the witnesses separately — a resolution that was impossible to assert when the
case was first described due to the anonymity of the witnesses discussed. Anonymity should
always provoke doubt.
Keywords: Nuclear, Missiles, Paranoia, Interference, Deterrent, Military, Silos, Witnesses,
Documented, Declassified, Unclassified, Secret, Government, Confirmed, Officers, Consistency,
Inconsistency, Forces, Targeted, Anti-nuclear
Preface
Never underestimate the need for the validation of one’s world view, particularly when that
validation can only succeed with the rejection of known facts. Sadly, when a case tends to
support the world view of adherents, it is only rarely examined with appropriate focus. In such
cases, that need for validation is perfectly capable of fueling the mass stupidity that all too often
lies at the heart of one’s contempt for reasonable alternatives. When that happens, the need for
validation can be weaponized just as effectively as any rifle or hand grenade. More to the point,
when we ignore such aggression, we do so at our peril. Welcome to America: we listen best to
those who won’t hear the truth, and give voice to those who won’t speak it.
In 1996, Robert Salas and members of the Computer UFO Network (CUFON) , decided to lobby
the federal government to reopen and expand Project Blue Book, the USAF program intended to
openly study and address the issue of UFO incursions within the borders defining American air
space. This goal has been consistent amongst UFO proponents for the past 50-years since Blue
Book was terminated in December 1969. Given the failure of UFO proponents to expand UFO
studies beyond the mere reporting of testimony using their own limited resources, they have been
persuaded that only by using the nation’s resources could any measure of success be achieved.
And success for these individuals requires the U.S. government to finally admit that UFOs
represent America’s contact with one or more alien species visiting Earth for at least the past
65-years and possibly for all of our recorded history. Anything less, it is believed, would be just
another example of more lies and secrecy intended to hide this truth.
Robert Salas and CUFON decided that the best way to achieve this goal was to create a UFO
incident so shocking and of such obvious importance that Congress would be forced to open a
proper, well-funded investigation of UFO phenomena — one that would complete what the
USAF had started and then prematurely ended when Project Blue Book was terminated on
December 17, 1969. While UFO proponents were often critical of Blue Book, they were
nonetheless dismayed when the investigations were terminated completely for what they have
45
I. Case Studies
always believed to be false causes instigated to complete a cover-up of the “truth” behind UFO
claims.1
The story they decide to make public is a frightening one. On March 16, 1967, a UFO
approached Echo Flight, one of the nuclear missile silo regions in use at Malmstrom AFB in
Montana, and using some unknown means, took all ten missiles offline from the system,
effectively removing them for a short period from strategic use by U.S military forces.
Supposedly, this incident was investigated, and no cause for the shutdown of missiles could be
discovered.2 Also, allegedly, the mystery remained classified by the USAF until Robert Salas
and CUFON came along and ensured that the Echo Flight Incident was declassified in 1996,
after nearly 30-years. Then they appropriately made public the “fact” of the UFO interference
with the missiles in 1996-97. Later, they insisted that the same thing happened at November
Flight on the same date. In 2000, they stated that because of poor memory, this was wrong. The
second event actually took place at Oscar Flight. Seven years after this, they changed the date of
the second event and insisted that it took place a week later on March 24, 1967. The only missile
failures that were ever documented, however, were those that occurred at Echo Flight on March
16, 1967, and that also represented the only full-flight failure of missiles that ever took place at
any time in the United States. They took a real event and charged it with UFO paranoia to try and
frighten people into demanding further UFO study using national resources to pay for it.3
Problems with the Case
Of course, none of the claims they made have ever been proven, and subsequent interviews with
the witnesses who allegedly confirmed every aspect of their claims, have proven as well that
Robert Salas and CUFON simply lied about the whole matter. There was no UFO reported, nor
was there a UFO ever investigated in relation to the events of March 16, 1967. The Echo Flight
missiles did fail, but the incident was investigated thoroughly for over a year, and the problem
was determined to be an electrical one that was subsequently resolved, and never recurred again
after maintenance changes were made to the entire system.4 There was no failure of missiles at
all at November Flight or Oscar Flight — that entire “incident” was a complete invention.5 Not
one missile officer, excepting Robert Salas, has ever discussed more than three or four missiles
ever failing at Oscar Flight in 1967, and those three or four missile failures were reported
second-hand by Robert Salas, who eventually changed them to 5-6 missiles, and a year later 7-8
missiles. He later made the claim himself that the entire flight of ten missiles had actually failed.
The individual Robert Salas insists has made such claims was his own commander: Colonel
(Retired) Frederick Meiwald, Commander Oscar Flight. Meiwald, however, when contacted by
researchers, refused to confirm having done so, stating rather insistently that he could not
remember any such incidents occurring at all, let alone one confirming Robert Salas’ claim that
such an incident had taken place on March 24, 1967.6
1
Peebles, Curtis, Watch the Skies: A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth, pp 228-230. Berkley Publishing Group,
New York, New York, copyright 1992, Smithsonian Institute.
2
http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case1017.htm ; http://www.nicap.org/reports/malmstrom67-2.htm
3
http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case1017.htm ; http://www.nicap.org/reports/malmstrom67-2.htm
4
Nalty, Bernard C., USAF Ballistic Missile Programs 1967-1968, Office of Air Force History, Washington, D.C.,
September 1969.
5
341st Strategic Missile Wing and 341st Combat Support Group HQ SAC DXIH 67-1865, Malmstrom AFB, Great
Falls, Montana (Command History, Vol. 1), p.32-34, & 38.
6
Klotz, James and Salas, Robert, Faded Giant,
46
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Motivating Factors
Somewhere along the way, Robert Salas and the members of CUFON must have convinced
themselves that the enormity of the task before them might require use of the same dishonest
strategies to reveal the whole UFO “truth” that the “alphabet soup” agencies within the
government — FBI, CIA, DOD, NSA, USAF, ONI, etc. — have allegedly used to maintain what
these UFO proponents consider to be outrageous secrecy of the most important truth facing
mankind. Lying to the public would, after all, be a small matter compared to the possible payoff
at the end of the day. Both Salas and CUFON have been very open regarding what that “payoff”
should ultimately consist of: (1) reopen Project Blue Book or its equivalent to reevaluate the
question of UFOs in American airspace and provide it with sufficient funding to properly address
such an important and wide-ranging issue; (2) make public the “truth” of past UFO claims,
because obviously the government has made contact with intelligent species from other solar
systems, galaxies, dimensions or temporal locations and are determined to keep those
revolutionary, scientifically valuable contacts secret; and (3) provide an example to military
“whistleblowers” who wish to make public their own experiences as witnesses to military
interactions with UFO phenomena.
The contour illustration to the left,
provided by the USAF Public
Affairs Officer at Malmstrom AFB,
depicts the standard LCC building
design, including the underground
console area where the 2-man
launch officer teams were expected
to launch the nuclear missiles under
their care upon receiving legal
orders to do so. The building
topside is the Command Post
manned by security officers. For the
most part the security teams were
independent
of
the
launch
personnel, so minor matters under
the Command Post’s purview, such
as the 2-man alarm patrols — were
normally carried out by security
patrols without having to check in
with the launch officers stationed
underground. Proximity alarms at
the LFs were very common.
These three aspects of the goals intended have all too often been addressed by the actions already
adopted by Robert Salas and the members of CUFON. Aspect (1) is a political act, and as such it
requires a political solution. In order to reopen Project Blue Book or replace it with a more
robust, well-funded modern study, it is necessary to prove that the conclusions reached as a
result of the original study are false, whether by design or through honest appraisal. One of the
major conclusions reached by the original Project Blue Book was that UFOs do not represent a
valid national security threat, and that any study conducted by the United States Department of
Defense is therefore unnecessary. This, of course, holds true as well for any sub-group under the
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1419603418/ref=nosim/librarythin08-
47
I. Case Studies
Department of Defense, such as the U.S. Air Force. Why use Pentagon funding to address an
issue that has no bearing whatsoever on the functions of the Department of Defense, particularly
a black hole budget with impossible to estimate conditions of closure?7
If Robert Salas and CUFON could show that an entire flight of 10 Minuteman missiles was shut
down unexpectedly at Malmstrom AFB on March 16, 1967 — a well-reported and undeniable
incident that occurred before Project Blue Book was abandoned by the USAF as both fruitless
and pointless — had actually been caused as a result of a UFO incursion, it would prove as well
that an undeniable threat to national security had indeed been caused by a UFO in American
airspace. Given such a threat, it would necessitate at the very least further investigation using
funds allotted by Congress to the U.S. Department of Defense. Such a demand could easily be
addressed by Congress, particularly given the feckless paranoia that body has been victimized by
in the past. By dishonestly associating a UFO presence to the failure of missiles at Malmstrom
AFB’s Echo Flight on March 16, 1967, Robert Salas and CUFON could easily satisfy the
requirements referenced in aspect (1) above: reopen Project Blue Book and provide it with
sufficient funding to address the issue of UFO incursions as a national security threat.
Unfortunately, Echo Flight represents the only verifiable nuclear missile failures that have been
associated with a UFO, honestly or not. If Salas and CUFON fail to make their case, than they
will have failed to prove any UFO threat in relation to America’s nuclear deterrent forces. Echo
Flight is the only case addressing the failure of a full flight of nuclear missiles that the
Department of Defense has ever had to contend with.
The goals inherent to aspect (2) were also easily assured by Salas’ and CUFON’s claims: making
public the “truth” of past UFO claims as phenomena based outside of the experiences and
collected knowledge of the world’s scientific communities. Any technology capable of shutting
down an entire flight of nuclear missiles so important to the national defense matrix of the
United States by merely coming within regional approach to the operating system would seem
like “magic,” not technology, especially if any subsequent investigation was unable to determine
a cause for the missile failures, which is precisely what Salas and CUFON were claiming. Such
claims, of course, were ultimately proven false in the course of a very thorough investigation that
was fully documented by the USAF — documentation that was inexplicably ignored by CUFON
and Robert Salas.
Robert Salas has discussed on numerous occasions and in emails the importance of aspect (3) of
his goals: providing an example to military “whistleblowers” who wish to make public their own
experiences as witnesses to military interactions with UFO phenomena. He has stated openly that
he wanted to show others that the Department of Defense would never go so far as to prosecute
military personnel for openly discussing such matters, even if they were highly classified. Upon
joining the Disclosure Project in 2000, he was able to declare this aspect of his contributions
with much more spirit, affirming that he was himself the perfect example of the federal
government’s absence of will to prosecute those who disclosed classified materials in their drive
to make public UFO phenomena in a military context. What Salas fails to discuss, however, is
the fact that it is not illegal to “invent” information and pretend it is fact. “Invented” information
has never been classified, so merely calling it an actual incident may be immoral, but it is
certainly not prosecutable under the law — whether that law is civil or military. In regard to the
7
See Footnote #1.
48
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
classification of materials and incidents, the Department of Defense is not in the habit of
restricting the discussion of events that never occurred. In fact, the USAF documents that Robert
Salas has used to support his claims are notable for having assessed the only mention of UFOs in
their entirety as being UNCLASSIFIED from the very beginning, making disclosure of UFO
interference at Echo Flight a non-starter. Nobody in the Department of Defense really cared
about rumors of UFOs. His use as an example of a military “whistleblower” is decidedly limited
by the fact that he has yet to “blow the whistle” on any event that actually took place. Even his
claims that he was integral to the process of declassifying the Echo Flight Incident is not entirely
true. Markings on the documents themselves make it clear that they were automatically
declassified in 1979, not 15-years later when Salas and CUFON merely requested the materials
from the Department of Defense. Salas and CUFON simply replaced the cover sheet to the
documents they received with a different cover sheet, one with less discernible classification
markings. This bit of pointless deception was easily noticed, however, because the document
dates were equally discernible on both cover sheets, proving they aren’t the brightest group of
conspirators to try and manufacture a UFO incident.
The above discussion represents the primary goals that Robert Salas and CUFON wanted to
achieve as a result of their invention of a UFO incident. They certainly had no moral issues with
making false claims to successfully achieve those goals. Any examination of the claims being
asserted leaves no other conclusion possible. In this case, however, the deceit can be proven by
the simple examination of claims being addressed over a long period of time. Valid claims
normally remain consistent. When there is no consistency, the odds in favor of deceit increase
significantly.
This map of Malmstrom AFB to the
left, also provided by the USAF
Public Affairs Officer at Malmstrom
AFB, shows all of the missile sites
discussed in this narrative: Echo
Flight is located between quadrants
11 and 12 (it is primarily in 12),
November Flight is in quadrant 14,
and Oscar Flight is between
quadrants 12 and 14 (mostly in 12);
the main administrative area of
Malmstrom AFB is in quadrant 6; the
blackened circles represent the
launch control facilities (LCF), also
called the launch control centers
(LCC); the 564th Squadron LCCs are
located to the extreme northwest of
the main administrative area of
Malmstrom AFB. Please note that
each silo is separated from every
other silo by about 5 miles [8 km], so
the area overall is significant.
49
I. Case Studies
Machinations Behind Deceit
When Robert Salas first related his “tale” about a UFO, he stated that he was the deputy
commander at Echo Flight when the event occurred. It gave his claims about a UFO shutting
down the Echo Flight missiles a solidity that would not have existed had he been honest about
his actual duties: that he was a missile officer at Oscar Flight under the command of a different
squadron and had nothing at all to do with the events at Echo Flight on March 16, 1967. He later
insisted that he was actually the deputy commander at November Flight, the only other flight of
missiles mentioned in the four pages of USAF documentation he used to support his claims
(there are over 80 pages of USAF documentation relevant to the Echo Flight Incident that were
available, but Salas and CUFON pointedly ignored all the documents that proved their claims
were false). He insisted at this point that the missiles were also shut down at November Flight,
even though there is no evidence whatsoever that any missiles were also taken offline at
November Flight (or anywhere else) on March 16, 1967. There is plenty of documentation about
the missile failures and the subsequent investigation at Echo Flight, but not a single word to
support claims of missiles failing at November Flight. The only documentation about a UFO is a
single mention in the command history of UFO “rumors” that developed in the weeks following
the incidents that were proven to be false. And yet, those were the claims Salas was making, and
he insisted he had the support of witnesses.
The Confirmation of Witnesses
His three primary witnesses were not named by Salas for the first few years he was making such
claims. Even in his private email messages, he merely referred to them as the “commander” and
the “deputy commander” of Echo Flight. Eventually, in the year 2000, it was made clear that
these two individuals were Captain (Retired) Eric D. Carlson, Commander Echo Flight, and
Colonel (Retired) Walt Figel, Jr., Deputy Commander Echo Flight. From the very beginning,
Robert Salas insisted that both officers had “confirmed” all of his claims (not counting the three
years from 1993-1996 that he was claiming to be the deputy commander of Echo Flight, which is
the story CUFON told Raymond Fowler in a personal letter dated May 27, 1996 that Raymond
Fowler very kindly shared with the author). Salas also insisted that his own commander, Colonel
(Retired) Frederick Meiwald, Commander Oscar Flight, had also confirmed all of his claims.
Unfortunately, it naturally appears suspicious when one is forced to change the established
details supporting a claim, particularly an already astounding claim — and there are numerous
details over the course of many years that Robert Salas was forced to change. Even worse, his
claims are all very well documented and dated, and he habitually changed the details of his story
every time he retold his story — and this was all done in writing! After 25-years of such
nonsense, a rude little puddle of lies is all he’s got left. But the extent of the stupidity behind his
actions becomes most noticeable when he makes the same assertion associated with every
change: the story he is telling has been confirmed by the same three individuals. This type of
awkward arrogance and contempt for the public just isn’t possible in a normal, honest world.
Eventually researchers contacted the three witnesses to find out for themselves exactly what
could be confirmed and what was still undetermined. It seemed to be necessarily urgent in
September 2010 when Robert Salas and UFOs and Nukes author Robert Hastings hosted a press
conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC for previously confirmed members of
the press and Congressional staff. This was an attempt to build support for the disclosure of
50
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
UFO-related documents that were still classified by the U.S. Department of Defense. Given that
the public brouhaha was directed primarily at Congressional staff while ignoring entirely the
Executive Branch that could actually instigate changes within the Department of Defense,
perhaps “necessarily urgent” was an overly apprehensive sort of description for a motivating
factor. The general feeling, however, was that a 43-year old story that had been publicly
discussed as the paranoid extension of UFO fears and idiocy for 15-years had never been
properly examined by anybody, but was nonetheless considered one of the best documented and
most believable UFO incidents in history. As a result, it represented a twisted reality that was
somewhat hard to abandon as just ordinary yet insignificant piffle.
Even worse, under the influence of author Robert Hastings, some military UFO witnesses were
starting to get together and change their stories just enough, so previous differences and
contradictions were removed, thereby making their stories or supporting experiences more
believable. And yet, the fact remains that from 1997 when Robert Salas appeared on the cable
television series “Sightings” to the 2010 press briefing in Washington, DC, none of his three
primary witnesses ever appeared to confirm his claims in public. So, researchers sought them out
to ask about the inconsistencies that were so typical of Robert Salas’ claims.
Walt Figel’s Testimony
Colonel (Retired) Walt Figel, Jr., Deputy Commander Echo Flight, addressed the issue of
inconsistencies when he gave his final appraisal of the matter in 2010, just prior to the September
press briefing in Washington, DC:
Bob Salas was never associated with any shutdown of any missiles at any time in any flight and
you can take that to the bank. Just think about this for a split second. He is a person wrapped up
in UFOs to the Nth degree. Yet he could not remember he was not at Echo. Then he thought he
was at November — wrong again. Then he thought he was at Oscar — wrong again. ...
... There is no record about anything happening at November or Oscar except in people’s minds
that are flawed beyond imagination. Salas has created events out of the thin air and can’t get the
facts straight even then. My best friend to this day was the Flight Commander of the 10th SMS at
the time. He and I have discussed this silly assertion in the past couple of years — he thinks it is
all made-up nonsense for sure. I put both Salas and Hastings in touch with him and he has told
them both that an incident at November or Oscar never happened. In addition, he was
subsequently stationed at Norton AFB where the engineers tested the possible problems. No little
green men were responsible. ...
... I have always maintained that I do not nor have I ever believed that UFOs exist in any form at
any place at any time. I have never seen one or reported that I have seen one. I have always
maintained that they had nothing to do with the shutdown of Echo Flight in Montana. ...
... There is no Air Force “cover-up” [of the events of March 1967]; it just did not happen the way
Salas has portrayed the course of events. ... He has made a 15 year career pandering about the
country talking about things he has no knowledge about. I am not at all interested in taking them
51
I. Case Studies
on – it’s not worth my effort — I have more important things to do with my life. I’d much rather
just stay out of it. [Some minor typos remain uncorrected.]8
For many weeks prior to this final appraisal, he had repeatedly insisted to the author in various
email communications that he had consistently informed both Salas and Hastings that the claims
they were trying to establish were wrong. There was no UFO at Echo Flight, and there were no
missile failures at November Flight or Oscar Flight.9
Frederick Meiwald’s Testimony
Colonel (Retired) Frederick Meiwald, Commander Oscar Flight, also insisted that he doesn’t
believe in UFOs — a strange comment to make in light of Salas’ insistence that a UFO took out
the missiles at Oscar Flight during an incident that resulted in an injury to one
non-commissioned officer, requiring that man to be evacuated from the site by helicopter. When
interviewed by researcher Robert Hastings, he stated unequivocally that he doesn’t remember
anything at all about a UFO. In fact, Robert Hastings himself has written (and published to both
Frank Warren’s UFO CHRONICLES website at https://www.theufochronicles.com/ and in his
own website as noted in the footnotes):
Meiwald then elaborated and said that he couldn’t support everything Salas has said about the
incident because he had been resting/sleeping when the first missile or two dropped offline —
which occurred moments after Salas received a report from the Oscar Flight Security Controller
about a UFO hovering over the Launch Control Facility’s front gate.
Although Salas had quickly told Meiwald about that telephone conversation, Meiwald says that
he can’t remember it.10
In another interview conducted by Hastings, Meiwald is equally clear:
RH: Okay. Now, when Bob, I think moments [after] he woke you up, or you got up and sat down
at the commander’s console — he of course had received a call from the Flight Security
Controller, saying that there was a bright red, oval-shaped object hovering over the security
fence gate — my understanding is that is what he told you as soon as you were at your console,
that he had received this call and, uh, that of course coincided with the missiles beginning to
malfunction. Do you recall him telling you that?
FM: I really don’t remember that portion of it, relative to the bright object. I remember an
unusual condition [but] as far as the details, uh, I can’t elaborate on that.11
The following exchange is also revealing:
8
https://web.archive.org/web/20160714033806/http://www.realityuncovered.net/blog/2010/09/the-echo-flight-ufo-de
bate-continues/
9
https://web.archive.org/web/20101106091259/http://www.realityuncovered.net/blog/2010/09/the-malmstrom-afb-mi
ssileufo-incident-part-ii/
10
https://www.ufohastings.com/articles/echo-flight-ufo-incident-not-unique
11
See Footnote #10.
52
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
RH: Okay. He of course has also said that you two were, uh, when you were back at Malmstrom,
you were debriefed by OSI and required to sign non-disclosure statements. Do you remember
that?
FM: I remember being directed to do that. But that was no problem. I’ve been one of these
people, when told to forget something, I forget it — eventually [inaudible].
RH: Right, well, is that a polite way of saying that you really don’t want to discuss this, even
though you know more than you’re saying?
FM: No, I’m saying I don’t remember.12
It would be difficult to get any more definitive In a letter dated October 1, 1996 from Frederick
Meiwald to Robert Salas, Meiwald insists that there was no debriefing by OSI and he was not
required to sign non-disclosure statements in regard to any UFOs he allegedly witnessed,
contrary to Salas’ testimony since 1996. He clearly states there was no follow-up by any Wing
personnel. He also states in that letter that what he recalls is very different from the bulk of
Salas’ testimony. For instance, he states that he checked his personal records and could confirm
that both he and Salas had served at Oscar Flight alone. This was in 1996, which means that
Robert Salas went on to claim for the next three years that he was serving at November Flight,
and that Colonel (Retired) Frederick Meiwald, Commander Oscar Flight, had confirmed his
entire story. In actuality, Meiwald never confirmed Salas’ UFO claims, until he allegedly
confirmed that Salas was “very accurate” in a phone conversation with Robert Hastings in 2011
just prior to his tragic and unfortunate death. Given the lengths Robert Hastings has gone in the
past to discredit or distort the claims of every witness involved in the Echo Flight Incident, there
is reason to doubt this claim. The fact is, Meiwald’s October 1996 letter asserts that the security
witnesses to the only UFO sighting he has ever discussed with Hastings and Salas were
instructed to report the matter to civilian authorities, an instruction that was never applied to
military witnesses until after Project Blue Book was terminated on December 17, 1969.
In a personal email to Raymond Fowler written on August 14, 1996, Robert Salas tells Fowler all
about having communicated with Meiwald. His recollections are extremely different from what
Meiwald wrote to him in his letter, but we should keep in mind that Salas very much wanted to
get on Fowler’s good side, believing that Fowler had contacts who could help him get his story
the support it would never really deserve.
I was lucky enough to locate the man who was my MCC on the day of the incidents. [At this point,
Salas was still insisting that both missile failures incidents occurred on the same date.] I spoke
with him by phone, briefly. He certainly recalled the incident in the sequence I outlined with one
exception. He believes we “lost” four LFs instead of all. But our memories coincide on every
other point. I didn’t ask him what flight we were controlling, but it was probably November
Flight [it wasn’t — the Command histories establish that due to the UFO rumors developing in
the weeks following the Echo Flight Incident, a maintenance crew that was out all night at
November Flight was queried about the events that occurred, and they insisted that nothing
abnormal happened. The only reason anybody bothered to talk to them was because they were the
only maintenance crew that was outside on March 16, 1967. Since November Flight was the only
other flight mentioned in the documents Salas wanted to exploit, once it was proven that he was
not at Echo Flight, he decided to claim that he was serving at November Flight. The Command
histories, however, state clearly that nothing happened at November Flight on March 16, 1967.
12
See Footnote #10.
53
I. Case Studies
They also state that no other missiles at any other flights were taken off of alert on March 16,
1967. The only missiles that failed were at Echo Flight.] He also added that he remembers
receiving a call from one of the LFs where we had a roving security patrol that saw a UFO at
very close range. He said these men were so traumatized by the experience that they never
returned to security duty.13
A proper examination of the letter Meiwald wrote establishes that Salas was unwilling to give an
honest account even at that early date. Meiwald was unable to confirm that the one UFO incident
he was aware of happened during a missile failures event, and his account proves that he was not
in communication with the members of the security patrol, as Salas reports. Meiwald received all
the information second hand, which proves that there was no missile failures event. Had the
missiles failed, Meiwald would have been in charge of all security protocol and would have been
in direct communication with the individuals who reported the UFO. Instead, he freely admits
that he didn’t have all of the information. Details in the letter regarding who the witnesses were
supposed to report the UFO to suggest that the event actually occurred after Project Blue Book
was terminated in December 1969. Nothing in this report serves as a confirmation of Salas’
claims. It’s just more nonsense that Salas has failed to properly examine.
For nearly ten years Salas insisted that either Captain (Retired) Eric D. Carlson, Commander
Echo Flight, the SAC Commander on duty at the time, or someone else — more inconsistencies
noted in three tellings of the story — had called Meiwald on March 16 and told him all about the
events that happened at Echo Flight. Salas insisted he had a very clear memory of that event
taking place. When interviewed by Hastings, Meiwald stated, “Whatever happened over at Echo,
I have no idea.” He has rebuffed completely all attempts to establish confirmation for the UFOs
of March 16 and 24, 1967, that Salas has invented.
Salas’ own inconsistent reporting asserts that Meiwald would only confirm four missiles failing
during the one missile failures event he has allegedly recalled, but this number would later
change in Salas’ retelling of the “confirmation” to 5-6 and then 7-8 missiles being affected.
Salas himself asserts that he remembers very well that the entire flight of ten missiles dropped
offline, but the incident itself was never documented by the USAF, even though the Echo Flight
Incident a week earlier had been very thoroughly documented in both message traffic and the
command histories consistently over the course of the following year. Although it is not only
standard procedure to report all equipment failures that occur, it was an actual requirement under
USAF nuclear weapons policy. Nevertheless, not a single equipment failure report has ever
been discovered for equipment at Malmstrom AFB, let alone reports documenting the failure of
multiple missiles for March 24, 1967. More importantly, there is at least one summary report that
insists very clearly that there were no equipment failures at all for March 24-25, 1967, the date
Robert Salas affirms for his otherwise unreported and nonexistent Oscar Flight Incident.
13
All email text was provided to the author by Raymond Fowler in September 2010.
54
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Originally written in 1996, the letter on the
left by Colonel (Retired) Frederick Meiwald
has been used by Robert Salas and Robert
Hastings to confirm the missile shutdown
incident due to UFO interference at Oscar
Flight. With the exception of interview
transcripts published years later by Robert
Hastings, this letter is the only actual
statement that can be attributed to Colonel
(Retired) Meiwald. It also represents the first
time since 1996 that Salas and CUFON
actually
identified
by
name
Salas’
commander, who, according to Salas, had
previously confirmed the UFO incident under
examination in its entirety, a confirmation that
remained consistent for both November Flight
and Oscar Flight. Unfortunately, this supposed
consistency of confirmations also proves that
Meiwald had already informed Salas that they
had been serving at Oscar Flight, and that
Salas was very much aware of this fact for the
entire three year period that he was claiming
to be at November Flight! Additionally,
Meiwald does not discuss any missile failures
in his letter, and the one UFO story he does
discuss is from the point of view of a very
commonly deployed 2-man security patrol.
which is unsurprising given that Meiwald was
transferred to the Command Post (top-side
security for each flight of missiles) in
November 1967. Mention that instructions
ordered the report be made to civilian
authority strongly suggests that the incident
didn’t occur until December 1969, when
Project Blue Book was terminated.
As for the UFO that Salas insists shut down the missiles at Oscar Flight, Meiwald has NEVER
stated that the one UFO story he told Salas about in the above-mentioned 1996 letter had
anything at all to do with missile failures; it’s never even been mentioned in context. The details
of the incident Meiwald has discussed in the letter suggest that not only was the incident unlikely
to have been coincident with a missile failures event, but it also very likely occurred after
December 17, 1969 due to actions taken that would not have been ordered until after Project
Blue Book had been terminated. Meiwald states clearly that personnel were told to report UFO
sightings to civilian authority, not USAF, a standard procedure that was only required after
Project Blue Book was shut down in December 1969, proving that that the incident could not
possibly be associated with anything that took place in March 1967.
55
I. Case Studies
Eric D. Carlson’s Testimony
Captain (Retired) Eric D. Carlson, Commander Echo Flight, has been remarkably consistent
regarding the incident since 1996 when Salas and CUFON first made public their claims. He has
always insisted that there was no UFO coincident to the missile failures at Echo Flight. In a
newspaper article published in Great Falls, Montana shortly before the “Sightings” episode
featuring Robert Salas was aired, he states that he remembers a “vague description of a UFO
sighting,” but nothing relevant. He ignored it, because, as he says in the article, “UFO sightings
were a dime a dozen at that time. It seemed like nearly every security group squadron saw them
some time or other. But I spent a lot of time outdoors in Montana, and I never saw them.”
The “vague description” aspect was later confirmed by Deputy Commander Walt Figel, Jr., who
mentioned that one of the maintenance crew members sent out to check on the status of the
missiles made a “joke” reference to a UFO about two hours after the missiles failed. Figel states
that this relatively offhand statement was both intended to be and interpreted as a joke, adding
that none of the maintenance nor security personnel ever filed a UFO report — which was a
requirement under USAF directives worldwide.
Nobody ever believed a UFO was present at any time, so nobody ever officially reported a UFO,
including every member of the security detachment manning the Echo Flight command post
topside. If there had been such a report, it would have been investigated by the Command UFO
Officer in accordance with USAF directives, because the Condon UFO Study out of the
University of Colorado was still active at the time (Condon’s report was ultimately used by the
USAF as reason to terminate Project Blue Book on December 17, 1969). There was no
investigation of a UFO at Echo Flight because there was no UFO. The entire incident was
automatically declassified in 1979 under security protocol originally ordered by President
Kennedy some years before, so there were no legal risks to disclosing the alleged UFO activity
for any time after 1979. Review of all the documentation proves that there was no UFO
interference at Echo Flight, and there was no full-flight failure of missiles at Oscar Flight.
Robert Salas’ Inconsistencies
At one point or another since 1996, Robert Salas has changed nearly every detail of the story
he’s been repeatedly selling since then (these are too extensive to be discussed in this short
article, but every detail of the changes instituted by Robert Salas and CUFON since 1996 has
been carefully recorded with extensive footnotes and internet links in a book length narrative by
this author).14
Robert Salas’ original claim was that he was the deputy commander at Echo Flight when the
incident occurred on March 16, 1967. According to email and UPS communications from
CUFON to Raymond Fowler, Salas was making those claims within the UFO proponent
community for 3-years. That fallacy was noted almost immediately after he decided to publish
his claims, so he stated for the next few years that he was the deputy commander at November
Flight on March 16, 1967, and had been appraised of the UFO interference with the Echo Flight
missiles on the telephone during the UFO instigated failure of missiles at his own command
14
Carlson, James, “Americans, Credulous or The Arrogance of Congenital Liars & Other Character Defects.
Establishing the Truth Behind the Echo Flight UFO Incident of March 16, 1967,” February 10, 2010.
https://es.scribd.com/doc/26641522/Americans-Credulous-by-James-Carlson
56
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
(during this entire 3-year period, Salas was in possession of a letter from his commander stating
that he was actually at Oscar Flight, a happenstance confirmed by his own personnel file). He
could have easily retracted his Echo Flight claims and simply asserted that he made a mistake
and the UFO interference had only occurred at Oscar Flight, but he had already invested too
much credibility into the documentation of the Echo Flight missile failures, and apparently
determined that he had to keep the missile failures at Echo Flight in order to retain that
credibility. There has never been any documentation of the failures he insists occurred at
November Flight and then Oscar Flight. Command and unit histories have never recorded such
an event that he and Hastings have proposed, although such records have been very extensive for
Echo Flight. That may be why he insists so strongly that the UFO event he describes took place
at Echo Flight as well as November Flight.
In 2000, for the Disclosure Project debrief, Salas changed his claim again, stating that identical
incidents occurred at both Echo Flight and Oscar Flight on March 16, 1967, while he was
attached as deputy commander of Oscar Flight. Eight years later, at the suggestion of Robert
Hastings, he insisted that a UFO took out the missiles at Echo Flight on March 16, 1967, and at
Oscar Flight on March 24, 1967. When this change was instituted, James Klotz and CUFON
formally retracted their support for the claims, Apparently there was a line in the sand beyond
which they were unwilling to cross. One suspects that at some point, dishonesty gives way to
stupidity, and while CUFON had few qualms about the reliance on dishonesty to further their
goals, stupidity was a different matter altogether, a color of distinction they had no desire to be
painted with.
Salas has asserted that he found out about the missile failures at Echo Flight having been
compromised by a UFO when Carlson, the Echo Flight Commander, telephoned Meiwald, the
alleged commander at November Flight, to notify him of the matter. He later insisted that it was
Walt Figel, Jr., Echo Flight Deputy Commander who called him. When it was pointed out that
the flights were manned by two separate squadrons, so no communications at all would have
taken place between the two commanders, he changed this detail to state that the SAC
Commander called Meiwald to tell him about the Echo Flight Incident during the incident that
was in process at November Flight, and later still Oscar Flight. When it was pointed out that
there were no UFO sightings or reports of a UFO on March 16, 1967, Salas changed the date of
his Oscar Flight claims to March 24, 1967, when UFOs were actually reported over or near
Malmstrom AFB airspace. When he changed the date, he changed the conditions of notification
as well, alleging that nobody called them to notify them about a UFO at Echo Flight, because
they had already been debriefed on the subject of UFOs prior to their watch. Doubts, of course,
had already been sowed prior to this change, however, because Salas had repeatedly established
that his story — first at November Flight and then at Oscar Flight — had occurred at night. All
of his previous claims had established as well that the incident occurred at Echo Flight first. The
Echo Flight missiles, however, started dropping off of alert at 08:45 a.m., about two hours after
the sun came up. The details of Salas’ consistently evolving story have repeatedly turned his
claims into a mass of contradictions and idiocy, because he habitually changes every detail of his
claims whenever it is pointed out that certain details of the story cannot possibly be true for
whatever reason. Not only was Salas repeatedly forced to change his claims that he and Meiwald
were debriefed about Echo Flight on the telephone during the alleged incident at Oscar Flight,
because he couldn’t get any of the details right, later interviews conducted by both Hastings and
57
I. Case Studies
Salas with Colonel (Retired) Frederick Meiwald repeatedly confirmed that Meiwald had no idea
what happened at Echo Flight.15
There are only two aspects of Robert Salas’ UFO claims that have remained unchanged: (1) the
entire flight of all ten missiles at Echo Flight was interfered with by a UFO — and (2) Salas’
assertion that throughout the numerous changes made to his story, every detail of his claims have
been repeatedly confirmed by Eric D. Carlson, Walt Figel, Jr., and Frederick C. Meiwald. Salas
would never have changed a single point of his assertions regarding aspect (1), the Echo Flight
Incident, because it represents the only full flight failure of missiles that has ever occurred in this
country, and it has been and remains the foundation of Robert Salas’ and CUFON’s entire book
of lies used to stoke paranoia and fear throughout the nation. It was a sad and dishonest attempt
to generate a public call for a well-funded investigation of UFOs in American airspace. The
whole point was to prove that the Condon UFO Study used to terminate Project Blue Book was
lying when it concluded that UFOs have never been the cause of a national security threat. They
were so desperate to establish a case that would convince Congress of the necessity for a more
thorough and well-funded look at UFOs that they rushed into the plan without bothering to learn
as much as they possibly could about the singular event in USAF history that they wanted to
exploit: the Echo Flight Incident.
As for aspect (2) of his claims — that throughout the numerous changes he has inserted and then
removed from his claims, three USAF missile officers — Walt Figel, Jr., Eric D. Carlson, and
Frederick C. Meiwald — had repeatedly confirmed his claims, it’s simply impossible to imagine
that he ever gave any thought to the story he was trying to establish. There have been simply too
many doubts raised by the assertion that three USAF missile officers would all confirm the
details of a story that had been so extensively changed as Robert Salas’ story was.
Why, for instance would his own commander inform Salas that they had both served at Oscar
Flight, then confirm Salas’ claim that they were at November Flight only to flip again three years
later? Like every other detail of these claims, it beggars the imagination. Upon interviewing
these three military officers, it became apparent almost immediately that not only were they
unwilling to confirm any of the details alleged by Robert Salas, but they also insisted strongly
that Robert Salas was never involved in a missile failures incident, and UFOs had never been
linked to any of the missile failures these men had been witness to. There was no UFO at Echo
Flight, and a missile failures incident with or without UFOs had never occurred at November
Flight or Oscar Flight. The story was fiction from beginning to end.
Captain (Retired) Eric Carlson stated that he was available to be interviewed for the “Sightings”
episode that aired in 1997, a point which was confirmed in Salas’ email communications to
Raymond Fowler. The producer of “Sightings,” however, did not believe he would be useful, and
they refused to use him as a witness, even though Salas believed it was imperative to have
somebody from Echo Flight on the show. Carlson believed as late as 2019 that he wasn’t asked
to be on the show, because he refused to confirm any presence of a UFO at Echo Flight. He also
told the producer of “Sightings” that there were no missile failures at November Flight, which
was also unhelpful (Salas would later retract his November Flight claims in favor of an Oscar
15
See Footnote #10.
58
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Flight incident). In the comments section at the Reality Uncovered website, Eric Carlson again
denies the presence of a UFO:
To date no one, other than Salas and Hastings have contacted me. I don’t know if Salas is lying,
if he has told the story so many times that he believes it, or he truly believes it, but it is false.
There were not UFOs reported and Oscar Flight did not shut down.16
As a result of this comment, Captain (Retired) Eric Carlson was finally interviewed by Ryan
Dube, a journalist who has been published at numerous websites including Reality Uncovered.17
He again denied any presence of a UFO, asserting that no UFO had been witnessed, reported or
investigated at Echo Flight as a result of the events of March 16, 1967. All of the evidence tends
to support his consistent claims. Had a UFO been witnessed, any failure to report that UFO
would have been a violation of multiple USAF directives. Not a single UFO report for March 16,
1967, has ever been noted.
Multiple reports for UFOs were established for March 24, 1967. Robert Salas finally affirmed a
date of March 24, 1967, for the Oscar Flight missile failures that every other witness insists
never occurred. He did this at the recommendation of Robert Hastings in 2008, 12 years after
originally establishing his claims. A report written by the Malmstrom AFB UFO Officer in
March 1967, Colonel Lewis D. Chase, confirms that there were no equipment failures at all on
Malmstrom AFB on March 24-25, 1967. This was written in response to a query by the Foreign
Technology Division about UFO rumors asserted by one individual in the weeks following the
Echo Flight Incident. The phone calls they had received insisted that a UFO had shut down the
missiles at Echo Flight on March 24, 1967, and given that the Echo Flight Incident had taken
place on March 16, 1967, and Chase had thoroughly investigated the UFO reports of March 24,
1967, as required by USAF directives, the Foreign Technology Division had requested an
addendum to Chase’s original report of his investigation of the March 24 UFO reports. His
addendum insisted that there were no equipment failures base-wide on March 24. Later email
communications from Raymond Fowler establish a high probability that he was responsible for
all of the UFO rumors that have plagued the Echo Flight Incident, all due to the fact that he did
not know the date of the actual incident. This tracking of the UFO rumors has been fully
documented by the author.18
Conclusions
Robert Salas is still asserting his claims in regard to UFO interference with nuclear missiles,
most recently during an October 21, 2021, press briefing intended to gain the attention of
Congress. He is still insisting that his claims have been completely confirmed by USAF missile
officers Eric Carlson, Walt Figel, Jr., and Frederick Meiwald. Eric Carlson and Frederick
Meiwald have both passed away and can no longer assert for themselves the truth of what
occurred. This is typical of Robert Salas, who asserts as well that Malmstrom AFB UFO Officer
16
See Footnote #9.
17
https://web.archive.org/web/20100925040151/http://www.realityuncovered.net/blog/2010/09/an-interview-with-mal
mstrom-afb-witness-eric-carlson/
18
Carlson, James, “Echo Flights of Fantasy - Anatomy of A UFO Hoax,”
https://www.scribd.com/document/42303580/Echo-flights-of-Fantasy-Anatomy-of-a-UFO-Hoax-by-James-Carlson
59
I. Case Studies
Lewis D, Chase has repeatedly lied about the events of March 24, 1967, in his official reports,
making such claims only after Chase died and could not defend himself.
Salas has settled on the claim that UFOs interfered with the nation’s nuclear deterrent forces on
March 16 and 24, 1967, first at Echo Flight and then at Oscar Flight. Robert Hastings has
reportedly produced another ex-military witness who has reported being on duty during a full
flight failure of missiles at Minot AFB that was caused by a UFO during the same period.
Apparently, Robert Salas has been successful in his attempts to persuade others to learn from his
example.
The USAF has always and continues to affirm that the only full flight failure of missiles to ever
occur in the United States took place at Echo Flight on March 16, 1967. That incident was fully
investigated over the course of the following year and it was determined to have been caused by
a random noise pulse similar in effect to an EMP. The component of Minuteman I that was most
vulnerable to noise pulse was the logic coupler of the guidance and control system. Subsequent
tests showed that the same part in Minuteman II was equally sensitive to this same phenomenon.
By the end of fiscal year 1968, the incorporation of electromagnetic shielding had been added to
general maintenance orders. Afterwards, no such incidents ever recurred. The problem was
investigated and subsequently resolved.19
The military documentation amounts to over 80-pages of military messages and command, unit
and ICBM histories that as a whole detail the entire story of what happened to our nuclear forces
in March 1967. The author has collected all of the documents and published them within a
book-length narrative.20 Captain (Retired) Eric D. Carlson summed up the whole issue nicely in
an email communication to his son, James Carlson, stating: Robert Salas is either lying or
delusional. There was no UFO at Echo Flight. There were no missile failures at November
Flight or Oscar Flight.
(Final statement: Captain Eric D. Carlson peacefully passed away in August 2021 at the age of
84. He was my father. Everything I have written in regard to the Echo Flight incident has been
previously fact-checked by him. I have asserted his claims from the very beginning, and all of
my subsequent research supports those claims. All of the witnesses to this singular event in
USAF history have affirmed that he was dutifully honest in all things. If he had no first-hand
knowledge with which to enhance testimony in regard to any subject, he said nothing at all. He
never sought to attack those who disagreed with his conclusions, and the only reason he bothered
to discuss Echo Flight at all, was because he was asked about it by a newspaper reporter in Great
Falls, Montana, and by the producer of the SyFy Channel series “Sightings.” He refused to
discuss the matter unless he was asked about it directly. He thought lying was the resort of
cowards, and he found the practice worthy of only scorn and contempt. He was one of the most
purely civilized men I have ever known.)
(All web articles accessed on December 9, 2022.)
19
20
See Footnote #4.
See Footnote #14.
60
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Meeting the Abductees: Betty Hill, Richard Price & Others
Peter Huston
Abstract: How believable are people who claim to be UFO abductees? An informal assessment
based on interviews with Betty Hill, Richard Price, Sr, and attendance at Budd Hopkins’s
Intruder Foundation’s Year 2000 UFO Abduction Conference. The author discusses his
impressions, concluding that alternate explanations are more believable than the alien abduction
hypothesis.
Keywords: UFO Abduction, Betty Hill, Richard Price, Implants, Budd Hopkins
Few subjects in Ufology captivate like abduction claims (no pun intended). That beings from a
mysterious realm, perhaps extraterrestrial, perhaps something even more exotic and mysterious,
might be visiting our world is fascinating on its own. If, as many claim, they are entering our
world to seize humans, paralyze them, tamper with their memories, even probe their rectum and
sample their DNA, sometimes leaving mysterious implants in people, or causing strange
pregnancies as part of a cosmic experiment, is unavoidably disturbing and attention grabbing. To
those who believe, the abductee reports and stories are a sign that our very species is on the cusp
of a great change, perhaps utopian, perhaps one where humanity’s right to rule and manage our
own planet, even our lives, may be in danger.
Yet even the most mundane interpretation, that the claims can be explained by psychology,
offers an extreme example of the flexible way the human species at times interprets or distorts
reality. Either way, the abduction claims are worth examining.
Who are these abductees and how believable are they? While I do not claim to be an expert, I
have met some well-known and not so well-known UFO abductees. Here I offer my thoughts and
opinions on three contacts that took place approximately 20 years ago, arguably the height of
interest in UFO abduction claims. First is an interview with Betty Hill, widely known as the first
UFO abductee to be taken seriously by ordinary people. The second was Richard Price, Sr, a
man who reported not just being abducted by space aliens but also claimed physical proof of this
encounter. The third was attendance at a large gathering of ufologists and self-identified
abductees in Queens, New York, held by Budd Hopkins’s Intruders Foundation, an organization
devoted to researching such claims and networking and sharing its beliefs with people who
suspected themselves to be alien abductees.
Betty Hill
Betty and Barney Hill are probably the best-known UFO abductees of all time. Reportedly, on
September 19, 1961, while driving through the mountains of New Hampshire, the couple were
taken aboard an alien spacecraft and inspected and interviewed by the extraterrestrials aboard.
Betty Hill, who was born on June 28, 1919, was 42 at the time. Her husband, Barney, was 39. As
the couple had no reason to lie about the alleged encounter and were known members of the
community, there was little reason to suspect a hoax. Although Betty Hill did have an interest in
both science fiction and UFO reports, and spoke about the alleged encounter soon afterwards,
61
I. Case Studies
neither of these things discounted her claim. As they were known as relatively normal members
of their community, many believed her.1
My personal encounter with Betty Hill occurred in 1998, when I called her up, introduced myself
as a journalist, and asked for an interview.2 She invited me to come to her house in small town
New Hampshire. We met on October 1, 1998. Betty Hill was then 79, and it had been over 37
years since the alleged incident that had changed her life and made her famous.
Like almost everyone who had the privilege of meeting Betty Hill, I greatly enjoyed our time
together. We spoke for a couple hours and then went out for dinner, getting some of the local
fried seafood. As a full transcript of the interview is available online in at least two places,3 I’m
going to simply summarize some key points here. While doing so makes things concise and easy
to understand, it does miss much of the flavor of Betty Hill’s style of speaking and the way she
tended to bounce from topic to topic, shifting mid-stream, then bouncing back again, in a
rambling but delightful way.
When in the presence of Betty Hill, I felt like I was in the presence of someone of great
importance, and I was not alone in that. To me, a non-believer in UFOs as spaceships, Betty Hill
was a woman of historic importance, to those who believed she was even more.
My friend Tom Calarco, a published author and Underground Railroad researcher who believes
that at least some UFOs are alien spacecraft, met Betty Hill in 1978 when he spent a summer
investigating UFO sightings in New Hampshire. He has described his feelings dramatically:
Wow, was I ever flabbergasted when I found Betty Hill at my cabin door. To me she was more
than a celebrity. She was a living link between humanity and the great unknown. . . . . I couldn't
believe it! Betty Hill! Bill, my girlfriend soon led them directly to my cabin. I couldn't believe it.
This was actually Betty Hill! She was a friendly, little, gray-haired lady, older than I expected.
But she was smiling and appeared friendly enough and she had come all the way here just to see
me!4
Although a skeptic, I, too, was thrilled to meet Betty Hill and felt that I was in the presence of
someone of historic importance, who was the starting point of a significant belief system.
1
Curtis Peebles. 1994. Watch the Skies, A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth. (Washington and London:
Smithsonian Institution Press), pp. 160-166.
Susan A. Clancy. 2005. Abducted, How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens. (Cambridge,
Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press), pp. 94-99.
2
I had taken an assignment to write an article on UFO abductions for Hustler, the famed pornographic magazine
founded by Larry Flynt. I had originally contacted the publication, having been impressed by the journalistic work
Adam Parfrey did there. Due to editorial changes, I’m afraid the editorial staff there was not interested in a serious
piece on the topic, edited my submission heavily, and I did not work for them again. More of this story can be read
in my book, More Scams from the Great Beyond. Some of Adam Parfrey’s journalistic writing can be found in his
books Apocalypse Culture, Cult Rapture, and Apocalypse Culture II.
3
https://web.archive.org/web/20040618113115/http://www.capital.net/com/phuston/bettyhill.html and
http://peterhuston.blogspot.com/2021/06/transcript-of-interview-with-betty-hill.html
4
Like the transcript of the Betty Hill interview, this is in at least two places on the Tom Calarco’s website,
Confessions of a Red-Hot UFO Investigator,
https://web.archive.org/web/20050118111705/http://www.capital.net/com/phuston/calarcoinvestigation.html and
http://peterhuston.blogspot.com/2021/06/tom-calarcos-tales-of-red-hot-ufo.html
62
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Speaking with Betty Hill at the time, as reading her 1995 book, reveals an odd mixture of
countless fanciful statements mixed in with common sense and social concern.
Betty Hill and the author, 1998, in her home at the time of the interview.
A few highlights from our interview, with the reminder this interview occurred near the end of
her life after 37 years of enthusiastic contact from ufologists and UFO fandom:
•
•
Betty Hill stated she saw UFOs on a regular basis at this point in her life. When asked what
people who question the reality of UFOs should do to determine if they are true or not, her
answer was that they should simply look around more. If one reads her book, “A Common
Sense Approach to UFOs,” written shortly before this time, it offers great insight into how
she saw and approached the world. She was constantly being contacted by people who
believed in UFOs, and when she went out with these new friends to look for them, well,
they saw them. And countless people, including local law enforcement and public officials,
knew her as a nice lady who saw UFOs, and they assured her they saw UFOs as well and
shared their stories. If one reads “A Common Sense Approach to UFOs” not only does it
seem that most people in her region of New Hampshire saw UFOs fairly regularly, but so
did the people in most places where she visited. Of course, most places where she visited, it
was because she was invited to speak on UFOs and so it had been for 37 years.5
Apparently, her belief that UFOs could be easily seen was nothing new. Tom Calarco
described a visit in 1978 to Betty Hill’s home, where she, accompanied by two boarders
who also said they were abductees, presented him with a slide show:
Inside, Betty soon turned on the slide projector. Most of what we saw looked like photos of planes
at night, their lights silhouetted against the sky. There was one of interest, though, of these small
balls of light that appeared to be flying around some trees. Trick photography? I couldn't tell. A
movie followed. It was shot with a super-8, and in order to catch glimpses of the barely flickering
points of colored light she claimed were UFOs, we had to sit with our noses in the screen. Her
explanation that the fleeting quality of the images was due to their fantastic speed was difficult to
accept. It was as if the film were taken of the night sky with bits of light being picked up from
5
Betty Hill. 1995. A Common Sense Approach to UFOs, (Greenland, New Hampshire: Published by Betty Hill).
63
I. Case Studies
planes passing across in the distance. Though she promised to take me to one of her secret spots
some other time, my first doubts about her story emerged. 6
This was almost 17 years after the alleged abduction, and although Tom Calarco tells me that
Betty Hill spoke of her abduction with such emotion that he’s convinced something happened to
her, clearly there are aspects of her claims that leave him confused and wondering. It must be
stated that a likely explanation for many of Betty Hill’s strange statements was reinforcement of
the beliefs by visitors. For better or worse, neither Tom Calarco or I confronted or challenged
Betty Hill during her stories.
•
•
•
Aliens often take things from UFO abductees, according to Betty Hill, sometimes after
secretly entering their homes, and return them later, seemingly for no reason. One has to
wonder if Betty Hill shared my problem of forgetting where one puts things but had found a
more interesting way to deal with it than self-blame.
Betty Hill had grown convinced that hypnosis distorts or changes memory. She was quite
firm on this important point. She explicitly said that any report of a UFO abduction should be
discarded as unreliable if hypnosis had been used during an interview. This is consistent with
scientific understanding of how hypnosis distorts memory and encourages confabulation and
the creation of false memories. She was quite clear on this and repeated it in her book where
she very clearly states “if repressed memories of rape are invalid in New Hampshire, the
same thinking applies to rape on board a UFO. And it probably applies to all ‘repressed
memories’ of missing time.” 7
Except in her case. Betty Hill also affirmed, with no hesitation or irony, that her case was
special and had been done with “medical hypnosis.” According to Hill, the couple’s hypnosis
had been performed by Benjamin Simon, a leading psychiatrist of the time.8 Hill claimed that
Simon used “medical hypnosis,” a special kind of hypnosis that no one is able to do these
days, and that “medical hypnosis” does produce accurate memory recall. Although she said
this when interviewed, I found no such statement in her book. I have read several books and
spoken to experts and have never heard this claim before, nor have I ever heard a reference to
“medical hypnosis” elsewhere.
I can only speculate on why she was saying this. Perhaps she was unable to accept that she had
spent decades believing a lie and spent so much time pursuing a premise, the premise that she
and her husband had been abducted by space aliens, that was now easily explained away. Or
perhaps, and while it may be a stretch, I admit, she knew that if she were to suddenly deny being
6
Tom Calarco. Confessions of a Red-Hot UFO Investigator website, see Footnote #4.
Betty Hill. A Common Sense Approach to UFOs, p. 93.
8
Benjamin Simon is seen using hypnosis to treat combat veterans suffering from “shell shock” in the 1946
documentary on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Let There Be Light, which was produced by John Huston.
David J. Halperin. “The Moment the Myth of Alien Abduction Was Born, Betty and Barney Hill Took an Interesting
Trip to the Doctor's Office,” Literary Hub (blog), March 26, 2020, https://lithub.com/the-moment-the-myth-of-alienabduction-was-born/
Robert Sheaffer. “Dr. Simon Reveals his Real Thoughts on the Hill "UFO Abduction Case,” in Bad UFOs:
Skepticism, UFOs, and The Universe (blog), December 23, 2015, https://badufos.blogspot.com/2015/12/dr-simonreveals-his-real-thoughts-on.html
7
64
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
an abductee, she’d lose influence and that the best way to combat the misuse of hypnosis in UFO
abductions was to maintain her status as the first abductee to be taken seriously.
Looking back, I have had to ask myself why I did not question Betty Hill more aggressively on
this important question. But I know the answer. Betty Hill was a very nice woman, charming and
kind, near the end of her life, and, like most people who met her, I had no desire to upset her or
hurt her so I did not probe as deeply as a journalist should have on this key issue.
•
•
•
Betty Hill denied mistreatment by her abductors, and says they treated her well. She said
she did not like using the term “aliens” and preferred to refer to them as “space people.”
For decades, Betty Hill had been involved in several mainstream political activist
organizations including Vote Smart and Veterans for Peace.
Betty Hill said she avoided UFO politics and joining UFO groups as much as possible.
She said she had never heard of The Skeptical Inquirer.
In conclusion, when I met Betty Hill, I found her a pleasant, cheerful, and idealistic woman who
left the impression of being someone who spoke the truth as she saw it and had spent decades
working for a better world. However, she also contradicted herself in several ways and made
statements that were clearly illogical or not believable. Two examples would be her position that
hypnosis distorts the memories of all witnesses, except herself, and that UFOs are easily seen
and if one wishes to see one, just go outside and look.
Obviously, my interview occurred at the end of her life, after years of contact with eager, often
credulous ufologists and enthusiasts anxious to hear and believe her story. Although it would be
an interesting research project to try and collect interviews with Betty Hill at different stages of
her life and compare them, I can say that when I met Betty Hill, although I considered her a
delightful and brave woman, I did not find her a credible witness. I think the transcripts of my
interview will bear this out.
Richard Price, Sr.
Richard Price, Sr. was another prominent, but lesser known, UFO abductee who I’ve met and
whose report has received national and international media attention. In the early 1990s, Price
appeared on several television programs and his story was featured in print media. These
included Joan River’s talk show, the docudrama series “Hard Copy,” Japanese television, and
more. 9 He spoke regularly at UFO conventions and his story was reported as plausible and
worthy of discussion in Omni magazine 10 and elsewhere including countless specialty
publications aimed at hardcore UFO enthusiasts and members of the UFO community. Several of
our local newspapers had written of his case and presentations.11 His case is even mentioned in
9
Table of contents for the transcript of [Encounters], Show number: 105, Air date: July 22, 1994,
http://www.ufomind.com/area51/articles/1994/encounters_940727/summary.html
10
Patrick Huyghe, “Alien implant or - human underwear? - Omni's Project Open Book,” Omni, April 1995.
Article can be found at:
https://web.archive.org/web/20050603081936/http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1430/is_n7_v17/ai_1684
8268
11
Bill Eager. “Aliens Shaped His Life Cohoes Man Bemoans,” The Times Union (Albany, New York), January 27,
1991, p. C3.
65
I. Case Studies
Carl Sagan’s “Demon Haunted World -Science as a Candle in the Dark.” 12 His story was in the
Weekly World News, the sillier spin-off of The National Inquirer. 13 Price included these
appearances on his bio and in the publicity packet that he distributed when soliciting talks.14
What made Price’s claim particularly interesting was that he claimed to have hard, physical
evidence of alien visitation, the so-called “Holy Grail” of Ufologists. The mysterious object, an
alleged alien implant, had been reportedly implanted in Price’s abdomen as an eight year old
child, and years later, somehow, moved itself to inside his penis. After working its way free
years after that, Price put the object in a small bottle on a chain around his neck and carried it
with him everywhere he went. Ultimately, after word of this alleged implant got around in
ufological circles, a portion of the object was studied by MIT physicist David Pritchard, an
unprecedented event that also raised Price’s profile.
Although Pritchard had concluded that the object did not seem to be of extraterrestrial origin, and
more likely was a cotton fiber, perhaps from underwear, that had entered Price’s urethra and
developed a collagen sheath, Price staunchly believed it was and continued with public talks.
I first met Price when he began attending meetings of our group, The Inquiring Skeptics of
Upper New York. The group was intended to promote science and a critical attitude to strange
claims including UFO claims. I was vice-president, later president, and attended virtually all
meetings. Although we claimed an open attitude towards UFO reports, the officers and bulk of
members believed that there had not been scientifically proven evidence of alien visitation, and
that existing UFO claims could be explained without using unproven claims of alien visitation,
or, if unexplained, by definition, were lacking proof that extraterrestrials or otherworldly
presences were involved.
Our advocacy of science and so-called rational explanations was done primarily through holding
public lectures and panel discussions at a local library. Although many skeptics groups tend to be
hostile to UFO believers, from the beginning a frequent presence at our club was an amateur
astronomer with a strong belief in UFOs as alien spacecraft. He attended our meetings to spend
more time with his more skeptical astronomer friends and to hear the other side of issues that he
believed in. The fact that he asked questions that led to interesting answers, kept us honest, kept
Darryl Campagna. “Man Not Alone Retelling Tale of Alien Abduction,” The Times Union (Albany, New York),
May 16, 1997, p. D1.
Tim McClone. “Close Encounter? 34 Years Later, Man Sticking to Story about Alien Abduction,” The Daily
Gazette, (Schenectady, New York), February 9, 1993, pp. D1- D2.
No byline, “Cohoes Man Haunted by Belief of Alien Abduction,” The Record, (Troy, New York) No page number.
While Price had written the date, May 8, 1992 on the photocopy he distributed, the librarians at the Troy Public
Library said this was not correct, and the story is not in that issue. As the paper is not indexed for that period of time
or available in searchable form, to determine the correct date would be a very time-consuming task.
12
Carl Sagan, 1996. The Demon Haunted World (New York: Random House), pp. 185-186.
13
Joe Berger. “I was operated on –by Space Aliens,” Weekly World News, August 6, 1991, p. 3.
14
As I was not aware of any place where researchers could access Richard Price’s publicity materials, I have taken
the liberty of posting images of them on my blog. See “A UFO Abductee's Self-promotional Materials: Richard
Price's Publicity Kit from the 1990s,” PeterHuston --A blog about my life, writings and whatever strikes my fancy
(blog), October 9. 2021, at https://peterhuston.blogspot.com/2021/10/a-ufo-abductees-self-promotional.html
66
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
us from getting too smug, and that he genuinely seemed to appreciate hearing our answers, made
him an asset to the group even if no one ever swayed in their beliefs.
In time, he began bringing his friend, Richard Price, the UFO abductee, to our meetings. Price
was well known to the local UFO community, and they often helped him out when he was
having troubles such as his intermittent homelessness. Price’s attendance at our meetings took us
by surprise. Our skeptics group now had an internationally known UFO abductee as a regular
attendee. Price would approach us periodically seeking a chance to speak at a meeting. Therefore,
our officers had the chance to interact with Price in a way few skeptics did. We were also
contacted by his manager, a local woman known in New Age circles who had befriended and
assisted Price when he had his problems, and presented us with his publicity materials and copies
of his newsletter. Unfortunately, these did little to convince us he would be a desirable speaker.
His three-page flyer advertising a previous talk at a local Howard Johnson’s Hotel, presumably
typed by his manager, was, for instance, typed with a capital letter at the beginning of each word
on sky blue paper with cloud pictures on the first and third page. The second had a rainbow.15
There were many signs that Price was not functioning well, among them his writing in his
newsletter. I have three issues: Vol V, no 1, Jan Feb Mar 1995, Vol. V No 2, April to October of
1995, and Vol VI No. 1, Oct Nov Dec 1996. The first two say “NEWSLETTER” in large
capitals at the top and the third says “The Jupiter II File.” All have a logo of a flying saucer.
While all speak of UFO and alleged paranormal phenomena, they also tell of family problems.
In the first five-page newsletter, three pages are about UFO abduction related topics and Price’s
experiences. But there’s also a front-page article discussing his recent divorce and how upsetting
it is that his ex-wife aborted their unborn child after the separation. Inside, there’s a cute little
story about finding a cat that had no UFO content, and an article describing a business dispute
with paranormal filmmaker Richard Knell, who was allegedly trying to claim credit for parts of
Price’s story of having his implant analyzed at MIT.16
The second is three pages long. It contains a full-page personal refutation of Pritchard’s analysis
of his implant, updates on his books and speaking projects, and a report that his ex-wife, a
different ex-wife apparently, has now committed suicide and his estranged son who he has not
spoken to for four years blames him for it. Also, disturbingly, we have an article by Nancy
Ziegler, a woman who had been arrested in connection with a bizarre series of incidents where
she and her husband Richard Barron (AKA “Robin Boston Barron”) had committed a series of
sex crimes using their alleged investigations into alleged paranormal phenomena such as ghost
sightings to make contact with potential victims including underage teen girls. 17 Ziegler
15
Again, I have taken the liberty of posting images on my blog. See “A UFO Abductee's Self-promotional Materials:
Richard Price's Publicity Kit from the 1990s,” PeterHuston --A blog about my life, writings and whatever strikes my
fancy (blog), October 9, 2021, at https://peterhuston.blogspot.com/2021/10/a-ufo-abductees-self-promotional.html
16
Again, I have taken the liberty of posting images of the three copies of his newsletter that I own online. See “A
UFO Abductee's Newsletter: Richard Price's Newsletter, Vol. V, No. 1,” January to March 1995 at
https://peterhuston.blogspot.com/2021/10/a-ufo-abductees-newsletter-richard.html
17
"Couple Charged With Committing Bizarre Sex Acts With Young Girls," AP, March 2, 1994 at
https://apnews.com/article/2e05718b85ac91c72f78d5390a8f75e5
67
I. Case Studies
describes a trip taken with Price to an allegedly mysterious site in Duddleytown, Connecticut
where Price was cured of his bad hip, asthma, and poor eyesight. In an afternote, Price
commented that he had gone back to wearing glasses sometimes.18
The third issue has eight pages, two and a half on personal issues. We learn Price was not invited
to a family reunion, and we learn details of his second divorce including physical attacks by his
ex-wife motivated by irrational jealousy. This included not letting him watch other women on
TV or listen to CDs sung by women as he might fall in love with them and leave her, and, in a
different article, he discusses the importance of the issue of battered men in domestic violence
situations. Price wrote, “Marianne and I had a near perfect marriage, but she had a problem with
extreme jealousy. During our relationship, she would not let me look at a newspaper or magazine
unless she cut out the pictures of women that she did not want me to see. I could not watch TV.
If a woman appeared on the screen, she would shut it off, then proceed to pound on me with her
fist or whatever she had in hand.”19 From the same source we learn that Marianne, his ex-wife
who had committed suicide, was also an abductee and included in an unspecified Budd
Hopkins’s book under the name Andrea. She was one of the first women who was impregnated
by aliens and had the fetus removed during a second abduction, although Price states that she had
admitted to him that she had invented the story of being impregnated by aliens to conceal the fact
that she had been a victim of incest who had become pregnant and had an abortion. 20 Based on
my reading, despite this, I don’t think Price questioned whether or not she had been abducted by
aliens, just whether the pregnancy was the result of alien abduction or tragic incest. Price also
shares that the same woman took all of his Country and Western CDs that featured female
singers from him one day and hid them under the rug. “She told me she was afraid I would fall in
love with them and leave her.”21 They had been introduced to each other by a UFO investigator.
There’s also a two-page article by his friend, our member, on various aspects of the UFO
abduction phenomena, along with a short article describing his further attempts to refute
Pritchard’s claims and what he considers inaccurate reporting in interviews with Pritchard. The
remainder of the newsletter discusses his plans for a conference and a self-published book.22 As
far as I could learn, the book was never published.
Aside from the newsletters, Price claimed as evidence that he had purchased a policy for UFO
abduction insurance and that the insurance company had accepted his claim and was paying him.
Although the policy clearly stated if an alien abduction occurred, the policy holder would receive
a million dollars, the slightly smaller print explained that the policy holder would receive their
million dollars at the rate of one dollar a year. Therefore, they were paying him a dollar year.
18
Richard Price, “A UFO Abductee's Newsletter: Richard Price's Newsletter, Vol. V, No. 2, April to October,
1995”, pp. 1-2 at https://peterhuston.blogspot.com/2021/10/a-ufo-abductees-newsletter-richard_9.html
19
Richard Price, “Revelations from Second Marriage,” The Jupiter II File, Vol. VI, No. 1, October to December
1996, p. 3. Images of this newsletter and this article are available at https://peterhuston.blogspot.com/2021/10/aufo-abductees-newsletter-richard.html
20
ibid
21
ibid
22
Richard Price, The Jupiter II File, Vol. VI, No. 1, October to December 1996 at
https://peterhuston.blogspot.com/2021/10/a-ufo-abductees-newsletter-richard.html
68
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Nevertheless, the acceptance of this claim is the first item on his list of important events on his
list of speaking engagements.23
He admitted to a mental health history. In fact, he made it very clear that as a teen, when he
began speaking of his abduction by aliens, he had been put in a mental institution for several
years and not let free, until he denied it had ever happened and stated that he understood that the
alien abduction had never happened. “I had to lie my way out,” he said more than once. His
primary job, if I remember correctly, was driving a taxi.
We began turning these speaking offers down on a regular basis. It wasn’t that we disliked the
man, he was pleasant enough despite obvious eccentricities and never caused any problems.
However, our group had never had a “pro-paranormal speaker.” It just wasn’t what our group
was for, and there were many other forums that welcomed talks by such people. Second, none in
our group found him believable or his report convincing. One officer pointed out that if we were
to choose an obviously unconvincing pro-UFO speaker as our first “pro-paranormal” speaker, we
could be accused of having chosen one in bad faith, and using a “ringer,” a bad example of a proparanormal or pro-UFO speaker instead of a more credible one.
Others said they would stay home if he spoke. Some just simply weren’t interested in hearing
him speak for an hour, and one older woman said she had no desire to hear Richard Price tell us
a story that involved his penis.
And the reports we had received from people who had attended Richard Price’s talks were not
terribly flattering. A friend, a fiction writer, had attended one while doing research on UFO
abduction claims for a fiction project, and, honestly, laughed a lot when describing it. Reportedly,
at one point Price had told the audience, which was less than a dozen people, a surprising
number of them journalists or writers like himself:
Actually, I do have hard, scientific evidence that aliens are visiting this planet. The problem is
that my ex-wife won’t let me go into the house and get it.
Ultimately, our president approached Price’s friend and said we simply weren’t interested in
having him as a speaker and did not expect to change our minds. When asked for clarification, he
said “Quite frankly, we believe your friend is mentally ill.”
“Well, of course,” replied Price’s UFO believing friend. “He was abducted by a UFO. That’s
very traumatic.” In other words, their belief was that he was mentally ill BECAUSE he’d been
abducted by space aliens, instead of claiming to be abducted by space aliens because he was
mentally ill.
Regardless, our group turned down a chance to have a talk to our group by a UFO abductee who
had received international media coverage simply because we did not find him convincing, nor
did we think it would be a humane thing to debate him about his beliefs.
23
See Footnote #15.
69
I. Case Studies
I admit I did write a bit about him and his case in the same article that prompted me to seek out
Betty Hill. Honestly, when I did, although he was eager to speak to me, I felt like I was taking
advantage of him. He was staying in a welfare hotel at the time, and we met for coffee elsewhere.
I remember on the way home we picked up a few groceries for him, including a loaf of bread,
and I paid for them as he was between homes at the time.
In conclusion, the way some media reports presented Price and the way he seemed in person
contrasted starkly. Sadly, we did not consider him a reliable reporter of his own experiences. 24
Queen’s UFO Conference
In the year 2000, I was contacted by a film maker working on a documentary on UFO claims for
the Discovery Channel. As part of this project, they invited me to attend the Year 2000 UFO
Abduction Conference at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, New York City, providing
me with lodging and a ticket. The conference was sponsored the Intruders Foundation, Budd
Hopkins’s organization. Hopkins, an accomplished sculptor and painter of abstract art, had also
become an extremely prominent ufologist and a strong proponent of abduction claims. Aside
from Hopkins, presenters at the conference included John Mack, Nick Pope, and Bruce
Maccabee, four of the biggest names in ufology of the time.25
Despite this lineup, the event was attended by a mere approximately 200 people. 26 A large
segment of the attendees were self-identified alien abductees. Most others had read and studied
books and materials on UFO abductions. There were few skeptics or even people on the fence.
Materials were available for purchase, and I purchased a book and two VHS tapes. One VHS
tape was a presentation by Budd Hopkins, “Hidden Memories -Are You a UFO Abductee?”
27
This tape reinforces Hopkin’s list of signs and symptoms that indicate a possible alien
abduction in a person or their children and the need to use hypnosis to uncover hidden memories.
The second tape, “Omega Communications Presents The UFO Experience,” is a lecture by
Roger Leir, a podiatric surgeon (often identified as a “surgeon”) and firm advocate that not only
were alien abductions taking place but aliens were leaving implants in people.28 Leir had made a
name for himself using scalpels and surgery to remove objects imbedded in people’s feet, objects
that he was convinced were implants and proof of alien visitation and abductions. The strength of
24
Multiple efforts were made to contact Richard Price or discover his whereabouts prior to writing this piece.
Sometime around 2002 or so, he moved out of New York state, and no one I know has heard from him since.
Attempts to contact him through local skeptic, astronomy, and New Age circles led to nothing. Reaching out to
MUFON, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (formerly CSICOP), and even David Pritchard produced polite
responses indicating that they had no idea where he was. Requests for leads on several social media sites achieved
nothing. Attempts to phone his former manager and friend from the astronomy group went unanswered. If he were
8 years old at the time of the alleged abduction in 1955, then he is or would be 77 at the time of this writing.
25
Intruder’s Foundation website, Events, May 10, 2000. Retrieved from
https://web.archive.org/web/20000607031647/http://www.intrudersfoundation.org/abduction_conference.html
26
Merle English. “QUEENS DIARY / Close Encounters in Flushing / People who say they have seen UFOs get
down to earth during a conference at Hall of Science,” Newsday. May 27, 2000.
27
Hidden Memories, Are you a UFO abductee? Lecture by Budd Hopkins, with an introduction by David Jacobs.
(Los Angeles, CA: Lightworks Audio & Video, 1993) VHS Tape.
28
Omega Communications presents The UFO Experience, Dr Roger Leir, The Aliens and the Scalpel:
Breakthrough Research on Alien Implants. Lecture by Roger Leir. (Central Park Media Corporation, 1997.
70
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
this evidence and how seriously it stood up to examination, can be judged by how little
remembered these surgical interventions are today.
A woman named Beth Collings, a self -identified UFO abductee who was hypnotized by
Hopkins in 1992,29 was selling copies of a book she had co-authored with another self-identified
UFO abductee, Anna Jamerson (both pseudonyms). The book blurb stated:
This is a gripping tale of two women and their search for the truth. Experience their interwoven
tale of missing time, bizarre nightmares, unexplained pregnancies, and flashbacks of large-eyed
beings from another world-all pointing to the impossible... alien abductions. Share their battle to
end the abductions, their struggle to understand, and finally their acceptance and empowerment
that can only come from a strength inside. Both discovered evidence for alien abductions that
may have been going on in each of their families for generations and is still going on today! 30
For better or worse, claiming such experiences, probably put her among the majority of people in
the hall that day. She most certainly was not alone in claiming them.
I bought one. She signed it “To Peter, thanks for all your help in solving this mystery.” No
comment.
Hopkins’s work, particularly his heavy reliance on hypnosis when questioning suspected
abductees and the way it seems too often lead to uncovering exactly the narrative he had hoped
to uncover, had been heavily criticized. These critics included Carl Sagan, Robert Baker,
Michael Persinger, Elizabeth Loftus, Richard Ofshe, and others.31 Among the common criticisms
is the way in which hypnosis and obvious or even subtle leading questioning as well as the
emotional expectations and hopes of the hypnotist or investigator can cause the suspected
abductee to answer their questions in a way that will please the people asking the questions. In
other words, hypnotized people tend to answer questions in a way that pleases the hypnotist,
often going so far as to invent stories without knowing it. These are often seized upon as truth,
especially when the hypnotist desperately wishes to believe the story, a situation that is common
with UFO abduction investigators, among others.32
Aside from misuse of hypnosis, two other factors that lead to false beliefs that one has been
abducted by space aliens are misunderstanding of common sleep problems and the intense role
29
Anonymous. “Alien Advent Abduction Calendar Day 5: No Sweets,” Uqbar Calling (blog), December 5, 2012,
https://uqbarcalling.wordpress.com/tag/alien-abduction/page/3/
30
Beth Collings & Anna Jamerson. 1996. Connections: Solving Our Alien Abduction Mystery. (Leland, North
Carolina: Wild Flower Press.)
31
“Kidnapped by UFOs? -PBS Airdate: April 1, 1997,” Nova,
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2306tufos.html
This is a transcript of the PBS Nova science program that heavily criticized self-identified UFO abduction
researchers including Hopkins and others.
32
Richard Ofshe & Ethan Watters. 1994. Making Monsters -False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria.
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.)
Mark Pendergrast. 1996. Victims of Memory -Sex Abuse Accusations and Shattered Lives.( Hinseburg, Vermont:
Upper Access, Inc.)
Nicholas P. Spanos. 1996. Multiple Identities and False Memories -A Sociocognitive Perspective. (Washington DC:
American Psychological Associates.)
71
I. Case Studies
that group expectations and joining a new community can play in reshaping a person’s identity
and behaviors.
Sleep paralysis and hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations often occur in healthy people,
producing frightening experiences. Many so-called abduction reports begin with a person waking,
gripped by fear, and being unable to move with a sense of some presence that they cannot see in
the room. Having suffered them myself at one time, and written of the experience, 33 I was
stunned when I learned that Hopkins, after years of working with self- identified abductees,
seemingly dismissed these experiences as a factor in his investigations.
On the PBS Nova program, he stated, “One of the issues about, of course, hypnogogic states and
these other theories is that they’re usually not accompanied by an enormous amount of emotion.
The issue about these abduction experiences is, of course, immediately the enormous powerful
and appropriate emotions that go with the experiences as they’re recalled.” 34
Please put me on record as stating Hopkins was completely wrong about this, absolutely and
disturbingly wrong. Hopkins’s talk, like many at the conference, began with a simultaneous
attack on the people, scientists, medical professionals, politicians, and others who were ignoring
his claims, and the skeptics who while they had looked into his claims, had then rejected them
instead of believing.
Soon, it segued into Hopkins’s current enthusiasm, the topic he felt was the cutting edge of alien
abduction research. While still having failed to uncover evidence to convince the scientific
community or even government policy makers that UFOs were spacecraft or that humans were
being abducted by otherworldly beings, he had moved on to a different idea, and now claimed
that if one member of a family were being abducted, whether they were aware of it or not, it was
very possible that their children might be being abducted as well.
According to Hopkins, common signs that a young child might have been or currently be
undergoing a series of abductions were basically that they woke up and said there were monsters
in the room or that they were scared or had nightmares. There were others he mentioned, such as
blood found on their pillow or bed sheets or mysterious scars or marks on their body, but the big
one was fear of monsters at night, especially if a child says the monsters are either present or
were present. Obviously, to hear someone say this, and a large roomful of adults believe it and
take it quite seriously, was very disturbing as even the most healthy children have been known to
do this from time to time. For that matter, even the more dramatic signs mentioned, such as
mysterious blood on the pillow or bedsheets could have mundane explanations such as children
picking their nose or scratching scabs, both actions that children sometimes deny having done if
their parents have told them not to do them.
Hopkins’s advice for parents whose children show such signs was “If this happens to your
children, use their language. The child needs to know you’re on their side.” In other words, he
33
Peter Huston. “Night Terrors. Sleep Paralysis, and Devil-Stricken Telephone Cords from Hell,” Skeptical Inquirer,
Volume 17, No. 1, Fall 1992 at
https://skepticalinquirer.org/1992/10/night-terrors-sleep-paralysis-and-devil-stricken-telephone-cords-from-hell/
34
“Kidnapped by UFOS?” PBS Nova transcript, p. 28
72
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
clarified, agree with them about the reality of the monsters in the room. Don’t tell them it’s a
dream if they think it really happened.
Additionally, if the child should ask if this will stop and the monsters will come back, Hopkins
advised parents to tell their children that the big problem, of course, is that you can’t make it stop.
The aliens might come back, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them. Therefore, be
honest. There’s no reason to try and assure the child that it won’t happen again, but reassure the
child that everything is fine now, but without making a claim that the aliens won’t come back.
If the child wants to talk about it, a parent can encourage them to draw pictures about what they
saw or believed to be present.
Hopkins explained that one tool he and his investigators use is an “Image Recognition Test.”
This consisted of a series of pictures of characters that children were likely to recognize such as
Santa Claus, Batman, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, and, of course, classic Grey-style space
aliens of the type who allegedly abduct people. Hopkins explained “I go to the home, and I play
with the child, just games, so that they do not think this is some kind of big scary test.” He shows
them the pictures and asks: “Have you ever dreamed of any of these things?” Then later, while
showing the children the pictures, he asks the children to “Make up a story, silly story, funny
story, what happens when he comes into your room. What happens?”
Hopkins concluded “The amounts of information this test can elicit are quite interesting.”35 The
big problem with this is that children are highly imaginative, suggestible, and easily invent
stories when prompted, stories that adults have often misinterpreted as the truth, particularly
when they are seeking important information to determine whether terrible things may have
occurred. In other words, if small children sense what the questioner wants and expects to hear,
especially if they think they are playing a game, it has been documented that they will often tell
that person what they think that person wants to hear. 36
As for those without children, Hopkins said “For those of you who do not have children, at least
you may recognize some of your childhood experiences in these accounts.” In other words, if
you have vague memories of sensing monsters in the dark or having nightmares as a child (and
who doesn’t?), Hopkins felt a wise course of action would be to seek out someone like himself
and have yourself hypnotized to see what could be elicited.
35
In some cases, the exact quotes used come from Hopkins VHS tape and may not be the exact words used at the
Intruders Conference lecture.
36
Paul Eberle & Shirley Eberle. 1993. The Abuse of Innocence -The McMartin Preschool Trial. (Buffalo, New York:
Prometheus Books)
Debbie Nathan & Michael Snedeker. 1995. Satan’s Silence, Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American
Witch Hunt (New York: Basic Books)
Richard Wexler. 1990, 1995. Wounded Innocents, The Real Victims in the War Against Child Abuse (Buffalo New
York: Prometheus Books)
73
I. Case Studies
The implications of spreading the notion among believers in UFO abduction, that their children
might be abductees too, is disturbing. In fact, it is not uncommon for unusual, unorthodox, or
even delusional ideas to be shared among members of the same family or residence.37
One of the few attendees I met who was trying to sort out the issue told me that he was working
through some personal issues. He told me he had been adopted, and there were apparently issues
with some other family members about whether or not he should be considered part of the
extended family or not. A funeral of a loved one, a family member, had recently happened, and
some members of the family had made a decision not to invite him, upsetting him greatly. This
incident, and others, left him feeling insecure and hurt. He’d begun wondering why he often felt
bad and had traumas he didn’t quite understand, and thought a forgotten alien abduction could be
one source of such trauma. So, he’d come to the event to decide for himself it was worth
exploring the option that he could be an alien abductee with no conscious memory of the event.
We spoke in the stands while waiting for a speaker to begin. A nearby person overheard us
speaking and turned around encouraging him to explore the possibility that he, too, had been an
alien abductee.
The talk began on signs that one might be an abductee, and when the comments and question
period began, the man I’d been speaking to spoke up, giving his opinion that if one were adopted,
it would probably best to give serious thought to the idea that emotional and personal problems
are more likely to stem from being adopted, then from a hidden alien abduction experience.
In return, he got a lot of dirty looks and ugly mumbled comments. Those who attended, as the
saying went, wanted to believe, and no one could stop them, it seemed.
In conclusion, what I saw at the conference, not only failed to convince me that UFO abductions
were real or even “an extraordinary phenomenon” as Budd Hopkins often used to say when he
would say “An extraordinary phenomenon demands an extraordinary investigation.” In fact,
everything I saw was perfectly explainable using standard, readily accepted, non-controversial
psychological and physiological explanations. Most important among these are the way sleep
paralysis and hypnopompic and hypnagogic states work, the way hypnosis and social priming
and the hypnotist’s expectations can distort memory, and the way groups and group dynamics
can help form, shape, and maintain unorthodox belief systems among group members.
The sad truth is that I found my two days at the Intruders Foundation Conference a depressing
and disturbing experience. 38
Conclusion
In conclusion, it’s been twenty years at least since the events, encounters, and meetings
described. While I have not followed the UFO abduction scene carefully, I have touched in from
37
Marc Galanter. 1989, 1999. Cults -Faith, Healing, and Coercion. (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.) p.
16.
38
I could find no evidence that Budd Hopkins’s Intruder Foundation continues to exist, their website is gone and
their domain is for sale. There is a site, http://www.buddhopkins.net/, maintained by his daughter Grace Hopkins,
that discusses his career as an artist with no mention of his ufology.
74
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
time to time. I find it safe to say that not only have the repeated claims of abductions by
extraterrestrial beings failed to capture the interest of mainstream science or become a topic of
government policy at any level, but interest in the alleged phenomenon among the general public
and media has diminished considerably rather than grown.
In terms of hard evidence that such alien abductions are happening, there’s simply none to be
had, at least none that comes without more questions than answers. As I discuss in my book
“More Scams from the Great Beyond,” while people like David Jacobs argue that the alleged
abductions indicate our planet is essentially being invaded and our species is in danger, if this is
the case it is the cleanest military operation of all time. Don’t the invaders leave any garbage
behind in the manner that all other military forces ever do? 39
The claims of implants, even after multiple surgical efforts to find them, have, after 20 years,
provided nothing and are largely forgotten.
Most of the leading UFO researchers of slightly more than two decades ago have died off. This
would mean little if the foundations and research organizations they had created lived on and a
new generation had taken their place, but generally speaking, this isn’t the case.
While some who claim to be abducted or contacted by space aliens are consciously lying or
mentally ill, I think they are in the minority. The majority, I feel, are or were people who do not
have a diagnosable mental illness and are basically honest but who have or had a general sense
of unease, depression, or anxiety, and an interest in UFOs, alien visitation, and the claims that
aliens were abducting people. This interest might hint at the likelihood of certain personality
traits and types among self-identified alien abductees, but attempts to confirm this should be
done carefully and scientifically and I lack the resources and expertise to do so.
The repeated descriptions of an alien abduction and its various elements can easily be explained
through a combination of misinterpretation of phenomena such as sleep paralysis and related
hallucinations, 40 social priming (few, I hope, would deny that the overwhelming majority of
people who wonder if they are a UFO abductee and seek out UFO abduction researchers to
determine if they were abducted by UFOs have become interested and at least open minded
towards the possibility that UFO abductions being real), distortion of memory through
hypnosis,41 and the claimant entering a meta-community where such beliefs are not just accepted
but reinforced.42
In my opinion, the belief in alien abductions is a social problem, and an obscure one at that. The
self-identified abductees that I have met did not appear to be reliable witnesses.
39
Peter Huston. 2002. More Scams from the Great Beyond.
See Footnote #33.
41
Richard Ofshe & Ethan Watters. 1994. Making Monsters.
Mark Pendergrast. 1996. Victims of Memory.
Nicholas P. Spanos. 1996. Multiple Identities and False Memories.
42
Marc Galanter. 1989, 1999. Cults -Faith, Healing, and Coercion.
40
75
I. Case Studies
Bibliography (all web articles accessed on November 25, 2022)
Clancy, Susan A. (2005). Abducted –How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by
Aliens. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.)
Huston, Peter (1997). Scams from the Great Beyond -How to Make Easy Money Off of ESP,
Astrology, UFOs, Crop Circles, Cattle Mutilations, Alien Abductions, Atlantis,
Channeling, and Other New Age Nonsense. (Boulder, Colorado: Paladin Press. )
_____. (2002). More Scams from the Great Beyond –How to Make Even More Money Off of
Creationism, Evolution, Environmentalism, Fringe Politics, Weird Science, the Occult,
and Other Strange Beliefs. (Boulder, Colorado: Paladin Press.)
Klass, Philip J. (1989). UFO Abductions –a Dangerous Game. (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.)
Matheson, Terry (1998). Alien Abductions -Creating a Modern Phenomenon. (Buffalo, New
York: Prometheus Books.)
Peebles, Curtis (1994). Watch the Skies -a Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth. (Washington
and London: Smithsonian Institution Press.)
76
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Investigating Ball Lightning Eyewitness Reports
Alexander G. Keul
Abstract: Ball lightning (BL) and UFOs as unsolved phenomena appear side-by-side in many
news articles and popular books. The term BL has been used since Arago 1837 for unexplained
metastable lightning forms that appear at random in time and space and last for seconds. For both
classes of transient phenomena, most of the incoming material is anecdotal, thus serious
investigation needs to consider and evaluate social as well as natural science data. However, BL
theories still outnumber critical field investigations. The author—meteorologist and psychologist,
involved in BL studies since 1974—explains his examination of witness reports and related
evidence, highlights BL case statistics, and delineates obstacles and chances for a potential
scientific solution.
Keywords: Ball lightning, Field investigation, Social science data, Case statistics, Epistemology
Introduction
“Guarda! Guarda!” (Look! Look!)—Calls from the Corsa dei Servi (today Corso Vittorio
Emanuele II) in central Milan, Italy, alarmed Mr. Butti, naval painter to the Empress of Austria. It
was six o’clock in the evening in June 1841, and a heavy thunderstorm was in progress. Outside
Butti’s room, people followed a reddish-yellow ball of fire in the rain. It floated at second-floor
window level, rose higher, and exploded with a thud at a nearby church tower cross. The artist
wrote a report to physicist Arago. In 1923, this report was quoted by Walther Brand in his
monograph “Der Kugelblitz,” the only one in German to date. François Arago (1837) first used
the term ball lightning for an unexplained group of metastable luminous phenomena of
atmospheric electricity. Ball lightning (BL) makes its random appearance in time and space, lasts
for seconds, and ends with or without traces.
BL cases cause epistemological problems. After hundreds of years of BL case histories and 184
years of scientific interest, most of the material on record is still anecdotal. US lightning
researchers Vladimir Rakov and Martin Uman, in their handbook “Lightning” (2003, p. 656),
write: “The existence of BL seems beyond doubt after thousands of similar reports, but hard
scientific evidence in the form of photos, films or residue, a consensual theory or empirically
convincing laboratory simulation is largely missing.” This sounds unbelievable in our “science
age” - we explore the most distant quasars with space telescopes, but a phenomenon that appears
within reach during thunderstorms should slip through the mesh of natural science? As
spontaneous, erratic phenomena, most BL events are witnessed by chance by non-scientists. When
alleged BL cases are reported by the media, it often remains unclear whether such an object was
actually seen or whether it was just being fantasized about. This means that the BL case also has a
sociopsychological level dealing with witness reports, lay theories, and mental models.
The author encountered the BL debate while studying meteorology in Vienna 1974-1978. He
found BL reporting instructions in the official observer guide of the Austrian weather service,
amused comments at the university, and emotional stories in the public. Getting interested, he
wanted to take a closer look and examine the data. This led to 47 years of case collection,
77
I. Case Studies
interviewing and field investigation with interdisciplinary contacts. First results were published in
1981, a preliminary BL case statistics (with Stummer) in 2002.
History, Definitions, Theories, Laboratory
BL belongs to the field of thunderstorms and lightning. Meteorologically speaking, thunderclouds
are formed by the upward motion of moist air, whereby condensation and freezing of the water
particles lead to charge separation and to electrical phenomena. A distinction is made between
cloud-cloud flashes in the sky, cloud-ground flashes down to the ground, and ground-cloud flashes
from towers or mountains upwards. Lightning is an ultrafast process made up of individual rapid
discharges. In a cloud-to-earth lightning flash, a “stepped leader” starts in the cloud, growing
rapidly downwards, where so-called “streamers” reach up towards it. One of them merges with the
leader into the main discharge. Most cloud-ground flashes have multiple partial discharges
(strokes), which explains the observed flickering of the lightning bolts. The discharge processes
happen in the microsecond (10-6) to millisecond (10-3) range, too fast for the human eye to resolve.
Lightning research is carried out in Austria by ALDIS, the lightning detection and information
network of OVE (Association for Electrical Engineering) and Verbund (Austria’s power
company). Although lightning has been identified as an electric spark discharge since Benjamin
Franklin in 1752, it is far more complicated than the spark of an electrifying machine: There are
different discharges, positive and negative or with polarity change, and of various energy content.
BL as a rare phenomenon has names in many languages (Keul 2005): in Italy fulmine globulari,
in France foudre (or éclair) en boule, in Spain rayo en bola, in Denmark kuglelyn, in Holland ball
bliksem, in Germany Kugelblitz, in Sweden klotblixt, in Finland pallosalama, in Iceland
urdarmáni, in England ball lightning, in Estonia keravälk, in the Czech Republic kulový blesk, in
Hungary gömbvillám, in Russia sharovaya molniya, in Malaysia bola petir and in Japan hinotama.
In Austria’s folklore legends, there are definite BL references (Keul 1993): Be it the rolling
“Klage” of the Leitha Mountains, a ball of fate, “Vizotum” (as much as the devil himself) in the
Bregenzer Woods, which rips careless people apart when rolling down the mountain, or the
Carinthian “Skopniak,” a glowing ball that scorches the beards of wicked people. Although the
early BL stories always give religious interpretations, currently no such references remain, so
observers do not wonder what BL means for them or what it is that wants to tell them something.
Unlike the field of UFOs, BL reports offer a subjectively impressive, but time-invariant repetition
of similar phenomena typical for a natural origin.
Historical BL reports date back to 1557 and 1638, i.e., over 450 years (Doe 2013). Scientific BL
investigations started with “Sur le tonnerre” by French physicist François Arago (1837). The
astrophysicist (and BL observer) Axel Wittmann, from the University of Göttingen, listed BL
phenomenology in 1976 as follows:
Appearance in thunderstorms, often near cloud-ground lightning, round shape less than one meter,
color mainly orange to red, opaque and self-luminous, continuous or irregular movement,
sometimes motionless, frequent penetration into buildings, lifespan seldom over several seconds,
with noise or noiseless, also in the final phase, mostly without traces, i.e., damage and injuries.
In addition to its appearance in buildings, numerous observations in and around aircraft at cruising
altitude pose questions open to research (Doe & Keul 2009, Doe et al. 2009). BL publications—
78
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
already 1,600 listed in Barry’s bibliography (1980), 2,400 in Stenhoff’s collection (1999)—still
have uncertain theoretical foundations, which is why the numerous case studies, hypotheses and
laboratory simulations from different research groups remain unconnected. Turner (2002) called
this a “fragmented science” and demanded more integration and convergent operations. However,
at all congresses of the International Committee on Ball Lightning (ICBL) since 1988, there have
been long sessions with ever newer theories and models and only a few field studies and case
reports. Stanley Singer therefore criticized (2002, p. 6): “Only a small number of observations
have been examined to determine the reliability of the eyewitnesses and to evaluate the report.” In
any case, the establishment of the ICBL was a step forward in 1988, and the board members try to
coordinate field findings at biennial conferences. A technical communication of COST P18, signed
by 30 leading European lightning experts (Thottapillil 2005), cites BL as an open research topic.
In their lightning manual, Rakov and Uman divide BL theories into 16 categories (2003, p, 664):
A. Models with an internal energy source: 1. Heated air with impurities, 2. Dust, droplets, aerosols,
3. Chemical reactions, combustion, 4. High density plasma, 5. Closed current flow loop, 6. Air
vortex with glowing gas, 7. EM field in a thin plasma envelope, 8. Nuclear reactions, antimatter,
9. Smallest black holes, 10. Charge separation, 11. Maser theory with water vapor.
B. Models with an external energy source: 1. Focused atmospheric high frequency fields, 2. Steady,
locally focused current flow, 3. Focused cosmic radiation, 4. Antimatter meteors, 5. Electric fields
on the ground after lightning discharge.
In addition to these 16 categories, there are also “illusion”/”hallucination” models that try to
explain BL a) as a glare/dazzle lightning afterimage on the retina or b) as a neurological lightning
artifact, an EM hallucination. However, this skeptical approach is unable to explain away the entire
spectrum of cases, and above all the photo and video material (Keul et al. 2008).
BL laboratory research, which aims to simulate the phenomenon, developed in a similarly
idiosyncratic manner. Experiments considered silicon nano molecules at the points of lightning
strike (Abrahamson & Dinniss 2000), plasma clouds triggered by a high-voltage pulse over water
(Egorov et al. 2004, Versteegh et al. 2008), flammable substances in plasma (Emelin et al. 1997,
Dikhtyar & Jerby 2006), arc discharges on silicon wafers (Piva et al. 2007) etc. Bychkov et al.
(2010) give a complete historical overview of theories and experiments.
Not laboratory simulation, but an innovative field experiment was carried out by the Uman
research group (Hill et al. 2010). At the Camp Blanding military base in Florida, lightning has long
been triggered by launching rockets with a metal wire during thunderstorms. In the same way,
lightning bolts were triggered in 2008 and passed over about 100 different substances on the
ground, including salt water, silicon wafers, stainless steel, and conifer branches. The resulting
luminous phenomena were photographed and analyzed. There was a flame over salt water for half
a second, luminous silicon fragments fell down for a second, a flashover at the steel surface formed
a ball of light 33 cm in diameter and the discharge in the conifer branches was visible for half a
second. Uman and colleagues did not call this BL, but pointed out the effects of various materials
when exposed to lightning. Stephan and Massey (2008) added that some BL events could be
explained by molten spheres when lightning strikes evaporate metal objects.
79
I. Case Studies
Another problem is the following: The term BL stands for spherical objects, but does not
automatically justify one homogeneous, self-contained phenomenon. The sun and the moon appear
round in the sky and at almost the same angular size without being physically the same. Every
blinding short-circuit arc after a lightning strike appears to the observer as a sphere, but is by no
means spherical, but only an over-exposure image due to irradiation. Rakov and Uman (2003, p.
656) are therefore right with their cautious remark “that there can be more than one type of BL
and therefore more than one mechanism by which BL arises.”
Psychology and Ball Lightning: Mental Models, Lay Theories, Experiment
The majority of ball lightning reports are only verbal. Social science techniques can be used to
interpret them and to assess the testimony of witnesses (Keul 1993). Forensic psychologists have
already done numerous field studies with eyewitnesses, but not in the contexts, situations, and
latencies typical for BL events. Nevertheless, there are interesting results from this research field:
Special details of a sequence of actions are better remembered (Marshall et al. 1971). Central
details of a scene are clearly remembered, even if they caused fear (Kebeck & Lohaus 1986).
People tend to overestimate the duration of fearful and stressful events (Sarason & Stoops 1978).
Observed details can be distorted by suggestive questioning, and also by personal and cultural
stereotypes (Carmichael et al. 1932). Emotionally disturbing sudden events are often stored and
recalled together with irrelevant details of the event situation (“flashbulb memory”; Brown &
Kulik 1977). Incorrectly remembered details are furthermore remembered this way (“freezing
effect”; Kay 1955).
Cognitive psychology speaks of “mental models” as internal symbols or representations of external
reality, essential for perception and interpretation (Craik 1943). For Gentner and Stevens (1983),
a mental model is based on non-qualifiable, obscure, and incomplete information (Gentner &
Stevens 1983)—this is what happens when a round hole in a wall becomes a compelling “proof”
of BL after a thunderstorm. Recently, mental models have been used in ecosystem research as an
interdisciplinary synthesis of theory and methods (Ross et al. 2001). Another term is used in social
and clinical research: “lay theories” are informal, common-sense explanations by laypeople of
certain phenomena, usually completely detached from scientific explanations (Furnham 1988).
The BL case investigator must be aware of the phenomenon of false BL reports. They are produced
by a common mental model or lay theory that goes like this: “Extraordinary events in a
thunderstorm, such as strange or unexpectedly large damage and other unexplained things, are
caused by the extremely dangerous BL.” So, if an “evil” cloud-ground lightning bolt damages a
church or destroys an entire warehouse, BL comes under suspicion—even in the eyes of rural
police or insurance agents. Upset victims and media people are happy to accept the BL label
because it reduces uncertainty. For the author, despite all emotionally charged evidence, this is by
no means BL, but a false alarm. In short, BL investigations cannot be an inductivistic, theory-free
game, but implicitly or explicitly follow a research paradigm (Kuhn 1962): It determines what is
observed and how, which questions may be asked, how results should be interpreted, how
experiments have to be carried out.
Whereas the interest of social scientists in UFOs (or rather, in the UFO observer) has already been
considerable, psychological studies about lightning and BL are still rare. Together with students,
the author accomplished a 51-item survey on lightning knowledge, risk awareness, folk beliefs,
life-saving cognitions, and behavior (N=133, age 20-84, Upper Austria and Salzburg; Keul et al.
80
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
2009). With another student group (Keul et al. 2015), a simple BL perception experiment was
arranged in May 2014 in an empty seminar room of Salzburg University (see Fig. 1): In daylight,
a non-luminous white Styrofoam globe (2 diameters: 15 or 20 cm) was hung from a nylon thread
at eye level 3 meters from the subjects (97% students, 30 male, 30 female, 16-62 years, mean 23,
50% were shown the 15-, 50% the 20-cm object). Subjects saw this object when entering the room
and, after 4 seconds, had to turn around and reconstruct the object size with both hands. After that,
they were asked about the object size in cm. The same task was repeated to indicate the size of a
soccer ball from memory (physically and verbally). The results: Shown with the hands, the 15-cm
object gave a mean size estimate of 15.3 cm, the 20 cm object of 21.7 cm. The verbal mean estimate
was 17.5 cm for the 15-cm globe and 19.9 cm for the 20-cm object. All estimate deviations were
not statistically significant. However, the soccer ball (22 cm for adults), recalled from memory,
had 28.3-28.8 cm physically and 29.7-25.4 cm verbally, which are statistically significant
overestimations. We conclude that educated observers under favorable conditions, low stress and
short recall time can produce fairly accurate size estimates. The results will probably be different
for low education, long recall times and unfavorable conditions, but the harsh judgement of some
experts (usually untrained in experimental psychology) that eyewitness estimations are “good for
nothing” should be treated with caution. A replication of the Salzburg BL experiment with
different borderline conditions (no bright daylight, luminous object, various recall times/stress)
and a general population sample would be a good idea.
Figure 1. The Salzburg BL size experiment.
BL events and non-events
A German BL non-event example
According to a local newspaper, on June 6, 2011, shortly after 20:00 CEST (Central European
Summer Time), a thunderstorm in Strasburg near Uecker-Randow, Mecklenburg-Western
Pomerania, Germany, caused a major fire on the roof of a local prefabricated housing estate. A
journalist for NordKurier wrote (Marten 2011): “... a football-sized fireball sat down during the
thunderstorm on blocks 34 to 37 in Straßburger Siedlungsweg 1, about house entrance 35. The
fireball then raced southward over the roof and set all combustible material on fire.” The fire spread
quickly over the entire length of the roof structure, which burned out completely despite immediate
alarms to all local fire departments. A photovoltaic system had been installed over the full length
81
I. Case Studies
of the roof in the previous autumn—it was destroyed in the fire. On the evening in question, a low
pressure system over the British Isles created two cold fronts with widespread thunderstorms
before 16:00 CEST. Gerhard Diendorfer, head of ALDIS (the Austrian lightning surveillance),
looked through his German records and found a series of four negative cloud-to-earth lightning
strikes between 4,000 and 21,000 amperes scattered over 1 km in the fire area. It seems likely that
a negative cloud-to-ground lightning stroke caused a short circuit in the photovoltaic system,
which then set fire to the entire length of the roof. The short-circuit arcs then appeared to observers
as a moving ball of fire.
An Austrian BL event example
On July 29, 2020, BL was reported to ZAMG Zentralanstalt fuer Meteorologie Vienna. A day
later, the author interviewed the reporting witness, Reinhard Wilhelm, 49 years, executive director
of a technical company with a MSc in management (Keul 2021). ALDIS lightning data were
checked by Gerhard Diendorfer and Rainer Kaltenberger, and as the COVID pandemic prevented
a field investigation, the witness sent a photo reconstruction plus measurements of azimuth,
elevation, size, and object angle.
After heavy thunderstorms over Vienna on July 28, 2020, Mr. Wilhelm and his wife went out into
the garden of their home in Vienna’s 22nd district (Neu Essling) between 22:05 and 22:15 CEST.
Thunderstorms were still in progress, but no rain fell. Looking eastwards, both saw something
striking—Mr. Wilhelm first in the corner of his eye, his wife directly: Moving upwards, the light
seemed to contract into a white sphere which illuminated the clouds, circled shortly, stopped, then
quickly flew up at an angle into the cloud layer and disappeared. The duration was about 2 seconds,
probably longer. The light was white, steady. The object had 0.1 degrees size (witness size test
estimation), was in the east at 45 degrees elevation (i.e., 2 km direct distance) just below the cloud
base, so it was about 3.5 m diameter. Mr. Wilhelm knew BL from the media and sent an email
report to the ZAMG meteorologists.
July 28 was the hottest day so far of 2020 in eastern Austria, with 37.2°C at Vienna, followed by
a cold front with heavy thunderstorms, hail and flooding. The city’s heat island intensified the
thunderstorms. At 22:00 CEST, Grossenzersdorf station 4 km east reported 21°C, 80% relative
humidity, wind 15 km/h (gusts 35), 2.5 mm rain, Vienna airport station a visibility of 22 km, cloud
base at 1,500 m. Of three instability parameters derived from the 18 Z (20 CEST) Vienna
radiosonde, only CAPE (convective available potential energy for instability, deep moist
convection) was strong with >1000. In the 22:01-22:28 CEST ALDIS record, Vienna lightning
activity was still considerable with 108 detections, but not in Neu Essling with only 10 events
within a 5 km radius. At 20:16:28 GMT (22:16:28 CEST), a strong positive cloud-ground stroke
with +170.4 kA was detected 0.5 km west of the witnesses’ location, at their back. A first study of
34 European BL events versus lightning location data 1994-2016 showed a correlation with strong
positive CG strokes (Keul & Diendorfer 2018).
BL Field Investigation Scheme
Random reports almost always come from lay people. Lately, the main medium is email for reports
from observers who find the author’s internet information page. Starting a BL investigation (Keul
2013), the first report must be listened to/read critically and categorized into: a) Errors
(misidentification, fraud, other phenomena), b) Inadequate information/second-hand reports
82
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
(insufficient details, secondary reports—“my late grandfather once saw...”) or c) sufficient details
for further examination. In the third case, direct contact with the main observers is mandatory, via
telephone, internet, or in writing. In substantial recent cases, a cost-intensive field investigation
should be carried out. Without research funding, for economic reasons the researchers’ main
energy should concentrate on promising cases—very qualified observers, photos, videos, material
traces. The author uses a questionnaire for phone calls, email, or letter contacts and a field
investigation scheme as a checklist.
In contrast to pure physical research, there is always an observer who is of psychological and
medical interest. For example, if an observer reports subsequent visual disturbances, one should
not speculate, but ask about ophthalmological symptoms. In a 2012 BL case, it was evidently
photoelectric keratitis. If there are—rarely enough—several observers, separate interviews are
necessary in order to document individual perceptions and details. Interviews are given
voluntarily, so observers should be treated kindly and not “interrogated.” The best situation for
eyewitnesses who are supposed to remember details is to return to the observation site, where
appropriate environmental cues are present and can be taken into account. In this way, for example,
the observation framework can be clarified: Did the object appear in an open field or within a
limited field of vision, was the trajectory only the visible part of a longer one? The observation
duration may be reconstructed in the field: “Now imagine, the whole thing is happening again and
you tell me ‘now’ when it starts and ‘stop’ when it is over.” The duration is measured with a
stopwatch. It can be shorter or longer than first estimated by the observer (compare Sarason &
Stoops 1978). The size estimate poses a similar difficulty—apart from possible overexposure
(irradiation) against a dark background, to ask for centimeters is pointless, because people in
everyday life (perhaps with the exception of some specialists) do not think in centimeters, but use
comparative objects as a size reference. “Soccer ball-size” (for adults) is therefore a more common
specification than “22 cm.” As with any field research, field sketches and photos with a scale are
a matter of course. The anonymity of the observer must be strictly observed (European DSGVO,
English GDPR General Data Protection Regulation DSGVO; Daniel 1918), especially in
controversial cases. Media contacts have to follow ethical standards, observe the copyright of
photos/videos and not be profit-oriented. In the author’s field work, material traces were rare
exceptions (e.g., Keul, Gugenbauerm, & Diendorfer 1993). The assistance of qualified experts
should always be sought for competent trace examinations.
The Montafon Photograph (Keul 1992, 1996): Photography has the potential to record transient
phenomena and allows a laboratory examination of the physical record. Spontaneous photographic
material of BL is rare because it is practically impossible to capture a five-second phenomenon
after a moment of shock with a camera. Therefore, BL will more often appear on long-term shots
and automatic recordings. Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos (Van Utrecht & Ballester Olmos 2019)
holds a catalogue of 140 BL pictures/films 1891-2019. Here is such a case: Werner Burger,
eyewitness and photographer of the BL color slide, contacted the author after a local press callfor-reports in 1990. After inspecting a paper copy of the photo (see Fig. 2), the author went to
Vorarlberg for a field investigation. Thereafter, copies of the photo plus investigation report were
distributed to astronomical, meteorological, and technical experts asking for their opinions. Also,
a computer image analysis was performed. On a 1978 summer night (very likely the cold front
passage of August 3/4), Mr. Burger noticed an approaching storm front in St. Gallenkirch. The
village has 1,400 inhabitants and is located in the Montafon Valley of southern Vorarlberg at about
83
I. Case Studies
900 meters, surrounded by mountain massifs of over 2,000 meters. The 1978 place of observation
was Aussergant near the Silvretta Pass road. Burger put his mirror reflex camera with tripod and
wire trigger on the balcony to photograph lightning. The camera looked towards Mt. Grappeskogel
(2,206 m) in the east. It was dark and before midnight. The observer had just started a further time
recording and pressed the remote release when he heard a noise, “as of a Christmas sparkler, or a
wire brush pulled over an edge,” then ahead, “a fireball fell down.” Burger, a bit shocked, let go
of the wire trigger before the object disappeared. A reconstruction on the spot timed two seconds
visual observation time and before that, one second of noise. The object seemed to be in free-fall.
The lightning and BL long-term photos were made with a Fujica AZ1, focal length 55 mm, on
Agfa CT-18 diapositive film, 50 ASA. After development, the lightning slides were overexposed,
but the BL appeared sharp and with details.
The observer was born 1957 in the Montafon Valley and in 1978 was working for a cable car
company. At the time of inquiry, he had government work and, together with his wife, ran a bedand-breakfast. He had normal visual acuity and was an active athlete. The color slide measures
23x35 mm. It was scanned for photo analysis (see Fig. 2). In the interdisciplinary analysis (Keul
1996), meteor astronomer Zdenek Ceplecha, of Ondřejov, Czech Republic, emphasized the
parabolic form of the trajectory, but excluded a bright meteor (it was in front of the clouds!). He
estimated it as an object one meter across at a distance of 400 meters. He pointed out that the two
longest and brightest sparks followed different paths. Pyrotechnician Claus Feuerstein did not
recognize any typical fireworks rocket. The photographed “sparks” were not customary in
pyrotechnics, but looked military to him, such as burning gas or a liquid. Josef Scheutz, a second
pyrotechnician, thought he recognized a “Scorpio bomb” pyro effect, but the author could not
photograph a BL-similar effect with one of his fireworks at Linz, Austria. “Bombs” usually
explode after a vertical climb without a luminous track. Colonel Marterbauer, Austrian Army,
Salzburg, said that firing artillery ammunition is not allowed in the Montafon Valley, but only on
special military exercise grounds. He definitely excluded an artillery shell or grenade in the photo.
Lightning protection engineer Alfred Gugenbauer, Linz, Upper Austria, saw an upward lightning
flash as possible explanation. His hypothesis, however, fits neither the observation nor the
photographic data. Upward lightning would neither be observed nor photographed as a falling
object. The head of ALDIS (Austrian Lightning Location and Information System), lightning
protection engineer Gerhard Diendorfer, contradicted the upward lightning hypothesis.
Photographed cloud-ground or cloud-cloud lightning forms a continuous channel, not a fragment.
Lightning researcher Doug G. Jordan, a US colleague of Professor Uman in Florida, examined the
photography during a visit to Austria. He noticed “no standard lightning,” wondered why the
“sparks” had similar forms, and said the object might be something that falls down burning after a
lightning strike. Hannspeter Winter, Plasma Physics professor at the University of Technology
Vienna: “Something fell from the sky and burned out… It is definitely not a highly ionized
plasma… When the film shows the correct color temperature, this is a rather cold phenomenon, a
conventional combustion process of 1,500 to 2,000 degrees Celsius maximum. On the other hand,
plasma, like lightning, would be in the blue spectral range.” Lightning protection expert Walter
Hattinger, of Salzburg, saw neither conventional lightning nor burning magnesium. Maybe a
flammable liquid? Salzburg Fire Brigade training officer Greisberger denied that: “A burning
liquid would not be compact, but would quickly dissolve... Burning gas does not burn so bright…
This is a solid body that is burning in the core and somehow dissolves.”
84
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Further discussions at the ICBL BL congresses in Los Angeles 1992 and in Salzburg 1993 did not
arrive at new insights. In the Montafon Valley, the author made long-term photo exposures of
alpine signal missiles fired by Werner Burger as a comparison. Their sparks were rather regular,
not similar to the sparks on the BL photograph. Although the absence of any landscape details on
the Montafon photograph represents a certain forensic weakness, its rich details are remarkable
and should encourage further analyzes by interested experts.
Figure 2. Montafon BL photograph
© Werner Burger, 1978
Figure 3. Zwoenitz BL video composite
© Sabine & Thomas Fuchs, 2003
The Zwoenitz Video Record (Keul 2004a, 2004b, Schrattenecker & Baumegger 2004): BL
movies or videos would be most valuable, but there are almost no well-documented ones. A few
were discussed by Barry (1980) and Stenhoff (1999). A 1976 video from Transvaal, South Africa,
shows a round shape detaching from a cloud-ground lightning channel (Eriksson 1977). An alleged
BL video from Ashford, England, 1989, turned out to be an internal reflection of the camcorder
(Meaden 1990, Bergstrom & Campbell 1991). On the internet, especially YouTube, many BL
videos circulate, but all are of unknown origin without well-documented case details, and some
are even deliberate fakes. The worldwide use of digital photography, cam/webcorders, and
cellphone cams already makes the chance documentation of BL easier, but they have to pass a
scientific validity check.
On April 22, 2003, the author received an email from students Sabine and Thomas Fuchs of
Zwönitz, Saxony, Germany: “…We have filmed a phenomenon during a thunderstorm and assume
it could be BL.” A 332 KB AVI file with an eight-second color video was included (Fig. 3 is a
composite of the video film frames). A telephone interview gave more details: The family lives in
a former East-German concrete-prefab (Plattenbau) building west of the city center. On the
evening of April 19, Thomas fastened his webcam to a chair, with a view through a window to the
east, to record possible lightning. The sky was cloudy, no precipitation, thunder. The webcam
recording started at 18:44 computer time. Thomas left the room to eat something and stopped the
record after four minutes. Later that evening, his sister Sabine detected a moving light source on
the webcam record.
85
I. Case Studies
The video shows the flat roof of the next prefab building under a dark, cloudy sky. After about
four seconds, a yellow-orange, bright light source comes out from behind the roof, moves upwards,
jerking along a wavy track with two brightness maxima before it dims after 2 seconds or disappears
into clouds. The first impression was like a reflection in a train window. The webcam used was a
three-year-old Mustek WCAM300 with a 1/3 inch (0.85 cm) color CMOS sensor from RGB24 and
640x480 pixel maximum resolution. Manual focus, fixed aperture 2.0, built-in microphone (set to
zero in the video) and 54° field of view. Recording and processing used VirtualDub 1.51 with
DivX compression, 25 fps. The webcam was connected to a Toshiba 200 MHz 64 MB RAM
notebook. A Mustek frame rate of 15 fps, i.e., 15 frames per second, means for a resolution of
640x480 pixels that 10 images per second are lost due to lack of system capacity, i.e., not stored.
This explains the jerky motion, like in an old silent movie. From 18:44 to 18:48 computer time,
the system recorded 4 minutes and 3 seconds of video signals. The webcam was about 1 meter
away from the closed and clean window, the webcam axis tilted slightly to the left. The family
lives on the fifth floor (above ground level). Between the blocks is a green area. The housing estate
is located in open hills at 500-700 m above sea level. To the west, behind the next building in the
camera direction, is a local railway and a high-voltage line. No airfield or military installation is
in close range, no fireworks or festival took place on the day of the recording. The roof nozzles
visible in the video are fireplace exhausts. A roof inspection by Thomas Fuchs did not reveal any
special features. At the time of their recording, neither teen was interested in money or publicity,
so they wanted to keep the video and report away from the media until examination and
clarification. Running through the video material with Magix Program Video 2.0 Deluxe, 56
images took a total of 2.3 seconds. Thomas Fuchs produced a composite, i.e., a superimposition
of all video images on his recording (see Fig. 3). The wavy trajectory differs from a parabola.
Visible are two light maxima and three jumps through lost images.
The German Weather Service (DWD) reported a flat high-pressure system over Scandinavia on
April 19, 2003, with Germany at its southern edge. At 20:00 CEST, the warm front of a low over
France had reached southern Germany with showers and thunderstorms. It was almost stationary
until 02:00 at night. Zwönitz had bad weather with overcast sky, rain showers, and some lightning
strikes. Certainly, the video did not record a meteor under the clouds. Gerhard Diendorfer, head of
ALDIS Austria, also ruled out ordinary cloud-ground lightning. The reflection hypothesis was
checked on the spot in 2003 in another webcam video by turning on the room lighting, which
appeared motionless in the form of four light circles. Fireworks are implausible during a
thunderstorm and without a festival. For a privately shot signal rocket, appearance and trajectory
are atypical—its luminous ball does not fly in curves, but in a simple ballistic parabola. As with
the Montafon photo, the BL color temperature is in the yellowish area near to white.
On a vacation trip, the author visited the Fuchs family at Zwönitz on September 16, 2003, for a
field investigation. There was no reason to doubt the reported case history. An angular
determination of the trajectory length found 20-25 degrees, which gives an angular velocity of the
object of at least 10 degrees per second. At an assumed distance of 100 m, this would have been a
speed of 65 km/hour. A local press reporter found out that at 18:45 CEST, the Chemnitz Rescue
Center had received a false fire alarm from a garden center 1.7 km from the camera position.
Because of 2-3 minutes time uncertainty for the observer’s computer time, this was practically at
the same time. Asked about the frequency of false alarms during thunderstorms, the fire brigade
86
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
officer said that technical problems like local grid overvoltage were quite common. Gerhard
Diendorfer, ALDIS Vienna, found in the time interval 18.40 to 18.50 CEST 13 flash registrations
in a 20 km radius. Two negative cloud-ground flashes with 12 and 15 kA shortly after 18:46 were
possible candidates for the local main’s overvoltage. Alfred Gaiswinkler, a retired power company
director, contacted the Vattenfall Center about possible overvoltage in their high-voltage network.
None did occur in the time window in question.
Next came the critical review of the webcam video regarding a possible fake, i.e., fabricated data.
This was done by the two video professionals, Ruediger Schrattenecker and Siegfried Baumegger
(2004) of the University of Applied Sciences Salzburg. They analyzed the Zwönitz video with
Premiere Pro and Photoshop 7.0. Due to a single-image analysis, they found the already-referenced
frame dropping, picture losses from the 25 fps recording to the 15 fps storage. To discover possible
compositing (assembling objects or animations into a video via postproduction), they used frame
contrast analysis. For eight images, they examined enlarged edge pixels between object and
environment in Photoshop 7.0 for color value differences as they occur when copying in foreign
material. None were found. Another possible trick to “iron out” RGB differences by multiple
MPEG encoding to remove processing tracks was not detectable. The video professionals
commented: “If the two really faked that, you should recommend them to Hollywood.” Thus,
Schrattenecker and Baumegger confirmed the authenticity of the video record. The strength of the
Zwönitz case is that the technical recording conditions of .avi film are well-known. Further
interpretations of the material cannot come from a theorists’ desk but have to be empirical checks
in which possible explanatory hypotheses are tested. If the Zwönitz object really was BL, then we
have a two-second record of its trajectory.
European and International Ball Lightning Statistics
Brand (1923, 2020) published the first European BL monograph 99 years ago where he collected
and analyzed 215 cases from scientific journals, from 19 European countries and some from
overseas. What can be said about published European cases today? This was discussed by Keul
and Schwarzenbacher (1989), Keul and Stummer (2002), Keul (2005, 2006, 2008), and others. A
BL survey in 21 European countries (Keul 2005) showed that weather services in 17 countries are
aware of the phenomenon. Official reports exist from Austrian climate observers, unofficial reports
from staff come from Austria, Finland and Sweden. Police and media reports of BL as well as
reports from the public are present in 15 of the 21 countries. BL cases are scientifically documented
in 14 of the 21 countries. Publications followed in 10 of the 21 countries. Published European BL
case collections, each with over 200 reports, exist for Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Hungary
and Russia (Keul 2005). There are French databases by Hubert (1996) and Piccoli (2011), Italian
databases by Toselli (1999) and Carbognani (2006), and a Hungarian one by Egely (1987). ExUSSR databases contain over 3,000 documented cases (Stakhanov 1979, Smirnov 1993), also from
Asia.
The author compared six national data sets based on 22 important variables (Keul 2008). Some of
them (year, thunderstorm, duration, shape, distance, size, color, details) are present in all
databases; others (particularly witness-related data such as gender, age, occupation, reaction,
number of observers) are only available for the German-speaking and French areas. Observation
age: 30-70% of the observations in Germany came from children or schoolchildren. Emotional
reactions to the observations were similar in Germany and Austria—half were interested, half were
87
I. Case Studies
scared. Number of people: 40-50% German-speaking observers were alone, whereas in France
60% of the cases had two or more observers. Years: Most BL databases start around 1900 and end
before 2000. The maximum years in four databases were in the 1950s and 1960s. Months: All files
except Italy show a clear summer maximum with 60 to 80% of the cases. The summer summit is
steep in Germany, Austria and the ex-USSR and is flatter in Italy and Hungary. Time of day: In
four databases, BL followed the thunderstorm maximum in the afternoon (between 12 and 6 P.M.).
In Italy, 30% late events (6-9 P.M.) were also recorded. Thunderstorm occurrence: A typical
pattern for 50 to 80% of cases. But 6 to 20% also happen outside thunderstorms, in Italy almost
40%. In the German-speaking countries, around 60% report simultaneous precipitation and 20 to
40% simultaneous cloud-to-ground lightning. But a larger number (25-60%) has no connection
with lightning. Number of objects: In Germany and Austria, over 90% of the BL are single objects.
Duration data: 40-80% fall within 1-5 seconds; most cases take no more than 20 seconds. Shape:
80 to 90% report circular or round objects. Distance: The distance object-observer is less than 5
meters in 50-70% of cases, i.e., in close proximity. 70-80% are within 20 m. Size: The size
category has mean and median in the interval 10-50 cm. 60 to 80% of the objects are smaller than
30 cm. More than 75% of reports in German-language countries have a sharply defined BL surface.
Color data from all six databases have their maximum in the red region of the visible spectrum
(50-75%). Typical colors reported are yellow, red, and white. Brightness: It is described as not
dazzling in 55-90% of cases. However, around 10-25% are dazzling (as high as 44% in Hentschel’s
German collection), which brings them close to electric arcs from a short circuit, especially in the
case of a white-blue color. Movement: Typical primary motion in German-speaking countries and
the ex-USSR is horizontal, with 50-75% of the cases. Other movements are descending, complex,
stationary, or (rarely) upwards. Secondary motion such as hopping is reported. Location: All six
databases differentiate between observations indoors and outdoors—the typical indoor percentage
is 35 percent, less in Hungary, and up to 50% in the ex-USSR. Residue is mentioned in 20-30% of
the cases, in France even 43%. Noise is less common (15-20%), odor is even rarer (7-15%). An
end-of-observation-explosion is reported in 30-50% of the cases; in France only in 13%.
Finally, six national BL files show more similarities than differences for central parameters.
Although the data come from locations up to 3,000 km apart with very different climatic
conditions, basic characteristics such as occurrence during thunderstorms, distance from the
observer, size, color, and brightness form common clusters. One out of three BL events happens
inside a building. Up to 60% of the objects end explosively. Further international data sets come
from the USA (N=513 McNally 1966; N=112 Rayle 1966) and Japan (N=2,060 Ohtsuki &
Ofuruton 1989). Although the Japanese collected assiduously, they hardly published any results.
In the US, 85% of BL cases were related to thunderstorms—in Europe, the percentage was higher.
The most common US values for observation time (1-4 seconds) and size (13-40 cm) are similar
in Europe. The US color maximum in the red-yellow area (38%) is also comparable. In the US,
sudden decay accounts for 74% of cases, and in Europe up to 60% explode. So, 99 years after
senior teacher Walther Brand (1923), we have 4,420 cases instead of his 215, but with sometimes
dubious data quality, while Brand’s cases came from scientific journals, and he further reduced
their number from 600 to 215. In addition to the problem of data quality, next analysis steps should
deal with clusters of characteristics, such as the simultaneous occurrence of “dazzling,” “metal
contact,” and “blue-white,” which speaks for short-circuit arcs. In addition, Geographic
Information Systems (GIS) should be used on a routine basis, i.e., cases should be geo-referenced
in topographic and climatological maps. The pioneer study of 34 European BL events versus
88
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
lightning location data 1994-2016 which showed a correlation with strong positive CG strokes
(Keul & Diendorfer 2018) is about be replicated and tested with US data (Sonnenfeld et al. 2020).
Obstacles and Opportunities for a Scientific Solution
After four centuries of BL reports, any further public controversy about the very existence of BL
sounds medieval, as in pre-Enlightenment-times. BL case data are intelligible to natural and social
scientists, and a considerable number of well-documented cases from qualified observers are
known internationally (Keul 2021). What remains as epistemological difficulties are a) the short
duration of events, b) the randomness of observations, c) non-reported observations, i.e., the dark
field, d) emotional interpretation and subjective frames of reference, and e) a large number of
physical objects and effects that interact under non-laboratory conditions. Therefore, what is
needed first is definitely not new speculative theories, but more field research, especially on
material traces and photo/video cases, with the aim of identifying places and conditions as “hot
spots” where the phenomenon appears more frequently and where instrumental records can assist
research. Only high-quality, valid records will then enable laboratory projects to reproduce the
natural effects.
Contrary to widespread public fears, average BL events are not fatal (although injuries can happen;
Shmatov 2003) and in most cases end without causing damage. As a result, so far there exists no
particular pressure on the security and insurance industries to invest funds in a scientific study.
BL-interested scientists are mostly part-time researchers and receive little or no funding. BL
research is basic research, but may produce interesting applications. Vladimir L. Bychkov, ICBL
Vice President, noted in 2012 that further progress could be made if one looked closely at the
interaction of BL with natural materials (metal, sand, glass), with BL models moving from pure
plasma to a combustion of solid matter in plasma. In order to obtain more reliable data, field
research should be internationalized, refined through training, and evaluated critically. BL research
needs more interdisciplinary cooperation, for example with historians, cultural geographers,
consulting meteorologists, and digital forensic scientists. In 2012, BL was included as a new event
type in the ESWD, the largest European database for storm events (European Severe Weather
Database; Holzer et al. 2011).
Acknowledgments: The author thanks numerous observers and researchers. Anton Puehringer,
Axel Wittmann, and the late Karl-Heinz Hentschel did pioneering work in Austria and Germany.
Austrian and German cases were then investigated in the field with the help of Michael Karrer,
Gerhard Grau, Oliver Stummer, and Claudia Hinz. The cooperation with Gerhard Diendorfer,
ALDIS, Michael Staudinger, Otto Svabik, Thomas Krennert, Rainer Kaltenberger, ZAMG Vienna,
and Alois M. Holzer, ORF and ESSL, is much appreciated. Boris M. Smirnov, Vladimir Bychkov,
Anatoly Nikitin and Mikhail L. Shmatov, Russia, Yoshi-Hiko Ohtsuki, Japan, the late Stanley
Singer, Karl D. Stephan and Richard Sonnenfeld, USA, the late Gerard Berger, France, VicenteJuan Ballester Olmos, Spain, and Robert K. Doe, Great Britain/Netherlands, helped to put
European BL data in the international perspective. Readers of this review who have seen BL or
know an unreported case might be interested in my English/German reporting webpage
https://kugelblitz.sbg.ac.at/kugelblitz.html
89
I. Case Studies
References
Abrahamson, J., and J. Dinniss (2000). “Ball lightning caused by oxidation of nanoparticle
networks from normal lightning strikes on soil.” Nature 403, pp. 519-521.
Arago, F. (1837). Sur le tonnere. Annuaire pur l’an 1838 presente au roi par le bureau des
Longitudes. Paris: Bachelier, pp. 221-618.
Barry, J.D. (1980). Ball lightning and bead lightning. New York: Plenum.
Bergstrom, A., and S. Campbell (1991). “The Ashford ‘ball lightning’ video film explained.” The
Journal of Meteorology 16, pp. 185-190.
Brand, W. (1923). Der Kugelblitz. Hamburg: Henri Grand.
_____. (2010). Der Kugelblitz (reprint). Remagen-Oberwinter: Kessel.
Brown, R., and J. Kulik (1977). “Flashbulb memories.” Cognition 5, pp. 73-79.
Bychkov, V.L. (2012). Personal communication on the BL state-of-the-art. February 8.
Bychkov, V.L., A.I. Nikitin, and G.C. Dijkhuis (2010). “Ball lightning investigations.” In V.L.
Bychkov, G.V. Golubkov, and A.I. Nikitin (Eds.). The atmosphere and ionosphere.
Physics of earth and space environments. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 201-373.
Carbognani, A. (2006). “The nature of ball lightning in Italy.” The Journal of Meteorology 31,
pp. 307-315.
Carmichael, L.C., H.P. Hogan, and A.A. Walter (1932). “An experimental study of the effect of
language on the reproduction of visually perceived form.” Journal of Experimental
Psychology 15, pp. 73-86.
Craik, K.J.W. (1943). The nature of explanation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Daniel (2018). “EU data protection regulation: tips to ensure GDPR compliance.”
https://www.eurodns.com/blog/eu-data-protection-regulation-gdpr
Dikhtyar, V., and E. Jerby (2006). “Fireball ejection from a molten hot spot to air by localized
microwaves.” Physical Review Letters 96, 045002-1 – 045002-4.
Doe, R.K. (2013). “Ball lightning: the illusive force of nature.” In K. and N. Pfeifer (Eds.), Forces
of nature and cultural responses. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 7-26.
Doe, R.K., and A.G. Keul (2009). “Ball lightning risk to aircraft.” EGU2009 Geophysical
Research Abstracts, Vol. 11, EGU2009-0, NH1.7/AS4.4 Lightning and its Atmospheric
Effects.
Doe, R.K., A.G. Keul, and V. Bychkov (2009). “An analysis of ball lightning-aircraft incidents.”
Poster AGU American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2009, San Francisco, CA,
December 14-18.
Egely, G. (1987). Hungarian ball lightning observations. Budapest: Central Research Institute for
Physics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Egorov, A.I., S.I. Stepanov, and G.D. Shabanov (2004). “Laboratory demonstration of ball
lightning.” Physics Uspekhi 47, 1, p, 99.
Emelin, S.E., V.S. Semenov, V.L. Bychkov, N.K. Belisheva, and A.P. Korshyk (1997). “Some
objects formed in the interaction of electrical discharges with metals and polymers.”
Technical Physics 42, pp. 269-277.
Eriksson, A.J. (1977). “Video tape recording of a possible ball lightning event.” Nature 268 (July
7), pp. 35-36.
Furnham, A. (1988). Lay theories. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Gentner, D., and A.L. Stevens (1983). Mental models. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
90
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Hill, J.D., M.A. Uman, M. Stapleton, D.M. Jordan, A.M. Chebaro, and C.J. Biagi (2010).
“Attempts to create ball lightning with triggered lightning.” Journal of Atmospheric and
Solar-Terrestrial Physics 72, pp. 913–925.
Holzer, A.M., P. Groenemeijer, N. Dotzek, B. Feuerstein, T. Krennert, T. Kuehne, Z. Liang, and
S. Haeseler (2011). “New event types for the European Severe Weather Database
(ESWD).” 6th European Conference on Severe Storms (ECSS 2011), 3-7 October, Palma
de Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain.
Hubert, P. (1996). “Nouvelle enquête sur la foudre en boule—analyse et discussion des rėsultats.”
Rapport PH/SC/96001. Saclay, France: Commisariat a l’Energie Atomique.
Jones, N.A., H. Ross, T. Lynam, P. Perez, and A. Leitch (2011). “Mental models: an
interdisciplinary synthesis of theory and methods.” Ecology and Society 16(1), p. 46.
Kay, H. (1955). “Learning and retaining verbal material.” British Journal of Psychology 46, pp.
81-100.
Kebeck, G., and A. Lohaus (1986). “Effect of emotional arousal on free recall of complex
material.” Perceptual and Motor Skills 63, pp. 461-462.
Keul, A.G. (1981). “Kugelblitze.” Naturwissenschaften 68, pp. 134-136.
_____. (1992). “Possible ball lightning colour photograph from Sankt Gallenkirch, Vorarlberg,
Austria.” The Journal of Meteorology 17, pp. 73-82.
_____. (Ed.) (1993). Progress in ball lightning research: Proceedings of the interdisciplinary
congress Vizotum, Salzburg, Austria, Sep 20-22. Salzburg: Vizotum.
_____. (1996). “Ball lightning photographs—testing the limits.” The Journal of Meteorology 21,
pp. 82-88.
_____. (2004a). “A possible ball lightning webcam record from Zwoenitz, Germany.” The Journal
of Meteorology 29, pp. 168-173.
_____. (2004b). “Further results of the Zwoenitz webcam case.” The Journal of Meteorology 29,
pp. 176-180.
_____. (2005). “European survey on ball lightning.” The Journal of Meteorology 30, pp. 99-103.
_____. (2008). “European ball lightning statistics.” In I.V. Karpov (Ed.), AIS-2008 Atmosphere,
ionosphere, safety. Kaliningrad, July 7-12, 2008. Kaliningrad: I. Kant University, pp. 111112.
_____. (2013). “The ball lightning controversy: Empirical case studies.” In K. & N. Pfeifer (Eds.),
Forces of nature and cultural responses. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 27-48.
_____. (2021). “A brief history of ball lightning observations by scientists and trained
professionals.” History of Geo- and Space Sciences 12, pp. 43-56.
Keul, A.G., and G. Diendorfer (2018). “Assessment of ball lightning cases by correlated LLS
Data.” 34th International Conference on Lightning Protection, Rzeszow, Poland, 2-7
September 2018, IEEE 978-1-5386-6635-7/18/$31.00.
Keul, A.G., M.M. Freller, R. Himmelbauer, B. Holzer, and B. Isak (2009). “Lightning knowledge
and folk beliefs in Austria.” Journal of Lightning Research 1, pp. 22-29.
Keul, A.G., A. Gugenbauer, and G. Diendorfer (1993). “A ball lightning trace case at Perg, Upper
Austria.” The Journal of Meteorology 18, pp. 287-294.
Keul, A.G., K.H. Hentschel, and O. Stummer (2006). “German ball lightning data bank results.”
In G.C. Dijkhuis, D.K. Callebaut, and M. Lu (Eds.), Proceedings Ninth International
Symposium on Ball Lightning, ISBL-06, 16-19 August 2006, Eindhoven, The Netherlands,
pp. 96-105.
91
I. Case Studies
Keul, A.G., S. Lengauer, S. Ludwig, and A. Kovacz (2015). “Experimental ball lightning size
estimation.” 1st International Symposium on Lightning and Storm-Related Phenomena,
July 2-3 2015, Aurillac, France.
Keul, A.G., P. Sauseng, and G. Diendorfer (2008). “Ball lightning – an electromagnetic
hallucination?” The International Journal of Meteorology 33, pp. 89-95.
Keul, A.G., and K. Schwarzenbacher (1989). “Phenomenological and psychological analysis of
150 Austrian ball lightning reports.” In Y.H. Ohtsuki (Ed.) Science of ball lightning (Fire
ball). Singapore: World Scientific, pp. 58-80.
Keul, A.G. and O. Stummer (2002). “Comparative analysis of 405 Central European ball lightning
cases.” The Journal of Meteorology 27:274, pp. 385-393.
Kuhn, T.S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Marshall, J., K.H. Marquis, and S. Oskamp (1971). “Effects of kind of question and atmosphere
of interrogation on accuracy and completeness of testimony.” Harvard Law Review 84, pp.
1620-1643.
Marten, R. (2011). “Kugelblitz entfacht Großbrand.” NordKurier Strassburg, June 11.
McNally, J.R. (1966). Preliminary report on ball lightning. Oak Ridge National Laboratory No.
3938.
Meaden, G.T. (1990). “Preliminary analysis of the video recording of a rotating ball-of-light
phenomenon which happened at Ashford, Kent, in England on 10 September 1989.” The
Journal of Meteorology 15, pp. 128-140.
Ohtsuki, Y.H., and H. Ofuruton (1989). “Nature of ball lightning in Japan.” In Y.H. Ohtsuki (Ed.),
Science of ball lightning (fire ball): Tokyo, Japan. 4-6 July 1988. Singapore: World
Scientific, pp. 31-57.
Piccoli, R. (2011). “A statistical study of ball lightning events observed between 1994 and 2011.”
Internet file. Champs-sur-Tarentaine: Laboratoire de recherche sur la foudre.
Piva, G.S., A.C. Pavão, E.A. de Vasconcelos, O. Mendes, Jr., and E.F. da Silva, Jr. (2007).
“Production of ball-lightning-like luminous balls by electrical discharge in silicon.”
Physical Review Letters 98, 048501-1 – 048501-4.
Rakov, V.A., and M.A. Uman (2003). Lightning. Physics and effects. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Rayle, W.D. (1966). Ball lightning characteristics, NASA Technical Note TN D-3188,
Washington, D.C.: NASA.
Sarason, I.G., and R. Stoops (1978). “Test anxiety and the passage of time.” Journal of Consulting
and Clinical Psychology 46, pp. 102-108.
Schrattenecker, R., and S. Baumegger (2004). “Video analysis of the Zwoenitz webcam data.” The
Journal of Meteorology 29:289, pp. 174-176.
Singer, S. (2002). “Ball lightning—the scientific effort.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society of London, Series A, 360, pp. 5-9.
Shmatov, M.L. (2003). “New model and estimation of the danger of ball lightning.” Journal of
Plasma Physics 69, 6, pp. 507-527.
Smirnov, B.M. (1993). “Physics of ball lightning.” Physics Reports 224, pp. 151-236.
Sonnenfeld, R., K. Stephan, A. Keul, I. Edelman, and S. Jimenez (2020). “Applying modern
meteorological tools to the study of ball lightning.” Poster AGU fall meeting, online, 117 December 2020.
Stakhanov, I. P. (1979). The physical nature of ball lightning. Moscow: Atomizdat, 1979.
92
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Stephan, K.D., and N. Massey (2008). “Burning molten metallic spheres: One class of ball
lightning?” Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 70, pp. 1589-1596.
Stenhoff, M. (1999). Ball lightning. New York: Kluwer.
Thottappillil, R. (2005). “The physics of lightning flash and its effects.” COST P18 proposal.
Technical Annex. Uppsala, Sweden.
Toselli, P. (1999). “BLITA Italian ball lightning database.” Poster ISBL-99. 23-25 August 1999.
Antwerp, Belgium.
Turner, D.J. (2002). “The fragmented science of ball lightning (with comment).” Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series A, 360, pp. 107-152.
Van Utrecht, W., and V.J. Ballester Olmos (2019). “Lightning-Like Phenomenon on 1893
Photograph.”
https://www.academia.edu/39936310/LIGHTNINGLIKE_PHENOMENON_ON_1893_PHOTOGRAPH.
Versteegh, A., K. Behringer, U. Fantz, G. Fussmann, B. Juettner, and S. Noack (2008). “Longliving plasmoids from an atmospheric water discharge.” Plasma Sources Science and
Technology 17, pp. 1-8.
Wittmann, A. (1976). “Gibt es Kugelblitze?” Umschau 76, pp. 516-521.
93
I. Case Studies
Very Close Encounter with a UAP in Levitation
Éric Maillot and Jean-Michel Abrassart
Abstract: The “Amaranth” is a very famous French close encounter of the second kind that
was officially investigated by GEPAN in 1982. It is still generally considered “unexplained”
because of its duration, the proximity of the witness and some alleged physical effects on plants.
Working within the conceptual framework of the Psychosocial Model, we put forward in this
article a mundane explanation. After looking for more than a decade for unpublished original
documents, we have found new information that support the hypothesis that a Mylar balloon
was the real cause. We present a coherent scenario and analyze the perceptual mechanism that
led to this case. Based on those, we think that it should now be regarded as “probably explained.”
Keywords: Amaranth, Close encounter of the second kind, GEIPAN, Mylar balloon, UAP,
Perceptual illusions, Psychosocial model, UFO, UFO landing
Introduction
The “Amaranth” 1 is one of the most famous French UFO cases, considered by the Groupe
d'Études des Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés (GEPAN)2 as being one of the strangest
that they have ever investigated. This case takes its name for a plant that was chemically
analyzed in the hope of finding tangible proof of a UFO landing. The claim is that the plants
withered because of the proximity to the UFO. This Amaranth case has been classified by
GEPAN in the category D of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP),3 that is “unexplained after
investigation.” Working inside the theoretical framework of the Psychosocial Model (Abrassart,
2016b), we will discuss a possible mundane explanation for this case.
After looking for more than a decade for unpublished original documents, we have found
information that supports the hypothesis that a Mylar balloon was the real cause. Previously,
some claimed that it was impossible for a Mylar balloon to have stayed totally still and floating
in mid-air for such a long period of time. After careful review of some new evidence available,
we found that there was in fact a possible support in the garden at the time of the observation:
some amaranths4 were there that could have done the job. The witness did some gardening and
pulled them up before the GEPAN investigator arrived, but their presence was still documented
by the gendarmerie’s5 preliminary investigation.
Realizing this, we think now that the Mylar balloon hypothesis is a very strong candidate to
explain this famous French case. These balloons, which still today deceive witnesses and
experts, were still rare objects in the early 1980s, and thus seldom observed and unrecognized.
If the nickname “Amaranth” is given to this case in reference to alleged effects on the so-called
1
All the images extracted from NT17 are published here with the special authorization of the GEIPAN (private
communication with the second author). They are all ©CNES/GEIPAN.
2
GEPAN is the ancestor (1977-1988) of the current Groupe d’Études et d'Information sur les Phénomènes
Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés, or GEIPAN, a unit of the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales
(CNES).
3
We translate here “Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés (PAN)” used by the CNES as the English equivalent
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).
4
Or maybe hollyhocks: it is impossible to know for sure at this point.
5
A military force with law enforcement duties among the civilian population in France.
94
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
dried flowers, the irony would be that these plants would be at the same time the mystery and
the explanation!
After the previous critical review of the weaknesses in the investigation of the Amaranth case
by D. Rossoni, É. Maillot, and É. Déguillaume (2007, pp. 326-349) and due to the lack of
verified elements supporting hypotheses, a UAP D classification still seemed acceptable but,
with the possible mundane explanation proposed in this article, we do not think it is still
warranted. This case perfectly illustrates that sometimes perceptual illusions can last a long
time and transform mundane objects into something very strange and mysterious.
General Presentation of the Case
This is a very impressive case at face value. A summary of the official investigation was
published in Note Technique n° 17 (NT17) and written by Jean-Jacques Velasco (GEPAN,
1983), who would become the director of GEPAN the same year.
October 21, 1982: “Henri”6 is 30 years old and a cell biology researcher. He lives in Laxou
(Nancy district), in Meurthe-et-Moselle (eastern France). He decides that day to do some
gardening. At 12:33, Henri looks up and sees something in the sky. A plane is the first thing
that comes to his mind, but then he realizes that a UFO is flying towards him. The bright spot
becomes a round shape. It suddenly stops near him, levitating one meter above the ground.
Henri evaluates the diameter at 1.5 m at a height of 0.8 m. Henri goes to fetch his camera, but
it does not seem to work when he comes back. He then approaches the UFO and looks at it
closely. He says “Hello” to it in different languages, but he gets no reply. At 12:56, the UFO
flies away, just as silently as when it arrived. Henri then gives his testimony to the gendarmerie
(which does a preliminary investigation from October 22 to October 27, 19827), which later
leads to the full-on GEPAN investigation.
Unfortunately, the “Amaranth” remains one of the rare cases where access to the original report8
is still not possible on the GEIPAN online database. Éric Maillot (the first author of this paper)
asked in a private communication with J. Paul Aguttes, the current director of the Groupe
d’Études et d'Information sur les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux non identifies (GEIPAN), to
explain the reason behind this. His answer was that priority has probably been given by his
predecessors to the more recent unpublished online cases and its priority to process the
testimonies that arrive regularly. According to him, since the original report dates to 1982, it
may be posted in the future, when someone takes the time to go back in the archives or “revisit”
this UAP D. We think that, for such a prominent case, GEIPAN should make the effort of
putting all the original pieces and report on their online database for further critical examination
by the scientific community.
What made this case famous is that there were some alleged chemical alterations of the
amaranths due to the presence of the UFO nearby. Some chemical analysis was made by the
GEPAN team, but NT17 is in fact inconclusive on that matter: the plants’ leaves did wither, but
it is impossible to know for sure if it is because of the presence of the UFO or simply because
of the ordinary environmental condition at that time of the year. GEPAN also took some
samples of the grass (GEPAN, 1983, pp. 47-51), but NT17 does not state why no results
concerning the grass was ever published, despite samples correctly identified on two
6
Pseudonym used by GEPAN to protect the anonymity of the witness.
The GEPAN investigation started October 29, 1982.
8
The original report is different from the Note Technique. NT17 is only a summary with partial quotes from the
statement and audio recordings.
7
95
I. Case Studies
perpendicular axes (a methodology that wasn’t used for the Trans-en-Provence case 9 ) and
preservation in liquid nitrogen at -30 °C. For some reason, so far unknown to the public, only
two amaranth samples (which were poorly preserved in the refrigerator at 4 °C) seem to have
been ultimately analyzed.
Jean-Jacques Velasco stated in many interviews that the Amaranth case is one of the best
GEPAN investigations ever. For example, he said during a TV interview for ARTE10 that the
Amaranth case and the Trans-en-Provence case “show that these phenomena interact with the
environment” 11 . In 1997, he also used the Amaranth case at the Pocantico Symposium to
support the existence of “genuine UFOs” with physical effects on the environment (Sturrock et
al., 1998).
A skeptical investigator from the Comité Nord-Est des Groupes Ufologiques (CNEGU), Raoul
Robé,12 thinks that the Amaranth case could have been influenced by the movie “La Soucoupe
de Solitude,” directed by Philippe Monnier (1982),13 which was released around the same time.
We are unconvinced because though the size and the proximity of the witness is indeed the
same, the other details are different.
Problems with GEPAN’s Investigation
D. Based only on the information then available to the public, D. Rossoni, É. Maillot, and É.
Déguillaume (2007) did a comprehensive critical review of the weaknesses in the investigation
of the Amaranth case in their book Les OVNI du CNES, 30 Ans d’Études Officielles (19772007).
-
Firstly, the fact that there is only one known witness to this case is a major issue.
GEPAN did not try to find other witnesses, even though it all happened in a suburban
area. The team could have tried to find if other people saw it either by simply asking the
neighbors or with a press article, but they took neither of those steps.
-
Secondly, it doesn’t seem that GEPAN took the time to have a psychological evaluation
of the witness done by a professional. It is worth pointing out that even if GEPAN had
collected pertinent information about the witness’s mental health, this organization
would not be able to disclose it, as it would be strictly confidential. To be precise, the
psychological evaluation of the witness, including a history of alcoholism or drug abuse,
cannot be disclosed by GEPAN. On the other hand, if a witness himself states that he is
taking psychotropic medications, that could be included in a Note Technique.
-
Thirdly, GEPAN’s investigation also completely overlooks the issue of his visual acuity,
which could have facilitated a perceptual mistake. Was this thirty-year-old laboratory
scientist affected by myopia, astigmatism, or hyperopia? If so, did he wear his glasses
when cleaning the garden planters before the arrival of the object? We just do not know.
9
The Note Technique n°16 (GEPAN, 1983) is the one about this other very famous French case. Rossoni, D.,
Maillot, É. & Déguillaume, É. (2007, pp. 296-316) also provides an in-depth criticism of the work done by GEPAN
on this case.
10
ARTE is a European public service channel.
11
“Sciences et OVNI,” ARTE, March 17, 1996.
12
Private communication with the first author.
13
It is a French adaptation of Theodore Sturgeon’s short story “A Saucer of Loneliness.”
96
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
-
Finally, the way the analysis of the Amaranth plant was done was also problematic in
several ways. Among other things, the GEPAN team came for taking some samples
eight days after the sighting, which is quite a long time. On top of that, the witness did
some gardening just the day before, pulling out plants (all of them in the area near the
alleged UFO landing, including amaranths and hollyhocks) and damaging some of the
evidence in the process. It is suspicious since he is supposedly a cell biology researcher
and should have known that doing so would thwart the chemical analysis.
Hoax, Hallucination, or Illusion?
Since there is no hard proof at this point of alien visitations of the planet, the theoretical
framework of the Psychosocial Model (Abrassart, 2016b) posits that the best methodological
approach of a UFO case is to look for mundane explanations. We will first briefly discuss here
the hoax and the hallucination hypothesis.
The hoax hypothesis doesn’t seem very plausible for the Amaranth case, and, from a
methodological point of view, we think it is better to explore all other options first. The reasons
for rejecting the hoax hypothesis are as follows:
-
First, the witness didn’t try to become famous or to make money with his story, instead
insisting on being anonymous.
-
Secondly, he went himself to the gendarmerie to testify with his spouse. Usually, a
hoaxer wouldn’t do that since it presents a risk of being caught lying and possibly being
in legal trouble later. GEIPAN claims a hoax rate of only 2.4%.
-
Lastly, his story is atypical: we feel that a hoaxer would have gone for a more classical
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Hynek, 1972), or simply of the First Kind, instead
of a Close Encounters of the Second Kind. Also, details like the fact that he didn’t try
to touch the UFO immediately raises questions (why not try to touch the object based
on the duration of the sighting and the proximity of the witness?) and thus would
probably not be included by a hoaxer.
D. Rossoni, É. Maillot, and É. Déguillaume, (2007, pp. 326-349) argued for other possible
explanations (hallucination or aura of an acephalgic migraine). There must be UFO cases that
are explained by hallucinations (Abrassart, 2015). Even if those are very rare, it would be the
contrary that would be surprising. If there is so far no proof that aliens visit earth, there is ample
evidence that hallucinations do happen. The fact that Henri is the only witness and that he could
not manage to take a picture during such a long sighting gives credence to the hallucination
hypothesis. Another argument in support of this idea is that Henri never tried to touch the UFO
to see how it felt, even though it posed no apparent threat.
Nevertheless, the Psychosocial Model posits that most cases are explained by misinterpretation
of a stimulus (Abrassart, 2016b). In other words, most cases are perceptual mistakes (illusions),
not hallucinations.14 For that reason, we kept looking for a potential stimulus that could explain
this case without invoking the hallucination hypothesis.
Investigation of the Mylar Balloon Hypothesis
14
In psychiatry, if illusions are perceptive distortion of an objective stimulus, hallucinations are defined as
perceptions without any stimulus.
97
I. Case Studies
Our first idea was a two-color Mylar balloon already reported to GEIPAN as the misidentified
source of the “pilot Fartek” case (Arc-sur-Tille (21), December 8, 1979).15 The difficulties with
this hypothesis in the “Amaranth” case are as follows:
1. The balloon would have to be able to stay motionless for 20 minutes at less than 1.70
m above the ground. However, no support was visible on the map or on the photo of the site
available in NT17. They were some clotheslines, but they were not at the location of the UFO.
Moreover, in that case, the balloon could not have remained balanced: even suspended,
entangled by a hypothetical nylon thread; it would have found itself in a vertical position and
not horizontal as described. On top of that, it would at least have oscillated at the beginning.
2. There was a small privet whose branches could have supported a balloon, but it did
not match the position of the UFO.16
3. The witness gave his testimony to the gendarmerie only 5 hours after the sighting,
which means he would have had to alter his memory of the event from a balloon to a UFO in a
very short time. We know from psychological studies (Loftus, 1996) that memory alterations
do happen, but they usually take time. Decades happened before some extraordinary testimonies
(including alien bodies and so on) appeared for the Roswell incident (Fernandez, 2010), but in
the Amaranth case the timespan seems too short.
If the testimony wasn’t the result of a memory reconstruction, and if we excluded the hoax and
the hallucination, the only possible explanation left was a perceptual mistake. During an
informal discussion about this case with a former GEIPAN director, Xavier Passot (director of
GEIPAN from 2011 to 2016), he mentioned to the first author the existence of two audio
recordings made during the GEPAN investigation. The first author obtained permission from
GEIPAN to listen to them. Despite their poor sound quality, we hear a witness sincerely
disturbed by what he saw that day. He doesn’t sound like a prankster making a sophisticated
hoax.
More surprisingly, the witness mentions, spontaneously and several times at different moments,
a detail that obviously disturbs him: the hollyhocks. Here is the transcription of some passages
of the audio recordings [our comments in brackets]:
(a) They [the Gendarmerie] came back several times on the issue [of] the environment
[silence] if I had some [silence] tall hollyhocks and if they had moved. I answered it was
certainly likely, but my attention was not focused on that.
(b) They asked me again about the environment [UAP], saying it’s big [words barely
audible], it had to move. I did not say yes or no. They [the amaranths or hollyhocks] have
certainly moved.17
(c) They were in the four corners. They were two hollyhocks in the middle [of the
amaranths].
15
Eric Maillot, 2004 http://www.unice.fr/zetetique/articles/ovni_pilote.html (accessed Feb. 27, 2022) and Les
OVNI du CNES: 30 Ans d'Études Officielles (1977-2007) in chapter 6.2, “Varois et Chaignot.”
16
The position of the UFO is open to debate. We base our analysis on the pictures taken by the gendarmerie but,
unfortunately, they didn’t put a meter stick the ground for size reference.
17
NT17 (GEPAN, 1983, p. 32) states: “Mr. Henri mentioned that hollyhocks, very tall flowers on stems and
therefore sensitive to the slightest breath of air, had at no time moved.” This statement is incorrect: it is contradicted
by the audio recordings by the same GEPAN.
98
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
(d) When he makes a list of all the other plants present in his garden for the investigators,
he makes this revealing slip of the tongue with two very different plants: there will also be
hollyhocks, uh, arums that were behind.18
Why is the witness so concerned by those plants? We think that it is in reaction to the policeman
standing in the intact site on October 22nd. He must have noticed (and let the witness know he
was surprised by it) that some long stems of hollyhocks had to be very close to the UAP, when
the witness claimed that only the amaranths were affected. Indeed, the fact that the UFO would
have affected the amaranths but not the hollyhocks doesn’t make much sense.
It was by trying to confirm that the Mylar balloon hypothesis was refuted that the first author
finally understood the importance of a small detail in NT17 (GEPAN, 1983, p. 13): there were
hollyhocks in the four corners of the garden among the plants present in the garden, including
“2 extra feet in the middle of the amaranths.” The witness will tell the GEPAN investigators
who arrived after the plants had been uprooted, that their size was “about the height of the
witness, namely around 1.70 m.” Because the information that we have about it is contradictory,
it is fair to say that, at this point, we don’t know the exact location of these plants, but we do
know for certain they were present. Hollyhocks stems, of a man’s height, tend to bow toward
the ground in late summer. Their two or more long and strong foliated stems could thus have
been the discrete support of a Mylar balloon.
On the drawing presented by GEPAN (GEPAN, 1983, p. 9), the hollyhock plants closest to the
UFO are there, but apparently not in their correct place. On top of that, they mysteriously
disappear from figure 8 (GEPAN, 1983, p. 27). Contrary to what we thought previously, the
support for a Mylar balloon was there, but invisible on the Figure 8 plan or on the unusable
photocopy of a photo of the site presented in NT17 (GEPAN, 1983, p. 11).
NT17 indicates that GEPAN takes its “intervention decision on October 27th.” They must have
informed the witness beforehand (or at least on the same day) and explained to him the purpose
of the visit: to take additional plant samples. NT17 also indicates that the witness pulled out the
18
The “there will” (future tense) is strange here, but it’s the tense used by the witness when he indicates on site
the locations of all the plants that investigator Jean Jacques Velasco must note.
99
I. Case Studies
amaranths and the hollyhocks “two days before” the GEPAN investigation (which started
October 29th), thus the same day the decision was made to go see the garden. These plants
seemed to have been a problem for him and he decided (consciously or unconsciously?) to not
only remove some of the amaranth, but also all the big stems of hollyhocks. None remain on
the GEIPAN photos, not even those planted at the four corners of the walls, presumably far
from where the UFO was. Yet they were still blooming when the gendarmes came, according
to their photos. The witness himself confirmed the normal state of flowering of the other clusters
of colorful amaranths, except for those that he considers to be withered and close to the UFO.
In 2015, the first author sent an email to GEIPAN asking if there are in their archives usable
photos taken by the gendarmerie and thus showing the intact site, before the uprooting. Xavier
Passot (director of GEIPAN from 2011 to 2016) then kindly sends “the only photos” (sic) which
he thinks he has: four quality photos, but which are those taken on October 29th by GEIPAN,
not by the gendarmerie. They are, however, instructive when compared closely with the plans
given in NT17. One can clearly see the area of turned-over soil where the amaranth plants were
ripped out. Here again an important detail appears: this strip of soil does not form a regular
rectangle along the fence as falsely drawn in NT17.
On that picture (see below), it is possible to see clearly that part of the dirt is going towards the
location of the UFO. We have here a clue of the position of the plants that were removed. It is
now impossible to know for sure whether it was amaranths or hollyhocks that were at this exact
position.
100
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Any further investigation would have stopped if, at the end of 2016, the first author had not by
chance seen on YouTube a clip of the “Planète+” tv show about UFOs.19 In that clip, Jacques
Patenet (director of GEIPAN from 2005 to 2008) presents the case (0:19 to 0:45) and furtively
shows a sheet with three snapshots. After a frame-by-frame examination, the first author
realized they were annotated as taken by “the gendarmerie on October 22nd”! One of them
shows a view of the garden that looks very different, a lot less clean, from the one that can be
seen on GEPAN’s photos and plans.
A new request was made in January 2017 to Jean-Paul Aguttes (director of GEIPAN since
2016) to obtain these shots in high quality. The goal was to check if there were any plants or
stems above the grass and below the position of the UFO. Jean-Paul Aguttes did transmit those
three pictures but only in low quality and in PDF format. A subsequent request to get the
negatives was not successful since it fell at a time of relocation of GEIPAN’s archives. However,
the available images clearly corroborate the Mylar balloon hypothesis since it undeniably shows
a small garden looking like a small “jungle” with stems and leaves where the UFO could have
been. It is surprising that the GEPAN investigator, who was in possession of these photos, did
not notice or report in NT17 this visual difference between the clean aspect of the garden when
he came on site and the gendarmes’ pictures of the initial state of overflowing vegetation above
the grass.
In 2018, GEIPAN confirmed that it does not have other archives or photographs for this case.
It seems surprising that the gendarmes on site only took three pictures, furthermore that they
were in black and white. Perhaps there are other images that have not been used, a priori deemed
not illustrative? It would be interesting for GEIPAN to search the Gendarmerie’s archives for
potential negatives or other complementary prints (perhaps taken from another angle or clearer)
likely to support or refute the hypothesis developed here.
Since we didn’t have anything better, we used one of these shots taken from the terrace, the
only one of the three that gives an overview with measurable elements, to make a very
approximate visual simulation (see below) of a circular Mylar balloon, a large model with two
sides colored, integrated into the tight environment but without the initial dense vegetation.
19
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPTsdcEf3RU (accessed Feb. 27, 2022).
101
I. Case Studies
Analysis of the Illusion
If you put yourself in the shoes of someone who cannot use the right words (hereafter put in
parentheses), since he does not know what the object really is, you will find that Henri’s
description mostly matches the characteristics of a Mylar balloon: the “blue green lagoon”
shades on the top and “beryllium” underneath; the “filled” aspect (inflated with gas), “Plexiglas”
and “metallic” or “smooth surface,” logically described as “a pretty object” (a balloon is
decorative and festive in nature), with moving effects “neither liquid nor gel” that the witness
struggles to describe as “internal or external,” and so on.
The witness overestimated the size of the object (1.50 m, when a large balloon is 0.91 m), but
that can be explained by the fact that the object was more impressive in the narrow space of the
little garden (3.4 m wide and enclosed between two walls). It should be also noted that there
are indeed green Mylar balloons matching the Pantone shade —bluish-green 320-327—chosen
by the witness.
The only difference in description of the object lies in a detail of the UFO shape: the 40-cm
vertical edge surmounted by a 10-cm flat outline at the top. A party balloon normally does not
have thick straight edges or a flat surface. However, some photos of Mylar balloons show that
such illusion of faceted surface, flat top or flat edge on the outline is possible due to an ordinary
reflection effect.20 This depends of course on the inflation, on the lighting angle, and on the
observer’s perspective. The witness had only to observe such a reflection to then transform it
in his drawing, during the reconstruction, into an actual detail of the structure (see illustration
hereafter).
20
This is like the Mach bands illusion: named after physicist Ernst Mach (1838-1916), this illusion exaggerates
the contrast between edges of slightly different shades of grey as soon as they come in contact with each other by
triggering edge-detection in the human visual system.
102
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
GEPAN itself conducted several psychological experiments to test and confirm the hypothesis
that UFO witnesses add strange details to sightings in this manner. That perceptual psychology
research has been published in NT10 (GEPAN, 1981).21
NT17 tells us that the witness “is not particularly interested in the UFO phenomenon, nor in
science fiction themes.” That may very well be true, but we think that, because of cultural
influences (Abrassart, 2014), he cannot help himself, and associates what he sees with an alien
technological object, a process we call “saucerization” of the stimulus (Abrassart, 2016b).
Indeed, a person need not have an interest in ufology or even in science fiction to be culturally
exposed to UFO mythologies and iconographies.
It seems inconceivable that a witness, supposedly a normal person of sound mind, could be the
victim of a simple yet powerful illusion lasting for 20 minutes.22 Lots of people would express
incredulity at this argument. Yet as soon as you leave the context of the UFO phenomena, it is
easy to demonstrate that it is, in fact, not unusual. There are indeed plenty of optical illusions
that prove this (M. Bach and C.M. Poloschek, 2006). You can look at them as much as you like,
and the illusion will persist. If it is true that for some illusions it is possible to switch the
perception (like for example the ambiguous image of the rabbit–duck illusion), there are also
many known examples of visual illusions that persist in the long term, which we are unable to
correct or dismiss from our perception.23
In ufology, many perceptual mistakes have been documented in the scientific literature. For
example, perceptual mistakes with a well-known object, the Moon, often last more than twenty
minutes (E. Maillot et al., 2019). The lack of hard proof in favor of the extraterrestrial
hypothesis since 1947 (when ufological investigations started) clues us to the fact that human
21
The person behind NT10 is Manuel Jimenez, who finished his PhD in psychology on that same subject the next
year (Jimenez, 1994).
22
The witness stated that he looked at his watch. Of course, we still cannot be sure that this duration is correct,
and that Henri didn’t overestimate the time the UFO was in his garden.
23
To give only one example of a persistent illusion, there was a photo of “oily legs” that went viral on Twitter in
2016 (London, 2016). There was no oil involved but only traces of white paint. Even when the correct explanation
is given, it is difficult to unsee the illusion.
103
I. Case Studies
beings indeed make those perceptual mistakes, since that is the only way to account for some
testimonies if there are no extraterrestrial spaceships visiting us.24
As in magic shows, once the illusion takes hold, we do not understand reality anymore, and
accept that impossible things may happen. Yet the magic tricks used are often basic. Let’s take
the example of a street levitation trick in which someone is holding a stick in his hand and
seems to be sitting calmly in the air.25 The performer who levitates in public is like a UFO for
the spectators because they do not see any support likely to bear his weight. The illusion persists
even though they can go around the scene, look at it from different angles, or lean in to look
very closely. Our brain refuses to see the stick as a logical support, with its remaining part
partially hidden. Exactly as the witness from Nancy did with the UFO in his little garden: Henri
just refused to see the surrounding plant stems as the supports of a very light object when he
convinced himself that the UFO was a manufactured and heavy object that nevertheless rested
at “one meter” above the ground, without a visible propulsion system, noise, or exhaust. This
mental representation, though incorrect, could no longer leave his brain. It was impossible to
get rid of it without touching the object, which he says he did not dare do.
This cumulative case we are putting together for the Mylar balloon hypothesis is strengthened
by the data of the weather archives for Nancy. Seeing this balloon coming down towards him,
probably under-inflated in a cold morning atmosphere, the witness is immediately convinced
that a heavy vehicle “brakes” while going down towards his garden and will “make a crater or
a hole.” He said during the investigation: “I thought it was really something that would fall into
the earth.” Frightened, he steps back toward his home. When the object stabilizes quietly above
the ground and remains motionless, he does not imagine for a moment that it is ultralight,
discreetly lying down flat on the long stems and leaves of the present plants (hollyhocks or
amaranths), sheltered by four walls from the weak wind (maximum 2 m/s) in the narrow garden.
When we investigate anomalies, environmental factors often add complexity to the case. Here,
it is the cramped space combined with the weather conditions. After 20 minutes of stillness in
the midday sun, the balloon warms up little by little between the walls of the garden and
therefore expands, again becoming able to fly at the slightest turbulence of air between the
houses.
The weather data 26 support this scenario, with the temperature changing from 9 to 18 °C
between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM. During the same period, there is are regular decreases in the
high humidity (97 to 72% relative humidity) and the atmospheric pressure (1016,4 to 1011,6
hPa) that favor the expansion necessary for the take-off. A weak wind (11 to 7 km/h) coming
from south-southeast is present. After a whole morning totally covered with clouds (8 oktas),
around noon the sky clears quickly and reveals the sun all afternoon (from 0 to 2 oktas).
The witness, who by then had moved to his terrace, and not near the UAP, may not have felt
the draft that triggered the balloon’s ascent. The descent is logically described as slower than
24
The only other alternative would be the paranormal hypothesis (Ouellet, 2015). The problem with this approach
is that it is unfalsifiable. Rather, an unfalsifiable hypothesis is not wrong, it’s just unscientific. If parapsychologists
don’t find a way to empirically test the paranormal hypothesis for explaining the UFO phenomena, the
psychosocial model is to be preferred by the scientific community (Abrassart, 2016a).
25
This street levitation trick is often seen in European markets nowadays. It is different from levitation tricks in
which the magician seems to be walking in the air, like the one done by Criss Angel for example.
26
NT17 (GEPAN, 1983), chapter VIII.1.
104
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
the so-called fast (but not lightning-like) rise.27 The witness then loses sight of the balloon that
goes up and away until it is no longer visible in a bright blue sky.
Henri then succumbs to the influence of the ufological mythology of the flying object which
acts on its environment with physical effects. He will thus look for a trace left by the object on
his amaranths, of which only a few floral clusters remain, faded and parched. Yet all
experienced gardeners know that this is quite normal and natural in autumn.28
The witness told GEPAN: “This is not the kind of thing that comes in your garden like a soccer
ball.” Yet a festive balloon (from a local event or a birthday party) of Mylar that would have
come loose from its thread could very well be at the origin of this case that has become a modern
classic in ufology. There are many other UAPs with a similar cause in the GEPAN database:
one of them named “Lac d’Opale” 29 has only recently (2018) been reclassified from D
(unexplained) to A (identified) as predicted in the book Les OVNI du CNES: 30 Ans d'Études
Officielles (1977-2007) (D. Rossoni, É. Maillot, and É. Déguillaume, 2007, p. 163). Other cases
explained by the Mylar hypothesis are the “Dora” case (investigated by the CNEGU),30 the
UAP A of Voreppes (38),31 the picture of the UAP of Chambley (54),32 and so on.
Conclusion
Being able to fly for several days, depending on local winds and turbulence, Mylar balloon
hypotheses are obviously difficult to prove beyond any doubt, absent cases with clear photos
or videos. Nevertheless, we think we have built a convincing cumulative argument that this
explanation is correct for the Amaranth case. As with other, older, UFOs, the thorough research
for information unknown to the public (here photos of the site and audio recordings of the
witness) will have made it possible, more than 30 years after the fact, to support as strongly as
feasibly possible a new explanatory hypothesis. It is true that the Mylar balloon hypothesis does
not explain the famous detail of the sudden raising of 15 cm of grass under the UAP but a
turbulence of wind or a brief whirlwind of air between the walls may have been enough to stir
up a blade of grass. It is up to everyone to evaluate how much weight should be given to this in
the final explanatory probabilistic balance.
If CNES was to reclassify this case as UAP type B “probably identified,” this action would
probably generate lots of protests in the French UFO community, because of the status this case
has acquired in the UFO mythology at this point. For this reason, this alleged UFO will probably
remain a UAP D1 (strong strangeness and low consistency) even if it has a very likely
explanation that should allow us to reclassify it.
This case reminded us of an important investigation rule: you only need one important item of
information missing from a report to create a case that will become famous and will endure a
27
Note there was no simulation of mental timing performed by GEPAN for these two phases.
This is paradoxically what the witness gives to the GEPAN investigators as the reason for his unwanted
uprooting of all amaranths and other plants: the replacement of withered and dried flowers at the end of the season.
29
For more information about this case in the GEIPAN database “« LAC D’OPALE (LE) » ESTAING (65)
18.07.1989”: https://www.cnes-geipan.fr/index.php/fr/cas/1989-07-01179 (accessed Feb. 27, 2022).
30
About the Dora case, see the interview of Francine Cordier on the Scepticisme Scientifique (French-speaking
podcast), episode #82: https://www.scepticisme-scientifique.com/episode-82-le-cas-dora/ (accessed Feb. 27,
2022).
31
For more information about this case in the GEIPAN database “VOREPPE (38) 06.09.1998”: https://www.cnesgeipan.fr/fr/cas/1998-09-01754? (accessed Feb. 27, 2022).
32
For more information about this case in the GEIPAN database “CHAMBLEY-BUSSIERES (54) 05.08.2007”:
https://www.cnes-geipan.fr/fr/cas/2007-08-02247 (accessed Feb. 27, 2022).
28
105
I. Case Studies
long time in the ufological literature. It also illustrates the fact that sometimes perceptual
illusions can endure and transform in the witnesses’ mind a mundane object into something
very strange and mysterious.
Bibliography
Abrassart, J.-M. “The Influence of Culture on UFO Sightings.” Collecte et Analyse des
Informations sur les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non Identifiés (Caipan). Paris, 2014.
_____. “UFO Phenomenon and Psychopathology: A Case Study.” 58th Annual Convention of
the Parapsychological Association. London, 2015.
_____. “Do We Need the Paranormal to Explain the UFO Phenomenon? A Review of
‘Illuminations: The UFO Experience as Parapsychological Event’ by Eric Ouellet.”
Paranthropology, 7(1), 2016a, pp. 60-61.
_____. Le Modèle Sociopsychologique du Phénomène Ovni: Un Cadre Conceptuel Interprétatif
en Sciences Humaines. Louvain-la-Neuve, France: Presses Universitaires de Louvain,
2016b.
Bach, M., and C. M. Poloschek. “Optical Illusions.” Advances in Clinical Neuroscience &
Rehabilitation (ACNR), 6(2), 2006.
Fernandez, G. Roswell: Rencontre du Premier Mythe. Norderstedt, Germany: Books on
Demand, 2010.
GEPAN. Note Technique n°10: Les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-Identifiés et la Psychologie
de la Perception. Toulouse, France GEPAN, 1981.
_____. Note Technique n°16: Enquête 81/01 Analyse d’une Trace. Toulouse: GEPAN, 1983.
_____. Note Technique n°17: Enquête 86/06 “L’Amarante.” Toulouse, France: GEPAN, 1983.
Hynek, J. A. The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry. Chicago: Regnery, 1972.
Jimenez, M. Témoignage d’OVNI et Psychologie de la Perception. Thèse de Doctorat en
Psychologie. Montpellier, France: Université Paul Valery, 1994.
Loftus, E. F. Eyewitness Testimony. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996.
London, B. “Bizarre Optical Illusion Divides Social Media… So Can YOU Spot What Is Wrong
with This Pair of Legs?” Mail Online, 2016. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article3874662/Bizarre-optical-illusion-divides-social-media-spot-wrong-pair-legs.html
Accessed Feb. 27, 2022.
Maillot, E., G. Munsch, L. Danizel, I. Dumas, P. Fournel, R. Robé, and J.-M. Abrassart,
“Mistaking the Moon for an Alien Spacecraft: The ‘Saros Operation.’” Anomaly Journal of Research into the Paranormal, 50, pp. 8-17, 2019.
Ouellet, E. Illuminations: The UFO Experience as a Parapsychological Event. San Antonio,
Texas: Anomalist Books, 2015.
Rossoni, D., É. Maillot, and É. Déguillaume. Les Ovni du CNES: 30 Ans d’Études Officielles
(1977-2007). Nantes, France: Book-e-book, 2007.
Sturrock, P., et al. “Physical Evidence Related to UFO Reports: The Proceedings of a Workshop
Held at the Pocantico Conference Center, Tarrytown, New York, September 29 October 4, 1997.” Journal of Scientific Exploration, 12(2), 1998, pp. 179-229.
106
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
The Real Raël, UFO Contactee and the Last Prophet
Claude Maugé
Hypocrisy and deception have lasted enough.
Claude Vorilhon “Raël”1
Abstract: Claude Vorilhon “Raël” is a French UFO contactee who, after his first meeting with an
alien in 1973, founded an organization, the Raëlian Movement (later the Raëlian Religion) and
developed a doctrine, Raëlism. They are devoted spreading the Messages he received from the
extraterrestrials, the Elohim – mainly their head, Yahweh – but have greatly benefited the
contactee and his staff. A careful reading of Vorilhon’s ten books reveals a huge number of
anomalies of various kinds, several of which are deadly for Vorilhon’s credibility, all the more so
as other sources can be devastating, too. The conclusion thus seems inescapable: he lied from the
beginning and added lies to lies as time went by. The positions of three sociologists who studied
from different viewpoints the reasons for Vorilhon’s success are presented.
Keywords: Contactees, Raël, Raëlism, Raëlian Movement, UFO hoaxes, Claude Vorilhon
Introduction: A Short Presentation of Vorilhon and Raëlism.
The following abbreviations are used below: V = Claude Vorilhon (also with his pseudonym “Raël”), E = Elohim =
the extraterrestrials who created us, Y = Yahweh = head of the Elohim, who contacted V. V’s books are coded with the
initial of the author and the number of the book, that is V-1, V-2, V-3, then R-4 to R-10.
All translations from the French are by the present writer. Because of space constraints, this
contribution does not intend to be a detailed presentation of the history of V, of the various forms
of the organization he founded, of several major problems in it,2 or of the Raëlian doctrine.3
Basically, it is a little exploration of V’s books intended to give an answer to a simple question:
are V’s claims reliable? Other sources are also used in order to have a background for several
points or to give other examples. However, some key points about V and Raëlism (also written
Raëlianism) are needed first for a better understanding of some elements.
V is born on December 13, 1946 from Colette, a young maiden (aged 15) from a rather notable
family of Ambert (Puy-de-Dôme) and from an officially unknown man,4 a wealthy Alsatian Jewish
businessman who had been a refugee in Ambert during WWII. Mainly raised by his aunt Thérèse
and his grandmother, V has a rather difficult childhood, is put twice in boarding schools – where
he discovers masturbation at 9, and later playing guitar. His father dies when he was 15, so that
Colette receives no more money from him. V then decides to go to Paris where he has a difficult
life as a street singer, then begins to have a modest success as “Claude Celler” and enters in the
team of Lucien Morisse. But this man commits suicide a few years afterward, so that V again has
1
Les extra-terrestres m’ont emmené sur leur planète. Le 2ème message qu’ils m’ont donné. Brantôme (France):
L’Édition du Message, 1975, p. 151.
2
For instance, with the way several dissenters were treated; the numerous high-ranking Raëlians who left the
movement, among them Lisa and Sophie, one-time V’s spouses; or the financial opacity at one with V’s greed for
money – including swindling his rich follower “Gérard” according to Jean-Denis Saint-Cyr (pp. 81-84, 89-90).
3
A rather useful starting point is the articles “Raëlism,” “History of Raëlism” and “Raëlian beliefs and practices” on
en.wikipedia.org.
4
His name is Marcel Heimendinger (Péloquin p. 49).
107
I. Case Studies
a difficult period. He marries the nurse “Christine” in 1970. Then, as a fan of car races, he soon
launches in Clermont-Ferrand his own magazine about car driving, Autopop, which allows them
to live and him to test cars and to have some success in races. But in October 1973 the Yom Kippur
War leads to a major oil crisis, so that severe measures are taken, including in France the banning
of car races and rallies: as a consequence, Autopop soon has serious difficulties. At the end of
1973, during a dinner with much alcohol, two guests speak jokingly about UFOs in order to get
much money, but the third man, V, takes the thing very seriously (Bisaillon pp. 51-55, Péloquin
pp. 27-28). The fact that UFOs were fashionable in France in the seventies – including the notable
40-episode radio series by Jean-Claude Bourret on the France-Inter program during the first
quarter of 1974 – was very possibly an encouragement for V. He writes, apparently very rapidly,
the manuscript of his alleged first contact. TV host Jacques Chancel becomes aware of this: thus,
V appears on March 13, 1974, on his very popular program Le Grand Échiquier5. The Raëlian
machine is now on its way in France, and the first printing of V-1 is published in July 1974 – but
the French UFO magazines were very skeptical about V’s story: the movement can attract people
interested in UFOs, but not ufologists. Outside France, it will expand in Belgium and Switzerland,
then in Québec and several other areas such as Italy, Africa, Japan, South Korea, and elsewhere.
The basic elements of the Raëlian doctrine were built in several steps. In Le livre qui dit la vérité,
Y gives four “new ‘Commandments’” to V, two of which (“humanitarianism” and world
government) can be connected to the first, geniocracy (V-1 pp. 132-134); Y insists about its
importance in his second message for avoiding a nuclear cataclysm (V-2 pp. 53-54); and V devotes
to it a large part of his third book (V-3). Nevertheless, he distances himself from it as soon as R-4
(pp. 40-41), rather forgets it for a while, and comes back to his political role as a prophet in 2001
(R-10 pp. 9, 197-198). He then invents in 2009 “paradism” which combines some of its traits with
new technologies such as nanotechnologies and robotics. The fourth Commandment is the (double)
mission devoted to V, that is to spread the Message given by V (of course with the later revelations)
and to build an embassy for the coming of a delegation of the E (V-1 pp. 138-141). No date is
given for that event; the year 2025 had been mentioned for a while (for instance Saint-Cyr pp. 186187) but it was later turned into 2035 or possibly earlier if the Raëlian truth spreads rapidly enough
(R-8 p. 315). Two major steps were the Sensual Meditation with R-5 in 1981, although V-2 had
already hinted about it and about non-standard practices in summer camps; in any case, the
liberated sexuality promoted by Raëlism is in line with the general trend of liberation of mores. As
for human reproductive cloning, it began to be a real concern for V in 1997 after the birth of the
sheep Dolly, even if, again, hints about cloning were formerly present. It was basically seen as a
way to obtain “immortality,” as with the E. A company, Clonaid, was founded, but its mere
existence and its alleged goals seem to have been problematic. As for the announcement on
December 26, 2002, by Brigitte Boisselier (a chemist, Raëlian bishop, and head of Clonaid) of the
birth of Eve, the first human cloned baby, it obtained huge media coverage. Its connection with
Raëlism allowed V to claim that the Message had been now disseminated through the whole planet,
so that this part of his mission was now accomplished, which seems very optimistic. But doubts
arose rapidly, no evidence of the reality of the event was ever given, and the whole affair is now
considered as a promotional hoax. (Except by Raëlians, even if they are very discreet about the
5
The Great Chessboard.
108
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
subject. As for the Internet site of Clonaid, it is in 2022 in a state of suspended life since 2004 or
so)6. The “Angels of Raël” will be mentioned below.
Summaries of Vorilhon/Raël’s books.
(See in References for more complete bibliographic data and translations into English.)
V-1. Claude Vorilhon “Raël,” Le livre qui dit la vérité. J’ai rencontré un extraterrestre, 1974 (two
printings, in July and then November). V reports his six contacts of December 13 to 18, 1973, on
the mountain Puy de la Vache (1974 editions) or Puy de Lassolas (later editions and titles) with an
unnamed alien (Y) from an unspecified planet. Most of his revelations are a reinterpretation of
many biblical episodes (mainly from the Old Testament) in extraterrestrial terms. The Elohim – a
conventional name, not the proper name of their species (p. 148) – arrived 25,000 years ago as the
Earth was completely under water, built the only continent, created life, and made it evolve until
human beings. However, several aliens found that our intelligence could become a threat for them,
and their hostile actions explain several biblical events. The mission of Jesus, a half-alien, was to
spread the truth, and the Church continued it despite its errors, but today with the Aquarian age,
its end is close. V’s mission is to convert mankind to the extraterrestrial truth, to make us adopt a
better social and political system (“geniocracy”), to build an embassy for the E, and to prepare for
their return. An organization, whose name is given by Y (see later), will help him in his task. As
for Y, he is the President of the Council of the Elohim, he is 25,000 years old (his present body is
the 25th), and he had managed the team of alien biologists who created terrestrial life.
V-2. Claude Vorilhon “Raël,” Les extra-terrestres m’ont emmené sur leur planète. Le 2ème message
qu’ils m’ont donné, 1975. V presents firstly his life before 19737 and his early success as a
contactee. After a UFO sighting at the Roc Plat near Brantôme, in the Périgord area, V has another
contact there on October 7, 1975, where Y reveals his name and brings along V to E’s space base
then, not to the E’s planet itself, but to the one where the 700 E and the 8,400 earthlings who were
granted eternity live. V banquets with Y, Jesus, Moses, Elijah, Buddha, Mahomet, and other
unnamed eminent people; has an unforgettable love night with six expert female robots; visits
some installations; and has his brain greatly improved by a machine. Moreover, says Y, “from then
on, we shall see through your eyes, we shall hear through your ears, and we shall speak through
your mouth. We shall even be able to heal through your hands, as we already do in Lourdes” and
other places (p. 84). And V learns various things. Particularly, he receives instructions for the life
of humans (e.g., geniocracy, sensual education, importance of art and science; as for the Raëlians,
they are not allowed to judge the E nor V), learns that E’s computers watch permanently over us
and at our death take at a distance a cell of our body so that we will be later tried (to harm V is a
serious sin) – while the Raëlians must have a part of the frontal bone taken. And V is named as the
ambassador of the E, the Last Prophet for announcing the new era (later, the dates will be given
with the style a.H., that is after Hiroshima), and the Guide of Guides who will lead us to the
fulfillment of the golden age. Back on Earth, V will later receive many messages by telepathy and
automatic writing.
6
Several declarations by V could be interpreted as meaning that at a later stage he did not really take cloning as a
serious matter, but rather as a publicity device; if so, it would be an insult to the people who had hoped to benefit from
it.
7
It seems basically accurate.
109
I. Case Studies
V-3. Claude Vorilhon, La géniocratie, 1977. The name Raël is absent and the reader is unaware
that the concept was allegedly given to V by Y. The book presents measures for entering the golden
age: geniocracy, that is a government by geniuses (an “intellectual potential” of 110 is needed to
be a voter, of 150 to be elected; collegiality; geographical pyramidal organization); fabrication of
androids for doing all material tasks; suppression of armies; creation of centers for the fulfillment
of body and mind, etc. An appeal to the world geniuses for the creation at Geneva of a Geniocratic
World Government is launched; its first constitutive meeting took place on September 9, 1977.
R-4. Raël, Accueillir les extra-terrestres. Ils ont créé l’humanité en laboratoire, 1979. After the
account of a UFO sighting by V and followers, V gives details in answer to questions by his readers
or by journalists. Particularly, he had written V-3 after being asked by Raëlians, but now he
distances himself from geniocracy because “a political party has a low weight in front of the
Elohim’s messages.” He also reveals two “details” from his visit to the alien planet, which had to
be kept secret until now: in order to try V’s faith, he had been tempted – of course vainly – by the
Elohim Satan, who was in league with Y; and this one is his true father, by artificial insemination:
V is thus the half-brother of Jesus. Moreover, referring to the Revelation by John (who was a
contactee), Y warns us that the “final nuclear apocalypse” is highly probable. A chapter presents
explicitly that Raëlism is an atheistic religion. Six followers offer their testimonies and comments.
R-5. Raël, La méditation sensuelle®. L’éveil de l’esprit par l’éveil du corps, 1981. The Sensual
Meditation is “the simplest and the most powerful” technique for self-fulfillment because it was
given to us by our creators, the E. Its goal is a total awakening in five steps: becoming aware of
our mediocrity, searching for information showing we can live otherwise, putting ourselves into
question, reprogramming ourselves by an optimal use of our senses which link us to the infinite of
which we are a tiny part, raising our consciousness level to that infinite for becoming “a being
living permanently in the uttermost harmony.” These points and the content of six cassettes are
developed, but one must also follow a training course or a meditation center because a guide is
necessary for some activities. The importance of sexuality is stressed, because to make love is
making it with the atoms which form us and with the galaxies we form...
R-6. Raël, Le racisme religieux financé par le gouvernement socialiste. Halte à la violation des
droits de l’homme en France, 1992. France is from centuries ago a racist and intolerant country;
and things were worsened by the socialist government.8 As well as by the various organizations
which inundate the media with messages full of hatred directed against the so-called cults
– actually the “New Religious or Philosophical Minorities.” Some examples of their evil actions
are given. In order to counter their wrongdoings, V created in 1992 with other targeted
organizations the FIREPHIM, Fédération Internationale des Religions et Philosophies
Minoritaires (International Federation of Minority Religions and Philosophies). That said, V is
right if we translate his basic “the cults are not dangerous” into “there are cults which are not
dangerous.”
R-7. Raël. “Vive le Québec libre!”. Faire du Québec la Suisse d’Amérique du Nord, 1995. Now
living in the province of Québec, V offers possible solutions to make it a self-governed prosperous
8
Socialist François Mitterrand had been elected President in 1981.
110
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
country. Including suppressing income tax, creating its own currency, suppressing the army, and
particularly suppressing bank secrecy, which will draw many funds.9
R-8. Raël, Les messages que m’ont donnés les extra-terrestres. Ils sont ce que nous avons appelé
“Dieu,” 1998. Combined edition of V-1 and V-2, with some very minor modifications, except for
two novelties. A message of December 13, 52 [a.H.] without anything fundamental except for Y’s
warning that the Covenant with Israel is close to its end. And a 1997 postscript explains that the E
should arrive “in 38 years [2035], or even possibly earlier” if the Raëlian truth spreads rapidly.
R-9. Raël, Oui au clonage humain. La vie éternelle grâce à la science, 2001. V and Brigitte
Boisselier, the chemist in charge of Clonaid, think that human reproductive cloning is essentially
feasible within twenty years. And V incorporates it in a peculiar transhumanist vision: we shall
very soon be able to transfer our personality and memory either in a computer, which will allow
an eternal life in the virtual world but with all the pleasures of the real world, or in a biological
clone, with possible moving from one world to another. As the E, we could thus live some 700 to
900 years (process of “elohimization”), while the physical eternity will be granted to worthy
people. And V replies to the “incredibly stupid arguments” of the opponents to cloning. Also, he
explains why we need MGOs; advocates a total liberty for the Internet; emphasizes the numerous
benefits of nanotechnologies, of the imminent biological robots, and of the soon-to-come pleasure
society; foretells totally autonomous houses; and so on.
R-10. Raël, Le Maitraya. Extraits de son enseignement, 2003. Twenty chapters offer large pieces
of V’s teachings; many subjects had been presented in V’s previous books or during the summer
courses. For instance, we find considerations about Love, happiness, peacefulness, spirituality, the
necessity to give a meaning to one’s life and to enjoy its delights, the need to be aware of our
responsibilities, the need for nonviolence, the necessity to dismantle the UN, the unavoidable fact
that science will change our lives, and so on. Our creators the E, their existence, teachings, or
actions, are casually mentioned some thirty times. The title “Maitraya” (the correct spelling in
French is Maitreya, as it is in English) appears only twice, on the front cover and the rear cover.
Exploring Vorilhon/Raël’s Books (And Some Other Little Things)
A critical reading of V’s books conveys a picture very different from the one V and the Raëlians
aim to draw, that is the content of messages given to V by the extraterrestrial, firstly in the 1973
meetings on Earth, then during his cosmic voyage in 1975, and since that date by telepathic
communications. Several ideas conveyed by V are perfectly well-advised, for instance when he
writes that we must see the positive side of things or events, learn from our mistakes, admit that
we have limits, that arts and sciences are important, or that overpopulation is a danger for the
planet [conversely, he negates its global warming]. Such views obviously need no alien source,
but extraterrestrials may of course share them with us. As anybody, V makes errors, but several
are somewhat strange, all the more so since his brain had been very improved on the planet of the
eternals (V-2 p. 84); worse, the person to blame can be Y, not V himself. For instance, when Y says
that the Kabbalah is a book, “the book the closest to the truth” (V-1 pp. 120, 121). There are also
views which are coherent by themselves but which are questionable for various reasons
(extraterrestrial interpretation of the Bible, geniocracy, eugenics, cloning); a huge number of
9
This book was written as a support for the 1995 sovereignty referendum in Québec, as thanks for the status of a
religious corporation granted to the Raëlian Church the previous year (Bissaillon, p. 90).
111
I. Case Studies
contradictions between books or even in the same book; scientific aberrations; and many signs of
an unpleasant personality. Many problems with V’s claims other than the ones presented below are
exposed by several authors; the best synthesis of the whole story is the book by Maryse Péloquin.
As V-1 is mainly an interpretation of the Old Testament in extraterrestrial terms, we must look into
its historical value. Since the 1970s, biblical archaeologists and scholars are building a new
paradigm,10 of which the following phrases perfectly reflect the tone: “it is today evident that a
great number of events in biblical history occurred neither in the place nor in the way they are
reported. Far more, certain of the most famous episodes in the Bible clearly never occurred”
(Finkelstein & Silberman, 2002, p. 1611). This applies to probably all the episodes until the biblical
Judges and to other later events. According to this new school, many books of the Old Testament
were each rewritten at different periods according to the political and theological concerns of the
time; that process was more or less continuous but had some key moments; particularly, persons
or events were invented or shifted for some centuries. For instance, the Exodus and the Conquest
of Canaan very probably never existed: their accounts have anachronisms, no archaeological traces
were found, and the Hebrews were in fact native people of the area; as for Moses, he could have
been invented in the VIIth century B.C. or was at the best inspired by a real person to whom
imaginary events were attributed long after. Therefore, no UFO had to separate the waters of the
Red Sea, to distribute the manna, to knock down the wall of Jericho (which had no wall), and so
on. Moreover, if biblical “historical” events or persons are actually imaginary, what should we
think about the “mythological” ones, such as the Creation, the offspring of the sons of God and the
daughters of Man, the Flood and Noah’s Ark, and the like? As for the name Elohim, it is really a
plural (of Eloah) as V and others say, but it is most often used with an adjective or a verb in the
singular form, and according to the context can mean god in general, a specific god (not necessarily
the one of the Hebrews), gods, the spirit of a dead person, etc. (Bogaert et al., pp. 409-410). Now,
if the above can be trusted, it has some obvious consequences about the value of V’s claims.
Moreover, the “extraterrestrialization” of the Bible is not specific to V, and it had been shown he
has “borrowed” many episodes from various authors, particularly Jean Sendy (Péloquin pp. 139188; Bisaillon pp. 247-56). But these are not the only unrecognized borrowings by V: while he
claims that the Sensual Meditation had been transmitted to him by the E, it was actually largely
drawn from what Jean-Denis Saint-Cyr had presented to him (Péloquin pp. 292, 386-7; Saint-Cyr
pp. 60-62); his teaching about fasting from Claire Labrie (Saint-Cyr pp. 61-62); and the idea that
illness is “the immune system of mankind” [in R-9] from Daniel Chabot (Bisaillon p. 183).
Another major problem for V’s credibility is his misuse of science. He claims that science is
Raëlism’s religion, but his own science is elementary, fantasized, science fictional, or plainly
aberrant. Even his elementary science is frequently wrong. For instance: there are “male” and
“female” spermatozoa (R-5 p. 59), “a spermatozoon possesses all the pieces of information which
are needed in order to make a living being, including the color of his hair or eyes” (V-1 p. 74), “as
you know now, the burn caused by an atomic explosion to nearby people kills them, making them
resemble a salt statue” (ibid. p. 44). V’s fictional science appears in various forms, from the
education by injection of brain matter (ibid. p. 153) to future houses totally autonomous where our
10
See for instance the books by Finkelstein and Römer and other contributors; the article “The Bible Unearthed” on
en.wikipedia.org can be a good starting point.
11
My translation from the French translation.
112
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
food will come from a total recycling of our urine and feces (R-9 p. 144). V negates biological
evolution, but on that matter he is obviously not the only one. He is however far more original
when he claims that the planet of the E is situated at less than a light-year from the sun (V-1 p.
120), and according to “certain scientists belonging to our movement” the discrepancy with the
astronomers’ knowledge that the closest star is at some four light-years is explained if the light of
the star of the alien world would follow a highly curved path12 (R-4 p. 25). As for the Earth totally
covered by water 25,000 years ago (V-2 p. 67), it is another absurdity because it was the time of
the last maximum of the Würm glaciation, so that the level of the oceans was obviously lower than
today; moreover, the E created one only continent – by displacing the bottoms of the oceans with
atomic bombs... (V-1 pp. 31-32, 35); and 22,000 years ago, they began to create the present earthly
life13 (ibid. p. 111). Such dates are obviously far younger that our scientists say. As it would be
nonsense to think that Y could have lied to V about the previous data, we must face a simple
question: are our astronomers, cosmologists, physicists, geophysicists, geologists, paleontologists,
and biologists wrong, or is V shamelessly lying?
Other kinds of lies are altered quotations or references (not specific to V...). For instance, Y and V
say that Noah’s “ark arose above the ground (Genesis 7:17). You can note it is clearly said it arose
above the ground, not above the waters” (V-1: 40); however, the (not quoted) following verse 18
adds: “[...] the ark went above the surface of the waters.” We have already seen some contradictions
or inconsistencies in V’s books. But there are plenty of them in his writings, many rather minor
but a lot of them much more significant. Only a sample can be given here. During their very first
meeting, Y says to V that “we needed someone who lives in a country where new ideas are
welcome and where it is possible to express them. France is the country where democracy is born
and its image on the whole Earth is that of the country of liberty” (V-1 pp. 21-22); but in R-6 V’s
discourse is totally reversed – because he had meanwhile left France, mainly for financial reasons,
although the political and media climate concerning cults had also become somewhat hostile.
There is nothing like the soul (V-2 p. 59; R-5 p. 47), but the soul is our DNA (R-5 p. 47, R-9 p.
123). Any cell of his/her body is enough to recreate physically and psychically any person (V-2
pp. 59, 78, 88; R-9 p. 123) – why thus a swab in the frontal bone for Raëlians, moreover precisely
“at 33 mm above the middle of the axis joining both pupils,” as if all human beings had
standardized measures (V-2 p. 114)? The machine of the planet of the eternals allows the E to heal
via V (V-2 p. 84): so why is no example of a healing ever mentioned in V’s books14? Another
important point of the first book also totally disappeared from the following ones: the fact that our
mankind is in competition with two others elsewhere for receiving the scientific legacy of the E
(V-1 pp. 99-101). Why?
There is “an absolute rule in the universe: the beings able to escape their planetary system are
always peaceful” (V-2 p. 56); why then the refusal by the E to give V the position of their planet
– which is not the same as the eternals’ one (see particularly V-2 p. 71, 139) while V confuses them
from time to time (e.g. V-2 p. 144; R-9 p. 123) – because they fear that we could disturb them with
12
According to general relativity, the light is indeed curved “near” a mass; but such a bending would here need a
gigantic mass, so that its effects would be clearly visible, unless the solar system could even not exist.
13
While former life, which gave much of the fossils, could have existed earlier but had been totally destroyed – even
the aquatic beings? – (R-4 pp. 22-23).
14
Nor in any Raëlian pieces of literature this author is aware of.
113
I. Case Studies
our aggressiveness15 (V-1 p. 22; R-4 p. 25). In “the keys,” that is “the major rules dictated by the
Elohim” received by V via automatic writing, the E advocate “brutal and even very brutal sports
[…] which are safety valves” as well as attending brutal shows (V-2 p. 134); and everybody is
entitled to his/her difference (R-10 chapter 13); however, elsewhere V blames bodybuilding and
violence in the stadiums with their “thousands of overexcited people” (R-10 pp. 136, 147). All the
religious books must be censored in order to expel all of what prompts violence or hate and what
is contrary to human rights or to the laws of democratic countries (ibid. p. 127). On the other side,
the revisionists and the neo-Nazis for instance “may be entitled to express their ideas” because the
freedom of speech must be total – in that respect, the freedom of the Internet is “sacred” [curious
word for an atheistic religion] – (R-9 pp. 65-69). All these contradictions point to one conclusion:
V is a forgetful weathercock; in many cases he does not remember what he said previously, in
other numerous circumstances he feels the direction of the wind and speaks accordingly, and in
some instances his changes seem to be deliberate provocations.16 Last but not least, another
episode is a matter neither of a forgetting nor of circumstances but of a deliberate maneuver. In the
1974 printings of Le livre qui dit la vérité, Y orders V: “your movement you will name the
MADECH, the Mouvement pour l’Accueil des Elohim Créateurs de l’Humanité” (Movement for
the Welcome of the Elohim, Creators of Mankind); but in the 1978 and later editions, as well as in
the other books, it is now: “your movement you will name the Raëlian Movement” (V-1, 1974 p.
141; 1978 p. 135). The reason for that change is very simple: the MADECH was an association
coming under the French law of 1901 for nonprofit organizations and thus with several terms
which could not allow V to manage it at his own will (basically, the management had to be
democratic, not geniocratic). As it is impossible that V could have heard one sentence instead of
the other, the conclusion is inescapable: V lied about that important point...
As for V’s doctrine for action, it could well be defined basically by three short successive
commandments: “Believe and shut up!”; “Fuck and shut up!”; and “Sell, pay and shut up!”...
What Vorilhon Implicitly Says About Himself
Other key data which are important for assessing the truthfulness of V’s claims are what can be
drawn from his personality, both from his own writings and from other sources; again, only a few
indications are given here. Like anybody, V presents positive personality traits, and he is a
charismatic man (see following Section) – but charisma can go with good or evil. Several lies and
inconsistencies mentioned above are already useful signs, but they are far from the only ones. V
often acts as a hypocrite who says one thing but practices its opposite. For instance, humility is
“the first, the finest and highest quality of the human being” (R-10 p. 70): exactly what we find in
the name Raël, allegedly meaning “God’s light” (V-1 p. 127), in the fact that “if Jesus and Buddha
were here today they would be Raëlians” (R-10 p. 182), or in V’s various titles (Last Prophet,
“prophet of the religion of religions,” “our Beloved Prophet,” Guide of Guides, His Holiness,
Maitreya [Maitraya in V-10, Maitreya in several documents] and so on). V also claims that
“another major quality” is compassion, towards people having a low level of consciousness and in
forgiving others for “whatever they could have done” (R-10 pp. 40, 73, 195). Compassion indeed
when he sees our ancestors as “primitives” – for instance “I’m always entertained when I hear
people speaking admiringly about ancient civilizations such as the Greek, Roman or Egyptian
ones. They were not civilizations but gatherings of barbarians” (R-9 p. 136) – as well as all our
15
16
Which allows Péloquin to characterize the E as “paranoiac cowards” (p. 338-41).
As for the Raëlian symbol: the Star of David with first a swastika, then a kind of spiral, and later again the swastika.
114
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
ordinary contemporaries – of whom each will appear as “a ‘Cro-Magnon’ of mankind” (ibid. p.
10).17 Or in some episodes reported by Saint-Cyr, for example when, in a car on a hot day, V
electrically closes all the windows when one female passenger asks for a little air circulation – a
“disgraceful gesture” by which V wanted to show he was the “absolute master” for Saint-Cyr (pp.
192-193). Jealousy must be banned (it’s why V doesn’t hesitate to take the female companion of
some high-ranking Raëlians for his own use – that last word is not usurped) and one must do all
that is possible so that our companion is happy (R-5 pp. 66-67, 70). It’s probably for that reason
that V broke the life of “Christine” and their two children (for instance, Péloquin pp. 32-33, 278,
286) but suffered an intense nervous breakdown when she decided to divorce in 1984. While the
official version is that V disappeared at the time because of a “spiritual retreat,” Saint-Cyr, at the
time V’s closest friend and right-hand man, reveals that he took refuge with him in Montréal, was
unsure of what he had to choose as a profession, and even acknowledged that he had had no contact
(Saint-Cyr, chapters 12-15, particularly pp. 106-107 for the confession) – after several months, V
decided to resume his life as a contactee.18
Everybody is entitled to have his/her position about present-day sexual mores when it concerns
fully consenting adults, so that the fact that V prefers young women with a youthful appearance is
not by itself a problem (Péloquin p. 286; Saint-Cyr pp. 87-88). But what about the “Order of the
Angels of Raël” and with pedophilia? V was instructed to found that “religious” [!] order by a
message of 1997; basically, the angels are women chosen for their qualities, including religiosity,
discipline, harmony, and internal and external beauty. When the E and the prophets will arrive,
they will be their total servants; meanwhile, most can have a personal life, but their elite is devoted
to the Prophet alone. Several Raëlians were not really happy by the creation of such a harem.19
What about the legal status of the angels? Are they paid, are they insured, will they receive a
retirement pension? (If not, they are basically slaves.) We don’t know. As for pedophilia, V is now
clear that it is forbidden. But for many years it was not so, as proven by several declarations by
him or by Raëlians, for instance: the need to explain to children how they can take pleasure from
their genitals (V-2 pp. 107, 108)20; “the child is, for the adult, a favored sexual object” (Apocalypse
N° 64, quoted by Salamolard & Rottet p. 62); or a woman explaining contentedly that her grandfather had taught her to masturbate herself when she was 3 or 4 (Apocalypse N° 63, ibid, p. 61).
And what about the “cherubs,” “a group of very young girls” which V decided to create21 after the
suggestion by the young daughter of an angel? “Little girls beginning to learn together the
teachings of the Elohim and of Raël and to have lessons for preparing themselves to become
angels,” it will be “brilliant” (Bisaillon pp. 273-276, quotation p. 274). It would be a total negation
of what V had previously written about the education of children (V-2 pp. 101, 104). And while
Raëlians are of course not the Raëlian Movement, several of them have been sentenced for
pedophilia, including incest or rape (About pedophilia: Bisaillon, chapter 6; Péloquin pp. 287290).
17
Several mentions of that primitive state of most humans, sometimes with revealing expressions, appear from V-1 to
R-10, particularly in R-9.
18
Which later offers a splendid lie by him to “Héloïse” for explaining his absence: he had been kidnapped in France
by the police, put in jail, questioned constantly, had fallen seriously ill and was close to death, was taken to the hospital,
and operated on (Palmer 2004 p. 168).
19
Which proves moreover that the E are sexist because they demand a totally female reception team.
20
This is not by itself an invitation to pedophilia, but several persons can understand it in this way. The three successive
levels of the Swiss justice found a possible danger in such words (Salamolard & Rottet, chapter 4).
21
No message from the E is apparently involved here.
115
I. Case Studies
Other indications about V are indirectly given by the ideology which is conveyed by geniocracy
or V’s views about cloning, as well as by some traits of the E themselves, such as the following.
“To say that the man is imperfect is insulting our creators who created us as their image. The man
is perfect […];” and “nothing offends our creators more than seeing their creatures being ashamed
at the appearance they were given” (V-2 pp. 107, 123). However, for V, the human being is his/her
DNA. Necessary consequence of both facts, if taken as true: that DNA was created perfect, then it
could not have deteriorated, which is obviously contradicted by malformations, diseases, mental
imbalances, or evil people. The truth is actually that the E are evidently arrogant and egocentric
persons (as is V), giving us commandments not unlike the ones of the (yet hated) Church (ibid. pp.
89-90), forbidding us to judge what they say and do because “the creature has no right to judge his
creator” and those of V, their representative on Earth (ibid. pp. 148-9). But how have the E reacted
when reading that their beloved creature the “human being is absolutely insignificant” (R-10 p.
43)?
Three Sociologists’ Views About the Reasons for the Success of Vorilhon
After having presented V, his books, his doctrine (an “atheist creationism”) and his movement
which is characterized by its “permanent social creativity,” Jean-Bruno Renard draws for that
success some basic reasons [reformulated here] which can satisfy contradictory needs: Raëlism
associates a need for spirituality with science and materialism by technologizing the supernatural;
particularly, it replicates several features of the Roman Catholic Church in its structure and several
other creeds, for instance in accepting Jesus but in modernizing Yahweh, so that it can be attractive
for “disenchanted Catholics.” It gives a special value to the person by integrating several
contemporary views (liberated sexuality, personal development by the Sensual Meditation), by
claiming that Raëlians are intelligent people, and by identifying the adept as that “New Man” who
is Raël (adapted from Renard).
Annie Cathelin was plunged into the Raëlian movement in 1997-1998 for preparing her doctoral
dissertation in sociology. Her book (Cathelin) presents four basic components that can be mixed:
the theoretical frame, the question of charisma – in general and as applied to V and Raëlism –, a
detailed description of the movement and the doctrine, and a symbolic analysis of many aspects of
Raëlism. The charisma is not the property of a person, but the result of an interaction of this person
with his followers, particularly thanks to intermediaries skilled in various fields: the charismatic
cannot exist without them, but without him they are nothing; and to be efficient, that charisma
requires a resonance between the needs of the members (to give a meaning to their life), several
traits of the modern world (here spirituality must come to a compromise with materialistic views)
and the archetypal core (answers to basic questions such as our origin and destiny). Symbolically,
V appears simultaneously as an overman, a man who passes us from one state of life to another, a
visionary, a savior, a sacred person; he leads the Raëlians toward a more satisfying life today and
the golden age tomorrow, including immortality by cloning. But Cathelin shows that in the real
Raëlian life, the whole process uses somewhat totalitarian practices and manipulates the followers,
and that V’s symbolic value doesn’t prevent him from being a weathercock, a crook, and an
impostor.
Susan J. Palmer is a Québécois sociologist of religions, particularly interested in New Religious
Movements (NRMs) and who is perceived as a specialist about Raëlism by English-speaking
116
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
colleagues. Her The New Heretics of France (2011) is a rather virulent attack on the political,
judicial and mediatic assaults against NRMs in the 1990s, with good and bad arguments; she
compares these assaults to the Inquisition, which is largely exaggerated, while a far more accurate
equivalent would be the satanic panic of the 80s in the United States, to which is devoted only half
a page. Palmer feigns to think that these attacks were largely motivated by the unorthodox beliefs
of the NRMs, while they actually arose from the fear of illegal actions; and she rejects mental
manipulations among them by equating that concept with the brainwashing of U.S. prisoners of
war in Korea (which was indeed later proved nonexistent).22 Several errors arise from Palmer’s
poor knowledge of the French language, social reality, and institutions 23; and particularly from the
fact that she very rarely distances herself from the statements of leaders or members of the NRMs,
either made specifically to her or in other contexts. All these elements apply to the chapter about
the Raëlian Movement in the above book. And also, to Alien Adored (2004), a work very
interesting for its large review of many aspects of Raëlism, particularly for many original data
obtained by Palmer or by her students, but which is also seriously biased. She says clearly
(however rather shyly) she is not a Raëlian nor believes the Messages (pp. [ix], 49), and it is evident
she sometimes, but far from always, dissociates herself from Raëlian claims. While we can expect
that a sociologist has a neutral, even if somewhat kindly, look about the group she studies, it
appears that Palmer’s neutrality is far from being already present. For instance, she appreciates
having been well-received by the group for several years – no problem here –, but later is “not
very happy” that the Raëlian meetings become more formal (p. 115), then “shocked, upset” to be
excluded for some time from these meetings (p. 10) and “jealous” when a journalist says he could
become “the Raelians’ kept historian” (p. 7): what an emotional involvement with her study
object... And when the Baby Eve affair burst in the media, why these words to journalists?: “I said
[to them] that the Raelians weren’t stupid enough to paint themselves into a corner; that Dr.
Boisselier was a serious scientist; that it was true Raelians liked to court the media, but they had
never told an outright lie”24 (p. 12)?
With one exception, no part of that book is directly devoted to the reasons of success of V’s
business, but several passages offer useful indications. The most important is V’s own person, who
has made a very strong impression on Palmer: “his creativity seemed limitless”25 (p. 3); he is “a
sportsman,” “a philosopher,” “a scintillating performer,” “above all, a writer,” his “relationship
with technology is shamanistic” (e.g. “his instant technological education” on the eternals’ planet),
“he is a complex, unique individual, a Renaissance man who defies facile categorization,” “I
approach Raël rather as a creative artist, a kind of religious genius” (pp. 45-49), etc. As for Raëlthe-philosopher, Palmer has this immortal thought in her second book: “Raël is perceived26 to be
a great atheistic philosopher, descending in a direct line from Voltaire and Rousseau; like them, he
demystifies the irrational beliefs, mythologies, and obscurantisme of the oppressive Catholic
22
But Palmer had previously stated that Raëlian lectures in France presented slides of crop circles with “a subtle
suggestion [a mental manipulation, perhaps?] that this unexplained phenomenon could be a sign that the Elohim are
supporting Raël’s mission” (2004 p. 64).
23
Only one example: the former Renseignements généraux (now a part of the Direction centrale du Renseignement
intérieur) are for her “similar to the CIA,” whereas they only had an informational mission within France’s borders.
24
Really? But what with that non-solar planet less than one light-year from ours or the Earth totally covered by water
25,000 years ago?
25
Palmer does not seem to suspect it could apply to V’s whole story.
26
By whom?
117
I. Case Studies
Church”27 (2011, p. 97) [!]. Other reasons are the favorable context of the time toward interest in
UFOs (2004 chapter 1); the ability of the Raëlians for “manipulating the media” (pp. 67-70); the
fulfillment of six of the eight conditions defined by Rodney Stark for the success of a NRM, for
instance “cultural continuity” (from Judeo-Christianism) or a “favorable ecology” (choice of
countries with religious freedom) (pp. 77-79); the millenarian aspects (pp. 92-96, 155-156); the
atmosphere of the monthly meetings in Montréal which Palmer compares to Louis XIV’s court at
Versailles [!] (p. 104); V’s charisma (pp. 113-114); the “Raëlian sexual effervescence” and the
“Raëlians’ anti-Catholic stance” (pp. 114-115); the main reasons given by the guides for having
become Raëlians, basically linked to a philosophy that makes a bridge between their childhood
Catholic faith and their pragmatic and scientific views as adults (pp. 124-129); the use of external
enemies (claims of assassination projects) for tightening up the ranks (pp. 160-161); the “science
is our religion” motto (chapter 9); and the “technological utopianism” (pp. 199-203).
Conclusion
Some facts in particular (such as Y telling V to create the MADECH [the first name for the Raëlian
Movement]; the original “mark appearing on the UFO and the man’s suit” which changes from the
1974 to the 2022 editions of V-1; or the impossible distance to the alien planet and the equally
impossible date when the Earth was covered by water) and the whole story in general lead to a
simple and short conclusion: the reliability of Vorilhon’s testimony as a UFO witness is zero, a
zero as absolute as the temperature zero kelvin of the physicists... That Raëlians believe in the
content of V’s claims can be psychologically understandable – especially as Y says that those who
believe in V, and thus in him, are “wise and intelligent” (V-1 p. 139) and that V “addresses the
humans by requesting them to understand and not to believe” (R-4 p. 83). But for other people, the
truth should be simple: Vorilhon lies, starting with the very beginning of his 1973 alleged contact.
Period!
Acknowledgments: Stefano Bigliardi, Annie Cathelin, Jean-Bruno Renard, and Thierry Rocher
for their documents and pieces of information. And Jacques Scornaux for his revision of my
translation.
References
(I) Books by Claude Vorilhon/Raël (first edition only; other editions can have different titles).
V-1. As Vorilhon, Claude “Raël”. Le livre qui dit la vérité. J’ai rencontré un extra terrestre.
Clermont-Ferrand: L’Édition du Message, 1974. Translation with V-2: Space Aliens took me
to Their Planet. the most important revelation in the history of mankind. The Book which
tells the Truth. Waduz [sic], Liechtenstein: Fondation pour l’accueil des Élohim (FACE),
1978.
V-2. _____. Les extra-terrestres m’ont emmené sur leur planète. Le 2ème message qu’ils m’ont
donné. Brantôme, France: L’Édition du Message, 1975. Translation: see V-1.
V-3. As Vorilhon, Claude. La géniocratie. Brantôme, France: L’Édition du Message, 1977.
Translation: Geniocracy: Government of the People, for the People, by the Geniuses. [No
place]: Nova, 2008.
R-4. As Raël. Accueillir les extra-terrestres. Ils ont créé l’humanité en laboratoire. Vaduz,
Liechtenstein: Fondation Raëlienne, 1979. Translation: Let’s Welcome Our Fathers from
Space: They Created Humanity in Their Laboratories. Tokyo: AOM, 1987.
27
No, he mystifies his flock by replacing them with his own versions.
118
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
R-5. _____. La méditation sensuelle®. L’éveil de l’esprit par l’éveil du corps. Vaduz,
Liechtenstein: Fondation Raëlienne, 1980. Translation: Sensual Meditation: Awakening the
Mind by Awakening the Body. Tokyo: AOM, 1987.
R-6. _____. Le racisme religieux financé par le gouvernement socialiste. Halte à la violation des
droits de l’homme en France. “Édité par l’auteur” [Published by the author]. 1992.
R-7. _____. «Vive le Québec libre!». Faire du Québec la Suisse d’Amérique du Nord.
[Boucherville, Canada]: Assistance Révélation 1973. 1995.
R-8. _____. Le Message donné par les extra-terrestres. La sience [sic] remplace enfin la religion.
Vaduz, Liechtenstein: Fondation raëlienne, 1997. (Basically V-1 + V-2 + two complements).
Translation: The Final Message. [London]: Tagman, 1998.
R-9. _____. Oui au clonage humain. La vie éternelle grâce à la science. Vaduz, Liechtenstein:
Fondation Raëlienne, 2001. Translation: Yes to Human Cloning: Eternal Life Thanks to
Science. [No place]: Raelian Movement / Jean Claude Reuille, 2001.
R-10. _____. Le Maitraya [sic]. Extraits de son enseignement. Vaduz, Liechtenstein: Fondation
Raëlienne, 2003. Translation: The Maitreya: Extracts From His Teachings. Wisdom of the
Prophet Rael. Messengers of the stars. [No place]: Raelian Foundation / Nova, 2004.
(II). Others.
Anonymous. Rael’s Secret. The Suppressed History of the Raelian Movement. On-line for instance
at
https://www.pdf-archive.com/2016/06/28/the-suppressed-history-of-the-raelianmovement/the-suppressed-history-of-the-raelian-movement.pdf [accessed Oct. 13, 2022]. –
Basically, a translation of Péloquin’s book, not acknowledged as such, with several changes.
Bisaillon, Martin. Raël. Enquête sur le mouvement raëlien. Montréal: Les Intouchables, 2003.
Bogaert, Pierre-Maurice, Mathias Delcor, Edmond Jacob, et al. (eds.) / Centre: Informatique et
Bible de l’Abbaye de Maredsous. Dictionnaire encyclopédique de la Bible. Turnhout,
Belgium: Brepols, (1960) 2002.
Cathelin, Annie. Le mouvement raëlien et son prophète. Approche sociologique complexe du
Charisme, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004.
Finkelstein, Israël, and Neil Asher Silberman. La Bible dévoilée. Les nouvelles révélations de
l’archéologie. Paris: Bayard, 2002. Translation of The Bible Unearthed, New York: Free
Press, 2001.
_____. Les rois sacrés de la Bible. À la recherche de David et Salomon. Paris: Bayard, 2006.
Translation of David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of
Western Tradition, New York: Free Press, 2006.
McCann, Brigitte (photos by Chantal Poirier). Raël. Journal d’une infiltrée. Outremont, Canada:
Stanké, 2004.
Maugé, Claude. Le Raël Réel, Profession: Imposteur. Unpublished paper, 2022.
Palmer, Susan J. Aliens Adored. New Brunswick (New Jersey) / London: Rutgers University Press,
2004.
_____. The New Heretics of France: Minority Religions, la République, and the GovernmentSponsored “War on Sects.” Oxford / New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Péloquin, Maryse. Raël: Voleur d’âmes. Montréal: Trait d’Union, 2004. – See Anonymous.
Renard, Jean-Bruno. “Le mouvement raëlien: les raisons d’un succès.” Psychologie et société,
2003, vol. 6, pp. 116-131.
Römer, Thomas, Jean-Daniel Macchi, and Christophe Nihan (eds.). Introduction à l’Ancien
Testament. Genève: Labor et Fides, (2004) 2009.
Saint-Cyr, Jean-Denis. Confessions de Raël à son ex-bras droit. [Montréal]: Au Carré, 2009.
119
I. Case Studies
Salamolard, Michel, and Pierre Rottet. Le réel de Raël. Une secte à la dérive. Saint-Maurice,
Switzerland: Pillet, 2004.
120
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
The MUFON-ian Candidate:
The Gulf Breeze UFO Case as Political Contest
Craig R. Myers
Such self-possession at command,
The byplay great, th’ illusion grand;
In truth—’twas everything but true.1
Abstract: To best understand the Gulf Breeze phenomenon of the late 1980s and early 1990s one
must view it not primarily as a UFO case, but a political contest. As when a hurricane strikes the
Gulf Coast, many factors came together to create a perfect storm of social competition, including
outside cultural forces. As with weather, pressure was a key factor: Ed Walters’ and MUFON’s
high-profile promotion of his sightings and photos influenced people to join this “social creativity”
advancement opportunity. Walters and his enablers benefitted from “rational ignorance” and the
“economics of lying” in persuading others to join the In-Group of Believers and Witnesses, while
dealing out punishment to the Out-Group of skeptics and debunkers. The result was an
environment of high “expectations,” “misinformation,” and powerful “visual cues” that, according
to Loftus et al, can taint eyewitness accounts.
Keywords: Gulf Breeze UFO, Ed Walters, MUFON, Debunkers
Figure 1: Ed Walters campaigning for his UFO photos on “Oprah” in September 1990.
Preamble
Let me start with a confession: “The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony” is a topic beyond my
experience and expertise. Before you skip on to another chapter, let me elaborate. I am a recovering
newspaper reporter whose second career act has taken him into the strange new world of academia,
exposing me to some theories and research relevant to this topic. So, while I still lack the training
to assess eyewitness testimony in general, much less that involving the paranormal, I am an expert
1
From poem published by Bristol Mercury in 1817. Imbler, Sabrina. “The English Servant Girl Who Pretended to Be
an Exotic Island Princess.” Atlas Obscura, May 9, 2019. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/who-was-princesscaraboo-scam
121
I. Case Studies
on the “Reliability of One Particular UFO Witness’s Testimony” and the impact it had on the social
environment of an entire Florida Panhandle community in the late 1980s-1990s. I believe that
narrowing our focus on the Ed Walters case study yields numerous valuable insights into the wider
topic at hand.
The Certain Uncertainty Principle
UFO contact claimants have a built-in contradiction—they can be completely confident they saw
something that they cannot identify. Consider this tale of a “debunker” turned UFO witness...
Nearly 30 years ago, a friend and colleague at Florida’s Pensacola News Journal called me
frantically exclaiming, “You have to see this! I’ve never seen anything like it! I’ll pick you up.” It
was the proverbial dark and stormy night, a deluge once again dousing that moist part of the world.
Minutes later, I was in his car zig-zagging through that great old port city following strange shapeshifting blobs of light as they moved back and forth, round and round, across the night sky
seemingly in or behind the clouds. “Turn right here! Turn left here!” I shouted as the navigator.
The amorphous lights were moving fast, faster than any aircraft, disappearing briefly before
popping out again to continue their dazzling dance. After what seemed like hours, we noticed a
pattern to the circulating lights and some faint trails below them. Estimating the center of the light
pattern, we extrapolated it downward to a highway north of town. There, we discovered the source
of the show—a car dealership using giant rotating spotlights to draw attention to a sale. The
spotlights reflected along the bottom of the clouds like flashlight beams traveling along a hanging
sheet, changing shape as they moved. But for those few hours I—the reporter who helped crack
the Gulf Breeze UFO case—could not grasp what I was seeing. I recount this not to belittle UFO
sighting claimants, but to illustrate my point: I can reliably recount my actions that night, but if we
had not sussed out what we were seeing, our eyewitness account would have culminated in pure
speculation.
Loftus on Eyewitness Acquisition
The work of Elizabeth Loftus and colleagues on “false memories” and “imagination inflation”
raises serious questions about general eyewitness accuracy. In one famous study, Loftus et al
showed participants altered Disney World “Remember the Magic” ads describing a wonderful day
in the theme park from a child’s perspective. A statistically significant percentage of participants
recalled encountering characters that could not have been there at the time:
For example, 16% of people claimed that they shook hands with Bugs (Bunny) after receiving the
false Bugs ad; 7% said they remembered meeting Ariel, a character that had not yet been
introduced, after seeing an ad suggesting all children meet her at the park. Neither character would
have been at the park during the participants’ childhood... imagination inflation occurred, where
people became more confident that the ad-suggested event had happened to them when they were
children. (1)
It stands to reason that retaining a memory over a long period of time can be a challenge.
Surprisingly, however, Loftus says the breakdown often occurs not in retention but in the first
stage of the witnessing process—acquisition: “(E)ven though an event is bright enough, loud
enough, and close enough, and even though attention is being paid, we can still find significant
errors in a witness’s recollection of the event.” (2) Loftus et al document other powerful influences
including stress and fear. But there are three more I find relevant to the Gulf Breeze saga:
“expectations” created by a peer group or interviewer; the “misinformation effect” in which a
122
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
person’s recollection can be significantly altered after exposure to misleading information about
the event; and most significantly “visual cues” such as photos and other images. I would not
attempt to apply these principles to any specific sighting, but I believe all three converged in space
and time in Gulf Breeze to create an environment that tainted eyewitness accounts.
Gulf Breeze Case as Political Campaign
To truly understand the Gulf Breeze Sightings, you must view it not primarily as a UFO case but
as a political campaign. Walters’ claim that he took 38 photos in 20 encounters from November
11, 1987, to May 1, 1988, sparked arguably the most hotly contested, highest profile ufological
clash in U.S. history. The following key can help you understand the political nature of this case:
• The Candidate—Ed Walters as an ambitious community member and active promoter of
his photos and the wider cultural phenomenon of UFO contact.
• The Campaign—Walters’ and his supporters’ intentional effort to obtain “votes,” defined
as belief in the issue of UFO contact and a government-Debunker cover-up.
• The Supporting Party—MUFON as a growing national organization with local affiliates
that actively endorsed Walters’ case and helped him attack opponents.
• The Opposition Party—The informal national network of Debunkers and local skeptics
like the mayor and police chief.
• The Scandal—The Styrofoam UFO model found in Walters’ former house and Tommy
Smith’s hoaxing testimony, and subsequent damage control by Walters and MUFON.
• The Election—The 1990 MUFON convention where support for Walters was confirmed,
followed by Ed’s effort to convert that into real votes in his run for City Council.
The Candidate
Even before his “sightings,” Ed showed a desire for social advancement as a community leader.
He helped plan a scavenger hunt as part of the city’s 25th anniversary. He dabbled in public service
as a member of the Gulf Breeze Planning Board and would later seek a City Council seat. But in
1987 when he submitted blurry photos of stereotypical spaceships from a 1950s B-grade sci-fi
movie to the local paper, even he may have been surprised at the tsunami that was unleashed. How
could a local homebuilder spark such an explosion of support and attention in this period just
before the digital age? Part of the answer is Walters was a smart, charismatic, convincing, tireless,
aggressive, and media-savvy claimant. I concur with former Gulf Breeze Mayor Ed Gray’s
summary in a 1990 episode of “Unsolved Mysteries”:
Ed Walters is extremely intelligent, smarter than I am, I’m sure. He managed to create a story and
keep the story fed and keep it going for years now...The photographs of Ed Walters are a hoax
created for the purpose of starting the UFO as a topic of interest, and ultimately became a way for
him to make a great deal of money off a publication. (3)
But with apologies to the Beach Boys, Walters also was able to “Catch a Wave” of cultural interest
in UFOs and distrust in government in the 1980s-1990s. This was reflected in books such as
Whitley Strieber’s Communion and Transformation, and Budd Hopkins’ Intruders (Hopkins
would write the introduction to Walters’ book). Later, a new TV network’s flagship show argued
“The Truth is Out There” and is being covered up by the Government. “The X-Files” debuted in
1993 and the Gulf Breeze case would be referenced in two episodes—the 1993 episode “Fallen
Angel” and 1994 episode “E.B.E.” In the latter episode, FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully
123
I. Case Studies
have the following exchange over anonymously provided UFO photos, illustrating this cultural
zeitgeist:
MULDER: “This is the best photographic evidence I have ever seen. When I first saw the Gulf
Breeze photos, I knew they were a hoax but this . . . this is the quality of evidence the government
has amassed for decades at the highest classified levels . . .”
SCULLY: “Mulder, this photograph is a fake.”2
The political context also is key. The movement that sprang up from the sandy grassroots of
Northwest Florida was a strange mixture of conservative and liberal, which allowed it to attract
members from both camps in an area with a huge Navy and Air Force presence. It featured a
nebulous New Age belief (per Streiber and Hopkins) that these contacts were part of mankind’s
evolution to a higher plain of existence. That appealed to liberals who were not traditionally
religious. It also featured a distrust and suspicion of the federal government embodied by the
GOP’s political ascendence, which appealed to conservatives—many of whom were traditionally
religious. As Walters told “Unsolved Mysteries”: “this is a very conservative town, and I am a
very conservative guy. ... I didn’t want to be known as the builder who saw UFOs.” (3) This from
a man portraying himself on a national TV show, demonstrating that far from being the reluctant
contactee, Walters was arguably the most aggressive and engaged UFO witness ever. Starting in
1987, he was a happy warrior who loved the media attention, the debate with Debunkers, the battle
for “votes” in the form of belief in UFO sightings—his in particular. Variations on these quotes
from The Gulf Breeze Sightings became his “stump speech” on national TV, local news interviews,
or live events called Skywatches:
No longer can I look at the night sky and disregard the possibilities of intelligent life somewhere
in the heavens...My character has been assaulted and that I cannot fully forgive or forget...The
more than 100 other witnesses have been steadfast in proclaiming what they saw. We have
experienced an encounter of spectacular proportions...The personal stigma I carry in revealing the
true story of these emotional events becomes less and less important when compared with the
reality of the UFO—proof positive. (4, p. 265)
Ed vs. the Evidence
While Walters’ meteoric ascension is impressive, his survival as a supported UFO contactee is
perhaps even more so. A cursory search of ufological media will reveal this. News coverage from
2017, the 30th anniversary of his Polaroid shots heard ’round the world, found continued support
for Ed, albeit somewhat Nixonian or Clintonian as the damaged leader who still inspired loyalty.
In keeping with our theme, the reliability of this singular witness should have long ago been
universally rejected with Walters confessing in disgrace, offering an apology for all the time, ink,
paper, and videotape wasted on this debate, and offering refunds for anyone who purchased his
book. Let us review the well-documented evidence that this was a hoax, with some running
commentary regarding efforts to discount it. Before he became a UFO photographer in 1987,
Walters had a well-known penchant—acknowledged yet discounted by his supporters—for
playing practical jokes using the same or similar old Polaroid camera, most famously using double
exposure to cause the image of a “ghost” or “demon” to show up behind subjects. In 1990, as
Walters was garnering fame and a small fortune for photographs of spaceships in the skies of Gulf
2
“E.B.E.” The X-Files (with David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson). FOX, Feb. 18, 1994.
124
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Breeze, I discovered that a model Styrofoam spaceship (see Figure 2) had been found in the attic
of Walters’ former home, where he lived when he claimed these encounters.
Figure 2. The model found at a prior residence of Ed Walters.
No one tipped me off that a model had been found, or encouraged me to go to Ed’s former home
and talk to its new residents. It was old-fashioned follow-the-trail investigative reporting. This is
a key point, because it debunks claims by Walters and his supporters that I was part of a
Government-Debunker cabal to find (or even plant) the false flag model to debunk the Gulf Breeze
case. For such a setup to work, it could not be left to chance. Robert Menzer, the homeowner who
found the model in his attic, had no interest in announcing it: “When I uncovered the model, I
didn’t think much about it. It was just a curiosity that it was there. I was not aware at that time of
the significance attached to a model of a UFO.”(3)
The model had a midsection of paper cut from house plans, upon which was written in Walters’
distinct handwriting the dimensions of a house. Walters admitted the plans and handwriting were
his, but claimed they were recovered from his trash and used to make the “fake fake” model. The
debate over whether a house plan with those dimensions existed at the time of the model’s
discovery is a red herring—Ed had indeed produced house plans with those dimensions before the
model was found, according to city records that I personally inspected. When I inspected them, I
discovered someone had torn the corner off the thick drafting paper where the dimensions were
written. A city official told me Walters had been there just a short time before I arrived to review
those plans. The dimensions were confirmed to be the same as inside the model. (5, pp. 133-134)
I brought the model back to our newspaper offices and worked with photographers to recreate
double exposure photos of the type Ed became famous for taking with his Polaroid (see Figure 3).
Figure 3. Left: author’s
recreation of picture using
the model found. Right:
original picture by Ed
Walters.
125
I. Case Studies
The argument by Walters and supporters that the model did not look exactly the UFOs in his photos
is akin to a counterfeiter claiming, after a forged $20 bill is discovered in his home, that it is
irrelevant because Andrew Jackson’s hair looks different on it than on other $20 bills he circulated
in the community.
Later in 1990, I personally interviewed and wrote the story of a compelling eyewitness—a wellspoken, conscientious young man named Tommy Smith. He detailed on the record, and at great
cost to his reputation, how he helped Ed fake UFO photos using the double exposure process.
According to Smith, in January 1988 Walters gave him six faked photos to take to the Gulf Breeze
Sentinel newspaper to kick off the escapade. Smith told “Unsolved Mysteries” that he had second
thoughts and declined: “Two main reasons I didn’t go through with it was because I was lying to
my folks basically and also the fact that I just felt like it was fraud.” Smith also addressed the
argument that the model wasn’t an exact replica of Walters’ photo subject: “He had a spot on the
floor where he could kneel or sit and photograph the model every single time. I was sitting in the
bedroom and he went into the closet and pulled one model out and said ‘no, wrong one’ and stuck
it back up and pulled another one out.” (3) By early 1990, what Ed started as a practical joke had
morphed into a way to make some money ($200,000 just for writing his book). Next, it would
snowball into a quasi-political movement and a novel method of social advancement.
Social Identity Theory
In 1979, British psychologists Henri Tajfel and John Turner introduced Social Identity Theory
(SIT) to explain how social groups advance:
The theory suggests that the group we identify with (such as family, football club, nation) is
important to our self-esteem and sense of identity. By a process of social categorisation, we decide
which social group people belong to: “us” or “them” (the in-group or out-group). This is followed
by social identification where we adopt the identity of a group and adjust our behaviour;
accordingly, and social comparison where we compare our groups with others. Enhancing the
traits of the in-group (“we're great”) and denigrating out-groups (“they're bad”) ensure that the
social comparison comes out favourably for our own group. According to the social identity theory
the in-group will look for negative aspects and characterisations of the out-group to boost their
own self-image. (6)
According to SIT, a group may pursue one of three strategies for advancement:
• Social mobility in which they emulate the values and practices of the higher-status group
with the goal of gaining admission into elite clubs.
• Social competition in which groups try to equal or surpass the dominant group in the
area on which its claims to superior status rest.
• Social creativity in which they reframe a negative attribute as positive or stress
achievement in a different domain.
Whether by intention or by instinct Walters chose this third approach, seeking advancement and
prestige in a different dimension by promoting new norms or a new developmental model (no pun
intended). As eyewitness accounts grew exponentially it reversed the stereotypical societal
dynamics of UFO sightings cases: Believers and Witnesses became the promoted and protected
In-Group, while Naysayers and Debunkers were punished as the Out-Group. That also reflected
126
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
an element of social competition in which “group members may seek positive distinctiveness
through direct competition with the out-group. They may try to reverse the relative positions of
the in-group and the out-group on salient dimensions.” (7)
Princess Caraboo
An example of social creativity occurred in 1817, when a common British woman passed herself
off for several months in Gloucestershire, England, as the mysterious “Princess Caraboo.” She
dressed the part of Asian royalty, danced exotically, shot a bow and arrow, and even made up a
spoken and written language. Soon a Portuguese sailor, Manuel Eynesso, claimed to understand
and translated her story: She had swum ashore after escaping from pirates who kidnapped her from
a country called Javasu, where she prayed to a god named “Allah-Tallah.” She held court in the
town like real royalty, visited by a steady stream of reporters, painters, physiognomists,
craniologists, and linguists including “a certain Dr. Wilkinson, who identified her language using
Edmund Fry’s Pantographia.” (8) The ruse lasted only a few months:
By now word had spread of the attractive foreign stranger and curious members of society came
to visit the woman now known as Caraboo. The stranger was being treated like a visiting head of
state...It transpired that the self-styled princess was really Mary Willcocks, who came from
Witheridge in Devon. She was no princess, but the daughter of a cobbler. Apparently, she adopted
the disguise in the hope that it would make her more interesting.
For a social creativity strategy to succeed, the proposed criteria for status must be recognized as
valid and worthwhile by the dominant group. In Walters’ case the new criteria was to become one
of the Believers who, although oppressed by the Government and Debunkers, were on a path
toward Transformation. An amazing number of contact claimants sprang forth ranging from
average folks to prominent community members such as a chemical engineer, medical examiner,
and city council member, many claiming to be eyewitnesses not just of a UFO, but of the UFO.
The Campaign
Walters’ skills as the MUFON-ian candidate were on full display in 1990 during his appearance
on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” after the model UFO had been found and Smith’s whistleblowing
reported. (9) Ed was at his best, simultaneously playing victim and attacker while giving his stump
speech and debating a Debunker. He methodically built a force field of support around him in
concentric circles, starting locally and extending it nationwide and even worldwide. Asked by
Oprah to explain his story, he began with the campaign issue: “Two and a half years ago I saw
what I saw, and I know what I saw was a UFO. People came forward by droves, dozens and scores
of people saying yes that’s exactly what we saw. ... I support completely the idea that the
government is covering this up.” He called on Congress to hold hearings to force the military to
“tell us what they are doing—“What’s going on? It is our right as Americans to know what we are
funding our government to do.” Skeptic Phil Klass was on the show, gamely attempting to debate
the model and Smith’s devastating testimony, but Walters was in control. When Klass quickly
outlined Ed’s outlandish claims of blue beams, images of nude women, and abduction, Walters
used President George H.W. Bush’s famous line to elicit applause and cheers from the audience:
“Read my lips, I have never claimed I have been abducted.” When a woman in the audience asked
about the model, Walters turned it into an opportunity to ratchet up the campaign rhetoric:
127
I. Case Studies
If you think this model looks anything like the photographs of what people around Gulf Breeze are
seeing, then you need glasses...the prank that was pulled by putting a model in a house that I used
to live in...was an effort by whomever to discredit the sightings. And it shows me that there is a very
definite coverup going on trying to make this phenomenon go away. And any big case that happens
around the United States will be ridiculed and I have heard these same stories, unsubstantiated
stories about models and witnesses coming forward over and over and there is no truth to them.
When Klass pointed out that the mayor called the story a hoax and Walters had two criminal
convictions, including forgery, Ed drew more applause with his impassioned closing speech:
This type of ridicule is the same thing the government does to virtually every high-profile UFO
case. They will dig into someone’s background...and try to convince people across the whole United
States “don’t worry, don’t worry there’s nothing there. This guy’s a criminal, he didn’t really see
anything,” “ooh they’ll plant a model in an old house he lived in.” “Oh, don’t worry it’s just a
model.” Hundreds of people in Gulf Breeze are testifying to seeing this thing. Now if you want to
believe I am a faker or trickster, then you also have to somehow or another convince all these other
people who are seeing the same thing that they are also hoaxsters and tricksters. (9)
Like all campaigns, the goal of this one was to obtain “votes,” which for my purpose are defined
as belief in Ed’s story as part of a wider phenomenon of UFO contact. In his multimedia onslaught,
he was not simply sharing his experience, but building his base. The last line of Walters’ book
invites other eyewitnesses to send him their stories and photos.
‘Rational Ignorance’
These supporting eyewitness accounts illustrate how Walters’ success as the MUFON-ian
candidate depended in large part on the principle of “rational ignorance.”
The expected benefit associated with a political lie comes from its success in securing votes ... the
rational vote-seeking politician will lie to the point where the marginal expected benefits are
equated with the marginal expected cost. Predictably, politicians will lie more extensively to the
rationally ignorant than to the well-informed voters. (10)
The term rational ignorance is not a pejorative, it simply means that voters (i.e., supporters) remain
intentionally ignorant about some issues because the cost of acquiring information about them is
greater than the benefits to be derived from the information. One analogy is someone whose
washing machine breaks down—he could study and learn how to repair it himself. But the average
person will opt to pay an expert to fix it because the cost of acquiring the information is
comparatively too high. So, it is more rational to remain ignorant. In the Walters case, many
witnesses could have invested the time and intellectual effort needed to figure out what was really
going on, but instead opted to simply declare themselves believers. “The theory of rational
ignorance explains a lot of what otherwise might appear to be baffling human behavior. ... The
busier the voter, the more rational it is to remain politically ignorant.” (11)
The Supporting Party
“You had politicians reporting seeing objects. There were so many sightings that you have to
account for, unless you believe there was massive collusion on the part of the residents of Gulf
Breeze and Pensacola,” Walters’ partner Bruce Maccabee said in 2017. (12) But such a massive,
organized conspiracy is not necessary at all. In the movie “The Lady Vanishes,” the protagonist
128
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
tries to solve the mysterious disappearance of a friend from a train only to have numerous
passengers deny the woman ever even existed. Asked to explain why so many people would lie,
the hero says: “I can’t, unless one person is lying and the others are backing her up.” 3
In Gulf Breeze, a few people were outright lying while others were backing them up for various
reasons. Some of these backers were Duane Cook, editor of the local newspaper that started the
phenomenon by publishing Walters’ photos, and Gulf Breeze City Council member Brenda
Pollack. The main backing, however, came from the Mutual UFO Network aka MUFON, which
now boasts more than 4,000 members worldwide. MUFON would stick with Ed through thick and
thin, not only providing just enough pseudo-scientific photographic psychobabble to give him a
veneer of credibility—as the visiting academics did for Princess Caraboo—but also leading the
attack on critics. In 1988, after only a cursory investigation, Ed officially became the MUFON-ian
candidate when International Director Walter H. Andrus Jr. issued this endorsement:
This is one of the most amazing UFO cases that I have investigated in the past 30 years in the
United States . . . The witness/photographer was evaluated as a sincere, truthful and successful
businessman who could destroy his personal reputation in the community if he was perpetrating a
hoax. No evidence was disclosed that this Gulf Breeze citizen was involved in anything deceptive.
On the contrary, he has impressed each of the investigators by his sincerity in sharing very openly
his experience. (5, p. 43)
This group of paranormal investigators became full partners in writing Walters’ book The Gulf
Breeze Sightings. Andrus elaborated on his endorsement by explaining “the intelligence behind
the UFOs implanted a tiny communication device within Ed’s head whereby they could
communicate by voice or humming sound to alert him to the proximity of their craft. ... Ed was
conceivably programmed to take the photographs for public distribution as part of the entities’
ultimate plan to make themselves gradually known to the public and world governments.” (4, p.
346). Florida MUFON Director Don Ware said “these sightings are proof of alien visitation” based
on his own version of Occam’s Razor:
One might ask why one couple in Gulf Breeze has been allowed eighteen photographic sessions.
The most obvious reason to me is the aliens want people to see the photographs. I hope this causes
more people to give serious thought to the idea that we, as an intelligent species, are not alone in
the universe. (4, p. 347)
Maccabee wrote a full chapter in which he raised the possibility that the photos were double
exposures, then dismissed that in part because Ed denied any knowledge of such a technique, in
part for photographic reasons, and in large part because “no one had ever seen Ed with UFO
models. Nor had anyone seen such models or evidence of such models at Ed’s house.” (4, p. 288)
Yet in 1990 after such a model was found, Maccabee said “There is very little evidence that Ed
hoaxed these pictures.” (3) There was by then much “evidence” that Ed had hoaxed them, as
outlined above, so perhaps the word Maccabee was looking for was “proof.” Five years ago,
Maccabee called the model, not Walters’ photos, a “hoax squared.” (12) The Walters-MUFON
relationship would mutually benefit both sides in building supporters, members, and customers.
3
“The Lady Vanishes.” Directed by Diarmuid Lawrence (with Tuppance Middleton and Tom Hughes). BBC, Aug.
18, 2013.
129
I. Case Studies
The Economics of Lying
“Ed will never, ever admit to it being a fraud, even if it goes to court, even if he goes to jail, no
matter what happens he’ll never admit it’s a fraud. ...Ed always told me that he would go to the
grave, that he would never admit to it being fake,” Smith said. (3) I understand his point, but there
was no crime committed, and suing Ed for fraud would have been futile because of the First
Amendment and because anyone who buys such a book knows there is a good likelihood it is not
true. Walters could no more be successfully sued for his lie than I could be for saying he lied.
Perhaps it was considered a harmless lie because after all, are not all good practical jokes lies?
Later it would become a way to make money then ultimately to drive a socio-political movement.
Economist and political theorist Gordon Tullock wrote in The Economics of Lying about the
strategy of “a political propagandist, a man or organization which aims to change public opinion
in order to obtain some political objective.” To do so, the organization must generalize its argument
to appeal to that wider circle of supporters:
Books on rhetoric normally urge placing great emphasis on the strong points of your argument
while skimming over the weak. The pressure group may be well advised to do just the opposite if
the weak argument will appeal to large numbers of people who are only vaguely interested in the
subject.4
In political contests, lying can be part of that process and while it carries some risks it has a
quantifiable payoff. Tullock said there are two challenges involved in lying, “the likelihood that
the lie will be believed and the probability it will persuade the hearer to take the desired action.”
The lie will always be part of an effort to persuade some person or persons to take some action or
to refrain from some action. It is a persuasive effort, and its benefit will come from the success of
the persuasion.
If someone is predisposed to lying, the choice to do so becomes quite literally a calculated decision.
Tullock developed equations to illustrate this principle, the simplest one being B1-C1=P1. In this
equation, B1=Anticipated Benefits from lying; C1=Anticipated Costs of lying; and P1=Payoff.
Tullock listed several costs of lying, including a guilty conscience, formal punishment, and injury
to reputation. “The conscience pain will be felt simply as a result of lying; the other two costs will
be felt only if the lie is unsuccessful, i.e., if it is not believed.”
But outside of certain professional or legal situations, punishments for lying are “socially
determined” and therefore have no tangible consequences. Lying about a UFO sighting is
something for which society has not determined formal punishment. Tullock says:
With the voters largely inattentive, they normally only learn things about the campaign that the
candidates force on them by public relations techniques. With most of the voter’s information
coming from the output of the candidates, and with most of the voters and sources of opinion
already committed before the campaign starts, a repetition of a false charge may be very effective.
The decision of whether or not to lie will depend largely on an estimate of the efficiency of the
public relations organizations of the two candidates.
4
All quotes from Tullock on this page are from “The Economics of Lying.” The Economics of Politics. Ingram, 2005,
pp. 259-269.
130
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Thus, driven by the lie and its backers, the Gulf Breeze debate early on became such a PR
competition between groups for and against Ed—and MUFON had the early advantage.
The Opposition Party
In response to the coordinated efforts of Walters and MUFON, a loosely connected coalition of
critics and skeptics coalesced to contest their claims. They were collectively dubbed the Debunkers
and “consisted of men like the easy-going California piano-tuner Zan Overall, the sarcastic partycrasher Phil Klass, and the methodical mad scientist Dr. Willy Smith.” (5) This group fought
skirmishes by fax and phone—debating emulsion streaks, cloud movement, asymmetrical
windows, and such topics. Before social media, their platform was as sources for news stories and
a newsletter called “Saucer Smear” published by “Editor and Still Supreme Commander,” Jim
Moseley (see Figure 4).
Figure 4. Cartoon from Saucer Smear showing the level of debate.
Some ufology groups were part of this Opposition coalition, primarily the Center for UFO Studies
(CUFOS), which declared the photos “most probably a hoax” early on.
As for me, I did not set out to debunk this story. The tone of my early coverage was of an interesting
local phenomenon perfect for fun feature stories. But it was Overall’s documentation of Walters’
Ghost-Demon party photo games in a 44-page report that helped me to see that perhaps there was
an intentional effort under way by Walters and his backers to cash in on the case, both in terms of
money and attention. That changed the news angle of my coverage. From a journalistic
perspective, as the MUFON-ian candidate’s campaign brought him more national and international
attention and continued economic benefit, Walters became a “limited purpose public figure” and
therefore fair game for more critical public service reporting. The key is that Walters chose the
spotlight, it was not thrust upon him (and by that I do not mean the famous “blue beam” he claimed
lifted him off the ground). Walters had strong local political opposition, too, most notably Mayor
Gray and Police Chief Jerry Brown, who objected to their quiet, family friendly community being
used by Walters and these outsiders to promote their cause. Gray and Brown were instrumental in
131
I. Case Studies
locating Smith and convincing him to tell his story. Despite all this, Walters’ campaign continued
to gain steam as support for Ed’s sightings, and UFOs in general, grew exponentially and filled
the newspaper pages and airwaves with “I saw something too” type stories.
The Scandal
One of the biggest ways in which the Gulf Breeze UFO debate was a political contest was in the
Watergate-style Styrofoam model scandal and the Believers’ efforts to manage it. A decade later,
this analogy would become even more clear with the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. Clinton hung on
much as Walters did—damaged in reputation, discredited in some corners, but still viable as a
leader because of how invested his party, the media, and supporters were in his success. MUFON
and Ed would seek to discredit Smith just as Clinton’s “war room” did the women who accused
him of different kinds of close encounters. The hypocritical scenario created was much like when
those who argue “Women must be believed” about sexual harassment change their tune when the
accused is one of theirs. In this case, UFO contact claimants who cried foul over how they are
doubted and dismissed attacked a young man who was an eyewitness himself—to UFO models
being used by Walters to make double-exposure photographs.5
Walters started it on “Unsolved Mysteries” with the following strange comparison:
Tommy’s statements don’t check out. No matter how nicely he says them and how sincerely he says
them, they don’t check out. I have been studied for two and a half years, every word that I have
uttered has been examined and cross-examined. Why is it that we are suddenly expected to believe
without any examination every word this young man says just because he happens to be a naysayer?
(3)
MUFON joined Walters in coming after Smith’s credibility, with Andrus simply calling him a liar.
They questioned why Smith waited so long to come forward, labeled him a religious zealot who
wanted to discredit all UFO sightings, or my favorite from Walters again:
Back in January 1988 Tommy Smith, the young man, actually photographed a UFO. He was quite
upset when he told his father, or his father was quite upset when his son told him, and said that the
angels were coming and a very, very religious-oriented conversation which scared the young man
who then later told his father it was just a trick. (5, p. 131)
Another MUFONer scoffed that Smith “states he did witness some UFO hoaxing sessions, but
none of the photos from these sessions were ever published.” (13) Thus did the Gulf Breeze case
“jump the shark” with the spectacle of persecuted, mistreated UFO believers and contact claimants
doing just that to Smith over his inconvenient eyewitness account.
The Election
The campaign, debate, and damage control continued all the way to the MUFON convention held
in Pensacola in summer 1990 (that location having been planned a while in advance). At a press
conference, Andrus said “we stand by Ed Walters 100 percent.” The culmination of the event had
all the feel of an acceptance speech at a political party’s nominating convention, as Ed and Frances
sat on centerstage, the audience hushed, the lights turned low, with UFO photos projected on a
5
Efforts to reach Tommy Smith for comments for this paper were unsuccessful. A family member contacted by email
said Smith did not want to relive the episode.
132
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
screen behind them and repeated their claim of truthfulness and accusation that “everything is
being twisted by the debunkers.”
But there were some Machiavellian machinations at work behind the scenes too: Ed knew that by
rejecting him, MUFON would be rejecting its own credibility and judgment... Renew your support
for me, or I will drag you down too, Ed seemed to whisper. In order to save itself, MUFON had to
accept Ed. (5, pp. 148-149)
Later that year there was more drama as two local MUFON members assigned to reopen the
Walters case, Rex and Carol Salisberry, courageously concluded that perhaps it was a hoax after
all. They were denounced by Andrus and replaced with a new investigator, who came to the
predetermined conclusion that Ed must still be believed. (13) The case culminated with a twist as
Walters truly became a political candidate in fall of 1990, entering the race for Gulf Breeze City
Council. At a debate he claimed, “I sit here before you not as a UFO witness, but as a qualified
candidate. UFOs have nothing to do with city business.” (5, p. 157) The city had no districts, so
the top four vote-getters out of a pool of nine would win terms on the City Council. On election
night, Ed finished dead last, ninth out of nine candidates, picking up just 373 votes out of nearly
8,400 cast. The rational ignorance that helped Walters succeed in the campaign for hearts and
minds of Gulf Breeze did not translate into actual votes at the ballot box. Because Tullock writes:
“If individuals go to the polls, they vote their interest, as best such interest is perceived to be
through the fog of rational ignorance, stupidity, persuasion, and lies.” The MUFON-ian candidate
was not representing the interests of Gulf Breeze.
What About the Others?
Robert Stack, host of the “Unsolved Mysteries” episode in 1990, asked, “Even with the Ed
Walters’ controversy put aside a tantalizing mystery remains—what are we to think of the
hundreds of eyewitness accounts of Gulf Breeze residents who insist they have seen the same
UFOs that were photographed by Ed Walters? (3) Putting aside whether “hundreds” literally
claimed to see the Walters-type UFO there were many who did, making it a fair question. First,
returning to Loftus, a visual cue that influences eyewitness accounts does not have to be physically
present at the event, but can be projected back in memory upon viewing a cue. In addition, for
those seeking difficult-to-identify objects in the sky Gulf Breeze is the place to be. It sits at the
center of one of the busiest air spaces on earth: To the west is Pensacola NAS and a regional airport
and to the east Eglin Air Force Base and Hurlburt Field, a massive testing area for rockets, missiles,
drones, and experimental aircraft. Aircraft flying at night do not appear how you might expect.
The “Major Object”
But to truly answer that question there is more eyewitness testimony to consider. Pollak, the proWalters councilwoman, told “Unsolved Mysteries”: “What I saw was certainly not a small model
made of paper plates or any other small model. It was a major object.” (3) She took a photo of that
object the first time in 1988. (See Figure 5.)
133
I. Case Studies
Figure 5. Pollack’s first
UFO photograph of
object she claimed
matched Ed Walters’
pictures.
Far from being a Walters-type UFO, it shows the pathway of a lighted object moving wildly in the
Gulf breezes in circular patterns like a tethered balloon or kite. Then in 1990, just in time for the
second “Unsolved Mysteries” episode on the Gulf Breeze case, Pollak would photograph this
object again in a sighting with Walters. Under increased scrutiny over the model and Smith’s
testimony, Ed had urgently called several MUFON members and local supporters to his house,
including Pollak, to watch a UFO in the sky. Pollak said she was only able to get the photo after
the light went out and in the background she “could see a round silhouette of an object or a craft
of some kind that was unlit.” (3) All of the participants portrayed themselves in the episode
including Walters, who said, “It was wonderful to be with a crowd of people and stand there and
watch this object, because it’s no longer that you’re on your own.” What was this major object? In
1990, an anonymous source who I consider very credible recounted to me how one day he visited
Walters’ home. When no one came to the door, he located Ed in the garage working on a larger
UFO-shaped object as if working on his riding lawnmower. This eyewitness made a drawing of
this object he witnessed up close and in broad daylight in Ed’s garage (see Figure 6).
Figure 6. Left, drawing of an object a witness saw Walters working on. Right: drawing Walters made of UFO
he claimed he and others saw and photographed in January 1990.
134
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Conclusion: A Perfect Storm
On June 10, 1990, the day the Pensacola News Journal published my Gulf Breeze UFO expose, it
also ran a column by my Editor Ken Fortenberry that provided some good balance. In it, he told
the story of growing up as the son of a pilot involved in one of most famous UFO cases in history—
the Nash-Fortenberry sightings. Ken started it by writing, “I believe in UFOS,” and concluded it
with: “There are many fine people, particularly in the Gulf Breeze area, who are seeing something.
We are not trying to say they aren’t. Our stories simply focus on one man—Ed Walters—and his
encounters with UFOs in Gulf Breeze.” (14) I agree that was true of our professional work as
journalists. For this paper, I will add that the discredited reliability of this one witness has a wider
impact on UFO witness reliability. The aggressive and relentless PR and damage control campaign
waged by Walters and MUFON became a perfect storm. In the cultural context of growing UFO
interest, it created an environment that pressured people to choose between the In-Group of UFO
Believers, and the Out-Group of Debunkers. In addition, it provided all three of the Loftusdocumented influences—expectations, misinformation, and visual cues. Thus did a social and
political hurricane hit Gulf Breeze, Florida, from 1987-1990. At its center was a carefully
calculated and strongly supported lie spinning out powerful bands of influence that left UFO
eyewitness reliability devasted in its path.
References (all web articles accessed on December 7, 2022)
1. Braun, K.A., R. Ellis, and E.F. Loftus. “Make My Memory: How advertising can change our
memories of the past.” Psychology and Marketing, 2001, p. 17.
https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.1000
2. Loftus, Elizabeth F. Eyewitness Testimony. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press, 1996, pp. 22-23.
3. “Update: Gulf Breeze UFO Incident.” Unsolved Mysteries (with Robert Stack). NBC, season 3
episode 69, October 3, 1990.
4. Walters, Ed, and Frances Walters. The Gulf Breeze Sightings: The Most Astounding Multiple
UFO Sightings in U.S. History. William Morrow & Co., 1990.
5. Myers, Craig R. War of the Words: The True but Strange Story of the Gulf Breeze UFO.
Bloomington: Xlibris Corp., 2006. https://www.amazon.com/War-Words-Strange-StoryBreeze-ebook/dp/B0793SZK78
6. “Social Identity Theory: ‘Us’ and ‘Them.’” UKRI, Economic and Social Research Council,
2015.
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20220208114659/https://esrc.ukri.org/
about-us/50-years-of-esrc/50-achievements/social-identity-us-and-them/
7. Tajfel, H., and J.C. Turner. “The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior.” J.T. Jost & J.
Sidanius (eds.) Political psychology. London: Psychology Press, 1979, p. 20.
8. “The Mysterious Princess Caraboo.” Cheltenham: The History Press, 2018.
https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/the-mysterious-princess-caraboo/
9. “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” September 1990. https://youtu.be/lA4atn8wHps
10. Rowley, Charles K. The Intellectual Legacy of Gordon Tullock. New York: Springer, 2011,
p. 39
11. “The Theory of Rational Ignorance.” Economic Brief No. 29. Clemson University
Community and Economic Development Program.
https://www.scribd.com/document/396277840/The-Theory-of-Rational-Ignorance-pdf
135
I. Case Studies
12. Moon, Troy. “30 Years After Gulf Breeze UFO sightings, Is the Truth Still Out There?”
Pensacola News Journal, September 22, 2017.
https://www.pnj.com/story/news/2017/12/10/gulf-breeze-ufo-sightings-30-years-publicdivided/915397001/
13. Hufford, Art. “Ed Walters, The Model, and Tommy Smith.” The MUFON UFO Journal, No.
297, January 1993. http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc370.htm
14. Fortenberry, Ken. “Believe In UFOs? Sane People Are Seeing Something.” Pensacola News
Journal. June 10, 1990.
136
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
The Pascagoula Abduction: A Case of Hypnagogia?
Joe Nickell
Abstract: Among reports of extraterrestrial encounters, the 1973 claim of two Mississippi men
to have been taken aboard a flying saucer remains controversial. This case study reveals what
was really behind the encounter: a hypnagogic experience.
Keywords: Abduction, Hypnagogia, Pascagoula, Witness testimony, UFOs, Case studies
Preface
Charles Hickson, the chief claimant in the Pascagoula, Mississippi, UFO abduction case, died of
a heart attack on September 9, 2011, at the age of eighty. Until his death he maintained the truth
of his alien encounter—part of the UFO “flap” of 1973.1 It has remained (after the Betty and
Barney Hill case of 1961) “the second most famous UFO-abduction case in history,” according
to UFO historian Jerome Clark.2
Very Close Encounter
Hickson, then forty-two, was fishing from an old pier on the Pascagoula River with a friend,
nineteen-year-old Calvin Parker Jr., on the night of October 11, 1973. Hickson claimed they
heard a “zipping” sound and encountered a glowing object—an elongated UFO—hovering above
the ground. Three robot-like aliens exited from the craft; although they were gray humanoids just
over 153 cm tall, they were otherwise of a type not reported before or since3: each entity lacked a
neck, exhibited only slits for eyes and mouth, had a nose and ears that were sharply pointed
protrusions, and possessed clawed hands. The legs were joined, pedestal-like, and the entity
glided (see Figure 1).
The two men claimed they were taken aboard the spacecraft, where they were examined, after
which they were returned to their fishing site. Unnerved, they sat in a car to regain their
composure (with Hickson, at least, drinking whiskey), then reported their experience to the
sheriff.
Although the UFO reported by the men had apparently not been seen by people on the heavily
traveled nearby highway,4 there had been other UFO sightings in the area, including on the night
in question. The UFOs were variously described—some saw a helicopter-like object; one person
reported a supposed “experiment” from an air force base; and so on.5,6
Curtis Peebles. 1995. Watch the Skies! A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth. New York: Berkley Books, pp.
241–45.
2
Jerome Clark. 1998. The UFO Encyclopedia, vol. 2. Detroit, Michigan: Omnigraphics, p. 714.
3
Joe Nickell. 2011. Tracking the Man-Beasts. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books: “Alien Likeness” (with
pictorial chart, “Alien Time Line”), pp. 184–86.
4
Kevin D. Randle. 2001. “Pascagoula (Mississippi) abduction.” In Story, Ronald D. 2001. The Encyclopedia of
Extraterrestrial Encounters. New York: New American Library, pp. 423–24.
5
Jerome Clark, p. 715.
6
Ralph Blum, with Judy Blum. 1974. Beyond Earth: Man’s Contact with UFOs. New York: Bantam Books, pp. 14–
19.
1
137
I. Case Studies
Figure 1. Recreation of Hickson and Parker’s encounter, based on several sketches made from their descriptions.
(Drawing by Joe Nickell)
Controversy
The pair’s veracity was accepted by UFO believers J. Allen Hynek of the Center for UFO
Studies (CUFOS) and James Harder of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO),
both of whom rushed to interview the “abductees.” Harder tried unsuccessfully to hypnotize the
men7 but did conclude they had experienced “an extraterrestrial phenomena [sic].”8 Hynek
believed the pair had at least had “a very real, frightening experience.”9 The sheriff’s department
also felt the men were telling the truth, and Hickson requested and passed a lie-detector test
arranged by the agent with whom the men had signed a contract to promote their story. Parker
suffered a breakdown and was briefly hospitalized.10
The men’s fantastic report drew much skepticism. Famed UFO skeptic Philip J. Klass noted
discrepancies in Hickson’s account (for instance, once referring to the creatures as having a
“hole” for a mouth but later calling it a “slit”). Klass also pointed out that the lie-detector test
was conducted by an “inexperienced” polygraph operator and that Hickson refused to take
another administered by an expert police examiner. Based on other evidence—including the fact
that Hickson had once been fired for improperly obtaining money from employees under his
supervision—Klass concluded the case was a hoax.11,12
A Solution
So which was it: a genuine alien abduction or a hoax? Or is that a false dichotomy? In reviewing
the case, I thought there might be another possibility: the two men, who might have been
drinking before the incident (as Hickson admitted he was after), might have dozed off in any
7
Jerome Clark, p. 717.
The men were later hypnotized by another (see Hickson, Charles, and William Mendez. 1983. UFO Contact at
Pascagoula. Tucson, Arizona: Wendelle C. Stevens).
9
Ralph Blum, with Judy Blum, pp. 24–25.
10
Jerome Clark, pp. 714–17.
11
Philip J. Klass. (1974) 1976. UFOs Explained. New York: Vintage Books, pp. 347–69.
12
Philip J. Klass. 1989. UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game, updated edition. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus
Books, pp. 18–19.
8
138
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
case. Hickson could then have entered a hypnagogic (“waking dream”) state, a trancelike
condition between waking and sleeping in which some people experience hallucinations, often
with bizarre imagery, including strange beings (aliens, ghosts, etc.). This state may be
accompanied by what is called “sleep paralysis” (the body’s inability to move due to still being
in the sleep mode). In fact, Hickson not only reported the bizarre imagery but also said that the
aliens “paralyzed” him before carrying him aboard the UFO in what sounds like a hypnagogic
fantasy.
The imagery might even have been triggered by Hickson actually sighting something—almost
anything—that, while he was in the waking-dream state, appeared to be a “UFO.” During a
recorded interview with Sheriff Fred Diamond,13 Hickson described the UFO as “a blue light,”
adding: “It circled a bit.” He emphasized it was blue, saying, “And you think you dreamin’ about
something like that, you know” (original emphasis). Hickson also reported that it made “a little
buzzin’ sound—nnnnnnnnnn, nnnnnnnnn.”14 Bright lights and odd noises can also be part of the
waking-dream experience, as can the sense of floating.15 Hickson stated, “I couldn’t resist [the
extraterrestrials], I just floated—felt no sensation, no pain.”16 These phenomena, coupled with
the paralysis and fantastic imagery, corroborate the diagnosis of a hypnagogic experience.
Of additional corroborative value are other factors, including Hickson’s description of the aliens
as speaking inside his head,17 because a feature of hypnagogia is the sense of perceiving “with
whole consciousness.” This explains the bright lights and clarity of his experiences, since
hypnagogic visions often seem particularly illuminated, vivid, and detailed.18
But if Hickson had a hypnagogic experience, what about Parker? Actually, he need not have
been in such a state himself because, as he told officers, he had passed out at the beginning of the
incident and failed to regain consciousness until it was over.19 Later he “remembered” bits and
pieces of the alleged encounter. This would be consistent with an example of folie à deux (a
French expression, the “folly of two”) in which a percipient convinces another of some alleged
occurrence (as by the power of suggestion, the force of a dominant personality, or the like) or the
other person simply acquiesces for whatever reason. (Young Parker’s position was vulnerable:
he had recently joined the shipyard where Hickson worked and was residing with the Hicksons.)
It would have been significant if Parker had himself been in a hypnagogic state, since
“suggestibility is high during this state.”20 Interestingly, when the two men were left alone in a
room at the sheriff’s office, where they were secretly tape recorded,21 they did not make
incriminating statements as they might have if perpetrating a hoax but acted more like people
13
Ralph Blum, with Judy Blum, pp. 30–36.
Ibid., p. 31.
15
Andreas Mavromatis. 1987. Hypnagogia: The Unique State of Consciousness between Wakefulness and Sleep.
New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, p. 148.
16
Ralph Blum, with Judy Blum, p. 32.
17
Jerome Clark, p. 715.
18
Andreas Mavromatis, pp. 14–52, 148.
19
United Press International. 1973. Wire-service story, “Creatures” (Pascagoula, Mississippi, October 12). In Blum,
Ralph, with Judy Blum, pp. 9–11.
20
Robert M. Goldenson. 1970. The Encyclopedia of Human Behavior: Psychology, Psychiatry, and Mental Health.
New York: Doubleday, vol. I, p. 574.
21
Jerome Clark. 1998. The UFO Encyclopedia, vol. 2. Detroit, Michigan: Omnigraphics, p. 716.
14
139
I. Case Studies
comparing notes to see if they were in agreement with each other.
Still, some of Hickson’s behavior is questionable. For example, he kept adding to his story. He
claimed on a television show a month later that the interior lights of the UFO had been so intense
as to cause eye injury lasting for three days, although an extensive hospital examination the day
after the incident had shown no such eye damage.22 But this is a familiar story: even accounts of
the truest occurrences gain distortions and embellishments over time, so why should Hickson’s
story be any different? Ufologist Kevin D. Randle23 insists Hickson’s alterations “went beyond
that.” Specifically, he says, “These changes seemed to be in response to criticisms and appeared
to be an attempt to smooth out rough spots in the story.” But to me that just signals Hickson’s
defensiveness brought on by people ridiculing him—not proof of initial hoaxing.
When all the facts are weighed, the preponderance of evidence appears not only to favor the
hypothesis involving the hypnagogic state but to provide corroboration as well. The realization
may not benefit the late Charles Hickson, but it could help others who hear of supposed alien
abductions to rest in peace.
Acknowledgments: I am grateful to Major James McGaha, CFI Libraries Director Tim Binga,
and Julia Lavarnway, managing editor of the Skeptical Inquirer, for help with this article.
Bibliography
Blum, Ralph, with Judy Blum. Beyond Earth: Man’s Contact with UFOs. New York: Bantam
Books, 1974.
Clark, Jerome. The UFO Encyclopedia, vol. 2. Detroit, Michigan: Omnigraphics, 1998, pp. 714–
19.
Goldenson, Robert M. The Encyclopedia of Human Behavior: Psychology, Psychiatry, and
Mental Health. New York: Doubleday, 1970.
Hickson, Charles, and William Mendez. UFO Contact at Pascagoula. Tucson, Arizona:
Wendelle C. Stevens, 1983.
Klass, Philip J. (1974). UFOs Explained. New York: Vintage Books, 1976.
———. UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game, updated edition. Buffalo, New York:
Prometheus Books, 1989.
Mavromatis, Andreas. Hypnagogia: The Unique State of Consciousness between Wakefulness
and Sleep. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987.
Nickell, Joe. Tracking the Man-Beasts. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2011. “Alien
Likeness” (with pictorial chart, “Alien Time Line”), pp. 184–86.
Peebles, Curtis. Watch the Skies! A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth. New York: Berkley
Books, 1995.
Randle, Kevin D. “Pascagoula (Mississippi) abduction.” In Story 2001, pp. 423–24.
Story, Ronald D. The Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters. New York: New American
Library, 2001.
United Press International. Wire-service story, “Creatures” (Pascagoula, Mississippi, October 12,
1973). In Blum with Blum. 1974, pp. 9–11.
Philip J. Klass. (1974) 1976. UFOs Explained. New York: Vintage Books, pp. 349–50.
Kevin D. Randle. 2001. “Pascagoula (Mississippi) abduction.” In Story, Ronald D. 2001. The Encyclopedia of
Extraterrestrial Encounters. New York: New American Library, pp. 423–24.
22
23
140
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Misinterpretations of Fireball Swarms from Satellite Reentries
James Oberg
Abstract: Explaining “mother ship UFO” reports becomes credible by showing how such
misperceptions commonly have occurred all over the world from one particular stimulus that is
thoroughly documented – satellite reentries – and could ALSO occur from similar visual stimuli
such as aircraft formation lights or shallow-entry bolide meteors.
Keywords: Satellite reentry, Meteor, Witness misperception
Introduction
Space exploration has provided insights into secrets of nature that have baffled people for
millennia. New vantage points, and new detection instruments, and well-designed exploratory
projects, have together been fruitful all across the Earth, into and under the oceans, and now up
and out across the Solar System.
But for one compelling spectacular mystery in the skies of Earth, the spaceflight-provided
unveiling of one hidden mystery-explanation was entirely unintentional – and still widely
overlooked by the still-baffled world public.
Humans have seen wondrous things in the sky throughout history, and even earlier. Gradually,
curiosity led to comprehension of the mechanisms of weather, of motion and illumination of the
moon and of bodies now called “planets,” and optics such as rainbows and sun dogs, and of flight
[by other organisms and eventually by humans as well].
In recent decades, all across the planet, people have been reporting particularly unusual flying
objects – the “UFO” phenomenon. While most can reasonably be explained as misidentifications
of prosaic phenomena, one particular type of report has defied persuasive solution – the largestructured light-mounted “mother ship” configuration that crosses the entire sky horizon to
horizon.
141
I. Case Studies
Until now – and it showed up accidentally, thanks to spaceflight. A totally new perceptual
phenomenon has begun appearing in the past six decades of the “Space Age.” These are satellite
atmospheric reentries leading to fiery fragmentation of the objects. While skimming the thin upper
atmosphere, they traverse the sky on near-horizontal flight paths, the flaming pieces often
remaining clustered together.
Real-life Events
Recently, in October 2020 over Hawaii and in March 2021 over the NW USA, two additional
spectacular night-time satellite reentries occurred randomly. Their location over a population well
equipped with pocket cams and well-connected with the internet, created a torrent of reports of
exactly the same nature as previous similar events. But they were much better documented, much
more accessible for follow-up investigation, and consequently much more fruitful in providing
definitive characteristics of the perceptual phenomenon.
The consistency and magnitude of common eyewitness misinterpretations continues to be amazing
and sobering. Documenting the scope of these processes is a fundamental challenge to assessing
adequately the accuracy of any future witness descriptions of startling sky manifestations of any
origin – natural events, human technology [missile/space activities, aircraft, weapons systems,
etc.], or potentially truly anomalous phenomena highly deserving of serious attention. But it’s a
literally heaven-sent opportunity.
This report will follow a two-stage approach, at first practical and then speculatively theoretical.
First, to focus on events, it will examine the two recent fireball swarms to document in what ways
many witnesses misinterpreted it. More importantly, it will assess WHY such misinterpretations
were so common, largely based on mass public misunderstanding of basic features of space flight
and especially atmospheric reentry.
Secondly, it will examine the theoretical basis for explaining WHY such misinterpretations have
been – and still are – so widespread. The witness reaction reaffirms the widespread and age-old
human propensity to “Rorschach” pre-favored explanations onto once-in-a-lifetime ambiguous
aerial apparitions, demonstrating creative “confirmation bias” in the sky. There are profoundly
important evolutionary and cultural factors that encourage such a pattern.
Lastly, we will examine lessons of these still-poorly-appreciated perceptual processes that can
allow researchers of future similar apparitions [and not only reentry fireball swarms but other
technological sources of a grouping of bright lights moving in formation across the night sky].
These can be applied both to future events, and by historians, to many still-puzzling past events of
a similar nature.
The source of the Hawaii fireball swarm was the reentry of the third stage of the Chinese CZ-3B
booster [2008-055B] launched October 29, 2008, delivering Venezuela’s “Venesat-1”
communications satellite. The payload remains in orbit, but this booster stage’s orbit slowly
decayed, and a reentry warning had been issued. The actual reentry was about an hour past the prereentry prediction interval, not unusual.
142
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
The predicted ground track for the propagated forward motion to the time of the observed fireball
swarm precisely put the path right over Maui, moving almost due west to east, as actually observed.
Any surviving debris impact would have been into the Pacific Ocean east of Hawaii.
On the ground, this is what the startled witnesses were perceiving. For example, Kimberly Lani
[posted Nov 10, 2020, then deleted] had written: “I saw it, over the open Molokai sky. We don’t
have much light at night, so it was very clear viewing. It was a massive thing, coming in from
south/west direction, headed northeast. I saw what looked like flaming lights in the front, almost
like a point. The lights all together, resembled a triangular aircraft shape. The mid-section had 2
bands of lights in a rhythmic circular pattern. It was quite massive, since I don’t know how far
away it was....my best description was saying it was as big as a small neighbor Hawaiian island.
Like Lanai. That’s just what I could relate it to. There was no noise around it, that we could hear.
I swear, I saw what looked like an energetic behind it. Not yellow in flame but maybe like a smokytype coloration. Definitely something there from the rear, in contrast to the night sky.”
Other eyewitnesses appended comments on videos that had been posted on youtube.com:
* Nunna Urbiznez: “The way the lights twinkle and appear to bank left doesn’t look like individual
objects. It looks like one solid object.”
143
I. Case Studies
* Almut Behnke: “I saw it too, it flew right over my head, the lights were different colors, and it
flew from sea towards land… not like they say rocket booster disintegrating over the water… this
thing was a real huge spaceship... and it flew lower than on the picture here... and there was a
slight sound and a kind of tail behind it like steam...how would a rocket booster after 12 years have
stable lights still functioning? And this craft was not falling at all it was maneuvering...and it had
a certain energy to it also.”
* 808Man: “I took my dog to the yard in my Nuuanu home and looked up to see what looked like
a blimp-size object moving from Honolulu Airport to the North-Northeast covered in lights.”
* Eric Weiss: “I saw it too. It flew directly over head of me as well. They are definitely not telling
the truth after seeing it with my own eyes. I was so bummed that astronomer came out and tried to
speculate... if he would have seen it, he wouldn’t be saying it was a rocket booster. Thing was so
low, silent, slow and had adjacent lights all traveling at the same speed, blinking as opposed to
burning off. I have no idea as to what it was, but it sure isn’t what they are telling us.”
The fireball swarm was also recorded on several all-sky survey cameras, but the best identifying
observation was made from Waikoloa Scenic Point on the big island. There, the keen-eyed
observer Claire Bajo noticed the fireball swarm pass left-to-right directly across Polaris [the North
Star], thus giving an elevation angle of 20 degrees. Since observers on Maui 100 miles (160 km)
away also saw it, but passing directly overhead flying WSW to ENE, simple trigonometry gives
an altitude of ~40 miles (64 km). This is exactly the level that typical satellite fragments are
brightest on their long shallow descent. And that ground path was exactly the one pre-calculated
for the demising satellite rocket.
Similarly, over Oregon: a Falcon 9 second stage from the 2021-017 Starlink launch [March 4]
failed to safely deorbit as planned, so it decayed naturally at approximately 04:00 UT on 26 March
2021 https://www.zarya.info/2021#017 NORAD #47782 (2021-017BN) listed it as “Falcon 9
RB.”
Here’s how many people perceived it:
* Robert Lovdahl: “A slow moving object with man-made lights, Cigar shaped, Rounded on each
end. With what looked like windows on it.”
* Love Elaine: “This ship went right over me. I had full vision of the lights, beams, and metal like
structure that surrounded the lights.”
* Tammy Taylor: “I live here in Brookings Oregon....it looks like a Huge ship.”
* Mz Dawn: “To me it looked like a train in the sky … It was absolutely massive.”
* Unexplained Tragedies: “In my personal opinion it’s one big craft, but who knows.”
* Sofia Bulg: “How the rocket goes falling horizontally? Lierssssss.”
* Elena Caddell: “Since when does anything falling from the sky travel horizontally?”
* Peaceloveforever88: “How can you justify all this lights are grouped together parallelly? and
why all lights have the same speed?”
Those witnesses [and other readers of their accounts] who rejected the satellite reentry explanation
did so for very specific reasons that are susceptible to analysis. The two main reasons, which this
report will address in detail, are that the object flew level across the sky under obviously controlled
flight, and that the appearance was consistent with a structured physical object with mounted lights
of some sort, blocking background stars and looking unlike any previously known rocket or
144
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
satellite.
Other reasons, addressed in longer reports cited in the Bibliography, included that the object was
very low and close, that the motion was too slow, and often turned or even stopped, that no warning
was issued, and that no debris was found.
Public mental images of “falling satellites” are widely shaped by false analogy with “falling
aircraft,” exacerbated by the common media spurious analogy of anti-satellite weapons as
“shooting down” enemy satellites. But even when shattered, the fragments maintain their forward
orbital motion by their own momentum.
145
I. Case Studies
Witnesses expected “falling satellites” to fall downwards as shown in widely published artist concept (left) modeled
after falling warplanes (right). Since satellites remain in orbit by virtue of tremendous horizontal velocity, even as
they are near the atmosphere their motion will be largely horizontal.
The “but-it-flew-LEVEL” objection seems based on a very widespread public misconception
about why satellites remain in space after launching. Somehow the over-simplified explanation is
that the rocket flies up into space and escapes Earth’s gravity, so it can drift through space in
whichever direction it chooses to steer.
But as Isaac Newton first explained more than three hundred years ago, an object “in orbit” just
above Earth’s surface is still firmly in the grip of Earth’s gravity which is relentlessly pulling it
down. Even as its path curves toward the ground, the ground itself is curving away and down,
because Earth is round. If the object is moving fast enough, it doesn’t hit the ground at all.
Impeded by drag from the very thin upper atmosphere, a satellite slowly slips lower until about 40
miles (64 km) up it gets into enough wind resistance to lose its own speed more rapidly, and no
longer can “fall over the horizon.” The significance for the satellite reentry flight path is that the
tremendous horizontal speed [about 25,000 ft/sec, or 7,600 m/sec] will carry it way across the sky
while it is descending ‒ not straight down. By the time it’s falling vertically, it’s too slow to
surround itself with flames, it’s too small to be seen in the sky.
The “appearance” of the descending object is a fascinating subject. The critical context of that
perception is that the sky is dark, and the most striking visual impression is a group of lights
moving in formation as if attached to a very large structure. That is a compelling impression that
strongly suggests an explanation that resides already in the observer’s memory.
A typical large satellite reentry goes through several visual stages. At the beginning of the reentry
phase, decaying satellites are skimming the upper atmosphere with tremendous forward speed, and
they don’t begin to visibly DESCEND until long after they’ve fireballed into fragments, which
occurs between 50-60 miles (80-97 km) up (the “Karman Boundary”), and a few miles (kilometers)
lower. The satellite, and soon after, the fragments of the satellite, are still moving horizontally at
about Mach 25.
146
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
A glow appears in front of the object in the hypersonic shock zone, and soon many still-glowing
molecules trail behind the main object. At some point the object breaks apart under enormous
deceleration stress. Individual fragments continue by momentum along near-parallel paths each
with own flame trail. Pieces break off and fall forward, along parallel paths, in a cloud of sparks
and dazzling stars, multi-colored from different types of metals, and flaring from explosions of, or
heat-induced spraying from fuel tanks – especially with quick-decaying booster stages in low,
unstable orbits, within a few hours [or a day or two] of the original launch, before residual
propellants have been purged, or have leaked away.
The glow is not from “flames” or combustion but from molecular disruption of atmospheric
components [oxygen and nitrogen] and recombination. The trail lengthens as the quantity of
disrupted molecules increase. As the speed lowers, the amount of disrupted molecules decreases,
and the tails die out while glow from the leading shock wave continues. At this stage the fireball
swarm looks like a pattern of simple lights. As irregular fragments tumble, each object’s leading
shock wave glow can flicker.
With gradual slowdown, the flame trail diminishes and fades while each fragment’s smaller
leading shockwave fireball continues to glow. That final fireball dies out while the objects are still
very high, still moving on a shallow decline.
This mass of lights and streaks moves, almost “in formation,” across the sky in total silence,
another eerie feature. At its speed during this phase, it can take one or two minutes to cross the
sky. Once sufficiently slowed, the fragments no longer have enough energy to induce airglow.
Only after several minutes more would any sonic boom reach ground viewers.
One shortcoming of the profusion of pocket cams is that low-light-level moving images can be
jittery and overexposed, losing detail that could help characterize the initiating event. That’s why
147
I. Case Studies
it’s important for investigators to actively encourage [even pester] eyewitnesses to make drawings
of the detail their eye-brain system perceived in the fast-moving glary fly-bys. Then you get
amazingly useful details such as this:
One point that needs to be stressed is how counter-intuitive it seems that a visual apparition as
spectacular as a fireball swarm can so consistently and similarly be misinterpreted by witnesses of
all cultures, education, profession, and experience. It’s worth repeating – such a process is both
learned, and innate, because it’s ‘survival-positive’. The visual cortex accepts raw images and
instantly selects ‘best fit’ to past memories, both real life and learned from recorded images. In
some professions, witnesses’ minds leap to the most dangerous potential interpretation, as a matter
of life and death – if the interpretation is NOT dangerous, a positive response is just embarrassing,
but if it were dangerous, NOT reaching that interpretation could be fatal.
In assessing those witness comments, it must first be recognized that similar descriptions have
been coming in from the identical visual stimulus – a flaming swarm of fireballs from a
disintegrating heavy satellite skimming earth’s upper atmosphere – since the earliest years of the
Space Age. All over the world, all cultures, all professions, all ages, and awesomely similar.
148
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
As already stated: the witness’s misperception is NOT a failure of eyesight or of brain or of
rationality – it actually reflects a survival-positive adaptation to sudden surprising ambiguous
visual perceptions in which an observer must amidst urgent uncertainty quickly pick out from
existing memories what threat or opportunity the perceived object offers so that fast response can
be useful, even life-critical. False-positives are usually low-cost, so they are a preferred when-indoubt strategy. At least, the genetic predisposition to this trait seems to survive to reproduce more
offspring much more often over generations.
By adding many more similar events, both earlier and later in time, and especially the visually
overwhelming 1963 ‘Kiev event’ [now ‘Kyiv’], investigators have now established the consistent,
repeatable perceptual results beyond any reasonable doubt. Across decades of time, on all
continents, witnesses of all professional and educational levels, of all ages and social levels, seem
to generate memory-based fill-in interpretations of bright fireball swarms in a startlingly similar
format.
In a more recent compilation of reentry fireball swarms (Printy, 2008),1 we read:
After examining many reports of known fireballs and re-entering space debris, I have discovered
that the average observer can make many mistakes in their observations. Many will claim that the
fireball landed just over the next ridge, often overestimate apparent size, and sometimes get their
sense of direction incorrect. UFOlogist John Keel once wrote: ‘Early in my own investigations I
discovered that the average witness could not even pinpoint true north- even when he or she had
lived in the area all their life...Estimates of altitude are much more difficult to make even for
experienced pilots. And at night it is almost impossible to judge the altitude of an object (usually
just a light of unknown size...estimates of UFO speeds are usually inaccurate and altitude estimates
are questionable unless the object appears near something of a known altitude - such as a mountain
or a conventional aircraft.’2
Tim Printy, “The Rocket’s Red Glare,” http://www.astronomyufo.com/UFO/rocket.htm
John Spencer and Hilary Evans (eds.), Phenomenon: Forty Years of Flying Saucers. New York: Avon, 1988, pp
187-188.
149
I. Case Studies
The degree of perceptual elaboration of many individual reports still seems to defy “common
sense,” and “a priori” would be patently incredible if suggested for a UFO. Only faced with a
thoroughly documented range of perceptions for a subsequently fully-explained stimulus, is it
“believable.” It can happen because it did, again and again. Here’s another example from France
in 1990, of a Soviet space booster reentry – the “searchlights” are an occasional feature of recentlylaunched rocket stages presumably venting leftover fuel heated by the reentry:
For that reason, the 1963 ‘Kiev event’ [now ‘Kyiv’] may be the most important double-blind
“control experiment” in the history of UFO studies, and it was completely accidental – and
overlooked. I only received a copy of it in 2016 from a Spanish colleague, Vicente-Juan BallesterOlmos. A team of technically-trained citizens, who did not know the prosaic explanation,
interviewed more than a hundred witnesses and had them make drawings of what they had
perceived. It turned out to be a Soviet booster rocket reentering from low orbit.
Its application to other reports of large structured silent light-equipped craft is both unavoidably
obvious and revolutionary in its implications, because satellite reentry fragmentation is not the
only potential way to create a grouping of bright lights in night sky. Other known sources include
[not exhaustive] grazing meteors [much faster], military jet formation, mass parachute flare drop,
spoofing private pilots, Chinese lanterns, and orbiting formations [e.g., NOSS].
In Summation
It’s helpful to recognize the scope of the fundamental challenge to assessing adequately the
accuracy of any future witness descriptions of startling sky manifestations of any origin – natural
events, human technology [missile/space activities, aircraft, weapons systems, etc.], or potentially
truly anomalous phenomena highly deserving of serious attention.
The spectacular nature of such events is very attractive to visual media such as internet YouTube,
150
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
etc. But in general, more respected UFO research sites accept most satellite reentry explanations.
Solution of this unique category of reports does not reflect on the genuine interest [even
“unexplainability”] in other types of UFO reports, nor on the legitimacy of any of the most
common offered general explanations for them.
Solution of this category of reports DOES reflect on the judgment of those advocates who
imprudently accepted and promulgated the “unexplainability” of such events. This should reflect
on their assessments of all other reports that they have similarly endorsed.
As long as ufology [“UFO studies”] remains mired in these kinds of spurious reports, it hinders its
acceptance as a legitimate science-based field of inquiry.
The “coincidence” of a documented satellite reentry fireball swarm moving at the same time at the
same rate in the same direction as the occasionally reported “UFO mother ships” becomes
significant now that it can be shown to have occurred again and again all over the world.
It’s certainly correct to realize how it is difficult, “a priori,” to imagine how such once-in-a-lifetime
apparitions can spark such “giant mothership” misperceptions. It definitely “defies common
sense.” But that’s “earth-based” logic, and space is literally “unearthly.” Nonetheless, the records
show that satellite reentries have done exactly that, many times, and in a startlingly reproducible
manner with an uncanny similarity of results.
These data are trying to tell us something that we didn’t start out knowing, and we didn’t even
KNOW that we didn’t know. What we THOUGHT we knew, wasn’t so. For many people,
including many witnesses as well as enthusiasts of the non-explainability of such reports, it still is
something they clearly do not WANT to know.
The only productive response is to try to be open to reality’s unambiguous implications, even if it
is showing us evidence for what we don’t want to be true.
Offering this explanation should not be misinterpreted to believe it implies every witness to a
fireball swarm [of any origin] misleads themselves into perceiving a “mothership UFO.” Past
collections of witness testimonies show there is a gradient of interpretations from starkly separate
lights all the way through a sharp-outlined large structure, for the very same raw visual stimulus.
Conclusion
The eagerness with which UFO-related interpretations spread across the Internet, along with
vehement rejection of the rational prosaic cause, sadly reflects a continued reality-defiant corner
of popular culture and significantly diminishes the chances of genuine progress in understanding
potentially extraordinary [or deliberately concealed] causes of other strange reports.
1. Personal observations of unusual and enigmatic sky phenomena remain a critical engine behind
potentially new scientific insights, and always will be.
2. The better we appreciate the full range of spaceflight phenomena, the better understanding and
judgment we’ll have to be able to isolate and zoom in on the most promising “unknowns.”
3. Events such as these satellite reentry fireball swarms [and earlier similar events] sadly reveal
widespread public misunderstanding of fundamental features of spaceflight, but that identifies
151
I. Case Studies
areas needing better person-to-person outreach that everyone can contribute to.
4. This is a “fixable” problem, but the remedy isn’t top-down, it’s bottom-up.
5. For “UFO studies,” this very specific category of reports is a dead end in terms of the legitimate
ongoing search for evidence, but may yet serve to advantage [with other missile-UFO
misidentifications] as a useful calibration of eyewitness testimony of similar future apparitions –
and a cautionary tale for future events.
6. From all angles, these insights involve not hi-tech science labs but man-in-the-street interactions
to overcome these barriers. It humanizes the heart of research on these topics and offers productive
roles to everyone who feels curiosity.
Bibliography (all web articles below and in body accessed on Nov. 6, 2022)
(Selected author’s work related to witness (mis)perceptions of space/rocket events)
Oberg, James. “Jimmy Carter ‘UFO’ was NASA barium rocket.”
https://debunker.com/texts/200829%20barium-carter.pdf
_____. “Top Soviet 1967 ‘UFO flap’ was space-to-ground warhead tests.”
http://satobs.org/seesat_ref/misc/soviet_1967_wave.pdf
_____. “1970-1980a South American UFOs caused by Russian space launches.”
http://satobs.org/seesat_ref/misc/molniya_clouds_over_south_america.pdf
_____. “Space Age ‘space clouds’ from worldwide rocket launches.”
http://satobs.org/seesat_ref/misc/Space_clouds-Strange_Spinoff_of_the_Space_Age.pdf
_____. “California missile/rocket launches spark UFO reports.”
http://satobs.org/seesat_ref/misc/misperceiving_missiles.pdf
_____. “November 7, 2015 Trident SLBM launch off California.”
http://satobs.org/seesat_ref/misc/151107-cali_slbm_witness_analysis.pdf
_____. “Norway December 2009 ‘spiral UFO’ was missile test.”
http://www.astronautix.com/data/norwayspiral.pdf
_____. “Australia June 2010 ‘spiral UFO’ was Falcon-9 rocket.”
http://satobs.org/seesat_ref/misc/180314-falcon9s2-australia.pdf
_____. “China July 2017 UFO was military missile test.”
http://jamesoberg.com/china/
_____. “July 2, 2017 China’s Long March launch failure seen from the Philippines.”
http://satobs.org/seesat_ref/misc/18_chisat_fail_phil_final_draft.pdf
152
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
When Testimony Becomes Testament:
The Case of Raël, UFO Prophet, and the Question of Witness Reliability
Susan J. Palmer
Abstract: This chapter features the case of Claude Vorilhon (“Raël”), a French journalist who wrote
a book about his CEIII experience and went on to create a new religious movement (NRM)
dedicated to carrying out the mandates of the Elohim (extraterrestrials), as revealed through their
“Messenger.” This study addresses the question of the reliability of Raël as a contactee and his
witness statement, as well as the challenges posed by the religious content of his messages received
from extraterrestrials. Since the focus here is not on the social consequences of Raël’s testimony,
but rather on the authenticity of the witness statement itself (which necessitates or at least implies a
value-laden approach), the standard social-scientific method of “bracketing” the faith claims of
mystics or founders of new religions has not been applied here. Rather, this researcher proposes to
reverse the target of bracketing; to ignore the social context and to focus directly on Raël and his
testimony, as a case study of the problems and questions that arise around the character of the
witness to a UFO encounter.
Keywords: Raël, UFO, Bracketing, New Religion
Introduction
“The phenomenon under study is not the UFO, which is not reproducible in the laboratory, but the
report written by the witness.” Jacques Vallée made this statement in the preface to his first
book, Anatomy of a Phenomenon.1 The UFO itself is the object that scientific ufology seeks to
investigate, but the experience of sighting a UFO undergoes a number of refractions before reaching
the investigator as a witness report. The physical stimulus that prompts the report is, first,
experienced by the witness themselves, who, then, by a complex and problematic process of
articulation (involving perception, memory, education, motivation, etc.) communicates a linguistic
representation of their experience in the report itself.
This scheme, wherein the witness functions partly as observer and partly as instrument (registering
sensory and other data) places great importance on the witness. But an even more daunting and
complex challenge is posed by a UFO witness whose report is not just some astonished testimony
collected by a police officer or UFO research organization, but turns out to be a religious tract, a
kind of “New Testament” intended to gather and inspire a community of believers. A striking
example of this latter kind of testimony is that of Claude Vorilhon (“Raël”) who describes his CEIII
in his 1974 book, Le livre qui dit la verité.2
But is there really such a marked difference between the “garden variety” UFO witness and the
UFO prophet? One can trace back a long history of religious or spiritual dimensions associated with
the UFO experience. Again, Jacques Vallée can serve as an instructive example. In his 1975
book, The Invisible College, he turns his attention from the Unidentified Flying Object to
1
Jacques Vallée Anatomy of a Phenomenon. Chicago: H. Regnery Company,1965.
Vorilhon, Claude, “Raël”. Le livre qui dit la vérité: le message donné par les extra-terrestres.
Fondation Raëlienne, Brantome: Editions du Message, 1974. [Translated into English and renamed in 1986 as “The
Message Given to me by Extra-Terrestrials,” where his UFO witness testimony is reproduced in pages 4 to 14.]
2
153
I. Case Studies
the subject of the witness. This shift in attention reveals that many witnesses, whose cases are
reviewed throughout the book, not only claim to have witnessed a UFO but also report profound
and uncanny experiences connected to their sighting. What witnesses often report are
parapsychological phenomena: spacetime distortions (“missing time”), materializations, telepathy,
poltergeist phenomena, and Out-of-Body Experiences. The case of an unnamed engineer whose
report Vallée recounts, even includes physical changes: hyper- and hyposomnia, quickened mental
capacities (comprehension and retention), hyper immunity to infectious diseases, and changes in
eyesight.3
Of course, one need not invoke parapsychological considerations to legitimate the claim that the
UFO encounter can be understood as a variety of religious experience, as has been done for decades.
One can refer to, for example, the studies collected by James R. Lewis in The Gods Have Landed:
New Religions from Other Worlds 4 or the more popular, if less scholarly, American Cosmic: UFOs,
Religion, Technology by Diana Walsh Pasulka.5
Nevertheless, there are serious objections to reflecting on, in this case, Raël, in the context of his
claims as a contactee; one who describes contact and communication with extraterrestrials. The
UFO witness is the source of the sighting report, which, in the absence of any automatic instruments
(e.g., such as the proposal by Avi Loeb as part of The Galileo Project)6 becomes a foundational
element (however problematic) of ufology. An essential task is to determine the veracity of the
report, which requires scrutiny of the witness. In the context of ufological research, there is nothing
particularly special about Claude Vorilhon, better known as “Raël”; his report is merely another
data point, among thousands. Paradoxically, what makes his testimony significant for sociologists
or scholars in the humanities serves to discourage efforts to assess its veracity. The social-scientific
approach is to study the effects of his testimony, quite apart from any facts regarding its truth value;
the question of the authenticity of his testimony is thus “bracketed” for the sake of focusing on its
social significance, e.g., as an articulation of alternative beliefs in a new religious movement
(NRM).
But I propose to reverse the bracketing, and focus instead on Raël, as a case study of the kinds of
problems and questions that arise around the character of the witness to a UFO encounter, or an
“experiencer” of a CEIV. However much a scientific ufology might want to reduce witness accounts
to impersonal data points, this desire does injustice to the intractable fact of an irreducible
particularity of each witness, which needs to be accounted for. If the witness is, in a sense, a
recording instrument, then it requires careful calibration.
Raël, then, becomes a case study; one whose unusual features render it not so much an
inconsequential outlier, as one whose complexity enriches the investigation of UFO witnesses. To
proceed with this investigation, I propose to follow six steps:
1. A brief biography of the witness, Claude Vorilhon/Raël, will be provided.
3
Vallée, 1965, pages 6-9.
James R. Lewis (ed.), The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds. Albany: State University of New
York, 1995.
5
Diana Walsh Pasulka, American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
6
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/home
4
154
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
2. The witness report of Vorilhon / Raël and confirmations thereof will be scrutinized. [I will bracket
his later claim to be the biological son of an eloha named “Yahweh,” as well as his claim to be the
chosen Messenger and “Last Prophet” of the Elohim in the Age of Apocalypse.]
3. The statements and opinions of character witnesses personally acquainted with him—friends,
family, close associates—will be weighed.
4. A survey the more general reactions of those personally unacquainted with Raël, such as
journalists, anticultists, rank-and-file ex-Raëlians, and ufologists will follow.
5.The context of Raël’s CEIII experience; the socio-historical milieu of recent OVNI sightings in
France, will be examined as well as the possible influence of contemporary ufologists on Raël’s
writings.
6. Finally, the question of how one might interpret Raël’s testimony will be addressed.
The Witness
Claude Vorilhon was born in 1946 in Ambert (near Vichy) France. In his 1975 book, Les extraterrestres m’ont emmené sur leur planète, he describes growing up with the historical and
philosophical influences peculiar to France. In secondary school he was taught to revere science
and studied the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau. His aunt and grandmother were firm atheists so
as a child he imbibed the militant brand of atheism peculiar to France’s laïcité. Vorilhon left home
in his teens to sing on the streets of Paris, and after a brief stint as a pop singer, he married a nurse
in 1970 and they had two children. He then founded a car racing magazine called Autopop and
became well-connected in the racing world, where he established a career as a test driver. This all
came to a sudden halt when a new law was put into effect that banned speeding on the highways.
Three months later, at age 27, Vorilhon experienced a Close Encounter of the Third Kind.7
The Testimony
On December 13, 1973, at age 27, Vorilhon drove into the mountains overlooking the city of
Clermont-Ferrand in central France. He parked and walked towards the volcanic crater known as
Puy de Lassolas. There he claims to have encountered an extraterrestrial, as recounted in the first
chapter of his 1974 book, Le livre qui dit la Vérité. He beheld flashing red lights in the fog overhead,
and “a sort of helicopter” descended soundlessly. The vehicle was seven meters in diameter, 2.5
meters in height with a “flattened shape.” It descended and hovered about two meters from the
ground. A stairway slid out of a trap door and a small figure (1.20 meters tall) whom Vorilhon at
first mistook for a child, came out and approached him. By this point Vorilhon realized he was
witnessing a flying saucer and he describes the “Eloha” (extraterrestrial—singular for “Elohim”) as
dressed in “a green flying suit” with a sort of halo around his head (a shield or bubble). The Eloha
had white skin with a greenish tinge, almond-shaped eyes, long black hair, and a small black beard.
The Eloha invited Vorilhon on board for a series of Bible lessons in which was revealed the “true
meaning” of Genesis, the creation myth in the Bible. The Eloha dubbed Vorihlon “Raël” and
revealed the secret of humankind’s true origins—that the first human beings were created or
7
For a more complete account of Raël’s origins, see Susan J. Palmer, Aliens Adored: Raël’s UFO Religion. New
Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2004.
155
I. Case Studies
“implanted” on this once-barren planet by a team of extraterrestrial scientists who set up a laboratory
and created life from their own store of DNA.8
Raël’s special relationship with extraterrestrials was confirmed subsequently on two occasions. On
October 7, 1975, he claims he experienced a CEIV. As he describes in his 1975 book, Les extraterrestres m'ont emmené sur leur planète [translated as, “They Took Me to Their Planet”], he awoke
in the night with a compelling urge to return to Puy de Lassolas. There, an alien ship was waiting
for him and transported him to the planet of the Elohim where he claims he was initiated into Elohim
culture and customs. 9 He watched his own body being cloned in a vat from a particle of his DNA.
He studies the Elohim’s political system, “geniocracy.” He learned a sensory awareness technique
that activates psychic abilities, stimulates the growth of new neural pathways—a technique he later
shared with his followers in his 1980 book, La Meditation sensuelle.
A third uncanny experience is featured in Raël’s 1979 book, Accueilir les Extra-Terrestres
[translated as, “Let’s Welcome Our Fathers from Space”]. A different kind of contact with the
Elohim occurred on October 7, 1976, which involved the mysterious appearance of “angel hair.”
This time there were fifty witnesses; Raël’s followers who were gathered to commemorate Raël’s
abduction experience of the previous year. Raël writes:
Suddenly someone cried, “What is that falling from the sky?” Great flakes were falling from a nearly
cloudless sky…made of a cottony substance which when touched melted. …Two luminous
objects...were just above us. The fall of the flakes lasted about ten minutes, then the objects suddenly
disappeared.
This event occurred shortly before 15h. when Raël was planning to perform the Raëlian initiation
ceremony of the “Transmission of the cellular plan.” Raël writes, “At the precise moment…the
Elohim had offered a sign to those present, which they would never forget. For the first time, Raël
had not been the only witness to the Elohim’s activities. There were fifty people with him who can
testify to the phenomenon.”10
Character Witnesses: Friends and Family
The third step in our efforts to assess Raël’s credibility as a UFO witness is to examine the
statements of those who were personally close to him. To this end, we will examine statements
made by Raël’s boyhood friends, by the aunt who raised him, by his ex-wife, and by his mother.
These statements are posted on a website (http://raelian.com/en/) created by ex-members:
Raël’s boyhood friends from Ambert, as well drinking buddies from Clermont-Ferrand who
knew him in his mid-twenties, recall conversations with the young Vorilhon that would support
the notion that he fabricated a UFO sighting as a money-making scheme.
Roland Chevaleyre, a restaurant owner in Puy-de-Dôme, in his interview on a TV program called
“Sectes, escrocs et manipulateurs” (April 10, 2001), claims Raël had admitted to him in confidence
8
Raël also narrates his initial CEIII experience in a video posted on the Raëlian website (www.rael.org).
Claude Vorihlon/ Raël, Les extra-terrestres m’on emmene sur leur planète. [“Space Aliens Took Me to Their
Planet”]. Brantôme (France): Edition du Message, 1975.
10
Claude Vorilhon /Raël, Let’s Welcome Our Fathers from Space, Tokyo: AOM Corporation, 1987, pages 9-10.
9
156
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
that he lied about his encounter with “little green men,” but that boasted of how he had achieved
considerable status through fabricating the story:
…that evening we ate together at a restaurant, so we went into deep discussion, and I posed straight
up the question, and [Raël] answered me, 'Yes, I lied… I can tell you I lied to you, but you knew it
anyway… it simply happened like that… he confessed to me very sincerely that he had never met a
small green man over there, but that he is now what he is because people who believed him helped
him to get to that position.
Jean-Jacques Arene, interviewed by Le Progres de Lyon, made the following statement, published
on 16 January, 2003:
The Extra-Terrestrials? We invented them one evening in 1973 when we had good drinks with
meal…in downtown Clemont-Ferrand. We were three, and Claude Vorilhon was very impressed
when [Franck] told him how his father made a fortune. He had just his journal Autopop, which was
agony. I was twenty years old. We were a gang, going out to the same pubs, the same clubs. That
evening, after many drinks …we spent the evening deliriously plotting a hoax that we could launch.
The idea of the Extraterrestrials came from Franck. I suggested that tranquil spot close to Puy-deDôme. For us, it was a big laugh. But not for Claude.11
Charles Guillaume, another drinking companion from the Clermont-Ferrand days, notes:
I was born in Clermont-Ferrand. I can’t remember exactly the name of the pub where we used to
meet on Gaillard Square…but I do remember well that on “hazy” evenings, the conversations of our
small group would often be focused on extra-terrestrials. Just once, Vorilhon suddenly looked
thoughtful and stern and said something like “What a brilliant idea!” 12
Aside from old friends, members of the Vorilhon family have expressed their personal opinions,
psychological insights, and moral judgments regarding Raël to journalists.
Raël’s ex-wife, Marie-Paule, whom he married in Paris in 1970 when he was working as editor of
Autopop, reports how, in 1973, when she was pregnant with their first child, they had visited his
home village of Ambert, in the mountainous Auvergne region of central France:
He set off one day to climb an extinct volcano—and came back as Raël… I thought I had married a
fairly ordinary, if slightly egotistical, man. Not a freak. At first, I believed that Claude really thought
what he was saying was true, but over the years I began to think the whole Raëlian movement was a
trick to have more sex and to satisfy [his] enormous ego and need to be worshipped…. Is he mad?
No, I don't think so. I think he is devious, crafty, manipulative and very, very clever. 13
When interviewed in 2003 by journalist Emmanuelle Chantepie, Marie-Paule described how Raël
showed up at her door in 1984, “ultime sursaut du gourou [burnt out as a guru] and stayed for a
while with her and the children in their home in Fréjus, France. She (a registered nurse) diagnosed
11
https://raelian.org/2022/04/02/testimony-of-journalist-jean-jacques-arene/
https://raelian.org/2022/04/02/testimony-of-charles-guillaume/
13
Emmanuelle Chantepie, “Raël: itinéraire d'un gourou en quête d'identités,” Le Journal du dimanche, January
5, 2003.
12
157
I. Case Studies
him as clinically depressed and taking sleeping pills for insomnia (“his mental health was in
doubt.”).14
Raël’s mother appeared on a television network in 2001.15 When asked, “Don't tell me that you
have been inseminated by an Extraterrestrial!” she replied, sarcastically, “Who knows? Like the
Holy Virgin? An angel came through my window…. Well, I do sleep with my window open!”16
Raël’s aunt, Therèse Vorilhon, interviewed by a journalist in Ambert, described how she had raised
“little Claudy” as her own son, and struggled to understand how her sweet little nephew had become
Raël, and how little Claudy went too far at times:
For instance, when he claims that he was born from the union of his mother …with an
extraterrestrial. When he says silly things, I call him a cornichon [“pickle”—the French equivalent
of “nitwit”]. He was such an adorable child. He went to the local Catholic school, and he was in the
church choir. He was the perfect child. But in 1973 everything changed. He says his discovery of
Raëlism was like being reborn. He wasn't expecting it to happen. I told him it was a load of fairly
harmless mumbo jumbo … I love him like a son, so I have to accept it… Some children grow up to
become doctors or farmers. He leads a cult. I have learned to live with it.17
Public Responses
In the wake of Raël’s 1974 book, throughout the course of his charismatic career, Raël has generated
considerable criticism, opposition, and derision from various opponents. These range from former
followers (ex-Raëlians), anticultists, Catholic priests, journalists, and anonymous jokers. Raël is a
frequent target of scorn and derision in the French media and in “antisecte” circles. One of France’s
leading “anticultists,” Xavier Martin-Dupont, is the editor of a website (www.zelohim.org) devoted
entirely to discrediting Raël and the Raëlians. French journalists’ initial reaction to Vorilhon as a
contactee was one of tongue-in-cheek amusement. But within three years of its founding, the
Raëlian Movement was perceived in France as a “threat to public order.” After Raël succeeded in
building an international NRM, the journalists began to portray him as the stereotypical “gourou”
and “cult leader” who was an escroc (fraudster) and a manipulateur (brainwasher).
But the controversies that swirl around Raël’s career are the direct result of his institution-building
efforts based on the mandates given to him by the Elohim (or so he claims). Thus, the conflicts
between this new religion and the state arise not so much from Raël’s claim to be a contactee,
experiencer, abductee, per se—but rather from the use he makes of the Elohim’s symbols and
messages, such as placing a swastika inside the Star of David, or claiming to fulfill their mandate
to clone humans, and encouraging Raëlian women to perform topless marches.
Moreover, many once-loyal Raëlian followers have defected from the Structure (the core group),
and some of them were high up in the leadership as Raëlian bishops or Continental Guides. Victor
Legendre, who was the Raëlian Movement’s first National Guide of Canada, resigned because his
girlfriend had claimed to receive direct messages from the Elohim (unmediated via Raël), so that
14
Emmanuelle Chantepie, “Le Passé de Raël dévoile par ses proches,” Dernière Heure, January 18, 2003, page 11.
M6 presented by Bernard de la Villardière on April 10, 2001.
16
The show was repeated on April 14, 2002, and on January 14, 2003.
17
François Vignole, Le Parisien, January 15, 2002.
15
158
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
he was forced to choose between the Message and his beloved girlfriend. Other apostates claimed
they left because Raël had changed; he was no longer projecting love but had become a petty
despot.”18 A rumor circulated that he had been kidnapped and replaced by evil aliens. The Raëlian
Movement’s arch apostate, “Ex-Raël,” claims Raël is a “sexist” because he only allowed women to
join the Order of Raël’s Angels. Another apostate, Richard Baril, accused Raël of pocketing the
donations intended for the building of the Embassy, hence the long delay in the project. Daniel
Chabot, one of Raël’s top bishops, left because he felt Raël had deviated from the Elohim’s mandate
to promote peace and to maintain zero tolerance stance towards war-mongering. Jean-Denis SaintCyr, Raël’s “right hand” for fourteen years, exposes the “financial manipulations and exploitation
of women” in his 2019 book, Confessions de Raël à son ex-bras droit:19
But none of these apostates have expressed doubts concerning the existence of the Elohim, as
depicted by Raël. Nor do they question Raël’s claim to be a UFO witness, a Messenger, or a Messiah
chosen by the Elohim.20
The Ufological Context
The receptivity of the French public to Raël’s claims and to the Elohim’s message, must be
examined against the backdrop of France’s UFO sightings, reported since the early 1800s until the
1970s.
On 12 January, 1836, a glowing doughnut rotated through the sky above Cherbourg. On 1 August,
1871, a meteor-like object zigzagged across Marseilles’ horizon. Another rash of sightings occurred
in the 1950s. By the 1970s, France was in the throes of “flying saucer fever.” In 1974 and 1975
there were numerous UFO sightings in the La Nievre region. In 1975 two demi-spherical objects
were seen near Boulogne en Haute Marne by witnesses interviewed by gendarmes, ufologists, and
distinguished scientists and astronomers. The witnesses proved to be solid citizens, whose
respectability was beyond reproach. The sheer volume of these sightings was impressive. The
journalist Jean-Claude Bourret, after collecting five thousand accounts of CEIIs in France, noted:
“by pursuing…all the sources available; media, army, police, scientific enquiries, one finds oneself
in the presence of a colossal mass of information.”21
It has been argued that “concrete proof” of the objective existence of UFOs was found in the Turin
airport affair of November 30, 1973. Two pilots, a technician, and dozens of passengers spotted a
flying saucer at 7:00 p.m., initially detected by the airport’s radar. Two weeks later, on December
13, a twenty-seven-year-old sports journalist and race-car driver named Claude Vorilhon
experienced his own Close Encounter.
The originality of Raël’s 1974 revelations has been questioned by his cultural opponents. The
“Ancient Astronaut” theory, for example, was already in vogue, ever since the French edition of
18
Personal communication.
Jean-Denis Saint-Cyr, Confessions de Raël à son ex-bras droit. Montreal: Les Éditions au Carré, 2019.
20
For an account of these apostates’ careers, read chapter seven, ”Enemies Within,” in Palmer 2004, pages 157-176.
21
Jean-Claude Bourret, La Nouvelle vague des soucoupes volantes. Paris: France-Empire, 1974; Le Nouveau défi des
OVNI. Paris: France-Empire, 1975; La Science face aux extra-terrestres. Paris: France-Empire, 1977.
Also, see John A. Saliba, “UFO Contactee Phenomena: A Psychosociological Perspective,” pages 207-250 in James
R. Lewis, 1995.
19
159
I. Case Studies
The Chariots of the Gods came out in 1969.22 Prior to von Däniken's work, there were less wellknown books presenting similar ideas of extraterrestrial influences on our planet, but von Däniken
failed to credit these authors, although he made the very same claims, relying on similar or identical
evidence. For example, the first (Swiss) edition of von Däniken's Erinnerungen an die
Zukunft failed to cite Robert Charroux’s 1963 book, One Hundred Thousand Years of Man's
Unknown History, despite the fact that the two authors were making almost identical claims.23 In
the same vein, Raël failed to cite French ufologists Jean Sendy (1968), Serge Hutin (1970), and
Jacques Bergier (1970) who had all written books claiming that human civilization originated in an
ancient colonial outpost of extraterrestrial pioneers and scientists.24 These books all predated Raël’s
first (1974) book.
A former Raëlian Guide named Sage Ali addresses the issue of whether Raël was influenced by the
theories of Jean Sendy, a French ufologist who wrote La Lune, clé de la Bible (1968) and Ces dieux
qui firent le ciel et la terre, le roman de la Bible, 1969. Ali identifies ideas and themes in Sendy’s
work which he claims have been reproduced with no citations in Raël’s books.
For Sendy, “Elohim” is a plural word in ancient Hebrew that means, “Those who came from the
sky.” For Sendy, the Elohim are human beings like us, for we were “made in Their image.” 25Sendy
challenged the theory of evolution, claiming the Elohim began creating life on Earth between 23,500
and 25,000 years ago.26 He claims the Garden of Eden was a laboratory where the Elohim were able
to re-create various species using genetic material. 27 Sendy’s interpretation of the Fall in the Bible
resonates with Raël’s. Lucifer’s group (the Serpent) was condemned to remain on Earth. 28The
Elohim lost confidence in the people of Earth because of their aggression, so they decided to leave.29
Raël’s description of the Elohim’s way of life on their planet in his 1975 book echoes some of
Sendy’s notions, such as that the Elohim don’t need money, for unlimited material goods are free
for everyone.30 Also the notion that Elohim have a “fully technological civilization.” 31Raël’s notion
of a “Geniocracy” or “rule of geniuses” is prefigured in Sendy’s 1969 book, where intelligent
scientists have chosen to live apart from people of mediocre intelligence on the Elohim’s planet”
and “Individuals with excessive genius” will live outside of regular society.32 Sendy and Raël’s
interpretations of the symbolic meaning of the Star of David overlap. For Sendy it represents the
“identity between what is above and what is below.” 33
22
The first edition in 1963 was in German.
Robert Charroux was added to von Däniken’s bibliography in later editions of Chariots of the Gods.
24
See Jean Sendy, La Lune, clé de la Bible, 1968; and Ces dieux qui firent le ciel et la terre, le roman de la Bible,
1969; Richard Hennig, Les Grandes Énigmes de l'Univers, 1969; Serge Hutin, Hommes et civilisations
fantastiques,1970; Jacques Bergier, Les extraterrestres dans l'histoire, 1970.
25
Sendy 1969,page 13; 1968, pages 63,130.
26
Sendy 1969, page 182.
27
Sendy 1969, pages 95, 110, 127.
28
Sendy 1989, pages 144-147.
29
Sendy 1969, pages 139-145.
30
Sendy 1969, page 122.
31
Sendy 1969, page 122.
32
Sendy 1969, pages111-112.
33
Sendy 1960, pages 222-23.
23
160
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
An alternative explanation of this synchronicity was offered by a “prominent European Raëlian
friend” of Sage Ali: “He said that the Elohim actually contacted Jean Sendy before Raël because
Sendy was their first choice to be their prophet and ambassador, but he turned down the mission…
Raël doesn't know about this because his father Yahweh didn't want to destroy his confidence by
telling his son that he was their second choice.” 34
Theorizing the CEIII
How might we researchers and members of the academic community understand Raël’s CEIII
experience?
We might analyze the witness’ experience within the frameworks supplied by psychoanalysts or
psychologists of religion. Elizabeth Bird, for examples, argues that that contactees are fantasyprone, suggestible people easily influenced by cultural trends.35
We might approach Raël as a mystic, referring to William James’ model of the mystical
experience.36 Certainly, we find in Raël’s witness account the four characteristics of a mystical
experience: Ineffability, Noetic Quality, Transiency, and Passivity. So how did the young Vorilhon
transform a classic mystical experience into an urgent mission that generated an international
religious movement?
We might cite C.G. Jung’s37model of the Collective Unconscious as a storehouse of religious ideas
and symbols which, as Jon Saliba puts it, “can become exteriorized through anxiety or stress.”38
Thus, Vorilhon (quite understandably) was experiencing anxiety related to nuclear war and nuclear
contamination. He had been reading Jean Sendy and von Däniken, admiring how they reconstructed
the myths in the Hebrew/Christian Bible to render them compatible with science and contemporary
concerns. In attempting to communicate his own mysterious, almost ineffable experience, he used
the language that was available and meaningful to him at the time, the mythic language of the Bible
and the symbolic language of ufology.
So how might one analyze the Messenger without exploring the Message? Must we “bracket” its
spiritual quality and religious dimensions?
Jon Saliba notes, “the aura of mystery in which these accounts are expressed is astounding….
Encounters with UFOs, particularly those of the third and fourth kind, are intense experiences that
are easily comparable to those of Christian mystics or visionary saints.” 39 Raël’s account is no
34
“Testimony of Sage Ali, Former Raëlian” (http://raelian.com/en/sage_ali.php)
Elizabeth Bird, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” Psychology Today 23: no.4, 1989, pages 64-69.
36
William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, was published in 1902, and
comprises his edited Gifford Lectures on natural theology, presented at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland between
1901 and 1902.
37
C.G. Jung, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky. (From Vols. 10 and 18, Collected Works).
Translated by R. F.C. Hull. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1958.
38
Saliba, page 68
39
Jon Saliba, “Religious Dimensions of the UFO Experience,” in The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other
Worlds, ed. James R. Lewis, 1995. Albany: State University of New York, 1995, page 50.
35
161
I. Case Studies
exception. He conveys the experience of encounter with the Eloha with the kind of naïve simplicity
and sense of wonder we find in St Exupery’s Le Petit Prince.40
Conclusion
How might one justify choosing to study Raël’s case? How does it contribute to this volume?
First, Raël provides a rich and unique example and case study for two reasons. First, his CEIII and
CEIV are conveniently well-documented. Second, Raël is a special case since he is a “witness” in
both senses of the word. He is an “experiencer” who “witnessed” the descent of a UFO, but he is
also an evangelist who preaches a new gospel (as in the Two Witnesses of Revelation, or Jehovah’s
Witness missionaries). Unlike many previous UFO witnesses, who were hesitant to go on record
for fear of sullying their social and professional reputations, Raël is not at all secretive, in fact, he
broadcasts his witness experience and uses it to construct a new religion.
But this dual role raises an important question: “Is Raël honest? Is he telling the truth?”
For the scientific ufologist, the veracity of Raël’s story holds little importance. His witness account
is just one of many data points. The UFO sighting is treated rather like a crime scene. The witness,
as a whole person, is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what happened before the event, nor what happens
afterwards.
For Raël’s disciples, the Raëlians, in contrast, the issue of veracity is of burning importance. Should
the Elohim’s Messenger prove unreliable, their sacred worldview and the way of life of more than
80,000 followers would be undermined and many would confront “cognitive dissonance.”41
For scholars in the social sciences, on the other hand, the issue of veracity should not be important,
nor relevant to their work. Ironically, the “normal” academic procedure would be to “bracket” the
claims of charismatic prophets and questions of faith, while focusing on the historical or social
aspects of a religious movement and/or its leader. But, for the purposes of this volume, we have
been asked to do precisely the opposite; to focus on the issue of authenticity; on Raël’s
“believability” as a contactee, and to ignore or “bracket” the real-world repercussions found in his
subsequent career as the world’s “Last and Fastest Prophet.” 42
When one focusses narrowly on the CEIII or CEIII as described by Vorilhon/Raël, one encounters
certain obstacles or problems that interfere with its “believability.” For example, the notion that an
extraterrestrial would arrange a series of six meetings with a human for the purpose of studying the
true meaning of the Bible is hard to digest. Also, Raël’s original account is embellished in later
tellings (particularly the reported conversation with Raël’s biological father Yahweh in 1975 that
impacts his earlier account of meeting an Eloha in 1973). For scientific ufologists, these later
embellishments are unimportant, irrelevant. For Raël’s disciples they would be understood as
40
Antoine de St Exupery, Le Petit Prince, Paris: Gallimard, 1943.
Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of
a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota
Press, 1956.
42
See Susan J. Palmer’s chapter, “The Last and Fastest Prophet” in Aliens Adored, 2004, pages 31-58.
41
162
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
inspiring new revelations. But for academics in religious studies who dare to raise the issue of
authenticity, they are problematic.
There have been several interesting challenges to what has become a standard academic
methodology of bracketing extraordinary claims (such as those of Raël and other religious or
spiritually-inclined UFO witnesses). This method has been called into question by religious scholar
Hussein Ali Agrama. In a discussion with Jeffrey Kripal during the (March 3-6, 2022) Archives of
the Impossible Conference at Rice University in Houston, Texas.43 Agrama questions the
metaphysical and epistemological assumptions underwriting the academic’s timid suspension of
judgment. He argues that this suspension all-too-often unconsciously slides into an outright denial
of the possibility or reality of the pertinent anomalous phenomenon, thereby implying a tacit
affirmation of its ontological status quo as essentially material or socially constructed. Agrama
argues that by suspending judgement and “just looking at the people who believe these things
and…the social consequences of their practices and beliefs,” academic researchers are implicitly
rejecting the possibility of the paranormal and spiritual, and reinforcing the epiphenomenalist’s
worldview—that only the social and material plane of reality exists.
“But the UFO is deeply disruptive,” Agrama insists. Once you acknowledge that, and … other
paranormal phenomena that come with it, then your conception begins to change, and you undergo
what I called elsewhere “ontological shock.”
Jacques Vallée makes the same point when he argues that, once we begin studying the UFO witness
as an individual and include the “before and after” of the phenomenon in our study, we find—in
many cases—that the UFO experience begs to be analyzed in religious terms. He insists that any
investigation of witness reliability should be open to including the spiritual dimensions of the
phenomenon.
In the end it is impossible to determine whether Claude Vorilhon “really” saw a UFO descending
through the mist, or did, in fact, encounter an extraterrestrial. While there are some small revisions
and embellishments in his later retelling of the original CEIII and CEIV stories, that does not
necessarily undermine Raël’s credibility. If a dream—or a fish story—becomes enriched with detail
over several retellings, does this mean the narrator didn’t have a dream, or that the fisherman never
caught a fish?
So how can one judge the veracity of this UFO witness account and the reliability of this particular
witness?
If one considers the possibility that Vorilhon was telling the truth, then what tools did he bring to
this deeply disorienting, potentially terrifying, encounter? He brought his own familiar tools of the
Bible, his Frenchman’s atheism and Voltairian skepticism, his reverence for science, plus the
exciting, newfangled myths of Jean Sendy and other ufologists. Stimulated perhaps by an authentic
CEIII experience, he applied these tools to tame it, to craft his testimony, rendering it beautiful,
touching and “cozy.” He “made sense” of it. Moreover, in the retelling he continued to craft his
43
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmrn4FBXrfw
163
I. Case Studies
uncanny experience in such a way as to address one of the most terrifying challenges to humanity
looming on the horizon—the threat of nuclear war.
Finally, the case of Claude Vorilhon/Raël suggests that the question of witness testimony is
remarkably complex. One cannot simply treat the witness as a passive recording instrument (e.g., a
CCTV camera). The witness is always already a site of social and individual determinations.
Moreover, the experience itself is not necessarily self-contained, but may be preceded or followed
by other experiences that help make sense of the “primary” report. This important temporal
dimension of the report includes, too, the question of its own consistency over time in its retellings
as well as what literary scholars refer to as its “reception history” (i.e., the ways it is understood and
judged over time). This reception history is made possible by the social dimension of the testimony.
The witness is not “an island entire unto itself,”44 but a social being, whose reporting may be
inhibited or encouraged by their immediate social circle and more general social milieu, social
contexts often turned to as relevant in determining the veracity of the witness. One might end by
observing the believability of a report is not a simply rational matter.
In the case of Raël, its unconventional content will motivate one judge to reject it as outrageously
false, while among his followers, the spiritual significance of the message contained in the
testimony will confirm its truth. For all its singularity, the case of Claude Vorilhon / Raël serves as
a reminder of the inescapable “messiness” of the question of witness veracity in the real world, a
world whose reality escapes every laboratory, whether brick-and-mortar, procedural, or
methodological.
But what does Raël himself have to say on this issue, and how does he defend his own veracity?
According to Mark Woodgate, the former National Guide of New Zealand:
Over the years, Raël has made many onstage references such as, ‘even if it isn't true, it is still
beautiful’ or ‘if it is only a dream, then my dream is better than their reality.’ I've even heard Raël
ask the audience, ‘Even if it isn't true, will you stay with me to build this dream? Good! Then it
doesn't matter if it is true or not!’45
Acknowledgments: The author would like to thank her former co-author, Bryan Sentes, for
contributing his brilliant ideas and his useful critique of earlier drafts of this chapter, and for sharing
his knowledge of the ufological milieu.
References (all web articles accessed on December 2, 2022)
Bergier, Jacques. Les extraterrestres dans l'histoire. Paris: Éditions J'ai Lu, 1970.
Bourret, Jean-Claude. La Nouvelle vague des soucoupes volantes. Paris: France-Empire, 1974.
_____. Le Nouveau défi des OVNI. Paris: France-Empire, 1975.
_____. La Science face aux extra-terrestres. Paris: France-Empire, 1977.
Däniken, Erich von. Chariots of the Gods: Unsolved Mysteries of the Past. New York: Berkley,
1969.
Fritze, Ronald H. Invented Knowledge: False History, Fake Science and Pseudo-religions.
Islington, London: Reaktion Books, 2009.
44
45
John Donne, Meditation XVII, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions.
http://raelian.com/en/mark_woodgate.php
164
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Hennig, Richard, Les Grandes Énigmes de l'Univers. Paris: Robert Laffont,1969.
Hutin, Serge. Hommes et civilisations fantastiques. Paris : Éditions J'ai Lu, 1970.
Lewis, James R. (ed.). The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds. Albany: State
University of New York, 1995.
Pasulka, Diana Walsh. American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2019.
Palmer, Susan J. Aliens Adored: Raël’s UFO Religion. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers
University Press, 2004.
Saint-Cyr, Jean-Denis. Confessions de Raël à son ex-bras droit. Montreal: Les Éditions au Carré,
2019.
Saliba, John A. “UFO Contactee Phenomena: A Psychosociological Perspective,” in James R.
Lewis (ed.) The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1995.
_____. “Religious Dimensions of the UFO Experience,” in James R. Lewis (ed.) The Gods Have
Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds. Albany: State University of New York Press,
1995, page 50.
Sendy, Jean. La Lune, clé de la Bible. Paris: Éditions R. Julliard, 1968.
_____. Ces dieux qui firent le ciel et la terre, le roman de la Bible. Paris: Éditions R. Julliard,
1969.
Story, Ronald. The Space-gods Revealed. A close look at the theories of Erich von
Däniken (2nd ed.). New York: Harper & Row, 1980.
Vallée, Jacques. Anatomy of a Phenomenon. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1965. (Preface).
Vignole, François. “L'histoire vraie du ‘petit Claudy’ Vorilhon, désormais surnommé Son
Altesse.” Le Parisien, January 15, 2002.
Vorilhon, Claude. “Raël.” Le livre qui dit la vérité : le message donné par les extra-terrestres.
[The Book That Tells the Truth] Fondation Raëlienne, France: Editions du Message, 1974.
_____. Les extra-terrestres m’on emmene sur leur planète. [Space Aliens Took Me to Their
Planet]. Brantôme: Edition du Message, 1975.
_____. Let’s Welcome Our Fathers from Space. Tokyo: AOM Corporation, 1987, pp. 9-10.
Whitmore, John. “Religious Dimensions of the UFO Experience,” in James R. Lewis (ed.), The
Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds. Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1995.
165
I. Case Studies
The Legendary Cash-Landrum Case:
Radiation Sickness from a Close Encounter?
Gary P. Posner
Abstract: One night in December 1980, Betty Cash (then age 51), her friend Vickie Landrum
(57), and Vickie’s grandson Colby (7), allegedly witnessed, at close range, a massive, hovering,
diamond-shaped, porthole-encircled, fire-spewing object, which was soon to be escorted away by
more than 20 military helicopters. This case’s notoriety revolves primarily around Betty’s saga, as
she was more exposed to the object than the others and thereafter manifested the most significant
illnesses, some of which have been attributed to “radiation sickness” from her UFO close
encounter. However, the nature of the principals’ medical signs and symptoms (and the absence
of another) provide reason to seriously doubt, if not discount, the role of ionizing radiation. Thus,
the reliability of the testimony not merely of the eyewitnesses, but of others who have contributed
to Cash-Landrum’s standing as the classic “UFO radiation” case, merits critical scrutiny.
Keywords: Cash-Landrum, UFO, Radiation
Background
Some forty years ago, aerospace journalist, UFO skeptic, and friend, Philip J. Klass, requested
my assistance in investigating the then-one-year-old Cash-Landrum “UFO radiation” case. I was
in my second year of medical practice as a general internist, with limited knowledge regarding
radiation-induced illness. My efforts included textbook research and correspondence with,
among others, the primary radiology consultant to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), the
principal agency chronicling this case. Three years ago, I scanned much of my file’s content and
created a C-L section on my website at gpposner.com/Cash-Landrum.html.1 My contribution to
this book is at the behest of its first-listed editor, whose invitation noted that C-L “is such an
important case that it probably even influenced the inclusion of the study of UFO-related
physiological effects in the recently approved Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) law in the
U.S. National Defense Act.”
The Eyewitnesses’ Testimony to the U.S. Air Force
On August 17, 1981, Betty, Vickie, and Colby were interviewed jointly by three U.S. Air Force
representatives at Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin, Texas. The following narrative is derived
from a transcript of that session.[1]
Betty and Vickie believed the object to be not an alien spacecraft but an experimental U.S.
governmental device. At the suggestion of ufologist Allan Hendry, Betty wrote to her two Texas
U.S. Senators and received a response from Sen. Lloyd Bentsen directing her to Bergstrom AFB
for assistance. Per her account, at about 21:15 on the night of December 29, 1980, with Vickie
and Colby as passengers in her vehicle, a strange light was observed in the sky. As Betty turned
the car onto a narrow country road between the Texas towns of New Caney and Huffman
(roughly 30 or 40 km northeast of Houston), the object, which now “lit up the entire sky,”
suddenly descended “almost level with the treetops.” They could not proceed further because
1
All gpposner.com URLs are case sensitive, as my website is hosted on a Linux server.
166
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
“fire was shooting out the bottom of it.” Inside the car, “the heat was so intense” that Betty
exited the vehicle. From her vantage point in front of her car, she estimated the size of the craft
to be “as large, if not larger, than a water tower.” She watched it for several minutes before
retreating back into the vehicle, but the door handle was “so hot I couldn’t stand it with my bare
hand, so I got the pocket of my leather jacket to open the car door.”
Once the object lifted off, Betty said “it was [still] so hot … we were all burning up.” And within
moments there were “helicopters completely around the object … the [type with] two rotors. … I
counted twenty three. … They had ‘United States Air Force’ [markings].” The copters and UFO
eventually drifted away together, with the object emitting a “shrill beeping sound. … It was …
deafening.” Betty estimated the duration of the event to have been “about 15 to 16, 17 minutes.”
When asked to “draw … a picture … if it had a discernible shape, and just sign it and date it for
me,” Betty sketched what she described as “a diamond.” Vickie added some streaks from the
bottom point where she said “the fire was coming right down,” and further characterized the
object as “kinda like a flat … aluminum, I guess, [and] the inside of it looked dark.”
Betty insisted that she had been feeling fine prior to the incident, but within 30 minutes of the
traumatic experience she began developing “blisters all over my head, my face, my back, my
neck. I was burning … from the inside out.” She reported prompt swelling of her lips and ears,
areas of hair loss and, at the time of this interview, nearly eight months post-incident, continuing
issues with upset stomach, diarrhea, fatigue, and severe headaches, among other symptoms.
Vickie recounted being outside of the car for “just a few minutes,” most of the time apparently
only partially, with one arm “holding [Colby] in, and had my [other] arm up on the car,”
resulting in it getting “burned.” She added that “blisters” on her arms continue to come and go.
On the back of her left hand, one questioner pointed out “a bruise about the size of a quarter
[and] kind of a deep purple,” about which Vickie explained, “Saturday we were out in the sun for
quite a while, and the sun does it to me.” She said her hair started falling out “about a month
after the incident” but had since regrown, though with a different texture. She said she initially
“was sick [with] the diarrhea and everything,” but most of her ongoing symptoms seemingly
involved her eyes, which she said had “started forming … a film, like cataracts, except that my
eyes was burned so bad that they teared for about three months.” She added that they still “feel
just like they’ve got sand in them,” especially when she is out in the sun, and “my eye doctor
said that there’s a possibility that within a year or year and a half that he’ll have to operate.”
Colby concurred with the timeframe of “about … 15 to 20 minutes.” He said the object was
“kinda yellowish-red” but was not asked and did not comment about its shape or having felt
burning heat. Vickie described him as “screaming and crying,” yet when asked “[when] you saw
it … what did you feel like?” he replied, “I just … [sat] there wondering what it was” and “didn’t
feel nothing until I got up the next morning” with stomach pain and “runny” stool.
The Eyewitnesses’ Testimony to the Media
Through the years, numerous books, magazine articles and television programs have perpetuated
the story of the Cash-Landrum “UFO radiation” incident. The July 9, 1998, “Close Encounters”
episode of The Unexplained 2 may just be, based upon my own experience on another of this
2
This series, which ran from 1996-2000, should not be confused with any newer one(s) with a similar name.
167
I. Case Studies
series’ episodes, one of the more respectable efforts. On this program,[2] Betty adds some
flourishes to her Bergstrom AFB rendition. For example, when attempting to reenter the car, “I
just grabbed the door handle, and when I did it just pulled all the meat off my hand” (at 21:29 of
the video). And that night, “I went on to bed and I was so sick all night, upchucking. The next
morning I woke up and there was big globs of hair on my pillow” (24:05). Dr. Bryan
McClelland, a family practitioner who began treating Betty after her subsequent move to
Alabama months after the incident (to be nearer her mother), offers, “The illness that she
suffered three weeks after her exposure was an absolute classic radiation injury in which she lost
skin, she lost hair on the exposed side. She then had diarrhea, vomiting, and all the illnesses you
get [from ionizing radiation], and it was exactly on time” (25:01).
On the same show, Vickie explains that after the craft and helicopters “flew [away] slowly
toward Houston” (at 22:08), about 13 km into the resumption of their drive home “there was
[another?] whole bunch of [the big kind of] helicopters that were flying in with their searchlights
on. They flew over us” (23:12). A photograph of what the narrator misidentifies as the “badly
burned [hand of] Betty Cash” (23:26) shows an area resembling a dark purplish triangle on the
back of Vickie’s left hand (a newspaper photo’s caption at 31:25 correctly names Vickie).
Photograph of Vickie’s left hand, as shown in numerous print
publications and television shows, including The Unexplained
In 1985, HBO’s America Undercover documentary series devoted a portion of its hour-long
episode “UFOs: What’s Going On?” to the Cash-Landrum case.[3] Per Betty (at 40:23), “After
they found out really what had happened, then they started … treating us as radioactive burns.
And since [then], I have had cancer.” The narrator immediately clarifies that “Betty’s hospital
records do not explicitly state that she was treated for radioactive burns” but that she exhibited
symptoms “similar to someone who might have been exposed to a radioactive element.”
Dose-Related Effects of Ionizing Radiation
Cash-Landrum’s notoriety as a “radiation” case rests primarily upon several reported medical
effects allegedly caused by the witnesses’ exposure to the UFO: hair loss, acute skin burns with
non-healing sore(s), and gastrointestinal complaints (particularly nausea and diarrhea). Within
168
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
weeks of receiving Phil Klass’ request for assistance, I had compiled my preliminary findings
regarding both the superficial and internal effects of excessive ionizing radiation. Though no two
people or exposures are identical and expert opinions can somewhat differ, my sources indicated
that temporary epilation (hair loss) requires, for a single exposure, about 300-400 rad of ionizing
radiation. It takes 2-3 weeks for onset and, following a resting stage, hair begins to regrow in 1-3
months, gray or white in color but typically with its original texture.[4,5] Regarding the skin, acute
onset of erythema (redness) requires about 450 rad and should disappear within about three days;
it would take exposure of greater than 1,000 rad to cause blistering and non-healing of sores.[6]
As for GI effects, while nausea and vomiting may be seen at far lower doses, diarrhea lasting
more than a few days would require exposure of 1,000 rad.[7]
In preparation of this chapter, I reviewed some additional resources to augment my originals from
four decades ago. A December 2017 U.S. Department of Energy publication contains a graphic
titled “Ionizing Radiation Dose Ranges (Rem).”[8] Its timeline #5 confirms “Temporary
epilation” to typically have a “3 wk onset” following a dosage of about 260 to 300 rem. Early
(2-24-hour onset) transient skin erythema can occur from as little as 190 rem, while “Main erythema
reactions” require about 530 rem, roughly the same minimal requirement for “circulating blood cell
death [and] moderate G-I damage,” with “death probable 2-3 wks.” Without medical intervention,
the LD50/30 (dose likely to be fatal to 50% of victims within 30 days) is roughly 340-500 rem.3
The relevant timeline (#5) from the above-cited December 2017 U.S. Department of Energy publication
On the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) web page devoted to “Acute
Radiation Syndrome,” Table 1 implies that exposure in the 50-rad range should manifest in mild
blood-related findings, and that a dose in the 600-rad range is required for any notable GI effects.
Diarrhea continuing for more than a few days—if resulting from an acute exposure—would be
severe and indicative of a full-blown GI syndrome requiring 1,000 or more rad, with death
“within 2 weeks.”[9] The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission concurs that this level of whole-body
irradiation leaves “the prospects of recovery … so poor that therapy may be restricted largely to
palliative measures,” followed almost invariably by death “usually within … 2 weeks.”[10]
3
The differing units of measurement (“rad” vs. “rem”) seen throughout this chapter are explained thusly by the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (see https://tinyurl.com/CL-Nuclear): “For practical purposes … 1 rad (absorbed
dose) = 1 rem or 1000 mrem (dose equivalent).”
169
I. Case Studies
MUFON’s Investigation
The principal investigation of this case was conducted by the Mutual UFO Network. The
December 1982 issue of its MUFON UFO Journal contains an article by Paul Stowe, MUFON’s
Research Specialist in Nuclear Technology.[11] Stowe asserts that “the observers exhibited
radiation sickness of varying severity as well as local skin burn.” He notes that the photoelectric
effect of non-ionizing radiation, such as ultraviolet light, could account for “the observed burn as
well as the sensation of heat.” But to account for “the [other/deeper] injuries … it is apparent that
a delivered exposure of between 200-300 rem occurred. … [I]t is further assumed [to have been]
gamma/X-ray emission.” His article includes a table based on “data gathered by the [U.S.]
Department of Defense” listing the observable effects of various ranges of exposure to such
radiation. In it, blood abnormalities are noted to manifest at about 50 rem. The 200-300 rem
column reads, “Radiation sickness with accompanying first instances of death occurring within
30 days.” Further down, 300-450 rem represents the range considered to be LD50/30, and 600900 rem is the LD100/30 range (100% lethal within 30 days’ time).
Following Stowe’s article, Peter Rank, M.D., a practicing radiologist in Madison, Wisconsin,
and MUFON consultant, writes, “I would agree totally with Mr. Stowe’s analysis,” yet he parts
with Stowe regarding both the assumption of deep/total-body exposure (“This is by no means
clear”) and the estimated 200-300 rem (“I do not believe that a general dosage level can be
assigned”). Rank does concur that “both women had symptoms of radiation sickness,” though he
notes that “there were no well documented changes in the blood.”[12]
MUFON co-founder John Schuessler has researched and written extensively about the C-L case.
His article in the July 1982 MUFON Symposium Proceedings [13] states that Betty was “directly
exposed” to the UFO for “5 to 10 minutes” and Vickie “3 to 5.” By the time Betty arrived home
shortly before 22:00, she already had “red blotches” on her face, and over the next four days her
health “degraded … eyes swelled closed, the red blotches became blisters of clear fluid, and she
was weak with diarrhea and nausea.” Vickie took Betty to the hospital, where she was admitted
“as a burn patient,” and over “the next several days [she] lost patches of skin on her face and
about fifty percent of her hair fell out.” The caption of a photo of Betty, depicting two areas of
denuded scalp, reads, “Betty Cash, back of head showing approximately 50% loss of hair.”
Another of the article’s accompanying images was the same hand photo shown earlier, its
caption reading, “Vickie Landrum. A sore on the back of her left hand which has not healed.”
The same photo of back of Betty’s head as cited above,
but a higher-quality image from a television program
170
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
In 1998, Schuessler published The Cash-Landrum UFO Incident, a book which, though largely
anecdotal, contains passages that faithfully portray Betty’s hospital records.[14] According to his
presentation (which in a couple of spots leaves me a bit hazy as to whether a date-unspecified
event took place during her first hospitalization or her second), Betty was initially admitted as a
burn patient to Parkway Hospital in Houston on January 2, 1981, four days after the UFO
incident, with initial complaints of “swelling of the eyes, scalp, and face, along with a terrible
headache,” and was discharged on the 19th (p. 88). The consulting dermatologist, Dr. Solomon
Brickman, noted areas of swelling and crusting of the scalp, face, and eyelids, which he
diagnosed as cellulitis and treated with antibiotics and steroids (pp. 90-93). He made no mention
of alopecia, nor did admitting physician Dr. V.B. Shenoy who, per Schuessler, “specifically
noted that Betty had little, if any, hair loss” upon admission (p. 88). An EEG and CAT scan of
the head were negative (p. 90), as were sinus x-rays, and neurologist Dr. K. Kumar concluded
that her head pain was “most probably due to severe tension headache” (p. 104).
Betty was readmitted to Parkway on January 25th for similar complaints as well as diarrhea and
alopecia, and remained hospitalized until February 9th. Detailed ophthalmologic findings by Dr.
Joseph Darsey on January 26th indicated no significant abnormalities, though some small areas of
residual red, dry, and scaly skin of the forehead and eyelids were seen. Her neurological exam on
the 29th by Dr. Kumar was again unremarkable. Only upon this admission, nearly a month postincident, were areas of alopecia noted, which Dr. Kumar described as “two large areas of
complete hair loss on either side of the head in the parietotemporal region.” Dr. Brickman
referred to them, per Schuessler, as round spots within which were areas of black hair regrowth
(not the more typical post-irradiation white or gray), and his clinical impression was “alopecia
areata” (p. 93), an autoimmune condition sometimes triggered by emotional stress but unrelated
to radiation exposure. This diagnosis was supported by scalp biopsy (p. 94), though Dr. Rank
takes issue with the pathologist’s interpretation of it (pp. 109-111).
Betty was hospitalized again, primarily for skin issues, from May 27th through June 1st of that
year at Lloyd Nolan Hospital in Alabama. In addition to multiple other lesions common to
almost anyone her age, Dr. Whittaker (no first name given, and also spelled “Wittaker” later in
the book) noted areas of erythema, especially on the anterior and posterior aspects of the lower
trunk and upper thighs, including the buttocks. He described many of them as “almost like a
[round] ringworm-type lesion,” and others as more irregular in shape (pp. 96-97). No definitive
diagnosis was mentioned regarding the skin, but he did comment that her “chronic bowel
problems” still persisted. She was hospitalized twice more between September 29th and October
17th for “chronic bronchitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.”
In Schuessler’s words, “The effects of the radiation exposure were becoming more pronounced,”
so Betty was readmitted to Lloyd Nolan from November 26th to December 7th, her primary
complaint being pain in her chest and left arm (p. 100). Her exam revealed a normal BP of 120/70,
a “normal” chest x-ray, unchanged EKG, “no edema” of her legs, and no cardiac “rubs” often
heard with pericarditis. (In a later, anecdotal chapter [p. 125], Schuessler says she was admitted
on the 28th, had “swollen legs … and low blood pressure,” and that her doctor said she had
“pericarditis … secondary to radiation exposure.”) After “2-3 days in CCU,” a heart attack was
ruled out. The consulting dermatologist noted several skin lesions of concern, given the patient’s
oral history of “radiation exposure,” and, per Schuessler, the clinical impression was “radiation
171
I. Case Studies
dermatitis. She had biops[ies] of skin and [the] report was pending at the time of discharge.”
When it became available (pp. 100-101), two of the specimens turned out to be seborrheic
keratoses (waxy, superficial growths) and the third “hyperkeratotic epithelial hyperplasia” (a
descriptive phrase, essentially translating to “thickened skin” like a callus). Both conditions are
benign and extremely commonplace, and neither is caused by radiation, ionizing or not.
She returned to the hospital in March 1982 (p. 101) for more skin lesions (“same results as
before”) and continuing chest and arm pains (“poor exercise tolerance”). On July 4, because “her
problems were continuing to mount,” Betty underwent a bone marrow aspiration and biopsy,
along with a standard CBC/blood count (pp. 101-102). The white cells and platelets in her blood
were normal in number and appearance. Her red cells were slightly small (common, and typical
of iron deficiency). The marrow studies confirmed a “marked decrease” of stored iron, but were
otherwise normal and negative for any evidence of marrow damage due to ionizing radiation. Per
Schuessler, “Betty continued to be hospitalized several times each year due to a combination of
the aforementioned problems.”
Incongruity and Quandary
Skin blistering and non-healing of sores for at least 1½ years, if caused by ionizing radiation,
should require an exposure sufficient to kill within a couple weeks—unless it is directed to only
a small area (as in targeted radiation therapy) or, rather than deeply penetrating, is only of a
superficial, skin-deep nature. If the UFO’s emitted radiation was superficial, how could it
account for the deeper “radiation sickness” complaints of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and the
rest? If penetrating, how could Betty have survived for 18 more years (to age 69) when enough
radiation to cause, for example, diarrhea for more than a few days should kill in just a few more?
(Vickie lived another 27 years to age 83, and Colby survives to this day.)
Dr. Rank’s aforementioned assertion that “both women had symptoms of radiation sickness,”
while also recognizing that “there were no well documented changes in the blood,” creates
a quandary, since the absence of such blood abnormalities indicates internal exposure of less
than 50 rem, insufficient to cause the various symptoms of “radiation sickness.” This is one
reason why, in his generous 1982-83 correspondence with me,[15] Rank suggested I read The
Medical Basis for Radiation Accident Preparedness, which he indicated “should answer all of
your questions.” My hospital library obtained a copy for me, and though the book actually
answered none of them, I did find interesting a discussion of a man in Japan who had suffered
only a small dose of penetrating whole-body radiation despite several thousand rem locally to
one hip. (I can’t recall, but I think a radioactive particle may have been trapped in a pants
pocket.) But how would this sort of story relate to Betty, whose lack of blood abnormalities
indicates deep exposure of less than 50 rem, yet whose “radiation sickness” would have required
hundreds more?
Possible Hoax for Monetary Gain?
Philip Klass, whose prior investigations had revealed some of the most “classic” UFO cases to
have been apparent hoaxes, wondered whether this incident might have a similar explanation. In
a January 1982 letter to Richard Niemtzow, M.D., a radiation oncologist who also (with Dr.
Rank) consulted to MUFON on this case, Klass explained that “as a senior editor with Aviation
Week & Space Technology magazine … [which is sometimes] referred to as ‘Aviation Leak’
172
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
because of our publication of [sensitive] material … I can assure you that during my nearly 30
years … we have never received a ‘leak’ indicating that the U.S. Government knows anything
more about UFOs than it has made public. Based on [our] excellent sources, I can assure you that
IF the principals … were indeed exposed to radiation, that it did not come from any ‘secret
weapon’ … [but rather] would represent powerful evidence to support UFOs as extraterrestrial
vehicles. But my gut instincts suggest a more prosaic explanation.”[16]
Later that year, Klass inquired to John Schuessler about the principals’ prior health and was
told, “Several years [pre-incident], Mrs. Cash had some severe health problems, but had
recovered.”[17] It would be many more years before Schuessler would release Betty’s medical
records revealing that prior cardiac surgery, but in July 1983 (and again three months later, after
receiving no reply), Klass asked Schuessler, “Is it not true that Mrs. Cash had taken
chemotherapy and/or … radiation treatment for cancer prior to the date of the alleged UFO
incident?” Schuessler’s brief reply, “Where did you get this information? It wasn’t from me,”[18]
denies only his awareness of the information’s source, not necessarily of its accuracy. On The
Unexplained, Dr. McClelland states (at 26:00) that Betty was “economically devastated by the
illness that she had after she was radiated” by the UFO and that “later she did get breast cancer
and had mastectomies. … She was uninsured.” In Betty’s words, “They’ve ruined my health.
They’ve ruined my life. So what else is there that they can do other than kill me? And they
probably would love to do that … [but] I’m going to be around to fight just as long as there’s a
fight left in me” (36:29).
As to whom “they” refers, toward the end of the interviews at Bergstrom, Betty asked the Air
Force representatives, “Well, who is responsible for us being injured?” Vickie asserted that “it
had to be something the government had up there … and I intend to find it.” She also revealed
that “I was hypnotized, I have the tape if [anyone wants] to hear the tape. … I knew I wasn’t
lying, and I did it because I wanted … people to know I wasn’t lying.” The session was
conducted in July 1981 by Dr. Leo Sprinkle,[19] a psychologist known for his work with UFO
“contactees.” A second session with Sprinkle was conducted at a TV studio and aired on an
episode of ABC-TV’s That’s Incredible!, a series which, as described on its Wikipedia page,
“featured people performing stunts and reenactments of allegedly paranormal events.”
Video of that November 16, 1981, TV program has proven elusive, but I had watched a rerun the
following April and recorded the audio of the segment covering the C-L case (I did miss the first
90-or-so seconds). More probative to me than anything of value revealed by Vickie under this
hypnosis (which was virtually nothing—listen from 6:53 to 11:10 of the audio)[20] was a
photograph shown of Betty’s skin. As memorialized in my correspondence (16 months postviewing) with the MUFON UFO Journal’s “Critic’s Corner” columnist,[21] I recalled observing
“a number of round, sunburn-type lesions on her limbs [which looked like they] could be
explained by UV light exposure.” I added that “a sunlamp would do,” but neglected to mention
that she would have first covered her limbs with material containing round cutouts.
And returning to the matter of Betty’s “later” development of breast cancer, Klass’ initial letter
to Schuessler asking specifically about any “prior” cancer treatment was dated July 28, 1983.
Earlier that day, during a telephone conversation (almost certainly surreptitiously recorded, as I
knew Klass’ habit to be) with Peter Gersten, a New York attorney and director of Citizens
173
I. Case Studies
Against UFO Secrecy, Klass’ transcribed notes from that call indicate that he was told, “As far as
Betty Cash is concerned, I think several months ago she had her right breast removed because of
cancer and she is now receiving chemotherapy.” When then asked about any prior history of
cancer, Gersten’s cryptically ambiguous response, “Well, none [sic] diagnosis, let’s put it that
way,”[22] can justify inferring that she may have noted something on self-examination prior to her
alleged UFO encounter and only much later was it evaluated and diagnosed as a malignancy.4
In pursuit of their quest for compensation for their injuries, Betty and Vickie had engaged
Gersten[23] to file a lawsuit against the U.S. government. As reported in the publication Texas
Monthly, “The case dragged on in district court for several years and called upon the testimony
of officials from NASA, the Air Force, and the Army and Navy, before being dismissed in 1986
because no governmental agency owned or operated any aircraft fitting Cash and Landrum’s
description” (emphasis added).[24] Three years prior to the case’s ultimate dismissal, the Air
Force had informed Gersten that “The appeals of your clients’ claims for personal injuries
allegedly caused by an overflight of an unidentified flying object and unidentified helicopters on
29 December 1980 have been considered and denied.”[25] The letter goes on to state that the
Air Force had uncovered “no evidence of involvement by any military personnel, equipment or
aircraft in this alleged incident” (emphasis added).5 Betty and Vickie hired another attorney in
1990 to “reopen the case by showing government officials lied about [their] record-keeping” and
to negotiate “the sale of his clients’ movie rights,”[26] but nothing came of either endeavor.
Discussion
The summa cum laude status of Cash-Landrum as a “UFO radiation” case rests not upon
superficial burns of the sort that can be caused by the sun’s UV rays or other sources of nonionizing radiation, but upon symptoms—among them longstanding diarrhea—ascribed to
“radiation sickness” resulting from penetrating, ionizing gamma/X-ray-type exposure. Yet, such
irradiation, had it occurred, should have been lethal in a matter of days.
If this case were to be stripped of its “radiation” component, it would still qualify as a UFO close
encounter and demand critical scrutiny. Should even one seeming whopper of a falsehood by a
principal, such as vividly describing “big globs of hair” falling out within a few hours, justify
labeling that person’s UFO eyewitness testimony as unreliable? And what, if anything, can be
inferred about the reliability of investigators’ authentications of extraordinary sightings of, and
physical injuries from, UFOs—whether thought to be extraterrestrial or (as in this case) not—
absent unambiguously persuasive documentary evidence?
John Schuessler “wrote the book” on this case and, as co-founder of a pro-UFO organization,
might be expected to interpret doubtful details in their most positive light. The same might be
said of others who offer their expert services as consultants to such enterprises. For example, in
Dr. Niemtzow’s 1983 MUFON UFO Journal article titled “Radiation UFO Injuries,” when
4
Per Schuessler’s book (p. 28), in early 1983 “lumps were found” (via radiography) in her right breast, followed by a
right mastectomy (March 29), chemotherapy, and also a left mastectomy (June 23). There is no mention of when Betty
may have first felt a lump, though a xeromammogram in early 1981 was interpreted as unremarkable (p. 94).
5
Schuessler’s book does contain an anecdotal 1989 double-hearsay account (see gpposner.com/CL-Pilot-Hearsay.pdf)
of an unnamed alleged military pilot’s participation in a multi-helicopter exercise remarkably similar to (including a
huge, spark-throwing “diamond” UFO), and possibly at the very time and place of, the C-L principals’ alleged sighting.
174
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
referencing the Cash-Landrum case’s particulars as “reported very professionally by Mr. …
Schuessler” in an earlier article, Niemtzow opines (with the caveat that “I never examined [the
principals] or had access to their medical records”) that “it would be feasible to assume that [they]
might have been exposed to some type of … ionizing radiation.”[27]
Ultimately, however, Dr. Niemtzow appears to have decided otherwise. In a 1999 Internet
posting, ufologist Brad Sparks, though believing that Betty Cash had “bravely endured
tremendous [physical] suffering as a result of her unfortunate UFO encounter,” delves into
technical matters beyond those addressed in this paper to explain why he believes “ionizing
radiation or ‘radiation sickness’” must be rejected as the cause, instead suspecting exposure to a
“chemical agent.” He notes that “Radiation oncologist … Dr. Richard Niemtzow reviewed my
findings and agreed that the symptoms did not match those expected for ionizing radiation
syndrome.”[28] (My correspondence with Dr. Rank obviously had no such effect.)
UFO researcher and writer Curt Collins’ blueblurrylines.com website is largely devoted to CashLandrum and is filled with historical documents and other invaluable information (including
a detailed report[29] of Betty and Vickie’s exploitation by some notable “myth”makers). In a
November 2013 posting,[30] his link beginning with the words “A Preliminary Report” leads
to a large pdf file, the first page of which is a July 1981 handwritten/signed memo by John
Schuessler documenting a phone conversation during which Dr. Niemtzow was already opining
that the skin issues, as reported, seemed compatible with “an exposure to a chemical substance
rather than radiation.” Pages 3-7 of that file consist of a letter to Schuessler written three months
earlier by Dr. Rank detailing why he, however, felt it “safe to conclude, at this time, that Betty
and Vicki[e] sustained radiation damage,” though confined to “the skin and the immediate
subcutaneous area” with the exposure “not sufficiently [penetrating] to cause sy[s]temic signs
and symptoms” (blood abnormalities, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, etc.). Rank added, “I think it is
important to assure Betty that on the basis of the medical information you have provided me, that
there are no signs of serious injury to date. You may also reassure Vicki[e] that her cataract was
probably a pre-existing condition and not necessarily related to the incident.”
Pages 8-18 of the file contain an April 1981 analysis of the case by Allan Hendry, chief
investigator for the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies and author of The UFO Handbook: A
Guide to Investigating, Evaluating and Reporting UFO Sightings, a book widely acclaimed by
leading UFO proponents and skeptics alike for its thoroughness and objectivity. Collins
describes Hendry’s 11-page analysis as “one of the most valuable pieces of evidence in the
case,” as it was based largely upon “extremely rare early interview[s] with the witnesses before
the case became subject to pollution by manipulation and rumors.” Several items of particular
relevance to witness reliability:
• Betty tells Hendry that as they approached the UFO, “It killed the motor in the car!” (a
phenomenon not uncommonly reported with close encounters). Hendry was “surprised at
her new portrayal,” since Betty had been telling others, including John Schuessler, that she
had turned the engine off herself. When further pressed by Hendry, she continued to insist
that “It just quit on its own. … I was beginning to wonder, ‘What if we can’t get out of
here?’” (pp. 9-10 of the pdf file). Hendry thought this to be likely just a “glitch in this recent
retelling,” though “Schuessler acknowledges [also] being disturbed about this discrepancy,”
175
I. Case Studies
and it would be repeated by Betty during the Bergstrom AFB interview later that year: “I
had not killed the motor on the car, I had put it [in] park. The radio was playing on low, but
the car completely went dead. I mean, it was like somebody had turned a switch off.”
• Vickie tells Hendry that she didn’t seek medical attention for her injuries “because she
didn’t have the money.” He found it “puzzling,” however, that “she continued to use [this]
excuse” even after agreeing that “her health insurance would cover the costs” (pp. 13-14).
• Despite the blinding light, the deafening noise, and a helicopter swarm and diamond-shaped
UFO the size of a water tower flying off together toward Houston, Hendry could find scant
evidence of any corroborating witnesses. “The tabloid coverage … mentioned one
seemingly independent witness” [along with her son and his wife] but they “apparently
don’t want to talk about it.” And “a news broadcast arranged by MUFON … has netted at
least one other witness” (p. 14).
• Hendry’s attempts to confirm the helicopter story came up empty. But he quotes a Mr.
Nidever from the Army Guard Unit at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston as telling him,
“We had a UFO sighting … [not a few months ago when the C-L incident occurred but]
about two years ago. … They had a helicopter out there. … Mr. Culverson (with the Army
Guard) was involved in that” (pp. 15-16). John Schuessler, in the September 1983 MUFON
UFO Journal, discusses a public twin-rotor helicopter demonstration event held not far from
the Landrums’ home on April 30, 1981 (four months after C-L), which Vickie and Colby
attended.[31] The pilot was identified by Schuessler as Willy Culberson (note the similarity
to “Culverson,” though no first name was provided by Hendry), and when approached by
Vickie and asked if he had been involved in any previous nearby flights, “He referred to the
December UFO event and said he and others had been called out because of the UFO
and were there. When Vickie said she was one of the people hurt in that incident, Culberson
beat a hasty retreat. Later, he denied via a telephone call [from Schuessler] having been
involved.” Per Collins, who devotes another page of his website to this mix-up of UFO
incidents, “Based on the evidence, it seems that the pilot mentioned [his] UFO case. Vickie,
in her excitement, made an overzealous mistaken connection [to her case two years later].
Emotion and the inattention of the investigator [i.e., Schuessler, in his 1983 article, by not
recognizing the name similarity in Hendry’s 1981 report] carried the story from there. The
pilot’s [truthful] denial was the foundation of the charges of [a U.S. government] cover-up”
(emphasis added).[32]
• Schuessler claims to have been led, by Betty and Vickie independently of each other, “to the
very place” where they all were able to observe “the roadway that was burned and the trees
that were burned” by the UFO’s flames (see The Unexplained, beginning at 29:30). Hendry
describes a similar expedition (the same one?) with Vickie and Colby, during which
Schuessler associate Alan Holt had paced off the estimated distance between Betty’s parked
car and the UFO (about 40 m.) and measured the treetop level to ascertain how high
the object had been hovering. Though making no mention either way of burned trees,
Hendry’s report does note that “later examination showed no [burn] marks on the
pavement” (p. 10).
176
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
And in a search for evidence of any residual ambient radiation left behind by the UFO, on
September 16, 1981, two representatives from the Texas Department of Health surveyed the
stretch of road encompassing the site of the alleged incident. Despite making three passes while
“following the route [Betty] took” and also gathering three soil samples along the way, “No
significant deviations from background radiation were noted.”[33]
Conclusion: Did The Eyewitnesses Even “See” What They Saw?
Aside from whether or not they were truly irradiated by a UFO, the eyewitnesses’ testimony
regarding the most basic aspect of their sighting—what the alleged object actually looked like—
appears utterly unreliable. I refer the reader to Curt Collins’ comprehensive analysis, originally
published in the February 2014 issue of UFO Today magazine and more recently reproduced
(with additional illustrations) on his website.[34] When queried in 1985 about the portholes and/or
lights encircling the object, which are depicted in perhaps all of its subsequent artistic
renderings—including the one by Schuessler’s wife Kathy on the cover of his 1998 book—Betty
denied having seen or reported any such detail. But of far more significance is the hallmark
“diamond” shape—a most uncommon contour that almost certainly defines this celebrated UFO
in the mind of anyone familiar with the Cash-Landrum case.
Left: Drawing at Bergstrom AFB by Betty Cash and Vickie Landrum6
(Bergstrom interview transcript indicates date to have been August 17)
Right: Illustration by Schuessler’s wife Kathy, used on cover of his 1998 book
During their August 1981 interview at Bergstrom Air Force Base, the signed drawing by
Betty and Vickie affirmed their agreement regarding the shape of the craft they had witnessed.
However, as early as February 1st of that year, in a transcribed audio recording, Betty stated, “We
could not get up close enough to detect what the figure was. Or I couldn’t at least, the lights were
too bright.” Several days later, she added in a handwritten narrative that Vickie “said the light
was [also] too bright for her to see very much of the figure.” And as revealed by Vickie in her own
February 1st recorded account, “Colby swore it looked like a big diamond. I couldn’t tell.”[35]
6
See tinyurl.com/CL-Bergstrom-Drawing, p. 78. Pages 46-81 consist of a 36-page file released by the U.S. Air
Force on August 22, 1983, to reporter Billy Cox in response to his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
Also, “Vickie” is misspelled “Vicki” in the text (though not in the title) of the Bergstrom interview transcript.
177
I. Case Studies
So what are we to conclude with regard to the reliability of these UFO witnesses’ testimony?
Despite Betty and Vickie’s signed drawing for the U.S. Air Force, was the only principal to have
discerned the alleged object’s distinctive shape actually a seven-year-old child who may have
had the least opportunity of the three to observe it? Do the official hospital records confirm any
of Betty’s numerous health problems as having been caused by exposure to ionizing radiation?
Have significant details of her ordeal been embellished and even contradicted in retellings? Have
John Schuessler et al. met their burden of providing compelling evidence that the prevailing
narrative of this UFO close encounter and its injurious aftermath, which occupies a hallowed
spot in the annals of ufology, is historically sound? Or, as I believe, are there myriad reasons for
skepticism of virtually every aspect of the legendary Cash-Landrum case?
Acknowledgments: An e-mail query three years ago from Curt Collins regarding my 1982-83
investigation of this fascinating case prompted me to create my own Cash-Landrum web page.
His replies to my e-mails during preparation of this chapter were always not only swift but
extremely helpful, and his review of an early draft, which I had foolishly thought might be the
final one, was of immense value.
References (all web articles accessed on December 14, 2022)
1. Transcript of interviews of Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum, and Colby Landrum at Bergstrom
Air Force Base, Austin, Texas, August 17, 1981. https://tinyurl.com/CL-Bergstrom
2. The Unexplained, Episode titled “Close Encounters.” Towers Productions, A&E Network,
July 9, 1998. Video of a History Channel rerun can be viewed at:
https://tinyurl.com/CL-Unexplained
3. America Undercover, Episode titled “UFOs: What’s Going On?” Robert Guenette Productions,
HBO Network, September 10, 1985. Video can be viewed at:
https://tinyurl.com/CL-Undercover
4. Fitzpatrick, T.B. (Editor). Dermatology in General Medicine. New York: McGraw Hill,
1971, p. 1038.
5. Prasad, Kedar N. Human Radiation Biology. Hagerstown, Maryland: Harper & Row (Medical
Department), 1974, p. 241.
6. Fitzpatrick, pp. 1037-1038.
7. Hall, Eric J. Radiobiology for the Radiologist. Hagerstown, Maryland: Harper & Row (Medical
Department), 1973, p. 202.
8. U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environment, Health, Safety and Security. Information
Brief. December 2017, p. 5. https://tinyurl.com/CL-Energy
9. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Acute Radiation Syndrome: A Fact Sheet for
Clinicians. Web page last updated April 4, 2018. https://tinyurl.com/CL-CDC-Radiation
10. Glasstone, Samuel (Editor). The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (Revised Edition). U.S. Atomic
Energy Commission, 1962, pp. 590, 595. https://tinyurl.com/CL-AEC-Radiation
11. Stowe, Paul. “Technical Review of Radiation Evidence in Cash-Landrum Case.” MUFON
UFO Journal. December 1982, pp. 8-9. https://gpposner.com/CL-Stowe.pdf
12. Rank, Peter. “Comments on Stowe Analysis.” MUFON UFO Journal. December 1982, p. 9.
https://gpposner.com/CL-Stowe.pdf
13. Schuessler, John F. “Radiation Sickness Caused by UFOs.” MUFON Symposium Proceedings.
July 2-4, 1982, pp. 50-64.
178
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
14. _____. The Cash-Landrum UFO Incident. La Porte, Texas: Geo Graphics Printing Co., 1998,
pp. 88-112, 119-126, 225-230.
https://gpposner.com/CL-Schuessler_book-1.pdf, … -2.pdf, … -3.pdf, and … -4.pdf
15. Personal correspondence with Dr. Peter Rank, 1982-83.
https://gpposner.com/CL-Posner-Rank-1.pdf, … -2.pdf, … -3.pdf, and … -4.pdf
16. Letter from Philip J. Klass to Dr. Richard C. Niemtzow, January 2, 1982.
https://gpposner.com/CL-Klass-Niem-1982.pdf
17. Letters from Philip J. Klass to John F. Schuessler, 1982-83, p. 2. https://gpposner.com/CLKlass-Schuessler.pdf
18. Ibid., p. 3
19. Collins, Curt. “The Cash-Landrum UFO Case Document Collection.” Internet posting,
October 3, 2019. https://www.blueblurrylines.com/2019/10
20. That’s Incredible! ABC-TV, November 16, 1981. The Cash-Landrum segment (missing the
first approx. 90 seconds) can be heard at https://gpposner.com/CL-audio.mp3
21. Personal correspondence with Robert Wanderer, August 6, 1983. https://gpposner.com/CLWanderer.pdf
22. Notes from Philip J. Klass regarding his telephone conversation with Peter Gersten, July 28,
1983. https://gpposner.com/CL-Klass-Gersten.pdf
23. America Undercover (at 41:10).
24. Colloff, Pamela. “Close Encounters of the Lone Star Kind.” Texas Monthly. December 31,
1969. https://tinyurl.com/CL-Texas-Monthly
25. Letter from Col. Charles M. Stewart, Department of the U.S. Air Force, to Peter A. Gersten,
September 2, 1983. https://gpposner.com/CL-USAF-Gersten.pdf
26. Horswell, Cindy. “Twice burned, not shy: Stung by radiation, ridicule, trio stick to UFO story.”
Houston Chronicle, September 15, 1991, pp. 1-2. https://gpposner.com/CL-HoustonChronicle.pdf
27. Niemtzow, Richard C. “Radiation UFO Injuries.” MUFON UFO Journal. January 1983, p. 14.
28. Sparks, Brad. “Cash-Landrum: NOT Ionizing Radiation.” Internet posting, January 1999.
https://tinyurl.com/CL-Sparks-1999
29. Collins, Curt. “Cash-Landrum UFO Disinformation: Rick Doty & Bill Moore.” Internet
posting, June 22, 2022. https://tinyurl.com/CL-Collins-Doty-Moore
30. _____. “Report on the Cash/Landrum New Caney CEII Case …” Internet posting, November
19, 2013. https://tinyurl.com/CL-Collins-Report
31. Schuessler, John F. “Cash-Landrum Case Investigation of Helicopter Activity.” MUFON UFO
Journal. September 1983, p. 5.
32. Collins, Curt. “Exonerating the Helicopter Pilot.” Internet posting, May 16, 2013.
https://tinyurl.com/CL-Collins-Pilot
33. Texas Department of Health interoffice report by Russ Meyer, September 28, 1981, pp. 17-18.
https://tinyurl.com/CL-TDHealth
34. Collins, Curt. “The Cash-Landrum UFO: The True Picture.” Internet posting, April 18, 2020.
https://tinyurl.com/CL-Collins-Picture
35. Schuessler, 1998, pp. 39-40, 42, 253. https://gpposner.com/CL-Schuessler_book-5.pdf
Note: All gpposner.com URLs are case sensitive, as my website is hosted on a Linux server.
179
I. Case Studies
The Weinstein Catalog: Ufological Bullion or Fool’s Gold?
Tim Printy
The mere listing of unanswered puzzles is not equivalent to providing
unanswerable arguments.
Dr. William K. Hartmann1
Abstract: The Weinstein catalog of eighty years of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) reports
by pilots is considered by Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) proponents as an index of 1,305
observations made by dependable eyewitnesses, who could not have been mistaken about what
they described seeing. This paper demonstrates that pilots are not the highly reliable observers
suggested by the compendium’s author, Dominque Weinstein. Like all human beings, pilots make
mistakes and can allow their personal beliefs to affect their observations when confronted with
something they have never seen before. This author also notes that the inventory contains a
significant number of events that have potential explanations or do not contain sufficient
information for proper evaluation. In conclusion, it is the opinion of this writer that the list is
contaminated with so many poor reports and identifiable sightings that it does not meet its implied
objective of demonstrating that pilot reports of UFOs indicate that there is something unknown to
science in the sky. In order to meet that objective, these poor cases and Identified Flying Objects
(IFO) need to be removed so the best incidents can be carefully examined to see if there is any
signal in the noise.
Keywords: Pilots, UFO, Reliable, Error, Explanations
Introduction
In my opinion, publishing UFO lists is a lazy way to make a case that UFOs require serious
scientific study. This methodology is similar to coin or stamp collecting, where the collector will
try and impress the uninformed observer with a large collection of objects. However, if the
collection contains a significant number of items that are worthless, what does it say for the entire
collection?
I have examined many cases in various catalogs being produced by UFO groups/organizations and
continue to be amazed at how a significant number of events on these lists are identifiable. Even
worse is how these same faulty cases can be found in other collections. It appears that all of these
various compilations reference each other and assumed that the incidents were properly vetted
because they appear on somebody else’s directory. When it comes to UFO lists, quantity is more
important than quality.
Expert Witness?
One of the UFO lists often cited by UFO proponents is compiled by Dominique Weinstein, who
wanted to highlight cases involving pilots and aircrews.2 It is the opinion of Mr. Weinstein that
pilots are considered to be the most reliable of witnesses:
Training and experience make pilot and crews much more reliable witnesses than others. They are
used to unusual meteorological phenomena. They have the added advantage of being able to
approach the phenomenon. Sometimes they can even overfly the object, observing it between
180
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
themselves and the earth below. Military pilots are trained to estimate distances, shapes and speed
of flying machines.3
The problem with this reasoning is that, while military pilots are trained to identify objects in the
sky, they are only trained to deal with KNOWN aircraft. If they see another aircraft, which they
are familiar with, they can approximate details based on the angular size. However, when we are
talking about UFOs, we are talking about an “unknown.” Nobody knows if it is five meters or five
kilometers in size. Therefore, one cannot approximate distance based on angular size. Without
distance, one cannot estimate speed or altitude. The bottom line is that it is impossible, no matter
how good a witness is, to accurately determine size, speed, distance, or altitude without having
some point of reference. This “unknown” indicates that all the pilots can do is provide a “best
guess,” which makes many of these estimates worthless as far as scientific research is concerned.
Pilots are highly trained but how good are they at doing their primary job? It is somewhat
surprising that the main cause of aircraft accidents is “pilot error.” Out of the 1516 accidents
examined by the FAA between 1990 and 2002, 1020 (68%) can be attributed to
aircrew/supervisory error.4 This does not mean pilots are always making mistakes but it does
demonstrate that they are not always dependable to perform the correct action when required. If
they are not “perfect” performing their primary responsibility, how reliable can they be as
observers when they are busy performing that task?
During World War 2, there were numerous examples of how pilots were prone to making mistakes
in reporting what they had seen and did. Ships were sunk that were not even hit, pilots claimed
numerous planes shot down when only a few were damaged, and aircrews often simply were
mistaken about what they reported. In the Pacific, pilots were often sent out on long tedious
missions to scout out the ocean looking for enemy ships/fleets. These were the eyes of the fleet
and their reports were extremely important. They were often equipped with optical aid, such as
binoculars, had an observer with them, and, probably, had identification manuals to help
distinguish between different types of targets. Despite all the training and equipment, mistakes
were still common. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, a barge had been identified as a Japanese aircraft
carrier and attacked by two aircraft. During the Battle of the Coral Sea, a Japanese scout craft
reported seeing an aircraft carrier and cruiser to the fleet. In response, the Japanese aircraft carriers
launched a full attack on this target. When the strike made it to the location described, they only
found an oiler and a destroyer. Had they not attacked based on this false report, they could have
attacked the main US fleet, which was discovered shortly after the strike had departed. After the
main battle, an exposed reef had been identified as a carrier, which had the remaining carrier, the
Yorktown, send an attack force to destroy it. In the battle of Midway, the Japanese, as well as the
American pilots suffered from inaccurate information about each other’s fleet locations and
compositions. This resulted in a comedy of errors that contributed to the defeat of the Japanese
and could have cost the United States the battle when one strike force from the USS Hornet went
in the wrong direction and never attacked anything. All of this indicates that the abilities of pilots
to make accurate observations during World War 2 was not very good.
Of course, this is not really comparing apples to apples. It is one thing to mistake the types of
aircraft and ships or make a mistake in navigation in the heat of battle. It is another thing to see
how pilots react to something they had never, or rarely, seen before. Perhaps the best way to
evaluate how reliable pilots are in reporting UFOs is to see how they react to events involving
known objects that were unknown to the pilots when they saw them.
181
I. Case Studies
Case Study 1: November 5, 1990
On November 5, 1990 a Russian rocket body, used to launch Gorizont 21, re-entered the Earth’s
atmosphere over the North Sea around 1800 UTC. It was seen by many pilots and their accounts
indicated that what they had seen was something truly extraordinary.
Some of the primary witnesses to the event were some RAF pilots flying Tornado aircraft over the
North Sea and commercial pilot, Mike D’Alton, who was piloting a 737 from Rome to London
and located over the Alps.
D’Alton’s description of the object was:
What we saw was one large, fairly bright light. Ahead of it was a formation of three fainter lights
in a triangle. Another faint light was behind the large light and was slightly slower…we watched
the lights for two minutes then it took a lightning-fast right-angle turn and zoomed out of sight.5
British MOD files contained message traffic related to the incident. It gave two descriptions of
the event. The first came from a civilian airliner:
ONE LARGE AEROPLANE (SHAPE). 5 TO 6 WHITE STEADY LIGHTS. 1 BLUE STEADY
LIGHT. CONTRAILS FROM BLUE AREA.6
Several British Tornado pilots also saw the re-entry. There description was also in the message:
UFO APPERRED [SIC] IN OUR RH SIDE SAME LEVEL WE WERE TRAVELLING AT MACH
POINT 8. IT WENT INTO OUR 12 OCLOCK AND’ACCLLERATED [sic] AWAY. ANOTHER 2
TORNADOS SEEN IT AND POSSIBLE IDENTIFIED IT AS A STEALTH AIRCRAFT.6
When writing about the event in 2003, one of the Tornado pilots wrote the following:
The UFO did not look like any aircraft that I know to be in service with any air
force either today or at the time of the sighting.7
He also stated:
This was definitely not a Russian satellite- I am 100% certain of that. This was a large “aircraft”
and I could see detail of the lights and the engine area. I have never since seen anything like it.8
It is interesting that these highly trained individuals felt that what they had seen was not rocket
debris re-entering the earth’s atmosphere but some sort of piloted craft of large size that had
incredible capabilities of speed and maneuverability. Even after over a decade, one of the Tornado
pilots was still convinced he had seen an exotic craft of some kind even though all the evidence
indicated otherwise. Most important, this event involved multiple pilots making the same kind of
error. So intense was their belief in what they think they saw, they could not be convinced that
what they saw was something else.
Missing from all of the writings of this incident are the pilots who saw the object and determined
that what they had seen was some sort of re-entry. Unfortunately, their reports are never
182
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
documented and it is only the spectacular reports that make it into the UFO literature. How many
cases, in the Weinstein catalog, involve other pilots who saw the event listed, were able to identify
the object for what it was, but made no report to the news media or government agency?
Case Study 2: Ghana July 27, 1987
The July 29, 1987 edition of the Ghana times described a UFO event seen over the southeastern
region of the county. On the ground, was a Ghana Air Force pilot, who reported to US officials
his observations of the UFO. The official, who interviewed the pilot, implied he was a very reliable
witness:
…A QUALIFIED JET FIGHTER PILOT. HE IS WELL KNOWN TO THE DAO AND OTHERS AS
A SERIOUS PROFESSIONAL, NOT GIVEN TO FLIGHTS OF FANCY OR TO ANY DESIRE TO
ATI’RACT ATIENTION TO HIMSELF. HE SEEMED TO HAVE BEEN EMBARRASSED (AS
WELL AS MYSTIFIED) BY THIS UFO SIGHTING AND PROVIDED THE DETAILS
RELUCTANTLY, MAINLY BECAUSE THE AIR FORCE COMMANDER HAD ASKED THE DAO
TO HELP IDENTIFY THE OBJECT.9
Based on this description, one would expect his observations to be highly accurate. Additionally,
he was on the ground and did not have to worry about flying his aircraft. Therefore, all of his
observations were without any distraction. He described the UFO as follows:
THE UFO FOLLOWED A GENERAL NORTH-TO-SOUTH COURSE AND DISAPPEARED
OVER THE HORIZON OF THE GULF OF GUINEA. THE INITIAL IMPRESSION OF THE UFO,
AS IT APPROACHED THE VICINITY OF ACCRA FROM THE NORTH, WAS THAT IT MIGHT
HAVE BEEN A FAILLING METEORITE. VERY QUICKLY, HOWEVER, THE UFO STOPPED
FALLING AND STARTED TO CLIMB. AS IT WAS GAINING ALTITUDE OVER ACCRA AND
THE OCEAN, DETAILS OF THE UFO, COULD BE SEEN QUITE CLEARLY BECAUSE OF ITS
OWN LIGHT EMISSIONS AND THE CLEAR EVENING SKY. WHEN OBSERVED MOST
CLEARLY, THE UFO APPEARED TO BE AT AN ALTITUDE OF ABOUT 15,000 FEET. ITS
GENERAL SHAPE WAS SIMILAR TO A VERY LARGE AIRCRAFT FUSELAGE OR MISSILE
BODY. ITS COLOR WAS METALLIC, ALUMINUM-LIKE. IT APPEARED TO BE ABOUT TWO
OR THREE TIMES THE SIZE OF A BOEING 747 AIRLINER. BUT IT DID NOT SEEM TO BE
PRODUCING ANY SOUND.
AT FIRST, PARTICULARLY WHILE IT WAS DESCENDING, THE UFO DISPLAYED A
RELATIVELY LARGE SINGLE SOURCE OF LIGHT, YELLOWISH IN COLOR, ORIGINATING
FROM THE CENTER OF ITS TRAILING END, LIKE A ROCKET. AT ABOUT THE TIME THE
UFO STOPPED DESCENDING AND BEGAN TO CLIMB, THIS SINGLE, YELLOWISH LIGHT
DISAPPEARED, AND· EIGHT SMALLER LIGHTS APPEARED. THESE WERE BLUE IN COLOR
AND WERE ARRANGED IN A CIRCULAR CONFIGURATION AROUND THE END OF THE
UFO—LIKE RELATIVELY SMALL, JETS. THESE EIGHT BLUE “JETS” SEEMED TO BE THE
UFO’S SOURCE OF PROPULSION AS IT DISAPPEARED OVER THE HORIZON.
.
THE ·AIR FORCE PILOT ADDED THAT HE HAD HEARD OF OTHER SIGHTINGS.
APPARENTLY OF THE SAME-OBJECT, THAT HAD INCLUDED THE SOUND OF “TWO
EXPLOSIONS,” AND HE SPECULATED THAT THESE COULD HAVE BEEN SONIC BOOMS.
BUT HE WAS APPARENTLY NOT AWARE OF ANY SOUND PRODUCED BY THE UFO AT ANY
TIME DURING THE PERIOD OF HIS OBSERVATIONS.10
183
I. Case Studies
Does this all sound familiar? What was actually seen was the re-entry of another rocket used for
the launch of Cosmos 1870 on July 25th. Like the November 5, 1990 case, the pilot described the
craft he saw based on what he thought he saw. His personal biases affected his interpretation of
the actual event.
Statistics and Pilots
One might consider these case studies “cherry picking” or only looking at the “low hanging fruit.”
There are a great number of such cases in the UFO record involving meteors and space debris.
However, they are not the only sources of UFO reports made by pilots. The Blue Book files reveals
pilots reporting meteors, satellites, space debris, planets, stars, and balloons, among other things,
as UFOs. They were not making up stories but were just reporting they had seen something
unusual that they could not identify. In some cases, it was nothing more than a light moving across
the sky. In other incidents, the object was described as a craft of some kind.
When Dr. Hynek examined the Blue Book files in the 1970s, he quantified the number of UFO
reports made by pilots that could be explained as being 88% for single pilots and 76% for multiple
pilots.11 Hynek’s remark about this statistic was:
What we have here is a good example of a well-known psychological fact: “transference” of skill
and experience does not usually take place. That is, an expert in one field does not necessarily
“transfer” his competence to another one.11
Allan Hendry had a smaller and more limited database to work with. Most of his reports came
from civilian air pilots. Still, his statistics came up with a value of 75% of mistaken identity.12
This is not much different than what Hynek determined from the Blue Book files.
All of this indicates that the belief that pilots are experts at observing and correctly evaluating
unknown objects in the air is a false premise. If pilots are mistaken 75-88% of the time when
reporting UFOs, what does that say for a database that contains raw or improperly investigated
reports? Can we draw the conclusion that roughly 80% of these cases are probably
misidentifications? If pilots are wrong four out of five times, what does it say for the remaining
twenty percent?
Looking at the Weinstein Catalog Closely
The Weinstein Catalog is often treated as an important reference to ufologists. The index appears
to be quite extensive but I doubt that many UFO proponents have looked at it beyond the numbers.
My initial examination of the list revealed that, by my count, 423 cases had no specific date or
time, which, by any reasonable standard, defines the case as “insufficient data.” This means that,
before investigating a single case, almost a third of the cases should be rejected as containing
inadequate information for analysis.
After removing the 423 insufficient data cases, there are still 882 cases remaining. When looking
at these sightings, one quickly comes to the realization that a significant number use a single source
of information. One case that I examined was August 15, 1975 from Stockton, California. The
list gives us several sources, which makes one believe that it must have been thoroughly
investigated and used several independent sources of information. However, as one pulls on the
string, the entire garment unravels. It appears that all of these individuals obtained their material
184
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
from one single news story that was missing a lot of pertinent data. One cannot even tell which
direction the object was seen from the available information. The most likely cause of the sighting
was a minuteman rocket launch but we cannot verify it for sure because the data was inadequate.
Looking at these cases closely, takes time and resources. To date, I have examined forty-five of
these cases and have been able to find potential explanations for them. Additionally, Ted
Molczan’s database of visually sighted space debris re-entries identifies ten more as being space
debris re-entries13:
Case
Case
Description
Description
Explanation
Explanation
Investigation
Investigation
information
information
48.04.09
48.04.09
Montgomery, Ala. One silver disc-shaped object with
Possible balloon
Montgomery,
One
silver disc-shaped object with
Possible balloon
a dark cable andAla.
sphere
underneath.
SUNlite 13-2
Near Montgomery, Ala. Near-collision with cigar-
Probable fireball
SUNlite 8-2
Hickam AFB, Hawaii. One large round object circling
Possible balloon
SUNlite 13-1
SUNlite 13-2
a dark cable and sphere underneath.
48.07.24
48.07.24
49.01.04
49.01.04
49.06.08
Near
Montgomery,
Ala.
Near-collision
shaped
object with two
rows
of portholes. with cigarshaped object with two rows of portholes.
Probable fireball
Hickam
AFB,
large round object circling Possible balloon
the area at
3000Hawaii.
feet (914One
m) high.
the
area
at
3000
feet
(914
m)
high.
Haines, Alaska. One very bright blue-green ball of
Probable fireball
SUNlite 8-2
SUNlite 13-1
SUNlite 12-3
light gradually
disappeared
Haines,
Alaska.
One very bright blue-green ball of
light
gradually
disappeared
Arizona. An object with a trail of smoke
Probable fireball
SUNlite 8-1
50.02.01
50.03.08
Arizona.
An object
with
a trail
smoke
Dayton, Ohio.
A huge
round
and of
metallic-looking
Probable fireball
Venus
SUNlite
SUNlite
13-2 8-1
50.03.08
object hovered then climbed away.
Dayton,
Ohio. A huge round and metallic-looking
Stuttgart,
Ark. Athen
disc climbed
with 9-12away.
portholes and a light
object
hovered
Possible fireball
49.06.08
50.02.01
50.03.20
Probable fireball
Venus
on top
SUNlite 12-3
SUNlite 13-2
SUNlite 10-2
Stuttgart, Ark. A disc with 9-12 portholes and a light
Possible fireball
Mojave
Possible fireball
on
top Desert, Calif. A cigar shaped object
SUNlite 6-3
51.09.23/51.
50.06.24
March AFB,
Calif.
A round
silvery
object
at high
Mojave
Desert,
Calif.
A cigar
shaped
object
Probable
research
balloon
Possible
fireball
SUNlite
9-5
SUNlite
6-3
51.09.23/51.
52.04.29
07.23
March AFB, Calif. A round silvery object at high
Goodland, Kan. A white blinking light.
altitude
Possible fireball
SUNlite 8-2
Fulda, Germany. A white object flew at great speed
Possible balloon
SUNlite 8-3
Goose Bay, Canada. One bright orange and red light,
Fulda,
Germany.
no definite
shape. A white object flew at great speed
Probably Venus
SUNlite 12-6
50.03.20
50.06.24
07.23
52.06.02
52.04.29
52.11.26
52.06.02
altitude
Goodland, Kan. A white blinking light.
Probable research balloon
Possible fireball
Possible balloon
SUNlite 10-2
SUNlite 9-5
SUNlite 8-2
SUNlite 8-3
52.11.26
52.12.15
Goose
Bay,Canada.
Canada.A One
bright
orange andand
red light, Possibly
Probably
Goose Bay,
red light
maneuvering
AltairVenus
no
definitewhite.
shape.
becoming
SUNlite
SUNlite
12-6 12-6
52.12.29
52.12.15
Japan. A
UFO
emittedA3 red
beams
of maneuvering
light.
Goose
Bay,
Canada.
light
and
becoming
white.
Rosalia, Wash. Blinking white light turned and
Probably
Venus
Possibly
Altair
SUNlite
8-6
SUNlite
12-6
Possible weather balloon
SUNlite 10-1
53.02.06
52.12.29
disappeared
Japan.
A UFO emitted 3 beams of light.
53.02.11
53.02.06
Libya. A Wash.
disc passed
the plane
Rosalia,
Blinking
white light turned and
Probably
Venus
or Jupiter
6-1
Possible
weather
balloon SUNliteSUNlite
10-1
disappeared
Dayton, Ohio. Circular object below plane
Subsun
54.06.01
53.02.11
Boston,AMass.
big white
disc flew against the wind
Libya.
disc A
passed
the plane
Probable
research
balloon
11-3 6-1
Probably
Venus
or Jupiter SUNliteSUNlite
54.11.12
54.05.24
Kentucky,
Ohio,Circular
Indiana.object
Interceptors
Dayton,
Ohio.
belowchased
plane targets
Probable
research balloon
Subsun
54.05.24
54.06.01
56.01.22
54.11.12
56.04.08
Probably Venus
tracked on radar
Boston, Mass. A big white disc flew against the wind
Probable research balloon
SUNlite 8-6
SUNlite 7-1
SUNlite
5-2
SUNlite
7-1
SUNlite 11-3
Gulf of Mexico. A big, elongated light with yellow
Possible fireball
SUNlite 11-1
Kentucky,
Ohio, Indiana. Interceptors chased targets
Probable research balloon
SUNlite 5-2
lights
tracked on radar
Schenectady, N.Y. A white light hovered and
Probably Venus
SUNlite 9-2
56.01.22
disappeared
at great
speed.
Gulf
of Mexico.
A big,
elongated light with yellow
lights
Possible fireball
SUNlite 11-1
56.04.08
Schenectady, N.Y. A white light hovered and
disappeared at great speed.
Probably Venus
SUNlite 9-2
185
I. Case Studies
57.03.09
150 miles (278 km) east of Jacksonville. Pilot made
abrupt turn to avoid white-greenish object.
Probable fireball
SUNlite 5-1
57.03.29
Bahamas. A bright pulsating object.
Probably Jupiter
SUNlite 8-2
57.06.30
Belo Horizonte, Brazil. A bright red orange disc
maneuvered around the plane
Possibly related to known
daylight fireball
SUNlite 6-5
57.08.27
Dry Tortugas, Fla. One object with a bright red to
reddish-yellow pulsating light.
Probably Venus
SUNlite 12-4
57.10.10
A huge bright red fireball with a blue tail flashed
across the sky.
Probable fireball
SUNlite 13-5
58.12.18
Atlantic Ocean. One reddish object with a red trail of
fire, no sound. (could be a missile: Blue Book)
Atlas missile launching
SCORE satellite
SUNlite 12-6
59.02.24
Pennsylvania. Three bright yellow-orange lights
changing colors
Refueling operation
SUNlite 9-1
59.07.11
800 miles (1482 km) east of Hawaii. Pilot saw bright
light and two smaller lights
Probable fireball
SUNlite 8-4
59.09.13
Bunker Hill AFB, Ind. White pear-shaped object
observed for 3 hours
Probable research balloon
SUNlite 5-6
60.07.02
Near Puerto Rico. Aircraft followed by bright object
for twenty minutes
ICBM test launch
SUNlite 7-3
61.04.24
Pacific. A white-reddish light
Echo Satellite
SUNlite 13-2
61.05.20
Tyndall AFB, Fla. White-orange object observed.
Disappeared when craft approached
Probably Venus
SUNlite 6-4
61.09.21
Aircraft near Wake Island. Bright object with halo
Soviet ICBM test
SUNlite 5-5
and 7-1
62.08.22
Between Wichita and Liberal, Kan. Guymon Airport,
OK. (2 entries). A bright object flew from east to west,
hovered, then disappeared. One bright object traveling
very fast.
Possible fireball. Jupiter.
SUNlite 13-4
62.12.22
Argentina. A bright object hovered near the ground,
climbed and went away
Possible moon rise
SUNlite 4-6
63.03.11
Oahu. National Guard pilots report bright light with a
trail flying at high speed
Vandenberg ICBM test
SUNlite 4-5
66.06.26
Between Hawaii and Wake island. One bright light
seemed to expand like a gas bubble with bright
blinking light in center
Vandenberg ICBM test
SUNlite 4-6
66.09.30
Above Virginia. One light seen for twenty seconds.
Wallops Island Nike-Ajax
missile launch.
SUNlite 12-5
67.01.22
Pacific Ocean. One milky pulsating light surrounded
by a glowing bubble of gas.
Vandenberg ICBM test
SUNlite 12-1
74.01.26
Portugal. V-formation of 10-15 orange saucers
Molniya 1-25 BOZ re-entry
Molczan, Ted
75.01.15
Japan. 15-16 greyish-blue object flying in two
formations
Cosmos 701 KDU re-entry
Molczan, Ted
75.01.15
Groton, Conn. and R.I. (2 entries). One large greenishwhite solid object heading east. One large green disc
heading east.
Wallops island Aeronomy
test.
SUNlite 13-1
186
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
75.08.14
75.08.14
Stockton
Airport,Calif.
Calif.AAdisc
discemitting
emitting
a bright
orangePossible
Possible
Minuteman
Stockton Airport,
a bright
orange
Minuteman
II II
light
became
dark
red
when
climbing
at
great
speed.
missile
test
launch
light became dark red when climbing at great speed.
missile test launch
76.09.19
76.09.19
Portugal.
Near collision
collisionwith
withblue
blueoval-shaped
oval-shaped
object Molniya
Molniya
re-entryMolczan,
Molczan,
Portugal. Near
object
1-351-35
BOZBOZ
re-entry
Ted Ted
with
of red
redand
andwhite
whitelights
lights
with rows
rows of
77.03.12
77.03.12
South of Syracuse
bright
white
object.
Venus
South
SyracuseN.Y.
N.Y. One
Oneround
round
bright
white
object.Probably
Probably
Venus
Strong effects
effects on
compasses.
Strong
onthe
theautopilot
autopilotand
andthree
three
compasses.
SUNlite
11-5 11-5
SUNlite
79.08.20
79.08.20
Poland. Four
Four light
flying
in in
triangular
1122r
re-entry
Poland.
lightradiating
radiatingobjects
objects
flying
triangular Cosmos
Cosmos
1122r
re-entry
formation.
formation.
Molczan,
Ted Ted
Molczan,
82.03.17
82.03.17
125 miles
miles (232
Fla.
125
(232 km)
km)s.s.ofofJacksonville,
Jacksonville,
Fla.Three
Three
objects with highly illuminated vapor trails.
objects with highly illuminated vapor trails.
Submarine
Trident
C-4 C-4
Submarine
Trident
multiple missile test launch
SUNlite
12-2 12-2
SUNlite
Poland. An object with a light in front and a flaming
Poland.
An object with a light in front and a flaming
trail
Gorizont 18r re-entry
Molczan, Ted
Pennsylvania and Michigan. A rocket shaped object
Cosmos 1569r re-entry
Molczan, Ted
Fort Wayne, Ind. Two object both with two rows of
Raduga 21r re-entry
Molczan, Ted
83.12.02
83.12.02
84.07.27
84.07.27
87.12.12
87.12.12
89.10.24
89.10.24
90.11.05
90.11.05
93.03.31
93.03.31
95.11.17
95.11.17
trail
Pennsylvania
and three
Michigan.
A rocketspheres
shapedwith
object
paced a plane and
metal looking
a
paced
a plane
and three
metal looking spheres with a
luminous
trail pass
the plane.
luminous trail pass the plane.
lightsWayne,
approached
Fort
Ind. rapidly.
Two object both with two rows of
lights
approached
rapidly.
Northern Ind. A boomerang-shaped
object with a beam
SUNlite
SUNlite
13-4 13-4
multiple missile test launch
Gorizont 18r re-entry
Cosmos 1569r re-entry
Raduga 21r re-entry
Molniya 1-76 BOZ re-entry
Molczan, Ted
Molczan, Ted
Molczan, Ted
Molczan, Ted
of light passed
theboomerang-shaped
plane
Northern
Ind. A
object with a beam Molniya 1-76 BOZ re-entry
Molczan, Ted
of
light passed
the plane
Germany
and North
Sea. A formation of UFOs and two Gorizont 21r re-entry
Molczan, Ted
mysteriousand
lights.
Germany
North Sea. A formation of UFOs and two Gorizont 21r re-entry
Ireland/UK.lights.
Two bright whitish spots with vapor trails
Cosmos 2238r re-entry
mysterious
(possible Russian rocket re-entry)
Ireland/UK. Two bright whitish spots with vapor trails
Cosmos 2238r re-entry
Near LongRussian
Island, N.Y.
bright light with green
Probable fireball
(possible
rocketOne
re-entry)
tail passing very fast from south to north.
Near Long Island, N.Y. One bright light with green
tail passing very fast from south to north.
Probable fireball
Molczan, Ted
Molczan, Ted
Molczan, Ted
SUNlite 11-6
SUNlite 11-6
Notice that many of the sightings involve satellite re-entries and rocket launches, which should
have been checked before even putting them on the list. Other sources of these reports involved
fireball meteors, satellites, planets/stars, balloons, and, in one case, possibly the moon. These are
all objects that pilots should be familiar with but still misidentified. All of this data refutes Mr.
Weinstein’s claim that pilots are unlikely to make observational errors.
Improving the Catalog
While I am dismissive of the Weinstein list, I am also of the opinion that ufologists could improve
it by promptly eliminating all the cases that have potential explanations or lack sufficient data for
evaluation. Of course, this would probably reduce the record to maybe a hundred, or fewer, cases.
Once these cases are identified, another culling must occur to eliminate those cases where
sufficient data is available for evaluation. While a date and time might be available, one also
requires information such as angular size, direction, and elevation to properly evaluate the event.
My point is that if one is going to create a list, make it worth something that withstands scrutiny
instead of using the shotgun approach of padding it with an excessive number of bad cases. As
Brian Dunning once noted, “You can stack cowpies as high as you want, but they won't turn into
a bar of gold.”14
I doubt that my criticism will be accepted by many UFO proponents. Ufological lists are akin to
propaganda pieces used to impress the uninformed. How many times have UFO proponents
187
I. Case Studies
mentioned that Weinstein’s catalog contains over 1300 cases made by expert witnesses? They say
this as matter of fact without even looking, or mentioning, the flaws associated with the list.
Ufology needs to set, and meet, higher standards than this if they want the respect of skeptics and
science. They need to demonstrate that they can tell the difference between garbage and gold.
References (all web articles accessed on Nov. 12, 2022)
1. Sagan, Carl, and Page, Thornton , eds. UFO’s: A Scientific Debate. New York: Barnes & Noble,
1972, p. 14.
2. Weinstein, Dominique F. Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: Eighty years of pilot sightings.
NARCAP, February 2001. https://www.narcap.org/s/narcap_revised_tr-4.pdf
3. Ibid, p. 4.
4. Shappell, S.A., Detwiler, C.A., Holcomb, K.A., Hackworth, C.A., Bouquet, A.J., and
Wiegmann, D.A. Human Error and Commercial Aviation Accidents: A Comprehensive,
Fine-Grained Analysis Using HFACS. Federal Aviation Administration: Office of
Aerospace medicine, Washington. D.C, July 2006, p. 6.
5. Defe-24-2041-1-1, p. 26. The National Archives.
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11611910
6. Ibid, p. 20.
7. Ibid, p. 9.
8. Ibid, p. 10.
9. “MSG to DIA Washington D.C. DTG R201417Z Aug 87 Subject: Unidentified Flying Object,”
p. 3.
10. Ibid, pp. 2-3.
11. Hynek, J. Allen. The Hynek UFO Report. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1997, p. 261.
12. Hendry, Allan. The UFO Investigators Handbook. London: Sphere Books Ltd., 1980, p. 102.
13. Molczan, Ted. Visually Observed Natural Re-entries of Earth Satellites. December 18, 2015.
http://satobs.org/reentry/Visually_Observed_Natural_Re-entries_latest_draft.pdf
14. Dunning, Brian. “The Rendlesham forest UFO.” Skeptoid Podcast #135. January 6, 2009.
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4135
188
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
The Changing Case of Próspera Muñoz:
An Abduction Remembered over 41 years?
José Ruesga Montiel
Abstract: Some strange events that take place between 1946/1947 and that its protagonist begins
to remember in 1980, attract the attention of the Spanish ufological community. The author
considers that it has not been dealt with properly and was publicized hastily, so he commits himself
to an unhurried investigation in which he gives the witness the benefit of the doubt. This work
synthesizes a view of the process followed for ten years to unravel the reality of a supposed
abduction attributed to extraterrestrial beings that seems to have changed the life of the protagonist.
Keywords: Abduction, UFO, Hypnosis, Implant, Spain
Knowing the Facts
I confess that I should have written a whole book on the circumstances of the present case, but I
was always very prudent not to harm the witness, despite the fact that the documentation that I
accumulated during ten long years of following it would have allowed me to do so without much
effort. I just tried to close the case with my work “Próspera Muñoz, conclusion?” which was
published in November 20011 and subsequently under the same title in 2013.2
We are therefore faced with what is undoubtedly one of the most famous Spanish cases,
synonymous with the term abduction, which achieved that status thanks to what I call shared
irresponsibility. Therefore, we are going to address in a few pages the history of one of the most
archetypal cases in Spanish ufology, in which I personally got involved out of a feeling of
solidarity with the witness. Does this mean that I agreed with everything in her account? No,
certainly not, but I disagreed with how the investigation had been approached and, what is worse,
with the way it was published.
My first news about the case came through an Argentine colleague and friend, Mario Luis
Bracamonte Báez of the Centro Ovnilógico Riocuartense (the Ufological Center of Río Cuarto)—
sadly now deceased—who in one of his many cassettes that we used as a means of exchanging
letters, he spoke to me of the participation of Antonio Ribera in a Congress on the subject in which
his paper “Próspera Muñoz: a Case of Abduction Remembered Thirty Years Later”3 was
presented. This was in 1982. (Ribera was a prolific and early Spanish writer on UFOs.) In 1984
Ribera’s book En el túnel del tiempo (“In the Time Tunnel”)4 appeared, and in the chapter bearing
the same title as his earlier paper he reveals the experience of Próspera Muñoz. It is all reasonable
and apparently consistent if it weren’t for the fact that, as we know from the story itself, the witness
begins to remember the experience in 1980, in 1982 she comes into contact with Ribera, and
already that same year he makes the story public, to later release it for public consumption in 1984,
when the book was published by Planeta. In summary, the story is as follows:
One summer day in 1946 or ’47, little Próspera, 7 or 8 years old (Figure 1), along with her sister
Ana, 11 or 12, are in a small house that their family had in the country outside Jumilla (province
of Murcia, southern Spain) since 1942 (Figure 2). They see a shiny object approaching over the
fields, which at first they mistake for a car. They think that it is their father, since the two girls
189
I. Case Studies
Left. Figure 1. Peri (Próspera’s nickname), as a child, photograph of her First Communion, provided to the author by
Próspera herself. (Author’s archives.)
Right. Figure 2. Villa Próspera (the name of the family house, from which Próspera Muñoz got her name). Próspera
Muñoz at the door of the little house where the events occurred. Photograph provided by José Mª Semitiel, 1990.
(Author’s archives.)
were spending time with an uncle of theirs (about 40 years old), and their father had the habit of
visiting them on weekends. But they realize that it is not a car when it moves cross country. Her
sister, nervous, urges her to close the window. They observe how the object silently passes a short
distance from the window, and lands a short distance from it (Figure 3). Ana tries to close the
window, but this action is not completed when two men enter through the door.
They were both wearing white one-piece outfits; otherwise, they seemed completely normal to us.
One looked young, in his early twenties, tall and thin; the other, shorter and sturdier, looked about
forty-five and was undoubtedly the boss. His hair was very black and completely pasted on his
skull, so much so that, when I remember him, I wonder if it wasn’t painted on; his eyes were very
black and piercing. I remember the young man less: with all naturalness, he asked for a glass of
water.
Figure 3. Landing site with the object’s trajectory
depicted. The pine tree in the picture did not exist
at the time of the event. Photograph provided by
José Mª Semitiel, 1990. (Author’s archives.)
What happened next is rather mundane: they talked about a calendar on the wall, they did not drink
the water, they were interested in the pots in the cupboard, and they talked between themselves
190
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
about what seems to be something that would affect the girls in the future. When Ana, the elder,
left, she did not allow Próspera to open the window, through which an intense light entered from
the place where the object was landed, causing them to fall to the ground. She says they lost
consciousness and that their uncle arrived, alarmed from seeing a plane (sic) take off above the
roof of the house.
In the afternoon two people visited, both wearing brown corduroy suits and caps; according to
Próspera, one of them was the younger one from the morning. They examined the surroundings of
the house and gave her a few suggestions for them not to go to the place where the object had
landed. For a few days the door to that room was blocked and when it was opened the food was in
poor condition and the girls’ dresses seemed to have lost color. Próspera noticed a metallic object
on the table, like two cherries joined by their stems, which she hid in an outer wall of the house.
At night, the three of them slept in a room in the front of the house, the uncle in a makeshift bed
on the floor between those of the girls. Próspera woke up to see a man looking in the window. She
recognized the younger one from the morning, but now he was dressed in a diving suit, with a
helmet and everything. So far, these are blurred memories that after a hypnosis session were
translated into a real abduction. With the young man were others, including a strange woman with
long hair and a circle of light.
It 1985 a debate of the case was proposed in the magazine Cuadernos de Ufología, requesting the
opinion of several physicians. The double number 10-11 of the 1st epoch collected Ribera’s
account and the opinion of Dr. Antonio Bueno Ortega5; number 13-14 would include the verdicts
of doctors Antonio Petit Gancedo, Pedro Vicente Rubio Gordo, and Vicente Manglano Baldoví.6
Of all of them, the most critical and harsh was that of Dr. Bueno. There were opinions for all tastes,
including that of some skeptics who considered it a waste of time to dedicate effort to the
investigation of abductions. As I said, Ribera’s attitude and the opinions expressed on a poorly
elaborated and incomplete account, gave me the impression that the witness deserved, at least, the
attention of an investigator to verify and/or better understand the intricacies of the case and its
content. I started that investigation with two premises: attentive listening and without haste. Then
I added something else, to seek support from those who would know more than I in certain fields
of knowledge, and I did that by seeking the ideas of various doctors and graphologists. Thus, on
September 16, 1985, I contacted Ribera, expressing my interest in dealing with the case, which his
kindness made possible on October 15 of the same year.
In a letter dated December 15, 1985, Próspera tells me what seems to be the forgotten part of her
experience. She writes:
... I went with them carried by another individual, much taller than them, who they told me was a
doll. Another was carrying my dog, who had been made to sleep so that he would not make a fuss.
When we got to that great light, it was a vehicle just like the one they had brought in the morning,
but much bigger. It is impossible for me to describe it in detail, I have not even been able to do it
under hypnosis, I only remember a dome and a wing that surrounded it; the size could be that of a
two-story villa. They deposited me on a platform, where they all came to see me, there would be no
more than ten or twelve, they showed great curiosity, but no one approached me by more than two
or three steps. Those who had brought me took off their diving suits and were left wearing the same
191
I. Case Studies
as in the morning. We went up a ramp into the vehicle. It was a circular room, to my left there was
a series of little screens with different images, now I know it was a closed-circuit television with
which they kept an eye on all the surroundings. Several of them were seated at a long table,
operating buttons and levers. Those chairs made of an unknown material and without legs caught
my attention. The only familiar thing was a movie-like screen in the background. They took me to
a device that was manipulated to make a screen appear, with images that at first I did not recognize.
They were made up of multi-colored horizontal lines. When I managed to discern the images, I saw
that it was us girls, with the dog, the donkey and Uncle Juan. They had filmed us one afternoon
before all the events. We seemed to be wrapped in a kind of cloud or light that came out of us, in
bluish tones... They told us that this halo was the reason why they visited us, that there they could
read the quality of our feelings... The animals appeared without that halo. [Figure 4.]
While we were looking at these scenes one of them
approached, saying: “They are there now.” They told me it
was time for us to get ready, we went up a vertical staircase
in the center, to the dome. There were two sitting in front of
some panels that were strange to me. The dome opened
diametrically, and we got out and positioned ourselves on
top of the wing. They made me look at a star that was getting
bigger and bigger. There we go— they told me—above all
do not be scared. A luminous circle appeared on the wing,
about 80 centimeters in diameter, as if they had lit up a giant
lantern from above; they assured me that it was an elevator.
Figure 4. Comparison of the humanoid drawing published on the cover of Cuadernos de Ufología journal issue No.
10-11 and the drawing made by Mr. Semitiel (Próspera’s husband). (Author’s archives.)
They pushed me into the circle and I began to ascend, slowly at first, then accelerating at an
impressive speed. After a while, it slowed down and I felt like they were taking me out of there with
great care. We were on a framework of beams, something like a horizontal scaffold. There were
several more of them dressed in black mime suits, and the lighting was extremely limited. We walked
on one of the beams, their boots adhered to it, but not my shoes, so they held me everywhere, and
thus, with great care, in short steps, we covered about two or three meters to eaves where a door
opened, through which we entered. After walking down a long corridor, they show me into a room
and leave me there alone. The room looks like a loft, that is, it has a sloping ceiling, a small window,
and a long table. From another door, located at the front, my companion came out with 6 or 7
others in white lab coats.
I was subjected to a complete physical examination, during which I felt nothing at all, they joked
with me the whole time and were amazed at my submissiveness. While they were manipulating a
pair of scissors, I noticed their hands. One of them agreed to take off his glove so that I could get
a good look at it, they had only four long fingers with flaking skin, narrow nails, and webbing
between them.
They brought in a kind of folding screen, they placed it in front of me, they plugged in a lot of cables
and some grey spots began to appear on a little screen. They told me that those spots were inside
my head, but I did not understand how my head could be split in half. Now I understand that this
192
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
was my brain. They showed me some slides—as they called them—but they had to be microscopic,
because I didn’t see them. They injected them into the back of my neck. Everyone was attentively
watching the screen, where a flashing red dot was seen advancing, until they made sure it was in
the right place. After I got dressed, we went back to the elevator and when we got down I was really
scared, because, unlike when I went up, my hair came to my face, it went in my eyes, mouth and
ears and it was impossible for me to get it out. When we got downstairs, they calmed me down.
Looking up at the sky, I saw a train [sic] with windows that went around us as a farewell... When
they took me home it was still night, everything could have happened in about two or three hours.
The experience seemed to end here, but Próspera herself assures us in the same letter:
They came to see me around the year ’53, then it would be ’60, again about ’72 and the last time
three years ago. I have never recognized them. [sic]
What the dissemination of the case produced in Próspera—restlessness, personal involvement in
the ufological environment, along with uneasiness—motivated me three years after the beginning
of my investigations to publish the work “Próspera Muñoz: A Case Reported and Little Known,”7
it was something I owed her so she could settle down. Moreover, the ufological community was
demanding news after three years of silence. Only Ángel Alberto Díaz was able to issue an
acceptable critical judgment. The others, who generally gave their opinions in private to the author,
undoubtedly did not know how to read between the lines, or even verbatim, which originated a
torrent of very diverse opinions, from the one issued by Ignacio Cabria, who said: “... Ruesga
affirms the witness’s sincerity, but fails to pronounce on the material reality of Próspera’s
successive encounters with aliens throughout her life,”8 through that of skeptics for whom
“investigating abductions is a miserable waste of time,” up to that of a certain malicious writer
who notified the witness of his opinion that “Ruesga has betrayed your friendship.” Fortunately,
in this last case, the witness had such a degree of confidence in me that she did not hesitate to tell
me about this insinuation for what it was, the crude intention to provoke a confrontation with the
investigator in order to get an easy opening into the case. (Figure 5.)
Figure 5. Próspera with the author in his house during a
visit that she and her husband (J.M. Semitiel) made to
Seville in 1987. Photograph by José Ruesga. (Author’s
archives.)
After the publication of my article in Cuadernos
de Ufología in 1988, my contacts with the
witness continued to be frequent, very lengthy,
and full of deep mutual trust. Such a degree of
collaboration existed in the following two years
that Próspera did not hesitate for a single
moment to accompany me to Santander to give
a lecture on her experience, which was
organized in December 1990 by Cuadernos de Ufología in collaboration with Caja Cantabria, as
part of the program “Ovnis: Experiencias y analysis” (“UFOs: Experiences and Analysis”). This
time we has the opportunity—once again—to spend many hours in a row together. Her husband,
José María, accompanied her. There it was said again that there was no evidence to consider the
193
I. Case Studies
material reality of her experiences, and I reasserted that Próspera was not lying, because she fully
accepted what happened as real.
In our conversations, some differences arise about the opinions expressed. For example, it turns
out that the drawings and sketches accompanying the first accounts had not come from the hand
of Próspera, but from that of her husband. In addition, the husband talks about the unreliability of
the tests carried out, based on his experience in the company he works for.
Meanwhile, the witness continues to be subjected to all kinds of pressure in an irresponsible way.
Her presence on radio, press, and TV is constant, sometimes on style shows, such as the program
“A mi manera” (“My Way”). Also, with researchers such as Ribera. Próspera had entered into the
realm of the researchers themselves through these channels very early on—her own husband is
fond of the subject—which makes her presence and participation very peculiar, it is not that of a
researcher-witness relationship, but rather that of two interested parties. Rare is the researcher who
has not established a correspondence with “Peri,” or who has not taken her to public events or
participated in her gatherings in Gerona. As Ignacio Cabria would say in his book already cited:
“... do not forget that thanks to her case she has been introduced into the environment of paranormal
investigators.”8 (Figure 6.)
Figure 6. Santander, 1990. From left to right at the table,
Ignacio Cabria, Próspera Muñoz, the author, and Julio Arcas,
during the sessions of “Experiences and analysis.” Photograph by Cuadernos de Ufología. (Author’s archives.)
The First Doubts
The December 1990 conference in Santander marked a milestone in the investigation process. The
witness tirelessly seeks to answer my doubts, with our exchange of letters maintaining a sustained
interest for some time, which is not surprising, because since the beginning of the investigation
the correspondence had become very fluid and intense. However, in her letter of January 14, 1991,
Próspera says:
I feel the need to clarify everything regarding the matter of the
drawings, there was never any intention of deception, it was
just a misinterpretation, the important thing was the details
and clarity. It never occurred to me to think that they would
serve for undertaking a personality study. [Figure 7.]
Figure 7. Drawings of the humanoids done by Próspera in 1991.
(Author’s archives.)
194
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
So, this prompted our interlocutor to return to the drawings of what she had seen. Her letter said:
The subject of drawings is the most problematic, I spent all afternoon yesterday on them, and I only
get what you see. They are mine, but they do not express with the maximum fidelity the mental
image that I have of my “friends.” The first illustration [Figure 7] corresponds to the first visit, it
is not very successful because I cannot get rid of that feminine aspect that they did not really have,
nor can I give it the tremendous elasticity and agility that they possessed.
The basic characteristics of the beings observed by the witness in her first experience can be
defined as follows:
● Small stature.
● Bulky skull.
● Fine face, very marked cheekbones.
● Hair flat against the skull.
● Eyes elongated toward the sides, slightly inclined. Large pupil, sweet look.
● Bulging forehead, with large purplish veins.
● Pale color.
● Very thin neck.
● Wide shoulders.
● Well-proportioned body (except for the head) with extreme thinness and narrow hips.
● Arms longer than normal.
● Long, thin hands, four fingers, with a small webbing between.
● White, one-piece, tight-fitting outfit.
● Transparent helmet carried in the right arm.
● Long gloves that they remove when taking the glass of water.
At this stage of the investigation, the student already has an impartial judgment of the facts. When
Próspera begins to have her strange memories, there does not seem to be any event that justifies it,
at least so it seems. However, for the beginning of the story, it is crucial to know certain dramatic
family events that occurred in 1979, which I cannot disclose.
The memories begin in 1980 and it is not until 1982 that she comes into contact with Ribera. It is
symptomatic that the memories begin by reading a book about UFOs. The story that she tells
Ribera and which he hastily makes known in En el túnel del tiempo, tells us about her first
experience. When she describes the beings, she says: They both wore white one-piece outfits;
otherwise, they seemed completely normal to us. [sic] Only two features stand out, very black hair,
completely plastered against the skull and the eyes were black and penetrating.
Not until February 1982 does Próspera rectify what she saw, and she does so after having read
Ribera’s book Secuestrados por extraterrestres (“Kidnapped by extraterrestrials”).9 Then she
made a series of arguments, establishing that the beings should measure between 1.40 and 1.50 m.
When we come into contact with her in 1985, her description is already much more elaborate, and
her account says:
195
I. Case Studies
Two beings approximately 1.40 to 1.20 meters tall [sic], dressed in white one-piece outfits, very
thin faces, very thin lips, huge eyes that stretched out toward the sides, huge skull, very bulging
temples (revealing huge purplish veins), very white in color, broad shoulders, very thin body, tight
suit, boots with very thick soles, hands without thumbs, very long and with skin between the fingers,
thin arms and longer than normal, with a significant lack of musculature.
If we assume—as we have already said—that the drawings made then, despite not having been
made by Próspera (her husband made them, following her instructions), can be compared with her
different accounts and with the cover of issue 10-11 of Cuadernos de Ufología (1st epoch), an
issue that addressed the debate on the case of Próspera and to which she had access at the time.
The differences between accounts are evident: from “completely normal” to this description where
any resemblance to normality is purely coincidental. It is curious that little by little everything is
modified and becomes increasingly complex and strange. In her letter of December 15, 1985, there
is already something that draws our attention: on the visit to the house at noon they are dressed in
a tight white suit and do not wear a helmet or diving suit, later they wear a corduroy suit and cap
and at night the same as in the morning, wearing a diving suit. But also, as we see in a new version
of the events in 1991, there are new elements added: very thin neck, transparent helmet and long
gloves, and omitting others such as boots with very thick soles. There is an evident metamorphosis,
an evolution of content caused by her continued active presence in the ufological world during
these six years. Does Próspera lie? I am convinced that she does not, but the subject is much more
complex and simpler at the same time.
Her story is a conventional story within abductions, it follows general norms despite the
differences in nuance; what is abnormal is the memory-recovery process. It is not a matter of
accessing blocked memories through the use of hypnosis, but rather that they appear suddenly at
a certain moment in her life. It is the reading of Ribera’s book El gran enigma de los platillos
volantes (“The Great Enigma of Flying Saucers”)10 which serves as a trigger, and curiously for a
person who admits to being a fan of the subject, what draws her attention is precisely the silent
nature of the event at noon. Hypnosis is used frivolously and without any guarantees, and the only
thing it has done in this case is to reaffirm previous knowledge. Moreover, the readings and the
discussion in which Próspera participates, even with me, in the course of the investigation, does
nothing but improve the subject matter, refine the doubts and failures in her own memory, therefore
creating elements absent from the original story.
Próspera continues with a detailed recollection of the beings she saw in the bar in Jumilla, which
was the second of the visits described in the first step of the investigation process:
This visit corresponds to the second illustration [Figure 7], which I consider quite successful, so
much so that when I look at it, it impresses me, although I have not managed to capture some details
such as the arch of the eyebrow that was very pronounced and the eyes, which despite their size
were very sunken...
The description of how she sees them can be summarized like this:
● Small stature.
● Figure somewhat stooped.
● Grotesque demeanor.
196
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
● Huge hat.
● New raincoat that is big on them.
● Lively and intelligent look.
● They act with great poise and conviction, with calmness.
● Strong light bothers them.
Now five successive visits are documented at different moments of her life, in the third one
Próspera highlights the total absence of muscles, since they had bare arms and legs, as well as their
olive tan color. After all, this was at San Juan Beach in Alicante.
During the fourth visit, in the telephone office where the witness worked, she was struck by the
fact that they were small and thin, and with raincoats despite it being the middle of summer. In so
many statements she had made previously, she said that she was the only one to see them and now
she tells us literally:
... My coworker made a comment about the color of the skin, between brown, grey or bluish and
that she found them very ugly.
As Ignacio Cabria wrote in the aforementioned book: “the subject having had access to what was
published about her experience... has made Próspera unconsciously introduce new elements in her
story.” Here it is obligatory to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that before she always
maintained that no one else saw the strange visitors, and now there is someone who seems to
corroborate the fact, but also adding something more in line with the knowledge acquired, that the
skin is grey or bluish.
Now returning to the fifth visit, Próspera will tell us:
I only remember that I [sic] saw them small, pale and that the woman was wearing an old-fashioned
blonde wig and they were all wearing small caps.
That the witness maintains an absolute conviction that she relates real events, the following words
can serve as a sample:
In all honesty, my abduction from the beginning has been a real event, a memory as vivid as any
other in normal life; I swear to you that, if I reject these memories, I would also have to reject all
the rest of my previous life, I cannot deny them because to do so I would even have to doubt my
name.
The witness’s account was strange but, due to the many interferences occurred over 38 years, it
has become a very extravagant tale. When she first speaks of her experience, she had read
everything published in Spanish, which was very little, and yet her account did not resemble that
of the Hills, although Ribera tried to compare it to theirs. Then, almost five years later, the story
already looked more like the Hopkins models, to finally more closely resemble those that circulate
about the “greys.”
197
I. Case Studies
A Coherent Proposal
Around the same time—the year 1991—my contacts with Dr. Carles Berché, a member of the
Cuadernos Collective, had made us consider some questions that were mandatory to confirm some
of the things that the investigation had been uncovering and that, if it were not done, they made it
necessary to leave totally unknown certain facts related by Próspera. It involved diving into the
subsequent encounters with the humanoid figures and subjecting them to a reliable psychological
test, evaluated by Dr. Berché himself (I used Adell’s 10 x 10 test)11 as well as doing an X-ray and
a Magnetic Resonance Imaging scan (MRI) of her skull, which would allow for the capture of
water densities, that is to say, a living tissue—only cells—where differences from another tissue
of different composition can be detected. The MRI would expand on what was obtained by X-ray.
Próspera’s disposition was excellent, as demonstrated by her words in the same letter of January
14, 1991, in which she said:
We will do the brain scan and whatever you want when you see fit...
Unfortunately, the fluidity of our communication is broken on her side until June 3 of the same
year. Beyond that, nothing on the case, just personal issues, feelings expressed in spurts, which is
a symptom of lack of concentration. From then on, her letters got further and further apart. My
insistence is at times restrained by our existing friendship and a scrupulous respect for her privacy.
When she doesn’t answer, there must be compelling reasons, I thought.
Thus, on April 24, 1992, I received a page from the magazine Tele Indiscreta, which reads: “Next
Thursday on the program ‘Who Knows Where?’ a woman explains her experience with UFOs.”
Accompanying the report is one photo of Billy Meier and two of Próspera, the latter apparently
asleep. On May 19 of the same year, I write to her and, among other things, I say:
Several days ago, by chance I saw you on television...
If I have to be honest, it gave me a certain shudder to
see you on the screen, subjected to hypnosis...
[Figure 8.]
Figure 8. Screen capture from the TV program “¿Quién
sabe dónde?” (Who Knows Where?), 1992. (Author’s
archives.)
A short telephone conversation with her husband tells me that she is going through a crisis, of
which I will only say, out of respect for privacy and our friendship, that it was serious enough for
me to keep silent for several months. On July 1, 1992, Próspera writes me a heartbreaking letter.
Among many other things, she tells me about the simulation of hypnosis made for the program at
the request of certain people, whose names I omit due to the discretion I owe to Peri’s private
communications. The reaction is consistent with the damage done to her, and she tells me:
I do not want to continue any kind of research on myself, whatever I had to say has already been
said, if something new happens, which I doubt, you would be the first to know, but I would not give
it to everyone as I have done so far, because reporters have a habit of distorting everything,
embellishing stories to their liking, they only want to show off their own personal brilliance.
198
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
So this closes off any possibility of investigating those aspects that we had agreed on with Dr.
Berché. Curiously, the promise that she makes to me is not fulfilled, because throughout
subsequent years she has continued giving interviews and participating in whatever is proposed to
her, without returning to take up research with me.
A mutual friend writes to me throughout 1995 and, commenting on Próspera’s silence, she tells
me: “I have a special interest in letting you know how much I know that Próspera Muñoz valued
you in my presence, without a doubt she must be going through a difficult time.” In a further letter,
dated August 22, 1995, she confirms to me that Próspera suffers from a very strong depression,
something that Semitiel—Próspera’s husband—had already made me understand in our aforementioned telephone conversation.
My contacts with Próspera continued over time, until a suspension in April 1996. They were
limited to a conversation between friends, without any allusions at all to her experience, not even
to her current feelings on the matter. Próspera Muñoz has returned to her birthplace, Jumilla, where
she has reencountered her family and herself. One day, before these last experiences, she herself
wrote in the pages of the magazine Más allá de los ovnis (“Beyond UFOs”)12:
In 1983, with Antonio Ribera, I attended a UFO congress in Ciudad Real and a new conference on
UFOs in Madrid, in 1985. As a result of offering my testimony publicly in those forums, several
researchers approached me, and at the same time others curious and interested in the topic of
UFOs also did so... In this way, I was getting up to date with other currents within ufology that
offered supposed messages received from entities connected to UFOs.
Reflections
Próspera Muñoz’s case came to the investigation with great problems, with too much haste on the
part of those who did the investigating. Without guarantees about the hypnosis sessions and
without measuring the personal implications of the witness in the ufological media. When I tackled
researching her in 1985, I tried to learn about several aspects:
● The full account of her experience.
● The existence of possible witnesses who could corroborate her statements. Three very obvious
ones presented themselves: her father, her uncle, and her sister Ana. From my investigations it can
be deduced that neither her father nor her uncle has any memory of those events, nor of possible
footprints, nor of strange planes that take off, which her own husband confirms in personal
telephone conversations: “Neither grandfather nor Uncle Juan remember anything,” he tells me.
Her sister Ana, after much insistence, confirmed to us on Feb. 27, 1986, that she recalled that in
the summer of 1947 events occurred that are limited to the observation of a shiny object, like
nickel-plated, which approaches them without any noise. It gave the impression that it was taking
over the entire environment. After my insistence for more data, only complete silence.13
● It was a work supported by several specialists in medicine and graphology to learn about her
personality and establish a medical chart that could provide clinical background.7 The only
possible conclusion is that Próspera could have made up the story, although there were no serious
personality disorders. Moreover, her clinical development did not indicate anything abnormal to
the extent of making one suspect that she had invented the experience as narrated.
● Find physical evidence to support her story. We have already said that only the testimony of her
199
I. Case Studies
sister seems to corroborate the beginning of the events. No footprint, none of the effects of
supposed radiation, or finding the metallic object found on the table, despite the fact that the latter
was searched for by a Gerona investigation group and by Próspera herself and her husband. Nor
has it been possible to carry out the tests proposed by Dr. Carles Berché, which, although they
were never rejected by the witness, were not accepted in the end because of her refusal to continue
investigating.
I cannot accept the material reality of the facts because the evidence shows that her story is of
another kind, closer to psychological, and whose ultimate causes lie in a difficult family situation
in 1979, an evident lack of self-esteem at the time of the beginning of the memories and the demand
for attention when she finds herself welcomed by Ribera and then by all of us who are interested
in her supposed experience. Some things remained to be done, which would undoubtedly have led
us to less controversial conclusions: the psychological test, the X-rays and MRI proposed by Dr.
Berché, or finding the mysterious contraption supposedly hidden by Próspera in her namesake
villa, which contrary to the opinion of some, was searched for without success.
Her own words could be a good coda to the whole case:
Whatever plane they come from (another planet, another dimension or any hidden place in my
brain) [emphasis of the author], they all deserve my respect and thanks, since they forced me to take
a big step on the path of my own personal development.
And certainly, this would have been a magnificent coda if it weren’t for the fact that throughout
the years from 1996 to the present day, Próspera has continued to promote herself in public by
giving interviews and attending meetings and congresses, showing that she is comfortable in that
environment and not safeguarding her emotional integrity. For example, the publication of the
article “La niña secuestrada por extraterrestres” (“The Girl Kidnapped by Extraterrestrials”), also
in 1996,14 or the articles published by La Verdad de Murcia, in its “Evasión” supplement (which
her own husband criticizes in Tierra 2),15 in El País in 1983,16 in Más allá de los ovnis in 2015,17
references and interviews on the internet, and many more.
A few years ago, Jorge Sánchez phoned me, asking for my research on the case, and I referred him
to what was published in Cuadernos de Ufología and explained that I keep a large amount of
information as a result of my ten years spent monitoring the case, but that I was reserving it for a
possible future book. He told me about his book project in which Próspera was openly
collaborating, a book that I read when it was eventually published, under the title Contacto entre
dos mundos: Las extraordinarias experiencias ovni de Próspera Muñoz (“Contact between Two
Worlds: The Extraordinary UFO Experiences of Próspera Muñoz”).18
After that, I located Próspera Muñoz on Facebook and we reconnected. That is, until 2021, when
after congratulating her on her 81st birthday, I never had any more response from her. (On May
28, 2021, I discovered that she had blocked me on Facebook. This was soon after she had appeared,
once again, on the DMAX series “Extraterrestres.”)
Reading Jorge Sánchez’s book was a big surprise to me. On the one hand, there is no mention of
the ten years of contacts with me but, nevertheless, it says verbatim:
200
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
It was at that exact point in Peri’s life that the proposal arose, by two Sevillian researchers—José
Ruesga and Miguel Alcaraz—of subjecting her to the controversial polygraph, in addition to a new
hypnosis session.... 19
This assertion is totally false, as my proposal was made in agreement with Dr. Berché, and at no
time does it speak of polygraph or hypnosis as stated above. And much less that it could have been
done with Alcaraz, whom I am fond of but with whom I have never undertaken any investigation
related to Próspera’s case. Moreover, it talks about facts and circumstances that Próspera had never
referred to before in all her accounts. This ends with the description of some red spheres like
marbles, of which she says: when I touched them I felt a tremendous burning. As if this isn’t
enough, Próspera is quoted as describing the visitors: He wore a kind of transparent helmet on his
head, like glass, I suppose, which reminded me of ordinary spherical fishbowls, when you don’t
have to do more than read her original statements to see the differences. And she even goes so far
(allegedly) as to declare to Sánchez that they told her that they came from Venus, but not the Venus
that we knew.
Now Próspera’s sister also decides to talk about the experience and speaks with all kinds of detail
about the first sighting of the events in Villa Próspera, claiming that she did not do so before
because her husband was skeptical of these matters and she did not want to be involved with the
press.
Jorge Sánchez did two things well. First, he asked about the implant, to which Próspera replied
that they did a scan for an ailment she had and that nothing strange appeared (?), without
mentioning Dr. Berché’s proposal and her refusal. And second, he made a search for the strange
artifact that Próspera hid in the wall of the house using a pachometer (a device used to detect the
presence of ferromagnetic materials like steel and iron embedded in concrete), but without results
even after drilling up to 30 cm of the wall where the device gave a signal. That is, there was no
implant, nor was there a metallic device in the wall.
Once again the story is modified, for the umpteenth time. Evidence that could have verified the
veracity of certain aspects of her story is not found. Popularity and satisfaction are still sought after
despite the fact that she says otherwise when talking with somebody one-on-one. And we are left
only with the testimony of her sister. I always stood up for her, saying that she was telling the
truth, and was convinced of her experience because a certain psychological reaction to daily events
was operating in her, causing discomfort. But now all this makes me question the entire story.
Conclusions
Dr. Bueno Ortega said that, if she believes it, even if it is not real, she will relate it as such.
Hypnosis only serves to deepen and update the subject, implanting memories that are not real,
rather than helping discover the truth. He also said that she could have family problems, and there
were, in fact, personality problems in 1979—a lack of self-esteem was detected that was later
apparently corrected by her dealings with researchers; she was a patient prone to depression due
to frequent anemia; and she managed to attract the attention of her husband who was fond of these
issues. We do not know if there was an episode that marked her childhood, other than what she
says.
201
I. Case Studies
My final diagnosis is that the subject matter is not real, it is a confabulation, a fantasy that she has
been recreating repeatedly to which she has added new imaginary data. She may believe it to be
true, although everything leads one to think that she has consciously avoided everything that could
ruin her story. The role of her sister is difficult to understand, because if it is true that she lived the
same experience in that first meeting, why did she abandon her sister in the face of people’s
incredulity? Why didn’t she reaffirm those brief lines that she sent me that led me to believe that
they had been dictated by her sister?
Let’s look at some of the most difficult points:
● She says that the beings in the first meeting seemed completely normal, when her description,
every time she alters it, is less than normal.
● When she sees the same beings on different occasions, sometimes they don’t wear a diving suit
and sometimes they do. If the environment is hostile to them, how is that possible?
● When she describes their clothes, she talks equally about tight one-piece outfits as well as
corduroy and raincoats, caps or hats, even wigs.
● She claims to have seen them again, at least four times. And she adds: I have never recognized
them. If so, how does she know it was the same ones?
● She affirms that only she saw them, however, she relates that her co-worker found them
especially ugly. (?)
● When I point out that when she was on the television program under supposed hypnosis, and it
made me shudder to see her like that, she breaks down and confesses that it was all a farce, that
she was not subjected to hypnosis and it was only to meet the demands of the script. After that
confession a serious depressive crisis is triggered, or the one that she could already be suffering
from (judging by the symptoms detected) gets worse.
● When medical investigation with Dr. Berché is proposed to her, she accepts, but subsequently
slams the door on any investigation. She does not return to the usual contact and shifts her interest
to other people—despite her having said to the contrary—which shows a conscious escape from a
truthful search for an explanation of the unknowns in the case.
● Far from reducing her appearances in the press, radio and television, over the years she has
granted countless opportunities to be present in the UFO news. Which does not benefit her. At the
same time, she continues to shape her story, adding new aspects.
● And particularly eloquent is the omission of our years of monitoring that, for or against, should
have left their mark on the witness.
At all times I have been scrupulously honest with Próspera Muñoz, to the point of not making
public conclusions that could affect her psychological integrity. But the desire to continue feeling
herself the protagonist and center of attention has been more powerful in her, rather than the
safeguarding of her own integrity. I have the moral peace of mind of having been excessively
scrupulous in my dealings with her, to whom I unconditionally granted my friendship. For me,
then, the case has now reached its conclusion.
Acknowledgments: My gratitude to Richard W. Heiden for an excellent translation from Spanish.
202
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
References
(1) Ruesga Montiel, José. “Próspera Muñoz ¿punto final?” La Nave de los locos, No. 12,
November 2001, pp. 10-16.
(2) _____. “Próspera Muñoz ¿punto final?” Revista Misterios, No. 146, May 2013, pp. 22-29.
(3) III International Congress of Extraterrestrial Science, VI National Congress of Ufology,
organized by the Rosario branch of the Argentine Federation of Studies on Extraterrestrial
Science (FAECE), held in Rosario (Argentina), December 8 to 12, 1982.
(4) Ribera, Antonio. “El caso de Próspera Muñoz: Una abducción recordada treinta años después,”
in En el túnel del tiempo, Barcelona, Spain: Planeta, 1984, pp. 59-75.
(5) Ribera, Antonio, and Antonio Bueno Ortega, “Próspera Muñoz. Un caso a debate.” Cuadernos
de Ufología, No. 10-11 (I), 1985, pp. 7-11.
(6) Several authors, “Las abducciones a debate. II parte.” Cuadernos de Ufología, No. 13-14 (I),
December 1985, pp. 19-26.
(7) Ruesga Montiel, José. “Próspera Muñoz. Un caso divulgado y poco conocido.” Cuadernos de
Ufología, No. 4 (II), December 1988, pp. 51-65.
(8) Cabria, Ignacio. Entre ufólogos, creyentes y contactados. Santander, Spain: Editorial
Cuadernos de Ufología, 1997, p. 177.
(9) Ribera, Antonio. Secuestrados por extraterrestres. Barcelona, Spain: Planeta, 1981.
(10) _____. El gran enigma de los platillos volantes, Barcelona, Spain: Pomaire, 1966.
(11) Adell Sabatés, Alberto. “Psicometría,” in Manual del ufólogo. Barcelona, Spain: Editorial
7½, Collection “Sí. Están,” 1979, pp. 55-66.
(12) Several authors, “Mutación de conciencia en los abducidos,” Enciclopedia Más allá de los
ovnis, Madrid: Heptada Ediciones, 1992, Tome 2, Chapter 18, pp. 409-432.
(13) Muñoz Jiménez, Ana, letter to José Ruesga, February 27, 1986.
(14) Guijarro, Josep, “La niña secuestrada por extraterrestres,” Expedientes secretos (supplement
No. 26 of magazine Tele Indiscreta), No. 4, October 1996, pp. 3-12.
(15) Semitiel, José Mª, in Tierra 2, No. 13, 1996. Commentary on article by Maravillas Ledreras
(pseudonym) about the abduction of Próspera Muñoz, published in the daily La Verdad de
Murcia, supplement Evasión, August 31, 1996.
(16) Castro, Alfonso. “Próspera Muñoz fue secuestrada por extraterrestres hace 36 años.” El País
(Madrid), September 25, 1983.
(17) “El caso de Próspera Muñoz,” Más allá de los ovnis, April 2015, pp. 55-61.
(18) Sánchez, Jorge. Contacto entre dos mundos: Las extraordinarias experiencias ovni de
Próspera Muñoz, Porriño. Spain: Cydonia, 2016.
(19) _____. Ibid, pp. 63-64.
Bibliography
Fuller, John G., El viaje interrumpido, Barcelona, Spain: Plaza & Janés, 1968. (The Interrupted
Journey: Two Lost Hours “Aboard a Flying Saucer,” New York: Dial Press, 1966.)
Hopkins, Budd, Intrusos, Madrid: EDAF, 1988. (Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley
Woods, New York: Random House, 1987.)
Hopkins, Budd, Missing Time: A Documented Study on UFO Abductions. New York: Marek,
1981.
Laqueur, Walter, Terrible Secret: Suppression of the Truth about Hitler's “Final Solution.” New
York: Penguin Books, 1982. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980.)
Ribera, Antonio, Abducción, Barcelona, Spain: Del Bronce, Collection Textos del Bronce No. 12,
203
I. Case Studies
1988.
Ribera, Antonio. Contactados y abducidos. Madrid: Contraste, Nueva Biblioteca de los Temas
Ocultos, 1995.
Strieber, Whitley, Comunión, Barcelona, Spain: Plaza & Janés, 1988. (Communion: A True Story,
New York: Beech Tree Books, 1987.)
204
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Lunar Terror in Poland: A Doctor’s Dilemma
Wim van Utrecht
Abstract: A report describing the sighting of an unidentified aerial phenomenon that
obstructed the passage of an ambulance car carrying a pregnant lady to a hospital in Sztum,
Poland, is being re-examined. The incident occurred on September 5, 1979, and it received
publication in the local press and in a reputable UFO journal. Assessing the details of the
report with modern tools and a critical mind-set revealed that the sighted phenomenon was the
setting moon. The report contains all elements typical of such misinterpretations, including:
the moon illusion (false impression of the moon being bigger when close to the horizon), the
parallax effect (false impression of being followed by a distant, quasi-stationary object), as
well as grotesque errors in estimations of size, distance, and altitude.
Keywords: Ambulance, Flawed estimations, Folie à deux, Moon illusion, Parallax effect,
Popik, Sztum
Introduction and Case Summary
The subtitle of this paper (“A Doctor’s Dilemma”) is borrowed from a caption that
accompanied the drawing on the cover of the March 1981 issue of the British Flying Saucer
Review,1 a publication that was long considered to be the world’s foremost UFO journal. The
drawing, published here as Figure 1, is an artist’s rendering of a UFO incident detailed in an
article on pages 2-4 of the journal. The author of the article is the well-known Polish ufologist
and sci-fi & fantasy writer Emma Popik.2 Popik’s report describes a scary encounter between
the occupants of an ambulance car and an unidentified object “hovering centimeters above a
road” near a railway crossing in northern Poland. The highlights of the incident are given
below, quoted directly from Mrs. Popik’s contribution to FSR.
On September 5, 1980, at 3.15 a.m., the telephone rang in the first-aid department of the
hospital at Sztum. An ambulance set off quickly in response to the call. Its destination, the
village of Zulawka, where a confined woman, Mrs. Elzbieta Pluta, aged 25, was waiting.
Aboard the ambulance were Dr. Barbara Piazza, Grzegorz Skoczynski the driver, and
stretcher bearer Andrzei Olejuik . . . At about 3.30 a.m. they were on their way back to [the]
hospital. Elzbieta Pluta was comfortable, sitting, not lying—which means that there was still a
little time. She had pains every ten minutes.
Suddenly Dr. Piazza noticed a big red ball in the sky, some distance from them. She asked:
“What would that be?” . . . At that point, the time was about 3.35 a.m., and the ambulance
was near the village of Tropy. The red ball was well in view. Indeed, as they passed through
Tropy, the object was as large as the moon to look at, dark crimson in color, and coming
closer all the time. The driver could also see it when he was able to take quick glances, and
they all became very interested when the ball approached within a measurable distance—
about 500 meters—and moved on an oblique course to the road, from N.E. to S.W. over gently
sloping hills. It did not appear to be at any great height, the angle of elevation being between
15° and 20°.
Popik, Emma, “Under Intelligent Control? When a UFO ‘paced’ an ambulance in Northern Poland — and
obstructed the road,” Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 26, No. 6, pp. 2-4.
2
Born in 1949 in Skępe, Emma Popik graduated in Polish philology at the University of Gdańsk. In 2000, after a
long stay in London, she returned to Poland and became founding editor-in-chief of Nowy Kurier Nadbałtycki, a
monthly magazine that focused on the educational institutions in Gdańsk. A list of selected publications by Popik
can be viewed at: http://www.emmaPopik.pl/index.php?title=Strona_g%C5%82%C3%B3wna (all Web sites
accessed July 25, 2022).
1
205
I. Case Studies
Said Barbara Piazza a few days later: “I was always aware that it was never exactly in the
sky; it was not very high over the ground any of the time.”
Soon the ball was at the level of the treetops and at a distance of about 200 meters from the
ambulance. All the passengers were watching it in silence.
Figure 1. The cover of Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 26, No. 6, with artist
Terrence Collins’ impression of the scene at the railway crossing.
Figure 2. Map of the area. In orange, the route followed by the ambulance from Żuławka
to Sztum. The black line represents the railway. Times are approximate and gleaned from
Emma Popik’s report in FSR. Credit: Google Maps, with graphics added by the author.
At about 3.40 a.m. the moon had waned [set? —Ed. FSR] and the ball was swinging past the
trees in gentle curves as they left the village of Kalwa behind them. By now the ball was about
150 meters to the left of the ambulance.
206
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Wishing suddenly to escape from the object, the driver accelerated. Whether at 130 km/h or at
90 km/h, it was just as if the ball were linked to them by cord; it never changed its distance
from them. Later, while I was interviewing the doctor, she said: “It seemed obvious to me that
that object was under intelligent control. We just could not lose it. It was pacing after us!”
Soon the ambulance was approaching the railway level crossing between Kalwa and Sztum.
The driver continued a few meters, but then stopped: the red ball had suddenly appeared
about 200 meters, or less, ahead of them in the road. They had not seen it dash ahead of them,
but it stopped . . . between two trees. The carriageway is 6 meters wide at that point, but the
edges of the UFO overlapped the road on either side, between the trees, by about 50 cm.
The surface of the UFO displayed curved bands and stripes, with a lot of black lines going up
and down irregularly in each direction. One of the eyewitnesses compared these clear-cut
markings with veins inside a human body, while another compared them to a net. Only the
doctor could not see the veins, for she is short-sighted, and wears spectacles. But she could
see how parts of the surface changed color. There appeared to be yellow-orange patches on
its deep crimson surface, and all four of them could see that. Dr. Piazza mentioned something
about the possibility of radiation, and she instructed the driver to move the vehicle away
behind the level crossing, and when that was done, she examined her patient, whom she found
to be not too bad, but with not a lot of time left.
“I had seen the ball,” said Mrs. Elzbieta Pluta when I spoke to her later, “and I also noticed
the ‘veins’, but I didn’t pay much attention to the thing. Let UFOs be UFOs, I thought; my
problem was how not to bear my baby in an ambulance, for by then I was having pains every
five minutes.”
Dr. Piazza got out of the ambulance and approached the house where two crossing keepers
were on duty. They were Józefa Kamińska and Gabriela Ludorf, and they were leaning out of
the window.
“Can you see what I can see?” asked the doctor.
“We were looking at it for a while,” one of them answered.
“We can ask them for anything,” interrupted the driver, Skoczynski, “the girls are trembling
with fear.”
Turning back to the ambulance the doctor picked up the radiophone, and got in touch with the
police:
“There’s an obstacle in our way,” she reported. “Come, please.”
“What obstacle?”
“A UFO.”
...
The object hovered a few centimeters over the road, all the while changing colors, getting
brighter, then less bright, but always with a dull finish. Suddenly it moved slowly to the right
and stopped behind the tree. Its yellowish light shone through the leaves; momentarily the tree
was on fire. The object then moved up the slight hill, hovered at the summit, then returned
after a few seconds. The watchers could see a strong white light underneath the ball, and the
light stretched left and right. There seemed to be a flood of white light beyond the horizon, but,
said the doctor, “undoubtedly the horizon was behind the object.”
...
Minute by minute the doctor checked the time because of her patient. The situation was now
urgent, and she called the police station again.
Meanwhile the object was changing back to its original color. The orange patches
disappeared, and the whole thing became deep crimson.
The doctor looked at the patient and knew they could wait no longer. Her thoughts raced . . .
surely it would know we have no time if we give it a signal? She turned to the driver: “Flash
207
I. Case Studies
the headlights,” she said, and he did so, twice. Then, one second they could see the crimson
UFO as they began to move forwards, the next second it vanished . . . “like a TV set when
switched off.”
That was at about 4.15 a.m., and 10 minutes later the ambulance is in the hospital. At 6.10
a.m. Mrs. Elzbieta Pluta bore a daughter, Aneta, 2,600 grammes, her fourth child.
So far, the chain of events as recounted by Emma Popik in her report for FSR. We received
additional information about the incident through British researcher Martin Shough. Shough
had located a link to a 28 minutes-long audio file containing fragments of Emma Popik’s
interview with ambulance driver Grzegorz Skoczyński, stretcher-bearer Andrzej Olejnik and
crossing keeper Gabriela Ludorf.3 A friend of the author translated the interviews from Polish
to Dutch (Dutch being the native language of the author). In addition to more details about the
event, the audio file tells us that police officers did eventually pay a visit to the railway
crossing. In fact, the ambulance driver had noticed two officers talking to the crossing keepers
when he was sent out by the hospital for a second call later that morning.4
So, what was this ball-shaped object with “yellow-orange patches on its deep crimson
surface” that paced four people in an ambulance car as if it “were linked to them by cord”
before blocking the road in front of them? To experienced investigators of weird sky
phenomena, these descriptive elements immediately ring a bell: a reddish ball of light pacing
a vehicle reminds one strongly of the moon, sitting close to the horizon and seemingly
copying the movements of the observers due to what is known as the parallax effect.5 But can
four adults—and an additional two crossing keepers—be fooled by the moon to such an
extent that an urgent ambulance ride is interrupted, and police assistance sought? To answer
that question, we need to first find out if there was a full or near-full moon in the right part of
the sky that September morning.
The Stop at the Railway Crossing
There is one moment during the incident for which the line of sight to the unidentified reddish
ball can be determined with precision, namely when the ambulance driver stopped “a few
meters” beyond the crossing, then—fearing radiation from the object—drove approximately
200 m backwards to a point just before the crossing. The report is precise as to where this
crossing is, namely “the railway crossing between Kalwa and Sztum.” Using Google Street
View, it was not too hard to find this location (see Figure 3). Its geographical coordinates are
53°56’27”N and 19°07’18”E. Looking in the direction where the red ball was, namely
hovering over the road in front of the witnesses, we found that the azimuth of the red ball for
that phase would have been exactly 244°, meaning that the ball was then in the westsouthwest.
Next, we checked if the moon was anywhere near that azimuth in the early hours of
September 5, 1980. It was not… When the ambulance arrived at the crossing (at about 4:00
CEST or 2:00 GMT), the moon would have been in the east (azimuth 85.5°; elevation 19.5°).
3
http://www.emmaPopik.pl/images/3/3b/Ufo_w_Sztumie_-_wywiad_przeprowadza_Emma_Popik.mp3
From the interview it transpires that the doctor had called the telephone company and asked the receptionist to
contact not only the police but also the army, hoping that one of the two would clear the road for the ambulance.
5
When looking out of the window of a moving vehicle, distant objects will remain in the field of view longer
than objects closer by. A tree or a lamppost bordering the road, for instance, is quickly lost from sight, whereas
obstacles farther away will remain in view longer. This effect explains why astronomical bodies like the moon
appear to keep pace with a moving vehicle, apparently gliding over trees and hills and slowing down or going
faster as the driver reduces or increases his speed.
4
208
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
In other words, the moon was nowhere near the western horizon and too high in the sky for it
to have appeared reddish due to atmospheric scattering of the shorter wavelengths. Moreover,
only 17% of the lunar disk was illuminated that morning, giving it the shape of a thin
crescent, not a ball.
End of story? We must admit that these negative findings came somewhat as a surprise. After
all, many elements in Emma Popik's report point to the moon as the obvious culprit. So, we
decided to enter a few other dates in our sky map program. Perhaps there was a moment not
too far away in time when the moon was in the right position. We struck gold when typing
“1979” instead of “1980.” Indeed, if the incident were to have occurred exactly one year
earlier, the match would be perfect! That day, September 5, 1979, at 4:00 a.m. the moon was
97% illuminated and sitting close to the horizon at azimuth 245° (full moon was on the 6th).
Figure 3. Top: “Photo 2” from FSR showing the crossing facing the direction of where the red ball
was seen. Bottom: Google Street View image from August 2013 taken from almost the same spot.
The electric cabin on the right is gone, but the crossing keepers’ house on the left is still there.
Could it be that Popik got the year wrong? This seems very unlikely, because Popik stated she
interviewed the witnesses two days after the event. More plausible, perhaps, is that she had
not mentioned the year in her report, and that it was the late Gordon Creighton, then acting
editor of FSR, who slipped in the year “1980,” thinking the event occurred not too long before
he had received the report, which presumably was in late 1980 or early 1981. In a first attempt
to find out if the year could be in error, we checked the internet hoping to find the date of
birth for Mrs. Aneta Pluta, the daughter to whom witness Elżbieta Pluta was about to give
birth less than three hours after the sighting. Aneta’s birth date would tell us in which year the
incident occurred. Alas, the search proved fruitless.
209
I. Case Studies
We then started looking for Polish references to the case by typing in Google Search terms
like “Sztum,” “UFO,” “5 września 1979,” and “5 września 1980” (“września” being Polish
for “September”). That quickly took us to an online article at a website called UFO Relacje.
Its title: “UFO nad miejscowością Tropy Sztumskie 5 września 1979” (in English: “UFO over
the village of Tropy Sztumskie on September 5, 1979”).6 The account we found there clearly
concerned the incident we were interested in. A footnote further reassured us that the
summary was based on “Press articles from 1979.” So, there we have it: the Tropy Sztumskie
encounter occurred not in 1980, but in 1979!
Having established the correct date and time, we can now check the moon’s position in more
detail. Figure 4 is a composite image of how the setting moon would have looked to someone
standing at the railway crossing facing the west-southwest on September 5, 1979, between
3:50 and 4:10 a.m. We know that the ambulance arrived at the crossing around 3:50 a.m. At
that moment, the moon was to the left of the carriageway, descending until reaching a position
directly above the road (azimuth 244°) three minutes later. The Earth’s rotation would have
made the moon transit slowly from the left side of the road to the right, which is consistent
with Dr. Piazza’s statement that “it moved slowly to the right” (FSR). According to the
ambulance driver, the ball was lost from sight “at about 4:15 a.m.” (FSR). At that time, he
recalls, it “began to shrink and disappeared without a trace in 2-3 seconds” (UFO Relacje),
which is consistent with what we find in the taped interview, namely that “it remained there
till ten past four or a quarter past four.” 4:10-4:15 a.m. is exactly when the moon disappeared
into the haze and sank beneath the horizon (at 4:13 a.m. to be exact, and not “at about 3:40
a.m.,” as Popik stated in FSR 7). Actual moonset was at azimuth 248°, i.e., about 8 moon
diameters to the right of the carriageway.
Figure 4. The position of the moon at intervals of five minutes between 3:50 and 4:10 a.m. on September 5,
1979. Composite image based on Stellarium renderings.
6
The article is at https://ufo-relacje.pl/2018/12/29/ufo-nad-miejscowoscia-tropy-sztumskie-5-wrzesnia-1979/
We agree with FSR’s Gordon Creighton that Popik’s statement “the moon had waned”—actually it was
waxing— should be interpreted as “the moon had set.”
7
210
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Figure 5. Schematic map of the sighting location with yellow rectangles representing the locations where the
ambulance was stopped (first west then, after having driven backwards, east of the crossing), orange dot
indicating the spot where the witnesses situated the red ball, dotted arrow showing the azimuth line for the red
ball (244°); and blue arrow indicating the highest point on the road, namely 44 m ASL (the crossing itself is at
37 m ASL). White stars represent streetlights near the hamlet of Pietrzwałd (30 m ASL).
Six witnesses watching the moon for about half an hour and not recognizing it for what it is?
Is that not far-fetched? Well, that representation of the facts is not entirely correct. When
interviewed by Mrs. Popik at the railway house two days after the incident, crossing keeper
Gabriela Ludorf stated as follows:
We had been looking at the ball for a while . . . We had already raised the barriers before the
ambulance arrived because a motorbike wanted to cross over. We closed the barrier again
and after that we saw the ambulance. I told my colleague to raise it again. The ambulance
crossed the barrier, then quickly reversed to park itself just in front of the railroad. Oh my,
perhaps they want to ask something. Something may have happened! So, the barrier went up
again. I told my colleague Józia [short for Józefa] “What is that ball?” Józia said: “That’s the
moon” [laughter]. Then someone [Dr. Piazza] came out of the ambulance and asked if we saw
that ball too. She then started talking about possible radiation. That is when my hairs stood
up. We had been looking at the ball for some time before the ambulance arrived but hadn’t
given it much thought because we figured it was the moon. I do not know exactly when the ball
had appeared, but when I saw it, it was over a small hill in the field about 2m above a pole.
Dark red and bigger when compared to the moon. Not twice as big but about one and a half
times the moon.8
In summary: it seems that the anxiety among the young women was largely due to the arrival
of the ambulance car, its driving backwards over the tracks, the doctor stepping out,
approaching them and asking questions about the ball while hinting at possible radiation. Not
a folie à deux, but a folie à six so to speak. But Gabriela’s account also raises another
question: how could the two crossing keepers have been looking at the red ball “for some time
8
http://www.emmaPopik.pl/images/3/3b/Ufo_w_Sztumie_-_wywiad_przeprowadza_Emma_Popik.mp3
211
I. Case Studies
before the ambulance arrived” if that same ball was supposed to have chased the ambulance
near the village of Tropy, a location 5.3 km away from the railway house?!
The Chase
Popik gives no precise indications about the direction in which the object was seen prior to
the ambulance’s arrival at the crossing. All we have is that “as they left the village of Kalwa
behind them . . . the ball was about 150 meters to the left.” The UFO Relacje web article
confirms this: “At 03:45 the ambulance was approaching the Sztum Trail, and when it reached
the intersection, driver G.S. noticed, on the left, a dark red matte ball.” The vehicle was then
on Route 515 approaching the turn-off to the “Sztum Trail,” which involves negotiating two
consecutive junctions or “intersections” (Figure 6). It is when the ambulance nears the first
junction that the red ball is first seen “on the left.” The witnesses were then heading northwest
(Figure 7). This is found to be in accordance with the position of the moon at that moment
(3:40 a.m., according to Popik’s account in FSR), namely west-southwest (azimuth 241°).
The next actions are accelerations and decelerations by the ambulance, matched by the
“pacing” object. Plausibly this is when the vehicle was turning south between the two nearby
junctions at Kalwa, and when the object was “swinging past the trees in gentle curves” (FSR).
This would have been the moon “pacing” them on their left as they initially headed towards
the junctions near Kalwa, then after “swinging” about during the turns, it would have “dashed
ahead” and remained roughly ahead for a while before “gliding” to the right as they headed
southwest towards the railway crossing. Just before the crossing, the road takes a weak turn to
the right. As a result of this, the moon would have appeared on the left again before
“swinging” right in front of them and coming to a stop above the road. The UFO Relacje
article mentions: “When they passed Kalwa, the ball suddenly accelerated and overtook the
ambulance to hang over the road.” That all generally fits the map and the likely relative
motions of the moon, with the driver unwittingly putting an end to the chase when he stopped
the car.
“next intersection”
“approaching the Sztum
Trail” at first “intersection”
red ball “on the left”
this stretch of road was
not constructed yet
in 1979
crossing
500m
Figure 6. Zooming in on the trajectory followed by the ambulance.
© Google maps, with graphics added by the author.
212
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
First sighting area
20m
Figure 7. Map focusing on the two intersections near Kalwa with orange line indicating the
azimuth for the moon at 3:40 a.m. © Google maps, with graphics added by the author.
Elevation Issues
But there is a problem. From the recorded interview, it transpires that when the ambulance
arrived at the intersection of Route 515 and the Sztum Trail, the driver estimated the object
was about 35° above the horizon. Popik had arrived at that elevation angle by asking
Skoczyński to imagine a line leading from the eyes to the object, and then estimate the angle
that line would have made with the horizon. Although it should work theoretically,
experienced investigators know that this method fails to give a reliable outcome. Possibly,
Popik was aware of this because in her FSR article she states that, when the witnesses
approached the double junction at Kalwa, they situated the object at an angle of elevation
“between 15° and 20°.” That reduces the initial estimate by half. But a bigger problem is that
at 3:40 a.m., when the ambulance arrived at Kalwa, the moon was not 15, 20, or 35° above the
horizon but only 4°.
The question is how reliable the figures given by Popik are. Experienced investigators know
that estimates of elevations are almost always off, and not by just a few degrees. In fact, an
(unpublished) study carried out by the author on 196 cases in which alleged UFOs had been
positively identified as astronomical bodies, confirmed rather spectacularly that the elevation
of an object in the sky is almost always grotesquely overestimated. In 45 cases from this
sample, the witnesses estimated that the elevation angle of the sighted “UFO” was between
15° and 25°. In 4 of these, i.e., 9%, the reported phenomenon could be attributed to an
astronomical cause (star, planet, moon, meteor, or ISS) that was lower than 4° above the
horizon. In 17 cases or 38%, the mistaken astronomical objects were found to have been at
altitudes between 4° and 8°. In 71 cases from our sample, the elevation angle was estimated to
have been bigger than 25° but smaller than or equal to 40°. Thirty of these cases (i.e., 42%)
were attributable to an astronomical source lower than or equal to 10°. Even though the
sample used for this study is small, it does show a clear tendency for observers to largely
overestimate the altitude of what they saw.
Another reason to doubt the accuracy of the high elevation angle are two sentences in the FSR
article that quote the witnesses as having described the object’s as “never exactly in the sky”
or “not very high over the ground any of the time.” Popik’s article also mentions that, at one
point, the object was “at the level of the treetops,” and in the taped interview the ball’s flight
is described as “passing trees and farms.” Do these quotes suggest that the red ball was
213
I. Case Studies
sometimes seen in higher areas of the sky? Not necessarily. Google Street View images show
that Route 515 between Tropy and Kalwa offers wide views over low hills and fields (see
Figure 8). In these circumstances, situating an object “at the level of the treetops” or “passing
trees and farms” does not imply a large elevation angle.
Figure 8. Typical view of the open landscape from a point on Route 515 halfway between Tropy and Kalwa.
Credit: Google Street View.
Confirmation that the reddish ball was at a low elevation from the moment it was first sighted
came when Spanish researcher Manuel Borraz Aymerich called the author’s attention to an
article written by Stanislaw Barski and published on the Polish blog Paranormal.PL.9 We
had missed that source when we set out to reexamine the case. Yet, it contains an interesting
statement. Barski doesn’t mention his source, but he cites driver Skoczyński as follows: “It
was 3.45. I just turned from Żuławka Sztumska to the Malbork road [Route 515]. That’s when
we noticed a dark red ball far ahead the size of the moon floating in the sky quite low above
the horizon.” This conclusively confirms our initial suspicion: the phenomenon was never
observed at an altitude between 15 and 20°, let alone 35°.
The elevation is not in dispute when it comes to the final and longest phase of the incident.
Popik writes in FSR that, when the ambulance arrived at the crossing, the object had
descended to “a few centimeters over the road.” According to the driver’s account in Barski’s
article, it came down “to a height of about 1m, 1.5m at most.” “To a height of about 2 m” is
what UFO Replacje mentions. Any which way, it is clear that, during this phase, the object
was in a very low position in the sky, close to the horizon.
Shape, Color, and Size
We already pointed out that there was a near-full moon on the night of the encounter, with
97% of the lunar disk illuminated. This phase of the moon is consistent with the description of
a luminous, ball-shaped object. Telling in this regard is a fragment from the taped interview.
When Popik asks the driver to draw the object (audio file), Skoczyński replies: “Not sure how
to do that,” upon which the stretcher bearer tells him: “Just draw the moon, that’s as close as
you can get.”
Tree branches in front of the slow-moving moon may easily have created the impression of “a
lot of black lines” on the surface “going up and down irregularly in each direction” (see
Figure 9). Popik’s article in FSR states: “Its yellowish light shone through the leaves” (our
9
Stanislaw Barski’s article is at https://paranormalpl.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/incydent-sztumski/
214
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
emphasis), while in the interview the driver stipulates that the luminous ball “had no influence
on the trees.” Both statements suggest that the object was not in front of, but behind the trees
that can be seen at the end of the road in Figs 3, 11 and 12. The typical dark and light areas on
the lunar surface, can further account for the “yellow-orange patches,” with the overall red
color being due to the large amount of atmosphere between the observer and the low moon
(more atmosphere means more scattering of blue light).
There are several more peculiar details in the descriptions given during the interviews Popik
conducted. One relates to the driver clearly seeing not only the “grid of black irregular lines,”
but also “two dark horizontal stripes” or “shelves,” “bottom and top.” According to the UFO
Replacje article these “shelves” were “visible only when the ball hung over the road.” Thick
branches, aircraft contrails, or stacked cloud layers near the horizon—the latter illustrated in
Figure 10—may account for these two dark stripes. More difficult to explain is Mrs. Pluta’s
claim that she also noticed “something like an antenna” on top of the ball, making it look
“like an inflated balloon on a wire” (Barski). Oddly, none of the other witnesses mentioned
this detail. If reported correctly, it might be suggested that this “antenna” was created by
streetlights near Pietrzwałd illuminating the side of a tall tree.
Figure 9. A near-full moon rising behind distant trees in an otherwise pitch-dark landscape
produced this eerie sight. The photo was taken by the author during a holiday in Friesland,
the Netherlands, on Christmas Day 2018.
Figure 10. Two pictures by the author showing how thin horizontal clouds may create the effect of “shelves.”
215
I. Case Studies
With regard to the size of the ball, the witnesses are unanimous: “the object was as large as
the moon to look at” and “coming closer all the time” (FSR). Barski’s article tells us that Dr.
Piazza tape-recorded her own recounting of the incident immediately after returning home
that morning. A fragment of that recording refers to the moment when the phenomenon was
first seen. It is quite revealing. Barki quotes the doctor as follows: “On the way back, a few
kilometers after Żuławka, a red cloud appeared on the driver’s side over the horizon. It was
strange; it looked like the setting sun. I joked to the driver: ‘Tell me what it could be: the sun
or the moon? Surely it can’t be a UFO.’ The driver said it was the moon!” It is only after the
object “became bigger, orange-red and clearly outlined” that the witnesses abandoned the idea
of the object being the moon.
It is important to note here that many people are convinced that the moon is bigger when it is
close to the horizon.10 In the same vein, witnesses who mistook the setting or rising moon for
an unidentified object typically overestimate the size of what they saw when they are asked to
compare its diameter to that of the moon. Gabriela Ludorf described the object’s apparent size
as “not twice as big, but about one and a half times the moon,” which is also how other
mistaken witnesses have described the setting or rising moon.11
In the Tropy-Sztumskie case we have precise numbers to work with. When at the crossing, the
size of the ball was compared to the width of the carriageway, which Popik asserts was “6
meters wide at that point” (FSR). “At that point” refers to the spot on the road where the
witnesses believed the ball was, namely “200 meters or less” away from the car after they had
crossed the railway. Popik also informs: “the edges of the UFO overlapped the road on either
side . . . by about 50 cm.” At 200 m, a 6-metre-wide road corresponds to an angular width of
1.7°. With the moon’s diameter covering only about 0.5° of the sky, that would mean that—if
the object had been the moon—it took up only about 1/3 of the road. So, what is wrong here?
Like with elevations, estimates of distances at night cannot be trusted. Interestingly, the road
behind the barriers goes upward from the crossing (angle of inclination approximately 0.5°),
then down again towards the hamlet of Pietrzwałd. According to Google Earth, the highest
point on the road is at a distance of 870 m from the level crossing (see Figure 5). Having
driven past the railway for “several meters” (FSR), we can round that down to 800 m. Beyond
that point the road goes downhill again and is no longer visible from the crossing (see Figure
11). If it was the moon that was mistaken for an object hovering over the road, it would
logically have been this visible ‘end’ of the road that was believed to be directly underneath
the object. Now, at 800 m, a 6-metre-wide road would subtend a horizontal angle of 0.43°. In
other words, to someone standing near the crossing, the moon being approximately 0.50° in
diameter would indeed have appeared somewhat bigger than the width of the carriageway.
10
This optical effect is known as “The Moon Illusion.” The reason why people feel that the moon is bigger when
close to the horizon has been explained in numerous ways, but the most important influences that create the
illusion are believed to be the presence of reference points close to the horizon (small silhouettes of distant
houses and trees make the moon look big), and a compensation by the brain that expects objects moving from a
position high in the sky towards the horizon (like an airplane or a balloon) to become smaller, and not maintain
the same angular size as the moon does.
11
See for instance the author’s assessment of the Belgian Faymonville sighting of July 19, 1972, in which the
principal witness similarly described the size of what they believed to be an unidentified object as
“approximately 1½ times that of the full moon” (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos and Wim van Utrecht, Belgium
in UFO Photographs Vol. 1, UPIAR, Turin, 2017, p. 101).
216
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Movements
In the interview Popik conducted, one of the crossing keepers mentions that the object she and
her colleague first presumed to be the moon, was “rocking up and down.” The driver, for his
part, stipulates that it “lowered step by step,” whereas the doctor asserts that, after she had
returned to the car, “the ball was still hovering,” but that after 15 minutes “it glided over the
tree and continued to hover slightly” (Barski). Popik herself writes in her report that the ball
“moved up the slight hill, hovered at the summit, then returned after a few seconds,” while the
sketched path in an illustration that accompanies the UFO Relacje article (Figure 12) shows a
downward movement followed by a steep vertical chute, turning the arrival of the ball into a
veritable landing maneuver.
Figure 11. Zooming in on the highest point of the carriageway, we see that the parallel lines marking the
borders of the road do not converge to a point on the horizon. Instead, the road is cut off horizontally. This
atypical situation may have added to the illusion that the moon appeared to hover directly over the road.
Credit: Google Street View.
Figure 12. Illustration borrowed from ufo-replacje.pl showing the ball descending
over the road as seen from the spot where the ambulance car first stopped after
the driver had passed the level crossing.
217
I. Case Studies
The movements reported above are difficult to reconcile with the moon’s steady downward
movement to the right. It is remarkable, however, that each witness seems to be describing a
different type of motion. This makes us wonder if the reported movements cannot be
attributed to movements executed by the witnesses themselves. Walking up or down a small
step, driving up or down a hill, or taking a few steps to the left or right or to the front or back,
all these displacements could have caused the moon to shift positions with regard to fixed
objects like a pole or a tree, just as it did when the moon “paced” the ambulance. The
witnesses believing that the object was never more than 500 m away—while it was actually
hundreds of thousands of km away—may have further complicated their interpretations of
what was unfolding in front of them.
The White Light Underneath
Popik also mentions that there was a “white light underneath the ball,” stretching “left and
right” as well as a “flood of white light beyond the horizon.” In the audio file, it is specified
that the “lights” (plural!) shone downward and resembled the white lights of a car. The article
from UFO Relacje has the white light “illuminating the ground beneath it.” With varying
descriptions, it is difficult to establish what exactly was observed during this phase. Using
Google Street View, we noticed that there are several streetlights near Pietrzwałd, about 1.5
km from the crossing (see Figure 5). We cannot be sure if these streetlights were already there
in 1979, but it is not far-fetched to suggest that the glare of lamp posts near this small village
may have been visible just above the highest point of the road and in that way added to the
strangeness of the scene. Another possibility is that the lights came from a parked vehicle on
the other side of the hill.
Conclusion
Despite these peculiar details (none of them particularly strange or based on corroborating
eyewitness statements), the moon explanation appears solid. Apparently, Popik did verify if
the moon was visible in the early hours of September 5 (possibly because not only the driver,
but also the crossing keepers and the stretcher bearer initially believed they were looking at
the moon), but Popik is quick to get it out of the way by stating that “the moon had waned
[sic] at 3:40 a.m.” Nothing could be further from the truth: even at 4:10 a.m., half an hour
later, the near-full moon was still in the sky and positioned exactly where the UFO was
situated. In fact, moonset was at 4:13, the exact time the mysterious red ball disappeared,
namely between 4:10 and 4:15. Yet, none of the witnesses mentioned seeing the moon in
close proximity to the red ball.
We consider the Tropy Sztumskie UFO incident, as it is referred to in Poland, as one of the
finest examples of a moon/IFO report. It is not unique, though. Already in the 1980s, French
UFO skeptics documented dozens of similar cases in which the moon turned out to be the
cause of—often-spectacular—UFO encounters.12 More recently, U.S. researcher Herb Taylor
and the author collected many more such reports, notably from the Low Countries and from
the U.S. Air Force Blue Book files.13
12
See for instance: Opération SAROS, CNEGU, 1994; Les influences de la lune sur la casuistique & l’ufologie,
SERPAN, 1993; as well as: Thibaut Alexandre with Eric Maillot, Des OVNI au clair de lune, Les dossier de
S.O. n° 6, 2015. A lengthy French article by Maillot on moon misinterpretations can be read at:
http://www.unice.fr/zetetique/articles/meprises_lune.html (in French).
13
Unpublished, alas, but two of these moon/IFO cases are discussed in: Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos & Wim
van Utrecht, Belgium in UFO Photographs Vol. 1, UPIAR, Turin, 2017, notably on pp. 99-113 and 140-151. For
more Moon/IFO reports see also Tim Printy’s website at: http://www.astronomyufo.com/UFO/MoonUFO.htm
218
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Acknowledgments: I am grateful to Martin Shough for proofreading this article and for
helping me map the location and line of sight for the early phase of the sighting. I am further
indebted to Manuel Borraz Aymerich for directing me to Stanislaw Barski’s article, and to
Herb Taylor for initiating the reopening of this cold case from the UFO archives. A final word
of thanks goes to Monika Zielinska for a verbal translation of Emma Popik’s taped interview
from 1979, as well as to Mieke Tiebos for her help in conducting the study on estimated vs
real elevation angles in Belgian UFO reports.
219
I. Case Studies
On the Credibility of the Barney & Betty Hill Abduction Case
Nigel Watson
Abstract: Betty and Barney Hill claimed they were taken inside a flying saucer where they were
subjected to quasi medical examinations by alien entities. The story is too well-known to be
repeated here. This article attempts to examine the credibility of the witnesses and the factors that
made this a “classic” alien abduction.
Keywords: Betty and Barney Hill, Physical evidence, Abduction, Alien encounter, Fantasy,
Racial factors, Star map, Hypnotic regression, Missing time, Telepathy, Medical examination,
Dreams
Stress as a Factor
There has been considerable speculation about the stresses the Hills were under at the time. They
were an inter-racial couple at a time when such relationships were frowned upon. Barney worried
about his children from a previous marriage, and his job as a postal worker involved a considerable
amount of commuting. Betty was a social worker and both of them were actively involved in civil
rights campaigns. They had gone on their fateful trip on a whim without taking much money with
them, and they were heading home at night to avoid bad weather.
Throughout his testimony Barney shows clear signs of being hunted and on the very night of their
encounter he is fearful of encountering people. As further sign of his state-of-mind he hides a
handgun in his car in case there is any trouble.
Ufologist Peter Rogerson notes that even Barney’s description of the UFO he saw through
binoculars indicated he was in a traumatized state of mind:
Anyone who reads Barney’s encounter in the field with the light (in the sky–N.W.) must suspect that
his extreme reaction was more likely to have been a symptom of preexisting post-traumatic stress
than something new. His description of the alien as having a Mongolian-type face, wearing a sort
of leather jacket and a scarf is curiously reminiscent of a kamikaze pilot. This figure is also seen
as an evil Nazi officer and an Irishman (Boston Irish, traditionally hostile to Blacks). In other
words, reflected in the unknown light, Barney sees images of evil authority, intolerance and threat.1
Physical Evidence
At this stage we could just dismiss their abduction recollections as a fantasy that was triggered by
Jupiter, the Cannon Mountain Observation Tower beacon, or other equally mundane sources of
light. Yet, there are several other supporting pieces of evidence that we have to consider.
Project Blue Book report card 10073 notes that the North Concord early warning radar station,
Vermont, detected an erratic, slow moving object, at high altitude on September, 19, 1961. This
1
“Fairyland’s Hunters: Notes Towards a Revisionist History of Abductions. Part Two.”
http://magoniamagazine.blogspot.com/2013/11/fairylands-hunters-notes-towards.html
220
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
was 6 or 7 hours before the Hills’ UFO sighting and only 33 miles from their sighting location. It
was observed for 18 minutes. From this data it was concluded that this was possibly a weather
balloon. An addition to the card notes:
During a casual conversation on 22 Sept 61 between Major Gardiner B. Reynolds, 100th B S DC01
and Captain Robert O. Daughaday, Commander 1917-2 AACS DIT, Pease AFB, N.H., it was
revealed that a strange incident occurred at 0214 local on 20 Sept. No importance was attached to
the incident at the time.
In the base’s daily report, it states that it was detected on their precision approach radar at a distance
of 4 miles, it pulled up half-a-mile away, and then they only saw a weak target that made a low
approach. No aircraft was seen visually, and the official verdict was that it was caused by a
temperature inversion or similar natural causes.2
After their encounter they found six strange, shiny spots the size of a dollar on the car’s trunk.
Betty thought they might have been radioactive, so she ran a compass over them. The compass
needle moved erratically when Betty did this test, but when Barney tried it, the needle acted
normally. Whether these spots were radioactive or not, it was presumed that they were caused
when they heard the strange beeping sounds, which seemed to come from the trunk of their car.
A more mundane explanation is given by Karl Pflock who notes that when the Hills got home they
found the lid of the trunk was not closed properly. This could have happened just before Barney’s
first close encounter with the UFO when he took a handgun out of the car’s trunk. In his panicstricken state he could easily have left the lid unlatched, thereby causing the strange sounds when
the car roared away.3
Following the encounter, the top of Barney’s toe caps were found to be scuffed. This would
substantiate his statement that he was dragged by his arms towards the landed UFO when he was
abducted.
The dress Betty wore during the abduction was found to be covered in a pink powder. When this
was shaken off it left pink stains behind. She also found the hem and seams torn. The patterned,
purple dress has been kept in her closet and over the years she cut sections off it to satisfy the
requests of laboratories throughout the world.4 So far no one has provided any evidence that it is
of exceptional, let alone extraterrestrial origin.
Even weirder, Betty claimed that six to eight weeks after their encounter they returned home to
find a pile of leaves on their kitchen table. They had just been back to the mountains searching for
the location of their encounter to see if it triggered any memories. When cleaning up the mess she
found the blue earrings she had been wearing the night of the encounter. She quite reasonably
wondered how she lost them and how they got in their home. What this indicated to her was that
2
“Radar Reports Prior to Hill Case.” https://www.nicap.org/reports/0450-74.htm
“‘Beep-Beep!’ Went The Saucer?” Karl Plock, Saucer Smear, Volume 47, No. 10. December 1, 2000.
http://web.archive.org/web/20130828165237/http://www.martiansgohome.com/smear/v47/ss001201.htm
4
“Betty Hill - The Grandmother of Ufology.” Interview by Avis Ruffu conducted in
http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1182.htm
3
221
1991.
I. Case Studies
the aliens had stolen her earrings and they knew where they lived.5
The most powerful piece of evidence to support their claims was the notorious Star Map. Working
in conjunction with Betty, amateur astronomer Marjorie Fish created a three-dimensional map of
the star system that matched the Star Chart seen onboard the flying saucer. This seemed to indicate
that the aliens originated from the double star system of Zeta Reticuli. Skeptics have convincingly
argued that Betty’s Star Map consists of vague dots and lines that could be matched with a whole
range of stellar systems. Indeed, there have been at least 6 other attempts to match the home of the
aliens with other star systems or even our own Solar System that are as (in)credible as Zeta
Reticuli.
A Fantasy?
The bottom line is that the main evidence for this abduction comes from the testimony of the Hills
that comes from a combination of nightmares and accounts given under hypnotic regression. They
came across as sincere and truthful people to everyone who interviewed and met them. Though
this was undermined by Betty’s many subsequent claims of psychic events and sightings of
hundreds of UFOs, many of which could be easily explained.
Betty Hill died of lung cancer at her home in Portsmouth on October 17, 2004. She was mourned
by the UFO community as a true pioneer. One person went as far as to say that she was the
ufological equivalent to Lindberg. Others had some doubts about her credibility. Bryan Daum,
who was a junior officer copilot stationed at Pease Air Force Base, remembered meeting her twice
in the late 1970s. The first time was in the library of the base where she gave a talk about sightings
in the area. About a year later he saw a box-like UFO and decided to visit Betty to see if she knew
if anyone else had seen such a thing. Meeting him in her garden, she affirmed such sightings and
added that they sometimes flap their wings. Her wild eyed manner made him think “she was really
crazy and (I) quickly got into my car and drove away”.6
UFO skeptic Robert Shaeffer was also unconvinced by Betty:
I was present at the National UFO Conference in New York City in 1980, at which Betty presented
some of the UFO photos she had taken. She showed what must have been well over two hundred
slides, mostly of blips, blurs, and blobs against a dark background. These were supposed to be
UFOs coming in close, chasing her car, landing, etc... After her talk had exceeded about twice its
allotted time, Betty was literally jeered off the stage by what had been at first a very sympathetic
audience. This incident, witnessed by many of UFOlogy's leaders and top activists, removed any
lingering doubts about Betty's credibility – she had none. In the oft-repeated words of one
UFOlogist who accompanied Betty on a UFO vigil in 1977, she was “unable to distinguish between
a landed UFO and a streetlight.”7
5
Interview with Betty Hill. Held at her Home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Thursday, October 1, 1998 by Peter
Huston.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070121013509/http://www.capital.net/com/phuston/bettyhill.html
6
“Betty Hill Credible?” by Bryan Daum, UFO UpDates Mailing List, October 22, 2004.
https://files.afu.se/Downloads/Discussion-Lists/UFO%20UpDates/2004/UFO%20UpDates_2004_10_October.pdf
7
“Over the Hill on UFO Abductions,” by Robert Sheaffer, p. 3.
https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2007/11/22164518/p52.pdf
222
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
There are also several fantasy or folkloric elements to the encounter. Like visitors to the fairy
otherworld, Betty is not allowed to take away a souvenir as physical proof of her experience. And
the Kalendrier des bergiers, a fifteenth century French calendar shows, demons torturing people
by inserting long needles into their stomachs, indicating a primal fear generated long before flying
saucers took to the skies.
Inconsistencies
There are several inconsistencies in their abduction story. They showed extreme anxiety when
recounting the incident, yet Betty said to the “leader” alien as she was leaving the spaceship: “This
is the most wonderful experience of my life. I hope you'll come back. I got a lot of friends who
would love to meet you.”8
Other inconsistencies occur in the description of the aliens. Betty at first described them as having
Jimmy Durante noses but this was dropped in later recollections. Barney said they communicated
via some form of telepathy whilst Betty’s aliens spoke to her in English. The aliens also seemed
to have selected areas of knowledge and ignorance. For example, they were puzzled by Barney’s
false teeth yet had an otherwise good knowledge of human anatomy.
It has also been stated that the Hills had little knowledge about UFOs or science fiction, yet The
Immanuel Velikovsky Archive website contains a copy of a letter from Betty dated March 9, 1968,
addressed to Dr. Velikovsky, beginning:
Since 1950 I thought that someday I would write to you, for at that time I discovered your “Worlds
in Collision.” At that first reading, my emotional experience was one of shock, but I accepted your
theories quickly, for they answered many of my own questions: If man has been in existence for so
many ages, where has he been and what has he been doing? These theories helped me to solve this
riddle.9
The book claims that in the 15th Century BC, Venus was blasted from Jupiter and as it passed the
Earth it caused numerous catastrophes that are recorded by worldwide mythologies and religions.
His thesis intrigued the public who made the book a bestseller, but scientists have found it
unconvincing. James Fitton, who was working on his Roman history dissertation at McMaster
University in the early 1970s, wrote that:
In at least three important ways Velikovsky's use of mythology is unsound. The first of these is his
proclivity to treat all myths as having independent value; the second is the tendency to treat only
such material as is consistent with his thesis; and the third is his very unsystematic method.10
This shows Betty had more than a passing interest in space topics and what have become known
as Ancient Alien theories.
8
Interview with Betty Hill. Held at her Home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Thursday, October 1, 1998 by Peter
Huston.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070121013509/http://www.capital.net/com/phuston/bettyhill.html
9
https://www.varchive.org/cor/various/680309hillv.htm
10
“The Lost Critique.” http://defendgaia.org/bobk/vfitton.html
223
I. Case Studies
Racial Aspects
Barney was intensely aware of his racial background, and it is significant that he thought he saw
an evil Nazi alien looking at him when he originally viewed the UFO through binoculars. On these
slim grounds this has led some to speculate that this proved their encounter was with a craft built
under an alliance of the CIA, Nazis, and the aliens.
‘Betty in her dreams becomes the heroine who stands up to the grey meanies, tells them off (after
all she is a Barrett of New Hampshire). Don’t these dreams emphasize who wears the trousers and
has the balls in this family?
What is Barney afraid of, but which Betty Barrett of New Hampshire can stand up to. Look
at the pictures of the aliens with their caps, jackets, and trousers, remember those charts
and that mutinous crew. Charts aren’t much use in spaceships hopping between stars
through wormholes, using space warp or the Z process which no human mind could ever
understand. These are images of ships and the sea. These are sailors. What kind of sailors
steal people? Slavers of course. We have all overlooked this because we are not black. This
is the central fear which grips Barney, the terrible others who are both us and not us are
going to take him back into slavery. Betty comes from the dominant white culture, she
cannot feel the fear of being turned back into a slave. She can stand up to the crew. In her
vision the sailors are more like a chaotic pirate crew. 11
In a letter to UFO skeptic Philip J. Klass, dated March 1, 1976, Dr. Simon asserts that this was
more a case of ‘dual amnesia’ and ‘racial paranoia’ rather than an alien abduction:
Until (John) Fuller got his hooks into it lay fallow as a record of a successful medical study of a
dual amnesia situation. My interest in UFOs was almost entirely on the phenomena of Barney
Hill’s developing racial paranoia which seemed to me to have been the best representation on the
matter I had seen. The ultimate impact on other events, such as a probable UFO experience, served
only to amplify the situation, not to create an explanation of UFOs or similar phenomena.12
Betty Hill with a color painting of her alien visitors
created by David G. Baker in 1967. This painting now
resides in the Hill Archives at the University of New
Hampshire. Credit: Clas Svahn/AFU.
11
“Encounters at Indian Head,” by Peter Rogerson. http://mrobsr.blogspot.com/2012/08/encounters-at-indianhead.html
12
Betty and Barney Hill Scanned Documents, p. 8.
www.debunker.com/historical/BettyHillBenjaminSimonPhilipKlass.pdf
224
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Alternative Explanations
One explanation for Barney’s stressful recollections under hypnotic regression is that he was
influenced by accidental awareness, which occurs under general anesthesia. Barney had undergone
a tonsillectomy and perhaps the trauma of it induced a flashback to that event under hypnosis?
Anne Skomorowsky, an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University, notes that:
He was cold. His eyes were closed. He didn’t want to be operated on. Then he woke up under
general anesthesia, to full-blown terror, surrounded by distorted beings, squinting in the blue light
of the OR. Perhaps the pain and horror of awareness overwhelmed his mind, or maybe it was the
anesthetic drugs, but somehow the experience disappeared from his working memory - until he and
Betty came to believe they had crossed paths with an unidentified flying object on a dark and lonely
New Hampshire road.13
Barney, under hypnosis, confirms that he tried to keep his eyes closed throughout the abduction
experience and when he did briefly open his eyes, he saw a pale blue hospital operating room.
Mark Harrison, in his dissertation on The Extraterrestrial in US Culture, notes:
This motif of medical examination, which would become a standard trope in the abduction
narrative, spoke to a number of basic matters. It placed the abductee in a subservient position,
rendered them as an object to be observed and assessed, and underlined the fundamental
embodiedness of the experience. Aside from moments of pain, it is rare that we are so aware of our
bodies as organisms than when the object of medical scrutiny.14
It is Martin Kottmeyer’s contention that bad movies and medical quackery are the prominent
influences on Betty’s imagination, rather than alien medical procedures. Cases that have followed are
merely examples of cultural transmission and elaboration. 15
In a letter to Philip Klass, dated November 28, 1975, Betty reveals her feelings about their
interaction with Dr. Simon:
On the tapes there are many more hours of Barney’s experience than mine. Barney’s examination
on board the craft was different from mine. Barney told of them taking out his teeth and I told of
them trying to take out mine. In fact, there were times I was angry with Dr. Simon because he spent
so much more time with Barney, both during the hypnosis sessions and later at his home. 16
This anger about the attention on Barney seems very strange as his continuing trauma and ill health
was the main reason for these sessions. It indicates that Betty wanted to be the star of the show
and was more interested in proving they had an alien abduction than anything else.
13
“Alien Abduction or ‘Accidental Awareness’?”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alien-abduction-or-accidental-awareness/
14
“The Extraterrestrial in US Culture,” dissertation by Mark Harrison, p.181.
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/6666/1/TheExtraterrestrialinUSCulture.pdf
15
“Betty Hill’s Medical Nightmare,” by Martin Kottmeyer.
http://www.users.waitrose.com/~magonia/ms12.htm
16
Betty and Barney Hill Scanned Documents, p. 23.
www.debunker.com/historical/BettyHillBenjaminSimonPhilipKlass.pdf
225
I. Case Studies
Symposium
In September 2000 Karl Flock and Peter Brookesmith organized a symposium at the Indian Head
Inn, New Hampshire, sponsored by Joe Firmage (at that time a Silicon Valley multimillionaire),
near to the site of the abduction. In attendance were the editors, moderator Marcello Truzzi, Robert
Sheaffer, Dennis Stacey, Eddie Bullard, Hilary Evans, Greg Sandow, and a guest appearance by
Betty with her niece Kathleen Marden. This became the basis for the book, Encounters at Indian
Head: The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Abduction Revisited, which has contributions from those
at the symposium and by Martin Kottmeyer and Walter N. Webb.17
In his detailed review of the symposium Robert Sheaffer pulls no punches by stating that:
Not a single participant in the symposium was willing to describe the Betty Hill we heard firsthand as a credible witness; nonetheless, a number of them still were inclined to accept her story of
alien abduction...
At the end of the day, not surprisingly, no consensus was agreed over whether the Hills had a real
encounter with aliens or imagined it.18
Conclusion
Betty and Barney Hill were hardworking and well-respected members of their community, and
their emotional recall of their abduction under hypnosis is particularly powerful and believable.
As it was such an unusual case even ufologists did not know what to do with it and it took a
journalist to bring it to worldwide attention. Whether they saw an extraterrestrial craft follow them,
or they experienced any missing time during which they were abducted, is subject to much debate.
In a review of the case Brian Dunning described Betty Hill as:
A woman who clearly had an obsession with UFOs (she) saw a light in the sky that her husband
described as an airplane. She then spent two years writing an elaborate story and no doubt telling
and retelling it to her husband. Later, under hypnosis, Barney was asked about the events described
in Betty's story, and surprise, surprise, he retold the story she'd already told him a hundred times,
with an added dash from The Outer Limits episode of twelve days before. So far, we have a tale
that's hard to consider reliable. 19
Peter Rogerson is equally unimpressed by their description of the aliens:
The Hill’s (sic) aliens are very poor aliens indeed, they are just far too human. They look more or
less like us, except for a few minor anatomical differences, far less than the differences between
humans and their very close cousins the chimpanzees. They act like people, they have books, and
maps, and mutinous crews, they wear uniforms. Their technology was getting old fashioned in
1960, its levers and wall map positively antiquated by now. Their conversations are self17
Karl Pflock and Peter Brookesmith (eds). Encounters at Indian Head: The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Abduction
Revisited. San Antonio, Texas, USA, Anomalist Books, 2007.
18
Robert Sheaffer, “Betty’s Last Hurrah - A Secret UFO Symposium in New Hampshire,” Bad UFOs blog at:
https://badufos.blogspot.com/2015/05/betty-hills-last-hurrah-secret-ufo.html
19
“Betty and Barney Hill: The Original UFO Abduction,” by Brian Dunning.
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4124
226
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
contradictory.
The Hill story reads like a product of the human imagination, replete with human imagery and
human concerns, and that is what it almost certainly is. Its story line must be derived from the lives,
hopes and fears of the Hills. 20
Betty and Barney Hill are at first-sight credible witnesses to an incredible encounter. Yet, Betty’s
dreams and conviction that aliens are visiting our planet drove the narrative, and the evidence to
back up these claims is very circumstantial and/or inconsequential to say the least.
Much attention has been given to the Star Map as it supports the ufological belief in extraterrestrial
visitors, this has been at the expense of considering the social and psychological context of their
encounter. Stress, fantasy, and preconceptions seem to have come into play during their drive home
on that fateful night and continued to influence them ever afterwards. Betty was a forthright
intelligent woman but that did not stop her being gullible enough to think virtually any light in the
sky is a UFO that indicated the fantasy-prone side to her character. Given her predisposition
towards believing in UFOs and her subsequent sightings, why should we regard her encounter and
abduction on September 19/20, 1961 as any more different or substantial?
In a letter to Philip J. Klass from Dr. B. Simon dated October 28, 1975, he states:
Let it be known that I have never deviated from my conviction that the “sighting” took place. What
was sighted, I don’t know, nor do the Hills know. I am also sure that the “abduction and
examination” did not take place except as Betty’s dreams.21
Whatever is said their case is now a cornerstone for belief in alien abductions. For such an
important event the physical evidence is very flimsy and the witness testimony, although powerful,
does not carry much weight as evidence for an encounter with a real spacecraft and its occupants.
Nonetheless, over the years it has had a powerful influence on ufology and the belief in alien
abductions that has migrated into mainstream popular culture. This is another example of UFO
lore, like Roswell or the Rendlesham Forest Incident, that has gone from being an incredible story
of a UFO and dreams to a credible story of alien contact in the minds of UFO believers, and
“improves” over the years.
20
“ Encounters at Indian Head,” by Peter Rogerson. http://mrobsr.blogspot.com/2012/08/encounters-at-indianhead.html
21
Betty and Barney Hill Scanned Documents, p. 2.
http://www.debunker.com/historical/BettyHillBenjaminSimonPhilipKlass.pdf
227
I. Case Studies
Bibliography (all web articles accessed on December 15, 2022)
Evans, Hilary. Gods, Spirits, Cosmic Guardians. Wellingborough, UK: The Aquarian
Press,1987.
Fuller, John G. The Interrupted Journey. New York: The Dial Press, 1966.
Guide to the Betty and Barney Hill Papers, 1961-2006.
https://library.unh.edu/find/archives/collections/betty-barney-hill-papers-1961-2006#series-3
Pflock, Karl and Brookesmith, Peter (eds.). Encounters at Indian Head: The Betty and
Barney Hill UFO Abduction Revisited. San Antonio, Texas, USA: Anomalist Books, 2007
Rimmer, John. The Evidence for Alien Abductions. Wellingborough, UK: The Aquarian
Press,1984.
Magonia on-line at: http://magoniamagazine.blogspot.com/
228
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Metamorphosis: Claimed Witness Accounts of the Great Lakes Fireball of
December 9, 1965
Robert R. Young
Abstract: On December 9, 1965, a bright meteor fireball was seen from 10 states and Ontario.
Searches at 17 locations recovered no meteorites or debris. Astronomers used photographs, a
seismic record and eyewitness accounts to determine an end point and probable orbit. Media
coverage and UFO investigators kept alive a mystery narrative. At least 14 nationally broadcast
TV programs over the next 24 years stimulated new witnesses and narratives with their dramatic
details. Stories repeating classic flying saucer myths allowed others to join in retelling this folkloric
tale.
Keywords: Great Lakes fireball, Kecksburg, UFO crash, Cosmos 96, Folkloric tale
The fireball
On December 9, 1965, at 21:43 UT, plus or minus 10 seconds, a brilliant bolide (exploding) meteor
brighter than a Full Moon was seen from ten U.S. states and the Canadian Province of Ontario.
The visible fireball changed from yellow to orange; lasted about 4 seconds; brightened at one or
more points, and finally burst leaving a “smoke” train visible for up to an hour. [1]
One researcher estimated there could have been 1.3 million potential witnesses. [2] There were
hundreds of reports collected for this object visible in the bright sky just before sunset. G. W.
Wetherill, a geophysics and geology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles
collected accounts from more than 100 witnesses including some on the South shore of Lake Erie
who reported the fireball disappearing to the North over the Lake. “Almost everyone who saw the
fireball thought it was much closer than it really was,” he wrote. [3] This is particularly true with
observers on the outer edge of the viewing area where meteors seem to drop just on the other side
of trees or buildings.
In published 1965 accounts it was said to have “crashed” or “landed” in at least 17 places in six
states and interviewers found many more. Several witnesses claimed to have found slag-like rocks
and old radar chaff was found. None of these materials were ever shown to be associated with the
meteor. [1] The most spectacular report came from Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, where pilots,
weather observers and U.S. Coast Guard personnel reported a flying object had “exploded” over
Detroit. Coast Guard boats sent into Lake St. Clair found nothing.
Fortunately, photographs of the train were taken within seconds by two widely spaced
photographers in Michigan, Lowell Wright at Orchard Lake, Michigan, and Richard P. Champine
East of Pontiac (Figure 1). These and data from a seismic station of the Geophysics Laboratory
of the University of Michigan at Ypsilanti, allowed astronomers Von Del Chamberlain and David
J. Krause to determine an endpoint and estimated orbit. The fireball was found to be falling steeply
Northeastward over extreme Southwest Ontario. Although the velocity of the object in the
atmosphere is uncertain, a value of 14.5 km/sec was adopted from the photographer’s estimates.
This would give an orbit out to between Mars and Jupiter, near the asteroid belt, source of many
bright meteors. The object would have been in a prograde orbit, similar to most solar system
229
I. Case Studies
objects. [4] The speed would be well within the speed of meteors and about twice that of returning
space debris in a shallow, decaying orbit.
Chamberlain and Krause obtained 66 eyewitness accounts; Wetherill 23 accounts from pilots via
the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, many of whom thought a plane had gone down over the
Lake. Canadian astronomers also used 120 eyewitness reports to establish the end point and search
for meteorites in the snow-covered terrain. None were found. [5]
All 1965 broadcast and published eyewitness accounts for which a direction was given or can be
inferred can be explained by the 16:43 (EST) fireball over Lake Erie, searches for its debris, and
associated excitement. [9]
Media Excitement
The public was primed, however, for “out of this World” explanations. Newspapers and TV were
filled with news that day of the launch of an American Gemini spacecraft with two astronauts for
the first rendezvous of two manned spacecraft, Gemini 6 and 7.
In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, well-known flying saucer lecturer, broadcaster and writer Frank
Edwards was on a call-in show on 50,000-watt KDKA Radio promoting his popular paid lecture
in the city the next day when he would discuss Government coverups and saucer lore. Edwards
recalled that after the fireball the phones lit up with callers. He attributed the event to a bright
meteor. [8]
UFO writer Ivan Sanderson filed a story three days later with the North American Newspaper
Alliance widely used and later reprinted in FATE magazine. He apparently spoke to no witnesses,
relying on calls to State Police desks and news reports. [7] He used only published reports of
witnesses in four locations, ignoring dozens more, and naively assumed that the fireball was at
their locations, not visible for hundreds of miles around. His speeds were based on widely varying
published times; he made a mistake, substituting miles/hour instead of miles/minute, slowing down
his object’s flight by 60 times. His assumed path plotted on a hand-drawn map from Lapeer,
Michigan, to Elyria, Ohio, would be at an azimuth of 152 degrees, and from Elyria to Kecksburg,
Pennsylvania, would be at an azimuth of 120 degrees, a difference of 32 degrees, not 25 degrees
as Sanderson claimed. An object using Sanderson’s path would pass over Pittsburgh, where it
apparently was unnoticed, but would pass no closer than 26 miles (42 km) to the south of
Kecksburg, his assumed endpoint. Had he used a real map, as I did [10] or had UFO enthusiasts
merely checked his arithmetic, Sanderson’s article which jump-started the myth of a slow-moving,
“maneuvering UFO” would have been dismissed in 1965.
The next year Edwards published his popular book Flying Saucers - Serious Business, the first
saucer book to sell a million copies. In it he made fantastic claims about the December 9, 1965,
event, very similar to claims he made about a 1947 Roswell, N.M. incident, which he had been
making for years in his popular lectures. He misquoted Sanderson, claiming that “Sizable
contingents of various military units” were “already present,” when police and searchers arrived.
He must have had misgivings because in his next book, Flying Saucers - Here and Now! when he
listed supposed UFO crashes and recovered debris he never mentioned the incident.
230
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Figure 1. The December 9, 1965 fireball trail. Credit: Richard P. Champine. Used with permission.
The Kecksburg “crash”
One of the places where witnesses saw the fireball or its cloud train was Kecksburg, Pennsylvania,
a small village about 30 miles (48 km) East of Pittsburgh. There, eight-year-old Nevin Kalp told
his mother he had seen “a star on fire.” Going outside, his mother reported seeing a puff of smoke
over nearby woods. She did nothing for more than an hour until listening to Edwards talk about
UFOs on KDKA. The witness then called local Greensburg, Pa., radio station WHJB that had
been reporting an airplane crash to tell them it was the fireball; then she called the Pennsylvania
State Police. The station filed a report to wire services. The author plotted a line from Kalp’s
location toward the location of the Lake Erie fireball, at azimuth 305 deg. to 309 deg. pointing
directly toward the site of subsequent searches (Figure 2). [10, 11] Police and local fireman
searched unsuccessfully until about 21:00 pm.
231
I. Case Studies
Figure 2. 1965 Kecksburg witnesses reported a fireball and puff of smoke in the direction of the Ontario fireball and
a 1965 search at “B.” Decades later new “witnesses” described a crash site and object at “C.” A 1965 newspaper
article had mistakenly reported this location, 1/2 mile (800 m) away on another farm. For decades it remained the only
published location of events, misleading ufologists. “Murphy’s UFO” (“E”) was 1.5 miles (2.4 km) West of Kecksburg
at the site of burning brush at the Norvelt Golf Course construction site. (1 inch = 1,000 ft; 1 cm = 120 m; contour
lines represent 20 ft intervals above sea level).
Military Involvement
In 1965 the U.S. Air Force investigated UFO reports under the authority of Air Force Regulation
200-2. [12] Its Project Blue Book, located at the Air Technical Center at Wright-Patterson Air
Force Base, Dayton, Ohio, received initial reports from “UFO officers” at each USAF installation.
They seemed to be particularly interested in possible recovery of returning space debris. [13]
Blue Book received a call about 18:35 EST from the Air Force Defense Command alerting them
to expect UFO reports, relaying information about reports received by the Detroit Air Defense
Sector. After an AP wire service story, it was decided to send four men from the nearest USAF
installation, a radar site West of Pittsburgh, where the USAF 662nd Radar Squadron (SAGE) was
based on the U.S. Army Engineers Support Facility at Oakdale. The Squadron also sent three men
to Erie, Pennsylvania., to investigate a pilot’s report of the fireball to the West over the Lake. This
232
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Erie, Pennsylvania investigation always seems to be ignored by proponents of a UFO because it
doesn’t support their theory of a maneuvering object which ended near Kecksburg.
The myth of U.S. Army involvement seems to have begun when a local reporter spoke to a fireman
who said “Army engineers.” were coming. This was reported in an early edition of the newspaper
[16] and later repeated elsewhere. No 1965 news reports or witnesses actually reported seeing
“Army engineers”.
WHJB-Radio News Director John Murphy began broadcasting live from what he thought was a
crash site where he reported seeing smoke and sparks, about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) West of Kecksburg
where brush and trees were being burned at the Norvelt Golf Course. Eventually he made his way
to the actual search location where he interviewed onlookers and police. Some locals derisively
called the fire “Murphy’s UFO,” memorializing his role in the creation of the crash myth.
The next week Murphy produced a radio special, “Object in the Woods,” in which he reported no
large military presence except seeing three Air Force men in the back seat of a police car. He
identified them as members of the “Army 662 Radar Squadron,” showing that five days later he
was still confused about the identity of the military present. This kept alive the myth of Army
involvement. The station included a statement that no government agency had intervened
regarding the broadcast, and they had all the cooperation they needed from the police and other
officials. [15] There is no documentary or other evidence that anyone but these Air Force UFO
investigators, State Police and local firemen were involved.
Light in the Woods
The 662 RAD Sq. people arrived about 21:00. By then reports were coming from fireman of
intermittent “blue lights” flashing. in the woods. The Air Force men wanted to take a look, leaving
one officer at the Greensburg police barracks to communicate with Oakdale. They and the police
conducted a second search by flashlight and a fire department light truck. A road (later officially
named “Meteor Rd.”) had been closed at either end by the Fire Marshal to allow possible fire truck
access to what had at first been reported as a plane crash. The two roadblocks were manned by
members of the Mt. Pleasant Township Auxiliary Police, not the military.
The flashing lights were created by several teenagers running through the woods flashing a camera
strobe. The author obtained a long, signed statement from a participant which can account for the
location and timing of the lights, which attracted spotlights from a crowd along Meteor Rd. [11]
The local paper reported in an editorial two days later that its staff had concluded that nothing had
come down and that the lights were the result of a TV news crew and photographers in the woods.
[6]
The Searches
The second search was also unsuccessful, and the Air Force people left about 02:00 the next
morning. Blue Book’s chief Major Hector Quintanilla reported to his superiors at the Air Force
Command Post that the search had been fruitless, and the fireball had been a meteor. [14] The Air
Force announced the next day it had been a meteor. [21]
233
I. Case Studies
Three newspapers, a Pittsburgh TV station, and Murphy were present during the searches and
never reported armed troops, convoys or objects in the woods. The next day, in daylight, the State
Police and news media conducted a third search, finding nothing. State Police Troop A
Commander Joseph Dussia said the search, “uncovered absolutely nothing,” and that people had,
“made a mountain out of a molehill.” [17]
Enter the Ufologists and Local Supporters
Major 1960’s civilian UFO groups didn’t take the fireball seriously. The largest group, the
National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, had a Pittsburgh chapter and considered
it a meteor. [31] Neither it nor the Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization submitted the case
during congressional hearings or to the Air Force funded University of Colorado Project several
years later.
Fourteen years later, with the help of UFO enthusiasts, the story was revived on a call-in show on
KDKA-Radio November 6, 1979. UFO proponents Leonard Stringfield, a publisher of UFO
stories from Ohio; Clark McClelland, a local investigator, and famous “abductees” Travis Walton
and Betty Hill took phone calls. McClelland discussed the 1965 incident and the possibility that
a Soviet spacecraft, Cosmos 96, had crashed at Kecksburg. Four callers claimed to be 1965
witnesses. [24] Two said that they saw only lights, but one said he had been the Kecksburg Fire
Chief and later described being 25 ft. (7.6 m) from a large 10-ton (9.1 metric tons) military truck
surrounded by armed military guards with a 6 by 7 ft. by 17-ft. long (1.8 x 2.1 x 5.2 m)object on
the back. This witness told his story in various versions for ten years. He was not the 1965 Fire
Chief but was Chief later and Kecksburg Fire Company President in 1990 when an “Unsolved
Mysteries” TV show was filmed with the assistance of some fire company members and
supporters.
In December 1990 Kecksburg firemen had a “25th Anniversary celebration” and “UFO dance”,
selling commemorative t-shirts, hats, license plates and clothing to benefit the company. The 300lb (136 kg) UFO model used in the TV show was mounted on the roof of the old firehouse. [22,
32] Curiously, in 1979 there had been a 50th anniversary celebration and banquet for the fire
company. During historical remembrances, no mention of the 1965 incident or UFO had been
made. [19] While filming in town it became known that the film’s “fire chief” was not; his
interview and participation was dropped, with a well-known local actor playing his part.
Cosmos 96
A Soviet spacecraft destined for Venus, Venera 3, also known as Cosmos 96, had been launched
16 days earlier. It failed to leave parking orbit and reentered over northern Canada 13 hours before
the Great Lakes fireball. [33] This coincidental event led investigators astray for many years, the
first of several unsuccessful efforts to explain the Kecksburg story. In 1987 during a “International
UFO Information Week” exhibit at a mall a local UFO group discussed the Kecksburg events,
displaying a picture of a painting by a Soviet artist of Venera 3, complete with Cyrillic writing
around its edge. Out of the crowd came a witness, James Romansky, who said he saw an acornshaped object in the woods, with “hieroglyphics.” His claimed location matched the estimated
location the investigators had come up with, convincing them that he was “the real deal.” A local
paper in 1965 had published a mistaken location, placing the search 1/2 mile (800 m) from
Kecksburg, but the actual search was on another farm, 1 mile (1.6 km) from town [11]. For decades
234
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
this remained the only published location. Locals who were 1965 witnesses have told the author
this is how they know if a new claimed participant was really there.
National Media Explosion
The event that launched the Kecksburg search into “outer space” was the NBC-TV program
“Unsolved Mysteries,” September 19, 1990. [18] This was the tenth most watched program in a
week when the season’s new shows were introduced. It reached tens of millions in an estimated
17.7% of American households with television, on 30% of sets turned on. [20] It has been repeated
many times. Over the next 24 years six more nationally televised US and Canadian programs have
featured and portrayed the Kecksburg UFO and recovery claims, sometimes including dramatic
effects from new claimed witnesses. Several did include statements about the meteor fireball by
skeptics of a crash, including the author, but most repeat the dramatic story first presented in this
1990 program, including a privately produced video sold by local ufologist Stan Gordon.
Promoters of a crash claimed there were few doubters in Kecksburg, but five doubters had actually
been interviewed by a producer for the “Unsolved Mysteries” show, three agreeing to go on
camera. They were never contacted during filming. [25] 45 residents and property owners sent
the producers a petition saying the crash and recovery didn’t happen. They were there.
Astronomer Von Del Chamberlain had been contacted about his research six months before, had
sent a copy of his paper, and been interviewed by phone. He stressed that the object was a meteor,
not a mystery. This was not mentioned in the show, nor was the existence of the Michigan photos
used in his article revealed. [26] Instead, Stan Gordon was shown sketching a hand-drawn map
reciting Sanderson’s old theory about a maneuvering UFO.
Two witnesses claiming to have seen the object in the woods noted the acorn-like object portrayed
in the program was shorter than what they saw, but they understood that was for “transportation”
reasons. It seems the show’s producers were unable to procure a “ten ton” (9.1 metric tons) old
military truck, substituting a 2 1/2-ton (2.3 metric tons) truck. Later “witness” accounts and
portrayals of the myth now seemed to fit the iconic scene first presented by “Unsolved Mysteries.”
The 17-foot long, 7-foot wide mystery object had metamorphosed into an acorn shape like the
propaganda version of Cosmos 96.
More than 100 “new” witness called the “Unsolved Mysteries” phone hotline after the 1990
broadcast. While many remembered the event, searches, and excitement, three men claimed to
have seen the object at Top Secret military bases in Ohio [23] as well as “alien bodies” and a
“spaceship.” Soon identical “acorns” were appearing in reports from California and the USSR.
Alien Bodies
What would a saucer crash story be without the little pilots’ bodies? Kecksburg would have it all.
The late Flying Saucer evangelist and founder of the 20th Century UFO Bureau Robert D. Barry
announced on his weekly television program that the military had recovered bodies at Kecksburg,
citing a source from Westmoreland County (Kecksburg area). His show was fed to a score of TV
and cable stations and could be received over much of the U.S. and Canada via satellite. He
withdrew this claim three weeks later. [27]
235
I. Case Studies
The Kecksburg UFO’s Columbus Connection
Soon stories by people claiming to be former military personnel surfaced placing the recovered
UFO at Lockbourne and Wright-Patterson Air Force Bases in Ohio. [30] The Lockbourne accounts
bear curious similarities to a 1954 tale from the Columbus which proved to be untrue or
unsubstantiated. [28] Parts of this earlier story seem to have been lifted almost verbatim from
Behind the Flying Saucers by Frank Scully. This 1950 best-seller, one of the first American flying
saucer books, was based on a hoax by a mysterious “Dr. Gee,” actually Leo Gebaur, owner of a
Phoenix radio parts store, and has stimulated many “UFO crash” tales.
There are 19 parallels between the 1954 Columbus saucer crash and the Scully tale, including eight
which seemed to have been lifted verbatim. For example: Scully had called for a WAC with Army
Intelligence to come forward publicly with a woman’s perspective on how the aliens managed to
live in the 30-foot (11 m) disks. “Miss Y” was first described as a WAC at Wright-Patterson Air
Force Base, an Air Force intelligence headquarters, but this was untrue. Scully described a “36-ft.
in diameter unmanned disk”; “Miss Y”, a 30 to 40-ft. (9.1-12.2 m) unmanned saucer.
Also, in neither story did the saucers crash. “Dr. Gee’s” landing ships were, “set on automatic
float”; “Miss Y” said that they “floated gently to the ground.” “Dr. Gee’s” saucers had, “Portholes
which they can see out, but nobody can see in...half-silvered to stop cosmic rays”; while the
Columbus saucer was, “Not like ours... portholes of one way glass not visible from outside.” “Two
metals unknown to us” and not found “on this planet” became “One or more alloys not found on
this planet.” Both discs were powered by “magnetic power,” and so on.
“Miss Y” may have inadvertently confirmed the source of her story. Despite claiming to have been
told that photos and information she had seen were classified with a “top security designation,”
she told James W. Moseley that the facts she gave him were,“Public knowledge and that she was
not breaking security to tell them.”
It seems that 15 parallel elements in the 1954 hoax and the 1990 Ohio stories strongly suggest that
the Kecksburg “UFO crash” Columbus connection is nothing more than a retelling of this 67 yearold hoax and the 70 year-old granddaddy of American crashed flying saucer tales.
Conclusion
The Kecksburg UFO crash is a folktale with increasingly divergent and bizarre elements allowing
many new participants to join in the retelling of the myth.
A proposed “model” for American crashed saucer legends could involve: 1. An event with at least
one witness, 2. local news media interest, 3. involvement of UFO enthusiasts or investigators, 4.
additional witnesses join the narrative, 5. widespread media excitement, 6. as witness stories are
refuted new witness claims appear and 7. ufologist theories of an increasingly bizarre nature are
developed, sometimes including adoption of classic crashed saucer legends.
Acknowledgments: The author expresses appreciation to Tim Printy, Robert Sheaffer, James
Oberg, Von Del Chamberlain, and Richard P. Champine for their cooperation and work to allow
the accurate story of the December 9, 1965, Great Lakes fireball to be told and made available to
everyone.
236
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
References (all web articles accessed on December 2, 2022)
1. Chamberlain, Von Del. Meteorites of Michigan, Bulletin 5, Michigan Geological Survey,
Lansing, Michigan 1968, pp. 1-5.
2. Hartmann, William K. “Process of Perception, Conception and Reporting” in Final Report of
The Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects. New York: Bantam Books, 1968, pp.
586-588, at http://www.project1947.com/shg/condon/contents.html
3. Sky & Telescope, “Great Lakes Fireball,” February 1966, pp. 78-79 and 82.
4. Chamberlain, Von Del and David J. Krause. “The Fireball of Dec. 9, 1965 - Part I,” Royal
Astronomical Society of Canada Journal, Vol 61, No. 4., August 1967, at
http:/adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1967JRASC..61..184C
5. Douglas, J.A.V. “The Fireball of Dec. 9, 1965, Essex County, Ontario,” Proceedings of the
Tenth Associate Meeting on Meteoritics. Appendix 1. Council Chambers of the National
Council of Research Laboratories, Ottawa. April 18, 1966.
6. “Flying Saucers, Again,” Editorial, Tribune-Review, Greensburg, Pennsylvania, December 11,
1965, p. 8.
7. Sanderson, Ivan T. “The Abominable Space Thing,” North American Newspaper Alliance;
reprinted in FATE as, “Something Landed in Pennsylvania,” March 1966, p. 33.
8. Edwards, Frank. FLYING SAUCERS - SERIOUS BUSINESS. New York: Lyle Stuart, 1966, p.
128
_______. Flying Saucers - Here and Now! New York: Bantam Books, 1967, p. 117.
9. The author conducted a literature search for accounts of the events of December 9, 1965, as
well as subsequent claims and investigations. All Pennsylvania daily, weekly and selected
out-of-state newspapers for mid-December 1965 were searched. Pittsburgh and
Westmoreland County papers were checked into 1966, around anniversaries of the event
and dates of media attention. The General Science Index, Reader’s Guide to Periodic
Literature and Sky & Telescope were checked. Seven television programs, a lecture and a
radio program were reviewed.
10. “Lake Erie,” International Map of the World. Reston, Virginia: USGS, 1974.
11. Young, Robert R., in SUNlite, Vol. 3, No. 6, November-December 2011, p. 11, at
http://www.astronomyufo.com/UFO/SUNlite3_6.pdf
12. United States Air Force. Air Force Regulation No. 200-2, Unidentified Flying Objects,
Washington, D.C.: Department of the Air Force, July 20, 1962.
13. Craig, Roy. UFOs: An Insider’s View of the Official Quest for Evidence. Denton: University
of North Texas Press, 1995, p. 177.
14. Files of Project Blue Book, Dec. 9-10, 1965. National Archives, Washington, D.C.
15. “Object in the woods”. WHJB radio, transcript of the 30th anniversary rebroadcast about the
Kecksburg incident. November 29, 1995, 1:05-3:00 PM.
16. “‘Unidentified Flying Object’ Falls Near Kecksburg,” The Tribune-Review (Greensburg,
Pennsylvania), (early) County Edition, December 10, 1965, p. 1.
17. “Searchers fail to find ‘object.’” The Tribune-Review (late city edition). Greensburg,
Pennsylvania, December 10, 1965, p. 1.
18. “Unsolved Mysteries.” NBC-TV, September 19, 1990, repeated February 27, 1991, and at least
once yearly during 1992-1995; “Sightings,” Fox Television Network, October 9, 1992,
237
I. Case Studies
rebroadcast April 23, 1993 and later; “The Montell Williams Show,” December 27, 1993;
“Kecksburg” on the Sci-Fi channel, October 25, 2003; “UFO files: Kecksburg UFO,”
History Channel. June 6, 2005; “UFO Hunters,” History Channel, February 18, 2009;
“Close Encounters,” Discovery Canada, January 17, 2014.
19. Personal communications with 1965 Kecksburg Fire Chief Edward Myers.
20. Broadcasting. 1990. Cites Nielson and its own research, p. 40.
21. The Pittsburgh Press. December 10, 1965.
22. “UFO celebration,” The Tribune-Review (Greensburg, Pennsylvania), December 7, 1990.
23. Santus, Sharon. “Kecksburg UFO Seen at A.F. bases,” The Tribune-Review (Greensburg,
Pennsylvania), December 9, 1990, pp. A1, A10.
24. “The John Signa Show,” KDKA-Radio, Pittsburgh, November 16, 1979.
25. Porch, Carl, letter to the author, July 11, 1991; phone interview September 12, 1991.
26. Chamberlain, Von Del, letter to the author, February 20, 1992.
27. “ET Monitor,” WGCB-TV, Red Lion, Pennsylvania, April 2, 1989.
28. Moseley, James W. “The Wright Field Story …. or ‘Who’s Lying?,’” UFO Crash Secrets at
Wright/Patterson Air Force Base. Abelard, 1991, pp. 48-52.
29. Young, Robert R., in SUNlite, Vol.3, No. 6, November-December, 2011, pp. 36-37, Tables
1 and 2, at http://www.astronomyufo.com/UFO/SUNlite3_6.pdf
30. McClelland, Clark, and Leonard H. Stringfield. Jan. 17, 1980 report and footnote in The UFO
Crash/Retrieval Syndrome Status Report II, Leonard H. Stringfield (ed.), Seguin, Texas,
Mutual UFO Network, pp. 19-20.
31. NICAP files are in the possession of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, Chicago,
Illinois. Letter to author confirming the meteor designation from Mark Rodeghier.
32. Picture of TV “acorn” at fire hall, Robert Sheaffer’s “Bad UFOs” blog at
https://badufos.blogspot.com/2014/01/discovery-canada-serves-up-kecksburg.html
33. Printy, Tim. “The Cosmos 96 Connection,” SUNlite, Vol. 3 No. 6, November-December 2011,
p. 33, at http://www.astronomyufo.com/UFO/SUNlite3_6.pdf
238
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
II
PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
239
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
On Eyewitness Reports of Extraterrestrial Life
Thomas D. Albright
Until I know this sure uncertainty, I’ll entertain the offered fallacy.
William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors
Abstract: A substantial majority of the American population today believes in the existence of
extraterrestrial life. Despite the strength and pervasiveness of this belief, direct scientific evidence
in support of it is limited. The primary reason for this limited support is that the evidence comes
predominantly in the form of testimonial reports from eyewitnesses. Modern scientific
understanding of human sensation, perception, and memory has revealed a host of factors that
routinely undermine the validity of eyewitness reports under conditions of uncertainty.
Recognizing this, the American criminal justice system has implemented new science-based
reforms to reduce the likelihood of misidentification in criminal investigation and prosecution.
This approach stands as a model for reform of the highly unregulated populist adjudication of
eyewitness reports of extraterrestrial life – reform that could bring credible evidence to bear on a
topic of great importance in matters of safety, security, and science.
Keywords: Eyewitness identification, Visual perception, Evidence, Uncertainty, Bias, Confidence
Introduction
A recent survey revealed that 65% of the American population is willing to bet on the existence of
extraterrestrial life.1 Given that we have limited facts at hand (it’s not like speculation about the
weather, or which boxer will win the match) and given that this majority belief is capable of driving
policy in a democratic society, one cannot help wonder where this certainty comes from.
Broadly speaking, there are two types of explanation – faith and evidence – which I return to
shortly. Before doing so, I offer a few words about why, as a laboratory scientist practiced in the
empirical study of perception, cognition, and behavior, I have chosen to write about human
testimony on personal experiences with purported extraterrestrials. I have no experience with
extraterrestrial life, but I do have considerable experience when it comes to understanding the
validity of human perceptual reports. That validity reflects limits imposed by our biological
nature, our cognitive and behavioral priorities, and the physical properties of the world we inhabit,
which collectively determine our ability to accurately detect, discriminate, interpret, remember,
decide upon, and report information that comes to us through our senses. I recognize that these
qualifiers – our biology and our physical world – may be viewed as limiting in this context because
the experiences in question have sometimes been said to fall outside the domain of human
knowledge.2 Heeding that intractable possibility, I remain open minded.
In the following sections, I briefly review the contributions of faith and evidence to beliefs in
extraterrestrial life. This is followed by an examination of eyewitness testimonial evidence of the
appearance and actions of purported alien life forms, as well as eyewitness reports of unusual lights
and sounds, such as those said to arise from alien transport. As I have done previously for
eyewitness reports of the sort commonly used in criminal investigation and prosecution,3 I
241
II. Psychological Perspectives
conclude by addressing the manifold factors that can cause honest well-intentioned observers to
make inaccurate statements about their sensory experiences.
FAITH
Many people who believe in extraterrestrial life do so as a matter of faith, if only because they
have little evidence at their disposal.4 Through an implicit process of folk psychology and armchair
reasoning, combined with the fact that being wrong is so far of no consequence, it just seems
reasonable, and perhaps exciting, to suppose that we are not alone in the universe. There’s also
the statistical argument: to deny extraterrestrial life would presume that we are inexplicably unique
in a vast universe of matter, a hole-in-one in a hurricane.i Reinforcing this extraterrestrial belief
is an enormous body of fantasy literature and multimedia entertainment, ranging from ancient
mythology to tales of modern superheroes and sci-fi star sagas, all of which has promoted a cosmic
pluralism. While explicitly fiction, such work facilitates acceptance of creatures different from us
– through a form of exposure therapy – who hail from kingdoms in the sky, or galaxies far, far
away. Real factual evidence in support of the extraterrestrial hypothesis would also be valuable
and undoubtedly interesting, but it isn’t necessary if one’s conviction is anchored on faith.
There are well-known similarities between faith in the existence of extraterrestrial life and
traditional religious faith, which are illuminating because they expose some common
characteristics of human belief systems, and they remind us that for some people belief in alien
life is no more surprising than, for example, belief in the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus. 5
The modern Christian creed known as Creationism provides a vivid illustration. Creationism
argues that the profound richness and diversity, beauty, and exquisite functionality and harmony
of life on our planet could only have come about as deliberate creations of a divine power.
According to this doctrine, alternative explanations, such as evolution by natural selection, suffer
from inherent complexity, noisiness, incompleteness, and lack of directed movement toward a
human-centric world. In the absence of evidence, and without the guardrails of science and critical
reasoning, we default to simplifying explanations sanctioned by self-appointed belief leaders.
Never mind that the Creationist canon requires acceptance of things we cannot confirm. As for
belief in extraterrestrial life, that acceptance is facilitated by an extensive mythic literature and a
missionary community manifested in the form of organized religion. In this world, faith alone
prevails, if only because it satisfies a need for explanation.
EVIDENCE: “BUT WHERE IS EVERYBODY?” ii
Evidence-based certainty in the existence of extraterrestrial life is naturally harder to come by and
is always at risk of exaggeration and distortion by biases born from faith. Evidence that currently
exists falls into two broad categories: indirect and direct.
i
Uniqueness of life on Earth is a common Christian belief, which may account for the fact that people with strong
religious faith, such as evangelical Protestants, are less likely to believe in extraterrestrial life [B. Alper B and J.
Alvardo (2021) Pew Research Center Survey, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/28/religiousamericans-less-likely-to-believe-intelligent-life-exists-on-other-planets/] See also J.D. Sarfati (2004) “Bible Leaves
no Room for Extraterrestrial Life,” Science and Theology News, 4(7), 3-7; C.E. Sagan (1973) The Cosmic Question:
An Extraterrestrial Perspective, 2nd edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press.
ii
Legendary quote from 20th century physicist Enrico Fermi, on the contradiction between the statistical improbability
that we are alone in the universe and lack of evidence to support that premise, known today as the Fermi Paradox.
242
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Indirect Evidence: Potential for Extraterrestrial Life
The indirect form of evidence for extraterrestrial life, which is arguably the strongest in terms of
empirical rigor, consists of demonstrations that there are extraterrestrial environments possessing
conditions that could harbor life as we know it. The existence of earth-like planets – planets with
atmospheric and terrestrial conditions like those that gave rise to life on earth – at other locations
in the measurable universe has long seemed a compelling possibility, which led to the emergence
of the scientific field of astrobiology. The Kepler Space Telescope, which operated from 20092018, was used to identify thousands of extrasolar planets – “exoplanets” – using the centuries-old
technique of astronomical transit detection. iii A subset of these exoplanets has been deemed earthlike in their suitability for life, based on criteria such as size, orbit, and temperature.6,7 An even
smaller but highly intriguing subset includes those habitable exoplanets that could have provided
a view of Earth transiting the Sun.8 These are not simply habitable exoplanets that we can detect,
but those where extraterrestrial life forms would have the potential to detect us.
This work on habitable exoplanets is complemented by recent discoveries and ongoing search for
chemical elements of life on other planets and moons of our own solar system, as exemplified by
on-the-ground geochemical explorations of Mars,9 and spectroscopic analysis of electromagnetic
radiation from distant planetary bodies.10 It is noteworthy that these demonstrations of the potential
for extraterrestrial life are all products of systematic investigations carried out by our mainstream
scientific enterprise. Potential for life has only a probabilistic relationship to actual life, of course,
but these findings have a sound empirical foundation, reinforcing the belief that we are not alone.
Direct Evidence
While largely lacking the scientific bona fides of indirect forms of empirical evidence for
extraterrestrial life – if only because it relies upon analysis of infrequent, unexpected, and brief
events – direct evidence is by far the most provocative type of support. It’s useful to distinguish
two general categories of direct evidence: (i) signals that may be indicative of remote
communications from extraterrestrial civilizations, and (ii) real-time observations of proximal
animated beings and devices that are inferred to be of extraterrestrial origin.
Signals from the Cosmos
Our universe is replete with visually detectable objects and other electromagnetic events, the
properties of which are mostly explainable as products of known natural forces. Against that
predictable backdrop, one compelling form of direct evidence for extraterrestrial life consists of
statistically improbable visual or radiofrequency signals, which could be interpreted as directed
communications, or technosignatures – the flotsam and jetsam of alien civilizations.11 The
longstanding Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), made possible by public and privately
funded science that employs large radio telescope arrays, is designed to survey the skies for signals
potentially arising from sources of extraterrestrial life. Rare and brief bursts of activity in narrow
radiofrequency bands – Fast Radio Bursts – arouse interest and encourage belief because natural
iii
Distant planets are difficult to detect against the darkness of the universe, but their existence and orbital properties
can be inferred from measurable diminutions in brightness as they ‘transit” across the face of a star. Johannes Kepler
predicted, in the 16th century, the solar transits of Mercury and Venus that were telescopically observed in the 17 th
century. The same principle, with added spectrographic features, was employed by the Kepler Space Telescope
Program in order to identify and investigate exoplanets.
243
II. Psychological Perspectives
explanations are limited.12 But this forensic practice – however technically and conceptually
sophisticated it may be – has yet to point us toward alien civilizations.
Anomalous telescopically viewed objects arouse similar interest. In 2017, for example, an object
on a strange interstellar trajectory was discovered tumbling through our solar system. Later named
Oumuamua (scout), several unusual properties of the object – movement along an unexpected path
with what appeared to be non-gravitational acceleration, non-comet-like surface properties and
reflectance, and a cigar-like shape – led prominent astrophysicists to speculate that it could be of
alien origin.13 The object moved on uneventfully into the distant cosmos and many now argue that
it is a natural object, albeit an unlikely one.14
Encounters at Close Range
The most controversial form of direct evidence for extraterrestrial life – the form that I will focus
on in the remainder of this essay – is human eyewitness reports of direct encounters with
extraterrestrials and associated sensory phenomena. In an effort to systematize a new science
based on such testimony, the astronomer J. Allen Hynek developed in the early 1970s a useful
taxonomy of extraterrestrial encounters.15 Of interest here are two sub-categories of what Hynek
termed “Close Encounters.” Close Encounters of the First Kind, refers to “UFO [Unidentified
Flying Object] sighting reports that speak of objects or very brilliant lights close to the observers.”
Close Encounters of the Third Kind, iv refers to encounters “in which the presence of animated
creatures is reported.” Both First and Third kinds of Close Encounters are thus evidenced by
eyewitness reports. Close Encounters of the Second Kind, refers to other physical manifestations
of witnessed UFOs or animated entities, such as damaged vegetation, which are of interest as
independent confirmation (or failure of confirmation) of eyewitness reports.
Close Encounters of the First Kind: Unidentified Flying Objects
The largest category of close encounters involves UFOs, made visible (we presume) by reflected
or emitted light, or by occlusion of other visible objects. Throughout much of the 20 th century,
many of these encounters were initially popularized as anecdotal reports from aviators, who
described events such as: “nearly collided with a UFO,”16 “very unusual flight patterns,”17 “seven
disc-shaped objects hovering in formation around 1500–3000 meters,”18 “lights that changed color
and size,”19 and “each object had a square shape, consisting of two rectangular arrays of what
appeared to be glowing nozzles or thrusters.”20
Among the most widely cited and discussed encounters of this type were captured in a series of
videos recorded by United States Navy fighter pilots flying above the Pacific Ocean off the coast
of San Diego in 2004, and above the Atlantic Ocean off the Eastern Seaboard in 2014-2015. These
videos, which reveal phenomena visible to the pilots using cockpit instrumentation and target
tracking technology, drew massive attention mainly because the highlighted targets appeared to
exhibit flight behaviors inconsistent with known physical principles or technologies, such as the
ability to “remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at
considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion.”21
iv
Famously also the title of a critically acclaimed 1977 movie about such an encounter, directed by Steven Spielberg
and starring Richard Dreyfuss.
244
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
In recent years, human eyewitness reports of UFO sightings have gained even greater credibility
– both with United States military intelligence and with a public eager for evidence to support their
convictions – because the visually observed phenomena have sometimes been simultaneously
detected by optical and radiofrequency sensors operated by the United States government.
Because all such signal detection devices, including human observers, have some non-zero
probability of error, concurrently detected signals greatly increase the likelihood that they have
some basis in fact. In a brief unclassified report that was recently released by United States
intelligence and defense agencies, those agencies formally acknowledged as much: “Most of the
UAP [Unidentified Aerial Phenomena] reported probably do represent physical objects given that
a majority of UAP were registered across multiple sensors, to include radar, infrared, electrooptical, weapon seekers, and visual observation.”21 United States military intelligence argues that
many such objects are likely to have benign explanations, such as airborne clutter (e.g. birds,
balloons, and windborne garbage), natural atmospheric events, or technology development
programs by the United States government or industry, or by foreign adversaries. Nonetheless, in
tones notable for their dispassionate quality, the official United States government report
acknowledges that some eyewitness-observed and instrument-confirmed phenomena, such as
those suggesting advanced transport technologies, lack explanation in terms we understand and
could thus be threats to flight safety and national security.21
By the same logic as corroboration by multiple sensors, there are, not surprisingly, cases in which
human eyewitness reports of extraterrestrial phenomena are directly contradicted by other sensors.
Consider, for example, a widely cited early 20th century event in which a large crowd of people in
Portugal reported witnessing the Sun move around the sky in a manner inconsistent with
established astronomical patterns and principles. This event, known today as the “Miracle of the
Sun,” was the culmination of a series of extraterrestrial sightings (detailed below as a category of
“animated entities”). The same Sun is, of course, potentially visible from half the planet at any
point in time. There are no other human observations or astronomical tracking device data that
corroborate what was said to have been visible in the central Portuguese sky on October 13, 1917.
The strength, breadth, and persistence of belief in the Miracle of the Sun, in spite of clear evidence
to the contrary, is testament to the power of faith. It also highlights a disconnect between
confidence and accuracy of perception. The witnesses in this case – supported by many disciples
to this day – were confident they perceived something that evidently did not happen. This same
phenomenon is pervasive in the literature on eyewitness misidentification of criminal suspects. 22
Witnesses often confidently assert “Yes, that’s him. I’m certain. I will never forget that face.”
But in many such cases, the accused is later exonerated based on objective evidence, such as DNA
genotyping.3 All of which leads inevitably to questions about the validity of perception itself, 23
which I address in the next section on eyewitness reports of animated extraterrestrials.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Animated Entities
The second important category of direct eyewitness reports of extraterrestrial life consists of
encounters with animated beings. The literature on such sightings is abundant and descriptions of
appearance are often richly detailed, as in these various eyewitness reports from 1973 (“The Year
of the Humanoids”):24
They were tall and were dressed in white outfits like monks’ habits, with tight belts around their
waists; on their heads they wore cowls with two points that hung on their shoulders. They seemed
245
II. Psychological Perspectives
to be looking for something on the ground by the walkway between her [the witness’s] house and
a nearby school and had little instruments in their hands. They wore wide, blunt shoes… turned at
once and moved off quickly with very small fast steps.
A catfish-like creature came out from the top of the lower UFO, holding onto a handrail. It had
gray, fish-like skin, a wide mouth, one glowing eye, flipper-like feet and webbing between the legs
like a flying squirrel. It had feather-like objects on its back which opened and closed when it
moved.
The witness saw a “ghost-like” figure floating about 50 feet [15 m] above the ground at 1000 feet
[305 m] distance; it was about 4 feet [120 cm] tall and thin, ‘like a person draped in a close-fitting
sheet.’ It was seen only briefly when she saw a bright light moving about, approaching to within
200 feet [61 m] before going away. It was about 20 feet [6.1 m] in diameter and about 25-30 feet
[7.6-9.1 m] off the ground. Later she saw a ‘little blue-green thing’ about 2 ½ feet [76 cm] tall and
with a face with ‘spiky things at the tops and sides of the head’ look in an open door; it had stumpy
arms (she saw no legs), and quickly disappeared from sight.
These descriptions of alien creatures are so far beyond the ken of normal human experience that
it’s tempting to dismiss them without cause. Before doing so, however, it’s important to recognize
that there exists a domain of culturally protected eyewitness reports of extraterrestrial activity that
possess a similar outlandish quality, but nonetheless underlie the belief systems of hundreds of
millions of people. For example:
[The figure] was covered with a white mantle… all embroidered in gold…more brilliant than the
sun, shedding rays of light, clear and stronger than a crystal glass filled with the most sparkling
water, pierced by the burning rays of the sun… She opened Her hands again as She had done the
two previous months. The light reflecting from them seemed to penetrate into the earth, and we saw
as if into a sea of fire, and immersed in that fire were devils and souls with human form…The sun
had an eccentricity of movement. It was not the scintillation of a celestial body at its highest power.
It was rotating upon itself with exceedingly great speed… The sun, still rotating, had unloosened
itself from the skies and came hurtling towards the earth.
These are excerpts from verbal eyewitness reports initially offered by children, later “confirmed”
by adults, that testify to events experienced in the central Portuguese city of Fátima over the course
of several months in 1917.25 There are fascinating and detailed investigative accounts of this story,
which offer insights into the human tendency to find truth where it satisfies an agenda.26 In short,
the witnesses reported a series of apparitions that consisted of a “lady” in a ball of light resting on
top of an oak tree. In the first instance of this “Marian apparition,”v the lady spoke to the children,
asserted that she was “from heaven,” made a few vague threats about potential for suffering and
God’s comfort, and ordered them to “Pray the Rosary every day, to obtain peace for the world,
and end the war.”25 The lady then floated away into the sky until she disappeared. (The larger
v
Marian apparitions are instances in which a witness reports a distinct percept of what is inferred to be Mary, mother
of Jesus, in the witness’s visual environment. Hundreds of such apparitions have been reported in the past century.
Judgments about authenticity are made by the Catholic Church under the “Norms of the Congregation for Proceeding
in Judging Alleged Apparitions and Revelations,” which were approved by Pope Paul VI in 1978. These Norms
contain several specific “Criteria for Judging, At Least With Probability, The Character of The Presumed Apparitions
or Revelations,” which lend the process an air of objectivity. For example, such apparitions must not be explainable
by natural phenomena. Most applicants are denied.
246
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
context for these events was the 1916 German declaration of war against Portugal and subsequent
attack on Portuguese troops on the Western Front in the north of France.)
Several other apparitions followed, the last of which was apparently witnessed by a large crowd
of people and included the bits about the careening sun (later known as the Miracle of the Sun).
Much of this was initially dismissed by the local Catholic parish and townspeople. The child
witnesses were admonished for lying and the town feared loss of credibility in the eyes of their
countrymen. Ultimately the Catholic Church saw that promotion of the story as a miracle
involving the Virgin Mary – “Our Lady of Fátima” – would help further a pro-Catholic political
agenda in Portugal. The events were deemed “worthy of belief” – an officially designated miracle
– by the diocese in 1930. Two of the original child witnesses were canonized as saints by Pope
Francis in 2017, on the 100th anniversary of the initial apparition, which is a compelling
institutional declaration of belief in the witnesses’ testimony regarding the Marian apparition.
The larger mythical literature of Christianity is filled with such reports of supernatural events,
including a burning bush through which God calls out to Moses, a talking donkey, and several
resurrections from the dead, to name but a few – all of which most people today interpret as creative
and instructional allegory handed down from centuries past, not things that actually happened. But
the Fátima eyewitness reports were made a mere 100 years ago. Aside from the biblical references,
the descriptions of Our Lady of Fátima are qualitatively indistinct from contemporary eyewitness
reports of extraterrestrial life. Their culturally protected status as true accounts of events that defy
our modern understanding of natural laws should give us pause, especially when interpreting the
validity of eyewitness reports of extraterrestrials or, indeed, everyday eyewitness reports of
criminal activity by people.
Why Do People Report Close Encounters with Extraterrestrials?
My larger thesis here is that modern scientific understanding of sensory and mnemonic factors that
are known to influence the validity of eyewitness testimony in criminal cases also provides a
foundation for interpreting eyewitness reports of UFOs and animated extraterrestrials. In
particular, this science offers an understanding of why people report such things, regardless of
whether we actually believe that they are true. The “why” question concerns not simply the causal
factors that led to the experience, but also the witness’s motivation to report.
Liars, Sociopaths, and Divine Intervention
As for criminal eyewitness testimony, some extraterrestrial reports can be dismissed out of hand
simply based on the reporter’s motivation. One such category is deliberate fabrication – a lie or a
hoax. Those cases are neither interesting nor are they thought to be frequent in this literature, but
are commonly exposed by reporting inconsistencies when they do occur.27,vi
Reflecting his concern about motivation, Hynek drew a finer distinction between genuine
witnesses who feel compelled to report an alarming experience, in the way that one might frankly
report witnessing a carjacking, versus what he called “contactee” cases. 15 As Hynek defined them,
“contactee cases are characterized by a ‘favored’ human intermediary [the eyewitness], an almost
always solitary ‘contact man’ who somehow has the special attribute of being able to see UFOs
and to communicate with their crew at will.” Such contactees are not liars, per se, but typically
vi
In criminal cases the deceptive eyewitness is also subject to substantial legal penalties for perjury.
247
II. Psychological Perspectives
people who regard themselves as “chosen” and “messianically charged to deliver the message”
from extraterrestrial visitors. By placing themselves at the center of controversy, these witnesses
are fulfilling a desire for individual relevance and self-meaning, with little regard for critical
thinking or the consequences of their actions.28,29,30 Hynek believed that such cases could be
readily identified by their character, including the fact that many of the witnesses were improbable
repeat offenders. He nonetheless lamented the “opprobrium and ridicule” that contactee cases
brought upon earnest efforts to scientifically investigate extraterrestrial phenomena.
Marian apparitions are arguably a special type of extraterrestrial contactee cases. The specific
testimony and motivations of individuals, such as the child witnesses of Our Lady of Fátima, may
be inscrutable. But the stories themselves have been co-opted by the Roman Catholic Church,
which following Hynek’s logic is “chosen” and “messianically charged to deliver the message.”
Here Hynek’s contactee definition – “a ‘favored’ human intermediary [a priest, in this case] – is
disturbingly apt. While the testament of these contactees fulfills in spades a collective desire by
the faithful for relevance and meaning, the historical motivations of the Church are enough to
dismiss “miracle” apparitions from any serious consideration as extraterrestrial evidence.
What Does it Mean to Be an Extraterrestrial Eyewitness?
What remains after excluding liars, hoaxers, and sociopaths, are instances in which a credible
eyewitness is believed to have honestly reported an experience, however remarkable it may be.
As for the stunned witness of an armed robbery, Hynek noted that:
The experience comes upon these [extraterrestrial] reporters just as unexpectedly and surprises
them…These reporters are in no way ‘special.’ They are not religious fanatics; they are more apt
to be policemen, businessmen, schoolteachers, and other respectable citizens. Almost invariably
their UFO involvement is a one-time experience.15
These are the witnesses we need to account for, which brings us back to the remaining “why”
question, which concerns the sensory and mnemonic origins of the witnessed experience.
In order to sensibly make use of knowledge gained from the scientific study of criminal eyewitness
reports, a few distinctions need to be drawn between the practical features of criminal and
extraterrestrial inquiries. On the surface of things, the problem appears the same: Can witness
reports of a lived experience provide valid information for action by others? In the criminal case,
as practiced under American common law, witnesses are initially asked to provide descriptions of
the witnessed people and events. The following contains excerpts from such testimony presented
by the witness/victim in a recent criminal case in southern California, which reports unexpected
and frightening events similar to many reports of extraterrestrial life:
It was a man, like 20 to 30, like, you know, with a hat on backwards, fitted; whitish shirt, something
on it; and darker arms, but he was white, but he was slightly tanned. And he had something on his
– facial hair, like on the bottom chin…. And the person’s face came on to the left side of mine and
I could feel like the stubble of like a beard or something…. I was like lifted and then like pushed,
like lifted or thrown, like lifted and pushed into the bushes by the stop sign… I remember being told
to stop screaming and I was threatened.vii
vii
This eyewitness testimony resulted in misidentification of an innocent suspect, who was wrongfully convicted by a
San Diego jury and sentenced to life in prison [see reference 3).
248
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
In practice, a suspect is sought who matches such a description and is compatible with other facts
of the case. That suspect is placed in a “lineup,” together with other people (lineup “fillers”) who
are known to be innocent but also match the description of the perpetrator. The lineup is presented
to a witness, who is asked to identify anyone they recognize as the perpetrator. The purpose of the
multi-face lineup configuration is to challenge a witness’s ability to recognize a suspect from
memory and thus get a sense of how certain they are about an identification.22
The extraterrestrial case is obviously different in that the witness’s task is necessarily limited to
reporting descriptions of the witnessed animated entities and events. Suspects are not sought, if
only because the singular nature of the reports and the properties of the observed suggest that they
may be difficult to find and apprehend. (And one might argue that being an animated
extraterrestrial is, in principle, no more threatening than being a rhinoceros, and surely not a
crime.) In the end, testimony consists solely of recalled memories, not recognition or
identification. As such, there is no independent assessment of certainty and – even when we
believe a witness to be credible – there is generally no way to assess the validity of what was
reported. (There are some interesting exceptions to the validation problem, as noted above in the
discussion of corroboration by multiple sensors.) Viewed in this stark light, it might seem
surprising that large segments of the population today believe eyewitness reports of encounters
with extraterrestrial life.1 Knowledge gained from the modern sciences of vision and memory
provide insight into this collective belief, and also offer good reasons to question the accuracy of
reports from otherwise credible people.
THE CONSTRUCTIVE NATURE OF PERCEPTION
Throughout recorded human history, people have been known to regularly communicate
experienced truths to one another using the medium of stories, of which eyewitness testimony is
one common form. Most individuals place great trust in the validity of their own sensory
experiences – “I know what I saw” – and they readily grant the same confidence in the eyewitness
reports of others – “It must be true because she saw it with her own two eyes.” Underlying this
social contract is an implicit belief that confidence is correlated with the accuracy of perception,
and that contract would be fair and useful if we indeed saw the world the way that it exists. The
problem with that assumption, however, is that perception is, by its very nature and for very good
reasons, not an accurate reproduction of the world around us but rather a construction of what we
have predicted it to be.23,32,33
To understand this constructive mandate, consider the physical and biological processes that
underlie visual perception: Light reflected off of objects in the world around us is refracted by the
crystalline lens in the anterior portion of the eye and projected as a two-dimensional image onto
the back surface of the eye – the retina – where luminous energy is converted into neuronal energy.
The goal of vision is to infer, from these projected images, the structure and meaning of objects
and events in the world around us.33 This inferential problem is fundamentally constrained,
however, by the fact that the retinal projection does not contain, indeed cannot contain, all of the
information needed to accurately determine the real-world cause of the image. viii To put it bluntly,
there is an infinite set of real-world environments that can give rise to any specific retinal image.
viii
Vision is a classic “inverse problem” in that there is not sufficient information in the product of the process to
uniquely infer the values of the parameters that gave rise to it.
249
II. Psychological Perspectives
Uncertainty, Bias and Confidence
Some of the informational loss associated with the retinal projection stems simply from
compression of a three-dimensional world onto a two-dimensional image. But vision is also
plagued by noise from many natural sources, some associated with the structure of the visual
environment (e.g., occluding surfaces, glare, shadows), some inherent to the optical and neuronal
processes involved (e.g., refractive error or scattering of light in the eye), some reflecting sensory
content not relevant to the observer’s goals (e.g., a distracting sign or a loud sound). The presence
of such noise leads to uncertainty about what we’re actually looking at, such that any decision we
might make or information that we store in memory has a significant likelihood of being wrong.
Perception overcomes this problem of uncertainty by enriching sensations through reference to
prior knowledge or experience.31,34 From these priors, or “biases,” the human brain infers the
probability distribution of underlying causes and fills in the gaps with what is most likely to be out
there. In a noisy world, learned regularities about the properties of our environment routinely tip
us off to the presence of obstacles, threats and rewards, which enables us to navigate safely and
recognize objects of behavioral import. The visual brain is literally a pattern-finding machine
deployed covertly and with immediacy in response to uncertainty, offering probabilistic clues that
afford us the perceptual certainty needed for survival.
To illustrate this relationship between
uncertainty and bias, consider the abstract
visual pattern that appears in Figure 1.
Upon viewing this pattern, most people
struggle to identify what it represents, what
caused it and what it means. Figure 2
provides an additional bit of information
that instills a bias in the observer’s visual
processing system. When returning to
Figure 1, the knowledge-based bias
introduced by Figure 2 enables the observer
to improvise perceptual structure and
meaning where there formerly was none.
Biases born from experience thus play a Figure 1: To most observers, this image initially appears as a
ubiquitous and essential role in perception. random pattern with no clear figural interpretation. The
This is hardly a new idea. According to the perceptual experience elicited by this stimulus will be
century
experimental markedly different after viewing the pattern shown in Figure 2.
great
19th
psychologist William James: “Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the
object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own head.’’ 31
The German physicist/physiologist Herman von Helmholtz made a similar assertion: “Senseperceptions that are derived from experience are just as powerful as those that are derived from
present sensations.”32 The 21st century version of this concept is captured in Figure 3. Modern
neurophysiology has revealed neuronal cells located in a region of the brain known as the visual
cortex (Figure 3, bottom panel), the activity of which underlies visual perceptual experience.
250
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
These neurons receive inputs from the
retina, which convey immediate
properties of light from the world around
the observer. The same neurons also
receive inputs from another region of the
brain that is the repository of visual
memories, gained from prior experience.
These two inputs – sensory and memory
– normally collaborate to improvise a
coherent perceptual experience.33
This collaborative process is illustrated
conceptually in Figure 3, top panel.
Perceptual experience nearly always falls
somewhere along a continuum of
mixtures of sensation and imagery – an Figure 2: Most observers will experience a clear and
improvisation that facilitates behavioral meaningful percept upon viewing this pattern. After achieving
interaction with the world. The two ends this percept, refer back to Figure 1. The percept of that pattern
of this continuum, however, are should now be markedly different, with an interpretation that is
driven largely by memory of pattern in Figure 2.
problematic states. At one end, pure
sensation is the condition in which a meaningful perceptual interpretation is impossible, generally
because of the novelty and ambiguity of the stimulus. An observer’s initial viewing of Figure 1
leads to that state. This type of perceptual failure is rare in adult visual experience, but it is
debilitating and potentially dangerous when it occurs, because the observer is confronted with a
stimulus for which rational decisions and actions are impossible. At the other end of the
continuum, pure imagery is the hallucinatory condition in which perceptual experience is detached
from all sensory input, which can be entertaining or terrifying, but not at all adaptive. There are
thus strong selective pressures for perceptual improvisation.
Figure 3: Lower Panel. Neurons in visual cortex that represent
perceptual experience receive ascending inputs from the retina
and descending inputs from the memory store. Upper Panel.
Perceptual state at any point in time falls on a continuum between
pure stimulus and pure imagery, depending upon the relative
contributions of sensory and memory signals.
251
Though evolution has thus granted us
the ability to predict and judge based on
prior experience, there is a well-known
hazard associated with this process:
Our biases are sometimes wrong. The
same system that grants certainty of
perceptual experience in the face of
noise is also capable of introducing
content that does not correspond to
external reality. This may come about
because it has been difficult to acquire
reliable information or because
previously
observed
associations
between objects and events are
artifactual or inappropriate to context.
Either way, the result is that perception
is inaccurate and we are none the wiser.
What we perceive is a common-place
II. Psychological Perspectives
illusion: The coat rack looks like an intruder in the hall, or the shrubbery is mistaken for a police
car. Magicians routinely manipulate uncertainty and bias to entertain us with distinct perceptions
of things that didn’t happen or simply don’t exist.
To make matters worse, perceptual inaccuracy born from uncertainty and bias is often associated
with misplaced confidence. Studies of criminal cases demonstrate that while confidence may be
low at the time of the initial lineup identification, confidence grows with reinforcement for the act
of testifying and with receipt of what appears as independent corroborating information – someone
else saw something similar. The cause of this confidence–accuracy disparity is captured by Daniel
Kahneman’s cognitive “illusion of validity”:36
Subjective confidence in a judgment is not a reasoned evaluation of the probability that this judgment
is correct. Confidence is a feeling, which reflects the coherence of the information and the cognitive
ease of processing it. ... Declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has
constructed a coherent story in his mind, not necessarily that the story is true.
What’s Wrong with Our System for Reporting Close Encounters
Our Lady of Fátima and the associated Miracle of the Sun are exemplary of the empirically
predictable perceptual and cognitive problems that plague honest and well-intentioned
eyewitnesses. In this specific case, uncertainty comes from many sources: children have naïve
and impressionable minds and are frightened perhaps by atmospheric events or other unusual
properties of the natural world; biases are induced by imagined demons and well-rehearsed biblical
themes; and confidence is reinforced through the prejudices held by those receiving reports of the
witnessed information – all of which helps the witness craft a coherent story integrated with
bedrock religious beliefs. Similarly, time and again in criminal investigations eyewitnesses
express an initial lack of confidence. Conditions of the witnessed events include uncertainty
caused by, perhaps, terror and bad lighting. Biases come into play about the physical appearance,
character and intent of the perpetrator. And yet witnesses ultimately become resolute because they
have inferred corroboration that enables them to tell a coherent story.22,36,37,38
In the end, as with most eyewitness accounts – of human criminals, extraterrestrial visitors and
their spacecraft, or Mary, mother of Jesus – we don’t really know what happened. In the parlance
of forensic science, we have no access to ground truth. As information processing devices, human
observers have predictable weaknesses and their perceptual reports and cognitive interpretations
are inherently limited by uncertainty, bias and overconfidence.39,40 It is only with recent scientific
understanding of these factors, together with considerable effort and attention directed to the
problem – such as the National Academy of Sciences recommendations regarding the validity of
eyewitness evidence,22 subsequent guidance by both the United States Department of Justice41 and
the International Association of Police Chiefs,42 and both judicial and legislative reforms43,44 – that
the handling of criminal eyewitnesses has evolved to help prevent what is effectively
contamination of the evidence.45
Sadly, none of this science-based reform, or even explicit acknowledgement of sensory and
mnemonic factors known to make eyewitness reports unreliable, has found its way into the world
of testimony on appearance of extraterrestrial life. Because extraterrestrial sightings do not fall
within the purview of the criminal justice system, there are no agreed-upon standards for witness
debriefing, witness cloistering to prevent contamination by other sources of information, record
252
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
keeping, or application of general principles from the scientific method that might improve data
acquisition and interpretation. Moreover, the rapid spread, via the internet, of uncontextualized
stories, photographs and videos feeds a fervid base of UFO enthusiasts – rather than an adjudicative
body of experts – who issue poorly informed proclamations about the existence of alien life
without questioning the measurement conditions under which the evidence was obtained.
Simply put, reports of extraterrestrial sightings are fuel for an unregulated and highly
impressionable system that has more in common with Hollywood celebrity sightings than with the
legal and scientific standards that modern criminal eyewitness testimony now aspires to.43,44 As
much as people believe in extraterrestrial life – and surely they will continue to do so – testimonial
reports of extraterrestrial sightings will continue to elicit scientific skepticism and, more likely, the
opprobrium and ridicule that Hynek bemoaned, unless the community of ufologists recognizes the
inherent biological causes for human error and adopts a scientific approach to mitigate them.
The Eyewitness: Expertise of Everyman
Finally, it will likely not escape the reader that the problem with extraterrestrial sightings is a
microcosm of the larger problem of disinformation in our 21st century world. The deeper cause of
these problems is a sweeping cultural erosion of respect for the value of expertise – the property
of a person “regarded or consulted as an authority on account of special skill, training, or
knowledge.”46 By beaming seemingly unlimited information – unqualified and unsourced though
it may be – to everyone’s desktop, the internet has given us all the illusion that we can be experts
on pretty much anything. Buoyed by this illusion, we then use that same tool as a megaphone to
offer our own “expertise” to anyone who might be curious, through poorly researched, unfiltered
and unvetted blogs, tweets, and posts.
Most of this is noise, of course, but the easily-gained power of faux expertise has long been
strategized by the advertising industry, frequently used for political gain, and is a nuisance in
campaigns for public health. The internet has simply made this disruptive force intractable to the
point where we lose sight of the fact that true expertise is hard to come by, and is of priceless
value. In the domain of science and technology, for example, true expertise is the state in which
someone has acquired a thorough understanding of what things are, how they’ve come to be, how
they function and how well they perform, for what purpose, and how they relate to other things.
All of which requires a prerequisite understanding of history, relevant scientific concepts, and an
appreciation of causality, followed by years of empirical investigation using objective research
methods and careful statistical analyses. Without this actual expertise, we are lost in a world in
which poorly formed opinion masquerades as truth. And because this type of truth is multivarious,
we are doomed to argue about it forever.
The eyewitness is an exemplar of unqualified expertise. The witness is, by definition, holder of a
specific type of information gained through experience. For that reason, they are viewed as
singular experts in what they saw and remember. But because the typical eyewitness has little idea
about the operations, aptitudes, and frailties of biological systems for seeing and remembering,
they are in no position to judge the validity of their accounts. Many eyewitnesses implicitly
recognize this and appropriately qualify their testimony, as did the child witnesses of Marian
apparitions in Fátima. But the rest of us, equally naïve about human biology, beseech them for
certainty, and for our efforts end up with testaments of miracles (or heinous crimes) proffered by
253
II. Psychological Perspectives
people who perceived something but in reality have little idea what actually transpired. The
solution to this, in both criminal and extraterrestrial cases, is to seek counsel from actual experts
who understand how perception and memory work, and how people make decisions based on their
experiences.
Acknowledgements: I am grateful to my colleagues Sergei Gepshtein, John Wixted, and Larry
Squire for feedback on this manuscript and informed discussion of the larger topic of eyewitness
identification. I hold the Conrad T. Prebys Endowed Chair in Vision Research at The Salk Institute
for Biological Studies, which made possible the preparation of this article.
References (all web articles below and on previous pages accessed on December 2, 2022)
1. Kennedy, C. and
M. Lau (2021).
“Pew Research Center Survey.”
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/30/most-americans-believe-inintelligent-life-beyond-earth-few-see-ufos-as-a-major-national-security-threat/
2. Hopkins, B. (1981). Missing Time. New York: Putnam.
3. Albright, T.D. (2017). “Why Eyewitnesses Fail,” Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 114(30), pp. 7758-7764. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1706891114
4. Swami, V., A. Furnham, T. Haubner, S. Stieger and M. Voracek (2009). “The Truth is Out
There: The Structure of Beliefs about Extraterrestrial Life Among Austrian and British
Respondents,” The Journal of Social Psychology, 149(1), pp. 29–43.
https://doi.org/10.3200/SOCP.149.1.29-43
5. Lewis, J.R. (1995). The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds. Albany, New
York: SUNY Press.
6. Habitable Exoplanets Catalog, Planetary Habitability Laboratory, University of Puerto Rico
at Arecibo. http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog
7. Lammer, H., J.H. Bredehöft, A. Coustenis, M.L. Khodachenko, L. Kaltenegger, O. Grasset,
D. Prieur, F. Raulin, P. Ehrenfreund, M. Yamauchi, and J.E. Wahlund (2009). “What
Makes a Planet Habitable?” The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review, 17(2), pp. 181-249.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00159-009-0019-z
8. Kaltenegger, L. and J.K. Faherty (2021). “Past, Present and Future Stars that Can See Earth
as a Transiting Exoplanet,” Nature, 594, pp. 505–507.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03596-y
9. Rampe, E.B., D.F. Blake, T.F. Bristow, D.W. Ming, D.T. Vaniman, R.V. Morris, C.N.
Achilles, S.J. Chipera, S.M. Morrison, V.M. Tu, and A.S. Yen (2020). “Mineralogy and
Geochemistry of Sedimentary Rocks and Eolian Sediments in Gale Crater, Mars: A Review
After Six Earth Years of Exploration with Curiosity,” Geochemistry, 80(2), pp. 125605.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemer.2020.125605
10. Angel, S.M., N.R. Gomer, S.K. Sharma, and C. McKay (2012). “Remote Raman
Spectroscopy for Planetary Exploration: A Review,” Applied Spectroscopy. 66(2), pp. 137150. https://doi.org/10.1366/11-06535.
11. NASA and the Search for Technosignatures, (2018). A Report from the NASA
Technosignatures Workshop. https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1812/1812.08681.pdf
12. Price, D. (2021). “Breakthrough Listen Is Scanning More of Space Than Ever to Try to Find
Intelligent Life,” IEEE Spectrum, 58(2), pp. 34-39.
https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2021.9340120
13. Loeb, A. (2021). “On the Possibility of an Artificial Origin for `Oumuamua.”
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2110.15213.pdf
254
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
14. Desch, S.J., and A.P. Jackson (2021). “1I/`Oumuamua as an N2 Ice Fragment of an Exo Pluto
Surface II: Generation of N2 Ice Fragments and the Origin of `Oumuamua,” Journal of
Geophysical Research (Planets) 126(5) e2020JE006807.
https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JE006706
15. Hynek, J.A. (1972). The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry. Chicago, Illinois: Henry
Regnery Company.
16. “Chiles-Whitted UFO Encounter 1948,” Ancientalienpedia.
https://ancientalienpedia.wordpress.com/2019/05/27/ufo-sightings/
17. “Milton Torres 1957 UFO Encounter,” Ancientalienpedia.
https://ancientalienpedia.wordpress.com/2019/05/27/ufo-sightings/
18. “Finnish Air Force Sighting 1969,” Ancientalienpedia.
https://ancientalienpedia.wordpress.com/2019/05/27/ufo-sightings/
19. “Kaikoura Lights sighting, South Island, New Zealand, 1978,” Ancientalienpedia.
https://ancientalienpedia.wordpress.com/2019/05/27/ufo-sightings/
20. Ryan, M. (2015). The Third Kind: A Compendium of U.F.O. Encounters. Scotts Valley,
California: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform.
21. Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (2021). Office of the Director of
National Intelligence, June 25, 2021.
https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP20210625.pdf
22. National Research Council (2014). Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness
Identification. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.
23. Albright, T.D. (2012). “On the Perception of Probable Things: Neural Substrates of
Associative Memory, Imagery, and Perception.” Neuron, 74(2), 227–245.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2012.04.001
24. Webb, D. (1976). 1973, Year of the Humanoids: An Analysis of the Fall UFO/Humanoid
Wave, 2nd Edition. Evanston, Illinois: Center for UFO Studies.
25. De Marchi, G. (1952). The Immaculate Heart: The True Story of Our Lady of Fátima. New
York: Farrar, Straus and Young.
26. Bennett, J.S. (2012). When the Sun Danced: Myth, Miracles, and Modernity in Early
Twentieth-Century Portugal. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press.
27. Gleiser, M. (2011). “Mysterious Crop Circles: Alien Messages or Hoax?” Cosmos & Culture,
Commentary on Science and Society, National Public Radio.
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2011/06/15/137188796/mysterious-crop-circles-alienmessages-or-hoax
28. Tufekci, Z. (2018). “How Social Media Took Us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump,” MIT
Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/08/14/240325/how-socialmedia-took-us-from-tahrir-square-to-donald-trump/
29. Halperin, D.J. (2020). Intimate Alien: The Hidden Story of the UFO. Redwood City,
California: Stanford University Press.
30. Dewan, W.J. (2006). “‘A Saucerful of Secrets’: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of UFO
Experiences,” Journal of American Folklore, 119(472), pp. 184-202.
https://doi.org/10.2307/4137923
31. James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2. New York: Henry Holt and Co.
32. Helmholtz, H.V. (1867/1924). Treatise on Physiological Optics, Volume 3, J.P.C. Southall,
trans. New York: Optical Society of America.
255
II. Psychological Perspectives
33. Albright, T.D. (2015). “Perceiving,” Daedalus, 144(1), pp. 22–41.
https://doi.org/10.1162/DAED_a_00315
34. Mill, J.S. (1865). Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy and of the Principal
Philosophical Questions Discussed in His Writings. New York: Longmans, Green, Reader
and Dyer.
35. Albright, T.D., and W.A. Freiwald (2021). “High-Level Visual Processing: From Vision to
Cognition,” In: E.R. Kandel, J.D. Koester, S.H. Mack, and S.A. Siegelbaum (eds.)
Principles of Neural Science, 6th Edition, pp. 564-581. New York: McGraw-Hill.
36. Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
37. Smalarz, L., and G.L. Wells (2013). “Eyewitness Certainty as a System Variable,” In: B.L.
Cutler (ed.) Reform of Eyewitness Identification Procedures, pp. 161–177. Washington,
D.C.: American Psychological Association.
38. Roediger, H.L., J.T. Wixted, and K.A. DeSoto (2012). “The Curious Complexity Between
Confidence and Accuracy in Reports from Memory.” In: L. Nadel and W.P. SinnottArmstrong (eds.) Memory and Law. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
39. Green, D.M., and J.A. Swets (1966). Signal Detection Theory and Psychophysics. New York:
John Wiley & Sons Inc.
40. Lindsay, P.H., and D.A. Norman (1972). Human Information Processing: An Introduction to
Psychology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Academic Press.
41. US Department of Justice (2017). Eyewitness Identification Procedures for Conducting Photo
Arrays. https://www.justice.gov/file/923201/download
42. IACP Law Enforcement Policy Center (2016). Eyewitness Identification: Model Policy
Concepts & Issues.
https://www.theiacp.org/sites/default/files/2018-08/EyewitnessIDPolicy2016.pdf
43. Albright, T.D., and J.S. Rakoff (2020). “A Clearer View: Impact of the National Academy of
Sciences Report on Eyewitness Identification,” Judicature, 4(1), pp. 20-29.
https://judicature.duke.edu/articles/a-clearer-view-the-impact-of-the-national-academyof-sciences-report-on-eyewitness-identification/
44. Albright, T.D., and B.L. Garrett (2022). “The Law and Science of Eyewitness Identification,”
Boston University Law Review, 102, pp. 511-629.
https://www.bu.edu/bulawreview/files/2022/03/ALBRIGHT-GARRETT.pdf
45. Wixted, J. T., and L. Mickes (2022). “Eyewitness Memory is Reliable, but the Criminal Justice
System is Not.” Memory, 30(1), pp. 67-72.
https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2021.1974485
46. Oxford University Press (2022). “Expertise,” Oxford English Dictionary. OED Online:
Oxford University Press.
256
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Close Encounters of the “Other” Kind: On the Psychology of “Alien
Abductions”
Jorge Conesa-Sevilla
The subject is nothing other than what slides in a chain of signifiers, whether he
knows which signifier he is the effect of or not.
Jacques M.E. Lacan
Abstract: Even within the vast affiliation area that is meant by “professional psychologists,”
diverse perspectives of what constitutes “truth” are found in reference to a willingness to accept,
at face value, the phenomenological reality of the “client.” This sympathetic and sometimes
necessary approach may at times obscure the complexity of the human mind, its capacity for
creative confabulation, on both sides. That is, it is assumed that a number of professional
psychologists pursue their degrees and finish their training holding onto preferred biases: antiscience, pro-“spirit,” pro-UFO. Thus, a closer examination of what these interactions might be
about, and their role in prolonging a narrative of alien “otherness,” might elucidate these processes
from an evidence-based perspective. Not all “abduction” accounts can be explained; however,
some may contain enough evidential regularities suggesting explainable mechanisms.
Keywords: False memories, Imagination inflation, “Otherness,” Isolated Sleep Paralysis,
Dunning-Kruger Effect.
Introduction
Even when approaching the validity of witness testimony as it pertains to the “UFO phenomenon”
from various and scientifically-grounded psychological perspectives (e.g., Sensation and
Perception, Cognition, Human Factors, Forensic Psychology, Neurocognition), it would be too
simplistic to contextually group extant experiences (all kinds) under one theoretical and empirical
umbrella. For example, witnessing unidentified flying objects (UFOs) during daytime and
nighttime conditions, claiming to have seen “aliens” out-of-doors, asserting that “aliens” were
present in one’s bedroom, and furthermore, claiming that subjects were rendered immobile and
taken elsewhere for medical examinations (reported while under hypnosis and also during casual
conversation) are all different areas of theoretical and empirical interest.
Making a claim about the veracity of one of the above situations (several people saw, in daylight,
unusually-looking reflective spheres and videotaped them), and afterwards, extrapolating these
facts to imagine alien visitations and other UFO-preferred lore, is bad inference.
Psychologically important, however, is the fact that the primary dualities found in the UFO and
“alien visitation” experiences and conclusions are the significations bad-good, doomtranscendence, damnation-salvation. As in the opening quote from Lacan,1 much of what humans
experience is predicated upon ontological and experiential categories ubiquitous to our species.
Signification is a never-ending chain of meaning motifs, central and peripheral, that are necessary
for framing our realities (individual and collective).
1
Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan (Seminar XX: 50).
257
II. Psychological Perspectives
The specific pre- and postdormital experiential circumstances of subjects claiming that they were
“abducted,” while rendered immobile and taken elsewhere for medical examinations by “aliens,”
is particularly interesting in light of confounding and converging variables such as our human
predisposition toward nocturnal-affect vulnerability,2,3 the likelihood of confusing dynamic and
varying consciousness states during sleep,4 and the incidence, in a percentage of the human
population, of Isolated Sleep Paralysis (ISP), to name just a few factors, and obligates serious
researchers to consider plausible and testable hypotheses.5
Whether part of clinical or empirical work, little is gained, and some harm could be done, by
accepting, unqualified, the subjective report of an obviously frightened individual, that
extraterrestrials or government agents are the primary cause of a set of experiences that might be
otherwise explained. An Occam’s razor approach to sifting through explanations, although not
fool-proof, might be a better protocol for evaluating these uncanny experiences.
Isolated Sleep Paralysis (ISP) and False Memories
While conducting long-term longitudinal studies on Isolated Sleep Paralysis (ISP) as well as
hundreds of subject interviews, the author collected a wide range of first-hand descriptions of what
it is to experience a variety of dream or dream-like experiences and their effects on psychological
well-being.6,7
The uncanny experience of the feeling of a presence (FOP), for example, a common and
concomitant report to ISP events, is of interest as an explanation for stories of ghosts and “aliens,”
particularly when dream material might continue in some form minutes after waking up.8
Additionally, one of the canonical experiences reported by so-called “alien abductees” include
elements of body paralysis and levitation, being deposited on cold, metal tables, seeing creatures,
“aliens,” that are of various colors and sizes (tall, short, green, blue, gray), bright lights, and both
pleasurable and painful medical examinations.
That the above experiences, taken as a whole or in isolation, depict distorted perspectives of what
children or adults might experience in actual human medical rooms, deserves closer attention,
particularly when other known conditions and experiences such as ISP and FOP have been
scientifically studied. Interestingly, when ISP and FOP events are triggered under laboratory
conditions, no ghosts or “aliens” are seen.
Admittedly, even when well-intentioned professionals but non-experts attempt to define sleep
paralysis in reference to other topics, some factual errors are committed as in this example:
2
Boivin et al, “Complex Interaction of the Sleep-wake Cycle and Circadian Phase Modulates Mood in Healthy
Subjects,” pp. 145–152.
3
Wirz-Justice and Benedetti, “Perspectives in Affective Disorders: Clocks and Sleep,” pp. 346–365.
4
Conesa-Sevilla, Wrestling with Ghosts.
5
Brugger, Regard and Landis, “Unilaterally Felt “Presences”: The Neuropsychiatry of One’s Invisible
Doppelgänger,” pp. 114-122.
6
Conesa-Sevilla, “Geomagnetic, Cross-cultural and Occupational Faces of Sleep Paralysis: An Ecological
Perspective,” pp. 105-111.
7
Conesa-Sevilla, “Isolated Sleep Paralysis and Lucid Dreaming: Ten-year Longitudinal Case Study and Related
Dream Frequencies, Types, and Categories,” pp. 132-143.
8
Conesa-Sevilla, “Infra-dreaming and Dream-awake States,” pp. 26-29.
258
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Sleep paralysis is a common non-pathological sleep disorder. It occurs in the intermediary stage
between sleep and full consciousness and can last anywhere from a few seconds up to several
minutes. It is often characterized by symptoms such as auditory and visual hallucinations,
immobility, a sense of presence, fear, a feeling of pressure on the chest, or the feeling of floating.9
To reiterate and clarify, a distinction must be made between Isolated Sleep Paralysis, occurring in
the neuro-typical population without other symptoms and sleep paralysis occurring in narcolepsy.
Their phrase (above), “the intermediary stage between sleep and full consciousness” is a nontechnical description lacking medical precision which might give rise to further ambiguity and
misunderstandings. Muscle atonia—paralysis—is a normal neurological consequence of entering
rapid eye movement sleep (R.E.M.). In fact, every human (mammals) who falls asleep and enters
REM sleep is “paralyzed.” The puzzle is why a small percentage of the human population, from
time to time, and under certain conditions, remains “self-aware” and thus witness one step in a
sequence of cascading events beginning with the random firing of cells in the pontine brainstem.
The above situations (open-ended imagination and errors in describing sleep proper) may get even
more confusing when other so-called “experts” come to the assistance of “abductees,” employing
a variety of questionable or unreliable methodologies, like hypnosis, which almost guarantees that
one but no other narrative will prevail.10
The work of American memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus and her collaborators has been
instrumental in providing a parallel empirical course from which to examine claims of “alien
abduction.”11,12 Her play-by-play deconstructive analysis of the questionable work of individuals
like Budd Hopkins and John Mack is a great example of the scientific rigor and critical thinking
approaches that one should expect from any person who calls her/himself a mental health
professional. From misperception, to misinterpretation, to cobbling together “tall tales,” the mythmaking capabilities of the human mind cannot be underestimated.13
Considering the probability of singly determined and/or co-occurring factors (our human primate
evolutionary propensity to feel anxious and insecure at nighttime, sleep deprivation for any number
of reasons, anxiety, a consistent number of individuals who occasionally experience ISP, FOPs,
the actual adulteration and modification of memories afterwards, and the possibility that some
individuals have very vivid imaginations), an evidence-based, critical thinking approach to the
“alien abduction” phenomenon is necessary, if for no other reason than to expand the work of
forensic psychology when it comes to empirical processes related to witness testimony.
Evaluating statements about the veracity of something as disturbing and anxiety-producing as an
“alien abduction,” where perceived injury is also reported and while naming “suspects,” requires
the most sophisticated and up-to-date tools used during forensic discovery and the professional
9
Latorre and Vellisca, 2021, p. 1.
Dilani, “Kidnapped by UFOs? The True Story of Alien Abductions,” PBS/NOVA documentary.
11
Loftus and Hoffman, “Misinformation and Memory: The Creation of Memory,” pp. 100–104.
12
Loftus and Pickrell, “The Formation of False Memories,” pp. 720–725.
13
Conesa-Sevilla, “Medieval Thinking (MT) in the 21st Century: Crystal Balls, Black Swans, and Darwin’s
Finches in the Time of Corona.”
10
259
II. Psychological Perspectives
acumen to see these investigations through. Kidnapping, physical injury, and sexual violence are,
after all, crimes. Why would an artist (e.g., Elliot Budd Hopkins)14 without forensic or
psychological training be called to investigate these “crimes” unless his work took place in the
context of an ongoing criminal investigation and under the guidance of forensic experts?
States of Consciousness and the “Alien Abduction” Experience
In the literature about so-called “alien abductions,” one rarely (if at all) reads a complete
presentation about how the richness of conscious experience (while awake or asleep) might
contribute to the misperceiving and/or misreporting of uncanny phenomena.
Even after five decades of thorough sleep research does one read pointed accounts that would
explain “uncanny experiences” of the “other kind.” That is, and common to other noetic gulfs
between current and up-to-date science and popular descriptions of various phenomena, the naive
public is often carried away by mostly impressionistic and emotion-laden “explanations.”
As Figure 1 shows, the many experiences normally oversimplified as “sleep” can be described in
reference to how these may “feel like” being awake, and thus, under this assumption, potentially
misreported as uncanny phenomena that feels objectively “real” to subjects. In the context of
archival sleep research conducted at the Inselspital Universitätsspital, in Bern, Switzerland (20042006), the author employed a 103-item questionnaire in order to better ascertain the many
dimensions of consciousness states while under “sleep.” Recollections of dream material and
events were evaluated according to three factorial axes: 1) the degree to which a dream experience
felt like “the real world” of being awake (cognitive embeddedness); 2) the degree to which
perceptual experience was exact, similar to (or not at all like) everyday awake consciousness
(perceptual acuity); and 3) the degree to which subjects were able to function in their “dream
realities” as they normally would in everyday life (functional control). For example, if a subject
reported that “this did not feel like a dream at all” because they interacted within an experiential
set as if they were awake, saw vivid colors, heard people talk, walked, flew, or were paralyzed,
then they would score high on this particular questionnaire. A high score correlated with vivid
dreams, lucid dreaming, and/or ISP, FOPs and so-called out-of-the-body experiences.
One can, as easily, draw a similar “consciousness cube” for describing the phenomenology of
“being awake” and perhaps then one can appreciate that our “sense of reality” is complex and everchanging--very dynamic. Given the ease with which any person could be persuaded to accept a
“false memory” (previous section) or delude him/herself into thinking that aliens truly kidnapped
him/her, and assert these “facts” with a high degree of confidence (see next section), then it is clear
that much in-depth psychological forensics must take place before we accept these reports at face
value.
Equally, because these events seem very real to these subjects, one must, again, also have a degree
of compassion and sympathize with their real-felt emotions. However, to take a person in this state
and confuse him/her with improbable stories about alien abduction seems misguided at best and
cruel or exploitative at worst.
14
Dilani, “Kidnapped by UFOs? The True Story of Alien Abductions,” PBS/NOVA documentary.
260
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Imagination Inflation, the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and Pseudo-Profound Bullshit
To reiterate the introduction, reports that belong to UFO lore are of two kinds: public and private.15
The former includes situations, for example, where several people see, in daylight, unusuallylooking reflective spheres and videotape them. Weather scientists, oculists, and video technology
experts may be consulted in order to verify the authenticity of these public claims. The so-called
“alien abduction” experience is private. Thus, private and uncanny experiences occurring close to
or during bedtime in private quarters are claims that are difficult if not impossible to verify, and
their evidential merit must come under more rigorous examination.
Private experiences, in the words of Tedeschi16 refer to:
…mental events in one person that are inherently unobservable by another person. The actor is
viewed as having a choice of whether or not to reveal these private events to others, that is, to make
them public. A related question is whether there are cognitive events that cannot be “observed” by
the person within whom they occur (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). Psychoanalysts have long held that
most of mental life is unconscious (e.g., Freud, 1938).
The last sentence of his quote alludes to cognitive biases and epistemological propensities that
may elude many observers—an inner subjectivity that requires highly-trained mental professionals
to untangle and then assess. To reiterate, the ease with which any of us may reconstruct an event
falsely, naturally, and without the intent to deceive, is evident in the work of Elizabeth Loftus and
other researchers.17
15
Tedeschi, “Private and Public Experiences and the Self,” 1986, p. 2.
Ibid, “Private and Public Experiences and the Self.”
17
See Garry et al, “Imagination Inflation: Imagining a Childhood Event Inflates Confidence that it Occurred,” pp.
208–214; Loftus, “Imagining the Past,” pp. 584–587; Strange and Hayne, “Creating False Memories for Events that
16
261
II. Psychological Perspectives
In particular, the process of imagination inflation14, 15 and a related construct, the Dunning-Kruger
Effect18 might, alone or in tandem, explain why experiencers of so-called “alien abductions” and
their enablers fall prey to a sense of overconfidence in the absence of the necessary training
required to evaluate these experiences (their own knowledge or lack thereof). To simplify both
constructs, their very sense of overconfidence makes them blind to their inability to judge their
own incompetence.18
Additionally, there is a persistent but false folk psychological belief that only the subject is
qualified to gaze accurately by leaps of faith and/or intuition into the inner workings of his/his own
psychology. A person who is justly terrified by these assaults, but wants nothing to do with a
critical-thinking-oriented psychologist, may end up embracing the most cockamamie notion that
could explain hishis experiences. Under these circumstances, they may fall victim to pseudoprofound/scientific “bullshit.”19 In addition to the individual differences mentioned in section one,
there might be psychological propensities in certain individuals to prefer unorthodox explanations
or be consistently credulous across several other domains.20
To add to the preceding conditions, one must include any pseudo-scientific idea or proposal that
is neither recognized by most experts in a given field nor adheres to standard empirical protocols.
For example, to the extent that the practice of hypnosis, by its own methodology and nature,
requires a willingness to take on suggestions, then it may not be the appropriate method with which
to examine “alien abduction” claims. Hypnotic techniques and inductions may be warranted under
highly protocolized and supervised conditions but wantonly inadequate and even harmful under
unrestricted uses.
Related to the above, it is also assumed that a number of professional psychologists pursue their
degrees and finish their training while holding onto preferred biases: anti-science, pro-“spirit,”
pro-UFO. Thus, a closer examination of their professional motivations and their role in prolonging
these uncanny narratives might not only elucidate the enabling process of the “abduction”
narrative, but may even be helpful in understanding how professional credentialing and
recertification allows, in some states and countries, the continuance of certain practitioners to exert
their misguided guidance. This is not to say, in all fairness, that most psychologists would be
inclined to treat an “alien abduction” narrative as objectively real.
To be fair and compassionate, one must always understand that the strangeness and intensity of
the so-called “alien abductions” may easily drive experiencers to seek out equally uncanny
explanations when the answer might be, if not simpler, at least within the purview of
neuropsychiatry and neurobiology—sleep science.
Occurred Before Versus After the Offset of Childhood Amnesia,” pp. 475–484; and Newcombe et al., “Remembering
Early Childhood: How Much, How, and Why (or Why Not),” pp. 55–58.
18
Kruger and Dunning, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence
Lead to Inflated Self-assessments,” pp. 1121–34.
19
See Pennycook et al., “On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-profound Bullshit,” pp. 549–563; Evans and
Mlakar, “Individual Differences in Receptivity to Scientific Bullshit,” pp. 401-412; and Čavojová and Jurkovič,
“Expanding the Bullshit Research Out of Pseudo-transcendental Domain,” online link.
20
Evans and Mlakar, “Individual Differences in Receptivity to Scientific Bullshit,” pp. 401-412.
262
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Conclusion
Human psychology is complex but not, ultimately, recondite. Science-based discoveries occurring
in the last sixty years have shown and suggest that even though human psychology is far more
complex than the ancients ever imagined, nevertheless its underlying computational organics are
open to study and control, and more so every decade. No amount of philosophical conjecture and
try-as-you-go impromptu “techniques” can replace exacting scientific methodologies. That does
not mean, on the other hand, that anything-goes “science” or the easy juxtaposition of a known
construct in one area (e.g., quantum entanglement) can be readily adopted in another (e.g.,
consciousness) in order to explain a third and absurd idea (e.g., spiritual evolution).
In the introduction it was argued that primary dualities found in the UFO and “alien visitation”
experiences and interpretations within, revisit universal categories and tropes of bad-good, doomtranscendence, damnation-salvation—that this is psychologically important. To invoke Lacan
once more, the phenomenological subject is a pawn of the dynamics of “otherness,” his own, and
those of others. This vast dynamic semiotic space is constantly shifting.
Much of the UFO lore directly addresses these universal categories or alludes to them. An “alien
abductee” may come to believe that no matter how disagreeable her/his experiences might be,
she/he is at the center of something grand. As in the case of many mythological conceptions, a
virgin is taken by a powerful god in order to bear his demi-god child. That this violation was
against her will pales in comparison with being chosen for such a momentous and mythical
occasion. Godlike characters, enacting much of human psychology, equally signify “doom” and
“transcendence,” “damnation,” and “salvation.” The delusion enabler him/herself may willingly
collude in the recurring fantasy: Gods-meet-humans under many guises and across time, a
Heaven’s Gate tragedy ready to happen.21
Underfoot, however, a discoverable synaptic malfunction, a missed sleep sequence, and a
representation-prone brain confabulate and collate an uncanny narrative that satisfies cultural
trends or ideas about extraterrestrials. That any of these explanations, and more, are not first and
duly investigated suggests that something about the idea of “the celestial visitation” is both alluring
and enduring as part of our collective mythology. And once free to roam in our imaginations any
combination of these narratives is as good as any: shamans and UFOs, gremlins and
malfunctioning airplanes, Jesus and the little green men, or reptilian civilizations presently and
concurrently existing in a hollow Earth.
The average citizen, one dares to venture, lives unaware that his/her perception of the color “red”
is an invention, and that in fact, all his/her experiences are brain representations, a virtual reality.
That the naïve and uneducated experiencer is not privy to the wet mechanics of her/his
computational machine, the human brain, is understandable. That well-meaning but inept enablers
add fodder to delusions is problematic, but still understandable, if they are as naïve as their own
“clients.” That manipulative professionals, knowingly, take advantage of naïve folks in order to
be under an otherwise elusive spotlight is exploitative and could be considered criminal.
21
“Heaven’s Gate: A Timeline,” online link.
263
II. Psychological Perspectives
Given the scientific fact that human brains represent, infer, and make sense of the world as best
they can, it is prudent to seek answers within the dynamics of cerebral circuits rather than far away
and yonder in the stars.
Acknowledgments: My gratitude to C. L. B., J. N., and W.D. for their feedback.
Bibliography
Boivin, D.B., C.A. Czeisler, D.J. Dijk, F. Duffy, S. Folkard, D.S. Minors, and J.M. Waterhouse.
“Complex Interaction of the Sleep-wake Cycle and Circadian Phase Modulates Mood in
Healthy Subjects.” Archives of General Psychiatry 54(2) (1997): pp. 145–152.
Brugger, Peter, M. Regard, and T. Landis. “Unilaterally Felt “Presences”: The Neuropsychiatry of
One’s Invisible Doppelgänger.” Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology, and Behavioral
Neurology 9(2), (1999): pp. 114-122.
Čavojová, V., I. Brezina, and M. Jurkovič. “Expanding the Bullshit Research Out of PseudoTranscendental Domain.” Current Psychology (2020): 1-10. Accessed May 21, 2021. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-00617-3
Conesa-Sevilla, Jorge. Wrestling with Ghosts: A Personal and Scientific Account of Sleep
Paralysis. Bloomington, Indiana: Random House/Xlibris, 2004.
_____. “Geomagnetic, Cross-cultural and Occupational Faces of Sleep Paralysis: An Ecological
Perspective. Sleep and Hypnosis: A Journal of Clinical Neuroscience and Psychopathology 2(3), (2000): pp. 105-111.
_____. “Isolated Sleep Paralysis and Lucid Dreaming: Ten-year Longitudinal Case Study and
Related Dream Frequencies, Types, and Categories.” Sleep and Hypnosis: A Journal of
Clinical Neuroscience and Psychopathology 4(4), (2002): pp. 132-143.
_____. “Infra-dreaming and Dream-awake States.” Sleep and Hypnosis: A Journal of Clinical
Neuroscience and Psychopathology 18(1), (2016): pp. 26-29.
_____. “Medieval Thinking (MT) in the 21st Century: Crystal Balls, Black Swans, and Darwin’s
Finches in the Time of Corona.” The International Journal of Ecopsychology 1(1), (2020):
Article # 7.
Dilani, D. (Director/Producer) (Feb 27, 1996). “Kidnapped by UFOs? The True Story of Alien
Abductions.” DVD. PBS/NOVA: Season 23, Episode 6.
Evans, A., W. Sleegers, and Z. Mlakar. “Individual Differences in Receptivity to Scientific
Bullshit.” Judgment and Decision Making 15(3), (2020): pp. 401-412.
Garry, M., Elizabeth F. Loftus, C. Manning, and S. Sherman. “Imagination Inflation: Imagining a
Childhood Event Inflates Confidence that it Occurred.” Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
3(2), (1996): pp. 208–214.
“Heaven’s Gate: A Timeline,” The San Diego Union Tribune, March 18, 2007. Accessed Feb. 20,
2022.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/local-history/sd-me-heavens-gate20170316-story.html
Kruger, Justin, and David Dunning. “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in
Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-assessments.” Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 77(6), (1999): pp. 1121–34.
Latorre, José, and María Vellisca. “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Suggestibility, and
Dissociation Related to Alleged Alien Abductions.” EXPLORE: The Journal of Science &
Healing (New York). 2021 Oct 21:S1550-8307(21)00218-4.
264
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and
Knowledge (Encore Edition, Book XX). Edited by Jacques Alain Miller and translated by
Bruce Fink. New York: W. W. and Norton (1st Ed.), 1999.
Loftus, Elizabeth F. “Imagining the Past.” The Psychologist 14(11), (2001): pp. 584–587.
Loftus, Elizabeth F., and H.G. Hoffman. “Misinformation and Memory: The Creation of
Memory.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 118(1), (1989): pp. 100–104.
Loftus, Elizabeth F., and J.E. Pickrell. “The Formation of False Memories.” Psychiatric Annals
25(12), (1995): pp. 720–725.
Newcombe, N., A. Drummey, N. Fox, E. Lai, and W. Ottinger-Alberts. “Remembering Early
Childhood: How Much, How, and Why (or Why Not).” Current Directions in
Psychological Science 9(2), (2000): pp. 55–58.
Pennycook, Gordon, J.A. Cheyne, N. Barr, D.J. Koehler, and J.A. Fugelsang. “On the Reception
and Detection of Pseudo-profound Bullshit.” Judgment and Decision Making 10(6),
(2015): pp. 549–563.
Strange, D., K. Wade, and H. Hayne. “Creating False Memories for Events that Occurred Before
Versus After the Offset of Childhood Amnesia.” Memory 16(5), (2008): pp. 475–484.
Tedeschi J.T. “Private and Public Experiences and the Self.” In Public Self and Private Self. Edited
by R.F. Baumeister. New York: Springer, (1986).
Wirz-Justice, A., and F. Benedetti. “Perspectives in Affective Disorders: Clocks and Sleep.”
European Journal of Neuroscience 51(1) (2019): pp. 346–365.
265
II. Psychological Perspectives
Dissociation and Alien Abduction Allegation
Olivier Dodier
Abstract: In this chapter, I propose a description of the links between dissociation and alien
abduction allegation. To do so, I first describe the controversies surrounding the etiology of
dissociation to conclude that the sociocognitive model, which acknowledges social, cognitive, and
cultural variables as factors in the development of dissociation, probably best explains the
relationship between the two central concepts of the chapter. For example, it appears that the
common correlates of dissociation and alien abduction claims are fantasy proneness and sleep
disturbances, particularly sleep paralysis, which is often accompanied by visual hallucinations that
can be interpreted as the presence of aliens. In conclusion, the link between dissociation and alien
abduction allegation appears to be indirect, but a measure of dissociation in people reporting such
experiences could serve as a good starting point to investigate the genuineness of the claims.
Keywords: Alien abduction allegation, Dissociation, False memory, Fantasy proneness, Sleep
paralysis
Introduction
According to NASA, our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains at least 100 billion stars. The observable
universe is estimated to contain at least 100 billion galaxies. The probability that in the universe,
or even in the Milky Way, a solar system other than our own hosts a planet that could support life
is highly credible. However, it seems less credible that these hypothetical alien life forms have
arrived on Earth without our knowledge. Even further, there is no credible evidence of such an
invasion that we know of. Thus, it seems even less credible that people have been abducted by
aliens; insofar as to prove that they were abducted by aliens, one would already have to prove that
the aliens reached planet Earth, which also requires evidence of the existence of aliens. The more
unproven phenomena there are between an assertion and the phenomenon that is the subject of the
assertion, the less credible the assertion is.
One piece of evidence may be testimony. The fact is that there are people who claim to have been
abducted by aliens. Is this level of evidence sufficient to conclude that (i) aliens exist, (ii) they
have come to Earth, and (iii) they are abducting people from Earth? Certainly not. However, what
is characteristic of this kind of testimony is that the people sometimes seem so sure of themselves
that it is credible that they are intimately convinced of this. In fact, it seems that many people
report alien abductions. Work conducted in the U.S. in the 1990s has documented tens of thousands
of reports of such experiences (see Appelle et al., 2014). However, the popularity of an apparent
phenomenon does not make it true (i.e., argumentum ad populum). It is then necessary to look for
the most parsimonious explanation in the light of fundamental epistemological principles related
to the development of scientific theories.
Of course, given the lack of evidence for the very existence of aliens, we might consider that the
most efficient and simplest explanation would be lies or deception. The problem with this
explanation is that it is based on the premise that such experiences are necessarily false, and that
they can only be the product of a desire to deceive others, without even knowing what the purpose
would be. Of course, some people may make up such stories. But if, as mentioned earlier, there
266
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
are tens of thousands, if not more, allegations of alien abduction, it is reasonable to look for
parsimonious alternative explanations. It is even more necessary to take these claims seriously
because people who claim to have been abducted by aliens appear to have similar
psychophysiological responses to the abduction event as highly traumatized people (McNally et
al., 2004). This result suggests that these individuals are truthful and genuinely convinced that they
have been abducted by aliens. Among the explanations are those of psychological phenomena and
psychopathological disorders. Among the phenomena that can induce the impression of having
been abducted by aliens, or even having a specific and precise memory of it, we can mention, for
example, false memories, but also broader psychological conditions such as dissociation, which is
the subject of interest in this chapter.
Dissociation is the subject of much debate in the literature as to its etiology, and these debates are
of importance to the topic. Indeed, the sociocognitive etiological model of dissociation points to
numerous correlates that can be linked more or less directly to experiences such as alien abduction.
For this reason, the sociocognitive model of dissociation will be described, and its links with
fantasy proneness, false memory and unusual sleep experiences will be reviewed in detail, since
these are the most relevant correlates for connecting dissociation to alien abduction allegations.
What is Dissociation?
Dissociation is a rather paradoxical psychological concept. Although complicated to define on a
scientific and clinical level, and despite the number of points of ignorance about it, it is the subject
of much popularity in the media and is often presented in a misleading way in movies such as
“Fight Club” or, more recently, “Split.” The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013) describes dissociation as
a “disruption and/or discontinuity in the normal integration of consciousness, memory, identity,
emotion, perception, body representation, motor control and behavior” (p. 291). More precisely, it
suggests that dissociation may occur in “every area of psychological functioning” (p. 291). As
with many psychological phenomena, dissociation can affect anyone, but can occur to an extent
that makes it pathological, although the distinction between pathological and non-pathological
dissociation is not always easy to make (e.g., Giesbrecht et al., 2008). In addition, dissociation can
be expressed in many different ways: sudden loss of attention and failure to integrate information
into memory, fantasizing, daydreaming, being absorbed in content (e.g., a movie). In its
pathological dimension, the DSM-5 indicates that dissociation can lead to amnesia (i.e.,
dissociative amnesia), the development of several identities (i.e., dissociative identity disorder), or
the feeling of being in an unreal environment, outside one’s own body and thoughts and actions
(i.e., depersonalization/derealization disorder). The prevalence of these disorders is relatively high,
since, for example, the DSM-5 states that 1.8% of the population has suffered from dissociative
amnesia, 1.5% from dissociative identity disorder, and about 2% from
depersonalization/derealization (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Thus, these disorders
probably affect several million people, making dissociation and its disorders a public health issue.
One of the characteristics of dissociation is that it can also occur as a symptom of other disorders.
For example, the DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) lists dissociative amnesia as a
potential symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. The manual also lists
depersonalization/derealization as a symptom of panic disorder. What will then distinguish
dissociative features as symptoms or markers of a dissociative disorder will be the presence or
267
II. Psychological Perspectives
absence of other symptoms that are either characteristic of another disorder or characteristic of a
dissociative disorder. In any case, dissociation in its pathological dimension is extremely complex
and the cause (or consequence) of many comorbidities, making the need for differential diagnoses
greater. Recent work has even highlighted the transdiagnostic nature of dissociation in that it may
be a risk factor for all forms of psychopathology (Ellickson-Larew et al., 2020). Another
supporting datum is that the prevalence of dissociation in clinical populations (i.e., populations
diagnosed with a psychopathological disorder) is much higher than that in the general population—
i.e., ranging from 12 to 35% in clinical populations (depending on the study, e.g., Lipsanen et al.,
2004; Ross et al., 2002), versus 4% in the general population (Lipsanen et al., 2004).
To sum up, dissociation is a major point in the psychological literature that is quite difficult to
define: it may refer to everyday and totally benign phenomena, it may be symptomatic of
psychopathological disorders, but it may also constitute a psychopathological disorder in itself.
The complexity then lies in the identification of potential pathological forms and in the correct
interpretation of the symptoms.
The controversy of the Etiology of Dissociation
Historically, there have been two opposing etiological models in the literature to explain how
dissociation develops, as well as to account for the tendency of some people to experience more
or less dissociative experiences. As we shall see, it seems that today a reconciliation of the models
is possible, and the purpose of this section is not to take sides with either model. However, we will
see later that one of the two models seems better suited to explain how dissociative experiences
can lead individuals to consider as credible memories of being abducted by aliens.
The first model is the Trauma Model (TM) of dissociation. This model suggests a causal link
between aversive and traumatic experiences in childhood and a high propensity to have
dissociative experiences in later life and even to develop dissociative disorders, such as
dissociative amnesia or dissociative identity disorder (e.g., Brand et al., 2018; Dalenberg et al.,
2012). This model is based on the finding in a 2012 meta-analysis (Dalenberg et al., 2012) that a
relationship is often found between scales measuring dissociation (e.g., Dissociative Experience
Scale; Bernstein & Putnam, 1986) and childhood trauma or traumatic treatments. According to
proponents of the TM, this link between trauma and dissociation is sufficiently strong that it has
been found in studies of both clinical populations (i.e., diagnosed with a dissociative disorder) and
the general population (i.e., not diagnosed with such a disorder but who may express varying
degrees of dissociation). This model is therefore historical insofar as it is in line with the
conception of Pierre Janet (e.g., 1889), who was the first author to emphasize dissociation, and the
role of trauma in its etiology.
The way in which trauma leads to dissociation is described in a highly cited article by van der Kolk
and Fisher (1995). The authors suggest that dissociation results from a compartmentalization of
adverse experiences. These experiences would not be integrated into memory as whole and
complete units, but as dissociated fragments of sensory perceptions and affective states. In other
words, during the traumatic event, the objective experience (e.g., the course of the event) would
be integrated into memory separately from the affective states and sensory elements felt during the
event, which would be integrated in a separate level of consciousness, thus leading to dissociative
states known as “peritraumatic” (i.e., during the traumatic event, e.g., depersonalization) and
268
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
“post-traumatic” (i.e., after the traumatic event). In summary, dissociation has three levels
according to van der Kolk and Fisher: memory fragmentation, peritraumatic dissociation, and posttraumatic dissociation/dissociative disorders. Note, however, that this model has been criticized
by proponents of the TM, who suggest other mechanisms for the links between trauma and
personality dissociation (e.g., Nijenhuis & Van der Hart, 2011). However, we will not elaborate
on this aspect, as the TM is not the most relevant model to explain the links between dissociation
and alien abduction allegations.
The second model is the sociocognitive model of dissociation (SCM). This is an open model
suggesting the interaction of social and cognitive variables to explain the development of
dissociative experiences and dissociative disorders. Typically, the variables most studied are
fantasy proneness, cognitive failure, and suggestibility, as well as the iatrogenic nature of some
therapeutic techniques (see, e.g., Giesbrecht et al., 2008; Lynn et al., 2014). This model is based
on the fact that correlations between trauma and dissociation are rather weak and/or suggest an
indirect link mediated by other variables such as emotional dysregulation, deficit in meta-cognition
or sleep disorders (e.g., Dodier et al., in press; Lynn et al., 2014). Conversely, many studies have
shown remarkable correlational associations between dissociation and various measures of
cognitive failure (Giesbrecht et al., 2008), fantasy proneness (Merckelbach et al., in press), or
suggestibility (e.g., Lynn et al., 2014). Thus, the etiology of dissociation would be individual
factors that promote the integration of suggestions leading to the development of dissociative
experiences or dissociative symptoms. More recently, a study also found that trauma experience,
dissociation, and low cognitive ability were associated with a greater tendency to form
spontaneous (i.e., not induced by a third party) false memories, which is consistent with the SCM
(Fatemeh Sajjadi et al., 2021).
For these reasons, some authors have considered that dissociative identity disorder, for
example, could sometimes be an iatrogenic effect of several psychotherapeutic techniques (e.g.,
Lilienfeld, 2007), or misinterpretations of behavioral state changes due to hyperassociativity, that
is, the tendency to make associations between various elements of the environment and cognitions
and/or emotional states that are not semantically or emotionally related (or only weakly so), which
may lead observers to believe that a sudden set shift in an individual is characteristic of an identity
change (Lynn et al., 2019).
In response to these two models, several landmark papers have been published by SCM proponents
calling for the development of an integrative/transtheoretical model aimed at reconciling
approaches that do not appear to be so contradictory to each other (e.g., Dodier et al., in press;
Lynn et al., 2019). Indeed, it seems that proponents of the SCM do not reject the etiological role
of trauma in dissociation, but suggest that it is not specific to dissociation in that its role is indirect
and, as stated earlier, mediated by other variables. Thus, the experience of trauma would provoke
the presence of variables such as impaired self-regulation, sleep disturbances, or emotional
disorders, which in turn would facilitate the onset of dissociative experiences and their correlates
(e.g., fantasy proneness, false memory).
Because the SCM links dissociation with sleep disturbances, fantasy proneness, and false memory,
it seems that this model is particularly well suited to explaining how dissociative states can be
related to beliefs of having been abducted by aliens. In the next sections, we will then attempt to
269
II. Psychological Perspectives
link the information described above and explore credible connections between dissociation and
alien abduction allegations.
Dissociation and Sleep Disturbances
It seems trivial to say that sleep quality is a critical factor of health quality. In 2004, experts in
sleep medicine met in Germany under the guidance of the World Health Organization to establish
the consensus on the effects of sleep on health (World Health Organization, 2004). Their
conclusions were very clear: the negative consequences are to be found in the physiological (e.g.,
diabetes, obesity), neurological (e.g., high pain sensitivity), cognitive (e.g., reduced memory,
reduced reaction time) and behavioral (e.g., mood changes, nervousness, sleepiness, and drastic
mood changes, mood disorders) areas. Since we spend about a third of our lives sleeping, it is
consistent that sleep disturbances lead to several forms of dysfunction, ranging from occasional
discomfort to serious difficulties in the social, emotional, and behavioral life of individuals. Over
the past twenty years, work has begun to place the emphasis on the links between sleep
disturbances and dissociation. This work, which we will describe next, leads to such consensual
results that sleep disturbances is a strong correlate of dissociation.
In 2012, van der Kloet and colleagues reviewed 23 studies conducted with clinical and non-clinical
samples and found that in all cases but one, correlation measures between sleep disturbances and
dissociation ranged from r = .30 to r = .55, suggesting a high correlation. A year later, a team led
again by van der Kloet (van der Kloet et al., 2013) found a correlation of r = .40 between unusual
sleep experiences such as sleep paralysis or narcoleptic symptoms and the expression of
dissociative symptoms. On a psychopathological level, patients with DID generally report more
sleep disturbances and poorer sleep quality than healthy participants (van Heugten-van der Kloet
et al., 2014). More generally, as noted at the beginning of this section, sleep disorders are
associated with a wide variety of psychological disorders. However, it appears that the association
with dissociation is particularly strong (Watson et al., 2015), perhaps even more so than with other
psychological conditions/disorders. Finally, a key feature of the links between sleep disturbance
and dissociation is REM sleep. Indeed, longer periods of REM sleep have been shown to predict
dissociation (van Heugten-van der Kloet et al., 2014). Yet it is during this phase that remembered
dreams usually occur, as well as sleep paralysis, which, as we will see, seems to be very strongly
connected to claims of alien abduction.
The question now is how sleep disturbances can lead to dissociative states. Dissociation and sleep
disturbances have, in fact, common correlates. For example, it appears that DID patients report
sleep disturbances, but also fantasy proneness and cognitive failures (van Heugten-van der Kloet
et al., 2014). All these states are in fact inter-connected. Sleep disturbances can lead to
daydreaming and sleepiness states (Soffer-Dudek et al., 2017) and fantasy proneness (van
Heugten-van der Kloet et al., 2014). Yet these states are also associated with dissociation
(Giesbrecht et al., 2008; Lynn et al., 2014). We can then consider that sleep disturbances can
generate states of daydreaming, fantasy, or absorption, which in turn could be precursors of
dissociation.
Linking Dissociation to Alien Abduction Allegations
As just briefly described, dissociation is strongly associated with sleep disturbances such as sleep
paralysis, as well as with daydreaming and fantasy-prone states. It also appears that both
270
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
dissociation (Fatemeh Sajjadi et al., 2021) and fantasy tendency (Geraerts et al., 2005) or sleep
disturbance (Frenda et al., 2014) are associated with the production of false memories.
Sleep paralysis is a sleep disorder that results from the intrusion of muscle atony (i.e., decreased
muscle tone via inhibition of spinal motor neurons to prevent motor action during REM sleep)
during the sleep or awakening phase. This paradoxical state of being awake and aware, but
temporarily unable to activate any motor behavior is sometimes accompanied by visual and
auditory hallucinations, leading people to believe that an entity is present in the room with them.
The fact is that it is quite conceivable that people undergoing sleep paralysis with visual
hallucination interpret the presence of this entity as the presence of an alien; this interpretation can
be personal as well as proposed by others later on, and likely related to cultural narratives (McNally
& Clancy, 2005a).
In one study, McNally and Clancy (2005a) specifically showed that hallucinations of entities in
the room interpreted as aliens were related to episodes of sleep paralysis. Furthermore, in another
paper published the same year (McNally & Clancy, 2005b), it was shown that among those in
whom a link between recovered memories of sexual abuse and sleep paralysis was found, 17%
claimed that this abuse occurred during an alien abduction attempt. Also, we discussed earlier the
links between dissociation and fantasy proneness, in that the latter would, according to the SCM,
be a factor of dissociation. However, research has shown that people who report abductions by or
prolonged contact with aliens generally exhibit what is called a “fantasy-prone personality”
(Bartholomew et al., 1991). Thus, if these individuals are devoid of any psychopathological
conditions, it appears that they generally experience a rich fantasy life that could facilitate the
interpretation of visual hallucinations resulting from sleep paralysis as the presence of aliens.
In view of the vast amount of information to be put together, here is an attempt to summarize all
the data described so far in order to clarify the links between dissociation and allegations of alien
abduction. Some people, for various reasons ranging from daily and occasional worries to critical
psychological disorders, experience sleep disturbances. These sleep disturbances, such as sleep
paralysis, have psychological consequences such as a proneness to fantasy, daydreaming, or false
memories. These consequences, in turn, are related to high levels of dissociation. Sleep paralysis
is known to lead to hallucinations that can easily be interpreted as the presence of aliens, this being
facilitated by high levels of fantasy proneness. Thus, dissociation appears to be associated with
these alien abduction claims in that it is potentially caused by conditions that also cause these
(false) memories of extraordinary and implausible events. As such memories can be traumatic
(McNally et al., 2004), it is also likely that they facilitate the persistence or increase in the
frequency of sleep disturbances (van Heugten-van der Kloet et al., 2014), thus increasing the
likelihood of re-experiencing events interpreted as alien abduction attempts. A graphic summary
of the links between dissociation and allegations of alien abduction is provided in Figure 1 below.
271
II. Psychological Perspectives
Trauma
Visual hallucinations
Sleep disturbances
(e.g., sleep paralysis)
Misinterpretation influenced
by cultural narratives
Alien abduction
(false) memory
Fantasy proneness
Daydreaming
Dissociation
Increased REM
False memory
Figure 1. Summary of the links between dissociation and alien abduction allegations from a sociocognitive
perspective.
Conclusion
The literature does not seem to directly link dissociation (in its non-pathological as well as
pathological form) to allegations of alien abduction. However, the sociocognitive model of
dissociation allows finding a relationship between both since they seem to be caused by the same
psychological conditions, possibly arising from sleep disturbances (e.g., sleep paralysis). Thus, it
seems important to explore several factors in people who report extraordinary alien abduction
experiences, without necessarily exploring any pathological condition. High levels of dissociation
in a person claiming such an experience may indicate a need to explore fantasy proneness, a
tendency to develop false memories, and sleep quality. This may provide a more credible
explanation for their claim than an actual case of attempted alien abduction.
It is also necessary to emphasize that in the hypothetical cases described in this chapter linking
dissociation and alien abduction allegations, people may be genuinely convinced of their
experiences, without any deception or pathological condition. While certain traits may facilitate
the occurrence of such events and memories (e.g., high fantasy-prone personality traits), the
conditions described in this chapter apply to everyone and no one seems immune to such
phenomena.
References
Appelle, S., S.J. Lynn, L. Newman, and A. Malaktaris (2014). “Alien abduction experiences.” In
E. Cardeña, S.J. Lynn, and S. Krippner (Eds.), Varieties of anomalous experience:
Examining the scientific evidence (pp. 213-240). Washington, D.C.: American
Psychological Association.
Bartholomew, R.E., K. Basterfield, and G.S. Howard (1991). “UFO abductees and contactees:
Psychopathology or fantasy proneness?” Professional Psychology: Research and Practice,
22(3), pp. 215-222.
Bernstein, E.M., and F.W. Putnam (1986). “Development, reliability, and validity of a dissociation
scale.” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 174(12), pp. 727-735.
272
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Brand, B. L., H.J. Schielke, and J.S. Brams (2017). “Assisting the courts in understanding and
connecting with experiences of disconnection: Addressing trauma-related dissociation as a
forensic psychologist, Part 1.” Psychological Injury and Law, 10(4), pp. 283-297.
Dalenberg, C.J., B.L. Brand, D.H. Gleaves, M.J. Dorahy, R.J. Loewenstein, E. Cardeña, P.A.
Frewen, E.B. Carlson, and D. Spiegel (2012). “Evaluation of the evidence for the trauma
and fantasy models of dissociation.” Psychological Bulletin, 138(3), pp. 550-588.
Dodier, O., H. Otgaar, and S.J. Lynn (in press). “A critical analysis of myths about dissociative
identity disorder.” Annales Médico-Psychologiques.
Ellickson-Larew, S., S.M. Stasik-O’Brien, K. Stanton, and D. Watson (2020). “Dissociation as a
multidimensional transdiagnostic symptom.” Psychology of Consciousness: Theory,
Research, and Practice, 7(2), pp. 126-150.
Fatemeh Sajjadi, S., M. Sellbom, J. Gross, and H. Hayne (2021). “Dissociation and false memory:
The moderating role of trauma and cognitive ability.” Memory, 29(9), pp. 1111-1125.
Frenda, S.J., L. Patihis, E.F. Loftus, H.C. Lewis, and K.M. Fenn (2014). “Sleep deprivation and
false memories.” Psychological Science, 25(9), pp. 1674-1681.
Geraerts, E., E. Smeets, M. Jelicic, J. van Heerden, and H. Merckelbach (2005). “Fantasy
proneness, but not self-reported trauma is related to DRM performance of women reporting
recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse.” Consciousness and Cognition, 14(3), pp.
602-612.
Giesbrecht, T., S.J. Lynn, S.O. Lilienfeld, and H. Merckelbach (2008). “Cognitive processes in
dissociation: An analysis of core theoretical assumptions.” Psychological Bulletin, 134(5),
pp. 617-647.
Lilienfeld, S.O. (2007). “Psychological treatments that cause harm.” Perspectives on
Psychological Science, 2(1), pp. 53-70.
Lipsanen, T., J. Korkeila, P. Peltola, J. Jarvinen, K. Langen, and H. Lauerma (2004). “Dissociative
disorders among psychiatric patients.” European Psychiatry, 19(1), pp. 53-55.
Lynn, S. J., S.O. Lilienfeld, H. Merckelbach, T. Giesbrecht, R.J. McNally, E.F. Loftus, M. Bruck,
M. Garry, and A. Malaktaris (2014). “The trauma model of dissociation: Inconvenient
truths and stubborn fictions. Comment on Dalenberg et al. (2012).” Psychological Bulletin,
140(3), pp. 896-910.
Lynn, S. J., R. Maxwell, H. Merckelbach, S.O. Lilienfeld, D. van Heugten-van der Kloet, and V.
Miskovic (2019). “Dissociation and its disorders: Competing models, future directions, and
a way forward.” Clinical Psychology Review, 73, 101755.
McNally, R.J., and S.A. Clancy (2005a). “Sleep paralysis, sexual abuse, and space alien
abduction.” Transcultural psychiatry, 42(1), pp. 113-122.
_____. (2005b). “Sleep paralysis in adults reporting repressed, recovered, or continuous memories
of childhood sexual abuse.” Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 19, pp. 595-602.
McNally, R. J., N.B. Lasko, S.A. Clancy, M.L. Macklin, R.K. Pitman, and S.P. Orr (2004).
“Psychophysiological responding during script-driven imagery in people reporting
abduction by space aliens.” Psychological Science, 15(7), pp. 493-497.
Merckelbach, H., H. Otgaar, and S.J. Lynn (2021). “Empirical research on fantasy prone-ness and
its correlates 2000–2018: A meta-analysis.” Psychology of Conscious-ness: Theory,
Research, and Practice, 9(1), pp. 2-26.
Nijenhuis, E.R.S., and O. van der Hart (2011). “Defining dissociation in trauma.” Journal of
Trauma and Dissociation, 12(4), pp. 469-473.
273
II. Psychological Perspectives
Janet, P. (1889). L’automatisme psychologique: Essai de psychologie expérimentale sur les formes
inférieures de l’activité humaine [Psychological automatism. An essay of experimental
psychology on the inferior types of human activity]. Paris: Alcan.
Ross, C. A., Duffy, C. M. M., & Ellason, J. W. (2002). “Prevalence, reliability and validity of
dissociative disorders in an inpatient setting.” Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 3(1), pp.
7-17.
Soffer-Dudek, N., Shelef, L., Oz, I., Levkovsky, A., Erlichm, I., & Gordon, S. (2017). “Absorbed
in sleep: Dissociative absorption as a predictor of sleepiness following sleep deprivation in
two high-functioning samples.” Consciousness and Cognition, 38, pp. 161-170.
van der Kloet, D., Giesbrecht, T., Franck, E., Van Gastel, A., De Volder, I., Van Den Eede, F.,
Verschuere, B., & Merckelbach, H. (2013). “Dissociative symptoms and sleep
parameters—An all-night polysomnography study in patients with insomnia.”
Comprehensive Psychiatry, 54(6), pp. 658-664.
van der Kloet, D., Merckelbach, H., Giesbrect, T., & Lynn, S. J. (2012). “Fragmented sleep,
fragmented mind: The role of sleep in dissociative symptoms.” Perspectives on
Psychological Science, 7(2), pp. 159-175.
van der Kolk, B. A., & Fisler, R. (1995). “Dissociation and the fragmentary nature of traumatic
memories: Overview and exploratory study.” Journal of Traumatic Stress, 8(4), pp. 505525.
van der Kloet, D., R. Huntjens, T. Giesbrecht, and H. Merckelbach (2014). “Self-reported sleep
disturbances in patients with dissociative identity disorder and post-traumatic stress
disorder and how they relate to cognitive failures and fantasy proneness.” Frontiers in
Psychiatry, 5(19).
Watson, D., S.M. Stasik-O’Brien, S. Ellickson-Larew, and K. Stanton (2015). “Explicating the
psychopathological correlates of anomalous sleep experiences.” Psychology of
Consciousness: Theory, Research and Practice, 2(1), pp. 57-78.
World Health Organization. (2004). “WHO technical meeting on sleep and health.”
https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/114101/E84683.pdf (accessed Aug.
15, 2022)
274
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Alien Abduction: Takeaways
David V. Forrest
Let us go then, you and I, /When the evening sky is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table
T.S. Eliot1
Abstract: My hypothesis (2005) was that the phenomenon of alien abduction may be an
unconsciously reworked narrative stimulated by intra-operative awareness. A study by a Harvard
psychologist of persons who believed they had been abducted by space aliens found that sleep
paralysis, a history of being hypnotized, and preoccupation with the paranormal and
extraterrestrial were predisposing experiences. I noted that many of the frequently reported
particulars of the abduction experience bear more than a passing resemblance to medical-surgical
procedures and proposed that experience with these may also be contributory. There is the
altered state of consciousness, uniformly colored figures with prominent eyes, in a high-tech
room under a round bright saucer-like object; there is nakedness, pain and a loss of control while
the body’s boundaries are being probed; and yet the figures are benevolent. No medical-surgical
history was apparently taken in the Harvard study, but psychological laboratory work evaluated
false memory formation. Anesthesiologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists are addressing intraoperative awareness (IOA) and ways in which the medical hypothesis could be elaborated and
tested. If physicians and surgeons are causing this syndrome in a percentage of patients, we
should know about it; and persons who feel they have been abducted should inform their
surgeons and anesthesiologists.
Keywords: Alien abduction, Medical-surgical anesthesia, Intra-operative awareness, Childhood
memories, Unconscious sources of fantasy, Evaluating alien experiences
Introduction
We psychiatrists were called alienists in prior centuries, as we studied the alien sensibilities of
psychosis. In the past 50 years a new phenomenon has arisen for psychiatric study that may
justify that term in a new way.
In the “Books on Health” section of The Science Times of August 9, 2005, my eye was caught by
an article entitled “Explaining Those Vivid Memories of Martian Kidnapping.” It was a prepublication discussion of a new book, Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were
Abducted by Aliens, by Susan A. Clancy, Ph.D., a Harvard postdoctoral psychology student. The
article said that Clancy had found that sleep paralysis, a history of being hypnotized, and a
preoccupation with the paranormal and the extraterrestrial may have predisposed her subjects to
have the experience.
How I Became Involved
As I am, among other things, a consultation-liaison psychiatrist who consults to the Neurology
Department at Columbia, and think in medical mechanisms, I harbored a pet theory about alien
1
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
275
II. Psychological Perspectives
abductions that I shared with a small proportion of the terrestrial population in the form of a
Letter to the Editor of The New York Times. This read as follows:
To the Editor:
“Explaining Those Vivid Memories of Martian Kidnapping” (Books on Health, Aug. 9): I wish to
propose another possible contribution to those experiences (in addition to sleep paralysis, a
history of being hypnotized and a preoccupation with the paranormal and the extraterrestrial).
Could dimly or subconsciously recalled memories of surgery play a part? One is in a state of
altered consciousness (anesthesia), surrounded by green figures (surgeons) whose eyes are more
noticeable above their masks, in a high tech ambience with a round saucer-like bright object
above(the O.R. light), and the body’s boundaries are being breached by intubation, catheters,
intravenous needles and the surgery itself.
Perhaps surgery in childhood would be especially contributory, transformed by the amnesia for
childhood. The autonomic (blood pressure, pulse) response could be a learned bodily memory.
And the surgical aliens are well-meaning. The puzzle is why we don’t see many cases in New
York City. Perhaps it’s because we can’t see the sky much.
Dr. David V. Forrest
New York
The writer is a psychiatrist.
Regarding my impression of a paucity of cases in our New York City experience, my colleague
Ronald O. Rieder, M.D., Vice Chairman for Education in Columbia’s Department of Psychiatry
remarked, “They don’t want us New Yorkers. We’re too much trouble!” Others suggested we
New Yorkers would probably probe them. All humor aside, in the flat country of wide open
spaces and big skies, when one spends one’s days looking around 360 degrees and not seeing
anyone, it might be a bit less lonely to look up for some company.
The same morning my letter appeared I received a call at my office from Katy Ramirez Karp, the
Booking Producer for MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, inviting me to a live
interview on the show on the evening of the next day about my letter and the phenomenon.
I was already familiar with Streiber’s Communion and the work of John Mack, M.D., the
Harvard psychiatrist, but did a rapid literature search.
The most useful reference from the search was the 1996 issue of Psychological Inquiry, which
was devoted to an article by Leonard S. Newman and Ray F. Baumeister, “Toward an
Explanation of the UFO Abduction Phenomenon: Hypnotic Elaboration, Extraterrestrial
Sadomasochism, and Spurious Memories,” together with commentaries. Baumeister and
Newman spoke of a motive of escaping the self but emphasized pain as a central UFO abduction
feature. They cite Disch’s (1987) article about Whitley Streiber’s Communion that found an
“acorn to oak” relationship to Streiber’s 1986 story “Pain” about a man drawn into
sadomasochistic rituals with prostitutes. Loss of control was also associated, frequently by
bondage.
In the Olbermann interview, Keith began by summarizing the phenomenon:
The extraterrestrials are invariably tall with big heads. Their eyes are large. And often the only
feature you can see, the only one that’s even distinguishable on their heads are those big eyes.
276
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
The aliens are often green from head to toe or all one color. The aliens are conducting some
medical or anthropological experiments. They strap their human guinea pigs down to a table of
some sort, often by invisible means. Despite the element of danger that that would suggest, the
abducted victim somehow knows that the aliens mean them no harm. Somehow they manage to
diminish both the human’s degree of consciousness and the pain that the subject should be feeling
considering that he or she is invariably being probed.
I said the similarities between alien abduction reports and the usual experiences of surgical
anesthesia were numerous. Anesthesia by definition resembles the reported alteration of the state
of consciousness. Surgeons wearing green (or uniformly colored) scrubs resemble the mysterious
green figures. The high-tech saucer interior could be the operating theater (a term given new
meaning!). The bright saucer-like object above might be the operating room light. The eyes of
the aliens-surgeons might be prominent because they are all one sees of the faces of the surgical
staff above their masks. The patient-abductee is physically restrained, not in control. There may
be pain, and pain relief. There is nakedness, the humiliation of exposure and having things (like
catheters) inserted into or probing the body. Physiological changes in the heartbeat and blood
pressure occur. And yet there is somehow the reassuring knowledge that the purpose is
benevolent.
Olbermann summarized that “people are in essence remembering either some operation that
they’ve had or possibly even one that they’ve dreamt about or seen?”
I replied that it was worth investigating for two practical reasons. One is if we are causing this
experience in a small, but vulnerable proportion of the population, which still might number in
the millions, it’s important to know about it. And furthermore, such people should not be
ashamed and should bring it forth when they face medical or dental anesthesia and tell their
doctors or anesthesiologists about it because one’s mental set in going into a procedure affects its
outcome. In other words, one should be aware if one is prone to intra-operative awareness, which
is the substrate or precondition for narrative production.
The exposure of the television interview led to my being contacted by a trauma surgeon in
California who said he was being sued for a surgical procedure he had done by a family that
believed they had been abducted. He said “the whole town, north of Fresno, and its Mayor” that
the patient came from believed they had been abducted, and asked me for some references from
the literature for possible use by his lawyer.
The supermarket tabloid Weekly World News then picked up the story, and featured four masked
surgeons with large black almond eyes looking down at the reader, with the headline, “Your
Doctor Could Be an Alien” (Siegel, 2006).
Anesthesiologists Weighed In
The ‘bookofjoe” web log, written by the self-styled “world’s most popular blogging
anesthesiologist,” had picked up the story from the New York Times as one answer to the
question, “Where does your consciousness go when you are under anesthesia?” An
anesthesiologist from Columbia Presbyterian, Hilda Pedersen, M.D., supplied me with
transcripts from a conference of The New York State Society of Anesthesiologists on December
11, 2005, “Awareness Following Surgery: Hype or Reality?” which addressed the unsolved
277
II. Psychological Perspectives
problem of determining how aware an anesthetized patient is. In reviewing this and other more
recent sources, I have learned that tests like being able to follow the request to squeeze one's
hand (Mashour et al. 2008) are not definitive. It may be that distressing intra-operative awareness
occurs more with neuromuscular blocking agents (muscle relaxing). One interesting future study
might be whether red heads are more likely to experience abduction as they are harder to
anesthetize fully. So are drug abusers, and they have more IOA.
I shall not revisit the relevant details of anesthesia I reported in my (Forrest, 2008) paper.
Anesthesiologists continue to be intrigued with IOA, however, and the interested reader may
consult the review by Mashour et al. (2015) of what is non-controversial and what is still
controversial (much). Veselis (2018) discusses the problems of veridical recollection (also
relevant to UFO sightings) and the observation that false memories (such as seeing Bugs Bunny
at Disneyland) are not usually completely false, but constructed in part from genuine
experiences. Psychiatrist Anne Skomorowsky (2014) reviewed recent discussions of IOA and
reminded us that other things than abduction might be triggered. She described a case of acquired
dislike of jazz music played intraoperatively. I might add that one very good thing that has come
of IOA studies is that the mores and manners of those in the OR have changed radically from
when I participated in surgeries as a sub-intern and medical-surgical intern in 1963-5, when we
would regale ourselves with prognostic medical comments and even jokes, many off-color, and
other saucy talk that are completely avoided today, not just because of it being an inappropriate
workplace environment, but because it is impossible to tell whether the anesthetized patient is
listening and might be harmed.
At a presentation of this paper at The New York Clinical Society on December 11, 2006, Samuel
Selesnick, M.D., an ENT physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital, described the variability
among agents in anesthesia, analgesia, immobility, and amnesia.
Following surgery, patients who recall intraoperative events should be interviewed for details
and reasons for the occurrence, possibly employing structured interviews and questionnaires.
Psychotherapeutic support should be offered to those patients who report intraoperative
awareness.
The difficulty in ascertaining lack of consciousness in anesthesia also applies to lethal injection.
All these executions are potentially and indeterminately cruel and unusual.
Background in Psychology of Popular Culture
Susan Clancy’s book appeared, and documented her experience with the abductees, which was
much richer and multidimensional than the New York Times item could indicate. It is an
engrossing read, and not the least of its interest is her willingness to present her subjective
experience as a young woman doing field research, and also her empathic, deeper appraisal of
her subjects’ existential experience.
Clancy became involved in the study of alien abductions indirectly through the study of memory
as a Ph.D. psychology student at Harvard in the mid-1990’s during the height of the “recovered
memory wars.” That is, the issue, divisive among psychologists. of whether ordinary memory
278
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
differs from traumatic memory in that the latter become repressed and dissociation (otherwise
known as spacing out or strange feelings of alienation) may occur.
Clancy approaches the purported consistency of abduction stories by first saying they are only
broadly similar and not consistent in their details—except for the general plot of kidnapping for
medical examination or sexual experimentation, and certain details: “big heads, wrap-around
eyes, reversible amnesia, probing needles” (p. 83).
In Clancy’s thorough media review, abduction accounts did not exist before 1962, and only after
they began appearing on TV and in the movies. In 1964 Betty and Barney Hill recalled under
hypnosis an abduction experience that started it all, following an episode of The Outer Limits
entitled the “Bellaro Shield.”
Preoccupation with aliens occurred long before the second half of the 20th Century; “since about
1700, people have accepted the idea that that life may exist elsewhere in the universe” (p. 84).
Whitley Streiber, who wrote Communion in 1987, was the most famous abductee, with his
hypnotically induced sensational account of a female alien who wanted sex with him, but is
prevented by his lack of an erection. The book involved a distinguished Columbia University
pharmacotherapist, Donald Klein, M.D., who testified that no psychiatric illness was involved.
The abduction phenomenon occurs only in cultures that are familiar with Western cultural
references. Clancy argues that in the United States, children know what an alien is supposed to
look like at an early age—for example, her own daughter at age 2 ½.
Clancy found that the persons who have the abduction experience are high in schizotypy. The
term connotes eccentricity and perhaps a proneness to fantasy. She found they may believe in
such things as ESP, astrology, and crystal therapy, and work in professions like teaching yoga,
the theatre and the visual arts.
To answer the question, why do they want to believe it happened? Clancy argues that “alienabduction memories are best understood as resulting from a blend of fantasy-proneness, memory
distortion, culturally available scripts, sleep hallucinations, and scientific illiteracy, aided and
abetted by the suggestions and reinforcement of hypnotherapy” (p. 138). Clancy feels that why
the abductees want to believe it is problematic. “The experiences are terrifying, nightmarish.
They take place in the dark when you’re alone and vulnerable. The alien creatures are repulsive
with vacant black eyes, long fingers, segmented bodies. They steal you away from all that’s safe
and familiar, and then they probe and dig into your brains, nasal cavities, genitals, and intestines.
Things are carved out of you, or embedded in you” (pp. 138-139).
Clancy is critical of the theory of Baumeister that the abductees are masochists, and of other
theories that they are little nobodies seeking attention. She favors Frederic Bartlett’s 1932 “effort
after meaning” hypothesis and Freud’s showing how people’s mental health benefits from a
coherent narrative. She found that none of her abductees would choose not to have been
abducted. Clancy finds religious parallels with the Christian narrative. She agrees with Jung that
279
II. Psychological Perspectives
E.T.’s are technological angels and that many abductees long for contact with the divine. “Being
abducted by aliens may be a Baptism into the new religion of our technological age” (p. 155).
Richard McNally Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Clancy’s thesis advisor at Harvard,
conveniently for this discussion, gave a Grand Rounds entitled “Recovering Memories of Sexual
Abuse, Past Lives and Space Alien Abduction” at the New York State Psychiatric Institute on
June 23, 2006. McNally discussed research with Clancy and others (see McNally et al) with
sexual abuse patients whose memories were repressed and unavailable, recovered, and
continuous (never forgotten). Their psychological laboratory tests were able to demonstrate
proneness to false memory formation. Other groups studied were those with recall of past lives,
and the alien abductees. McNally described the difficulty Clancy and he had obtaining a sample
of subjects through ads. A “whiff” of schizotypy and an “absorption” trait were found in the
abductees, with many “New Age” beliefs in Tarot (70%), Astrology (60%), and ghosts (70%).
90% believed in spirituality and, in the Boston area, many were lapsed Catholics. They all had
had sleep paralysis/hypnopompic experiences.
Psychiatrists Responded
In the question period after McNally's talk at Columbia, I summarized the resemblances to the
surgical situation, and asked McNally if any medical history had been taken, and particularly
surgical history. He had no such data. The Harvard researchers had also not graded the level of
hypnotizability, for example with the Spiegel scale (Spiegel and Spiegel, 2004). [Jeffrey
Lieberman, M.D., Chairman of Psychiatry at Columbia, offered collaboration with our
Department to investigate this hypothesis. No collaborative studies have been done to date.]
In the discussion at the luncheon following McNally’s presentation, Donald Klein, M.D., who
had been cited in Whitley Streiber’s 1987 book Communion, said he also thought that the
abductees may have temporal lobe epilepsy, because of the religious intensity of their
experiences.
While we are casting about for related phenomena, I might now add that a frequent feature of
near death experiences involves ascension up out of one's body so that one is above and looking
down on it. And psychedelic experiences may include a rapid rising through geometric forms—I
can personally report that from my one trial of mescaline in 1962, I hallucinated a rapid elevation
upward through what looked like the Eiffel Tower.
How These Hypotheses Could Be Tested
The hypotheses I am proposing could be classified from strong to weak. The strongest
hypothesis is that the abductees are recovering memories of actual surgery. These memories may
be actual recall of the operating room before losing consciousness, or they could be memories
that have penetrated the patient’s anesthesia, or they could be memories from childhood filtered
through childhood amnesia. The weak hypothesis is that abductees are conflating media concepts
of aliens with images of surgical and medical procedures generally, images that they may or may
not have experienced personally.
280
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Even collecting a sample of persons who sincerely feel they have been abducted can be daunting,
as Clancy and also Richard McNally, at his Grand Rounds presentation at Columbia, have
entertainingly described. People ridicule investigators with experiencers.
First, a complete medical history could be taken, with emphasis on surgical and medical
procedures, administration of anesthetic and consciousness-altering pharmacological agents, and
age of occurrence and mental status at the time as these might affect vulnerability as well as
content, although people continually revise past memories. Physiological reactions to
recollecting could be monitored. Next, images of surgery in the patient’s memory could be
elicited and physiological reactions measured, all to be compared to bodily reactions to
recounting memories of abductions for similar signatures.
Concluding Thoughts
The growing study of intraoperative awareness (Maskour, et al.), including the recognition that
there remain many open questions, may offer more opportunities for study of the reworking of
these experiences in fantasies, including those of abduction. But the limiting factor is the
willingness of abductees to participate in studies that may question the source of their
experience. It seems for many that it asks them to suspend an article of faith that they cherish and
feel benefits them. Perhaps they can be comforted by the thought that the study of religion has
not ended it. The principles of alien abduction are worthy of study as a belief system that is
positively mysterious, miraculous, and admirable in many ways: intriguing, optimistic, idealistic,
scientific, xenophilic, angelic, salvific, and (I cannot resist) uplifting—reminiscent of the
Ascension or the Rapture eschatological position held by some American evangelical Christians
to occur at the end of time.
But this is unrelated to scientific validation and remains in the domain of faith.
References
Apfelbaum, J. “Summary of the ASA advisory on intraoperative awareness.” Abstract
NYSSA05L1 SP-09.1, 1995.
Cole, D. “Clinical perspectives: intraoperative awareness as a focal point of perioperative
management.” NYSSA05L1 SP-09.3, 1995.
Clancy, Susan A. Abducted. How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Disch, T.M. “The Village Alien,” Nation, pp. 328-335, March 14, 1987.
Clancy, Susan A, McNally, Richard J., Schachter, D.L., Lenzenweger, M.F., and Ditman, R.K.
“Memory Distortion in People Reporting Abduction by Aliens,” Journal of Abnormal
Psychology 111: pp. 455-461, 2002.
Forrest, David V. “Alien Abduction: A Medical Hypothesis,” Journal of The American Academy
of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry 36(3) 431-442, 2008.
Jacobs, D.M. Secret Life: Firsthand Accounts of UFO Abductions. New York: Simon and
Shuster, 1992.
Mack, John E. Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens. New York: Ballantine, 1995 [orig.
pub. 1994].
Mashour, G.A and Avidan, M.S. “Intraoperative Awareness: Controversies and NonControversies,” British Journal of Anesthesia 115:Suppl: 120-126 July 01, 2015.
281
II. Psychological Perspectives
Matthews, D. “Responsiveness during surgery vs. awareness.” Abstract NYSSA05L1 SP-09.2,
1995.
McNally, Richard J. “Recovering Memories of Sexual Abuse, Past Lives and Space Alien
Abduction,” Grand Rounds, Columbia University Department of Psychiatry, June 26,
2006.
Newman, Leonard S. and Baumeister, Ray F. “Toward an explanation of the UFO abduction
phenomenon: hypnotic elaboration, extraterrestrial sadomasochism, and spurious
memories,” Psychological Inquiry 7(2):99-126, 1996.
Siegel, D. “EMTS Extraterrestrial medical technicians,” Weekly World News 28:13:12-14, 2006.
Skomorowsky, Anne. “Alien Abduction or 'Accidental Awareness'?: Scientists Report on a
Long-Ignored Problem,” Scientific American.com, November 11, 2014.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alien-abduction-or-accidental-awareness/
Spiegel, Herbert and Spiegel, David. Trance and Treatment: Clinical Uses of Hypnosis, Second
Edition, Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press, Inc., 2004.
Streiber, Whitley. “Pain,” in D. Etchison (Ed.), Cutting Edge. New York: Doubleday, pp. 269290, 1986.
_____. Communion: A True Story. New York: Avon, 1987.
Veselis, R.A. “Complexities of Human Memory: Relevance to Anesthetic Practice,” British
Journal of Anesthesiology 121(1):210-218, July, 2018.
282
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Hypnotic Regression and False Memories
Christopher C. French
Abstract: Hypnotic regression is employed in various contexts with the aim of recovering
allegedly repressed memories of traumatic events including alien abduction, past-lives, and
childhood sexual abuse (including ritualized Satanic abuse). Evidence from all of these contexts
fails to support the claim that the memories produced are true memories of events that really took
place in objective reality and instead strongly supports the notion that they are false memories
unintentionally produced by the technique itself. Other studies have directly shown that hypnotic
regression can be used to implant false memories. In light of such findings, any reports based upon
the use of this technique should be treated with extreme caution.
Keywords: Hypnotic regression, False memories
Introduction
Those who are, to varying degrees, skeptical regarding the extraterrestrial (ET) hypothesis have
offered alternative psychological explanations for claims of close encounters of all
kinds.1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21 There is general agreement that most claimants are
sincere in making such claims although the possibility of deliberate hoaxes must always be borne
in mind (see, for example, Philip J. Klass’s 22 critique of the Travis Walton case). The simplistic
idea that all claimants are suffering from some form of serious psychopathology is not supported
by available empirical evidence.23,24,25,26,27 So, if claimants are generally neither deliberately lying
nor suffering from serious psychopathology, how do skeptics account for such claims?
It would clearly be naïve to believe that there is a ‘one-size-fits-all’ explanation for reports of all
types of close encounters. Instead, the importance of different psychological factors will vary
depending upon the type of close encounter we are considering. With respect to close encounters
of the first kind, for example, factors such as the unreliability of eyewitness testimony28 are likely
to be highly relevant. When it comes to close encounters of the second kind, confirmation bias 29
should be borne in mind. Claims of close encounters of the third and fourth kind, that is claims of
alien contact and alien abduction respectively, are likely to involve a wide range of psychological
factors. At the risk of stating the obvious, with the possible exception of close encounters of the
second kind, human memory is at the center of such claims and thus research into the reliability
of memory must be considered when assessing their validity.30,31,32
Rather than attempt to comprehensively cover all of the psychological factors involved in all types
of close encounters, this chapter will focus upon one specific controversial technique used by many
ufologists in their attempts to recover allegedly repressed or blocked memories of alien contact
and abduction. Thomas E. Bullard 33 estimated that around 70% of the “well-investigated, high
quality cases” in his sample had involved the use of hypnosis in attempts to either recover more
details of an incident or else to recover a totally repressed memory. Prominent ufologists such as
Budd Hopkins34 and John Mack35 were convinced of the authenticity of many case reports based
upon the use of hypnotic regression. There is widespread acceptance within ufology that the alien
abductors are able to partially or totally wipe the memories of abduction from their victims’ minds.
Whereas many supporters of the ET hypothesis view hypnotic regression as a valuable tool
283
II. Psychological Perspectives
allowing the hypnotist to recover veridical memories of events that really did take place, skeptics
maintain that, on the contrary, hypnotic regression is likely to result in the formation of false
memories for events that never actually happened at all.
Before proceeding further, readers may reasonably expect a clear definition of the terms hypnosis
and hypnotic regression. Sadly, such readers will be disappointed. For much of the history of
hypnosis, two very different perspectives on hypnosis have vied for supremacy on the basis of
theoretical coherence and empirical findings. At the risk of oversimplification, state theorists have
argued that hypnotic induction procedures can be used to put susceptible individuals into an altered
state of consciousness sometimes referred to as a hypnotic trance. This state is said to be as
different from normal waking consciousness as, say, dreaming. While in this state, it is claimed
that the individual’s mind works in a completely different way to how it works during normal
waking consciousness. For example, they may become extremely susceptible to suggestions from
the hypnotist as well as demonstrating much higher levels of physical strength and pain tolerance
than normal. Their memory may be enhanced, allowing them to provide detailed information
regarding previously witnessed events or even to recover memories that had previously been
completely repressed. It is claimed that the hypnotist may be able to hypnotically regress them
back in time allowing them to mentally re-experience events that took place weeks, months, or
even years earlier.
A typical and influential example of a state theory is Ernest Hilgard’s neo-dissociation theory.36
Hilgard argued that there exist multiple systems of control which are not all conscious at the same
time. Normally, a central control structure known as the executive ego monitors and controls the
other systems but under hypnosis this central control is removed. As a result, consciousness can
become compartmentalized. Theoretical accounts of a wide range of hypnotic phenomena were
proposed based upon this theory.
In contrast to the state view of hypnosis, the unimaginatively named nonstate theorists argued that
the full range of so-called hypnotic behaviors could be adequately explained without having to
resort to an explanation in terms of a unique and special altered state of consciousness. Instead,
they point to a range of more mundane psychological concepts to explain the observations, such
as compliance, suggestibility, imagination, distraction, and relaxation. Non-state theorists such as
Nicholas Spanos 37 and Graham Wagstaff38 view the typical interaction between hypnotist and
participant in terms of role-playing. For example, Wagstaff proposed that three stages are typically
involved: (i) the participant works out what is expected on the basis of previous knowledge of
hypnosis and current instructions; (ii) the participant employs various cognitive strategies to bring
about the desired result (and sometimes succeeds); and (iii) if the strategies are unsuccessful, the
participant gives up or else fakes it. The nonstate theorists have generally adopted the approach of
demonstrating that a wide range of allegedly hypnotic phenomena can occur without the
requirement of any hypnotic induction procedure. If volunteers are either asked simply to “try
really hard” to achieve the desired outcome or even to just pretend that they are hypnotized, the
resulting behavior is often indistinguishable from that of volunteers who have gone through a full
hypnotic induction procedure39.
A detailed discussion of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the state versus nonstate
perspectives on hypnosis is beyond the scope of the current chapter but it is worth noting that
284
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
recent theoretical developments and empirical observations suggest that some sort of
rapprochement between the two may be possible in the near future40. In the absence of universal
agreement regarding the definition of what a hypnotic trance is (or even whether it exists at all),
from this point on the term will be used to refer to the state that a person is in having gone through
what would typically be labelled as a “hypnotic induction procedure” without any implied
endorsement of either the state view or the nonstate view. Both sides of the debate tend to agree
on many aspects of the relationship between hypnosis and memory.
Common Misconceptions About Memory
Survey data from around the world reliably demonstrate that members of the general public hold
a range of beliefs about the nature of memory that are at odds with the evidence-based views of
memory experts. For example, Daniel J. Simons and Christopher F. Chabris 41 reported the
following results from a large-scale telephone survey of US adults (p. 1):
Substantial numbers of respondents agreed with propositions that conflict with expert consensus:
Amnesia results in the inability to remember one’s own identity (83% of respondents agreed),
unexpected objects generally grab attention (78%), memory works like a video camera (63%),
memory can be enhanced by hypnosis (55%), memory is permanent (48%), and the testimony of a
single confident eyewitness should be enough to convict a criminal defendant (37%).
Similarly, Lawrence Patihis and colleagues42 reported high levels of agreement in a sample of 390
undergraduate students with a number of statements about memory that are not in line with our
current scientific understanding. Here are some of those statements (with the percentage of
students agreeing in parentheses): “Traumatic memories are often repressed” (81%); “Repressed
memories can be retrieved in therapy accurately” (70%); “Hypnosis can accurately retrieve
memories that previously were not known to the person” (44.6%); “Memory of everything
experienced is stored permanently in brain (sic), even if we can’t access all of it” (66.7%). A
minority of the sample (15.1%) agreed with the statement, “With effort, we can remember events
back to birth.”
Christopher C. French and James Ost 43 reviewed surveys of beliefs about memories from several
different countries from samples of the general public as well as professional groups including
clinical psychologists, psychotherapists, counsellors, and those involved with the justice system at
all levels. Misconceptions about the true nature of memory were widely held amongst all of the
groups surveyed. Belief in the psychoanalytic notion of repression was common in virtually all
groups with the exception of experimental psychologists directly engaged in memory research.
This group, arguably the most well-informed regarding the true nature of human memory,
demonstrated high levels of skepticism with respect to the concept of repression44.
Beliefs About the Relationship Between Hypnosis and Memory
The relationship between hypnosis and memory is one of the most widely misunderstood aspects
of memory45. It is commonly believed that hypnosis can be used not only to recover additional
details of a previously witnessed event but also as an almost magical key to unlock completely
repressed or hidden memories. Note that these beliefs rest upon the misconceptions that (a)
memory works like a video camera, accurately recording every detail of experiences, and (b) that
sometimes memories, especially traumatic ones, are repressed and are completely inaccessible to
conscious awareness until they either emerge spontaneously or as a result of so-called “memory
285
II. Psychological Perspectives
recovery techniques” such as hypnosis and guided imagery. In fact, the evidence suggests that such
techniques can lead to the generation of false memories.
Several surveys, in addition to those already cited, confirm that misconceptions regarding the
relationship between hypnosis and memory are widespread. For example, Myles Johnson and
Coleen Hauck46 reported that 88% of their sample of the general public agreed with the statement
that “hypnosis enables people to accurately remember things they could not otherwise remember”
(p. 17). A follow-up study by Joseph Green and colleagues 47 found a similar rate of endorsement
of that claim in college students across four countries (Australia, Germany, Iran, and the US),
indicating that such misconceptions are a global phenomenon.
Worryingly, many practitioners who directly employ hypnotic regression in their own work also
appear to have a poor understanding of the relationship between hypnosis and memory 48,49. For
example, in 1994, Michael Yapko surveyed the views of psychotherapists regarding this issue 50.
This is how he summarized his findings (p. 64)51:
Survey data regarding hypnosis and suggestibility indicate that while psychotherapists largely view
hypnosis favorably, they often do so on the basis of misinformation. A significant number of
psychotherapists erroneously believe, for example, that memories obtained through hypnosis are more
likely to be accurate than those simply recalled, and that hypnosis can be used to recover accurate
memories even from as far back as birth. Such misinformed views can lead to misapplications of
hypnosis when attempting to actively recover memories of presumably repressed episodes of abuse,
possibly resulting in the recovery of suggested rather than actual memories.
Reasons to Doubt the Veracity of Reports Based on Hypnotic Regression
There are several strong reasons to believe that reports produced as a result of hypnotic regression
are often nothing more than fantasies based upon a complex mix of imagination, expectation,
traces of real memories from a variety of sources (including movies, novels, and TV shows), and
suggestions from the hypnotist and others. For example, as noted above, it is widely believed that
hypnotic age regression can be used to recover memories from early childhood. One of the reasons
that observers of hypnotic regression find it such a compelling phenomenon is that those who
undergo such a procedure not only seem able to report detailed memories of events that allegedly
took place some considerable time ago, but they actually appear to be re-experiencing the events
themselves. They appear to be able to not only describe in detail what happened at, say, their
birthday party when they were seven, they appear to revert to behaving as a 7-year-old child would.
Their voices change, their vocabulary changes, and their mannerisms change. If they write or draw
anything, their output is childish in appearance. However, there is considerable variability in how
accurately the behavior demonstrated actually corresponds to that of a child of the corresponding
age52. Putting it simply, age-regressed individuals behave the way that adults think that children
behave at particular ages, not, according to developmental psychologists, the way that real children
of that age actually behave.
Many people believe that hypnotic regression can be used to recover memories from very early
childhood. Much is known about the development of memory across the lifespan53 and it is
generally accepted by memory scientists that accurate autobiographical memories typically cannot
be recalled by adults from the first couple of years of life, a phenomenon referred to as infantile
amnesia. This is probably because at that age the infant’s brain is not yet physically mature enough
286
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
to store such memories and also because the infant lacks the verbal skills required to organize
autobiographical memories. It therefore follows that any memory reports from this period
produced as a result of hypnotic regression are almost certainly based upon false memories. Lisa
Marmelstein and Steven Jay Lynn54 asked 85 volunteers to report their earliest memories following
hypnotic regression. This is what they found (p. 313):
After the hypnotic induction, nearly two-thirds of participants reported memories that fell well
within the range of infantile amnesia (i.e., 2 years of age or younger). Furthermore, during
hypnosis, more than half of the participants reported memories from 18 months or younger, more
than 40% of the participants’ memories dated from age 1 or younger, and more than 20% of the
participants recalled memories dating from age 6 months or younger. These findings are consistent
with the contention that hypnosis can engender false or inaccurate memories.
Denys Kelsey55 and others56 demonstrated that hypnotic regression can sometimes lead to reports
of memories of actually being born, of life in the womb, and even of the moment of conception.
Amazingly, a minority of hypnotherapists go even further and claim that hypnotic regression can
be used to recover memories from past lives 57. Albert de Rochas58 was one of the first to report
such cases. In 1904, he regressed one patient, Josephine, back through several previous lives and
even back down the evolutionary chain until she could recall life as an ape. He also hypnotically
“progressed” her into the future, describing the life she claimed she would be leading at the age of
40 and even further forward in time to her own death, where she witnessed her own funeral.
Similarly, psychiatrists Robert Rubenstein and Richard Newman 59 published a short report in the
journal Science in 1954 describing their success in “progressing” five volunteers a decade into the
future, making it clear that they viewed such “memories” as nothing more than fantasies.
The popularity of hypnotic past-life regression soared with the publication in 1956 of a bestselling
book, The Search for Bridey Murphy, by amateur hypnotist Morey Bernstein 60. Bernstein claimed
that he had successfully regressed a Colorado housewife by the name of Virginia Tighe back into
a past-life in which she was living in Cork, Ireland, in the early nineteenth century. Her name, she
claimed, was Bridey Murphy. She described her life in great detail with a strong Irish accent, sang
Irish songs and even performed some Irish dancing. Her story was turned into a feature film,
inspired at least two pop records, and led to a craze for “come as you were” parties. Subsequent
investigations, however, established that Bridey had never existed and her fictitious life was
probably a result of hearing tales of Ireland from neighbors and relatives, combined with a teenage
love of playing Irish roles in amateur dramatics.61
Nicholas Spanos and colleagues 62 carried out a series of experimental investigations which
provided important insights into the nature of past-life regression. Those volunteers who exhibited
past-life identities had higher levels of hypnotizability and fantasy proneness compared to those
who did not but did not differ in terms of psychopathological tendencies. Typically, those
volunteers reporting past lives were unable to answer simple questions that one might reasonably
expect a person living in the claimed country and era to be able to answer such as: Who is the ruler
of your country? Is your country at war? What is the currency of your country?
The series also demonstrated that the content of the past-life identity was strongly influenced by
suggestions from the hypnotist. For example, in one study participants in one condition were told,
287
II. Psychological Perspectives
prior to being hypnotized, that past-life identities often lived in exotic cultures and were often of a
different race and sex to that of the current self. Such characteristics were much more likely to
manifest in these participants compared to those who were not primed in this way. In a separate
study, the participants in one condition were told that children in the past were frequently the
victims of abuse and this was again reported much more often for these participants compared to
a control group who were not primed in this way.
There have been some rare instances of past-life reports being given as a result of hypnotic
regression that contain a lot of historically accurate, fairly obscure, information in contrast to the
more typical sketchy and inaccurate accounts produced.63 Further investigation has, however, then
revealed the true source of the details produced, such as historical novels based on the events in
question.64 Given this, even academics who are sympathetic to the idea that reincarnation might
be a genuine phenomenon, such as the late Ian Stevenson65, warn against using hypnotic past-life
regression because of the inherent risks of generating false memories. Despite this, a minority of
hypnotherapists continue to make use of the technique, maintaining that psychological problems
in the individual’s current life may have their roots in trauma suffered in a past life.66,67,68 For
example, it might be claimed that fear of dogs in the current life is a result of having been killed
by a pack of wolves in a previous life.
Hypnotic regression has also been widely used by hypnotherapists to recover supposedly repressed
memories of sexual abuse in patients suffering from a wide range of psychological problems.
Sometimes the memories “recovered” in this way are of ritualized Satanic abuse involving the
most extreme forms of sexual perversion, human and animal sacrifice, and cannibalism.69,70,71
Given that no forensic evidence has ever been produced in support of such claims 72, we can be
confident that they are a further example of false memories resulting from the use of hypnotic
regression.
Lawrence Patihis and Helena Younes Burton 73 report that the first clear example of the use of
hypnosis to deliberately implant a false memory occurred back in the 1880s. French physician
Hippolyte Bernheim74 successfully implanted a memory in his patient Marie that she had witnessed
an old man raping a young girl. She subsequently gave a detailed account of the suggested event,
insisting that it had really taken place and even expressing a willingness to testify under oath if
required. Even though Bernheim claims that he subsequently used hypnosis to remove this
distressing memory, it goes without saying that no modern ethics committee would approve of his
actions in implanting such a memory in the first place. More recent demonstrations of the
effectiveness of hypnosis as a means of implanting false memories have generally been more
ethically acceptable. For example, Jean-Roch Laurence and Campbell Perry75 used hypnosis to
successfully implant a false memory of having been awoken by a loud noise one night in the
previous week in 13 of 27 highly hypnotizable volunteers.
Hypnotic Regression in the Context of Alien Abduction Reports
As stated, many ufologists have made use of hypnotic regression with the aim of obtaining
additional details regarding an alleged close encounter or even of “recovering” supposedly
completely repressed memories of such an encounter. A variety of different triggers may cause an
individual to believe that they may have been abducted by aliens even in the absence of any
conscious memories whatsoever of such an event. These triggers include sightings of possible
288
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
UFOs, finding unexplained scratches and bruises upon one’s body, episodes of so-called “missing
time”, and/or sleep paralysis.76,77 Each of these potential triggers have more plausible explanations
than alien abduction.78 However, once an individual suspects that they may have been a victim of
alien abduction, the obvious, if misguided, next step is to try to “recover” the allegedly repressed
memory of the event with the aid of a hypnotherapist.
One of the most famous cases involving the use of hypnotic regression is that of Betty and Barney
Hill. Prior to hypnosis, the Hills reported that they had encountered a UFO as they drove home to
New Hampshire after a vacation in Niagara Falls and Montreal in September 1961. A few days
later, Betty began to have a series of dreams in which she and her husband were abducted by aliens
and medically examined. It was not until January 1964 that the Hills were hypnotically regressed
by psychiatrist Dr Benjamin Simon and further details emerged. It is worth noting that Dr Simon
believed the accounts given by the Hills were fantasies based upon Betty’s dreams.
Bullard33 argued that the fact that reports obtained via the use of hypnotic regression are very
similar to those reported without the use of hypnotic regression supports the claim that hypnosis
had not influenced the memories recovered. However, it unclear why any differences between the
two would be expected given that the accounts produced in both cases are likely to be largely based
upon widely shared cultural knowledge. He also compared the accounts produced by four different
hypnotists, again claiming that they were very similar to each other and therefore that this indicated
that specific hypnotists had not had any great influence upon those accounts. Once again, there is
no obvious reason why major differences would be expected if the core narrative is based upon a
culturally shared template. Furthermore, in a subsequent analysis, Bullard acknowledged that in
fact investigators did have some influence upon the contents of reports but insisted that this was
only for peripheral details. Other commentators, such as Terry Matheson 79, have argued that the
abduction reports produced by hypnotic regression are indeed influenced to a considerable degree
by the beliefs and expectations of the hypnotist.
Bullard33 also commented upon the results of a study carried out by Alvin Lawson80 in which a
group of volunteers were hypnotized and asked to simply imagine that they had been abducted by
aliens. Despite the fact that these volunteers had been selected on the basis of their minimal prior
knowledge of UFOs, the accounts they produced were remarkably similar to those produced by
allegedly “real” abductees. In Bullard’s words (pp. 27-28), “Not only did the subjects readily
respond to an initial suggestion with an elaborate and detailed story, with little need for prodding
along the way, but the contents bore striking similarities to alleged real abductions, both in more
obvious matters and in odd, minute details.” Despite this, Bullard concluded that the accounts of
these so-called “imaginary abductees” lacked the coherence of those from “real” abductees. This,
he argued, supported the claim that the “real” abductees had indeed all experienced a similar,
objectively real, abduction. However, a more plausible explanation is that those who suspected
that they had been abducted would undoubtedly have sought out information on UFOs prior to
their hypnotic regression. Exposure to previous accounts would be expected to increase the
similarity of their own “recovered” memories to previous, widely shared, cultural templates. The
imaginary abductees, in contrast, had been specifically selected for their lack of any such
knowledge. Their narratives, not surprisingly, strayed somewhat further from such shared narrative
templates.
289
II. Psychological Perspectives
It is important to note that hypnotic regression is not the only way to produce false memories.
Research has shown that simply imagining events which never actually took place can sometimes
lead people to believe that the events did take place and, in some cases, to develop detailed false
memories in support of such beliefs. This phenomenon is referred to as imagination inflation.81
For example, Henry Otgaar and colleagues 82 implanted false memories of being abducted by aliens
in over 70% of a sample of children aged 7-8 and 11-12 years simply by telling them that their
mother had said that this had happened (half of the children were also shown a fake newspaper
reporting implying that such abductions were a fairly common occurrence).
It should be noted that those who are hypnotically regressed are themselves initially often uncertain
as to whether the “memories” reported are genuine memories for events that really took place in
objective reality as opposed to imaginative fantasies. Studies have demonstrated that participants
can easily be persuaded to disavow their belief in such memories fairly readily in the immediate
aftermath of experimental investigations.83 Such initial uncertainty is also common in other
contexts where hypnotic regression is employed including “recovering” memories of previously
repressed sexual abuse or past lives. If, however, such memories are validated as being true
memories of events which genuinely took place and are reflected upon and possibly elaborated
upon in further sessions, they may well end up as being detailed and firmly held.
Conclusion
Hypnotic regression has been used in several different contexts with the aim of recovering
allegedly repressed memories of trauma. The available evidence strongly suggests that such
memories are often, if not always, false memories. Furthermore, several studies have shown that
hypnosis can be used to deliberately implant false memories. In light of such findings, any reports
based upon the use of this technique should be treated with extreme caution.
References
1. Appelle, Stuart. “The Abduction Experience: A Critical Evaluation of Theory and Evidence.”
Journal of UFO Studies 6 (1996), pp. 29-79.
2. Appelle, Stuart, Lynn, Steven Jay Lynn, Leonard Newman, and Anne Malaktaris, “Alien
Abduction Experiences.” In Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific
Evidence. 2nd ed. Edited by Etzel Cardeña, Steven Jay Lynn, and Stanley Krippner.
Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2014, pp. 213-240.
3. Baker, Robert A. Hidden Memories: Voices and Visions From Within. Buffalo, New York:
Prometheus Books, 1992.
4. Bartholomew, Robert E., and George S. Howard. UFOs and Alien Contact: Two Centuries of
Mystery. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1998.
5. Blackmore, Susan. “Alien Abduction: The Inside Story.” New Scientist 144 (Nov. 19, 1994),
pp. 29-31.
6. Brookesmith, Peter. Alien Abductions. London: Barnes & Noble Books, 1998.
7. Clancy, Susan A. Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2005.
8. Devereux, Paul, and Peter Brookesmith. UFOs and Ufology: The First 50 Years. London:
Blandford, 1997.
290
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
9. French, Christopher C. “Close Encounters of the Psychological Kind.” The Psychologist 28
(2015), pp. 812-815.
10. _____. “Abducted: The Psychology of Close Encounters with Extraterrestrials.” In Aliens –
Science Asks: Is there Anyone Out There? Edited by Jim Al-Khalili. London: Profile
Books, 2016, pp. 58-69.
11. _____. “Alien Contact and Abduction Claims.” In Parapsychology: The Science of Unusual
Experience. 2nd ed. Edited by David Groome and Ron Roberts. London: Routledge, 2017,
pp. 48-64.
12. French, Christopher C., and Anna Stone. Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal
Belief and Experience. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
13. Holden, Katherine J., and Christopher C French. “Alien Abduction Experiences: Clues from
Neuropsychology and Neuropsychiatry.” Cognitive Neuropsychiatry 7 (2002), pp. 163178.
14. Klass, Philip, J. UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus
Books, 1989.
15. Newman, Leonard S. “Intergalactic Hostages: People Who Report Abduction by UFOs.”
Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 16 (1997), pp. 151-177.
16. Newman, Leonard S., and Roy F. Baumeister. “Toward an Explanation of the UFO Abduction
Phenomenon: Hypnotic Elaboration, Extraterrestrial Sadomasochism, and Spurious
Memories.” Psychological Inquiry 7 (1996), pp. 99-126.
17. _____. “Not Just Another False Memory: Further Thoughts on the UFO Abduction
Phenomenon.” Psychological Inquiry 7 (1996), pp. 185-197.
18. Randle, Kevin D., Russ Estes, and William P. Cone. The Abduction Enigma: The Truth Behind
the Mass Alien Abductions of the Late Twentieth Century. New York: Tom Doherty
Associates, 1999.
19. Rutkowski, Chris. Abductions and Aliens: The Psychology Behind Extra-Terrestrial
Experience. London: Fusion Press, 2000.
20. Showalter, Elaine. Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Culture. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1997.
21. Spanos, Nicholas P. Multiple Identities and False Memories: A Sociocognitive Perspective.
Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1996.
22. Klass, Philip J. UFOs: The Public Deceived. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Book, 1983.
23. Spanos, Nicholas P., Patricia A. Cross, K. Dickson, and Susan C. DuBreuil. “Close Encounters:
An Examination of UFO Experiences.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 102 (1993), pp.
624-632.
24. Parnell, June. “Measured Personality Characteristics of Persons who Claim UFO Experiences.”
Psychotherapy in Private Practice 6 (1988), pp. 159-165.
25. Parnell, June and R. Leo Sprinkle. “Personality Characteristics of Persons who Claim UFO
Experiences.” Journal of UFO Studies 2 (1990), pp. 45-58.
26. Bloecher, Ted, Aphrodite T. Clamar, and Budd Hopkins. Summary Report on the
Psychological Testing of Nine Individuals Reporting UFO Abduction Experiences. Mount
Rainier, Maryland: Fund for UFO Research, 1985.
27. Bartholomew, Robert E., Keith Basterfield, and George S. Howard. “UFO Abductees and
Contactees: Psychopathology or Fantasy Proneness?” Professional Psychology: Research
and Practice 22 (1991), pp. 215-222.
291
II. Psychological Perspectives
28. Loftus, Elizabeth F. Eyewitness Testimony with a New Preface by the Author. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996.
29. Nickerson, Raymond S. “Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises.”
Review of General Psychology 2 (1998), pp. 175-220.
30. French, Christopher C. “Fantastic Memories: The Relevance of Research into Eyewitness
Testimony and False Memories for Reports of Anomalous Experiences.” Journal of
Consciousness Studies 10 (2003), pp. 153-174.
31. French, Christopher C., and Krissy Wilson. “Incredible Memories: How Accurate are Reports
of Anomalous Events?” European Journal of Parapsychology 21 (2006), pp. 166-181.
32. Meeks, J. Thadeus, and Arlo Clark-Foos. In Investigating Pop Psychology: Pseudoscience,
Fringe Science, and Controversies. Edited by Stephen Hupp and Richard Wiseman. New
York: Routledge, (2022), pp. 47-55.
33. Bullard, Thomas E. “Hypnosis and UFO Abductions: A Troubled Relationship.” Journal of
UFO Studies 1 (1989), pp. 3-40.
34. Hopkins, Budd. Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods. New York: Random
House, 1987.
35. Mack, John E. Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens. New York: Scribners, 1994.
36. Hilgard, Ernest R. “A Neodissociation Interpretation of Hypnosis.” In Theories of Hypnosis:
Current Models and Perspectives. Edited by Steven Jay Lynn and Judith W. Rhue. New
York: Guilford, 1991, pp. 83-104.
37. Spanos, Nicholas P. “A Sociocognitive Approach to Hypnosis.” In Theories of Hypnosis:
Current Models and Perspectives. Edited by Steven Jay Lynn and Judith W. Rhue. New
York: Guilford, 1991, pp. 324-361.
38. Wagstaff, Graham F. “Compliance, Belief, and Semantics in Hypnosis: A Nonstate,
Sociocognitive Perspective.” In Theories of Hypnosis: Current Models and Perspectives.
Edited by Steven Jay Lynn and Judith W. Rhue. New York: Guilford, 1991, pp. 362-396.
39. _____. “Hypnosis.” In Mind Myths: Exploring Popular Assumptions About the Mind and Brain.
Edited by Sergio Della Sala. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 1999, pp. 187-204.
40. Lynn, Steven J., and Joseph P. Green. “The Sociocognitive and Dissociation Theories of
Hypnosis: Toward a Rapprochement.” International Journal of Clinical and Experimental
Hypnosis 59 (2011) pp. 277-293.
41. Simons, Daniel J., and Christopher F. Chabris. “What People Believe about How Memory
Works: A Representative Survey of the U.S. Population.” PLoS ONE 6(8): e22757 (2011).
42. Patihis, Lawrence, Lavina Y. Ho, Ian W. Tingen, Scott O. Lilienfeld, and Elizabeth F. Loftus.
“Are the ‘Memory Wars’ Over? A Scientist-Practitioner Gap in Beliefs About Repressed
Memory.” Psychological Science 25 (2014) pp. 519-530.
43. French, Christopher C., and James Ost. “Beliefs About Memory, Childhood Abuse, and
Hypnosis Amongst Clinicians, Legal Professionals and the General Public.” In Wrongful
Allegations of Sexual and Child Abuse. Edited by Ros Burnett. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2016, pp. 143-154.
44. Patihis, Lawrence, Lavina Y. Ho, Elizabeth F. Loftus, and Mario E. Herrera. “Memory experts’
beliefs about repressed memory.” Memory 29 (2021) pp. 823-828.
45. Mazzoni, Giuliana, Jean-Roch Laurence, and Michael Heap. “Hypnosis and Memory: Two
Hundred Years of Adventures and Still Going!” Psychology of Consciousness: Theory,
Research, and Practice 1 (2014) pp. 153-167.
292
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
46. Johnson, Myles E., and Coleen Hauck. “Beliefs and Opinions About Hypnosis Held by the
General Public: A Systematic Evaluation.” American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis 42
(1999) pp. 10-20.
47. Green, Joseph P., Roger A. Page, R. Rasekhy, Lissa K. Johnson, and Sarah E. Bernhardt.
“Cultural Views and Attitudes About Hypnosis: A Survey of College Students Across Four
Countries.” International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 54 (2006) pp.
263-280.
48. Ost, James, Dan B. Wright, Simon Easton, Lorraine Hope, and Christopher C. French.
“Recovered Memories, Satanic Abuse, Dissociative Identity Disorder and False Memories:
A Survey of Clinical Psychologists and Hypnotherapists.” Psychology, Crime & Law 19
(2013) pp. 1-19.
49. Ost, James, Simon Easton, Lorraine Hope, Christopher C. French, and Dan B. Wright. “Latent
Variables Underlying the Memory Beliefs of Chartered Clinical Psychologists,
Hypnotherapists and Undergraduate Students.” Memory 25 (2017) pp. 57-68.
50. Yapko, Michael D. Suggestions of Abuse: True and False Memories of Childhood Sexual
Trauma. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1994.
51. Yapko, Michael D. “Suggestibility and Repressed Memories of Abuse: A Survey of
Psychotherapists’ Beliefs.” American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis 36 (1994) pp. 163-171.
52. Nash, Michael. “What, if Anything, is Regressed About Hypnotic Age Regression? A Review
of the Empirical Literature.” Psychological Bulletin 102 (1987) pp. 42-52.
53. Howe, Mark L., Lauren M. Knott, and Martin A. Conway. Memory and Miscarriages of
Justice. London: Routledge, 2018.
54. Marmelstein, Lisa R., and Steven Jay Lynn. “Normative, Group, and Hypnotic Influences on
Early Autobiographical Memory Reports.” International Journal of Clinical and
Experimental Hypnosis 47 (1999) pp. 301-319.
55. Kelsey, Denys. “Phantasies of Birth and Prenatal Experiences Recovered from Patients
Undergoing Hypnoanalysis.” Journal of Mental Science 99 (1953) pp. 216-223.
56. Cheek, David B. “Sequential Head and Shoulder Movements Appearing with Age-Regression
in Hypnosis to Birth.” American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis 16 (1974) pp. 261-266.
57. French, Christopher C. “Reincarnation Claims.” In Parapsychology: The Science of Unusual
Experience. 2nd ed. Edited by David Groome and Ron Roberts. London: Routledge, 2017,
pp. 82-95.
58. De Rochas, Albert. Les Vies Successives, Documents Pour L’Étude de Cette Question. 1911.
Paris: Charcornac.
59. Rubenstein, Robert, and Richard Newman. “The living out of ‘future’ experiences under
hypnosis.” 119 (9 April 1954) pp. 472-473.
60. Bernstein, Morey. The Search for Bridey Murphy. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1956.
61. Gardner, Martin. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. New York: Dover, 1957.
62. Spanos, Nicholas P., Evelyn Menary, Natalie J. Gabora, Susan C. DuBreuil, and Bridget
Dewhirst. “Secondary Identity Enactments During Hypnotic Past-Life Regression: A
Sociocognitive Perspective.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 61 (1991) pp.
308-320.
63. Iverson, Jeffrey. More Lives Than One? The Evidence of the Remarkable Bloxham Tapes.
London: Pan Books, 1977.
64. Harris, Melvin. Sorry, You’ve Been Duped. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986.
293
II. Psychological Perspectives
65. Stevenson, Ian. “A Case of the Psychotherapist’s Fallacy: Hypnotic Regression to ‘Previous
Lives.’” American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis 36 (1994) pp. 188-193.
66. Fiore, Edith. You Have Been Here Before: A Psychologist Looks at Past Lives. New York:
Coward, McGann, & Geohagan, 1978.
67. Netherton, Morris, and Nancy Shiffrin. Past Lives Therapy. New York: William Morrow and
Co., 1978
68. Weiss, Brian. Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His
Young Patient and the Past-Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives. New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1988.
69. Loftus, Elizabeth F. “The Reality of Repressed Memories.” American Psychologist 48 (1993)
pp. 518-537.
70. Bottoms, Bette L., and Suzanne L. Davis. “The Creation of Satanic Ritual Abuse.” Journal of
Social and Clinical Psychology 16 (1997) pp. 112-132.
71. Ofshe, Richard, and Ethan Watters. Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and
Sexual Hysteria.London: Andre Deutsch, 1995.
72. La Fontaine, Jean S. Speak of the Devil: Tales of Satanic Abuse in Contemporary England.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
73. Patihis, Lawrence, and Helena J. Younes Burton. “False Memories in Therapy and Hypnosis
Before 1980.” Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 2 (2015) pp.
153-169.
74. Bernheim, Hippolyte. De La Suggestion Dans L’Etat Hypnotique et Dans L’Etat de Veille.
Paris: Octave Doin, 1889.
75. Laurence, Jean-Roch, and Campbell Perry. “Hypnotically Created Memory Among Highly
Hypnotizable Subjects.” Science 222 (1983) pp. 523-524.
76. French, Christopher C., and Julia Santomauro. “Something Wicked This Way Comes: Causes
and Interpretations of Sleep Paralysis.” In Tall Tales About the Mind and Brain: Separating
Fact From Fiction. Edited by Sergio Dela Salla. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007,
pp. 3-22.
77. Sharpless, Brian A., and Karl Doghramji. Sleep Paralysis: Historical, Psychological, and
Medical Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
78. French, Christopher C. The Science of Weird Shit: Why Our Minds Conjure the Paranormal.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, in press.
79. Matheson, Terry. Alien Abductions: Creating a Modern Phenomenon. Amherst, New York:
Prometheus Books, 1998.
80. Lawson, Alvin H. “Perinatal Imagery in UFO Abduction Reports.” Journal of Psychohistory
12 (1984) pp. 211-239.
81. Loftus, Elizabeth F. “Imagining the Past.” The Psychologist 14 (2001) pp. 584-587.
82. Otgaar, Henry, Ingrid Candel, Harald Merckelbach, and Kimberley A. Wade. “Abducted by a
UFO: Prevalence Information Affects Young Children’s False Memories for an
Implausible Event.” Applied Cognitive Psychology 23 (2009) pp. 115-125.
83. Spanos, Nicholas P., and Ewy Bures. “Pseudomemory Responding in Hypnotic, TaskMotivated and Simulating Subjects: Memory Distortion or Reporting Bias?” Imagination,
Cognition and Personality 13 (1994) pp. 303-310.
294
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Aliens, UFOs, and Personal Schemas
Stanley Krippner
Abstract: The construction of personal schema is an adaptive human activity; it explains puzzling
events that could produce stress if left unattended. This propensity can be applied to people’s
alleged experiences with purported aliens and UFOs. In the absence of a consensus regarding the
topic, a range of explanatory schema have emerged, each purporting to provide “answers” to what
may be complicated phenomena. Constructing a scientific schema to the topic may disappoint
some experiencers but a critical assessment is more likely to solve these puzzles than simpler
schema.
Keywords: Schema, Aliens, UFOs, Brazil
Personal Schemas
Human beings need to explain puzzling events in their lives, creating beliefs, scenarios, and
worldviews at many levels—cultural, ethnic, institutional, familial, and individual. The human
brain searches for beliefs more often than it looks for facts because the organism’s goal is survival,
not finding “truth.” These “answers” are often helpful, serving as cognitive roadmaps that help
people navigate their way through both placid and difficult times. But they may also be overly
simplistic and do not do justice to complicated phenomena.
A cognitive or perceptual “schema” can be described as a framework, statement, or story that
addresses important, existential human issues, and that impacts behavior. Personal schema often
collide with the prevailing opinion embedded in cultural or institutional beliefs; examples of the
latter include such institutions as organized religion, a business or company, and a school or
university. It is within these frameworks that I approach the controversy over unidentified flying
objects (UFOs). When someone views a UFO, one typically explains it in the context of their
personal schemas, for example, “I have always believed that aliens from outer space are monitoring
us”; “Seeing is not always believing; there must be a simple explanation for what I saw that does
not include alien contact”; “There is so much that we do not know, and my experience attests to
it.” There is no institutional consensus on the topic, hence many experiencers create their own
schemata to explain what they have seen.
I have discussed UFOs with such celebrated investigators as J. Allen Hynek, John Mack, and
Michael Persinger, and I have heard lectures on the topic by Carl Sagan and Philip J. Klass. I have
spoken to dozens of people who claim to have seen UFOs, sometimes at what they purport to have
been close quarters. I have even met a few individuals who claim to have had personal interactions
with the inhabitants of UFOs, including “abductions,” close scrutiny of their bodily parts, and the
implantation of foreign objects in their bodies. In engaging in these discussions, I have been aware
of the vagaries of human memory; even first person accounts cannot escape the fallibilities of
recall, which only deteriorate over time.
A Sighting in Brazil
With this orientation as a guide, I will discuss an unusual experience I had in February 1991. The
Institute of Noetic Sciences (an organization founded by the astronaut Edgar Mitchell) had asked
295
II. Psychological Perspectives
me to take a group of its members to Brazil in order to visit spiritual communities and folk healers.
On February 22, we stayed at a rustic country hotel near Ouro Preto, a historic mining town in the
state of Minas Gerais.
During our evening meal, a member of our group asked me if I had ever seen a UFO, and I replied
negatively. I mentioned that several years earlier, two friends and I had visited the Valley of the
Dawn, a Brazilian spiritual community. During an outdoor meditation session, the three of us were
sitting in different parts of the auditorium. Immediately after the session, one of my friends—
Rolf—told me that he had just seen a UFO. He described it as blue, disc-like, with flashing lights
on the bottom. He said it was visible for about thirty seconds and then disappeared. A few minutes
later, my other friend—Alberto—rushed over to me, asking if I had seen a UFO. I immediately
separated him from Rolf, so that he could not hear Rolf ’s account and asked for details. Alberto’s
description was exactly the same as Rolf ’s, except that his time estimate of the “sighting” was less
than ten seconds. Residents of the Valley of the Dawn then told us that they often see UFOs during
the afternoon meditation session, especially when recorded music is being played.
After relating this account to the group in Ouro Preto and offering several alternative explanations
(a collision of space debris, optical illusions, hallucinations, cloud formations), I made the
humorous observation that the aliens were neglecting direct contact with me. Nonetheless, it
reflected a personal schema, namely “Visitors from other space have avoided me, even though I
am open-minded about their existence.” Then, I retired for the night.
Within the hour, Shirley, a member of our group, telephoned my room urging me to step outside
because there was a UFO in the sky. In my haste, I neglected to put on my shoes, and my slippers
were scant protection against the rocky terrain as I followed Shirley up a hill where the object
could be seen to advantage. By this time, a dozen members of our group had assembled; their
attention was focused on a distant circular formation of twinkling orange, yellow, and green lights
situated about 45 degrees above the horizon. During the time that it remained visible, it moved
neither closer nor farther from us. Its angle above the horizon appeared to remain constant as well.
Its size was difficult to estimate, because it was so far away; however, it was several times the
usual size of a planet viewed in the evening sky, more closely approximating the size of the moon.
Every four or five minutes, one of the lights would dart from the sphere, pause for a short period
of time, and then rejoin the other lights. All the members of our group reported the same details,
indicating that, if the sighting was hallucinatory, it must have been a group hallucination.
One by one, we began to eliminate ordinary explanations. It could not be an airplane or weather
balloon because its position was stationary. The same characteristic ruled out the possibility of its
being a comet, meteor, or earth satellite. The nocturnal timing of its appearance ruled out sun
pillars or ice crystals. Its geographical location eliminated the possibility of the aurora borealis.
Ball lightning was unlikely because the lights twinkled rather than pulsed. The fact that there were
several lights contra-indicated a planet or a star formation. The stationary nature of the formation
did not suggest a fleet of airplanes; the occasional breaking of the formation by one light was not
what one would expect if the circular system had been triggered by temperature inversion or a
reflection of ground lights. The formation was too far away to consist of fireflies, birds, or other
earthbound organisms, although it was impossible to accurately estimate its distance without
additional visual cues.
296
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Upon returning home, I shared my story with others, always being attentive to alternative
explorations. One of my informants, Belgian researcher Wim van Utrecht, noted that we did not
report seeing the moon, something we attributed to the dusky weather conditions at the time. But
van Utrecht suggested that the disc was actually the moon, its appearance distorted by the local
weather conditions. I have seen a blue moon, an orange moon, and various lunar eclipses—but
nothing resembling the sphere in question. However, van Utrecht proposed that the darting lights
were the erratic movements of clouds covering the moon. The lights were quite small and moved
very rapidly, but they only seemed to travel about as far as the moon’s diameter, lending credence
to the suggestion.
Van Utrecht soon followed this hypothesis with another schema. The date of the sighting coincided
with the time that the annual Carnival celebrations are in full swing. I had attended half a dozen
Carnival events over the years and know that they differ from one part of the country to another.
However, there is something unique about Ouro Preto Carnivals: they are designed by local
students. Perhaps some creative students in the area had created a huge floating disc, one from
which lights were programmed to blink, twinkle, and move. This hypothesis makes more sense to
me than any of the other schema, especially when one considers that my complaint over the dinner
table may have unleashed a shared unconscious determination to be sure I finally would experience
an UFO sighting, a determination that would have trumped a less complicated assessment. In
addition, V.J. Ballester-Olmos investigated the records of Brazilian “ufologists,” discovering that
there were no reported sightings of UFOs in the Ouro Preto area at that time. Additionally, Manuel
Borraz discovered the existence of a truly Brazilian underground hot-air balloon subculture in the
1990s.1These investigators have made a convincing case that our 1992 sighting was a visual
display of a Carnival-related disc, one that could easily have been interpreted as a UFO, especially
after our dinner discussion of the topic. Moreover, the attached diagram, prepared by Scott
Carpenter after he read my account, is congruent with the suggestion that an arrangement of lit
candles sitting in transparent cylindrical recipients accounted for the sighting.
Diagram of what I remember (2021) I saw in 1991.
1
Felipe Fernandes Cruz, “An Art of Air and Fire: Brazil’s Renegade Balloonists,” November 4, 2014,
http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/10/an-art-of-air-and-fire-brazils-renegade-balloonists (Accessed August 6, 2021).
297
II. Psychological Perspectives
My Personal Schema
Some writers influenced by Carl Gustav Jung have posited that UFOs might not be actual objects
but “mandalas” visualized by people yearning for harmony and equilibrium. However, nobody
had told me exactly what I should expect—the UFO in question had not been described to me
before I saw it—and my account tallied with those of people who came outside before and after I
had arrived. I cannot deny that all of us would have been delighted if there were more harmony in
our lives and more equilibrium in the world, but our accounts of this “mandala” were virtually
identical. If this had been a Jungian “mandala,” perhaps it would be an example of what he called
“the collective unconscious” at work. Jungian psychology is permeated with references to schema
and so his suggestion needs to be cited, although I consider its viability unlikely, at least in this
instance.
The circular formation was too far away and too dim to be recorded photographically. But I recall
the experience quite clearly, and I continue to discuss it with individuals from time to time, still
being willing to entertain ordinary explanations. In the meantime, has this anomalous sighting
affected my personal schema? If anything, it has strengthened two of them: (1) Humans often have
puzzling experiences that they attempt to explain by constructing various schema. (2) The
construction of a scientifically informed schema may take time but is the most appropriate path
to take if one would like to understand these experiences and to develop tools for similar
experiences in the future. My friends and I had dismissed ordinary explanations at the time, but in
subsequent years other explanations occurred that made sense to me, specifically that we had seen
the moon at a time when cloud formations obscured its identify, or that a nearby Carnival
celebration may have involved a colorful disc that could have been mistaken for a UFO. It is for
this reason that I do not let my psychology students use the words “proof” or “proved” unless they
are referring to logic, mathematics, or whiskey. Science needs to remain open-ended, and to keep
searching for explanations that fit observations better than existing observations, something
especially salient for controversial phenomena.
Even if my accounts and others like it do not provide evidence of extraterrestrial life forms, they
take us deeper into the mysteries of human memory, emotion, and symbol-making—and help us
chart the undiscovered realms in both our inner and outer worlds. The result of these experiences
has been a greater awareness on my part of how people, myself included, make assumptions when
confronted with new information. Humans have a propensity for schema construction because it
is an adaptive trait; it provides explanations for puzzling phenomena, thus reducing stress, and
promoting well-being. But if one is committed to a scientifically informed process, better
explanations may emerge, even though they might be less satisfactory than one’s original attempts.
Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank Vicente-Juan Ballester-Olmos, Manuel
Borraz, and Wim van Utrecht for their valuable suggestions regarding the interpretation of this
sighting.
298
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Clinical Approach to UFO Sightings and Alien Abductions
Hélène Lansley and Thomas Rabeyron
Abstract: “UFO experiences” are exceptional experiences that lie on a continuum from a simple
UFO sighting to abduction on board an alien ship. The understanding of these strange narratives
can be achieved by using a specific method that takes into account the subjective aspect of the
experience in order to be able to grasp all its aspects. After defining the concepts of ‘exceptional
experience’ and ‘UFO experience,’ this chapter proposes a methodology adapted to the
collection of narratives that takes into account the subjective aspects of the experience. Then, by
using clinical examples, we study UFO sightings and abductions from the perspective of a model
called the paranormal solution. We also show the specific psychological functioning of some
people who report such experiences, which creates the opportunity to establish the hypothesis of
possible links between UFO sightings and different type of psychological processes. Finally, a
more sociological and anthropological approach leads us to consider the emergence of these
experiences in western societies as a metaphorical expression of existential questions about the
origins of life, and gives form to latent anxieties within current society.
Keywords: Exceptional Experiences, UFO sighting, Alien abduction, Paranormal Solution,
Psychoanalysis
Introduction
UFO sightings and alien abductions fascinate and worry both those who experience them and
those who receive their testimony. In this regard, the term ‘narrative’ is preferable to ‘testimony’
since it highlights the importance of taking into account the subjective aspect of the perceived
event. Indeed, the term testimony refers to objectivity, the search for evidence, and usually
serves a pragmatic purpose. The term narrative enables one to work with the explicit and implicit
aspects of speech so that the experience can be understood from a more global point of view.
This allows one to work with the unconscious processes related to the experience and highlights
its transformative potential. Indeed, the experience cannot be separated from the individual and
is necessarily part of a subjectivity. In this chapter, we will thus emphasize the importance of
considering the overall subjective attribution of the “UFO experience” to better understand its
nature. We will first present the methodology and the theoretical foundations we use to gather
and analyze narratives of “UFO experiences.” We will then show how having access to a very
detailed description of the experience helps one to analyze it more precisely and provides
valuable information about the psychological processes involved. Finally, we will describe some
of the processes implicated in alleged UFO sightings and alien abductions from the perspective
of clinical psychology and psychoanalytical theories.
Exceptional Experiences and the Paranormal Solution Hypothesis
Exceptional experiences involve, from the subject’s point of view, an unusual or “extraordinary” interaction with the environment. The experience is then considered as being
“paranormal” and generates intense emotions that stem from its unusual and strange aspects
(Rabeyron, Chouvier, & Maléfan, 2010). The systematic study of exceptional experiences started
at the end of the 19th century, but was gradually relegated to the margins of psychology during
the 20th century because the experiences concerned were too complex in epistemological terms
299
II. Psychological Perspectives
with regard to the scientific approach of the time (Rabeyron et al., 2010; Rabeyron, 2015).
Nevertheless, it seems relevant to focus on these experiences given the number of people who
report them. For example, according to Ross and Joshi (1992), more than one in two people
report such an experience during their lifetime. Moreover, recent advances in clinical
psychology, psychiatry, and cognitive neuroscience have generated renewed interest in this topic
(Rabeyron et al., 2010).
To understand the emergence of these singular events, we usually rely on a hypothesis called the
paranormal solution in which exceptional experiences are considered as a specific reaction to
traumas and negative life events (Rabeyron et al., 2010; Rabeyron, 2020). Exceptional
experiences can then be understood as a nonpathological defense mechanism allowing the person
to cope and to keep control over negative and traumatic life events such as trauma, early
pathological relationships, and dysfunctional intra-family patterns. For example, Irwin (1991)
states that the psyches of children abused by their alcoholic parents tend to develop paranormal
theories in order to create a coping mechanism against aggressions. The goal is to have the
feeling of controlling the events that happen to them, and this defense mechanism would remain
active throughout adulthood. Also, people who describe exceptional experiences have frequently
had an important negative life event before the experience such as disease, grieving, and
accidents (Rabeyron & Watt, 2010). Most of the time, a first paranormal “event” leads to other
and more frequent exceptional experiences. The paranormal solution model implies more
precisely two levels (Rabeyron et al., 2010): the “experiential” one takes into account the
exceptional experience as a singular lifetime moment that fits into the subject’s personal
narrative and the “interpretative” level corresponds to the meaning and interpretation that the
subject gives to the experience. In addition to these two levels, a third level concerns the further
transformation processes that sometimes happen after these experiences (Rabeyron, 2010, 2022).
In this chapter, we will analyze in particular one category of exceptional experiences in which
people believe that they have seen an alien craft (as a UFO) or have encountered an
extraterrestrial life-form. The narratives that we receive go from the observation of something
which is interpreted as being an alien craft to an abduction. Some people describe nocturnal
lights, shiny cigars, sometimes huge triangular vessels (such as the ones described during the
sightings of what are now called “the Phoenix Lights”). Closer encounters are also reported, such
as the close encounters described in the classification of UFO sightings proposed by Allen
Hynek in 1972, going from the first type which is observing a UFO from less than 150 meters
away (type 1), the second type where the alleged UFO has left traces of its passage (type 2), or
the third type were people claim to have seen extraterrestrials. More recently, ufologists have
sought to complete this classification by proposing to add cases where people say they were
kidnapped aboard a UFO (type 4), or sometimes that they have entered into communication with
UFO occupants (type 5) or have had sexual intercourse with an alien (type 6). Type 4 and type 6
experiences are commonly called “abductions,” when people report having been kidnapped
aboard an alien vessel and having undergone surgical and sexual experiments (Mack, 1994;
Maleval & Charraud, 2003). The timeline of this type of experience is often incomplete and
people sometimes report having what ufologists call missing time, and cannot recall the whole
experience. Mack (1994) and Fuller (1966) described this missing time in the abduction cases
they studied and tried to put their patients under hypnosis so that they could fill in these gaps.
These different types of experience disrupt the subject’s life, ranging from a radical change in
300
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
beliefs, to symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (McNally, Lasko, Clancy et al., 2004;
Rabeyron, 2018). In the latter case, it is sometimes necessary that the subject meet a psychiatrist
or clinical psychologist who can help them make sense of this experience despite its unusual
nature (Rabeyron, 2018; Rabeyron, 2020).
Listening to the Witnesses of UFO Sightings and Alien Abductions
For the last five years, we have been receiving cases of people who describe UFO sightings or
alien abductions from two main sources in France. The first source is the National Center for
Space Studies (CNES) which has a special unit, almost unique in the world, called the Group of
Studies and Information on Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena (GEIPAN). This organization
offers an information service to the public about “Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena” (UAP).
The GEIPAN reviews all UAP for which French people have drawn up a report to the police or
have completed a questionnaire proposed by the GEIPAN on their website. This unit works with
a group of experts from different disciplines: astronomers, engineers, pilots, sociologists,
psychologists, etc. This multidisciplinary approach allows a global study of the observations that
are reported and a better understanding of UAP (https://www.cnes-geipan.fr/en, accessed on Oct.
6, 2022).
Our second source is through the Center for Information, Research and Communication on
Exceptional Experiences (CIRCEE). It includes academic researchers and clinicians who
approach paranormal experiences from a clinical and scientific point of view. CIRCEE was
created in September 2009 by Thomas Rabeyron, Renaud Evrard, and David Acunzo (Rabeyron,
2020). Since its creation, CIRCEE has developed a counselling service in which four clinical
psychologists have been working to this day. People who feel the need to share their exceptional
experiences contact us through a form available on CIRCEE’s website. We then contact them
and offer phone or video-conference interviews. We find it very important to have several
sessions with the person—three to ten, more if counselling sessions are necessary—as valuable
elements tend to be described once a trust relationship has been established with the clinician.1
UFO sightings account for about 6% of interview requests at the counseling service. Abductions
are more rarely reported and account for only about 3% of the requests. For half of these cases,
the abduction experience is accompanied by a UFO sighting. Therefore, there seems to be some
kind of experiential continuum between UFO sightings and alien abductions, just like Hynek’s
(1972) classification, ranging from the observation of something unknown far away in the sky
(such as a small light) to a close encounter where the subject describes being abducted in an alien
spaceship. In some close encounter narratives, subjects also report some form of
“communication with the UFO” (movements, flashes of light, telepathic messages), and effects
on the environment (burnt ground, car breakdown, disturbances of electrical equipment).
We have developed a specific methodology that allows gathering these narratives by taking into
account the phenomenology and the psychodynamic aspects of the experience (Rabeyron, 2022).
It is indeed important to understand that witnessing a UFO sighting or an alien abduction is
always part of a global psychological dynamic (Rabeyron, 2018, 2020). In the same way that
Winnicott says that “a baby alone does not exist” (Winnicott, 1959), one may say “A UFO alone
does not exist,” which means that the UFO never exists alone, without the narrative of a person,
even when tangible and objective elements are reported to corroborate the sighting. Therefore,
1
To find out more about CIRCEE and the counseling service, please refer to: Rabeyron, 2022.
301
II. Psychological Perspectives
understanding the subjective context of the experience and the associated conscious and
unconscious psychological processes is crucial. However, most research in this area does not
take into account this subjective attribution, 2 whereas our data show that it is essential to
seriously analyze this parameter. Indeed, a UFO sighting or an abduction does not happen to
anyone at any time, as we will demonstrate in this work. This also means that the framework
used in the collection of the narrative has itself an impact on the overall understanding of the
psychological processes involved. For example, choosing to contact the GEIPAN on the one
hand or the counseling service of CIRCEE on the other is not the same thing and leads us to meet
with people presenting different psychological profiles. The interview itself and its context must
therefore be taken into consideration. The choice of the interlocutor (in terms of his profession or
expertise in a given field), and the explicit or implicit request concerning the reasons for the
exchange, are different elements that also need to be taken into account to understand the
psychodynamic aspects of the experience.
The people who describe these experiences often “lived” them in a profound manner and they
have become part their personal story. In this regard, clinicians have to be able to suspend their
own personal judgment about the experience so that they can fully listen to the narrative of the
person. The accounts of such experiences can indeed generate rejection from some experts who
are unable to put aside their own a priori stance. Others can, on the contrary, develop a
fascination that does not allow an appropriate approach toward these experiences. This
fascination can make the interviewer run the risk of remaining fascinated by the “unusual
objective elements” and not being able to analyze psychological aspects and other clues that
allow for a complete picture of the alleged event. The interviewer must therefore be able to
tolerate uncertainty and doubt when listening to such experiences (Rabeyron, 2020, 2022). In this
sense, we rely on a position described initially by psychoanalyst Georges Devereux (1956), in
the field of ethnopsychiatry, that of undecidability, which allows the clinician to move away
from the question of belief and the possibility of such events. 3 It thus becomes possible to
develop an open approach to UFO sightings and abduction experiences, which is a necessary
condition for their detailed analysis on the phenomenological and psychodynamic levels.
We will now describe in more detail how our interviews usually take place. During the first
interview, the person describing a UFO sighting or an alien abduction may wish to display
elements that are presented as evidence of the reality of what they have experienced. These can
include photos or videos, markings in the environment, or sometimes traces on the body
interpreted as marks of medical experiments carried out during the abductions. Despite the
undecidability posture described above, we feel it is important to consider these various elements
that are very useful in understanding the nature of the person’s experience. This more
2
Humans engage in a psychological process of attributing their subjective experiences to objects in the world. The
objects are cognitively reconstructed to be the causes of perceptual experiences.
3
As clinical psychologists, we do not take a position with regard to the ontological reality of such experiences - for
example: are they the consequence of hallucinations or of “real” and objective events? - for several reasons : (1) the
clinical counseling approach requires a posture of undecidability in order to help the person make sense of the
experience and explore the different potential meanings of that experience; (2) the situations are extremely
heterogenous and one explanation probably does not fit all UFO sightings and alien abductions; (3) our research
setting and the data we have collected so far do not allow us to propose firm conclusions concerning this very
challenging topic, especially for epistemological reasons (see on this topic: Méheust, 2000; J. Vallée & C. Aubeck,
2000).
302
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
“objective” step also promotes the therapeutic alliance and shows that we are “seriously”
interested in what the reporters have experienced, which may not have been the case in previous
interviews. Here are three examples from sessions conducted at the CIRCEE counselling service
to illustrate these different aspects. The first one shows how these objective elements can
sometimes lead to an understanding of the experience and the next two reflect what some people
might want to show as what they assume is evidence of their experience.
Mrs. V. observes from her balcony a “whirlwind of purple lights in the sky.” Panicked by what
she is seeing, she films it with her cellphone. During the first interview, she shows us the video,
which, combined with the time, place and day of the observation, allows us to conclude that these
were lights projected during a festival. This explanation greatly sooths her and she then suffers
less from her anxiety.
Mr. H. contacts CIRCEE after strange experiences that he does not understand: He wakes up one
morning with indelible blue marks on the back of his neck. During our first interview, he sends
photos of these marks and the results of their biopsy, which concludes they are tattoo ink, but Mr.
H. claims that he has never been tattooed. He’s convinced that these traces are evidence of an
abduction and that aliens marked him. However, he does not remember being abducted, but has
seen numerous videos of abductees on the internet, and knows that “missing time” is frequent. He
therefore also thinks that aliens may have erased his memory.
Mrs. F. says she saw a “huge unidentified aircraft” at night through the window of her kitchen.
The “craft” is described as being stationary and seems to float above the field at the bottom of
Mrs. F’s garden. As it is emitting a kind of green halo, she decides to go to the observation scene
the next morning to see if the halo has left traces. She takes a couple of photos of shattered pieces
of wood and marks on the trees that she considers to be traces of the passage of the UFO.
Beyond these objective elements presented by the person, we collect their narrative using
microphenomenology techniques (Rabeyron & Finkel, 2020; Rabeyron, 2022). These methods
improve the collection of phenomenological information and give access to a very precise
description of the experience. The people are put in a state of “evocation” (Vermersch, 1994),
allowing access to a multitude of details, to the context and to their emotional state at the time of
the alleged event. The description of the experience is then as close as possible to the experience
itself, which allows for a better understanding of it and of the subject’s themselves (Rabeyron,
2022). To better understand the importance of having access to all these details, let’s take the
example of a person describing a “flying saucer”: it is an object that is easy to imagine in our
society since most people have been confronted with it in science fiction movies (Méheust, 1992,
2000; Vallée & Aubeck, 2009). However, the terms used by a person to describe their experience
are usually not precise enough to represent “their” flying saucer in terms of size, appearance,
color, movement, or shape. Each case always has its own unique elements (perfectly flat discs,
sometimes standing vertically, or flattened ovoid shapes, with or without bright flashes, etc).
These unique elements are very important in research so as not to create the confusion of
thinking that all narratives can be grouped into one category. Thus, microphenomenology makes
it possible to obtain a very detailed description of the subject’s mental representations, which
appears as a first step to obtain a narrative that is as reliable and as detailed as possible.
303
II. Psychological Perspectives
Once a climate of trust has been established and the narrative of the experience well described,
we try to understand more precisely the subjective attribution4 and the psychic reality5 of the
person who reports such an experience. The “non-judgmental space” proposed during the
interviews offers the possibility of deploying and developing the whole experience from a
psychological point of view and not just the “objective” description of the UFO: what are the
feelings related with UFO encounters or alien abductions? In what context did the observation
take place? Had the person experienced any unusual events, either before or after the experience?
What impact did it have on their life? What is their interpretation of their experience? In this
regard, people often describe mixed feelings of fascination and fear at the time of the
observation: something impossible has just happened to them, which sometimes induces what
John Mack (1994) has called an “ontological shock” or what Renaud Evrard (2014) describes as
a “paradigmatic breach.” Moreover, one of the questions asked after UFO sightings and alien
abductions is often “Was I chosen to witness this?” Behind this question, there are narcissistic
aspects that can make it difficult for the subjects to detach themselves from the experience. For
those who contact ufologists, paranormal investigators, or a more official institution such as the
GEIPAN, their testimony can become a source of interest which supports these narcissistic
aspects. The case of abductions is even more complex, since the persons are often convinced that
they were “chosen” by aliens, but find themselves caught in a paradox between narcissistic
aspects (I am different and that’s why I was chosen from among seven billion people on earth)
and traumatic aspects (the abduction was terrifying and painful, will it happen again?). This
ambivalence between fear and feeling singled-out seems to be an important psychological
dimension of people who have experienced abductions.
The fate of the experience’s aftermath is quite variable from one person to another, but we can
nevertheless spot certain recurrences. The examples we are going to cite are found more
regularly in cases of abductions, but as the “alien experiences” seem to be on the same
continuum, it is not uncommon to observe the same after a UFO sighting. Thus, some people
will join groups of abductees in order to find a “safe space,” with people “like them,” to whom
they will be able to talk about their experiences. Others will implement avoidance behavior such
as not sleeping alone, not going to a certain window at home, or taking a detour to stay away
from certain roads at night. These strategies are in many aspects similar to PTSD symptoms such
as described in the DSM-5.6 Changes in behavior are also observed regularly, such as developing
a certain ecological awareness or working for humanitarian purposes following “telepathic
messages sent by aliens.” In terms of belief, the persons sometimes start to believe in
extraterrestrials, which is rarely the case beforehand, and which for some might even go against
previous religious beliefs. They also often state the hypothesis that aliens might be the origin of
mankind.
This psychodynamic approach, which focuses on what happened before, during, and after the
alleged experience, allows us to have an overview of both the experience and its subjective
attribution. We can therefore try to understand who is the person behind the event, which
highlights the fact that collecting only the testimony of the experience does not allow for
understanding these narratives in a global manner. Indeed, our data strongly suggest that a
4
See footnote 2.
“Psychischen Realität” described by Freud (1916-1917).
6
Diagnostic Statistical Manual, 5th edition.
5
304
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
number of these narratives have a “psychological function” that can be identified and analyzed.
The emergence of alleged UFO sightings and abductions seems to be related to unconscious
processes related to self-esteem regulation, internal conflicts, projection of previous trauma, etc.
The work of investigation that we carry out is often parallel to the work of elaboration of the
subjects who thus manage to put meaning on their experiences and integrate them in a more
harmonious way into their psychological life. We will now describe more precisely the
psychological or psychodynamic functions of these experiences.
Psychological Functions of UFO Sightings and Alien Abduction Experiences
UFO sightings, alien abductions, and the paranormal solution hypothesis
A number of studies point to the fact that some of these experiences could have their origin in
negative life events and can thus be considered as a kind of defense mechanism or psychological
solution (Si Ahmed, 2006; Rabeyron et al., 2010), in the face of previous trauma, anxiety and
depressive states or affects as illustrated below:
Mrs. E. has just retired and is suffering from the absence of her son who is now living abroad.
One evening, as she settles down in her veranda to enjoy the view of her garden, she observes a
very bright rectangle in the sky that suddenly disappears. Since then, Mrs. E. is convinced that
aliens are trying to make contact with her and that she was chosen to see this “spacecraft.” This
experience has led her to spend her days doing research about UFOs and she has contacted
several ufologists who have interviewed about her observation.
This experience seems to have permitted Mrs. E. to rediscover her self-esteem and to find a new,
challenging occupation that helps her to unconsciously avoid the negative emotions related to the
end of her professional career and the departure of her son. Abductions, like other exceptional
experiences, are also often, apparently, a metaphor for a negative life event that has not been
psychologically “digested,” and the experience appears as the expression of an unsymbolized
unconscious psychological content. Traumatic events can then resurface in the life of the subject
in the quasi-hallucinatory form of an alien abduction as illustrated by this case:
Mr. D. contacts CIRCEE because he wants to testify that he has been abducted from his bed by
aliens in his late teens. At the age of 18, Mr. D. is awakened at 5 a.m. by a pale white light that
appears in his room. Frightened, he leans over to turn on the light on his bedside table, but when
he presses the switch, “the thing” turns his brain off, as if it has pressed a switch and Mr. D.
immediately falls asleep. He wakes up on a cold table in an unknown room. He imagines that he
is on board “a spaceship.” On each side of the table is a “Grey.” They are “tall beings of 1m
70,” grey with a slight bluish hue. Their head is oval, their skull is “thick and slightly elongated
towards the back.” Their eyes have the same shape as humans’, but they are larger and
completely black. Instead of a nose, they have two small holes. The mouth is small and seems
devoid of teeth. What is “destabilizing” for Mr. D. is the lack of expression on their faces, “as if
they didn’t want to show any emotion, I didn’t even see them blink.” The “Grey” to the right of
Mr. D. has particular physical characteristics, small dots that look like moles and a scar. While
“the alien” advances his hand to place it behind Mr. D.’s neck, he tries to scratch “the grey” to
“get some of its DNA under his fingernail”; but as soon as he touches it, he wakes up in his bed.
As soon as he wakes up, Mr. D. remembers being in pain, especially in the testicles, and felt as
though he were paralyzed. At that precise time, he cannot remember what happened exactly.
Since that time, he has had severe pain in his neck and thinks something was implanted (“a lead
ball that I sometimes feel”). He says that through time, his memory has been coming back to him
little by little, but he has difficulty determining whether it is just a dream or real memories. This
305
II. Psychological Perspectives
abduction experience happened to him a few months after he had been raped by a group of men.
It also appears that one of the aliens he describes has physical characteristics very close to those
of one of his attackers. Nevertheless, Mr. D. does not seem to consciously make any connection
between the two attackers or the two experiences.
The case of Mr. D. suggest that it might be easier to psychologically deal with an “alien
abduction” by a third party than with the traumatic experience of rape. The account of the
abduction allows him to speak about his rape for the first time and gently acknowledge different
traumatic events he has experienced through life. This case is consistent with the work of
Richard McNally, who suggests that abductions could be the expression, by false memories, of
real sexual trauma (McNally et al., 2004). McNally and Clancy (2005) also draw a connection
between sleep paralysis, hypnagogic hallucinations, and sexual abuse in childhood. Sleep
paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations (related to when the subject is falling asleep or waking
up) are common in people who have suffered sexual abuse and have often been linked to
experiences of abduction and apparitions. Periods of falling asleep and waking up create a
separation between the body and the psyche that are similar to “altered states of consciousness”
and can generate hallucinations (Rabeyron, 2009; Rabeyron, 2015). Hypnagogical hallucinatory
phenomena occur when the transition between waking and REM sleep phases malfunctions
(Rabeyron and Caussié, 2015). Sleep paralysis causes great anxiety, such as a feeling of
imminent danger and a tightening of the chest. Subjects often feel as if they are being attacked or
raped (Rabeyron 2009). In the following illustration, we can also draw a link between a
traumatic event and an exceptional experience, but the latter seems less to be a metaphorical
replicate of the trauma in terms of the narrative and serves a different purpose for the subject’s
psyche:
Mrs. P. is in psychological difficulty after receiving bad news from her general practitioner, who
informed her that her uterus was infected and that she needed a hysterectomy. Her anxiety of
undergoing surgery is accompanied by her mourning the fact that she will not be able to have
another child. In this context, she wakes up one morning and sees an alien being leaning over
her. It is described as having a humanoid form, but no face or gender characteristics, even
though she thinks it was “a male.” It seems to be “composed of water or similar matter” and “an
immense energy or intelligence emanates from it.” As he approaches his finger to her forehead,
she immediately falls asleep and wakes up a few hours later. She now thinks that the infection of
her uterus is due to hybridization procedures that she underwent due to these beings, but that she
cannot remember.
Mrs. P.’s experience maybe offers her the possibility to find meaning after a negative life event
and resulting grief. As mentioned above, UFO sightings and alien encounters often result in a
certain narcissistic revival or can decrease depressive symptoms such as illustrated in Mrs. P.’s
case. The fact of seeing an “extraterrestrial spaceship” can also alleviate anxiety of separation
and loneliness. The perceived event therefore has a function for the subject’s psyche and does
not happen in a random way. The two cases we have just mentioned illustrate the fact that such
experiences occur regularly after or during difficult life situations, which themselves seem to be
associated with previous traumatic events. The subjective context of the experience is therefore
essential, but only becomes apparent after a thorough psychological and clinical evaluation.
306
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Operatory functioning
Our research interviews and counseling with people reporting UFO sightings and abductions
have also shown that certain people have the particularity of speaking in a very emotionally
detached way, at least initially, about their experiences. This is an element that was not obvious
at the beginning of our investigations as we rather expected to be in contact with people with
“Fantasy Prone Personalities” (FPP), as is often the case with exceptional experiences (Wilson &
Barber, 1983). FPP usually have finer mental boundaries, which causes confusion between the
“inside” and the “outside” of the psyche. As a result, these subjects with more permeable mental
boundaries are more likely to report exceptional experiences (Hartmann, 1991). They are people
with very rich fantasy lives and emotional lives. However, we were surprised to discover that
very different way from people with FPP, as illustrated by the following situations:
Mrs. T. describes many UFO sightings, and what she perceives as alien encounters, in a very
banal way, including the observation of “a large white and bright vessel” that took place right
after her father’s funeral. All her different life experiences are described on a single tone, and she
seems completely emotionally detached from all of them, although some would naturally be seen
as sad, frightening, or sometimes joyful.
Mr. C. describes three sightings that he has observed in a very short period of time. The first one
is an apparition of the Virgin Mary, hovering above the trees near his house. The second one is a
15-meter-tall man, that looks like a Greek god, that he observes in broad daylight while he is
driving through the countryside. The third observation is of a man who flies out of a spaceship.
Mr. C. tells us he knows that these experiences are strange, but that he does not feel any emotions
in particular, and that in the moment where he saw them he assumed that he was just “tired.”7
The lack of emotion in speech can be understood in the light of the work of Pierre Marty (1967)
and Claude Smadja (2001) about psychosomatic disorders and what they called “operational
thinking.” Marty and De M’Uzan (1994) suggest that people who use operational thinking list
facts without necessarily relating them to emotions or affectivity. People who think in an
operational way are not connected to their emotions and every life event is on the same “level”
for them. They do not seem to be moved by situations and do not seem to make choices out of
desire, but rather out of respect for the societal norm. Smadja (2001) also suggests that
psychosomatic patients have a particular transferential exchange that impairs their ability to
adapt an appropriate emotional approach to the relationship concerned: “the patient is present,
but empty” (p. 194). The same thing seems to happen with some of our cases with a very
particular transferential dynamic. Indeed, at the end of the conversations, we sometimes had a
tendency to feel empty, as if surrounded by a “big white screen.” This feeling can be very
unpleasant, and has the tendency to shut down the investigator’s ability to “think” about the
experience. Thus, some UFO sightings and alien abductions seem to induce a mechanism to
suppress thoughts, maybe to protect the psyche from negative emotions. Marty and De M’Uzan
7
The cases of M.C., the previous one (Mrs. T.), and the next one (Mrs. A.) could also lead to a diagnosis of
psychosis because of emotional detachment and behaviors associated with the experience that may seem strange (to
not feel worried, resume usual tasks in the immediate aftermath, etc.). As we progressed in our interviews, Mr. C’s
case clearly appeared to us to involve psychosis. However, it was necessary to conduct several interviews before
having enough evidence to support this differential diagnosis, which again shows the importance of conducting
several interviews in the context of this type of work. The cases of Mrs. T. and Mrs. A. (see below) revealed nothing
in favor of a psychotic structure and thus illustrate the idea of an operational functioning for some of the people who
consult us.
307
II. Psychological Perspectives
(1994) suggest that operational thinking “sidesteps” phantasmatic activity, and that impulses can
return in the form of somatization. With our own patients, their inability to symbolize an
unmanageable situation returns unconsciously in the form of a UFO or abduction.
Operational thinking is one of the three symptoms described in psychosomatic patients to
account for the operational life (Smadja, 2001; Marty, 1967). The other two symptoms,
“essential depression” and “operational behaviors,” also appear to be part of the clinical picture
seen in some of UFO and abduction cases. Kaswin-Bonnefond (2004) defines “essential
depression” as “a psychological state without a manifest expression of suffering; moreover, the
emergence of a somatic impairment causes a psychological improvement” (p. 1331). Ksensée
(2004) adds that people suffering from essential depression cannot explain the reason behind
their depression and express only a few emotions. These elements coincide perfectly with the
narratives of UFO observations, since they seem to allow an improvement in self-esteem and the
avoidance of depressive affects, as illustrated in the case below:
Mrs. A. and her husband come back home after a dinner with friends. It’s about midnight when
her husband goes to bed and Mrs. A. gets busy with household chores. She goes into the garden
to spread her laundry. At this moment, she observes a “huge triangular vessel” that is gradually
approaching her. It stops a few hundred meters from her, and she suddenly feels “thrown on
board” thanks to what she describes as “a magnifying effect.” She sees women wandering,
“prisoners of the ship,” and who, according to her, are very sad. She also communicates
telepathically with famous people on board. She then finds herself again in her garden and
decides to go home and set the table for the next day. Since then, she has been constantly thinking
about the experience for which “she was chosen” and which she only wants to share with people
who will not deny it.
This clinical case highlights two of the aspects that we can link to operational thinking. First,
Mrs. A. goes back to completely normal activities after a very unique experience. She therefore
seems to do things because “that is what is expected of her,” without any personal purpose. The
fact that she sees sad women wondering aboard the “spaceship” could also resonate with how
she feels. Secondly, she only wants to talk to people who will have a particular interest in her
experience, and who will not try to “take it away from her.” Marty and colleagues (2001) suggest
that in psychosomatic disorders, the medical institution takes the role of a maternal function
which can offer the patient a possibility of psychological reorganization. Witnesses of UFO
sightings or subjects describing abductions also turn to institutions such as the GEIPAN or
CIRCEE, looking for experts who will be able to “take care of them” and to take their
experiences into consideration.
Marty and De M’Uzan (1994) also suggest that patients with operational functioning exhibit
behavior that is very close to their cultural references, but this conduct is meaningless to them.
Their identifications remain superficial, with norms that are imposed on them by society as a
whole. For both authors, the superego of their operational patients is “schematic, apparently not
integrated” (p. 201). We can also make connections here with several cases in which the persons
often tell us that, immediately after an “incredible experience,” they resume their daily tasks,
such as Mrs. A, but also a man who explained to us that he put an end to his sighting of the
“spaceship” because “it was time to eat.” These behaviors seem almost absurd after such an
308
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
intense and strange experience. The hypothesis of a trauma-related dissociation8 remains valid,
but in view of the other elements, the hypothesis of operational functioning deserves to be
studied more closely.
In concluding this section, we can therefore say that some people reporting UFO sightings or
extraterrestrial abductions may present a particular psychological profile different from the ones
commonly found with exceptional experiences. Instead of Fantasy Prone Personalities, we
encounter operational functioning, so people through their observation seek a psychological
solution so that their experience can make sense. As they suffer from the inability to symbolize,
these people tend to project psychological contents outside the psyche: in psychosomatic
patients, these contents will be projected into their bodies, and in our patients, they are projected
into a UFO.
Aliens and fantasy about the origins of humanity
In this last part of the chapter, we would like to propose a study of UFO sightings and alien
abductions with a more anthropological point of view. We can start with this questioning: why
do some people, especially since 1947 and the testimony of Kenneth Arnold, think they have
been in contact with an alien life form? In 1961, Carl Gustave Jung proposed an answer: “But if
there is psychological projection, there must be, for this to happen, a psychological cause [...]
The origin of such rumors is an affective tension resulting from a situation of collective distress,
which can either result from collective danger or from a vital necessity of the soul” (p. 40). Jung
proposes more precisely that UFO sightings might reflect the fear in the population about the
Cold War and “traumatic remains” of the two world wars. At present, we are noticing a
significant increase in the number of UFO sightings and a growing interest in this topic in the
media,9 which makes us believe that certain latent anguishes in our society come to be expressed
through these experiences. Indeed, Maleval & Charraud (2003) describe cases of people who say
they have received messages from aliens, often related to the societal concerns of the moment:
ecology, war, nuclear energy, etc. We have also encountered a case where the person told us that
UFOs were visible from his home because “they” came to monitor the proper functioning of the
nuclear power plant near his home. Beyond this first sociological hypothesis, we can also
approach “extraterrestrial experiences” as the metaphor of the question of origins as illustrated
with the next case:
Three friends drive home from a game night around midnight. On the road that leads through the
forest, the driver points out to his passengers a “black mass, which slowly flies over the trees.”
Mrs. B. describes a “huge dark flying saucer, with lights of different colors flashing underneath
it.” Mrs. B wants to stop and observe the UFO, but she gives up because the driver is too scared.
Mrs. B. expresses disappointment that she was not able to fully experience her UFO observation
because of the driver. Since then, she regularly scrutinizes the sky and confesses that she hopes to
see “the spaceship” again, and even to be taken away by “those” who are on board. She later
says she does not know what forms these “beings” might have. Therefore, she uses the word
“dust.” This term, in view of other elements of the case, unconsciously echoes God’s creation of
man in the Bible. “The Lord God made man out of the dust of the earth” (Genesis 2:7), or the
more famous formula when God drives Adam out of heaven “you are dust and you will return to
8
Dissociation is a process in which a person disconnects from his thoughts, feelings, memories, behaviors, physical
sensations, or sense of identity.
9
See for example the revealed files of the Pentagon.
309
II. Psychological Perspectives
dust” (Genesis 3:19). This idea in our culture that dust is the origin of life is thus found in her
speech, but she also hypothesizes that aliens come to "watch over their creation.”
Today’s Western society tends to constantly measure, classify, compartmentalize and explain the
world in a rational and scientific way. In this context, the usefulness of asking existential
questions is being challenged. Indeed, these unanswered questions, for which doubt will always
exist, may no longer find attentive ears. These questions could then manifest themselves in
exceptional experiences, where the observation of an extraterrestrial spacecraft can allow a
metaphorical answer to existential questioning (Why do I exist? What is the meaning of life?
etc.).
This hypothesis is also illustrated in science-fiction and especially in two movies directed by
Ridley Scott: “Prometheus” (2012) and “Alien Covenant” (2017). These films offer a new vision
of the origins of life, its meaning, the roles we hold during our lifetimes, and the existential
anguish about death. This questioning about the origins of humankind, and of the individual, is
universal, thus placing it at the heart of the structure of our identity (Bretonnière-Fraysse, 2006).
Religions provide answers to this fundamental question, but their revelations no longer seem to
satisfy many Westerners. Thus, it seems that the overflow of uncertainty about the origins of our
existence is transformed into a threshold of excitement which could then come into being in the
vision of an “alien-craft,” perhaps of a “mother ship,” thereby mixing “scientific” elements and
traditional religious beliefs. For example, this relationship to the question of origins manifests
itself in a comparable way to the apparitions of the Virgin Mary and by extension the symbol of
the mother in the Catholic religion. Moreover, a fusion between theology and ufology has been
developed recently, with the idea that the apparitions of the Virgin Mary were in fact alien
apparitions (Seval, 2007). From this point of view, “UFO experiences” could be considered as
new “myths” that provide cultural material for reflecting on the question of origins. It is possible
that other cultural and sociological issues could also contribute to the development of this type of
myth in our culture. Jung (1961), for example, emphasized the fact that UFO sightings appeared
in the post-war period, and more specifically during the Cold War, and that they could thus
represent a kind of metaphorical representation of the collective fear of a specific threat,
especially in the form of a nuclear war (in this case, supposed “extraterrestrials” thus represent a
potential threat to humankind, especially if they are credited with a considerable technological
advantage). Further research into these perspectives is necessary, but we can note that the current
increasing enthusiasm for this topic,10 and the large number of sightings and abductions that are
being discussed in the media, could also fit into this sociological and anthropological analysis. In
this sense, these observations could thus represent a form of “solution” to different forms of
existential anguish, and also to the anguish related to the social climate today and the anxiety it
generates. This anxiety seems to have been catalyzed over the past two years by the COVID
pandemic, and also more recently by the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which re-actualizes certain
fears concerning the threat of a nuclear war.
10
See for example Pentagon UAP files revealed in June 2021.
310
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Conclusion
As stated above “a UFO alone does not exist,” it is necessarily part of one’s subjectivity. We
must take this point into account in order to understand the emergence, the causes, and the
meanings of exceptional experiences. This postulate leads us to use methods of micro-analysis in
our interviews in order to obtain a narrative which is as close as possible to the experience as
“lived” by the subject. The narratives of UFO sightings and abductions that we obtain give us the
possibility to study these experiences from the angle of the paranormal solution, allowing us to
understand how some of them are related to non-symbolized traumatic experiences. We have
also identified an operational way of thinking among some of our patients, as described in the
psychosomatic approach. Further work will aim to support this complex hypothesis, since the
accounts of extraterrestrial experiences are found in all psychological structures, whether they
are neurotic, psychotic, or other, and will require us to focus more specifically on notions in
psychopathology so that we can then seek to understand more specifically the differences in the
narratives of experiences according to the different structures. A more anthropological
perspective allows us to study the role of this type of experience in western society and leads us
to consider extraterrestrial experiences as a new myth to answer the question of origin and primal
anguish.
References
1. Devereux, G. (1956). “Normal et anormal.” In G. Devereux. (1970). Essais d’ethnopsychiatrie
générale.
2. Evrard, R. (2014). Folie et paranormal, vers une clinique des expériences exceptionnelles.
Rennes: PUR.
3. Freud, S. (1916-1917). Conférences d’introduction à la psychanalyse. Paris: Gallimard.
4. Fuller, J.G. (1966). The Interrupted Journey. New York: Dial Press.
5. Hartmann, E. (1991). Boundaries in the Mind. New York: Basic Books.
6. Hynek, J.A. (1972). The UFO Experience: A scientific study. Whitby:McGraw-Hill
Contemporary.
7. Irwin, H.J. (1991). “A study of paranormal belief, psychological adjustment, and fantasy
proneness.” Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 85(4), 317-331.
8. Jung, C.G. (1961). Un mythe moderne. Paris: Gallimard.
9. Kaswin-Bonnefond, D. (2004). “La vie opératoire. Etudes psychanalytiques de Claude
Smadja.” Revue française de psychanalyse, 4(68), 1327-1336.
10. Ksensée, A. (2004). “Dépression essentielle et narcissisme.” Revue française de
psychanalyse, 4(68), 1283-1296.
11. Mack, J.E. (1994). Abduction. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
12. Maleval, J.C., & N. Charraud. (2003). The “alien abduction syndrome.” In N. Totton (ed.),
Psychoanalysis and the paranormal: Lands of darkness. London: Karnac.
13. Marty, P. (1967). “La dépression essentielle.” Revue française de psychanalyse, 32(3), 595598.
14. Marty, P., & M. De M’Uzan (1994). “La pensée opératoire.” Revue française de
psychosomatique, 2(6), 197-208.
15. Marty, P., M. De M’Uzan, & C. David. (2001). Le Fil Rouge. Paris: PUF.
16. McNally, R.J., & S.A. Clancy. (2005). “Sleep paralysis, sexual abuse, and space alien
abduction.” Transcultural Psychiatry, 42(1), 113-122.
311
II. Psychological Perspectives
17. McNally, R.J., N.B. Lasko, S.A. Clancy, M.L. Macklin, R.K. Pitman, & S.P. Orr (2004).
“Psychophysiological responding during script-driven imagery in people reporting
abductions by space aliens.” Psychological Science, 15(7), 493-497.
18. Méheust, B. (1992). En soucoupes volantes. Paris: Imago.
19. _____. (2000). Retour sur l’ “anomalie belge.” Marseille: Le livre bleu éditeur.
20. Rabeyron, T. (2010). Approche psychodynamique et cognitive des expériences
exceptionnelles (Ph.D. Thesis), Lyon: Lyon University.
21. _____. (2018). “Clinique des expériences d’abduction: Trauma, clivage et logiques de
l’originaire.” L’Evolution Psychiatrique, 83(2), 355-379.
22. _____. (2022), “When the truth is out there: Counseling People Who Report Anomalous
Experiences.” Frontiers in Psychology, 12 : 693707.
23. _____. (2022). Clinique des expériences exceptionnelles. Paris: Dunod.
24. Rabeyron, T., B. Chouvier. & P. Le Maléfan. (2010). “Clinique des expériences
Exceptionnelles: du trauma à la solution paranormale.” L’évolution psychiatrique, 75,
633-653.
25. Rabeyron T., & A. Finkel. (2020). “L’exploration des états subjectifs de la conscience par la
micro-analyse au croisement de l’analyse cognitive et de la psychanalyse / The
explorations of subjective states of consciousness at the intersection of cognitive analysis
and psychoanalysis.” Recherches en psychanalyse, 30(2), 176-186.
26. Rabeyron T. & C. Watt. (2010). “Paranormal experiences, mental health and mental
boundaries and psi.” Personality and Individual Differencies, 48(3), 487-492.
27. Renard, J.-B. (2009). “James R. Lewis (ed.). Encyclopedic Sourcebook of UFO Religions.”
Archives de sciences sociales et des religions, 136, 133-166.
28. Ross, C.A., & S. Joshi. (1992). “Paranormal experiences in general population.” Journal of
Nervous and Mental Diseases, 180(6), 357-361.
29. Scott, R. (producer), M. Green, J. Logan, & J. Paglen. (screenplay). (2017). Alien Covenant
[science-fiction movie]. USA and UK:Brandywine Productions, Scott Free Productions, Dune
Entertainment.
30. Seval, C. (2007). La Vierge et les extraterrestres, ufologie et théologie. Hescamps : JMG.
31. Si Ahmed, D. (2006). Comment penser le paranormal: psychanalyse des champs limites de
la psyché. Paris: L’Harmattan.
32. Smadja, C. (2001). La vie opératoire, études psychanalytiques. Paris: PUF.
33. Vallée, J., & C. Aubeck. (2009). Wonders in the sky, Unexplained aerial objects from
antiquity to modern times. New York: Penguin Group.
34. Vermersch, P. (1994, ed. 2010). 'L’entretien d’explicitation. Paris: ESF.
35. _____. (2017). “L’accès aux traces mnémoniques: l’entretien d’explicitation comme une aide
à la remémoration et à la description des vécus.” Expliciter (le journal de l’association
GREX2 Groupe de recherche sur l’explicitation), 113, 26-47.
36. Wilson, T., & T. Barber (1983). “The fantasy-prone personality: implications for
understanding imagery, hypnosis and parapsychological phenomena.” In: A.A. Sheikh
(ed.), Imagery: Current theory, research, and application. New York: Wiley.
37. Winnicott, D.W. (1959). “The Fate of the Transitional Object.” In PsychoAnalytic Explorations, Boston: Harvard University Press.
312
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Manuel Jimenez and the Perception of UFOs: Hypotheses and Experiments
Claude Maugé
Abstract: Five types of contributions about the perception of UFOs by psychologist Manuel
Jimenez are presented, particularly from his thesis in psychology: participations in case
investigations; a sociological survey about the basic attitudes on UFOs in the general population;
experiments about the perception of UFO-like luminous stimuli; general considerations about
visual perception; and their application to the perception of UFOs/IFOs, in particular a series of
hypotheses about the role of UFO cognitive schemas and their verification using various files of
UFOs or IFOs. Basically, the main idea is that, in the matter of IFO witnessing (but also more
generally), the perceptual error appears when the top-down cognitive processes outdo the
bottom-up sensory data.
Keywords: Cognitive schema of UFO, Perception of distance, GEPAN, IFO, Manuel Jimenez,
UFO, Visual perception
Introduction
First, a word of caution: the texts presented here date from a few decades ago; several data are
still relevant, but it is clear that others can be out-of-date. Manuel Jimenez [hereafter J] is a
cognitivist who taught psychology at the University Montpellier-III Paul Valéry; he had worked
with (and for) GEPAN1 at the end of the 70s and during the 80s. He contributed to some ten
GEPAN’s Notes Techniques, in four basic directions: treatment of information in two of them;
participation to several case investigations (following section); a sociological survey with
Philippe Besse (next section); and a synthesis about the psychology of perception in Note
Technique N° 10, which is based on experiments by him and on theoretical views. These views
will be later expanded on in J’s thesis in psychology in 1994, again with theory and experiments
but also with a direct application to the perception of pre-UFOs 2, and in a little book for the
general public. Except if another source is noted, all page numbers refer to the thesis: [Jimenez,
1994]
Jimenez and the Case Investigations in GEPAN’s Notes Techniques
The following six French cases are given in chronological order, with: Basic facts. J’s
contribution (in the source, explicit only for cases 1 and 4). GEPAN’s verdict. Positions outside
GEPAN (cases 4 to 6). [Sources.]
March 11, 1979, Saint-Marcel (Ain). Intense light observed by several witnesses, sound, death of
1 GEPAN, Groupe d’Études des Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non Identifiés, is an official French body created in
1977 within the Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES); it will later become SEPRA, and finally GEIPAN,
its present name, where “I” stands for Information.
2 The present author uses the following terms. Pre-UFO ~ UFO/IFO ~ UFO in Condon’s sense: not identified by
the witness or labelled “UFO” by any other person; quasi-UFO ~ UFO in Hynek’s sense ~ rank “D” by GEPAN:
not identified after a (presumed) good investigation; true-UFO: (hypothetical) stimulus really (not only in words)
outside the current scientific paradigm; IFO = false-UFO: stimulus having an identified conventional cause. As
for GEPAN, it uses the acronym “PAN” = Phénomène aérospatial non identifié = Unidentified Aerospace
Phenomenon (~ UAP) instead of UFO and gives cases the marks: A = plainly identified, B = probably identified,
C = impossible to evaluate, D = unidentified.
313
II. Psychological Perspectives
many fish in a fish farm. J compares the accounts of the six main witnesses in a table giving for
each several parameters (hour, duration, sound, features of the light, etc.) and separating what
had been said to the gendarmes and later to the GEPAN; the testimonies are coherent, except for
one which has some differences, probably due to the influence of ufologists who had intervened
between the gendarmes and the GEPAN. Electrical disturbance in an old 10-kV line just above
the pond, confirmed by the specialists of EDF, the national power company. [Ebers et al.;
Jimenez (1981), pp. 50-58.]
Nov. 7, 1979, Marcols-les-Eaux area (Ardèche). Luminous phenomenon, car problems, loss of
any space and time notions, the witness recovers his consciousness in another place; hypnosis by
a member of IMSA3 reveals an abduction with travel above France. Probably a hallucination
triggered by the Moon and due to Cimetidine, a drug used by the witness, and later an artifact of
poor hypnosis. [Audrerie et al.; Maugé; Roussel, pp. 117-124.]
Nov. 26, 1979, Cergy-Pontoise (Val d’Oise). Franck Fontaine’s abduction followed by his return
on December 3rd makes a stir in the French media (and elsewhere). The analysis of the discourse
and the behavior of the three protagonists shows they speak spontaneously without any rigor as
for the content (incoherencies, absurdities, lies, etc.) and that the picture they give for themselves
with the help of the media and certain ufologists is far from the truth. Hoax according to the
GEPAN (and most ufologists). [Esterle et al.; Caudron; Maugé.]
Nov. 27, 1979, Porcieu-Amblagnieu (Isère). On this evening, “Rosine” (13) sees something she
believes to be a UFO and then a rather vague figure; she had heard of the Cergy-Pontoise affair
and is afraid of being abducted with her little brother and their mother who is to come home
soon, so that she flees to a neighbor, who sees a vague light and is herself frightened; the object
is said to have halted above a nearby fallow meadow, where a trace (crushed grass) is soon
discovered; a few very secondary witnesses. For J, the psychological analysis of Rosine’s
account shows it is strongly subjective. GEPAN’s conclusion is that the girl has seen something
unusual; particularly, the analysis of the non-verbal data given by Rosine leads Jean-Pierre
Rospars to think they can be trusted. For Rossoni et al., an amalgam of three independent stimuli
within two minutes could be possible. [Aguado et al.; Rossoni et al. pp. 283-295; Rospars,
communication to the author.]
Jan. 26, 1981, Laprade (Aude). Close sighting of a cigar-shaped object, failure of the car which
will later have electrical problems, the cause of which is not discovered. The psychological
analysis ends with: “the perception by obsessed people is said to be simultaneously rather
objective, not leaving much room to the imagination, and very rigid, admitting novelty only with
difficulty. These ideas plainly confirm our analysis.” Coherent testimony, credible witness; no
solution (physical nor psychological) is found, but nothing more can be said. Rossoni et al.
suggest a military helicopter as a possibility. [Besse et al., 1982; Rossoni et al., pp. 317-325.]
Oct. 21, 1982, Laxou (Meurthe-et-Moselle). Disk observed at 12:30 at a very close range; grass
under the object stands up when it leaves, amaranth dried out. The witness seems reliable; his
testimony is coherent. Unexplained. But several problems, at least one of them rather serious, are
3 Institut Mondial des Sciences Avancées, founded by Jimmy Guieu – author and group not among the most
serious...
314
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
not considered by the investigators. [GEPAN; F. Lagarde, Lumières dans la nuit, No. 246-248;
Rossoni et al., pp. 326-349.]
The Survey “Draw a UFO for Me” (the phrase is figurative) [Besse & Jimenez, 1983]
In March 1982, 1195 inhabitants of the Haute-Garonne département4 were asked eleven
questions prepared by Philippe Besse and J. They worked with the postulate that in the Western
culture everyone has a “mental representation of what a UFO is, that representation being
particularly visual” [it will later be called a UFO schema]. Basically, the questions were the
following. 1: sighting of a phenomenon/apparition that the person could not explain; 2: does the
subject believe he/she will see a UFO some day; 3: (imaginary observation) how would that
object be; 4: numerous people say they have seen a UFO, how do they describe it; 5:
circumstances of the observation imagined in 3; 6: interest in the subject of UFOs; 7: if he/she
sees something, would he/she mention it, and to whom; 8: will science explain the UFO
phenomenon; 9: does it contradict religion; 10: had the subject read or seen something on TV
about UFOs; 11: how the subject explains UFOs.
The answers were studied by factor analysis, and some were compared to previous surveys. It
shows three (or even four) types of behavior. The “UFOphobes” will see no UFO, have no
interest nor explanation for them, have seen or read nothing about the subject, and generally do
not answer the descriptive questions. The skeptics (often 30-50 years old) give various mundane
explanations and describe UFOs as a luminous star. The indecisive persons (more or less the
general tendency) see a UFO as round, red, silent, moving in a straight line; skeptics and
indecisive people, not easily separated, will perhaps see a UFO and consider the subject as
moderately important. The “UFOphiles” (young and informed people) will surely see a UFO and
even want to see one, the subject is very important, UFOs are unknown natural phenomena or
extraterrestrial devices, and they are disc- or cigar-shaped. (See the sixth section for other
elements from a later analysis of the same data.)
The Experiments Made by Jimenez (labels “Experiment A”, “First experiment”, etc., are his)
The six experiments presented in the Note Technique N° 10 [Jimenez, 1981, for this subsection].
Experiment A. It aims to determine what clues we use for evaluating a distance: intrinsic (linked
to the perception of the stimulus), extrinsic (linked to the environment), or subjective. At the
Paris Air Show5 in June 1981, the stand of GEPAN at the CNES pavilion offered seven
photographs of ambiguous luminous stimuli, and the visitors could answer a few questions (J
admits it’s not a scientific procedure). The following indications are given below: a) Description
of the picture; b) Question; c) Results (266 useful answers; as for the following experiments: E =
experimental group, e = value of its answer; N = neutral group, n = corresponding value); d) True
answer and comments for the visitors; e) Possible theoretical comments.
Pictures A, B. a) Two similar luminous phenomena at the same distance in the landscape, A with
a hilly background, B in the sky. b) “What picture seems to you to be closer to the
photographer?” c) A at 70.3%; e < n not significant. d) A; “generally speaking, an unknown
luminous phenomenon in the sky gives the impression to be farther than when passing before an
4 A possible bias is not considered by the authors, namely the presence in Toulouse of the GEPAN and of major
aeronautical and space industries which could have influenced the inhabitants of the Toulouse area about the
UFO question via the media. The extrapolation of the results to the French population is thus perhaps not
assured.
5 Salon international de l’aéronautique et de l’espace de Paris-Le Bourget.
315
II. Psychological Perspectives
obstacle.” e) Extrinsic clues (the perceptual surroundings) are used.
C. a) Luminous phenomenon above a stopped car in a hilly landscape. b) Choose the distance
among: about 10, 100, 500 m, several km. c) The farther the distance, the more numerous
choices (km+: 37.6 %). d) Some 100 m; “the distance of a luminous object is often assimilated
to the one of the nearest obstacle in the same direction.”
D, E. a) Two similar luminous objects in the sky, E is smaller than D. b) Which appears to be
farther? c) Stimulus E: 65.9 %; e > n, significant. d) Same distance; “an unknown luminous
phenomenon generally appears to be closer if its apparent size is bigger.” e) The subject
apparently thinks that the two pictures represent two phenomena having the same real size.
F, G. a) Two luminous phenomena “rather complex and ambiguous.” b) “In your opinion, what
does [each] photo represent?” c) F: 60.5% known phenomenon, 19.4% “UFO”; G: only one
answer “UFO”. d) F: lenticular cloud at setting sun, G: very close helicopter with all lights on;
it’s very difficult to correctly evaluate the size, distance, and speed of an unknown light.
Taken globally, the results fit “the hypothesis that the attitude of the witness, and particularly the
meaning he/she gives to a stimulus, are pertinent in order to understand the physical features
described in the account. [… And with] the hypothesis that the subject evaluates the distance by
using clues which are not the ones of the true distance” but are linked to his/her attitude [p. 71].
Experiment B (20 subjects). It directly tests J’s hypothesis that the descriptions by the witnesses
having “UFO expectations” and thus naming the perceived stimulus a “UFO” present more
distortions than these by other people. With three slides similar to those of experiment A, the
subject must say what he/she sees: those who answer “a UFO” or the like make group E, the
others make group N; the other questions deal with the position of the object relative to the
landscape, the real distance, and the size of the phenomenon; no intrinsic clues are available. The
results fit the hypothesis (a specific case of that is in the final paragraph of this paper) that “when
a subject has expectations about the UFO phenomenon and actualizes them [here by the mere
idea: “it’s a UFO” or “it’s probably a UFO”] when perceiving a PAN 6 [UAP] its description is
probably affected by a distortion of the features of the stimulus” – but the only really significant
effect is that the angular size tends to be underestimated [p. 76].
Experiment C (N = 18, E = 31 subjects). It’s similar to B but with three differences: the UFO
expectation is introduced by the use of the word “UFO” by the experimenter, the stimulus is the
lenticular cloud of A, and its free description is asked somewhat later. The slide is presented for
10 seconds, a duration that allows seeing many features.7 The results confirm what was expected:
the UFO expectations, here due to the experimenter, “are related to a particular naming of the
sighted phenomenon and to a significant increase of the distortions in its description” (E:
significantly more label “UFO” and wrong features then in N). This shows again that a witness
having expectations about UFOs will give a more subjective account than a neutral witness [p.
80].
Experiment D (N = same group as above, E = 38). The procedure is the same as for C, except
that for the group E the name “UFO” is introduced during the request for a description. As for C,
there are significantly more “UFO” labels and more erroneous elements in the descriptions by
6 See Foonote #2.
7 For instance: Paul Fraisse, “Mémoire de dessins et de phrases en fonction de la durée de présentation,” Année
Psychologique, 1974, 74, pp. 145-156.
316
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
the members of E than of N. J concludes that leading questions are to be banished during a field
investigation and that it is important to learn during the investigation what was said during
previous discussions by the witness with various people, including journalists and ufologists.
Moreover, the comparison of the results of C and D suggests that the effect of pieces of
information about UFOs does not depend on the moment where the witness receives them,
before or after the sighting.8
Experiment E (N = 34, E = 10). One can think that the conditions of experiments C and E (short
duration, distracting movie) may have some effect on the results and that there would be no
difference between the two groups with optimal sighting conditions. Thus, this preliminary
experiment, with the same procedure as for C, except that the picture remains visible during the
account that immediately follows the presentation (N: “this slide,” E: “this slide of a UFO”).
However, the results alone are interpretable only with difficulty. J notes that in experiments C to
E, the influence of the “denomination” variable is not perfect: subjects from group N use the
term “UFO,” subjects in group E don’t use it, and this fact is important because it shows that the
witness him/herself too can internalize pieces of ufological information. Thus, the three
experiments largely fit J’s general hypothesis that “relates the expectancies (as indicated through
the chosen denomination) to the distortions (measured by the erroneous elements)” [p. 87].
Experiment F (two tenth-grade classes, N = 33, E = 34). The slide of the lenticular cloud is
shown for 15 seconds, then the students have to write what they saw. One of them exclaims
immediately “Wow! A UFO!” so his class is group E; it gives more denominations “UFO” than
the other (UFO: n = 6, e = 23 – that is n = 18%, e = 68%; non-UFO naming: n = 27, e = 11). J
comments that one has to be careful about influences among the witnesses to the same event.
GEPAN’s Document de travail N° 6 [Jimenez, 1982.]
J presents here an experiment that formalizes his experiment A above, with 12 subjects who are
asked to say if the luminous shape seems to be very distant, distant, nearby or very nearby. The
results are equivalent to others already obtained: a luminous figure seems to be closer when it is
bigger and lower in the sky. J also considers three multi-witnesses sightings as invoked
experiments9: Dec. 2, 1978, Burgundy etc. (missile test, 36 witnesses); Nov. 11, 1980, southeast
France (meteorite, 96 witnesses); and Dec. 25, 1980, western France [also in some other
European countries] (launcher reentry, 132 witnesses). J’s hypothesis is that witnesses give more
precise numerical features to the phenomenon as they give a more precise meaning to it. The
independent variable is the denomination used; the dependent variables are the way (absolute,
relative, none) of giving the size, distance, altitude, and speed. The more notable results are that
there is a significant relationship between the denomination and a numerical estimate of size or
altitude, but none with the distance or an altitude related to the environment.
The three experiments reported in the thesis [Jimenez, 1994].
First experiment (25 subjects). Slides show a somewhat blurred luminous circle having the
angular size of the Moon above an open urban landscape (low wide building with flat roof); the
two independent variables are the “distance to the horizon”—that is, from here to the building
8 This seems reasonable for “soft” cases but questionable for “hard” ones: if abductions (for instance) do exist, an
abductee previously not really motivated by the phenomenon would be more sensitive to a reading or a TV show
about abductions after his/her adventure than before it.
9 Invoked experiment: real previous event whose data are analyzed according to a priori hypotheses.
317
II. Psychological Perspectives
(12, 100, or 400 m)—and the angular height of the circle (1°, 6°, or 13°). For each of the nine
slides, the subject must mark the distance to the circle (dependent variable) on a scale previously
designed. Two analyses of variance show that when the stimulus is visually near the horizon, its
distance is assimilated to the one to the horizon, and that this effect decreases as the object is
higher in the sky [p. 104].
Second experiment (24 subjects). It is basically identical, but the stimulus can be higher in the
sky (1°, 13°, and 35° above the horizon). The results confirm and extend the previous ones: the
distance to the horizon can be taken into account even for stimuli rather high in the sky, but its
influence decreases as the angular height increases. They nuance the classical view that “the
apparent distance decreases with the angular height” obtained when no horizon is present,
possibly because the subject “locates the luminous shape perceptively near the visually closest
places: the horizon or the canopy of heaven” [p. 108].
Third experiment (98 subjects, but only 64 usable answers). It is designed for eliminating in part
the previous artificial component of the situation by using a natural stimulus, the full Moon,
while asking the subjects to forget its nature and to admit it could be some object at a variable
distance. The experiment takes place in the streets of Toulouse or of neighboring villages, on the
evening or the morning. The subjects are asked to say if the stimulus seems closer than the
features of the landscape and how many times, where it would fall if it were close to fall, and
what clues they used to answer the preceding questions; the incoherent answers or the answer
“Moon” for the last question are removed from the study. The results for the two independent
variables (distance and angular height) are bimodal, so that they are analyzed with two values
each: near/far away (basically: urban/rural surroundings) and low/high (less or more than 5°).
“Most answers place the stimulus at a distance similar to the one of the horizon. This relative
distance appears to increase with the angular height when the horizon is far off” [p. 112], while
there is no significant effect when the horizon is nearby. Moreover, the place of the fall appears
to be farther than that of the object in the sky, except when the object is low in the sky and the
horizon nearby [p. 113]. Therefore, when one neglects its identity, “a very distant stimulus such
as the Moon can be perceived far closer than it is”; and, as previously, the distance to the horizon
influences the perceived distance of a stimulus low in the sky, and that effect decreases as the
object is higher [p. 113].
Theoretical Aspects of the Psychology of Perception
Because of space constraints, here are only a few of the useful elements (please refer to any
textbook for a formal presentation). It is known that our perception (or our memory) does not
work as its physical “equivalent”: it is linked to processes or factors related to memory,
cognition, emotions, or culture, which has several consequences. It is a two-way process, with a
bottom-up course of the sensory message from the receptors towards the brain and a top-down
course of “processes of adaptation, selection, adjustment between the central nervous system and
the sensory receptors.” Therefore, if our perception is generally accurate, this rule has many
exceptions “because of some deception by the milieu or a wrong tendency (preparation 10) by the
10 See particularly the model of Jerome S. Bruner (“On Perceptual Readiness,” Psychological Review, 1957, 64: pp.
123-152), for which the perception is a decision-making, probabilistic and dynamic process: basically an
induction of a category by using certain (possibly variable) traits or clues defining it; taking into account the
available clues, the necessity of the answer (compromise between safety and rapidity), and the cognitive
accessibility of the category; and a continual up-and-down movement between the available clues and the
318
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
subject” who attributes a wrong meaning to the situation [Jimenez, 1981, p. 32]. Besides that, our
perception is organized in three phases: the sensory stage “providing the elementary
characteristics of the sensory field,” such as orientation, contrast, lines, color, movement,
“patches,” etc.; the figurative stage which organizes the preceding features and links them to
very general schemas, giving particularly the figure-background separation and where certain
previous elements become “figures or ‘near-objects’” (illusory contours such as the Kanizsa’s
triangles11 can occur here); and the cognitive stage, where the previous “near-objects” are fully
identified by an integration of all gathered elements, a stage where the context, data from the
memory, and the culture and the psychology of the subject have a role; moreover, there are also
between these stages interactions contributing to a better coherence [pp. 176-178].
The perception of relative or absolute distance (also called depth) uses several clues, many of
which are linked to the source: luminance, angular size (cf. Experiment A), angular altitude
(elevation), tendency to equidistance (two luminous shapes giving equal retinal sizes seems to be
at the same distance), plus others for non-point stimuli. For faraway luminous stimuli, the main
factors are the angular elevation and the presumed distance of the context (the horizon if the
stimulus is low in the sky). In any case, a faraway stimulus can be perceived far closer than its
actual location (cf. Third experiment); and a stimulus rather low above the horizon is seen at the
distance of that horizon – but the higher is the light in the sky, the less its distance is related to
the horizon [pp. 113-114]. On a general level, according to the circumstances, the integrated
representation of a perceived object with its distance can be the matter mostly of one of the
sensory, figurative, or cognitive phases, or of their interaction. And when the sensory data are
poor or contradictory, wrong prevalent pieces of information based on intrinsic or cognitive
factors lead to an error in the perceived distance. Particularly “an object in the half-light or
during the night, in the atmosphere, on a window, in water, or which is evanescent gives a visual
image which offers few intrinsic or contextual data” – for instance when pilots shoot at faraway
islands or clouds, or even Venus, which are confused with airplanes12 [pp. 94-95].
As for perceptual errors, each of the following factors can be sufficient, however it “appears and
persists preferentially with the encounter of the following conditions: a vague or evanescent
stimulus, strong and inadequate figurative schemas [for instance because of the incoherent
features of the stimulus] and an urgent perceptual task [particularly if a rapid answer is needed]”
– both latter conditions making the vague stimulus be perceived as significant [p. 184]. In
Bruner’s model, the perceptual error is linked to a “failure of readiness,” when “the category the
most accessible and compatible with the collected clues [is] inappropriate”; for instance, if the
stimulus is too brief or too poor, when facing a new situation, or because of psychological
features of the subject. Actually, the fact that the sensory data would be interpreted in the most
coherent way can explain many perceptual mistakes; for instance, when one reads a word written
with a fault without noticing it, or – and this is what can concern the ufologist – when “the
identity attributed to the stimulus affects” its [perceived] color, luminosity, contours or shape [pp.
category leading toward a more precise diagnosis. Another model of perception interesting for the UFO matter
lies in the Gestalt psychology with its concept of good shape such as the circle (e.g., two luminous points moving
on an ellipse in the frontal plane are seen as moving on a slanted circle).
11 Cf. various atmospheric (re)entries where alleged solid objects are perceived by several witnesses.
12 Sociologist Robert L. Hall, who was very sympathetic to UFOs, briefly mentions that “I know from personal
experience as a military flyer in wartime” that such mistakes can occur (in Carl Sagan & Thornton Page (eds.),
UFO’s – A Scientific Debate, Norton, 1972, p. 221).
319
II. Psychological Perspectives
128-129].13
The Perception of Pre-UFOs (PANs for J)
General considerations.
J makes clear at the onset that his thesis is that “a UFO testimony is in most cases the outcome of
a process of a perceptual misinterpretation of a known event.” He notes that, whatever the term
used by the witness, he speaks about “UFO testimony,” which is “a psychological fact which can
be understood without explanations dealing with the abnormal or the psychopathological”; and
he defines a “‘UFO report’ or ‘case’ [as] the set of data, particularly of testimonies, which is
related to a given phenomenon, apparently physical and defined by its spatio-temporal
coordinates” [pp. 4, 5, 16 (note 9)]. The scientific and official sources (the only ones J chose to
use) show that known UFO observers sociologically mirror the general population, however with
in some measure a stronger interest in UFOs (which leads them to spontaneously report what
they saw). And that “the UFO testimony appears as a phenomenon whose social extent and
generality are important. It is moreover presented in reports and investigations, and that fact
allows its observation, analysis, and description. It thus offers the conditions that allow it to be
considered as an object of scientific study” [pp. 28-29].
J is otherwise not very pleased with the numerous private ufologists for whom the reported
features of the pre-UFO (or even features which are “inferred by the investigator”) are
automatically seen as those of the phenomenon, who use unreliable methods for obtaining data
(directive questioning, hypnosis, selecting from a collection of drawings or photos), and often
consider the UFO report as belonging to the quest toward proof of the ETH. We can also note
that J mentions elsewhere that “ideological concepts such as morality or sincerity” have little
interest for evaluating testimonies [Jimenez, 1981, p. 36]. For him, neither the “sociopsychological” hypotheses14 nor the ones involving rare more or less known natural phenomena (such as
ball lightning) can explain certain cases: J therefore considers there is indeed an unexplained
phenomenon, even if the relationship of UFO testimonies and IFO testimonies suggests that the
same type of explanation might apply for both. In any case, the differences between the features
of the phenomena which explain IFOs, and the descriptions made of them are a problem for
psychology: “what is the process, perceptual, mnemonic or social, which is able to justify these
distortions?” So, “as an object to be studied by psychology, the phenomenon examined in the
present thesis is the IFO testimony, defined as ‘the fact that rather numerous persons observe in
the sky mundane phenomena which they don’t recognize and which they describe mistakenly’”
[pp. 52-53].
Perceptual errors and UFO testimonies.
Several mistakes can be linked to a process of social influence, particularly with the role of
questions asked to the witness (see for instance the work of E. Loftus). Many are related to the
13 In his booklet La psychologie de la perception, J adopts a radical constructivist position, according to which “the
nature of the reality […] cannot be objective because it is constructed” [Jimenez, 1997, pp. 76-77] ; as regards to
perception, there is no more error (nor delusion) but “the result of the application of an inadequate or particular
schema” – something which applies particularly to “the rare perceptions, from the manifestations of conjurors to
the testimonies about UFOs” [ibid: pp. 80-83 and 87-88]. Such views probably make invalid many points of the
thesis, at least in their wording.
14 His knowledge of them is apparently insubstantial.
320
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
perception itself; others are due to a transformation in the recollection. As for J, his thesis is: “the
fact that a notable number of people observe in the sky mundane phenomena which they don’t
recognize and which they often describe erroneously is, in most cases, the result of a process of
perceptual misinterpretation of a known event” [italics by the reviewer]; and one parameter has
a major role in that process, the distance: the testimonies of IFOs show that the reported distance
is often very lower than the real one, and this underestimation seems to be linked either to the
perceptual process or to an alteration of the memory [pp. 53-57].
For J, the following “hypothetical” scenario could explain the process of the IFO errors.
“The IFO would appear in the [visual] field as a luminous phenomenon, vague and evanescent. 15
Being luminous, it would trigger the perceptual process; being vague and evanescent, it would
allow only weak or ambiguous elementary features. / The context would premobilize a figurative
three-dimensional schema allowing for the integration of these weak or ambiguous elementary
features into a figurative representation placing the stimulus at a given distance. / The witnesses
would have at their disposal a cognitive UFO schema,16 coherent with the context of the
observation, with its elementary characteristics, and with its figurative distance, and thus easily
mobilizable. / Being in a situation of uncertainty, the witnesses would try to perceptively identify
the stimulus; and in order to fit that task of identification, the cognitive stage would strongly
mobilize the cognitive UFO schema, many features of which would assimilate the bottom-up
figurative representations and would be present in the final objectal 17 representation. / This
scenario is highly speculative, but several of its assertions can be turned into theoretically
plausible predictions” [pp. 188-189].
Predictions (hypotheses), which J presents as follows.
“The presented thesis is that IFO testimony is the result of an erroneous perceptual representation
of a mundane stimulus. That thesis implies several general hypotheses:
- The witnesses generally have at their disposal cognitive UFO schemas having objectal, spatial
and contextual features (hypothesis 1).18
- The observed stimuli are in most cases vague and evanescent (hypothesis 2).
- These stimuli are observed in contexts compatible with the UFO schemas (hypothesis 3.1). At
the sensory level, the elementary features created from these stimuli are compatible with the
UFO schemas (hypothesis 3.2).
- Particularly in the figurative stage, these features facilitate an organization of the stimulus with
a depth (hypothesis 4.1), in a manner coherent with the cognitive UFO schemas (hypothesis 4.2).
- In the cognitive stage, the witnesses try to identify the stimulus rather to describe it (hypothesis
5.1). The more devoted to the identification is the perceptual task, the more the cognitive
schemas mobilized for that identification are determining in the construction of an objectal
representation of the stimulus which is both precise and generally erroneous (hypothesis 5.2).
- For identifying the stimulus, the witnesses mobilize preferentially the cognitive UFO schemas
which are already premobilized by the figurative organizations with a depth and by the context.
Therefore: the more the UFO schemas were premobilized, the more the perceptive task is
devoted to identification and the more these schemas are determining in the construction of an
objectal representation of the stimulus (hypothesis 6).”
15
16
17
18
Not always. J will admit in his final conclusions that this vagueness/evanescence is not necessary.
Roughly, the idea that a person has of a UFO.
Objectal: pertaining to the image in the brain of the observed object.
But in 1947? Was the interest of the media in the Arnold affair enough?
321
II. Psychological Perspectives
Besides these hypotheses, J summons up also three “ad hoc interpretations” named a, b and c,
that is that the UFO schemas are according to the witnesses: (a) similar but more or less
mobilized; (b) different; or (c) more or less constructed and precise [pp. 189-190].
Confrontation of the Hypotheses to the Empirical Data (J uses here various works19)
a) H2: “The observed stimulus is in most cases vague and evanescent,” either by itself or
because of unfavorable sighting conditions (brevity, distance, night, atmospheric conditions). H2
appears implicitly confirmed [pp. 194-195].
b) H4.1: “The elementary features created by the IFO stimulus facilitate their relationship with
the perceived distance.” We have seen that a faraway or very faraway stimulus (the Moon) can
be perceived as rather close to the witness; if it is supposed that “the IFO testimony can be the
result of an erroneous perceptual representation, then the apparent nearby distance of an IFO
should be determined by the intrinsic and contextual factors” mentioned above about the
perception of distance (luminance, angular size and height, apparent distance of the horizon). As
a matter of fact, the statistical analysis of F7’ [Remenber: the meaning of the codes Fx for the
files used by J is given in footnote 19], of the 90 cases from that file for which the source is a star
or a planet, of F1, F2, and F4 actually points in that direction. The general tendency is that “the
apparent distance of an IFO stimulus increases with its elevation. This distance is often reported
by reference to features of the landscape, but that reference decreases when the angular altitude
of the stimulus increases. These results are coherent with the general conclusions [… about the
perception of distance]: a luminous stimulus easily appears at a distance relatively close to its
observer, that distance is related to the elevation of the stimulus and to the assumed distance of
the horizon it overhangs” – what confirms H4.1 but implies the role of top-down schemas,
including the supposed identity (cf. H5.2 and H6) [pp. 195-202].
c) H1: “The witnesses generally have at their disposal cognitive UFO schemas having objectal,
spatial and contextual features.” As it is impossible to know the a priori UFO schema of the
witness, J starts with the postulate that pre-UFO witnesses and persons who would testify if
seeing a pre-UFO do not seem to be different from the general population for their psychosocial
features (see above in General considerations). He then tries to show that “cognitive UFO
schema [are] largely widespread in our society” (see below for that matter), a schema possibly
diversified according to the individuals – by admitting moreover “the additional hypothesis that
the answers to a questionnaire reflect without major distortions the individual representations or
mental images, which would themselves be close to the general schema” in the population [pp.
202-205]. J uses for that task the survey F8 by Besse and himself, by analyzing the answers to
questions N° 3 (situation of an imaginary observation: how would a pre-UFO be that the witness
could see someday), 4 (how other witnesses describe UFOs) and 5 (what would the
19 The case files of GEPAN used by J (coming from the Gendarmerie nationale) are of various natures, cover time
periods which are not always specified, and are not clearly referenced. They are thus listed here by convenience
by the increasing number of witnesses/testimonies (T) or persons (P); the following symbols are used: ’: sub-file;
A, B, C, D: value of the case for GEPAN, see footnote 2; NT: Notes Techniques of the GEPAN; [R]: natural or
artificial atmospheric (re)entries, with date; if double number n/m T: n testimonies/m independent testimonies.
The files are: F1: 68/56 T, [R] Feb. 21, 1978. // F2: 89/72 T, [R] Nov. 11, 1980; F2’: 39 T who have answered a
questionnaire for GEPAN. // F3: 188 reports D, Besse in NT 4. // F4: 247/162 T, stars, planets & meteorites. //
F5: 247 T, cases A & B, 1974-1979. // F6: 263 reports (~ 500 testimonies) D, 1974-1978. // F7: 499 reports,
Besse in NT 13; F7’: 176 cases A & B. // F8: 1195 P, Besse & Jimenez in NT 15 (cf. third section). // F9: 1225 T,
18× [R with multiple witnesses], 1974-1990; F9’: 469 T [R] Nov. 5, 1990; F9’’ = F9 except F9’.
322
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
circumstances of the sighting imagined in 3 be). A factor analysis gives four groups whose main
traits can be summarized as: (1) no answer; (2) precise answer, object with artificial detail,
answers “saucer,” “rocket,” “engine,” “shrill” sound, closeness; (3) phenomenon faraway, high in
the sky, elongated, rapid; (4) far less defined, with “round,” “luminous,” “straight trajectory.”
These results “partially” fit H1: “certain persons have UFO objectal schemas, which are
precisely defined by objectal, spatial and qualitative features” (groups 2 and 3); but “other people
would not have UFO objectal schemas, while others” seem to have little constructed schemas
(respectively groups 1 and 4) [pp. 205-213].
d) H3.1: “The IFO stimuli are observed in contexts compatible with UFO schemas.” In
particular, “the context of the sighting must be similar to the one associated with these UFO
schemas,” including for the date, hour, and meteorological conditions – one can suppose that
their mentions in the gendarmerie reports are generally accurate; now this seems to fit rather well
the same data in the imaginary observations in F8, what validates the hypothesis for these data
[p. 214].
e) H3.2: “The elementary features created from the IFO stimuli are compatible with the UFO
schemas.” As for the circumstances of the sighting, “certain descriptive features of the
phenomenon don’t seem a priori subject to specific perceptual errors” to the extent that it can be
admitted they are “strongly determined by the characteristics of the stimulation” (sensory stage):
general shape, color, luminosity, duration. Now, “the general tendencies for the color, shape,
luminosity, duration, and movement” of the IFOs in F4 are close to the same features in the
answers to F8, which proves H3.2 for these tendencies [pp. 215-216].
f) H4.2: “The features created by the IFO stimuli facilitate their organization with a depth, in a
manner coherent with UFO schemas.” The expressions of the distances and altitudes for the
group (2) in c above can be interpreted as showing “an increase of the distance of the phenomenon with its altitude, an altitude that is generally correlated with the angular elevation” (cf. the
link between distance and elevation noted in b). Which gives a partial validation for H4.2 – for
which a better confirmation will appear below in i) [pp. 216-217].
g) H5.2: “The more devoted to the identification is the perceptual task, the more the cognitive
top-down schemas determine the construction of an objectal representation of the stimulus that
is precise and erroneous” – which J also expresses by: “hypothesis 5.2 expects that, facing a
vague and evanescent stimulus, the more specific and precise the perceptual identification is,
then the more detailed and erroneous the objectal perceptual representation is. This
representation is mainly constructed thanks to the top-down cognitive schemas, mobilized by an
identity coherent with the perceptual figurative organizations (hypotheses 3.1, 3.2, 4.1, and 4.2).
In other words, the witness perceives what he/she identifies, because he/she must identify the
unknown phenomenon as rapidly as possible 20 (hypothesis 5.1).” Many UFO testimonies seem
motivated by the wish to know what was observed, which can have surprised the witness but that
he/she could not identify; now “the lack of cognitive identification for a real-life event could
produce in the subject a state of ‘imbalance’ (F. Heider, 1958) or of ‘cognitive dissonance’
(L. Festinger, 1957).” Moreover, “the feelings of strangeness, surprise, and worry must act
during a perception as requirements for rapidity,” which demands more of an identification rather
20 This does not seem to be necessary in several pre-UFO situations.
323
II. Psychological Perspectives
than a description – and thus a lesser analysis of the stimulus and therefore more possibilities for
mistakes (cf. above, Theoretical Aspects of the Psychology of Perception).
Also, “one can put forward the additional hypothesis that the broad and vague identifications
during the testimony [cf. first terms in the following list] don’t indicate an accomplished
perceptual identification, they express the failure of a precise overall identification.” The
denomination given by the witness (seven ordered modalities were defined using an independent
set of 134 testimonies: light, phenomenon, shape, object, machine, flying object, UFO) is then
used as an intermediary variable as an “indicator of the degree of perceptual identification”
(rather a description for the first labels in the list, rather an identification for the last ones). J
moreover uses the fact that “certain features of the objectal representations are strongly
determined in a bottom-up automatic way by the elementary characteristics” of the stimulus and
thus are not erroneous in liminal perceptual situations, as in a general manner: two-dimensional
location, temporal location, color, luminosity, shape, approximate angular or relative values of
the size; now “the IFO testimonies generally give these characteristics appropriately.” 21 On the
contrary, “the spatial features, the real [that is, compared to real objects] size, speed, altitude and
distance are a priori constructed at the meeting of figurative organizations with top-down
schemas,” as are also the accessory details; these data “are often reported erroneously in IFO
testimonies” and are those that J considers below. Besides, “using the additional hypothesis that
the testimony conveys the perception of the observed phenomenon, 22 the terms used to report its
size, speed, altitude, and distance are considered as indicators of the perceived size, speed,
altitude, and distance” and are thus used as operational variables. Now J confronts his hypotheses
to the 1,225 accounts of F9 (these cases have between 11 and 467 witnesses) by using the
variables of denomination, distance, altitude, size, speed, accessory detail (two modalities:
yes/no), luminosity, interpretation (not reported, mundane according to the witness, not
mundane), independence (or not) of the witnesses, cases (7 specific cases, in 4 groups) [pp. 217225].
Three factor analyses for respectively F9, F9’’, and F9’ give similar results; because of the
importance of the events of Nov. 5, 1990,23 here are only the latter. “The first [factorial] axis
strongly opposes two sets of testimonies, analogous to these observed in both previous analyses
[of F9 and F9’’]: / The phenomena whose distance is not given, whose size is given in a relative
manner, and which are named by weak terms – light, phenomenon, shape – and are given
mundane interpretations. To a lesser extent, the distance, size, and interpretation are not made
explicit, and no artificial details are reported. / The phenomena whose distance, altitude, size, and
shape are strongly stated [… for instance when the distance is given in meters]. They are named
by strong terms – machine, flying object, or UFO – and described with artificial details.” And it
seems that the link of the “subsidiary variables, luminosity, and independence” with the
descriptive variables is negligible. J concludes from these data that “as a global matter, the
results of the three factor analyses largely reinforce hypothesis 5.2 in the observed sample: the
precision of the descriptive features increases with the specificity of the denomination: object
clearly identified → “precise perceptual representation assimilating the indistinct figurative
21 Um...
22 This is more a postulate than a hypothesis – it is in fact the (most often implicit) postulate of pro-UFO ufologists.
Yet J had noted it is erroneous when later “interferences” “pollute” the account of the observer.
23 A major case for many French ufologists convinced that true-UFOs exist; but also for skeptical ufologists, for
whom it was basically the reentry of a part of the launcher of the satellite Gorizont 21.
324
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
elements”; object badly identified → “very general or vague objectal representation,” and thus
the use of general terms and “absent, imprecise or broad characteristics.” These last elements can
be prudently interpreted by saying that “the vagueness in the perceptual identification of an IFO
stimulus results from the mobilization of schemas that are themselves broad and imprecise” (ad
hoc interpretation c above) [pp. 225-236].
A chi-square test (crossing of the modalities of the denomination with those of distance, altitude,
presence or not of artificial details, size, speed, and interpretation) always leads to a strong link
between the variables. “Globally, when the variable ‘denomination’ is becoming more specific,
the reported features are first absent, then apparent or ordinal, then specified in a threedimensional way. / Hypothesis 5.2 foresees that the level of success for the perceptual
identification task determines the level of precision of all the perceived characteristics. In an
operational manner, that hypothesis is expressed by a significant statistical relationship between
the variable ‘denomination’ and the descriptive variables. The observed results largely verify that
hypothesis. The presented hypotheses emphasize the integrative role of the identification, which
explains the precision of the perceived features – more than it is explained by them.” J finally
notes about the distance that “it would be risky, or even wrong, to say that proximity determines
the identification of a UFO, or conversely” [pp. 236-242].
h) H5.1: “In the cognitive stage, the witnesses try to identify the stimulus rather than describe
it.” J’s thesis is thus that “the perceptual error […] is made more easily when the witness tries to
globally identify the stimulus rather than when he/she examines it in order to know its features,
that is when he/she describes it perceptively”; moreover, if the stimulus is “vague or evanescent,
the task of a perceptual description can be necessary when the subject has no available cognitive
schemas for clearly identifying that stimulus” (cf. g); and the presented hypotheses “foresee that
the first concern of a UFO witness is to globally identify the observed phenomenon. It will be
perceptively described only in cases where the identification task was not realized in a precise
manner.”
In order to test the hypothesis and to know the witnesses’ reactions (possible role of surprise or
worry), J uses F2’. While the results are to be nuanced because there are too few subjects, the
factor analysis shows three distinct groups: (1) very weak denomination (cf. the seven-value
scale in g), features not reported except for luminosity, rather faraway, neither curiosity nor
surprise; (2) middle denomination, size given in a relative manner, low altitude; (3) strong
denomination, distance, altitude, size, and speed all well-specified, interpretation as a strange
phenomenon. J also draws four conclusions from his analysis: 1 st) Strong coherence of the
testimonies, which “reinforces the subsidiary hypothesis of the spontaneity of the declarations”
of the witnesses to the gendarmes. 2nd) Strong positive correlation between the precision of the
denominations and the one of the characteristics, which goes in the direction of H5.2. 3 rd) The
fact that “the witnesses use the term UFO more easily when they thought they had seen a strange
phenomenon,” and thus that “when the witness tries to identify the perceived phenomenon, the
more precise that identification is, the more precise and erroneous is his perception” [emphasis
by J]. 4th) With 31 reactions of surprise and 20 of curiosity (plus one of fear), “everything
happens as if, faced with an unknown stimulus, the more surprised witnesses are those who
interpret and identify it more precisely, in one way or another. On the opposite side, the less
surprised witnesses are those who reject mundane interpretations without replacing them with
325
II. Psychological Perspectives
other interpretations […; thus] descriptive tasks leading to features whose generality and
imprecision are determined by the vague or evanescent character of the stimulation” [pp. 342351].
i) H6: “The more the UFO schemas were premobilized, then the more the perceptive task is
devoted to identification and the more these schemas are determinant in the construction of an
objectal representation of the stimulus.” A discussion using the results obtained with F9 and F8
leads J to note that “contrary to hypothesis 6, the survey shows ‘medium’ UFO schemas having
broad and imprecise features while the sample of testimonies shows ‘medium’ schemas having
similar features but which are not UFO schemas”; but also that, in both cases, “the factorial
groups opposite to hypothesis 6 are situated between the extreme groups which go in its
direction: the group with precise features and the group with features not reported or no
answers.” As a consequence, J 1st) wonders if there are “several UFO schemas or rather several
schemas of the observation of a UFO”; 2 nd) thinks that several interviewees in F8 would have
“described, not necessarily a UFO, but a phenomenon that certain persons could consider as a
UFO or could name a UFO. If so, the ‘medium’ schemas shown by the survey are not UFO
schemas, but schemas of the phenomenon that certain persons could call a UFO”; and 3 rd)
concludes that “the more precise the features are, the more specific the denominations” and that
the weak denominations with broad and imprecise representations correspond to these “schemas
of the phenomenon that certain persons could call a UFO.” Actually, “in the face of a vague or
evanescent aerospace phenomenon, the witnesses would have and would mobilize objectal
schemas more or less precise for the characteristics of rare phenomena that can be seen in the
sky” [pp. 251-258].
j) Synthesis of the results. “Celestial stimuli that are at the source of IFO testimonies are usually
vague or evanescent (hypothesis 2). Their apparent distance is often related to their angular
elevation or reported in comparison to elements of the landscape, which would confirm that
these stimuli create elementary features and figurative organizations which give them a depth
(hypothesis 4.1). / Many people make explicit a UFO representation that has more or less
numerous and precise details, particularly for the contextual and spatial characteristics; this
supports the idea that they have a UFO schema at their disposal (hypothesis 1). Globally
speaking, the visual elementary features due to an IFO stimulus, its apparent distance, and the
context of its observation that are inferred from the testimonies are not contradictory with the
general characteristics which appear in the indicators of the UFO schema (hypotheses 3.1, 3.2,
4.1, and 4.2). Thus, at the figurative stage, the organizations inferred from the elementary
features, which include a situation with a depth in a specific context, would call for the UFO
schema during the perceptual process. / The precision of the descriptive features of an IFO as
they are reported in the testimonies increases with the specificity of its denomination, as if the
action of the cognitive schemas would be all the more so intense since the perceptual task is
devoted to an identification [rather than a description] (hypothesis 5.2). Especially, the witnesses
perceive the phenomenon all the more precise (and all the more erroneous) since they try to
identify it and since they identify it more precisely (hypothesis 5.1). / As for hypothesis 6, the
more the perception is devoted to identifying the stimulus, the more the UFO schemas are
mobilized and the more they determine the objectal representation. It is also expected that the
UFO representations will be close to the content of the testimonies that give an identification to
an IFO. The comparison of factorial tables has, at least in part, made invalid that hypothesis. A
326
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
sharper analysis of the results, based on the denominations accompanying the representations,
allows an alternative interpretation that is in concordance with the hypothesis” (in terms of
“schemas of the phenomenon that certain persons could call a UFO”) [p. 258].
k) Discussion. Of his three ad hoc interpretations, J retains the last one, which is that the UFO
schemas are more or less constructed and precise according to the persons. He notes that “most
hypotheses, theoretically justified [… by what is known about visual perception in general], have
not been invalidated by the observed results. But they were made operative in a rather loose way,
which restricts their verification”; and that certain interpretations or operations, for instance for
H6, are speculative [pp. 259-260]. As a conclusion, J writes that the above empirical
confrontation goes toward the direction that IFO testimony is “the outcome of a process of
perceptual misinterpretation. That process is a specific case of the perceptual error, whose main
conditions are the encounter of weak sensory data and a cognitive schema which is coherent with
these data, inadequate, but strongly mobilized by a pressing perceptual task. / When facing an
IFO, the witness begins a task of perceptual identification that involves more or less precise
cognitive schemas, which in turn allow him/her to construct a more or less detailed objectal
representation and at the same time to identify it in a more or less specific way. It would seem
that the mobilized schemas are exceedingly varied […] / The conclusions of the present thesis
focus on a whole set of relationships, the weakness of which is balanced by their general
coherence [… both with each other and with current theories]. / No precise conclusion or
forecasting can thus be drawn from them” [pp. 261-262].
Three Related Questions
The origin of the UFO cognitive schemas. The sighting of a pre-UFO is not a daily experience,
so that the UFO schemas cannot have an empirical origin. They come therefore from the news
media and their images. But what can be their role, for instance regarding the fact that “the
interest in a given matter goes generally with a search for information about it”? J then looks into
the witnesses of F2; and in F8 (see above) into the answers to questions 7 (236 interviewees who
would testify to a sighting); 6 and 10 (they are more interested and more informed, as are the 123
witnesses given by question 1); 3 to 5 (imaginary sighting), as well as into the crossing of the
variable “information” with “the most discriminating descriptive variables (distance, altitude,
size, speed, and artificial detail).” For him, “as a general rule, the results […] show that there is a
relation that is not negligible between the precision of the UFO schema as it is revealed by the
survey or the testimonies and the interest in UFOs. The word UFO, used for naming what had
been observed or what had been imagined as a very precise phenomenon, is also the word which
names the subject of interest, of the readings and TV programs that one views. On the opposite
side are those who reveal the most vague and imprecise schemas, who use the word UFO far less
frequently, and who have the least interest in the phenomenon named UFO. If one transforms
these concomitances into causal hypotheses in the line of the above theoretical positions, it is
safe to think that the interest in UFOs and the search of information about them permit the
construction of a cognitive schema of the physical features of that phenomenon and of its
sighting conditions. The lesser this interest and this search for information is, the lesser precise,
detailed, and accomplished is that schema.” That reinforces the idea that “there would not be
UFO schemas with opposite characteristics,24 but more or less precise schemas for rare
24 At least in a rather homogeneous country such as France; it could well be a different matter in rather other
countries, for instance when comparing the situations in Brazil, France, and Japan.
327
II. Psychological Perspectives
phenomena that can be seen in the sky, corresponding to various degrees with the specificity of
their identity,” from “lights” to “UFOs” [pp. 265-274].
Newspaper articles about UFOs offer “a source of information, and thus of potential premobilization, which is rather independent of the a priori interest in the matter. One can thus put
forward the hypothesis that the sightings, and therefore the testimonies, are not independent from
the articles published in daily newspapers about UFOs.” The study of the time-lag between the
daily number of cases and of articles during the French wave of UFO sightings in the fall 1954
and the time-lag between the monthly numbers in the three most important French daily journals
during the period 1974-1980 goes actually in the direction of “the hypothesis that the publication
of articles about UFOs in the newspapers pre-mobilizes the UFO schemas, which in turn eases
the perception, and the testimony, of phenomena that are not understood by their observers.” 25
And among certain people, science-fiction can also have some role [pp. 274-277].
The case of IFOs other than atmospheric entries. J examines here the identified or probably
identified cases of F5, by excluding multiple testimonies. The analysis concerns the variables
denomination, distance, altitude, size, speed, artificial detail, and nature of the stimulus. It gives
two clearly distinct groups: (1) planets, stars and satellites, which are named by weak terms and
for which the only feature which can be reported is the elevation; (2) airplanes and helicopters,
with rather strong terms (which can go as far as UFO) and well-specified features; plus (3) a
third group, distinct but rather poorly specified, corresponding to balloons and atmospheric
entries. J deducts from these results that they confirm the fact that “the perception is the result of
the irreducible encounter of bottom-up sensory data and of top-down cognitive schemas, and
that the perceptual error appears when that meeting is completed at the disadvantage of certain
fundamental features of the stimulus.”26 From J’s discussion emerge particularly, just as for the
testimonies of atmospheric entries with multiple witnesses, the fact that “a more precise
description for a richer stimulus [e.g., an airplane vs. a planet] does not mean a reduction of the
perceptual error”; and that often “the observation of various known stimuli […] leads to an
erroneous perceptual representation because the witnesses mobilize inadequate cognitive
schemas. As for the specific case of atmospheric entries, the richer and more specific these
schemas are, the more detailed, precise and erroneous is the resulting perception. That
generalization encompasses stimuli that are closer, and often less ambiguous, than the
atmospheric entries.” Some hypotheses that were studied above thus appear to be no longer
necessary, particularly H2 (vague or evanescent stimuli) [pp. 279-283].
Can the results obtained with IFOs be extrapolated to UFOs? Work using F3 and F7 shows that
“whether the stimulus is identified later or not, the testimonies are distributed in the same way
for the witnesses, the sighting conditions, the descriptions, and the reasons for the reporting.” 27
Thus, the question: is it the same thing for the nature of unidentified cases? (Their nature is not
known, therefore neither is their a priori aspect). A factor analysis of F6 “shows relations similar
to the ones obtained with IFO testimonies. Two or three groups of testimonies are observed,
which are organized according to the precision of their description and denomination; the
descriptions the phenomena have, with the terms used to name them, are similar to the ones
25 That is: one reads an article, then one looks at the sky, then one sees a pre-UFO (succession, not necessity).
26 Said otherwise: the cognitive processes outdo the sensory ones.
27 Indiscernibility for these features.
328
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
obtained with IFO testimonies. At most, the features and the most precise names are relatively
more numerous than in the other samples studied.” However, it is difficult to go further (Besse
had obtained comparable results when he tried to distinguish the “D” cases in F7). As a final
matter, for J, “UFO testimonies remain, at that stage, testimonies of stimuli which are not
identified,” even if certain ones can possibly be due to a perceptual error [pp. 284-286].
Conclusion.
As this paper is a presentation of J’s views, the crucial point of Note Technique N° 10 (Jimenez,
1981) will be our conclusion. Here J tallies rather well with various elements of the thesis, but it
was intended particularly for the GEPAN investigators, so J is clearer here (and also tackles the
question of case studies). His main idea is that the subjectivity affects the pre-UFO testimonies,
and that it will be more important, as the subject “knows” more about UFOs (or rather about
what is said about them). It is thus necessary to take into account the positive or negative
expectancies he/she can have about them and the influences that might have been exerted on
him/her, particularly (but not only) by private UFO investigators. Therefore, his crucial
hypothesis (which experiments A to F – and later his thesis – seem to validate): “the probability
that subjectivity plays a role in a testimony (proclivity to subjectivity) increases when pieces of
information about the UFO phenomenon are actualized, by the witness or by his/her circle,
before, during, or after his/her sighting of a PAN.”
Acknowledgments: Thanks to Jean-Pierre Rospars and Jacques Scornaux for their comments.
References (all web articles accessed on May 4, 2022)
(GEPAN’s Notes Techniques are available online at: https://www.cnes-geipan.fr/ > LE GEIPAN
> Documentation > Publications internes).
Aguado, Th., M. Jimenez, J.-P. Penot, J.-P. Rospars, and J.-J. Velasco. Note Technique N° 8.
Enquête N° 79 / 06. CNES / GEPAN, 1981.
Audrerie, D., A. Esterle, and M. Jimenez. Note Technique N° 7. Compte rendu de l’enquête 79 /
05. “A propos d’une rencontre.” CNES / GEPAN, 1981.
Besse, Ph., L. Ebers, M. Jimenez, and J.-J. Velasco. Note Technique N° 11 (Enquête 81 / 02).
CNES/GEPAN, 1982.
Besse, Philippe and Manuel Jimenez. Recherche de stéréotypes: Dessine-moi un OVNI. Note
Technique N° 15. CNES / GEPAN, 1983.
Caudron, Dominique, Gilles Durand, François Haÿs, et al. OVNI: Retour sur l’affaire de CergyPontoise. Lulu, 2016.
[Ebers, L., J.L. Sedard, M. Jimenez, and J.-J. Velasco]. Note Technique N° 5. Compte rendu de
l’enquête GEPAN N° 79 / 03. CNES / GEPAN, 1981.
Esterle, Alain, M. Jimenez, J.-P. Rospars, P. Teyssandier, and D. Audrerie. Note Technique N° 6.
Enquête GEPAN N° 79 / 07. “A propos d’une disparition.” CNES / GEPAN, 1981.
GEPAN. Enquête 86 [sic; error for 82] / 06. Note Technique N° 17. “L’Amarante.” CNES /
GEPAN, 1983.
Jimenez, Manuel. Note Technique N° 10. Les phénomènes aérospatiaux non-identifiés et la
psychologie de la perception. CNES / GEPAN, 1981.
_____. Quelques expériences en psychologie de la perception. Document de travail N° 6.
CNES
/
GEPAN,
June
1982.
https://www.cnesgeipan.fr/sites/default/files/doc_travail_6.pdf
329
II. Psychological Perspectives
_____. Témoignage d’OVNI et psychologie de la perception. Ph.D. thesis in Psychology.
Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier III, 1994, Montpellier, France.
_____. La psychologie de la perception. Paris: Flammarion (collection Dominos), 1997.
Maugé, Claude. Catalogue of UFO abductions in France (unpublished).
Rossoni, David, Éric Maillot and Éric Déguillaume. Les OVNI du CNES. 30 ans d’études
officielles 1977-2007. [No place]: Book-e-Book, 2007.
Roussel, Robert. OVNI. Les vérités cachées de l’enquête officielle. Paris: Albin Michel, 1994.
330
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Cognition and Memory Distortion behind UFO Testimonies
Subhash Meena and Surabhi Das
Abstract: The world revolves around innumerable theories and beliefs about entities no one has
witnessed. These entities have remarkable relevance in science and history but that does not
mean they are not myths—god, fantasies, aliens, wars, space, UFOs, and big bang theory—
comes along with a testimony to defy the myths. A belief that is consistent with the theory only a
few have seen or experienced leads to searching for the answers to testify to the belief which also
gives birth to conspiracy theories, giving an alternative perspective to the findings. The
cornerstone of this paper is to bring forth a succinct analysis about these esoteric entities by
acknowledging various cognitive processes, biases, and memory distortions rationalizing
sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs).
Keywords: Cognition, Memory, Distortion, Belief, Entities, Science, UFO, Psychology
Are We Ready?
Headway toward the advancement of science and philosophy is one of the mankind’s colossal
attainments. Scientific research and theories based on technology can record even the slightest
moment that happens in the cosmos, the moment induces the hope to find something prodigious.
However, being hopeful and curious does not fulfill the criteria of achievement; philosophers
like Adryn Rudnyk believe we also have to be ready to accomplish it.
If extraterrestrials are real, then why haven’t they already established communication with
Earth? What could be the possible reason behind those brief sightings without an established
communication? According to Adryn Rudnyk, mankind is not advanced enough to connect with
the other side of the cosmos. Many are not ready to grapple with the truth that life can exist
outside Earth, on some other planet, or maybe in the galaxy.
The fear of changing one’s whole line of thinking resides in us and it might not be within reach
of our present technologies to maneuver around those repercussions. The warning about the
tactical risk for humanity if it favors approaching extraterrestrials with futuristic technologies
and suspicious schemes has already been insinuated by astrophysicist Stephen Hawking.
Considering the possible harm that could cause by connecting with extraterrestrials and
investigating the evidence, it can be surmised that we are not equipped and prepared to explore
the part of the galactic mystery that we have revolved around for ages. The lack of knowledge
and preparedness can bring more evil and destruction to mankind.
Flying Saucers
An unidentified flying object (UFO), as the name suggests, is an aerial object that is not readily
identifiable to the observer; some say that it is an illusion and others claim the actual presence of
a UFO. Kenneth Arnold first sighted UFOs in 1947, when he claimed to see nine high-speed
objects near Mount Rainier in Washington; that was when UFOs started getting called “flying
saucers.” From 1947 on, numerous theorists and researchers suspected the existence of
extraterrestrial beings, an irrational belief about those extraterrestrial beings or alien contacts or
visits in UFOs. Revolving around these beliefs, many private and governmental organizations
331
II. Psychological Perspectives
conducted investigations to unearth the mystery about the existence of aliens and aliens traveling
in UFOs. The Pentagon recently released videos showing unidentified terrestrial aircraft, which
prompted various explanations; speculation about alien spacecraft being one of the explanations
that gave rise to media attention.
The curiosity rising from contemplating the theories can be elucidated by the term “paranormal
belief,” which incorporates beliefs such as belief in psychic abilities; belief in powerful deities;
belief in survival of the soul after death and the ability to communicate with the deceased;
superstitious beliefs; belief that an organism can be hurt or healed through mental intentions; and
belief that the earth is being visited by alien life forms. This term and belief system has been
studied by anthropologists, parapsychologists, and psychologists. They have their own reasons
for the explanation of why this happens. Anthropologists focus on the social and cultural
functions these beliefs serve; parapsychologists do not rule out the possibility that psychic
abilities maybe genuine; and psychologists are skeptical about the beliefs and assume that they
rise from misguided and maladaptive behavior.
In a country like America, which claimed to spot UFOs the most, and according to history where
UFOs were first spotted, UFOs have always been folklore. In America it became a “cultural
phenomenon” where movie posters, comics, and advertisements started featuring UFOs. It can
be assumed that the culture and folk tales raised paranormal belief among people, and they
started believing that there is an actual entity that comes to Earth.
However, this assumption does not disprove the existence of UFOs, but rather states a
perspective about what could be the possible reason behind such a mystery and conundrum
which is giving rise to fascination among sociologists, anthropologists, historians, scientists,
astronomical scientists, psychologists, and others.
Cognition Behind It
The first and foremost notion of cognition is a mental process and understanding through which
humans think, perceive, and sense. Information processing is a cardinal element of cognition; it
can be concrete or abstract, conscious or unconscious. Development of cognitive abilities is
ceaseless, which means it keeps developing throughout life at different rates. Attention,
perception, language, communication, illusion, and problem-solving are all parts of different
cognitive activities. Due to the contorted nature of cognition, it becomes vulnerable to biases,
illusions, and misinformation, which dilute how one perceives reality. Extreme distortion leads
to phantoms and makes an unrealistic bubble around us.
Cognitive bias creates inexorable barriers which put limitations on apprehension. Having the
wrong idea about reality acts as a substructure which supports further bias. Clouding memories
and constructing a faux memory is the chief trait of the distortion. The most amusing fact about
cognitive distortions is that they are global and ineluctable in nature, in other words each and
every one of us experiences them whether we are aware of it or not. Individual differences play a
crucial role in the variability and severity of experiences. Fantasy and fascination about
extraterrestrials, their contact with the Earth, their intentions to invade the planet, sightings of
UFOs, and alien abductions are all viewed as cognitive distortions and biases in psychology.
Fascination about the mystical nature of UFOs gives birth to a lot of biases and theories.
332
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Unidentified flying object (UFO) is an enigma that fascinates even psychologists; they might not
actively participate in the field of research about the existence of extraterrestrials, but they
palpably make it easier to understand the reason why people believe in UFOs. According to
British psychologist Christopher C. French, “It is important to distinguish between the questions,
‘Do you believe aliens exist?’ and ‘Do you believe aliens ever visited the Earth?’” Many people
who claimed to have seen a UFO will answer the first question “Yes,” but their answer to the
second question will be “No.” They will explain why they said “Yes” to the first question by
providing examples. Why does this happen? What is the reason behind it? It would not be wrong
to assume that most of the sightings take place at night. It is possible that our perception is under
the influence of our prior knowledge; like what happens with top-down influence, our brain
perceives from previous knowledge and apprehends the next. It distorts perception in a way that
the person might perceive cues that are not even there. The environment has limitless sensory
experiences, top-down processing assists in detangling sensory experiences, making it easy to
assess them quickly. It is now safe to say that even hard evidence such as photographs or radar
signals can also be misinterpreted through top-down processing.
Supremacy of Environment
In the world there are lots of like-minded people and others with contrasting convictions. The
influence of the thoughts of people with whom a person is surrounded is more than anticipated.
Everyone, at least once in his lifetime, finds himself under the influence of his peers; this
phenomenon is known as peer pressure. The predilection to belong and be accepted in society
gives birth to peer pressure; choosing something a person wouldn’t do otherwise is the basic
effect of peer pressure. It is common to start believing and lean toward the opinion or perspective
of people around us; many patients with psychological issues come up with bizarre beliefs or
thoughts, and during case studies it comes to the forefront that people around them have similar
views on the particular subject matter.
The environment plays a salient role in developing belief systems; it would not be wrong to
imply that it can also modify the belief about the presence of extraterrestrials in the cosmos; if an
individual is surrounded by people with the same outlook, then the individual is more likely to be
influenced by it rather than by the contrasting opinion. The media exert radical influence and
elevate it to a higher level by publishing about UFOs or aliens on a public platform which
develops a keen interest in the audience of “cosmophiles.” Making someone believe in a theory
is easier when it comes from a comparably reliable source such as news anchors, editors, or
reporters. The way the news is presented is the key to the belief system of the audience. If
something is constantly reported, such as UFOs or aliens visiting the Earth, and there is no
convincing explanation for the events, it makes the reader want more, as if there is a lot more
than what they can see. It is hard to realize the intensity of preconditioning when there are others
in agreement on the belief. Articles or news from reputed sources that do not disagree with one’s
belief, help explain why the thought keeps lingering in our head.
One of the earliest alien abduction claims came to the forefront from a Brazilian farmer, who
claimed that he was dragged into a spaceship by aliens and forced to engage in intercourse with a
female alien who was making odd sounds throughout the act. Another case, which received
media attention, was that of Betty and Barney Hill, who claimed to have seen a UFO while
333
II. Psychological Perspectives
driving, and they reached home two hours later than expected, without having any account of
that time. It is hard to believe the authenticity of the claims, since there are no co-witnesses, so
their accuracy is subject to doubt. Professor John Mack, psychiatrist at Harvard University,
backed these claims by writing a book about alien abduction and he supported the belief that
these are not a symptom of psychosis but very real experiences. Mack did not get much support
for his conclusion due to lack of empirical evidence.
Reminiscences
Human memory is a complex process, the information from various events and environmental
stimuli are stored in human memory. In other words, it’s a stockpile of information that an
individual has accumulated through experience. An explanation regarding memory distortions
can unfold the cognition behind alien abduction claims and UFO sightings. Empirical evidence
emphasizes defense mechanisms to suppress anxiety-provoking thoughts resulting from
traumatic events. Dissociation from the traumatic event and engaging in abnormal integration of
thoughts and feelings segregate the memories of traumatic events from the conscious.
Individuals having dissociative thoughts sometimes draw false assumptions from stimuli in order
to lose the actual memory of the traumatic event, which often leads to misinterpretation.
Research supports that memories of alien abduction can be an abstract representation of previous
memory which was suppressed because of the anxiety-provoking nature of the memory, and it
can also be related to false memory. At times under the influence of dissociation an individual
tends to perceive sensory cues that are not accurate or not present in the scenario. This is called
false memory. False memory can be explained in simpler words by recalling or remembering
memories that a person has not experienced in the first place. Misinterpretation and
misattribution are two major factors contributing to false memory, as an individual tends to
misinterpret an event under stressful or complex situations; he might not be able to accurately
perceive the stimuli under the circumstances, which leads to misattribution. The existing memory
of former events can sometimes interfere with the formation of present-day memory, promoting
a false impression of the current event.
Glimpses of UFOs, claims of alien abduction, or surmising the existence of extraterrestrials can
be chalked up to false memory. Lack of evidence of these testimonies makes it comprehensible
that the rise of inexorable circumstances or emotions leads to false memory of seeing UFOs and
memories of alien abduction. The chances are low that the person experiencing false memory is
actually experiencing the phenomenon. Previous studies affirm that locus of emotion contributes
to the formation of current memory. Having curiosity about or interest in a particular topic or
thing tends toward formation of memory involving the topic of interest if there is a familiar
object or stimulus in the environment. The pre-existing idiosyncrasy about UFOs facilitates
arousal whenever there is something even slightly resembling a UFO-like object in the skies,
leading one to take if for an actual UFO.
Cosmic absorption accelerates automatic thoughts as a part of a cognitive process which is an
elucidation of the belief that an extraterrestrial entity exists. Being engrossed in mental imagery
and fantasies immensely correlates with fantasy-prone personality. Persisting with the absorption
about prodigious happenings in outer space is susceptible to fantasy-prone personality; the
personality trait keeps an individual involved in prevailing and extensive inclusion in the fantasy.
334
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Possessing the trait makes it difficult to fabricate the contradistinction between fantasy and
reality, hence the individual starts believing the fantasy is reality. Without empirical evidence,
UFO testimony seems to be a fantasy suggesting hallucinations and psychosomatic symptoms in
the extreme case. Openness to mystical fantasy, self-altering experiences, and proneness to
dissociation accelerates absorption. It would not be wrong to suspect the testimonies that have
come across are repercussions of fantasy-prone personality resulting in an overwhelming
absorption concerning the existence of extraterrestrials and their contact with the planet. Illusory
truth effect comes into play because track records of the assertions persistently come to the
forefront and reach out to onlookers.
Periodic indications concerning the existence of visitors make it easier to process than new
information that no one had heard about before. After a period of time, when reputable journals
and scientists started opening up about the evidence they have come across through various
testimonies or claims, more and more people were getting to know about such imaginative and
mysterious occurrences in the cosmic environment. Once the fact got established it gained
attention from around the globe and eventually became a point of discussion. Reading materials
and media reports are now readily available on the web, which are easily accessible. This
continual exposure to the details and particulars is easier to accommodate, resulting in actually
believing it as a truth. Familiarity overpowering rationality can affect the recipient’s belief and
cloud his judgement if he finds it even remotely relatable. The processing fluency increases in
such cases, hence resulting in illusory truth bias.
The level of consciousness delineates the reason behind the inducement of fantasies. Experiences
and materials stored in one’s personal unconscious can be insignificant in the context of the
present. Unresolved strife, antagonism over moral concerns, and emotion-induced thoughts are
the chief fragments of one’s unconscious; these thoughts mainly consist of repressed feelings
which are now forgotten. Elements from one’s personal conscious often emerge in the form of
dreams. At times feelings and recollections correspond to each other and represent a theme.
When themes have an emotional impact, they become a complex. An atypical response to
stimulus is an indication of an emotional complex behind that stimulus which the individual is
unaware of.
Collective unconscious, in contrast to personal unconscious, does not postulate person-specific
experience. Materials that form the collective unconscious are independent of consciousness.
The human mind has a propensity to render mythological motifs. Carl Jung emphasized one way
of perceiving and structuring experience through archetypes. Archetypes work as a passage
between collective unconscious and consciousness, which eventually turns into an action.
Archetypes help with perceiving in the form of symbols and images instead of content. They are
expressed in the form of fantasies, dreams, myths, folklores, art, and visions; through these
forms, symbols represent the wisdom of humanity that can be applicable in the future.
Carl Jung attempted to understand why individuals believe they have seen spaceships and in the
existence of aliens. He explained it with the help of symbols that the spaceship represents
totality, coming to our planet from another planet or galaxy in the unconscious and little green
men as archetypes. Jung used amplification to reach this conclusion. To associate meaning to the
symbols one should have prior knowledge about the history and meaning of the symbols. It
335
II. Psychological Perspectives
indicates there is a possibility of suppression and buried past thoughts or feelings which are not
socially acceptable and appropriate to be expressed, resulting in the sighting of UFOs and related
fantasies as archetypical symbols from the unconscious. The fantasies act like reality and an
individual misinterprets objects or things as physical. A psychoanalyst deciphers these symbols
which are in the form of fantasy, and gives a meaning to it which ultimately helps the individual
with his unconscious and buried sentiments.
Humans’ innate tendency or propensity to perceive things as a whole throws some light on the
physical images of radar and how they are intuited. The Gestalt school of psychology
emphasizes cognizing an object as unexpurgated rather than in its components. It is presumed
that UFOs flout the laws of physics because they transpose instantaneously or move in
paradoxical ways. The radar images are obscure and cloudy; one can only see a dot of a structure
like a plane, and cannot possibly identify it as a UFO just by looking at the image, even when
there are no distinct features on it. Then why is it identified as a UFO? The predisposition to
grasp an object or stimulus as a whole allows associating the present object with possible
explanations attached to it, consequently perceiving a single dot in the sky as a possible UFO.
Discussion
Cognitive functioning and memory distortions are parallel to each other; inaccuracy in the
sensory process leads to memory distortion. Sightings of UFOs are far more than just false
memory or misinterpretation, but an ocean of incalculable possibilities. Influence of the
surroundings around us and preconditioning which has taken place in the form of folklore is the
first step when approaching the fascination with aliens and flying saucers. The mystical aura
creates compelling engrossment, which is difficult to avoid or think about, especially when
folklores are part of the culture. Familiarity with the tales establishes a breeding ground for
information that can be accommodated in the future. It is possible that an individual might find it
absurd to be the only person having an alluring fascination with UFOs, but when confronted with
the fact that there are other people harmonizing with the same thought it builds up confidence
and makes the belief even stronger. Validation from reputable journals, scientists, researchers,
and other resources establishes conformity and mutual agreement. Not only are preconditioning
or conformity manifested, to contribute to the absorption, but some other underlying cognitive
distortions are responsible for the claims and testimonies of UFO sightings. Proneness to a
particular trait or personality, which is facilitated by external factors, gives in to absorption with
the fantasy that was planted at an early age. Fantasy is seen as reality which could not be
apprehended otherwise, and an individual becomes so engrossed it becomes difficult to
determine the difference between fantasy and reality.
Many researches and articles emphasize false memory and dissociation as behind UFO
testimonies. The reliability of the testimonies has always been in doubt because of these practical
cognitive distortions that take place in the human mind. Dissociating from a traumatic past event
joins hands with false memory in a way that they can be associated with each other. Escaping
from the reality and anxiety-provoking thought is always comforting, instead of facing and
resolving it. Dissociation is a defense mechanism used for keeping away the anxiety-provoking
thought after experiencing trauma. It is one type of dissociation to suppress his actual feelings
and engage in a peculiar fantasy. It is a typical trait of a dissociative person to strongly believe
that the traumatic event never existed, and that reality is really what they think right now.
336
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Psychologists suspect that a dissociative person can go so far as to make others believe that they
have seen something unnatural and clearly recall it, which is a false memory.
False memory is customarily observed in eyewitnesses at a crime scene, where one witness
believes and remembers the event as something different; other witnesses give statements that
contradict the memory of the witness who is experiencing false memory. Substantial evidence
points towards the suppression of thoughts and interruption while senses are recording the scene
as the chief reason behind false memory. Vivid memory of sighting a UFO or being abducted by
aliens and failing to provide empirical evidence suggests that it can be the person’s false
memory. Carl Jung explained this with archetypes in the form of symbols. The deep-down
unconscious and forbidden thoughts reach consciousness in the form of perplexing symbols,
which can be resolved only by an expert. Symbols in the form of fantasies are not baseless; prior
knowledge far from our awareness still exists about the fascination. These symbols can represent
a wide array of possibilities and expressions that are similar to riddles.
Frequent exposure to testimony even without verifiable evidence makes it easy to fit in with
prior knowledge about the object, since old information is easier to process than new information
and the familiar becomes reality. An individual who is spellbound with a fantasy will read and
dwell on resources in support of the thought or fantasy, and through this it will become a truth.
The prior information will accommodate the new familiar information, syncing with the nature
of the belief, and it will work like an illusion. It is somewhat similar to seeing things as a whole
and undivided. A partially visible object on a tree can be a fruit, a bird, or a species of animal.
Our perception of the object will depend on the accessibility of the information, prior knowledge,
and interest. Environmental, social, and psychological factors all contribute to how an individual
perceives the external stimuli and world around him. A slight distraction, interruption, or
disruption in sensory registration warps the consciousness. There is no loophole to exit or avoid
these distortions or biases; sometimes we are not even aware of the distortion. Falling in the trap
of such illusions depends entirely on the level of consciousness.
References (all web articles here accessed on June 25, 2022)
1. Irwin, H.J. The Psychology of Paranormal Belief: A Researcher’s Handbook. Harfield,
Hertfordshire, U.K.: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2009,
https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=0S6bgzQrfLEC&oi=fnd&pg=PP9&ots
=PeTyYC6YW&sig=Jq7ZiJ9vLZtoAD6zlh0s8KXBAlw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
2. The Seth MacFarlane collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan archive, 1860-2004, US
Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/finding-our-place-in-the-cosmoswith-carl-sagan/articles-and-essays/life-on-other-worlds/ufos-and-aliens-among-us
3. Mystery Wire, (2021), https://www.wfla.com/news/national/ufo-philosopher-humans-notready-to-make-contact-with-aliens/
4. King, L.A., C.M Burton, J.A. Hicks, and S.M.Drigotas. “Ghosts, UFOs, and Magic:Positive
Affect and the Experiential System,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92
(5) (2007), pp. 905–919, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.5.905
5. Rabbie, P. Inverse, (2019), https://www.inverse.com/article/59833-nasa-scientist-thinks-wewill-find-life-on-mars
337
II. Psychological Perspectives
6. Loeb, A. “What We Can Learn from Studying UFOs,” Scientific American, online (June 24,
2021).
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-we-can-learn-from-studying-ufos/
7. French, C.C. “Close Encounters of the Psychological Kind,” The Psychologist (The British
Psychological Society), 28 (Oct. 2015), pp. 812-815.
https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-28/october-2015/close-encounterspsychological-kind
8. Cherry, K. “What Is Top Down Processing?”Verywell Mind (Updated October 18, 2020).
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-top-down-processing-2795975
9. Clancy, S.A., R.J.McNally, D.L.Schacter, M.F.Lenzenweger, and R.K. Pitman. “Memory
Distortion in People Reporting Abduction by Aliens,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology,
111:3 (2002), pp. 455-461.
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-17277-005
10. Sissons, C. “Defence Mechanisms in Psychology: What Are They?”Medical News Today
(July 31, 2020).https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/defense-mechanisms
11. Cherry, K. “False memories,” Verywell Mind (Updated July 31, 2020).
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-false-memory-2795193
12. Cowen, R.C. “‘Believing Is Seeing’ Still Explains UFO Sightings after 40 Years,” The
Christian Science Monitor, June 23, 1987.
https://www.csmonitor.com/1987/0623/dbob23.html
13. Sharps, M. J., J.Matthews, and J. Asten. “Cognition and Belief in Paranormal Phenomena:
Gestalt/Feature-Intensive Processing Theory and Tendencies Toward ADHD,
Depression, and Dissociation,” The Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and
Applied, 140:6 (2006),pp. 579- 590.
http://justinlmatthews.com/papers/paranormal_2006.pdf
14. Otgaar, H., I.Candel, H.Merckelbach, and K.A. Wade, “Abducted by a UFO: Prevalence
Information Affects Young Children’s False Memories for an Implausible Event,”
Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23:1 (2008), pp. 115-125,
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/acp.1445
15. Jung, C. G. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 2nd edition. Princeton University
Press, 1968.
16. Sharf, R.S. Theories of Psychotherapy and Counseling: Concepts and Cases, 5thEdition.
Linda Schreiber-Ganster, 2012.
17. Sevillano, A.S., H.G. Ordi, B.C. Gran, and M.V. Pareja.“Psychological Characteristics of
Dissociation in General Population,” Science Direct, 28: 3 (2017), pp. 101-106,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clysa.2017.09.003
18. Fazio, L.K., N.M.Brashier, B.K.Payne, and E.J. Marsh.“Knowledge Does Not Protect against
Illusory Truth,” Journal of Experimental Psychology, 144:5 (2015), pp. 9931002.http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000098.supp
19. Rock, I., and S. Palmer, “The Legacy of Gestalt Psychology,” Scientific American,263:6
(Dec. 1990), pp. 84-91.https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/24997014
20. Kaplan, R.L., I.Van Damme, L.J. Levine, etal.“Emotions and False Memory,” Emotion
Review,8:1 (Jan. 2016), pp. 8-13.
338
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Clinical Evidence in the Italian Phenomenon of Alien Abduction
Giulio Perrotta
Abstract: Purpose. Starting from the classic definition of “alien abduction”, the present
research, which began with a study published in 2020 on the proposed clinical classification of
this particular phenomenon, is aimed at confirming the theoretical assumption of
psychopathological origin. Methods. Clinical interview and administration of the following
psychometric tests: PICI-2, PSM-Q, PAD-Q and PDM-Q. Results. Preliminary results would
suggest that the phenomenon of alien abductions has a greater tendency to occur in the female
group and has an absolute prevalence in the believing population about the existence of
paranormal phenomena per se, even in the absence of objective and/or scientific evidence. It is a
phenomenon almost completely linked to a low to medium cultural level or not fully educated. It
emerged that the selected sample suffers from delusional, dissociative, and narcissistic disorder;
followed, as secondary disorders, by schizoid, borderline, obsessive, and psychopathic disorder.
The analysis of functional traits also reported the marked dysfunctional tendency of the classes
referred to as self-control, sensitivity, Ego-Es comparison, emotionality, ego stability, security,
and relational functionality. Nearly two-thirds of the participants present a dysfunctional
tendency in sexual behavior and a marked tendency to chronicle feelings of shame in avoidance
behaviors or hyposexuality; in addition, 100% report significant or severe psychological or
physical abuse at a young age, or intra-parental relational imbalances, or otherwise a sexual
upbringing that is not open and lacks free communication. Conclusions. This research confirms
the psychopathological nature of the alien abduction phenomenon, which deserves to be treated
using a psychotherapeutic approach and possibly also pharmacological in serious cases,
depending on the symptoms manifested and the severity of the morbid condition.
Keywords: Alien, Alien abduction, UFO, PICI-2, PDM-Q, PSM-Q, PAD-Q, PHEM
Introduction and Background
In the literature, the experience of alien abduction consists of the alleged kidnapping of human
beings by extraterrestrial biological entities, using superior technologies. The information is not
always clear whether these experiences are lived onboard spacecraft orbiting deep space outside
the Earth’s orbit, or inside specially built underground military bases. The narratives supporting
this circumstance are often different, as are the medical investigations that are carried out by an
unspecified specialized technical staff. [1]
In the world, thousands of people claim to have, at least once, the experience of being kidnapped
by an alien race (mainly described as grey type humanoids, Nordic type humanoids, and
reptilians). Certainly, it is a fact that to talk about alien abductions we must give credence to the
existence of extraterrestrial biological entities capable of interacting with us and possessing
highly advanced intelligence and technology, far superior to our current knowledge. The (nonscientific) evidence supporting the confirmation hypothesis of the phenomenon are eyewitness
testimony, mechanical evidence (audio and video), the retrieval of objects related to the
“abduction” phenomenon such as the plants allegedly found in the body of the kidnapped, and
the experiences of direct contact with one of the alien breeds described. [1]
339
II. Psychological Perspectives
Generally, in the field of ufology, encounters with creatures from other worlds and mysterious
aircraft follow a precise identification, according to the system of astrophysicist Allen Hynek and
ufologist Ted Bloecher’s directives [1]. In particular:
1. CE1 (type 1): one or more flying objects of defined solid mass or stray lights are sighted;
2. CE2 (type 2): there are phenomena caused by the presence of a flying object, such as crop
circles, the heat or radiation that damages the ground, human paralysis not otherwise diagnosed,
interference with engines or radio-television reception, and the loss of space-time cognition
(intended as a flaw in the memory of a person associated with the alien encounter);
3. CE3 (type 3): animated beings are seen, understood as extraterrestrial biological entities, in
association with a sighting of unidentified flying objects;
4. CE4 (type 4): one or more witnesses are the victims of alien abduction;
5. CE5 (type 5): there is a direct encounter with the extraterrestrial creature in a bilateral
communication relationship established through conscious, voluntary, and active human
initiatives, or in any case through psychic cooperative communication;
6. CE6 (type 6): long-term pathological effects are suffered, deriving from direct contact with the
alien creature;
7. CE7 (type 7): there is finally the direct participation, with human-alien hybridization through
mating or the birth of a creature that is the fusion with the terrestrial race.
In the scientific literature there are very few works dedicated to this topic, and all the studies
published are focused in various ways on psychopathological profiles, albeit with population
samples too small and therefore not sufficient to sanction the statistical representativeness;
however, the data are still interesting and deserve attention:
1. Research focuses attention on child abuse. Six adults, who had recently experienced sudden
recall of preschool memories of sexual abuse or alien abduction/visitation, underwent
comprehensive neuropsychological evaluations. All experiences “emerged” when hypnosis was
used in the context of sexual abuse or New Age religion and was followed by a reduction in
anxiety. As a group, these subjects showed significant elevations (T greater than 70) of
childhood imagery, complex partial epileptic signs, and suggestiveness. Neuropsychological data
indicated right frontal temporal abnormalities and reduced access to the right parietal lobe.
MMPI profiles were normal. The findings support the hypothesis that enhanced imagination due
to temporal lobe lability within specific contexts may facilitate the creation of memories; they
are further strengthened if there is also reduced anxiety. [2]
2. Research focuses attention on sleeping disorders. It is clear that sleep is not only a global or
cerebral phenomenon but can also be a local phenomenon. This explains the fact that the primary
states of being (wakefulness, NREM sleep, and REM sleep) are not necessarily mutually
exclusive, and the components of these states can appear in various combinations, with
fascinating clinical consequences. Examples include sleep inertia, narcolepsy, sleep paralysis,
lucid dreams, REM sleep behavior disorder, sleepwalking, sleep terrors, out-of-body
experiences, and reports of alien abduction. Incomplete state declaration also has implications for
consciousness—which also has fluid boundaries. Fluctuations in the degree of consciousness are
likely explained by abnormalities in a “rhythm of spatial and temporal binding” that normally
results in a unified conscious experience. Dysfunctional binding may play a role in anesthetic
340
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
states, autism, schizophrenia, and neurodegenerative disorders. Further study of the broad
spectrum of dissociated states of sleep and wakefulness that are closely related to states of
consciousness and unconsciousness by basic neuroscientists, clinicians, and members of the legal
profession will provide scientific, clinical, and therapeutic insights with forensic implications. [3]
3. Research focuses attention on false memories. People sometimes fantasize entire complex
scenarios and later define these experiences as memories of actual events rather than as
imaginations. This article examines research associated with three such phenomena: past-life
experiences, alien UFO contacts and abductions, and memory reports of childhood satanic ritual
abuse. In each case, elicitation of fictional events is frequently associated with hypnotic
procedures and structured interviews that provide strong, repeated requests for the requested
experiences, and then legitimize the experiences as “real memories.” Research associated with
these phenomena supports the hypothesis that recollection is reconstructive and organized in
terms of current expectations and beliefs. [4-5]
4. Research focuses attention on sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is a dissociative state that occurs
primarily during waking and is characterized by alterations in motor, perceptual, emotional, and
cognitive functions, such as the inability to perform voluntary movements, visual hallucinations,
feelings of pressure in the chest, delusions about a frightening presence, and, in some cases, fear
of imminent death. Most people experience it infrequently, but typically when sleeping in the
supine position; however, paralysis is considered an illness (parasomnia) when it is recurrent
and/or associated with the emotional burden. Interestingly, throughout human history, different
peoples have interpreted paralysis according to a supernatural view. For example, Canadian
Eskimos attribute paralysis to shaman spells, which hinder the ability to move and cause
hallucinations of a formless presence. In Japanese tradition, paralysis is due to a vengeful spirit
that suffocates its enemies during sleep. In Nigerian culture, a female demon attacks during a
dream and causes paralysis. A modern manifestation of paralysis is the reporting of “alien
abductions,” experienced as an inability to move during waking associated with visual
hallucinations of aliens. In all, paralysis is a significant example of how a specific biological
phenomenon can be interpreted and shaped by different cultural contexts. To further explore the
ethnopsychology of paralysis, in this review we present the “Pisadeira”, a Brazilian folklore
character native to the southeast of the country, and also present in other regions with variant
names. The Pisadeira is described as a witch with long nails who lurks on rooftops at night and
stomps on the chests of those who sleep with their stomachs full. This legend is mentioned in
many anthropological accounts; however, no comprehensive references can be found about the
Pisadeira from the perspective of sleep science. [6] Again, sleep paralysis accompanied by
hypnopompic (“waking”) hallucinations is an often frightening manifestation of the discordance
between the cognitive/perceptual and motor aspects of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.
Sleepers upon awakening become aware of an inability to move, and sometimes experience the
intrusion of dream mentality into waking consciousness (e.g., seeing intruders in the bedroom).
Two studies are summarized in this paper. In the first study, we evaluated 10 individuals who
reported being abducted by space aliens and whose claims were linked to apparent episodes of
sleep paralysis during which hypnopompic hallucinations were interpreted as alien beings. In the
second study, adults reporting repressed, recovered, or ongoing memories of childhood sexual
abuse more often reported sleep paralysis than a control group. Among the 31 who reported sleep
paralysis, only one person linked it to memories of abuse. This person was among the six
341
II. Psychological Perspectives
participants with recovered memory who reported sleep paralysis (i.e., 17% rate of interpreting it
as related to the abuse). People rely on personally plausible cultural narratives to interpret these
otherwise puzzling episodes of sleep paralysis. [7]
5. Research focuses attention on epileptic states and false memory. 20 male and 20 female
undergraduate students were exposed singly for 20 minutes to an exotic setting (partial sensory
deprivation and weak, bilateral transtemporal pulsed magnetic fields) that enhances relaxation
and exotic experiences. The numerical incidence of subjective experiences described as old
memories, dreams, emotions, or vestibular sensations did not differ significantly between the
sexes; however, women who reported a greater prevalence of pre-experimental complex partial
epileptic-like signs were more likely to report experiences of “old memories” (r = 0.61), while
men who exhibited these signs were more likely to report dream-like experiences (r = 0.49).
Because complex partial epileptic-like signs are positively associated with suggestibility, the
potential contribution of this differential gender effect to the etiology of False Memory
Syndrome requires further investigation. [8]
6. Research focuses attention on childhood sexual abuse. Twelve white middle-class women
who had been severely sexually abused as children by a family member were asked to provide a
narrative of their abuse and discuss their subsequent remembering and forgetting of these
experiences. Most claimed they had undergone periods during which they had not recalled their
abuse, but also claimed that they had never forgotten their experiences at another point during
the interview. Nine of the women had actively tried to forget the abusive experiences, although
eight still experienced recurrent and often relentless intrusive memories. Our findings suggest
that women with continuous memories may have longer and more coherent narratives than
women without continuous memories. Implications of these findings for understanding the
phenomenology of memorable experiences and the concept of “recovered” memories of
childhood sexual abuse are discussed. [9] People sometimes report recovering long-forgotten
memories of childhood sexual abuse. The memory mechanisms that lead to such reports are not
well understood, and the authenticity of recovered memories has often been questioned. We
identified two subgroups of individuals reporting recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse.
These subgroups differed dramatically in their cognitive profiles: People who recovered
memories of abuse through suggestive therapy exhibited greater susceptibility to the construction
of false memories but showed no tendency to underestimate their prior memories. In contrast,
individuals who recovered memories of abuse spontaneously exhibited a greater propensity to
forget their prior memories but did not show greater susceptibility to false memories. This
double dissociation points to the mechanisms underlying recovered memory experiences and
indicates that recovered memories may sometimes be fictitious and other times authentic. [1011]
“Contactism” must be differentiated from the phenomenon of alien abduction, both from a
technical and clinical point of view: the former is the person who claims to be in contact with
alleged extraterrestrial biological entities, to receive messages and communications of a nature
mysterious, esoteric, and spiritual (for the good of humanity), without ever undergoing contact
with violence or compulsion. This hypothesis, in a psychiatric clinic, is often associated with
delusional or hallucinatory experiences, the result of a psychotic disorder or a class A personality
disorder, well-structured and outlined in their chronic condition, according to DSM-5. In the
342
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
hypothesis of alien abduction, if not repeated over time (according to the patient's medical
history), one could think of episodes of an acute or in any case less serious and pervasive nature,
such as, for example, episodes of sleep paralysis, epilepsies of the temporal lobe, alterations
determined by modifications of the electromagnetic field, constructions of false memories on a
post-traumatic basis, or single psychotic episode and dissociative tendency. The DSM-IV, in its
revised version R, included alien abductions in the section dedicated to religious and spiritual
problems (V62.89) supporting the direct connection with the last generation’s religious
movements. The DSM-5 instead radically shifts the axis of an investigation by eliminating the
thorny issue, thus bringing into play the multifactorial diagnosis and the possible correlations
with the pre-existing conditions already categorized in the manual. In other cases, on the other
hand, the hypotheses of voluntary mystifications have often been found, as happened in the cases
of contactees George Adamski, and Eduard (“Billy”) Meier. Psychologist Chris French
examined nineteen people who believed they were abducted by aliens and found a tendency
towards fantasy, hallucinations, dissociation, and belief in the paranormal greater than normal,
concluding that there is no reason to believe that those people are victims of kidnappings by
extraterrestrial biological entities. Finally, in some episodes of kidnappings, surgical
interventions aimed at implanting alien devices in the human body are often mentioned, for the
remote control of thoughts and physiological functions. Such “alien” implants would be concrete
proof of the existence of the phenomenon. Some researchers and scientists have tried to identify
the materials implanted in bodies, as Dr. Roger Leir (known first as a surgeon and later as a
podiatrist, specializing in micro-operations exclusively on the foot) attempted to make, and
Derrel Sims (ufologist, expert in certified hypnotherapy). A little more than a dozen physical
tests were collected and certified (including, in 1978, a mysterious triangular object with a
metallic nuclear heart, seven centimeters long and four centimeters wide, covered by a redbrown membrane and equipped with many receptors connected to the nerve endings). These
findings were then mysteriously hidden, effectively avoiding further and accurate technicalscientific and biological investigations. [12]
In 2020, this writer tried to trace in specialized research all possible hypotheses that would
explain the phenomena under consideration. In particular, the following conclusions were
reached [12-49]:
1. There is no documented evidence in the academic and scientific field about the chemicalphysical investigations carried out on the findings extrapolated from humans, although there are
suggestive reports from accredited laboratories about the mysterious origin of the same objects,
with a strong indication for an extraterrestrial origin.
2. The patients who report having experienced alien abductions have a greater attraction and
interest in paranormal phenomena and have a history of post-traumatic episodes and sleep
paralysis (and disturbances), all events capable of generating false memories and episodes of
hallucinators, as in the hypothesis of post-operative awakening.
3. A strong tendency for patients to dissociate is connected with altered functionality of the
temporal lobes.
343
II. Psychological Perspectives
4. The alien abductions, abuses with a satanic background, and the identities of past lives seem
connected to the reconstruction of false memories, typical in patients with high imagination and
fantasy, connected to a hyperactivity of the upper longitudinal fasciculus and an altered
functionality of the frontal lobe, of the prefrontal cortical regions, the hippocampal and vascular
deficits (in particular, those referring to the anterior artery in the Willis’s Polygon), in situations
of high stress perceived by the patient.
5. The best treatment suggested in the scientific literature is the one combining psychotherapy
(strategic or cognitive-behavioral) and psychopharmacology (especially in the presence of
evident clinical psychotic signs or disorders that need a pharmacological approach to stabilize
the patient before continuing or setting up psychotherapy targeted and centered on the needs
specifically identified during the anamnesis). In the presence of confirmed dissociative episodes
or rich production of false memories, it is not recommended to make use of hypnosis and
suggestive techniques, which could incentivize or strengthen this patient’s interpretation of
reality. [12]
6. The phenomenon of alien abduction, in the absence of scientific evidence, must be considered
to have a psychopathological matrix. Therefore, a scale of severity of symptoms is identified
(Perrotta Alien Abduction Scale, PAAS):
a) Level 1: voluntary mystification.
b) Level 2: delusions or hallucinations determined by the use of substances capable of altering
the state of consciousness or by morbid neurological forms (such as epilepsy, tumors,
vasculopathy, vascular disorders, trauma).
c) Level 3: false memories connected to post-traumatic stressful events, with pathologically
oriented personality traits.
d) Level 4: altered state caused by the obsessive idea of abduction, in comorbidity with sleep
disturbances and pathologically oriented personality traits.
e) Level 5: altered state caused by the dissociative disorder.
f) Level 6: altered state caused by eccentric personality profiles (cluster B, DSM-V; cluster B,
PICI-2).
g) Level 7: altered state caused by psychotic personality profiles (cluster A, DSM-V; cluster C,
PICI-2).
This theoretical approach appears, in the writer’s opinion, to be complete and detailed, and will
therefore be used in this research work as an evaluation scale concerning the symptoms
manifested by the patients, part of the selected population.
Research Objectives and Methods [110]
The methods used are two: 1) Clinical interview, based on narrative-anamnestic and
documentary evidence and the basis of the Perrotta Human Emotions Model (PHEM) concerning
their emotional and perceptual-reactive experience; 2) Administration of the battery of
psychometric tests published in international scientific journals by the author of this work: a)
Perrotta Integrative Clinical Interviews (PICI-2), to investigate functional and dysfunctional
personality traits; b) Perrotta Individual Sexual Matrix Questionnaire (PSM-Q), to investigate
individual sexual matrix; c) Perrotta Affective Dependence Questionnaire (PAD-Q), to
344
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
investigate affective and relational dependence profiles; d) Perrotta Human Defense Mechanisms
Questionnaire (PDM-Q), to investigate ego defense mechanisms.
The phases of the research were divided as follows:
1. Selection of the population sample, according to the parameters indicated in the following
paragraph.
2. Clinical interview, to each population group.
3. Administration of the Perrotta Integrative Clinical Interviews (PICI-2), Perrotta Individual
Sexual Matrix Questionnaire (PSM-Q), Perrotta Affective Dependence Questionnaire (PAD-Q),
and Perrotta Human Defense Mechanisms Questionnaire (PDM-Q).
4. Data processing following administration.
5. Comparison of data obtained.
Setting and Participants [110]
The requirements decided for the selection of the sample population are:
1) Age between 18 years and 67 years, healthy and robust constitution and without pathological
symptoms.
2) Italian nationality, with Italian ancestors in the last two generations: this choice is oriented in
this sense to avoid cultural contaminations determined by popular beliefs different from the
Christian-Catholic cult.
3) Precocious and manifest physical and psychic symptoms attributable to the state of alien
abduction (altered perception of time with memory lapses, lucid dreams, bodily paralysis with
fully or partially preserved state of consciousness, bodily marks and scars of unknown origin,
perception of feeling observed or spied on, perceptions of metallic or distorted sounds in the
absence of objective explanations, persistent insomnia, episodes of electromagnetic alteration to
equipment present near the subject, physical fatigue, presence of bodily implants of unknown
origin).
4) Declaration of alien possession based on the subjective experience, about the testimonies of
family members.
5) Absence of psychopathological diagnosis or neurological and neurodegenerative disorder.
The selected setting, taking into account the protracted pandemic period (already in progress
since the beginning of the present research), is the online platform via Skype and Video call
WhatsApp, both for the clinical interview and for the administration.
The present research work was carried out from March 2018 to September 2021. All participants
were guaranteed anonymity and the ethical requirements of the Declaration of Helsinki are met.
The selected population clinical sample, which meets the requirements, is 112 participants,
divided into five groups:
345
II. Psychological Perspectives
Table 1: Population sample (size).
Age
18-27
28-37
38-47
48-57
58-67
Total
Male
4
9
18
11
3
45 (40.2%)
Female
7
14
29
13
4
67 (59.8%)
Total
11
23
47
24
7
112 (100%)
Table 2: Population sample (% by sex in each age range).
Age
18-27
28-37
38-47
48-57
58-67
Male
4 (36.4 %)
9 (39.1%)
18 (38.3%)
11 (45.8%)
3 (42.8%)
Female
7 (63.6%)
14 (60.9%)
29 (61.7%)
13 (54.2%)
4 (57.2%)
Total
11 (100%)
23 (100%)
47 (100%)
24 (100%)
7 (100%)
Results and Limits [110]
After the selection of the chosen population sample (first stage), we proceeded with the clinical
interviews (second stage), from which the first significant data emerged:
1. Considering the total population sample (112/112), one immediately notices the good disparity
between the size of the overall female sample (67/112) compared to the male sample (45/112).
Preliminary results from the interviews and the anamnestic form would suggest that the
phenomenon of alien abductions has a greater tendency to occur in the female group, in the adult
and mature group (and tends to diminish but not disappear with advancing age) and in the group
geographically originating in central-northern Italy (due to lower religious influences but greater
openness to the typical contents of ufological and mystery narratives). Moreover, the subsequent
results would lead us to deduce with almost total certainty, concerning the selected sample, that
the phenomenon of alien abductions has an absolute prevalence in the believing population
concerning the existence of paranormal phenomena per se, even in the absence of objective
and/or scientific evidence. It is a phenomenon almost completely linked (110/112, 98.2%) to a
medium-low or not fully educated cultural level.
2. Also during the first clinical interview, other interesting data emerged that further
strengthened the initial hypothesis: All the proposed narratives presented fantastic and
phantasmal elements, unsupported by evidentiary evidence such as descriptive testimonies,
photo-video-audio material and peculiar physical signs. 91/112 (81.2%) claimed to possess
unexplained bodily scars, without however supporting these claims with any specific clinical or
material evidence. At the clinical interviews, 48/112 (42.8%) of the sample presented markedly
psychotic symptoms (mainly paranoid, delusional, dissociative and schizophrenic) but denied
ever having received a psychiatric diagnosis or having ever taken psychotropic drugs or having
undergone psychotherapy.
346
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
3. Using, during the interview, the strategic language and the Perrotta Human Emotions Model
(PHEM), it emerged that the totality of the selected population sample presents a full distress
orientation, facilitating feelings such as guilt, shame, anger, fear, and disappointment, in the
presence of past (childhood) and current (interpersonal and work) family traumas. In fact,
without the administration of questionnaires, it is evident that the impairment of perception in the
plane of reality involves per se the manifestation of paranormal episodes described by patients,
in the presence of a probable personality disorder to be identified with the help of
psychodiagnostics tools.
The third stage of the research focused on the administration of the battery of questionnaires, and
these revealed the following results: [50-108]
1. Administration of the Perrotta Integrative Clinical Interviews (PICI-2). Concerning the
analysis of the dysfunctional traits (PICI-2TA), the primary disorder that emerged with at least 5
traits is delusional disorder (60/112, 53.6%), dissociative disorder (36/112, 32.1%) and
narcissistic disorder (18/112, 16%). Secondary disorders include delusional disorder (if not
considered as a primary disorder, 65/112, 58%), schizoid disorder (21/112, 18.8%), borderline
disorder (10/112, 8.9%), obsessive disorder (8/112, 7.1%) and psychopathic disorder (5/112,
4.5%). A separate category that deserves specific mention is schizophrenic disorder, which was
first diagnosed in 2/112 (1.8%) of the population sample (1 woman and 1 man, both in the 38-47
age group) after the administration of the PICI-2, confirmed by the psychiatric examination
proposed subsequently. In 108/112 (96.4%) the following disorders emerged as comorbidities:
ADHD (in the population under 27 years of age), body dysmorphism, ICT disorder, sleep
disorders, eating disorders, anxiety and mood disorders, paraphiliac disorders, and behavioral
addictions (especially technology and internet addiction). The concrete suicide risk emerged in
23/112 cases (20.5%), while the presumed risk or request for attention emerged in 48/112
(42.8%). Equally interesting is the cause/concause “epilepsy”: 24/112 (21.4%) report being on
anti-epileptic therapy, while 71/112 (63.4%) report having had in their lives at least one episode
referable to epilepsy and/or a syncopal state of vasovagal origin. On the other hand, in the
analysis of functional traits (PICI-2FT), it emerged that the most compromised classes, because
they tended to be dysfunctional (with values of 0 or 4), were those referring to self-control,
sensitivity, action, Ego-Id comparison, emotionality, ego stability, security, and relational
functionality, confirming here too the marked dysfunctional tendency of the clinical population.
These findings place the clinical group under examination in correlation with the clinical group
of subjects presumably affected by demonic possession. The preference for the administration of
the PICI-2 concerning other widely validated and used psychometric tests, such as the MMPI-2,
was for reasons of expediency: in fact, previous research has demonstrated the efficacy and
efficiency, sometimes better indicated, of the PICI-2 rather than the MMPI-2, in terms of
performance and completeness of diagnosis.
2. Administration of the Perrotta Individual Sexual Matrix Questionnaire (PSM-Q). The PSM
questionnaires demonstrated that almost 2/3 of the participants (73/112, 65.2%) show a
dysfunctional tendency towards sexual behavior and a marked tendency to chronicle feelings of
shame in avoidance behavior or hyposexuality. Furthermore, 100% (112/112) of the sample of
the population interviewed reported having suffered significant or serious psychological or
physical abuse at a young age, or intra-parental relational imbalances, or in any case a sexual
upbringing that was not open and lacking in free communication.
347
II. Psychological Perspectives
3. Administration of the Perrotta Affective Dependence Questionnaire (PAD-Q). According to
the PDM-Q, 27.7% (31/112) are affected by affective dependency, with greater emphasis on
types I (neurotic), VI (covert narcissist), V (borderline) and III (histrionic), in this descending
order.
4. Administration of the Perrotta Human Defense Mechanisms Questionnaire (PDM-Q). The
PDM-Q reveals the widespread psychopathological tendency of the functional framework of the
Ego, in the totality of the population sample (112/112) for the mechanisms of isolation, denial,
regression, reactive formation, denial, projection, removal, withdrawal, instinct, repression and
idealization.
Conclusions [110]
The last two steps served to reorder the results, and then draw conclusions. In particular:
1) Results obtained by Clinical interview. Preliminary results from the interviews and the
anamnestic form would suggest that the phenomenon of alien abductions has a greater tendency
to occur in the female group, in the adult and mature group (and tends to diminish but not
disappear with advancing age) and in the group geographically originating in central-northern
Italy (due to lower religious influences but greater openness to the typical contents of ufological
and mystery narratives). Moreover, the subsequent results would lead us to deduce with almost
total certainty, concerning the selected sample, that the phenomenon of alien abductions has an
absolute prevalence in the believing population concerning the existence of paranormal
phenomena per se, even in the absence of objective and/or scientific evidence. It is a
phenomenon almost completely linked (110/112, 98.2%) to a medium-low or not fully educated
cultural level.
2) Results were obtained by Perrotta Integrative Clinical Interviews (PICI-2). Based on the
PICI-2 it emerged that the primary emerging disorders are alternately delusional disorder,
dissociative disorder, and narcissistic disorder; followed, as secondary disorders, by delusional
disorder (if not considered as primary disorder), schizoid disorder, borderline disorder, obsessive
disorder, and psychopathic disorder. Also, the analysis of functional traits reported the marked
dysfunctional tendency of the classes referring to self-control, sensitivity, Ego-Es comparison,
emotionality, ego stability, security, and relational functionality, confirming here the marked
dysfunctional tendency of the clinical population.
3) Results were obtained by Perrotta Individual Sexual Matrix Questionnaire (PSM-Q).
According to the PSM-Q, almost 2/3 of the participants (73/112, 65.2%) show a dysfunctional
tendency towards sexual behavior and a marked tendency to chronicle feelings of shame into
avoidance behavior or hyposexuality. Again, 100% of the sample of the population surveyed
report having suffered significant or serious psychological or physical abuse at a young age, or
intra-parental relational imbalances, or in any case a sexual upbringing that was not open and
lacking in free communication.
4) Results were obtained by Perrotta Affective Dependence Questionnaire (PAD-Q). According
to the PDM-Q, 27.7% (31/112) are affected by affective dependency, with greater emphasis on
348
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
types I (neurotic), VI (covert narcissist), V (borderline) and III (histrionic), in this descending
order.
5) Results were obtained by the Perrotta Human Defense Mechanisms Questionnaire (PDM-Q).
The PDM-Q reveals the widespread psychopathological tendency of the functional ego
framework for the mechanisms of isolation, denial, regression, reactive formation, denial,
projection, removal, withdrawal, instinct, repression, and idealization.
In conclusion, this research confirms the psychopathological nature of the alien abduction
phenomenon, which deserves to be treated using a psychotherapeutic approach (preferably
cognitive-behavioral and/or strategic) [109] and possibly also pharmacological in serious cases,
depending on the symptoms manifested and the severity of the morbid condition.
References
1. Hynek, J.A. “The Hynek UFO Report”. 1977, Dell Publishing Company.
2. Persinger, M.A. “Neuropsychological profiles of adults who report sudden remembering of
early childhood memories: implications for claims of sex abuse and alien
visitation/abduction experiences”. Percept Mot Skills, 1992; 75(1): pp. 259-266.
3. Mahowald, M.W., et al. “State dissociation, human behavior, and consciousness”. Curr Top
Med Chem, 2011; 11(19): pp. 2392-2402.
4. Spanos, N.P., et al. “Past-life identities, UFO abductions, and satanic ritual abuse: the social
construction of memories”. Int J Clin Exp Hypn, 1994; 42(4): pp. 433-446.
5. de Sa J.F.R., and S.A. Mota-Rolim. “Sleep Paralysis in Brazilian Folklore and Other Cultures:
A Brief Review”. Front Psychol, 2016; 7(1).
6. McNally, R.J., and S.A. Clancy. “Sleep paralysis, sexual abuse, and space alien abduction”.
Transcult Psychiatry, 2005; 42(1): pp. 113-122.
7. Persinger, M.A. “Elicitation of childhood memories in hypnosis-like settings is associated
with complex partial epileptic-like signs for women but not for men: implications for the
false memory syndrome”. Percept Mot Skills, 1994; 78(2): pp. 643-651.
8. Fivush, R., et al. “Remembering and forgetting childhood sexual abuse”. J Child Sex Abus,
2004; 13(2): pp. 1-19.
9. Geraerts, E., et al. “Cognitive mechanisms underlying recovered-memory experiences of
childhood sexual abuse”. Psychol Sci, 2009; 20(1): pp. 92-98.
10. Geraerts, E. “Cognitive underpinnings of recovered memories of childhood abuse”. Nebr
Symp Motiv, 2012; 58: pp. 175-191.
11. Coons, P.M. “Reports of satanic ritual abuse: further implications about pseudomemories”.
Percept Mot Skills, 1994; 78(3 Pt 2): pp. 1376-1378.
12. Perrotta, G. “Alien Abduction Experience: definition, neurobiological profiles, clinical
contexts and therapeutic approaches”. Ann Psychiatry Treatm, 2020; 4(1): pp. 25-29.
13. French, C., and K.J. Holden. “Alien abduction experiences: Some clues from
neuropsychology and neuropsychiatry”. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 2002; 7: pp. 163178.
14. Forrest, D.V. “Alien abduction: a medical hypothesis”. J Am Acad Psychoanal Dyn
Psychiatry, 2008; 36: pp. 431-442.
15. Spanos, N.P., C.A. Burgess, and M.F. Burgess. “Past-life identities, UFO abductions, and
satanic ritual abuse: the social construction of memories”. Int J Clin Exp Hypn, 1994; 42:
pp. 433-446.
349
II. Psychological Perspectives
16. O’Mara, S. “Torturing the brain”. Trend in Cognitive Sciences, 2009; 13: pp. 497-500.
17. McNally, R.J., N.B. Lasko, S.A. Clancy, M.L. Macklin, and R.K. Pitman,
“Psychophysiological responding during script-driven imagery in people reporting
abduction by space aliens.” Psychol Sci, 2004; 15: pp. 493-497.
18. Appelle, S., S.J. Lynn, and L.S. Newman. “Alien abduction experiences”. Research Gate,
2012.
19. Paley, J. “Satanic abuse and alien abduction: a comparative analysis theorizing temporal lobe
activity as a possible connection between anomalous memories”. Bri J Social Work,
2007; 27: pp. pp. 43-70.
20. Perrotta, G. “Psicologia clinica”. 1st ed, 2019, Luxco Ed.
21. _____. “The reality plan and the subjective construction of one’s perception: the strategic
theoretical model among sensations, perceptions, defence mechanisms, needs,
personal constructs, beliefs system, social influences and systematic errors”. J Clinical
Research and Reports, 2019; 1(1).
22. _____. “Gli UFO nella mente”. Interferenze aliene. 1998, Bompiani.
23. _____. “Alieni o Demoni”. 2010, Terre Sommerse Ed.
24. _____. “Alien Cicatrix”. P. 1-2, 2010, E-book Ed.
25. Roger, R.L. “The Aliens and the Scalpel: Scientific Proof of Extraterrestrial Implants in
Humans”. 2005, Book Tree.
26. Irwin, H., et al. “Dissociative tendencies, sensory-processing sensitivity and aberrant salience
as predictors of anomalous experiences and paranormal attributions”. Journal of the
Society for Psychical Research, 2014; 78(4): pp. 193-206.
27. French, C. “Alien abduction experiences: some clues from neuropsychology and
neuropsychiatry”. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 2002; 7(3): pp. 163-178.
28. Bartholomew, R.E., et al. “UFO abductees and contactees: Psychopathology or fantasy
proneness?”. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 1991; 22, pp. 215-222.
29. Cheyne, J.A. “The ominous numinous: Sensed presence and ‘other’ hallucinations”. Journal
of Consciousness. Studies, 2001; 8, pp. 133-150.
30. Cheyne, J.A., et al. “Sleep paralysis and associated hypnagogic and hypnopompic
experiences”. Journal of Sleep Research, 1999/b; 8: pp. 313-318.
31. Hobson, J.A., et al. “The brain as a dream state generator: An activation synthesis hypothesis
of the dream process”. American Journal of Psychiatry, 1997; 134, pp. 1335-1348.
32. Newman, L.S., et al. “Toward an explanation of the UFO abduction phenomenon: Hypnotic
elaboration, extraterrestrial sadomasochism, and spurious memories”. Psychological
Inquir, 1996; 7: pp. pp. 99-126.
33. Persinger, M.A., et al. “Temporal lobe epileptic signs and correlative behaviors displayed by
normal populations”. Journal of General Psychology, 1987; 114: pp. 179–195.
34. _____. “Experimental simulation of a haunt experience and elicitation of paroxysmal
electroencephalographic activity by transcerebral complex magnetic fields: Induction of a
synthetic ‘ghost’?”. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 2000; 90: pp. 659–674.
35. _____. “Temporal lobe signs and reports of subjective paranormal experiences in a normal
population”. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1985; 60: pp. 903-909.
36. Powers, S.M. “Dissociation in alleged extraterrestrial abductees”. Dissociation, 1994; 7, pp.
44-50.
350
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
37. Guberman, A., et al. “Sexual ictal manifestations predominate in women with temporal lobe
epilepsy: a finding suggesting sexual dimorphism in the human brain”. Neurology, 1983;
33: pp. 323–330.
38. Ring, K., et al. “The Omega Project: A psychological l survey of persons reporting
abductions and other UFO encounters”. Journal of UFO Studies, 1990; 2: pp. 59–98.
39. Rodeghier, M., et al. “Psychosocial characteristics of abductees: Results from the CUFOS
abduction project”. Journal of UFO Studies, 1991; 3: pp. 59–90.
40. Schacter, D.L., et al. “Neuroanatomical l correlates of veridical and illusory recognition
memory: Evidence from positron emission tomography”. Neuron, 1996; 17, pp. 267-274.
41. Symons, D. “The stuff that dreams aren’t made of: Why wake-state and dream-state sensory
experiences differ”. Cognition, 1993; 47, pp. 181-217.
42. Terrillon, J.C., et al. “Does recurrent isolated sleep paralysis involve more than cognitive
neurosciences?”. Journal of Scientific Explanation, 2001; 15, pp. 97-123.
43. Twemlow, S.W., et al. “The out-of-body experience: A phenomenological typology based on
questionnaire responses”. American Journal of Psychiatry, 1982; 139: pp. 450-455.
44. French, C., “Psychological aspects of the alien contact experience”. Cortex, 2008; 44(10): pp.
1387-1395.
45. Forrest, D.V. “Alien abduction: A medical hypothesis”. J Am Acad Psychoanal Dyn
Psychiatry, 2008; 36(3): pp. 431-442.
46. O’Mara, S. “Torturing the brain”. Trend in Cognitive Sciences, 2009; 13(12): pp. 497-500.
47. McNally, R.J., et al. “Psychophysiological responding during script-driven imagery in people
reporting abduction by space aliens”. Psychol Sci 2004; 15(7): pp. 493-497.
48. Appelle, S., et al. “Alien abduction experiences”. Research Gate, 2012.
49. Paley, J. “Satanic abuse and alien abduction: a comparative analysis theorizing temporal lobe
activity as a possible connection between anomalous memories”. The British Journal of
Social Work, 1997; vol. 27, n. 1, pp. 43-70.
50. Perrotta, G. “The strategic clinical model in psychotherapy: theoretical and practical
profiles”. J Addi Adol Beh, 2020; 3(1).
51. _____. “Accepting change in psychotherapy: from consciousness to awareness”. J Addiction
Research and Adolescent Behaviour, 2020; 3(1).
52. _____. “The Human Emotions and the Perrotta Human Emotions Model (PHEM): The new
theoretical model. Historical, neurobiological and clinical profiles”. Arch Depress
Anxiety, 2021; 7(2): pp. 20-27.
53. _____. “Psychological trauma: definition, clinical contexts, neural correlations and
therapeutic approaches”. Curr Res Psychiatry Brain Disord, 2020: CRPBD-100006.
54 _____. “Dysfunctional attachment and psychopathological outcomes in childhood and
adulthood”. Open J Trauma, 2020; 4(1): pp. 12-21.
55. _____. “Neonatal and infantile abuse in a family setting”. Open J Pediatr Child Health,
2020; 5(1): pp. 34-42.
56. _____. “Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS): definition, humanistic profiles and clinical
hypothesis of absorption with adaptation disorder. Clinical evidence”. Open J Pediatr
Child Health, 2021; 6(1): pp. 26-35.
57. Perrotta, G., and G. Fabiano. “Behavioural disorders in children and adolescents: Definition,
clinical contexts, neurobiological profiles and clinical treatments”. Open J Pediatr Child
Health, 2021; 6(1): pp. 5-15.
351
II. Psychological Perspectives
58. Perrotta, G. “The reality plan and the subjective construction of one's perception: the
strategic theoretical model among sensations, perceptions, defence mechanisms, needs,
personal constructs, beliefs system, social influences and systematic errors”. J Clinical
Research and Reports, 2019: 1(1).
59. _____. “Delusions, paranoia and hallucinations: definitions, differences, clinical contexts and
therapeutic approaches”. Journal of Neurology (CJNE), 2019; 1:4, pp. 22-28.
60. _____. “The state of consciousness: from perceptual alterations to dissociative forms.
Defining, neurobiological and clinical profiles”. J Neuro Neurol Sci Disord, 2021; 7(1):
pp. 6-18.
61. _____. “The structural and functional concepts of personality: The new Integrative
Psychodynamic Model (IPM), the new Psychodiagnostic Investigation Model (PIM) and
the two clinical interviews for the analysis of personality disorders (Perrotta Integrative
Clinical Interview or PICI) for adults and teenagers (1TA version) and children (1C
version)”. Psychiatry Peertechz, 2020. E-book.
62. _____. “First revision of the Psychodiagnostic Investigation Model (PIM-1R) and
elaboration proposal of a clinical interview for the analysis of personality disorders
(Perrotta Integrative Clinical Interview or PICI-1) for adults, teenagers and children”.
Psychiatry Peertechz, 2020. E-book.
63. _____. “Perrotta Integrative Clinical Interview (PICI-1): Psychodiagnostic evidence and
clinical profiles in relation to the MMPI-II”. Ann Psychiatry Treatm, 2020; 4(1):
pp. 62-69.
64. _____. “Perrotta Integrative Clinical Interview (PICI) for adults and teenagers (1TA version)
and children (1C version): New theoretical models and practical integrations between the
clinical and psychodynamic approach”. Ann Psychiatry Treatm, 2021; 5(1): pp. 1-14.
65. _____. “Perrotta Integrative Clinical Interview (PICI-1): a new revision proposal for PICIITA. Two single cases”. Glob J Medical Clin Case Rep, 2021; 8(1): pp. 41-49.
66. _____. “Perrotta Integrative Clinical Interviews (PICI-2): innovations to the first model,
the study on the new modality of personological investigation, trait diagnosis and state
diagnosis, and the analysis of functional and dysfunctional personality traits. An
integrated study of the dynamic, behavioural, cognitive and constructivist models in
psychopathological diagnosis”. Ann Psychiatry Treatm, 2021; 5(1): pp. 67-83.
67. _____. “Anxiety disorders: definitions, contexts, neural correlates and strategic therapy”. J
Neurol Neurosci, 2019; 6(1): pp. 46.
68. _____. “Neural correlates in eating disorders: Definition, contexts and clinical strategies”. J
Pub Health Catalog, 2019; 2(2): pp. 137-148.
69. _____. “Post-traumatic stress disorder: Definition, contexts, neural correlations and
cognitive-behavioural therapy”. J Pub Health Catalog, 2019; 2(2): pp. 40-47.
70. _____. “Sleep-wake disorders: Definition, contexts and neural correlations”. J Neurol
Psychol, 2019; 7(1): p. 9.
71. _____. “Tic disorder: definition, clinical contexts, differential diagnosis, neural correlates
and therapeutic approaches”. J Neurosci Rehab, 2019; pp. 1-6.
72. _____. “Depressive disorders: Definitions, contexts, differential diagnosis, neural correlates
and clinical strategies”. Arch Depress Anxiety, 2019; 5(2): pp. 9-33.
73. _____. “Panic disorder: definitions, contexts, neural correlates and clinical strategies”. Curr
Tr Clin & Med Sci, 2019; 1(2): CTCMS.MS.ID.000508.
352
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
74. _____. “Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: definition, contexts, neural correlates and clinical
strategies”. Journal of Neurology, 2019; 1(4): pp. 8-16.
75. _____. “Behavioral addiction disorder: definition, classifications, clinical contexts, neural
correlates and clinical strategies”. J Addi Adol Beh, 2019; 2(1).
76. _____. “Paraphilic disorder: definition, contexts and clinical strategies”. Neuro Research,
2019; 1(1): p. 4.
77. _____. “Internet gaming disorder in young people and adolescent: a narrative review”. J Addi
Adol Beh, 2019; 2(2).
78. _____. “Bipolar disorder: definition, differential diagnosis, clinical contexts and therapeutic
approaches”. J Neuro Neurol Surgery, 2019; 5(1).
79. _____. “Suicidal risk: definition, contexts, differential diagnosis, neural correlates and
clinical strategies”. J Neuro Neurol Surgery, 2020; 6(2): p. 114.
80. _____. “Pathological gambling in adolescents and adults: definition, clinical contexts,
differential diagnosis, neural correlates and therapeutic approaches”. ES J Neurol, 2020;
1(1): p. 1004.
81. _____. “Pedophilia: definition, classifications, criminological and neurobiological profiles
and clinical treatments. A complete review”. Open J Pediatr Child Health, 2020; 5(1):
pp. 19-26.
82. _____. “The concept of altered perception in ‘body dysmorphic disorder’: the subtle border
between the abuse of selfies in social networks and cosmetic surgery, between socially
accepted dysfunctionality and the pathological condition”. J Neurol Neurol Sci Disord,
2020; 6(1): pp. 1-7.
83. _____. “Sexual orientations: a critical review of psychological, clinical and neurobiological
profiles. The clinical hypothesis of homosexual and bisexual positions”. Int J Sex Reprod
Health Care, 2020; 3(1): pp. 27-41.
84. _____. “Borderline Personality Disorder: definition, differential diagnosis, clinical contexts
and therapeutic approaches”. Ann Psychiatry Treatm, 2020; 4(1): pp. 43-56.
85. _____. “Narcissism and psychopathological profiles: definitions, clinical contexts,
neurobiological aspects and clinical treatments”. J Clin Cases Rep, 2020; 4(85): pp. 1225.
86. _____. “Dysfunctional sexual behaviours: definition, clinical contexts, neurobiological
profiles and treatments”. Int J Sex Reprod Health Care, 2020; 3(1): pp. 61-69.
87. _____. “Bisexuality: definition, humanistic profiles, neural correlates and clinical
hypotheses”. J Neuroscience and Neurological Surgery, 2020; 6(5).
88. _____. “Histrionic personality disorder: Definition, clinical profiles, differential diagnosis
and therapeutic framework”. Arch Community Med Public Health, 2021; 7(1): pp. 1-5.
89. _____. “Affective Dependence: from pathological affectivity to personality disorders.
Definitions, clinical contexts, neurobiological profiles and clinical treatments”. Health
Sci, 2020; 1: pp. 1-7.
90. _____. “Psychotic spectrum disorders: definitions, classifications, neural correlates and
clinical profiles”. Ann Psychiatry Treatm, 2020; 4(1): pp. 70-84.
91. _____. “Maladaptive stress: Theoretical, neurobiological and clinical profiles”. Arch Depress
Anxiety, 2021; 7(1): pp. 1-7.
92. _____. “Sexual fantasies: the boundary between physiology and psychopathology”. Int J Sex
Reprod Health Care, 2021; 4(1): pp. 42-52.
353
II. Psychological Perspectives
93. _____. “Clinical evidence in sexual orientations: definitions, neurobiological profiles and
psychological implications”. Ann Psychiatry Treatm, 2021; 5(1): pp. 43-53.
94. _____. “Polygamous perception and couple's relational choice: definitions, socio-cultural
contexts, psychopathological profiles and therapeutic orientations. Clinical evidence”.
Ann Psychiatry Treatm, 2021; 5(1): pp. 54-61.
95. _____. “The learning of specific dysfunctional behavioral patterns through social network
and telematics platforms in preadolescents and adolescents. Psychopathological clinical
evidence”. Open J Pediatr Child Health, 2021; 6(1): pp. 26-35.
96. _____. “Epilepsy: from pediatric to adulthood. Definition, classifications, neurobiological
profiles and clinical treatments”. J Neurol Neurol Sci Disord, 2020; 6(1): pp. 14-29.
97. _____. “The pharmacological treatment of epileptic seizures in children and adults:
introduction, clinical contexts, psychopharmacological profiles and prospects in the
neurogenetic field”. Journal of Neuroscience and Neurological Surgery, 2020; 6(5).
98. _____. “Avoidant personality disorder: Definition, clinical and neurobiological profiles,
differential diagnosis and therapeutic framework”. J Neuro Neurol Sci Disord, 2021;
7(1): pp. 1-5.
99. _____. “Clinical evidence in Troilism (Polygamy and Polyamory): definition, psychological
profiles and clinical implications”. Int J Sex Reprod Health Care, 2021; 4(1): pp. 7379.
100. _____. “The diagnosis of personality traits in ‘affective dependency’: when the toxic bond
is an expression of a personality disorder. Research”. Int J Sex Reprod Health Care,
2021; 4(1): pp. 85-90.
101. _____. “Massive use of tattoos and psychopathological clinical evidence”. Arch Community
Med Public Health, 2021; 7(2): pp. 79-85.
102. _____. “Clinical evidence in the phenomenon of demoniac possession”. Ann Psychiatry
Treatm, 2021; 5(1): pp. 88-95.
103. _____. “Perrotta Individual Sexual Matrix Questionnaire (PSM-1). The new clinical
questionnaire to investigate the main areas of the individual sexual matrix”. Int J Sex
Reprod Health Care, 2021; 4(1): pp. 13-21.
104. _____. “Perrotta Individual Sexual Matrix Questionnaire (PSM-Q): Technical updates and
clinical research”. Int J Sex Reprod Health Care, 2021; 4(1): pp. 62-66.
105. _____. “Perrotta Affective Dependence Questionnaire (PAD-Q): Clinical framing of the
affective-sentimental relational maladaptive model”. Ann Psychiatry Treatm, 2021; 5(1):
pp. 62-66.
106. _____. “Perrotta Affective Dependence Questionnaire (PAD-Q): Psychodiagnostic evidence
and clinical profiles”. Int J Sex Reprod Health Care, 2021; 4(1): pp. 80-84.
107. _____. “Human mechanisms of psychological defence: definition, historical and
psychodynamic contexts, classifications and clinical profiles”. Int J Neurorehabilitation
Eng, 2020; 7:1.
108. _____. “Perrotta Human Defense Mechanisms Questionnaire (PDM-Q): The new
psychodiagnostic tool to identify human psychological defense mechanisms and their
clinical implications”. Arch Depress Anxiety, 2021; 7(2): pp. 29-33.
109. _____. “Strategic psychotherapy and the decagonal model in clinical practice”. Ann
Psychiatry Treatm, 2021; 5(1): pp. 28-35.
110. _____. “Clinical evidence in alien abduction”. Ann Psychiatry Treatm, 2021; 5(1): pp. 107115.
354
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
From “I Witnessed…” to Established Hypothesis: UFO Cultures and Contexts
Scott R. Scribner and Gregory J. Wheeler
It’s not what happened. It’s what you can get a jury to believe happened.
Philip Gerard (Raymond J. Barry)1
Abstract: In this essay, the authors present key cultural themes and contexts that may be critical
in evaluating and interpreting reports of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP/UFOs) and
extraterrestrial contact claims, such as alien abduction narratives (AANs). Specifically, they
distinguish between forensic reports and contact narratives and highlight the impact of increasing
cosmological awareness. Building on survey data that indicates a dramatic rise in public belief in
extraterrestrial life and expectation for its discovery, if not current presence; and the 2003 Alien
Fears study that led to a testable social transmission model for experiential narratives; a continuum
model is proposed to distinguish among different observer reports and data relevant to the
Extraterrestrial Hypothesis.
Keywords: Unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), Unidentified flying objects (UFOs), Ufology,
Alien abduction narratives (AANs), Contactees, Abductees, Experiencers, Storytellers, Narrators
Introduction
For as long as human consciousness has existed within Nature—and well before our capacity for
self-reflection developed into science—our abilities for sensing and focused attention have
generated a wide range of perceptions and interpretations of our environments. Human cultures
have assembled these elements into stories, myths, narratives, and explanations. During the second
half of the 20th Century, two distinct cultural streams based on witness reports of unidentified
aerial phenomena (UAPs) achieved considerable social and intellectual prominence: reports of
unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and extraterrestrial contact claims, including alien abduction
narratives (AANs) (Scribner, 1999; 2003). These two streams—sometimes jointly called ufology-have come to reflect different subcultures with differing standards of evidence. Both rely
foundationally on witness reports, but the subjects and objects of the “witnessing” can be
problematic.
Existing literature offers dozens of proposed theories for UFO phenomena; most interpret them as
some type of physical, psychosocial, or religious event, thus presumptively granting them
ontological status. However, further examination reveals distinct differences between these
categories of reports, including different perceiver and perception types. For example, formal UFO
sighting reporters tend to be extraverted and realistically oriented; whereas some sources of AANs
were found to be more introverted, artistic, and in many cases, they were discovered by outside
professionals or journalists (Mack, 1994) instead of self-reporting.
Wheeler (2000) characterized these two UFO cultures as reflecting differences between Weldbild
(scientific) and Weltanschauung (worldview) concerns. Methodological parallels can be found in
1
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2002).
355
II. Psychological Perspectives
anthropology between etic (analytical) and emic (local, or folk) knowledge (Pike, 1954;
Goodenough, 2003); or as products of explicit or implicit memory in developmental psychology
(Van de Kolk, 2014). Such a bicameral distinction can serve as a bridge to understanding that the
story can be both true and strange; that is, it can form the basis for both forensic and philosophical
or religious inquiry. Instead of presuming to uncover “what really happened,” an objective
approach must first understand such phenomena as they present themselves and then propose
investigatory methods that are appropriate to such understandings.
Ufology and Its Discontents
Research on unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and alien abduction narratives (AANs) has always
been controversial. It has been suggested that ufology--the study of unidentified flying objects and
related phenomena--has failed as a science (Sturrock, 1999; Jacobs, 2000). When a Stanford
University scientist says that UFO data would be “better” when it is “scientifically collected,” the
implicit message is that the previous fifty years of study had produced little of value. In Wheeler’s
terms, there still is no agreement on what constitutes a legitimate First Contact Science (Wheeler,
2000). In terms of ufology’s credibility, some of the questions raised by AANs resemble those in
areas identified by sociologists as “wild psychotherapies” (O’Keefe, 1982).
Do We Owe the Public a UAPology?
Whether as forensic investigation or social science, ufology remains on the margins. Marginal
disciplines issue scientific disclaimers when they say, “Take a look at the evidence and decide for
yourself.” Instead of promoting critical scrutiny, such a presentation may cloak an in-group
“agreement to agree” because what constitutes evidence is predetermined by the social context.
Sociologist James Lewis asserts that such intra-group knowledge comes about through
“conversations.”2 To the in-group, the evidence is what new arrivals are supposed to accept by
initiation into the group agreement.
Data reliability is a challenge that confronts any scientific researcher and becomes especially
salient when investigating anomalous phenomena. The objectives of an eyewitness reliability
project include the development of standards and procedures for evaluation of witness reports as
they relate to UAP/UFO phenomena. This dilemma can be seen by considering the contrasting
forms of evidence in the classification system first devised by J. Allen Hynek. From “distant lights
in the sky” to “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,”3 Hynek sought to expand the conception of
“hard core data” in order to set up criteria unique to the “UFO problem.”4 Specifically, Hynek
required “accounts that were made, in each instance, by at least two persons of demonstrated
mental competence and sense of responsibility” and therefore should not be rejected out of hand
as spurious.
One might question whether even a highly trained and respected astronomer is qualified to
determine mental competence in the clinical sense. The psychological state of an observer
experiencing “high strangeness” evokes perceptual filters influenced by their past experiences and
presuppositions. These conditions can result in quite different stories about what was witnessed
2
Lewis, J. (1997). Personal communication.
Center for UFO Studies (cufos.org).
4
Hynek, p.38. “…what constitutes hard-core data for one field of study may not be considered so for another.”
3
356
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
and lead to different conclusions, depending on the observer. Taking into consideration the
interactions of reality testing, fantasy imagery (imagination, hypnagogia, dreaming), and media
influences, the difficulty of determining witness reliability can be profound, as summarized by
Ioan Culianu (2001):
The outside world could not exist without the mental universe that perceives it, and this mental
universe in turn borrows its images from perceptions… Thus, the world outside us and the world
inside us are not truly parallel, for not only do they interfere with each other in many ways, but we
cannot even be sure where one of them ceases to be and the other commences.
One objective of an eyewitness reliability project is the determination of factors that could provide
a solid basis for the confirmation or disconfirmation of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH).5
During his investigations, Hynek stated that “there are no shortage of cases” and in subsequent
decades, UAP reports have only proliferated. From the same data, remarkably diverse conclusions
have been drawn by researchers, military spokespersons, scientists, ufologists, and even
politicians, leading to the primary conundrum: has the ETH been validated or not?
On the affirmative side are numerous advocates in the Disclosure Movement, including testimony
of former governmental and military personnel who have come forward with stories of “alien
technology” and even alien beings. Dr. Steven Greer, MD, claims extensive briefings by highly
placed government officials with the testimony he gathered over the years from a variety of wellplaced individuals.6 In a report submitted to Congress, Greer states unequivocally, “The evidence
and testimony presented in the following pages establishes…that we are indeed being visited by
advanced extraterrestrial civilizations and have been for some time.”7 Former Israeli space
security chief Haim Eshed, “claims Israel and the United States have been dealing with an alien
organization known as the 'Galactic Federation' for ages.”8 Even a casual review reveals a large
number of books and articles claiming that “we have been contacted.”
From these, one might conclude that the ETH has already been verified, but it is significant that
this supposition occurs in the presence of a pervasive public belief that ETs exist.9 Despite the
testimonies of highly credible individuals in positions to “know the truth,” and the plethora of
“close encounter” narratives of various kinds investigated by scientists such as Hynek and others,
we have a scientific obligation to juxtapose the contrary view of the null hypothesis.10 The most
recent official U.S. Government document cites a relatively small number of unclassifiable cases
5
Extraterrestrial hypothesis - Wikipedia.
Testimony – The Disclosure Institute.
7
https://waskosky.com/mirrors/DisclosureProjectBriefingDocument.pdf
8
https://www.gefenpublishing.com/product.asp?productid=2935
9
National Geographic: https://www.livescience.com/21216-americans-ufo-belief.html . Pew Research:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/30/most-americans-believe-in-intelligent-life-beyond-earth-fewsee-ufos-as-a-major-national-security-threat/
10
“The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence
has contacted or engaged any member of the human race,” Phil Larson from the White House Office of Science and
Technology Policy reported on the WhiteHouse.gov website. “In addition, there is no credible information to suggest
that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.” https://mufon.com/2011/11/07/white-house-theres-no-signof-e-t-or-ufo-cover-up/
6
357
II. Psychological Perspectives
as “:…unidentified due to limited data or challenges to collection processing or
analysis…[requiring] additional scientific knowledge to successfully collect on, analyze and
characterize some of them.”11
Scientific opinion ranges widely from outright dismissal of most of the accumulated evidence pool,
to acknowledgement of only the hypothetical probability of extraterrestrials, while also asserting
the lack of contact asserted by the Fermi Paradox.12 Dick (1996) summarized the dismissal of
UFO type reports as follows:
At least three circumstances joined in precipitating the decline of the extraterrestrial hypothesis of
UFOs in mainstream science. First, even taking into account the failings of the Condon Study, no
incontrovertible evidence was produced in favor of the hypothesis, and its champions realized that
to maintain the extraterrestrial theory lacking such evidence was an obstacle to further study of
the UFO phenomenon. Second, “New Wave” theories of UFOs led away from the extraterrestrial
hypothesis and toward ever more ethereal ideas associated with the New Age movement that grew
in the last quarter of the twentieth century, confirming to scientists that this was a subject to be
avoided. Finally, the rise of claims that, if true, would have proven the extraterrestrial hypothesis
-ancient astronauts, spaceship crashes, contactees, and abductees- were based on evidence (such
as statements under hypnosis) that most scientists could not accept, thereby bringing the entire
extraterrestrial hypothesis into disrepute. Pervading all of these factors was the question of
scientific method and the nature of evidence, questions that mean a great deal to working scientists
but often all too little to the public.13
The Fermi Paradox cites this lack of evidence as further suggesting that the ETH must be answered
in the negative--humans are the only inhabitants of our Milky Way galaxy--or else that some fate
must befall advanced civilizations if they do arise that prevents the inevitable expansion into the
galactic space that would assure contact (statistically speaking).
Well before astronomical advances confirming the existence of thousands of exoplanets, Brin
(1983) reviewed the theoretical positions taken at the time regarding the lack of evidence
confirming the ETH. Most of these concepts are still referenced in current literature, at least by
scientists willing to comment on these subjects. Brin concluded that:
Some of the branch lines discussed here serve the optimists, while others seem pessimistic to an
unprecedented degree…This survey demonstrates that the Universe has many more ways to be
nasty than previously discussed. Indeed, the only hypotheses proposed which appear to be wholly
with observation and with non-exclusivity –“Deadly Probes” and “Ecological Holocaust”- are
depressing to consider.14
Also prior to the discovery of any confirmed exoplanets, Barrow and Tipler (1986) took a
particular view of human uniqueness that centers on the “Cosmological Anthropic Principle”
11
https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf
https://www.seti.org/fermi-paradox-0
13
S. J. Dick. The Biological Universe, p.308.
14
A. D. Brin, “The 'Great Silence': the Controversy Concerning Extraterrestrial Life.” Quarterly Journal of the Royal
Astronomical Society, Vol. 24, No. 3, P.283-309, 1983.
12
358
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
(CAP). This view demands that the universe be “as big as it is in order to evolve just a single
carbon-based life-form.”15 That life-form is humanity, and “the evidence is very strong that
intelligent life is restricted to a single planet”—Earth, hosting an “extremely fortuitous accident.”
To avoid our planet’s inevitable end, should interstellar travel become possible, it will only be
humans populating the galaxy and perhaps the entire cosmos. Consequently, this view is a prima
facie dismissal of the ETH and all related evidence from other sources.
One might conclude that the discovery of so many exoplanets and the new calculations of the
number of Earth-like planets in habitable zones makes a unique Earth hypothesis seem rather
quaint. In a proposal for seeking signs of life on Earth-like exoplanets, Suto (2006) noted that
“…the emergence of life itself may not be such a rare event as long as the relevant environment,
which we do not yet understand exactly, is provided. A simple application of the Copernican
Principle suggests that a large fraction of temperate planets with oceans and lands will inevitably
develop a certain type of life.”16
Building on the different models of investigation described above, we see the current state of ETH
research in the following categories:
•
Solar System Exploration (MARS)
•
Exoplanet Detection & Sensing
•
James Webb Space Telescope (Webb)
•
Exobiology Research
•
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)
•
Evaluation of UAP reports (UFOs)
•
Alien Artifact Claims
•
Alien Abduction Narratives (AANs)
15
Barrow and Tippler, p. 3.
Suto, p. 2 [2006.11451] Beyond a pale blue dot: how to search for possible bio-signatures on earth-like planets
(arxiv.org).
16
359
II. Psychological Perspectives
Using a two-culture model, types of claims can be diagrammed as shown in Figure 1:
We must ask whether the narrative information developed on the right side of this diagram--of
which there is an abundance--can have any impact on solving the ETH. The scientific approach to
the ETH demands the sources on the left be considered as the primary data in approaching this
problem. Hynek also bracketed the right-side categories as not meeting his eyewitness criteria.
On the right side of the diagram, there are an almost unlimited number of proposed hypotheses,
and most of them are non-disconfirmable (Scribner, 2003). The problematic nature of AAN
research derives from approaching the phenomenon from any context that includes a predefined
set of assumptions: physical, psychosocial, or religious. In almost seventy years of AAN research,
these approaches have produced a stalemate instead of additional clarity. Yet even the possibility
of hoax and deception does not cause interest in the phenomenon to recede. To be objective, even
a psychological approach should be based what is known: human narratives, human values and
human behaviors, not speculation. It must consider these narratives in terms of what is human
within them, rather than shift from one theoretical context to another--ground much treaded by
others--without resolution.
Some UFO researchers are loathe to hear psychosocial interpretations of the AAN phenomenon
(Jacobs & Shermer, 1998). If AANs are demonstrated to be psychological--subject to theories of
cognitive and emotional development—they might lose appeal as either “real” physical science or
“true” spiritual revelation. Despite professional psychology’s century-long quest for acceptance,
its explanations are still perceived to hold a lower credibility than those of the physical sciences.
However, deep psychological roots are tapped by UFOs and AANs, and our current psychological
tools may not be fully adequate to investigate their implications. For example, self-worth can be
enhanced through identification with superior beings (alien or otherwise). The belief that “I’ve
360
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
been selected since childhood” implies specialness and provides a cosmic context for a unique
individual life.
Intense emic debates have arisen among “those who believe” claims of alien contact but who differ
about the intentions of “visitors.” One faction fears imminent invasion or human-alien conspiracies
or both (represented by Budd Hopkins, Jacques Vallee, and David Jacobs); another camp
welcomes alien “salvation” (Leo Sprinkle, Edith Fiore, Richard Boylan, and perhaps John Mack);
and a third group remains neutral about alien intentions (Raymond Fowler and Whitley Strieber).
These differences may presage forms of UFO religious group such as the Aetherius Society
(Scribner & Wheeler, 2003). The religious issues are discussed at length by Lewis and others in
The Gods Have Landed (1995).
In their disputes, many believers and debunkers alike may impose implicitly materialist
interpretations on the same phenomenological gestalt. Both sides try to hold their ground as
champions of common sense, whether about flying saucers or swamp gas. However, each side
focuses its energies on some specialized forensic and scientific method or theoretical framework,
which narrows their attention away from the totality of the human experience. In other words, all
sides can become hypnotized by their methods. The result is little movement toward a definitive
determination of actual First Contact.
Heavens Above
In evaluating witness credibility, we must also consider the increasing societal awareness of
cosmological discoveries for both UAP/UFO and AAN narratives. Although humans studied the
skies for millennia, the concept that “the heavens” is a vastness of space and not a mythological
realm of gods and angels has occurred mainly during the last 500 years. Before astronomy became
independent of astrology as a realistic and materialist model of the sky, the primary cosmological
models were the mythological—derived from earlier conceptions of a living Nature--and Plato’s
idealism, which taught that what we see are mere shadows of a hidden reality. Today one still hears
the expression, “Heavens above!,” “the Man upstairs,” and so on; and “ascending into Heaven”
remains a religious concept. The dramatic change in our modern conception of the sky acts as a
primary evolutionary motivator in the search for and expectation of extraterrestrial life, and
especially the prospect of intelligent, technologically advanced “aliens.”
Carl Sagan, writing in the popular magazine Astronomy, noted that the ancients “understood that
five, and no more, of the bright points of light that grace the night sky” moved along with the Sun
and Moon. “These seven were important to the ancients, so they named the wanderers after gods-not any old gods, but the chief gods…”17 The sky was the realm of what Rudolf Otto described
as the Mysterium tremendum et fascinans, a numinosity beyond human understanding, or as Otto
described the numinous, as “wholly Other.”18
With increasing study and attention (fascinans), the heavens began to resolve into an object of
observation. The movements of the “wanderers” were found to be predictable, and this knowledge
17
18
Carl Sagan, “The First New Planet,” Astronomy, March 1995, p. 35.
Rudolf Otto, (translated by John W. Harvey), The Idea of the Holy, Oxford U. Press, 1950 ed., p. 25f.
361
II. Psychological Perspectives
eventually appeared in Ptolemy’s monumental Almagest19, the dominant cosmological perspective
that reigned for twelve centuries. This anchored a certain concept crucial to the changes to come:
And so, in general, we must state that the heavens are spherical and move spherically; that the
earth, in figure, is sensibly spherical also when taken as a whole; in position, lies right in the middle
of the heavens, like a geometrical centre; in magnitude and distance, has the ratio of a point with
respect to the sphere of the fixed stars, having itself no local motion at all.20
With the Copernican Revolution,21 the moving earth was initially considered only as a convenient
fiction for computational purposes. “Authors who applauded Copernicus’ erudition, borrowed his
diagrams, or quoted his determination of the distance from the earth to the moon, usually either
ignored the earth’s motion or dismissed it as absurd.”22 Interestingly, Kuhn notes that questions
that were raised by theologians could be seen as the seeds of a new predicament: Are we alone in
the Universe? Kuhn writes:
When it was taken seriously, Copernicus’ proposal raised many gigantic problems for the believing
Christian. If there were other bodies essentially like the earth, God’s goodness would surely
necessitate that they, too, be inhabited. Worst of all, if the universe is infinite, as many of the later
Copernicans thought, where can God’s Throne be located? In an infinite universe, how is man to
find God or God man?23
As documented by Ramon Mendoza,24 these questions were to be challenged head on by the
remarkable thinker of the Copernican era, Giordano Bruno. “Copernicus unquestionably had dealt
a very serious blow to humankind’s insatiable need for centers…[but]…The decisive blow to
mankind’s desperate need for security” came from its fiercest advocate, “The first man in European
post-medieval history to formulate explicitly and clearly that the universe has no center…” 25 His
doctrine of the infinite universe, multitude of suns with their own planets, possibly inhabited, and
the lack of any centrality for earth or Sun pushed the ending of a geocentric cosmos across the
philosophical threshold that had held since Aristotle. It also earned him eventual execution, burned
at the stake in February 1600 CE.
Observational astronomy would eventually confirm and expand on these early intuitions. Galileo’s
discovery of moons around Jupiter is usually cited as the breakthrough observation that settled the
concept of “other worlds.” However, an even greater discovery seems often overlooked. As
translated, “The next thing I observed…the Milky Way. With a telescope this can be perceived so
palpably that all the disputes that have tormented philosophers for so many centuries are quashed
by sheer ocular proof…Point your telescope in any direction within the galaxy and at once a great
mass of stars comes into view.”26
19
After the Arabic for “the greatest.”
Ptolemy, The Almagest, Great Books edition, U. of Chicago, 1952, p.7.
21
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution, MJF Books, 1985.
22
Ibid, p. 186.
23
Ibid, p.193.
24
Ramon Mendoza, The Acentric Labyrinth, Element Books Limited, 1995.
25
Ibid, p. 73.
26
Galileo Galilei, “Neither Known Nor Observed by Anyone Before,” (translated), in The Book of the Cosmos, D.
Danielson, (ed.), p. 152.
20
362
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Carl Sagan elaborated on this theme in his article:
It was with a real sense of surprise that people in 1781 heard about a new planet discovered
through a telescope. New moons were comparatively unimpressive, especially after the first six or
eight. That there were new planets to be found and that humans had devised the means to do so
were both considered astonishing. If there is one previously unknown planet, there may be many
more…27
An Accelerating First Contact Zeitgeist
During the 19th Century, historical momentum toward a possibly inhabited universe continued to
gain traction with Darwin’s evolutionary theory, suggesting a plausible template for life
developing elsewhere. At the end of that century, an astronomer named Giovanni Schiaparelli
thought he was seeing canals on Mars, and this view was advanced by another astronomer, Percival
Lowell, who took the position that the only logical conclusion was evidence of engineering, and
thus intelligence, on Mars. Interestingly, H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, published in 1897, and
would be “one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between mankind and an extraterrestrial
race.”
The anticipation of contact with—and fear of--extraterrestrial life was brought into vivid focus in
1938 by Orson Welles. His Halloween radio program “caused some listeners to believe that an
invasion by extraterrestrial beings was in fact occurring. Although reports of panic were mostly
false and overstated.”28 This could also be cited as an instance where “set and setting” contributed
to attributions that otherwise would have been dismissed, as the program started with a clear
disclaimer of legitimacy as a dramatization.
Reports of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) have proven elusive objects of study even when
sponsored by governmental agencies around the world.29 The most recent report from U.S. Office
of The Director of National Intelligence reached essentially the same conclusion as all the other
studies:
Although most of the UAP described in our dataset probably remain unidentified due to limited
data or challenges to collection processing or analysis, we may require additional scientific
knowledge to successfully collect on, analyze and characterize some of them. We would group such
objects in this category pending scientific advances that allowed us to better understand them.30
Despite a history of disparaging comments from official sources, UFO sightings have persisted in
abundance. Following the first widely publicized appearances over Mt. Rainier, Washington, and
Roswell, New Mexico, as investigators collected more reports, a public format of those seeking
answers coalesced into various investigative NGOs collectively known as ufology. Collecting
many more incidents and generating a huge volume of popular publications, ufology has seemed
27
Sagan, Ibid, p.37.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Welles
29
David Tormsen’s ListVerse article, “10 Official Government Programs That Studied UFOs” found at:
https://listverse.com/2015/03/23/10-official-government-programs-that-studied-ufos/
30
https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf, p.6.
28
363
II. Psychological Perspectives
in a constant search for more suggestive evidence. The principal result has been the widely
believed conjecture that UAPs are signs of alien visitations and contact.
Geocentric belief systems stand to lose credibility when extraterrestrial life becomes a public
matter. Many religious people still strongly feel that Earth is a unique center of cosmological
destiny, wherein God will remake the heavens and earth in an apocalyptic moment.31 Some see
UFOs as demons working for “the Enemy” or as the opposite, angels working for God (Graham,
1994). The shadow cast by these conceptions is seen in a framework of analysis that usually begins
with the question, “Do you believe in UFOs?” Science cannot run the risk of acting as simply
another belief system.
From Experience to Investigation
Ufology must depart the arena of belief and individual experience and instead work from and
toward a public consensus in verifying the ETH or First Contact. Alien contact would profoundly
affect everyone on the planet, so the search for an answer to the UFO enigma is everywhere equally
important to everyone. To this end, investigations of anomalous phenomena must employ methods
that are specified before a report is made. By bringing psychological methods and approaches
(such as neurophysiology, social cognition, and narrative theory) to UFO and AAN data, we
respect the subtleties of human experience and consider data that many interested parties have
arbitrarily excluded, keeping the door open to future discoveries.
We have contended that alien abduction narratives are given little credibility in part because
investigators have become dependent on less reliable methods to analyze their results (Wheeler &
Scribner, 1995; Brookesmith, 1995). “Recovered memories” are prominent in the discussion about
alien abduction narratives because this is one cornerstone of the AAN edifice. There are many
forms of psychological trauma, and their origins and outcomes vary widely. A schizophrenic can
be traumatized by a psychotic episode. A dreamer can awaken horrified and be unable to sleep
again even without evidence of any unusual environmental changes. These private forms of trauma
can be traced to brain disease or dysfunction, but they are nonetheless still traumatic to the
individuals involved. In most AAN research so far, the primary emphasis has been on detailing
the various narratives recalled by subjects under hypnosis or through spontaneous revival of
memories made “valid” by criteria of “consistency,” “sincerity,” and the ostensible presence of
psychological symptoms of traumatic stress.
Much so-called evidence for anomalous trauma comes from anecdotal recollections of hypnotized
witnesses and from “recovered memories” uncorked by researchers who have shown less interest
in questioning their own methods publicly than in benefiting from book and movie deals, for which
they have been criticized by UFO researcher Jacques Vallee (1995).
Storytellers--as we prefer to call those whom other researchers have variously labeled contactees,
abductees, or experiencers--have made claims that are questionable from a scientific perspective.
These claims are typically relegated to the Metaphysical and New Age sections of bookstores;
31
Joshua M. Moritz, “Big Bang Cosmology and Christian Theology.” Ch. 17 in Theology And Science: From Genesis
to Astrobiology, Joseph Seckbach, Richard Gordon (Eds.), 2018, World Scientific Publishing Co.
364
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
however, given a certain set of historical circumstances, growing credence in these reports could
result in significant social upheaval.
No specific case that claims eyewitness contact with extraterrestrials--whether a hostile abduction
scenario or a euphoric Space Brother rapture—currently confirms the ETH to the satisfaction of
the entire research community, including scientists in all relevant areas. This fact implies at the
very least that the investigations are incomplete or can be dismissed by most scientists as spurious
and of no value in disconfirming the null hypothesis (the view held by most scientists). In the latter
case, we are more likely dealing with a psychological phenomenon of a type that still holds a
controversial place within the consensus reality of normal science (Kuhn, 1962).
Descartes' Evil Genius argument serves as a caution to those who would have us believe that our
scientific research is ineffective because “they” can outsmart us at every turn and hide their
presence until they are ready to be revealed. Typically, governments are assumed to be complicit
in this scenario. Such a self-contradictory stance implies that no research can be effective, so by
implication, no research would be useful. If an Evil Genius hides purposefully, then he must exist.
Case closed.
We must not yield to closed-system models. A scientific approach always must begin with the null
hypothesis: that there are no aliens visiting us in the night, therefore all contacts and sightings most
likely have a natural or psychological explanation. When the null hypothesis is proven wrong with
a less than significance chance that the proof itself is false, we will have crossed the threshold in
proving contact, and we can claim an end to doubt. At present, AAN narratives from recovered
memories cannot sustain this criterion. This is the same criterion that any individual must use in
judging his or her own subjective experience. How likely is it that what one believes happened
‘actually’ happened? How open is the reporter to alternative explanations for what they believe?
The Alien Fears study (Scribner, 2003) proposed that an alien abduction narrative can act as a
“meme container” for a matrix of very human fears. By bracketing the question of UFO sighting
reports as a forensic domain, the Alien Fears study examined five prominent public AAN texts
and proposed a Storyteller-Narrator model, including a non-linear chronological structure to
examine their social salience and transmission. The 2003 study concluded that AANs (specifically)
are created and propagated through society because they address personal and social values and
concerns for their storytellers, narrators, and other members of society at large. This study also
developed a social transmission model which has since been expanded to detect specific linguistic
data and media imagery that compose AANs (Scribner & Wheeler, in press).
It is time for an original approach in ufology and especially for the study of narratives of humanextraterrestrial contact. This requires an approach which neither dismisses unusual narratives out
of hand nor invests claims with presumed credibility. For example, researchers might seek out and
interview persons who narrated an alien abduction experience who later, with time or therapy,
came to a different interpretation of events.
A scientific ufology must have as its highest priority to establish its conclusions about UAPs and
AANs in the most transparent manner. Ufological researchers must extend their communication
beyond the converted and claims to “aliens among us.” For ufology to earn scientific status, the
365
II. Psychological Perspectives
improvement of its standards and methods is overdue. The challenge is considerable. Funding for
this kind of intensive research is difficult to obtain, in part because the chimeras of illusion may
prove more profitable than the discipline of the null hypothesis. Where is the appeal and political
fervor to fund a research proposal that begins with the appropriately tentative scientific assumption
that there are no alien visitors? Despite no currently accepted confirmation of exobiology or ETI,
the scientific community is dedicated to finding the answer. A true First Contact Science would
do well to take this same road and apply its own methods in search of an answer.
A validated UFO report or alien abduction narrative has the potential to be a pivotal “working
fact” for the disciplines of ufology or psychology or both. Carefully chosen cases, using preestablished criteria, should at least receive the special professional research attention afforded a
criminal investigation. The payoff comes whether we reach certainty with the best methods we
have or gain greater knowledge of human psychology and belief formation from each attempt. We
may confirm a First Contact during the process. The best service we can perform is to investigate
with the thoroughness of the laboratory scientist, the practical awareness of the forensic
investigator, and the sensitivity of the clinician. Without all three approaches, we are still chasing
shadows on cave walls. Plato already warned us about that.
References (all web articles accessed on November 17, 2022)
1.
Barrow, J. and F. Tipler (1986). The Cosmological Anthropic Principle. Oxford University
Press.
2.
Brin, A.D. (1983). “The 'Great Silence': The Controversy Concerning Extraterrestrial
Life.” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 24, No. 3: pp. 283-309.
3.
Brookesmith, P. (1995). UFO: The complete sightings. New York: Barnes & Noble.
4.
Bruckheimer, J. (Executive Producer). (2001-2003). CSI: Crime scene investigation
[Television series]. United States: Paramount.
5.
Campbell, Dallas. (2016). In: Al-Khalili, J. Aliens. New York: Picador: pp. 35-46.
6.
Caughey, J. (1984). Imaginary social worlds: A cultural approach. Lincoln, Nebraska:
University Press.
7.
Culianu, Ioan. (2001). Out Of This World: Otherworldly Journeys from Gilgamesh to Albert
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
Einstein. Boulder, Colorado: Shambala Publications.
Dick, S. J. (1996). The Biological Universe. Cambridge, UK: University Press.
Goodenough, W. (2003). “In Pursuit of Culture”. Annual Review of Anthropology, No.
32:1-12.
Graham, William. (1994). Angels: God’s secret agents. Dallas, Texas: Word Publishing.
Hopkins, Budd. (1981). Missing time: A documented study of UFO abductions. New York:
Richard Marek Publishers.
_____. (1996). Witnessed: The true story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO abductions. New
York: Pocket Books.
Hopkins, B., D. M. Jacobs, and R. Westrum. 1992. Unusual Personal Experiences: An
Analysis of Data from Three National Surveys Conducted by the Roper Organization.
Bigelow Holding Corporation, Nevada.
Hynek, J. Allen. (1977). The UFO Experience: A scientific inquiry. Kindle reprint edition,
ASIN: B07ZKQTNVK, 11/17/2019: pp. 35-36.
Jacobs, David. (Ed.) (2000). UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the borders of knowledge.
Lawrence, Kansas: University Press.
366
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
Jacobs, D. M., and B. Hopkins (1992). Suggested techniques for hypnotic regression of
abductees (Second Edition). Los Angeles, California; Intruders Foundation.
Jacobs, D., and M. Shermer (1998). KPCC-FM radio interview.
Kuhn, Thomas. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago, Illinois: University
Press.
Lewis, J. R. (Ed.). (1995). The gods have landed: New religions from outer space. Albany,
New York: SUNY Press.
Mack, J. E. (1994). Abduction: Human encounters with aliens. New York: Scribner.
O’Keefe, D. (1982). Stolen lightning: The social theory of magic. New York: Random
House.
Pike, K. (1954). Language in relation to a unified theory of the structure of human
behavior. Glendale, California: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Suto, Y. (2006). Beyond a pale blue dot: How to search for possible bio-signatures on
earth-like planets. https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.11451v1
Scribner, S. (1999). Alien abduction narratives. In J. Lewis (Ed.), Encyclopedia of UFOs
and popular culture. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO.
_____. (2003). Alien Fears: Toward a psychology of UFO abduction beliefs. Unpublished
doctoral dissertation. Available at: https://independent.academia.edu/ScottScribner
Scribner, S., and Wheeler, G. (2003). Cosmic intelligences and their terrestrial channel: A
field report on the Aetherius Society. In J. Lewis (Ed.), Encyclopedic sourcebook of UFO
religions. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books: pp. 157-171.
Scribner, S., and Wheeler, G. (2022). “The Alien Other: Cosmology and social
transmission of UFO narratives.” (In press).
Sturrock, P. (1999). The UFO enigma: A new review of the physical evidence. New York:
Warner Books.
Wheeler, G. (2000). Cosmology. In J. Lewis (Ed.), UFOs and popular culture: An
encyclopedia of contemporary myth. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO.
Wheeler, G. and S. Scribner (1995). “Snap Out of It! or The Hypnotic Regression of
UFO Research.” Continuum Magazine, July 1995: pp. 9-11.
https://archive.org/details/continuum4no4_1995/page/n7/mode/2up
Vallee, Jacques. (1995). Consciousness, culture, and UFOs. Noetic Sciences Review, No.
36 (Winter 1995), Viking: pp. 6-11; 30-36.
367
II. Psychological Perspectives
Forensic Cognitive Science and the UFO Phenomenon
Matthew J. Sharps
Abstract: The principles of forensic cognitive science, especially those of eyewitness cognition,
are critical for our understanding of witness testimony in the UFO realm. This paper will focus
on important aspects of eyewitness cognition and the UFO phenomenon, with special reference
to the processes governing cognitive reconfiguration as it is typically observed in research on
forensic cognitive science. The paper will also address the importance of individual
psychological differences in the mediation of these processes. Finally, we will discuss how the
principles of modern cognitive science are instrumental in explaining the generation of
UFO/Space Alien observation and ideation, in both the scientific and popular realms.
Keywords: Eyewitness memory, UFOs, Forensic cognitive science
Introduction
Enormous strides have been made over the last century in our understanding of eyewitness
cognition. Beginning with the early inquiries of Munsterberg1 and continuing in the
groundbreaking work of Loftus,2 scholars have since made very significant inroads into the
arcana of the eyewitness realm.3,4
The principles of eyewitness memory, however, go far behind the immediate arena of witnesses
to specific crimes. These principles have far-reaching implications for virtually every area of
forensic cognitive science. Officer-involved shootings and other tactical decisions, for example,
are based on the given officer’s eyewitness memory of the given tactical situation; a
“shoot/no-shoot” response, in any given case, is governed by the dynamics of eyewitness
cognition in terms of the officer’s observation and interpretation of the situation.4 In another
example, the detection of improvised explosive devices (IED’s) involves the same eyewitness
dynamics. An IED can be hard to detect, whether disguised, hidden, or even in plain view;4 but
whether an explosive device is perceived and correctly identified or not depends on the
eyewitness performance of the observers who perceive it. An enduring truth in experimental
psychology and neuroscience is the fact of continuity in the nervous system. Correspondingly, the
principles of the eyewitness realm are clearly relevant to far broader areas in criminal justice and
forensic psychology, and beyond into other fields of research; and this is emphatically the case
with the extension of these principles into paranormal arenas, including those concerning
unidentified flying objects (UFOs).4
Recent research shows that the dynamics of the eyewitness realm extend very firmly into several
realms of the paranormal, including, for example, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, ghosts
and spirits, and of course unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and the Space Aliens who
putatively drive them.4 It is important to emphasize this principle of continuity; assuming that
UFOs are not actually the alien spacecraft of popular belief, it is reasonable to explore the
psychological continuity of UFO phenomena with beliefs and ideation surrounding other
paranormal concepts, rather than to attempt to explain UFOs in some form of concrete, objective
physical reality.
368
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
In my California State University laboratory, my research students and I have conducted a series
of experiments on this issue, the extrapolation of eyewitness principles to UFO and related
“paranormal” phenomena.4 This research has been specifically concerned with integrating the
principles of eyewitness memory with more general issues of cognition, such as interpretive
processes, and with bringing this relatively new, more unified perspective of forensic cognitive
science to bear on questions pertaining to UFO phenomena.
This approach has been productive; for example, as discussed below, it is now possible to
ascertain the individual psychological differences which contribute to belief in UFOs or space
aliens, by comparison with individual differences which contribute to belief in other aspects of
the paranormal. We can also demonstrate the direct effects of these tendencies and beliefs on the
perception of UFOs, as well as on the relevant beliefs. We can even show how these
perceptions, and their interpretations, may be created in the laboratory.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss these findings within the larger corpus of UFO witness
psychology from a forensic cognitive perspective, and to consider these issues under the aegis of
broader cognitive and related psychological principles which pertain to the UFO phenomenon.
We will begin this inquiry with a critical basic question: How do UFO perceptions and
interpretations arise at all, and how has the topic become so popular?
The Modern Spread of the UFO Phenomenon: Nomenclature
As in any forensic inquiry in the criminal justice system, we begin with the issue of
nomenclature and the definition of terms: exactly what is meant by the term “UFO?”
This type of issue is by no means as simple as it first appears, as we can readily see in the
forensic cognitive realm in criminal justice. In the judicial realm, language is often manipulated
to produce a mental set favorable to one side or another of a given criminal case. (A relatively
recent example involved the characterization of a physically powerful, extremely violent
strong-arm robber as a “precious child,” since at the time of his crimes he was only nineteen
years old. There are many other examples4).
Similar verbal manipulation can surround the term “UFO.” In the broad sense, a UFO is
anything we cannot identify that happens to be overhead. This would include all sorts of natural
astronomical phenomena and might even include some birds in a sense, if the given observer
can’t tell what kinds of birds they are. This means that, by a definitional trick, practically anyone
can be included in the vast gamut of “UFO observers.” One can see a UFO, in this technically
correct sense, without believing in aliens or flying saucers at all; but just as a physically powerful
adult criminal can be included in the category of “precious children” due to his age of 19, the
highly improbable alien starship can be smoothly incorporated into the vastly larger, familiar,
and more believable category of things overhead that we simply can’t identify.
The use of an overly broad concept (in this case, things one can’t identify in the sky) to imply the
necessity of belief in a specific, potentially doubtful subclass of that concept (alien spaceships) is
not a modern invention; it was well known to the unscrupulous Sophists repeatedly confronted
by Socrates in the Platonic dialogues.5 And in the modern world, this sophistic trick is not
confined to the courtroom. It is easily observed in virtually any gathering or media presentation
369
II. Psychological Perspectives
devoted to UFOs and the “paranormal.” Since UFOs are by definition unidentified, the basic
concept that they may very well be alien spacecraft is easily promulgated if more parsimonious
potential explanations are ignored; this may involve the “leap of faith” held by Shermer to be
characteristic of some religious experience.6 The nascent believer may experience something
like this: since UFOs seem to be alien spacecraft, and since I, too, have seen things in the sky I
can’t identify, it’s a good bet that these unidentified things are flying saucers; and with repeated
investment in such a concept, the given believer may begin increasingly to value and adhere to
his or her space alien beliefs through the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance,7 in which
repeated strong emotional investment in the concept may render UFO beliefs increasingly
impervious to logic and evidence.
As is the case in the forensic realm, linguistic fallacies and distortions can be used in the creation
of UFO believers and the maintenance of UFO beliefs. But when we go beyond such issues,
using the term UFO in normal popular parlance, referring to an alien spacecraft: what
psychological processes could support such UFO beliefs?
The Modern Spread of the UFO Phenomenon: The Availability Heuristic
Believers in UFOs as alien spacecraft may be influenced by the fallacy discussed above, or by
related logical fallacies. They may have seen a satellite, or a meteor, or a night-flying bird they
could not identify as such, and they may have used this sighting as what might be termed a
“gateway“ observation to venture further into the realm of UFOs and space aliens. This
possibility deserves further inquiry, currently under preparation in my own laboratory; but there
is another important cognitive phenomenon at work here, the availability heuristic. This is the
concept that we evaluate the probability of an event by judging the ease with which relevant
instances come to mind.8 We see this repeatedly in the forensic realm, in which people may take
perspectives on crime which have no basis in reality, but which are repeatedly promulgated in
media.4
Consider a phenomenon comparable to the UFO realm: belief in Sea Monsters. At least in the
United States, cable and satellite television very seldom broadcast anything about sea monsters,
and when they do, in this writer’s subjective experience of typical U.S. television, it’s usually a
rerun of a laughably nonsensical program on mermaids.
However, UFOs and the aliens who drive them are a different story. A major cable/satellite
network broadcasts a specific Alien program for at least an entire day every week. Other
networks have joined them with a constantly-broadcast smorgasbord of UFO/alien programs,
including a relatively new one starring a former Disney child-actress who sang the song I Love
Me. For Americans, at least, space aliens and UFOs are ubiquitous in media. Sea monsters are
not.
So here we see the influence of the availability heuristic.8 In popular media, few sea monsters are
seen, and so the average person has no time for unknown creatures of the deep. We have
available to us many, many media references to UFOs and Space Aliens, and very few to sea
monsters. Our perceptual and interpretive abilities operate on that information correspondingly.
We don’t believe in the Loch Ness Monster. We believe, so to speak, in UFOs and aliens,
without a shred of corroborative physical evidence.
370
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
In view of this consistent UFO broadside, viewers are continually and ubiquitously bombarded
with UFO material. In this environment, the availability heuristic operates to provide the average
viewer with a continuous cognitive framework9 for the acceptance of UFO ideation; and under
these conditions, we would anticipate that many otherwise rational people would wander down
the UFO path into the ranks of the true believers.
At this point, we have made use of comparative consideration of beliefs in UFOs and sea
monsters to demonstrate the importance of the availability heuristic in the promulgation of the
relevant beliefs. Yet there is another reason to discuss this comparison here. Thus far we have
considered only psychological issues in the UFO phenomenon; but this specific comparison, sea
monster to UFO, assumes special significance when we consider these psychological concepts
with direct reference to what can be demonstrated physically in these two specific arenas.
UFOs in Physical and Cognitive Contexts
Many people believe in UFOs as alien spacecraft. This leads to the critical question of
legitimacy. Can one legitimately believe in UFOs, in this sense? What actual evidence is there
of alien spacecraft in our skies, and of alien astronauts among us?
Let us continue this inquiry, as above, with the concept of sea monsters in comparison. Can one
legitimately believe in sea monsters, a similar paranormal concept? Well, the Colossal Squid
(Mesonychoteuthis sp.) was only first described in 1925, and an adult specimen had to await
confirmation until 1981.10 By any normal human standard, it’s monstrous, and it does live in the
sea. So, we could make a case for calling it a “sea monster,” unknown prior to the twentieth
century. So, some “sea monsters,” under this type of definition, can be shown to exist. QED.
Granted, no one has turned up with any specific mythological Sea Monster specimens, such as
the Loch Ness Monster or the Kraken, and no one is going to; but the fact is, we do have physical
specimens of large, previously unknown creatures of the sea; “sea monsters,” if you will. These
specimens are available for rigorous scientific inquiry, and if a given theorist wishes to refer to
these animals as “sea monsters,” so be it; such creatures have been discovered, and there may be
others out there, presumably awaiting discovery by those with sufficient temerity and a
reasonably large boat. Probably nothing mythological, i.e., the Loch Ness Monster or the Kraken
of legend; but something like another very big squid is a very real possibility.
So, big sea animals, “sea monsters,” have been shown to have a real, if prosaic, reality; but in
informal polls in my college classes, I have found that most of my university students simply
don’t believe in sea monsters. Large unknown animals in the sea, for most of my students, are
mythological in nature.
However, large numbers of those same students endorse a belief in UFOs as alien spacecraft;
and what is remarkable about this observation is that we have not a single shred of confirmed
physical evidence of UFOs, or of the aliens who putatively drive them. Myths and rumors, yes;
typically, vague photographs or digital images, yes; physical evidence, no. Although we have
confirmed lumps of Colossal Squid here and there in various laboratories, there simply aren’t any
371
II.
II. Psychological
Psychological Perspectives
Perspectives
bits of alien spaceships about; and, as discussed above in term of linguistic custom and usage,
when we say “UFOs,” we’re talking about alien spaceships.
This is a huge problem. Large numbers of putatively modern people are very solid believers in a
concept, the UFO-as-spacecraft, of which there is no hard physical evidence of any kind
anywhere.
So how is it possible that so many people claim to be “eyewitnesses” of a phenomenon that, as
far as physical evidence is concerned, does not exist? The believer in sea monsters can point to
the Colossal Squid. Aside from some questionable images and hearsay, the believer in UFOs and
Space Aliens can point to nothing at all.
Physical evidence of UFOs is nonexistent. The reality of UFOs, as far as we can tell, is therefore
entirely cognitive. But what cognitive processes support belief in their existence?
UFOs and the Reconfiguration of Eyewitness Memory
As discussed above, accounts of UFOs rely on eyewitness memory. Eyewitness accounts are
rendered by a person, or by a group of people, of something they believe they have seen. This is
true of all types of eyewitness accounts. In the forensic realm, eyewitness testimony concerning a
mugging or robbery, wherever it occurs, is governed by the same psychological dynamics; and
the same eyewitness dynamics govern eyewitness accounts of spacecraft and aliens, wherever
they occur. There is continuity in the nervous system; and the same principles govern accounts of
murder or Martians, felonies or flying saucers.
Therefore, criminal investigators and scholars of UFO phenomena are in the same situation. We
must ultimately refer to eyewitness accounts; and thus, we must refer to the fallibility of human
memory.
This fallibility is distressingly real. Human memory is amazingly fallible; but if you discuss this
with the average human being, there is typically very little public awareness of memory’s
fallibility.
Having served as a consulting investigative psychologist in nearly two hundred cases, most
involving serious violent crimes, the present writer can attest to the typical popular attitude
toward memory. The average citizen (or juror) well understands that human memory is fallible;
but there is typically a tendency to believe that this fallibility is very limited, that it lies only in
the occasional omission of details, with the major elements of the memory remaining relatively
accurate.
Outside the realm of the psychological specialties, a typical view of memory might operate
something like the following analogy. If memory were to be seen as a jigsaw puzzle, the process
of forgetting might turn the puzzle upside down and shake a few pieces out of the puzzle picture.
The completed puzzle might have depicted a farmyard or a mountain, and now there are some
pieces missing; but even though a few bits may be missing, thinks the average juror, the witness
can still make out a farmyard or a mountain. The basic concept, as the present writer has seen in
372
372
The
The Reliability
Reliability of
of UFO
UFO Witness
Witness Testimony
Testimony
many cases, is that fundamental memories remain intact, with the inconsequential exceptions of
a few minor details deleted by the forgetting process.
Yet even a cursory examination of the psychological literature shows that this supposition is very
far from the truth. As the pieces of the puzzle “fall away,” so to speak, the mind does not
necessarily retain a picture of either a farmyard, or a mountain. The configuration which
remains, in the elastic memory of the given witness, may have been changed into another thing
entirely.
Nearly a century ago, Bartlett11 demonstrated that human memory is not stable. It cannot be
conceptualized as something like a jigsaw puzzle, with reference to a few bits and pieces being
dropped out, “forgotten” in normal parlance. Memory defies simple physical analogies; it is a
biological process, with all the complexities inherent in such a process.
To begin with, human memory is not static, albeit with a few bits forgotten. Bartlett11
demonstrated that human memory is amazingly friable; it changes in three major directions.
These three directions are brevity, gist, and popular belief.
Bartlett showed that, as is popularly supposed, details tend to be lost from memory. This results
in the direction of brevity; fewer details, to the sorrow of every detective or investigative
psychologist, result in a briefer, relatively impoverished account of whatever actually happened
in any given situation.
But this loss of detail means much more than might be supposed. It means that what is retained
in any given memory is only the core or gist of the actual situation. For example, if robbed by a
given criminal sporting jeans, a leather vest, a series of tattoos and a spiked hairdo, and armed
with a Ruger SP-101 revolver, the victim may remember nothing more than a “bad guy” with a
“gun”; the prospect of effective judicial action is thereby lost. These losses of detail, inherent in
the normal brevity of Bartlett reconfiguration, result in increasing mnemonic reliance on gist, on
the core memory of a bad guy with a gun; and the chances of apprehension of the correct
perpetrator are correspondingly reduced.
Yet there is a third factor contributing to memory configuration in the forensic realm. It is
probably the most disturbing factor demonstrated by Bartlett: there is reconfiguration in the
direction of personal belief. Bartlett demonstrated this in both the visual and verbal realms. In
one well-known experiment, he showed respondents a highly abstract picture, Portrait d’Homme
(Portrait of a Man), and told them the title. Bartlett then requested that his respondents draw the
figure they remembered, repeatedly and over time.
Armed with nothing more than the knowledge that they were supposed to be drawing a portrait
of a man, Bartlett’s respondents re-drew the highly distorted, geometric image, more and more,
as a naturalistic picture of a male face. The representations became ever more face-like with
each repeated drawing; and although this early finding has been questioned in some modern
research,12 Bartlett’s initial results showed that respondents’ belief in the initial geometric
graphic as a portrait of a man caused their memories to shift in that direction, toward a more
373
373
II. Psychological Perspectives
naturalistic picture of a human face with each subsequent reproduction. Several other
experiments in Bartlett’s research converged on a similar conclusion.
It is important to understand that this phenomenon did not derive from intent; respondents
apparently believed that their more naturalistic renderings, completely divorced from the stark
and geometric original, represented their actual memories of that original.
In the verbal realm, among other experiments, Bartlett used a Native American story, rendered in
the rather stilted language of an anthropological translation. Not only did his respondents
remember the language in much more fluid, colloquial terms than they’d seen in the original,
consistent with their linguistic idiom and their cultural beliefs and understanding, but, as British
subjects, their memories were rendered in terms of twentieth-century British beliefs, frequently
overwhelming the story’s Native American elements. Their prior framework for understanding,9
in their accustomed roles as British subjects, reconfigured the original cultural elements of the
story. This occurred to the extent that the motivations of the protagonists of the story were
interpreted in British rather than Native American terms, through the lens of their own culture
rather than from the original viewpoint.
Bartlett’s groundbreaking research demonstrated a fundamental cognitive law: our beliefs
literally change our memories. Bartlett’s results clearly demonstrate this fact; and although
elements of Bartlett’s work in the visual realm have been challenged in more modern research,12
major factors he identified, at least in the verbal realm, have been replicated in modern times.13
Therefore, in the verbal realm of UFO accounts, we can expect Bartlett reconfiguration in all
three identified directions–brevity, gist, and personal belief. All of these will contribute to the
prior frameworks for understanding within which we will interpret the idiosyncratic
characteristics of individual “UFO experiences.9
So, eyewitness memory is changed by our prior frameworks for understanding,9 by the ways in
which we are predisposed to interpret memories. This factor of course applies to memories of
UFO observations as well. But how powerful is this effect?
In my laboratory, we conducted the first known studies designed to elicit a field-valid taxonomy
of eyewitness memory, a classification of the error types made by respondents in the
consideration of field-valid crime situations.14 In that research, dealing with crime scenes of
types typical in the modern United States, we discovered that the most common error types,
under emotionally neutral circumstances, were errors of the physical appearance of the
perpetrator. The average person made almost two errors of this type per scene (188%), under
ideal conditions of normal, everyday arousal. The normal, everyday human brain, confronted
with a given situation of interest, can therefore be expected to yield approximately two errors of
appearance.
Several other error types (environmental errors, errors of perpetrator race and sex, weapon errors,
and so on) were identified in this work.4,14 However, the second most frequent error type is the
one which claims our attention here. The average respondent made one and a quarter (124.5%)
errors of the imagination. In other words, under no situational stress which might have impaired
374
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
mental acuity, average people simply made at least one thing up per person; and they had no idea
that they were doing so.
Now, if an individual observes an unidentified object in the sky, his or her beliefs are likely to
reshape that object according to those beliefs. If the observer’s prior cognitive framework9 is one
of UFO-as-alien-spaceship, the reconfigurative dynamics demonstrated originally in the general
experimental realm,11 and later confirmed for eyewitness memory in the realm of forensic
cognitive science,4,14 are very likely to result in the reconfiguration of the given memory in the
direction of increasingly spacecraft-like characteristics.
Yet this process is far from over. Individuals think about significant memories repeatedly over
time. As we repeatedly process a given memory, whether a memory of a crime scene or of a
UFO, errors of brevity, gist, and personal belief are made each time. Cumulatively, those errors
become part of the memory; and if those reconfigurations occur within the context of a prior
framework which tends toward the UFO-as-spaceship viewpoint, the cumulative errors could be
substantial.
This effect was demonstrated in a study15 in which witnesses to a mock crime scene were
repeatedly questioned, as is typically the case in either a criminal or a UFO investigation. At the
first questioning, respondents, on average, gave approximately 3.5 correct responses for every
error produced. However, by the second questioning, that ratio fell to 1.39 correct responses per
error, and rose only slightly at the fourth; but at the third questioning, the ratio was actually
inverted, yielding less than one (0.91) correct response per error. More mistakes than facts were
elicited.
Obviously, the ratio of factual to confabulated responses will vary over any series of repetitive
considerations of a given memory. However, this study demonstrated that the cumulative error
effect, resulting from repetitive reconfiguration, can actually result in more falsehoods than
truths surrounding any given memory; and this increase in error and false response can increase
with no awareness on the part of the witness.
In fact, as briefly noted above,7 the witness may become increasingly confident and defensive
about his or her memories with repeated recounting. Festinger and his colleagues7 examined a
group who had surrounded a charismatic leader, and whose beliefs involved a divinely ordered
rescue of the faithful by UFOs from a putative punitive flood. This flood, according to their
beliefs and their leader, was to be visited upon the Earth by God in the winter of 1954; and even
when no such flood occurred, the followers, in general, did not forsake their beliefs in UFO
salvation. In fact, in many cases, those beliefs were strengthened. Some of the followers decided
that they, personally, had Saved the Earth by their beliefs, and they were increasingly motivated
to proselytize the gospel of alien saviors to others. These followers had developed such
profound cognitive dissonance that to abandon their UFO beliefs was simply psychologically
impossible.
This type of effect has occurred in more recent times.16 In the minor hysteria surrounding Mayan
End-of-the-World concepts in 2012, it was shown that levels of belief in the return of the Maya
god Kukulkan and related supernatural phenomena, in relatively educated American college
375
II.
II. Psychological
Psychological Perspectives
Perspectives
students, were completely unshaken by the god’s failure to appear. The effects of cognitive
dissonance are alive and well, in the UFO realm and related paranormal precincts.16
The relevance of memory reconfiguration and resultant confabulation, combined with the effects
of repetition and of cognitive dissonance, is hard to overestimate for the realm of UFO accounts.
If we can make things up, with no idea that we are doing so, in our observations of a crime scene
to which we are emotionally indifferent,14 what might we do in the realm of a UFO observation
in which we are emotionally invested? What dynamics might drive the identification of prosaic
objects or phenomena as UFOs?
Individual Differences: Depression, Attention Deficit, and Dissociation in the Paranormal
Realm
We began this inquiry with a field-valid question. What individual psychological differences
might drive belief in paranormal things such as UFOs? Who is likely to believe in what?
For specific reasons discussed below, we examined depression, attention deficit hyperactive
disorder (ADHD), and dissociation in this experiment.17 It is important to note that none of these
issues, in this population, lay at the clinical level. Unlike many symptoms in the medical realm,
people can exhibit different levels of depression, or ADHD, or dissociative tendencies at
subclinical levels which may be largely undetected in their everyday lives. None of the people
we examined exhibited clinical levels of these symptoms; but across the continuum of our
respondents, the symptoms were there, albeit at subclinical levels.
Why did we address these specific subclinical conditions? We hypothesized that depressed
people might be most likely to believe in ghosts and in space aliens (not in the aliens’ spacecraft,
in their UFOs per se–who, in a state of emotional distress, would care what the aliens drive?)
But the space aliens themselves might, in the imagination of a depressed individual,
compassionately take that person to a planet where things would be better; a planet where that
person would be better understood, where the depression would lift.
We would therefore expect the depressed to believe in space aliens; and we would also expect to
be predisposed to beliefs in ghosts, as putative evidence of an afterlife in which things might
improve. An alien world, or Heaven–anywhere other than Here might be better for the depressed.
But, again on a field-valid basis, we would not expect persons with tendencies toward attention
deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) to believe strongly in either the Ghosts or the Space Aliens.
Granted, such entities might be moderately interesting to those with ADHD tendencies; but the
frequent boredom with everyday life endemic to those with even subclinical tendencies toward
ADHD would require more, a higher level of vicarious stimulation. Those with ADHD
tendencies, we believed, would prefer starships with phasers blazing, and Bigfoot and the Loch
Ness Monster lurking in the wilderness, available for discovery by any explorer with sufficient
ADHD-based personal courage to confront the monsters in their lairs. Therefore, we suggested
that those with ADHD tendencies would have no particular tendencies to believe in ghosts or
Aliens; but they would tend to buy into UFOs and cryptid creatures with great fervor.
376
376
The
The Reliability
Reliability of
of UFO
UFO Witness
Witness Testimony
Testimony
And this is exactly what we found.17 As measured by standard instruments, those who were
depressed tended to believe in ghosts and space aliens. Ghosts imply an afterlife where things
might get better, and the aliens might take you to a planet where you could be happier.
But those with ADHD tendencies did not, statistically, buy into concepts of ghosts or aliens. As
suggested above, and at a statistically significant level, those with ADHD tendencies believed in
UFOs and Cryptids (Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, etc.), which might, as suggested, alleviate
their boredom in the real world.17
This result may prove especially important for UFO psychology. We verified a statistically valid
psychological distinction between those who believe in Space Aliens and those who believe in
the UFOs in which those aliens putatively arrive. The depressed tended to believe in aliens and
ghosts, but not in UFOs. Those with subclinical ADHD tendencies, even the subclinical
tendencies which characterize a great many people, tended to believe in Bigfoot and such, and in
UFOs; they believed in the spacecraft themselves, rather than in their putative alien drivers.
There is a statistical void between these two respondent populations, those with depressive
versus ADHD tendencies, a void which has not been previously explored.
This should be a topic of future psychological inquiry. We can distinguish, psychologically,
between those who believe in the Space Aliens and those who believe in UFOs, the space
vehicles in which the aliens putatively arrive. This statistical fact points rather dramatically to a
psychological origin of space alien/UFO ideation, rather than to a physical one. Individual
psychological differences may drive a given person to believe either in the alien pilot or in his or
her spacecraft. The two concepts, alien pilot and UFO, are not psychologically united. In the
complete absence of any hard physical evidence of either spacecraft or alien pilots, we must take
very seriously the idea that UFO/Alien ideation has its roots not in physical reality, but in
psychological subjectivity.
Yet this important distinction was not the end of this research. There was a third factor in this
work, as mentioned briefly above: dissociation. Dissociative processes, again at the subclinical
level, may be the most important psychological dynamics pertaining to witness factors in the
UFO phenomenon: those who tended toward dissociation believed in everything.17
Bigfoot, the Aliens, the UFOs, the ghosts–the dissociated were more likely to believe in all of
them. There were no distinctions at all.17 Dissociative processes were a very major factor in the
production and/or support of paranormal and UFO ideation. But what exactly is dissociation?
Dissociation and UFOs
The term “dissociation” has a plurality of uses and definitions. We must be clear in terms of
definition here. Emphatically, in this work, we are not talking about psychiatric concepts of
dissociative identity disorder, or of pathological levels of dissociation in which psychotic
ideation might figure. Rather, in this work we refer to subclinical dissociative tendencies, of the
sort probably experienced, at least occasionally, on an everyday basis by practically everyone.
Dissociation, at a subclinical level, may lead us to doubt the nature of reality, at least for the
moment. The world may seem unreal or diffuse at some level.18 Dissociation may lead us to
377
377
II. Psychological Perspectives
introspective states in which we ignore immediate reality, or to flights of fancy in which the
improbable or supernatural becomes eminently reasonable and utterly natural. In dissociation
lies the realm of the psychologically bizarre, and the ability to see the bizarre as ultimately
prosaic.18,19
However, some people have stronger dissociative tendencies than others,18 and those with these
dissociative characteristics may see prosaic reality as potentially fraught with supernatural
meaning. Space aliens, UFOs, cryptids, or spirits might lurk anywhere for the dissociated,
perhaps hidden from the rest of us by vast government conspiracies.
So, dissociative tendencies can lead us to paranormal beliefs, including beliefs in UFOs and their
putative Space Aliens drivers–but can these tendencies lead us to see them?
The answer is yes.20
My research students and I showed respondents a series of static images. These included a piece
of fabric, oddly illuminated but hanging from a clothesline; a teenager in a Halloween gorilla
costume; and a helicopter landing at an odd angle in the dark, with its landing lights
correspondingly placed.
Using a standard instrument, we evaluated the dissociative tendencies of our respondents in this
experiment. Those with normal levels of dissociation saw exactly what you’d expect: a piece of
laundry, a person in an ape costume, and an aircraft landing at night.
But for those with higher levels of dissociative tendencies, these simple images formed a
gateway into another world.
For many of the dissociated, our piece of fabric became a ghost or a spiritual entity. The
adolescent in the gorilla costume became Bigfoot, albeit with extra unkempt monkey hair; and
the helicopter, landing lights askew, became a UFO.20
Subclinical tendencies toward depression, ADHD, and dissociation, rife in the general
population, can accentuate our beliefs in the paranormal.17,21 The depressed believe in aliens and
ghosts. Those with ADHD believe in Bigfoot and flying saucers. And those with dissociative
tendencies frequently believe in all of it.17,21
But in our research to date, only dissociation had the power not only to influence belief, but also
perception.
The dissociated didn’t simply believe in UFOs. They saw them.
As we see in the forensic eyewitness realm, none of these perceptions derived from nothing,
from an absence of stimuli. Perceptions and their interpretations are not created, so to speak, out
of whole cloth. There must be something like an aircraft seen at an odd angle to make a UFO
perception work, just as one may need a piece of oddly illuminated cloth to imagine a ghost, or a
teenager in a gorilla costume to create a Bigfoot; but there are psychological principles which
help individuals to do so. In our research, in the presence of subclinical dissociative tendencies,
378
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
a perfectly prosaic stimulus item such as a helicopter at night was easily transformed, in the mind
of the dissociative witness, into an alien spacecraft.
As mentioned above, it is very important to emphasize that word subclinical. Dissociative
tendencies are emphatically not “crazy.” All human beings experience some level of dissociation
in their everyday lives; but as we see here, those with more dissociative tendencies may tend to
see their world in vastly more paranormal terms. They not only believe in these paranormal
things; they may see them, in stimuli that other people would perceive as everyday objects, or
perhaps as hoaxes. But the dissociated are perfectly capable of seeing UFOs, of being
eyewitnesses to alien spacecraft, when no such craft exist at all.
Thus, we see cognitive elements of the genesis of the UFO phenomenon. Those with subclinical
tendencies toward depression, ADHD, and/or most importantly dissociation, observe everyday
phenomena through a very different lens. For those individuals, everyday things may become,
psychologically, UFOs and their alien pilots. Social factors and media coverage may mediate
these processes further, using language and availability to produce the illusion of commonality,
the idea that the Aliens and their UFOs are everywhere. Once people believe, cognitive
dissonance may increase personal investment in those phenomena; and thus, we have UFO
enthusiasts.
But can these psychological processes go even farther?
Individual Differences: The Question of Aviation Training
It is often asserted that pilots and other aircrew, with their aviation and systems expertise, are
superior observers and interpreters of UFO phenomenon. However, several caveats arise in this
consideration.
Pilots and aircrew obviously have expertise in matters pertaining to aircraft, understanding of
aircraft systems and engineering, navigation, aircraft operation and so on. But does this specific
expertise apply to areas outside those of aviation per se?
These questions were actually raised by Plato, obviously not in the realm of aviation, but
pertinent, nevertheless. In the Protagoras, Plato22 points out that in building a wall, one consults
stonemasons, whereas in the building of a ship, one consults shipbuilders. Both activities involve
building; but the crucial differences arise in what is to be built. The relevant expertise is
domain-specific, not universal across building activities.
Similar considerations arise in the consideration of aircraft piloting and UFOs. Both involve
things and activities in the sky; but the crucial differences arise in precisely what sky-related
things are to be observed and interpreted.
Pilots, and of course some other aircrew, have formal training in specific aspects of meteorology
and astronomy, but typically with reference to the reasonable spectra of eventuality, to the types
of phenomena that they are normally likely to encounter. However, UFO observations deriving
from atmospheric or astronomical factors typically involve abnormal circumstances of
astronomy and meteorology,23 not the more typical ones in which aviators are normally trained;
and unless the given aviators are also specifically trained in meteorology or astronomy, outside
379
II. Psychological Perspectives
the normal training for aviation professionals, their aviation training would not necessarily have
any bearing on the relative accuracy of observation or interpretation. The ability to recognize
different types of storm fronts and clouds, for example, may have no bearing on the ability to
deal with the arcana of very atypical weather factors, any more than a knowledge of celestial
navigation would lead a pilot to a knowledge of the misperception of Venus through industrial
haze, or of the different types of stars on which navigation is based.
All of this may contribute to the fact that early in the modern study of UFOs, J. Allen Hynek,24 a
major participant in the U.S. Air Force Project Blue Book, found that pilots were in fact typically
worse at identifying UFOs correctly than were personnel of many other occupational categories.
Hynek found that on average, even the best single witnesses tended toward a 65% misperception
rate. However, this rate climbed significantly for aircraft pilots. The misperception percentage
rating was reported to be in the high 80’s for both military and commercial pilots as single
witnesses.
Aviation personnel may also have very different mental sets than do scientists and those
specifically interested in the UFO phenomenon. As pointed out by Wolfe25 in his informal but
thought-provoking book The Right Stuff, pilots tend, quite reasonably, to be specifically and
highly focused on their missions and on the operation of their aircraft in the service of those
missions. This leaves little time for scientific speculation or wonder, and this mission focus is
essential for successful aerial operations. This was clearly observed, for example, in the return
from space of the Apollo 11 lunar mission, in which a variety of odd visual phenomena were
noted, but essentially ignored, by the astronauts. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin has pointed out in
interviews that the astronauts’ focus was on successfully returning to Earth; Apollo 11 had
completed its mission, and the complex operation of the spacecraft simply left no time for
scientific or philosophical considerations regarding odd bits of light in the surrounding space.
Despite many modern assertions to the contrary, for which hard evidence appears, at this time, to
be lacking, Hynek’s original data, later observations, and the psychological considerations
discussed here would seem to preclude overreliance on the accounts of aviation personnel in the
consideration of UFO phenomena. Aviation expertise is obviously admirable, and indeed
essential if aircraft are to get from one place to another successfully; but just as the builder of a
wall is different from the builder of a ship, we would not necessarily expect aviation training and
experience to generalize to the scientific or philosophical consideration of UFO phenomena.
Individual Differences: Scientific Training; Percival Lowell and the Canals of Mars
Percival Lowell, the founder of the great Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, was an
excellent astronomer; the list of his achievements precludes any other reasonable conclusion.
Yet he was a firm believer in Space Aliens. 26
At the turn of the last century, Lowell turned his then state-of-the-art telescopes to the planet
Mars, where he beheld Canals. Actual, artificial Canals, built by what he presumed to be actual
Martians, heroically shunting water around on their desert world in an attempt to survive what
Lowell perceived to be increasingly desiccated conditions.
380
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
The problem is that we are now quite certain that there are no canals, or any other engineered
structures, on the planet Mars. As far as we can tell, there never have been.
So, what was Lowell, an experienced, accomplished, and expert astronomer, actually seeing?
Thanks to the courtesy of the staff of the Lowell Observatory, the present writer was able to
examine Lowell’s original notes, drawings, and globes of Mars from the time of his Canal
observations; and the only possible conclusion of this research was that the source of Lowell’s
observation of these artifacts of Space Alien engineering was entirely psychological. 26
There are many natural, geological features on the planet’s surface. We know that human minds
tend to “connect the dots” among such features, consistent with perceptual laws identified early
in the 20th century by the Gestalt psychologists.27 Once the Gestalt principles set in to connect
various actual Martian planetary features, by straight interpolated lines which don’t actually exist
outside of perceptual processes, it is perfectly possible for cognitive dissonance7 to set in; and a
physical, rather than psychological, explanation for the Canals became so important to Lowell
that he effectively fired one of his most valued colleagues for suggesting the psychological
reality. Lowell had, in his own mind, created a powerful cognitive framework9 for his belief in
the Canals.
This would suggest that cognitive frameworks can actually reconfigure our perceptions, to the
point at which we perceive things that simply don’t exist. But is this true?
My research students and I provided research respondents with a slightly out-of-focus picture of
Earth’s moon at “supermoon” approach. It appeared as a large, featureless, spherical white blob,
and none of our respondents identified it positively as the moon (although one guessed). When
we told them that the picture was “an object,” practically nobody saw any surface features.
Reasonable; there weren’t any. However, when we informed respondents that the image was a
“lunar or planetary body…photographed in this solar system,” with or without reference to
expert belief that there might be alien structures up there, prior cognitive frameworks,9
presumably fostered by a continuous media bath of UFO ideation, took over. On the blob, now
identified as a lunar or planetary body, respondents saw all sorts of things, ranging from colors
and abstract patterns to a few alien buildings and even, in one case, a canal.24
Extraterrestrial buildings and an alien canal. On a featureless white blob.
Not surprisingly, those who “saw” the most evidence of space alien handiwork, on the featureless
white blob in question, were those with higher levels of subclinical dissociation.28
Using nothing but psychological dynamics, the popular prior framework that “lunar or planetary
bodies” might be riddled with alien constructions, we were able to produce perceptions and
interpretations of structures, on a featureless blob, that had no existence outside the minds of the
perceivers. This was especially true of the relatively dissociated perceivers.
381
II. Psychological Perspectives
The ultimate lesson is this: if we believe strongly enough in the Space Aliens, under the right
conditions, it’s a good bet that we will also perceive them, in the absence of any corroborative
evidence whatsoever.
Here we see strong evidence that one of Lowell’s few errors, in a distinguished scientific career,
is readily explained through the processes of psychology, literally of forensic cognitive science,
applied to this case; and although it is likely that Lowell himself would have bitterly resisted this
conclusion, it would appear that the same psychological dynamics that apply to popular
perception and interpretation in the paranormal realm may also find purchase in the realm of the
scientific. There is continuity in the nervous system–and there is a psychological dimension to
perception and interpretation in the world of professional science as well.28
Suggestive Psychological Frameworks and UFOs
We can even produce, psychologically, the perception of UFOs themselves.
In a series of photographs taken in the desert southwest of the United States, two roughly
spherical blobs appeared in the sky in each photograph, in the same relative positions. These
photographs were shown to respondents, accompanied by descriptions of the relevant desert
features.
Other respondents, however, were shown the photographs with accompanying information: that
this was a desert area “in which a great many UFOs and alien encounters have been reported.”
This assertion was true; the American deserts tend to attract a great many believers in UFOs and
related phenomena, and paranormal reports surge there accordingly.
In this experiment,29 those who received prosaic desert descriptions tended to attach no real
importance to the two blobs. However, those in the UFO condition tended to endorse, at a
statistically significant level, some rather far-fetched ideas: that at least one of the blobs was an
intelligently controlled vehicle; that they might be directly piloted or controlled from some other
“ship or station”; and that at least one of the objects was “an extraterrestrial spacecraft or similar
vehicle.”29
All this from the simple, true statement that other people had reported UFO sightings in the area,
resulting in a prior framework for understanding of the type that, as we have seen, may
predispose us to UFO observations and interpretations. Respondents in the UFO/alien encounter
information condition of this experiment created a significant amount of UFO ideation and
imagery, all from the observation of two roughly spherical blobs.
The spherical blobs in each photograph were actually images of two dust-specks which had
inadvertently adhered to the mirror of the present writer’s camera during a desert dust storm.25
Conclusions
One need not postulate a physical universe of space aliens and UFOs to explain observations of,
and beliefs in, such phenomena. Psychological dynamics are perfectly adequate to explain these
phenomena. Most of these are observed in related realms of forensic cognitive science, in the
world of criminal justice. These include linguistic factors; the importance of the availability
382
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
heuristic; the reconfiguration of memory; individual differences, especially those involved in
dissociative processes; prior frameworks for perception and interpretation, rooted in a variety of
sources; cognitive dissonance; and somewhat exotic interactions of these factors with, for
example, the Gestalt laws.23 There are certainly other factors involved, many that go far beyond
the scope of this paper, into the realms, for example, of social and developmental psychology.4
For the present, however, it would seem that the Earth is in no danger from the space aliens or
their UFOs, save the dangers that these ideas may promulgate in our own minds. It might also be
asserted that the principles of forensic cognitive science may be very helpful in explaining
aspects of the UFO phenomenon, and that, reciprocally, scientific study of the psychology of the
UFO phenomenon may be very useful and important in furthering our understanding of forensic
cognitive science, as well as of other critical aspects of criminal justice psychology.
References
1. Munsterberg, Hugo. On the Witness Stand. New York: Doubleday Publishers, 1908.
2. Loftus, Elizabeth F. Eyewitness Testimony. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press, 1979.
3. Wells, Gary L. “What Do We Know About Eyewitness Identification?” American
Psychologist, 48, 1993, pp. 553-571.
4. Sharps, M.J. Processing Under Pressure: Stress, Memory, and Decision-Making in Law
Enforcement. (3rd Ed.). Flushing, New York: Looseleaf Law Publications, 2022.
5. Plato (tr. W.R.M. Lamb). Meno. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1924.
6. Shermer, M. The Believing Brain. New York: Time Books, 2011.
7. Festinger, L., H.W. Rieken, & S. Schachter. When Prophecy Fails. Blacksburg, Virginia:
Wilder Press, 2011 (reprinted from 1956).
8. Kahneman, D., & A. Tversky. “On The Psychology of Prediction.” Psychological Review, 80,
1973, pp. 237-251.
9. Bransford, J.D., & M.K. Johnson. “Consideration of Some Problems of Comprehension.” In
W.G. Chase (Ed.), Visual Information Processing. Orlando: Academic Press, 1973, pp.
383-438.
10. Ellis, R. The Search for the Giant Squid. Lanham, Maryland: Lyons Press, 1998.
11. Bartlett, F.C. Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. London:
Cambridge University Press, 1932.
12. Carbon, C.C., & S. Albrecht. “Bartlett’s Schema Theory: The Unreplicated Portrait
d’Homme Series from 1932.” Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65, 2012,
pp. 2258-2270.
13. Ahlberg, S.W., & M.J. Sharps. “Bartlett Revisited: “Reconfiguration of Long-Term Memory
in Young and Older Adults.” Journal of Genetic Psychology, 163, 2002, pp. 211-218.
14. Sharps, M.J., J. Janigian, A. Hess, & B. Hayward. “Eyewitness Memory in Context: Toward
a Taxonomy of Eyewitness Error.” Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 24, 2009,
pp. 36-44.
15. Sharps, M.J., M. Herrera, L. Dunn, & E. Alcala. “Repetition and Reconfiguration:
Demand-Based Confabulation in Initial Eyewitness Memory.” Journal of Investigative
Psychology and Offender Profiling, 10, 2012. DOI:10.102/jip.1398
16. Sharps, M.J., S.W. Liao, & M.R. Herrera. “Remembrance of Apocalypse Past: The
Psychology of True Believers When Nothing Happens.” Skeptical Inquirer, 38,
November/December 2014, pp. 54-58.
383
II. Psychological Perspectives
17.
Sharps, M.J., J. Matthews, & J. Asten. “Cognition, Affect, and Beliefs in Paranormal
Phenomena: Gestalt/Feature-Intensive Processing Theory and Tendencies Toward
ADHD, Dissociation, and Depression.” Journal of Psychology 140, 2006, pp. 579-590.
18. Cardena, E. “Dissociative Disorders: Phantoms of the Self.” In S.M. Turner & M. Hersen
(Eds.), Adult Psychopathology and Diagnosis (3rd Ed.). New York: Wiley, 1997, pp.
384-408.
19. DePrince, A.P., & J.F. Freyd. “Dissociative Tendencies, Attention, and Memory.”
Psychological Science, 10, 1999, pp. 449-452.
20. Sharps, M.J., E. Newborg, S. Van Arsdall, J. DeRuiter, B. Hayward, & B. Alcantar.
“Paranormal Encounters as Eyewitness Phenomena: Psychological Determinants of
Atypical Perceptual Interpretations.” Current Psychology, 29, 2010, pp. 320-327.
21. Sharps, M.J., S.W. Liao, & M.R. Herrera. “Dissociation and Paranormal Beliefs: Toward a
Taxonomy of Belief in the Unreal.” Skeptical Inquirer, 40(3), 2016, pp. 40-44.
22. Plato (tr. W.R.M. Lamb). Protagoras. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
1924.
23. Sharps, M.J. UFOs and Cognitive Science: A Case Study. Skeptical Inquirer, 38(3), 2014,
pp. 52-55.
24. Hynek, J.A. The Hynek UFO Report. London: Sphere Books, 1977.
25. Wolfe, T. The Right Stuff. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1979.
26. Sharps, M.J. “Percival Lowell and the Canals of Mars.” Skeptical Inquirer, 42(3), 2018, pp.
41-46.
27. Kohler, W. Gestalt Psychology. New York: Mentor, 1947.
28. Sharps, M.J., S. Hurd, B. Hoshiko, E. Wilson, M.A. Flemming, S. Nagra, & M. Garcia.
“Percival Lowell and the Canals of Mars, Part II: How to See Things That Aren’t There.”
Skeptical Inquirer, 43(6), 2019, pp. 48-51.
29. Sharps, M.J., S. Nagra, S. Hurd, & A. Humphrey. “Magic in the House of Rain: Cognitive
Bases of UFO ‘Observations’ in the Southwest Desert.” Skeptical Inquirer, 44(5), 2020,
pp. 46-49.
384
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
III
ON WITNESS TESTIMONY
385
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
UFOs: The Role of Perceptual Illusions in the Endurance of an Empirical
Myth
Manuel Borraz Aymerich
Abstract: This paper does not deal with alleged inexplicable UFOs—even though reasons to
seriously doubt their very existence are also briefly addressed—but with explainable UFO
reports existing beyond a shadow of a doubt with massive presence. The uninterrupted flow of
those reports constitutes a worldwide social phenomenon keeping alive the UFO myth, an
empirical myth of our age. Focusing specifically on the role of perceptual illusions, this paper
examines the different types of illusions involved, their incidence in the reported UFO
experiences, and their relevance to the myth’s survival. Popular misconceptions about perceptual
illusions, raising prejudices against explanations implying misperception, are also reviewed to
show their contribution to the myth’s endurance.
Keywords: Social phenomenon, Empirical myth, Cognitive visual illusion, Ambiguous stimulus,
Misconceptions about misperception
Introduction
Throughout history, people have observed “strange things” in the sky. However, since the mid20th century, the sky has become increasingly cluttered by potential things to be seen, owing to
the development of aeronautics and astronautics. The last 75 years have also witnessed the rise
and consolidation of a new trend in western popular culture. Unusual aerial displays are assumed
to relate to each other as part of a unique phenomenon and are suspected to involve
extraterrestrial visitors. Moreover, besides sightings of unknown objects in the sky, alleged
landings of spaceships and even encounters with their crews have been reported. These are the
notions permeating the simple question “Do UFOs (unidentified flying objects) exist?” or the
more revealing “Do you believe in UFOs?” often eliciting responses like “There is something to
it” or “Man is not alone in the universe.”
Is the widespread belief in a so-called “UFO phenomenon” backed by solid evidence? Over the
years, there have been various extensive studies of UFO reports with a rational and pragmatic
approach by official agencies (e.g., USAF Project Blue Book, in 1952–1969; or French civilian
GEIPAN, nowadays) as well as private initiatives (e.g., Allan Hendry’s investigations under the
auspices of CUFOS in the 1970s). Those studies have shared at least one main conclusion: most
UFO reports can be satisfactorily explained by ordinary causes, when enough information is
available.* It implies that, indeed, a real large-scale phenomenon exists, albeit of a social nature,
having the character of a modern myth. This text will focus on this main corpus of evidence
(explained cases) to illustrate the relevance of perceptual illusions in the empirical foundations of
the social phenomenon. Nevertheless, it is worth looking at the alleged anomalistic nature of the
minority of UFO reports remaining unexplained after an in-depth analysis before leaving them
aside.
*
Nowadays, there seems to be a general agreement among ufologists—except the more gullible ones—that 90% or
more of all UFO sightings result in an explanation.
387
III. On Witness Testimony
Some Words on the “Residue”
While extreme believers utterly negate the well-known social dimension of the UFO issue, the
usual conventional approach still disregards the explained reports to concentrate on the
unexplained ones. They try to find the accurate signal amidst the noise, the true UFO
phenomenon at the core. Yet, the significance of the “residue” of unexplained cases is far from
being established.
Firstly, the mere existence of a small percentage of unexplained cases does not prove the
existence of an inexplicable phenomenon. Some explainable UFO files will remain unsolved for
several mundane reasons. However, no way exists to know in advance which cases will remain
unexplained after a proper evaluation task. No analytical shortcuts can anticipate which cases
will add to the “residue,” let alone distinguish hypothetical “true UFOs.” Unexplained cases lack
specific characteristics differentiating them from the explained ones. The “residue” is a
hodgepodge of heterogeneous reports, just like the primary collection of solved files.
According to the above remarks, if there were an unknown phenomenon, it would concern only a
fraction of the already marginal “residue” and should probably be better described as several
unknown phenomena rather than a single one. On top of that, a close look at the social side
reveals that any “true UFO phenomenon” at the heart of the “residue” would be irrelevant to the
popular views on the subject. Because most cases that people consider when thinking about the
so-called UFO problem are actually explained, doubtful, or even fictional, the social
phenomenon can endure and develop without any true anomaly. In this regard, the
aforementioned ufological usual approach leads to a “homeopathic” paradox. Trying to find the
answer in the “residue” while overlooking the social dimension resembles focusing on the
supposed healing properties of ultra-diluted substances and dismissing the placebo effect.
Ultimately, strong reasons exist to dispute the existence of any anomaly and wonder if there is no
signal but only noise. A blatant lack of compelling photographic evidence is present for a
phenomenon primarily involving things seen in the sky. Besides some impressive but fake
photos of spaceships, we have had an endless parade of either readily identifiable images or
useless, poor-quality, blurry shots. Furthermore, photography has contributed to the noise in its
category of UFOs unseen by the photographer and discovered a posteriori in the pictures
(usually, lens flares and other photographic artifacts, as well as images of unnoticed bugs or
birds). While the photographic argument has always been relevant, it has substantially
strengthened nowadays with everybody carrying cameras on their phones—they can take
pictures and videos—and with surveillance cameras everywhere. We are still waiting for
indisputable photographic evidence.
Other types of evidence, including radar detection and physical traces, support UFO reports.
Therefore, among the “residual” cases during the last 75 years, we could expect to find at least a
few examples of “ideal cases,” supported at once by multiple independent witnesses and goodquality photos as well as consistent radar evidence and unmistakable imprints on the ground.
Nevertheless, none exists. Otherwise, we would not still be pondering on ill-defined UFOs but
referring to a newly discovered phenomenon that could then be studied on scientific grounds.
388
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
UFO Reports as a Social Phenomenon
From the outset, many aspects of the UFO issue fall within the scope of human sciences. Topics
like the symbolic dimension of UFOs, their presence in popular culture, the links between
science fiction and UFO lore, the dynamics of UFO cults, the psychological profile of abductees,
the governmental policies on the subject, or even the epistemological status of ufology are some
relevant examples. Scholars addressing such topics often avoid taking a stance on what UFOs
really are, sometimes purposely committed to an exclusively anthropological approach.
However, multidisciplinary research—akin to detective work—allows finding indisputable or, at
least, probable explanations for most UFO files, proving that they constitute a great-magnitude
full-fledged social phenomenon. Consequently, besides the sociocultural imprint of UFO reports
and the usual topics regarding how they are handled and interpreted, those (solved) UFO reports
and how they originate prove to be legitimate objects of study in human sciences.
The UFO narrative in the media, popular magazines on strange phenomena, or books written by
ufologists of all tendencies covers a broad range of stories. Therefore, from the perspective of
human sciences, the study of UFO reports cannot be limited to reports of sightings of
unidentified flying objects. In this context, I propose a pragmatic and inclusive definition of
“UFO report” as follows:
The report of an apparently anomalous observation, experience, or occurrence that, for whatever
reasons, has been directly or indirectly related by someone (observer or experiencer, reporter,
investigator, etc.) to the sighting of Kenneth Arnold of June 24, 1947, and/or to previous or
subsequent reports or stories that have been directly or indirectly related to that sighting.
One can observe that the relationships may be indirect, not relating to factual details but the
interpretation of an event, usually under the widespread extraterrestrial assumption. Thus, for
example, “bedroom invader” experiences (usually ascribable to hypnagogic or hypnopompic
hallucinations) may become related to Arnold’s sighting itself and enter the universe of “UFO
reports,” despite involving no “flying object” and not even an “object.” The same applies to the
finding of peculiar traces in the fields (a “fairy ring” caused by a fungus, for instance), because
the definition considers events or occurrences in general. Note also that old tales, before
Arnold’s sighting (for example, pious medieval legends mentioning mystery lights leading to the
finding of a sacred tomb or a hidden statue of the Virgin Mary), can become “UFO reports”
when mentioned or reproduced nowadays in a ufological context.
An Empirical Myth
Some UFO reports concern rumors, hoaxes, supposed memories retrieved by hypnosis, stories
developed around false memories, and all kinds of unsubstantiated claims. Nevertheless, most
cases have a real experiential basis. They range from entirely subjective experiences (e.g.,
infrequent hallucinations—mainly hypnagogia-related—and rare oneiric episodes) to far more
frequent and typical observations of physical phenomena. The reports reflect the observational
substance with uneven accuracy and varying degrees of distortion, sometimes integrating
spurious nonfactual contents. Still, the fact remains that the UFO social phenomenon has a strong
empirical background. The modern UFO myth does not rely solely on a “tradition” of
bequeathed beliefs, a foundational episode, and occasional claims by specific individuals
pretending to be in contact with aliens. We are facing a genuine empirical myth kept alive by an
uninterrupted worldwide flow of experiences—mostly sightings—since Arnold’s encounter in
389
III. On Witness Testimony
1947. In a sense, UFOs are on everyone’s mind because UFOs are being sighted and reported,
and they are being sighted and reported because they are on everyone’s mind.
What is being sighted and fueling the feedback cycle is quite diverse. We expect to find only
unusual phenomena with which casual observers are unfamiliar, including some exceptional ones
that could perplex even trained observers. A few elaborate pranks played on some witnesses are
also to be expected (although not all the pranks get disclosed or uncovered, some might remain
categorized as high-strangeness unsolved cases). However, in practice, virtually anything may
end up labeled as a UFO, even the most elementary and everyday objects and phenomena.
People are sometimes deceived by a spacecraft’s deorbit burn, a sophisticated drone, a
stratospheric balloon, a parhelion, or a spectacular fireball, and also by a passing satellite, an
ordinary plane, a toy balloon, simple clouds, or even the Moon. How is this possible?
First, we should not overestimate the ability of the average observer to identify commonplace
phenomena. It is usual for witnesses to accurately report a sighting of Venus, just failing to
identify it. Secondly, expectations may play a major role, guiding the observer’s attention and
influencing the interpretation of what is seen, preventing the observer from making a correct
identification. It applies not only to UFO enthusiasts anytime but also to anyone in certain
situations when spotting a UFO becomes a “reasonable” possibility (e.g., when the topic hits the
headlines). It can even be a likely and imminent one (e.g., when a pilot is asked to take a look
around after an alleged UFO has been reported by another aircraft in the area). Physical
conditions affecting the appearance of trivial objects, making them more challenging to identify,
are another factor to be considered. An observer can misinterpret the image of the Moon close to
the horizon when half-concealed by clouds or affected by a mirage. Observational constraints
imposed by the dynamics of the sighting may also hinder its identification. For example, failing
to witness the end of certain events can impede a proper understanding of what was observed.
When an aircraft with landing lights approaches an observer on the ground from a far distance, it
may be misinterpreted as a close, silent, almost stationary, luminous object. If observed for long
enough, the oncoming course, the sound of the engines, and the different lights become more and
more noticeable, facilitating the identification. However, an observer missing that final phase
might not recognize the aircraft. Last but not least, perceptual illusions are a vital aspect of the
issue, as depicted by this last example involving a distant aircraft misperceived as a nearby still
object.
UFO Experiences and Perceptual Illusions
In many UFO reports, the appearance and behavior of the actual observed phenomenon appear
considerably distorted, rendering it unrecognizable. Although mistakes, exaggerations, and
misrepresentations often arise and accrue during the recall phase and the subsequent processes of
collecting and transmitting the information, some anomalous features in the reports can be traced
to the witness’ actual perceptual experience. In those cases where the observer fails to identify an
ordinary object and experiences perceptual illusions, we have, at best, a reliable account of the
observer’s experience but an unreliable report of the original stimulus. Such reports cannot be
completely trusted when trying to identify the observed object. Fortunately, they may include
valuable data to accomplish the identification and, ultimately, clarify what perceptual illusions
were at play. Typical examples are episodes involving regular celestial bodies (e.g., a motorist
“followed” by a bright star) because their position can be accurately calculated for any given
390
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
place, date, and time. Good chances also exist to clarify puzzling reports involving a completely
random and unanticipated stimulus (e.g., a sporadic meteor described by some observers as an
airship with windows) when observed over a wide area by many independent witnesses.
Comparative analysis of all the reports can then be used to reach a more objective view of the
event and isolate the conflicting details appearing in some.
Perceptual illusions in UFO experiences are mainly cognitive visual illusions affecting
perception of objects' motion and shape. A non-exhaustive list follows.
Visual Illusions of Motion
Except for the autokinetic effect, considered a physiological visual illusion, all the illusions
mentioned below have a cognitive character. Most relate to mistaken assumptions and inferences
about distance.
The Autokinetic effect causes a stationary point source of light in a dark sky, with no frame of
reference, to appear to move. Observers may perceive a star moving around erratically * or a
satellite zigzagging instead of following a straight path.
Repeated flashing of a light, like that of a twinkling star, can be taken as a cue of spinning
motion.
Illusions of motion along the line of sight originate from changes in an object’s size or a light
source’s brightness, which the brain interprets as changes in the distance to the stimulus. A
bright planet becoming gradually visible as the sky clears up seems to move closer, whereas the
setting Moon, seen “shrinking” as it hides behind clouds on the horizon, appears to move away.
The opposite situation occurs when an object in motion is perceived as stationary. The observer
may miss the cues denoting the motion when they are weak, as happens for a distant object
following a path identical or close to the line of sight—like in the aforementioned example of the
approaching aircraft with landing lights on. The illusion becomes particularly perplexing when
the observer wrongly assumes that the object is near.
Illusions of motion caused by the observer’s motion depend on whether the distance to the object
is under- or overestimated. A motionless distant object visible to the side of the direction of
travel is overtaken by the traveling observer exceedingly slowly. In contrast, closer objects are
quickly left behind unless they move along with the observer. Therefore, if the observer assumes
that a distant object is much nearer than it is, its “fixed” relative position to the side leads to
inferring that it mimics the observer’s motion—halts and accelerations included. Typical
examples involve motorists and pilots mistaking Venus for a nearby flying object and reporting
having been accompanied, followed, or even chased by it. Figures 1 and 2(a) illustrate this
illusion when the distance is underestimated.
*
Not to be confused with small apparent displacements of stars due to variations in atmospheric refraction.
391
III. On Witness Testimony
Figure 1
A distant still object observed from a moving car (b, d, and f) can be misinterpreted as a close moving object (c, e,
and g). For comparison’s sake, the figure also depicts a close still object observed from a moving car (a).
Figure 2
A still floating object observed from an encircling aircraft can be misinterpreted as a moving object when the
distance is either underestimated (a) or overestimated (b).
392
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
When the above illusion is due to an overestimation of the distance to the object instead of an
underestimation, the perceived object’s motion becomes an inverted version of the observer’s
motion, where the object travels in the opposite direction (see Figure 2(b)). A pilot flying around
a nearby balloon thought to be at a greater distance may experience this illusion and attribute
evasive maneuvers to the object, akin to those encountered in a dogfight episode.
Illusions of motion induced by environmental cues are also worth mentioning. A vivid example is
that of a witness observing a distant stimulus in the sky from two successive places with different
foregrounds: first, the trees of a forest and then a vast plain bounded by faraway mountains. The
observer’s brain can infer that the object has moved away—due to the assumption that it was
first over the nearby trees and later over the background mountains. Another less sophisticated
example is that of stars overhead perceived as lights in motion when seen through moving clouds
that the brain takes for a motionless frame of reference. The effect is even more dramatic if the
observer perceives the “moving” stars as being below the clouds.
Some illusions above can coincide, adding complexity to a sighting. It is the case of the illusory
collision course discerned by a traveling observer when a distant brightening light is assumed
near. This situation combines an illusion of following due to the observer’s motion and another
of approaching along the line of sight induced by the brightening.
Illusory Shapes
Some specific examples follow.
“Airship effect.”* A fraction of witnesses to spectacular fireballs and re-entries of space debris
describes a cigar shape surrounding the string of disintegrating fragments, sometimes interpreted
as windows in a dark aircraft (see Figure 3).
“Rotating saucer” illusion. A row of stationary lights sequentially flashing creates a single
moving light illusion. If the flashing is repeated on a loop, the observer can think that one or
more lights are placed on the circular outer edge of a rotating object—provided that the existing
framework is invisible due to a dark environment. It is precisely the case of night advertising
planes (quite rare nowadays) when spotted from an angle not directly below the aircraft as
intended. That sideways view makes any scrolling text displayed on the electronic billboard
appear as a row of “moving lights” misinterpretable as belonging to a rotating disc. Occasionally,
witnesses even describe the outline of the illusory saucer and some of its features (see Figure 4).
Shape changes, as well as splitting and fusion processes, are typically reported by observers
mistaking the Moon for a nearby mysterious object when the satellite is at low elevation and
clouds partially block the view.†
*
Term coined by William K. Hartmann and applied to UFO reports generated by the re-entry of Zond IV debris on
March 3, 1968.1
†
Changes are determined not only by the motion and evolution of the intervening clouds (not necessarily local
clouds) but also by the own motion of the Moon. Besides, some distortion effects at rising or setting do not relate to
clouds but to atmospheric refraction.
393
III. On Witness Testimony
Figure 3
Sketches of the phenomenon observed from Western Europe on 1978 New Year’s Eve, depicted according to
different witnesses from all over Britain.2,3 It was caused by the re-entry of the third stage of the rocket carrying
Cosmos 1068 into orbit.
Other Illusions
The Moon close to the horizon causes an optical illusion affecting not shape but apparent size.
The so-called “Moon illusion” makes the satellite appear bigger near the horizon. This illusion
and the usual reddish-orange hue of the Moon at low elevation (an atmospheric scattering effect)
suffice to make it an object too big, too strange, and too low to be the real Moon in some
observers’ eyes.
394
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Figure 4
Sketches of misinterpreted advertising planes with flashing night signs observed in Spain in 1982 (upper row)4,5,6
and the USA in the 1970s (four lower rows).7
Other illusions experienced by UFO witnesses are not visual illusions, strictly speaking. For
example, sometimes observers make sense of completely random fluctuations in the light of a
celestial body, as if it responded to their signals or even reacted to their thoughts.
Misconceptions about Misperception
Very few would deny that some UFO reports concern misinterpretations of conventional objects
misperceived by the observers. Nevertheless, few know the extent of such occurrences and how
commonplace and severe misperceptions can be. In the paragraph below, I summarize what I
395
III. On Witness Testimony
think are the most common misconceptions and prejudices about the possibility of UFO
witnesses being misled by misperceived objects:
Some mistakes involving misperceptions do occur, but they probably result in a subset of jumbled
cases of little or no complexity. They would mainly affect lone observers, neither particularly
smart nor experienced, with a prior interest in UFOs and quite knowledgeable about the subject.
Additionally, it would be no surprise that many of them had vision problems. Most cases would
concern either infrequent phenomena or fleetingly seen ordinary ones. A longer duration of
sightings increases the chances of observers becoming aware of any mistake. All things
considered, we are talking about a subset of cases of little significance.
Those views do not paint an accurate and fair picture of the matter, as we will show below by
considering the evidence derived from explained UFO reports. Notably, the evidence accords
with what is already known about perceptual illusions, so we cannot expect the study of UFO
reports to revolutionize perceptual psychology.
“Just Some Cases”
Generally speaking, mistakes involving misperceptions are relatively infrequent in everyday life,
but it does not follow that they must be present only in a limited number of UFO reports. UFO
experiences often involve misperceptions.
Figure 3 depicts the appearance of an aerial phenomenon observed over Britain in 1978—the reentry of the third stage of a Soyuz-U rocket—according to different witnesses. The weirdest
eyewitness accounts—like those illustrated in the upper part of the figure displaying
misperception effects—have a greater chance of being reported as UFO sightings by observers
and be shared in ufological circles. In this 1978 case, we have all kinds of testimonies and an
after-the-fact explanation providing the right context. However, when similar occurrences result
in just one or a few isolated UFO reports, we can expect the weirdest eyewitness accounts to
prevail. To a certain extent, collections of UFO reports are biased assortments of improbable
episodes involving misperceptions.
“A Subset of Jumbled Cases”
Surprisingly, the outcome of mistakes is not necessarily a chaotic scenario. Certain mistakes are
recurrent, thus bringing in some distinct characteristic patterns.
We have already commented on the “airship effect.” Over the years, observers worldwide have
consistently reported a particular type of non-existent windowed aircraft. Because the
fundamental psychological and cultural factors involved do not change (namely, the perceptual
processes at play and the basic idea of a vehicle with windows or portholes), exposure to the
same stimulus (typically, a space junk re-entry) can repeatedly cause precisely the same type of
misinterpretation. A similar example is the above-mentioned “rotating saucer” illusion, triggered
by the view of night advertising planes and—unlike the “airship effect”—heavily influenced by
the flying saucer stereotype. Recurrent patterns also occur concerning behavior, like when
celestial bodies are reported as UFOs pursuing observers or moving away at blazing speed along
the line of sight.
Ironically, UFO believers consider those patterns intrinsic properties of UFOs and solid proof
396
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
suggesting their authenticity because independent observers report the same things.
“Little or No Complexity”
Perceptual illusions such as those listed in the preceding sections can combine to generate
complex, dynamic, and high-strangeness experiences.
Moreover, some wrong inferences arising when the involved stimulus becomes unavailable may
also add to the complexity of the episodes. Some instances include motorists being “chased” by a
bright planet, then losing sight of it while driving through a village, and seeing it again when
leaving the built-up area. The observers become convinced that the UFO went around the village
and waited for them to resume the chase. Sometimes, the initial stimulus completely disappears,
and the observer’s attention is transferred to another stimulus, assuming both are the same UFO.
After losing sight of the bright planet, our motorist would probably think the UFO had landed
when suddenly encountering some eerie-looking lights from a house in the fields when coming
out of a curve.
Both pure coincidences and indirect causal effects can also increase the complexity and
strangeness of UFO experiences. For example, a driver observing a UFO may blame it for a
coincidental interference on the car radio caused by power lines next to the road. In a similar
encounter, the driver can inadvertently stall the car out of nervousness and presume that the UFO
caused the engine to stop. In this last example, the stalling is down to human error—not due to
alleged UFO “electromagnetic effects”—yet indirectly attributable to the UFO sighting.
Nevertheless, all of the above is only half of the story. Before crystallizing in the version
conveyed by the UFO report, the information about the original experience goes through storage
and retrieval stages of memory as well as one or more transmission phases, often involving the
interaction of the observer with other persons (relatives, friends, investigators, journalists, police
officers...). Without going into detail, all these processes may introduce omissions, distortions, or
additions shaping the publicized version of the experience and making it appear even stranger
and more complicated.
“Lone Observers”
Contrary to what some might think, many UFO sightings with multiple witnesses involve
mistakes and misperceptions.
These sighting reports often reflect the views of only some witnesses in a group (sometimes,
only one!), making it difficult to tell how many embraced the UFO interpretation during the
event. In any case, multiple-witness UFO reports show that an observer in a group may conform
to the interpretation held by some or all of the other group members, be it right or wrong.
Individuals may think that the majority opinion can be trusted or just feel compelled to agree,
influenced by their concept of the other persons in the group—determined by factors like
authority, expertise level, or socio-emotional ties. Besides, others’ attitudes and reactions during
the sighting can exert a decisive influence.
While this scenario could seem as implausible as the notion that someone can be persuaded to
view a cat when seeing a moose, real examples are more akin to deciding between a rabbit and a
397
III. On Witness Testimony
hare because they mainly concern ambiguous stimuli. When crew members of an airplane
misidentify Venus on the horizon for an unknown aircraft not far away, they assume a wrong
distance to the light. Once that initial decision is made, what ensues—perceptual illusions,
deductions, reactions—is not intrinsically farfetched but makes sense in that wrong context,
shared by the crew members. Compared to the alternative experience they would have had if
they had assumed a great (astronomical) distance from the start, it is a more mysterious
experience, but not less coherent.
We have stressed above the role of the group—the social factor—in multiple-witness UFO cases.
However, we should not forget that any consensus of interpretation is made possible by
witnesses observing the same stimulus and, eventually, undergoing the same types of perceptual
illusions. Therefore, it is reasonable that UFO sightings involving misperceptions must exist with
multiple independent witnesses, in different locations. We refer again to the examples
concerning the “airship effect” and the “rotating saucer” illusion.
“Not Very Reliable Observers”
The often-repeated claim that UFO reports by qualified observers (civilian and military pilots are
the most-cited examples) are entirely reliable, whereas misidentifications are made only by
observers who are neither particularly smart nor experienced, has been repeatedly proven false.
Perceptual illusions are ordinary and non-pathological processes affecting all humans, including
“top witnesses.”
Pilots differ from many other categories of eventual observers in professional training and
experience. However, interestingly enough, they are particularly exposed to situations
occasionally leading to misinterpreting ordinary stimuli. We are not necessarily referring to
extreme situations setting strong expectations (e.g., the scrambling of a fighter jet to intercept an
unknown target detected by ground radar, later known to be a ghost target) but to more mundane
situations raising concerns about flight safety and, sometimes, causing pilots to overreact. Going
back to the example of a flight crew misidentifying Venus on the horizon for an unknown
aircraft at their level, without a conclusive identification, safety concerns can prevent a pilot
from dismissing the UFO interpretation and thinking of a heavenly body. Moreover, under these
circumstances, the pilot may even take evasive action if Venus becomes much brighter,
interpreting it as a cue of a collision course.*
These are rare occurrences. More frequently, pilots can immediately identify the planet or realize
the mistake while the sighting is in progress. Note that the selective nature of collections of UFO
reports makes this latter type of event invisible. Therefore, we have an incomplete, biased view
of the problem.
It is also worth mentioning that pilots’ UFOs, like everyone else’s, can get bigger, nearer,
stranger, and less ephemeral with time when recounting the stories. Fortunately, sometimes it is
possible to test the reliability of the details when audios or transcripts of air-ground
communications are available.
*
Evasive aircraft maneuvers have been more common in “close encounters” with fireballs and atmospheric reentries of space debris.
398
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
“Acquaintance with UFOs”
Does it take big expectations and much information about UFOs for observers to misinterpret
conventional objects and have UFO experiences? Not necessarily. On the contrary, many cases
suggest that it suffices that observers of unexpected phenomena consider mere UFO notions and
images as those present everywhere around us in news, films, rumors, jokes, and the like.
Thinking of UFOs when seeing something strange is a powerful enough evocative action. It
arouses the notion of “Them”—usually understood as alien intelligent beings—leading the
witness to find purpose in all that the UFO appears to do next. “They come for us” is also a
simple thought. Nonetheless, it can trigger a strong emotional response of fear and even panic.
No need exists to insist on how perceptual illusions and the nature of the misidentified
stimulus—both factors out of the observer’s control, particularly the second one—can largely
determine the features of the experience, once the observer considers the UFO possibility.
“Infrequent Phenomena”
Misidentification occurrences are not confined to sightings of unusual phenomena.
Commonplace phenomena may sometimes deceive people, and, as previously explained,
virtually anything may end up labeled as a UFO.
Incidentally, a fascinating trait of the UFO myth is that, while it began as a “flying saucer” craze
in 1947, it quickly embraced sightings of flying objects of all sorts, including mere lights. As
early as 1948, USAF study Project Sign categorized sightings into four sections: flying disks,
cigar/torpedo-shaped crafts, balloon/spherical crafts, and balls of light. Nowadays, UFO
sightings do not constantly require a flying object (they can refer to a “landed” one), nor even an
object (it suffices, for example, to see a lone being that someone could relate to UFOs). All these
circumstances have dramatically broadened the range of stimuli that can be misidentified as a
UFO or anything UFO-related, boosting the empirical myth. It makes the UFO myth very
different from other more limited, specific, and even geographically-confined empirical myths
(e.g., Big Foot).
“Short sightings”
The notion that UFO sightings involving misperceptions cannot have a long duration—in
particular when they concern ordinary visual stimuli—is based on the assumption that the longer
the duration, the higher the chances of observers becoming aware of any mistake.
Nonetheless, perception of ambiguous stimuli in a ufological context can be approximately
compared to observing a Rubin vase providing two different perceptions, both stable. Only one
of the two mental images can be maintained at a given moment, and the observer’s brain will
stick to that interpretative frame unless it is challenged. It explains why UFO sightings involving,
for example, the Moon—unrecognized by the observers—can last long. Contrary to what it
might seem, witnesses do not have to be transfixed all that time. In some cases, they try to
experiment or interact with the UFO, or leave the observation spot to return later with new
observers and resume the sighting. Notably, trying to put the UFO to the test may reinforce the
wrong perception in some cases. Occasionally, a driver unable to outpace the UFO—in reality,
the Moon—finally decides to stop the car and observe what happens. “Amazingly,” the UFO
stops too, and the observer’s suspicion of being followed and watched is thus “confirmed.” The
399
III. On Witness Testimony
situation is still consistent with a faraway Moon and a nearby moon-like object following the car,
and remains ambiguous if the observer considers this second scenario a real option.
“Little Significance”
Cases of misinterpretation of conventional objects are crucial to the UFO myth’s survival. People
may distrust rumors, be wary of stories sounding fake, and be aware of ordinary phenomena
fooling observers occasionally, yet feel compelled to believe in the kind of UFO reports related
to misperceptions. Those reports usually imply honest, credible witnesses, real personal
experiences, and no apparent explanations—because they only become evident when a detailed
analysis of the information is conducted. Therefore, it is easy to hastily conclude that these
accounts of extraordinary experiences recounted by ordinary people prove that the depicted UFO
encounters were factual. Such reports may lack the epic of contactees’ stories or the appeal of the
inflated tales of UFO crashes; however, they convey authenticity and are considered compelling
pieces of evidence by many, thus nourishing the empirical myth.
UFO Research as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Investigation of UFO reports by UFO believers is usually constrained by misconceptions about
misperception—as illustrated above—along with other factors such as probability illiteracy and a
strong predisposition to take witnesses’ words at face value. The most gullible ufologists do not
even search for reasonable explanations for UFO reports and accuse those doing it of being
debunkers trying to discredit “the UFO phenomenon.”
As stated, collections of UFO reports gather many improbable episodes (extraordinary
experiences involving ordinary misperceptions, unrelated events coinciding by accident, and
mundane things seen under unusual circumstances, among others). However, UFO believers
keep applying standard probability criteria instead of adopting a proper Bayesian approach when
attempting to explain UFO reports. Consequently, they deem accurate explanations impossible
because they find them “too improbable.”
The presumption of truth attached to witness testimony by many ufologists leads them not only
to reject explanations concerning misperceptions but also to regard as unfair any suggestion of
errors in critical data provided by the observer (like date, time, or sighting direction)—even
when such errors appear to be the only and most apparent reason for the failure of the attempts to
solve a particular case.
Misunderstanding and disregarding perceptual illusions result in the early exclusion of specific
scenarios from the array of acceptable explanations for UFO reports. Most UFO believers
presume that pilots cannot mistake Venus for a UFO, and motorists cannot misinterpret the
Moon for a pursuing object.
Ultimately, ufologists’ prejudices and misconceptions transform unexplained UFO reports into
inexplicable ones. The circle is complete, the research becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and
“investigating” UFOs keeps the myth alive.
400
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Conclusion
No definitive evidence of any anomalistic UFO phenomenon exists. Nevertheless, since UFO
reports exist and most of them can be explained, a large-scale genuine “UFO phenomenon”
occurs, albeit of social nature. It has the character of a modern myth linked to the belief in alien
visits. Because the bulk of solved UFO reports has a real experiential basis, we can categorize it
as an empirical myth, kept alive by an uninterrupted worldwide flow of experiences—mainly
sightings—since Kenneth Arnold’s encounter in 1947.
What is sighted is comparatively diverse, from unusual yet non-mysterious phenomena and
elaborate pranks to virtually anything, especially when it is misperceived and, hence,
misinterpreted by the observer. Perceptual illusions in UFO experiences are mainly cognitive
visual illusions affecting perception of objects' motion and shape. Most instances of illusory
motion relate to wrong assumptions and inferences about distance. Some illusions can combine
to generate complex, dynamic, and high-strangeness experiences.
Episodes affected by misperceptions have honest witnesses reporting authentic personal
experiences with no apparent explanations at first sight. Essentially, what we have in those cases
is, at best, a reliable account of the observer’s experience yet an unreliable report of the original
stimulus. Nevertheless, such intriguing UFO reports ooze authenticity and, hastily taken at face
value, become compelling pieces of evidence to nourish the empirical myth.
At the same time, popular misconceptions about misperception, among other prejudices, lead
UFO believers to disregard perceptual illusions as acceptable explanations for UFO reports, thus
reinforcing a myth that is predominantly kept alive precisely by sightings involving
misperceptions.
References (all web articles accessed on Sept. 14, 2022)
1. William K. Hartmann. “Processes of Perception, Conception, and Reporting.” In Final Report
of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects. Edited by Daniel S. Gillmor. New
York: E. P. Dutton & Co. in association with Colorado Associated University Press,
1969, pp. 571-577.
2. J.B. Delair. “Aerial Phenomena over Britain on Dec 31, 1978.” BUFORA Journal, Vol. 10,
No. 1 (1981), pp. 11-21.
3. Manuel Borraz Aymerich. “Meteoros con Ventanillas.” Cuadernos de Ufología, No. 9-10
(1990), pp. 15-24.
https://www.academia.edu/42949504/Meteoros_con_ventanillas
4. Ejército del Aire. Avistamiento de Fenómenos Extraños en Blanes (Gerona): 19 de Agosto de
1982. File No. 820819. Madrid: Mando Operativo Aéreo (1996).
https://bibliotecavirtual.defensa.gob.es/BVMDefensa/es/consulta/registro.do?control=BM
DB20160070712
5. IIEE Team. “Más OVNIS en el Litoral.” Espacio Compartido (IIEE, Barcelona), No. 11
(1984), pp. 30-33.
6. Manuel Borraz Aymerich. “Blanes (Gerona), 19/8/82.” Cuadernos de Ufología, No. 22-23
(1998), pp. 171-176.
https://www.academia.edu/42949461/Blanes_19_8_1982
7. Allan Hendry. The UFO Handbook. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1979, p. 92.
401
III. On Witness Testimony
Calibrating the Instrument: How Reliable Is Eyewitness Testimony?
Thomas E. Bullard
Abstract: UFO reports of low and high strangeness depend on witness reports, but this anecdotal
evidence holds little scientific credibility. From perception to conception, recollection, and
communication, every step in the career of a UFO experience is fraught with risks for distortions
and alterations, exemplified in the 1968 Zond IV reentry and the 1997 Phoenix Lights. Abduction
reports face even worse distortions. Yet most eyewitness accounts stick close to the truth or at least
preserve basic facts even when the observer misconstrues their nature. A test sample of highquality unknowns gathered from trained and experienced “elite” witnesses reveals a consistency
that suggests a unitary anomalous phenomenon as the source.
Keywords: Eyewitnesses, Witnesses, Observational errors, Perceptual errors, Conceptual errors,
Anecdotal evidence, Memory, Narrative creation, Zond IV reentry, Phoenix Lights, High
strangeness and UFOs, UFO abductions, Quality of UFO observations, Quality of UFO observers,
UFO characteristics, UFO best evidence
The Witness Problem
The first, foremost, and foundational instrument of UFO observation is the human witness.
Cameras and radar may assist, other witnesses may corroborate, but the burden usually falls upon
the individual experiencer to describe what happened, and to attest to the world that something
unusual happened at all. Without these witness accounts no other trace would remain, no one
would know that such a thing as UFOs existed. So, no pressure, right?
Sharp differences divide judgments on how worthy the witness really is. At first glance, reliance
on human observers looks like cause for celebration. All of us are these instruments, know how to
use them, trust them, take pride in them. In everyday thinking, if we saw it happen, it really
happened. To hear straight from the mouth of a witness is to get as close to the actual events as
humanly possible without having shared the experience ourselves. In a court of law, hearsay will
not do and only eyewitness testimony counts as most likely to be truthful and trustworthy. When
witnesses state that they have seen UFOs, even these experiences enjoy some benefit of the doubt
because the speakers have standing as first-person sources.
On the other hand, a countercurrent of unfavorable evidence erodes that trust. All humans,
ourselves included whether we admit it or not, are neither impartial nor infallible. The witness may
strive for truthfulness, but along the way from observable event to communicated report, the final
version of the story can, and often will, lose fidelity to the initial occurrence.
To cite a classic example of how much can go wrong, consider a celestial spectacle from the
evening of March 3, 1968. The Soviet Union launched its Zond IV moon probe that day, but it fell
back into the atmosphere over the midsection of the U.S. and broke into several pieces that
incinerated a hundred miles above the earth. Seventy-eight witnesses reported sightings to the Air
Force. There was no question about the time and place of the incident, no doubt about what these
witnesses saw.1 How they saw it is where the story gets interesting.
402
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Zond IV—Fanciful and Factual Versions (redrawn from Project Blue Book). 2
Most witnesses gave faithful descriptions of an elongated cluster of glittering sparks that swarmed
silently across the sky in straight, uniform motion. Some of them even identified the lights as
meteors or satellite reentries. Several witnesses used a misleading term like “formation,” implying
that the lights moved under organized control, when they probably meant that independent lights
traveled the same trajectory but knew no more precise terms to say so. In these observations as in
many others, underestimations of altitude and overestimations of size were commonplace. But a
few submissions distorted the events almost beyond recognition. In one account, a starlike light
barely a thousand feet high grew rapidly larger as it approached. “It was shaped like a fat
cigar…the size of one of our largest airplane fuselages” and “constructed of many pieces of flat
sheets of metal-like material with a ‘riveted together’ look.” “It appeared to have square-shaped
windows along the side….” The windows appeared lighted from inside, and the fuselage emitted
a trail of fire. Another witness said a long object like a jet aircraft without wings rushed by at
treetop level. It had many windows and appeared on fire in front and behind.3
A shared time, place, and position in the sky argue that the Zond reentry provided the sole visual
stimulus, and that the minds of a few witnesses transformed burning fragments into windows on a
solid body close enough to see its nonexistent metal plates. There is no escaping the hard truth that
eyewitnesses are capable of extreme errors at odds with the real events and other observers. This
“ideal” human instrument of observation can alter basic facts until the outcome is largely fanciful,
and without independent knowledge of the true nature of an event, no one might ever distinguish
the true from the false.
Eyewitness fallibility comes as no surprise to psychologists and social scientists. Much research
demonstrates that witnesses to crimes and accidents are often unreliable, that victims’ recall is
impaired by excitement and fear. Witnesses can lie and make honest mistakes; they are subject to
prejudices, desires, expectations, and demands that reshape experience into personal truth that may
differ considerably from historical truth. Because of this flexibility, skeptical scientists dismiss
UFO reports backed only by anecdotal testimony as devoid of scientific value and worthy only of
the scorn they heap on the subject.
How Witnesses Fail
Such blanket dismissal of careful observations by honest observers may cast scientists as arrogant,
but their doubts have a sound basis. The truth behind an experienced event runs a formidable
gauntlet of forces that pick at its integrity, rewrite its facts, and force it to fit personal and social
preferences. This lineup of assailants is long.
403
III. On Witness Testimony
Event and Experience
The event is the thing that really happened, the tree that fell in the forest whether anyone heard it
fall or not, the UFO that flew over the neighborhood while witnesses slept in bed. Awareness of
an event requires evidence—a downed tree, surveillance footage, or a witness. An observer does
not access the truth of the event, only an experience of it. Its nature can be known, like the Zond
reentry, or inferred, if the position of Venus corresponds in time and place to a UFO report; but
often we have only what the witness tells us to work with, and a witness can relate only the
experience, a personal version with an imperfect relationship to the truth.
Unfamiliar Stimulus
Deceptive events surprise the unsuspecting witness when rare sights like a large meteor or satellite
reentry spring into view. The witness might recognize a balloon, mirage, murmuration of starlings,
or searchlight on clouds in one circumstance but see only a mystery in another. A fire balloon at
night, a bright meteor seen head-on, or an advertising airplane at an odd angle can appear quite
weird, so can a familiar sight like navigation lights of a jetliner in receptive eyes. Venus has excited
misidentification time and again when it shines exceptionally bright, passes in and out of clouds,
or fulfills expectations as an airship’s headlight or a UFO. When more than one stimulus crosses
the field of view, a readiness to relate the unrelated poses an even more confusing problem for the
witness. Perceptual orientation, one’s physical and mental situation when called to observe, can
make all the difference between recognition and puzzlement.
Perceptual Errors
When the eye plays tricks, UFOs may result. Autokinesis refers to illusory movements of stationary
objects like a star or planet when viewed against a dark sky. A contrast effect results when a bright
light appears to darken the surrounding background and dims or drowns out the stars as if a dimly
seen mass eclipses them. When the eye connects separate objects into a single perceived form, the
result is a contour illusion. For several separate lights in the night, contour illusion and contrast
effects may combine to create the appearance of a dark body with lights attached. A more complex
illusion-maker is pareidolia, a tendency to see random forms as meaningful objects, like faces in
clouds or the Man in the Moon. In these cases, the perception is true as seen, yet a deception.
Conceptual Errors
The ability to relate a perceived stimulus to known phenomena and thereby identify it qualifies as
an appealing but error-prone capability of the witness. A perception by itself is external energies
impinging on human sensory systems. Close partnership between senses and conceptual abilities
brings form and meaning to what William James described as the “blooming, buzzing confusion”
of raw perception.4 Much of this connection happens without conscious awareness or effort, like
recognition of a line or circle, or distinguishing a cat from a dog. In familiar territory, perception
and conception work together with efficiency and reliability to associate a sensory encounter with
a proper conceptual category, but extraordinary experiences force the conceptual faculties to find
a box for unfamiliar and ambiguous perceptions.
Challenged with a literally unidentified sight, a witness may undertake the escalation of hypotheses
process that J. Allen Hynek applied to UFOs.5 The deliberation begins with common conventional
solutions, and if they fail, broadens to more exotic options, and as last resort, admits a genuine
unknown, a real UFO. Sometimes the witness has a concept already in mind. In 1897, expectations
404
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
of a successful flying machine led witnesses to see Venus and fire balloons as lights on some
inventor’s airship, while the “flying saucer” name suggested a shape for many reports whether or
not the objects really matched that description.
An effort to make sense of an observation is a natural desire best served by retrospection after the
basic facts are nailed down, but a ready source of error in the observational process itself.
Conceptual influences intrude on observation from the start. They may be unconscious at this
stage, their source an established belief, familiar cultural idea, or hypothetical surmise, but a
possibility that seems right in the moment of experience then hardens into an accepted truth that
forecloses further possibilities. A conceptual orientation once fixed in mind becomes a powerful
force to mold observations in its image. It can estrange the ordinary or conventionalize the
extraordinary, also impose requirements that the witness must follow for the sake of consistency,
determining a sort of confirmation bias that favors supportive observational data and overlooks
whatever does not fit—or revises it so that it does. Wrong concepts impose what is supposed to
happen onto the observation of what did happen to corrupt the very facts of an experience.
Memory
The moment an event passes, God alone knows what really happened. All the witness has is a
memory. Remembered events do not store away like photographs or replay like a mental videotape
but, according to researchers, return to awareness in an active reconstructive process that mixes
facts, concepts, and interpretations to create a version of the experience as the witness knows it,
not as the event really was. Some facts are forgotten, pseudo-facts added, and all memories
structured according to conceptual demands, in processes that leave truth the worse for wear.6-7 A
fresh memory may lie closest to the truth, but it is never finished. Modifications continue as second
thoughts, new information, and social pressures interact with the materials of memory to create a
version new in some respects. Sometimes the creation is literally new, a false memory of events
that never happened or so distorted that they no longer resemble the parent event. Memory
variations may be great or small, but not even “flashbulb memories” left from the day of John
Kennedy’s assassination or the Challenger disaster are immune to change when recalled.8-9 The
variants may circle around a core of truth but always at some distance removed.
Reflection, Interpretation, Understanding
Efforts to understand and interpret an anomalous experience begin on the wing, amid the
excitement and uncertainty of the experience itself. On-the-spot decisions about what is happening
and why help shape how the witness remembers the experience, but the witness has a chance to
review the facts later, to question initial impressions with a cooler head. Yet the remembered facts
are no longer historical but personal, entangled with concepts, beliefs, and motives of the witness.
The interpretation and understanding of a memory determine its future—realize you saw Venus
and maybe the experience is not worth mentioning, or worse, should not be because you may look
foolish; but if you saw a UFO, you might have a good story. Not truth alone but other uses and
interests steer the memory’s fate.
Communication
Sooner or later most witnesses of unusual events want to tell their story. They must first have a
story to tell, and it calls for more than a recitation of facts. The aspiring narrator must verbalize
personal memories in an account that is at least comprehensible and at best entertaining. An
405
III. On Witness Testimony
inherently strange experience multiplies the difficulties. Words should picture events, but
inadequacies of vocabulary may convey an inaccurate image. The story must order events in a
meaningful sequence, even if the narrator must improvise or interpret to compensate for
inexplicable parts and his own confusion. Some details get lost or misrepresented in the process,
others added for clarity, still more for support of the narrator’s opinions and understanding, to suit
his or her personality, or even to project a desired self-image.
A story’s debut on the public stage transforms private experience into communal property. To
reach this point it has conformed to narrative and social requirements and compromised its
authenticity for the sake of intelligibility and appeal. Beyond this threshold a personal experience
starts a new life as secondhand information. Once told, the story becomes a subject for the hearers
to receive, digest, and retell in individual ways, according to their own ideas, beyond the control
of the witness and without the eyewitness experience as an ultimate point of reference. The words
will hold different shades of meaning, the described events different understandings, and the
assigned interpretations different degrees of credibility for every recipient.
The changes that befall a narrative when it passes from person to person have attracted the interest
of psychologists, sociologists, and folklorists. Experiments on story transmission identify selection
processes of leveling, whereby less important details diminish; sharpening, wherein narrators
select important, striking, or interesting details to emphasize; and assimilation, choices and
changes that shape the story to the hearer’s beliefs, expectations, interests, and agendas. Social
pressures bear on the narrator to respect norms and the audience to enforce them. The outcome is
a shorter, tighter story that stresses the dramatic, emotionally gripping aspects and rationalizes
unfamiliar or confusing content. Gain in satisfaction and appeal come at the expense of lost
faithfulness to the source. Each recipient responds to a story with approval, enthusiasm, criticism,
or doubt, and unless the reaction is disinterest, then passes it on to other receptive individuals.
These like-minded persons form a transmission conduit that preserves and propagates their favored
version, augmented with discussions, disputes, and adaptations to personal and group needs. The
truth of the story comes to depend less on the experience of the witness and more on the shared
preferences of the various factions that foster their chosen versions of the story.10-11
The Scribes
Some of the audience not only listen but record the story in written or audiovisual form. This
record preserves the story at a moment in its history and persists as a reference for readers to
consult and—ideally—get their facts straight. While a fixed text curbs some freedom to improvise,
it also disseminates a version compromised before it was ever written down. Novices seeking to
educate themselves may trust any UFO book or website to present the official history of a case,
but these sources vary greatly in their reliability, and their writers seldom act as disinterested
historians. Journalists may have no further agenda than to report newsworthy events, though they
may sensationalize UFO stories for the sake of entertainment. The best UFO researchers and
skeptical investigators may dig into the story, even interview the source, in honest efforts to
recover the facts, though they too may listen with biased intent. Much UFO literature has less to
do with finding truth than with promotion of special interests, the authors blinded to any evidence
but the supporting kind or even determined to slant the story so that it serves personal and audience
beliefs. Reader beware—just because you read it in a book, it is not gospel truth.
406
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Today’s multiple channels of mass communication—published, televised, Internet, and social
media—raise the bully pulpit for influencers to promote chosen images, expectations, and
understandings. These channels give big voices to popular authors and media figures. These people
acquire name recognition, a following, an aura of authority and expertise; their versions and
opinions carry disproportionate weight among an audience of millions. Modern media open a
cyber-forum for participants to share experiences and fantasies, to discuss beliefs and dispute
ideas; they also close participants in an echo chamber for persuasion or pressure to conform to the
group’s beliefs and shut out alternative views. Who even needs Wi-Fi to connect with the influence
of UFOs? Their memes have soaked into popular culture with near-universal awareness, many
from movies and TV series where some stories are entirely fictional and some based on fact but
partly fictionalized, like the cases in History Channel’s Project Blue Book. UFO experiences have
shaped modern culture. In return, a cultural script has lodged in our heads to prepare us, should we
ever experience a UFO, with preconfigured ways to see, think, and talk about it.
The Phoenix Lights: An Example of Error Possibilities Realized
The perils that befall a UFO report make for dull reading in the abstract, but they come to life when
the consequences are seen in action, and no more vivid example unfolds than the Phoenix Lights
of March 13, 1997. Billed as the biggest mass sighting of all time, as many as ten thousand
witnesses, including the governor of Arizona, watched an enormous UFO cross the heavily
populated central corridor of the state that evening. Or was it two UFOs, or five, or more? A chorus
of many witnesses led to a cacophony with much to teach about the foibles of eyewitness
testimony.12
A warm clear night drew Arizonans out of doors, many to look at the Hale-Bopp comet then
prominent in the sky. Just past 8 p.m. a triangular group of five lights passed Prescott then swung
south toward Phoenix, some 120-130 km. away. As the lights departed Prescott, Phoenix resident
Tim Ley and family spotted five starlike lights floating low in the northwest, enlarging and
spreading into a “V” configuration as they approached. Ley suspected military helicopters, but the
lights maintained too perfect a pattern for separate aircraft. In minutes, with the lights less than 2
km. distant, he saw that a dark V-shaped body carried the white lights, one at the tip and two on
each arm. One light appeared to split in two for a moment. Sharp edges of the object showed
against the stars as it passed directly overhead, silent though only 30 m. high as it traveled at a
leisurely 50 km./hr. And it was enormous—each arm 210 m. long, so wide he turned his head from
side to side to take in the whole. It passed over the city and disappeared to view in the haze and
lights after more than 15 minutes of observation.
Confirmations came from many independent witnesses. The governor described a massive, silent
delta-shaped craft with lights embedded in its leading edge. Witnesses across Phoenix and its
suburbs spoke in awe of a black boomerang 1.6 km. wide and outfitted with five lights. There were
also differences: increases and decreases in the number of lights, a few diamond or rectangle
shapes. One account described a 1.6-km.-wide disk that reflected ground lights off its underbelly,
another told that a black triangle 3.2 km. wide with dozens of lights and silhouettes of human
figures in the windows swept low overhead. The most persistent alternatives denied any
connecting structure as witnesses insisted that the lights were independent, confirmed for some
when they saw a light break formation, drop behind, then catch up again.
407
III. On Witness Testimony
The sightings lasted until about 8:45. Local news of the events broke almost immediately so that
many people were on the lookout at 10 o’clock when a second UFO event occurred. A curving
line of nine bright lights burst into view in the southwest and hung low in the sky before the lights
blinked out one by one. While only one video recorded the 8 o’clock UFO, several witnesses
videotaped the 10 o’clock event, which later played on national TV with spectacular views that
became synonymous with the Phoenix Lights. The experience etched a deep impression in the
memory of witnesses. Many dug in their heels against efforts to conventionalize the event, some
thought it was alien, some regarded it as a life-changing, even spiritual experience.
Ufologists first accepted all reports that night as part of a unitary Phoenix invasion and interpreted
different descriptions as evidence that seven types of UFOs had converged on the city. Later
reflection narrowed the field to two events, the big triangular craft at 8 and the arc of lights at 10.
Both ufologists and sceptics found that the 10 o’clock lights issued from the direction of a military
proving ground and, after initial denials, the Air Force admitted that National Guard aircraft had
jettisoned unused flares at that place and time. Some skeptics concluded that flares explained all
the events, leading to general indignation among witnesses and a conspiracy theory that Air Force
planes dropped the flares in a calculated attempt to discredit the UFO sightings.
Holdouts continued to believe the 10 o’clock lights were UFOs, but attention shifted to the earlier
sightings as the true Phoenix Lights mystery. The Air Force dismissed the event as a formation of
aircraft, but most UFO proponents closed ranks around the thrilling narrative of a giant V-shaped
spaceship over a major city. But local reporter Tony Ortega supported the Air Force explanation,
citing an amateur astronomer whose telescope revealed the lights attached to aircraft, and several
witnesses with military and aviation backgrounds who confirmed this identification. Simple
calculations of flying time from Prescott to Phoenix gave a speed of 480-640 km./hr. for the lights,
in other words, typical cruising speed for jets. A conventional solution for the 8 o’clock sightings
is overwhelmingly persuasive: Five military aircraft flew in a V-formation at 6,100 meters with
their landing lights shining between Prescott and Phoenix, perhaps a little beyond. We know what
the Lights were even if the witnesses did not. We know what they saw, what they could and could
not see. The author gathered 128 published accounts to investigate the differences between
witnesses and their reports and bases the following results on this sample.13
Most witnesses agree on several basic facts—they saw five lights according to 68% of witnesses
who provided a number, in a triangular pattern (87%), and headed southward (79%). Those few
accounts with extreme idiosyncratic descriptions—a truck driver watched lights for two hours as
he drove toward Phoenix, another witness saw lights move in right angles and circles—are mostly
single-witness and probably describe objects unrelated to the mainstream Lights.
Only one significant issue divides the witnesses: One group reported a solid structure bearing lights
(37%), the other reported only the lights (54%). Those who reported a structure assert they saw it
with their own eyes; those who did not gave reasons that they had a good look but saw no
connecting framework, saw stars between the lights, or saw independent movements among the
lights. No matter how the witnesses interpreted their observations, their descriptions converge
toward the same general picture, a mainstream account likely to reflect observational facts. These
same descriptions also fit an overflight of aircraft with considerable fidelity. The fact that no
408
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
witness reported both the solid craft and the formation of lights in view at the same time or in close
succession adds telling evidence in favor of a single source.
Estimates of height, speed, and size missed the mark, as usual. Though a consensus held that the
UFO was large, how large ranged from the size of a football field (91 meters) to kilometers. Every
guess at altitude set it low, rarely as high as 1.6 km., and the speed as blimp-like. In fact, the aircraft
were several kilometers high and their apparent slowness was due to distance. Few witnesses
checked a clock at the time of sighting, but fifty-seven out of 102 cases with some indication of
time (56%) fall within a few minutes of the expected time of passage for landing lights on their
course across the state.
The V-shaped craft owed its nonexistence to a combination of contrast effect and contour illusion.
Landing lights on the jets outshone starlight and dimmed or blotted out the stars, an appearance
interpreted as an opaque or translucent object that crossed in front of them. The contrasting fields
of darkness beyond the lights created an illusion of connection that converted open spaces between
the jets into the appearance of a massive framework. Those who reported a vast and solid craft
gave honest accounts of what they saw, but the observations were illusory.
As they watched, witnesses formed concepts that shaped their understanding and their
observations. Tim Ley rejected his first thought of military aircraft when he failed to see the
independent movement he expected. The illusion of a solid object and the concept of a V-shaped
craft may have led him to overlook the implications when a light appeared to divide. With his
understanding already in place, the incident meant nothing more than an odd detail. Other
witnesses understood the event as a jet dropping out of formation and proved to their satisfaction
that the lights had no physical connection. The witnesses in nine cases saw a lagging light and read
it as an independent UFO breaking formation, while three others thought that the light exited or
detached from a triangular craft then returned, as a scout to the mother ship, in examples of an
observation rationalized to fit a concept.
No sooner did the news media take notice than they began to shape individual stories into a
coherent and influential narrative. It often entangled the 8 and 10 o’clock events to leave the false
impression of a single event, with the videos as persuasive support. The media narrative also
played up the most sensational attributes of the Phoenix Lights, often with emphasis on Tim Ley’s
eloquent account and iconic illustration to popularize the image of a giant V-shaped craft as “what
really happened” that night. This version left no doubt that the Lights represented an alien visitation
without having to say so outright; this same version appealed to UFO proponents who joined the
pro-UFO witnesses as stout defenders. Eyewitnesses to the “spaceship” needed no further
persuasion than their own experience, just as witnesses convinced that the lights acted
independently had to reject the craft, even if they regarded the lights themselves as UFOs. In
between stood witnesses who saw lights but lacked commitment to their nature. The memories of
these people remained pliant, vulnerable to the proponents’ pressures, the media’s authority, and
the allure of popular images to push ambiguities aside until possibility crystallized into certainty.
A comparison of reports that went on record soon after the sightings and those delayed for years
offers some evidence that publicity did tip the scales. Witnesses reporting a solid object increased
from seventeen in 1997 to twenty-seven in later years (32% to 38%); reports of separate lights
409
III. On Witness Testimony
grew only from thirty-three to thirty-six over the same period, for a percentage decline from 63%
to 51%. Reports of the Lights in a V or triangle increased slightly from 75% to 79%. The trends
are minor, but their direction suggests that the well-circulated image of a boomerang craft
encouraged more witnesses to report this type of sighting, or to conform their reports to these
expectations. Another trend shows that more latecomer reports bear questionable relationships to
the mainstream Phoenix Lights. Ten cases in 1997 differed radically in time, location, or
description, twenty-four followed 1997 (19% to 24%). Perhaps publicity convinced witnesses of
odd sights that what they saw belonged with the Lights, or perhaps some people just sought
vicarious participation in this exciting and famous event.
The Phoenix Lights story drew interest from well beyond the eyewitness population. One
community of belief committed to the reality of a UFO visitation, the other to a conventional
solution. Each side defended its ground and gathered supporters, welcomed confirmations and
cold-shouldered the rest. The proponents have enjoyed an edge in excitement and to this day treat
the lights as an event of momentous significance. Some people claim alien spacecraft continue to
haunt the city. Rumors that fighter jets pursued the Lights, that a private plane passed above a
mile-long craft that blotted out lights on the ground, contribute to an aura of wonder that surrounds
the story. Writers and ufologists sometimes elevate this case to best-evidence status despite the
negative evidence. A new story has supplanted the messy one told by the witnesses, a communal
version with inconvenient facts omitted, the most dramatic aspects emphasized, and the meaning
defined as alien visitation. This collective creation blends individual stories and elements preferred
by the intended audience into a generic version widely known and oft repeated, but unfaithful both
to the experiences of any one witness and to the implications of the total testimony. True to wishes
but false to evidence, this version proves only the human will to believe.
High Strangeness
All UFO observations discussed so far have been of the ordinary sort—strange but still within
bounds of the everyday. The subject relates to the object in the same way as any witness with all
faculties intact observes a passing car, airplane, or bird. But examples of “high strangeness” have
also accumulated in the UFO literature, cases where UFOs vanish, beams of light bend like solid
material, and entities pass through solid walls like ghosts, defying both the laws of physics and
common sense. The UFO abduction experience tops the chart for not only subjecting witnesses to
mind-bending experiences, but for tampering with their minds as well. When we enter the realm
of high strangeness, we are not in Kansas anymore.
The phenomena of abduction reports encompass many aspects of high strangeness. A sleeper
awakes unable to move, shadowy humanoids float her out of the house and into a spaceship. A
pervasive silence like a vacuum descends on a motorist, his car stops, all traffic ceases, and
surrounded by this Oz Effect, he levitates into a UFO. In a fluorescent room the beings subject the
helpless captive to a bizarre medical examination and instill thoughts by staring into his or her
eyes, often images of mass destruction or an idyllic paradise. Returned to the everyday world, the
captive realizes a period of missing time and fears certain sights and situations but remembers the
forgotten encounter only through flashbacks, nightmares, or hypnosis. UFO abductions compare
in some respects to kidnap by fairies, journeys to the underworld, and shamanic initiations. They
mingle the real and the surreal as they leave marks, cuts, and muddy feet yet escape independent
observation or fail to wake a spouse asleep in the same bed.
410
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
The kneejerk first response dismisses abductees as crazy, liars, dreamers, deluded, anything but
normal and reliable witnesses. Yet psychological tests demonstrate that they are not psychotic,
though they may exhibit characteristics of having suffered a traumatic experience. They are often
high functioning, accomplished, intelligent, educated people and one is a Nobel Prize-winning
scientist. Abductees represent a cross-section of society out of the ordinary only insofar as they
report an extraordinary experience.14
For the skeptics who regard these stories as fantasies, the real author is not the abductee but the
investigator, whose efforts to recover repressed memories by hypnosis instead create imagined
ones. Research into memory processes, much of it carried out in connection with the 1980s
epidemic of unfounded sexual and ritual abuse claims, discovered abundant evidence that
hypnotist and subject can confabulate elaborate stories of events that never happened. Suggestions
to remember what the investigator wants to find combined with the now-familiar content of UFO
abductions plant the idea, repetitive reinforcement solidifies false memories until they feel as real
as genuine memories. If the subject is susceptible to suggestion and already interested in UFOs,
so much the better; and if the subject has a fantasy-prone personality, the resulting story can
emerge as a masterpiece of creative imagination.15
Another path to becoming a mistaken abductee is sleep paralysis. The experience of wakening
unable to move and hallucinating a terrifying intruder, recognized in many cultures but nameless
in America, is rare enough to leave most victims grasping for an explanation and finding UFO
abduction as a suggestive possibility.16 Then there is Lewy Body Dementia, most common but not
limited to older adults, wherein vivid hallucinations may take the form of small or childlike entities
with large black eyes and so lifelike that conversations ensue. Nightmares, hallucinations, fugue
states, and other possibilities of subjective origin arm skeptics with ample ammunition to attack
the literal reality of abductee accounts.17
A defense for objectively real UFO abductions is a hard case to argue. Implausible on the surface,
without firm evidence in hand, with less radical psychological solutions available, the story leans
heavily on the testimony of abductees just when their credibility as witnesses seems most
questionable. Not that their honesty or sincerity is at stake, but the reality of their accounts certainly
is. The possibility of a physical event has circumstantial support like Barney Hill’s scuffed shoes
and broken binocular strap, multiple-witness cases, and a coherence in the narrative that predates
widespread public awareness; but this evidence is flimsy compared to the likelihood that
suggestion, confabulation, false memories, and cultural influences not only shape the stories
abductees tell, but even put the words they speak into their mouths.
When abductions exploded on the ufological scene in the 1980s, they dazzled proponents with a
promise to validate everything they believed about UFOs. Indisputable evidence seemed within
grasp, after years of accumulating thousands of ambiguous sightings that always fell short in some
way. By the late 1990s, failure to deliver had tarnished the shine and cleared the sight of those
willing to look. What they saw was that a claim as fantastic as alien abduction stood no chance of
scientific acceptance when ufologists could not even satisfy official science that UFOs existed.
411
III. On Witness Testimony
On the principle that it is better to start at the bottom than the top, abductions and all highstrangeness cases qualify as overreach. Is the strangeness inherent in the events? Does it represent
magical technology or encounters with paraphysical phenomena? If so, can witnesses perceive,
much less understand, what is going on as free observers, or are human senses inadequate, human
interpretations completely off base, the human mind itself impaired by outside control? Or is it all
just a well-promoted assemblage of extreme misperceptions and misconceptions? A final judgment
requires learning more about high-strangeness cases, more about the experiencers, and more about
how to separate objective from subjective experience; but for now, the most reliable witnesses and
the most substantive UFO cases reside at the low end of the strangeness spectrum, where all the
anomalousness belongs to the UFO and most of it seems physical in nature. Here lies the most
accessible evidence for UFOs, and here belongs the foundation for study of the rest.
The Good News About Witnesses
While cases of extreme error stand out like rare and gaudy birds in a flock of starlings, sure to
arrest attention and stick in memory, they fall far outside the norm. Reports of the Zond reentry
contained a few wild deviations and some lesser errors in estimated quantities and word usage; but
accurate reports of a group of lights, silence, movement, and identity as reentry fragments or
meteors were far more common. Most reports remained faithful to observable facts even when
witnesses misinterpreted them. The Phoenix Lights divided witnesses between a V-shaped craft
with five lights and five separate lights in V formation, but everyone saw lights and most saw five
in a V pattern. Even reports of deviant configurations may accurately describe the formation
flattened in appearance by a low angle of view. Even when distorted and misidentified, the factual
sights repeated in almost every mainstream account, even down to the light that jogged out of line,
however the witnesses understood it.
The Zond and Phoenix cases uphold rather than demolish everyday trust in eyewitness testimony.
Despite the suddenness and excitement of a UFO encounter, against preconceptions, agendas, and
pressures, most witnesses in two mass sightings demonstrate reliability in reports of observable
features and a dependable lack of reliability when reckoning size, altitude, and speed. Here is a
finding worth repeating: Witnesses of UFOs make good observers, with reservations. They see
something, they register the visible facts in their awareness, and they convey those facts in their
reports. Witnesses are never perfect, but if error sometimes corrupts the facts of a UFO
observation, it rarely destroys them, and true interpretations often win out over false.
To Trust or Not to Trust
If UFO witnesses can be accurate observers, their anecdotal evidence is not the junk hard science
condemns, but the question shifts to when they are accurate. Scientists can rely on their instruments
to provide a sound basis for research. Ufologists too want trustworthy answers but face two
unknowns—the UFOs they wish to explore and the uncertainties of the data with which they work.
Since anecdotal testimony usually provides the only UFO evidence, throwing it away is not an
option; but ufology’s data serve little purpose without some way to distinguish who relays facts
from who obscures them. No one can read minds or turn back time to share the experience. We
can anticipate errors in estimates of size and when common illusions play their tricks, or we can
take warning when two witnesses look at the same UFO and describe it in opposing ways; but in
most cases a decision on who to trust ends up as a personal choice, a flip of a coin, or an application
of Occam’s Razor.
412
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Another approach combines two “bests”—best reports and best witnesses—to work around the
trustworthiness dilemma and secure an improved UFO sample for research. Hundreds of thousands
of reports have entered the records since 1947 and some of them must describe real UFOs, if any
real UFOs exist. Genuine UFOs are rare and reports informative enough to be useful are rarer still;
but winnowed from the reams of mistaken identities and concentrated into a doubly refined sample,
these UFOs offer researchers the most promising materials to recognize, collate, and study for
traits of a unique phenomenon.
A two-pronged approach to collect a UFO-enriched sample starts with cases already rated as likely
unknowns. Military and government agencies, reputable UFO organizations, investigators, and
writers have gathered promising cases that defy conventional identification. These reports need to
be rich in information, full of descriptive details. Each report must have reliable provenance—
known sources, identifiable witnesses, accounts in the witnesses’ own words. Essential to establish
the quality of a case is an investigation by trustworthy and qualified parties who can gather facts,
interview witnesses, and judge both the reporters and the events reported. Each case should face a
trial by critics who search for conventional solutions, checking for Venus in the right position,
meteors, reentries, and the like; and only if the case passes these tests should it count as worthy.
Witness quality adds a second standard for desirable reports. Most UFO cases are single-witness
and rank lowest for reliability. Two or more witnesses are better and best of all are multiple
independent witnesses whose reports can be cross-checked for concurrencies and idiosyncrasies.
The reliability of witnesses is important—do they have a reputation for honesty and good standing
in the community, does the investigator consider them honest, serious, competent, mentally stable,
conscientious to communicate a strange experience as best they can, and not engaged in a hoax?
Two other characteristics boost witness value: One is training, experience, education, or profession
when it equips them to be better than average observers and interpreters of observations. The other
is a job or circumstance that places them in a favorable position to observe. People who fit one or
both categories include military—pilots, air traffic control, guards, and sentries; civilian aviation
personnel—airline pilots, ground control, airport workers, and private pilots; scientists and
engineers—astronomers, meteorologists, and aviation engineers; law enforcement officers—
police, sheriffs, border patrol; lookouts and observers—forest fire lookouts, ships’ watches,
weather observers, the Ground Observer Corps. These groups comprise an elite among witnesses,
responsible, vigilant, often familiar with the sky and aerial phenomena, prepared to make calm and
informed observations of an unfamiliar sight. Their qualifications raise the trust issue from the
individual to a more practical collective level.
Even the best observers make mistakes, like airline pilots fooled by a meteor, or police led on a
chase by a bright star. Some cases now inexplicable may yield to new information or investigation.
Ufologists cannot hope for a perfect sample, only a better one with an enhanced ratio of unknowns
to IFOs and a better chance to identify patterns and consistencies of a possible UFO phenomenon.
The cases reported by elite observers and surviving all challenges to their unknown status present
the most promising sample for researchers in this imperfect world.
413
III. On Witness Testimony
Putting Theory into Practice
The author undertook a small study to see if high-quality observers of unknown flying objects
provide evidence for consistent UFO characteristics.18 The sample consists of 697 unknowns and
102 IFOs reported by seven observer groups: military personnel (air, ground, and air + ground),
civilian aviation personnel (air and ground), scientists and engineers, and lookouts. Sources for
reports include Project Blue Book unknowns, NICAP yearly chronologies, NARCAP, the Condon
project, and a study of UFO experiences among forest fire lookouts.19-22 The reports are worldwide
though primarily U.S., and dates range from 1943 to 2015. These cases reflect selection bias in
favor of rich information, known investigation, daylight or twilight hours (52%), multiple
witnesses (70%), and duration of one to ten minutes (31%).
Important Content Features
The study tracked thirty-three elements of appearance and behavior that recur in reports by the
seven witness groups. The percentages are averages for all groups:
Description
The flying saucer or disk shape is the most common (37%), followed by round (sphere or disk
seen at a high angle) (20%), light (20%), cigar or cylinder (14%), and triangle (7%). The most
common colors are metallic or silvery (26%) and white (24%). Structural features like windows,
domes, and fins are scarce (16%).
Size and speed
These estimates may improve among military and airline pilots thanks to their training and
experience, while balloon trackers and weather observers sometimes have the aid of theodolites.
Only half of the sample reports provide figures for size and speed. The given sizes favor ten-100
feet (21%), more than 100 feet (16%) and less than ten feet (8%). Speeds are fast (supersonic or
more, 24%), moderate (200-750 mph, 15%), and slow (less than 200 mph, 6%).
Maneuvers
Two-thirds of the cases mention UFO maneuvers, and in 20% characterize the actions as
exceptional, using terms like “dogfighting,” “like nothing I’ve ever seen,” or “flew circles” around
a jet. The UFOs climb or descend (32%), change direction (38%), sometimes at right angles or in
circles and U-turns with a radius too tight for an aircraft. Zigzags, falling-leaf movements, spins,
rolls, and flutters occur at lower percentages.
Three maneuvers are especially noteworthy: 1) Fast stop-and-go (25%). The UFO flies at high
speed, stops suddenly, hovers, then whizzes off again. 2) High variability in speed (23%). The
UFO suddenly accelerates or decelerates up, down, or side to side, at speeds impossible for aircraft
or human pilots to survive. 3) Fast departure. After engagement with an aircraft or an object on
the ground, the UFO accelerates from a dead stop or pacing speed to tremendous velocity and out
of sight in seconds, headed straight up, away at an angle, or off toward the horizon. Examples of
this maneuver are certain or probable in 44% of cases, no or probably not in 24%, and not observed
or not reported in 25%. In the remaining 7%, the UFO blinks out or vanishes, though whether the
lights go out, the object physically disappears, or it speeds out of sight in a literal blink of an eye
remains uncertain.
414
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Purposeful actions (?)
Some activities lend themselves to subjective interpretation as deliberate. Military and civilian
pilots most often report these events, which nearly halves the sample to 331 cases; and of these,
26% interpreted fast, head-on, or close approaches as threatening behavior, 24% said that a UFO
paced, trailed, or pursued their aircraft, and 21% believed that a UFO turned away or fled as they
attempted to approach it. Smaller percentages from both air and ground witnesses attributed
curiosity, purpose, or “showoff” displays to UFOs.
Comparisons Among the Witness Groups
Taking the total averages for each of the thirty-three content features as benchmarks, the groups
of elite witnesses agree with no more than 10-20% variation in 135 out of 231 (7x33) possibilities.
The smallest group (Military Air-Ground) deviates the most, and speed estimates also go astray,
but the general picture is one of consistency. Some features are familiar and expected, like the disk
shape, but others are not, yet they still recur.
UFOs vs. IFOs
A sample of 102 cases from the same lists as the UFO sample provides comparison of UFOs with
conventional objects mistaken for UFOs. These identified flying objects originate with the same
high-quality observers as the UFOs and contain similarly rich information. Some of them are
famous, but fame does not make facts, and these cases have what the author considers plausible
conventional explanations. Compared to the 697 UFO reports, the IFOs post lower averages for
most features but higher averages for “undesirables” like long or short duration of sightings and
absence of maneuvers. A clear pattern of difference separates the two samples.
Best cases
100 reports selected from the 697 sample represent the “best cases,” those that the author considers
the most promising examples of a genuine UFO phenomenon. When compared with the 697,
almost all “positive” features increase, like disks, maneuvers, and fast departures. The selection
criteria for the “best” sample favor multiple witnesses, independent witnesses, and a moderate
duration, but descriptive indicators of an unconventional phenomenon grow as well.
Fast-departure sample
100 reports that include the fast-departure maneuver surpass the 697 sample averages for every
positive feature, and closely parallel the best-case sample, though with slightly fewer disks and
fast speeds, slightly more medium size and slow-fast maneuvers, and, of course, fast departures.
If fast departure corresponds to a true earmark, it suggests the other prominent features within the
sample are true, while the near match between this sample and the best-case sample lends mutual
support for these features. Here, then, elite witnesses introduce some strong candidates for ways
real UFOs look and act.
A graph sets these comparisons side by side, with eleven features expressed as percentages for the
IFO, 697, Best Cases, and Fast Departure samples. The features left to right are: 1) One to tenminute duration, 2) Disk, 3) Metallic, 4) White, 5) Medium size, 6) Fast, 7) Maneuvers (any), 8)
Up-down maneuvers, 9) Hover, 10) Slow-fast maneuvers, 11) Fast departure.
415
III. On Witness Testimony
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
IFO
1-10 min.
Disk
697 Av.
Metallic
White
Med. Size
Best cases
Fast
Mnvrs
Up-down
Fast depart
Hover
Slo-fast
FD
Table 1: Comparison of Select UFO Features in Four Samples
Source: Bullard, “UFOs in Practiced Eyes” (forthcoming).
The graph reveals across-the-board differences between IFOs and UFOs, and enrichment in certain
earmark features for the select samples in comparison with the 697 unknowns. This study suggests
that witness quality matters, that witness qualifications make a difference and deserve treatment
as a significant variable. Crude as it is, the study also hints that something more than human error
underlies a small remainder of UFO reports. Remove the clearly conventional, forget the lights in
the night that leave little to judge, and consider only the carefully observed and described reports
of qualified witnesses, and a pattern begins to emerge among these unknowns. The witnesses
include test pilot and future Mercury astronaut Deke Slayton, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, and
legendary aviation engineer Kelly Johnson, along with half a dozen of his fellow Lockheed test
pilots and engineers. The stories themselves are anecdotal but strong, detailed, and confounding.
If any eyewitness evidence deserves consideration, these reports do.
Does a distinctive UFO phenomenon exist? Maybe the unknowns amount to a heap of oddball
leftovers, unrecognized natural events and unresolved human errors dumped by scientists as trash
but embraced by ufologists as treasure. If the reports represent an accumulation of junk, they
should reflect the randomness of their origins, but this little study shows something more. Rather
than scatter far and wide, the reported features converge and gain in frequency as sample and
witness quality improve. Maybe sample bias and psychosocial influences herd the data toward
familiar stereotypes but features like fast departure and fast-slow movements are complex, robust,
and outside the popular spotlight, yet their frequency also grows in tandem with sample quality.
An alternative possibility allows that elite observers diverse in expertise, training, and situation,
who report similar experiences in detailed and independent-minded accounts, may simply describe
consistent external events.
416
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Yogi Berra, baseball’s master of malapropism, allegedly said, “If I hadn’t believed it, I wouldn’t
have seen it.” Whatever its origin, the quote repeats a sage reminder that the UFO witness is a
flawed instrument, variable in quality and capable of going far astray, yet often accurate and even
at worst, likely to preserve observational facts. The better the witnesses, the better vetted the
reports, the more consistent the attributes of the UFOs become. Perhaps even the most striking
elements will dissolve into some form of illusion, but they are noteworthy enough to deserve
further and more painstaking inquiry in case the witnesses have tapped into distinctive traits of a
unique and unknown phenomenon. Perhaps with UFOs, seeing will turn out to prove believing
after all.
References
1. Hartmann, William K. “Process of Perception, Conception, and Reporting.” In Final Report of
the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects. Edited by Daniel S. Gillmor. New
York: E. P. Dutton & Co. in association with Colorado Associated University Press, 1969,
pp. 571-577.
2. Menzel, Donald H. “UFOs—The Modern Myth.” In UFOs—A Scientific Debate. Edited by
Carl Sagan and Thornton Page. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1972, pp. 155-161.
3. Project Blue Book. “Northeastern U. S.” [March 3, 1968]: pp. 145, 113. fold3.com Accessed
Feb. 5, 2022.
https://www.fold3.com/image/6960252
https://www.fold3.com/image/6959831
4. James, William. The Principles of Psychology. 1890, p. 488. Classics in the History of
Psychology. Accessed Feb. 5, 2022.
https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/prin13.htm
5. Hynek, J. Allen. The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1972, p.
13.
6. Bartlett, Frederic C. Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. 1932.
London: Cambridge University Press, 1964, p. 213.
7. Loftus, Elizabeth F. Memory, Surprising New Insights Into How We Remember and Why We
Forget. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1980, pp. 66-76.
8. Loftus, Elizabeth F., and Katherine Ketcham. The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories
and Allegations of Sexual Abuse. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, pp. 94-100.
9. Ofshe, Richard, and Ethan Watters. Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and
Sexual Hysteria. New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1994, pp. 35-44.
10. Allport, Gordon W., and Leo Postman. The Psychology of Rumor. New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 1946, pp. 75, 86, 99-100.
11. Bartlett, F. C. “Some Experiments of the Reproduction of Folk Stories.” Folklore 31 (1920):
pp. 30-47. Reprinted in The Study of Folklore, edited by Alan Dundes. Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965, pp. 243-258.
12. Bullard, Thomas E. “Skeptical Successes and Ufological Failures: Opportunities in
Uncomfortable Places.” cufos.org, pp. 9-15. Accessed Feb. 5, 2022.
http://www.cufos.org/pdfs/Skeptical_explanations_for_UFOs.pdf
13. _____. “Skeptical Successes and Ufological Failures: Opportunities in Uncomfortable Places,
Appendix A: The Phoenix Lights.” cufos.org, pp. 1-35. For examples of how varied and
potentially influential illustrations of the same UFO might be, see Appendix C: “Visual
417
III. On Witness Testimony
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
Mythology, or the Idea of the Technological UFO Promoted by Witnesses and Media
Reporting of UFO Sightings.” cufos.org, pp. 1-10. Accessed Feb. 5, 2022.
www.cufos.org/pdfs/Skeptical_Explanations_Appendix_A.pdf
www.cufos.org/pdfs/Skeptical_Explanations_Appendix_C.pdf
_____. “Abduction Phenomenon.” In Jerome Clark, The UFO Encyclopedia, 3rd ed. Detroit:
Omnigraphics, 2018, pp. 1-38, especially pp. 22-24.
_____. “Abduction Phenomenon,” pp. 26-33.
Clancy, Susan A. Abducted: Why People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005, pp. 34-38.
Bullard, “Abduction Phenomenon,” p. 27.
The details of this study will be found in my forthcoming article, “UFOs in Practiced Eyes,”
to appear in The UFO Phenomenon, Michael Swords et al., 2022.
Sparks, Brad. “Comprehensive Catalog of 2,200 Project Blue Book Unknowns: Database
Catalog.” nicap.org Accessed Feb. 5, 2022. http://www.nicap.org/bb/BB_Unknowns.pdf
National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP). narcap.org
“Technical Reports” and “International Technical Reports.” Accessed Feb. 5, 2022.
https://www.narcap.org/technical-reports
https://www.narcap.org/international-reports
Gillmor, ed. Final Report of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, pp. 111-175.
Dorter, Jim. A Study of UFO Experiences and Anomalies as Reported by Forest Fire Lookouts
and Forest Workers. Ashland, Ore.: The Author, 2001.
418
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Bizarre Accounts: Remarkable Missile Sightings from the Canary Islands in
the 1970s
Ricardo Campo Pérez
“Tell me, do you not see that knight coming towards us on a speckled gray steed,
who has on his head a helmet of gold?”
“What I see and distinguish,” replied Sancho, “is only a man on a gray ass like mine,
who has something shining on his head. […]”
[Don Quijote] told Sancho to pick up the helmet, and he took it in his hands and said:
By God, the barber’s basin is good, and worth a real of eight if it is worth a maravedí.
Miguel de Cervantes1
Abstract: The reliability of UFO eyewitness accounts is far from being sufficient proof that some
unknown phenomenon exists, let alone an extraterrestrial presence on Earth. This article offers
some considerations on the psychology of perception necessary to evaluate such testimonies in
general, and, in particular, deals with two relevant examples drawn from the international
literature: observations made in the Canary Islands on June 22, 1976, and March 5, 1979.
Keywords: Testimonies, Psychology of perception, Missile launches, Canary Islands
Some Psychosocial Keys to Witness Testimony
The goal of classical ufological research should be to ascertain whether UFOs are–as Don Quixote
discovered–merely barbers’ basins and not the helmets of mysterious knights-errant. But most
ufologists prefer to believe such mundane objects could possibly lie at the core of astonishing
eyewitness testimony. However, “barbers’ basins” are a category that includes Venus, airplanes,
fireballs, space debris re-entries and the like.
Perhaps this sort of ufology should have ridden off into the sunset when the Condon committee
published its discouraging conclusions in 1969:
One’s judgment, conviction or belief about the actual identity and meaning of something, that is,
one’s cognition of it, are very much affected by mental set, expectation and suggestion. Every
observer is ready to perceive reality in a certain way. The observer’s sets and expectations arise
from his experiences, opinions and beliefs, including those derived from suggestion. The observer
who looks for faces in cloud patterns can find them easily.
No report is an entirely objective, unbiased, and complete account of an objective and distal event.
Every UFO report contains the human element; to an unknown but substantial extent it is subject
to the distorting effects of energy transmission through an imperfect medium, of the lack of perfect
correlation between distal object and proximal stimulus, and of the ambiguities, interpretations,
and subjectivity of sensation, perception and cognition.2
1
El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha I, 21 [1605] Barcelona, Spain: Labor, 1969.
Michael Wertheimer. “Perceptual Problems.” In Final Report of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying
Objects. Edited by Daniel S. Gillmor. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. in association with Colorado Associated
University Press, 1969, pp. 559-567.
2
419
III. On Witness Testimony
In fact, what M. Wertheimer states in the above passage was nothing new in the field of the
psychology of perception. The only novelty was that such considerations were coming from a
governmental body. The inevitable conspiratorial suspicions that followed, present in the history
of ufology since the first official research projects (Sign and Grudge), were reinforced when the
University of Colorado shut down the debate on the importance of the UFO phenomenon as a
matter relevant to U.S. national security.
It is paradoxical that a hegemonic power such as the United States did not have the capacity to
impose the skeptical conclusion of the Condon report through propaganda. One can only assume
that, perhaps, it was skepticism motivated by self-interest; a public smokescreen to disguise other
activities that did respond to a genuine interest in developing deterrent measures against anyone
who might challenge them. If so, the press played a decisive role in an unwitting symbiosis with
the U.S. government.
The general history of UFOs, comprising innumerable minor stories and endless speculations,
became entangled over the years, which worked to the advantage of those who administered
military and cultural power, in the latter case the media. The UFO phenomenon was thus in large
part brought into being by the media themselves. Within it, the Big Story comprised testimonies
about personal or collective experiences that were unclear, blurred, and with an important
emotional component. In this sense, UFO stories were a foretaste of the postmodern overvaluation
of personal experiences, of ever-present emotivism, of the vindication of relegated discourses and
of the fabrication of minority identities. But what was the real value of these testimonies as proof
of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth?
One of the most striking signs of the autistic character of mainstream ufology is the detachment
of its practitioners when evaluating testimony. It thus overvalues the relevance of the spoken word,
which betrays its orientation (more gnostic and religious than scientific), tending more to
numinous and intuitive contact than to rational scrutiny. Before the appearance of present-day
ufology—leaving aside the Fortean antecedents in the 19th and early 20th centuries—
psychologists demonstrated that eyewitness testimony is not perfect, far from it. It was in the
courtroom where this fact became apparent. In the forensic field, scientific concern for the value
of human testimony began with the relationship between psychology and law, giving rise, as is
natural in scientific research, to experimental forensic psychology.
In the late 19th century, psychologist Albert von Schrenck-Notzing warned that media publicity
and contact with others involved in a case can seriously alter a subject’s testimony when testifying
at trial. Shortly thereafter, James McKeen Cattell conducted several experiments on the reliability
of human testimony, finding that, for example, subjects in one experimental group were not even
able to give a consistent answer as to what the weather conditions were for the previous week,
since they could give a series of statements covering all possibilities of good or bad weather on
simultaneous days. Other elements that soon became apparent were the pernicious effect of leading
questions and the influence of expectations on the witness, which can lead them to see and hear
whatever they want or what the investigator directs them toward.
If the reliability of witness testimony has been a neglected factor in standard ufological research,
no less attention has been paid to memory, which is, in the final analysis, what the witness relays
420
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
to the interested party. Scientific consensus assures us that the memory of any event consists of a
standard outline of what happened updated with details of the specific episode; thus, our memories
are usually like caricatures of reality, in which some features stand out more than others, which in
turn are erased or greatly blurred. When we are asked to recall a relevant event, we are implicitly
asked to provide a coherent and complete story of said event, that is, to provide a “photograph”
based on the vision produced; and to accomplish this task we must fill in the blurred or non-existent
details of the event that we do not store in our memory, a process that is carried out through
inferences drawing information from our previous knowledge and experiences, and from the
information provided after the event. In general, our memories are caricatures of reality, in which
some features stand out more than others, which are erased or blurred.
To the perceptual factors must be added the beliefs of the witnesses, shaped by their upbringing
and the social environment in which they live. Regarding the belief factor, psychologist James R.
Reich3 noted that virtually all human beings experience, to some degree, three psychological traits:
depression, dissociation, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Although these conditions
take on a pathological character at their highest levels, at their lower levels everyone experiences
them on some occasions. More importantly, these traits can act as inducers of paranormal beliefs
and perceptions. In particular, Reich notes, “people with some level of dissociation tend to
manifest a diminished critical appraisal of reality, they may feel strange about themselves to the
point of thinking they are experiencing an out-of-body episode.” In addition, they may have
anomalous perceptions about the passage of time in their own experiences, and may feel that the
world “is not quite real or rather diffuse.”
In the case of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder–Reich supports his arguments with several
empirical investigations with human subjects–individuals with this disorder have a tendency to
lead active, exploratory lives, similar to those in science fiction stories. Thus, it makes sense that
people with subclinical levels of this disorder repeatedly think about and believe in strange
menacing animals such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, and in UFOs and extraterrestrials,
which provide evidence of possible adventures beyond Earth. For their part, the depressed may be
more likely to believe in aliens and UFOs. In addition, movies and television programs abound
that allude to abductions as a joyful sign of having been chosen, over and above earthly torments.
The following will focus exclusively on perceptual factors and the production of anomalous
testimony. 4 As examples, I have chosen two well-known episodes which, moreover, I have had
3
James R. Reich. “The Eyewitness: Imperfect Interface Between Stimuli and Story,” Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 17
(Summer 1993), pp. 394-399.
4
Examples of such misinterpretations are very abundant in the international literature and, for reasons of space, we
cannot dwell on them as extensively as we should. The case of civilian pilots Clarence S. Chiles and John B. Whitted,
who observed a large fireball with two rows of illuminated “windows” on July 24, 1948, flying over the state of
Alabama, deserves to be remembered. They described it as “a strange craft whose behavior and design were alien to
all terrestrial technology.” Of special importance in ufological historiography is the case of the re-entry of the booster
rocket of the Soviet Zond-4 probe on March 3, 1968, at about 21:50 hours. Thousands of Americans observed a
striking procession of incandescent objects with gold and orange tails moving across the sky departing from a
“fuselage.” Three witnesses reported seeing a single object traveling at “tremendous speed” at an altitude of “no more
than 2,000 to 5,000 feet.” Another group of witnesses reported that “it was at treetop altitude, could be seen very
clearly, and was only a few feet away” (Donald H. Menzel. “UFO’s. The Modern Myth.” In UFO’s A Scientific
Debate. Edited by Carl Sagan and Thornton Page. Ithaca (New York) and London: Cornell University Press, 1972,
pp. 123-182).
421
III. On Witness Testimony
the opportunity to investigate in detail. Although their explanation was obvious long before, both
were documented in 2001 through the publication of several articles in specialized magazines 5
with findings extracted from international databases of missile launches. These are the spectacular
phenomena observed from the Canary Islands (Spain) on June 22, 1976, and March 5, 1979, caused
by the launching of Poseidon missiles from U.S. Navy submarines at a minimum distance of
approximately 750 km west of the islands.6 Let us look at some of the most striking claims.
June 22, 1976, Canary Islands
This case is relatively popular in the international ufological literature, but, in reality, poorly
known for having been presented in a biased way. As it is about the alleged landing of a transparent
craft with two red beings inside, it became a “classic” of world ufology. The most popular witness
was physician Francisco Julio Padrón León, who was on his way by cab to visit a sick woman,
resident in the neighborhood of Las Rosas, in the town of Gáldar. It was 22:15 local time. From
the surprising description provided by the doctor and the driver, only the mention of a large
transparent sphere is reliable, although, in reality, it was hundreds of kilometers away from the
archipelago. The doctor’s testimony appears in the official file declassified by the Spanish Air
Force in 1994:7
The call to visit the sick woman was urgent, so I grabbed my briefcase and we set off as quickly as
the case required towards Las Rosas. To get there, we had to travel six kilometers on the Las
Palmas-Agaete main road and then take a detour on a steep country road in very bad conditions
for about two more kilometers. When going up the last steep slope of the road, the car’s headlights
focused on a slightly luminous sphere that was stationary, very close to the ground, I think, but I
could not tell if it was touching it. It was made of a totally transparent material, as if it were
crystalline, because through it one could see the stars in the sky. It was electric blue in color, but
faint without dazzling, and its radius was about 30 meters. In the first lower third of the sphere
there was an aluminum-colored platform as if it were metallic and three large panels. On each side
of the central one there were two huge figures about 2.50 to 3.00 meters tall, but certainly not taller
than 3.00 m., entirely dressed in red, facing each other, in such a way that I always saw them in
profile, they never turned towards us. The strange thing was the morphology of these figures, the
one on my right slightly taller than the other, the thorax was longer than their lower extremities,
which were short, the upper extremities were proportional to the thorax giving the slight impression
that they were sitting even when they were standing. The head was proportional to the thorax, but
the occipital was slightly elongated. They were wearing some kind of scuba gear as I could not
make out their features. The hands seemed to end in arrowheads, so they appeared to be gloved.
The uniform they wore seemed stiff, bright red with no wrinkles.
Startled, I asked the taxi driver if he saw what I was seeing in front of the car, but without saying
what it was. The cab driver replied that he had been seeing a big ball for a while, thinking at first
that it was one of those “satellites” they talk about on TV. Then he exclaimed: But now, my God,
what is that? Shall we stop and get closer? No, I answered, go on, go on to the house.
5
Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos and Ricardo Campo. “Navy Missile Tests and the Canary Islands UFOs,”
International UFO Reporter, Volume 29, Number 4, 2995, pp. 3-9 and 26. Original Spanish version at
https://www.academia.edu/16027101/Identificados_Los_OVNIS_de_Canarias_fueron_misiles_Poseidon
6
A total of five such episodes were observed from the Canary Islands in the 1970s. To the two indicated, the most
spectacular, must be added those of November 22, 1974, November 19, 1976, and March 24. 1977.
7
Mando Operativo Aéreo. Ejército del Aire español. File #760622, July 1994.
https://bibliotecavirtual.defensa.gob.es/BVMDefensa/exp_ovni/es/consulta/indice_campo.do?campo=idtitulo
422
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
We arrived at the sick woman’s house, which was very close, then I observed that from a semitransparent central tube of the sphere a kind of bluish smoke was coming out, which was spreading
around the periphery of the interior of the sphere without escaping from it at any time. Then the
sphere began to grow and grow until it became as large as a twenty-story house, but the platform
and crew remained the same size. It rose slowly, majestically, and I thought I heard a faint hissing
sound. I went into the house, and I met the old lady while I was in a state of tremendous excitement.
I could stand it no longer, I told the villagers in the house, and going outside with me, we saw the
sphere, already high, moving slowly towards Tenerife. Suddenly it reached a dizzying speed such
as I had never seen in any airplane, deforming the sphere into something fuzzy, bluish and red
behind, forming a bright white halo near the object that was gradually forming another very bright
blue one. It disappeared in the direction of Tenerife.
The testimony of the cab driver who took him to visit his patient is similar to that of the doctor,
but much shorter and with less descriptive detail. In the back of the vehicle, they were accompanied
by one of the patient’s sons, who, significantly, claimed to have seen only a glow. It has sometimes
been argued that the roof of the vehicle would have prevented him from comfortably seeing the
celestial spectacle. But this excuse ceases to be plausible from the moment the doctor assured that
the sphere was a few meters from the ground. How could he not see an alleged luminous object of
thirty meters in diameter that was a few meters away from the cabin and a few meters from the
ground? The only explanation is that the phenomenon was not in the immediate vicinity of the
vehicle: as we already know, the light show took place hundreds of kilometers west of the Canary
Islands. It was this scenario that caused major disparities in the countless eyewitness accounts.
The only known image of the phenomenon observed from the Canary Islands on June 22, 1976. The two diametrical
luminous bands are reflections in the camera mechanism. (V. J. Ballester Olmos Archives)
The event of June 22, 1976 is a magnificent example of how our perceptive, interpretative, and
memory capacities work in the face of a surprising and unusual phenomenon.
The phenomenon was not local, it was not limited to the area of Las Rosas, in Gáldar. It was seen
by the whole archipelago and by some ships, including the Spanish Navy frigate Atrevida, located
south of the island of Fuerteventura. In fact, there were hundreds of witnesses in all the islands,
423
III. On Witness Testimony
and the local press widely reported the spectacle. Are there any clues in the press to think that
some of the characteristics of the phenomenon were those that led the repeatedly quoted witnesses
to take them for two reddish beings inside a transparent sphere? Indeed, there are. It must be
remembered that there was only one phenomenon: all the witnesses saw the same thing and the
differences between the numerous accounts are due to the duration and the changing appearance
of the celestial spectacle. The role of sunlight was decisive, since, although at ground level it was
already night, at tens of kilometers high the by-products of the combustion of the Poseidon missiles
reflected the sunlight, just like every time similar phenomena had occurred. In the local Canary
Islands press we can read these testimonies, among many others:
On the 23rd, Diario de Avisos published that from Los Llanos de Aridane (La Palma) and from
Valle Gran Rey (La Gomera), 220 km and 160 km respectively from Las Rosas (Gran Canaria),
people saw that:
The phenomenon began with two red zigzagging objects, forming a kind of spiral, in the lower part
of which there were three stripes at different levels, superimposed and with some separation
between them. They were of an intense red color and gradually disappeared.
The same newspaper, on the 24th, referred to:
A gigantic mushroom that gave off an unusual luminosity was seen to appear in the sea, and, before
that, two halo-shaped figures of a reddish hue moved in a zigzag pattern.
From these descriptions, it seems evident that the phenomenon showed, at some point in its
evolution, reddish reflections or spots that could have acquired, by chance, an anthropomorphic
appearance. It was the first part of the wake of two missiles–launched one minute apart–as they
ascended. And it was from this thread that, unintentionally, the doctor and the cab driver created
their account.
The doctor influenced the cab driver’s statement because of their previous friendly relationship
and the social and cultural difference that existed between them. Let’s analyze his statements
before the ufologists entered the scene; that is to say, his first words to the press and those
appearing in the official file declassified by the Air Force, obtained a few days and a couple of
weeks after the events, respectively. Knowing that the phenomenon was caused by the launching
of two missiles and that its characteristics were similar to other cases in different parts of the
planet, we can make the following interpretation of the doctor’s statements.
According to the physician F. J. Padrón:
We were talking normally and when we passed a curve, about sixty meters away, we were totally
surprised to see a perfectly marked sphere, as if it were a compass, with a very nice gray or skyblue border.
His estimate of the distance was extremely subjective. Without knowing where the phenomenon
was or its nature, the perspective, and the low apparent height at which it was located, led him to
consider that it was above the terrain through which they were traveling, a few tens of meters
away.
424
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Through the sphere they could see the stars, so it was transparent, which suggests a gaseous nature.
This was a real detail and confirmed by other witnesses. The low density of the gases, already
greatly expanded, allowed the stars to be visible through it. There are spectacular international
images of ballistic launches in advanced phases in which this transparency is evident.
It was about three stories high. At the top, on the right, there was an oval-shaped image. At the
bottom was a silver platform with three panels–they looked like knobs–leaning forward.
Once again, we encounter a very inaccurate commentary, attributable to confusion and ignorance.
The “platform” and the “panels” were probably denser and less translucent areas due to the
presence of gas “clumps” that were created and dissolved during the slow evolution of the
phenomenon. It is worth mentioning an account used by William R. Corliss in his compilation of
cases of large luminous bubbles perched on the sea horizon, some of them produced by the
launching of weapons tests: “Bright, luminous patches on the horizon”.8 One of the examples
cited by Corliss is our case, which he describes as follows: “At 21:15 a ghostly white disc was
observed at an approximate altitude of 10º and bearing 290º.” The testimony originally comes
from an account published in Marine Observer magazine by R. Moore.9 The important detail here
is that “stars could be see through the disc at all times.” Nothing material but as transparent as a
cloud. See below the illustration published in the marine journal.
Of the five events observed from the Canary Islands as a result of missile launches, at least three
of them, June 22, 1976, November 19, 1976, and March 5, 1979, acquired at some point in their
evolution a geometrical configuration, not in their entirety, but in sectors of the expanding gases.
This is what must have led some witnesses to refer to quadrangular configurations. The witnesses
of these artificial phenomena were thinking in terms of “spaceships,” perhaps of the “lunar
module” type.
As for the beings, Padrón León indicated that:
8
William R. Corliss. “Bright, Luminous Patches on the Horizon.” In Lightning, Auroras, Nocturnal Lights and Related
Luminous Phenomena. Glen Arm, Maryland: The Sourcebook Project, 1982, pp. 35-39.
9
R. Moore. “Unidentified Phenomenon,” Marine Observer, 47:66, 1977.
425
III. On Witness Testimony
They were two very tall figures dressed in bright red. They had no fingers on their limbs, but like a
spiky fin-like thing. The one on the right was taller. Both were standing in profile. I can tell you
that they were moving their hands and on their heads they had a kind of scuba diver’s mask.
Honestly, I was struck by their great majesty, the perfection of the curved lines. There was nothing
pointed, it was something superior to anything I had ever seen.
The two figures were the “reddish-colored objects” observed from other islands. Their probable
anthropomorphic appearance during an undetermined time interval was sufficient for the physician
to interpret these stimuli–products of the high-altitude missile wake and reflected sunlight–as best
he could. Thus, some portions or sections with varying densities and prominent–or attenuated–
luminosities became mobile “fingerless limbs” and heads with diving masks. Added to this was
the subjective impression of majesty and the absence of very sharp or pointed angles, as one would
expect in gaseous matter evolving in free space.
The doctor’s description continues as follows:
The contraption then began to rise towards the top of an existing house there. A transparent tube
was then seen through which a bluish gas came out and circulated around the sphere, which
enlarged like a gigantic building.
In other later versions, physician Padrón León indicated that the sphere expanded while its contents
remained unchanged in its proportions. For analyst Martin Kottmeyer, consulted by V. J. Ballester
Olmos, this detail points to the fact that Padrón’s account was probably influenced by science
fiction related to the distant future: there is a general aesthetic tendency in science fiction that
science will eventually develop beyond the age of metals and machines, towards force fields
without material instrumentation. Light and crystal are part of this aesthetic. Things become
ethereal and move away from materiality.
In the doctor’s perception, the artificial sphere left over from the ballistic launches was interpreted
as a bubble of force and energy. Its interior contained a propitious and protective atmosphere, and
it moved without propellants or other conceivable impulse mechanisms. The apparent elevation
can be seen as an interpretation of the growth of the great bubble after appearing to hover over the
horizon. The transparent tube and bluish gas are interpretations of the motion of the combustion
gases, much like the phenomena we can observe in these stills from spectacular footage, on
December 22, 2017, of a Falcon 910 booster rocket putting a satellite into orbit. In these video
images, if we stop its movement at the right moments, we can perceive some curious shapes inside
it, like a kind of small boat:
10
“Falcon 9 rocket launch provides spectacular view in Bakersfield.” YouTube, https://youtu.be/JRzZl_nq6fk
426
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Minute 3:20: a small ship resulting from the solar illumination and the random dynamics of the gases and fuel
emitted by the rocket (Image borrowed from https://youtu.be/JRzZl_nq6fk)
Or this one, which resembles a funnel:
Minute 3:43: a cosmic funnel to collect terrestrial specimens? No, a shape created at random by the rocket’s
progress in clearing stages. (Image borrowed from https://youtu.be/JRzZl_nq6fk)
As is well known, we tend to endow stimuli with meaning based on prior knowledge and
experience, on expectations, or on more-or-less well-founded beliefs; and pareidolia11 occurs
frequently. In general, these perceptual illusions are part of the normal functioning of the cognitive
system.
In the mind of Dr. Padrón León, a “projective transformation” would have occurred, a concept that
French researcher Gilles Fernandez picks up in one of his ufological analyses:12 the witness sees
elements in accordance with his own “expectations” and alters the characteristics of the stimulus
during the perception. These information-processing strategies are called, in cognitive psychology,
11
Pareidolia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
Gilles Fernandez. “Space Re-Entry Stimulus as CE-3 Generator: The Example of a December 12 1987 case.”
Sceptiques vs les Soucoupes Volantes, 12 January 2015. https://skepticversustheflyingsaucers.
blogspot.com/2015/01/01/space-re-entry-stimulus-as-ce-3.html. Before Gilles Fernandez, the Italian Paolo Toselli
and the Spaniards Ballester Olmos and Fernández had already taken these psychological factors into account in their
theorizations on “UFO cognition.” For example, V.J. Ballester Olmos and J. A. Fernández Peris, “El síndrome de
transgresión de la realidad.” In Enciclopedia de los encuentros cercanos con OVNIS. Barcelona, Spain: Plaza y Janés
Editores, 1987, pp. 367-371.
https://www.academia.edu/41625252/ ENCICLOPEDIA_DE_LOS_ ENCUENTROS_CERCANOS_ CON_OVNIS
12
427
III. On Witness Testimony
top-down versus bottom-up processing, or concept-based versus data-based processing. Our
knowledge and culture influence both what we perceive in the environment and how we retrieve
and recall the event (through memory processes).
In general, top-down processes are information processes based on prior knowledge or schemas
and allow us to make inferences: to “perceive” or “know” more than what is contained in the data.
In other words, we often go “beyond the given information” in our mental processes. We learn to
add assumptions and complementary information derived from experience to the evidence of our
senses, and this is how we make sense of our world. When a stimulus is not recognized and
identified for what it really is, because it is novel or is contemplated in particular circumstances,
cognition is governed primarily by top-down processing and is processed by inferences using our
prior knowledge, which includes representations from the dominant culture. This may provide
some individuals with a grid for interpreting things they do not recognize. In other words, the
evidence suggests that UFO stories are a complex phenomenon that combines modern mythology
about outer space, popular culture, and human psychology.
Barcelona analyst Manuel Borraz was the first to undertake a rigorous analysis of this event in a
1992 essay. 13 There Borraz asks: “Why did what for some was no more than a circle containing
two red shapes constitute for the doctor a true theophany with technological overtones?” “It is
possible to think,” he continues, “that when the witness perceived a highly perfect ship with two
beings on board, all of them emanating a great spirituality, some of his most intimate desires and
expectations were fulfilled, perhaps his thirst for transcendence.” Padrón León referred, in his
numerous statements to the press, to the psychological and spiritual effects that the sighting
triggered in him.
March 5, 1979, Canary Islands
Even more relevant than the previous event, due to its media repercussion, was the phenomenon
observed from all over the Canary archipelago, from several vessels and from more than fifteen
airships on the aforementioned day. It is often mentioned in accounts published in the international
literature without citing the obvious explanation, just like with the previous event. In 2019 I
published an extensive monograph on this incident.14 The official file declassified by the Spanish
Air Force in 1995 contains this general description of the phenomenon:15
The first part of the phenomenon observed that evening is defined by witnesses as a large iridescent
cloud of great size.
The event had a second part at about 20:08, when a silvery object emerged from the horizon,
leaving a red trail behind it. Its movement is described by some witnesses as a spiral, like that of a
corkscrew, ascending slightly. When the object reaches the iridescent cloud, it begins to ascend
almost vertically.
13
Manuel Borraz Aymerich. Los gigantes de Gáldar y los avistamientos canarios. Monografía 1 CdU, 1992. Accesible
with an introduction by Ricardo Campo (2020) at:
https://www.academia.edu/43047669/Los_gigantes_de_%20G%C3%A1ldar_y_los_avistamientos_canarios
14
Ricardo Campo. El ovni de Canarias. Historia y análisis de una creación periodística. 2.0 Books. Ediciones Idea,
Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 2019.
15
Mando Operativo Aéreo. Ejército del Aire Español. File #790305, October 1995.
https://bibliotecavirtual.defensa.gob.es/BVMDefensa/exp_ovni/es/consulta/indice_campo.do?campo=idtitulo
428
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
During this ascent, a series of small explosions occurs, creating an enormous luminous trail in the
shape of a rounded cone (other witnesses describe it as a wine glass), which gradually widens and
at the apex of which the object is always found. This gigantic wake is the one that illuminates the
islands after sunset and that is observed from Africa and frightens many observers.
In a last small explosion, the object acquires more power and speed and detaches itself from the
wake it was dragging behind it. At this moment, the object changes its trajectory, flying horizontally
for a few seconds, changes its course again in a parabolic trajectory, and at a dizzying speed is
lost in the sky, hiding from the observers’ sight.
The best-known image of the many captured the evening of March 5, 1979, from various points of the Canary
Islands. This one was obtained by amateur photographer Guillermo Lijtmaer from Santiago del Teide,
Tenerife. (V. J. Ballester Olmos Archives)
As usual, the press published a large number of testimonies; but, as time went by, the most popular
ones were those furthest from reality. The following ones are worth mentioning.
Gilberto Naranjo, Izaña, Tenerife:
From the center of those dashed lines of gases a “full moon,” maybe with slightly smaller
dimensions, a “full moon” of a very nice silver color, no noise of any kind, and in about 25 or 30
seconds it comes out from the horizon and is completely lost in the sky. That leaves behind a huge
wake and the phenomenon lasts until almost eleven o’clock at night, leaving behind a platform
consuming an impressive amount of energy. We went out and saw a large silver object, which left
a pear-shaped trail and a bluish-green and red tail, with no apparent noise. In the middle we could
see a planet or a big star, it could be Venus (later I was sure it was Jupiter); it was getting huge,
very wide and pear-shaped, and the object was in front, until it disappeared, I think at about 90º of
altitude (overhead).
An anonymous cook also in Izaña, Tenerife:
Then I started to peel the potatoes and at about 8:00 p.m. I saw from where the cloud had been, a
patch of fire rising and it became like a pear or a balloon, inflating a lot. Then something like a
small plane came out of the pear but very straight up and I didn’t see anything else. I got scared
thinking it was the end of the world or an atomic bomb.
Eufronio García, aeronautical pilot of the company Naysa, was flying over Gran Canaria:
429
III. On Witness Testimony
At 20:08 we saw a big light, first reddish-orange, then in the second phase we saw a kind of cone
rotating on itself with green and apple-yellow colors. Finally, the object left behind it a large trail
of bluish and green hues. The trail was about four hundred meters wide and remained for about
twenty minutes. Then it was lost in infinity, merging with a star. From the front it looked like pure
gray. When it was about 4 kilometers away we could see windows with white light at the top. When
it started its ascent, we could see 24 round shapes about 250 meters in diameter. We did not see
any exhaust that could release any kind of propulsion.
For García Monforte, the luminous body:
came out of the sea in front of Teide and made a 90º turn and at about 60,000 feet [18.3 km] it
made an elliptical turn to the north. It was about 250 meters in diameter. It emitted no flashes and
at the top there were windows with white fluorescent-type light, and when it started the ascent there
were sparks from the friction of the leading edge with the atmosphere until 60,000 feet when the
sparks disappeared and it accelerated.
The first time a critical investigator referred to the eyewitness report of “windows” in a sighting
of various night-time light sources was in the aforementioned U.S. Air Force Condon Committee
report. One of the members of the University of Colorado UFO Project and co-author of the final
report was noted astronomer William K. Hartmann, 16 who proposed the expression “airship effect”
to refer to the vision of a flying body created by the mind of the witness from the observation of a
row of independent luminous points.
The answers given by pilot García Monforte show the high degree of subjectivity with which he
interpreted the phenomenon. It is likely that the situation in which he found himself–in command
of a small aircraft carrying six passengers–increased his emotional tension and reduced his
objectivity, causing him to be more concerned about the safety of the flight than about calmly and
attentively observing the appearance of the phenomenon. His interpretation was based on a skewed
understanding of his experience, compounded not only by his original perception but also by all
the interactions he subsequently had with interested parties, ufologists, and journalists that may
have influenced his recollection.
Photographer Antonio González Llopis, who was in Mogán, Gran Canaria, said:
The object brought appendages together like legs or gates that closed nozzles to leave in an almost
vertical direction without emitting any kind of light energy.
The Air Force file contains the testimony of the skipper of a fishing boat that was fishing about 16
km off the African coast, who saw:
Two luminous objects, the one that appeared more to the north ascended in an apparent northern
direction, disappearing afterwards, while the luminous object that appeared more to the south
continued ascending in an apparent southern direction. Subsequently, it changed direction towards
the north and towards the fishing boat itself, reaching a point directly overhead, disappearing after
remaining apparently motionless in the air for a few moments. At no time did it pass the position
16
William K. Hartmann. “Process of Perception, Conception, and Reporting.” In Final Report of the Scientific Study
of Unidentified Flying Objects. Edited by Daniel S. Gillmor. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. in association with
Colorado Associated University Press, 1969, pp. 567-590.
430
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
of the fishing vessel in an easterly direction. It would have been about 20 meters long and would
have been flying at an altitude of about 2,000 meters.
The accounts generated by the March 5, 1979, event are not in a class of their own in world
ufology. They are examples similar to many others from different parts of the planet and the
product of the perception of a real, surprising and terrifying phenomenon.
Conclusions
The launches of military missiles and rocket boosters for the purpose of putting satellites into orbit
form a complex explanatory category in skeptical ufology. In this regard, the Canary Islands cases
mentioned above, from 1974 to 1979, are archetypal examples. Not surprisingly, American
engineer James Oberg, who worked for more than twenty years for NASA’s Space Shuttle project,
while cultivating his interest in accounts of UFO sightings, has devoted numerous studies to the
celestial manifestations caused by these military and civil aeronautical engineering tests
(https://rocketspotting.blogspot.com), among which are the examples analyzed in this article. In
one of his essays, profusely illustrated, Oberg offered some general characteristics of such
terrestrial sightings that can be applied precisely to the events we have just seen:
Witnesses are caught by surprise.
Estimating size and distance becomes a “guessing game” for the witness.
Sightings can occur at dawn as well as at dusk. The most favorable conditions for such
observations are those at twilight, when the rocket trajectory is in the sunlit region and the
observer is in an area still under night conditions.
They take place at altitudes of hundreds of kilometers, which makes it possible to observe them
from great distances simultaneously.
The initial vertical movement leaves a trail that is not fully illuminated by sunlight.
Witnesses assume that the spindle-shaped or spherical cloud is self-luminous and was not
reflecting sunlight. The initial trail of the booster rocket can be interpreted as a searchlight
beam.
Space rocket launches can be observed from a significant distance, thousands of kilometers
away, even from other continents. The main optical mechanism for this kind of “UFO” sighting
involves the scattering of sunlight in the gas dust cloud formed by the by-products of rocket
fuel.
Advanced stages of launches, in the upper atmosphere, can produce complex visual patterns.
Depending on the altitude of the rocket flight, engine design, and propellant composition, the
configuration of a gas dust cloud and its size can vary widely. In some cases, the characteristic
cross-sectional size of the rocket trace can reach many hundreds of kilometers.
A fundamental challenge in ufology is to assess how accurately human testimony about these
apparitions can be related to the actual characteristics of the visual stimulus.
On the positive side, missile launches at twilight hours offer an opportunity for researchers to
gauge the true capacity of subjective perceptions. This may uncover the most typical comments
and the most common perceptions and interpretations by witnesses. Thereafter, researchers
will be able to assess these narratives more objectively and less naively.
When it comes to witnesses in so-called “UFO” sightings, we often find people who have been
interviewed on numerous occasions since the events occurred–some of them by the present author–
431
III. On Witness Testimony
with the result that the memories they have stored in their brains may be shaped by contradictory
versions of the observed phenomenon, by the tendency of each witness to seek more or less
“natural” rational explanations, and by their own assumed relevance as witnesses of anomalous
events for the group of journalists specialized in the field of “mystery.”
Let us conclude by indicating, as Italian psychologist Giuliana Mazzoni points out, that the
testimony of an event depends on the knowledge one possesses of the world and of things, which,
in turn, influence one’s way of perceiving and encoding an object, a situation, or an event, and
then on the way of representing them in long-term memory. 17 When no meaningful interpretation
is possible, it is almost impossible to remember an event. The interpretation of what is witnessed
is a mechanism that is activated automatically, even if we are not aware of what is happening and
not aware that, in one way or another, we are interpreting. This interpretation of events plays a
primordial role in the “modification” of the contents integrated in the memory. Consequently, even
the content of the memory and its subsequent recounting, at the moment the memory is retrieved,
will be modified with respect to the original event. What remains in the memory is not the object
seen, but the object interpreted. Anyone interested in ufology should keep this in mind.
(Translated by Chris Aubeck).
17
Giuliana Mazzoni. ¿Se puede creer a un testigo? El testimonio y las trampas de la memoria. Madrid: Editorial
Trotta, 2010. Spanish version of: Giuliana Mazzoni. Si può credere a un testimone? La testimonianza e le trappole
della memoria. Bologna: Società editrice Il Mulino, 2003.
432
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Some Considerations About the Behavior and Reliability of UAP Eyewitnesses
L. A. L. da Silva
Abstract: We briefly discuss some basic aspects concerning the behavior and reliability of
unidentified aerial phenomena eyewitnesses strongly affecting the quality and evidential weight
of their reports. Among them are expressiveness, degree of technical knowledge, honesty, and
pre-existing conceptions we refer to as "ufophilia" and a more severe form of it that we could
name "ufopathy." External influences like the cascade and media lensing effects are also
considered.
Keywords: UAPs, Eyewitnesses, Reliability
Introduction
Scientific investigations about unidentified aerial phenomena (thereafter UAPs) observations,
close encounters with supposed extraterrestrial beings, as well as alleged abduction episodes
conducted by aliens are always like criminal detective work. The investigator rarely participates
in the occurrence, usually arriving after the fact.
In this paper we briefly discuss some basic aspects concerning the behavior and reliability of
unidentified aerial phenomena eyewitnesses that strongly affect the quality and evidential weight
of their reports, based on experiences of field investigations.
Problem Proposition
When carrying out an investigation of an occurrence of a possible ufological nature, eyewitness
reports always represent an important piece of evidence in the puzzle of elucidating what would
have happened, in addition of elements such as images, video records, physical evidence, and
positive radar contacts.
However, the big question is that what an eyewitness reports is always a mixture of what he or
she saw with what he or she thinks he or she saw, and separating those two things is never an
easy task. Strictly speaking, it may even be impossible.
This represents a considerable obstacle to the investigation, especially when there are no
additional eyewitness reports, or independent corroborating evidence such as that cited above.
What a witness thinks he or she has seen will depend on many factors, being strongly influenced
by the way people tend to construct their culture and knowledge.
No witness, even one who is entirely honest, is totally trustworthy. Witnesses often build false
memories, misinterpret what they see, and establish non-existent relationships between details of
what they experienced, in addition to, quite often, not having the ability to describe exactly what
they observed, and what supposedly would have happened. Therefore, an occurrence based
exclusively on the testimony of a single witness will always have very low evidential weight,
regardless of the witness's credentials. An occurrence where more than one witness is available
will be of greater value. Even so, in the absence of other more objective evidence (such as
433
III. On Witness Testimony
images, video records, radar echoes, and physical traces) an occurrence with only multiple
witnesses will still not be of a great value.
Types of Witnesses
It is possible to distinguish different types of witnesses, namely:
- Perfect Witness:
One who is totally honest, objective and precise in descriptions, completely impartial, highly
educated, highly qualified from a technical point of view, and without biases that could
contribute to a distortion of what is reported. A perfect witness is unaffected by emotions,
remaining calm and accurate. There are no perfect witnesses.
- Ideal Witness:
Represents the maximum attainable threshold below perfect witness status. One who is honest
and objective, reasonably accurate in descriptions, impartial, highly educated, and technically
qualified, without any biases that could distort or influence the report.
- Trusted Witness:
One who seems honest and impartial. May or may not be well-educated or technically qualified.
- Biased Witness:
Sounds honest. May or may not be objective, have a high level of education, or be technically
qualified. However, he or she presents signs of ufophilia/ufopathy (see next section). Even with
proven honesty, their reports result of low reliability, because they are severely undermined by
pre-existing personal conceptions and opinions (lack of impartiality).
- Unsuitable Witness:
Not necessarily honest, impartial, and/or objective. May or may not be highly educated or
technically qualified.
Main Factors Affecting the Quality of Witness Reports
Honesty aside, we can list the following factors that may affect or influence the testimony of
witnesses of UAP events: low level of technical qualification, difficulty of expression and
inability to describe exactly what was observed or witnessed, "Ufophilia", "Ufopathy", the
Cascade effect, and the Media Lensing effect. Surely, this list is not complete.
- Technical Qualifications:
This factor strongly influences the evidential weight of a witness report. Without consistent
minimal knowledge in the fields of physics, astronomy, meteorology and engineering, it is very
difficult to extract accurate and technically reliable information from the account of a witness.
The vast majority of cases of unidentified aerial phenomena sightings involve witnesses with few
technical qualifications. This greatly hinders the investigation, but the patient work of an
investigator with considerable expertise in the areas of knowledge mentioned above can
contribute, in part, to the retrieval of more or less reliable information, whether applying their
own technical knowledge to judge and evaluate the details reported by the witness, or by
conducting additional interviews where the investigator, seeking to question the witness, will be
able to extract a more precise idea of what would have happened.
In cases where the witness is technically qualified, the investigation is facilitated, but it should be
noted that even so, the investigator should seek to build his or her own interpretation of the
434
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
report and also, if available, use other impersonal evidence to bring your study to a good
conclusion.
- Difficulty of expression and inability of adequate description:
It is also observed that most witnesses who report experiences of sightings or close encounters
with UAPs do not have the full capacity to express themselves properly, using inappropriate
words to narrate what they observed.
Some typical examples of this are described by da Silva, Kemper and Hoffmann Netto (2021)1,
where a witness describes his visual observation of the optical ablation of a bolide fragmenting
through the atmosphere as "four spheres of light moving at low altitude." The word "sphere" is
certainly not a convenient one to describe a bright meteor. And, on the other hand, what exactly
does "low altitude" mean: low flight level, or small angular elevation above the horizon line?
Another witness, simply looking at planet Jupiter near the horizon over the sea, again uses the
expression "sphere of light", and estimates that the "object" was "about 200 meters high" and
"about one or two kilometers away."
It is also common to associate brightness variations caused by the presence of variable
cloudiness, with real movements of unidentified objects towards and away from the observer.
Time intervals are also often underestimated, or overestimated.
This occurs even in cases involving technically qualified witnesses, as in the case of experienced
commercial pilot Gérson Maciel de Britto, the main protagonist of one of the most famous
Brazilian UAP cases, the incident of the VASP-169 flight (see, e.g., da Silva, 2013)2. When the
planet Venus, deformed by the effect of a rare atmospheric mirage, was mistaken for a UFO, the
phenomenon was reported as "a flying saucer outline embedded in a flurry of light activity, not a
star. It looked like a fixed thing, a fixed outline with a luminous focus". This inadequate
description gave rise to completely unrealistic simulated images released by the media at the
time, contributing to the consolidation of a highly distorted view of what had actually been
observed. See Figures 1 and 2.
Figure 1. An example
of an unrealistic
illustration. The VASP169 flight UAP incident
on February 8, 1982, in
Brazil, released by the
media and available on
the Internet. Here we
have a large luminous
object flying in front of
the aircraft
(approximately at the
12 o’clock position).
435
III. On Witness Testimony
Figure 2. What Commander Gérson Maciel de Britto actually saw in the Brazilian VASP-169 flight incident on
February 8, 1982, flying north to south, in drawings in his own handwriting. The "object" was seen at the 9 o`clock
position. Image adapted from VEJA Magazine, (702), 50.
Witnesses with a high degree of academic knowledge, for example, professors, researchers and
scientists, even in the field of exact sciences, often also make mistakes. A notable example of
this is the famous classic case of the "Lubbock lights", Texas, in August and September of 1951,
in which, perhaps because they were deeply influenced by the frequent news about UAP in wide
circulation in the media at the time, the witnesses (all professors) confused flocks of migratory
birds flying at night with flying saucers.
Although not always, reports from the military can be even more disappointing, as can be seen,
for example, in one of the official reports released by the Brazilian Air Force (FAB)3 on the
famous campaign to track unknown luminous phenomena, which took place in 1977 in northern
Brazil known as the " Operação Prato" (Operation Saucer).
Examining that report, one finds absurd phrases and assessments, such as "passage of a luminous
body, probably an artificial satellite, estimated altitude 35,000 feet." Artificial satellites at 35,000
feet?! In addition, several members of the team, especially the commander, captain Uyrangê
Hollanda, showed obvious signs of sympathy for flying saucers (see below).
436
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
- "Ufophilia":
We use this word to designate a person's predisposition to believe (and like to believe) in flying
saucers, interpreted as real spaceships manned by intelligent beings who regularly visit our
planet.
When evaluating the credibility of a witness's report of unidentified aerial phenomena sightings,
an investigator should be aware of the possibility that that person shows signs of being a flying
saucer sympathizer.
Ufophilia does not depend on the witness's culture, knowledge, education level or technical
qualifications. A sufficient demonstration of this is found, again, in the Brazilian case of the
VASP-169 flight, when Commander Britto reported to the press his attempt to "establish
telepathic contact with the object's crew" who was accompanying him, without, however, being
successful. Such a declaration constitutes an evident proof of ufophilia.
In another famous case also involving a commercial pilot, namely, the case of JAL-1628 cargo
flight over Alaska on November 17, 1986, Commander Kenju Terauchi also demonstrates, in his
attitudes and statements, evidence of ufophilia.
- "Ufopathy":
We define ufopathy as a behavior of proven ufophilia taken to extremes, assuming the character
of an almost pathological syndrome. Individuals who believe they are "chosen" for having been
"contacted" or "abducted," as well as those who believe that extraterrestrials are powerful
creatures who wish to intervene and help humanity, thus configuring a kind of modern mystic or
religious sect imbued with scientific and technological characteristics, are ufopaths.
The possibility of ufopathy must also always be taken into account when evaluating a witness.
Ufopathy as well as ufophilia wipe out the impartiality of a witness, practically nullifying the
value of their testimony.
- The Cascade Effect:
By Cascade effect we mean the influence that a case of an unidentified aerial phenomena
sighting with great media attention exerts, inducing reports of other similar occurrences,
sometimes triggering a wave of sightings, because the people involved in those events, alerted by
the news, on the one hand start to remember strange facts they had recently experienced and, on
the other, they start to pay more attention to phenomena that, under normal circumstances, in the
absence of news about strange things, would go unnoticed.
437
III. On Witness Testimony
Figure 3. The dynamics of the cascade effect, in an analogy with cosmic rays penetrating the atmosphere.
Image: © Telescope Array, 2011. Adapted from reference 1.
In situations like these, it is quite common for false-positive links to be established between two
or more occurrences. A typical example here is the association of the "UFO" in the case of flight
VASP-169 flight referred to above with the visual and photographic record of a ring-shaped
mesospheric cloud, seen during the night in the city of Torres, southern Brazil, two days before
the flight incident (da Silva, 2013)2.
The cascade effect, encouraged mainly by the media and, today also by social networks, can
strongly influence the opinion of witnesses, contributing to the introduction of distortions in their
testimonies.
- The Media Lensing Effect:
This effect acts mainly (but not only) in waves and mini-waves of unidentified aerial phenomena
sightings. Media coverage of those events is often biased, imprecise and poorly conducted,
distorting or ignoring relevant facts and details, favoring or even inducing false conclusions,
shaping the thinking and opinion of the witnesses involved. A previous event, reported in an
exaggerated way, can influence the behavior and testimony of witnesses involved in other later
cases.
Conclusion
We have pointed out some important fundamental aspects that influence the behavior of
witnesses to sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena, affecting the degree of reliability of
their statements. Personal trends and the direct influence of the media are elements that cannot be
ignored when giving weight to reports from witnesses involved in cases of UAP sightings. There
438
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
is no case where only the testimony of one or even more than one witness is able to reliably
establish what actually happened.
References
1. Da Silva, L.A.L., Kemper, E., and Hoffmann Netto, M. (2021). “Luzes Estranhas e Círculos
na Areia Observados em Junho, 2020, no Litoral Sul do Brasil,” Omega Centauri Network for
the Advancement of Scientific Education, AIFI Nucleus, Technical Report 01-2021, Ref. ωκTA-2021.01, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
http://www.redeomegacentauri.org/2021/04/01/luzes-estranhas-e-circulos-na-areia-observadosem-junho-2020-no-litoral-sul-do-brasil/
2. Da Silva, L.A.L. (2013). “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: The VASP-169 Flight Brazilian
Episode Revisited,” Journal of Scientific Exploration, 27, (4), pp. 637-654.
http://www.redeomegacentauri.org/wpcontent/uploads/2021/08/Unidentified_Aerial_Phenomena_The_VASP-169_Flight_.pdf
3. Brazilian Air Force, Report about “Operação Prato” (Operation Saucer), available at:
https://operacaoprato.com/documentos-oficiais
https://www.fenomenum.com.br/chupa-chupa8/
(All online links accessed July 9, 2022).
439
III. On Witness Testimony
UFO Myth Propagation before the Arrival of Social Networks1
Marcel Delaval
Abstract: This paper attempts to show, through typical testimonies, how the actors in the UFO
mythology ‒the witnesses, the ufologists and the media‒ contribute to propagating and feeding
their myth, even once the original phenomenon has been identified. It also suggests new areas of
research in the context of the Internet and social networks.
Keywords: UFO, IFO, ETH, MIB, Varese, Viggiù, Roswell, Crosia, Blue dwarfs, Fake story,
Misinterpretation, Myth propagation, Testimony, Witness, Internet, Social network
Introduction
It is important to remember that ufology is first and foremost the study of testimonies of specific
phenomena, and that hundreds and thousands of testimonies of similar phenomena are not
necessarily proof of the phenomena's existence or objective reality. Several statistical UFO
(Unidentified Flying Objects) studies have shown that the vast majority of UFO cases can be
explained by known phenomena, have received traditional explanations, or can be discarded for
lack of information. However, UFO literature and experience in the field show that most witnesses,
even if mistaken, act in good faith,
In our own statistical studies [1,2] on UFO waves in France and Italy in 1977, we tried to
differentiate between IFO (Identified Flying Objects) and UFO cases, but without success. Several
years later, in a reductionist approach, we reviewed our UFO category, arriving at the conclusion
that only a few cases were worthy of interest [3]. However, this approach risks missing a real signal
(rare events) in the background noise.
The following four accounts are representative of how the main actors – witnesses, ufologists, and
the media – propagate UFO mythology; all four, however were reported before the appearance of
the Internet in the early/mid 1990s.
The Role of the Witnesses
A UFO witness, when presented with proof of their misinterpretation of a known phenomenon,
can still deny this new evidence, and so contribute to the diffusion of the UFO myth: the myth here
being the reductive extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) so often present, implicitly or explicitly, in
the background of these testimonies. In the following story the main witness himself is the first
person responsible for propagating the account of his experience.
It’s July 1985 in the North of Italy, near the city of Varese. The summer warmth invites people to
stay outside late into the evening. The witness’s house is far enough from the city to provide a
good view of the sky. For several weeks during the evenings and early mornings, from their
balcony J. B., his wife, their daughter, and some neighbors have observed a brilliant light in the
east or southeast. They also saw moving lights with strange trajectories.
1
First published as “The Force of a Myth” in Hilary Evans and Dennis Stacy, eds., UFOs 1947-1997. Fifty Years of
Flying Saucers, London: J. Brown, May 1997. The original paper has been updated and enlarged.
440
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
J.B., an engineer with three diplomas, is considered to be our primary witness, in the sense that he
led the initiative to report their sightings. Intrigued by his observations, J.B. decided to contact the
local newspaper, La Prealpina, to declare:
Each evening for almost three weeks, I have seen a luminous object through the window exhibiting
a strange behavior. I am an engineer; I know the laws of physics and mathematics; I exclude the
possibility that it could be a satellite. I would like somebody to explain to me what it is. As a
scientist, I don't believe in the existence of other worlds, in fact I never mentioned the word UFO
in this entire story. On the basis of my knowledge, I cannot explain the nature of the object and I
would like some competent person to give me an explanation. It is the only reason why I am here.2
After reading this newspaper account, I made an appointment with the family and went to their
house that same evening. J.B. seemed proud to show me astronomical books open on the table, as
if he wanted to demonstrate that he knew something about the subject. As the observations had
happened over several weeks, it was quite difficult to reconstitute the events precisely. Fortunately,
during my visit, his daughter called to say that the object was again visible, as on the previous
evenings. A brilliant object was visible in the southeast, which was quickly identified as the planet
Jupiter, and confirmed using binoculars. Disappointed by this rational explanation, J.B. argued
that it could not explain their early morning observations.
Back home, a brief assessment of Venus’s position at that time of year showed that the planet was
visible early in the morning, in the same approximate direction. As the witnesses had seen only
one object at a time, based upon their description of the luminous phenomenon, identifying it as
Venus was relatively easy. Informed of this, J.B. tried to save the situation by highlighting the
unusual motion of the lights they had seen in previous weeks.
Even if no sure explanation could be given for these lights, we had already experienced strange
trajectories of lights in this geographical area. They were produced by the lights of the airplanes
taking off or landing at the nearby Malpensa airport. The airplanes are flying towards the
witnesses, which sometimes looks like they are suspended in midair, while moving quickly at other
times. It seems probable that all these observations had been conflated to give the impression of a
single phenomenon.
J.B. finally seemed to accept this astronomical explanation, and turned down a visit from RAI
(National Italian Television), saying that:
It’s not worthwhile for you to come, there’s nothing to see for the moment [even if apparently the
same phenomenon was still there] and it would cost too much money.
However, interviewed a few days later by the newspaper La Prealpina, he continued to state that:
The moving lights were something else.
As a consequence, the mystery continued to be propagated through the media. Even if the ETH
was not invoked in this case, extraterrestrial UFOs were still implied by the media.
2
La Prealpina August 2, 3, 4, and 8, 1985; Corriere della Sera August 4 and 6, 1985; CUFOC inquiry Aug. 2,
1985.
441
III. On Witness Testimony
J.B.’s behavior can be understood psychologically. He was probably in trouble for the commotion
he’d caused for the media, the ufologists, and the astronomers ... especially considering the
emphasis on his professional and academic credentials made by both the media and him. By
maintaining the mystery, JB was probably trying to save face.
The Role of Ufologists
The UFO myth is also propagated by ufologists. In the following story, a member of the family,
the witness’s father, was the first to share the information, giving rise to a secondary myth.
This case, the two blue dwarfs of Viggiù, took place on October 4, 1979, at the edge of a village
not far from Varese (where the previous account occurred), in the garden of A.N., a 38-year-old
workman employed by a refuse collection company.3
The night was dark and starry. As usual, A.N. was leaving home early to go to work. At 03:15 he
went to the garage, took out his Vespa motor-scooter, started the engine, switched on the lights,
and drove onto the garden path. Unexpectedly he saw two small blue dwarfs, no taller than 70-90
cm, about 10 m away. They were moving in his direction, floating 20 cm above the ground. They
looked human, with two arms and two legs, but were extremely thin. He did not notice their clothes
or hair, but was impressed by their luminous eyes, like those of a cat at night. They were
gesticulating and seemed to be discussing something, but he could not hear any words.
A.N. left the Vespa with the motor on and its headlight directed at the strange beings and began
walking in their direction; suddenly the motor stopped, and the light switched off. Unafraid, he
kept walking, intending to capture the dwarfs. He was about to grab the one on his left when it
disappeared horizontally towards the nearby lawn. Then he turned to the right to capture the second
one, but it too had disappeared. Returning to his Vespa, he was surprised to hear the motor start
and see the headlight illuminate the path again, without any intervention by him. The entire
observation lasted only a few minutes.
This strange case has never been explained, not necessarily because it is unexplainable but because
no psychological or medical study of the witness has been made, nor was there any investigation
of the witness’s background.
The inclusion of MIB (Men in Black) alongside the UFO elements adds a secondary interesting
element to the story. MlBs are those mysterious people who appear in some UFO stories, menacing
and intimidating both witnesses and ufologists, supposedly to prevent them from discovering the
truth about UFOs. They often wear black clothes and travel in black cars. While investigating this
case my colleague and I were publicly described as MIBs by a ufologist.
My colleague is French, and I am Belgian, thus both coming from French-speaking countries. We
both worked for the Nuclear Research Center of the CEE in Italy and were personally interested
3
CUFOC inquiry October 6, 1979; CUN inquiry November 18, 1979; La Prealpina October 5 and 6, 1979, February
14 and 20, 1980, and June 4, 1980; Cronaca Vera November 4-7, 1979; C. Naso, SKY Sentinel, No. 4, April 1985; A.
Hendry, M. Shipp, P. Rojcewicz, and E. Russo, MIB: Gli uomini in nero, tra mito e fenomeno, CISU monograph N°7,
September 1989.
442
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
in UFO testimonies. All this information is important to what follows.
We first learned about the blue dwarfs through La Prealpina newspaper. We telephoned A.N.’s
family and arrived in Viggiù on October 6th. We began recording his testimony inside the house
and then went out into the garden to measure distances and angles, and take readings with a
compass and Geiger counter. We did not notice any anomalies.
Six years later, C. N., a ufologist with a religious, conspiratorial and contactee agenda, published
the following [my own comments are in square brackets]:
One day (December 14th) [in reality December 6th], two men came to Viggiù and, without hesitation,
entered the garden. They were dressed in dark clothes [I do not have black clothes] and one of them
had a strange apparatus in his hands, pointing it in specific directions and showing a moving
needle. The man orientated the apparatus, turned around and, without hesitation, went to the exact
place where the dwarfs appeared, during the night of October 4th [of course A.N. had showed us
the spot already]. All of this lasted only some minutes. A.N. watched all this from behind a curtain
[the Pink Panther in action]. Seeing that the two men did not intend to go away, he left the house
[thus the Pink Panther came out of its hiding-place]. One of the men removed an ID card from his
pocket and said he was an engineer from the Nuclear Research Center.
Then, speaking in an incomprehensible language [obviously, if you don't understand French], the
men inspected in detail the path and the garden where the two visitors had been seen. A.N.
attentively observed their behavior and, not understanding the function of the apparatus, asked
what it was. “It is a Geiger detector,” said the man who presented himself as engineer [I don’t like
titles], in perfect Italian but with an evident foreign accent. The other man never spoke in Italian [I
never realized my colleague’s lack of Italian!]. After another five minutes, without saying goodbye
[no manners!] both men left. They got into a car hidden outside [it was not parked in the garden, to
avoid disturbing anyone], and A.N. watched them leave from behind the bushes [the Pink Panther
in action again]. Only then did he notice that their big black car [a white Citroën GS] did not have
any license plates [it has a red and white Belgian plate].
The A.N. incident is a rare Italian case of interference by the Men in Black. The Nuclear Research
Center absolutely denied the investigation. [I never reported anything about it, and our enquiry was
private and not work-related.] Whoever they may be, the intruders [this sounds as if they had been
identified] were surely not employed by the Research Center [I am sorry to contradict], which has
no interest in UFOs.
It’s interesting to note the atmosphere of mystery and conspiracy generated by this description: the
black clothes, the strange apparatus, the official nature of the visit, the military behavior in the
men’s movements, their strange language, the colleague’s silence, the big black car hidden outside.
It’s easy to imagine how this story, or a similar one, could be propagated by others, who don’t
check their facts first.
The Role of the Media
Some journalists – more concerned with their audience than with the reality of the situation – might
distort the truth by changing or omitting information, or refusing to correct mistakes, even when
presented with contradictory evidence.
G.M. presents the TV program MIXER on a main Italian channel. On December 16, 1991, he
443
III. On Witness Testimony
presented the audience with a photograph of a supposed alien, without saying it was a
reconstruction.
There followed a general discussion on UFOs, but not of the photograph he'd shown viewers.
Scandalized by this distortion of the facts, the Italian ufology group CISU published a press release
on December 17, explaining that the photo was of a dummy made for a Canadian movie
reconstruction of the Roswell case. The doll had been exhibited in the Pavillon du monde insolite
at the Universal Exhibition of Montreal (1981-1984). The doll is lying in a Plexiglas cylinder,
dressed in a diving suit. The photo had nothing to do with a 3D reconstruction, and was trimmed
so that the diving suit wasn’t visible. Apparently, G.M.’s response to their complaint was:
We showed the photo, but we did not say that it was an extraterrestrial.
About a year later, on November 30, 1992, G. M. broadcast exactly the same sequence, despite
the correction provided by CISU’s press release, so continuing to propagate false information and
to feed the myth.
A Convergence of Roles
Sometimes an amplification effect can be produced when events, and the roles of the different
actors ‒the witnesses, ufologists and the media‒ converge.
On May 30, 1987, a hundred people gathered at Crosia, in the Italian province of Cosenza, to
worship at a statue of the Virgin Mary which had been seen crying in a local church a few days
earlier. Unexpectedly, but anticipated by some of those assembled, a light appeared in the sky at
10 p.m. It performed a series of strange movements and was immortalized for six minutes on a
video camera. The light is called the star of the Virgin by witnesses. Initially the event was
interpreted as a religious one, then as a ufo one.
The incident took place almost exactly 40 years after Kenneth Arnold’s first historic sighting of a
UFO, on June 24, 1947. Alluding to similar cases is a typical means of bolstering one’s own
testimony, as noted by P. Lagrange,4 and in this case religious people compared the Crosia incident
to the visions of Fatima in Portugal while UFO enthusiasts pointed to Arnold’s sighting.
On October 17, 1988, an analysis of the video and a reconstruction of the light’s trajectory (from
a moving camera) were presented by members of the Italian ufology group CUN on Italian
Television RAI2. At one moment a clear disc shape with a hole in the middle and notches in its
periphery appears on the screen. The first impression that comes to mind is that this is a zooming
artifact of the video camera, as suggested by the TV presenter interviewing C.M., CUN’s
Chemical Engineer, who rejects the explanation. By coincidence, the shape of the object in the
video is similar to that of one of the objects described by Kenneth Arnold in 1947, and depicted
on the cover of Fate magazine in 1948. Of course, this fact was highlighted by CUN; one member
of the group, a former civilian pilot, added in an interview for Corriere 7 Giorni:
I am sure that this is not a terrestrial object.
4
“Enquêtes sur les Soucoupes Volantes,” Terrain, No. 14–L’incroyable et ses Preuves, Terrain (France), March 14,
1990.
444
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Years later, similar photographs continued to be published by the press.
In November 1990, the Belgian ufology group SOBEPS published an interpretation of the nowfamous disc shape. According to them, it resulted from the internal structure of the video camera,
which becomes visible when the automatic zoom tries to focus on a small point of light. This
phenomenon can be easily reproduced by anybody with a video camera from this period.
In December 1990, M.C., a CUN member refuted the explanation, arguing that in the Crosia video,
an additional central hole was visible, unlike in the SOBEPS photograph. The zoom artifact
hypothesis was again ignored by CUN member R.P. on their videotape UFO-Dossier Europa.
In July 1993 the Italian magazine FOCUS published a video of a lamp filmed with the zoom
opened to its max position, the central hole is clearly visible and the comparison to the Crosia case
is obvious. So, six years after the event, CUN finally agreed with the SOBEPS-Munsch hypothesis.
However, this was immediately annulled that November (1993), on the TV program Studio Aperto
by another member of the same group who presented similar images, and failed to mention the
video camera’s zoom mechanism.
Even if a luminous phenomenon had been recorded by the video camera, it remains the case that
the crowd’s observation of a simple point of light was transformed into an important incident by
the religious context of the event, the analogy with the Fatima visions, and the coincidence of the
anniversary of the Arnold sighting. The lack of criticism and objectivity shown by some ufologists,
and the lack of quality control and fact checking by the media, only serve to further propagate the
myth.
Conclusions
Leaving aside whether or not the UFO phenomenon is a reality, this paper has shown how the
actors in the UFO myth ‒witnesses, ufologists, and the media‒ can continue to propagate and feed
this myth. We can observe this common scenario: Witnesses, convinced that they have experienced
an exceptional phenomenon, wish, in good faith, to communicate their experience to others via
ufologists and/or the media. From this moment on, the UFO case acquires a kind of official
recognition that can act as a catalyst, attracting other witnesses, ufologists, and media.
Even once a case has been explained as having an ordinary cause, like an astronomical
phenomenon, a threshold may already have been reached, beyond which it can become difficult
for the actors in the myth to withdraw their statements. Then, the temptation to ignore or distort
the facts can be very strong. Other motivations like profit, bad faith, ignorance, or intellectual
dishonesty can also motivate the actors. Some UFO magazines, like other publications, are also
subject to practical constraints – for example they must collect enough material, publish on time,
and sell copies. This may also lead to a distortion or manipulation of reality. UFO cases which
have been explained don’t tend to interest people and so aren’t profitable for the media. This may
explain why corrections aren’t generally published.
Much energy can be expended in vain, struggling for the truth, correcting mistakes, and asking for
corrections to be published. However, the myth will continue to propagate because some of the
445
III. On Witness Testimony
actors want it to. Our time and energy is better spent on investigation and research. History has
shown that UFOs appear anywhere, at any time, to anyone, and that incidents can quickly be
widely reported by the media.
Possible Future Studies
Print media appeared in the late 15th century, cinema in 1900, radio about 1910, television about
1950, the internet about 1990, and mobile phones and the most widely used social networks about
2000.
* In what way did the global expansion of Internet media and associated forums, blogs, and social
networks influence the propagation of the UFO/ETH myth, or influence UFO conspiracy theories?
* In what ways has the Internet’s rapid expansion influenced close encounters and abduction
experiences?
* Are we to expect an increase in UFO testimonies due to these globalized networks or, on the
contrary, will more testimonies remain hidden within specific online communities?
* Are new characteristics or cultural aspects appearing in current UFO testimonies and, if so, why?
* What were the reactions of people and the UFO communities to the release in June 2021 of a
report on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) by the US-Pentagon (a parallel with the Condon
Report in 1968)? Why publish this now?
* Are there any differences between UFO myth propagation before and after the arrival of social
networks?
All these questions could form the object of further studies in the current context of the propagation
of UFO information and disinformation.
Bibliography
1. Bourdon, J., M. Delaval, and F. Murthag. UFO/IFO comparison-A descriptive study of the year
1977 in Italy. UPIAR monograph, 1990. https://www.afushop.se/store/p/0/bourdon,-jean;delaval,-marcel-murtagh,-fionn-ufo-ifo-comparison-a-descriptive-study-of-the-year1977-in-italy-773784
2. Bourdon, J., and M. Delaval. UFO/IFO comparison-A descriptive study of the year 1977 in
France. UPIAR monograph, 1990. https://www.upiar.com/index.cfm?artID=156
3. Delaval, M., and J. Bourdon. Confronto UFO/IFO dei casi italiani e francesi del 1977. UPIAR
monograph, 1993. https://www.upiar.com/index.cfm?artID=44&st=1
4. Paloque-Bergès, C. Qu’est-ce qu’un forum Internet – Les ordinateurs entrent en conférence.
Open Edition Press (France), 2018, pp. 19-53
https://books.openedition.org/oep/1846?lang=fr
446
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Witness Reliability: Accuracy - Reliability of Pilots - Personal Honor
Richard F. Haines
Abstract: One of the chief arguments raised by some skeptics is that many UAP/UFO witness
accounts simply aren’t reliable. Ipso facto, almost all should therefore be ignored. Beginning with
an analogy from a NASA space exploration mission, this paper argues that, indeed, no person or
inanimate thing can be one hundred percent reliable. Humans differ in many different domains and
these individual differences produce reductions in the reliability of their experiential accounts. But
this is not to suggest that their accounts are based on purely imaginary events, didn’t happen at all,
or that they can’t be accurate. The question here is how accurate are they? Involvement in serious
UAP studies now being conducted through the (U.S.) Office of the Director of National
Intelligence has raised this question yet again.1 If even one UAP sighting can be shown to be
“perfectly reliable,” isn’t that sufficient to settle the issue of their existence?
Keywords: Pilot sighting reporting, NASA Galileo Mission, Reporting honesty
A Comparison with Hardware
NASA’s Galileo mission was launched from Kennedy Space Center on October 18, 1989 en route
to Jupiter where it finally arrived and was carefully maneuvered into orbit on December 7, 1995,
more than seventy-three months later! It had required a gravity assist from Venus along with two
more assists using Earth’s gravity to finally reach its destination. The relatively small spacecraft
carried ten different kinds of sensors including a Solid-State imaging camera. But, unfortunately,
on April 11, 1991, when mission control attempted to open its large umbrella-like high-gain data
antenna (needed to send back its highly valuable data at rates up to 134,400 bps) it failed to open
fully! Staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and many other places
immediately went to work to find an effective workaround, or the entire mission could be lost.2
More than seven hundred people contributed to the mission and to this serious and unanticipated
intensive repair activity. I was one of them.
Earlier, spacecraft planners had wisely provided for two additional, smaller, low-gain antennas on
board as back-ups, each capable of sending a fainter transmitted signal back to Earth and at a much
slower rate of between 8 to 16 bps (so that the data stream could still be clearly understood), i.e.,
they still wanted sensor and overall system reliability to be as high as possible given all of the
expected and unexpected mission-related challenges.3 Because of the very low data rate and the
need to send back as much information as possible over this vast distance, various image
compression algorithms were evaluated to see if, by carefully removing certain features from each
video frame, the modified image would still be “reliable” and acceptable by members of the Solid
State Imagery (SSI) team who would study the arriving infrared, visible, and ultraviolet data.
(Planners had included the capability of reprogramming the onboard computer to alter its
processing and transmission characteristics during the mission.) Galileo managed to send back
more than 1,500 images of Jupiter and its moons during its 23-month orbital mission. Further
historical data can be found elsewhere.4
I found something both interesting and possibly relevant to the subject of this paper associated
both with Galileo’s space hardware and the SSI team members that my team and I worked with at
447
III. On Witness Testimony
Ames Research Center to evaluate the acceptability of various image compression algorithms that
might meet the challenging demands of the SSI team.
I believe there may be some valuable lessons to be learned about human reliability in general and
alleged UAP witnesses in particular from the Galileo project and the very brief overview just given.
Several are quite obvious: it goes without saying that just as inanimate, man-made technology isn’t
always 100% reliable (equipment sometimes fails) so human perception and memory can “fail”
regardless of the nature of the stimuli one experiences - whether it be expectedly mundane or
highly unusual and unexpected. The literature is replete with such supporting evidence. And while
Galileo’s hardware had a theoretical reliability factor (based on extensive pre-testing, calibration,
and iterative testing) which was very high indeed, the reliability factor of UAP witnesses cannot
be accurately assessed (for many reasons: legal, ethical, moral, biological, psychological, etc.)
And, just as Galileo’s system failure was unexpected, so most UAP are experienced unexpectedly.
While Galileo hardware had been carefully pre-planned to deal with a variety of contingencies,
UAP witnesses cannot be. It is unreasonable to expect a multimillion-dollar spacecraft to work
perfectly when bombarded by high energy cosmic rays, high acceleration and thermal loads, etc.
over long periods of time, so too is expecting a UAP witness to receive, store, and retrieve sensory
information perfectly, particularly under highly stressful conditions. This has also been shown by
much past research.5 Another lesson is less obvious: whereas scientific sensors can be calibrated
and tested for performance over long periods of time under all kinds of environmental conditions
and statistics generated on their reliability, similar statistics can be generated for humans under
only the most general circumstances. Human sensory reception, information input and output
(from stored memory), and overt behavior of humans can change relatively quickly, variably, and
without any clear-cut cause. These so-called individual differences contribute to the unreliability
of eyewitness testimony. Literature published in the field of “experimental psychology” is
constantly contributing to our understanding in such matters. But what about the members of the
SSI team and their requirements in our study?
At that time, I was leading a small team at Ames to evaluate a possible Galileo imagery workaround that involved comparing various levels of both lossy and lossless image compression; we
worked with fifteen members of Galileo’s Solid-State Imaging team who came to Ames to be
tested using our particular compression algorithms.6 Each was an expert in his or her field of
astrophysics or astronomy; each brought their own “hidden” (previously unidentified)
requirements for what they were looking for in the Galileo imagery, i.e., they didn’t (or couldn’t)
express all of the criteria they were looking for in the images they viewed although most agreed
that contrast, resolution, and field of view were important (even though they could not actively
control many of them). It became clear that some members required lossless image compression
(which would require extremely long transmission times back to Earth for each full frame), while
others said they could accept lossy compression imagery (where each full frame is transmitted
much faster). These requirements represented their several scientific biases imposed on the data in
order to carry out their own studies. In the same way, UAP witnesses bring their own kinds of
personal biases with them before, during, and even after their sightings. UAP field investigators
need to identify these biases far more carefully than they have to date.
And, although UAP witnesses don’t expect to experience what they see in advance, these SSI team
members had the added benefit of pre-planning what they examined and what criteria they would
448
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
apply to their assessment(s) of image scientific usefulness (i.e., they might have to compromise
some of their desired image quality features because there was only a single data channel available
back to Earth and it had to be shared by many users of the same data set). And so, the reliability
of their data was importantly influenced by one’s ability, willingness, and capability to pre-plan
for some set of outcomes (e.g., a particular surface or atmospheric detail at Jupiter). Again, as
everyone knows, UAP witnesses have no such opportunity and may be pre-conditioned by prior
exposures to Hollywood productions, popular press images of UAP, etc.7,8
Accuracy
Now two issues before us here are whether or not UAP witnesses both can and will provide an
accurate description of what they experienced, i.e., whether their testimony is actually reliable? If
they can (their senses and cognition are functioning normally), will they carefully and accurately
report the details of what they saw? Relatively little research has been done so far on either issue.
The author has carried out research somewhat tangential to (but overlapping with) this question. I
attempted to find out if drawings of UAP made by people who claimed to have seen a UAP differed
from those who claim they had never seen one.9 Of course, today almost every adult in the Western
world has seen various graphic representations of what culture tells us they look like. In my study,
I simply asked whether drawings of what was seen by alleged UAP witnesses and drawings of
what non-UAP witnesses thought they looked like might be useful in discriminating between these
two groups of people. What I discovered may have touched upon one aspect of eyewitness
reliability.
As I wrote in 1977 “…does the exposure to a ‘real’ UFO evidence itself differently in hand
drawings than does the exposure to ‘pictorial, synthetic, or otherwise artificial’ representations of
a UFO?” While the many details of this study will not be repeated here, it is interesting to note that
alleged UAP witnesses were more reluctant to draw certain details of the UAP (viz., domes, round
openings, apertures, and details around the object’s circumference, leg-like structure, markings,
symbols and/or insignias, etc.). I suggested back then that a person’s exposure to a “real”
unidentified aerial phenomenon acts to somehow constrain the number of details one draws as well
as to not draw obviously ridiculous shaped objects. In most other aspects the drawings of “craft”
by both groups did not differ very much! I doubt that the reluctance to include these details came
from their fear of ridicule, because they had already identified themselves as UAP witnesses!
Could it have come from a motivation to simply draw what they had seen and the UAP simply
didn’t have such details? Of course, without back-up corroboration, it is impossible to know.
Perhaps similarly, there was no back-up antenna available to send back the needed corroborating
information from Jupiter.
In another study,9 I attempted to quantify how accurately people could reproduce irregularly
shaped totally unfamiliar images presented to them for 1, 4 and 8 seconds; to each of two groups.
The fifteen participants in each group were asked to fill out a short questionnaire which (later)
showed that both groups were almost the same in: their frequency of reading articles about UAP
and/or paranormal phenomena; estimated frequency in looking up into the sky to try to see a UAP;
belief in a supernatural power, being, energy source; as well as age, sex, and handedness.
Group 1 was shown these test shapes first and simply asked to redraw them as accurately as they
could. Then (within several more minutes) they watched a 35mm (illustrated) slide lecture on UAP
449
III. On Witness Testimony
given by the director of the Space Science Center at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California.
Group 2 was shown the same slide-lecture as above (also 21 minutes long) first and then shown
the test shapes which they had to reproduce as accurately as they could. Careful measurements of
all of the drawings of the irregularly shaped images were then made. It was found that Group 1
tended to draw larger images than did Group 2 (difference wasn’t statistically significant). In a
follow-on study, another set of familiar, symmetrical (geometric) shaped images was presented to
the same observers employing the same experimental design as above; the same results were found
when they were presented a small white square as well as a small white circle flashed upon a black
background, a set of white vertical parallel bars, and a white capital letter T lying on its side (all
presented for only 0.2 second). Why should the fact of having seen and listened to a lecture on
UAP that included numerous photographs of alleged UAP have caused these participants to draw
smaller drawings when all of the other testing conditions were the same in both groups? Is this
finding perhaps related to the study presented previously where a prior (alleged) UAP sighting acts
to constrain the number and variety of details drawn? Studies such as these may help uncover some
of the bases for the acknowledged unreliability of some UAP witnesses. Clearly, such studies do
not need large expenditures of time or money.
On the Reliability of Pilots
A few comments are in order about the reliability of airplane pilots who report seeing UAP while
in flight (sometimes with corroborating radar or other electromagnetic contact).10,11 Few would
question their credibility or motivation for reporting these phenomena in the first place, given the
still-ongoing cultural stigma and negative biases shown against aviation professionals for doing
so.12 Nevertheless, skeptics have tried to debunk such sightings in various ways. One is to argue
that simply because pilots are humans and humans can be fooled by various illusory conditions,
ipso facto, pilots must be seeing an illusion of some kind. I won’t comment on Sheaffer’s13,14 views
on this subject other than to say I do agree with him that reliability is not a clear-cut matter by any
means. Serious research is needed to make this boundary clearer. I also agree with Buckout’s
statement that “…even highly trained people become poorer observers under stress.”15 Yet
“poorer” is a relative term and would seem to paint all such observers with the same brush. So,
what about pilots and visual illusions?
As Harris16 has pointed out, “The term visual illusion represents an unfortunate choice of
vocabulary (because it) seems to incite an air of magic... or to hallucinate elaborate imagery which
has no physical basis in reality. The vast majority of false perceptions are not magical in nature.
They are logical interpretations by the observer of what he actually saw. They are explainable and
predictable on the basis of sound engineering concepts.” I agree with Harris as long as the pilot
has limited his or her report only to a strict description of what he or she saw without adding other
interpretive comments about what they believe the phenomenon might be. I disagree, however,
with his assertion that the application of “sound engineering concepts” will quickly or easily
identify the source of the alleged illusion. I know of many pilot sighting reports of UAP that
skeptics and others have called illusory but which, after extensive study, cannot in any way qualify
as such. And so, in regard to illusions in particular, the reliability of a majority of pilot reports of
UAP remain very high in my opinion.
What about multiple (pilot) witnesses in the cockpit? Given the various Cockpit Resource
Management procedures being carried out (by mandate) in a majority of world airlines today, the
450
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
cockpit has become far more democratic. The junior flight officer (and all other flight crew
including cabin attendants) is encouraged and empowered to challenge the pilot flying about
anything that may impact flight safety. Of course, this includes reporting (or not) reporting UAP.
When there are two eyewitnesses of the sighting event in the cockpit, each must fill out an “afterevent” incident report. Onboard flight voice recorders are also analyzed to further document
auditory aspects of the sighting event. These changes to aviation procedures will continue to
improve the reliability of pilot reports of UAP.
As to making a UAP report in the first place, professional pilots particularly, are highly trained,
motivated toward responding safely and appropriately under stressful and sometimes ambiguous
conditions. They understand the often demeaning and career-limiting consequences of making a
UAP report to authorities on the ground and also possess various onboard electromagnetic sensing
equipment which might respond to energetic aspects of the UAP.12,17 In this regard a particularly
interesting account of a close aerial encounter clearly involving a strong magnetic field is presented
elsewhere.18 Numerous other aviation sightings in America have been documented as well.1,10
Having worked personally with the senior airline pilot in this particular case, I can attest to his
extremely high reliability, truthfulness, and accuracy. In my experience, he is typical of airline
flight crew despite what many skeptics might want to suggest otherwise.
Also, regarding pilots and visual illusions, once again, I would be among the first to agree that
pilots can be fooled into misidentifying an unidentified light or physical object in flight, particularly at night.19 However, because of their previous flying experience, viewing vantage point(s) of
the unknown object or phenomenon over time, capability to radio others for confirmation and
identification (e.g., ground radar and air traffic control, flight schedulers), and a strong subjective
bias against making any report at all (for reasons already mentioned) such UAP reports, if actually
made, should be accorded a relatively high reliability. It is easy for skeptics to make their
challenging assertions from the comfort and safety of their armchairs and sometimes without
having an understanding of what actually takes place in the airplane cockpit in flight at night, in
severe weather with air turbulence and reduced visibility, and sometimes with poor or no radio
communication at all with the ground and under stressful conditions. In my opinion, pilot reports
of UAP deserve not only more careful scrutiny by UAP investigators and government aviation
officials, but also much higher acceptance and respect than they have received in the past.20
Personal Honor (Telling the Truth) and Real-Life Conditions
Honesty is a part of witness reliability. I agree with Koi who has pointed out, “…in relation to
many UFO reports, the honesty of the witness is not usually a key factor.”21 In the case of
commercial and military pilots, their motivation is not only to maintain safety but also to keep
their jobs and not jeopardize them by radioing a UAP sighting along with giving relevant technical
data to help others on the ground and in the air nearby to obtain supporting information. They
know that flight safety is paramount and that “honesty is the best policy.” And, in the case of
modern military jet interceptors, particularly those that have onboard sensors of many kinds that
register “unknowns,” the pilot is safer being honest (by reporting the UAP) because if he doesn’t,
he will have to explain later why. Finally, asserting that, on a purely statistical basis, one
occupational group such as pilots is or is not as likely as another group to mistake a UAP as being
some other kind of phenomenon merely demonstrates one’s lack of understanding of the variability
of human behavior under real-life conditions. Again, let us consider commercial pilots as an
451
III. On Witness Testimony
occupational group where their selection involves a great many components that would tend to
make their sighting reports far more reliable, rather than less. Consider the extensive procedures
that are involved: prior (military or private) flying experiences that are gained under a wide range
of environmental and visual conditions; their educational requirements and achievements; written
application and training results; carefully focused simulator “type” training and periodic recurrent
training carried out under a variety of real-life, high-stress conditions; number of years flying;
safety record; etc. All of them contribute to reducing the chance of misidentifying a prosaic
phenomenon as a UAP (almost always the very last category a pilot will reluctantly seek out in
identifying an unknown). While, statistically speaking, occupational category is not a reliable covariable to use, still there are many individual well-documented UAP reports made by pilots that
have been shown to be of extremely high informational value.
Arguments also have been made that because eyewitness testimonies in courtrooms are notoriously
divergent and inconsistent so the same must be true for UAP sighting reports made by flight crew
members. Of course, inconsistency of any testimony blurs the boundary between truth and untruth.
But this false (or at least misleading) analogy assumes that legal research-related proceedings
employed in validating the testimony of an attorney’s eyewitness is similar or even the same as
those employed in aircraft incident and accident reports. They may be similar but only in
superficial ways! While attorneys for each side of a court case seek any and all evidence to support
their own client(s)’ testimony, they are motivated primarily to win the case at any and all costs. Of
course, this includes the testimony of so-called expert witnesses who may be brought in. Yet,
investigating incident and accident aviation reports (e.g., UAP sighting reports) by civil aviation
authorities such as the National Transportation Safety Board in America or their counterparts in
other nations involves a different objective than winning at all costs. The proximate cause of the
incident (e.g., the physical characteristics of the UAP that causes a report to be made) or accident
is the primary issue. Identifying all likely related (secondary) contributors to the event is also done
deliberately.
In the case of aviation incidents (e.g., near-miss with a UAP)10 and accident analyses, they are
almost always so widely publicized and influenced by political and economic considerations that
eyewitness testimony, if there is any, is largely accompanied by “hard” technical and engineering
facts including airborne and ground sensor data related to the phenomenon. In short, pilot sighting
reports of UAP would seem to be of quite a different nature than are civil and criminal cases in a
court of law.
Conclusion
What is the ultimate end of achieving perfectly reliable UAP witness data? Isn’t it to provide
scientists, engineers, and technologists with the kind of data they need to answer these questions:
“does something anomalous actually exist?” and also “if there is such data available does it show
any signs of intelligent control?” To me, these are the key questions that drive our desire for highly
reliable data on UAP. Sci-fi writers and others don’t require that these data are even moderately
reliable. They can and do fill in the unknown frustrating gaps with their own machinations of mind.
But UAP are so important that they can’t be left to the imagination of creative minds. They deserve
the assembled intellect and wisdom of all of the contributors to this volume, along with everyone
else who honestly wants to know the truth.
452
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
References (all web articles accessed on Nov. 4, 2022)
1. Anon. “Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” Washington, D.C.: Office
of the Director of National Intelligence, June 2021.
2. Anon. “Galileo’s New Telecommunications Strategy.” NASA. NASA Fact Sheet, 2004.
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/factsheet/Galileo_communication_factsheet.html
3. These two low-gain antennae might be considered analogs for multiple eye-witnesses who can
contribute their own independent information about the event.
4. Anon. NASA. “Galileo Antenna Deployment Problem Under Analysis.” Pasadena, California:
JPL News Release, 1991.
5. Tulving, E., and F.I.M. Craik (Eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Memory. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000.
6. Haines, R.F., Y. Gold, T. Grant, and S.L. Chuang. “Subjective Evaluation of Integer Cosine
Transform Compressed Galileo [Solid-State] Imagery.” NASA. Technical Paper 3482,
1994.
7. Haines, R.F., Observing UFO: An Investigative Handbook. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1980.
8. Karpicke, J.D., and M. Lehman. Human Memory. 2013.
https://learninglab.psych.purdue.edu/downloads/2013/2013_Karpicke_Lehman_Oxford.p
df
9. Haines, R.F. What Do UFO Drawings by Alleged Eyewitnesses and Non-Eyewitnesses Have in
Common? Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, 1979.
10. ____. Aviation Safety in America: A Previously Neglected Factor. Los Altos, CA: National
Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena, Technical Report 1, 2000.
11. Shough, M. Radar Catalog (RADCAT): A Review of Twenty-One Ground and Airborne Radar
UAP Contact Reports Generally Related to Aviation Safety for the Period October 15, 1948
to September 19, 1976. Los Altos, CA: National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous
Phenomena, Technical Report 6, 2002.
12. Roe, T. Aviation Safety in America – Under-Reporting Bias of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
and Recommended Solutions. Los Altos, CA: National Aviation Reporting Center on
Anomalous Phenomena, Technical Report 8, 2000.
13. Shaeffer, R. The UFO Verdict. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1981.
14. ____. UFO Sightings: The Evidence. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1998.
15. Buckout, R. “Eyewitness Testimony,” Scientific American, Vol. 273, Issue 6, p. 23, December
1994.
16. Harris, J.L. “What Makes a Visual Approach Nonvisual,” Airline Pilot, 1977, pp. 14-18.
17. Anon. “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Research Gathers Momentum,” Aviation Week,
August 13, 2021.
18. Haines, R.F. “Aircraft Equipment Malfunction,” Chapter 11 in P.A. Sturrock, The UFO
Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence. New York: Warner Books, 1999.
19. Haines, R.F., and C. Flatau. Night Flying. [TAB Practical Flying Series]. Blue Ridge Summit,
Pennsylvania: McGraw-Hill, 1992.
20. This has been the chief objective of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous
Phenomena (NARCAP) since its inception in 2000.
21. Koi, I. “Best UFO Cases. Part 16: Qualitative criteria: Credible witnesses.”
https://www.isaackoi.com/best-ufo-cases/16-qualitative-criteria-credible-witnesses.html
453
III. On Witness Testimony
Memories Are not Documentaries:
The Weakest Link in the Chain of UFO Evidence
Jochen Ickinger
The question is not whether a memory is false, but how false it is.
Dr. Julia Shaw
Abstract: Eyewitness reports of observations of UFOs are still the central argument in all
discussions of a possible anomalous background to unexplained UFO sightings. Researchers
often assign a very high level of relevance and reliability to statements from obviously credible
eyewitnesses talking about their personal experiences. As a result, conclusions are drawn from
their descriptions that are regarded as information on objective processes and properties of the
observed phenomena and objects. This happens without taking into account the subjectivity of
witness statements.
The following paper focuses on the susceptibility to error of witness statements and highlights
the diverse physiological and, above all, psychological influences on the entire memory process
which consists of perception, memory and recall. Perception and memory, which are largely
based on the respective knowledge and experience, and thus its individuality and temporality, are
emphasized. In addition, the way a witness interview is conducted also holds a potential for error
with regard to the information obtained. The cognitive interview is then described as a tool for
obtaining good-quality memories. Nevertheless, it is extremely problematic, if not impossible, to
draw scientific conclusions about the UFO phenomenon from findings obtained purely by
testimony. They require objectively verifiable data.
Keywords: Perception, Memory, Recall, Misinformation, Accuracy of testimonies, Eyewitness
interviews, UFO investigation
Introduction
In anomalistics, the UFO phenomenon is primarily classed as an extraordinary human
experience, i.e., a (predominantly) subjectively experienced and conveyed experience.1 While the
modern UFO phenomenon is also characterized by a huge number of photos and videos,
especially since the advent of digital photography, these have come under strong criticism in
terms of credibility and authenticity. They often show conventional objects and are based on
optical effects or do not allow exact conclusions because they lack detail or are of poor quality.
This is why eyewitness testimony and its assessment is still the central element in all discussions
about the origins of the phenomenon.
This can also be seen, for example, in the officially verified photos and videos of the US Navy,
which have been hotly debated in UFO circles since 2017. According to some researchers, they
show extraordinary vehicles of non-terrestrial origin. However, these images are also subject to
criticism because there are possible conventional stimuli which call into question unusual
claims.2 In the current discussion representatives of exotic hypotheses are increasingly referring
to the statements of US Navy pilots and military personnel – so, again, personal accounts have to
serve as evidence of the non-terrestrial origin of these flying objects. An example of this is the
454
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Scientific Coalition of UAP Studies’ (SCU) analysis of the Nimitz Tic Tac video.3 According to
its own statements, it is impossible to derive object data such as size or distance from the
footage, and assumptions and estimates based on eyewitness accounts were taken as the basis for
the objective calculation of unusual behavior. Here, as in various other reports, proponents
emphasize the assumed high quality and credibility of the testimony of the witnesses involved
(pilots and other military-technical personnel).4
In the state-of-the-art evaluation of eyewitness reports, the focus is not on the general credibility
of the person but on the credibility of the testimony in question, its accuracy, and reliability. This
must be evaluated independently of the reputation or the general credibility of a person, which
can only hint at a credible testimony.5 In addition, many factors can encourage false testimonies,
be it a deliberate lie, an error, or suggestion. Since fallacy is more widespread than conscious
lying (which also applies to eyewitness accounts of UFO sightings), this paper will present
relevant influences on all three stages of the memory process (perception, memory, recall) that
affect memory capacity and can cause errors, and its implications for UFO case investigations.6
Influences on Perception
Perception can be defined as a process by which
sensory stimuli from the environment are received,
organized, and interpreted. This identification process
is often referred to as chain of perception. However,
the representation of perception as a step-by-step,
linear sequence of stages is increasingly regarded
unlikely today since the actual perception process is
far more complex. Rather, perception is increasingly
seen as the result of several interactive processes. A
model describes it as a bottom-up process with the
transmission of stimuli and their organization
(generating patterns and encoding) on the one hand;
and on the other hand, as a top-down process in which
interpretation and identification of the organized
stimuli take place (see Fig. 1). The latter may Figure 1: Perception process (based on Bak
essentially be called “an educated guess.” The 2020)
interrelationship between bottom-up and top-down processes ultimately leads to perception in
the sense of recognition (identification and meaning).7 This presumes that we have assumptions
about the world and the objects in it. Without such assumptions, there can be no cognition in the
sense of identifying and giving meaning. If the necessary presence of knowledge, experience,
and expectation is decisive for the perception process, it is clear that the result of conscious
perception is not an objective image of reality, but always an individual and subjective one. It is
influenced by external and internal parameters.8
In perception, the following parameters that influence the perception of event information can be
identified (see Fig. 2 below):
1. Physical and sensory conditions. These include the external conditions under which the
perception takes place, such as spatial and temporal conditions (visual conditions, observer
455
III. On Witness Testimony
position, movement situation), e.g., whether the observation takes place outdoors, through a
window, with auxiliary means, in motion, or in a stationary position. These points are usually the
subject of an additional survey or questionnaire, and they are collected and taken into account for
further assessment. A common factor is the age of the witness. For example, advancing age leads
to physiological changes in perceptual abilities (this already tends to be noted from the age of 40
years). Examples are the decreasing depth of field in the eye, restrictions in peripheral
perception, and changes in color perception or night vision problems.9
2. Social and psychological conditions, which include perception differences based on
expectation and experience. Shape and pattern perception is also determined by this factor. Of
particular interest here are descriptions of flying objects in the dark. Object shapes are often
described by an interpretation of the visual distribution of individual lights. Typical examples are
“flying triangles,” which are interpreted based only on the arrangement of lights. Several lights
are regarded as belonging to the same object, whose form they define. This is a completely
normal process that is defined by the “laws of gestalt.”10 The brain forms a shape from the lights
perceived – yet this does not have to correspond to the true shape or the true object. As soon as
the brain recognizes a definite form of the flying object it is also perceives and describes it in this
imagined form.
It has been mentioned that the knowledge and experiences at the time of the event are an
essential part of its perception and will differ from observer to observer. Personal ideas and
convictions also play their role. Of particular interest is the so-called priming effect, whereby
one’s expectations or even previous experiences can influence the perception in a very special
way (it is therefore also referred to as the expectation effect).11,12 In the case of extraordinary
human experiences, this effect must not be underestimated. Most people hold a set of certain
expectations and beliefs regarding the phenomena, or may already have made strange
observations. The possible impact of this effect was illustrated in a TV documentary on the myth
of Bigfoot – witnesses believed they had observed a Bigfoot and described such an animal, but
traces and material found on the encounter site were identified as those of ordinary animals. The
documentary also discussed gestalt perception in this context.13 Researchers attempt to assess to
what extent such beliefs or experiences are present in observers by trying to find out about their
previous interest in UFOs. One problem here is the fact that such images have for long already
become part of pop culture; even children are exposed to many motifs of the subject of UFOs
and aliens. So, everybody will ultimately have his ideas about this topic.
3. Allocation and focus of attention. Was the observation deliberate or rather random and on the
periphery? Was the witness able to devote his full attention to the event and how long did the
observation last? Or was the witness busy with something else? As a spontaneous phenomenon
the witness generally encounters UFOs unprepared and only by chance (unless they especially go
to a place to make observations, such as happens in the case of the Hessdalen lights). The witness
has only a little time to interpret something in the sky as an unknown phenomenon, and then to
focus on its observation. Reported UFO observations with a very short duration, or incidental
ones, are often difficult to assess unless there are specific indications. American astronomer
Allan Hendry, who once was a UFO researcher, suggested the category “insufficient
observation” for such cases, as a sub-category of “exceptions,” observations that for various
reasons cannot be sensibly assessed.14
456
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
4. The personal situation (emotional situation) in which the witness is at the time of the
observation. Was he or she relaxed, stressed, excited or angry, tired or wide awake, or did the
event itself lead to particular emotional states in the witness? Such personal emotional states can
make it difficult to record the entire event accurately and above all objectively and soberly. This
is an often-neglected or underappreciated point which is hardly ever considered in questionnaires
on sightings and is only rarely asked if the witness does not spontaneously speak of his or her
own situation. This is of particular interest for night sightings – did the witness come from a
party, from a club, or was he or she on the way to or from work, etc.
Figure 2: Influences on perception (by author)
Experiments have shown that, in addition to interest and attention, a certain amount of arousal is
necessary for good perception. If it is at an optimal level, it offers a good basis. However, if the
level of arousal is too weak or too strong, it leads to a significant deterioration in perception
skills (model of the inverted U-curve according to the Yerkes-Dodson law [see Fig. 3]).15
Figure 3: Hebbian version of the Yerkes–Dodson law (Shaw 2016)
457
III. On Witness Testimony
This means, for example, that if an observational experience that is unusual for the witness leads
to very strong emotional excitement or a stressful situation, these emotions increasingly impair
perceptual performance. The effect of stress on eyewitness recall is widely underrated in its
effects. Studies have consistently shown that stress has a dramatically negative impact on the
accuracy of eyewitness memory, a phenomenon that witnesses themselves often do not take into
account.16 Particularly when a threat is being felt (sensation of fear), the focus of perception
narrows and concentrates on the perceived threat. Peripheral details and contextual information
become unclear or will be badly perceived.15,17 In a UFO observation under high stress, central
details of high priority may stand out, while accompanying details of low priority, which can be
just as important for an assessment, are not or only inadequately observed. Witnesses often
remark on a personal stressful situation on their own initiative or describe their feelings during
the observation. As a case investigator, we should take this into account and document it when
we make systematic inquiries.
Influence on Memory
Perceptions are not stored unalterably in memory, but they are also subject to influences. The
main factor here is time. The more time passes between the event and the interview situation, the
greater the risk of changes in the original perception. Such changes can occur within the space of
days after the observation. There are two influencing parameters (see Fig. 5 below):
1. Forgetting. Forgetting is a normal process to which most memories are subject to a larger or
lesser degree. From various studies on forgetting, a so-called forgetting curve has been derived,
which, however, is not linear over the years and varies in intensity depending on the type of
information absorbed or the event. Thus, autobiographical or important personal events are
remembered even after several years, while those with little or no personal significance are
subject to high memory loss. This already happens after just hours and continues asymptotically
until it begins to level off the following days at a dramatically reduced level of accuracy,18 As the
years go by, the forgetting curve continues to slow down (see Fig. 4). Eyewitness memory is
increasingly susceptible to contamination as time passes. When memories fade, they also become
more susceptible to suggestion.19 Childhood memories of an adult should be evaluated particularly carefully.
Figure 4: Typical presentation of the forgetting curve (Fluent-Forever/Gabriel Wyner)
458
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
At the moment, there is no definitive answer to the question of whether forgotten information is
really completely erased or can simply no longer be accessed, for whatever reason. In addition,
depending on the situation, there will always be occasions when you will not be able to recall
everything that you knew only shortly before or what comes back to your mind later. This
situation may happen during a witness interview. The brain will try to fill such gaps in memory
by itself on the basis of expectations and stereotypes. The problem is that it cannot be determined
in a single interview whether a memory was authentic or only retrospectively inserted by the
brain, since it is an unconscious process and the false fill-in is recalled by the witness as a real
memory. Only intentional false statements may later be determined on the basis of certain facts.
2. Suggestive influence (misinformation). Subsequent information obtained by witnesses after the
actual event can distort and alter their memory. This so-called misinformation effect is caused,
for example, by conversations and exchanges of ideas with other people or witnesses or by media
information.20 The effect must especially be considered in the case of UFO sightings, since
phenomena unknown to an observer cannot be calibrated on known objects and the observers
may think about their experience, search for possible analogies, and interpret their observation.
In a later interview, details may be described that were not originally observed, because they are
interpretations or adaptions based on subsequently acquired information. This change in one’s
memory occurs unconsciously, so that the witnesses believe they are telling the truth. In the case
of several interacting witnesses to an event, mutual influence often leads to memory conformity.
This means that the memory of a single witness in a group will not only reflect his own
memories, but after their exchange, consists of memories of all participating witnesses. In this
process, the memory of the individual group members tends to adjust to a common narrative.21
Researchers attribute great importance to media influence during waves of UFO sighting.
Additional witnesses may interpret their sighting according in the context of the information they
read about and then report a sighting (social contagion).22 Media influence on subsequent
testimony should not be underestimated. It must also be allowed for in the currently debated
observations by US Navy pilots. Their observations have now been reported for four years in
various media, and these reports advocate very different views and different interpretations and
assumptions. The witnesses compare them with their own perceptions; and in doing so may be
influenced. In addition, we have a long period of time that has passed since the Nimitz incident
in 2014, and this must also be taken into account. It would be of more use to consult any existing
protocols that were made immediately after the events.
Figure 5: Influences on memory (by author)
459
III. On Witness Testimony
A timely interview and exploration of a UFO observation is therefore of crucial importance in
order to minimize the influences mentioned and to obtain good-quality statements. Contrarily,
increased periods of time between observation and interview must be critically assessed. My own
experience from case discussions with fellow researchers shows that this is not always the case.
This aspect often only comes into the researcher’s mind when we are faced with insufficient data
from sightings from long ago, where a meaningful investigation can no longer be carried out.
When a long period of time has passed since the event, especially if the witnesses are regarded as
reliable, the problem is hardly ever discussed.
All things considered – and remembering that memories can change within days – I would
suggest an additional evaluation scale for sighting reports which measures the time that has
passed since the event. For the highest quality the interview should take place within a few days
after the event, ideally on the same day the event occurred, the second highest quality for
interviews within a month and the third highest quality for interviews within a year. Interviews
on sightings that happened more than a year ago would receive the lowest quality. I would tend
to classify the latter in a distinct sub-category as “exceptions” according to Hendry and not under
UFOs in the sense of unidentified.
Influences on Recollection and Reproduction (Interview)
In the interview situation, witnesses are expected to recall and replay their memories of an event
correctly and comprehensively. However, there are also influences that can affect the result, the
final witness report. For this, again two major parameters can be described (see Fig. 6 below):
1. Reproduction by the witness, distortions in the reproduction by levelling (simplifying details),
accentuation (emphasizing details, especially when stress is felt) or assimilation (changing and
adjusting details).23 The witness’s verbalization and language skills also play a role in the
description of the event. It is recommended that the interviewer uses what is known as active
listening and pays attention not only to what is said, but also to how it is said. An audio recording
of the interview is advisable in order to be able to later understand the situation if necessary.
2. Suggestive influences by the interviewer. In the interview situation, suggestive questions or
question techniques can also lead to false information. For example, misleading questions can
lead to witnesses reporting things that were not there in the first place.24 This is why neutral and
open questions must always be used. Even questions about details that are not well remembered
because they were not given sufficient attention can lead to misinformation effects. While
repeated and frequent interrogation on details may provide additional information, at the same
time it will encourage false memory convictions. Witnesses tend to make their own assumptions
in order to give an answer if they have no real memory of the detail asked.
Figure 6: Influences on recall/reproduction (by author)
460
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Measures to Optimize Memory Performance
There are strict limits to a subsequent evaluation of memories, as the event usually lies in the
past and measures are therefore limited to the interview situation. Precisely for this reason, the
witness interview is the central instrument for gaining information about the event and requires a
methodical approach in order to obtain reliable and usable information for the assessment of the
case.25 This is a weak point in UFO research because most interviewers are untrained in
interview techniques and regard their interview simply as an everyday conversation. A witness
interview of inferior quality can hardly be adjusted in retrospect. It may bring into question the
entire case assessment.
The cognitive interview is a tried and tested measure for obtaining good-quality memories;
studies show that it provides from 25% to 35% more correct memory content than standard
interviews.26 This means that the witness mentally re-engages in the observation situation and
reports everything that he or she recalls in a free-form report, even if the result appears
incoherent and fragmentary. The interviewer stays in the background. The witness should have
the opportunity to remember without time pressure and stress. The interviewer should create a
relaxed interview situation, not push the witness or ask questions during this phase. Ideally, the
interview is carried out personally with the witness and as a local appointment, i.e., at the
location of the sighting. In this way, the witness is most likely to put him or herself in the
emotional position of the experienced situation, which promotes memory. This is also the best
way to observe any reaction of the witness.
Questions can be asked only after the free-form report has been completed. Now suggestive
questioning techniques must be avoided. The investigator must keep his own assumptions or
interpretations to himself, or he will lead answers in a desired direction. Only open-ended
questions are to be used, and the witness is not given any answer options. Information about
peripheral details of the event is also problematic, especially with regard to duration estimates.
According to studies, there is a tendency to overestimate shorter events of less than 30 minutes
(which are typical for UFO observations).27
Only after this exploratory first phase, the subsequent, detailed interview as well as the filling in
of the usual questionnaire for case studies should be made. The partially given options in a
questionnaire may influence the answers, as they are then tailored to the questions. The use of
the free-form report and later of a detailed interview or questionnaire will result in a redundancy
of information. This can be compared, and contradictions noted, if necessary. A free-form report
is particularly important because of the resulting dynamics.
What Significance Can We Assign to Drawings?
Typically, in data collection on UFO sightings, witnesses are asked to make a drawing of the
observed object. Because they give a visual impression of what was seen, drawings add to purely
verbal or written descriptions. In the final case evaluation and discussion of prosaic causes,
significant weight is usually given to drawings, especially when they are compared with possible
explanations. If the pros and cons of a stimulus identification as a conventional object are
discussed, in addition to the overall shape individual details in a drawing are often used as
justification, especially in so-called unexplained cases where a drawing does not correspond to
the expected shape of a known object.
461
III. On Witness Testimony
This approach, however, does not take into account the already-mentioned influences on
perception and memory, which affect reproductions in drawings just as much as in verbal
descriptions. The content of memory is not an objective and unchangeable reality, and drawings
are not photographic reproductions of what is seen. Experiments by researchers show that
drawings by eyewitnesses are also quite individual. In these experiments, test groups were shown
an image on a slide which the participants were later asked to draw from memory. A well-known
and illustrative example is the series of tests conducted by the German UFO group GEP. Their
results, at least in part, do not necessarily point to the stimulus originally shown and the drawings
also differ considerably, and it was stated that “verbal descriptions and sketches of objects are
only ‘moderate’ in the majority. (...) A third to a maximum of half is ‘usable’” (see Fig. 7).28 A
comparable experiment exemplarily carried out by sociologist Edgar Wunder for the German TV
station Pro7 confirmed the results: people who are confronted with an ambiguous stimulus for a
short time will include details in their drawings which do not really correspond to the stimulus
and cannot be assigned to it, even when these drawings are done only a few minutes afterwards.29 The same, naturally, is the case with drawings made years after an event. In addition,
drawings by eyewitnesses to sightings that are later identified sometimes show significant
deviations from the actual stimulus. Corresponding remarkable cases were documented by the
Italian UFO group CISU, for example in mass sightings of a stratospheric balloon and a meteor
over Italy (see Fig. 7).30,31 These cases also show that with several (independent) witnesses in a
case, one and the same object will be depicted in many different ways.
Figure 7: Perception experiment by the GEP (Keul 2009, left); mass sighting of a stratospheric balloon (Grassino
1986, right)
Cases where drawings are given in addition to photos or videos can also be illustrative. I myself
took part in case discussions with videos which showed, in one case, only a still light and, in the
other case, an airborne airplane in the distance, while the descriptions and drawings had strongly
divergent details which were not confirmed on the videos and in one case clearly deviated from
an airplane. In both cases, the witnesses were convinced that they had seen something out of the
ordinary. Finally, it seems likely that in the case of an unidentified, commonly known,
conventional object that is perceived under unclear conditions and appears mysterious to the
witness, a drawing is more likely not to correspond to the stimulus, since it would otherwise be
462
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
obvious. The more one's own interpretations are incorporated, the more deviations must be
expected. Drawings can thus be no more than an indication in the case evaluation and individual
details should not be overrated, especially since another witness would probably draw the same
object differently. As many UFO observations are made at night, the influence on shape
perception should also be taken into account. The perceived shape will often correspond to the
arrangement of lights in the sky; this is then reflected in the drawings and, among other factors,
plays an important role in most of the sightings of flying triangles.
In general, I see many problems when investigators draw pictures to illustrate eyewitness
accounts, even if done in close co-operation with them, as these are, in essence, the results of an
interaction between investigator and witness and cannot be regarded as reproductions free from
influence. However, studies show that pictures drawn by witnesses immediately after a sighting
and before they talk or discuss it with others, are quite valuable, and enhance memory
performance.32 It has also been proven that drawing sketches either before an interview, or
independent from it, results in less confabulation than is the case in a guided interview.33
Therefore, witnesses should be encouraged to draw sketches independent of a later interview and
as soon as possible after their sighting. This is true even if photos or videos have been taken.
Is the Certainty of a Witness an Indication of Correctness?
When finally assessing a case, the strong conviction of a credible witness that his memory is
reliable is often regarded as a measure of the correctness of his or her memory performance. Yet,
studies show that subjective conviction is not related to objective accuracy, as the brain
constantly fills in the gaps in any experience with expectations, thoughts and stereotypes. It is
therefore misleading to assume that an extremely convinced witness is also a good witness.34 The
testimonies of witnesses who believe they can remember everything even after a long time must
be viewed with greater skepticism than testimonies of witnesses who admit to memory gaps.
Testimonies of witnesses who want to tell the truth and nothing but the truth can be subjectively
true and yet objectively false.
The situation is similar when a witness reports objectively about his observation, without his
own speculations, interpretations and discernible exaggerations. On the one hand, this speaks for
the credibility of the testimony and the authenticity of the reproduced memories, yet on the other
hand it cannot rule out the possibility of false perception and the sources of error described.
Conclusion
“Memories are not documentaries,”35 and drawings are not photographs. Giving a testimony
about events in the past is an intricate and very error-prone process; and “faultless recall is not
the rule but the exception”, as Hamburg psychologist William Stern stated already in 1902.36
Selective perception and individual conditions at the time of the event distort the perceived
information and also depend on what we already know and on our experience at that very time.
Subsequently, memory content changes through several suggestive influences, reflections
become facts, and existing information is lost or filled in by invented details. Memory details are
further distorted by suggestive interviews. Alterations of our knowledge will have us recall
events that occurred long ago in a completely new way. The memory of the same event can also
turn out very differently depending on the situation and mood. The quotation from forensic
psychologist Dr. Julia Shaw at the beginning of this article says it in a nutshell. An investigator
463
III. On Witness Testimony
can only try to conduct a cognitive interview as soon as possible after the event in order to obtain
reasonably reliable memories. However, it is not possible to draw a reliable conclusion about an
– or even the – objective reality based on purely subjective data. The deduction of anomalistic
object characteristics in UFO sightings from witness testimonies has no basis in the natural
sciences. Even natural scientists well-disposed to this topic point out the problem of witness
testimonies and the current rather deficient data situation as well as the necessity of reproducible,
objective and high-quality evidence.37,38,39
References (all web articles accessed on April 6, 2022)
Gesellschaft für Anomalistik (n.d.). “Profile of the Journal of Anomalistics.”
https://www.anomalistik.de/en/janom/profile-of-the-zeitschrift-fuer-anomalistik
2
Metabunk Forum (2017-2021). “UFO Videos and Reports from the US Navy.”
https://www.metabunk.org/forums/ufo-videos-and-reports-from-the-us-navy.60/
3
Scientific Coalition of UAP Studies (March 3, 2019; updated July 13, 2021). “2004 USS
Nimitz Navy Strike Group Incident Report.”
https://www.explorescu.org/post/2004-uss-nimitz-strike-navy-group-incident-report
4
CBS News, “60 Minutes Overtime” (May 16, 2021). “Navy Pilots Recall ‘Unsettling’ 2004
UAP Sighting” [Online]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygB4EZ7ggig
5
Ludewig, R., D. Tavor, and S. Baumer (2011). “Wie können aussagepsychologische
Erkenntnisse Richtern, Staatsanwälten und Anwälten helfen?” AJP/PJA, 11, p. 1418.
6
_____. Ibid., pp. 1418-1419.
7
Bak, P. M. (2020). Wahrnehmung, Gedächtnis, Sprache, Denken. Berlin: Springer, pp. 17-19.
8
_____. Ibid., pp. 21-22.
9
Chaloupka, C., R. Fous, R. Risser, & U. Lehner (1993). Erhöhung der Sicherheit der
Seniorinnen und Senioren im Straßenverkehr. Study by order of the Austrian BMVIT.
10
Domnik, I. (2005). Probleme sehen – Ansichtssache: Wahrnehmung von kartographischen
Darstellungen als visuelle Kommunikationsmittel in der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit.
Department of Geosciences of the Freie Universität Berlin. Berlin: Freie Universität,
Dissertation, p. 20.
11
Stangl, W. (2022). Priming. Online Encyclopedia for Psychology and Pedagogy.
https://lexikon.stangl.eu/1378/priming/
12
Ludewig, R., D. Tavor, and S. Baumer (2011). “Wie können aussagepsychologische
Erkenntnisse Richtern, Staatsanwälten und Anwälten helfen?” AJP/PJA, 11, p. 1418.
13
Pupp, M., and S. Taplin (Directors) (2014). The Missing Evidence - Bigfoot [Film]. UK, Blink
Films.
14
Hendry, A. (1979). The UFO Handbook. A Guide to Investigating, Evaluating, and Reporting
UFO Sightings. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., p. 22.
15
Shaw, J. (2016). The Memory Illusion, Remembering, Forgetting, and the Science of False
Memory [E-Book]. London: Random House Books, Ch. 2. Dirty Memories.
16
_____. Ibid., Ch. 7. Highly Emotional.
17
Greuel, L., et al. (1998). Glaubhaftigkeit der Zeugenaussage. Weinheim, Germany: Beltz/
Psychologie Verlags Union, p. 32.
18
Ludewig, R., D. Tavor, and S. Baumer (2011). “Wie können aussagepsychologische
Erkenntnisse Richtern, Staatsanwälten und Anwälten helfen?” AJP/PJA, 11, p. 1419, fn.
39.
19
Gerrie, M. P., et al. (2005). “False Memories,” in N. Brewer & K. D. Williams (eds.),
1
464
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Psychology and Law: An Empirical Perspective. New York: The Guilford Press, pp. 222253.
20
Greuel, L., et al. (1998). Glaubhaftigkeit der Zeugenaussage. Weinheim, Germany: Beltz/
Psychologie Verlags Union, p. 33.
21
Gabbert, F., et al. (2012). “Memory Conformity between Eyewitnesses,” Court Review, 48(12), pp. 36-43.
22
Abrassart, J.-M. (2010). “The Beginning of the Belgian UFO Wave,” SUNlite, 2(6), pp. 21-23.
https://www.academia.edu/4321342/The_Beginning_of_the_Belgian_UFO_wave
23
Balloff, R. (2004). “Grundlagen von Klärung und Diagnostik bei sexuellem Missbrauch Wahrnehmung, Gedächtnis, Erinnerung,” in W. Körner and A. Lenz (eds.), Sexueller
Missbrauch, Band 1. Götttingen, Germany: Hogrefe, p. 111.
24
Ludewig, R., D. Tavor, and S. Baumer (2011). “Wie können aussagepsychologische
Erkenntnisse Richtern, Staatsanwälten und Anwälten helfen?” AJP/PJA, 11, p. 1420.
25
Ickinger, J. (2003). X-Faktor UFO-Zeuge: Methodik der Zeugenbefragung.
26
https://www.academia.edu/47579660/X_Faktor_UFO_Zeuge_Methodik_der_Zeugenbefragung
Erdfelder, E. (2003). “Das Gedächtnis des Augenzeugen,” Report Psychologie, 28, p. 442.
27
Tobin, S., et.al. (2010). “An Ecological Approach to Prospective and Retrospective Timing of
Long Durations: A Study Involving Gamers,” PloS One, Volume 5, No. 2, E9271.
28
Keul, A. (2009). “Auswertung des GEP-CENAP-Wahrnehmungsexperiments 1988,” JUFOF,
30(3), pp. 81-86.
29
Story House Productions (2007). Galileo Mystery: UFOs – Sind sie wirklich gelandet? [Film],
Germany: Story House Productions & Pro7.
30
Grassino, G. P. (1986). “’Flap’ in Piemonte,” UFO Rivista di Informazione Ufologica, 1(2),
pp. 17-22.
31
Toselli, P. (1987). “Un Ordigno Extraterrestre Sull’Italia?” UFO Rivista di Informazione
Ufologica, 2(4), pp. 16-23.
32
University of Waterloo (Dec. 6, 2018). “Drawing is better than writing for memory retention”
[Online]. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-12-memory-retention.html
33
Memon, A., C. A. Meissner & J. Fraser (2010). “The Cognitive Interview: A Meta-Aanalytic
Review and Study Space Analysis of the past 25 Years.” Psychology, Public Policy, and
Law, 16(4), 340-372, cited by Wikipedia (2021). “Cognitive Interview” [Online].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_interview#Adults_and_cognitive_interviews
34
Ludewig, R., D. Tavor, and S. Baumer (2011). “Wie können aussagepsychologische
Erkenntnisse Richtern, Staatsanwälten und Anwälten helfen?” AJP/PJA, 11, p. 1420.
35
Bak, P. M. (2020). Wahrnehmung, Gedächtnis, Sprache, Denken. Berlin: Springer, Audiodatei
zu Kap. 6 Gedächtnis.
36
Sponsel, R. (2005). “Aussagepsychologische Wahrheitstheorie I,” Erlangen, Germany:
Service der IG-GIPT [Online]. https://www.sgipt.org/forpsy/falsch/falaus0.htm
37
Harder, B. (June 26, 2021). “Wir brauchen Daten“: Interview zum neuen ‘Ufo-Report’ der USNavy mit Professor Hakan Kayal” [Online]. https://blog.gwup.net/2021/06/26/wirbrauchen-daten-interview-zum-neuen-ufo-report-der-usa-mit-professor-hakan-kayal/
38
Loeb, A. (July 26, 2021). “Announcing a New Plan for Solving the Mystery of Unidentified
Aerial Phenomena” [Online]. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/announcing-anew-plan-for-solving-the-mystery-of-unidentified-aerial-phenomena/
465
III. On Witness Testimony
39
Hamblen, M. (June 7, 2021). “Sensors and Data Analysis Could Help Solve UFO Mystery,
Experts Say” [Online]. https://www.fierceelectronics.com/electronics/sensors-and-dataanalysis-could-help-solve-ufo-mystery-experts-say-0
Acknowledgements: The author thanks Ulrich Magin for his support in translating.
466
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Three Simple Tests of Eyewitness Reliability
Ulrich Magin
Abstract: The main sources of our knowledge about UFOs are eyewitness reports. These are
often treated, by believers and sceptics alike, as reliable accounts of something external that has
actually happened. But how reliable are eyewitness reports (not to speak of human perception)?
There are three ways to find out – in simple exercises that anyone can do, and without going into
the specialist jargon of the psychologists (although there exists a large body of academic papers
and investigations that confirm the simple things I am about to say here).
Keywords: Perception, Misperception, Memory errors, Sightings in groups, UFO observations,
Monster sightings, Hunting accidents
Misperception During Perception
In Marklohe, Lower Saxony, Germany, a 64-year-old hunter shot a 44-year-old comrade in midMarch 2020 because he thought he was a deer in the distance.1 In Germany, the completion of an
official hunting exam is required to own a hunting license. One can say, therefore, that a hunter
is an expert in his or her field. Still, at least a dozen people are killed each year in Germany by
hunters who believe them to be boars, or roe, or red deer, even when they wear flashing orange
safety vests.2
A recently published French study presents 29 cases from 1976 alone (of a total of 138 UFO
cases reported in that year) where people mistook the full moon for an alien spacecraft that had
landed in their garden – surely, a misperception several times more extreme than misperceiving a
bolide for a spaceship.3
In other cases, people have watched the disintegration of a bolide in the earth’s atmosphere and
reported rocket-like spaceships with windows!4
People have seen, and reported in great detail, volcanoes that erupted – in regions with sandstone
or limestone where no eruption has taken place for millions of years.5
Even pilots are prone to make mistakes: A recent study by “drone manufacturer DJI, and …
Academy of Model Aeronautics … found only 27 out of 764 drone sighting reports by aircraft
pilots were legitimate near misses.”6
Perception is far from certain, and sometimes fatal. You can test this yourself by going to Google
News and entering “hunter” and “mistake,” or “pilot” and “mistake.” There are updates each
day!
1
web.de. “Jäger bei der Jagd erschossen.”
Magin, “Zuverlässigkeit von Augenzeugenberichten.”
3
Maillot et al., “Mistaking the Moon.”
4
Borraz Aymerich, “Meteoros con ventanillas,” pp. 15–24.
5
Magin, Investigating the Impossible, pp. 127–163.
6
Anon., “Hu-hum or not?”
2
467
III. On Witness Testimony
Changes Over Time
Kenneth Arnold, the first UFO witness, changed the story of what he had seen several times over
the years – regarding size, behavior, and appearance of the half-moon-shaped objects he saw on
July 24, 1947.
In autumn 1866, Maria Schrott saw a Tatzelwurm, a kind of dragon, in the Alps in South Tyrol,
when accompanied by her husband – or so she told researchers in the 1930s. However, as she
was 78 in 1934, she would have been married at an age of 10 or 11 years. Clearly, time distorts
memory.7
Mrs. Winifred Cary saw the Loch Ness monster for the first time in 1918. Or in 1920. Or in
1917. The date depends on when and whom she told of her observation. It was “as big as a whale
and the hump must have been at least six or seven feet out of the water.” Or, in another telling, it
was “over 20 feet (6.1 m) long and about 4 (1.2 m) feet above the water.” She saw the monster
dozens of times, and no two lists of her sightings agree. Even Roland Watson, who is a strong
promoter of the monster’s reality and of Mrs. Cary’s reliability, has to admit: “The one big
difference in the two accounts is that she told Cooke the hump rose to about six or seven feet
(1.8-2.1 m) out of the water whereas she told Dinsdale it was about four feet (1.2 m). Moreover,
one account says it was a quarter mile (0.4 km) from Temple Pier, but the other says a mile (1.6
km). […] The only quibble with the fifth sighting is that one list gives it as happening in August
1962 and the other says August 1963.”8
An English couple, the Spicers, allegedly encountered the Loch Ness monster in 1933. It was six
to eight feet (1.8-2.4 m) long and, as Mr. Spicer wrote in a letter to the local newspaper
“Inverness Courier,” “it crossed my road about fifty yards (46 m) ahead, and appeared to be
carrying a small lamb or animal of some kind.” The Spicers changed this story after their initial
report. When asked by researcher Constance Whyte in 1957, they complained that people had
made fun of them: “Reports were circulated that the Monster had been seen ‘with a lamb in its
mouth’; this and other distorted or incomplete accounts were common at the time and, much to
the annoyance of Mr. and Mrs. Spicer, were frequently repeated afterwards.” To Mrs. Whyte
they now said that “[o]n reflection, [they] decided that it must have been the end of the tail.”
Regarding the size of what they had seen, the Spicers started to enlarge the six to eight feet (1.82.4 m) previously given. In an interview with Tim Dinsdale in 1960, the Spicers judged the
length as 25 feet (7.6 m). In the middle of the 1970s, Nick Witchell increased the length to 30
feet (9.1 m).9 Stories grow, eyewitness reports adapt to criticism. If people do not believe in a
monster that carries a lamb, you claim that this was a press invention.
One can test this phenomenon by following up with interviews with eyewitnesses over a range of
time, although admittedly this is arduous.
7
Steinböck, “Der Tatzelwurm und die Wissenschaft,” p. 459.
Watson, “The Monster Sightings of Winifred Cary.”
9
Magin, Investigating the Impossible, pp. 210–211.
8
468
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Group Sightings
Sometimes, more than one witness observes an anomalous phenomenon. Generally, in the
literature, the main witness is quoted, and the remaining ones simply confirm what he or she has
just said. At other times, someone has the presence of mind to interview the witnesses separately.
Often, very different stories emerge.
In November 1960, 50 pupils of Fort Augustus School watched the Loch Ness monster for 10
minutes. Their master collected 47 individual reports. No two agree. There are some who
observed one hump, others two humps, some three humps; there were those who saw a head and
neck, or a tail; some who said it was always above the surface, some who saw it dive; etc. A
multitude of reports should give us more certainty, but that is not always the case. If a monster
had appeared, with three humps and a head and neck, those who saw only one hump seriously
misperceived. If it was only a wave, those who reported a monster misperceived. We do not
know what was there to be seen, the only lesson we learn is: eyewitness reports per se are
faulty.10
On February 4, 1977, children at school recess in Broad Haven, Wales, saw a landed UFO in a
nearby field. Fifteen children were interviewed. To some it looked like two saucers piled on top
of each other, and it hummed. Another child saw landing gear. Still another, a silvery man with
pointed ears. Another said the UFO looked like a saucer with a cupola on top, and an orange
light. Some said the UFO appeared suddenly, others said it came out of a bush. No two reports or
drawings of the craft agree. If there was a humanoid at the saucer, the 14 witnesses who did not
see it were mistaken. If not, one witness was mistaken. How can we judge whose report can be
relied on and whose cannot?11
This confusion can grow as time passes, and not only perception, but memory gets faulty. Early
in the 1960s, Mildred Nye was present when a giant 5-m-long tadpole-like sea creature was
carried away on a lorry at Orford in England. Monster expert Tim Dinsdale researched the case –
only to learn that the monster had been a common 3.3-m-long blue shark, just half the size and
girth of the “tadpole.” Yet Mrs. Nye was an honest reporter, her memory just had been distorted
to the extreme.12
These are mot random problems. In two longer papers,13,14 I have listed first 17, then 22,
instances where reports by more than one witness have separately been protocolled, and there
were gross distortions and disagreements in each case.
Conclusions
We can only see how reliable an eyewitness account is when we can check it against a known
object. If the witness portrays a fire balloon, Venus, a meteor, or a plane, we can judge whether
he or she is a reliable reporter, because we do know what the objects look like, independent of
10
Burton, The Elusive Monster, pp. 26–35.
Pugh and Holiday, The Dyfed Enigma, pp. 21–31.
12
Dinsdale, The Leviathans, pp. 151–155.
13
Magin, “Problemfall Gruppensichtung.”
14
Magin, “Das Problem der Gruppensichtungen.”
11
469
III. On Witness Testimony
the witness. This is why we can certainly discern IFOs, or identified flying objects. We can
calibrate the tale we are being told.
On the other hand, we have no “real UFO.” We cannot evaluate whether a report tells us
anything about a genuine UFO. We cannot calibrate it against something we know and find out
how accurate the report is. This is why categories like Problematic UFO, Good UFO, or Best
UFO are basically senseless and worthless. We only have eyewitness reports telling about them,
and these cannot be calibrated, as we know nothing about Good UFOs, or Best UFOs.
This is an old hat. Aimé Michel wrote, already in 1958:
An isolated phenomenon—one that evades not only systematic experiment but even systematic
observation—cannot be the subject of scientific inquiry; it is at best a historical fact; and if its
truth is in question, it is not even that. […] Hitherto the only ‘study’ of saucers that has been
possible has been analysis of the reports of witnesses after sightings. But this is not the scientific
method. The analysis of testimony properly belongs to the law courts and to history, which
attempt to weigh human uncertainties; for the present at least, science cannot apply its methods
15
there.
UFO reports are just that, reports, and the science that takes care of reports is humanities, and all
research says such reports are unreliable and cannot constitute proof of anything we do not yet
know.
References
Anon. “Hu-hum or not?” Fortean Times 391, April 2020: p. 17.
Borraz Aymerich, Manuel, “Meteoros con ventanillas.” Cuadernos de Ufologia, II, No. 9–10
(1990): pp. 15–24. https://www.academia.edu/42949504/Meteoros_con_ventanillas
Burton, Maurice. The Elusive Monster. London: Hart-Davies, 1961.
Dinsdale, Tim. The Leviathans. London: Futura, 1976.
Magin, Ulrich. Investigating the Impossible. Charlottesville, Virginia: Anomalist Books, 2011.
_____. “Zuverlässigkeit von Augenzeugenberichten.” UFO-Information, 2020.
http://www.ufo-information.de/index.php/aktuelles/weblog/463-zuverlaessigkeitaugenzeugen-bigfoot
_____. “Problemfall Gruppensichtung.” UFO-Information, 2020.
http://www.ufo-information.de/index.php/aktuelles/weblog/466-gruppensichtungaugenzeugen-ufo
_____. “Das Problem der Gruppensichtungen.” Journal für UFO-Forschung 41 (2) (2020): pp.
50–58
_____. “Zeichnungen von Augenzeugen – das Beispiel Seeungeheuerkadaver,” Netzwerk für
Kryptozoologie, April 15, 2021.
https://netzwerk-kryptozoologie.de/monster-augenzeugen/
Maillot et al. “Mistaking the Moon for an Alien Spacecraft: the ‘Saros Operation.’” Research
into the Paranormal, Vol. 50, November 2019.
Michel, Aimé. Flying Saucers and the Straight-Line Mystery. New York: Criterion, 1958.
Pugh, Randall Jones and F.W. Holiday. The Dyfed Enigma. London: Coronet, 1981.
15
Michel, Flying Saucers and the Straight-Line Mystery, p. 13.
470
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Steinböck, Dr. Otto. “Der Tatzelwurm und die Wissenschaft.” Der Schlern (1934): p. 459.
Watson, Roland: “The Monster Sightings of Winifred Cary,” Loch Ness Monster, February 9,
2020. http://lochnessmystery.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-monster-sightings-of-winifredcary.html
web.de. “Jäger bei der Jagd erschossen,” March 23, 2020.
https://web.de/magazine/panorama/jaeger-jagd-erschossen-34542650
471
III. On Witness Testimony
Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony in Extreme Close Encounters:
“Abductees” & “Contactees”
Daniel Mavrakis
Abstract: Some people claim to have come into contact and communicated, sometimes
repeatedly, with beings of extra-human origin. We can distinguish “abductees” reporting an
abduction experience and “contactees” claiming direct contact with non-human entities.
Numerous studies have concluded that most “abductee” experiences were caused by altered
consciousness states occurring in subjects without psychiatric symptoms, often facilitated by the
use of hypnosis by investigators. In contrast, the alleged “contactees” we have studied were mostly
suffering from patent psychiatric disorders, often in the form of paranoid delirium.
Introduction
The UFO phenomenon has the peculiarity of not being reproducible and therefore it doesn’t lend
itself easily to traditional experimental scientific analysis. This is also valid for many other
phenomena such as ball lightning, not to mention meteorites (both long disputed by scientists).
The UFO phenomenon cannot therefore be studied directly, as pointed out by Hynek (46) and
Esterle (28): it can only be comprehended through sighting reports. This explains the crucial role
of the alleged witness as a transducer of information (49), and sometimes even as a creator when
it is not a question of real experiences, but of illusions, hallucinations, delusions, or hoaxes. It is
therefore essential to study medical and psychological aspects which may affect the alleged
witnesses and the reliability of their statements (66).
UFO sightings are classified into several groups (46), ranging from simple sightings at a distance
(nocturnal lights: 65% of the cases, diurnal discs: 25% of the cases, plus rare radar/optical reports
or instrumental observations) to close encounters (first kind: UFO seen close; second kind: side
effects on the environment or living beings; third kind: where “animated entities“ are sighted). In
this paper we will focus on two categories extending close encounters of the third kind:
“abductees” (sometimes called close encounters of the fourth kind) and “contactees” (sometimes
called close encounters of the fifth kind).
Abductees
Numerous cases of “abductions” have been reported, especially in the United States (20) (22) (25)
(76), more particularly since 1961 (when the case of Betty and Barney Hill benefited from wide
publicity). These experiences are characterized by memories of being captured by non-human
entities and subjected to varying degrees of physical examination. These experiences have received
considerable publicity and have often been interpreted as proof of the existence of extraterrestrials.
Apart from a few rare cases, the good faith of the witnesses, who are convinced of the reality of
their experience, cannot be doubted (5) and is generally accepted even by the most ardent skeptics.
An abduction experience usually occurs at night, in a car (after a long tiring period of driving),
outdoors, or simply in bed. The subject sees an intense blue or white light rapidly approaching him
(or her), hears a buzzing noise, is distressed, and feels the impression of an inexplicable alien
presence near him. Feeling paralyzed, he is then transported, or feels himself floating, inside a
large room, where strange beings are frequently found, and may then undergo various
472
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
examinations (which can range from vague sensations of touching to a thorough medical
examination). Generally, no substantive element of the witness’s experience is provided. In a few
cases, the witness has claimed to have recovered “artifacts” but the analysis of these artifacts has
always allowed a demonstration of a commonplace origin (terrestrial organic in general) and not
extraterrestrial (85).
Bullard showed that an abduction experience usually includes several of the elements below,
usually in this order (19) (20):
•
Capture: Unknown beings capture the witness in a strange way, attributed by the witness
to magic or higher science. The capture generally happens in a fairly stereotypical fashion: the
witness is generally alone and isolated, during the night, the environment is brutally disturbed by
a strange phenomenon such as a brilliant light rapidly approaching the subject, hissing, buzzing.
The witness then loses contact with the reality of the usual outside world and feels paralyzed, and
has the impression of passing through a luminous tunnel to find himself in an ovoid room or a
large brightly lit hall.
•
Medical examination: the witness is examined in a more or less thorough and humiliating
way by humanoid occupants. Often the witness has only a fuzzy perception of this “examination”:
he feels a sensation of foreign presence, feels manipulated, touched, palpated. In extreme cases,
the examination can go as far as the removal of sperm or ovum, or even rape.
•
Other elements may include a discussion with alien beings, inspection of their machinery,
a voyage beyond earth, or an encounter with superhuman beings.
•
Return: the subject is then carelessly released back on Earth, either in the environment
where he was when captured, or in another isolated place.
•
Subsequent repercussions: the subject, usually terrified by his experience, will then
frequently suffer repercussions from his adventure: physical, mental, mystical, even paranormal.
This typical scenario covers most of the elements that can be encountered during abductions; in
general, a given removal contains only some of these elements. Sometimes the subject retains the
memory of all or part of the events he thinks he has experienced (vigilant abduction), but usually
most details will only be remembered afterwards, either under hypnosis, or “spontaneously” (after
study, it turns out that most “spontaneous” recollections are hardly spontaneous and occur after
suggestions from the subject’s entourage, from reading an article, or from viewing a TV program
on abductions). Frequently, the witness will then be able to notice missing time in his memories,
corresponding to the amnesia of the period of the abduction, and leading him to seek the cause of
this missing time. Enthusiastic ufologists attribute this amnesia to the intervention of the aliens
who carried out the abduction, whereas skeptics consider the entire experience to be delusional,
imaginative, or dreamlike.
Here is an example of a widely publicized abduction:
On January 4, 1975, Carlos Alberto Diaz, a 28-year-old married man, returned to his home in a suburb of
Bahia Blanca (Argentina). It was already 3:50 in the morning. While crossing a railway line, he was
suddenly blinded by a strange light. Anguished, he wanted to run away, but was unable to make the slightest
movement. He then heard a buzzing, then felt himself pulled up off the ground and then fainting. The witness
then relates that, when he regained consciousness, he found himself in the center of a brilliant sphere, slow
and translucent, surrounded by three greenish unknown creatures floating around him. The creatures
began to tear hair from the witness, who tried in vain to resist and then lost consciousness soon after. The
witness woke up at allegedly around 15:00 on the side of a highway in Buenos Aires, 785 kilometers south
473
III. On Witness Testimony
of Bahia Blanca, his watch having stopped at 3:50. After hitchhiking and admission to a hospital center at
17:30 and having undergone in-depth medical examinations, the witness maintains his story.
Although this case has been considered as a hoax by several enquirers, this witness’s account is
also entirely consistent with hypnagogic hallucinations and sleep paralysis occurring either in a
normal subject in certain infrequent circumstances or at any time in a narcoleptic subject.
Among the studies done on abductee cases:
•
Search for psychiatric pathology: many authors have emphasized that these people
generally do not suffer from a proven psychiatric pathology (24) (60) (63) (79) (98). It should
however be noted that, by extension, authors frequently tend to confuse “abductees” (frequent)
and “contactees” (rarer). However, we and other authors have noted that many “contactees” suffer
from a psychiatric pathology (see below). The fact that most “abductees” do not seem to present
any pathology does not mean that they are representative of the general New York population (52).
Indeed, many authors have found in “abductees” either abnormal characteristics on the MMPI
(high creativity, distrust, etc.) (79) and in particular dissociative tendencies (84), or psychosis
(often in the form of paranoid delirium) (48) (95), significant anxiety (87), and a very high rate of
suicide attempts (98).
•
Comparing ordinary controls vs. “abductees”: Spanos et al. compared witnesses
alleging an extraordinary event (ex: close encounter of the third kind) and those alleging a banal
sighting (ex: unexplained light at night) and found no significant differences in terms of
psychopathology, intelligence and difficulty in separating dream from reality (fantasy proneness)
(97), which had been proposed by Bartholomew et al. (15) and other authors (38) (39) (78). This
lack of fantasy proneness has also been confirmed by other authors (50) (88), notably Rodeghier
(90).
•
Search for daydreaming personalities: Rodeghier et al., in a well-conducted study on 27
subjects (89) (90) classified the “abductees” into two distinct groups, one in the majority where
there is no personality prone to dreaming or psychological disorders on the MMPI, the other where
the tendency to daydream is higher as well as the overall score on the MMPI.
•
Induction by hypnosis or the simple suggestion of analogous experiences: Lawson
demonstrated that volunteers unaware of the problem could, under hypnosis, relate abduction
experiences very similar to those described by the “abductees” (57) (58). Lynn et al. found
similarities during simple suggestions without the use of hypnosis (62). This of course suggests
these experiences can be completely generated by the witness’s imagination and the invoked
mental mechanisms and imagery that are widespread in the general population.
According to numerous studies (10) (11) (14) (17) (18) (29) (30) (44) (81) (86) (97), most if not
all “abductee” experiences may be explained by altered states of consciousness triggered by
various causes (101):
•
Hypnagogic and hypnopompic states: Isakower (47) described in 1936 the phenomena
occurring in certain circumstances when a subject falls asleep: a so-called “hypnagogic” state
precedes sleep and, at its onset, the subject may for example have the impression of observing
speedily approaching round objects rapidly growing to gigantic size, and appearing to crash into
the subject. Many other types of sensations are possible. Lasting a few seconds to minutes, these
hallucinations can be so clear and precise that they are almost indistinguishable from reality (71).
474
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Their strange nature causes many who experience them to attribute them to supernatural causes.
In addition to hypnagogic hallucinations that occur during sleep onset, hypnopompic
hallucinations may accompany wakefulness (70). It is interesting to note that widely used sleep
inducing drugs such zolpidem or zopiclone facilitate those states.
Figure 1: Examples of entities reported by alleged abduction witnesses (top) and drawn by volunteers who were
hypnotized to suggest that they had been abducted (bottom). One notices the similarity between them (Lawson, 58).
•
Sleep paralysis and dreamy state: close to hypnagogic states, sleep paralysis is an
intermediate state between wakefulness and sleep where the subject is conscious but is unable to
move or speak (35). Movements of the limbs, trunk and head are impossible, while respiratory and
eye movements are preserved (104). This complete muscle atony, often experienced in an
agonizing way, can occur in a large percentage of normal subjects, especially when taking
hypnotics, as well as in patients suffering from narcolepsy (about one out of three narcolepsy
sufferers presents this symptom (56)). Rather, it should be referred to as waking paralysis, as it
most often occurs upon awakening, and is often accompanied by vivid and terrifying hypnopompic
hallucinations. During this state, which can persist for several minutes, the subject often has the
impression of a presence, of being pulled or manipulated, of feeling vibrations or light (multimodal auditory and visual hallucinations are frequent) and may experience emotions ranging from
simple curiosity (rare) to panic and terror (common) (21). Up to 40% to 50% of normal subjects
are likely to present, at least once in their life, sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations,
without a narcoleptic episode (7) (34) (35).
•
Narcolepsy: Narcolepsy or Gélineau’s disease is a rare but not exceptional condition where
patients experience sudden bouts of daytime sleep, usually lasting a few minutes. These bouts are
often also associated with hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations and sleep paralysis, as well
as automatic behaviors where they will mechanically perform mundane actions without
remembering them when they wake up (56) (59). These hallucinations can occur during normal
awakening and falling asleep, but also during sudden attacks of daytime cataplexy, often triggered
by emotions (1) (56). The prevalence of narcolepsy is not negligible (between 0.026% and 0.16%
according to authors (45) (56) and it can also be poorly known or even ignored by the subjects.
•
Use of some drugs, but mostly side effects of prescribed medications.
475
III. On Witness Testimony
•
Sleep, food, drink and sensory deprivation.
•
Use of hypnosis: In many cases, subjects recounting an experience of close observation,
contact or abduction or most often vaguer episodes, for example missing time or simply sleep
disorders and nightmares, were subjected to hypnotic regression sessions intended to recover
memories considered “forgotten” or “repressed” by the patient’s unconscious. Such usage of
hypnosis has been strongly criticized (54) (55) (77) as hypnosis may increase the amount of data
obtained from the subject, but not its reliability, because it greatly increases the subject’s
vulnerability to suggestions (3) (37) (41) (96). Not only does hypnosis not improve memory (96)
or data reliability, but in some cases it can even make the subject overconfident in the accuracy of
erroneous memories (53) (106), perhaps by inhibiting the structures responsible for judging the
reliability of memories, or by increasing the vividness of the representation of the memories thus
evoked (26). Consequently, the facts reported under hypnosis do not always correspond to real
events and often turn out to be imprecise, distorted or even purely imagined (102). As summarized
above, in a significant and well-conducted study which caused a sensation in ufology circles,
Lawson demonstrated that similar experiences and close details could be reported under hypnosis
by normal volunteers, who had never before reported such an abduction experience and were
considered naïve (unfamiliar with the phenomenon). This demonstrates not only that the reliability
of hypnosis for retrieving the history of an alleged “abduction” is poor, but also and above all that
these experiences call upon archetypal mechanisms and socio-cultural representations present in
many individuals (57) (58).
•
Rarer causes, such temporal epilepsy suggested by Persinger (82) (83), migraine (6).
Symptoms
Sensation of paralysis and foreign presence
Seeing a bright light or an object rapidly approaching
the subject, hearing a buzzing sound
Floating and moving sensation
Vague memory of being pulled, poked, pushed,
examined by alien entities
Missing time where the subject no longer remembers
what he did during the period considered
Marks and traces on the body with no memory of the
causative event
Sudden recall of “repressed” memories after hypnotic
regression, awake suggestion, reading an article or
viewing a program on the topic of abductions
Likely explanations
Sleep paralysis
Isakower phenomenon (hypnagogic
hallucinations)
Muscle relaxation, inhibition of
proprioceptive sensations, vestibular
sensations, sleep paralysis.
Hypnagogic
and
hypnopompic
hallucinations aggravated by fear
State of sleep, dreamy state, automatic
behavior
Common phenomenon: most people, if
they examine themselves carefully, will
find those
Creation of incorrect pseudo-memories
by auto- or hetero-suggestion.
Table 1: The main symptoms presented by the “abductees” and their possible explanations according to the
hypothesis of the occurrence of altered states of consciousness (according to Baker (11)).
Contactees
In some cases, people claim contact and communication with beings of extra-human origin. This
communication could have been made within the framework of an alleged UFO sighting, in other
cases, the extra-human origin is affirmed without a sighting being associated. Although a single
476
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
communication may be reported, in most cases the witness reports multiple communication events
and sometimes claims being still in contact with these entities. It is interesting to note that such
allegations are not only contemporary (27) (74), even if they have greatly increased in the last
seventy years (75).
In the literature devoted to the UFO phenomenon, these individuals are referred to as “contactees,”
to be differentiated from “abductees,” victims of an experience such as abduction, even if the
contact occurs for “contactees” quite often during an alleged UFO abduction.
One of the most famous cases is undoubtedly the one reported by George Adamski, a 60-year-old
man, already passionate about UFOs and a conference speaker on the subject, who in 1952 claimed
to have observed a UFO and met on this occasion an alien passenger (99). Adamski provided
various “proofs” (photos, plaster cast of the footprints of the extraterrestrial, corroborative
testimonies, etc.) in support of his statements. The affair caused a stir and immediately gave
Adamski international notoriety.
Within two years of the publication of Adamski’s first book in 1953 (Flying Saucers Have
Landed), more than a dozen other supposed “contactees” came forward publishing works relating
their adventures. Even though it is a demonstrated hoax, the Adamski case, which had considerable
socio-cultural importance, can be considered the archetype of the “contact” cases.
In most cases, the alleged content of the exchange is significant: these beings, usually impressive
and coming from a utopian planet, would have charged the so-called “contactees” with “missions”
of planetary scope, often concerning nothing less than the safeguard of humanity (108).
Although there are charlatans and swindlers among them who shamelessly abuse the general
public’s longing for escape and taste for the sensational, most seem to sincerely believe in what
they say, but provide no objective and tangible proof to support their surprising assertions.
Although there is nothing to rule out with certainty that in some cases there really were genuine
encounters with extraterrestrials, the characteristics of these reported sightings and missions, the
elements underlying their speeches, often without great originality, stem from the classic themes
of science fiction and our Western cultural baggage. This testifies in favor of a human rather than
extra-human origin and reflects the conscious and unconscious ideas and wishes of the so-called
“contactees” (58).
Jung analyzed the writings of a “contactee” from a psychoanalytical point of view (51). Audrerie
has shown that ufological themes can serve as a basis for fabrications and delusions and has
developed a psychopathological model of psychoanalytical inspiration about them (8). Several
authors have observed patients and concluded that events were caused by altered states of
consciousness in individuals not suffering from major psychopathological disorders, notably
Beyerstein (16), Don and Moura (23) (24), French et al. (33). A few such cases have been
described where contactees, abductees or mere witnesses to alleged UFO sightings actually had
paranoid schizophrenia (43) (48) (92), paranoid delirium (95) or other psychoses whose type was
not specified (61) (73) (91) (92), and had sometimes been hospitalized in a psychiatric ward. Other
authors, on the other hand, have not found any psychiatric pathology among them but consider
477
III. On Witness Testimony
them as personalities prone to daydreaming (“fantasy-prone personalities” according to Wilson
and Barber (107)), and in particular Bartholomew et al. (15).
We were able to observe several of these contactees, most of them outside of a hospital setting
(65) (67) (68) (69).
Contactees and Delirium
The study of the nine contactees that we studied led us to conclude that most of them were in fact
suffering from patent psychiatric disorders, often of the paranoid or paraphrenic type.
Except for two patients hospitalized in the psychiatric ward, all the other subjects had, to our
knowledge, no known psychiatric history. As we will see later, it is likely that they were able to
find a balance in their delusional beliefs.
Here is an example of such a clinical case (69):
I was sitting in the premises of an astronomy association with a study committee on UFOs.
Someone’s knocking at the door. A person half-opens it, casts a circular glance over the room, then
enters and closes the door carefully, not without first checking that he was not being followed
[persecutory element]. He is a man in his thirties, apparently in good physical health, properly
dressed, clean. He comes to meet the leaders of the association because he knows UFOs well…
better than anyone else [megalomania]. After many convolutions, he finally agrees to come to the
point. He often encountered extra-terrestrials, or rather he often fought them. These have indeed
expansionist aims on our planet that would have long since fallen into their hands if he had not
succeeded so far in defeating them thanks to his “psychic force.” Which explains why he is now the
number one target of invaders who are ready to do anything to make him disappear. Moreover, in
ambush fifty meters away, stands one of them, who will certainly try to shoot him (using an “Xray” weapon) when he comes out [imaginative and interpretative delirium with a strong persecutory
component]. At our request, he certifies to be in possession of numerous proofs of the existence of
these extra-terrestrials. Unfortunately, he does not think humanity is mature enough to be able to
take care of them. At our insistence, he finally agrees to show us a photo of an extraterrestrial craft
leaving their secret lunar base: in fact, it is the luminous trail left by a meteor, at a low angular
distance from the Moon. Just before leaving, he also let us glimpse a triangular symbol scribbled
on a piece of paper: the secret acronym of the invaders. After an interview of about twenty minutes,
he leaves, refusing to leave us his contact details: his duty of planet protector calls him.
The subject exhibits of course a delusion, that is to say, “a series of erroneous ideas, shocking the
evidence, inaccessible to criticism” (31). The DSM defines delusion as “an erroneous personal
belief based on incorrect inferences concerning external reality, and firmly held by the subject
despite the opinion of nearly everyone and clear and irrefutable evidence to the contrary” (4). This
definition is of course not perfect, for example in the case of contactees having founded ufological
sects, the opinion of the leader is shared by his followers.
In the clinical case cited, this paranoid delusion is accompanied by megalomania and a feeling of
persecution. Here the persecuting entity is represented by hostile extraterrestrials (80), whereas in
most of the other cases that we have observed, the extraterrestrials are often perceived as
benevolent. Like this subject, most of the contactees we met also seemed to suffer from a paranoid
delusion, the persecutory component of which was often not as obvious as in the case just
described.
478
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
This paranoid delusion most often finds its source in erroneous interpretations of real facts
(interpretative origin) and/or in elaborations made according to the reality on which the patient
develops fantasies with themes of power, grandeur, mysticism, etc. In general, the origin of
delirium varies according to the case: non-hallucinatory, rarely dreamlike, it is above all
imaginative, interpretive and sometimes intuitive. Most of these subjects can be classified as
paranoid wish personalities according to Kretschmer, defined by the following characteristics:
•
Megalomania and overvaluation of oneself, with pride, feeling of superiority, and
greatness. There are, however, veiled forms, with false modesty and proselytism, even apparent
timidity.
•
False judgment and psychorigidity, which allow the delirium to take shape and not be
questioned by the patient. There is indeed a loss of self-criticism and a patent apriorism for subjects
directly related to delirium, the capacity for objective reasoning for other facts being preserved.
The subjects bear criticism very badly. The declarations of certain “contactees” are very subtle in
this respect: one notices in their analysis that they include details and assertions that respond in
advance to or discourage possible criticisms. For this same reason, the “contactees,” as Audrerie
points out, most often give only unverifiable data (8). These mechanisms are probably the
reflection of protective structures of the delusional construction and therefore of the Ego of the
patients against an always possible collapse, either from external criticism or self-criticism.
•
Slight social maladjustment, which is generally manifested here only by a marginal mode
of existence: the “contactees” are more eccentric than sociopaths.
•
Defense of ideals in a relatively low aggressive way. The defended causes are not personal,
although their defense is used for self-promotion.
The delirium of the “contactees” encountered outside of a hospital or psychiatric environment was
usually well systematized, coherent, and logical, often plausible; the number of flaws subject to
criticism being inversely proportional to the patient’s intelligence.
On the other hand, there are other “contactees” who suffer from poorly systematized delusions,
particularly if they are of the schizophrenic type: these patients are usually cared for in a psychiatric
ward, and their delusions generally do not spread outside the hospital setting. We also observed a
few patients suffering from paraphrenia; such delirium may be more or less well systematized.
It can be noted that only the themes of the patients’ delusions have changed over the years, taking
into account recent technological and cultural achievements (science fiction): the Napoleon
Bonapartes are now representatives of extraterrestrials! Lycanthropy, royal parentage and demonic
possession have been replaced by “new age” themes. Maruani and Brillaud have moreover
maintained in a study at the psychoanalytical level that “at the collective level, science fiction as
modern mythology fulfills the same function than the imaginary in the paraphrenic” (64).
The majority of “contactees” with systematized delirium seemed to possess an inconsistent social
status, at least before the onset of delirium (105). This means that their intelligence, their ambitions
and sometimes their general culture was high compared to the social position they occupied. In
these patients, megalomania and ego hypertrophy compensate and mask their unconscious feelings
of frustration and inferiority. This is how the delirium often began, following an unpleasant and
479
III. On Witness Testimony
frustrating professional or personal event which was felt as a failure by the patient. For example,
in one case, the delirium took shape after a traffic accident, where the subject was driving an
ambulance in which he was seriously injured during a frontal impact on a national highway, the
transported patient dying on the scene. According to the subject, a deliberate extraterrestrial
intervention caused the accident: this explanation of course exonerates the subject from any
responsibility, having been the victim of superior forces outside his control.
Sects Founded by “Contactees”
It is interesting to note the similarities between these “contactees” and other psychotic founders of
various sects. In fact, several “contactees” have created sects, often prophesying the imminence of
a planetary cataclysm and working to save all or part of humanity from its imminent destruction,
generally with the help of benevolent extraterrestrials (12) (13) (32) (108).
The relative plausibility of the well-systematized delirium of these patients explains their
significant power of contamination by the creation of collective induced delusions (43). The
psychotic “contactee” is then the inducing element influencing credulous and suggestible
individuals, often less intelligent than him (40) (43). Some of the followers are moreover at the
edge of the pathological and likely to cross over. These psychotic disciples will in turn play the
role of inducing elements for other people, thus contributing to extension of the delusional group.
In fact, both in the United States and in Europe, many ufological sects, some famous, others
marginal, flourish and bring together individuals with quite varied psychological profiles and
objectives (2) (9) (13) (72) (74) (75) (100), often playing the role of alternative religions.
For Vallee, the attitude of systematic rejection of the phenomenon by established science plays a
key role in the success of these sects (103):
Skeptics have refused people the right to explore certain areas. People are not fooled: they know
their sightings are real, so the public finds themselves caught between what they know to be real
experiences and the denials of the academic and scientific communities. This creates dissonance,
but also a market for fraud, both in parapsychology and in ufology. It makes honest research almost
impossible and it opens the door to extremist religious and spiritual movements.
Conclusion
•
The current scientific consensus is that most “abductee” experiences are caused by altered
consciousness states occurring in subjects without psychiatric symptoms, often facilitated by the
use of hypnosis by investigators.
•
In contrast, the alleged “contactees” we have studied were mostly suffering from patent
psychiatric disorders, often in the form of paranoid delirium. The delirium is in general well
systematized (coherent and plausible). The patients show a good adaptation to reality for the points
not touching their delirium, which explains their significant power of contamination by the
induction of true collective induced delusions that affects followers endowed with little
discernment and excessive credulity.
Despite the cases presented and the socio-cultural impact of certain “contactees,” the relationship
between psychiatry and the study of the UFO phenomenon remains rather weak, and as Schwarz
observes, the vast majority of witnesses do not present any psychiatric pathology (93) (94). We
must therefore be careful not to consider witnesses of an unidentified phenomenon as deranged
480
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
victims of hallucinations. This remains in my view applicable even if they relate strange close
encounters of the third kind, “abductions” or even “contacts.”
In any case, it is essential that a mental health examiner of an alleged witness must demonstrate
perfect objectivity and complete impartiality. The task is difficult since he is responsible for
evaluating a patient whose speech may include strange and difficult to accept elements. The mere
presence of unusual elements should not be enough to label the subject delusional or psychotic. It
is therefore necessary for the examiner to free himself from his own prejudices related to the
patient’s assertions, without uncritically accepting the witness’s allegations.
In the end, the important factors to take into account to determine the mental health of the witness
are not the strangeness of the related phenomenon, but rather, in addition to the coherence of the
account and the existence of corroborating elements, the behavior of the witness with regard to his
experience, his medical history and the other psychopathological signs that he may exhibit.
As rightly pointed out by Gorceix, professor of Psychiatry at Paris University Hospital (36):
In our universe of scientific conformism and mediocre uniformity, the most benign originality, the
most inoffensive belief is stigmatized by the term ‘delirium.’ We are not allowed to hear voices or
meet demons, things that are all more likely than we think. A rigorous filter is placed between the
mystery of the world and the representation allowed to our eyes as civilized men. The rest must be
labelled as hallucinations. The best thing, if we happen to experience one day its overwhelming
evidence, is to keep quiet. We will thus avoid prolonged internships in so-called specialized circles
and the brutalization of massive treatments by these neuroleptic substances to which the countermagic of scholars attributes an antihallucinatory power.
References
1. Aldrich M.S. “Narcolepsy,” New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 323, 1990, pp. 389-394.
2. Alnor W.M. UFO Cults and the New Millennium, Grand Rapids (MI): Baker Books, 1998.
3. American Medical Association: “Scientific Status of Refreshing Recollection by the Use of
Hypnosis,” JAMA, Vol. 253, No. 13, 1985, pp. 1918-1923.
4. American Psychiatric Association DSM-V, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders, 5th edition, 2022.
5. Appelle S. “The Abduction Experience: A Critical Examination of Theory and Evidence,”
Journal of UFO Studies, Vol. 6, 1995, pp. 29-78.
6. Ardila A., Sanchez E. “Neuropsychologic symptoms in the migraine syndrome,” Cephalalgia,
Vol. 8, 1988, pp. 67-70,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318466044_Paroxysmal_Neuropsychological_Sy
mptoms_In_Migraine
7. Association of Sleep Disorders Centers, Sleep Disorders Classification Committee (Roffwarg
H.P., Chairman) “Diagnostic Classification of Sleep and Arousal Disorders (ed. 1),” Sleep,
Vol. 2, 1979, pp. 1-137.
8. Audrerie D. “Fabulation, délire et thèmes ufologiques,” in A propos d’une disparition, Note
technique G.E.P.A.N. No. 6, Toulouse (France): Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, 1981,
https://www.cnes-geipan.fr/sites/default/files/note_tech_6.pdf
9. Bader C. “The UFO Contact Movement from the 1950’s to the Present,” Studies in Popular
Culture,
Vol.
17,
No.
2,
1995,
pp.
73-90,
http://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/sociology_articles/3
481
III. On Witness Testimony
10. Baker R.A. “The Aliens among us: Hypnotic Regression Revisited,” The Skeptical Inquirer,
Vol. 12, No. 2, 1987, pp. 147-162, https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wpcontent/uploads/sites/29/1988/01/22165259/p37.pdf
11. _____. “No Aliens, No Abductions: just Regressive Hypnosis, Waking Dreams, and
Anthropomorphism,” in Frazier K., Karr B. and Nickell J. (Eds.): The UFO Invasion,
Amherst (New York): Prometheus Books, 1997, pp. 249-265.
12. Balch R.W., Taylor D. “Salvation in a UFO,” Psychology Today, Vol. 10, 1976, pp. 58-66 and
106.
13. _____. “Seekers and saucers : The Role of the Cultic Milieu in Joining a UFO Cult,” American
Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 20, No. 6, July/August 1977, pp. 839-860.
14. Ballester Olmos V.J. “Alleged experiences inside UFOs: An analysis of abduction reports,”
Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1994, pp. 91-105,
http://www.scientificexploration.org/docs/8/jse_08_1_olmos.pdf
15. Bartholomew R.E., Basterfield K. “UFO Abductees and Contactees : Psychopathology or
Fantasy Proneness?” Professional Psychology : Research and Practice, Vol. 22, No. 3,
1991, pp. 215-222.
16. Beyerstein B.L. “Believing is seeing : organic and psychological reasons for hallucinations
and other anomalous psychiatric symptoms,” Medscape Mental Health, Vol. 1, No. 11, 1996.
17. Blackmore S. “Abduction by Aliens or Sleep Paralysis?” The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 22,
May/June
1998,
pp.
23-28,
https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wpcontent/uploads/sites/29/1998/05/22164919/p23.pdf
18. _____. “Alien Abductions, Sleep Paralysis and the Temporal Lobe,” European Journal of UFO
& Abduction Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, September 2000, pp. 113-118,
https://www.susanblackmore.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Alien-Abductions-SleepParalysis-and-the-Temporal-Lobe.pdf
19. Bullard T.E. “UFO Abduction Reports : The Supernatural Kidnap Narrative Returns in
Technological Guise,” Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 102, 1989, pp. 147-170.
20. _____. “The Influence of Investigators on UFO Abduction Reports: Results of a Survey,” in
Pritchard A., Pritchard D.E., Mack J.E. et al. (Eds.): Alien Discussions, Proceedings of the
Abduction Study Conference, Cambridge (Mass.): North Cambridge Press, 1994, pp. 571619.
21. Cheyne J.A., Rueffer S.D., Newby-Clark I.R. “Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Hallucinations
during Sleep Paralysis : Neurological and Cultural Construction of the Night-Mare,”
Consciousness and Cognition, Vol. 8, 1999, pp. 319-337.
22. Clark J. “A Brief History of the UFO-Abduction Phenomenon,” in Pritchard A., Pritchard D.E.,
Mack J.E. et al. (Eds.): Alien Discussions, Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference,
Cambridge (Mass.): North Cambridge Press, 1994, pp. 15-18.
23. Don N.S. “Topographic Brain Maps of the Abductee, Sueli,” in Pritchard A., Pritchard D.E.,
Mack J.E. et al.: Alien Discussions, Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference,
Cambridge (Mass.): North Cambridge Press, 1994, pp. 493-495.
24. Don N.S., Moura G. “Topographic Brain Mapping of UFO Experiencers,” Journal of Scientific
Exploration,
Vol.
11,
No.
4,
1997,
pp.
435-453,
https://www.scientificexploration.org/docs/11/jse_11_4_don.pdf
25. Donderi D.C. “Validating the Roper poll: a scientific approach to the abduction evidence,” in
Pritchard A., Pritchard D.E., Mack J.E. et al.: Alien Discussions, Proceedings of the
482
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Abduction Study Conference, Cambridge (Mass.): North Cambridge Press, 1994, pp. 225231.
26. Dywan J., Bowers K. “The use of hypnosis to enhance recall,” Science, Vol. 222, 1983, pp.
184-185.
27. Eberhart G.M. UFOs and the Extraterrestrial Contactee Movement, 2 volumes, Metuchen
(New Jersey): Scarecrow Press, 1986,
https://www.academia.edu/60440004/UFOs_and_the_extraterrestrial_contact_movement_
a_bibliography_Volume_1_2
28. Esterle A. “Le problème des phénomènes aérospatiaux non Identifiés,” in Méthodologie d'un
problème: principes & applications, Note Technique G.E.P.A.N No. 3, Toulouse (France):
Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, 1981, pp. 6-14, https://www.cnesgeipan.fr/sites/default/files/note_tech_3.pdf
29. Evans H. “More thoughs on abductions,” Journal of UFO Studies, new series, Vol. 1, 1989,
pp. 149-152.
30. _____. Altered states of consciousness: Unself, Otherself, and Superself, Wellingborough
(England), Aquarian Press, 1989.
31. Ey H. “Délires,” Revue de Médecine, 1968, Vol. 9, No. 24, pp. 1545-1555.
32. Festinger L., Riecken H.W., Schachter S. When prophecy fails: A Social and Psychological
Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World, New York: Harper &
Row, 1956.
33. French C.C., Santomauro J., Hamilton V. et al. “Psychological aspects of the alien contact
experience,”
Cortex,
2008,
Vol.
44,
No.
10,
pp.
1387-1395,
https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/4223/
34. Fukuda K., Miyasita A., Inugami M., Ishihara K. “High prevalence of sleep paralysis:
Kanashibari phenomenon in Japan,” Sleep, Vol. 10, 1987, pp. 279-286.
35. Goode G.B. “Sleep paralysis,” Archives of Neurology, Vol. 6, 1962, pp. 228-234.
36. Gorceix A. “La psychiatrie courante de l’omnipraticien,” Le Concours Médical, No. 38
(supplement), October 20 1979, p. 36.
37. Gotlib D.A. “Methodological problems in abduction work to date,” in Pritchard A., Pritchard
D.E., Mack J.E. et al (Eds.).: Alien Discussions, Proceedings of the Abduction Study
Conference, Cambridge (Mass.): North Cambridge Press, 1994, pp.32-41.
38. Gow K., Lurie J. et al. “Fantasy Proneness and Other Psychological Correlates of UFO
Experience,” European Journal of UFO and Abduction Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2001, pp. 4566,
https://maggiemcneill.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/fantasy-proneness-and-ufoexperience.pdf.
39. Green C. “Waking Dreams and Other Metachoric Experiences,” Psychiatric Journal of the
University of Ottawa, Vol. 15, No. 2, 1990, pp. 123-128.
40. Grinspoon L., Persky A.D. “Psychiatry and UFO Reports,” in Sagan C., Page T., (Eds.): UFO,
a Scientific Debate, Ithaca (New York): Cornell University Press, 1972, pp. 233-246.
41. Hall D.F., McFeaters S.J., Loftus E.F. “Alterations in recollection of unusual and unsuspected
events,” Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1987, pp. 3-10,
https://www.scientificexploration.org/docs/jse_01_1_hall.pdf
42. Hall R.L. “On mass panic and other favorite myths,” in MUFON 1990 International UFO
Symposium Proceedings, Seguin (Texas): MUFON, 1990, pp. 62-71.
43. Heuyer G. “Note sur les psychoses collectives,” Bulletin de l’Académie Nationale de
Médecine, Vol. 138, 1954, pp. 487-490.
483
III. On Witness Testimony
44. Hines T. Pseudoscience and the Paranormal, Amherst (New York): Prometheus Books, 1988.
45. Hublin C. et al. “The prevalence of narcolepsy: an epidemiological study of the Finnish twin
cohort,” Annals of Neurology, Vol. 35, 1994, pp. 709-716.
46. Hynek J.A. The UFO Experience: A Scientific Enquiry, New York: Marlowe & Company,
1998 (originally published 1972, prefaced by Jacques Vallee).
47. Isakower O. “A contribution to the psychopathology of phenomena associated with falling
asleep,” The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, Vol. 19, 1938, pp. 331-345.
48. Jacobson E., Bruno J. “Narrative Variants and Major Psychiatric Illnesses in Close Encounter
and Abduction Narrators,” in Pritchard A., Pritchard D.E., Mack J.E. et al. (Eds.): Alien
Discussions, Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference, Cambridge (Mass.): North
Cambridge Press, 1994, pp. 304-309.
49. Jimenez M. “La place de la psychologie dans l’étude du phénomène OVNI,” in Recueil des
communications aux journées d’étude sur les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux non Identifiés, Paris
and Toulouse, 24-25 June 1985, Toulouse (France): Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales,
1985, https://www.cnes-geipan.fr/sites/default/files/journees_etudes.pdf.
50. Johnson D.A. “Personality Characteristics of UFO Abductees,” in Pritchard A., Pritchard D.E.,
Mack J.E. et al. (Eds.): Alien Discussions, Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference,
Cambridge (Mass.): North Cambridge Press, 1994, pp. 316-319.
51. Jung C.G. Flying Saucers: a modern myth of things seen in the skies, Princeton University
Press, 1978.
52. Kelley-Romano S. “A report on the demographics and beliefs of alien abduction experiencers,”
Journal
of
UFO
Studies,
new
series,
Vol.
9,
2006,
pp.
1-21,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333634035_A_Report_on_the_Demographics_a
nd_Beliefs_of_Alien_Abduction_Experiencers
53. Kihlstrom J.F., Hoyt I.P. “Hypnosis and the psychology of delusions,” in Oltmanns T.F. &
Maher B.A. (Eds.): Delusional Beliefs, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1988, pp. 66-109.
54. Klass P.J. “Intruders of the mind,” Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 1987, pp. 85-89,
https://skepticalinquirer.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2019/03/Issue-01-9.pdf
55. _____. UFO Abductions: A dangerous game, Buffalo (N.Y.): Prometheus Books, 1989.
56. Larkin K.T. “The Neurobiology of the Narcoleptic Syndrome,” International Journal of
Neuroscience, Vol. 25, 1984, pp. 1-17, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/KevinLarkin/publication/16800566_The_Neurobiology_of_the_Narcoleptic_Syndrome
57. Lawson A.H. “What can we learn from the hypnosis of imaginary abductees?” in 1977
MUFON UFO Symposium Proceedings, Seguin (Texas): MUFON, 1977, pp. 107-135.
58. _____. “Hypnosis of imaginary UFO ‘abductees’,” The Journal of UFO Studies, Vol. 1, No.
1, 1979, pp. 8-26.
59. Lemoine P., Mouret J. “Narcolepsie,” Encyclopédie Médico-Chirurgicale - Psychiatrie, 37670
A10, 1990.
60. Loftus E.F., Ketcham K. The myth of repressed memory, New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1994.
61. Lukoff D. “The Diagnosis of mystical experiences with psychotic features,” The Journal of
Transpersonal
Psychology,
Vol.
17,
No.
2,
1985,
pp.
155-181,
http://atpweb.org/jtparchive/trps-17-85-02-155.pdf
62. Lynn S.J., Kirsch I.I. “Alleged Alien Abductions : False Memories, Hypnosis, and Fantasy
Proneness,”
Psychological
Inquiry,
Vol.
7,
1996,
pp.
151-155,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247503301_Alleged_Alien_Abductions_False_
Memories_Hypnosis_and_Fantasy_Proneness.
484
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
63. Mack J.E. “Why the Abduction Phenomenon cannot be explained psychiatrically,” in Pritchard
A., Pritchard D.E., Mack J.E. et al. (Eds.): Alien Discussions, Proceedings of the Abduction
Study Conference, Cambridge (Mass.): North Cambridge Press, 1994, pp. 372-374.
64. Maruani G., Brillaud D. “Anticipation, paraphrénie et science-fiction,” L’évolution
psychiatrique, Vol. 43, No. 1, 1978, pp. 115-141.
65. Mavrakis D., Bocquet J.-P. “Psychoses et Objets Volants Non Identifiés,” Canadian Journal
of
Psychiatry,
Vol.
28,
April
1983,
pp.
199-201,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316483582_Psychoses_et_objets_volants_non_id
entifies
66. Mavrakis D., Olivier M.P. Les Objets Volants Non Identifiables, Paris: Laffont, 1986.
67. Mavrakis D. “Etude psycho-pathologique des ‘contactés’,” Inforespace, Vol. 12, No. 64,
October
1983,
pp.
4-6,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363153059_Etude_psychopathologique_des_con
tactes
68. _____. “Analyse psychologique et psychiatrique des cas de contacts allégués avec des êtres
d’origine extra-humaine,” in Recueil des communications aux journées d’étude sur les
Phénomènes Aérospatiaux non Identifiés, 24-25 June 1985, Toulouse (France): Centre
National
d'Etudes
Spatiales,
1985,
https://www.cnesgeipan.fr/sites/default/files/journees_etudes.pdf
69. _____. Les OVNIs: Aspects psychiatriques, médico-psychologiques, sociologiques, Paris:
Editions Universitaires Européennes, 2010.
70. Mavromatis A. Hypnagogia: The unique state of consciousness between wakefulness and
sleep, London: Routledge, 1987.
71. McKellar P. “Between wakefulness and sleep: Hypnagogic fantasy,” in Sheikh A.A. & Shaffer
J.T. (Eds.): The Potential of Fantasy and Imagination, New York: Brandon House, 1979,
pp. 189-197.
72. McClure K. “UFO Cults,” in Evans H. and Spencer J. (Eds.): UFOs, 1947-1987: The 40-year
search for an explanation, London: Fortean Press, 1987, pp. 346-351.
73. Merloo J.A.M. “Le syndrome des soucoupes volantes,” Médecine et Hygiène, 1967, 794, pp.
992-996.
74. Melton J.G. “The Contactees : a Survey,” in Lewis J.R. (Ed.): The Gods have landed, new
religions from other worlds, Albany (New York): State University of New York Press, 1995,
pp. 1-13.
75. _____. “The Flying Saucer Contactee Movement, 1950-1994 : a Bibliography,” in Lewis J.R.
(Ed.): The Gods have landed, new religions from other worlds, Albany (New York): State
University of New York Press, 1995, pp. 251-332.
76. Miller J. “Envelope epidemiology,” in Pritchard A., Pritchard D.E., Mack J.E. et al. (Eds.):
Alien Discussions, Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference, Cambridge (Mass.);
North Cambridge Press, 1994, pp. 232-235.
77. Newman L.S., Baumeister R.F. “Toward an Explanation of the UFO Abduction Phenomenon:
Hypnotic Elaboration, Extraterrestrial Sadomasochism, and Spurious Memories,”
Psychological
Inquiry,
Vol.
7,
No.
2,
1996,
pp.
99-126,
https://ur.booksc.me/dl/27952950/951964
78. Nickell J. “A Study of Fantasy Proneness in the Thirteen Cases of Alleged Encounters in John
Mack's ‘Abduction’,” The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 20, No. 3, 1996, pp. 18-20 and 54,
https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/1996/05/22165043/p18.pdf.
485
III. On Witness Testimony
79. Parnell J.O., Sprinkle R.L. “Personality characteristics of persons who claim UFO
experiences,” Journal of UFO Studies, new series, Vol. 2, 1990, pp. 45-58.
80. Partridge C. “Alien demonology: the Christian roots of the malevolent extraterrestrial in UFO
religion and abduction spiritualities,” Religion, Vol. 34, 2004, pp. 163-189.
81. Perrotta G. “Alien Abduction Experience: Definition; neurobiological profiles, clinical
contexts and therapeutic approaches,” Ann Psychiatry Treatm, Vol. 4(1), 2020, pp. 25-29,
https://www.peertechzpublications.com/articles/APT-4-116.pdf
82. Persinger M.A. “The UFO Experience: a Normal Correlate of Human Brain Function,” in
Jacobs D.M. (Ed.): UFOs & Abductions, Lawrence (Kansas): University Press of Kansas,
2000, pp. 262-302.
83. Persinger M.A., Richards P. “Tobacyk’s Paranormal Belief Scale and Temporal Lobe Signs :
Sex Differences in the Experiences of Ego-Alien Intrusions,” Perceptual and Motor Skills,
Vol.
73,
No.
3,
1991,
pp.
1151-1156,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232430414_Tobacyk%27s_Paranormal_Belief_S
cale_and_Temporal_Lobe_Signs_Sex_Differences_in_the_Experiences_of_EgoAlien_Intrusions
84. Powers S.M. “Dissociation in alleged extraterrestrial abductees,” Dissociation, Vol. 12, 1994,
pp.
44-50,
https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/1516/Diss_7_1_7_OCR_re
v.pdf
85. Pritchard D.E. “Physical evidence and abductions,” in Pritchard A., Pritchard D.E., Mack J.E.
et al. (Eds.): Alien Discussions, Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference, Cambridge
(Mass.): North Cambridge Press, 1994, pp. 279-295.
86. Randle K.D., Estes R., Cone W.P. The Abduction Enigma, New York: Forge Books, 1999.
87. Resta S.P. “Evaluating degrees of anxiety and perceptions in a group of abduction
experiencers,” Journal of UFO Studies, new series 7, 2000, pp. 65-79.
88. Ring K., Rosing C.J. “The Omega Project: A psychological survey of persons reporting
abductions and other UFO encounters,” Journal of UFO Studies, new series, Vol. 2, 1990,
pp. 59-98.
89. Rodeghier M., Goodpaster J., Blatterbauer S. “Psychosocial Characteristics of Abductees:
Results from the CUFOS Abduction Project,” Journal of UFO Studies, new series 3, 1991,
pp. 59-90.
90. Rodeghier M. “Psychosocial Characteristics of Abductees,” in Pritchard A., Pritchard D.E.,
Mack J.E. et al. (Eds.): Alien Discussions, Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference,
Cambridge (Mass.): North Cambridge Press, 1994, pp. 296-303.
91. Schwarz B.E. “Psychiatric aspects of ufology,” in Proceedings of the Eastern UFO Symposium
(sponsored by Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, Baltimore, on January 23, 1971),
pp. 8-12.
92. ____. “Saucers, PSI, and psychiatry,” in: Proceedings of 1974 MUFON Symposium (sponsored
by Mutual UFO Network, Akron, Ohio on June 22, 1974), pp. 81-95.
93. ____. “Psychiatric and parapsychiatric dimensions of UFO’s,” in Haines R.F., (Ed.): UFO
phenomena and the behavioral scientist. Metuchen (New Jersey) and London: The
Scarecrow
Press,
1979,
pp.
113-134,
https://www.nicap.org/books/Behavioral_Scientist/UFO_Phenomena_and_Behavioral_Sci
entist.pdf
486
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
94. ____. UFO Dynamics: Psychiatric & Psychic Aspects of the UFO Syndrome, books 1 & 2,
Moore Haven (Florida): Rainbow Books, 1988.
95. Shaw P. “People with unsubstantiated claims of contact,” in Pritchard A., Pritchard D.E., Mack
J.E. et al. (Eds.): “Alien Discussions, Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference,
Cambridge (Mass.): North Cambridge Press, 1994, pp. 24-25.
96. Smith M.C. “Hypnotic memory enhancement of witnesses: Does it work?” Psychological
Bulletin, Vol. 94, No. 3, 1983, pp. 387-407.
97. Spanos N.P., Cross P.A., Dickson K., DuBreuil S.C. “Close Encounters : an examination of
UFO experiences,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 102, No. 4, 1993, pp. 624-632,
https://www.humanistagenda.com/s/Close-Encounters-UFO-Experiences-Soc-Psych.pdf
98. Stone-Carmen J. “A Descriptive Study of People Reporting Abduction by Unidentified Flying
Objects (UFOs),” in Pritchard A., Pritchard D.E., Mack J.E. et al. (Eds.): Alien Discussions,
Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference, Cambridge (Mass.): North Cambridge
Press, 1994, pp. 309-315.
99. Stupple D. “The man who talked with Venusians,” in Fuller C.G. (Ed.): Proceedings of the
First International UFO Congress, New York: Warner Books, 1980, pp. 261-271.
100. ____. “Mahatmas and Space Brothers : The Ideologies of Alleged Contact with
Extraterrestrials,” Journal of American Culture, Vol. 7, 1984, pp. 131-139.
101. Tart C.T. Altered States of Consciousness, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1969.
102. Udolf R. Handbook of hypnosis for professionals (2nd ed.), Jason Aronson, 1995.
103. Vallee J.F. “Secte, suicide et soucoupes volantes: c'était prévisible!” Anomalies, No. 4,
October 1998, pp. 8-14.
104. Vecchierini M.F. “Les différentes parasomnies,” in Billiard M. (Ed.): Le sommeil normal et
pathologique, troubles du sommeil et de l'éveil, Paris: Masson, 1998, pp. 373-397.
105. Warren D.I. “Status inconsistency theory and flying saucer sightings,” Science, 6 November
1970, Vol. 170, No. 3958, pp. 599-603.
106. Weekes J.R., Lynn S.J., Green J.P., Brentar J.T. “Pseudomemory in hypnotized and taskmotivated subjects,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 101, No. 2, 1992, pp. 356-360,
https://ur.booksc.me/dl/60872947/11b470
107. Wilson S.C., Barber T.X. “The Fantasy-Prone Personality: Implications for Understanding
Imagery, Hypnosis, and Parapsychological Phenomena,” in Sheikh A.A. (Ed.) : Imagery:
Current Theory, Research and Applications, New York: John Wiley, 1983, pp. 340-387.
108. Wojcik D. “UFO Mythologies: Extraterrestrial Cosmology and Intergalactic Eschatology,”
Traditiones,
Vol.
50,
No.
3,
2021,
pp.
15-51,
https://ojs.zrcsazu.si/traditiones/article/view/10542
487
III. On Witness Testimony
Satanists, Aliens and Me
Richard Noll
Abstract: The author employs an autobiographical frame to address the concurrent rise of the
satanic ritual abuse moral panic and claims of recovered memories of UFO abductions in the 1980s
and 1990s. He highlights the influence of privileging subjective data over objective data as a source
of scientific error that can lead to clinical, cultural and social movements that can potentially have
adverse effects.
Keywords: Alien abductions, UFO abductions, Satanic ritual abuse, Subjective data, Objective
data
Speak, Memory…
I am 30 years old. The year is 1990. I am a freshly trained and recently licensed clinical
psychologist. I have just spent almost five years as a staff psychologist on various locked wards of
a state hospital in New Jersey. I am trying to build a private practice in Philadelphia and am
networking with as many other psychologists and psychiatrists as possible, just trying to learn the
craft of my profession.
Like several generations before me, my training was psychoanalytic. Freud is still the god of the
gaps for the tens of thousands of mental health professionals in the United States in 1990--the
continuing failure of biological research to unlock the etiology and pathophysiology of mental
disorders keeps him alive. As a clinical psychologist I was trained in graduate school to be a
scientist as well as a practitioner, but I was groomed to develop a scientific self of subjectivity, not
one of objectivity. Psychological tests that were designed to be tools of objective assessment (but
not true measurement–there is a difference) were taught to us from a Freudian angle–we were to
make psychoanalytic speculations about individual item responses and to downplay the
significance of a cold, unempathetic bit of data such as a final composite IQ score. Objective data,
we were told by our clinical professors, was too general and could not possibly capture the rich
uniqueness of an individual human being. True enough. But there was almost a reflexive dismissal
of objective data among most of the supervisors in my graduate school clinical training. We were
trained to trust our feelings in the presence of a patient, to trust our gut, not objective data. In 1990
I am still sympathetic to aspects of this conceit, but for the past decade I have agonized over the
prioritizing of subjective data over objective data and am losing respect for my profession.
But in the late 1970s there was a revolution within the American Psychiatric Association, led by
mostly younger psychiatrists who asserted–correctly–that if psychiatry was to remain a legitimate
branch of scientific medicine it had to eliminate Freud. Within the APA there was a palace coup.
The ritual sacrifice of the totemic father became public in 1980 with the publication of the latest
edition of the diagnostic manual, DSM-III. Freudian nomenclature and symptomatology were
banished, differential diagnosis strove to become descriptive (checklists of signs and symptoms
for each disorder), and assumptions about the causality of mental disorders were–mostly–
eliminated. No more Freudian psychogenic mental mechanisms--conditions such as schizophrenia
and autism were no longer caused by mothers, even though I had been told so by my graduate
488
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
school professors, most of whom (except my dissertation supervisor) dismissed biological
hypotheses with the wave of a hand in class. Mothers were the pathogens.
This top-down revolution in the APA disoriented and offended many. I was less conflicted than
most because I entered graduate school in January 1980 and learned the new DSM-speak of
checklists along with Freudian defense mechanisms. But later, when out of school as the 1980s
progressed, I still had trouble buying into the bio-babble of neurotransmitters, genes, and receptors
that the National Institute of Mental Health and the pharmaceutical industry forced us to speak. In
my first year as a psychologist in a state hospital locked ward I was shocked–shocked–to read a
sentence in a 1985 book on schizophrenia by psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey called Surviving
Schizophrenia that bluntly stated schizophrenia is a “brain disease.”1 We were taught in school it
was all due to bad mothering and I was trying, unsuccessfully, to “see” that psychogenesis in my
psychotic patients. After all, the American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Silvano Arieti had won
a National Book Award in Science in 1975 for a massive tome that argued that mothers were the
definite cause of a quarter of all the cases of schizophrenia he had encountered in his practice, a
conclusion based on the subjective data in his files of individual case histories.2 But despite what
the wise old men and women of the Freudian era had claimed, and despite my own youthfulness
and newness to the profession, this bold new biological hypothesis “clicked” for me. It matched
my observation of the physical signs and disabilities of my psychotic patients. The objective data
for the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder shifted my worldview. I was
evolving.
Satanists
I am sitting at a long table on a stage in a large conference room in a Chicago hotel. It is November
9, 1990. I am part of an opening plenary session panel of four–two prominent American
psychiatrists and an anthropologist are beside me–and I am facing a room packed with more than
700 people and TV camera men. The vast majority of the audience is hostile to the ideas we are
about to propose. The tension in the room is palpable.
We are there to offer critical views of the claims of patients and mostly Freudian or
“psychodynamic-oriented” mental health professionals, based entirely on subjective data, that
thousands (millions?) of persons are now recovering memories of physical, sexual, and emotional
abuse by persons, mostly family members, who are secret members of cults that worship the
Christian Devil. In 1990 many psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers, police and judges
and prosecutors, feminist scholars and child abuse experts, and a large section of the general public
in a country where as much as 40 percent of the population identifies themselves as “born-again”
Christians and conservative Roman Catholics all believe in the reality of these satanic cults. Such
satanic cults were claimed--even by some top psychiatrists in the APA involved in the creation of
the DSM--to be intergenerational in families and these satanists had been kidnapping children and
ritually abusing and sacrificing them in secret for the past 2000 years. Satanic ritual abuse was
claimed by some top members of the psychiatric profession as the causal source of trauma that had
created the epidemic of Multiple Personality Disorder diagnoses in the United States in the
previous decade. This is the 7th International Conference on Multiple Personality/Dissociative
States. The previous six conferences had served as Petrie dishes for the growth, cultivation and
1
2
Torrey, E. Fuller. Surviving Schizophrenia: A Family Manual. New York: HarperCollins, 1985.
Arieti, Silvano. Interpretation of Schizophrenia. New York: Basic Books, 1974.
489
III. On Witness Testimony
spread of SRA claims. Our presentations on that day are the first critical viewpoints of this
extraordinary claim to be presented at these annual series of conferences that have done so much
to spread the moral panic about “satanic ritual abuse” (SRA) within the mental health professions.
I am young, have no institutional affiliation, and I am nervous to be on that stage with three older
and more accomplished compatriots.
The first two speakers are the psychiatrists. They present what they no doubt felt were balanced,
rational arguments for separating clinical evidence into objective data (historical truth) from
subjective data (narrative truth). They are careful not to offend the audience and they do not
directly challenge SRA claims nor the presumed reality of an international ring of satanic cults.
The presentation of the anthropologist, and my presentation, directly attack the claims of the
existence of satanic cults, the kidnapping and ritual murder of children, and we use historical
parallels to show this fantasy has a two-thousand-year history in Western culture and is nothing
new. Along with one of the psychiatrists, the anthropologist and I both cite a recent study by Ken
Lanning of the FBI of hundreds of cases of crimes (mostly vandalism, often in cemeteries)
interpreted by local law enforcement as “occult” or “satanic” in nature.3 The FBI could not find a
single piece of objective evidence that indicated that there was a group of individuals worshipping
Satan who were committing crimes. Nor did the inflated numbers of claims of missing children in
the United States supposedly kidnapped by satanic cults match the far lower real number of
children who had gone missing. Instead, the FBI found that the typical “satanist” criminal was a
white teenage boy who, sometimes with his buddies, vandalized property by spray-painting
“occult” symbols or killed animals while being intoxicated with alcohol and illegal street drugs.
The anthropologist and I are rather strident in our presentations. We ruffle feathers. As I sit at the
table on stage after our brief talks, I see an attractive, intense woman who is making her way
through the crowd to me, keeping her eyes locked on mine the whole time. When she stands before
me, I see on her name tag she is Gloria Steinem, the famous feminist journalist and author. She
gently suggests I am wrong about denying the reality of these satanic cults and that SRA really
does exist. She writes down a few books for me to read so that I might change my mind later. It is
clear she is a firm believer in the reality of these cults. Later I am approached by a member of the
audience who was sympathetic to my critical arguments. She is a licensed mental health
professional. She warns me that most in the audience were angered by my presentation and that
some were claiming I was a witch or a satanist who was there to spread misinformation about who
I really was by publicly denying the reality of the very satanic cult to which I must assuredly
belong. As I was to learn later in a book by an apparent conference attendee and “believer”:
“Mulhern [the anthropologist] and Noll cut a line through the therapeutic community. A minority
joined them in refusing to believe sacrificial murder was going on; the majority still believed their
patient accounts.”4
That cold day in Chicago some thirty-two years ago only exists in my memory as a series of intense
flashbulb memories at this point in my life. The same is true for so many of the interactions I had
with other psychologists, social workers, and psychiatrists both before and in the years just after
3
Lanning, Kenneth V. Satanic, Occult, Ritualistic Crime: A Law Enforcement Perspective. Quantico, Virginia:
National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, FBI Academy, 1989.
4
Lockwood, Craig. Other Altars: Roots and Realities of Cultic and Satanic Ritual Abuse and Multiple Personality
Disorder. Minneapolis: CompCare Publishers, 1993, p. 17.
490
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
that conference. The strong impressions I have of those encounters were of my incredulity when I
heard from them how strongly they believed in the reality of these cults. They uncritically believed
claims such as the existence of cults engaged in the worship of Satan, that abominable crimes were
committed by families for generations, that in fact entire towns (usually in “the South” for some
reason) were totally comprised of these cults. Yes, I personally heard these claims from my fellow
psychologists in a profession I was trying to master. I began to turn my back on the mental health
professions at this point because I thought so many clinicians had gone absolutely mad. They were
drawing fantastic conclusions based on their “gut” feelings, and often Christian religious beliefs,
that these extraordinary claims “must” be true because so many people said so, and they seemed
to have the incapacity to distinguish between objective data and subjective data. But to be fair,
that’s how so many of us were trained in the psychoanalytic era.
It is easy to understand how the epidemic of diagnoses of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)
exploded after 1980 until the late 1990s when civil cases by patients against mental health
professionals led to massive, multimillion dollar settlements finally reduced the use of that
diagnosis.5 In 1980 the new DSM-III included a new category of new diagnoses (including MPD
for the first time) known as the Dissociative Disorders, and in 1987 DSM-III-R made MPD the
centerpiece of the group. This was the only category of mental disorders that still included a
putative cause–trauma–as the source when such speculations (mostly Freudian or psychogenic)
had been eliminated for all other categories of disorders. The thoroughly
psychoanalytic/psychodynamic population of mental health professionals who were angered and
disoriented by the new non-Freudian disorders introduced in 1980 flocked to the Dissociative
Disorders, and MPD in particular, as if they were survivors of a shipwreck swimming toward an
island of safety. Trauma caused dissociation (a splitting of consciousness, memory, and personal
identity) and it was argued that only therapies such as Freud’s which posited psychogenic origins
and unconscious traumatic memories that could be “recovered” in a pristine fashion could cure it.
MPD was assumed to be caused by extreme and prolonged abuse but today is now considered to
be a historical anomaly and an iatrogenic “idiom of distress” despite its survival in DSM5 (2013)
as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Clinicians rarely use this diagnosis in the United States
today because insurance companies refuse to honor it and will not reimburse clinicians for
treatment. Insurance companies are also afraid of paying out large sums in malpractice suits if a
patient treated for MPD/DID sues the clinician. The linkage of MPD to the mad fantasy of
international, multigenerational satanic cults abusing children, is more complex.
The roots of the MPD/SRA conflation were to be found in a witches’ brew bubbling up through
the 1970s: the rise of awareness of child abuse and incest, the feminist movement, the fear of the
popularity of “the Occult” and the magical traditions of New Age Spirituality, the spread of
hypnosis and “recovered memory therapy,” the rise of Christian evangelical political power in the
United States, and, of course, mass media. Historian Masimo Introvigne has documented how,
throughout the centuries, repeated eruptions of historical fantasies about secret groups of witches
or satanists who are a threat to the larger Christian population have occurred, and he has
demonstrated that anti-Satanists have always existed but that there is no historical evidence that
5
Barden, R. Christopher. “Reforming Mental Health Care: How Ending ‘Recovered Memory’ Treatments Brought
Informed Consent to Psychiatry.” Psychiatric Times, June 5, 2014.
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/reforming-mental-health-care-how-ending-recovered-memory-treatmentsbrought-informed-consent
491
III. On Witness Testimony
satanic cults ever have.6 Science journalist Mark Pendergrast published a book a few years ago on
the history and continued existence of “recovered memory” therapy and SRA beliefs and the reader
is referred to it for a ghastly rehash of how humans can lose their minds when subjective data and
cultural/religious beliefs are prioritized over objective data and science.7 In 2014 I also published
a brief memoir of the satanic panic which caused a minor controversy, including pushback from
two of the prominent psychiatrists who had been instrumental in promoting the link between MPD
and SRA in the 1980s and 1990s.8
Aliens
And then, in the midst of the satanic panic of the 1980s and 1990s, came those stories about
recovered memories, usually via hypnosis, of UFO abductions. As I try to teach my students, one
must distinguish between coincidence, correlation, and causality. The rise of reports of UFO
abduction experiences, the vast majority of which did not include a sighting of a UFO and most
often took place in bedrooms when an “experiencer” was alone, seemed to me then and seems to
me now to be correlated with the satanic panic. At the time it seemed a new iteration of the
iatrogenic epidemic of the diagnosis of dissociative disorders. The iatrogenic phenomenon was
evolving into a new phase as satanists were replaced by UFO aliens as the new perpetrators--totally
imaginary and non-falsifiable this time--of abuse and trauma. It did not, and still does not, seem to
be a coincidence that these two extraordinary narratives arose in our culture at the same time. Both
mass media and mental health practitioners (in which I include non-clinician lay practitioners and
hypnotists who were untrained artists and college professors, for example) fueled these fantasies.
It was after the publication of Whitley Strieber’s Communion in 1987 that I remember, certainly
by 1989, that my colleagues in the mental health field that I would meet at lectures or conferences
began to talk of patients entering their practices who told stories of conscious or recovered
unconscious memories of being abducted by aliens. I never had such a patient but I did have
acquaintances, friends of friends, who claimed they were recovering UFO abduction memories
after reading Communion. Hearing these UFO abduction stories from their patients unsettled many
of my colleagues and, as I remember it, this new clinical phenomenon caused many of them to
recoil from such reports. Some–the more enlightened ones–began to reassess their former
committed belief in the SRA phenomenon. They had been trained during the psychoanalytic era
to prioritize subjective data from patients, but UFO abduction stories required a higher order of
magnitude of credulity. For them this newly evolving phase was too wacky, too bizarre, a step
over the line of rationality that, in truth, they had already crossed by believing in the existence of
widespread satanic cults abusing children and creating the MPD epidemic.
I was invited to be on that panel in that MPD conference in 1990 because I had written a letter that
was published in the peer-reviewed journal Dissociation in December 1989. It was the first
unambiguous skepticism about SRA claims to be published in a medical journal. In my brief letter
I may have also been the first to link SRA claims to claims of covered memories of UFO
6
Introvigne, Massimo. Satanism: A Social History. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016.
Pendergrast, Mark. The Repressed Memory Epidemic: How It Happened and What We Need To Learn About It.
Charn, Switzerland: Springer, 2017.
8
Noll, Richard. “Speak, Memory.” Psychiatric Times, March 19, 2014.
https://www.academia.edu/6496435/_Speak_Memory_Psychiatric_Times_21_March_2014_debate_on_role_of_Am
erican_psychiatry_in_the_satanic_ritual_abuse_moral_panic_of_the_1980s_and_1990s_
7
492
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
abductions. I concluded then–and stand by it now–that SRA beliefs and claims are evidence of “a
modern version of (a) paranoid mass delusion–and one in which all too many clinicians and law
enforcement officials also share.”9
As for the correlation of SRA and UFO abduction claims I can point to the extraordinary work in
the 1980s and 1990s of Thomas “Eddie” Bullard, master folklorist and scholar that he is, who did
a comparative analysis of these stories and also hinted at their common roots (the iatrogenic effects
of hypnosis and recovered memory therapy, cultural, religious and mass media vectors, and so
on).10 To my knowledge no other scholar has checked his voluminous data nor have any served as
independent raters using Bullard’s own quantitative rating scales which he used as heuristics, so
we do not know if other independent assessors of his work would yield the same conclusions. I
respect Eddie and have enormous affection for him, but upon reading his work carefully, in it he
seemed to have placed his thumb on the scale to tilt toward the possible objective reality of
“something” behind UFO abduction accounts because the structure of the stories in “high
reliability abduction reports” is consistent whereas “low reliability abduction reports” and SRA
accounts are much more varied. I respectfully disagree. I do not think such a comparative analysis
of subjective experiences in the absence of objective data for UFO abductions can lead to such a
conclusion. There is no way to use comparative folklore studies or comparative religion analyses,
even if using ratings scales as heuristics, to confirm an “event” from a study of “experience” when
it comes to abductions. Satanic cults conducting SRA was always a potentially falsifiable claim,
and as a result it has been falsified. Unless objective data associated with subjective claims of UFO
abduction experiences arise, we unfortunately are in for an eternity of claims from experiencers
whose methods resemble more and more the phenomenon of spiritualism.
In my opinion it is a weak argument that the consistency of UFO abduction stories may suggest an
underlying objective reality to the phenomenon. Many make such a claim. But as someone who
has toiled in psychology and psychiatry as a student, practitioner, researcher, and teacher for more
than 40 years, I am also reluctant to commit to any all-encompassing reductive psychological or
clinical interpretation of abduction claims. At this advanced age I no longer reach so reflexively
for the diagnostic manual. I do not think there is enough concrete objective evidence to make such
a commitment.
So much of what passes for scientific “explanation” in specific abduction cases involves arguments
by analogy. Abduction stories “resemble” the phenomena of sleep paralysis, Lewy body dementia,
false memories, fantasy-proneness as a personality trait, psychosis-like experiences or whatever-that sort of claim. We can endlessly pull analogies to scientific or medical phenomena out of our
magical hat (or out of our lower bodily orifice) to soothe our epistemic anxiety, but the proof has
to be in the pudding and it isn’t there. This is true even for the famous work of Susan Clancy at
Harvard which, despite the distorting spin by others who only want to use her study to clinically
debunk all abduction claims (with “recovered memories” or not), is really not about UFO
abduction memory claims at all. Only a few of her 50 subjects made such a claim –the rest had no
9
Noll, Richard. “Satanism, UFO Abductions, Historians and Clinicians: Those Who Do Not Remember the Past…”
Dissociation 2 (4), December 1989, pp. 251-253.
https://www.academia.edu/6400906/_Satanism_UFO_abductions_historians_and_clinicians_Those_who_do_not_re
member_the_past_Dissociation_1989_December_2_1_251_254
10
Bullard, Thomas E. The Myth and Mystery of UFOs. Lawrence, Kansas: The University Press of Kansas, 2010.
493
III. On Witness Testimony
such memories and just arrived at that conclusion that they had been abducted via a process of
causal attribution and confirmation bias based on a variety of personal problems and cultural
factors.11 Although such general speculation makes us feel secure in the solidity of our scientific
worldview (especially if the scientific claim comes from someone at Harvard) and can generate
hypotheses for possible empirical or experimental study of individual cases, actual objective
evidence of abduction for specific cases seems to be lacking (and please, if someone knows
different, please correct me if I am wrong). There is no reliable objective data one way or another.
And there is hardly any connection to UFOs at all.
But I do not believe, as abduction “experiencers” want us to believe, that abduction claims are to
be regarded as sui generis, either. We can generate reductive hypotheses as long as we can also
follow through with testing them in individual cases. I know some have tried and found negative
results, especially when the “alien implant” or whatever seems to vanish when the time comes for
examination. And so until the time comes when the subjective data of abduction claims is linked
to truly objective data I firmly believe the proper domain of research on abduction claims would
be folklore or religious studies, especially comparative religion, not ufology. Some scholars in
comparative
religion
take
this
sui
generis
approach
with
respect
to
mystical/spiritual/religious/paranormal experiences while still combining it with efforts at
comparative narrative analysis, a hermeneutical gesture. As scholar of comparative religion Jeffrey
Kripal has argued, claims of experiences of the mystical and the paranormal are about narratives
of personal meaning.12 So too are claims of alien abductions. This approach works well in the
humanities, and I am sympathetic to it in those contexts, but not in the sciences. Not even in
psychology, which has enormous scientific problems with respect to weak methodologies
(including an overdependence on rating scales), the incorrect use and interpretation of statistics
and of course low rates of replication studies to verify the claims of others (the infamous
“replication crisis” that research psychologists acknowledge but are happy to ignore as they go
about their work).
When Science and Religion (writ large) cannot integrate an event into their worldviews they use
psychiatry and psychology as their go-to default explanation. As a psychologist, an “insider,” I
have often marveled at the undeserved respect that “outsiders” have for the scientific basis of
psychiatry and psychology. “Outsiders” are mostly unaware of the significant lack of scientific
solidity of most of the psychological constructs and methodologies in psychiatry and psychology.
I would hate to see ufology repeat the errors of psychiatry and psychology by using concepts and
methods borrowed from these disciplines that will never, ever, reduce an “experience” into an
“event.” The use of ratings scales in psychiatry, a method borrowed from psychology circa 1950,
has still not correlated regular patterns of “experience” with objective physiological “events.”
Using surveys or rating scales as affectations of objectivity in the study of subjective data (like
alien abductions) will yield no new objective scientific knowledge. They haven’t in psychiatry and
clinical psychology, which are both heavily dependent upon them for abstract psychological
constructs like “depression.” What is depression, really? Certainly, the physical suffering is
objectively real. But clinicians have a tough time agreeing someone has a diagnosis of a DSM5
11
Clancy, Susan A. Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped By Aliens. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2005.
12
Kripal, Jeffrey J. Comparing Religions. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014.
494
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
major depressive episode, with interrater reliability studies conducted by the American Psychiatric
Association itself as putting the kappa at a very low .28. Verifying an individual is currently
claiming to have a subjective experience we would call depression is obviously easier than
verifying someone’s claim of a recovered memory of an alien abduction. We have objective affect
and behavioral data to consider along with the subjective data of claimed symptoms. But in
nomothetic research it is not so simple. Rating scales constrain the definition of the relevant
psychological attribute or construct under study. There is no objective biological test for
depression as there is for, say, diabetes, that can be used to identify subjects for inclusion in a
depression study. Depression can only be defined by more than 200 different rating scales that
all differ slightly in their clinical vision of depression. Ninety percent of the time the field falls
back on the Hamilton scale that was devised by Max Hamilton in 1960, a respected clinician who
himself claimed that rating scales serve a temporary practical purpose as a way of grading or
sorting data but which are not good tools for the generation of new knowledge. The other rating
scales in use are treated as if they are interchangeable with the Hamilton scale. They are not. The
incongruity of these dependent measures may be playing a role in the lack of therapeutic efficacy
of drugs produced by pharmaceutical companies who must use such a variety of such rating scales
to select subjects in clinical trials.13
The reliance on depression rating scales in psychiatry and psychology--fields long familiar with
studying anomalous subjective experiences – has not led to advances in knowledge about its
presumed underlying objective reality (“true” depression as a biological reflective latent variable).
The study of “experience” via rating scales has not led to confirmation of “events.” Rating scales
are an ever-present nightmare for clinical research in psychopathology in general, and their
application to the study of experiences such as abduction claims have not and will not yield
information about the reality of the phenomenon. Rating scales for anomalous experiences such
as alien abductions or even altered states of consciousness in general are of limited usefulness and
will not add to the objective knowledge base of ufology. Rating scales and surveys cannot
substitute for some sort of objective data that can be verified in association with alien abduction
cases. Consistencies found in data from rating scales of alien abduction experiences will never
confirm the objective reality of the events. I simply conclude at the moment that concrete objective
evidence in specific abduction cases is lacking to allow for any firm determination of a reductive
chain of causation. I therefore also argue that surveys or ratings scales that purport to assess the
varieties of abduction experiences are probably a waste of time and would keep ufology diverted
away from more promising pursuits.
Final Thoughts--and Worries
I admit I am a novice when it comes to the field of ufology. I have been trying to educate myself
in the past decade about the history and research in the field and became an early member of the
Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies. But what I witness in the UFO community disturbs me. It
reminds me of the excesses in the 1980s and 1990s fueled by a psychoanalytic prioritization of
subjective data over objective data. I have never attended a MUFON conference, for example,
because I see from the content of the presentations that they are tilted toward the subjective data
of abduction claims (often in the absence of UFOs) and they remind me too much of the heated
enthusiasm for paranoid fantasies that I witnessed at the MPD conferences that were held in the
13
Fried, E.I., Flake, J.K. & Robinaugh, D.J. “Revisiting the theoretical and methodological foundations of
depression measurement.” Nature Reviews in Psychology (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-022-00050-2
495
III. On Witness Testimony
1980s and which continue today. Budd Hopkins, David Jacobs, John Mack, and especially Whitley
Strieber and Steven Greer, are the reigning gods of the gap for “experiencers” just as Freud still is
for the currently active “recovered memory” crowd. They all prioritized and even valorized
subjective data over objective data, and that is/was their tragic flaw. I believe collecting and
studying abduction claims is valid for an understanding of human nature and how idiosyncratic
hermeneutics leads to various schemes of personal meaning and significance for individuals. But
for me the lesson I learned during the psychoanalytic era was that when a scientific self of
subjectivity is to be prioritized over a scientific self of objectivity the only path is a maze of endless
speculation and paranoia, and sometimes it leads to destructive results.
(All web articles accessed on December 15, 2022.)
496
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
The UFO Testimony Reliability from 2000 GEIPAN Reports
Xavier Passot
Abstract: The author (1), who was the head of GEIPAN 1 from mid-2011 to 2015, describes his
personal path starting from the systematic processing of UFO sighting reports leading to a
qualification of the human testimony. UFO sighting reports are considered here as measure
points of an unknown phenomenon; as with physical measures, human testimony is subject to
some errors that the author tries to characterize. The question finally discussed is how to consider
the unexplained cases, so called outliers in other sciences.
Keywords: UFO, Testimony, GEIPAN, Unknown phenomenon, Outlier
Entering the UFO World
The common image of the UFO world is a collection of strange cases, still unexplained,
supposed to be from an extraordinary origin. The reality that any determined ufologist can
discover when starting to work on the large number of ordinary sighting reports is very different.
When starting my work in GEIPAN, I found hundreds of pending reports, most of them being
commonplace. My predecessors were inclined to prioritize the apparently stranger reports,
leaving the simplest cases lower in the stack. Because I wanted to send to the witnesses the
investigation conclusions within a reasonable time, and to reduce the stack of reports, I decided
on a systematic processing of the stack without considering the strangeness of the sighting
reports. This “management decision” was in fact the choice of the scientific method to process a
collection of measures: this approach of considering all samples of a phenomenon, without
selection, is the most appropriate; processing only the strangest cannot lead to any relevant
conclusion about the global phenomenon.
Explained UFO Cases to Calibrate the Human Testimony
Some explained UFO sighting reports really changed my mind because the witnesses reports
were drastically different from the reality, a reality which is well known in these perfectly
identified cases. I will describe only three hereafter, but there are hundreds.
Overflown by 30 space shuttles at low altitude2
The young witness tells that, during an August Saturday night, he saw 30 orange shining shuttles
silently overflying his village at low altitude for several minutes. He had the time to take quite a
good video from his smartphone. He distinguishes many details: a dark brown structure with red
and yellow lights. Later, he will add to his report a detailed drawing of a vessel quite similar to
those from science fiction movies.
The investigation was quite easy: thanks to the video which displays only shining orange dots
sliding in the sky, the assumption was that he clearly saw Chinese lanterns, following the wind in
a direction consistent with the wind measured in a nearby meteorological station. A private
1 GEIPAN: groupe d’études et d’information sur les phénomène aérospatiaux non identifiés (Unidentified
Aerospace Phenomena Study Group)
2 In the GEIPAN database: Tenteling (57) 29.08.2010 (Search Tenteling as a keyword)
497
III. On Witness Testimony
investigator later found that a wedding was celebrated simultaneously in the village, and they
launched numerous Chinese lanterns.
This perfectly identified case (class A in the GEIPAN nomenclature) demonstrates that the
interpretation of an ambiguous stimulus by the human mind can sometimes be very far from
reality. Of course, in this extreme case, the witness over-interpreted the scene, probably because
he was an UFO enthusiast. Most of the witnesses of such flying lanterns describe simply “flying
lights,” some others will describe small flying saucers in squadron or dark spaceships with lights;
another remarkable case mentions flying metallic monsters.3
A case of mass sighting: Fireball on November 11, 19804
This kind of case is quite common: a big fireball observed by thousands of witnesses. Ufologists
despise these kind of cases, often used by skeptics to discredit the witnesses, but they should
study the numerous sighting reports. The multiple reports of the observation of the same
identified phenomenon offer a perfect tool to calibrate the human witness. The contents of the
reports provide the following:
- several different colors are mentioned (green, red, purple, white, pink, blue …). This could be
explained by the real succession of colors during the fireball reentry and by physiological
differences in the witness eyes when observing a very bright light
- the distance estimate varies from 30 meters to 2 km (very far from the real altitude of fireballs:
20 to 30 km )
- the moving direction estimate is very approximate: more or less 45°; some reports indicate
inverse directions! (a lateralization problem or a bad interpretation of the questionnaire?)
- the sighting time estimate varies from 2 seconds to 2 minutes (not exceeding one minute in
reality)
We have to conclude in this case that the human testimony cannot be considered as very
accurate; however, all these witnesses were sincere, and most of them have a high level of
education. The good question when considering a UFO case is: “What really happened ?” The
processing of statistics is surely not a good approach because every witness is subject to some
illusion, and some illusions are the same for everybody e.g., distance and size estimation of a
bright light in the sky, and time duration of an impressive phenomenon; this creates some bias
which cannot be quantified. The results of statistics will only give a mean value and distribution
of the values, but it will be very far from the reality. The psychology of visual perception can
help calibrate those sighting reports as a kind of “reverse transfer function” but is, of course, not
reliable.
The human witness cannot be considered as a good recording instrument, although his testimony
is precious: yes, something happened in the sky this day, at this time approximately, it was
roughly moving from here to there, it was very bright and fast, and could be seen from a large
area like that. But one cannot assert more than that! Colors, size, distance, shape should not be
considered. The error margin is so wide.
3 In the GEIPAN database: PAYNS (10) 19.05.2012 (Search Payns as a keyword)
4 In the GEIPAN database: RENTREE ATMOSPHERIQUE — NATIONAL (FR) 11.11.1980 (Search 11.11.1980
as a keyword)
498
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Light plane or alien spacecraft? 5
Here is another very puzzling case because it opposes a sighting report of a very strange flying
craft observed by a qualified driver during his working time, with a strong set of proof that a
light plane was flying precisely there at the time.
The witness was driving a van on a highway, in the outer Paris suburbs; he saw a large
motionless flying machine with flashing lights, at a low altitude, hundreds of meters away from
the side of the road. He wrote a very detailed report very shortly after the event.
The GEIPAN found quite quickly that simultaneously a touring plane was training for night
landings on the small airfield along the highway. As the witness didn't approve this explanation,
GEIPAN was required to go further: a very skilled investigator was assigned on the case and
then made an impressive job: he got the GPS report log of the van trajectory (which was
available because it was a duty van), and the corresponding GPS report of the plane; then he built
a dynamic simulation of the view of the plane from the van driver: the proof was established that
the plane was at the same place as the flying craft described by the witness; it was seen
apparently stationary because it was flying in the opposite direction of the van, as rotating around
a virtual pivot.
The most puzzling finding in this case, which is the most documented case I’ve seen in GEIPAN,
is the comparison of the reality, as simulated from the plane shape and its GPS path, and the
witness report which was put on the same virtual model as hereafter:
r
Figure 1: simulation of the object as described by the witness, and the real plane
The flying craft (left part of the picture) is described 30 times bigger than the plane (Cirrus,
lower right), the lights are rectangular instead of circular and so on. This terrible comparison is
not so surprising: the “Rising Moon test” gives the same results: ask a friend how many fingers
he needs, arms outstretched, to hide the rising moon, when it seems so big; the usual reply is
about 5 fingers (the hand) and some people say, “2 hands” (15° angle), which corresponds to a
ratio of 30 compared to the real angular size of the moon (30’).
5 In the GEIPAN database: Silly-le-long (60) 31-05-2015 (Search Silly as a keyword)
499
III. On Witness Testimony
The human witness overestimates the size of most of the scenes he reports, especially if he was
impressed, as if he used a telephoto-lens, but he forgets it when he writes the report! That’s why
you are mostly disappointed by the poor snapshot you get from your smartphone when observing
an impressive phenomenon such as the sunset or fireworks.
Testis Unus, Testis Nullus
As many professionals of human testimony (lawyers, policemen, psychologists, insurers), we
have to accept the fact that the human testimony is not fully reliable. The law of the ancient
Roman empire was Testis unus, testis nullus, which means: Unique witness means no witness;
the practical implication was that a judge could not convict a suspect from only one testimony. In
all seriousness, it was more to avoid false testimonies than to avoid visual-perception illusions;
in our UFO world, we also have to consider the possibility of false testimony (even if it is very
rare), as well as hallucinations or the statements of a mythomaniac.
In any case, we should never consider a unique testimony sufficient to certify the reality of the
report of a very strange phenomenon.
Which Reality Hidden Behind a Heartfelt Testimony?
In many cases, we can be sure of the sincerity of a testimony, but we know now that it doesn't
accurately describe the reality. What can we infer from a good testimony? What information can
we take literally? What is to be corrected, and what should we forget? Does the “reverse transfer
function” exist?
The long experience of thousands of sighting reports investigations and the results of research in
psychology (2), in vision, perception, memory, etc. makes it possible to affirm the following:
- Above 20 m, estimating the distance of an unknown object is impossible for any human being
using only his eyes, especially in the dark. It means that every distance estimation of an unknown
object or light is, if not false, random, and consequently, the size and speed estimates of the
object are random: this basic rule depreciates thousands of UFO reports based on the
extraordinary size and speed of the related phenomena.
- Witnesses always overestimate the angular size of a surprising phenomenon, with a ratio from 3
to 30.
- The duration estimation of a surprising scene is very subjective.
- Any interpretation of the phenomenon should be considered with caution: as an example, a
statement like: “I’ve seen 3 moving lights” can be taken literally; “I’ve seen a flying triangle”
should not be taken literally, and considered as being probably “3 lights,” and of course the same
conclusion for “I’ve seen a dark triangular spacecraft with a lamp at each point, flying silently
100 m high” should be translated as only: “I’ve seen 3 moving lights.”
- The long-term memory of an extraordinary scene is the result of many very complex process in
the brain, which could drastically alter the real memory (3,4).
The Destabilizing Experience of Observing a UFO
When interviewing a witness, you are impressed with the power of psychological shock some
witnesses suffered during his observation; in some cases, it looks like a religious conversion or a
mystical vision. The on-site interview by the investigator is sometimes a very strong encounter.
500
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
However, the witness can only tell or repeat what he has in his mind, in his memory; the emotion
he had could emphasize the scene he observed.
Since 2013, GEIPAN uses a specific method to interview the witnesses: the “cognitive
interview” which is a quite long non-directive interview, including some repetitions. This
method has been proved to help the witness to remind some details of the events. However, the
on-site interviews are requested by GEIPAN only when the remote investigation has not given
any results: this is a check list of the usual misinterpretations: Chinese lanterns, moon, satellites,
aircraft, fireballs which can be performed with the modern tools of meteorology, astronomy,
radars ... This remote investigation is very often successful to explain the sighting reports of
simple lights in the sky.
The confrontation between the witness’s emotion and the proposed reality found after
investigation is confusing: the witness sometimes feels he is considered a liar or a mad person,
he believes that the truth is hidden. The on-site investigator is supposed to only collect
information, not to give an explanation; the final conclusion is sent directly by GEIPAN, without
preparing the witness; the knowledge of the results of the investigation, in a short mail, is
sometimes brutal for the witness who believes he has seen a very extraordinary phenomenon. In
some extreme cases, I personally called the witness to tell him the result of the investigation; this
difficult discussion has always been very positive; this should be done in every case where the
testimony is far from the proposed reality.
The Perfect UFO Sighting Report
Now that we have made the assertion that single testimony is weak, what should the perfect UFO
sighting report be?
A testimony can bring many very interesting statements if correlated from other sources:
- photographs or videos
- other testimonies from distinct witnesses, preferably independent from the main witnesses
- recordings from automatic systems: surveillance cameras, radars, fireballs or astronomical
survey...
The perfect UFO sighting report should include several testimonies and photos or videos. This is
the option taken by GEIPAN to classify a sighting report in the upper class D2: it requires at
least two independent testimonies and a photograph or video. These conditions are not so
stringent (a well prepared hoax could pass the filter!), but are hard enough to reduce today to null
the number of cases in this class.
Until now, any investigated case with several witnesses and a photo or video has been identified.
GEIPAN investigators give to each sighting report a consistency value, between 0 and 1; this
value has the same meaning as the margin of error in physical measures. The “perfect UFO
sighting report” should have the value of 1, which means a very small margin of error.
501
III. On Witness Testimony
The famous French close-encounters reports (e.g., Valensole 1965, Trans-en-Provence 1981,
“L’amarante” Laxou 1982) are far from a high-consistency level: a lone witness, no photo nor
video. The traces on the ground can be contested because they could have been there before the
event.
The History of the GEIPAN “D Cases”
In the GEIPAN classification, from A as fully explained, B as probably explained, C as
insufficient consistency, to D as unidentified, the last class is of course the most scrutinized. The
meaning of this D class evolved during the 40 years of the GEIPAN: in the early GEIPAN, it
was meaning “deserves a thorough investigation”; then it meant “unidentified after
investigation”; in 2000, this class was including old cases still not investigated and some very
strange cases with various levels of consistency. It was decided to split the D class into D1 for
“unidentified with a moderate consistency” and D2 for “very high consistency,” without
knowing if there were some existing D cases eligible for D2.
From 2014, the old D cases were carefully, and slowly, revisited: most of them could be
explained thanks to the modern tools of cartography, meteorology, and astronomy, and using the
last results of the psychology of the visual perception, many were placed in C class because of
too weak a consistency, and some stayed in the D class but in the D1 sub-class. The revisiting
job is not achieved, 70 D cases are not yet selected for D1 or D2 class. Even if the revisiting job
is not achieved, I do not think that some existing D case could be classified as D2.
On one hand, the number of old D cases decreased from 2014 because of this revisiting process,
on the other hand, the total number of cases increased dramatically from 2007 because of the use
of the Internet, which facilitates the submission of sighting reports. (the total number of
published reports since 1977 was 1,200 in 2011, 2,200 in 2016, and 3,000 in 2022);
consequently, the ratio between the decreasing number of D and D1 cases and the growing
number of all cases lowered drastically, falling from 22% in 2011 to 3% today. In the recent
cases, from 2010, the ratio of D1 cases is close to 2%.
Let us remind that any D unidentified case, even D2, means only that GEIPAN does not know
what the origin of the observed phenomenon was; the assumption of an alien visit is an option
among numerous others, but the experience with old, revisited D cases shows that “unidentified”
could mean “not yet identified” or “distorted or emphatic testimony,” much more so than “alien
visit.”
The Global UFO Phenomenon
If we consider the global UFO phenomenon as a set of measures, each one being subject to some
error in the measure, some UFO reports are considered as abnormal (outliers) because of relating
outstanding facts; they lead to extra investigations or extraordinary assumptions. But the greater
you consider the margin of error of a testimony, the less you’ll find abnormal reports/measures.
Many very strange UFO sighting reports, when submitted to this filter, appeared to be only the
result of visual illusions or enthusiastic : the outstanding related fact is no more than an
outstanding testimony.
502
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Acknowledgments: This article has been written from my experience with the GEIPAN team. I
wish to heartfully thank my predecessors and the acting team, and the associated private
investigators who told me about their long practical experience of UFO case investigations.
References
(1) Passot, X. J’ai vu un OVNI – Perceptions et réalités. Paris: Éditions du Cherche-Midi, 2018.
(2) Mavrakis, D. Les OVNI: Aspects psychiatriques, medico-psychologiques, sociologiques.
Éditions universitaires européennes, 2010.
(3) Loftus, E., and K. Ketcham. The Myth of Repressed Memory. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin,
1994.
(4) Axelrad, B. Les ravages des faux souvenirs: Ou la mémoire manipulée. Sophia-Antipolis : Booke-book, “Une chandelle dans les ténèbres,” 2010.
503
III. On Witness Testimony
Data are Worth a Thousand Accounts
Julio Plaza del Olmo
Abstract: Witness testimonies are at the core of every UFO report. The descriptions contained in
them, however, are not directly related to the UFO features. Instead, they describe what the witness
perceived, interpreted, and is able to recall at the time of reporting. It is a subjective account of
what he experienced. Therefore, accounts must be checked against objective data to discriminate
what parts can be taken as is, and what parts must be reviewed and reinterpreted.
Keywords: Data analysis, Canary Islands, Hammaguir, Pentagon UFO videos, Infrared camera
Introduction
The huge majority of UFO cases are based on witnesses’ accounts. Witnesses usually recall
impressive speeds or accelerations, impossible maneuvers, varying sizes, colors, light intensities,
either at close or far away distances…
But what they are describing are not necessarily the actual features of a UFO. Several stages can
be defined to describe the process of generation of any UFO report, basically: Apparition of a
stimulus, transmission, perception, and communication. From the moment a visual stimulus
appears somewhere either in the sky or near the ground, its light first has to travel towards the
witness’s position while being affected by atmospheric transmission, clouds, obstacles... Then it
has to be perceived by the witness’s senses, and interpreted by the brain. Sometime later, which
can range from hours to days, months or even years, the witness recalls his observation and reports
it to somebody.
Even if the original stimulus was of mundane origin, the final account reflected in a UFO report
has passed through different factors. Factors external to the observer can be objectively identified
and considered (e.g., atmospheric transmission). But factors internal to the observer are of a
subjective nature: limits of the senses, optical illusions, brain interpretation, emotions during
sighting (surprise, shock, fear…). Even during the communication process, the witness can stress
details he or she (subjectively) considers important, while leaving out details he may be aware of,
but does not consider relevant.
It is not the purpose of this introduction to make an extensive description or classification of all
kind phenomena that can affect the final report of a UFO sighting, but to clearly point out that any
report that an investigator has to deal with, is an account of what a witness did perceive, interpret,
and was finally able to communicate. How far or close to reality the description is, is highly
variable and dependent on each witness.
Humans as Measuring Devices
Let us consider the sightings in the Canary Islands on June 22, 1976. On that date, a series of
submarine-launched Poseidon missiles in the Atlantic[1] left an expanding smoke trail illuminated
by the setting sun. The phenomenon had multiple witnesses in the whole archipelago, and triggered
a UFO investigation by the Spanish Air Force.[2] Most of the witnesses described some kind of
light increasing in size and then vanishing. Some considered it was close to them, over the ground,
504
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
or approaching. But the most surprising description involved two beings standing inside a
translucent sphere. Figure 1 reproduces a picture taken of the event, and the drawing made by the
witness.
Figure 1: Left, photograph taken during the June 22, 1976, UFO sighting in the Canary Islands. (V.J. Ballester
Olmos files). Right, drawing done by one witness of the phenomenon. Taken from UFO File 760622 (Spanish Air
Force). [2]
We can see the different perceptions many witnesses had for the same stimulus. Many gave rather
reasonable descriptions (reasonable respect to what really happened), but a few gave shocking
ones. Maybe in ‘multiple witnesses cases’ there is way to decide what sounds reasonable and what
does not – start with what the majority says, and check how accurate it is.
It is not that easy when dealing with a ‘few witnesses cases’ – or even ‘single witness cases’: is
his/her description a reasonable one or radically different from reality? There are very few other
accounts to compare – or none at all.
In our previous example, we can notice that some witnesses apparently gave information that may
be quantified. Distance, position, speed, size, time of the day, duration… are examples of basic
quantitative data that may allow obtaining the dynamic behavior of whatever was seen. Analysis
of these data should help in validating the account: Is the perceived apparent size compatible with
the perceived distance and height above the ground? Does the perceived trajectory match any
known object? Was there any stimulus present that may match these perceptions at the time of the
sighting? After such analysis and validation, we can have a better idea on how reasonable the
account was.
Unfortunately, these data are sometimes missing, poorly estimated or only qualitatively expressed,
if they are given at all. It is not unusual to read things like “a fast moving object,” which indeed
is of no help: How fast is “fast”? Even the date and time are sometimes dubious!
Let us look at a different example. On April 22, 1966, there was a well-observed and documented
launch of a Rubis rocket from Hammaguir. Its payload included barium and copper oxide charges
to study the upper atmosphere, and produced several sightings all across Europe, from southern
Spain to Austria.[3] Out of 31 accounts, only 15 reported the position of the phenomenon. But only
505
III. On Witness Testimony
those reporting an actual measurement or a relative position to a known star, were accurate enough.
Estimates of an absolute value of elevation varied significantly. Azimuth estimates were only
roughly correct, but mostly informed as a broad cardinal point direction (“South,” “Southwest”).
Humans as measuring devices are simply terrible. Of course, experience serves as some sort of
calibration in specific circumstances, and educated guesses can be fairly correct, albeit not always.
Distances, speeds, sizes, positions, etc., are variables that depend on what the observer expects to
see, and what his or her brain is trying to identify. An airline pilot may expect to see other planes
in the air, so parameters like size, speed, or altitude of any light will be interpreted on this basis.
When such a light does not behave like a plane should, surprise arises and results in Venus being
misidentified,[4] or distant lights on the ground forcing the landing of an airliner.[5]
But cases are eventually solved, and the original stimulus can be identified despite the lack of
reliable data within the accounts. Accounts cannot be taken at face value, but that does not mean
they have to be dismissed right away. They must be checked by obtaining data from an independent
source. Thanks to the development in technology, we have now easy access to tools that can show
us land maps, sky maps, airline radar tracks, databases of rocket launches, satellite tracking
software… very valuable tools to obtain independent data to check against an account. Only after
such checks, can we know what parts of a testimony can be taken as-is, and which others should
be reinterpreted.
Technology Registering UFOs
Humans cannot perform accurately as a measuring device. Scientists know this very well, as any
laboratory is fully equipped with expensive devices to measure tiny electric currents, images of
extremely small particles, spectrometers to register wavelengths invisible to human eyes… Any
observation or experiment needs dedicated equipment.
There is no dedicated equipment for the observation of UFOs; but there are at least cases in which
the “witness” happened to be some kind of technological device. I am mostly referring here about
radar and imaging devices, but I would like to focus on the latter.
Direct images of the phenomenon are not affected by the subjectivity of a witness. Thus, it seems
reasonable to use imaging devices to systematically obtain data that can be studied afterwards. The
Hessdalen Project[6] is somewhat based on this approach. An automatic monitoring station has
been running since 1998 collecting images. These are later reviewed and classified to discard false
alarms (known phenomena like birds, insects, planes…), to leave only the apparent anomalies.
Another similar initiative has recently been put forward by Avi Loeb with the Galileo Project for
“the systematic search for evidence of extraterrestrial technological artifacts.”[7] This project
pretends to combine high-resolution imaging systems with different types of radar.
However, the images still have to go through the brain of the one watching them. If the
classification is done based on the viewer interpretation of the image, the subjective factor comes
into play again and the discrimination becomes biased by the human using the technology.
506
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
It has been suggested to use Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning[7,8] to do such discrimination.
This kind of algorithm has grown in interest in the last years with potential applications in many
different fields. But these techniques are also limited to how a human is able to train such
algorithms, which again, creates a bias. So far after 70 years, no features unique to UFOs have
been proved, and thus it becomes impossible to train a neuronal network to be able to recognize
and classify an event (e.g., image, footage, radar echo…) as such. It might be trained to classify
known phenomena (birds, planes, starts, bolides…) and then leave other unclassified phenomena
pending further study. But in any case, that is no warranty of it actually being an anomaly of
interest.
As a comparison, we have to mention the Spanish Meteor and Fireball Network (SPMN).[9] It is a
network of monitoring all-sky cameras. That is basically what the Galileo Project intends to do,
with the difference that SPMN searches for bolides and meteors, not UFOs. Very frequently, they
are caught by the cameras and basic studies like trajectory reconstruction are routinely done.[10] To
this day, there is no indication that they have detected any UFO.
The Pentagon UFO Videos
In 2017, three videos were leaked to the public that showed infrared footage of unidentified
objects, the so-called Pentagon UFO videos.[11] In 2020 the DoD officially admitted they were
obtained during training exercises in 2004 and 2015 by US Navy F-18 fighters.[12]
The fighters were equipped with an Advanced Targeting Forward Looking InfraRed (ATFLIR)
system. It is to expect that such a system is able to gather huge amounts of data as well as
communicate and share data with the other systems present in the plane. Azimuth, elevation, slant
range, speed, attitude, heading, field of view, radar and IR signatures, IR irradiation on the sensors,
state of the systems (searching, tracking, idle, settings…). There are plenty of parameters useful
to understand what the image actually shows.
Sure, if we could have access to so many good quality data, the Pentagon videos would be easier
to analyze. What has actually been leaked is only the 8-bit grayscale footage in a compressed
algorithm suitable for internet streaming and reproduction in a home PC. Not a great deal,
especially if someone wants to present it as the most compelling evidence of a UFO ever.
Even if this IR system is a state-of-the-art device, it has its limitations. In fact, if we go back in
time, it is easy to find similar quotes praising the – back then – “most sophisticated systems” to
remark how compelling the evidence was. Technology improves its limits with time, but UFOs
always appear at the limits of the detection systems. A very good reason to analyze data, instead
of interpreting images.
Fortunately, along with the image, the display was also recorded and shows some basic
information, as shown in Figure 2. The data have a higher uncertainty than the raw data would
have; but are still enough to do things such as the reconstruction of the trajectory.
507
III. On Witness Testimony
Figure 2: Frame from the “Go Fast” video, and description of some of the information available.
Go Fast
The “Go Fast” video was recorded in January 2015, off the East coast of the US. If we let our
brain interpret the image, it apparently shows a fast object moving near the surface of the sea. The
object itself is only 6 to 8 pixels wide, with no features to allow identification just by looking at it.
With simple trigonometrical relationships, it is easy to calculate the actual altitude of the target. It
is not near the surface, but halfway, about 13,500 feet over the surface level during the whole
video. A retired F-16 pilot (and now youtuber) has argued that the displayed slant range is not
reliable,[13] so the calculated altitude cannot be valid. His visual interpretation, based on his
experience, is again that of a fast object near sea level. However, no technical explanation has been
given as to why the range would not be reliable. It is only his subjective interpretation against a
calculation that consistently locates the object at a constant altitude throughout the whole video,
not at random or illogical values despite the range and tracking angles changing every second.
508
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Figure 3: Altitude (left) and trajectory (right) of the “Go Fast” target. Data show it is a slow moving object at a
constant altitude of 13,500 feet. The gray zone in the trajectory shows the uncertainty in the position of the target.
The indicated airspeed of 0.6 Mach at 25,000 feet corresponds to 370 knots of true airspeed. This
airspeed would still need to be corrected by the wind speed – in magnitude and direction – which
is unknown. But taking 370 kt as the reference, the trajectory of the target can be computed, and
also its speed. The final value is much lower than was apparent by just looking at the video (Figure
3).
If the brain interprets the image as an object near the surface, the target appears to move at high
speed. Analysis of data shows it is only an apparent effect due to parallax. But more importantly,
once the real properties are known, a serious discussion can start about the identification of the
object. The conclusion would be much different if we stuck to the “fast object” interpretation,
falsified by the data.
FLIR1
The video called “FLIR1” was recorded on November 14, 2004, near San Diego, by a fighter from
the Carrier Strike Group 11 that included the USS Nimitz. It shows a featureless target being
tracked by the fighter’s ATFLIR pod. Only in the very last second of the video, the target
disappears moving to the left of the image.
To the occasional, unaware, first-time viewer, nothing impressive seems to be happening.
But this video was recorded in a context that can bias the viewer: on the day of the recording, pilots
reported having an encounter with a “tic-tac”-shaped UFO, maneuvering with high speeds and
accelerations. After returning to the carrier, another plane, equipped with the ATFLIR system, was
later able to obtain the footage. Despite these previously reported maneuvers not being seen in the
video, a direct connection is made with those accounts. It is then claimed that the recorded object
was the same, and that the last second of the footage showed one of those high-acceleration
maneuvers that the IR system was unable to track.
509
III. On Witness Testimony
A complex analysis was done only on that last second of the video from the biased standpoint that
the object had to show a high acceleration as it had been previously reported, ignoring the previous
70 seconds of video in which nothing happens. From the initial assumption that the object “started
from rest” respect to the F-18 in that final second, the conclusion was that it accelerated at 76g.[14]
An unbiased examination of the available data shows the object in constant motion. Azimuth and
elevation are changing during the entire video. It was not at rest with respect to the F-18. Also, it
is easily observed that the tracking system was unstable whenever the operator switched the optics
of the IR camera. Every time, the object would drift slightly to the left, until the lock was
reacquired, and the object centered on the screen again. See Figure 4 for an example in the last
moments of the video. The very last second shows the optics were changed twice very quickly.[15]
Figure 4: Position of the target during the last seconds of the video. The change in the optical settings affects the
tracking. The system needs to regain the lock and re-center the target. Thick black lines indicate the change in the
optical system, which involved physical change of lenses and results in the system being blind for some frames. The
thin lines reflect only a change in the digital zoom.
The motion of the target can be reconstructed for the whole video, and shows a trajectory
compatible to an object moving in a straight line with a left component with respect to the fighter.
The lack of a slant range value prevents the obtaining of the speed of the target, but for some
reasonable ranges – about 30 NM – it is compatible with those of small jets.
Incidentally, the co-pilot who operated the IR systems said the object was first detected by radar
at about 30 NM. However, there is no radar data available to check this information. We can only
check that this value would give a speed within the flight envelope of small jets.
Figure 5 shows the reconstruction of the trajectory, starting at 30 NM of distance. The target would
travel at 425 kt, and would finish at 16 NM distance from the fighter.
510
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Figure 5: Reconstruction of the UFO/UAP trajectory in “FLIR1” video, based on the data of the display.
Finally, the angular speed at which the object disappeared was similar to the angular speed the
object was showing during the whole video.[15,16] All these data and analysis lead to a different
conclusion, in which the IR system simply lost track of the object due to the quick changes in the
optics before the system was able to reacquire the track and center the target again. Then, it drifted
away from the image to the left, the direction it was originally moving. Therefore, nothing in the
video is able to confirm that the object executed outstanding maneuvers.
Conclusions
As the saying goes, an image is worth a thousand words. In the UFO field, it may be re-worded
as data are worth a thousand accounts. Witnesses’ testimonies are descriptions of what they
experienced. That means they are not describing how a random light in the sky moved, but how
they perceived it moved, and how well they are able to recall that memory.
A qualitative description of an event is affected by the interpretation by the witnesses themselves.
It is not unusual that different witnesses can describe differently the same event; sometimes with
striking differences. Examples were given to show that quantification of simple parameters is also
inaccurate. A testimony, then, is not reliable. But that does not mean it has to be thrown away. It
is the task of the investigator to find data that can confirm it, refute it, or suggest a different
interpretation compatible with the data. Data must have preference over testimonies.
On the other hand, technological devices can provide reliable quantitative data. Images are the
most popular ones, but even if an image may constitute a valuable piece of evidence, its plain
visual interpretation is likely to introduce back subjectivity from the viewer. Similarly, giving
preference to a testimony over data can lead to a biased analysis trying to force the data to confirm
the account.
Good data will always be a better starting point than an account. But in the end, a good analysis
can be done only as long as subjectivity is left out.
511
III. On Witness Testimony
References (all web articles accessed on Aug. 18, 2022)
1. V.J. Ballester Olmos and R. Campo Pérez. “¡Identificados! Los ovnis de Canarias fueron misiles
Poseidón.” Revista de Aeronáutica y Astronáutica, No. 701, March 2001, pp. 200-207.
2. Mando Operativo Aéreo - Estado Mayor del Aire. “Avistamiento de fenómenos extraños en
Canarias: 22 de junio de 1976.” Biblioteca Virtual de Defensa.
http://bibliotecavirtualdefensa.es/BVMDefensa/exp_ovni/es/consulta/registro.do?id=38141
3. V.J. Ballester Olmos and J. Plaza del Olmo. “La experiencia espacial del 22 de abril de 1966.”
Academia.edu.
https://www.academia.edu/36433365/La_experiencia_espacial_del_22_de_abril_de_1966
4. M. Borraz. “Venus, tráfico no identificado.” Academia.edu.
https://www.academia.edu/42949527/Venus_tr%C3%A1fico_no_identificado
5. J.A. Fernández Peris. El expediente Manises. Vol. 1 - Biblioteca Camille Flammarion,
Fundación Anomalía (Santander), 2000.
6. “Hessdalen Project.” www.hessdalen.org
7. A. Loeb, “The Galileo Project.” Harvard University.
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo
8. Office of the Director of the National Intelligence, “Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified
Aerial Phenomena.” June 25, 2021.
https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP20210625.pdf
9. Spanish Meteor and Fireball Network, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain.
http://www.spmn.uji.es/ENG/presentation.html
10. Spanish Meteor and Fireball Network. “Stunning fireball over Spain on April 16.” YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lofMkg8a7wQ
11. “Pentagon UFO videos.” Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos
12. U.S. Department of Defense, “Statement by the Department of Defense on the Release of
Historical Navy Videos.” April 27, 2020.
https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/2165713/statement-by-thedepartment-of-defense-on-the-release-of-historical-navy-videos/
13. C. Lehto. “Gimbal video is NOT debunked!” YouTube, time mark 1:08.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tyw4JA00AMc
14. K. Knuth, R. Powell, and P. Reali. “Estimating Flight Characteristics of Anomalous
Unidentified Aerial Vehicles.” Entropy, Vol. 10, No. 21, 2019, p. 939.
15. J. Plaza del Olmo. “The FLIR1 Video.” Academia.edu, March 2021.
https://www.academia.edu/45588364/The_FLIR1_video
16. M. West. “Nimitz FLIR1 ‘Tic-Tac’ UFO video – No sudden moves!” YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1di0XIa9RQ
512
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
The Objectivity of Witnesses and the Subjectivity of Testimonies
Cláudio Tsuyoshi Suenaga
Abstract: In this study, I will proceed to a critical analysis of the general reference base
of the UFO problem, the testimony, seen as an authentic and indisputable cultural
source, but one that presents serious distortions. One of the main points to be
investigated is the exact value of the testimonies, which form the basis of the reports
and, therefore, of the UFO phenomenon. Therefore, I intend to provide adequate
scientific treatment of those data and factors relegated to the background by ufologists:
the observational subjective parameters, the perceptual aspects, the language and the
historical-cultural context of the witness, and the psychosociological variables, that is,
everything that has been disparagingly called “background noise,” the “sociological
refuse” despised at the expense of the “signal.”
Keywords: UFO reports, Cognitive dissonance, Disparities, Manipulations, Distortions,
Perception
Subject-Object
In general, the UFO phenomenon is treated anachronistically well, but scientifically
poorly, always lending itself to all kinds of manipulations and in the service of
determined interests. What we have seen is the systematic exploration of the idea of
extraterrestrial visitors by all-too-human organizations with very mundane purposes.
The public has often been deceived and deluded about almost every aspect of it.
UFO information reaches the general public filtered and popularized through the media.
The mass population and the so-called cultured layers themselves, are generally
unaware of the inaccuracies transmitted to them and the interests involved, and they
often accept the news as a reliable description of reality. This alleged knowledge is then
taken as the model of true knowledge that is provided only to a privileged few.
UFO cases, similar to works of art, are not descriptions of reality itself, but
interpretations of a reality that tell us more about the person who is expressing himself
than about the reality he is referring to. They are second-hand views of the world, quite
different from scientific knowledge, which describe reality itself and take away the
reassuring filters of opinion, beliefs, and ideologies and leave us alone in the face of a
demonstrable truth about the world.
Certainly, the appropriate scientific method can only be found, and above all applied, if,
on the one hand, the data related to the object of study are systematized and, on the
other, if these data are comprehended in their specific characters and distinctive
elements.
In the UFO phenomenon, subject-object relationships take on new conformations.
Liable to be approached by all fields of knowledge in which its unstable epistemological
aspects are accentuated, interdisciplinarity is therefore mandatory, provided that from
the perspective of a real integration of the disciplines, both in the human and exact
sciences. The expansion of the parameters of analysis offers conditions for the
understanding of its social dynamics related to a complex system of political relations in
close connection with secular religious beliefs.
513
III. On Witness Testimony
It is evident that this methodology is being proposed in a context of loss of
epistemological confidence and ambiguities that permeate the convictions about the
foundations of society and the role that is attributed to science itself. Therefore, offering
answers to such inquiries presupposes feeding the debate about the function, meaning
and modes of production of scientific knowledge within a context of multiple variants.
The issue of interdisciplinarity emerges, in effect, from the exhaustion of certain
parameters of scientificity built under the paradigm of natural sciences, which lead to a
global model of science whose advance was made by a free, detached, and
uncompromised observation of reality. In the new model, an approach capable of
articulating the points of integration of the phenomena in social life is sought.
Ethnology of the Contacts
At this point, it must have become clear that the objects of our study are the reports of
sightings, immediate contacts, and abductions, and not the flying saucers and ETs
themselves, unattainable by their very nature. It is up to us to build the ethnology of the
contacts, or at least of their narratives. In fact, almost all UFO reports inform us less
about reality than about dominant beliefs and desires. They put a kind of screen between
our eyes and what our eyes would like to perceive. Generally speaking, witnesses do not
provide a rational explanation or moral justification for what they claim. When
questioned, they answer only that the facts occurred exactly as they are describing,
however absurd or nonsensical they may seem. The reports reflect reality to a certain
extent, but almost all of them distort that reality. The challenge, for us historians, is to
discern the distortions arising from a set of beliefs and to gauge the extent to which they
transcend social reality.
Ufologists, for their peculiar behavior, for their role of mediation between witnesses and
society, and for being largely creators of the phenomenon, although they are often
unaware of it, also constitute an object of imprescriptible study. In their efforts to make
sense of the UFO Phenomenon, they create their own mythology: an epic drama of
individuals who seek to make sense of epic events and experiences.
There is a profusion of aspects and elements that I intend to dig into deeply and that
were never studied by ufologists, either by nature, which they soon discard when not in
line with their beliefs and expectations, or due to ignorance about the appropriate
methods of approach, or simply because they didn’t even notice them.
The method used by most ufologists, based on a desire for a quick explanation for the
Phenomenon, is restricted to a limited sample, covering only those cases with
possibilities of material proof in favor of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Since even
today, despite the billions spent by space agencies, no evidence of a civilization outside
of Earth has been discovered, the responsibility for analyzing all the UFO
documentation accumulated in the last seventy years lies with the historian and the
sociologist.
Filling the Gaps
Science and ufology have different objects and objectives and require different methods.
Stripping ufology of its absurdity and absurd ornaments with the application of
“Occam’s razor” leads us to a valid explanation based on simple and observable facts,
supplemented by pure logic, as William of Occam would have advocated. The
514
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
comparative method applied to ufology provides that we must test the hypotheses with a
sufficient number of cases, comparing each one with the others and with those with very
particular characteristics. That is why the method adopted by ufologists is erroneous,
and for the following reasons:
1. It totally excludes the psychosociological aspect that constitutes the context in
which ufological reports are sustained;
2. It leads to the arbitrary constitution of a “characteristic list” (median) of cases,
which will represent the UFO Phenomenon in all subsequent studies. Such a list results
from a selection from the bulk of the original appearances; its criteria are predetermined
in an impartial and subjective way, not being deduced from an objective analysis of the
set of observations, considered as a whole;
3. It makes the propositions of the different types of reports false, totally
eliminating some of them and hiding others through flawed classifications. It distributes
the weight or reliability index of the observations in such a way that certain groups of
witnesses are favored, although only certain types of observations correspond to those
groups; and
4. It removes each observation from its context, disregards the global nature of the
phenomenon, and blocks all paths of investigation of the pattern of distribution of
observations and the fluctuation of the phenomenon over time; it restricts the discussion
to a mere consideration of probabilities.
Ufologists try to fill the gaps in scientific thinking by appealing to audacious hypotheses
and unorthodox or unconventional “methods of investigation,” such as night vigils,
mediumistic trances, telepathic transmissions, etc., making these attempts exasperating
and ineffective in establishing direct contacts or recurring activities.
The Set of its Manifestations
My intention has been to explore a totally different line of research, based on the idea
that, in the absence of any plausible physical theory, the UFO Phenomenon can be
defined only by the set of its manifestations. I consider the totality of the information
reported by the witnesses and the data involved. Leaving aside any attempt to prove
each case individually, a task for professional physicists, I find useless any explanation
applicable only within certain limits of time and space, or within certain strict
boundaries, or that relates only to a small sample of cases. Since experience has shown
that there is a strong psychological component in periods of intense phenomenon
activity, I have established the principle of not rejecting observations merely on the
basis of their interpretation, however fantastic and extravagant it may be. In the same
way that the chronicles of the 5th century described comets as “the hand of God
wielding a bloody sword,” we are now confronted with fantastically distorted narratives
of real and physical events. It is the duty of the social scientist to analyze the reports,
separating the elements that arise from the fruit of human imagination.
It is on such bases that our methods are supported: to identify the various components of
the Phenomenon and to introduce a descriptive language, examining the reports
individually, from the points of view of both psychology and the social sciences; to
present studies based on the most general sampling, without trying to decide between
the different theories in a subjective way; on the contrary, we endeavor to outline, as
clearly as possible, the pros and cons of all the hypotheses raised in order to explain the
515
III. On Witness Testimony
Phenomenon; and to pave the way for a complete study on a global scale, reviewing
some of the methods that could be used.
The method required to decipher and understand the logic of immediate contacts is that
of social anthropology, which consists of considering reports under two aspects: on the
one hand, as fantastic narratives; on the other, as an echo of experiences lived on
different levels of reality. Thus, UFOs would not be from other planets, but from other
planes of reality. UFO phenomenology, far from being the chaos that we could suppose
if it were only the result of delusional visions, corresponds to a well-defined order and
logic. The cultural materials that make up this structure reveal that behind the
appearances of a wonderful science there is a set of themes and motifs that were already
included in the reports of the so-called fantastic folklore. In other words, to say that
behind science fiction lies folklore is just a simplified form of expression. Folk themes
are not behind science fiction in the same way as ethnological extracts are. The question
is much more complex than that, and it is necessary, first of all, to examine the
invariable structure, behind which the conventional direction of the initiating proof
appears.
Psychological Action, Political Manipulation and Social Control
With its prerogative for social history and cultural phenomena, the Annales magazine,
founded in 1929 by Lucien Febvre, of the École Pratique des Hautes Études, allowed us
to probe the substrates of individual consciences and the foundations of long-lasting
rhythms, where nothing seems to change. The inflection for detecting this impalpable
reality and from there extracting a whole worldview, consists of juxtaposing fragments
of memories, often precarious, surrounded by a symbolic and imaginary sphere, and to
try to connect them, to reconstruct an image, but according to abstract and conceptual
concepts, schemes drawn from themselves, and thus to compose a picture that comes
from the very base of society, that is, culture, although one cannot neglect the
repercussions of material structures on mental representations, or, more broadly, the
relationships between cultural phenomena and the movement of all economic and social
structures, or even, to use another language, between material infrastructures and
superstructures, that is, the production and reception of cultural objects.
Due to the intrinsic characteristic of camouflaging its secrets under dense layers of
misinformation, legends and lies, the UFO Phenomenon has served as one of the most
efficient instruments of psychological action, political manipulation, and social control.
However, if there has always been a hidden interest in stimulating belief in UFOs, how
do you explain the official campaign, carried out most of the time, to deny it and even
ridicule it in front of the public? The answer is very simple and concerns the psychology
of the masses: the more the public is persuaded to disbelieve something, the more they
will tend to believe it.
The belief in ETs sustains the world of ufologists and ensures a good dose of hope that
in the near future there will be a great rapture of those chosen, by a fleet of shiny
spaceships. Most of them, incidentally, claim to have entered ufology in response to a
kind of call or vocation comparable to a religious experience, and not a few converted to
the belief after having their “vision on the road to Damascus,” in this case witnessing a
UFO and having their faith justified. The belief in UFOs has given rise to pseudoreligious groups that have turned them into objects of worship, awaiting their arrival
with the same enthusiasm with which the Messiah’s second coming is expected. There
516
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
is no lack of those who defend that ufology is the stage of Armageddon, where the final
battle between good and evil will be fought.
Leon Festinger and His Theory of Cognitive Dissonance
The religious aspect of ufology, due to its intertwining of themes and fusion of utopias,
must deserve constant and special attention on our part. The first academic study on this
subject was carried out by Leon Festinger, who in late September 1951 was teaching
psychology at the University of Minnesota when he read a note published in the Lake
City Herald entitled “Prophecy from planet Clarion call to city: flee that flood.”
Continuing the work of his master, social psychologist Kurt Lewin, and author of the
book Research Methods in the Behavioral Sciences, in collaboration with Daniel Katz,
published the previous year, Festinger imagined how the group members would behave
after their prediction turned out to be false, given everyone’s commitment to their
beliefs and attitudes. Would they lose their faith? How would you justify the day after
the probably dry December 21st? Interviewing the outbreak of dissonant/divergent
feelings in the face of unconfirmed expectations, Festinger and his colleagues infiltrated
the group to see if this would indeed happen. On the evening of the 20th, Marion, her
followers and the undercover Festinger and his colleagues gathered at the home of the
contactee to await the cataclysm. Around midnight, everyone got rid of any metallic
object that could hinder the arrival of their intergalactic transport. At 4 o’clock in the
morning, no flying saucers had yet landed in Chicago, nor were there any signs of rain.
Marion burst into tears and announced that she had received a new and providential
message from her friend Sananda: the assembled group had radiated so much positive
energy, so much light, that the gods had decided to postpone the destruction.
But if Marion’s prediction had failed, Festinger’s had not; as he had predicted, the
group members, paradoxically, not only did not abandon their beliefs, but sought
explanations for their non-realization by clinging even more strongly to them. The
discrepancy between what they believed and reality became the basis for Festinger and
his colleagues to elaborate the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, which is, roughly
speaking, a state of tension that occurs when someone experiences two antagonistic and
psychologically inconsistent cognitions which are incompatible. The subject is then
motivated, by the experienced discomfort, to behave in such a way as to reduce the
dissonance. It is the old double morality that allows people to take one action while
preaching another, failing to see what they dislike so they don’t notice vital events and
information that would counteract their behaviors and beliefs.
The theory of cognitive dissonance was first proposed by Festinger and his colleagues
in the book When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern
Group That Predicted the End of the World, published in 1956, and the following year
by Festinger in his book A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. It provoked a real
revolution in psychology as it offered an elegant explanation for our most bizarre and
contradictory behaviors.
Extreme Credulity
The main aspect to be considered, therefore, is the extreme credulity of much of
contemporary society. In the last decades I have interviewed hundreds of witnesses, I
have checked out apparition sites in loco, I have visited UFO groups of the most diverse
strains and tendencies, I have attended hypnosis sessions, mediumistic operations, and
517
III. On Witness Testimony
channeling, and I even took part in mystical-religious services, always as an observerparticipant. I found that in all these places and situations, there is practically no room
for doubt. No one is free to speak up, saying, “That can’t be,” because they will be at
risk of being asked to leave or even attacked by the faithful. The insistent presence of
UFOs brings with it the messianism of a genre that insists on surviving when the cycle
of such movements seems to have run out, providing strength and relevance to the most
remote prophecies that relate times of crisis to the presence of “disturbing signs.”
The acronym UFO, which in the strict sense means Unidentified Flying Object, was
coined by the US military as an attempt to fit unexplained observations into an
ordination. Over the past seventy years its original meaning has been altered to
accommodate and assimilate innumerable connotations, many of mystical-religious
character, lending itself to all kinds of conjectures and speculation. So much so that the
ufologists are not even able to accurately define their object of study or to define the
field of research.
If not, let’s see how the head of the Ohio State Department of Astronomy and
nicknamed “father of scientific ufology,” J. Allen Hynek, who for more than twenty
years served as a consultant to the US Air Force on three consecutive official projects
[Project Sign (1947-1949), Project Grudge (1949-1952), and Project Blue Book (19521969)], defined what a UFO is: “An object or light seen in the sky or on the earth,
whose appearance, trajectory, dynamics and behavior luminescent generally does not
suggest a logical and conventional explanation, and one that is not only disconcerting to
the original observer, but remains unidentified despite all the evidence available to
people technically capable of making common sense identification, if this is possible.”
A UFO then, in Hynek’s sense, is an unusual stimulus that originates a report about a
phenomenon (object or lights) that, due to its aspects or dynamic behavior, cannot be
identified by human perception, such as ensuring that an object is really an object, that
the light is really in the sky and is not a reflection of a terrestrial light source, which is
truly hovering and which is not just on the observer’s retina? It is somewhat paradoxical
that one insists on calling an object something that most of the time does not even seem
to have material consistency, as if it could give the phenomenon a certain concreteness.
In the absence of a positive definition that explains what UFOs are, an uncomfortable
question remains: What are ufologists investigating after all? In reality, any supernatural
or paranormal phenomenon fits Hynek’s definition.
Over time, ufology, a discipline whose objective should be to conduct investigations
through the application of the scientific method, has become an appendix of cultural
distortion that strives to equate unexplained facts with supernatural phenomena. UFO
researchers still insist, however, that reports of encounters with UFOs are “pure,”
“impartial” and are free from any external contamination and mental and cultural
predisposition. In order to frame the new experience in a coherent structure that makes
sense, psychological, social, and cultural mechanisms immediately come into action and
seek to convene what in the first moment, by the limits of language, was classified as
“unidentified.” The more unstable and susceptible to contradictory interpretations are
the studied realities, the more necessary it is necessary to draw sharp boundaries and
establish precise goals.
518
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Projective Elaboration
Instigated by the innate propensity of witnesses to pick up elements of fiction and
incorporate them into the accounts, Argentine social psychologist Roberto Enrique
Banchs undertook a rigorous and categorical study of the effects on the population of
clearly suggestible films. Through graphs and statistical charts, he fully demonstrated
that many times waves of UFOs erupted, increased, and decreased following the time of
launch, exhibition and poster output of the films. “It is noteworthy to note that his
projection coincides with the months with the highest incidence of reports, which are
significantly reduced when the film stops occupying the screens of cinematographic
theaters,” he wrote in his book Fenómenos Aéreos Inusuales: Un Enfoque
Biopsicosocial (Buenos Aires, LEUKA, 1994). The comment refers to Steven
Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, shown in Argentina in 1978, the year
that this country found itself dealing with a gigantic wave of flying saucers. Banchs
stated that:
The causal relationship established between the [films] cannot go unnoticed when
analyzing the role played by the science fiction genre in UFO activity. Therefore, the
present study confirms the hypothesis that the phenomenon does not manifest itself in
cycles or waves due to its intrinsic nature, but to other factors, denoting a state of latent
emotion that awaits no more than an opportunity to manifest itself. (P. 83)
In order to carry out a critical appraisal of the problem of observations and their
potential falsifications, Banchs developed and carried out in late 1984, for the first time,
a “controlled experiment” in which he simulated the usual conditions of an ufological
observation, adjusting it in order to minimize the risk involved in decisions.
To carry out the experiment, Banchs used a room with seats placed along it, a projector
and its screen, and a sound amplifier. Such conditions were presented to the participants
on November 18, in the city of Rosario, Santa Fe province, by the regional Federación
Argentina de Estudios Extraterrestres, with the assistance of Eduardo Ficarotti. The
experimental group was formed by 15 persons of both sexes of varying ages,
educational and professional level, who were interested in the UFO theme. In order to
prevent bias in the results, none of the participants previously knew about the
experiment or even knew that they would be subjected to such an experience.
In short, an image of a characteristic and very appreciable UFO was projected for five
seconds – 45 centimeters on the screen, at a maximum distance of 3.5 meters. This
appearance was characterized by unpredictability and fugacity. Impromptu interrupting
the conditions recreated from an ufological observation – image and sound – the
participants were then asked to avoid the exchange of impressions and the group was
instructed to respond, without time limit and with absolute freedom, to a brief specific
questionnaire for UFO observation.
When analyzing the data obtained, Banchs found a series of disparities and concluded
that “none of the testimonies really reflected what was offered to the senses, and few
were those who approached them.” In a particular analysis, Banchs noticed several
mechanisms of the psyche:
a) Omission: In some cases, observers omit visible parts of the phenomenon –
absence of prolongations, etc.
519
III. On Witness Testimony
b) Replacement: Witnesses modify or replace aspects of the UFO – orange with
red, etc.
c) Addition: Observers add non-existent elements – small towers, engine noise,
etc.
“This is what some authors call ‘projective elaboration,’ that is, the witness produces a
more complex and unreal report,” said Banchs. Due to cultural and social influences,
there is a “projective transformation” in which the subject projects his or her more or
less conscious knowledge about UFOs, not induced by the perceived fact, but deduced
from the acquired knowledge.
Facing the unknown and assuming that the observed is related to the idea about UFOs –
for example, extraterrestrial spaceships – the witnesses accommodate the image of the
object to this prefabricated image, which, in appearance, solves the flaws and
inconsistencies of the sighting, eliminating restrictions and reinforcing with nonexistent details what they cannot interpret outside the framework of their beliefs, only
stopped by critical reasoning. Banchs concludes:
Scientific conviction is disguised by belief, arising from the emotional aspect and
certain pre-established ideas in consciousness. The UFO therefore acquires an
individual and collective sense and meaning, under different appearances that are
subordinated by visual memory, sensitive to the influences of the mind. In short, it can
be said that one of the major limitations of the investigation is that UFO witnesses do
not describe what they see, but what they believe they have seen.
Perception, understood as the act or effect of perceiving, is a complex psychic function,
through which the mind comes to form a reproduction of outer objects, with the
knowledge of the spatial situation, individuality, and reality of these objects. Visual
perception is distinguished from sensation, since it is much more complex; it requires
the competition of images, a judgment of exteriority, attention, etc. For German
philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716), perception
was the “more or less alive representation that transforms each monad into a more or
less alive mirror of the entire universe.”
The belief in the existence of the outside world is a product of acquisition, with some
admitting the perception of our self as immediate and, as acquired, discursively, the
notion of non-self. When two individuals see a thing, they hardly capture the same data
about it, because each interprets it differently. The intersection between the stimulus and
the reaction is not one-to-one nor does it depend on education, history, and language.
Vision and its representation are determined not only by the neural system, but mainly
by cultural conditioning. We know that all witnesses can make mistakes or distort
reality, without having these purposes, shaping their narrations according to previously
defined expectations, affecting certain observable magnitudes. More than a receiver or
transmitter of information, the human being is a transformer. The way we see the world
is the way useful to our perspective, said German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm
Nietzsche (1844-1900). In Posthumous Fragments (1885-1887), Nietzsche proclaimed
that “The world that concerns us is false, that is, it is not a state of fact, but poetic
invention.”
520
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Conclusions
The witness, for being the first to incorporate the prodigy within a certain system of
paradigmatic beliefs and, from them, relay to others an anomalous, infrequent, and
unusual phenomenon that denotes multiple interpretations, although commonly
considered, in the present time, as a technological portent of extraterrestrial origin (with
its intraterrestrial, interdimensional and intertemporal variants), it is on whom the UFO
Phenomenon has always been emphasized.
The witness is at the heart of the explanatory paradigm, the standard model that every
culture uses to solve a given problem. This paradigm not only acts as an organizing
model of perception, but also constitutes a prerequisite of perception itself, however
varied, divergent, and even incompatible with the explanations proposed to justify the
facts.
The belief in UFOs as extraterrestrial super-technological vehicles was being promoted
on a large scale through literature, newspapers, magazines, comic books, radio, cinema,
television, and the media in general, which ended up shaping the imaginary, inclining
people to naturally take them as such. The testimonies would not be, properly speaking,
absolute novelties as claimed by ufologists, but rather an almost literal reproduction of
science fiction reports prior to the 1940s. It was these writers who provided the
necessary materials for the elaboration of a new mythology. Behind the appearance of
the unusual, there is a set of themes and motifs that were already present in the accounts
of fantastic folklore, as well as a series of floating and peripheral themes unequivocally
taken from pulp fiction literature and “B movies.” These themes, with their different
levels of interpretation, were incorporated into the basic and invariable structure, either
in a single or repetitive way.
The UFO phenomenon is configured by today’s scientific-technological model, which is
why it assumes technological characteristics. The advance in the knowledge of physics
and the technical-industrial improvements, added to the irruption of communications on
a planetary scale, the social upheavals, and the warlike conflagrations, created a
psycho-logical climate that favored the emergence of the UFO phenomenon in facets
that were assimilable at the time: an aircraft in “flying saucer” format, anticipated by
avant-garde aeronautical designers and engineers and by science fiction authors. The
flying saucer appeared as a technical novelty to be perfected. The details and technical
details described by the testimonies give an account of this progress: “windows” are
seen in flying saucers in the late 1940s; “extraterrestrials” are seen wearing “diving suits”
in the 1950s; in the same decade, contactees taken aboard flying saucers describe seeing
screens (like those on black and white television sets), “control panels” with buttons and
levers and stabilizer-type dials and hands; in the following decades, flying saucers
would present increasingly bold and aerodynamic shapes and designs and would come
duly equipped with laser beams, touch-sensor panels, microcomputers, holographic
projectors, genetic laboratories, etc.
It is possible that all these visions in the course of history and to an ever-increasing
degree in the present, are versions of the same phenomenon or even psychic forms,
similar to thought-forms, generated by the minds of witnesses or the collectivity as a
whole when witnessed by others large groups and by crowds. Visions of UFOs,
however, cannot be attributed solely to factors of a “spontaneous” order, reduced to a
psychic pathology or seen as a mere by-product of the irruption of mystical-religious
521
III. On Witness Testimony
tendencies – duly updated for the standards of our scientific epoch – technological –
rooted in the “collective unconscious,” as Carl Gustav Jung wanted. These tendencies
that denote a compensatory effort of the unconscious to deal with the state of fear, chaos,
depression, anguish, and perplexity of our days, were channeled, articulated, and
potentiated so that they would acquire the form and consistency of a mass phenomenon.
To recall Nietzsche and Freud, who affirmed that the subject does not govern his speech
all the more as he believes he is telling the truth without telling the whole truth, the
testimonies are still permeated by other media reports and literature, other experiences,
and by the historical events themselves.
Finding out about something through what was directly witnessed cannot always be
converted into discourse, as in traumatic situations, in which the witness prefers to
silence or obliterate so that it does not emerge from a lived situation to something that is
still lived.
Finally, the testimony contains the report of what was perceived by the witness through
any of his senses and interpreted by his set of paradigmatic beliefs. Although they are
the most reliable descriptions of reality, these reports by themselves can’t be seen as the
definitive version of history, because, in addition to constituting only a partial view,
they are still permeated by other subjectivities and experiences that constitute the
experience of the one who gives his testimony.
Bibliography
Banchs, Roberto Enrique. Las Evidencias del Fenómeno OVNI. Buenos Aires: Rodolfo
Alonso Editor, 1976. (Colección Mundos y Misterios.)
_____. Fenómenos Aéreos Inusuales: Un Enfoque Biopsicosocial. Buenos Aires:
LEUKA, 1994.
_____. “El componente psíquico de los relatos fabulosos.” Perspectivas Ufológicas.
México, No. 7, February 1996, pp. 8-11.
_____. “Abducciones: la experiencia traumática y el camino regresivo.” Perspectivas
Ufológicas. México, No. 7, February 1996, pp.12- 15.
Barbuy, Heraldo. O Problema do Ser. São Paulo: Departamento de Filosofia,
Universidade de São Paulo, 1950. (Ph.D. dissertation.)
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1957.
Cerbone, David. R. Understanding Phenomenology. Stocksfield (United Kingdom):
Acumen, 2006.
Festinger, Leon. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press: 1957.
Festinger, Leon, and Daniel Katz. Research Methods in the Behavioral Sciences. New
York: Dryden Press, 1953.
Festinger, Leon, et al. When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a
Modern Group that Predicted the End of the World. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1956.
Goffman, Erving. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1986.
Hynek, J. Allen. The Hynek UFO Report. New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1977.
_____. The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1972.
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von. The Monadology. London: Forgotten Books, 2008.
Llobera, José R. (comp.). La Antropología Como Ciencia. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1975.
522
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris: NRF, Gallimard,
1945.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen.
German; Leipzig: C. G. Naumann, 1895.
Novaes, Sylvia Caiuby. Jogo de Espelhos: Imagens da Representação de Si Através dos
Outros. São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo (USP), 1990.
Rutledge, Harley D. Project Identification: The First Scientific Field Study of UFO
Phenomena. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1981
Schopenhauer, Arthur. Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays.
Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Steiner, George. Language and Silence. Yale University Press, 2013.
Stillings, Dennis (comp.). Lo Imaginario en el Contacto OVNI. Madrid: Heptada, 1990.
Sturrock, Peter (study director). The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical
Evidence. New York: Warner Books, 1999.
Suenaga, Cláudio Tsuyoshi. A Dialética do Real e do Imaginário: Uma Proposta de
Interpretação do Fenômeno OVNI. Assis, São Paulo: Departamento de História,
Faculdade de Ciências e Letras, Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp), 1999.
_____. Contatados: Emissários das Estrelas, Arautos de uma Nova Era ou a Quinta
Coluna da Invasão Extraterrestre? Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul (Brazil):
Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas de Discos Voadores (CBPDV), 2007. (Biblioteca
UFO.)
_____. 50 Tons de Greys: Casos de Abduções Alienígenas com Relações Sexuais –
Experiências Genéticas, Rituais de Fertilidade ou Cultos Satânicos? Campo
Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul (Brazil): Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas de Discos
Voadores (CBPDV), 2018. (Biblioteca UFO.)
Thompson, Keith. Angels and Aliens. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993.
Vallée, Jacques. Anatomy of a Phenomenon: Unidentified Objects in Space – A
Scientific Appraisal. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1965.
_____. Passport to Magonia: from folklore to flying saucers. Chicago: Henry Regnery,
1969.
_____. The Invisible College: What a Group of Scientists has Discovered about UFO
Influences on the Human Race. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975.
_____. Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults. Berkeley: And/Or Press,
1979.
_____. Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact. Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien
Contact. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1988.
_____. Confrontations: A Scientist’s Search for Alien Contact. New York: Ballantine
Books, 1990.
_____. Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception. New York: Ballantine Books,
1991.
Velho, Gilberto (org.). Desvio e Divergência: Uma Crítica da Patologia Social. 2nd
edition, Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1977. (Antropologia.)
Wilson, Bryan. Sociologia de las Sectas Religiosas. Translated by Carlos Pascual.
Madrid: Ediciones Guadarrama, 1970. (Biblioteca para el Hombre Actual, 60.)
523
III. On Witness Testimony
Aliens Are Good to Talk With1
Luise White
Abstract: Using the methods of oral history, this paper argues that eyewitness accounts of UFOs,
and abductions by aliens, can be read as stories that describe and debate the concerns of specific
times and places. Whether they are true or false is not the issue. Instead, the commonality with
which aliens, their technologies, and their goals are described can be taken together to reveal
broader anxieties and understandings that people – abducted or not – live with daily. This is not a
matter of teasing out hidden meanings, but of evaluating witness testimony in two ways at once –
stories about what aliens do to the humans they abduct, and stories about human reproduction.
Keywords: Aliens, Colonization, Race, Reproduction
Anthropologists insist that the reason so many folktales of so-called exotic peoples are about
animals – the hyena and the leopard, for example, or the crocodile and the rat – is because animals
are good to think with. They are not metaphors, but rather a bundle of traits and characteristics
that can be deployed to answer as many questions as these stories ask; they let the storyteller and
the audience think out loud. I am not an anthropologist but an historian who had done a great deal
of research in Africa (not on UFOs), and one of first things that struck me when I began reading
UFO abduction narratives was the kinds of questions they raised. What, I asked myself, are people
talking about when they talk about being abducted by aliens?
Also, as a historian I am troubled by the ways that legal categories have been imposed on methods
of historical research. Eyewitness testimony or hearsay have a certain value in courts of law; they
do not have the same meaning in ordinary speech and the interpretation thereof. I’m not alone
among historians in being unhappy with the concept of eyewitness testimony: I prefer to use the
term first person narrative, because even the most immediate description of what someone saw or
experienced is told with tropes and shared vocabularies. Eyewitness accounts are not the same
with every recounting; they can be dumbed down or tarted up depending on a wide range of factors,
including the audience and who else is in the room. Hearsay as a story recounted by someone who
did not witness an event –or who, even worse, was a friend of a friend of someone who did – has
no standing in courts of law, but the people I have interviewed in East Africa insisted that hearsay
was reliable. If a story passed through many retellings, anyone who thought it false would not have
repeated it as true, so hearsay was thought at least as trustworthy as first-person accounts.
But based on my reading of these published accounts, what do we do with first person narratives
in which almost everyone tells the same story? Does it mean that same thing happened to every
person who told the story? That’s the most logical answer, of course, but if three eyewitnesses to
the same traffic accident describe it differently shouldn’t we question three very similar
1
This essay contains some material first published in two earlier essays, “Alien Nation: Race in Space,” Transition
63 (1994), pp. 22-33; and “Evidence,” in Gaurev Desai, Adeline Mesquilier, and V. Y. Mudimbe, eds., Critical Terms
in the Study of Africa (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2018), pp. 105-126.
524
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
testimonies of events that happened at different times in different places? What does it mean that
almost all aliens are described as grey humanoids with large eyes and even larger heads and,
according to many abductees, no external genitalia? Does it mean that all aliens are the same or
that they came from the same planet? Again, that is a reasonable answer, but it raises the question
of why these beings come again and again, often investigating the same human activities?
My question is a simple one, but it undermines the concern with eyewitness testimonies: if the
evidence for alien abduction is that many people have experienced it, what does it mean that so
many people tell the same story? Why are words and details the same? Does it mean that the
experience was the same and somehow easy to recall, or that abductees are telling a shared story,
whether or not it happened to them? I am not saying these stories are made up but that the
vocabulary of UFO abduction narratives may be a good and meaningful way to talk about
something that is otherwise indescribable. This is not as uncommon as it may seem. When
someone says, “I really don’t know how to how to explain it” or “I don’t really know what to call
it,” they are saying that an event or a process or an emotion is outside the bounds of their ordinary
experience, that it is alien.
Rather than thinking about these accounts as true or false, I suggest that it may be more useful to
think of them as providing structures by which individuals can think and talk about unnerving,
inexplicable phenomena. The experience of missing time, of having minutes or even hours you
cannot account for, is unsettling to say the least. That there are circulating stories that explain what
happened during that time can offer an explanation; that explanation might be unnerving in a
different way, but as a shared experience with shared words and ideas it can be reassuring. Let
me be clear: if I were to claim that UFO abduction narratives are fabricated, I would mean that
literally: they are stitched together from bits and pieces of other people’s stories, with some details
honed and clarified and others rejected outright, until a whole story – as in whole cloth – emerges,
with its uncanny similarity to other abduction stories.
What struck me most forcefully when I read these texts was the extent to which aliens were
concerned with human reproduction. I don’t want to claim that is all aliens are concerned with; I
am writing about the literature I know best and, in fact, I find most compelling. When I first read
these accounts I was surprised by the idea that alien beings, capable of a technology to cross
galaxies and solar systems, would need to do so much research to understand human reproduction.
Indeed, if aliens have indeed been visiting earth for almost a century, shouldn’t they have figured
it out by now? Any number of abductees suggest they have not, however, and it is important to
ask why. Why, over years and countries, do aliens want to know how humans reproduce? Is it
mysterious to them? Do they think it changes over time, or that it is different for different races?
Do they want to find out how if it is possible to modify the way a fetus is created? Do aliens
understand the human race to be the unitary group we understand it to be now, or do they think of
humanity in terms of separate races, in the way that races were thought of on this planet three
hundred years ago, separate groups with such distinct physiological and anatomical differences
that their procreation and evolution had to be studied with the greatest care? Do aliens, like
European colonizers of the 17th and 18th centuries, think that there had to be extensive scientific
intervention before it was ascertained that their race could breed with humans?
525
III. On Witness Testimony
That’s what these narratives seem to suggest. This in turn suggests that many of the concerns of
the alien abduction narratives are those of 17th century Europe, when the fact of sperm and egg
was first established. These facts were not disputed by the imperial agendas of the 18th and 19th
centuries, but they were racialized by them. The simple question of imperial expansion was could
the expanding race live everywhere, whatever the climate and disease environment? If they could
not, could they be able to do so by breeding with a local race? Was such breeding even possible?
Whatever evidence surrounded settlers daily, scientific communities in Europe and new colonies
were obsessed by bodily differences. Were all human genitalia the same? (Think of Hottentot
apron, the supposedly elongated labia of women in Sothern Africa, and think of the absent genitalia
of aliens). If local humans could not breed with conquerors, was there another species that might
fit the bill? Erudite 19th century explorers suggested African women be mated with gorillas or
chimpanzees to produce a truly reliable labor force. If aliens are trying to colonize earth, or
repopulate their planet, or another planet altogether, investigating human reproduction makes
sense.
These are questions abductees ask, or at least impute, about what motivates alien investigations in
their published accounts. Have abductees shared a single experience that they report in near
identical detail or are they talking about something else in a shared vocabulary? What concerns
shape these accounts? What are abductees talking about when they talk about alien probes and
breeding programs? In many ways they are talking about what Europeans and North Americans
have been talking about (and hearing about) for over a century – that population growth serves a
nation as well as it serves a family – but in greater medical (or popular medical) detail. How is
conception to be managed and controlled, what are the ways a woman can become pregnant and
who has the right to terminate her pregnancy? Is biology destiny or can genes be edited to insure
health and longevity? If genes can be modified or removed, where is this done? In the womb, in
a petri dish, or in an incubator on a spacecraft? In the 21st century, these concerns are not debated
as biological facts or even biological theories; they are “reproductive rights,” to be determined by
law and practice, not physiology. Alien abduction stories return reproduction to a physical realm,
albeit one with many mechanical aids. The medicalization of fertilization – where and in what
kind of vessel a sperm and egg join – is no match for the wide range of mechanisms by which
aliens are said to extract eggs from women of all ages, whether they are virgins or not. The very
questions that frame contemporary debates about abortion are the questions that aliens try to
answer in any number of published abduction narratives: what is the viability of a fetus outside
the womb? What organs must be present for a fetus to have the status of a person? Several
abductees describe rooms of fetuses floating in life-giving fluids: these children (or hybrid
children) that survive outside the womb are living beings, regardless of which planet they will live
on.
My point is that these are accurate stories. Whether they describe actual abductions by aliens I
cannot say, but they are accurate stories about the questions that have shrouded the physical nature
of human reproduction since the 18th century. Are sperm and egg universal? Are they the only
way humans can reproduce?
Are races so physically different that they require detailed
investigation to understand their reproductive capacities or are they similar enough that they can
procreate with each other? If their reproduction needs assistance, who has the authority to give it
and how is it to be done? If fertilization is to take place outside a woman’s womb, where and how
does this take place? If a fetus cannot stay in a womb., for reasons of a woman’s choice or an
526
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
alien’s acclimatization program, when can a fetus be removed and where can it stay until it reaches
full term? While these questions are often standardized in law, abductees’ belief in alien
interventions is correct: these questions require more research.
What I have learned as a researcher is that anything that is really important to people will be talked
about and debated in many ways in many domains. The question of who can live where in this
solar system and beyond is all around us. As I wrote this, in late 2021, two billionaires flew to the
edge of space in rockets of their own manufacture, while several streaming services offer dramatic
series in which poor people are condemned to remain on a polluted earth while wealthy, educated
people thrive in artificial environments orbiting our dying planet. Alien abduction stories are
perhaps the oldest accounts of how human survival might be managed in the future, and however
reliable or unreliable these published accounts are as stories of UFOs, they are precise accounts of
how much anxiety human reproduction generates.
References
Fiore, Edith, Encounters: A Psychologist Reveals Case Studies of Abductions by Extraterrestrials.
New York: Ballantine Books, 1989.
Fowler, Raymond E. The Andreasson Affair. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1979.
_____. The Andreasson Affair – Phase Two. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1982.
_____. The Watchers: The Secret Design behind UFO Abductions. New York: Bantam Books,
1990.
_____. The Allagash Abductions: Undeniable Evidence of Alien Intervention: Tigard, Oregon:
Wildflower Press, 1993.
Hopkins, Budd. Intruders. The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods. New York: Ballantine
Books, 1987.
Jacobs, David M. Secret Life: Firsthand Documented Accounts of UFO Abductions. New York:
Simon and Shuster, 1993.
Mack, John E. Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens. New York: Scribner, 2007.
_____. Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters, New York: Crown
Books, 2000.
Strieber, Whitley. Communion. A True Story. New York: Avon Books, 1987.
Turner, Karla. Into the Fringe: A True Story of Alien Abduction. New York: Berkeley Books, 1982.
527
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
IV
EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
529
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Alien Delusions: Some (Real) Clinical Cases
Carles Berché Cruz
Abstract: Delusion is a symptom present in a wide variety of psychosis-type mental disorders.
Delusions are wrong beliefs, fixed beliefs that are not amenable to change in light of conflicting
evidence. However, there are different types of delusions. The most common examples of these
delusional disorder types include persecutory, referential, or grandiose delusions. Delusions
associated with the belief in extraterrestrial entities were very frequent in the last decades of the
20th century, coinciding with the fashion trending in flying saucer sects and related beliefs. Today,
although they are still present, their appearances are infrequent. Most of the cases presented here
are from my patients, others are collected from my colleagues. In this article, I explain my personal
experiences, based on my knowledge in psychiatry. I slightly changed the names of subjects in
order to preserve their confidentiality.
Keywords: Aliens, Delusion, Flying saucer sects, Folie á deux, Psychiatry, Psychosis, Social
trends
An Earthquake at the Hospital
Let me go, I have to go out on the roof of this building. Otherwise, it may be the end of the world!
This was said by the patient in Box 9, the emergency box reserved for psychiatric patients. He was
taken to a hospital by ambulance in a state of intense anxiety. He told us that the aliens were
landing on the roof of the hospital at that precise moment, and only he could stop them. We should
let him go, we were all in danger. In fact, the whole Earth was under threat.
The story follows in a confusing and also somewhat inconsistent way. More or less, he came to
say that the aliens would destroy the planet and only his blood could prevent it. At another time,
he said that they really came only in search of him, because of his blood, and so we should help
him contact them and give them his blood. The patient alternated between a megalomaniac
delusion (“only I can save the world”) and a persecutory delusion (“they come for me”).
There were about four of us, including nurses and myself, trying to calm and restrain the patient,
who was intensely agitated and trying to escape from the emergency room, fully convinced of the
intense danger waiting for us. He was certain that a large spaceship was above the hospital and
would destroy the building if we did not allow him to leave the emergency room immediately.
The patient was also violent. It was difficult for us to constrain him, there even requiring several
people to do it. Finally, I found how to stop him:
You have to draw blood from me immediately, at least a little bit, it is necessary to stop them,
hurry up!! Don’t you see how the whole building shakes, don’t you feel an earthquake? They are
already here! he would continue, his eyes disengaged, violent, agitated.
So, I told him: The building is trembling, so you are in danger of being injured if you fall from
the litter.
Yes, you’re right, he recognized.
I continued: it is best for us to tie you to the litter to avoid falling to the ground.
531
IV. Empirical Research
He agreed when I told him that this way, we could draw blood more safely. With this tactic he
allowed us to administer the sedative drugs. And with the help of both psychopharmacological and
mechanical contention, we could wait for him to calm down.
He was a known patient with paranoid schizophrenia, who had required several admissions, after
which he often abandoned medication and relapsed from time to time.
This case happened in the late 1990s. By then, the flying saucer sects were booming, they were in
trend at the same time, along with other similar beliefs. And delusions linked to alien entities were
the order of the day.
In the following days, the patient recovered thanks to our treatment. With proper medication, the
delusions ceased. He was able to make some self-criticism and recognize these ideas as strange
and pathological. In part he remembered those ideas that he was now able to criticize. It is also
true that he only partially remembered what happened: a partial amnesia of the psychotic episode
often appears.
Years later, the patient was readmitted. He continued to present delusional ideas, especially of a
self-referential and persecutory type, although without any reference to alien entities.
Delusions
Delusion is a symptom present in a wide variety of psychosis-type mental disorders. Delusions are
wrong beliefs, fixed beliefs that are not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence.
A delusion is a false idea that a person maintains over time with great conviction. This idea is not
modifiable by either empirical evidence against it nor by logical arguments. Delusions have two
characteristics: irreversibility and incorrigibility. Both characteristics refer to the fact that the
persons believe in their delusions and have no doubts about their veracity.
There is a narrow gap between delusions and other irrational beliefs, suggesting that delusions
replay characteristics of many of our everyday beliefs. On the other hand, even if the persons are
shown with objective evidence that their delusions are false, they will not be altered, and lastly,
the experiences of the subjects will hardly modify their delusions.
The patient I wrote about at the beginning was convinced, absolutely convinced of the truth of his
thought. It would have been completely useless to argue that there were no flying saucers over the
hospital. There is no need to discuss whether his blood would serve to save humanity. It was
equally irrelevant that none of those present noticed the supposed earthquake, neither shaking nor
loud noises. That patient was a delusional patient, regardless of whether aliens exist or not.
“EL”
“EL” adopts his name by his ancestry: angels and archangels. He is descended from angels. He is
a descendant of Samuel, Gabriel, Raphael, Samael... He himself is an angel! That’s why he
changed his previous name to “EL.” “EL” comes from AngEL, ArchangEL, GabriEL, SamaEL,
532
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
etc. Any resemblance to other contactee names is purely coincidental (e.g. Raël, whom he had not
even heard of).
“EL” founded a sect to which he gave the original name of “Peace and Love.” Currently, in
addition to being the founder, he is the President... and also the only formal member.
...they communicate with me through the mind: by telepathy. And no, these are not voices. These
are communications. My cells and the alien cells are connected, they don’t implant devices like
scientists imagine, they implant DNA. That is why you believe that they are angels, that they are
divine, but they are really aliens. Aliens are magicians, so advanced that they do not need
electronics, their magic is DNA.
That is why the patient does not accept the drawing of blood to do tests. He thinks that with his
blood we could copy his DNA and with his blood (“EL’s”) we could replicate the aliens and so
destroy them. That is why he is a protector of them, he is the protector of Peace and Love. Nor
does he accept long-acting injectable antipsychotics, for the same reason.
Those same thoughts lead him to abandon medication after admission. He was absolutely
convinced that drugs reduce the telepathic capacities he believes he possesses. Between admission
and admission, he maintained a delirious ideation attenuated with suspicious attitude, irritable
humor, and hypervigilance of his surroundings. For years, he claims to have received teachings
from them. Years in which the delusion of mystical onset becomes a more megalomaniac delusion:
“I am a Doctor… I have done a thesis in quantum-holistic coaching.” As the years go by, his
behavior becomes increasingly extravagant, he abandons medication, and he uses natural remedies
and treatments with medicinal plants.
Over the years, the messianic delusion becomes increasingly mystical, and in turn the aliens
become angels. In the 1990s, he was an envoy of the aliens. Now into the 21st century, he is one
of them; he is an angel like them.
As the illness progresses, he requires an average of one readmission every two years. But the
delusion remains, although its content mutates. And it mutates following the trends that mark
prevailing social fashions.
Searching through the annotations of the clinical course of the first admissions, the references to
aliens are continuous, and in the second decade of the present century, he only speaks of angels in
the strictly mystical-religious sense, angels are no longer a way of interpreting the extraterrestrial.
Currently, angels are divine.
“EL” remembers hardly any details of the previous admissions, and practically nothing of the
beginning of his illness. He denies having ever talked about aliens, and what has been written in
his clinical course is false, inventions by us doctors. We are the ones who participate in a plot
against the Divine, we are the ones who falsify the Truth.
There is a narrow gap between delusions and other irrational beliefs, suggesting that the same
beliefs that give rise to delusions characterize many of our everyday beliefs. We may have no
evidence against the truth of a belief, even when the belief is very implausible, with reasonable
533
IV. Empirical Research
contradictory evidence as to its veracity. But this is not enough to consider that a false idea can be
a delusion.
In order for a false idea to be considered delusional, it will be necessary that it cannot be justified
by a political, social, religious, or cultural context and that it is not shared by the various other
members of the cultural or social group to which the subject belongs. Characteristics already
mentioned, such as irreversibility and incorrigibility, help to diagnose it as delusional.
Delusions do not need to be about external reality or necessarily be based on incorrect inference.
They could be about oneself and one’s own experiences, requiring little or no inference. So,
delusions often are influenced by booming tendencies or trends.
Types of Delusions
There are different types of delusions. The most common examples of the delusional disorder types
include:
● persecutory delusions: The most common delusion type associated with schizophrenia, this
consists of the belief of being harassed or harmed. “The aliens intend to exterminate us to colonize
the Earth,” for example.
● referential delusions: These delusions cause persons to believe that gestures, comments, etc. are
directed at them. A person with referential delusions may appear very paranoid, “My
extraterrestrial guide speaks to me through the gestures and looks of the people around me,” for
example.
● grandiose delusions: These are delusions where persons believe they are exceptionally famous,
wealthy, or have special abilities. “I am an envoy of Aliens, they choose me as their prophet,” for
example. That type of delusion is often associated with bipolar disorders.
● erotomaniac delusions (where persons falsely believe another person is in love with them);
nihilistic delusions (where persons believe that a major disaster, such as the end of the world, will
occur); or somatic delusions (where persons are very concerned with their body and health, such
that they believe something is always wrong or going on with them).
Delusions are very resistant to counter-evidence and counter-argument, but they are not totally
impervious to cognitive probing. People can give up their delusion after being invited to reason
about the inconsistencies that the delusion is introducing in their belief systems. And maybe the
same can happen in a social change or evolution of trends.
World phenomena such as globalization and immigration, influence the psychosis of very diverse
presentations: expression through body language and somatization (India), frankly bizarre
hallucinations and with high rates of paranoia (Africa), ideas of reference and guilt (Japan),
mystical-religious ideation of Christian tradition (Italy), etc. The variability of the delusional
symptoms that define these diseases, according to a trans-cultural view, is marked by the
collectivism/individualism binomial, religion, culture, tradition and history of the country or
region.
That is why the delusional content is highly influenced by what we could call fashions, trends or
even “psychic epidemics.” It is convenient to place oneself in the cultural system of the patient,
534
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
overcoming the Eurocentric vision of mental health and knowing the system of values, myths,
religion, and language, valuing the emerging cultural signifiers.
Thirty years ago, “Vladis” presented episodes in which he loses his memory and appears in
unknown places that he relates as other planets to which he mentally travels, he has visual and
auditive hallucinations that he interprets as visions of God and/or the Devil or “galactic images of
planets, sometimes beautiful and sometimes bad.” He tells other episodes in which he could not
move or could make people stand “as if frozen.” He described episodes in which he could not
walk—“my legs were not coordinated, the right controlled by an Angel and the left by the Devil.”
“Otto” began to notice strange behavior in his friends that made him think that they wanted to kill
him to remove his organs and trade with them. He goes to the emergency room asking for shelter,
“my best friend tried to kidnap me to remove my organs.” In the emergency room, before being
treated, he again has the feeling that his organs are going to be removed and he escapes. A few
hours later, he is arrested for disturbance in the street. Once in the ambulance, on the way back to
the hospital, he hears how the paramedics comment how they are going to dismember his body, so
he runs away again.
What is strange in this story? Nothing. There are no aliens trying to abduct our protagonist. This
case is very recent, from 2021.
“Mila”
She was a young girl with early schizophrenia. “Mila” had the ability to contact aliens by looking
at a white wall. White walls were for her like screens where the images materialized and she could
also talk to them. In this case, the patient suffered from visual hallucinations, which are not very
common in psychotic disorders. On one occasion I was able to attend one of her “performances”:
“Mila” gathered a group of almost ten people around her, near a building about five stories high
that overlooked an unbuilt plot, therefore without windows with an immense white wall. There she
contacted her guides, surrounded by those followers, some of whom also shared the vision of the
alien face drawn in a simple shape on the wall, as if it were a blackboard...
This case is an example of shared or induced delusion, often called folie á deux in the scientific
literature. It is a delirium shared by third parties. In general, those who come to believe the delusion
are usually family members. It also often occurs in close, cohesive, sectarian-type groups. A
supposed intellectual superiority of the inducer favors the main delusional subject imposing his
delusion on a passive partner. Other factors that induce shared delusion would be life together and
social isolation; plausibility of delusional content; loneliness; low self-esteem, affective
instability... This explains the formation of sects and shared madness in convents, isolated towns,
families and clans. And they are usually delusions that have a certain logic and coherence.
In the 1990s, “Andreu” was a fan of science fiction books, from which he often captured hidden
messages with catastrophic meanings. “It’s going to be a big one,” he told me at the beginning of
every interview. Although I asked him what books he read, he could not tell me any titles and only
mentioned the names of classic authors of the genre, such as Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov:
535
IV. Empirical Research
You don't believe me, but they wrote warnings for me to understand… ETs will invade us,
and I get signals sent to me through books…I am the only human capable of understanding
them, he used to claim.
Over the years, only the neighbors in the village where “Andreu” lived represented a threat to him.
A disease of the retina caused him to lose some of his vision, and he went out for a walk only
through the streets closest to his house. He kept reading with the help of magnifying glasses. “And
the books?” I asked him about 4 or 5 years ago. He replied that this was a neighbor’s trap to keep
him distracted. “It’s going to be a big one!” he kept saying. “One of these days, the neighbors will
fuck me, I read it in the newspapers.” I insisted on asking him about those books he read a long
time ago, and their meaning, “Oh, this was my imagination...”
Conclusions
Over the years, I have been able to observe how the delusional topics have changed. And these
changes were due to social trends and beliefs. In the 1980s and 1990s, alien stories as abductions,
contactees, close encounters, were booming and were very popular. Nowadays the delusional items
are terrorism, political inquiry, or others. Mystical and religious delusions (Christ, prophets,
angels, and demons...) have always been present, before and now.
Bibliography
I have not used a specific bibliography on this topic, although there are a few articles that deal with delusions and
other mental disorders from the perspective of ufology. I have used basic concepts of psychiatry; to learn more, the
following textbooks are pertinent.
APA, “Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders,” in Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), 5th edition. Arlington, Virginia: American
Psychiatric Association, 2013, pp. 87-122. (The most complete and updated classification
of mental disorders.)
Ey, Henry, et al., “Psicosis delirantes agudas,” and “Las psicosis delirantes crónicas,” in Tratado
de Psiquiatría, 8th edition. Barcelona: Toray-Masson, 1980, pp. 268-270 and 450-464. (A
historical but very interesting vision to understanding the development of delusional ideas,
from descriptive psychopathology.)
Kaplan, H.I. and B.J. Sadock. Synopsis of Psychiatry, 9th edition. Baltimore, Maryland: Lippincott
Williams & Wilkins, 2003. (A complete text in psychiatry, but less dense than a
comprehensive textbook.)
Vallejo Ruiloba, J. “Trastornos del pensamiento y del lenguaje,” in Introducción a la
Psicopatología y la Psiquiatría, 6th edition. Barcelona: Elsevier-Masson, 2007, pp. 191194. (Especially for fundamental concepts.)
536
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Memory Distortion in a Social Judgement: People who Report Contact with
Aliens are More Susceptible
Stephanie Kelley-Romano and Amy Bradfield Douglass
Abstract: An online experiment was conducted to test whether memory distortion for a social
judgment is amplified among alien abduction experiencers (AAEs) compared with nonexperiencer (control) participants. AAEs (N = 156) and control participants (N = 171) read a
transcript of a fictitious couple’s counseling session. Participants then learned that one member
of the couple had an affair shortly after the session occurred. They indicated which person they
thought had the affair. Half of the participants were randomly assigned to learn that their decision
was correct (i.e., confirming feedback, “You’re right. That is the person who had the affair.”).
The other half learned nothing about the accuracy of their decision. Consistent with previous
research, confirming feedback inflated retrospective judgments related to the decision. As
predicted, this effect was even stronger among experiencers. These results suggest that increased
susceptibility to feedback-induced memory distortion could be one mechanism through which
experiencers develop confidence in their memories of encounters with aliens.
Keywords: Memory, Alien abduction experiencers, Confidence inflation, Social influence, Alien
abduction discourse
Introduction
Modern reports of interactions with aliens have been the subjects of interest since Betty and Barney
Hill reported being abducted in 1961 (as reported in Fuller, 1997). The estimates as to the
prevalence of this phenomenon vary widely. Their estimates of the number of people who have
been contacted by aliens range from 2% (Hopkins, Jacobs, and Westrum, 1992) to 5-6% of the
United States population (Jacobs, 1992). Many other researchers do not believe that people are
actually kidnapped by extraterrestrial beings. Instead, they believe that memories of such an event
are distortions of reality and have concentrated on finding explanations for the origin of these false
narratives. All of the following explanations have been suggested for memories of extraterrestrial
interactions: intentional hoaxes (Klass, 1988), sleep disturbances (i.e., hypnogogic or
hypnopompic hallucinations, see Blackmore, 1998; Hufford, 1994), expression of repressed
memories of sexual abuse (Ring and Rosing 1990; Rodeghier, Goodpaster, and Blatterbauer, 1991;
Powers, 1994), fantasy-prone personalities (e.g., Bartholomew, Basterfield, and Howard, 1991;
Rodeghier, Goodpaster, and Blatterbauer, 1991), psychopathology (e.g., Spanos, Cross, Dickson,
and Dubreuil, 1993), delusions (Banaji and Kihlstrom, 1996), false memories (e.g., Newman,
1997), and suggestions implanted during hypnosis/structured interviews (e.g., Spanos, Burgess,
and Burgess, 1994).
Unlike the researchers cited above, our focus was not on the origin of the narratives of AAEs,
instead, we were interested in the gradual nature of memory distortion among experiencers. 1
Namely, we were interested in how experiencers go from a suspicion that they have been contacted
by extraterrestrials to a confident decision that such an event happened. This is a relevant question
1
Although some research distinguishes “experiencers” from “contactees” or “visitees,” we use “experiencers” to refer
to any individual who reports interacting with extraterrestrial beings (for a discussion of these terms see Rodeghier,
Goodpaster, and Blatterbauer 1991; Gotlib, Appelle, Rodeghier, and Flamburis 1994; Kelley-Romano, 2006).
537
IV. Empirical Research
because AAE narratives indicate that suspicions about contact with aliens often precede actual
memories for such an event (Kelley, 1999). Consider how this might happen: A person wakes
after experiencing sleep paralysis. A tentative decision is made that the feeling of paralysis is
consistent with visitation by aliens (e.g., Appelle, 1996). This tentative decision might be made
after consultation with a hypnotist or therapist who believes in the veracity of extraterrestrial
visitation (e.g., Bullard, 1989a). Or it might be made after consultation with books describing
abductions (e.g., Budd Hopkins’ (1981) Missing Time or Whitley Strieber’s (1987) Communion:
A True Story). For example, one experiencer writes “Budd Hopkins and Whitley Strieber helped
me to accept the unacceptable…I read all related UFO/ET materials while doing research into my
own personal experiences.” (Kelley, 1999, personal correspondence). Experiencers also search
the internet to find lists of abduction indicators, narratives of others who have experienced
anomalous events, or to seek out support groups where they can talk with other experiencers in an
attempt to understand their tentative memories of contact with aliens (Kelley, 1999).
The current research tests how experiencers might move from a tentative decision that they have
been contacted by aliens to a confident memory for such an event. Specifically, the hypothesis is
that experiencers are highly vulnerable to memory distortion that occurs as a result of information
confirming a decision (i.e., feedback). It is likely that experiencers receive feedback about the
accuracy of their tentative decision that they have been contacted by aliens. Several experiencers
report that when they reached out to an abduction-sympathetic therapist, they were given several
pamphlets describing the many indicators of abduction (Kelley-Romano, personal
correspondence). Likewise, support groups are likely to provide confirmation of an experiencer’s
suspicion regarding alien visitation. The question we test in this experiment is how that
confirmation might affect experiencers’ judgments surrounding the decision that extraterrestrial
visitation did occur. In the current research, the hypothesis that experiencers are particularly
vulnerable to feedback-induced memory distortion was tested in a social judgment paradigm. We
chose a social judgment paradigm rather than a paradigm related to experiences with
extraterrestrial beings in order to prevent experiencers from becoming suspicious about the nature
of the experiment.
The social judgment paradigm used in the current research has been used to demonstrate memory
distortion in previous research. Bradfield and Wells (2005) required participants to make a
decision about which member of a couple had an affair. Participants were randomly assigned to
learn that their decision was correct or learn no information about the accuracy of their decision.
Then participants made a host of judgments related to their decision. For example, they indicated
how certain they recalled being in the accuracy of their decision at the time the decision was made
(i.e., retrospective certainty). Because participants were randomly assigned to receive feedback,
it was possible to estimate how those in the confirming feedback condition should have responded
if feedback was irrelevant. Namely, they should have produced reports similar to those produced
by participants in the no feedback condition. Note that this test of memory distortion uses a
between-subjects design instead of a within-subjects design (in which distortion is demonstrated
by comparing participants’ judgments at two points in time; differences in judgments are
interpreted as distortion). In this between-subjects test of memory distortion, people who learned
that their decision was correct (i.e., confirming feedback) reported remembering greater certainty
in their decision at the time it was made compared with a group that received no information about
538
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
the accuracy of their decision. 2 Reports on a host of other judgments related to participants’
decisions and general abilities were inflated in the same manner. We hypothesized that
experiencers would display similar memory distortion in the social judgment paradigm. However,
we believed that their distortion would be greater than that of a college student sample (i.e., control
participants).
The experiment reported here builds on other published research that has examined memory in a
sample of experiencers. For example, McNally, Lasko, Clancy, Macklin, Pitman and Orr (2004)
examined the psychophysiological responses of people reporting contact with extraterrestrial
beings. Their data indicate that experiencers who listened to a script containing details of their
own experience with aliens demonstrated more physiological reactivity than did control
participants. More closely related to the current research, Clancy, McNally, Schacter,
Lenzenweger, and Pitman (2002) used a common word list memory paradigm (Roediger and
McDermott, 1995) to demonstrate increases in false recall and recognition among experiencers,
compared with control participants. The current research adds to Clancy et al. by testing memory
for a social judgment rather than for a set of previously studied words. Changing the context in
which memory is studied is important because some research suggests that people’s ability to
remember words from word lists is unrelated to their ability to produce error-free autobiographical
memories (e.g., Wilkinson and Hyman, 1998). In addition, the current research builds on Clancy
et al. by employing a sample of experiencers substantially larger than what was used previously.
In Clancy et al. there were 11 people with memories of alien abduction (recovered group) and 9
people who suspected they were abducted but did not have any memories (repressed group)
whereas the current research includes data from 156 people who believe they have had contact
with extraterrestrial beings.
To test the hypothesis outlined above, participants read a short transcript of a couple’s counseling
session and then made a judgment as to which member of the couple had an affair. Participants
were then randomly assigned to learn their decision was correct (confirming feedback) or learn no
information about their decision (no feedback). We predicted that people who received feedback
would distort their memories of how confident they were at the time of their decision (and other
memories). However, we predicted that the distortion would be greater among experiencers than
among control participants.
Method
Participants
Control participants (N = 171) were recruited at several large universities across the country. They
were either given extra credit in exchange for their participation or asked, in their classes, to
participate as a way to understand how research is conducted online. Experiencers (N = 156) were
recruited in one of two ways. First, an email requesting volunteers was sent to an existing database
of experiencers managed by the first author. This database contains questionnaire responses from
people who claim to have been contacted by extraterrestrials. Participants were initially recruited
online to complete these questionnaires through links on other abduction related sites active at the
time of data collection (e.g., www.caus.org) and UFO conferences (e.g., the annual Rocky
Mountain UFO Conference). To ensure that accounts were consistent, participants answered
2
This paradigm is closely related to Fischhoff’s hindsight bias research (e.g., Fischhoff, 1975a). See Bradfield and
Wells (2005) for a detailed discussion of these two phenomena.
539
IV. Empirical Research
follow-up questions either in writing or in an interview, to confirm narrative and demographic
details. Only those cases for which the participants demonstrated consistency in narratives and
personal details were included in the current data set.
Procedure
Once people agreed to participate, they were sent to a web page introducing the experiment. The
introduction described the experiment as an examination of judgments about interpersonal
relationships. Participants learned that they would read excerpts from a transcript of a couple’s
conversation at a counseling session, accompanied by several pictures of the couple. Once
participants read the transcript, they would answer some questions about what they read. Then
participants clicked on a link to continue to the consent form. After reading the consent form,
participants clicked a box at the bottom of the page indicating their agreement to participate. At
any time, participants could cease participation by closing the web page. There was no indication
that any participants terminated the experiment prematurely, as there were no incomplete data
records. After agreeing to participate, participants were shown five pages of excerpts from a
fictitious counseling session. On each page there was a photograph of a man and a woman in an
office setting. An attempt was made to match the demeanor of the couple with the text of the
transcript. For example, the photo accompanying the part of the transcript in which the woman is
complaining that her partner never takes out the garbage showed the woman looking angry.
After reading the transcript, participants read that one member of the couple had an affair shortly
after the transcript was made. Participants indicated which person had the affair. At this point,
participants were randomly assigned to hear confirming or no feedback about the accuracy of their
decision. Participants in the confirming feedback condition were shown a screen that displayed
the words, “You’re right. That is the person who had the affair. Ok, now we’d like to ask you a
few questions about what you read.” The transcript was designed to ensure that confirming
feedback was plausible, regardless of the decision made by participants. In the no feedback
condition participants saw, “Ok, now we’d like to ask you a few questions about what you read.”
After making their decision, all participants completed a 13-item questionnaire concerning
judgments relevant to their decision: how certain they were at the time their decision was made
(i.e., retrospective certainty), how much attention they paid to the conversation, whether they are
good at making judgments about non-verbal behaviors, etc. 3 Data from one participant were
removed because of a concern that the participant did not take the experiment seriously; every
single score entered was the default value. This pattern of responses did not occur for any other
participant. Demographic information such as age, state of residence, and student status was also
collected. Finally, participants read a debriefing statement and were thanked for their participation.
The design of the experiment was a 2 (Confirming Feedback vs. No Feedback) x 2 (Experiencer
vs. Control) between-participants factorial.
Results
Preparation of Data Set
A common problem in web-based data collection is that people can respond to research materials
more than once (e.g., Bai, 2018). We addressed this problem by structuring the experiment’s web
page so that participants’ internet provider (IP) addresses were automatically downloaded
3
A complete survey instrument is available from the authors.
540
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
whenever data were submitted. Before running any analyses, we scanned the data set for duplicate
IP addresses. Data from 50 participants were associated with duplicate IP addresses and removed
from the data set. 4 Among experiencers, data corresponding to 27 participants from nine IP
addresses were removed. Among control participants, data corresponding to 23 participants from
10 IP addresses were removed. The analyses reported below were conducted on the remaining
data set of 327 participants: 156 experiencers and 171 control participants.
Demographic Variables
Participants provided information about their age, gender, and whether they were enrolled in
school. Because control participants were recruited from colleges and universities, it was expected
that this group would be younger and more likely to report being in school than would
experiencers. Indeed, a two-sample independent t-test revealed that experiencers were
significantly older (M = 47.94, SD = 12.67) than control participants (M = 20.91, SD = 5.47), t(325)
= 25.43, p < .001. In addition, a two-sample z test for the equality of proportions indicated that
control participants were significantly more likely to report being in school (85.26%) compared
with experiencers (1.16%), z = 15.46, p < .001. Another two-sample z test indicated that there
were significantly more women in the control sample (78.36%) than in the experiencer sample
(57.05%), z = 4.14, p < .001.
Questionnaire responses
A two-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted with participant type and
feedback as the independent variables. The MANOVA included age, gender, and school
enrollment as covariates in response to the significant differences between the samples, as reported
above. This MANOVA indicated that age and school enrollment were not significant covariates,
Fs(12, 309) < 1.21, ps > .27. Therefore, subsequent analyses were conducted using gender, only,
as a covariate. The subsequent MANOVA revealed significant omnibus main effects of the
covariate (gender), feedback, and participant type, Fs(12, 311) > 2.52, ps < .004. In addition, there
was a significant omnibus Feedback x Participant Type interaction, F(12, 311) = 1.99, p < .03.
Examination of the MANOVA revealed that only one dependent measure contributed to the
significant covariate: women participants reported paying significantly more attention to the
transcript (M = 8.19, SD = 1.77) compared with male participants, (M = 7.50, SD = 2.03), F(1,
322) = 18.00, p < .001, d = 0.37. The main effect of feedback was much broader: nine dependent
measures revealed significant differences. Compared with people who received no feedback, those
who received confirming feedback reported remembering more certainty at the time of their
decision, paying more attention to the transcript, having a better basis for their decision, making
their decision more easily, making their decision more quickly, being better at making judgments
about other people, predicting that their decision would have been more accurate if they saw a
video instead of a transcript, being more interested in making judgments about others, and finding
making judgments about others more enjoyable, Fs(1, 322) > 4.83, ps < .03, ds > 0.26 (see Table
1 below for means, standard deviations).
4
It is possible that these duplicate IP addresses represent unique participants because some internet providers give
the same IP address to multiple customers. However, because we could not assess whether this was the case in our
dataset, we removed participants whose IP address duplicated another. Analyses conducted on the full data set
reveal similar results to what is reported here.
541
IV. Empirical Research
Table 1: Means, standard deviations, and individual statistics for questionnaire items.
Dependent
Measure
Control participants
Experiencers
Main effect
of feedback
Main effect of
participant
type
No
Confirming
No
Confirming
F
feedback
feedback
feedback
feedback
5.98
5.92
Certainty
7.78 (1.39)
8.69 (1.44)
110.46***
(1.83)
(2.71)
7.28
8.15
Attention
8.12 (1.79)
8.43 (2.02)
9.69**
(1.72)
(1.86)
5.26
5.47
Basis
6.94 (2.10)
7.73 (2.52)
54.33***
(2.08)
(2.82)
5.50
5.62
Easy
3.88 (2.28)
3.37 (2.53)
45.93***
(2.42)
(2.97)
3.65
3.92
Long
2.74 (1.82)
1.87 (1.27)
44.82***
(1.79)
(2.71)
6.71
6.64
Judgments
7.36 (1.90)
7.80 (1.79)
15.44***
(1.88)
(2.53)
7.09
7.74
Non-Verbal
7.48 (1.80)
8.11 (1.73)
3.51†
(1.69)
(2.09)
7.45
6.90
Argumentative
7.27 (1.65)
6.60 (2.15)
1.47
(1.59)
(2.24)
7.58
7.15
Video
7.72 (1.89)
8.13 (2.04)
6.47**
(1.71)
(2.18)
7.45
5.36
Interesting
7.72 (2.33)
6.74 (3.21)
7.69**
(2.24)
(3.13)
5.63
3.71
Enjoyable
6.05 (2.44)
4.61 (2.93)
4.83*
(2.55)
(2.87)
7.58
5.67
Future
7.31 (2.42)
6.96 (2.93)
3.41†
(2.22)
(2.96)
Note. p < .10 denoted by †, p < .05 denoted by *, p< .01 denoted by **, p < .001 denoted by ***
F
2.99†
15.01***
3.05†
0.58
2.10
0.47
9.74**
9.59**
0.00
21.87***
29.81***
11.31***
Feedback x
Participant
Type
interaction
F
5.01*
1.89
1.17
1.21
6.61**
1.21
0.00
0.08
3.73*
3.41†
0.66
7.18**
There were also several significant effects for participant type. Compared with control
participants, experiencers indicated that they paid more attention to the transcript, reported being
better at interpreting non-verbal behaviors, thought that the couple’s conversation was less
argumentative, were less interested in making judgments about others, found making judgments
about others less enjoyable, and were less willing to participate in similar research in the future,
Fs(1, 322) > 9.74, ps < .002, ds > 0.33.
The primary question in this experiment was whether experiencers would demonstrate memory
distortion to a greater extent than control participants. The hypothesis that experiencers would
demonstrate greater susceptibility to memory distortion was supported by significant univariate
interactions on reports of how certain participants recalled being at the time of their decision, F(1,
322) = 5.01, p = .03 and how long their decision took, F(1, 322) = 6.61, p = .01. There were also
significant interactions on participants’ reports of whether seeing a video would have affected the
accuracy of their decision, F(1, 322) = 3.73, p = .05; and whether they would be willing to
participate in similar research in the future, F(1, 322) = 7.18, p = .008. Finally, there was one
marginally significant interaction on participants’ reports of how interesting it is to make
judgments about other people, F(1, 322) = 3.41, p = .06.
542
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
All of the interactions demonstrated that the effect of confirming feedback was more pronounced
among experiencers than among control participants. For example, consider the interaction on
participants’ reports of how certain they recalled being at the time of their decision. The simple
main effects of participant type revealed that when participants did not receive feedback, the
reports of experiencers (M = 5.92, SD = 2.71) and control participants (M = 5.98, SD = 1.83) were
equivalent, t(170) = 0.17, p = .87, d = 0.03. This result indicates that, in the absence of feedback
about their decision, the two groups of participants had similar recollections about their certainty
regarding the decision they made. However, when confirming feedback was introduced, these two
groups of participants no longer produced equivalent responses. Instead, experiencers’ reports
were inflated compared with control participants. Experiencers reported recalling that they were
more confident in the accuracy of their decision when it was made (M = 8.69, SD = 1.44) than did
control participants (M = 7.78, SD = 1.39), t(153) = 3.98, p < .001, d = 0.61 (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Two-way Interaction Between Feedback and Participant Type.
A significant Feedback x Participant Type interaction also appeared on participants’ reports of
how long their decision took; the pattern of this interaction was identical to the one described
above for reports of retrospective certainty. When participants did not receive feedback, the
reports of experiencers (M = 3.92, SD = 2.71) and control participants (M = 3.65, SD = 1.79) were
equivalent, t(170) = 0.77, p = .45, d = 0.11. Again, the reports of the two groups were not
equivalent in the confirming feedback condition. After receiving confirming feedback,
experiencers reported that their decision took significantly less time (M = 1.87, SD = 1.27) than
did control participants, (M = 2.74, SD = 1.82), t(153) = 3.38, p < .001, d = 0.53.
The two remaining significant Feedback x Participant Type interactions, on reports of how
responses would have been different if a video was shown and how much participants would like
to participate in future research, also demonstrated that the feedback effect was greater among
experiencers than among control participants. For these dependent measures, this effect is most
clearly seen by examining the simple main effects of feedback as a function of participant type.
For example, among control participants, there was no effect of feedback on reports of whether
seeing a video of the couple’s conversation would have affected accuracy or reports of willingness
to participate in future research, ts(169) < 0.78, ps > .44, ds < 0.11. However, among experiencers,
543
IV. Empirical Research
those who received confirming feedback reported that their decision would have been more
accurate if they had seen a video and they were more interested in participating in similar research
in the future, ts(154) > 2.70, ps < .008, ds > 0.43.
Participants also endorsed one of two descriptions of their decision process. Overall, participants
were significantly more likely to endorse the option stating, “I had to think back about the
conversation and reconstruct it before I could decide which person had an affair” (61.20%) versus
the option stating, “As soon as I read that one of the people had an affair, I knew exactly who it
was” (38.80%), χ2(1, N = 327) = 16.30, p < .001. In order to determine whether the pattern of
responses to this question differed for experiencers versus control participants, a chi-square test
for homogeneity was conducted (see Table 2 for frequencies).
Table 2. Frequencies for Endorsement of Decision Process Question
As soon as I read that
one of the people had
an affair, I knew
exactly who it was.
I had to think back about the
conversation and reconstruct it
before I could decide which
person had an affair.
Total
Experiencers
78
105
183
Control participants
64
130
194
Total
142
235
377
This test revealed a marginally significant effect, χ2(1, N = 327) = 3.65, p = .056. To determine
whether this effect was consistent with the results indicating that feedback affected experiencers
more than control participants, a one-tailed z test for the equality of proportions was conducted.
This test compared the frequency of control versus experiencer participants who endorsed the
option indicating that they knew which person had the affair immediately after they were told,
revealing that a significantly larger percentage of experiencers (44.23%) endorsed this option,
compared with control participants (33.91%), z = 1.92, p < .05, one-tailed.
Discussion
People who have reported contact with extraterrestrial beings (experiencers) and college students
(controls) read a transcript from a fictitious couple’s counseling session and then made a decision
about which member of the couple had an affair. After making their decision, participants were
randomly assigned to learn that their decision was correct (confirming feedback) or learn no
information about the accuracy of their decision (no feedback). As predicted, both experiencers
and control participants who learned that their decision was correct distorted their retrospective
judgments. People who received confirming feedback inflated reports of the event (e.g., they
reported paying more attention to the transcript), the decision (e.g., they reported that the decision
was easier and took less time), and their general preferences (e.g., they reported less enjoyment in
making judgments about others, in general).
544
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Because participants were randomly assigned to receive feedback and because the questionnaire
concerned events (or opinions) that happened (or existed) before feedback was administered,
participants’ reports on these questions should not have differed across the two feedback groups.
For example, due to random assignment, participants in the confirming feedback and no feedback
conditions should have reported equivalent levels of retrospective certainty. Instead, participants
who received confirming feedback clearly demonstrated memory distortion by remembering that
they were more confident at the time of their decision, compared with people who received no
feedback. One explanation for this effect is that people do not consider the judgments represented
on the questionnaire until they are asked about them. At that point, people cannot answer the
questions without considering what they know about the accuracy of their decision (i.e., the
feedback). Therefore, it is easy to see why answers to questions such as “How certain were you
at the time of your decision?” are distorted by feedback (e.g., Steblay, Wells, and Douglass, 2014).
The primary goal of this experiment was to test the hypothesis that memory distortion in this social
judgment paradigm would be greater among experiencers than among control participants.
Retrospective certainty judgments provide a clear example of how this hypothesis was confirmed.
In the no feedback condition, experiencers and control participants reported equivalent levels of
retrospective certainty. In the confirming feedback condition, although both groups produced
inflated judgments, the inflation observed in the experiencer sample was significantly larger than
in the control sample. The interaction between feedback and participant type supports the
possibility that susceptibility to confirming feedback is one explanation for how a tentative
suspicion of extraterrestrial visitation becomes a confident memory for such an event among
experiencers. As demonstrated here, experiencers and control participants’ initial decisions were
tentative: certainty ratings were mid-range for all participants in the no feedback group. However,
when confirming feedback was administered, experiencers remembered being much more
confident in the accuracy of their decision than did control participants.
The effects observed on retrospective certainty reports are problematic because certainty is directly
related to beliefs about the accuracy of one’s own memories (e.g., Hyman and Billings, 1998).
Therefore, the malleability of experiencers’ retrospective certainty reports could compromise their
ability to judge the accuracy of their own memories. This might have broad effects on mental
health because, as some researchers suggest “a belief in the accuracy of…one’s own recollections
is probably crucial to mental well-being” (Ross and Newby, 1996, p. 173). Certainty reports are
also indispensable in judgments about the accuracy of others’ memories in such myriad contexts
as recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (e.g., Garry and Polaschek, 2000; Porter, Yuille,
and Lehman, 1999), flashbulb memories (e.g., Talarico and Rubin, 2003), and eyewitness
identifications (e.g., Douglass and Jones, 2013).
Inflated certainty reports are the most prominent of a constellation of judgments used to assess the
accuracy of others’ memories. Two other judgments that are used to evaluate accuracy were
inflated more for experiencers than for control participants: reports of how long the decision took
and endorsement of the decision as automatic (rather than the result of a deliberative process).
Observers often use the speed of a decision as a cue to accuracy, so the effects observed here might
have implications for the willingness of people to believe experiencers’ post-feedback memories
(e.g., Dunning and Stern, 1994).
545
IV. Empirical Research
Why are experiencers more susceptible to the effects of feedback than control participants? One
possibility is that experiencers have a predisposition toward unusual cognitive experiences such as
“blanking out” or losing time (i.e., dissociation, e.g., Powers, 1994; Ring and Rosing, 1990).
Indeed, “missing time” is one of the most common symptoms reported by experiencers (e.g.,
Bullard, 1987; Kelley, 1999; Kelley-Romano, 2004) and is believed to be a strong indicator that
abduction has taken place by researchers and experiencers alike (e.g., Hopkins, 1981). Research
on non-experiencer samples indicates that people who tend to dissociate are particularly
susceptible to memory distortion regarding false events (Hyman and Billings, 1998), misleading
questions (Eisen and Carlson, 1998), and word lists (Winograd, Peluso, and Glover, 1998).
Another explanation for the results obtained in the current research relates to integration of new
information. Research shows that people simultaneously comprehend new information and accept
it as true (Gilbert, Krull, and Malone, 1990). After information is accepted, effortful thinking is
required to reject it. Perhaps the process of engaging in effortful thinking required to reject the
tentative suspicion that extraterrestrial visitation has occurred is truncated among experiencers
especially in an age where myriad sites about alien abduction and visitation are available online.
This is a reasonable possibility because belief in UFOs is positively correlated with cognitive
disorganization (Chequers, Joseph, and Diduca, 1997), assessed by questions such as “Do you get
easily confused if many things happen at once?” (Rawlings and MacFarlane, 1994, p. 492). Future
research will be needed to establish whether reports of actual extraterrestrial contact are correlated
with cognitive disorganization and whether this impairs people’s ability to reject false information.
Such investigations might also consider whether experiencers’ general ability to disregard
information is impaired (e.g., see Wegner and Zanakos, 1994 for a scale used to measure
suppression of unwanted thoughts).
The experiment most closely related to the current research, Clancy et al. (2002), argues that source
monitoring errors explain increased memory distortion among experiencers (e.g., see Johnson,
Hashtroudi, and Lindsay, 1993). Source monitoring errors are not an appropriate explanation for
the results observed here because participants were not asked questions that required them to
identify the source of a memory (i.e., “Was this word presented on a previously-studied list or
not?”).
The current research compiled one of the largest samples of experiencers ever tested in a memory
distortion experiment. Previous research on alien experiencers has included only small sample
sizes (e.g., 20 in Clancy et al., 2002; 49 in Spanos et al., 1993) or large sample sizes with data
collection taking place over very long periods (e.g., 225 participants in 17 years, Parnell and
Sprinkle, 1990). Furthermore, Parnell and Sprinkle (1990) and Spanos et al. (1993) included
people who sighted UFOs; our sample only included people who report actually being contacted
by extraterrestrial beings.
The large sample of experiencers tested here displayed several interesting characteristics. For
example, compared with control participants, experiencers reported less willingness to participate
in similar research in the future, less interest in making judgments about others, and less enjoyment
in making judgments about others. These results are consistent with evidence that experiencers
are “overly sensitive to criticism, and …tending toward personalizing the actions of others toward
themselves” (Parnell and Sprinkle, 1990, p. 51). Perhaps this tendency extends to disinterest in
546
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
making judgments about others. Additionally, as people who often perceive themselves to be
unfairly, and harshly judged by others, their reluctance makes sense. However, it is interesting to
note that even though experiencers report not liking to make judgments about others, they
nonetheless indicated that they paid more attention to the transcript and are better at making such
judgments, compared with control participants. The latter claim is consistent with research
showing that a vast majority of experiencers claim to have psychic abilities (94% in one study,
Kelley-Romano, 2004, see also Bartholomew et al., 1991) and report being more conscientious
than control participants (Hough and Rogers, 2004). Additionally, experiencers often report that a
consequence of their extraterrestrial interactions is heightened self-awareness and perception
(Kelley-Romano, personal correspondence).
One limitation of this research is the fact that control participants were not directly assessed for
alien contact experiences. We did not include a question probing for contact with aliens because
doing so might have made control participants suspicious about the nature of the experiment.
However, the likelihood that any more than a handful of participants would have reported contact
with extraterrestrials is small. Although survey data indicate that up to 48% of the general public
believes in UFOs, the number of people reporting personal experience with extraterrestrials is
much smaller: 2% in one survey (Patry and Pelletier, 2001). Therefore, it seems reasonable to
assume that few of our control participants would have reported personal experience with aliens.
Another potential limitation of this experiment is the difference between our sample of
experiencers and our comparison sample in terms of age and school enrollment. However, age
and school enrollment were not significant covariates, indicating that differences on these variables
did not interfere with the hypothesis being tested.
Future research on experiencers should move away from studying their pathology. Research has
already focused on this question, much of which has determined experiencers to be no more
pathological than the general population (e.g., Bartholomew et al., 1991; Holden and French, 2002;
Spanos et al., 1993). The current research suggests a different direction for future studies of alien
experiencers given the evidence presented here that experiencers’ memory distortion is not limited
to recollections of being abducted by aliens. Research should focus on how normal cognitive
functions operate in experiencers, such as chronic suppression (Wegner and Zanakos, 1994), social
contagion (Meade and Roediger, 2002), and general memory distortion. Experiencers are
susceptible to a broad range of recollections related to a social judgment decision, suggesting that
their lives could be infused with memory distortions well beyond what is demonstrated in their
extraterrestrial contact accounts.
Acknowledgments: We are grateful to Jon Mellen and Rebecca White for serving as models for
the photographs posted on the web, to Vesna Hampel and Luke Douglass for serving as the
fictitious couple in the original post-decision feedback paradigm, to Danny Hughes for setting up
the computer program, and to Luke Douglass and Josh Barney for careful readings of previous
drafts of this manuscript.
References (All web articles accessed on November 25, 2022)
Appelle, S. (1996). “The abduction experience: A critical evaluation of theory and evidence.”
Journal of UFO Studies, 6, pp. 29-78.
547
IV. Empirical Research
Bai, H. (2018). “Evidence that a large amount of low quality responses on MTurk can be detected
with repeated GPS coordinates.” Retrieved February 4, 2019, from Sights þ Sounds
website: https://www.maxhuibai.com/blog/evidence-that-responses-from-repeating-gpsare-random
Banaji, M. R., and Kihlstrom, J. F. (1996). “The ordinary nature of alien abduction memories.”
Psychological Inquiry, 7, pp. 132-135.
Bartholomew, R. E., Basterfield, K., and Howard, G. S. (1991). “UFO experiencers and
contactees: Psychopathology or fantasy proneness?” Professional Psychology: Research
and Practice, 22, pp. 215-222.
Blackmore, S. (1998). “Abduction by aliens or sleep paralysis?” Skeptical Inquirer, 22, pp. 2328.
Bradfield, A., and Wells, G. L. (2005). “Not the same old hindsight bias: Outcome information
distorts a broad range of retrospective judgments.” Memory and Cognition, 33(1), pp. 120130. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195302
Bullard, T. E. (1987). Abductions: The measure of a mystery. Mt. Rainier, MD: Fund for UFO
Research.
_____ (1989a). “Hypnosis and UFO abductions: A troubled relationship.” Journal of UFO
Studies, 1, pp. 3-40.
Chequers, J., Joseph, S., and Diduca, D. (1997). “Belief in extraterrestrial life, UFO-related beliefs,
and schizotypal personality.” Personality and Individual Differences, 23(3), pp. 519-521.
Clancy, S. A., McNally, R. J., Schacter, D. L., Lenzenweger, M. F., and Pitman, R. K. (2002).
“Memory distortion in people reporting abduction by aliens.” Journal of Abnormal
Psychology, 111, pp. 455-461.
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ:
Erlbaum.
Douglass, A. B., and Jones, E. (2013). “Confidence inflation in eyewitnesses: Seeing is not
believing.” Legal and Criminological Psychology, 18, pp. 152-167.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8333.2011.02031.x
Dunning, D. E., and Stern, L. B. (1994). “Distinguishing accurate from inaccurate eyewitness
identifications via inquiries about decision processes.” Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 67(5), pp. 818-835.
Eisen, M. L., and Carlson, E. B. (1998). “Individual differences in suggestibility: Examining the
influence of dissociation, absorption, and a history of childhood abuse.” Applied Cognitive
Psychology, 12(7), pp. S47-S61.
Fischhoff, B. (1975a). “Hindsight ≠ foresight.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human
Perception and Performance, 1, pp. 288-299.
Fuller, J. G. (1997). The interrupted journey: Two landmark investigations of UFO
encounters together in one volume. New York: MJF Books.
Garry, M., and Polaschek, D. L. L. (2000). “Imagination and memory.” Current Directions in
Psychological Science, 9(1), pp. 6-10.
Gilbert, D., Krull, D., and Malone, P. (1990). “Unbelieving the unbelievable: Some problems in
the rejection of false information.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, pp.
601-613.
Gotlib, D., Appelle, S., Rodeghier, M., and Flamburis, G. (1994). “Ethics code for investigation
and treatment of the abduction experience.” Journal of UFO Studies, 5, pp. 55-82.
548
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Holden, K. J., and French, C. C. (2002). “Alien abduction experiences: Some clues from
neuropsychology and neuropsychiatry.” Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 7, pp. 163-178.
Hopkins, B. (1981). Missing time: A documented study of UFO abductions. New York: Richard
Marek Publishers.
Hopkins, B., Jacobs, D., and Westrum, R. (1992). Unusual personal experiences: An
analysis of the data from three national surveys conducted by the Roper organization. Las
Vegas: Bigelow Holding Corp.
Hough, P., and Rogers, P. (2007). “Individuals who report being abducted by aliens: Investigating
the differences in fantasy proneness, emotional intelligence and the big five personality
factors.” Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 27(2), pp. 139–161.
https://doi.org/10.2190%2FIC.27.2.e
Hufford, D. (1994). “Awakening paralyzed in the presence of a strange ‘visitor’.” In A. Pritchard,
D. E. Pritchard, J. E. Mack, P. Kasey, C. Yatt (Eds.). Alien Discussions: Proceedings of
the Abduction Study Conference, pp. 348-353.
Hyman, I. E., and Billings, F. J. (1998). “Individual differences and the creation of false childhood
memories.” Memory, 6(1), pp. 1-20.
Jacobs, D. (1992). Secret life: First-hand accounts of UFO abductions. New York: Simon and
Schuster.
Johnson, M. K., Hashtroudi, S., and Lindsay, D. S. (1993). “Source monitoring.” Psychological
Bulletin, 114, pp. 3-28.
Kelley, S. M. (1999). The myth of communion: A rhetorical analysis of the narratives of alien
experiencers. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Kansas.
______ (2006). A report on the demographic and common characteristics of alien experiencers.
Journal of UFO Studies, 9, pp. 1-21.
Klass, P. J. (1988). UFO Abductions: A dangerous game. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
McNally, R. J., Lasko, N. B., Clancy, S. A., Macklin, M. L., Pitman, R. K., and Orr, S. P. (2004).
“Psychophysiological responding during script-driven imagery in people reporting
abduction by space aliens.” Psychological Science, 15(7), pp. 493-497.
Meade, M. L., and Roediger, H. L. (2002). « Explorations in the social contagion of memory.
Memory and Cognition, 30(7), pp. 995-1009.
Newman, L. S. (1997). “Intergalactic hostages: People who report abduction by UFOS.” Journal
of Social and Clinical Psychology, 16, pp. 151-177.
Parnell, J. O., and Sprinkle, R. L. (1990). “Personality characteristics of persons who claim UFO
experiences.” Journal of UFO Studies, 2, pp. 45-58.
Patry, A. L., and Pelletier, L. G. (2001). “Extraterrestrial beliefs and experiences: An application
of the Theory of Reasoned Action.” Journal of Social Psychology, 141, pp. 199-217.
Porter, S., Yuille, J. C., and Lehman, D. R. (1999). “The nature of real, implanted, and fabricated
memories for emotional childhood events: Implications for the recovered memory debate.”
Law and Human Behavior, 23(5), pp. 517-537.
Powers, S. M. (1994). “Dissociation in alleged extraterrestrial experiencers.” Dissociation:
Progress in the Dissociative Disorders, 7(1), pp. 44-50.
Rawlings, D., and MacFarlane, C. (1994). “A multidimensional schizotypal traits questionnaire
for young adolescents.” Personality and Individual Differences, 7(4), pp. 489-496.
Ring, K., and Rosing, C. (1990). “The Omega project: A psychological survey of persons
reporting abductions and other encounters.” Journal of UFO Studies, 2, pp. 59-98.
549
IV. Empirical Research
Rodeghier, M., Goodpaster, J., and Blatterbauer, S. (1991). “Psychosocial characteristics of
experiencers: Results from the CUFOS abduction project.” Journal of UFO Studies, 3, pp.
59-90.
Roediger, H. L., and McDermott, K. B. (1995). “Creating false memories? Remembering words
not presented in lists.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition, 21, pp. 803-814.
Ross, M., and Newby, I. R. (1996). “Distinguishing memory from fantasy.” Psychological
Inquiry, 7, pp. 173-177.
Spanos, N. P., Burgess, C. A., and Burgess, M. F. (1994). “Past-life identities, UFO abductions,
and satanic ritual abuse: The social construction of memories.” International Journal of
Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 42, pp. 433-446.
Spanos, N. P., Cross, P. A., Dickson, K., and DuBreuil, S. C. (1993). “Close encounters: An
examination of UFO experiences.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 102, pp. 624-632.
Steblay, N., Wells, G. L., and Douglass, A. B. (2014). “The eyewitness post-identification
feedback effect 15 years later: Theoretical and policy implications.” Psychology, Public
Policy, and Law, 20, pp. 1-18. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/law0000001
Strieber, W. (1987). Communion: A True Story. New York: Morrow/Beech Tree Books.
Talarico, J. M., and Rubin, D. C. (2003). “Confidence, not consistency, characterizes flashbulb
memories.” Psychological Science, 14, pp. 455-461.
Wegner, D. M., and Zanakos, S. (1994). « Chronic thought suppression.” Journal of Personality,
62(4), pp. 615-640.
Wilkinson, C., and Hyman, I. E. (1998). “Individual differences related to two types of memory
errors: Word lists may not generalize to autobiographical memory.” Applied Cognitive
Psychology, 12(7), pp. S29-S46.
Winograd, E., Peluso, J. P., and Glover, T. A. (1998). “Individual differences in susceptibility to
memory illusions.” Applied Cognitive Psychology, 12(7), pp. S5-S27.
550
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
It Was as Large as the Full Moon
Hans-Werner Peiniger
Abstract: The reliability of size estimations by UFO witnesses is a difficult question – we know
that witnesses misjudge size, but by what factors? The author has carried out experiments with
several groups of people to evaluate deviations of real apparent size in all sexes and age-groups.
Keywords: Estimations of size, Witness reliability, Apparent size of objects, Reliability of
female vs male observers, Experimental UFO research
The Question
We always run into problems when, during a UFO investigation, an observer is asked to guess
the size of the object he has seen in the night sky. Some witnesses give its size in meters to
emphasize how strange it was. They tell the investigator that “it was as large as the full moon” or
“it was 50 m long.” But no one is able to estimate the real size of a night phenomenon when it is
not known what it was or without a known thing to measure the UFO against. It could have been
a rather small object very close or a considerably larger object in a greater distance. In both
cases, it would appear to the observer as something of the same size. Only when a comparison is
possible, for example, when the object is in front of a forest, the size can be calculated. In normal
sightings in the night, the investigators generally have no chance to gauge its true size, and yet
they would want to have an idea of the size of the object observed.
It is helpful to document the optical impression the witness had as precisely as possible. In order
to do this, the investigators of the GEP1 ask for the apparent size of the object. The questionnaire
contains an item to do this, and a control item, to which we will come back later. The answer is
supposed to give an idea of the observed object. But – how reliable is the information the witness
gives about the apparent size of what he or she has observed?
In a few cases, when the height of the cloud cover or the observational angle were known, and
the object definitely was in or below the cloud cover, the apparent size allows conclusions as to
the real size or rather the minimum and maximum diameter of the thing that was seen.
But more often I found that the apparent size was estimated to be far too large by the observer.
Some witnesses gave sizes which, if correct, would mean that the object observed would have
blocked their entire field of vision! With the 57-cm-test (an object, for example a button, is
placed at a distance of 57 cm from the eye of the witness – would it have covered the UFO?) or a
test using a known object at outstretched arm length I heard size estimates that were manifold
higher than they should have been.
I very soon realized that the estimates the witnesses make have to be reduced considerably. Other
UFO researchers have confirmed this.
1
GEP is the acronym of Gesellschaft zur Erforschung des UFO-Phänomens (Society for the Study of the UFO
Phenomenon): https://www.ufo-forschung.de/
551
IV. Empirical Research
But by what percentage or amount do we need to reduce the estimates? I wanted to gain more
precise figures by a statistical analysis of estimates of the apparent size of the sun and the full
moon. The full moon and the sun, after all, are often observed. I thought that witnesses would be
able to pretty precisely judge their apparent size.
I established a questionnaire and – with the help of the Mannheim-based group CENAP – asked
relatives, friends, acquaintance, neighbors und visitors to our lectures to tell me the apparent
diameter of the moon and the sun. The subjects had to remember how both bodies looked, and
then stretch their arms, holding a folding rule, and say how big it was. The questionnaire also
recorded the sex and the age of the person.
The Results of the Study
All in all, we asked 238 people, 146 male and 92 female. The age distribution is shown on Figure
1:
Figure 1. Age groups – grey: male, dark: female
It is evident that not many people were interviewed in certain age groups for a more thorough
statistical analysis. Not all results will therefore be representative. It is also known that the full
moon can appear to vary in size against the night sky. It looks larger close to the horizon than
high in the sky. This well-known perception error (the size does not actually vary), however, can
be neglected given the expected differences in estimates. The following statements are not
statistically precise, but they show general tendencies.
552
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Figure 2.
Lines from top to bottom:
male – moon
female – moon
male – sun
female – sun
Figure 2 shows the relationship between the age groups and their average diameter estimates. In
the age up to 20 years, the values are similar, but there is a major difference up to the age of 40
years. We see that the male subjects tended to grossly overestimate the size of the sun, but were
lowest when it came to estimates of the size of the moon. This may be the result of the bright sun
appearing to be larger to males. Women also show a certain tendency for overestimating the size
of the sun. If these figures are confirmed by a larger number of subjects, we could possibly
conclude that the age group between 20 and 40 years generally tends to judge the apparent
diameter of bright objects larger than that of less bright objects. At ages 41–60, both sexes
estimate similar values for the diameter of the sun, though males tend to guess higher values.
With increased age, males tended to judge better than females. Those informants from 61 to 70
again approached the values given by those of ages up to 15 years.
We can also see that the estimated sizes start at a diameter of 4 cm. However, the actual
apparent diameter of the full moon and the sun is at 0.5 cm. The diagram shows how much the
size is estimated above the real value.
Looking at those diameters the different sexes most often guessed, we see that men generally
reported moon sizes of 1.6 to 2 cm. The sun was judged to be somewhat larger, between 2.6 and
3 cm. We have a similar situation with the female respondents. Up the size of 3 cm the
respondents still gave several intermediate sizes, after that, only round figures.
Using all data (Figure 3) we see that of the 238 people interviewed only 8 gave an estimate of
numbers up to 0.5 cm, and 37 people guessed at values between 0.6 and 1 cm. That means that
only 20 per cent of all people who took part responded with an estimate below 1 cm. Almost 32
553
IV. Empirical Research
per cent gave values between 2.6 and 3 cm. 91 people (or 38 per cent) guessed values well over 8
cm. I have heard figures of 1 meter! I assume these were people who just could not understand
what I wanted them to do. Some put the yardstick away and said, “I do not need such a help”,
while they attempted to estimate the diameter with both arms outstretched – which resulted in
grossly overestimated values.
Figure 3. Diameters evaluation in absolute figures – numbers.
Of the 238 people 32 gave the same value for moon and sun, even if the guessed wrongly. The
moon on average was estimated at a diameter of 7.05 cm, the sun – with an average of 7.98 cm –
slightly larger. Combined, this results in an average of 7.5 cm. This is 15 times of the real 0.5
cm. We can see that estimates of size which UFO witnesses tell us are not accurate.
What can we conclude from this exercise? First of all, our inquiry has shown that bright objects
will be judged larger than darker objects. This had already been known in the psychology of
perception as irradiation illusion. A light patch on a dark background looks larger than an
otherwise identical dark area over a light background. I have further concluded that the apparent
diameter of the relatively well-known and often seen celestial bodies such moon and sun are
judged, on average, to be 15 times larger than they actually are. Obviously, we have to ask
ourselves how far out estimates are when we are dealing with an unknown object seen only for a
very short period of time. One feels that the errors may be even higher. And the longer the time
that has passed between the observation and the investigation, the more uncertain the estimates
will be. The only exception will be those cases where the witness has actually noted parts of
buildings or of the landscape and judged the apparent size in comparison. This can also be done
on field investigation trips.
I do not conclude that the size estimates we hear from witnesses should automatically be reduced
by a certain factor. However, the result of this study should make us field investigators help
consider the size estimates critically. The GEP has added a control item asking for the apparent
size of the full moon to its questionnaire, in order to judge estimation errors by individual
witnesses. In field investigation, one can ask the observers to judge certain features of the
554
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
landscape. Conclusions from a sighting report should always be drawn keeping these facts in
mind.
Bibliography
Hans-Werner Peiniger, “Es war so groß wie der Vollmond,” in Das Rätsel: Unbekannte
Flugobjekte, Moewig (Rastatt), 1998, pages 45–51.
(Translated from German by Ulrich Magin).
555
IV. Empirical Research
When a Fire Balloon Transforms into a UFO
Hans-Werner Peiniger
Abstract: They question of the reliability of eyewitness descriptions of unusual aerial events sits
at the core of UFO data. The author has conducted a simple experiment to evaluate the accuracy
of eyewitness descriptions of unusual optical stimuli.
Keywords: Verbal description, Accuracy, Drawing, Accuracy, Scientific evaluation of accuracy,
Experimental test.
The Question
We often face the question of how closely a witness’s description of an object in the sky
coincides with the actual stimulus. Will perceptual errors and ideas from popular books and
television programs or an interest in UFOs distinctly distort any reports of such an experience,
thereby making an exact reconstruction of the object impossible? These were our concerns.
In order to learn more, I conducted a little experiment. It was never meant to be a representative
study and the results would therefore reflect some uncertainty. I was sure, however, that these
tendencies should nonetheless be considered during future case investigations.
We conducted the experiment in partnership with both the Central Research Network for
Extraordinary Celestial Phenomena (CENAP) in Mannheim, Germany, and meteorologist Dr.
Alexander Keul at University of Salzburg. Headed by me, the research project attempted to
determine how much we can rely on the perception of eyewitnesses. I organized the experiment
and provided the materials necessary to carry it out. All groups involved followed the same
protocol to ensure safeguarding, while Dr. Keul was responsible for the analysis briefly outlined
below.
Figure 1: Photo of fire balloon.
556
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
The Experiment
At different occasions, a group of several people were shown a color transparency of a fire
balloon in the sky (see Figure 1: Photo of fire balloon) for 10 seconds. Other people were shown
a color print of the same photo in the size A4, also for 10 seconds.1
The participants were then asked to fill out a small questionnaire and draw a sketch of the object.
All in all, we had 128 finished questionnaires, 100 of which were the result of tests in groups of
about 25 people each.
The Aim of the Experiment
Previously published English, American and Austrian studies have shown that witnesses often
report a wide range of assertions to describe objective facts. Some report a 10 second experience
lasting only 5 seconds, while others report the same incident lasted 20 seconds. Because these
subjective components varied so widely, the results had to be checked or otherwise improved by
increasing the number of participants.
The following analysis by Dr. Keul is based on four experiments using color slides and data
collected by way of 97 questionnaires. One experiment was conducted by Werner Walter of
CENAP, using data collected from 28 subjects, another was conducted by Walter L Kelch in
Koblenz using 23 subjects, a third was completed by Edgar Wunder using 24 subjects who
attended a skeptical lecture, and the fourth was conducted by the author of this report (HansWerner Peiniger) using 20 subjects who attended a meeting. At all these occasions, people were
aware that their response to a simulated sighting was tested. The Walter group consisted of 24
men and only 4 women ranging in age from 10 to 52 years (average 22.2). Thirteen were young
students, 4 were university students, 3 were employed in technical professions, and 2 were
commercial employees. The Kelch group consisted of 22 men and one woman aged 20 to 29
years (average 22.7 years), employed in a wide variety of professions. The Peiniger experiment
included data from 18 men and 2 women, aged 23 to 66 years (average 35.9), employed in a
variety of professions. The Wunder group consisted of 14 men and 9 women (plus one subject
questionnaire that was missing gender specification). Ages ranged from 11 to 19 years, all of
them young students. Not all participants filled out each item in the questionnaire so that figures
might not add up to the totals.
Estimates of Duration
As indicated above, the color slide was shown for exactly 10 seconds. This period was then
estimated by the participants as shown in Table 1 (estimated duration).
Table 1: estimated duration.
Group
Estimated duration
Walter
4 to 20
Kelch
4 to 30
Peiniger
1.5 to 30
Wunder
2 to 30
* Test announced in advance, without the element of surprise
1
Average
9.8
12.0
9.2
7.5*
Size A4 is the standard paper size of 210 mm x 297 mm used worldwide, except for North America and Canada.
557
IV. Empirical Research
All four groups show similar results. Some of the subjects overestimated the period excessively,
while others underestimated the period by an equally excessive amount. The results are spread
over a significantly wide range. We could, however, easily calculate an average value that was
much closer to actual conditions. One possible conclusion is that with single witnesses we should
expect considerable mistakes in the estimate of duration, while larger groups of witnesses tend to
reveal more accuracy in the average value.
Quality of the Description
We asked the participants to write a short verbal description of what they had just seen. As Dr.
Keul did not want to waste time conducting a qualitative analysis which could go on
interminably, he simply divided the texts according to the following rating scale: a very good
match between photo and description is assigned 1, a good match between photo and description
is 2, neutral (wishy-washy descriptions) are rated 3, a moderate match between photo and
description is assigned 4, and a clearly faulty match between photo and description is rated 5.
Table 2 (Quality of verbal description) shows the results for the individual groups, and Figure 2
(Quality of verbal descriptions), with 92 statements, average value 2.8, represents those of all the
participants.
Table 2. Quality of verbal description.
Group
Walter
Kelch
Peiniger
Wunder
1
0x
0x
2x
0x
2
10 x
8x
6x
2x
3
17 x
14 x
5x
17 x
4
0x
1x
5x
20 x
5
0x
0x
3x
0x
Figure 2. Quality of verbal descriptions. 92 statements, average value 2.8.
558
Average
2.6
2.7
3.0
3.0
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
In his analysis, Dr. Keul states, “This general (and subjective) classification of the verbal
descriptions of the object shows that very good descriptions are as rare as reports that are
completely wrong. Most are either good or wishy-washy.”
Quality of the Sketches
The participants were also asked to sketch what they had seen. The groups of Walter and
Peiniger did this in black and white, while the Kelch and Wunder groups used crayons of various
colors. Here, the same evaluation system was applied. How much did the sketches resemble the
photo? Very good, excellent, or many details is rated 1; good is rated 2; wishy-washy is 3;
moderate, without details is 4; and completely wrong is 5. This analysis (without regard to the
colors, which were not present in two of the groups) resulted in the values shown in Table 3
(Quality of object sketches). Figure 3 (Quality of witness sketches), with 89 statements, average
value 2.8, shows the values addressed by all participants.
Table 3. Quality of object sketches.
Group
Walter
Kelch
Peiniger
Wunder
1
0x
2x
1x
0x
2
8x
9x
5x
9x
3
9x
8x
9x
8x
4
7x
4x
5x
4x
5
4x
0x
1x
0x
Average
3.3
2.6
3.0
2.8
Figure 3. Quality of witness sketches. 89 statements, average value 2.8
In the evaluation of sketch accuracy, the outlines of the object as well as the object’s details were
all considered. Dr. Keul concluded that there were no significant differences from the evaluation
of the verbal descriptions. There were a few excellent sketches and there were a few that were
completely wrong. Most of the sketches could be classified as good or moderate.
Upon calculating the percentages of good and very good verbal accounts and sketches, we arrive
at the following values delineated in Table 4:
559
IV. Empirical Research
Table 4.
Group
Walter
Kelch
Peiniger
Wunder*
Text
10
8
8
2
Percent
37 %
35 %
38 %
10 %
Image
8
11
6
9
Percent
29 %
48 %
29 %
42 %
* Tests were previously announced, participants were all young students.
Figure 4. Sketches drawn by the participants.
As shown, at most only one-third to one-half of the descriptions and sketches can be called
“precise” (very good and good). How can these results be used in the evaluation of sighting
reports? Unfortunately, without anything to compare them to, we cannot say which group of
persons our hypothetical witness belongs to. This is a problem that requires additional research.
Identification
Finally, the participants were asked to identify the object. As stated above, the object was
actually a fire balloon in flight.
In the Walter group: 16 subjects identified it as having a conventional-technological origin; 3
identified it as a fake photo; and 3 had no idea what the object was.
In the Kelch group: 9 subjects identified it as having a conventional-technological origin; 5 had
no idea what the object was; 4 identified it as a UFO; and 2 identified it as a natural
phenomenon.
560
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
In the Peiniger group: 8 subjects identified it as having a conventional-technological origin
(including 1 subject who identified it as a balloon); 4 had no idea what the object was; 5
identified it as a natural phenomenon; and 3 identified it as a UFO.
In the Wunder group: 18 subjects identified it as having a conventional-technological origin
(including 1 subject who identified it as a balloon); and 2 identified it as a natural phenomenon.
Therefore, the majority of subjects correctly affirmed that the object observed could be identified
as having a conventional explanation.
The study of the quality of witness reports has essentially confirmed the previous studies from
Britain, the US, and Austria. Dr. Keul has summarized the most important results for critical
UFO investigation as follows:
“Groups of people who are asked to judge an ‘exciting’ span of time tend to spread far and wide.
Only an average value can be used for accuracy.
“Verbal descriptions and sketches of the object tend to be ‘moderate’ in their majority (from
good to wishy-washy). Only one-third to one-half can be considered accurate, but which data-set
should be affirmed? A good description can only be achieved in the statistical analysis of group
reports, and should never be affirmed accurate when there is only a single witness.”
Bibliography
Hans-Werner Peiniger, “Wie ein Heißluftballon zum UFO Wird,” in Das Rätsel: Unbekannte
Flugobjekte, Rastatt, Germany: Moewig, 1998, pp. 51–59.
(Translated from German by Ulrich Magin.)
561
IV. Empirical Research
Bedtime Alien Abduction Stories:
A Checklist to Detect its Dreaming Nature
Michael Raduga
Abstract: This paper attempts to understand the nature of the phenomenon of bedtime alien and
UFO encounters (AUEs) reports. At least two empirical studies have shown that encountering
alleged (i.e., interpreted as) extraterrestrial beings just before or after sleep is replicable by will:
such phenomena could be related to lucid dreaming. If this interpretation is correct, bedtime
AUEs could be explained. In this paper, a list of possible markers of such testimonials is listed
and discussed.
Keywords: Lucid dreams, Out-of-body experiences, Alien visitations, Alien abductions, UFOs
Introduction
People have believed in the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations for a long time (De
Fontenelle, 1686). Even Stephen Hawking thought it was impossible for us to be alone in the
universe (1998). As a matter of fact, alleged witnesses of an interaction with aliens originate
from the 19th century (Colvin, 2004). It is well known that mass media presents hundreds of
reports of UFO sightings every year. However, none of these reports provide any evidence of
actual aliens (or their spacecraft) visiting our planet. This begs the question of what the nature is
of all these testimonials.
Alleged alien and UFO encounters (AUEs) may happen any time of the day, but they often occur
when one is in a state of relaxation, sleep, or sleep paralysis (SP) (Basterfield, 2005; Stockton,
2018). Blackmore and Cox (2000) analyzed 12 alien abduction cases, and SP occurred more
often among individuals who experienced alien abductions than among individuals in two
control groups. Many other studies have also related AUEs to SP (Holden and French, 2002;
McNally and Clancy, 2005; Siddiqui, Qureshi, and Ghamdi, 2018). In one study, LaBerge and
Gackenbach suggested that lucid dreams (LDs) might also be responsible for some AUEs (1988).
Green also found several other arguments to support this connection (1990). Today, LD
practitioners even use the alien abduction technique in their practice (Raduga, 2014).
In this paper, SP and LD will be referred to using the term phase state (PS), which also includes
out-of-body experiences and false awakenings. These, along with several other phenomena, have
a similar physiological nature—specifically, they are characterized by the arousal of
consciousness during REM sleep. Reports show that 88% of the human population has
experienced at least one of these phenomena at least once (Raduga, Kuyava, and Sevcenko,
2020).
The theoretical correlation between bedtime AUEs and PS was not empirically investigated until
2011, when 20 volunteers were instructed to enter PS and then try to experience an AUE for
three consecutive days. Over the next 14 days, seven volunteers accomplished the goal (Raduga,
2011). A similar study was conducted later with a much bigger sample. In an online experiment,
152 PS practitioners (mostly LD practitioners) were instructed to induce PS by any technique
and try to find UFO or alien visitations. After one or more attempts, the volunteers had to report
562
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
the outcomes. The hypotheses were as follows: AUEs could be achieved in PS and SP, with fear
being more prevalent among cases with less paradoxical events (i.e., events similar to reality in
terms of emotional perceptions). The task was relatively easy for the volunteers to achieve, as
114 (75%) experienced AUEs. As expected, SP and fear were correlated with more ‘real’ cases
(P = .004).
More detailed results of the study include the following: “For 61%, ‘aliens’ looked as expected
from fiction movies and books; for 4%, ‘aliens’ were invisible, but the volunteers somehow
knew it was them; for 19%, ‘aliens’ looked like ordinary people, but the volunteers somehow
knew it was them; for 39%, only visual contact with ‘aliens’ was experienced; 26% managed to
talk with ‘aliens’ but did not have any physical contact with them; 11% encountered physical
contact with ‘aliens’ but did not talk to them; 12% talked to ‘aliens’ and had physical contact
with them; 28% encountered UFOs; 10% were inside a UFO at some point; and 3% flew in a
UFO.” These data are depicted in the following table showing the “features of successful
AUEs”:
Features
Sleep paralysis
Fear
Sleep paralysis and fear
Sleep paralysis or fear
‘Standard’ aliens
Invisible aliens
Humanlike aliens
Only visual contact
Talking
Touching
Talking and touching
UFO encounter
Inside UFO
Fly in UFO
AUE paradoxical status
Improbable
Probable
(N = 91, 45
(N = 23, 11
females, 46
females, 12
men)
men)
2 (2%)
3 (13%)
19 (21%)
6 (26%)
0 (0%)
3 (13%)
21 (23%)
6 (26%)
54 (59%)
16 (70%)
3 (3%)
1 (4%)
19 (21%)
3 (13%)
34 (37%)
10 (43%)
36 (40%)
8 (35%)
20 (22%)
7 (30%)
10 (11%)
4 (17%)
29 (32%)
3 (13%)
12 (11%)
0 (0%)
3 (3%)
0 (0%)
Total (N = 114, 56
females, 58 men)
5 (4%)
25 (22%)
3 (3%)
27 (24%)
70 (61%)
4 (4%)
22 (19%)
44 (39%)
44 (39%)
27 (24%)
14 (12%)
32 (28%)
12 (11%)
3 (3%)
Notes: AUE = alien and UFO encounters; Improbable = AUE that had more paradoxical dreamlike events;
Probable = AUE that had less-paradoxical dreamlike events.
The actual list of less-paradoxical AUE reports with skipped PS entries and PS endings follows.
Extracted from Raduga, Zhunusova, and Shashkov, 2021, after translation from Russian:
Report #3. February 18, 2019 (Female)
I went to the living room, imagining that they were there, but they were not there. Then, I went
out onto the porch and began going down to the street, with clear certainty that they were there. I
opened the doors (I opened them with purpose but didn’t go through), and, yes, a group of three
563
IV. Empirical Research
little people stood in my yard. Only on the large lawn on the left, where the playground is located
in real life, there was a flying saucer. I felt no fear, only interest. Little men with smooth skin of
blue color, human height, with non-standard large heads and huge, bulging eyes of black color.
Their arms were long. Their fingers were also elongated, four fingers on each hand. I went up,
and the phrase ‘Don’t be afraid; we are friends’ appeared in my head, which I clearly heard,
considering it to be telepathy. Only one being contacted me – apparently, he was their ‘leading
specialist.’ The rest (two) stood behind and did not come up. The alien came up and scanned me
with some object that looked like a roulette for walking dogs, but from inside it came a ray of
bright blue light. I watched with interest while rubbing my hands and blowing into my palms.
After that, he took my left hand and brought a long glass rod to the inner bend of my elbow (I
didn’t feel anything, but a red liquid that reminded me of blood appeared in the rod). By the way,
the skin of his hand was rather cold. I bit my lip and tongue. Next to the other two was a small
hairless dog who bounced merrily. Her skin was lilac (marvelously). After all the procedures, I
was invited to the ship with a gesture of a long hand (I still thought about what aliens I had
brought up). As soon as I approached him, I was blinded by a very bright light, like from a
searchlight. My vision was gone, and I felt dizzy and light. I tried to cope with this condition but
failed.
Report #14. May 9, 2019 (Male)
I began to listen, wanting to hear aliens outside the door. Almost immediately, I began to hear
their unnatural grunts. I didn’t imagine their appearance since it would be interesting to see what
my brain would make up for me. With the confidence that by opening the door, I would see the
aliens there, I immediately did it. A shock was waiting for me outside the door! All the walls of
the hall were in some kind of greenery from which hung either a dark green web or algae. In the
center, there was a round table in the form of a super-technological lens, inside of which one
could see the flickering of ornaments (apparently their writing). Two azure-colored organisms
stood on two sides of the lens. Each one had one huge oval eye, arranged vertically. They had no
limbs; they were only pulsating bodies that levitated 5 cm above the floor. Both aliens gazed at
me as they kept making sounds, which I heard even outside the door. After 8-10 seconds, a lot of
thin tentacles reached me from the body of one of them. It was very creepy. Nevertheless, I
grabbed several of them with both hands, immediately sensing an electric shock. From this, my
vision darkened, and I was in a state of sleep paralysis with subsequent awakening.
Report #37. September 19, 2019 (Female)
I thought I should look for them. I went outside looking around, and then I saw that three aliens
were coming to my house. I saw them pretty easily. They were taller than the fence, about three
meters tall. I was terrified. They looked creepy: gray, thin, and tall with big eyes, and they walked
smoothly, as if they were flying. Everything around was also gray, somewhat ominous, like
twilight. As I approached them, I was overcome by an animalistic fear. I turned away, trying to
calm myself, but then I realized this was just a phase, and I wasn’t scared. I turned and saw that
everything had become bright, and instead of the creepy aliens, there were green and not scary
people. I walked over, starting to touch and stroke them. They were as ebony to the touch, like
scaly, rough skin. On the head, for some reason, they had a yellow stripe. They tried to talk to me,
but I did not understand them.
Report #57. December 7, 2019 (Male)
I deepened the phase a little and, imagining that extraterrestrial beings were waiting for me in
the room, went into the room. There was nobody there. Then I imagined more vividly that they
were in the kitchen. I heard sounds coming from there, took courage, and entered. My wife stood
there and was washing the dishes, and on the stove, there were pieces of bacon being fried in oil
564
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
(although we are both vegetarians). But I did not give up, and, in order to better convince myself,
I asked my wife to come up to me and said that there were aliens behind the front door. Together,
we went to the door. I looked through the peephole, saw only some blurry shadows, and heard a
sound. I opened the front door; it hit someone. I felt a little scared, but I looked behind it and saw
two women – my mother and her sister. Why them, I don’t have a clue. Frustrated, I began just to
call for aliens aloud, as if I was trying to meet a specific person, but having not achieved success,
I stopped it and started doing other things…
… Having made my sensations more vivid, I decided to try again. I ran out onto the staircase and
went to the door leading to the shared balcony. I imagined the spacecraft flying out there
illuminating everything with bright light, and aliens emerged from it. Focusing on this image, I
went out onto the balcony, but I saw there, from nowhere, an iron staircase leading down, which
someone was going down, looking like quite a man in a blue jacket. I called him several times,
but he did not reply. Having focused all my attention on him, I was able to better examine the
details and it made my sensations clearer despite the fact that the character was far away. In the
end, he turned his head. He turned out to be an Asian; he looked Japanese. I went down to him
and asked if he was an alien. He shook his head affirmatively and said that he was not supposed
to talk to me and that, in general, he did not see me but only heard me. Then, it was all over.
Report #62. December 16, 2019 (Male)
I thought that people were usually abducted from bed, so I did not get up and was in no hurry. I
closed my eyes and was dragged somewhere by flight while lying down as if I were pulling a
beam like in films. I lost the feeling of touching the bed. I thought that now it would drag me
through the walls, and it happened. But gradually, the fear intensified, and, knowing my
imagination, I was afraid that aliens might be waiting for me. Having flown only a bit, I did not
reach the end and woke up again falsely. Opening my eyes, I again saw the outline of my dark
room, and then a white silhouette began to approach from another room. It was a humanoid, as if
in a silver suit. I didn’t see the face, that is, with the same success it could be a man, but since I
expected an alien, I thought it was an alien. The clarity of the phase was quite low, at 60%. He
came to me, then left again like a reverse action and did this several times. I was already terribly
uneasy. I closed my eyes to get rid of this. Then he cried out, I opened my eyes, and he was
already opening my chest and doing something inside with tools. I was completely scared, and in
my head, there was only one thought – to finish the phase as soon as possible; it was terrible. At
this moment, I was stuck in paralysis, I floundered, trying to move, but failed. As a result, I woke
up and couldn’t fall asleep for a long time.
Report #75. January 8, 2020 (Male)
I appeared in a large meeting room. There was no light, but the rows of armchairs were briefly
visible. I sat in one of them, and a light appeared. Aliens were sitting in the hall; there were 8-10
of them. I got up and went to look at everyone. They all looked like people but with different skin
colors. One was blue; one was gray. There was one with charcoal black skin.
Report #80. January 19, 2020 (Female)
I ran to the door and around the corner along the corridor, shouting, ‘Aliens! Where are the
aliens? I urgently need aliens!’ She herself imagined that they would appear around the corner.
Around the corner, blocking the exit to the street, there was a group of sprites of a completely
human nature. ‘You,’ I say, ‘aliens?’ Some denied it, but one who stood at the door admitted,
‘Yes, I’m an alien.’
I look at him. Tall (approximately 1 m 90 cm). His face is round, his eyes slanting a little – not
like a Chinese person, but somehow unfamiliar. The neck is perhaps a little long for a man, and
565
IV. Empirical Research
the shoulders are too round. The rest of the appearance is human. Gray eyes, dark hair, skin
color closer to dark. A brown leather jacket with knitted inserts and a hint of a uniform.
Further such dialogue:
– Where are you from?
– Alpha Centauri.
– But why did they immediately come up with Alpha Centauri? Couldn’t they come up with
nothing more original? He shrugs his shoulders. ‘Well, how are you doing there on Alpha
Centauri?’
– Yes, as usual.
– And who are you? What do you do?
– War pilot.
– It’s at home, but here?
– Same.
– Bomber?
– The fighter.
I tried to figure out why they needed fighters and asked what they were doing (with humanity)
here, and most importantly, what humanity was doing in response. Maybe I didn’t know
something, but either I couldn’t formulate the question, or he didn’t reply.
Report #98. February 1, 2020 (Male)
I saw aliens getting up from the bed after the fall. There were three of them, from about 80 cm to
a meter tall (I can only guess their measurement based on the height of my bed – specifically, the
height of the bed with the mattress is equal to the height of the alien to the shoulders). They had
big ears, like the master Yoda from Star Wars. It was not possible to examine their faces in detail,
but they had no helmets or headgear. The eyes are narrow and medium size. They stayed together
in a group and said something, but I didn’t understand their speech. They behaved in a friendly
manner, with their unusual appearance. I didn’t feel fear but rather interest. Each of them had
weapons: one had a stone, the second had a stick, and the third had something like a small river
trident like the ninja turtles. I even thought that their attributes were similar to the ninja turtles,
but for some reason, there were three of them, and they didn’t look like turtles (in particular, the
head and lack of armor). But their skin was very like a turtle’s, wrinkled, soft, and textured. On
the hands were 3 fingers, with claws on each. I held their hands and examined them when I felt
myself getting out of the phase. Also, each of them had its own skin tone: one was bluish, the
second was purple, and the third was greenish.
Report #101. February 2, 2020 (Female)
I imagined an alien in the next room. I came in and saw a yellow, wrinkled humanoid sitting in an
armchair. Its height is approximately 150-160 cm. Eyes are typical of an ‘alien.’ We went down
the street. There was another man with us, who came from nowhere. The alien worked as a
blacksmith cook, and they made food from iron. He was late for work and in a hurry.
Report #130. March 20, 2020 (Female)
I remembered about the aliens. I thought that it was already waiting for me in the hall, and I went
there. At first, I saw him, but he hid in the shade.
– ‘Show yourself in the light,’ I told him, and then something jumped into the light, no larger than
15 centimeters, in a hat, in armor, which made him plump. I started looking at him.
– ‘Hi,’ he said in a sort of childish voice.
– ‘Hi! Let me see you,’ I informed him and began to examine his face. It looked like an Asian. I
didn’t have time to look at his suit.
566
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Report #133. March 29, 2020 (Male)
I went out into the hall and began to wait for the aliens. Then I slowly walked down the corridor
to the kitchen. And suddenly, an alien ran out and passed me. The size was very small, about 20
centimeters, like a cat, thin and small. I turned around, but he was gone. I went into the room and
felt a rustle near the ceiling. I looked for a long time and noticed movement along the corner of
the ceiling. It also looked like aliens.
Report #142. April 7, 2020 (Male)
I walked around the apartment. I didn’t see any aliens. Then I went for a walk around the yard,
and I saw other people and things, but didn’t pay attention and went for the goal. I saw an alien
in a neighboring yard and examined his behavior. There were little creepy sensations. I hadn’t
met them in the phase before. It was big. It came out, about 190 cm tall, very muscular, his body
completely white without contours, except his face. His eyes and nose were black. The eyes are
large ovals, the mouth is small, more like a human’s. The feet are dark. He came around the
corner, and when he saw me, he came to me.
Report #151. April 18, 2020 (Female)
Like a freeze-frame, it was as if I was there because I had to complete the task. I was immobile as
I observed two humanoids of medium height, pale color, undetermined sex, without clothes, deep
black eyes without shine, as if they knew your being completely. They were sitting by the kitchen
window. I was at the door. For just a few seconds, we looked at each other, and I thought that it
was my imagination and woke up.
If the above-mentioned results are accurate, then it is not only the case that such spontaneous PSs
with AUEs can happen in general, but it is also possible for them to be confused with reality
(Raduga, Zhunusova, and Shashkov, 2021). Combining this fact with the absence of any reliable
evidence of actual AUEs, we could suggest that bedtime AUEs mostly happen because of the
nature of PS. Of course, this holds true only if all witnesses were honest and did not make up
their reports.
Detecting PS in AUEs
Because bedtime AUEs represent a considerable fraction of all AUEs, their exclusion from the
overall picture may substantially enhance, clarify, and simplify the general study of the AUEs.
This goal can be accomplished by creating a list of markers that potentially highlight the
presence of PS in AUE reports, after which they could be referred to as another topic (PS).
Though this goal requires an exclusive study, we can already suggest a few possible markers:
1. The “witness” is reclined, sitting, or lying down.
2. The “witness” wakes up, falls asleep, naps, meditates, or daydreams.
3. The “witness” is in a state of sleep paralysis or feels “vibrations.”
4. The “witness” levitates or penetrates solid objects.
5. The “witness” has an out-of-body experience.
6. The “witness” is involved in or observes paradoxical events that contradict reality (e.g., he or
she sees people or objects that could not exist in reality).
7. The “witness” quickly transitions from one location to another, even if these locations are not
directly connected.
8. The “witness’ experiences an unstable vividness of perceptions or encounters “hyperreality.”
567
IV. Empirical Research
9. In the end, the ‘witness” teleports directly to his or her initial location.
10. The “witness” forgets how the story ends.
Markers 1 or 2 are obligatory, while all others can either happen or not in PS. Stories that start
while dreaming are automatically omitted for the obvious reason that it is related to PS. Night
has no importance either, as people often take day naps.
It is important to keep in mind that the above-mentioned markers are theoretical only—they have
not been tested in empirical studies, nor have they been proven in practice. Therefore, at present,
they may be used only as a preliminary guide to direct studies investigating PS traces in AUE
reports. These markers are proposed based on the author’s 20 years of PS practice and
involvement in dozens of related studies.
What mechanisms underlie the manifestation of PS in AUEs? A person might occasionally think
about an AUE in a specific moment when their consciousness is active, but the brain is prepared
to dream. It is more likely to happen to people who are interested in supernatural phenomena and
consume movies, books, documentaries, and other media focused on this topic. In the PS space,
AUE thoughts could signal the emulation of this expectation. Because sensations feel very real, it
is sometimes very easy to confuse them with physical reality.
Conclusions and Directions for Future Studies
When people find themselves unable to determine the difference between reality and PS, they
may often become confused about their AUEs. These “witnesses” lack rational explanations
because such events are not commonly portrayed in the media and culture. However, extracting
PS from AUE stories may help us to better understand the nature of both phenomena.
Ideally, the suggested markers for extracting PS from AUEs will be tested in practice before
being implemented, as they are preliminary guidelines at this point. It is highly probable that
such study would become of great interest to researchers carrying out alien or UFO studies.
References (all web articles accessed on Sept. 6, 2022)
Basterfield, Keith. (2005). Australian Abductions: A Catalogue of Cases.
https://www.project1947.com/kbcat/kbabduct0505.htm
Blackmore, Susan, and Marcus Cox (2000). “Alien Abductions, Sleep Paralysis and the
Temporal Lobe,” European Journal of UFO and Abduction Studies, 1, pp. 113-118.
Colvin, Terry W. (2004, March 18). UFOs And Fairies/Legends/Supernatural - Pt. I.
https://archive.ph/jG2KC
Filkin, David (1998). Stephen Hawking’s Universe: The Cosmos Explained. Art of Mentoring
Series. New York: Basic Books, p. 194.
De Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier (1686). Entretiens Sur la Pluralité des Mondes [Conversations
on the Plurality of Worlds]. See 1803 translation in: https://tinyurl.com/ycktkac7
Gackenbach, Jayne (1989). From Lucid Dreaming to Pure Consciousness: “A Conceptual
Framework for the OBE, UFO Abduction and NDE Experiences,” Lucidity Letter, 10.
Gackenbach, J.I., and S. LaBerge (editors). (1988). Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain:
Perspectives on Lucid Dreaming. New York: Plenum.
568
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Holden, Katharine, and Christopher French (2002). “Alien Abduction Experiences: Some Clues
from Neuropsychology and Neuropsychiatry,” Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 7, pp. 163-78.
McNally, Richard and Clancy, Susan (2005). “Sleep Paralysis, Sexual Abuse, and Space Alien
Abduction,” Transcultural Psychiatry, 42, pp. 113-22.
Raduga, Michael. (2011, October 25). Alien Abduction Experiment.
https://obe4u.com/study/ufo-experiment/
_____ (2014). The Phase: Shattering the Illusion of Reality. Seattle: CreateSpace Independent
Publishing Platform. Part III.
Raduga, Michael, Oleg Kuyava, and Natalia Sevcenko (2020). “Is There a Relation among REM
Sleep Dissociated Phenomena, Like Lucid Dreaming, Sleep Paralysis, Out-of-Body
Experiences, and False Awakening?” Medical Hypotheses, 144.
Raduga, Michael, Zhanna Zhunusova, and Andrey Shashkov (2021). “Emulating Alien and UFO
Encounters in REM Sleep,” International Journal of Dream Research, 13(2).
Siddiqui, Javed, Shazia Qureshi, and Abdul Ghamdi (2018). “Alien Abductions: A Case of Sleep
Paralysis,” Sleep and Hypnosis, 20, pp. 144-147.
Stockton, Chrissy (2018, June 6). 100+ Alien Abduction Stories That Will Make You Believe.
https://thoughtcatalog.com/christine-stockton/2018/06/alien-abduction-stories/
569
IV. Empirical Research
Fantasy Imagery and UFO Testimonies
Raoul Robé
Abstract: This text aims to make researchers aware of the existence of a parallel between the
witnesses’ accounts of close encounters, sometimes described by the witness himself as a
confrontation with an alien (The ET event1) and the scenarios of Science Fiction authors and
Imagination in the broadest sense. I will use pictures from various sources to support my arguments,
sometimes with my own graphic interpretation. Through precise examples, sometimes even famous
in ufological literature, such as close encounters of the third type during the great wave of autumn
1954 in Europe (Chabeuil 1954) or through personal investigations carried out by the author (Nancy
1969), you will cross over into “another dimension”, reminiscent of the world-famous television
series: The Twilight Zone.
Keywords: Imagination, Close encounters of the third kind, Cultural context, Valensole, Amarante.
Introduction
To understand my ufological approach I must tell a little about my personal experience. In the
1970s, as a teenager, I read adventure and science fiction comics and started a collection on the
theme of flying saucers and aliens which today includes 1,370 titles. In 1972, a friend lent me the
1st album of Lob and Gigi Le dossier des soucoupes volantes, Dargaud (stories of UFO testimonies
in pictures which had been published in the magazine Pilote in 1969)2. This impressed me a lot and
even pushed me to start a long research (40 years) in this field.
In 2011, I even had the immense pleasure as a passionate amateur of being able to buy the original
comics art pages of this album illustrating the observation of Kenneth Arnold in 1947.
Since then, I have been studying the possible links between the pictures published in science fiction
and fantasy literature and the cases of UFO observations like my predecessors Bertrand Méheust,
Marc Hallet, Michel Meurger, and Jean-Bruno Renard.
What I find interesting is therefore to demonstrate the anteriority of fiction in various forms
(pictures, comics, illustrated children’s books, TV series, films, advertisements) over the UFO
testimonies.
1
2
Arnaud Esquerre, Théorie des événements extraterrestre. Essai sur le récit fantastique, Fayard, 2016.
Jacques Lob and Robert Gigi, Le Dossier des soucoupes volantes, Pilote, 1969, and Dargaud, 1972.
570
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Illustrations Serving the Popular Imagination
If the literature of fiction like Le Merveilleux-scientifique3 before Science Fiction undoubtedly plays
a role in the imagination of the witnesses, I think that pictures influence much more significantly
and durably their vision of the world. And above all, since the beginning of the XX century, they
have been widely used with the explosion of the paper press then the audio-visual media. So
inevitably a drawing published in a newspaper will affect a very large number of people whatever
their age. Let’s remember that from the beginning, advertising drawings, cartoons, various
illustrations were published in newspapers before the use of photographs.
But let’s be concrete and examine these few examples of coincidences between fiction and Ufology.
In the saga of Mandrake, the Magician and his fiancée Narda, there are often encounters with aliens
of various kinds. In the episode Les conquérants de l’espace published in France in 19584, tiny
aliens landed on Earth, met Narda and reduced her size thanks to a ray. Mandrake managed to find
them and saved his fiancée. He bent down near a shrub to catch one in his hand...
In April 1945, after picking mushrooms in the woods of Renêve (Côtes-D’Or) a priest saw a tiny
homunculus under a shrub. It was frightened and escaped before the witness managed to catch it.
The case was known only in 1975 by ufologists and the local press. The Parisian ufologists5 did not
hesitate to qualify it as an ufonaut whereas no UFO had been seen.
Graphic interpretation by the author.
The witness may have been influenced by this comic book or by another source, such as a film.
Indeed, in 1936, Tod Browning directed the film The Devil’s Dolls6 where a mad scientist reduces
humans to the size of small dolls. He grabbed them in his hand.
Or had the priest read the novel The Little Men of the Pine Forest written in 1929 by Beliard?7 In
this novel, a mad scientist succeeded in creating a mini humanity and made it evolve in his forest by
observing it. His assistant made the mistake of entering the forest and seized a tiny wild woman
who thought he was a god.
3
Exhibition and lectures : Le Merveilleux-scientifique, une Science-fiction à la française, BNF April 23 to August 25,
2019.
4
Mandrake, No. 306, Les Conquérants de l’espace, Éditions des Remparts, 1958.
5
Phénomènes Spatiaux, No. 45, GEPA, 1975.
6
Tod Browning’s film Les poupées du diable, 1936.
7
Béliard, Les petits hommes de la pinède, Nouvelle société d’édition, 1929.
571
IV. Empirical Research
In literature in 1929
At the cinema in 1936
In comics in 1958
As we can see, the principle of reducing the size of a human beings is an artifice which has been
used by authors for a long time in the fantasy literature.
During the “great wave of autumn 1954”, the case in Chabeuil (Drôme) became famous8. In
September, a woman was walking in the countryside with her dog, when a strange-helmeted figure
approached her through a field. She realized with fear that the little scuba diver was not ordinary.
She screamed and the figure disappeared. Then a UFO took off.
Illustration from the comic strip Ceux venus d’ailleurs.9
At the same period in the press dedicated to young female readers, the character Capucine10 met
helmeted Selenites (“moon people”) getting off their saucer in the countryside and she admitted that
she was afraid. An abduction of humans by aliens in this comic book appeared on April 1, 1954.
Michel Figuet, Enquête, SERPAN archives.
Jacques Lob and Robert Gigi, Ceux venus d'ailleurs, Dargaud, 1973, p. 11.
10
Capucine, Édition des Remparts. April 1, 1954.
8
9
572
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Illustrations from the comic strip Capucine.
Was the September witness in Chabeuil influenced by reading this illustrated book published in
April or should we look for another lead?
A few years ago, my friend Michel Figuet, UFO investigator and president of SERPAN, asked me
to check in my comic books if a similar story existed in fiction. Indeed, he had investigated a
sighting that took place in the spring of 1965, one afternoon at around 4 pm. A 12-years-old
schoolboy who lived in Sorgues11 in the Vaucluse region, declared that he had seen a device on the
ground in a wood with the presence of a small humanoid. The “alien” had pointed a futuristic gun
towards the witness which paralyzed him. Then the strange character jumped into his device before
taking off.
I discovered a series of similarities in the description of the humanoid with a character from the
children’s press that had become very famous. The following table shows a comparison of features:
The ET humanoid
The comic book character
A small being of 40 to 50 cm
small size
A suit covering head to toe
hair covering the head
The skull was shaped like an egg
oval skull
Large eyes
Large eyes
A small mouth
A small mouth
Didn’t notice an ear
non-human ear on the top of the skull
Walk like someone with flat feet
monkey’s flat feet
He raised his knees so high that he stretched legs to jump
seemed to jump
It made very high jumps
very high jumps
He shouted: “hic...hic...”
He shouted: “houba...houba...”
He raised his arms to the sky
often raised his arms to the sky
Very agile for its size
Very agile like a monkey
11
Julien Henry and Michel Figuet, Ovni en Provence, Édition Haute-Provence, 1993, pp. 231-233.
573
IV. Empirical Research
There are many similarities. This character is none other than the Marsupilami invented by the
Belgian cartoonist André Franquin for the magazine SPIROU in 1952.
If we dig deeper into the testimony, the young witness describes the device on the ground: “a
strange device, it didn’t look like made of solid metal, like SPIROR (?) that could move”. Now, on
the one hand the Marsupilami is SPIROU’s pet and on the other hand, in the album entitled Le
dictateur et le champignon12 (1956, 1962 et 1966) an eccentric inventor invented a spray that
softened metal.
We read in the testimony: “The little being took out a kind of gun that looked like a small hair dryer
and directed it towards the young witness” and paralyzed him.
In the album Z comme Zorglub13 (1961) an evil genius created flying machines and armed his
guards with paralyzers in the shape of hair dryers! In this album, “hundreds of unidentified objects”
were mentioned.
Graphic interpretation by the author after Franquin .
I believe that our young witness has read these widely distributed comic books and that he had been
inspired by them to invent his ufological story.
These cases, like many others, show that it is useful to systematically verify the cultural context of a
UFO case.
On July 1, 1965 in Valensole (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence)14 a farmer was working in his lavender
field when he discovered an unknown machine and two small pilots. One of the two humanoids
pointed a tube which paralyzed him. It should be noted that the little men were bald, spoke an
unknown language, and were armed with a stun gun. They examined the body of the paralyzed
witness and seemed to be benevolent.
Searching through my comic book references, I discovered a story called Passager de soucoupe
volante in a series called A travers le monde published in 1955 (reissued in 1960, OKAY)15.
12
13
14
15
André Franquin, Les aventures de Spirou et Fantasio, Le dictateur et le champignon, Dupuis, 1956.
André Franquin, Les aventures de Spirou et Fantasio, Z comme Zorglub, Dupuis, 1961.
Phénomènes Spatiaux, No. 5, GEPA, September 1965.
A travers le monde, No. 96, “Passager de soucoupe volante,” SEG, 1955.
574
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
The eye-catching cover shows a young rider and a herd of bulls running away from a flying saucer.
The introduction is about a flying saucer in Provence!
16
Illustrations from the comic strip A travers le Monde.
In the comic book, the hero discovered the landing of a flying saucer and the two little bald pilots.
The interpretation of the Encounter of the Third Kind by Lob and Gigi in Dargaud in 197517 shows
the bald pilot paralyzing the witness with a ray gun. In the illustrated version, the bald pilot
paralyzed a too nosy rider with a ray gun.
16
17
OKAY, No. 12, SEG, 1960.
Jacques Lob and Robert Gigi, Ovni dimension autre, Dargaud, 1975, pp. 10-12.
575
IV. Empirical Research
Illustrations taken from the mentioned comics.
The witness is closely examined by both pilots in both stories.
The descriptive elements of this Close Encounter of the Third Kind are exactly the same as in the
storyline of the earlier adventure comic book.
For the mark found in the field, according to the counter-investigation of two researchers it would
be due to lightning18.
In February 1967, the comic strip Météor published a story over several months entitled La boule
volante19 where a group of teenagers travelled in a sphere built by their friend, a scientist. They even
met a population of small and bald aliens on an island (Au pays des Iskirs, May 1967)20.
18
19
20
P. Vachon and P. Seray, Marliens et les cas similaires, SO, No. 5, May 2014.
Météor, No. 151, “La boule volante,” AREDIT, 1967.
Météor, No. 154, “Au pays des Iskirs,” AREDIT, May 1967.
576
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
The four pilots land.
The ball flies over the camp.
A boy and a teenager in front of the sphere on the ground...
(excerpts from the cited comic strip).
577
IV. Empirical Research
On August 29, 1967, at about 10:30 a.m., two children who where tending the cows not far from the
village of Cussac (Cantal) noticed in another meadow and behind a curtain of trees the presence of a
large sphere of metallic appearance reflecting the rays of the sun. They saw four small black figures
seeming to be busy around it. The sphere took off and one of the characters, who had remained on
the ground, flew back into the machine, which eventually flew away into the distance21.
Interpretation in the ufological magazine
Phénomènes Spatiaux, No. 16, June 1968.
Did the two young witnesses read this comic book and reinvent their own story according to it?
The Emergence of a New Popular Medium: TV
From the 1960s onwards, another medium has widely disseminated images of the Imagination
among the population: television.
The Close Encounter of the Third Kind of November 15, 1969 in Nancy22 described the
observation of a small flying saucer with a transparent dome flying over the city skyline. The
witness saw the scene from her window. The woman saw the aircraft approaching slowly and then
noticed the presence of two small pilot heads who were smiling at her. She felt a strong heat and a
powerful smell. The saucer moved away to join two others on the night horizon. Then the witness
noticed that she had a bump on the forehead and that her hands were swollen as if irradiated.
Graphic interpretation by the author.
21
22
Phénomènes Spatiaux, No. 16, GEPA, June 1968, p. 27.
Réalité ou Fiction, No. 2, “Les enquêtes du GPUN en bande dessinée,” Nancy, 1976.
578
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
After researching for a long time, I had the opportunity to watch the TV series The Twilight Zone
which was broadcast in France for the first time in February 1965. One episode caught my attention.
It was No. 15 The Invaders23:
Let’s compare the two scenarios of these “extraordinary stories”.
Phase 1:
The ufological testimony: “A woman alone in her apartment in the city saw the arrival of a small
metallic flying saucer with a dome approaching her above the rooftops”.
Graphic interpretation by the author of the 1969 testimony.
The SF scenario: “A woman alone on her farm in the country realized that a small domed metal
flying saucer had landed on the rooftop”.
23
TV series, The Twilight Zone, season 2, No. 15, “The Invaders,” CAYUGA production, CBS.
579
IV. Empirical Research
Photograph from the TV series.
Phase 2:
The ufological testimony: “The woman noticed that two very small pilots were visible, she felt
tingling on the skin due to the radiation of the headlights of the machine”.
Graphic interpretation by the author.
The SF scenario: “The anxious woman noticed the presence of two small astronauts who had landed
on the roof and one of them shot at her with a ray”.
Photographs from the TV series.
580
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Phase 3:
The ufological testimony: “The witness took refuge in her home, in her kitchen, and noticed that she
had stigmats on the skin of her hands and on her forehead”.
Graphic interpretation by the author.
The SF scenario: “The woman went back to her kitchen and saw scared the stigmata on her skin of
hands and neck”.
Photographs from the TV series.
Unlike the fictional scenario, the ufological adventure is perceived positively by the witness. Mrs
X... recognized having found the “scene” marvellous.
In the scenario of Twilight Zone, the assaulted woman defended herself by smashing the spaceship
after burning its mini attackers. The viewers discovered the emblem of the destroyed spaceship: the
“American coat of arms of the US Air Force”. So it was not about ET miniatures but about earth
explorers who had discovered a planet of giants. This surprising ending is one of the characteristics
of this very original series at the time.
This series was broadcast several times on French television and in Luxembourg. I think that the
witness from Nancy could have seen this precise episode. The bump on her forhead and the
hallucination that followed could have triggered this fictional memory that was so striking at the
time. Let us highlight the strong elements: a woman alone in her kitchen, appearance on the roof,
the exceptionally small dimension of the classic saucer made of “sheet metal and bolts”, very small
581
IV. Empirical Research
pilots, and very localized stigmata on the witness, all this in a media context favourable to “space
reverie” (in the middle of the American space conquest).
In the same region of Nancy (Lorraine) another case with traces was the subject of an investigation
by GEPAN in 1982. It is the file named “l’Amarante”24.
On October 21, 1982, a witness working in his garden around noon saw a small object descending
from the sky. The round object hovered above the garden. The witness came very close and noticed
that it was a small metallic flying saucer in the colour of blue-green lagoon.The craft took off and
moved away. Traces were found on the vegetation by the gendarmerie and were studied by GEPAN
scientists.
However, on September 8, 1982, the channel FR3 broadcast a fictional TV movie25 called “La
soucoupe de solitude” in which a small bluish flying saucer flew over a young woman in her yard.
It came down over her head. The witness fainted. Scientists recovered the alien object to study it.
Extracts:
A small blue saucer approaches....
It flies over a courtyard...
The UFO approaches the ground...
The witness examines it closely...…
Was the witness influenced by this fiction? Or should we look elsewhere for the explanation of this
disturbing coincidence between the Imaginary and reality.
24
25
Note technique du GEPAN No. 1, enquête 86/06, CNES, Toulouse.
Philipe Monnier, La soucoupe de solitude, FR3, 1982.
582
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Conclusions
What can we conclude from this? With these few examples, we have checked how these cases of
UFO and “alien” observations had appeared previously in the imagination of the scriptwriters of
illustrated books or films.
Facing this, three tracks are open to us:
(1) Simple, unrelated coincidences due to chance and the exponential growth in the number of
images flooding society in the twentieth century. Improbable, in my view.
(2) Direct influence of these fictional stories on the “eyewitnesses” who used them in their UFO
descriptions, after having read or watched them. In this hypothesis, they would build their stories
from those elements of fiction. I see it as the most logical and rational explanation26.
(3) The product of the “intelligence” behind an alleged “UFO phenomenon” that would manipulate
the psyche or the memories of certain chosen witnesses to this purpose, in the imaginative opinion
of writers like Jacques Vallée, Jean Sider, or Éric Zurcher. An over-creative scenario, I reckon.
I invite the educated reader to cut this Gordian knot.
26
Jean-Michel Abrassart, “L’influence de la culture sur les observations d’OVNI,” lecture, Workshop CAIPAN,
GEIPAN, Paris, October 7, 2014,
https://www.academia.edu/8686518/L_influence_de_la_culture_sur_les_observations_dOVNI
583
IV. Empirical Research
Bibliography
Abrassart, Jean-Michel and Robé, Raoul. “Case study of a Close Encounter of the Third Kind
(Nancy,
France,
1969)
Hallucination
or
false
memory?”
2019,
https://www.academia.edu/35030468/Case_study_of_a_Close_Encounter_of_the_Third_Ki
nd_Nancy_France_1969_Hallucination_or_false_memory_SUNlite_vol_9_n_6_p_4_5_
_____.“Humanoid
Sightings
in
the
Northeast
of
France,”
2021,
https://www.academia.edu/49586299/HUMANOID_SIGHTINGS_IN_THE_NORTH_EST
_OF_FRANCE
Altairac, Joseph, Hopkins, Fleur, Vas-Deyres, Natacha, Curval, Philippe, Klein, Gérard, and
Arnauld, Pierre. Exhibition and lectures: “Le Merveilleux-scientifique, une Science-fiction
à la française,” BNF, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, April 23 to August 25, 2019.
Baudou, Jacques and Schleret, Jean-Jacques. Merveilleux, Fantastique et Science fiction à la
télévision française, INA and 8e Art, 1995.
Blanrue, Paul-Éric. Les dessous du surnaturel dix ans d’enquêtes zététiques, Editions Book-ebook.com, Collection Zététique, September 2004.
Collectif. Ovni sur le Grand Est. 40 ans de recherche, CNEGU, 2018.
Collectif. Ovni en Belgique, chapter by Robé Raoul: “Les triangles dans l’imagerie de sciencefiction avant la vague Belge”, Les dossiers de SO-Hors-série, June 2015.
Méheust, Bertrand. Science-fiction et soucoupes volantes, Mercure de France, 1978.
Meurger, Michel. “Alien Abduction,” ScientiFictionS, No, 1, Vol. 1, Encrage, 1995.
Renard, Jean-Bruno. BD et croyances du siècle, PUF, 1986.
Robé, Raoul. “Les sources à l’origine du canular (autopsie de l’ET de Roswell),” Science et
Inexpliqué, No. 31, February 2013.
_____. “Les soucoupes volantes dans la bande dessinée,” The collectors’ magazine Papiers
Nickelés, No. 53, CNL 2nd quarter, 2017.
_____. “Mistaking the Moon for an Alien Spacecraft,” Perspectives on Contemporary Legend (36th
ISCLR Meeting), 2019,
https://www.academia.edu/41852623/Mistaking_the_Moon_for_an_Alien_Spacecraft_The_
Saros_Operation_
_____. “La Suspension d’incrédulité,” 2021,
https://www.academia.edu/45071557/La_Suspension_Dincr%C3%A9dulit%C3%A9
_____. “Comment les auteurs de BD représentent nos cousins extraterrestres dans leurs œuvres”,
2022,
https://www.academia.edu/78522835/COMMENT_LES_AUTEURS_DE_BD_REPR%C3
%89SENTENT_NOS_COUSINS_LES_EXTRATERRESTRES_DANS_LEURS_OEUVR
ES
Rossoni, David, Maillot, Éric, and Déguillaume, Éric. Les ovnis du CNES, 30 ans d’études
officielles 1977-2007, Editions Book-e-book.com, 2007.
Sider, Jean. Ces Ovnis qui font peur, Axis Mundi, 1990.
Vachon, Patrice. “Le petit homme de Renève,” Les Mystères de l’Est, No. 4, CNEGU, 1998.
Vallée, Jacques. La grande manipulation, Éditions du Rocher, 1983. (Messengers of Deception,
And/or Press, Berkeley, California, 1979).
Wiroth, Manuel. Ovnis en France, des années 1940 à nos jours, apparitions et chercheurs privés,
Ph.D. dissertation, Éditions Le temps présent, 2017, Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3,
Zurcher, Éric. Les apparitions mondiales d’humanoïdes, Le temps présent, 2018.
584
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Abilities and Limitations of Eyewitnesses Assessed on Atmospheric Entries of
Meteoroids and Artificial Satellites
Jean-Pierre Rospars
Abstract: Observers’ reactions to known phenomena with multiple witnesses provide a good test
of their ability to accurately describe unfamiliar, brief, and unexpected events. We analyzed
statistically about 300 accounts of 7 atmospheric entries of meteoroids and satellites reported to
the French police during 1980-2009 and quantitatively estimated the reliability of witnesses for a
dozen spatial, temporal, and structural characteristics. On a scale of 0 to 1, the reliability is
practically zero for metric data and direction of motion, which cannot be determined in general
from sensory data, and varies from 0.5 to almost 1 for directly perceptible characteristics. Witness
reliability is not a simple concept as it is highly dependent on the characteristics being studied, the
expected accuracy, and methodological constraints. It is also not a static notion because it can be
improved by helping the witnesses provide objective information (e.g. angular data instead of
metric data).
Keywords: Measurement of witness reliability, Psychology of perception, Intersubjectivity,
Misinterpretation, Statistical methods, Lognormal distribution, Time estimation, Distance
estimation, Color vision, UAP, Police reports
Introduction
To what extent are human observers able to accurately describe an unfamiliar phenomenon to
which they are unexpectedly and relatively briefly exposed? To answer this question, one must be
able to compare what the observers perceived, or more precisely what they say they perceived,
with the known characteristics of the phenomenon. One possible approach, which has the
advantage of being based on the vast resources of experimental psychology, is to present the
subject with artificial stimuli controlled by the experimenter in the laboratory (e.g.1). Another
approach, less precise but closer to natural conditions, consists in analyzing how observers
describe known natural or man-made phenomena that they happen to witness. We will follow here
this second approach, based on atmospheric entries of meteoroids or artificial satellites (payloads
and rockets), already illustrated by a few previous studies.2,3,4,5 These bodies burning in the
atmosphere are visible from the ground as more or less spectacular moving lights depending on
their speed and size. Observers of atmospheric entries, whether they identify them as such or not,
are in conditions similar to those of other rare and less easily identifiable phenomena known as
UFOs or UAPs, and so provide reference information for the assessment of UAP reports.
The available reports of atmospheric entries provide numerous pieces of information on the
observed phenomena and their conditions of observation. First, we will investigate how observers
report or fail to report various characteristics of these events, whether spatiotemporal (like time,
1
Jimenez, “Les phénomènes aérospatiaux non-identifiés et la psychologie de la perception.”
Hartmann, “Process of perception, conception, and reporting.”
3
Drake, “On the abilities and limitations of witnesses of UFO’s and similar phenomena.”
4
Jimenez, Témoignage d’ovni et psychologie de la perception. This study is based on police reports of 18 atmospheric
entries from the period 1974-1990, of which two (#1017 and #1159, see below) are also included in our sample.
5
Jimenez, La psychologie de la perception.
2
585
IV. Empirical Research
duration, height, distance and direction) or intrinsic (like structure and colors). Second, we will
evaluate how perceived characteristics differ from the actual characteristics of the phenomena as
known from the scientific literature or derived from the reports themselves. Then, defining the
reliability for a given characteristics as the ratio of the number of correct descriptions to the total
number of descriptions, we will propose practical methods for quantitatively measuring the
reliability of eyewitnesses for various characteristics. We will also provide some brief comparisons
with previous studies.
Selection of Reports
Before studying their content, let’s give an overview of the observers’ accounts. They were
extracted from a set of reports gathered by GEIPAN, the UAP study group of the French National
Center for Space Studies (CNES). In the period 1980-2009 covered by the present study, more
than 2200 reports were received by GEIPAN on about 1700 UAP events involving more than 5000
witnesses. The events of interest for the present study are atmospheric entries with multiple
witnesses. We found 215 atmospheric entries, but only 16 with 10 observers or more. However,
three-fourths of the corresponding reports were generated by only one event, a launcher re-entry
that occurred on November 5, 1990. This massive event would require a specific analysis, so it
was not included in this study. We drew at random 7 of the 15 other events for detailed analysis.
Table 1 summarizes the main features of the 7 selected atmospheric entries. Six of them were
interpreted as meteoroids and one as an artificial satellite. They generated 116 reports based on the
observations of more than 350 witnesses (Nt). The majority (83%) of recorded testimonies (Nr)
came from the Gendarmerie Nationale, one of the two national police forces in France in charge
of rural and suburban areas. The other testimonies came from the Civil Aviation agency (7%), the
urban police (1%), and directly from observers (9%). The difference between recorded (Nr) and
detailed (Nd) testimonies results from our exclusion of the observers who did not provide their
own description but merely confirmed another observer’s statements; this means that only explicit
statements were considered. We also removed from Nd a report that was not likely to describe an
atmospheric entry (see next section), thus obtaining the testimonies actually used (Nu = 283).
Table 1. Main features of atmospheric entries studied
-------------------------------------------------------Event Date
Time Nt Nr Nd Nu Ndp Nco Object
===== ========== ===== --- --- --- --- --- --- =========
#1017 11.11.1980 18:37 144 125 117 117 25 70 meteoroid
#1159 06.06.1983 22:57 52 45 35 35 11 22 meteoroid
#1461 11.28.1991 22:28 30 26 26 26
7 19 meteoroid
#1667 08.01.1996 21:24 75 67 65 64 11 49 meteoroid
#1769 02.01.1999 07:15 13 13 11 11
3 10 meteoroid
#2290 09.25.2008 22:55 23 16 16 16 12 16 satellite
#2378 01.17.2009 18:47 19 14 14 14
9 14 meteoroid
-------------------------------------------------------Total
356 306 284 283
200
--------------------------------------------------------
Event, event identifier. Date, date of the event. Time, approximate legal time of the event (see section Time for details).
Nt, number of known observers. Nr, number of observers met by investigators. Nd, number of detailed testimonies
(observers who only confirmed another witness were excluded). Nu, number of usable testimonies (one sighting
unrelated to event #1667 was excluded). Ndp, number of départements from which the event was reported. Nco,
number of communes with observers. Object, all events resulted from meteoroids except #2290 (Russian launcher).
586
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Table 1 shows that the phenomena were observed during night-time hours in geographical areas
whose size can be estimated by the number of départements where witnesses were located
(départements are administrative units of approximately 6000 square km, corresponding to a
circular area ca. 90 km in diameter). These areas are well-correlated with the number of observers
and the number of communes where the observers were located (communes are the smallest
administrative units, one tenth the diameter of a département). Depending on the event, the area
of visibility included from 3 to 25 départements (roughly 3% to 27% of metropolitan France),
which indicates that the visibility of the phenomena was not at all equivalent, with many factors
like brightness, duration, cloud cover, time of the day, etc. contributing to the visibility. Other
aspects of the events are described in the following sections devoted to their various characteristics.
Unless otherwise stated, all statistics (numbers and percentages rounded to the nearest integer) are
given with respect to the 283 useful testimonies.
Anomalous Motion and Confusion
Although witnesses usually reported a light or set of lights moving at constant speed across the
sky, in eight accounts the light was perceived as stationary during all or part of the observation.
This can occur if the object is following a path directed exactly toward the witness, but this should
be rare and reports suggest other explanations, as follows.
Four testimonies that do not show inconsistency in duration are likely the result of misperceptions.
The witness’ own movement in a car in the first case, the brevity of an “apparently stationary”
light seen for only 2 seconds in the second case, and the alleged “stabilization” of a moving light
before it goes out in the third one, are consistent with this hypothesis. The fourth example will be
discussed in the second-to-last section.
Four other testimonies of stationary phenomena also present inconsistencies in time and/or
duration. In event #1667, a witness saw the meteoroid fall and then, along with his friend, a white
light seemingly motionless on the ground for 20 min – a tractor at work in a field according to the
police investigation. The confusion of two independent phenomena is reflected here by
discrepancies in motion and duration. About an hour after the most probable time of event #1017,
two witnesses reported an intermittent blue light in the sky and a few seconds later a red sphere
motionless for 2 min. The blue light is consistent with other descriptions of meteoroid #1017,
which raises the possibility that the red sphere was something else, the moon for example; the
witnesses deny this interpretation but they do not indicate the direction of observation which
prevents a verification. In the last testimony, 80 min after the fall of meteoroid #1667, three lights
forming a triangle were seen stationary for 30 min. In this report at least three elements
(immobility, time, and duration) are inconsistent with the meteoroid assumption. For this reason
this account was removed from our final sample (hence the difference between Nd and Nu) which
avoids mixing witness errors (the signal we want to study) with erroneous selection by us of
irrelevant phenomena (noise).
Deviation from the Actual Date and Time
All observers provide the date of the event. In 5 cases (2%) this date is wrong by one day (the
next day is given), although the day of the week is correct in one of these reports. Time is the
second characteristic most frequently reported by witnesses (in 95% of usable testimonies).
However, the variable of interest for the present study is not time in itself but the difference
587
IV. Empirical Research
between the time given by the observer and the actual time of the event. For some events the actual
time is known approximately from a priori reliable observers (see below) but this is not always
the case, so we preferred to take the mean of all the times reported for a given event as a reference.
100
100
A
B
50
80
0
60
-50
40
-100
20
-150
n = 264
0
-60
1017 1159 1461 1667 1769 2290 2378 all
-40
-20
0
20
40
60
Deviation from mean (min)
100
100
C
80
60
D
80
n = 264
= 11.07
P = 1.88e-05
60
40
40
20
20
0
-60
-40
-20
0
20
40
60
Deviation from mean (min)
0
-20
n = 239
= 6.05
P = 0.022
-10
0
10
20
Deviation from mean (min)
Figure 1. Deviation of observation times from the mean time of each event. A. Boxplots of the 7 events (from #1017
to #2378). The rightmost boxplot is for all events together (n = 264). The boxes extend from the lower quartile (25%
of the data are below this point) to the upper quartile (75% of the data are below this point) with the medians (red line
with half values smaller or greater) in between. The whiskers extend to the most extreme data values within 1.5 × IQR
(interquartile range from lower to upper quartiles). Outliers (red crosses) are deviations beyond the end of the upper
whiskers. B. Histogram of deviations with bin width 5 min. Three outliers with deviations -144, -144 and 96 min. not
shown. C. Empirical cumulative distribution function (CDF) of deviations less than ±60 min. (solid black staircase);
all deviations are shown along the x-axis as stepwise jumps of height 1/n, giving a complete and undistorted view of
the original data. Empirical CDF is fitted to a normal distribution (smooth dotted curve) of mean µ (close to 0) and
standard deviation σ; fit is rejected at level 1% (P-value < 10–4). Fitted normal probability density function (PDF)
shown as smooth blue curve. D. Empirical CDF of deviations less than 20 min. from the mean (staircase) fitted to a
normal distribution (dotted CDF and solid blue PDF curves); fit is not rejected at level 1% (P-value = 0.022).
Different views of the deviations from the mean time are displayed in Figure 1. The deviations are
shown as so-called boxplots in Figure 1A, first separately for each event from left to right, then
for all events together. Most deviations are relatively small and similar in all events, as shown by
the heights of the central rectangles that contain half of the deviations in each event, although
relatively large deviations are found (from 3 to 9 per event drawn as red crosses). Figure 1B shows
all deviations together as a histogram whose bell shape is consistent with the idea that time
deviations follow a Gaussian (also called normal) curve that is a classical description of
measurement errors. The Gaussian distribution that best fits the data is shown in two different
ways in Figure 1C, as a bell-shaped curve (so-called PDF, in blue), which can be compared to the
histogram 1B, and a sigmoid-shaped curve (CDF, dotted curve) which has the advantage of being
directly comparable to the empirical data (see solid black staircase curve). However, this best fit
588
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
solution with standard deviation 11 min. is not satisfactory because the difference between the
theoretical (dotted) and the empirical (solid) CDFs is too large to result from random fluctuations
(see statistical test in legend of Figure 1C). If only the time deviations smaller than 20 min. are
taken into account (they include 90% of the values), then the bell curve with standard deviation 6
minutes becomes an acceptable description (see Figure 1D). This result suggests that beside the
majority of observers who give time with an error that does not exceed 20 min., there is a minority
of people (10%) whose less precise time estimates follow another Gaussian distribution with a
much larger standard deviation.
In any case, considering the empirical distribution only, the percentages of witnesses who give the
time with a difference of at most (plus or minus) 10, 15 or 30 min are 18, 11 and 4% respectively.
We can retain ±30 min as the most relevant since it corresponds to a range of one hour. Let’s add
a word of caution: it must be realized that we are not actually studying the time estimate of the
observers but the time recorded by the investigators and interpreted by the author. Mistakes in
recording and interpretation compound with errors made by inaccurate observers.6
Duration
The same method can be applied to the duration of the event, which is given by 71% of witnesses,
often as ranges like “10-15 seconds” (we took the mean of the extremes) and sometimes as “a few
seconds” (we interpreted as 3 s). Then it appears that the launcher re-entry (#2290), with median
duration 35 s, was visible for a much longer time than the meteoroids (all other events), since their
median duration is 8 s (range from 3 to 20 s). This is in good agreement with durations found in
the literature.7 Typically, meteors are seen during “a few seconds”8 or “a fraction of a second to
perhaps as long as 10 seconds,”9 but never more than 4 min 40 s,10 while satellite re-entries are
seen “from maybe 20 seconds to a minute, but these times could be also longer or shorter in
duration,”11 without exceeding 3 min.12 Thus, the approximately four times longer duration of
satellites with respect to meteoroids is sufficient to be perceived by witnesses taken together.
To go further, durations are shown in Figure 2 with the same graphic methods as in Figure 1. Not
only the median but also the interquartile range (103 s) is much greater for launcher #2290 than
for meteoroids (17 s, range 1-26 s; Figure 2A). The most conspicuous difference with time
deviations is apparent in Figure 2B as the histogram is not symmetric, with very short durations
being more frequent than longer ones, which means that durations cannot be described by a
Gaussian (normal) distribution but requires a skewed distribution. This is shown more precisely in
Figure 2C which distinguishes the meteoroids (all six together) and the launcher; we found that
the best fit PDF curves computed from the empirical staircases are lognormal distributions.
6
For example, in event #1667, the time (19:00) given by two witnesses is ambiguous as it can apply either to the
beginning of the dinner or to the meteor sighting. I used the dinner time because in the absence of other independent
witnesses, as in most UAP reports, this ambiguity would have been difficult to resolve.
7
For Hendry (The UFO Handbook), duration of meteors “ranges anywhere from one second to as long as twenty
seconds” while satellite re-entries “are usually observed for longer than ten seconds” (from 113 reports).
8
Jeanne, Méthode d’analyse statistique appliquée au réseau d’observation européen des météores FRIPON.
9
Wertheimer, “Perceptual problems.”
10
Alessandri, Durée des rentrées atmosphériques et des météores.
11
Wertheimer, ibid.
12
Alessandri, ibid.
589
IV. Empirical Research
A variable follows a lognormal distribution if its logarithm follows a normal distribution. This
means that while times are measured on an ordinary arithmetic scale (graduated 0, 1, 2, etc. with
successive additions) and their central value is given by their arithmetic mean, durations are more
adequately measured on a geometric scale (graduated 1, 10, 100, etc. with successive
multiplications) and their central value is given by their geometric mean (nth root of their product)
and median which is µ* = 8 s for meteoroids and 42 s for launcher #2290. As in Figure 1C, where
removing the most extreme values improves the fit to a Gaussian distribution, removing the
durations greater than 20 s in the meteoroid subset improves the fit to a lognormal distribution
with µ* = 5 s (Figure 2D), suggesting here also that the longest durations obey a law with greater
standard deviation.
150
600
B
A
500
n = 201
100
400
300
200
50
100
0
0
0
1017 1159 1461 1667 1769 2290 2378 all
50
100
150
200
250
300
Duration (s)
Events
100
100
C
D
80
80
Meteoroid
n = 186
= 2.08
= 1.27
P = 0.015
60
40
20
Satell.
15
3.74
1.25
0.950
Meteoroid
n = 142
= 1.54
= 0.87
P = 0.024
60
40
20
0
0
0
50
100
150
200
Duration (s)
0
5
10
15
20
Duration (s)
Figure 2. Reported duration of atmospheric entries. A. Boxplots of durations for each event and for all events together.
Note the wider dispersal of durations for event #2290 (Russian launcher). B. Histogram of all durations less than 400
s (regular). C. Distribution of regular durations of meteoroids (solid staircase) and launcher #2290 (dashed staircase).
D. Detailed view of durations less than 20 s for meteoroids (they include 72% of regular durations). Theoretical CDFs
in C and D (same line style and color as in Figure 1) are lognormal. Like its Gaussian counterpart, the lognormal
distribution is characterized by two parameters, its mean µ and standard deviation σ (see legends inside panels), µ* =
exp(µ) being the median and geometric mean of the lognormal distribution fitted to data. In C, µ* = 8 s (meteoroids)
and 42 s (launcher #2290). In D, µ* = 5 s (meteoroids).
It follows from the properties of the lognormal distribution and the near equality of standard
deviations of meteoroids and satellites (Fig. 2C), that for both types of events, 29% of witnesses
give durations greater than or equal to 2µ*, 10% for 5µ* and 3% for 10µ*. If outliers are defined
as in boxplots (see legends of Figure 1A), durations longer than 45 s for meteoroids and 180 s for
launcher #2290 are anomalous. This definition is reasonable because it corresponds to durations
approximately five times higher than the geometric means µ*. It yields n = 26 outliers for
590
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
meteoroids and 5 for the launcher, so that 15% of observers can be considered as unreliable with
this rule.13
Number of Objects, Fragmentation, and Trail
The witnesses observed a main object (single or larger than the others; 87%), several objects of
equivalent size (7%), a simple trail with no associated object (5%), or did not give a clear indication
(2%). In four events (#1159, #1667, #1769, #2378) there is only one object or, if several are seen,
one of them is larger than the others. For the 3 other events, the proportion of witnesses who see
several similar objects remains low for #1017 (8%) and #2290 (13%) but is clearly higher for
#1461 (31%) which is thus the most singular event from this standpoint.
The main object is sometimes accompanied by up to 3 smaller secondary objects during the whole
observation (3%) or is reported to break up into up to a dozen fragments (19%), while the main
object continues its course. Some observers speak of disintegration or explosion. The frequency
of observed disintegrations varies depending on events from about one-third to very few or zero.
Presumably, this feature depends on whether the witness’ observation starts before the
fragmentation of the object takes place or after it. If this interpretation is correct, the observation
of a fragmentation should be correlated with the duration of the observation, which is actually the
case.14
Half of the witnesses described a trail, most often behind the main object (or objects), sometimes
alone (5%). The word trail is the most common but sparks, tail, cone, glow, beam, flame, smoke,
spray, projection, triangle, comma, light are also found. The proportion of witnesses mentioning a
trail is similar across events (it varies in the range 67% to 82%), excepted for meteoroids #1017
and #1461 whose trails were seen by only 27% of observers.
The descriptions of the objects, their fragmentation, and their trails may vary because of actual
differences between phenomena, as illustrated by event #1461 for which more objects of similar
size were noticed than in the others; or differences in the observation conditions, as suggested by
the influence of sighting duration. Without sure norms for judging the truth or error of a witness,
reliability is difficult to estimate. However, as with the day and time, we can use surrogate
standards by relying on the testimonies. Let’s take the example of fragmentations. In 4 events
(#1159, #1667, #1769, and #2378; 123 testimonies in all) no fragmentation was described (except
by one witness in #1159, which by method we will not take into account). In the three other events
about one-third of witnesses (34% for #1017, 35% for #1461, 31% for #2290; 54 witnesses in all)
reported a disintegration, which is sufficient evidence that it occurred. Thus, 63% of witnesses
correctly reported the presence or absence of a disintegration. The same reasoning applied to trails
leads to a reliability of 49%; but in a simpler way, because in all events a trail was mentioned (by
13
Drake (“On the abilities and limitations of witnesses of UFO’s and similar phenomena”) concludes from 113 witness
interviews of two bright fireballs in 1962 that “the estimates of duration of the fireball… were remarkably accurate.
In these cases, it lasted four seconds, and the estimates were typically between three and five seconds, a remarkedly
good performance. The estimates of the length of time until the sonic boom were also about right” (between 1 and 5
min, which is correct within a factor of two).
14
For short-duration sightings, 16 witnesses reported a fragmentation and 84 none; for long duration, they were 29
and 73 respectively. So, a lesser number of breaking-up is observed during short sightings than in long ones and viceversa for no breaking up. This correlation is significant with P-value = 0.025 (exact Fisher test).
591
IV. Empirical Research
7 or more witnesses), in accordance with what is expected since all bodies at high speed produce
an ionization trail in the atmosphere.
Colors
The colors of the main object are indicated by 79% of witnesses. However, this percentage varies
across events from 81 to 95% for 4 events and from 41% to 55% for 3 events (#1159, #2290 and
#1769). Witnesses utilize a relatively rich vocabulary of 40 terms, including primary (red, green,
and blue), secondary (yellow, orange, brown, purple, etc.) and tertiary colors such as “blue-green”
etc., a vocabulary further enriched by indications of intensity and saturation. Half of these 40 terms
are found in two or more testimonies, and the other half in only one. The colors of the trail differ
in several respects from those of the main object: they are less frequently reported (they are
mentioned by only 49% of the observers mentioning a trail), and the proportion of trails whose
color is indicated varies less across events (in the range 43-64%, except #1461 with 25%). The
number of colors mentioned is also smaller (13).
As for several other characteristics, color analysis is hampered by the lack of reference data,15
since color was briefly reported by a single qualified observer, astronomer Paul Couteau from Nice
observatory. He described the trail of meteoroid #1017 as “green and red,” “typical of metallic
particles heated at very high temperature which detach from the meteorite as a result of friction
and burn immediately.”16 Thus, one can only rely on the similarities and differences between color
descriptions of the same event. The wide palette of colors suggests that differences outweigh
similarities and may confirm the plausibility of Drake’s conclusion that “the eye, perhaps
especially the dark-adapted eye, when presented with a bright unexpected light, may perceive any
color” so that “the colors reported are meaningless.”17
In order to check this conclusion, we simplified the palette by replacing the tertiary colors by the
most frequent primary or secondary color composing them. After reduction, it appears that the
most frequently mentioned trail colors for event #1017 are red, green and white (71% of witnesses)
in good agreement with Couteau’s description. This confirmation may give some weight to the
most frequently reduced ‘color’ we found for the trail, namely white, with two exceptions, #1017
and #1461 (only two witnesses indicate the color of the trail and they disagree: one sees it as red
and the other as yellow-green). Interestingly, the white appearance of the trail in most events may
explain why so many observers did not report their color, in accordance with the technical notion
that white and grey are not colors but shades.
The same procedure applied to the color of the main object (Table 2) shows that the most
frequently used terms are green and white (#1017 and #1667), white and yellow (#1461), white
and grey (#1159), and white and blue (#1769). For these last two events, their white or grey shade
may have contributed to their relatively low percentage of color descriptions (column None). For
two events, #2290 (orange and red) and #2378 (orange and green), no white shade was noticed.
15
This is a common situation. Drake notes about the two 1962 events he studied “we do not know for sure what color
the objects were” (“On the abilities and limitations of witnesses of UFO’s and similar phenomena”).
16
Interview in Dauphiné Libéré, quoted in Passot, J’ai vu un OVNI, p. 20.
17
Drake, ibid.
592
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
So, Drake’s conclusions about color vision seem too negative. Indeed, similarities between reports
of the same event led to the emergence of dominant colors or shades and to lower reporting
frequencies in the case of white and grey shades. Differences are manifested in the variety of terms
used which may result from many factors, neural (eye and brain), psychological (attention,
memory) and others (reporting).
Table 2. Reduced colors and shades of main object
------------------------------------------------------------------------------Event None N Main colors
n
n% Other colors
I%
------------------------------------------------------------------------------1017
6% 140 green white red
115 82% yellow blue orange dark brown rose 18%
1159 59% 15 white grey blue
11 73% dark red
27%
1461 19% 25 white yellow green 17 68% blue red
32%
1667 10% 69 green white orange 50 73% red yellow blue silver gold black 27%
1769 45%
6 white blue
4 66% dark green
34%
2290 50%
8 orange red
8 100% 0%
2378 18% 14 orange green
11 79% red black
21%
------------------------------------------------------------------------------Mean
77%
23%
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Event number. None, percentage of witnesses not indicating a color or shade. N, total number of terms used by
witnesses for describing colors (after reduction) and shades. Main colors, two most frequent reduced colors (plus
white) indicated by at least 2 witnesses. n, total number of colors and shades mentioned in column ‘Main colors.’ n%
= n/N in percent. Other colors, other terms describing reduced colors and shades (in italics if used by a single witness).
I% = 100 – n%, percentage of colors and shades mentioned in column ‘Other colors.’ In columns ‘Main colors’ and
‘Other colors,’ colors and shades are ranked by decreasing frequency.
Altitude
Although altitude is of a wholly different nature from time and duration, let’s start by studying it
with the same methods as for these variables (Figure 3). The altitude of the phenomenon is given,
in meters or kilometers, by only 20% of the observers,18 a proportion so small that in the two events
with the least number of observers (#1769 and #2378, see Table 1), neither of them gave height
values. In the five remaining events, two extreme outliers are found (at 125 and 150 km) that are
2 orders of magnitude larger than the values given by the other witnesses (Figure 3A). Once these
outliers are removed, we get a clearer view of the data (Figure 3B), showing that both the medians
and the IQRs (central rectangles) vary much more between events than in the case of times and
durations, which may also result in part from random fluctuations due to the small number of
values per event. Nonetheless, the last plot (Figure 3D) shows that the heights of all events together
are very well-fitted with a lognormal distribution of median µ* = 300 m.
Of course, this perceived altitude is definitely wrong. Actually, most meteoroids and artificial
satellites burn in the atmosphere at an altitude of between 120 and 80 km.19, 20, 21 So, the impression
of observers is about 300 times smaller than it should be! Clearly, the altitude given by these 20%
witnesses has no objective value. For this variable, eyewitness reports are completely unreliable.
18
Wertheimer (“Perceptual problems”) found in 13 of 30 “relatively complete reports” of Zond IV re-entry that the
estimated altitude or distance was less than 20 miles (32 km), which is much more than in our sample (20%).
19
Jeanne, Méthode d’analyse statistique appliquée au réseau d’observation européen des météores FRIPON.
20
American Meteor Society.
21
Koten et al., “Atmospheric trajectories and light curves of shower meteors.”
593
IV. Empirical Research
Should we be surprised? Not really, because the altitude and distance of an object seen in the sky
cannot be determined without prior knowledge of its size or nature.22 Only angular height and size
can be determined. Unfortunately, this simple rule does not seem to be known by most observers
and investigators (only 4% witnesses gave height in degrees). The only two observers who gave a
correct altitude are the astronomer Jean Couteau (150 km, event #1017) and a pilot in flight (125
km, event #1667), surely (for the astronomer) or probably (for the pilot) because of their scientific
knowledge of meteoroids. The two other large values (25 and 12 km, in event #1159) were possibly
influenced by what the observers knew about the altitude of airliners. Except for those 4 cases and
possibly 9 others where the object was felt as “high” (4%), most observers judged that its height
was less than 5 km or “low” (32%).
5
200
A
B
4
150
3
100
2
50
1
0
0
1017 1159 1461 1667 1769 2290 2378 all
1017
1159
1461
Events
1667
2290
all
Events
100
C
40
D
n = 56
80
n = 56
= -1.20
= 1.76
P = 0.805
30
60
20
40
10
20
0
0
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
Altitude (km)
0
5
10
15
20
25
Altitude (km)
Figure 3. Subjective estimates of altitude of atmospheric entries. A. Boxplot of altitudes for 5 events (no estimate for
2 events, #1769 and #2378) and for all 5 events together. B. Same as A for altitudes below 30 km with view restricted
to 0-5 km (two outliers in event #1159 are not shown). C. Histogram of altitudes. D. Distribution of altitudes less than
30 km; same representation as in Figure 2 with lognormal CDF and PDF. Lognormal fit not rejected at level 5% (Pvalue = 0.8).
However, human perception is not as fallible as the previous results may suggest because not only
do many eyewitnesses express doubts on their ability to estimate the height, but, more
significantly, the majority of them (56%) do not provide any indication about height, even
qualitative (like “high” or “low”), which is much more than for time (6%) and duration (29%).
This wariness might reflect a widely shared feeling that determining height was not possible under
their conditions of observation.
22
As stated by Wertheimer (“Perceptual problems”): “an unknown, vaguely defined object in the undifferentiated sky
can appear to be of any size or at any distance, depending on the inferences made by the observer.”
594
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Distance
The distance of the phenomenon is given quantitatively (in meters or kilometers, 14%) or
qualitatively (“near” or “far,” 2.5% each) by a minority of witnesses, whereas the majority prefers
to abstain from any indication (81%). So, witnesses are even more reluctant to give a distance than
an altitude. However, for those who dare to provide a quantitative value, the results are very similar
for distance and altitude (Fig 4), although only 18 people give both values. Most entries are felt to
take place at less than 5 km (Figures 4A and 4B). Distances follow a lognormal distribution with
a median distance of about 650 m (Figure 4C) which is practically identical to the distribution of
altitudes (Figure 4D).
20 A
B
20
n = 39
15
15
10
10
5
5
0
0
0
1017 1159 1461 1667 1769 2290 2378 all
5
10
15
20
Distance (km)
Events
100
100
D
C
80
n = 39
= -0.43
= 1.69
P = 0.40
60
80
n alti = 58
n dist = 39
60
P = 0.31
40
40
20
20
0
0
0
5
10
15
20
Distance (km)
0
5
10
15
20
Distance and Altitude (km)
Figure 4. Subjective distance of atmospheric entries. Same representation as in Figure 3. A. Boxplot of distances per
events and for all 7 events together. B. Histogram of distances. C. Distribution of distances fitted to a lognormal
distribution (not rejected at level 5%, P = 0.40), same representation as in Figure 2. D. Comparison of cumulative
distributions of distances (purple staircase) and altitudes less than 100 km (blue); null hypothesis (altitude and distance
are drawn from the same underlying continuous population) cannot be rejected at the 5% level (P-value = 0.31).
This near identity is in blatant contradiction with reality, because distance is typically greater than
altitude in atmospheric entries. A meteoroid entering the Earth atmosphere just above an observer
(height 90°) is at the shortest possible distance (about 100 km). At the other extreme, a meteoroid
entering the atmosphere close to the horizon (height 0°) is at the maximum possible distance
because the curvature of the Earth limits the horizontal distance at which it can be seen before it
becomes invisible below the horizon. An elementary geometrical calculation shows that the
maximum distance is approximately in the range 1000-1200 km. Thus, distance can be up to about
one order of magnitude greater than altitude, depending on the height of the meteoroid above the
horizon. As a result, the discrepancy between the distance reported by the most naïve observers
and the actual distance is still greater than for the altitude.
595
IV. Empirical Research
The near identity of perceived distance and perceived altitude is consistent with the idea that both
perceptions result from similar unconscious processing, possibly based on experiences gained with
lights seen at closer distance. Extrapolating from these ordinary experiences shared by all
observers leads to wrong estimates in the case of powerful faraway lights as seen in atmospheric
entries.
Direction of Motion
The majority of observers report the apparent direction followed by the object (71%). However,
this indication may be given ambiguously (like NE-SE or E-SW; 7%), incompletely (e.g. to the S;
5%) or with respect to geographical landmarks (7%; we have not analyzed these indications).
Finally, direction is given clearly by 52% of witnesses, mostly with respect to the four cardinal
directions (e.g. N-S, etc.), less frequently with respect to the intermediate directions (NE-SW, SENW, etc.) and rarely using the other subdivisions of the compass rose (only 4 occurrences, all
NNW-SSE). At first sight, the directions reported seem very messy. For example, in the event
#1017 reported by 117 people, one finds 58 regular directions, namely 27 N-S, 19 E-W, 12 NESW, plus 3 other directions each given by a single witness. Other directions are ambiguous (ESW, ENE-SSW, NW-SSE) or in contradiction with the regular ones, either opposite (S-N, SWNE) or perpendicular (SE-NW, SE-NW then S). It is tempting to conclude that data as diverse and
contradictory as those are unusable and to reject them as a whole. However, this quick conclusion
is not warranted.
Indeed, let’s consider the case of an object moving in a plane almost perpendicular to the vertical
of the witness, which is consistent with the horizontal trajectories often reported. This witness can
determine the object direction if and only if it passes overhead (as reported for case #1017 by a
witness in Corsica). If this condition is not met and if we assume that he/she cannot appreciate any
variation in distance, the direction of motion cannot be determined. Then the trajectory appears as
an almost horizontal line in the observer viewing direction (this line is the projection of the real
trajectory on the vertical plane perpendicular to the viewing direction). Then, the only things the
witness can actually observe are the viewing direction and the object motion to the right or left.
Whatever the heading of the object (except for a trajectory oriented towards the witness), if he/she
is looking towards the North (or the South), the object will be seen as moving from East to West
(or vice versa), if he/she looks westward (or eastward), he/she will judge that it is moving from
North to South (or vice versa), etc. The generalization to other viewing directions is
straightforward. So, for a distant object flying NW-SE, it may happen that some say N-S (they
look E), others W-E (they look N), still others NW-SE (they look NE). Contrary to appearances,
these directions do not necessarily contradict one another. Witnesses would only contradict if some
described trajectories oriented S-N, E-W or SW-NE, i.e. an object travelling in the opposite
direction.
With this narrower definition of what can be considered as an inconsistency in the reported
directions, we can analyze the available data of each event. Here again we only consider the
directions given by at least two observers. Table 3 shows that besides a few ambiguous directions,
inconsistent directions are found only for event #1667 with 3 witnesses reporting an East-West
movement, which contradicts all other 30 reports. This small number of inconsistencies (3/137 =
2% of analyzed directions) is surprising because we expected that many witnesses would not be
able to correctly identify the cardinal directions, especially far from home. The available data do
596
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
not confirm this expectation.23 However, the consistency criterion utilized is relatively imprecise
(±45°), so that the small percentage found might be a mere consequence of this tolerance to
orientation errors.
Table 3. Main directions of motion reported and corresponding number of witnesses
-----------------------------------------------------------------------Event n None Geo Inc Amb Uni Main regular directions
Sum
-----------------------------------------------------------------------1017 117 34 16
2
4
3 N-S:27 E-W:19 NE-SW:12
58
1159
35 17
0
3
3
1 S-N:5 SW-NE:3 W-E:3
11
1461
26 3
0
0
6
2 S-N:8 SE-NW:5 E-W:2
15
1667
64 14
4
6
5
2 N-S:13 W-E:10 NW-SE:5 E-W:3 NNW-SSE:2 33
1769
11 3
0
0
0
1 N-S:7
7
2290
16 3
0
0
0
2 N-S:6 W-E:3
NNW-SSE:2
11
2378
14 7
0
2
2
1 N-S:2
2
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Event number. n, number of witnesses. None, no direction reported. Geo, geographical landmarks (not analyzed). Inc,
incomplete directions. Amb, ambiguous directions. Uni, number of directions indicated by only one witness.
Directions, main regular directions mentioned by at least 2 witnesses (in descending order of number of witnesses).
Sum, number of witnesses in columns ‘Main directions’ (137 witnesses in all). Inconsistent direction in bold italics
(E-W in #1667).
Interpretation of Observed Phenomena by Witnesses
The two most common interpretations of their sighting by witnesses are “UFO” (ovni) and “meteor
or spatial debris,” although other interpretations are also given (optical effect, plane on fire, tractor
with flashing beacon) but only in a few reports. The word ovni is found in 17 testimonies (6%).
Adding descriptive terms like hublots (portholes) and engin (craft), about 11% of witnesses evoke
an artificial machine. The words “meteor,” “meteorite,” “bolide,” “body in the atmosphere,”
“atmospheric entry” appear in 25 reports (9%, I have removed from this count the witnesses who
think they have not seen a meteor).24 In three cases the witness considered both hypotheses and
did not choose. In most reports no interpretation is given.
Does the witness’s interpretation influence the reported characteristics of the object or vice-versa?
This idea can be tested by crossing the witness’s interpretation (meteor or machine) with the
distance or altitude of the object (estimated numerically or not) assuming that the witnesses who
give an estimate are more prone to the illusion that the objects are close. For altitude, Table 4
shows a slight relationship that is in line with this expectation, since those who interpret the
phenomenon as a strange flying craft give an altitude (much too low as we have seen) a little more
frequently than those who see a meteor.25 It means that the impression of proximity felt by
23
In his doctoral thesis (Témoignage d’ovni et psychologie de la perception) Jimenez notes that the reported directions
are “often adequate,” but without further explanation.
24
Wertheimer (“Perceptual problems”) found 12 reports suggesting meteor(ite) or satellite in his sample of “relatively
complete” reports (i.e. 40% of the sample).
25
This apparent relationship is not statistically significant, and thus might result from a mere random fluctuation.
Likewise, the table “interpretation vs. distance” displays no significant relationship (P-value = 0.68, Fisher test).
However, Jimenez (Témoignage d’ovni et psychologie de la perception) found a significant dependence in a
contingency table crossing 4 distances (unreported or far, above the horizon, below the horizon, metric) and 6
descriptive terms (light, phenomenon, object, craft, flying object) and in a factorial correspondence analysis, a
statistical method that makes use of many characteristics at once (see also his book La psychologie de la perception).
In addition to the modalities used, including the absence of the term “meteor” in his list of denominations, a major
597
IV. Empirical Research
witnesses influences their interpretation to some extent, although it does not really determine it. It
suggests that for the majority of witnesses (21 of 32 to 20 of 25) the high-level processes
(interpretative) are not dominated by the low-level ones (sensory).
Table 4. Cross-tabulation of witness’ interpretation and altitude
------------------------------------------------Altitude
Metric
Not metric Sum
------------------------------------------------Interpretation Meteor
5 (7.0) 20 (18.0)
25
Machine 11 (9.0) 21 (23.0)
32
------------------------------------------------Sum
16
41
57
-------------------------------------------------
Number of witnesses interpreting the observed object as a meteor (with altitude estimated numerically or not) and as
a machine (idem). Numbers in parentheses (products of the marginal sums divided by grand total n = 57) are expected
if both variables are independent. Null-hypothesis (independence of variables) not rejected at level 5% (P-value =
0.18, Fisher exact test).
Another question is: How many witnesses were deceived to the point of believing that they
experienced a close encounter with a UFO? Considering encounters as close when made at 300 m
or less, our sample includes 16 sightings (6%) of this kind (of which 3 are at 50 m or less), plus 7
sightings (2%) judged “close” without further clarification. The most remarkable testimony of this
subset comes from a witness who was a nine-year-old boy when he saw the meteoroid #1017 in
1980. Here are some excerpts of his report sent to GEIPAN in 2011:
We saw an oval, stationary, very luminous object at less than thirty meters, at about twenty meters
above one of the fields. The object flew silently and was illuminated with changing colors, from green
to orange. I was so frightened that I lay down between the seats of our Renault 16.... The object
slowly moved vertically, then sped southwards... at a speed that could be interpreted as a simple
‘disappearance.’ During this lightning acceleration, three white luminous balls escaped from the
object and followed it at the same speed.… My natural interpretation was that visitors from outer
space had landed near the house, and that this had to mean something.… Having informed myself
about the technical possibilities of such a [supersonic] aircraft in 1980…, it seems to me reasonable
to think that its origin was extraterrestrial.
In addition to the false impression of proximity, the object’s movement (stationary, then slow
vertical displacement and lightning acceleration) and observation time (1-2 minutes) are distorted.
The rest of the description is in good agreement with those of other witnesses, including the three
balls behind the main object that were mentioned several times, and leaves no doubt about the
meteoroid identification. It is noteworthy that the reconstructions provided by the witness show
the phenomenon against the sky background. The young age of the witness and his fear may have
contributed to his wrong interpretations.
The two other sightings at short distance (20 and 30 m) are less interesting because, as an exception
to the rule, the police report gives no verbatim accounts from the witnesses but only a sketchy
summary. The few characteristics given are consistent with the fireball #1667 except for the
distance. The fourth sighting (at 60-70 m, #1017) is also exceptional because the witness saw an
difference with our study is Jimenez’ inclusion of the spectacular re-entry of a Proton launcher on November 5, 1990,
which alone generated over 500 police reports. See Reference #4.
598
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
object apparently motionless, but he was driving at 40 km/h. None of the other sightings felt at
close range present any “eccentric” element, except for the use of the expression “it looked like a
flying saucer” (#1159).
In summary, in 21 of the alleged 23 close encounters, only the distance given is clearly wrong, the
other descriptive items being consistent with an atmospheric entry. The frequency of eccentric
testimonies is therefore 2/23 (9%) or 2/283 (0.7%, where 283 is the number of testimonies studied)
according to the chosen reference.26
The Many Facets of Reliability
Are witnesses reliable? A yes or no answer to this question would certainly be unwarranted, and
even trying to capture witness reliability with a single measure without further caveats would be
equally misleading, as reliability varies between practically 0 and 100% depending on the
characteristics considered. For the 12 spatial, temporal and structural characteristics we have
studied, reliability is primarily affected by three factors.
The first factor concerns whether an observer can actually know a given characteristic based on
the sensory data (column “Access” in Table 5). The spatial characteristics (altitude, distance, size,
speed) cannot be known directly except in special circumstances, such as with an object of known
size, or passing in front of a background at known distance, or seen from two places sufficiently
distant to allow a triangulation, or close enough for binocular vision to operate.27 The direction of
motion is reliable only if the object passes vertically over the witness. Apart from these special
cases, the witness reliability for the absolute spatial characteristics is a priori null. This is not a
question of reliability as such but of principle. Thus, asking a witness the height, distance, size (in
meters) or heading of an unknown object in the sky has hardly more sense than asking him its
chemical composition or its country of origin (if any). What is at stake here is not the reliability of
the observer but of the investigator or analyst.
In contrast, most other characteristics, like viewing directions, date and time, duration, aspect, and
colors, are directly accessible, at least in principle. Nonetheless, they differ in how one decides
whether a witness statement is true or false or how much it deviates from reality (column “Norm”
in Table 5). We know, for example, that atmospheric entries are visible at altitudes between about
80 and 120 km and that their duration is less than about 20 s (meteoroids) or 60 s (artificial
satellites). Even though they are rough, these values are useful references for our purpose. All
other characteristics – date, time, directions of observation, colors – vary from event to event. No
constant references being available, norms must be established for each event based on
instrumental records, expert accounts, or some form of averaging procedure (best illustrated here
by the times given by witnesses which apparently peak around the actual time of the event). In
practice, we used 3 types of norms (column “Criterion” in Table 5): (i) partly arbitrary thresholds
beyond which the witness is assumed to be in error (date, time, duration); (ii) norms fixed by the
26
Menzel (“UFOs—The Modern Myth”) gives 3 examples of eccentric testimonies following the re-entry of satellite
Zond IV on March 3, 1968. He only states that “hundreds of people made detailed reports of their sightings.”
Hartmann (“Process of Perception, Conception, and Reporting”) for the same event mentions 78 records. Thus, the
eccentricity ratio would be between 1% (if we assume 300 records) and 4%.
27
Readers interested in distance perception should refer to chapter 4 of Témoignage d’ovni et psychologie de la
perception, where Jimenez reviews the literature on this subject. See also Maugé’s chapter in this volume.
599
IV. Empirical Research
method itself (motion, trail); and (iii) norms derived from the majority (or unanimity) of witnesses
(fragmentation, colors, apparent heading). The reliability of accessible characteristics ranges from
49% to 98%, the qualitative characteristics being less reliable on average than the quantitative ones
(Table 5).
A third factor plays an important role: the number of testimonies providing data about a given
characteristic. As shown in column “Responses” of Table 5, it varies from 14% to 100% for the
characteristics studied. Characteristics with lower frequencies would be more difficult to study.
Obviously, this frequency depends on the witnesses but also on the investigators and reminds us
that the quality of the investigations could be improved, particularly for angular and distance data.
Table 5. Overview of factors involved in witness reliability for 12 characteristics
---------------------------------------------------------------------------Characteristic
Scale Access Norm
Type
Resp. Reli. Criterion
---------------------------------------------------------------------------Distance
quan no
no
zero
14%
0% Altitude
quan no
yes
zero
20%
1% - or >40 km
Heading
quan no
no
zero
52%
---------------------------------------------------------------------------Trail
logi yes
yes
intrinsic
49% 49% always present
Fragmentation
logi yes consistency majority
98% 63% majority
Color object
qual yes consistency majority
79% 77% majority
Color trail
qual yes consistency majority
27% 80% majority
---------------------------------------------------------------------------Duration
quan yes
yes+mean threshold
71% 85% ≤5 median (µ*)
Time
quan yes
mean
threshold
94% 96% ≤30 min
Date
quan yes
mean
threshold 100% 98% ≤1 day
Motion object
logi yes
yes
intrinsic
51% 98% always moving
Apparent heading quan yes consistency majority
48% 98% majority
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Characteristics studied ranked by increasing reliability and classified in 3 groups (non-accessible, accessible
qualitative and accessible quantitative). Scale, measurement scale of the characteristic: logical (true/false), quantitative
(quan) or qualitative (qual). Access, characteristic directly accessible to witnesses (at least in principle) or not. Norm,
the true value of the characteristics cannot be known by the analyst (no) or can be known approximately from the
literature on atmospheric entries (yes) or from all witnesses of the same event (based on mean or internal consistency).
Reliability type, in four categories: zero a priori, given with respect to a threshold, intrinsic to the method proposed,
or based on the majority of witnesses. Response, percentage of witnesses providing information on the characteristic.
Reliability: number of correct responses (according to the specified Criterion) out of total number of responses (nonresponses excluded, except for Trail), expressed in percent.
Based on these three factors (access, norms and report frequencies), the reliability of a
characteristic is measured by the number of correct responses (according to some specified
criterion) out of the total number of responses, expressed in percent. This reliability measure
mainly reflects the perceptual and cognitive performance of the observers but inevitably includes
a component related to the investigators and analysts.
Events with a Single Witness or Only a Few Witnesses
Can these results be applied to events of unknown origin with only one or a few witnesses, which
are the most frequent in UAP archives? If the reliability estimates of various characteristics
expressed in percent in Table 5 do not depend too closely on the specifics of atmospheric entries,
they should be applicable to the same or comparable characteristics in single-witness events, at
600
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
least as a first approximation. They indicate what would happen if the observation could be
repeated with several witnesses instead of a single one.
Conclusions
Witness reliability is not a simple concept, as it is highly dependent on the characteristics studied,
the methods used, and the expected accuracy of the results.
(i) As for all characteristics, the reliability of time indications decreases with their precision. The
less precise indication, date, is exact for 98% of witnesses; followed by time with 96% of time
estimates given with an error not exceeding 30 min and 82% not exceeding 10 min. Duration is
much more demanding; usually purely subjective, it apparently tends to be overestimated, and can
exceed 5 times the true duration for 15% of witnesses due to the long tail of its lognormal
distribution.
(ii) Indications of height and distance are grossly underestimated and are of no value unless they
are corroborated with respect to an element of the environment at known or knowable distance.
Investigators could greatly improve these indications by helping witnesses provide objective
information (e.g., angular data instead of metric data) and by using non-verbal methods to measure
them.28
(iii) Reported trajectories are unreliable but seem to be convertible into sighting directions, albeit
with a rather large uncertainty of ±45°. For azimuths, as for angular heights and other
characteristics, much better measurements could be obtained by using non-verbal methods, which
again shows that reliability is not a static notion but depends on the methods of investigation.
(iv) The qualitative details relative to structure and colors of objects (like presence of fragments
or a trail) depend in a complex way on their intrinsic visibility, and the observational skills and
sensory limitations of the witness. Obviously, many details, as shown by the example of the trail,
will not be described even when present. Other details, more frequently reported like the colors of
the main object, seem consistent across up to about 75% of witnesses; it means that the probability
for a witness to correctly report the main colors of a phenomenon is about 0.75, or equivalently
that 1/4th of hypothetical witnesses of the same event would report different colors.
(v) The reliability of the qualitative characteristics (colors, tail, fragments), which varies between
50% and 80%, appears to be lower than the reliability of the accessible quantitative characteristics
(duration, time, date, movement) which is between 80 and 98% with the chosen criteria.
Although there is considerable room for improvement in previous analyses, this five-point
summary based on a sample of atmospheric entries of meteoroids and satellites provides useful
guidelines for assessing other types of UAP events. However, further studies are needed to better
understand differences with previous studies and to estimate reliabilities of other events of longer
duration, at shorter distance, involving objects of different structure and light intensity, and with
witnesses from other countries, times and states of mind (for example: frightened).
28
I give examples of such methods in Reference #14. Non-verbal methods are also advocated by Shepard (“Some
psychologically oriented techniques for the scientific investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena.”)
601
IV. Empirical Research
Acknowledgments: The author thanks Claude Poher, Alain Esterle, Jean-Jacques Velasco,
Jacques Patenet, Xavier Passot, Jean-Paul Aguttes, Thérèse Baiguet, Mary-Pierre Desvignes, and
Michaël Vaillant of CNES for their various helps, and Richard Delécolle, Claude Maugé, Bertrand
Méheust, Gilles Munsch, and Jérôme Pagès for their comments on an earlier version of this
manuscript.
References (all web articles here accessed on June 6, 2022)
1. Alessandri, Robert. “Durée des rentrées atmosphériques et des météores,” 2003.
http://univers-ovni.com/rentrees/duree.html
2. American Meteor Society, “Meteor FAQs” and “Fireballs FAQs.” http://www.amsmeteors.org/
3. Drake, Frank D. “On the Abilities and Limitations of Witnesses of UFO’s and similar
Phenomena.” In UFOs – A Scientific Debate. Edited by Carl Sagan and Thornton Page.
Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1972, pp. 123-182.
4. GEIPAN. “Rentrée atmosphérique 5 novembre 1990.”
https://www.cnes-geipan.fr/fr/cas/1990-11-01225
5. Hartmann, William K. “Process of Perception, Conception, and Reporting.” In Scientific Study
of Unidentified Flying Objects. Edited by Daniel S. Gillmor. New York: Bantam, 1969, pp.
567-590.
6. Hendry, Allan. The UFO Handbook. A Guide to Investigating, Evaluating, and Reporting UFO
Sightings. New York: Doubleday, 1979, pp. 41-44.
7. Jeanne, Simon. Méthode d’analyse statistique appliquée au réseau d’observation européen des
météores FRIPON. Doctoral thesis, Observatoire de Paris, 2020.
https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-03271177/document
8. Jimenez, Manuel. “Les phénomènes aérospatiaux non-identifiés et la psychologie de la
perception.” Note technique n° 10. Toulouse: GEPAN, CNES, 1981. See chapter 3, pp. 59102. https://www.cnes-geipan.fr/sites/default/files/note_tech_10.pdf
9. _____. Témoignage d’ovni et psychologie de la perception. Doctoral thesis, Montpellier 3
University, 1994.
10. _____. La psychologie de la perception. Paris: Flammarion, 1997.
11. Koten, P., J. Borovička, P. Spurný, H. Betlem, and S. Evans. “Atmospheric trajectories and
light curves of shower meteors.” Astronomy & Astrophysics, 428(2), 2004, pp. 683-690.
12. Menzel, Donald H. “UFOs—The Modern Myth.” In UFOs – A Scientific Debate. Edited by
Carl Sagan and Thornton Page. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1972, pp. 123182.
13. Passot, Xavier. J’ai vu un OVNI. Perceptions et réalités. Paris: Le cherche midi, 2018.
14. Rospars, Jean-Pierre. “Description du phénomène d’après une étude critique des témoignages
de Rosine et Lucille.” In Note technique n° 8. Edited by Alain Esterle. Toulouse: GEPAN,
CNES, 1981, pp. 33-69. https://www.cnes-geipan.fr/sites/default/files/note_tech_8.pdf
15. Shepard, Roger N. “Some psychologically oriented techniques for the scientific investigation
of unidentified aerial phenomena.” In Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings
before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives.
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968, pp. 223-235.
16. Wertheimer, Michael M. “Perceptual Problems.” In Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying
Objects. Edited by Daniel S. Gillmor. New York: Bantam, 1969, pp. 559-567.
602
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
V
ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACH
603
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Inside a Spaceship: Cognitive and Social Aspects of an Alien Contact
Ignacio Cabria
Abstract: The recollection by a contactee group in Spain, the Grupo Aztlán, of a physical
experience of alien contact is analyzed as a process of psychosocial construction.
Keywords: Grupo Aztlán, Physical contact, Hypnosis, Psychosocial construction of memory,
Process
Introduction
Considered the most influential contactee group in Spain, Grupo Aztlán reported in 1992 an
experience of physical contact with aliens inside a spacecraft. This article analyzes the process of
psychosocial construction of the memory, which follows a pattern that the group had worked on
repeatedly in previous “energy level” experiences. The members of Grupo Aztlán gave coherence
to ambiguous perceptions and sensations according to a cognitive-symbolic complex that contains
a significant belief in extraterrestrial contact. The ontology of the event is culturally determined:
the encounter inside the spacecraft is a prefabricated and shared model in the UFO subculture as
an expression of the numinous and of the sacred, and of an announcement of a promise of salvation.
One of the phenomena that most challenges the understanding of those of us who have studied
alien contact groups is that of “physical contact” experiences inside a spacecraft, such as those
claimed to have been experienced by the most important contactee group in Spain: Grupo Aztlán.
This review of the experience is based on the fieldwork I carried out with the group between 2002
and 2003 for a thesis in social anthropology (Cabria, 2003). In it, I contemplated different
aspects—historical, sociological, and cultural—of their trajectory of alien contact, as well as the
cognitive aspects of learning and elaboration of the doctrine and experiences of telepathic and
physical contact with “Elder Brothers” from space. It is this last aspect that I want to focus on.
Grupo Aztlán was born in 1975 as a small circle of friends, and was throughout its life a closed
group of between five and twelve members until its dissolution in 2005. At the beginning, they
were inspired by the alien contact of the Peruvian Sixto Paz and his companions, which began in
January 1974 and gave rise to an international contactee movement called Misión RAMA. As a
result of the dissemination of the Peruvian group’s experience by the Spanish journalist Juan José
Benítez in the book OVNIs: SOS a la humanidad (Benítez, 1975), groups of UFO contact seekers
spread throughout Spain in 1975 claiming association with Misión RAMA. The doctrine of this
movement was focused on the messianic expectation of salvation by some cosmic guides who, in
the face of a great world holocaust, would save a part of humanity on other planets, with the hope
of returning in the future to regenerate Earth. Misión RAMA’s message was from its beginnings a
classical millenarian movement.
In Madrid in 1975, two couples who knew each other and who had read Benítez’s book and knew
what the Misión RAMA groups in the cities of León and Bilbao were practicing, began to try their
own contact by means of the Ouija board. This technique was at that time in vogue as entertainment
among young people for spiritualist communication. Along with other friends, these two couples
then formed Grupo Aztlán. This group soon became critical of the personalities that dominated in
605
V. Anthropological Approach
Misión RAMA because of its hierarchical centralization based in Peru, while they were an
ensemble that avoided a defined leadership. They also rejected the ritualism that dominated the
practices of the Misión RAMA groups. For example, two large gatherings of Spanish groups were
convened in the countryside in 1979 and 1980 in the province of León, to fulfill the rituals of
assigning cosmic names and receiving cesium crystals, a kind of baptism into contact. Although
Grupo Aztlán was invited, they did not attend. Instead, they decided to follow a route of their own,
without the ritualism that they considered artificial.
From 1981 onwards, while the notion of alien contact in general was entering a crisis and groups
were disbanding, Grupo Aztlán was able to consolidate itself by emphasizing group work, in a
silent way, following a very personal metaphysical path. While the Spanish Misión RAMA groups
had stuck to the same extraterrestrial guides with whom Sixto Paz connected, Grupo Aztlán had
an exclusive alien guide, Acael, “a human being of level 4.3” on the universal evolutionary scale.
Throughout the 1980s, the group opened up to a new stage of contact, consisting of receiving
through the Ouija board “teachings” on different subjects, which were imparted to them by
different cosmic guides. Instead of remaining with the millenarian doctrines of Sixto Paz about an
apocalypse that would regenerate the surviving humanity, Grupo Aztlán evolved in the 1990s
towards the elaboration of techniques of personal growth, while experiencing life in a small group
as a seed from which to build a new humanity.
Grupo Aztlán was always faithful to the technique of alien contact through the Ouija board,
because to them it seemed more “objective” than the channeling by a single person of the messages
by automatic writing, as the Misión RAMA groups did. As Grupo Aztlán members explained to
me, by requiring several people to place a finger on the glass in the Ouija board, the communication
was less prone to individual “mentalism” being introduced into the message. They knew that they
were consciously moving the cup, but believed they were channeling a message they received from
the guides telepathically in their minds. One of the group would write down the guide’s
communications. The information would then be discussed by the group, who would ask questions
of the guide, in an ongoing dialogue. The working sessions were an interaction from which
consensual learning and a shared narrative emerged. The “teachings” in different subjects received
from the guides made up several books.
Seeking Physical Contact
The night watch of UFOs was from the seventies onwards a popular activity of UFO groups, which
has continued to this day in massive sessions known in Spain as “Alertas Ovni” (UFO Alerts), in
which the media participate with enthusiasm. Waiting for UFOs was also a central point in Misión
RAMA’s contactee practice. Shortly after establishing alien communication by automatic writing
in January 1974, Sixto Paz and his companions asked their guide Oxalc for physical proof that the
contact was real. The guide Oxalc summoned them to the Chilca desert, south of Lima, where they
observed a luminous disc descending close to where they stood. Months later, in another outing,
Sixto and other companions said they had a vision of their guide Oxalc and experienced a
translation to Ganymede (a moon of Jupiter) through a luminous bubble, or interdimensional
gateway, called xendra. There they saw the twenty-four elders who led the Confederation of
Planets of the Galaxy. Six months later, they had a physical encounter with the guides inside a
spaceship where a doomsday message about the future of humanity was imparted to them.
606
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Following the inspiration of the Peruvians, the Spanish groups of Misión RAMA included from
the beginning among their activities the UFO watch in the field, following an appointment relayed
by their guides through automatic writing. Surprising stories of encounters can be found in the
biographies of those who participated in these “alerts.” Not wanting to seem inferior, Grupo Aztlán
repeatedly asked Acael for visual confirmation of their telepathic contact, but the guide repeatedly
replied, “YOU ARE NOT READY.” Curiously, this was the same answer that Sixto Paz had also
received in the beginning. The physical contact became a real obsession for Grupo Aztlán, until
eventually they managed to get some appointments for UFO sightings at a certain time of the night
and in a specific place. On those occasions, in the countryside or in the mountains, they saw lights
in the sky and experienced special sensations, but they expected more. Back home, they required
an explanation from their guide as to why the ships had not appeared, while the Misión RAMA
people had recounted so many extraordinary sightings. In one of those communications, Acael
gave them a surprising answer: the spaceships had been there and had tried to lower their
vibrational level, but the group had not been able to perceive them. In addition, he warned them of
the danger of too premature a contact, saying: “WHAT HAPPENS TO A DEVICE DESIGNED
FOR 75 VOLTS IF WE PLUG IT INTO A 1,000-VOLT CURRENT?”
Over time, the Grupo Aztlán members had some extraordinary experiences of being lifted up into
a spacecraft which they believed occurred on an “energetic” or “astral” level. They reported that
inside the ship, in a large circular room with illuminated walls, they met their guides and the
twenty-four white-robed, hooded elders. The language in which these episodes were reported does
not, however, give us much certainty about their factual reality. According to some of their
testimonies, these contacts took place on the threshold between the real and the imaginary, between
the conscious and the unconscious, between the mundane and the numinous, a liminal environment
between our ordinary world and that of altered consciousness. But for the members, they were
significant and fundamental events in their evolution as seekers of a spiritual path.
The most complete experience, which they consider to be a real “physical contact” with their
guides, took place on the island of Tenerife on the night of January 25, 1992. This event, one of
the most remarkable in the history of Spanish contactees, is the subject of this article.
Experience Inside a Spaceship
Following an appointment given by their guide, five members of Grupo Aztlán travelled to the
island of Tenerife in expectation of the long-awaited physical encounter. On the night of January
24-25, on the mountain, lying in a circle on the grass, they meditated waiting for the contact. At
the appointed time, a strange cloud of bluish light hovered over them and they saw flashes of light
illuminating the surrounding hills. At that moment they felt that something special had happened,
without knowing exactly what.
Meeting three days later in a contact séance, Acael told them: “YOU LIVED AN EXPERIENCE
INSIDE OUR SHIP” (Grupo Aztlán, 2001, p. 300). He then clarified that they were transferred in
the blink of an eye to the physical meeting in the ship, in which they analyzed the group’s program
up to that moment. In the following nights the Aztlán members had dreams in which they
remembered snippets of strange images. In hypnosis sessions, led by one of the member and by
some specialists linked to ufology, strange recollections began to surface. For two months they
reconstructed the memory of that night, which they shared in order to contrast their different
607
V. Anthropological Approach
personal experiences. The following is the group’s conscious reconstruction of the event on the
mountain from “recovered memories”: The bluish cloud above them was a ship from another
world, from which a column of light descended. Then they felt being pulled by the head and saw
themselves ascending the “solid light beam,” just as they had felt in other experiences in “energy
level.” Again, they found themselves in a large circular room where the walls seemed to have a
light of their own. There they saw several tall men and women with long blond hair who were
manipulating panels and monitors without paying attention to the visitors. In an adjoining room
were the same old men in white hooded robes that they had seen before. An elder with a white
beard touched their foreheads and they suddenly found themselves on a journey into the past,
where they came to understand how their lives have been programmed. They then heard a voice
within them saying, “When you leave here, you will bear the stamp of consciousness,” and the old
man encouraged them to continue working on the path of self-improvement. It was in that moment
that they were able to see Acael “physically for the first time.” He was tall, very blond, and with
slanted blue eyes, just as they had seen him in their previous experiences on another level of reality.
There were also the other masters, the ones who had accompanied them on their learning path for
so many years. The group received from them a recharge of energy in their brains, in a replay of
past sensations, and finally they descended through the light beam until they were back lying in
the meadow.
After this experience in the Canary Islands, the group had another experience in an energy or astral
level in which they descended to an “undersea base,” where they attended an assembly of the
Confederation of Worlds of the Galaxy. But this is not part of this article.
Perception and Cognition in a Collective Experience
The “physical encounter” in Tenerife was narrated to me by each of the five participants with such
a degree of affirmation and emotional charge that I would have to accept that it was in some way
an experience that was really lived. In my view, the key to understand this contact lies in analyzing
the socio-cognitive aspects of the observation, that is, both those of perception and cognition and
the form of socialized construction of memory. The members of Grupo Aztlán followed a typical
pattern of search for meaning described by French (2015) in abduction experiences. The Tenerife
encounter was the end result of a process of interpretation, consisting of the following distinct
moments: the anomalous perception on the mountain, the feeling of “missing time,” the messages
from the guide Acael in Ouija sessions confirming the encounter, the dreams in which they see
snippets of meaningful images, the recovery of memories through hypnosis, and finally the
elaboration of a common narrative about an encounter inside a spaceship.
Lynn and Kirsch (2006) have pointed to a series of procedures that can increase the risk of false
memories and encouraging fantasy and imagination in abduction cases: hypnosis, relaxation,
guided imagery, dream interpretation, and free association. They propose a pathway to false
memory creation that follows a series of steps, which I would summarize like this: first, a person
is predisposed to accept the idea that certain puzzling or “inexplicable” experiences are signs of
an abduction; second, the person seeks the help of a hypnotist with a familiarity with the UFO
subject; third, the hypnotist frames the experience in terms of an abduction narrative. Also of great
importance is the role of pre-existing culturally derived beliefs that “reflect basic elements of a
UFO contact script that are part and parcel of our culture, as represented in movies, books, tabloids,
and cartoons.” This framework is common to the pathway followed by Grupo Aztlán.
608
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
At first, we can consider how the cloud that the witnesses saw above them came to be interpreted
as an alien spaceship, an image loaded with quasi-religious overtones, as a sacred space in which
communion with the divinities represented by the space beings takes place. From early studies on
the psychosocial factors of UFO observations it was argued that our perception tends to interpret
ambiguous stimuli in ways that fit and support prior knowledge, and when the belief system is
strong it is likely to be defended even against logic, in such a way that an ambiguous event is
assimilated into the pre-existing belief. Furthermore, we live organized in social systems and have
a tendency to hold beliefs consistent with those around us. Robert Hall (1972) pointed out,
concerning collective observations: “In fact I would find it puzzling and behaviorally anomalous
if witnesses to a dramatic, ambiguous event promptly interpreted it in a way that lay outside their
previous beliefs and contrary to the beliefs of others around them” (p. 216).
In the Grupo Aztlán outings, they saw UFOs and perceived other visual stimuli that they
considered significant within the framework of the contactee subculture in which they participated.
On several occasions they saw a bluish cloud descending above them and flashes of light
illuminating the hills, accompanied by strange sensations. The group came to the encounter with
expectant attention to any anomaly, and we can understand that in these circumstances they did
not identify their perceptions as known natural phenomena, that is, they did not establish a
connection between the visual information and the contents of their memory. We can posit that in
this case the cognitive system of the witnesses makes a representation of a different reality, an
encounter with cosmic Elder Brothers, in accordance with the contemporary alien myth. Let us see
how the human conceptual device would operate this displacement of the interpretation of the
visual phenomenon to perceive it as an otherworldly craft. We know that every visual stimulus is
made to fit into a category of experience, but in the case of an anomalous observation the
identification is not satisfied, and this triggers the search for meaning. According to Dan Sperber’s
(1974) model, the cognitive process of interpreting an anomalous primary stimulus shifts to our
symbolic device, which in an evocative process reviews all that we have consciously or
unconsciously learned from popular culture, in this case from the UFO and contactee subculture.
The symbolic interpretation of the anomalous stimulus as a UFO worked for the members of
Aztlán as a representation system, adding a whole set of meanings of a spiritual communication
with superior beings from the cosmos. The experience was, ultimately, an interpretation.
The fact that we are considering a collective experience makes it all the more relevant for the
understanding of the socio-cognitive process that took place in the months after the “encounter”
in the field. As William Dewan (2010) has pointed out, “different individuals sharing the same
experience will conceptualize it similarly or differently depending on the schemas they have in
place. Rather than a litmus test for the veracity of the event, an analysis of shared experiences
better serves to locate the cultural schemas witnesses rely upon as well as to uncover the narrative
streamlining of their memories” (p. 290).
Apart from the group’s anomalous perceptions in the field, significant dreams during the night,
and images recovered under hypnosis, the decisive element in the construction of the story of the
alien encounter was the social interaction of the members in work sessions, in which the messages
of Acael were channeled through the Ouija board and later interpreted, debated, and agreed upon.
609
V. Anthropological Approach
All these stories are loaded with religious content expressed in science-fiction imagery. From a
cognitive point of view, the creation of these concepts involves, to use Boyer’s (2001) terms, a
series of systems of inferences, or mental structures, that process and organize the scattered pieces
of information to compose what we call knowledge, and these thought processes are carried out
through the filter of culture, so that experiences are given a culturally adapted interpretation. In the
story of Grupo Aztlán’s physical contact, there is no doubt that the images of the ship’s interior—
with its light-emitting walls, the crew members busy at their panels, the quasi-angelic guides, the
white-robed elders—are all science-fiction stereotypes that the group assimilated from Sixto Paz’s
account of his alien encounters, but which are typical plots and iconographies in the world of alien
contact in general.
Recalling the Experience through Hypnosis
Numerous authors have already demonstrated that hypnosis is a socio-cognitive mechanism
capable of creating fantasies shaped by a cultural framework, socially generated expectations, and
previous beliefs, especially when the hypnotist is a person exposed to the ufological milieu. Robert
Baker (1996) pointed out that one of the effects of hypnosis is confabulation, the tendency to
confuse reality with fiction and to fill in memory gaps with imaginary details. Baker summarizes
this tendency like this: “Hypnosis is mostly and primarily a turning on of the imagination and a
royal road to illusion, delusion, and fantasy land” (p. 177). As Newman and Baumeister (1996)
have indicated, “hypnosis has been shown to be a potent source of spurious memories that can be
influenced by the expectations, beliefs, and motivations of both the hypnotist and the subject.” The
testimony of Grupo Aztlán members elicited through hypnosis follows a predictable pattern set by
ufology, science-fiction, and contactee narratives.
As Clark and Loftus (1996) have remarked, “in the case of space alien memories and other
hypnotically induced retrieval, the mental product often involves strong visual imagery. These
visual images might persist over time.” The visual imagery of the contact itself, from the quasiangelic masters to the saucer paraphernalia that serves as a stage (the flying disc, the absorbing
solid light-beam, the circular room in which the walls glow, the control panels), all emerge in the
hypnosis sessions. Duncan Day (1998) highlights that “hypnosis does not contribute new or unique
information toward a greater understanding of this phenomenon. It does produce a reliable amount
of error and confabulation” (p. 170). Also, Susan Clancy (2005) has exposed that “under hypnosis,
people who wonder if they were abducted are lulled into a suggestible state and asked to imagine
what might have happened” (p. 71). The same applies to the specific case of the UFO contact of
Grupo Aztlán. Any memory that emerges through the recalling process is also likely to be taken
as evidence of their alien contact. Let’s just pinpoint that, during the hypnotic regressions of Grupo
Aztlán members, certain questions guided by stereotypes about UFOs and abductions could have
led to answers in accordance with their expectations and what is to be understood as a typical UFO
encounter. The incontrovertible fact is that hypnosis may have shaped vivid fantasies that have
been interpreted as memories of a real event.
Searching for Meaning in Anomalous Experiences
Just as an abundant scientific literature has arisen in the last three decades on the psychological
and cognitive aspects of UFO abductions, the contactee phenomenon has hardly been studied.
Some authors have taken into account the similarities in the discourses of abductees and
contactees. What differentiates an abduction from a messianic type of contact like that of Grupo
610
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Aztlán’s in the process of retrieving supposed memories during hypnosis, is that the former
produces terrifying images while the latter produces expressions of communion with entities
clothed in an aura of the sacred. Nevertheless, there is a salient trait of abductees that approaches
Grupo Aztlán’s experience, and it is, according to Susan Clancy (2005), their desire to find
meaning to their lives. Not only does the abduction experience explain disturbing emotions; it also
serves to facilitate a coherent narrative for their lives. One sign that abductions and alien contact
are similar problems has been given by Clancy when she asserts that all the subjects of an
abduction that she investigated felt “changed” because of their experience. Astonishingly, after
what one could consider an ordeal, they felt improved and better people.
In a study of abductees and people who reported past lives, McNally (2012) found that, although
the abductees’ experiences were terrifying, they later put them into perspective, and “they said
their encounters with aliens had deepened their spiritual awareness of the universe, making them
glad that there were powerful beings out there that cared for us and for the fate of the earth.” In
addition, McNally discovered among people who claimed to have lived past lives (like Aztlán
members experienced aboard the ship), that “past lifers likewise suggest a quasi-spiritual
motivation.” Some abduction experiences have come to be loaded with religious content similar
to that of typical contactee phenomena. In this sense I find it surprising that social and behavioral
scientists have not gone into more study of the cognitive aspects of contactee accounts of physical
encounters with space masters, especially when they are, as in the case I am describing, group
experiences.
Collective Construction of the Contact Experience
We know that the memory of past events is a reconstruction in which the idiosyncrasy of the
subject, the expectations, and socio-cultural factors are ingrained. But the case we are studying is
more challenging to understand, as it is a group experience, that is, the composition of a memory
reached collectively through a process of voluntary recall of significant contents. We do not have
immediate testimonies of the experience on the mountain, neither recorded nor written, that
describe the perception of each participant at the time. What we do have is a shared narrative,
which coincides as a final consensual elaboration of a series of independent memories—or
fantasies. Individual experiences were amalgamated in group interaction to compose a common
narrative with a transcendent meaning. It was, therefore, a process of social construction of the
experience.
The group sought to explain and give meaning to the event by attributing an external
(extraterrestrial) authorship and an intention (a mission to accomplish), which we can understand
as a mechanism of “attribution of causality.” This is also the case with the “knowledge” that makes
up the doctrine elaborated by Grupo Aztlán over the years, which came only in part from the
masters’ messages, as the whole narrative was elaborated in group work sessions. Moreover, the
origin of that knowledge is to be found in numerous works from the history of Western esotericism,
which have been disseminated by the media and shared in the ufology field. However, the group
attributed the “information” to the aliens. In the same way, the group attributed an external
causality even to the group’s strategic decisions that gave meaning to their lives, brought coherence
to their quest, and affirmed them in the relevance of their mission.
611
V. Anthropological Approach
But the physical encounter that midnight on January 25 was not an isolated event at one moment
in time. It was in fact the result of a long process by which the collective consciousness of an
“extraterrestrial encounter” was generated. This process had several stages. It began with the
previous appointment with the guide Acael for the physical manifestation of the spaceships, which
led several members of the group to travel to Tenerife with the expectation of contact. On the
mountain, at the appointed time, they had strange sensations and visions that they could not
interpret. Later they realized that in their memory of that night there was “missing time,” in
ufological language, a few minutes that they could not account for. In the following nights, each
of them had strange dreams, which they shared with each other in work sessions. In this way the
experience on the mountain took on meaning for all of them. An expectation was generated about
what they might have experienced unconsciously during the time they could not remember. They
knew from their ufology readings that there are a series of signs of having suffered an abduction,
among them the sensation of “missing time” and strange dreams. In contact with Acael by Ouija
board, he confirmed that they had been inside a spaceship. Then they tried to unveil what had
happened. For two months they carried out hypnosis sessions led by one of the members and other
experts related to ufology, during which they extracted memories of those missing minutes. Words
and images emerged, which they interpreted as hidden memories of their presence inside a ship
from another world.
In the group work sessions, collectively interpreting the guide’s messages and “hidden memories,”
the physical encounter took on “existence.” The result of this memory-making process faithfully
followed the model of contact that the group had assimilated from so many accounts of contactees,
especially Sixto Paz, but also the script that they themselves had worked on through successive
field experiences in an “energy or astral level.” Finally, the group sanctioned the reality of contact
into a coherent narrative of extraterrestrial contact.
In addition to the process of collectively crafting the memory and agreeing on a narrative, we find
in it a series of conventions about an encounter with otherworldly beings that are widely shared
among UFO fans. This narrative is faithful to a theoretical and symbolic tradition, which conforms
to a series of standardized motifs in the New Age and UFO contact alternative cultures. The
depiction of the encounter inside a spacecraft is laden with religious symbolism, even if it is
presented in the trappings of technology and popular culture. Being absorbed in a tube of light is
reminiscent of traditional religious themes as much as of abduction stories or science-fiction films.
The interior of the ship flooded with light streaming from the walls is a cliché theme of ufology,
suggesting a magical place, a representation of the power of science with religious and folklore
overtones. The imagery of the cosmic masters as quasi-angelic figures, manifestations of messianic
beings or divine messengers, is reminiscent of icons of consumer culture such as the alien Klaatu,
from the film The Day the Earth Stood Still.
The members of Grupo Aztlán gave coherence to ambiguous perceptions and sensations in the
mountain according to a cognitive-symbolic complex that is significant from the belief in alien
contact. The ontology of the event is culturally determined: the encounter inside the spacecraft is
a prefabricated and shared model in the UFO subculture as an expression of the numinous, of the
sacred, announcing a promise of salvation.
612
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Conclusion
The physical encounter with the Grupo Aztlán masters aboard a spacecraft was the conscious
elaboration of a consensual “memory,” which was composed from a series of elements: a longawaited expectation, sensations experienced on the mountain, “memories recovered” through
hypnosis, and a narrative socially generated in the group work. Expectations, visual stimuli, and
imagination were made to merge perfectly into a meaningful whole: a physical experience in which
a mystical communication took place with superior beings. The alien guides and elders transmitted
to Grupo Aztlán a mission that gave meaning to their own life experience and metaphysical quest.
Bibliography
Baker, Robert. Hidden Memories: Voices and Visions from Within. New York: Prometheus Books,
1996.
Benítez, Juan José. OVNIs: SOS a la humanidad. Barcelona: Plaza y Janés, 1975.
Boyer, Pascal. Religion Explained. The Human Instincts that Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors.
London: Heinnemann, 2001.
Cabria, Ignacio. “Mesianismo y milenarismo en contactados con extraterrestres.” Antropologies,
No. 2, Barcelona, 1989.
_____. Valores, símbolos y representaciones en una experiencia de contacto extraterrestre: El
Grupo Aztlán. Research work to fulfill requirements of the Diploma de Estudios
Avanzados en Antropología Social, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, 2003.
Clancy, Susan A. Abducted. How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Clark, Steven, and Elizabeth Loftus. “The Construction of Space Alien Abduction Memories.”
Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1996.
Day, Duncan J. A. Psychological Correlates of the UFO Abduction Experience: The Role of
Beliefs and Indirect Suggestions on Abduction Accounts Obtained During Hypnosis. Ph.D.
Thesis, Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montreal, 1998.
Dewan, William J. Occam’s Beard: Belief, Disbelief, and Contested Meanings in American
Ufology. PhD Thesis in American Studies, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 2010.
French, Christopher. “Close Encounters of the Psychological Kind.” The Psychologist, vol. 28,
October 2015.
Grupo Aztlán. Los manuscritos de Geenom I. Terrestres: esta es la historia. Madrid: Proyecto
Boreal, S.L., 2001 (original edition 1993).
_____ Los manuscritos de Geenom II. El hombre célula cósmica. Madrid: Proyecto Aridane, S.L.,
1994.
Hall, Robert. “Sociological Perspectives on UFO Reports.” In Carl Sagan and Thornton Page
(editors). UFOs: A Scientific Debate. Ithaca (N.Y.) and London (U.K.): Cornell University
Press, 1972.
Lynn, Steven Jay, and Irving I. Kirsch. “Alleged Alien Abductions: False Memories, Hypnosis,
and Fantasy Proneness.” Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2006.
McNally, Richard J. “Explaining ‘Memories’ of Space Alien Abduction and Past Lives: An
Experimental Psychopathology Approach.” Journal of Experimental Psychopathology,
Vol. 3, No. 1, 2012.
Newman, Leonard S., and Roy F. Baumeister. “Toward an Explanation of the UFO Abduction
Phenomenon: Hypnotic Elaboration, Extraterrestrial Sadomasochism, and Spurious
Memories.” Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1996.
613
V. Anthropological Approach
Sperber, Dan. Le Symbolisme en général, Paris: Hermann, 1974 (English version : Rethinking
Symbolism. Cambridge UP, 1975)
614
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Alien Big Cats and UFO Testimonies: Similarities and Questions
Frédéric Dumerchat
They all agreed that it was a huge creature, luminous, ghostly
and spectral. I have cross-examined these men, one of them a
hard-headed countryman, one a farrier, and one a moorland
farmer, who all tell the same story of this dreadful apparition,
exactly corresponding to the hell-hound of the legend.
Arthur Conan Doyle1
Abstract: I describe a long inquiry about an elusive puma in France. All the testimonies, ideas,
words, and sources have been treated with a complete neutrality. I observe that apparitions of
Alien Big Cats always obey the same scenario. I remind the reader of cryptozoology’s basis and
I compare cryptozoology with ufology. The problem of testimonies is fundamental for these two
research areas. I evoke the links between parasciences and sciences and address the fact that we
live in a new world where testimonies about ABCs, UFOs, or parapsychological phenomena can
find a place. If ABCs haunt the countryside, wild and exotic animals invade or are introduced in
the cities and the natural environment. More and more technological artefacts travel the sky and
space. Like in the novels of Philip K. Dick, in our world, fiction belongs to reality.
Keywords: Animal, Alien Big Cat, Controversy, Cryptozoology, Cryptid, Legend, Parascience,
Parapsychology, Rumor, Testimony, Ufology, Witness
The Snow Leopard in the Himalayas, the Hippopotamus in Colombia, the Boars in Hong
Kong, and the Puma in the North of France
Writer Sylvain Tesson accompanied wildlife photographers Vincent Munier and Marie Amiguet
when they made a documentary about the snow leopard (Panthera uncia). In the Himalayas, in
Tibet at an altitude of about 4,000 meters in very difficult conditions, the main objective of their
trek was to observe, photograph, and film a snow leopard. It’s a vulnerable species--only around
4,000 are left, and it’s very difficult to approach them.
They were successful, giving rise to a book (Tesson, 2021) and a documentary (Amiguet and
Munier, 2021). Tesson talked about it as “an apparition” when he located it. “We knew that it
prowled. Sometimes, I thought it was just a rock or just a cloud.” (Tesson, p. 126). In Iraqi
Kurdistan, another kind of leopard is also threatened (Panthera pardus saxicolor) and is
defended with great difficulty by Hana Ridha (Suleiman, 2021) like many other animals of the
planet. Some leopards can become ghost animals in the future.
In Colombia, famous drug trafficker Pablo Escobar kept in his huge Hacienda Nápoles a lot of
exotic species, including hippopotami (Hippopotamus amphibius) from Africa, one male and
three females. After his death, these animals were freed. In 2019, 69 hippopotami were counted;
they were perfectly adapted to their new environment, but this created many problems. So the
Colombian government decided to sterilize them (Herzeberg, 2021). In Hong Kong, in 2022, like
in other metropolises or towns, wild boar created increased problems, where they walk around
1 The Hound of the Baskervilles, London, Penguin Books, 1988, p. 27.
615
V. Anthropological Approach
even in broad daylight. In this case, some of the people reacted against the authorities who
wanted to kill the boars (de Changy, 2022).
Between October and December 2021, a wild feline was observed in northern France
(département of Pas-de-Calais). Several witnesses watched the animal, which was identified as a
puma (Puma concolor). The media, particularly the regional newspapers, followed the story. The
préfect (representing the state in the département) and the gendarmerie (police of rural areas and
cities) took the information seriously. An important police presence was developed to find it:
gendarmes, a vet, a helicopter, and volunteers with animal protection associations. They wanted
to catch it, or kill it if it was dangerous. An internet petition (with 60,000 signatures) asked that
the animal had to be caught alive. The scenario is well known and we will find it again. The
puma disappeared and nobody talked about it anymore (see internet: Puma dans le Nord).
This puma may be one of the Alien Big Cats (ABCs) or phantom felines, in France called félinsmystère. But they are closely related to three other examples: leopard, hippopotamus, and boar.
These are known animals which are sometimes very difficult to see, and exotic beasts which
became established in biotopes far away from their native countries, stir up controversy with the
acceleration of globalization. Furthermore, the animals often stir up debate because of the
important change of mentality towards them connected with the great scientific progress about
their cognitive and emotional abilities. The current problem for many people, in rich countries, is
only to protect and save the animals. In the media there are often reports about abolishing
hunting and giving up eating meat.
The larger species has been known for longer, but the dwarf hippopotamus (Hexaprotolas
liberiensis) has been documented by Europeans only since 1848-1849. Its nocturnal habits and
its life in the forest, in western Africa, kept it out of recognition. In Madagascar, two kinds of
dwarf hippopotamus disappeared around the 10th century, very probably as a result of human
activity. It has been reported as living but no evidence was found until the 20th century.
Cryptozoologists and others are especially interested in these animals that could have existed and
they used reports from people who had seen them. This is similar to ufologists, who study UFOs
and their witnesses, as well as to parapsychologists. The works of these three parasciences, as
they are usually called, are excluded from the official sciences. Generally, these sciences have a
tendency to refute or neglect the reports from these fields of research or to criticize them for
voicing theories that have to do with the subjects of these three parasciences.
The Elusive Puma in the Forest of Chizé, an Investigation (1995-2004)
Between 1996 and 2004, Philippe Véniel and I followed the tracks of an animal identified as a
puma (Dumerchat and Véniel, 2005). All the quotations below are from the book, and it’s
possible to hear the tape recording (CERDO). It appeared suddenly in our region, therefore
exciting our interest. We made a long ethnographical study by meeting a lot of people, men
(mostly) and women of all ages and different social categories. We took notes, recorded, and
took photographs when we could. There were those who saw the puma, others who didn’t
believe in its existence, local journalists, gendarmes, and other official personnel, specially ONF
workers (National Forest Office) and ONC workers (Hunting Forest Office, now Biodiversity
Office) who played an important role in the hunt for the presumed feline. It happened that some
of the professionals could not or would not be interviewed.
616
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Our investigation expanded to encompass what women and men, living far away from the forest,
could tell us. We read everything about the feline and we watched the rare television pictures
about it (this was before the internet), in particular in the local media, two daily newspapers,
which followed and maintained the adventures of the puma. The regional newspapers and now
the internet have played an important role in the spreading of these stories. We were allowed to
consult administration documents about the beast, notably the gendarmerie file, the reports from
the veterinary services, and the report from an American hunter.
Our approach was to immediately establish a symmetry between all those who were involved in
this event while observing a strict neutrality in their reports, such as in the controversy that arose
immediately with the mentioned hypothesis about the puma.
The puma was supposed to have haunted for two years the state-owned forest of Chizé, in an
area of 2,500 hectares, and also 3,500 hectares close to the forest of Aulnay, bordering on the
département of Charente-Maritime. There is a zoo with animals of European fauna now called
Zoodyssée (formerly Zoorama) and a center for animal biological studies funded by CNRS
(National Center for Scientific Research). At that time, at this center, there was an international
seminar on biodiversity and the species’ survival. The announcement of the puma’s presence
made everyone laugh, according to a witness among the participants. Between 1952 and 1967,
the forest was occupied by an American camp, a munitions depot. Some buildings of the camp
had been reused by the zoo and the center. We are thus not in a natural place, but in an area that
is controlled by state agents. The forest and its surroundings are very sparsely populated.
Agriculture is still an important economic activity in an open field landscape around the forest. It
has always been a place to go for a walk or visit the zoo.
It all began on October 18, 1995, when a group of hunters observed a strange animal. André
Abellard, one of the hunters, told us: “It’s not a calf, it seems to be a lioness… because it had no
mane like a male… There were four or five of us. We took the binoculars and we all saw it!” The
ONF was quickly informed. Bruno de la Chapelle, the person in charge, noted footprints,
identified as the tracks of a puma after the plaster cast of the tracks was analyzed by a researcher
with the Paris Natural History Museum. At this point there was general mobilization; Prefecture
in Niort (administrative center of the département), gendarmes, ONC, and ONF were ready to
look for it. The forest was surrounded and driving was forbidden to everyone except for the
officials.
The authorities, starting with the prefecture, believed in the existence of a puma in the forest.
The affair was immediately covered by the regional and national media (above all regional
Nouvelle République du Centre-Ouest and Courrier de l’Ouest), but only the regional news and a
regional television channel (FR 3) spoke about it over time. A lot of methods were used: patrols,
night and day observations, helicopter, watchtowers, and lures, including a female puma as it had
been decided that the puma in the forest was male. In 1997, they brought in Rowdy MacBride, a
hunter from the USA who was specialized in this kind of capture. He came with his pack of
dogs. He didn’t find the beast and expressed in his final report how he was skeptical about its
existence. The evanescent puma had cost the French state a lot of money.
617
V. Anthropological Approach
The closing of the forest was the main problem because of the cost and the loss of tranquility.
Most of the inhabitants were against it, even if a lot of them didn’t call the presence of the puma
into question but denied its dangerousness. Animal Rights organizations (e.g., Brigitte Bardot’s)
intervened and asked that it not be killed. Unless it was attacking people, the official orders were
to neutralize it with rifles equipped with hypodermic darts. Ségolène Royal, an important
politician at this time, deputy of the district, who had been Minister of the Environment, played a
decisive role in the argument for the reopening of the forest, and she was not alone. Thanks to
her intervention at the National Assembly, the forest re-opened in 1997. This became national
news.
Testimonies
Does it exist? Is it an escaped animal? These are the two fundamental questions that came up
from the beginning. There were several testimonies of sightings; we collected some of them and
some were published by the press or have been noted by the gendarmes. Here are some short
examples of testimonies:
Roland Dodin, retired, who was cutting wood and sat on his tractor: “… it was in winter (January
or February 1999, around 9:00-9:30 pm)… it cut in front of me… it came out of a wood… it
went two hundred meters, just one color, the same color, dark brown… rather big, as big as a
table, bigger than a dog, than a German shepherd… I saw it very close, it surprised me, 15
meters… completely surprised, I knew that it existed… it disappeared and ran away always at
the same pace...” It walked 200 meters, passing from one wood to another. Mr. Dodin put twigs
on the tracks, he wanted to call the ONF but he didn’t. He thought it was not dangerous, it broke
free and finally it went into the forest. His wife told us that he was moved by this presence. He
didn’t talk about it, because he was afraid that the media would pass him off as a weird man.
Marie-Gabrielle Dubreuil drove on a road through the forest going to her work, a route that she
had taken for thirty years. She stopped, watched it for three minutes when it was 10 or 15 meters
away. It was in 1998 or 1999 and in February. She just thought that it was a roe deer, she saw
them often, and also boars. She was very interested by animals. “This animal stops… it turns and
looks at me… Ah this is the puma!… I found it marvelous, I was astounded in front of it… it
was ‘fire color,’ rather tall (one meter)...” She stood and looked at it until it went away. She went
back home and told her husband, who then faxed B. de La Chapelle. She was at the same time
both admiring and afraid. As the puma was not afraid, she thought that it was domesticated.
Theo Baron is one of the seven hunters who gave the alarm. One of them saw the beast in
November 1995. At first he thought it might be a fox, then a calf, but the binoculars showed
neither was the case. It would be a lioness or a young lion because it had no mane. The hunters
watched it for five minutes walking: “… about 200 meters away, we could see it nearer thanks to
the binoculars and we saw very clearly a feline. We didn’t think of a puma at the beginning...
The puma really existed in the forest of Chizé. I am sure. I saw it with my own eyes.” It had
been talked about as a puma after an experts’ report of the tracks of the animal’s feet. B. de La
Chapelle, local manager of the ONF, saw it seven times. This affair kept him busy every day for
two years. The first sighting took place when he went back to his house in the forest: “… taking
a bend, it was here… what did I do? I looked at it like everybody did. It would have been better
to crush it, then it would have been over, the case closed… it was on the road, it crossed the road
618
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
slowly… and the last time I saw it, it’s not a secret, I saw it for more than one minute in my
telescopic rifle (a trainee was there). In the night, yes, with a spotlight. In 1996, it was, I
thought… a very, very big German shepherd, an animal between 60/70 kilos, I saw it about 100
meters away but in the telescope of a rifle, you see very well… I have seen it lying, quick,
dazzled by the headlights. I didn’t shoot, well after it turned its head and it went away.” He
thought it was a tame feline, which had been set free.
After attending a meeting about the puma, the representative of the Nature Association of the
département (who had a good knowledge of animals) also saw by night an animal as big as a
wolfhound crossing in front of her headlights. Its figure was slender, it moved its long cylindrical
tail nervously. She thought it was possibly the puma (A la découverte des mammifères des DeuxSèvres, 2017, p. 92).
The manager of the Zoorama, Daniel Guérineau, was convinced of its existence and didn’t doubt
that his daughter met the feline. He was also convinced, such as other people, for example B. de
la Chapelle, that the animal was in the forest before the hunters reported it. He got a report but
the person didn’t want to talk through fear that he would be taken for a “weirdo.” The manager
of the Biological Studies Center, at that time, he was favorable to the idea of a puma in the
forest. The gendarmerie had a file where the observations, including those from the newspapers,
were noted down very briefly. It had 22 witnesses. But of course, the gendarmes had no opinion
about the matter. And let us remember again, the authorities believed in its existence; under the
direction of the prefect, they just had to confirm the reality of the feline with all the show and the
measures they put in place for two years. It’s the principle of caution towards the human
inhabitants, which made them decide to close the forest and search.
Hypotheses
The prevailing hypothesis was that the puma belonged to an unidentified person who had set it
free in the forest and then later recovered it. This mysterious owner has never been identified. A
couple had been suspected and the gendarmes visited them. We met them. Yes, they received
felines abandoned by their owners or young felines belonging to circuses, and the couple
declared them officially. They had a tiger when we visited them, fortunately in a cage. The beast
impressed us. They never got a cougar and the one in the forest… they didn’t believe in it. As
they lived near the forest, they were not surprised to be suspects.
At the beginning the authorities investigated whether it had escaped from a zoo or a circus but
without any result. Some people thought that it was abandoned knowingly near the Zoorama or
that the feline escaped from this place. But the zoo never had a puma. Later they acquired a
cougar from another zoo to show what it really looked like. But a lynx in 1992, and a she-wolf in
1999, had escaped from there. The first one had been recaptured and the second one had been
killed. Zika stags also appeared in the forest, without anyone knowing where they came from.
One of them took refuge in the Zoorama. Other people thought to explain that it was not
captured, that it just went somewhere else, to another forest, or it had been killed and nobody
reported it. They were all just looking for answers to the fact that nobody had found the puma.
Several older people remembered that a puma, named Bill, really escaped from a circus in
summer, in the high tourist season, on the island Ré (Charente-Maritime) in 1956. The puma’s
619
V. Anthropological Approach
adventure had been intensely covered by the media, even by the international media, at that time.
It was in the end lassoed in a pine forest.
The other hypothesis was that there never was a puma. Some people talked about confusion with
foxes, dogs, deer, or roe deer. And others thought that it was a joke made up by the hunters who
reported it first, or by those who searched for the beast. I must say folklorists are always
interested in this type of hunters’ stories. A story had been told us with humor where there was a
hunter in a beast pelt, playing the puma. We noted that the farther away from the forest we
moved, the less people believed in its existence and the more jokes they made about the puma.
One of the local newspapers, where the articles had often been skeptical about its existence,
started a competition to find it a name; Pacha was adopted. Some of the agents of the ONF did
not believe in its existence either, despite B. de la Chapelle. All the evidence—tracks, scratches,
attacked animals—has been disputed. The report of the American hunter (which we read) shows
that he didn’t think that there was a puma.
Were there rumors? Yes, at the same time as the affair. But I have been careful with the word
“rumor,” which is defined as unchecked information. In general, people are only informed of the
hypotheses about just the presence and the disappearance of the animal. We have already quoted
that of a hypothetical owner of the beast who let it free and then reclaimed it. A few people said
that the feline looked especially strange. Far away from the forest, some reports were in the news
about other sightings of cats, a black panther for example, but immediately they were not
considered as serious. We never heard anything about the wolves. The Deux-Sèvres and
surrounding départements were the last in France to lose their population of wolves, in the
1930s.
Statements about the absence of the capture of the supposed big cat or of strong proofs of its
existence gradually disappeared from newspapers and conversations, from 1998 onwards. Its
memory continues as we are reminded very episodically by the media or by reading our book.
But the puma has not become a legendary beast… unless we decide to make it so.
Other Stories
Other stories through our investigation and beyond. During this inquiry we had also decided to
talk about animals with the people we had interviewed. Some of them talked about other felines
which had been seen in the département or in the region. We realized, these were often very
short stories which just circulated orally or which had a small article in the news. This type of
story continues to this day.
And then in 1999, we found another case, reported by the press with two witnesses, Mr. Le
Guerzigou and son living in Morthemer (Vienne). So, we visited them. They had possibly seen a
cougar. “It sat on its hindquarters. It licked itself. It didn’t seem very wild. It looked like a feline,
it walked like a cat… It might be a lioness.” They decided that it was a puma when they saw a
photo shown by the gendarmes who came to them. With a neighbor they gazed at the animal
through binoculars, for about an hour and a half. It was 150-200 meters away at the edge of a
forest where there are large deer. Other people would have also seen it. The son was a hunter,
and was sure he wouldn’t be confused by a dog or a fox, as other people might. That was the end
of the story.
620
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Hypotheses of deliberately released animals in the country circulated in France and around our
area, above all in the 1980s and 1990s. There was some talk of snakes, generally vipers, being
dropped often by helicopters. Laboratories, nature reserves, the government through the ministry
of the environment, or environmentalists have been accused. Some people knew somebody who
had seen the helicopter and the cages, or more rarely they were witnesses. There were also some
stories of released foxes or boars that came by trucks. But we heard about the deliberate release
of many other animals: buzzards, voles, caterpillars, ladybugs. These narratives were in the
media. The one about the planes “which broke the clouds.” I worked on it locally (Dumerchat,
1997). A story spread among the farming population that the tree-growers or tourist places
chartered planes to stop it from raining, by dispersing the clouds with silver iodide. In this case,
it was possible to find witnesses who saw planes, or people who knew somebody who had seen
them. There was no clear evidence of this but this method is used in China, for example. This old
technology is always questioned.
Recently, in 2020-2021, there was talk about animal mutilations, which ufologists know about
very well. This happened to horses in France, and in our region. There were neither witnesses of
these cases nor arrests. The French gendarmerie investigated and concluded that 15% of them
had no obvious explanation and could be the work of humans. Neither UFOs nor helicopters
have been mentioned in the suppositions, but the media talked about satanic rituals, initiations
into gangs, or removal of organs. A short investigation allowed me to see that local people
believed in an unnatural origin and that horrible crazy men were responsible.
At the same time in Deux-Sèvres, three wolves escaped from a private owner, who legally took
care of abandoned wolves accused of having killed sheep. Two of them had been shot and the
other one came back to the refuge and died. As ever now, this led to a heated debate in the
media. There was a petition on the internet asking for the wolves to be captured alive rather than
killed. This was opposed by the local farmers and authorities. Solitary wolves have been seen in
the region for a few years. A chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra) had been recently photographed by
surprised hunters: Where did it come from? From the Massif Central? Where was it going? For a
long time, wallabies, were seen, sometimes photographed and even captured, but often nobody
knew where they came from and what became of them.
Elizabeth Rémy, in her thesis (1992), closely studied the stories about released vipers, which
have been a topical question in France, in the south of the Loire, especially in the 1970s and
1980s. Jean-Louis Brodu, in a master’s dissertation (1992) and an article (1995), studied the
narratives about “planes being used to stop the rainfall” which had been told mainly in the 1970s
and 1980s in the south of the Loire.
More generally, there has long been talk about reintroducing animals such as the lynx in the East
of France (but there were also lynx from neighboring countries) and the bear from Slovenia in
the Pyrenees. This always causes controversy. The official return of the wolf to the Alps took
place in 1992. This arrival of Canis lupus could be understood by people as a voluntary
reintroduction from the French State. We know that it’s not true and that the wild canine came
from Italy. But definitely the government has now taken responsibility for their control in the
French territory. The presence of these animals has been immediately controversial, especially
621
V. Anthropological Approach
with cattle farmers and by a part of the rural world. It’s not the case for the urban population. It
contrasts two camps which cannot be reconciled now because a big part of the French people,
especially urban people, agrees completely with the fact that they are living in France. Let us add
as well that hunting and fishing in France are supposed to control animal introductions each year.
Always the Same Scenario
The people who know the British ABCs must have recognized in the adventure of this French
puma, a very well-known scenario with the same elements. At the beginning, a feline was
pointed out in a place where that was unnatural, more often a puma or a black panther, some
people maintained to have seen it. Next, it has looked like an escaped animal but it has not been
found, or very seldom. Sometimes a name was given to the beast. There were tracks found.
Sometimes some domestic animals were killed, attributed to the wild animal. Authorities
intervened to catch it, the media talked about it and then nothing more happened. They talked
about confusion with these animals, pets generally such as cats and dogs. The materials were
controversial and a collective psychosis was evoked. The authorities closed the file. Some people
believed that they hid facts: it was a feline, they knew where it came from, it has been killed
without publicity, and so on. The controversy, the debates which generally took place were in the
middle of this kind of events. The same thing happens with reported UFO testimonies and
parapsychological phenomenon. Their reality is always in doubt. Are they real or unreal, right or
wrong?
Our potential felines are in relation with the strong heated debates about the wild beasts, but also
with the domestical animals, and with the hunting. In the 1960s, the Puma in Surrey began the
ABCs saga. After that, other beasts in Great Britain have been reported regularly. At that time
cryptozoologists and Forteans (who are often the same) were quickly in on this topic. ABCs had
been listed in Ireland, Germany, in the Czech Republic, Italy, France, Spain, Luxemburg,
Denmark, Netherlands, Finland, and also in Australia, New Zealand, USA, and in other countries
where their furtive presence has sometimes been recorded but much less publicized, for example
in India or China.
In the 1980s in France, the felines took the place of supposed wolves or unknown beasts. It
continued. They came after stories of wolves, sometimes genuinely escaped, in the 1970s. The
wolves were normally not present because they had died out in the 1930s. The last important
French report was at the end of the 1970s in the département of Vosges. Farm animals were
killed, the beast was compared with a wolf, it was said that it had been set free by its owner.
Escaping all the traps and being probably never identified, it disappeared without any real
answer (Picard, 1979). In France, it was the last important beast pointed out as a wolf. The feline
stories came later. But the wolves are coming again from Italy where they used to live in the
Apennines, going through the Alps at the beginning of the 1990s, which showed that nothing
was obligatory definitive with the animals.
Rumor, Legend
The US researcher Jan H. Brunvand who played an important role in developing the concept of
urban or contemporary legend, classified the ABCs in this category. (Brunvand, 2002: 34-35).
For him there were black panthers, we knew that there were other felines, prowling in towns or
in their outskirts in USA and in other places in the world. They coincided, for him, at the heart of
622
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
the urban life, especially in New York with the stories of “alligators in the sewers” (2002, pp. 89), these were the only ones involving animals having proximity with ABCs. These alligators
would have been bought, when they were babies, by people who, afraid to see them grow, would
have thrown them away in the toilets. The alligators would have settled in the sewers. Really
there were alligators captured in New York in the 1930s, it was later Thomas Pynchon’s first
novel V (1963) which contributed a lot to belief in their presence in the sewers of which we
never had neither witness nor proof. That is one example, there are many more, of the interaction
between fiction and what we call “rumor” or “urban legend.” The story became widespread
elsewhere in the world. If we keep the word “legend,” it’s just better to speak about “urban
legend.” ABCs have been seen mainly in the countryside in what remains of nature or in the
outskirts of cities. So, they are rural legends. UFOs had a tendency to appear in the same places.
It is in the categories “rumor” and “legend” that the adventures of a mysterious feline have been
studied by Michel Meurger and Jean-Louis Brodu who wrote the first study on this topic in
France (Brodu, Meurger, 1984). They were interested in the Beast of Noth (a village in Creuse)
in 1982, which was supposed to be a lioness. Its story had all the criteria of ABCs that I have
noted before. We can consider that this case shows something new that continues: for that beast
in France all reported sightings were of felines and not wolves. Jacqueline Simpson, a great
specialist in English folklore, had classified them in the legendary category in her dictionary
(Simpson, 2000). With precautions, as Michael Goss had done, classifying them between rumors
and legends (Goss, 1992). Meurger already demonstrated that there had been talk about felines,
particularly about “anthropophagic” wolves as the well-known Beast of Gevaudan (1764-1767).
That has been identified at that time as a hyena or another exotic animal (Meurger, 1990). Royal
and aristocratic menageries owned felines. Common people thought about a werewolf. Through
its huge media coverage at this time, the story of the Beast of Gevaudan went round the world
and reached North America. This was the turning point in these Beasts stories. Intervention by
authorities at the highest level, up to King Louis XV, has played an important role. There were
other Beasts in France.
This story of the Beast of Gevaudan continues to live on until to this day, particularly through
fiction about conspiracies which could have been understood as truth. The area was developed
for tourism on the strength of this story. For the protectors of the wildlife, it was not possible that
the Beast was a wolf. In fact, there were several wolves. Some cryptozoologists had also their
own opinion to identify the animal which would not have belonged to the species Canis lupus.
But there were a lot of witnesses and unfortunately victims, around two hundred people who had
been attacked, with half being killed (Moriceau, 2021).
Meurger studied lake monsters, such as the one of Loch Ness, and on the way the dragon stories
developed from the 16th century when some scholars created an image of a real animal (1988,
1997, 2001). Véronique Campion-Vincent (1992) and Jean-Bruno Renard (1999: 106-108)
worked a lot on rumors and urban legends in France. They classified ABCs as “contemporary
legends.”
These approaches are interesting and useful but they can mask and cause us to forget the
testimonies of witnesses immediately neglected by explanations and approaches which can be
623
V. Anthropological Approach
controversial. If we want to progress in the study, whether for testimonies about ABCs, UFOs
and other close subjects, we cannot ignore witness accounts.
Cryptozoology, Ufology, Testimonies and Theories
Cryptozoology is the science of “hidden animals,” the cryptids. Bernard Heuvelmans (19162001) (Barloy, 2007), doctor in zoology, was at the birth of this field of research with the
publication of Sur la piste des bêtes ignorées (1955). Nevertheless, cryptozoology is still
considered like ufology and parapsychology as a parascience. The aim of the cryptozoologists
was to flush out animals that were thought to have died out or to identify other ones whose
zoological reality is denied or under discussion. Like ufology and parapsychology,
cryptozoology is considered to be pursued by amateurs, especially active on the internet, taking
place on reviews, blogs and websites. But it’s difficult for them to go on over time. Some
disciplines considered as scientific disappeared after a certain period.
It’s just partially true because we must say that some scientists have always been involved in the
studies, the same for ufology and parapsychology. And some amateurs can be very competent.
Cryptozoologists have not just a passion for the yeti or the monster of Loch Ness. The French
cryptozoologist Michel Raynal has dismissed a supposed South American monkey (the
“ameranthropid”) as a hoax. He proved that an Asian tapir has been described, a century before
science classified it (Raynal, 2016, 2018-2019). Reading, for example, Animals and Men, the
Fortean cryptozoological magazine or bulletins of the International Society of Cryptozoology,
showed us that cryptozoologists are interested in a lot of animals which at first showed nothing
extraordinary. They re-open files about supposed or possible cases, they are interested in hoaxes
and in the place of the animals in local cultures. I think, this is what scientists do.
To write articles and books, Heuvelmans worked continuously, made many investigations,
accumulated a huge bibliography and kept up a correspondence with a lot of people around the
world. He was interested in mysterious felines in particular in Africa (2007). He was careful, not
to voice just certainties but often simple possibilities. Some scientists took an interest in
cryptozoology, like Karl Shuker who is a star in the cryptozoology world. He is the author of
numerous papers and books, one of which is about our topic (Shuker, 2020). The French
scientists Benoit Grison (2016) and Eric Buffetaut (2020) are also authors of important books
about cryptozoology. We can use research guides like Georges M. Eberhart’s encyclopedia
(2013) or Loren Coleman’s and Jerome Clark’s books (Coleman, 1985, Coleman and Clark,
1999). They all wrote about ABCs. Coleman had pointed out, for a long time, the felines, the
kangaroos and the alligators in the urban world (1985: 61-67). A lot of other guides, dictionaries,
and encyclopedias followed.
Each year, many animals and plants are discovered, for example we don’t yet know all the trees.
Most animals are very small. They can be very old, like the famous coelacanth, identified in
1938, or mammals which have nothing reported in the 20th century, even though they were
known by natives such as the animals about which we are talking. We can’t forget the
discoveries of the okapi (Okapia johnstoni) in Congo in 1901, the peccary (Catagenus neagnere)
in Chaco (Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay) in 1975 (the specialists knew it only in the fossil state),
the saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) in Vietnam, a bovine looking like an antelope in 1993, or
the small black tapir (Tapirus kabomani) in the Amazon forest in 2013. In 2019, the discovery of
624
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
a supposed new wild cat in Corsica amused inhabitants as it was already locally known under the
name fox-cat, and was now identified scientifically. It’s difficult to know if other populations of
small, very discreet and savage felines always survive. An example: the wild cat (Primalitrius
bengalensis iriomotensis) from the Iriomote Island in Japan is extremely difficult to observe. In
the local culture it was, and perhaps today, a “fantastic” creature.
Without any doubt, Heuvelmans would have been filled with enthusiasm by the discovery of
other human beings with whom we share genes, who lived at the same time as our direct
ancestors. Notably the little man of Flores (Homo florieanensis). Heuvelmans defended the idea
of the long survival of comparable small humans at the same time of Homo sapiens. The reality
of an animal doesn’t obey the same criteria according to periods and societies. Dragons in
Europe could have been considered as totally plausible beasts by scholars in the past. In
European popular cultures and in those of other continents, for a long time and sometimes still
now, an animal was and is not only a proven and studied physical existence.
For example, Pierre Lagrange (2017) showed it with relevance, comparing two sightings of the
dugong in Papua New Guinea: well-identified by the natives. It was for them what we would call
a mermaid, when it was just a sirenian for a zoological field study. Another example is the
Zanzibar leopard moving between zoology and “supernatural” (Walsh and Goldman, 2020). The
wolf in Europe as an emblematic beast has accumulated during centuries a gigantic number of
words and documents, some of which were extraordinary stories and legends, we can imagine,
they could let our descendants believe it was an imaginary animal. Lagrange (2015) asks us
rightly to think when and how our naturalist knowledge has been made up by comparing with the
learnings of folklores, past and present, and by rejecting them.
It is certain that these named species are all considered as vulnerable. Other have disappeared
recently, but it’s still possible to study them, such as the big penguin and Steller’s rhytina (a
marine mammal) exterminated in the 19th century, or the dodo from Mauritius which vanished
in the 17th, and the thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) in Australia. The last one died in a zoo in 1936.
But some people claim to have met thylacines recently, and other people believe the dodo lived
longer than we think. The Kraken, we could imagine as legendary or simply as a fiction subject,
has been compared with a real giant calamar from the 19th century. It was a gigantic cephalopod.
In 1981, Heuvelmans met ufologists to compare the two areas of study and to identify common
points : testimonies, methods, hypotheses, the link with official sciences (Lagrange, 2008). Andy
Roberts (2007) used the expression “a wave of observations” for ABCs, such as it was said for
UFOs, in the 1970s-1980s in the Northeast of England. The collection of testimonies is the main
basis of cryptozoology and ufology. In a cryptozoological example: we can find a simple
compilation of very disparate testimonies, with potential sightings of the cougar (or other ABCs)
in the Eastern USA which should not be normally there (except in Florida) (Hensley, 2018), and
methodical pursuit of the supposed panther which walks around in the state of Queensland in
Australia (Williams and Lang, 2016). We find the same kind of examples in ufology.
To stay with the ABCs, British researchers Di Francis (1983) and Merrily Harpur (2006) worked
for a long time on this subject, having a lot of difficulties to establish the origin of the animal
studied, with no evidence or certain material proofs of its existence. Di Francis said that it was
625
V. Anthropological Approach
felines, hidden for a very long time on British soil, and she linked them to legends of black dogs.
Harpur was not the only one among cryptozoologists to lean towards paranormal apparitions, as
she linked the sightings to the concept of Daimon in ancient Greece. Cryptozoologists and
ufologists looked for indisputable material proofs like official sciences. But the frequent
elusiveness of concrete traces encouraged many cryptozoologists and ufologists to look for very
uncertain paranormal theories. Ufology looks as well for UFOs and extraterrestrials proofs in the
past. Without knowing the context of the cultures, there is a huge risk to project spacecraft and
extraterrestrials onto cultures.
Ghost planes and heavenly apparitions were part of the First World War history; we could not
take and isolate them from it (Dumerchat, 2014). There were many “fantastic” stories of
abductions in the past and present in numerous cultures in the world. But kidnappings by UFOs
were very different. One example. “Supernatural” abductions in Japanese folklore, which could
have been reported as completely real events, could be only understood in keeping with religions
of the country (Blacker, 1969). It’s the same for encounters with “extraordinary” beings and
entities, abundant in all folklores, which could be told as real experiences (memorate) (Méheust,
1992; Dumerchat, 1993, 2011).
Comparisons are always possible but they are not sufficient to clarify these phenomena. Ufology
has nothing to gain when it sticks just to a single causality or connects to a single scientific field.
There is generally more material evidence for cryptozoology. This is sadly not the case for
UFOs. This is illustrated in the recent and fascinating inquiry from Jacques Vallée and Paola
Leopizzi Harris (2021) into a supposed crash of a flying saucer. The book Passport to Magonia
(1969) by Vallée compared elements of folklore and ufology. This is the book that initiated my
interest in this subject.
A New World
For a very long time, there has always been displacements of fauna and flora on the earth
through trade, conquest and colonization. The acceleration of globalization multiplied these
movements. New kinds of pets, a boa constrictor in an apartment or a wolf in a house are
becoming more common. Arrivals and settlement of new species, listed as invasive, are not
without problems. International trade, urbanization of the planet, population increase, death or
great changes of the rural worlds or what we still call nature, and global warming disrupt the
planet and its human and animal populations. Humans, negatively or positively, constantly have
an impact on the fauna.
For wild animals, and not just little ones, we all know examples of quite large animals appearing
in cities. Boars and foxes, for example, are present in metropolises and towns or on their
outskirts in Europe, coyotes and pumas in the USA, or leopards in India (Zask, 2020). There are
six hundred wild species in New York like stags, coyotes, racoons, red foxes (Zask: 16). In
France, for fifty years, a hundred wallabies, escaped originally from a zoo, lived in the forest of
Rambouillet, near Paris. People are not surprised to see thousands of ring-necked parakeets
(Pittacula krameri) living in Paris and nearby, since forty of them escaped from a Belgian zoo in
1974 (Lasserre and Ruoso, 2029: 208-215, 98-105). Overhead, sky and space are so full of
technological artefacts that they can just encourage our perplexity on what we can see by night.
And so, the USA have just set up another research program dedicated to UFOs.
626
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Far be it from me to explain ABCs and UFOs through these obvious remarks. But it’s in our
world today that they take place. In a world whose fauna and flora have been disrupted and
where a profusion of exoplanets have been found. A gigantic telescope has just been sent into
space to see what we can learn about them. For a long time, space has been settled by
extraterrestrials and it’s not possible to separate known facts from fictions. For a long time,
science and technology have revolutionized the objects from the most ordinary to the most
sophisticated, flooding the planet. Science fiction anticipated a lot of technology and changes
that would take place in the future : from the extending of our life reality, we speak now about
metaverse, to robots and artificial intelligence through mental, physical and social
transformations of human beings.
The English naturalist and writer John Richard Jefferies has even anticipated in the 19th century
book After London (1885), with a persuading manner if we read it now, what wild and
domesticated animals would become in a future devastated world. Bertrand Meheust (2007) has
shown how impossible it is also to separate science fiction from UFO history. Cryptids were
imagined in fiction before zoology and cryptozoology studied them. From a long time ago, in
fiction, the most famous are lake monsters, especially that of Loch Ness, yeti, bigfoot, sharks and
crocodiles now.
With regard to our interest here, scientists have shown that our nature and culture conceptions
(Descola, 2015), or the way sciences are developed or how they are talked about beliefs from the
Others (Latour, 2009), about other possibilities to make place for non-humans. Unclassified
UFOs and animals are part of this group. We must not forget, each society has different
understanding of the entities of which they are made. This observation could lead to a new
encounter between anthropology and cryptozoology (Hurn, 2020) abolishing the frontier
between the two worlds, taking seriously what witnesses have told, comparing the native point of
view and that of sciences, compared with other knowledge.
ABCs have their place (Franklin, pp. 186-202, Hurn, pp. 203-217), whether real or not. They are
a part of the rural culture. Official research, particularly folklore in Anglo-Saxon countries
(especially UK and USA), has not hesitated, for a long time, to consider without ridicule what
Forteans and parasciences report. It’s absolutely not the same in France. On UFOs and their
witnesses, it’s for a long time the work that P. Lagrange (1990, 2019) is asking for. Most of the
time, official science researchers who look into these topics, have a preconceived theory. They
neither read nor listen objectively to witness reports, they just try to reduce all that to illusions
and beliefs. Most of the witnesses of UFOs tell what they have seen, it’s the same for the
mysterious felines. Naturally we can find mistakes, we have to take everything into account in
research, the part of inventions and hoaxes is relatively small. To speak about “collective
hallucinations” has been scientifically old-fashioned.
The testimony of witnesses is one basis of social sciences. But in the domain we are interested in
now, our witnesses become immediately suspects. What they are talking about, doesn’t fall into
what scientists consider as believable. They don’t correspond to main criteria of the sciences that
could be interested in it. Their testimonies don’t correspond to the common and current
representations of the accepted realities. Jean-Marie Brohn (2010: 51-82) points out that those
627
V. Anthropological Approach
who see extraordinary things are always awkward and suspicious witnesses for many societies
today.
In a time when well-known scientists did not hesitate to involve parapsychology in ethnological
works (de Martino, 2003 [1948], Elkin, 1998 [1976]), it did not help at all to make
parapsychology an interesting field of research for the established sciences. The situation is
worse for cryptozoology. For ufology, it’s the same, the structures of official investigations are
often interested in a possible threat of real danger from space. It is not always the case, in France,
the GEIPAN (Groupe d’étude et d’information sur les phénomènes aérospatiaux non identifiés)
works seriously (Passot, 2018). It’s dangerous, even now, in a researcher’s career to talk about
having heard a ghost voice (Carr, 2018). Still, some of them don’t hesitate to be interested in
haunted houses and current sightings of ghosts (Terrain, 2018, Perry, 2018) and to take a risk
with the anomalistic in the field of social sciences (Evrard and Ouillet, 2019). We can just hope
that this skepticism changes in the future and that witnesses can be really taken seriously.
Witnesses are the basis, for the most part, of parasciences and their contributors. The
problematics of the parasciences have to be based on controversy. We must not forget in our
societies, it’s also true for many subjects.
Conclusion
Testimonies are the main basis of cryptozoology and ufology. If we are actively interested in this
research, the first work is to collect the testimonies, respect the witnesses and lead real inquiries.
In general, official social sciences don’t take these conditions into account. We must also put
these testimonies into contexts with everything related to them. We can’t separate reports from
cultural and social contexts. And controversies are always part of these subjects.
A certain percentage of UFO reports are still unexplained and cryptozoologists are right to say
that forgotten or unknown animals, or new animals, can be discovered. Since 1947, the
beginning of UFO history, and since the 1950s, the beginning of cryptozoology, the world has
changed a lot. UFOs and cryptids have also changed, they are no more necessarily the same.
They don’t always raise the same questions. There are novelties in the methods, in the circulation
of the research and the studies in which scientists can get involved. The complexity of the human
cultures and the reality such as we imagine it, makes it necessary to consider, in the past and in
the present, that the mysterious animals and the strange celestial phenomena cannot be
understood in the same way in Papua New Guinea or in England. We cannot also separate fiction
in general and its importance from the worlds of the cryptids and the UFOs. The films, the world
of pictures, the literature had a tendency to forget the ABCs. Just one isolated example, a French
film, Les Fauves (Vincent Mariette, 2018), moves between realism and the fantastic; it shows us,
better than a long talk, how difficult it is to know if the “phantom” Big Cat from the film has
been really seen or met… reality is complex.
Acknowledgments: To Nelly R., Lesley R., and Pierre L.
Bibliography
A la découverte des mammifères des Deux-Sèvres, 2017: Niort, France: Deux-Sèvres Nature
Environnement.
Barloy, J.-J., 2007. Bernard Heuvelmans. Un rebelle de la science. Paris: L’Oeil du Sphinx.
628
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Blacker, C., 1967. “Supernatural Abductions in Japanese Folklore,” Asian Folkore Studies, 26.2:
pp. 111-147.
Bord, J., and C. Bord, 1988. Alien Animals. A World Investigation. Lake Monsters. Great Birds
and Birdmen. Black Dogs. Mystery Pumas. Bigfoot. London: BooksClub Associates.
Brodu, J.-L., and M. Meurger, 1984. Les Félins-mystère: sur les traces d’un mythe moderne.
Paris: Pogonip.
Brodu, J.-L., 1990. “Une rumeur de sécheresse,” Communications, 52: pp. 85-97.
_____, 1995. Entre folklore et ethnologie: l’affaire des “avions-chasseurs de nuage.” Université
Paris VII, Master’s thesis in Ethnology.
Brohm, J.-M., 2010. Anthropologie de l’étrange. Enigmes, mystères, réalités insolites. Paris:
Sulliver.
Brunvand, J. H., 2002. Encyclopedia of Urban Legends. London: Norton & Company.
Buffetaut, E., 2016. A la recherche des animaux mystérieux. Idées reçues sur la cryptozoologie.
Paris: Le Cavalier Bleu.
Campion-Vincent, V. (ed.), 1992. Des fauves dans nos campagnes. Légendes, rumeurs et
apparitions. Paris: Imago.
_____, 1992. “Apparitions de fauves et de félins-mystères en France,” in V. Campion-Vincent
(ed.), pp. 13-54.
Carr, G., 2018. “La mémoire du béton. Trouver une place pour les fantômes de la guerre dans les
îles anglo-normandes.” Terrain, 69, pp. 40-57.
CERDO: Centre d’études, de recherche et de documentation sur l’oralité, cerdo@metive.org
Coleman, L.,1985. Curious Encounters. Phantom Trains, Spooky Spots, and other Mysterious
Wonders. Winchester : Faber and Faber Inc.
Coleman, L., and J. Clark, 1999. Cryptozoology. A to Z. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Changy de, F., 2022. “A Hong-Kong, la chasse aux sangliers est ouverte,” Le Monde, January 7.
Descola, P., 2015. Par-delà nature et culture. Paris: Folio.
Dumerchat, F., 1993. “Les rapts aériens fantastiques: du diable à l’ovni. Une enquête
ethnohistorique,” in T. Pinvidic (ed.), OVNI vers une Anthropologie d’un Mythe
Moderne, Bayeux, xxxxx: Heimdal: pp. 380-997.
_____, 1997. “Histoires d’avions et aventures nuageuses,” Aguiaine: pp. 3-18.
_____, 2011. “Fées, carrosses volants et ovnis. Sur la piste de Bertrand Méheust,” Bulletin
métapsychique, November, pp. 20-25, and 31.
_____, 2014. “Engins fantômes, apparitions célestes et Grande Guerre. Histoire et parasciences,”
Bulletin métapsychique, April. pp. 11-13.
Dumerchat, F., and P. Véniel, 2005. Forêt de Chizé: attention puma! La Crèche, Geste.
Eberhart, G. M., 2013. Mysterious Creatures. A Guide to Cryptozoology, 2 vols., Bideford, CFZ
Press.
Elklin, A. P., 1998. Les chamanes aborigènes. Initiation et sorcellerie dans la plus ancienne
tradition du monde. Monaco, Editions Du Rocher.
Evrard, R., and E. Ouelle (eds.), 2019. Vers une sociologie anomalistique. Le paranormal au
regard des sciences sociales. Nancy, France: Editions Universitaires de Lorraine.
Fantômes, 2018. Terrain, 69, coordinated by G. Delaplace.
Francis, D., 1983. Cat Country. The Question for the British Big Cat. London: David & Charles.
Franklin, A., 2020. “Far from the madding crowd: Big Cats on Dartmoor and in Dorset, UK,” in
S. Hurn (ed.), pp. 186-202.
629
V. Anthropological Approach
Goss, M., 1992a. “Alien Big Cat Sighting in Britain: A Possible Rumour Legend?” Folklore,
103.2, pp. 184-202.
_____, 1992b. “Observation de félins d’ailleurs en Grande Bretagne,” in V. Campion-Vincent
(ed.). pp. 55-80.
Grison, B., 2016. Le Bestiaire énigmatique de la cryptozoologie. Du Yéti au Calmar géant. Paris:
Delachaux et Nestlé.
Harpur, M., 2006. Mystery Big Cats. Have you Seen One? Thousands Have. Where Are they
Come from and Why?, Loughborough, UK: Heart of Albion Press.
Hurn, S., (ed.), 2020: Anthropology and Cryptozoology. Exploring encounters with mysterious
creatures. London and New York: Routledge.
Hurn, S., “Introduction,” in S. Hurn (ed.), pp. 1-11; and “Land of beasts and dragons:
Contemporary myth-making in rural Wales,” in S. Hurn (ed.), pp. 203-217.
Hensley, J. V., 2018. Panther Tales and Woodland Encounters. Seeing Is Believing: Amazon.
Herzeberg, N., 2021. “Fin de partie pour les hippos d’Escobar,” Le Monde, December 15.
Heuvelmans, B., 2007. Les félins encore inconnus d’Afrique. Paris: L’Oeil du Sphinx.
Lagrange, P., 1990. “Enquêtes sur les soucoupes volantes. La construction d’un fait aux EtatsUnis (1947) et en France (1954),” Terrain, 14: pp. 92-112.
_____, 2008. “Présentation de l’entretien du Bugue. Compte-rendu complet du débat avec M.
Bernard Heuvelmans,” Kraken, 1, pp. 5-35.
_____, 2015. “Peut-on dépasser l’alternative entre animaux réels et imaginaires?” Prétentaine,
31/32: pp. 269-295.
_____, 2017. “Le chant des sirènes,” Billebaude, 11, pp. 82-99.
_____, 2019. “Pourquoi les sociologues qui étudient le paranormal sont-ils incapables de faire de
la sociologie? Les différentes façons de (ne pas) faire de la sociologie du paranormal,” in
R. Evrard and E. Ouellet (eds.), pp. 87-122.
Lasserre F., and C. Ruoso, 2020. Beaux d’ailleurs. Ces espèces exotiques qui nous entourent.
Paris: Belin.
Latour, B., 2009. Sur le culte moderne des dieux faitiches. Paris: La Découverte.
Martino de, E., 2003. Le Monde magique. Paris: Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond.
Méheust, B., 1992. En soucoupes volantes. Vers une ethnologie des récits d’enlèvements. Paris:
Imago.
_____, 2007. Science-Fiction et soucoupes volantes. Une réalité mythico-physique. Rennes,
France: Terre de Brume.
_____, 2019. La Postérité du Sabbat? Retour sur la question des enlèvements soucoupiques.
Paris, L’Oeil du Sphinx.
Meurger, M., 1997. “Le Monstre du Loch Ness, du folklore à la zoologie speculative,”
Scientifictions. La Revue de l’Imaginaire Scientifique, Amiens, Encrage Editions, pp.
135-214.
_____, 2006. Histoire naturelle des dragons. Un animal problématique sous l’oeil de la science.
Rennes, France: Terre de Brume.
Meurger, M., and C. Gagnon, 1988. Lake Monster Traditions. A Cross-Cultural Analysis.
London, Fortean Times.
Moriceau, J.-M., 2021. La Bête du Gévaudan. 1764-1767. Mythes et réalités. Paris: Tallandier.
Parry, R. L., 2018. Les Fantômes du Tsunami. Périr et survivre dans un Japon dévasté. Paris:
Payot & Rivages.
Passot, X., 2018. J’ai vu un ovni. Perceptions et réalités. Paris: Cherche Midi.
630
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Picard, G., 1989. La Bête des Vosges. Strasbourg, France: La Nuée Bleue.
Raynal, M., 2015. “L’améranthropoïde de Montandon, grand singe inconnu ou canular?”
Bulletin de la Société Vaudoise des Sciences Naturelles, 94-4, pp. 289-309.
_____, 2018-2019. “Le tapir qu’on aurait pu découvrir plus tôt,” Espèces, 30, pp. 22-29.
Rémy, E., 1992. Des vipères lâchées par hélicoptère? Anthropologie d’un phénomène appelé
rumeur. Université Paris V, Ph.D. Thesis.
Renard, J-B., 1999. Rumeurs et légendes urbaines. Paris: PUF.
Roberts, A., 2007. Cat Flaps! Northern Mystery Cats. Bideford: CFZ Press.
Shuker, K., 2020. Mystery Cats Of The World. Charlottesville, Virginia: Anomalist Books.
Simpson, J., 2000. A Dictionary of English Folklore. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Suleiman, K., 2021. “Il faut sauver la panthère de Perse,” Courrier international, June 3-9.
Tesson, S., 2021. La panthère des neiges. Paris: Folio.
Vallée, J. F., 1972. Chroniques des apparitions extraterrestres, du folklore aux soucoupes
volantes. Paris: Denoël. 1969. Passport to Magonia: from Folklore to Flying saucers,
Chicago: H. Regnery Company.
Vallée, J. F., and P. Leopizzi Harris, 2021. Trinity: le Secret le Mieux Gardé. Longmont-San
Francisco, StarkworksUSA and Documatica Research. 2021. TRINITY: The Best-Kept
Secret: Independently published.
Walsh, M. T., and H.V. Goldman, 2020. “Cryptids and credulity. The Zanzibar leopard and other
imaginary beings,” in S. Hurn (ed.), pp. 54-90.
Williams, M., and R. Lang, 2016. Australian Big Cats. An Unnatural History of Panthers,
Hazellbrook, New South Wales, Australia: Strange Nation Publishing.
Zask, J., 2020. Zoocities. Des animaux sauvages dans la ville. Paris: Premier Parallèle.
631
V. Anthropological Approach
Belief in Aliens and the Imaginary: A Transdisciplinary Approach
Carlos Reis
Si el hombre renuncia a su ilusión
de un dios paternal, si se enfrenta com
su soledad e insignificância em
el universo, será como el niño
que ha dejado la casa de su padre.
Erich Fromm
Psicoanalisis y Religion
Abstract: Amidist a historical and cultural scenario of profound socio-political and ideological
transformations, contemporary society is experiencing an era of uncertainty, fear, and hopelessness,
which induces one to create and cling to all sorts of illusions, beliefs, and utopias – angels, gods,
heroes, oracles, demiurges, extraterrestrials, and hierophanies – as instruments of coping with the
rough reality of daily life. The search for identity, the non-admission of its inner weakness and
external fragility, the fear of death and cosmic solitude, the search for completeness, and the
impossibility of being a transcendent animal, lead one to existential anguish. This paper brings a
condensed analysis of one of these “metaphysical crutches” by deconstructing the “modern myth”
through hermeneutics and transdisciplinarity, reinterpreting its symbols, languages, signs, and
representations. We base our claims on five decades of research and experience, supported by a
‘collegiate’ of the most expressive names in various areas of human knowledge.
Keywords: History, Culture, Imaginary, Belief, Cosmic significance
Architecture of an Illusion
Following Fromm’s (1956) thoughts, Becker (2008) understands that the need for cosmic
significance is an anthropological structural datum directly linked to the horror of death. We do
not like it, nor do we not want to admit that we are alone in the universe, and that we lean on
something that transcends us – a system of ideas and powers sustaining us in which we are
viscerally submerged. These two remarkable thinkers are not the only ones to adopt the same
discourse, many join them, undertaking one of the most important reflections that integrate this
matter. When one proceeds to an analyzis on such a scale, it is essential to consider all the
implicit variants through a transdisciplinary approach, that is, to go beyond the conjugate fields,
which cannot be compartmentalized and watertight, always with a strictly critical view. This
research platform, inaugurated in the mid-1980s, designed such an architecture in order to build
bridges between the UFO phenomenon and the disciplines of knowledge that might have some
relation with it: Sociology, Anthropology, History, Biology, Culture, Psychoanalysis,
Philosophy, Neurosciences, Psychology, Mythology, Religion, and astronomical sciences. This
study has shown, however, that “bridges” are not enough to bring light to more complex issues,
they need to be integrated by establishing multiple permanent dialogues.
In order to fulfill this task, we intend to bring to academic essayism the specificity of ufological
theme and, at the same time, enrich the critical view of ufological facts through university
education. The problem consists, as Lévi-Strauss (1987) warns, in finding the invariant within a
set of codes, what is common to all of them, and of translating what is expressed in the language
of this set. That is, to translate and interpret what is expressed in a language through the
632
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
comparative study of structural similarities.
This paper presents a condensed overview of beliefs in general, particularly about “flying
saucers” and aliens, their origins, their causes, the historical course, and the unfoldings of their
influence on human life. A final opinion with echoes of conclusion does not mean that the topic
has exhausted its possibilities of investigation, on the contrary, it indicates that everything is still
in the initial stages of appreciation. The words of Sena da Silveira seek to portray the objective
intention of the present study:
Perhaps there is here, to remember an important intellectual, Ernesto Laclau, a significant void:
everything fits together, everything can fit in it, it is, in short, an immeasurable bridge of beliefs
and movements, an endless catapult of credible fictions and theories. (Silveira, in Reis, 2016, p.
23).
The UFO phenomenon erupted through the combination of singular historical-social
circumstances, religious drives, cultural factors and archetypal aspects, in a process of updating
and ritualizing mythical thinking. In this sense, flying saucers have come to inhabit the popular
imagination by virtue of a mistaken premise that has consolidated and is promoted through a
systematic recurrence of errors. For these and other reasons, the “flying saucer” is part of a
complex multifaceted synergistic system of biopsychosociocultural beliefs where mysticism,
esoterism, divinatory practices, oracles, religion, spiritualism, post-mortem life, reincarnation,
occultism, folklore, superstitions, legends and fantasies meet and confound, in a heterogeneous
mixture of unprecedented creeds and hierophanies.
Deconstructing a Myth
Why “deconstructing” and why “myth”? In a very synthetic way, deconstruct can be defined as
follows: Disassemble, decompose the elements for analysis and understanding of the whole; and
myth: Narrative of symbolic meaning referring to aspects of the human condition.
Deconstruction of a myth, therefore, is to decompose the elements of symbolic meaning for
analysis and understanding of the aspects relating to the human condition. For seven decades the
“flying saucer” subject has been the order of the day around the world, designed for newspapers,
magazines, television documentaries, and congresses, always clad in an aura of sensationalism or
scorn. Surveys around the world have never yielded any scientifically proven, concrete,
definitive results, despite thousands of electronic records, reports, alleged contacts, abductions,
and physical marks. Everything remains on the obscure terrain of speculation.
These “thousands” of cases include frauds, lies, misinterpretations, hallucinations, ignorance
about natural atmospheric phenomena, and other intercurrences. Moreover, human behavior,
psychic and psychological factors to a large extent and interests of all kinds must be taken into
account at all social and cultural levels. Once the sorting is done, what is left is a tiny parcel that
has plausible and satisfactory explanations, or are inconclusive cases due to lack of data or
contradictory information.
Faced with this absolute lack of “evidence,” the UFO community searches for evidence of the
alien presence on the planet – astronaut gods, Hollow Earth, secret underwater bases, Bermuda
Triangle; buildings, temples, sculptures, objects, and archaeological sites; as well as rituals and
primitive tribal customs that would have been inspired by the presence of extraterrestrials in
633
V. Anthropological Approach
antiquity. Nothing more than a set of puerile hypotheses. Ufology goes around itself. Its liturgy
resembles a script of science fiction, and often fantastic fiction, with all elements of fantasy,
mystification, and mysticism amid much naïveté, farce, and deception.
To summarize, ufology is based exclusively on reports, photos, films, radar echoes, the alleged
physical injuries suffered by witnesses, and on electrical failures occurring in vehicles and
buildings at the approach of the “saucers.” Ufologists understands that the statements of army
people, pilots, authorities, scientists, and experts can not be disputed, that the physical evidence
is indisputable, and that the mental communication and psychographies made with supposed
entities of other dimensions are unequivocal proofs of their existence. Thus, there is a consensus
among researchers that the reality of “flying saucers” is definitely proven; the corollary of this
thought is that flying saucers are vehicles manned by intelligent beings, coming from long-lived
and advanced civilizations that visit us with the most diverse objectives.
This is a generalist interpretation of the UFO phenomenon, incomplete, superficial, and, under
the circumstances, precocious and precipitous. The phenomenon can only be studied if it is
atomized, deconstructed, so that its constituent elements are observed separately and meet the
nexus – if any – between them. In this sense, hermeneutics is effective in interpreting and
clarifying the study. Semiologist Umberto Eco has had a lot of concern and criterion when
dealing with interpretation, either for the written text or for the analysis of a given event, and he
has also had hermeneutics as a tool for reflection. It is the instruments that interest us.
Hermeneutics can be understood as the science of the interpretative process, used as soon as
there are forms of symbolic communication. Some important voices understand that the
contemporary moment is, par excellence, a “hermeneutic era,” and ufology, in this particular
case, could not be excluded from this examination because it is essentially a source of symbolic
expression.
Asserting the intentio operis – the intention of the work (or fact) was, for Eco, its fundamental
purpose. We are talking about deciphering what is expressed in the language and structure of the
object, be it text, speech, or event. Eco asks how it is possible to prove a conjecture of the
intentio operis, and at the same time responds that the only way is to verify it from the text
(speech or event) as a coherent set. Strictly speaking, what ufologists do is look at the
phenomenon through the “keyhole,” and in so doing the view on the other side is partial,
fragmented, insufficient. One does not have the vision of the whole, only part of it, and this is
decisive for a distorted interpretation of the reality of the facts.
Even if ufology is not a formally constituted discipline, one can not deny the reality of the
phenomenon that it has proposed to study, but, if it is not aircrafts and extraterrestrial beings,
what is it? What are we dealing with? In order to understand it, we have to go back a bit in
history, to 1958. With an interest in the subject, the renowned Carl G. Jung spent much of his
time examining hearsay, rumors and news running through the newspapers, within his clinical
practice. After analysing the events, with a careful reading of the subject, talking to experts and
researchers, and comparing reports to his patients’dreams, Jung wrote that year A Modern Myth
of Things Seen in the Skies, a work that became a milestone, provoked discomfort and criticism
from his colleagues, and was rejected by UFO circles around the world.
634
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
It is important to highlight that at no time did Jung declare that the UFO phenomenon was a
myth, but that it had such characteristics as to make him think that the psychic bias should be
explored with attention: “Such manifestations seem to be modifications in the constellation of
the dominant psychics, archetypes, ‘gods’ that cause or follow secular transformations of the
collective psyche (Jung, 1991, p. IX). We believe that, at that time, his work was beyond the
understanding of both laymen and researchers. He emphasized his point of view by stating that:
The psychic aspect plays such an important role in this phenomenon that it can not be
overlooked. As my explanations try to demonstrate, the raising of this question leads to
psychological problems that touch possibilities, or impossibilities, as fantastic as a physical
observation (Id, p. 98).
In the late 1980s, by reading Jung and other authors, we decided to embrace this research line,
broadening the spectrum of analysis by associating it with fields other than Psychology and
Mythology, finding in Lévi-Strauss’ structuralism concepts a secure way to a possible
understanding. By comparing the structure of the myth with that of the UFO phenomenon, we
were able to identify similarities and parallels that overcame improbable mere coincidences.
There was a clearly defined specular symmetry between them that could not be ignored:
A) Narrative: links with the holy, the “high” or the transcendent;
B) Nature: symbolic expression of higher forces acting in the unconscious;
C) Aesthetics: manifestation in mythical scope: saving gods, heroes, “cosmic brothers,”
supernatural creatures;
D) Meaning: archetypes, psychic balance, non-transient divine character;
E) Function: divided into four parts: Mysticism – dazzlement with the mystery, the magic, the
fantastic, the marvelous; Cosmological – connection of human existence with the cosmos;
Sociological – in the social, moral and cultural spheres; Psychological – in dealing with
conceptions of life and death.
This fourth function – the psychological one – is one of the focal points of the present study,
surely the most important one, when the phenomenon is articulated in terms of finitude and
immortality. We are at the door of the imaginary, where, for Durand (2002), the necessity of the
fantastic function resides in the faculty of the imaginary of surpassing temporality and death. The
euphemization it secures is the main engine of this great socio-anthropological process. It is for
this reason, according to the author, that myth becomes the provocateur of these two
insurmountable cultural barriers – time and finitude. Here’s the point Experiencing the presence
of a “saucer” or having “contact with aliens” is a way for the subject to be enveloped by the
oceanic feeling of being “part of the cosmos” and giving some meaning to his poor biography.
We are not afraid to say that the witness feels and believes himself privileged, chosen and even
blessed (religious language) for witnessing an event of this nature, therefore, detached from most
mortals. This ephemeral and unique moment, even if it is an illusion, fantasy or lie, can be the
most relevant feature of one’s existence. The “saucer” or the alien is one of the symptoms of a
greater and deeper cause. Obviously, the deliberate attitude of protagonism is evident. Anguish
due to the lack of meaning in life – or excess, as Calligarisi used to say – is as painful as the
irrelevance of anonymity. It is very important to know that anonymity, loneliness, anguish, and
neurosis sit at the same table.
635
V. Anthropological Approach
But Lévi-Strauss (1987) still presents us with an additional function of myth – the compensatory
function. According to him, the myth narrates a past situation which is the denial of the present
and which serves both to compensate humans for some loss and to assure them that a past error
has been corrected in the present, in order to offer a stabilized and regularized view of nature and
community life. The myth creates a symbolic and imaginary compensation against the
inescapable real needs, tensions and sufferings of the profane life, preserves the organization of
collective life avoiding the fracture of the society. According to Durand (2002), a society can
only develop if its institutions rest on strong collective beliefs.
The myth inhabits people´s imaginary, with their uncertainties and the blind faith they place in
something that has the power to guide their lives. This indefinite power is not only a deity in the
sense of classical mythology, but will always be a power that transcends the physical limit and
human understanding. In mirroring the myth with the UFO phenomenon we have, reflecting the
words of other notable thinkers, the understanding and synthesis of the problem:
‘Living' a myth, then, implies a genuinely "religiou ' experience, ince it differs from the ordinary
experience of everyday life. The "religiousne s" of this experience is due to the fact that one reenact fabulou , xalting, ignificant events, one again witne es the reative deeds of the upernaturals
(Eliade, 1963, p. 19).
What is the alien but a supernatural creature? What is the encounter with the “extraordinary” but
a transcendent, metaphysical, “religious” experience apart from the everyday world? Brazilian
theologian and philosopher Rubem Alves gives poetic tones to his definition of myth: “Myths are
stories that delimit the contours of a great absence that dwells in us. Enchantment is not in what
you see, but in what you imagine.” (Alves, in Morais, 1988, p. 14). Absence of what, of whom?
From the completeness of being. More than the simple connection with the transcendent, the
relinking – religio, religare – of the profane with the holy, of the lower world with the higher
plane, of the material with the immaterial. Religions are cultural, historical constructions where
anthropomorphism is its foundation, and “flirting” with the gods is a reflection of human
aspirations and ambitions. Religious thought arises out of this desire to connect with divinity.
Eliade (1963) does not let us forget that sacredness for religious man is the complete
manifestation of Being, and the enchanted world of stories, legends, fairy tales, fables, dreams
and myths expresses this desire, or, more precisely, this need for re-encounter. We consider
Cassirer’s reference to Max Müller’s reflection of special importance in the correspondence of
language with compared objects:
For Max Müller, the mythical world is essentially a world of illusion – but an illusion that finds
its explainatiom wheb ever the original, necessary self-deception of the mind, from wich the error
arises is discovered. This self-deception is rooted in language, which is necer making game of the
human mind, ever entangling it in that iridescent play of meanings that is its own heritage
(Cassirer, 1945, p. 5).
The myth does not refer to an objective reality, but to an internal reality, subjective, abstract,
conceptual, and emotional. It does not speak in a common language, but through symbols and
metaphors, a language of correspondences, not of references. Likewise, the UFO phenomenon
does not operate within an objective reality and does not speak a direct but symbolic language,
by signs, symbols, and representations. It is up to man to decode such symbolisms and interpret
636
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
such representations because, according to Castoriadis (in Legros, 2007, p. 95), “Everything that
presents itself to us in the socio-historical world is inextricably woven into the symbolic.”
Finally, Campbell complements the framework of definitions about myths, their relation to man,
and between man and the world, in perfect harmony with the scope of this study:
Myth is a necessary and universal form of expression within the early stage of human intellectual
development, when unexplained events were attributed to the direct intervention of the gods.
What the myth does is to point to the transcendent beyond the terrain of the phenomenon
(Campbell, 2001, p. 52).
Durkheim (2000) sees “religious thinking” similar to “social” and even a primacy over collective
consciousness. In general, a society has everything it takes to awaken the feeling of the Divine in
minds through the power that religion has over them. Religion is collective superstition and
superstition is individual religion, Freud wrote (1969).
According to Lévy-Bruhl (2008), the primitive mind is irremediable and completely immersed in
a mystical spirit state, unable to perceive the reality and truth with clarity and equity, disarmed
from the faculty of abstraction and reflection, stuck in a manifest aversion to the reasoning and
discursive operations of the thinking, unable to take advantage of the experience or understand
the most elementary laws of nature.
This is what we seek to do, vigorously and disciplinarily, in the examination of the phenomenon,
since when we consider it a palimpsest: to detach its epidermal layer in order to reach the
“flesh,” the core, what is hidden. What is and where is the transcendent that Campbell (2001) is
talking about? Certainly not the same as the mystic, the esoteric and the religious ones, but what
transcends man – himself. The basic concept of mythology is the transcendence of personification, which is only a concession to consciousness to talk about these things: God, Brahman,
Śiva, YHWH... it is the need to personify something that escapes our understanding. Why do we
give names to aliens? Not because they are deities – they are not – but because giving names
humanizes, and when humanizing, anthropomorphizes, approaches, establishes a character of
reality to that what is unreal, of materiality to what is immaterial, of comprehensibility to what is
incomprehensible. Just like the myth. By collating, approximating, anatomizing and interpreting
the symbolism contained in these two matters – myth and UFO phenomenon – a resonance
mechanism that generates and multiplies meanings is automatically installed.
When the gods are conjugated by an external influx, the archetypal forces protrude into the
stimulus, appearing to our senses as being a predicate of the outer object, rather than something
originating within ourselves. Thus, a fusion between subject and object occurs, through the
bridge established by these forces as perpendicular, what anthropologist Lévy-Bruhl (2001)
called participation mystique. This is how we introduce the object into our own psyche. This
way it loses its character of absolute strangeness – we adapt to it, and the libido (as synonymous
with psychic energy) that it was invested in can return to us.
This apparent predicate of the object is felt to be a total otherness, because it brings together
what I do not know about it and what I do not know about myself. Just to reinforce the idea of
Another, let us see what Abbagnano says: “To be another, to put oneself or to constitute oneself
637
V. Anthropological Approach
as another.” (Abbagnano, 2007, p. 34). Returning to Lévy-Bruhl, he understands that the object is
the Totally Other until I can incorporate it into my view of the world. With this, it also changes.
This action is bipolar, it can occur both in relation to external objects and inward to my psyche,
as long as one does not think of limiting it to consciousness.
In fact, the inner space is as vast and unknown as the exterior that fascinates us so. The
experience of the Totally Other and the sentiment to which it originates is what German
philosopher Rudolf Otto (2007) called numinous, considering it the basic foundation of religions,
but not unique to them. It should be noted that numinous and phenomenon have a common Latin
origin, respectively numen and noumeno – the thing itself, the ultimate reality apart from human
action, the holy, unreachable to the senses and the rational. The numinous can be the property of
a visible object, for example, a UFO, or the influx of an invisible presence, that produces a
special modification in the conscience, for example, an alien.
The “saucer” is always beyond the sign. The sign only emerges with its absence, a mark of an
already faded presence that we place on the emptiness inaugurated by its passage; it is born only
after the real flying saucer – whatever it is – has already gone wherever it has gone. In a certain
way, it is what Umberto Eco calls “cultural unity,” an image that brings together and represents a
broad set of signifiers – lights, sounds, rays, flights, objects, photos, movies, images, and, above
all, words – that translate a meaning not yet decoded. The flying saucer is a sign and only exists
as such, a combination of various traits drawn from cases that do not always go together, never
all together, but which are always sufficiently together so that one recognizes, or supposes, its
inner uniqueness. As Renard points out, the problem of the existence of UFOs
andextraterrestrials is spontaneously put in terms of belief: “Do you believe in flying saucers?”
“Is the reason able to stand on its own in the face of prejudice and superstition?” (in Mayer, 1989,
p.31).
We live in a world full of superstitions, and the imaginary is latent in symbols and reigning in
aesthetics; the slightest vacillation of perception takes us to hallucinations, delusions and
fantasies. A final comment on beliefs is given by Morin:
The imperative and prohibitive power of paradigms, official beliefs, reigning doctrines and
established truths determines cognitive stereotypes, ideas received without examination, stupid
uncontested beliefs, triumphant absurdities, the rejection of evidence in the name of evidence, and
makes cognitive and intellectual conformisms reign everywhere (Morin, 1999, p. 42)1.
If we accept that ufology does not exist in itself, and is therefore incapable of examining the
UFO phenomenon per se, and if it has all the characteristics to be understood as a “postmodern”
myth, it remains to deal with the object, the “flying saucer,” the instigator agent of doubt,
controversy, and debate. It is here, indeed, that the problem takes on extraordinary proportions of
complexity, and its approach amounts to the weaving of a Persian tapestry. In order to give
consistency and security to the “architecture of the bridges” mentioned in the beginning, the
1
Le pouvoir impératif et prohibitif conjoit des paradigms, croyances officielles, doctrine es régbantes, vérités
établies determine les stéréotypes cognitifs, idées reçues sans examen, croyances stupides non contestées,
absurditiés triomphantes, rejets d’évidences au nom de l’évidence, et il fait régner, sous tous les cieux, les
conformismes cognitifs et intelectuels.
638
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
study is grounded in four pillars: history, culture, fiction, and imaginary, all of them
interconnected by transdisciplinarity.
With history as the guiding thread, the key moment comes from the second half of the 20th
century, where the fact markers of contemporary civilization converge – and intertwine: the end
of World War II and the flourishing of the “Cold War,” the collapse of institutions and the
beginning of an era of anguish, fear, and disillusionment; the end of utopias and the reckless
possibility and proximity of dystopias, the establishment fissure and the lack of a reliable north.
The compass of civilization was disoriented. The world began to “liquefy,” Bauman (2008) said
later.
The rise of counterculture, feminist and student movements, New Age, Woodstock, Beatles,
LSD, Aquarian conspiracy, Aleister Crowley, beat generation, cultural revolution, Vietnam war,
contraceptive pill, transcendental meditation, Oriental philosophies, esoteric sects and orders,
alternative medicine, ecological consciousness, underground culture. They are the new
paradigms. It is the culmination of literature and science fiction filmography with its technomystical aesthetics. Orson Welles, with the radio version of “War of the Worlds,” consecrates
the stereotype of domination by invading aliens. The imaginary, the symbolic language and the
signs of representations leave the academic debate and reach the streets. It was the birth of
postmodernity or late modernity. There was something more in the air than simple airliners, sex,
drugs and rock’n roll. There were flying saucers.
It is indisputable that science fiction is a fertile soil of representations and formulation of
reflections on contemporary society, its structure and relations with scientific knowledge and
technological development. It is also the cradle of metaphors that reflect the social imaginary –
creative capacity of the anonymous collective – about past, present and future. Representations
are instruments of identification, ordination and hierarchy of social structure, identifying the
group or environment that produced them and consumes them. As Chartier says:
The symbolic function (symbolization or representation) is defined as a mediating function that
informs the different modes of apprehension of the real, whether it operates through linguistic
signs, mythological figures and religion, or concepts of scientific knowledge (Chartier, 1980, p.
19).
On the other hand, ufology absorbs all the data of science fiction in a mimetic process, an
incessant transfusion of ideas and concepts. It is a story that needs another story to assert itself, it
does not have autonomous life, it subscribes and writes/describes in other ways, by means of
borrowed words. It should be emphasized that mimicry is one of the fundamental characteristics
of the human being, as a set of internalized codes, predefined from its behavioral base, referred
from Aristoteles to René Girard, passing subjectively through the great literary men of history.
Therefore, there is nothing new that ufology operates within this imitative principle. Science
fiction is a kind of contemporary version of the myth, and the world is littered with rituals,
dreams, and non-rational visions, manifesting new models of magical-affective syncretism.
Belief is a natural psychological predisposition, organic and even pathological, beyond the reach
of criticism, reason and thinking, inducing a certain intellectual stagnation. It has roots in the
religious drive, one of the fundamental psychic forces of man, because the subjective sense of
639
V. Anthropological Approach
religion contemplates exactly the belief in a transcendent power, the feeling of dependence on
that power, and the need for contact with it. The UFO phenomenon, on the other hand,
incorporates some of the main elements of religious symbolism: transcendence, plenipotence,
multi-presence, omniscience, redemptive force. With its techno-mystical guise similar to science
fiction, one can conclude that the “flying saucer” is the culmination of the symbiosis between
science fiction themes and parareligious beliefs. Put another way, we can say that science fiction
is the gateway, and religion, the exit. Several authors with different shades help to compose a very
interesting polyhedral panel on this topic. We start with Grünschloß:
Undoubtedly, an important attraction of beliefs in UFOs is their ability to synthesize elements of
esoteric, spiritual, theosophical, and Christian traditions, to reconcile them with science, space
technology, and modern cosmology. Specifically, the traditions of “numinous” people (e.g. the socalled “ascended masters” of Theosophy or the esoteric representations of Jesus Christ) often appear
on the spectrum of UFO movements and their publications with a consistent pattern of functions
(Grünschloß, 2002, p. 22).
For theologian John Saliba, of the University of Detroit, many aspects of UFO mythologies
(anthropogenesis and evolution) seem to combine “Religious search for absolute answers with
the certainty of scientific objectivity, and, thus, tend to appear as secularized or scientific myths.”
(Saliba, 1995, pp. 15-64). It is important to emphasize that science fiction cannot and should not
be stereotyped as a mere form of entertainment, minor literature or a genre of alienation, much
less depreciated as mass culture, marginal and escapist. Its value for contemporary social
construction is indisputable. It moves through a stream of provocations, reflections, revelations
and truths, instigator by vocation. Sci-fi writers may be the ones who best understand the
palpitation of the world and, in a sense, feel the absence of being in the human and express it in
their works, not always with subtlety.
Every Child Dreams of Flying
The term “science fiction” may seem an oxymoron – an internal contradiction, claiming that its
logical construction of counterposition and differences integrates procedures of a completely
different nature: the fictional and the scientific. That is not correct, for it operates essentially with
mediating metaphors between the subject and the world without the rigors of science.
Umberto Eco understands that fiction, in general, offers a reality that even concrete reality itself
can not supplant, where the universe of narrative is the only one in which we can be totally sure
of a thing and that offers a strong idea of truth. In his rich historiography on lands and legendary
places, Eco not only reveals the human capacity to create imaginary worlds but also why it does
so. If fiction exposes the truth for the lie, Morin asserts that, precisely because it is an
“anthropological mirror,” cinema, as a mass vehicle of fiction, reflects practical and imaginary
realities, the needs and dramas of human individuality. With insight and malice, sci-fi writer
Ursula Le Guin reports that science fiction is not prophetic, not about the future, but elaborates a
kind of “lie game”:
The only truth I can understand or express defines itself, logically, as a lie. Science fiction does
not predict, it describes, “and it ends”: Science fiction is, in fact, a great metaphor, or an
allegorical procedure, in which the dominants of contemporaneity intertwine (Le Guin, 2008,
p.8).
640
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
And she is right, fiction is actually the lie that tells the truth. Lie brings to the surface the
symbolic, determining its constitutive trait. Some of the recurring themes in science fiction are
related to contemporary issues: the end of the world and the end of time; temporal paradoxes,
communication and interaction with non-human intelligences; hybridity and genetic mutations,
not incidentally present in philosophical and scientific encounters, in which discussions about the
articulations between technology, subjectivity, and possible experiences have converged to the
aesthetics of science fiction, evidencing the friction between factual and fictional in the present
time. Still for Morin, there is a predominance of realistic fantasy and fiction over the fantastic
and the documental, and it is the anthropology of the imaginary that brings us to the essence of
contemporary issues. The hallmark of fantasy is to rationalize the fantastic.
When we talk about the man-extraterrestrial relationship, we inevitably enter into an equally
complex theme – otherness. The question of alterity strikes the heart of man in his relationship
with the world. Studies in this field are numerous, dense, and ever deeper. The Other is a
fundamental piece for Psychoanalysis, Social Psychology, Anthropology, and Philosophy in the
understanding of the subject, his behavior in society and its own. But, who Other? All of them,
the next and the distant, the present and the absent, the old and the new, the brother and the
anonymous, God and the devil, everybody. For Lévinas (2005), the other is the mirror of me, so
we are interdependent, in(ter) dividual.
Lacan, in his study “Mirror Stage,” reiterates that the child, in order to reach the level of reality,
must leave the imaginary mode of the vision of himself and of others, but, so that it can happen,
he must use the symbolic mode. At some point, after the initial phase of contact with this other
body, still not recognized as his/her, the child acquires the sense of wholeness and unity. Before
that, he/she had a sense of fragmentation, of shredding, of unruled body. The mirror gives the
illusion of unity.
When we admit our cosmic childhood and solitude, we establish a correspondence with the
Lacanian study: the presence of the alien gives man the same illusory sense of wholeness and
unity, dissipates his misgovernance, and gives him an identity record. In ufology, when we put
ufologist and witness face to face, one sees himself in the other as if between them there was a
semi-opaque glass: the face of one overlaps with that of the other, one is the other, one is
reflected in the spectrum of the other.
The subject exists in function of the other, but the paradox is that one must disappear so that the
other exists without the superimposed image. The other one talks a lot about me, while I know
nothing about him. Only by understanding him will I understand me, and only when I understand
myself will I understand him. Absolute aporia. It is the logic of the dialectic and the otherness
advocated by Ricoeur, and yet, for Lévinas, the Other is another Me. A poetic license allows us
to say I am us.
When we take this reflection to the territory of ufology, we are faced with a difficult equation of
four elements, or, in terms of this language, four “others”: the researcher, the witness, the alien,
and the UFO phenomenon. An intricate set of mirrors in which each one reflects himself and the
641
V. Anthropological Approach
others, in a way that everybody is unknown to everyone. What is the true Face2 of each one? Is
there a true Face? Could there be presence without a Face? Who is behind my Face? For Scruton
(2015), the wholeness of the subjectivity of the subject does not exist without the gaze of the
other. And where is the one who does not see me and I do not see? What if the other’s face is not
the same as what I see?
Another, in Latin, is alienus, and alien – the “outsider,” or from any place beyond human
dimension – gods, angels, demons, spirits... Bizarre, anomalous, burlesque, inhabitants of the
realm of fantasy, of dreams, of myths and delusions, for this very reason so seductively
captivating. Since man is marked by incompleteness, insufficiency, fragmentation and
decharacterization of himself, he feels that something is lacking, and believes that “alientherapy”
will restore the integral being and mitigate the pain caused by the presence of this emptiness.
Myths, beliefs, dreams, and fictions are fruits of the magical vision of the world, putting
anthropomorphism into practice. The imaginary is the spontaneous action of the spirit that
dreams.
The diagnosis of the contemporary world presents a worrying picture, which can be translated by
the following expressions: age of emptiness, outbreak of mass apathy, empire of the ephemeral,
dilution of identities, shared solipsism. This body of definitions is summed up in three words:
voracity, volatility, and vulnerability. Man still believes himself made just like the Creator
because he refuses to recognize himself as fragile, needy, narcissistic, and cowardly. To mask
this visceral anguish of helplessness and solitude in the cosmos, he creates fantasies, dreams,
illusions, and utopias as defense mechanisms against a reality that reveals his ontological fears,
his indigence and his non-place in the cosmic economy, and the contradiction of his mortality in
the infinity of the universe. Contardo Calligaris3 once said that “Anguish is discovering that we
are pieces of meat left on a lost and smaller planet, and that all of this does not make any sense.”
Sartre feels the man creeping lethargically through the dark crevices of the cave, imagining
himself to be a knower of the universe when, in reality, he satisfies himself with his small
discoveries with sound illusion for the maintenance of his existence. He extends his reflection by
arguing that the consciousness of his existence and the feeling of existence come from thinking,
but this awareness is a terrible thing when man realizes that the only way to escape existence is
to flee from thought. At the same time, Sartre asks how to escape thought if the need for escape
is already a thought that brings us back to existence? Another aporia? He concludes that we are
incarcerated in existing; the thinking and the feeling of being are inseparable.
The Other discussed here goes beyond simply reflecting our image, it is the tormentor who
reflects what we think we see or imagine to be. For Rimbaud, the Self is another one, a
boomerang effect: the nuclear idea of otherness is to put us as “other” and bring it back to us. We
are essentially relational beings within a multitudinous solipsism.
A reflection of the size of the one we have developed goes beyond the theoretical and
epistemological contours of the engaged disciplines and of the phenomenon itself. There are no
boundaries delimiting the geography of this knowledge; the voices that put man at the center of
2
3
Face with capital “F,” according to Scruton’s writing, in a sense of “identity.”
Contardo Calligaris, “Angústia é descobrir que somos...,” https://www.pensador.com/frase/MTg4NzMzMg/
642
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
the discussion are not dissonant, but complementary, different visions that are not necessarily
antagonistic. On the other hand, we should not underestimate the fact that all knowledge is not in
itself free from deception and delusion in the search of truth, especially when it navigates in a sea
of questions and doubts.
As an inverse cliché, the parts do not surpass the whole. Far from simple rhetoric, it is the way to
ratify one of the pillars of complex thinking: incompleteness, unaccomplishment, fractional
knowledge. Many topics could not be discussed or explored: the capital role of science fiction in
language and in the making of the phenomenon, ethics, narcissism, religion, cosmobiology,
dreams, language, folklore, cosmology, and symbolism in all strata.
Complexity is not necessarily a challenge, an engine of thought, as Morin (200) believes, but a
recipe that replaces the simplification that almost always only answers, and does not clarify.
Moreover, it is the complexity that leads to multidimensional and pollinator knowledge, but still
incomplete. The correct understanding of utterances is also, above all, an unmodulated process of
interpretation, which mobilizes the general intelligence and calls to knowledge of the world.
The current century demands, claims, imposes the urgency of an attitude of the one who intends to
deal with the world, that is, to widen the range of connections with the knowledge where dialogue,
reflection, dialectics, criticism, and transdisciplinarity must be the managers of the processes of
growth. Either that, or the tenuous thread that keeps us tied to the present, will be broken by the
weight of our inertia. In Morin’s view, cognitive dynamics is the conjugation, in varying dosages, at
all three levels – the individual, the collective, and the historical – of the three domains of aptitude
that constitute the cognoscent subject: drive, reason and emotion. It is the connection between them
that constitutes a given structure from which the collected knowledge and data are retotalized,
resignified, understood, evaluated, and judged.
The general mapping of the study shows that, due to the historical bias, there is no doubt that the
conjunction of specific factors contributed to the emergence of an avant la lettre phenomenon, of
indisputable psychic nature in a silent gestation: wars, uncertainties, tensions, the political and social
changes, and a culture in formation, making up a new and “strange” reality. In the psychic plane, it
has been verified that the subject has no way to reconcile with himself or with the world, finding in
the archetypes the outlet to express this conflict. The only language that the unconscious disposes
come from symbols, images, deliriums, myths, and dreams. And neuroses. With the discovery of the
unconscious, man saw his most repressed weaknesses, his deepest pains, his unpreparedness for life,
his incapacity, and his existential shift sprouting: the thinking subject imprisoned in the predatory
animal, an irreconcilable duality, a devastating subterranean confrontation, the total impossibility of a
transcendent animal.
While man seeks a meaning for life, he finds death, and when he finds it, he does not know what
meaning life has, or even if it has meaning, so he creates one for what he sees no sense in, and the
search confuses with the veneration of obscurity. Sartre says that, more than death, existence itself is
absurd, without reasons or explanations, it is not justified by itself. Not finding a meaning for life
produces in man the noögenic, spiritual neurosis, one of the most widespread psychic sufferings in
the world: the fear of death and the fear that life is just that – an instant of solitude between the first
cry and the last breath. Human life lies between the nothingness of the before and the nothingness of
643
V. Anthropological Approach
the after, a temporal spark in the cosmic calendar.
To the ontogenic desire to be part of the universe, Morin states that “To anthropomorphism, which
tends to load things with human hope, cosmomorphism comes together weaker and darker, that is,
the tendency to load man with cosmic presence.” (Morin, 1997, p. 87). Eco calls it structures of
consolation, everything that contains an immediate appeal of leisuree, of spectacular, that holds him
off its miseries, horrors and misfortunes.
As anthropocosmomorphism fails to anchor itself in the real and objective world, it migrates to the
imaginary. The imaginary substance merges with our emotional, psychic reality. According to
Morin, “The imaginary confuses, in the same osmosis, the real and the unreal, the fact and the lack,
not only to attribute to the reality the charms of the imaginary, but also to give the imaginary the
virtues of reality.” (Id, p. 251).
Stars Don’t Speak
Man feels abandoned on an islet lost somewhere in space, with no one to hear his cry. The slightest
movement on the cosmic horizon rekindles his hope. If life is indeed a cosmic accident, an anomaly,
a prodigy, or a privilege, a work of chance and nature, an extraordinary and fortuitous encounter of
random organisms under the influx of unlikely factors, then it does not seem to make sense to seek
meaning for it. What remains for man, who is not even master of himself, but neurosis? It remains to
represent, to be the architect of the imaginary and the ability to (re)create images and invent senses
and outputs. It remains to cry out for the gods. Finally, for Durand (2002), the imaginary is the total
of images and the relations of images that constitute the thought capital, the great denominator where
the procedures of human thought fit. Succinctly, the imaginary defines itself as an unavoidable
representation, the faculty of symbolization from which all fears, all hopes and their cultural fruits
flow continuously since the approximately one and a half million years that the homo erectus has
risen on the face of the Earth. Man is a museum of images, produced and to be produced, which
designates the set of images produced by the symbolic animal, as Cassirer used to say. Museum is the
word that Durand uses frequently to name the collector of experiences in which the subject is
constituted – a museum of representations and symbolisms.
If we consider ufology in the realm of magical thinking, the imaginary, when in excess, breaks
the limits of the real and assumes itself as absurd, the surreal, the extraordinary. “Magical
thinking” is one of the escape routes in order not to face the truth of one’s own internal and
external experience, starting from the creation of a mental state that starts to come into its own
reality – angels, oracles, spirutal entities, demiurges, aliens… an alternative, imaginary reality.
The displacement, or transfer, to this imaginary reality is made through soteriological
metanarratives juxtaposed in the flow of daily individual experiences: religious and non-religious
beliefs, fictions and fantasies.
Magical thinking is also, ultimately, an amalgam of the ego’s defense mechanisms:
displacement, fantasy, negation, compensation, projection, repression... Magical thinking is just
the symptom of a cause that comes from the cradle, goes through the formation of the
personality, and culminates in the inevitable needs and insufficiency of the individual. Melanie
Klein, Anna Freud, and Jacques Lacan are some of the main names that gave their lives to this
important question. The contribution of psychoanalytic studies has been essential to understand
644
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
the labyrinthine paths of the human mind, and this cannot be ignored. Thus, ufology is an
invention and, as such, it is quite plausible to think it needs to go to the couch! The “fantastic” is
one of the tributaries of this abundant imaginary river, and reveals an invasion of the incredible,
the disconcerting, the supernatural in the natural world, as Caillois (1965) would say, the
“unusual outburst”, is capable to signal movements for the reconfiguration of new forms of
intervention in reality. For him, the “amazing” presents the supernatural event, which brings the
subversion of conventional space and reflection; however, these supernatural events are inserted
in everyday life and duel in two contrary dimensions, there being no total substitution of reality
for fantasy. The imaginary is the legacy of mythical thought, a concrete thought that, operating
on the principle of analogy, expresses itself through symbolic images organized in a dynamic
way.
We must apply Semiotics to remove the veil of intentions behind verbal and non-verbal
language. Any phrase, word, statement, formulation is a symbol of thought, just as language
contains symbolism. Thought and word complement and combine; the symbol itself is
essentially synthetic, therefore “intuitive,” serving better than language as a support for
“intellectual intuition,” which is above reason. When dealing with the semiotics of magic, Nöth
(1996) refers to the “enchantment” that words and narrative antics produce, signs that put
themselves in the place of something else not revealed. It is the meeting of the subjective,
adjustable unreal, with the concrete and immutable real.
According to Durand (2002), the world of images is divided into two domains: The first is that of
images as visual representations: drawings, paintings, prints, photographs, signs that represent
the visual environment. The second is the immaterial domain of images in our mind, which
appear as visions, ghosts, imaginations, schemes, models, mental representations in general.
Both domains are not separate, but inextricably linked to the source. There are no images as
visual representations that have not arisen from images of those who produced them, just as there
are no mental images that have no origin in the concrete world of objects.
Eco states that “we can define as a sign anything that, based on a socially accepted convention,
can be understood as something that is in place of something else,” (1997, pp. 9-11) therefore, a
representation. Peirce understands that the notion of representation includes several meanings,
without losing its connection with the image, and can be seen as a synonym for both symbolic
image and sign. Chartier notes that:
The symbolic function (symbolization or representation) is defined as a mediating function that
informs the different ways of apprehending the real, whether it operates through linguistic signs,
mythological figures and religion, or the concepts of scientific knowledge (Campbell, 2001, p.
52).
For Campbell, this particular aspect of the human experience obeys the two great themes that
permeate the mythologies and religions of the world. They are not the same. They have different
stories. The first to appear can be called astonishment in some of its modalities, from mere confusion
in the face of the unexplainable to the outburst of demonic terror or mystical reverence. The second is
self-salvation: redemption or liberation from a world that has lost its luster. The gods represent
protective forces that sustain the subject in his field of action. When contemplating the divinities, he
gains a kind of stabilizing force that places him, so to speak, in the role played by a particular
645
V. Anthropological Approach
divinity, because the symbols of the divinity coincide with those of the Self, that is, with what, in the
form of psychological experience, it represents the psychic totality and expresses the idea of divinity.
Ufology pulsates between fictional dynamics and redeeming ideology to mold its own concepts, firm
as a house of cards, solid as the rainbow, while the UFO phenomenon, on the mythical plane, reveals
a load of symbolisms that surpass it: the symbol is a kind of concrete abstraction, always poorer than
what it symbolizes. Anyway, both of them, through different paths, deal with the ambiguous and
conflicted human nature: sometimes mystical and fragile, sometimes critical and rational. After all, is
“flying saucer” our projection, or are we its projection? In conclusion, for us, the “flying saucer” has
never been a “saucer,” much less a “flying” one. In conclusion, Jung’s reflection appropriately
synthesizes the great question of man, chorusing many who have gone through these pages and
others absent of equal importance:
In every adult, there lurks a child – an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never
completed and calls for unceasing care, attention and education. That is the part of the human
personality which wants to develop and become whole (Jung, 2008, p. 150).
At the heart of man there is a long and hard battle, which consumes deal psychic energy, so that the
unconscious leaves the conscience out of the conflict of finitude. Ortega y Gasset understands that
the true human condition is that of a castaway:
The man with the clear head is the man who frees himself from those fantastic “ideas” and looks life
in the face, realises that everything in it is problematic, and feels himself lost. As this is the simple
truth- that to live is to feel oneself lost- he who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on
firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look round for something to which to cling,
and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause
him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of (Ortega y
Gasset, 1930, p. 114).
Bibliography
Abbagnano, N. Dicionário de Filosofia. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2007.
Abrassasrt, J-M. Le Modèle Sociopsychologique du Phénomène OVNI: Un Cadre Conceptuel
Interprétatif en Sciences Humaines. Louvain, Belgium: Presses Universitaires de
Louvain, 2016.
Banchs, R. Fenómenos Aéreos Inusuales: Un enfoque biopsuicosocial. Buenos Aires: Leuka,
1994.
Bauman, Z. Medo Líquido. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 2008.
Becker, E. A Negação da Morte. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2008.
Bettelhein, B. A Psicanálise dos Contos de Fadas. São Paulo: Paz & Terra, 1980.
Cabria, I. OVNIS y Ciencias Humanas. Santander, Spain: Fundación Anomalia, 2002.
Caillois, R. Au coeur du fantastique. Paris: Gallimard, 1965.
Campbell, J. Mitos, Sonhos e Religião. São Paulo: Ediouro, 2001.
Cassirer, E. Language and Myrh. New York: Dover Publ, 1945.
Cardoso, F.S. A Ficção Científica, Imaginário do Mundo Contemporâneo. Uma introdução ao
gênero. Niterói, Brazil: Vício de Leitura, 2003.
Castoriadis, Cornelius. A Instituição Imaginária da Sociedade. São Paulo: Paz & Terra, 1991.
646
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Chartier, R. A Histórica Cultural. Entre práticas e representações. Rio de Janeiro: Difel, 1980.
D’Angelo, B. “Deuses Invisíveis: A ficção científica e os mitos cosmogónicos (Lem, Lessing e Le
Guin)”. E-topia: Revista Electrónica de Estudos sobre a Utopia, nº 9, Edição Temática “Ano
2100”. Porto, Portugal, 2008.
Durand, G. As Estruturas Antroppológicas do Imaginário. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2002.
Durkheim, E.. As Formas Elementares da Vida Religiosa. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2000.
Eco, U. Os Limites da Interpretação. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1995.
Eco, U. Tratado Geral de Semiótica. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1997.
Eliade, M. Myth and Reality. New York: Harper & Rowl, 1963.
Forer, B.R. “The Fallacy of Personal Validation: A classroom demonstration of gullibility.”
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. 44, 1949, pp. 118-123.
Freud, A. O Ego e os Mecanismos de Defesa. Pôrto Alegre: Artmed, 2006.
Freud, S. O Futuro de uma Ilusão. Vol XX1. Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1969.
Grünschloß, A. “Quando entramos na nave espacial do meu pai - Esperanças cargoísticas e
cosmologias milenaristas nos novos movimentos religiosos de UFOs.” Revista de Estudos da
Religião. PUC/SP, 3, 2002.
Fromm, E. Psicoanalisis y Religion. Buenos Aires: Editorial Psique, 1956.
Jung, C.G. Um Mito Moderno sobre Coisas Vistas no Céu. Petrópolis, Vozes, 1991.
Jung, C. G. Os Arquétipops e o Inconsciente Coletivo. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2000.
Jung, C. G. O Desenvolvimento da Personalidade. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2008.
Lacan, J. Escritos. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1996.
Le Guin, U. A Mão Esquerda da Escuridão. São Paulo: Aleph, 2008.
Legros, P. et al. Sociologia do Imaginário. Porto Alegre: Sulinas, 2007.
Lévi-Strauss, C. Mito e Significado. Lisbon: Edições 70, 1987.
Lévinas, E. Entre Nós - Ensaios sobre a Alteridade. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2005.
Lévy-Bruhl, L. A Mentalidade Primitiva. São Paulo: Paulus, 2008.
Malinowski, B. Magia, Ciêcia e Religião. Lisbon: Edições 70, 1984.
Martins, A. F. Saudades do Futuro. O cinema de ficção científica como expressão do imaginário
social e do devir. Brasília: Ed. UnB, 2013.
Mayer, J-F. Novas Seitas, um novo exame. São Paulo: Loyola, 1989.
Méheust, B. Science-fiction et Soucoupes Volantes. Paris: Terre de Brume, 2007.
Morais, R. de (org.). As Razões do Mito. São Paulo: Papirus, 1988.
Morin, E. O Cinema ou o Homem Imaginário. Lisboa: Relógio D’Água, 1997.
Morin, E. Sept Savoirs Nécessaires à l’Éducation du Futur. Seuil/Unesco, 1999.
Nöth, W. “Semiótica da Magia.” Revista USP, 31. Set/Nov 1996, São Paulo, pp. 30-41.
Ortega y Gasset, J. The Revolt f the Masses. New York: Norton, 1930.
Otto, R. O Sagrado. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2007.
Peirce, C.S. “Illustrations of the Logic of Science. First paper: The fixation of belief” Popular
Science Monthly. Nov. 12, 1877, pp. 1-15.
Reis, C.; U. Rodrigues. A Desconstrução de um Mito. São Paulo: Livro Pronto, 2009.
Reis, C. Reflexões sobre uma Mitopoética. São Paulo: LPBooks, 2011.
Reis, C. Naus da Ilusão. Rio de Janeiro: Multifoco, 2016.
Renard, J-B. “Religion, Science-fiction et extraterrestres” Archives de Sciences Sociales des
Religions. 50(1); 1980, pp. 143-164.
Sartre, J-P A Imaginação. São Paulo: Abril, 1978.
Scruton, R. O Rosto de Deus. São Paulo: É Realizações, 2015.
647
V. Anthropological Approach
Saliba, J. A. Religious Dimensions of UFO Phenomena. The Gods have Landed. Albany, 1995.
Silva, A.; R. M. Nakagawa (orgs.). Semiótica da Comunicação. São Paulo: Intercom, 2013.
Todorov, T. Introdução à Literatura Fantástica. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 2010.
Tucherman, I. “A ficção científica como narrativa do mundo contemporâneo.” Consciência. Online.
Available at: https://www.comciencia.br/dossies-1-72/reportagens/2004/10/09.shtml
648
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
VI
METRICS AND SCALING
649
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Measuring the Subjectivity of UFO Testimony
V.J. Ballester-Olmos and Miguel Guasp1
No siempre nos es dable adquirir por nosotros mismos el conocimiento de la
existencia de un ser, y entonces nos es preciso valernos del testimonio ajeno.
Para que éste no nos induzca a error son necesarias dos condiciones:
primera, que el testigo no sea engañado; segunda, que no nos quiera
engañar.
Balmes2
Abstract: A method to quantify and rate the value of the subjectivity of UFO testimony is
proposed. Four criteria based on data collected by the field investigator give shape to an algorithm
to establish an “index of subjectivity.”
Keywords: UFO reports, UFO field inquiry, Subjectivity of UFO testimony, Measurement
criteria, Index of subjectivity (), GEPAN
Introduction
The French CNES-based Groupe d’Études des Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non Identifiés
(GEPAN)3 has designed a quantitative system to express the degree of subjectivity of the human
testimony applied to UFO reports. (Jimenez.) Based in the interrelationship of a series of elements,
it provided a numeric measure of this subjectivity. This model positioned every case within a
continuum establishing the “probability that subjective elements are reduced to a minimum”
(PESM). This system was self-evaluated with the assistance of three criteria: multiplicity of
witnesses, coincidence in the observational data, and effect on preconceived ideas of witness.
Apparently, GEPAN later abandoned this model in favor of a more detailed examination of single
UFO reports.
Index of Subjectivity of UFO Testimony
The GEPAN idea is conceptually valid, but in our opinion, it can be improved. Mainly because its two
first criteria were already part of the parameters of our own “index of certainty.” (Ballester-Olmos,
Groff, and Johnson.) By managing new concepts, we will fulfill the need to develop a valid model to
standardize the definition and assessment of UFO cases, and, in the first instance, to have a measure
of the subjectivity of a report, which complements the index of certainty already cited.
The new method to follow consists of highlighting a set of positive indications, emanating from a
logical discourse, the lack of even one of which will mean a breakdown in the reliability of report and
1
This paper was originally part of a larger essay entitled “Medida de la subjetividad del testimonio,” published in V.J.
Ballester-Olmos, Investigación OVNI, Barcelona: Plaza & Janés, 1984, pages 234-242.
2
Jaime L. Balmes (1810-1848), El criterio, Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1968. In English: It is not always possible for us to
acquire by ourselves the knowledge of the existence of something, and we must make use of the testimony of others. For
this not to mislead us, two conditions are necessary: first, that the witness is not deceived; and second, that he does not want
to deceive us.
3
In 2005, re-named GEIPAN, Groupe d’Études et d’Informations sur les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés,
https://www.cnes-geipan.fr/
651
Vi. Metrics and Scaling
reporter. Tracking these factors will consequently be inevitable for field investigators at the time of
their work, in order to optimize it.
We believe that there are certain distinct levels with respect to which we establish the various sine qua
non conditions for meriting the trustworthiness of human testimony; such a conclusion, as well as the
relevant levels, are deduced from the fact that eliminating the unknown whether or not the witness is
deceived or deceiving is the same as minimizing the uncertainty we have about the event, or,
conversely, as maximizing the certainty we have about it. The levels mentioned are the consistency of
the information provided, the witness’s own personality, the impact of the alleged event on his beliefs,
and, finally, the psychophysiology of the witness.
Consequently, in order to quantify the probability of subjectivity of UFO information, we propose the
following model:
Criterion CI: It denotes the level of concordance and consistency of the testimonies.
1. There should be no visible inconsistencies in the narrative/report, nor should there be other more
surreptitious inconsistencies that are only discovered when two or more variables contained in the
information are computed or correlated. Nor should there be disagreements with data outside the report
(meteorological, for example).
2. There should also be no different versions in narratives made to different people, nor evident
distortions in the information over time.
The weight (W) will be:
Internal consistency of the story:
Lack of consistency:
Unique version of the facts:
Different versions:
Wi
1
0
1
0
Criterion CII: It describes the subject’s personality and behavior in relation to the subject of reference.
1. It indicates the lack or not of a background of seeking notoriety, and the lack or not of a desire for
publicity or economic exploitation of the sighting.
2. It indicates whether or not there is a significant fondness for the subject of UFOs, esotericism,
occultism, etc. (at least in the most spectacular cases).
3. It rates the existence or absence of other alleged visions or experiences of an abnormal nature.
Background of notoriety:
Lack of background:
Exploitation of UFO event:
Lack of exploitation:
Interest for “occult” topics:
Lack of interest:
Subsequent experiences:
No further experiences:
Wi
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
652
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Criterion CIII: It designates the impact of the case on the witness’s beliefs (the fact that the witness’s
claims may appear as a suspicious reinforcement of his or her personal beliefs about the UFO
phenomenon, its existence, nature, etc.)
Reinforcement of positive or negative beliefs:
Absence, maintenance or reversal of positive or negative beliefs about UFOs:
Wi
0
1
Criterion IV: It measures psychophysiological aspects of the subject perceiving the phenomenon.
1. It denotes the lack or absence of past or current neurological, mental, memory, perception disorders,
etc.
2. It indicates the existence or non-existence of conflictive or oppressive family, work, or emotional
relationships. In general, evidence of not being subjected to especially hard, unusual, or prolonged
stress or strains.
3. Existence or non-existence of medical history involving the intake of “unusual” drugs and
medicines, with potential sensory contraindications or after-effects.
Existence of mental disorders:
Lack of mental disorders:
Evidence of strain, stress, etc.:
Lack of such evidence:
Unusual medical history:
Lack of unusual medical history:
Wi
0
1
0
1
0
1
The maximum (M) and minimum (m) values that can be achieved are:
CI
Mm
2 0
CII CIII
Mm Mm
4 0 1 0
CIV Total
Mm Mm
3 0 10 0
In turn, the intrinsic valuation of each set of criteria is not identical. Our valuation (v) is as follows:
CI
CII
CIII
CIV
vi_
40%
20%
10%
30%
In our opinion, these different percentages provide the relative weight for each of the criteria for the
assessment of human testimony in close encounter UFO sightings.
We are specifically interested in creating a numerical tabulation of the above criteria, so that a
mathematical rating can express the subjectivity (or objectivity) of human testimony applied to UFO
events of high strangeness. Such an index would encompass the values given above in a single formula.
We believe we have found an expression of this index of subjectivity ( ) in the following way:
653
Vi. Metrics and Scaling
Where:
i =I...IV, refers to the four criteria described above (CI, CII, CIII and CIV)
Wi is the weight or sum of the values reached by each criterion
Mi and mi are the maximum and minimum values that every criterion can reach, respectively
vi is the percentage of assessment contributed by each criterion
A simpler version of the above formula, in developed form, is as follows:
)
which indicates that the index of subjectivity of the testimony, denoted by (), is equal to the sum of
the different relative weights of the four criteria, duly adjusted by certain coefficients. The higher the
value found, the greater the subjectivity of the testimony.
Interpretation of the Subjectivity Index
The () index thus obtained has a range of variation that oscillates between 0 and 1. The application
of this index to a variety of different situations allows us to score it, which leads us to interpret its value
with simplicity when applied to a specific UFO report.
Figure 1 graphically shows the range of the index expressed as a percentage from 0% to 100%.
(Evidently, a value = 0.50, for example, is equivalent to an index value of 50%.)
Figure 1: Variation of the Subjectivity Index (S) of a UFO testimony.
654
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Legends:
OBJETIVO: OBJECTIVE - SUBJETIVO: SUBJECTIVE
Testimonio aceptable: Acceptable testimony
Testimonio dudoso: Dubious testimony
Testimonio subjetivo: Subjective testimony
Testimonio rechazable: Rejectable testimony
Only those testimonies with a value below 10% can be considered as objective testimonies, i.e.,
testimonies that under normal conditions should be accepted because of their low subjectivity. Above
this value and up to an index of 30%, the cases have a normal appearance but contain different elements
that point to a reasonable doubt of the testimonial integrity. Between 30% and 50% are those
testimonies that are insecure in form and content and do not refer to an external reality; there seem to
be motives that present high symptoms of subjectivity. Above 50% the testimony should be discarded
since there is not the slightest confidence in the integrity of the witness’s testimony.
We believe this proposal is a practical tool in the path to a scientific study of UFO reports. If field
investigators include the above sub-criteria in their normal survey work, a presumed UFO event will
be considered valid for further examination when its subjectivity parameter complies with the values
indicated above. The availability of these quantifiable parameters allows us to take a step forward and
prevents us from lagging behind events that can be interpreted with the help of analytical sciences.
Acknowledgments: To Richard W. Heiden, for editing the English translation.
References (all web articles accessed on June 10, 2022)
Ballester-Olmos, V.J., and Miguel Guasp. “Standards en la evaluación de los informes OVNI,” in
Los OVNIS y la Ciencia, Barcelona: Plaza & Janés, 1981, pp. 129-146. Translated as
“Standards in the Evaluation of UFO Reports,” in The Spectrum of UFO Research, Mimi
Hynek (ed.), Chicago, Illinois: J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, 1988, pp. 175-182.
http://www.cufos.org/books/The_Spectrum_of_UFO_Research.pdf
Groff, Terry, “MUFON Case Management System. Ballester-Guasp Report Evaluator,” (online
JavaScript calculator).
http://web.archive.org/web/20050205000326/http://terrygroff.com/ufotools/eval/eval_calc.html
Jimenez, Manuel, Les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-Identifiés et la Psychologie de la Perception,
GEPAN Note Technique No. 10, CNES No. 294, GEPAN (Toulouse), December 14, 1981.
https://www.cnes-geipan.fr/sites/default/files/note_tech_10.pdf
Johnson, Jerold, “Ballester-Guasp Evaluation of Completed Reports,” in MUFON Field Investigator´s
Manual, Walter H. Andrus, Jr. (ed.). Seguin, Texas: Mutual UFO Network, Inc., 1995, pp.
214-221.
655
Vi. Metrics and Scaling
The Reliability of the UFO Sighting Story
Marc Leduc
Abstract: Once verbally documented, a UFO1 sighting recounted by an observer is presented as
a story authored by an investigator. It is typically formatted in a scientific-looking report. The
current techniques for evaluating UFO stories meet the criteria for the value of information in a
scientific document in different ways, as their review shows. It is nevertheless interesting to
compare three simple ufological techniques and, to accomplish this, three examples of
application are compared. In conclusion, the three techniques prove to be complementary. In
addition, each can serve as a sampling modality and enable the comparison of groups of sighting
stories. For instance, time series derived from groups of stories of different values may be
compared. It appears that the time series of the compared groups of stories are indistinguishable.
How can this be so?
Keywords: Comparative group, Criteria, Indistinguishable, Sampling, Reliability
About Strength and Weakness of a Story
In the field of ufology, the observation story becomes the primary datum since, in principle, it
contains the description of an unexplainable phenomenon after verification. However, it is also
its Achilles’ heel, since the testimony of an observer is subjective and the report of the
investigator a matter of judgment. Experience suggests that the observer himself rarely reveals
his story directly to the general public. A UFO story nearly always takes shape as a result of the
work of an investigator or journalist and is therefore part of a process. The reliability of the story
and the observer should be addressed in the context that a triviality may take more significance
than the observer thought, or conversely, a strangeness that impressed him may appear to be
insignificant. Generally, the cases are classified as a misunderstanding: such vision, secret
military device, hoax, religious conviction, deception, and of course, as a UFO. Judging the story
is dependent on the reliability of several sources, including the reputation of the observer (quality
of the information initially narrated), and the investigator (reconstruction of the information), as
well as the relevance of the information provided by the medium. To sort out the stories and
assess their validity, researchers have developed various criteria of reliability.
Brief Review2 of Reliability Criteria
The information index of Poher,3 as well as GEPAN4 [Study of Non-identified Aerospace
Phenomenon], describe the elements of a comprehensive report such as: date, time, place,
number of observers, etc. MUFON-France,5 incorporates degrees of strangeness, a confidence
index is also applied. On the other hand, Ballester and Guasp6 have conducted exhaustive work
by introducing a complex formula that takes into account indices of confidence, credibility, and
reliability, including the maturity of the observers, and the circumstances of the sighting. In the
long run, some information is found to be of little value and is not prioritized by researchers. The
1 The word “UFO” will be used as a common noun.
2 The limited scope of this article allows for only a very brief review.
3 Poher (1971-1976).
4 GEPAN (1981 and 1982).
5 MUFON France (2014).
6 Ballester-Olmos, V. J. and Guasp, M. (1989)
656
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
contributions of three simple techniques will be examined, including those of Hynek,7 Randles
and Warrington,8 and Vallee.9 The examples applied to three UFO stories are discussed below.
The UFO stories presented here come from Quebec, in which the ability for further investigation
has expired and the relevant information has been consolidated. The comments will have a
general scope.
First Example
The purpose here is not to present the case in detail, but to briefly describe the application of
Hynek’s technique in which he proposes two criteria for each UFO story.
Hynek’s Criteria
First, the strangeness index (E)—referring to Étrangeté in French—captures the quantity of
information that is not readily explained in terms of motion, shape, brightness, physical effect,
etc. In theory, each unit of information corresponds to an element that is resistant to proper
explanation. If E = 10/10, then the evidence remains completely incomprehensible. Conversely,
if E = 0/10, nothing odd is apparent and a complete and clear explanation of the evidence is
available. Hynek assigned E = 3/10 for three pieces of information that defy explanation. This
value constituted the threshold for a good-quality observation story for scientific research.
The second criteria, the probability index (P), captures the quantity of information that lends
credibility to the story, such as the observer’s experience in the context or whether there are
independent observers. If P = 10/10, then one is “certain” of the accuracy and reliability of all
information. If P = 0/10, then one cannot believe anything that is told. Hynek assigned a ceiling
of P = 3/10 to an account told by a single person who was deemed credible and reliable.
First Case: A UFO Account with an Exceptional Shape
Figure 1. Bats, covered with metal.
7 Hynek (1972).
8 Randles and Warrington (1979).
9 Vallee (1991).
657
Vi. Metrics and Scaling
The case occurred in Chateauguay (Monteregie) 10 at 9:30 p.m. on May 29, 1978, over a period
of 10 seconds: A teacher spotted two objects resembling bats. They appeared black, seemed to be
covered with metal and were approximately the size of the moon. The second object was slightly
higher than the first. The two objects travelled across Lake St. Louis at a low altitude in silence
until the observer lost sight of them in the darkness of the sky. How do we interpret this story?
Were they machines carrying out monitoring or possibly related to the famous contraband on this
water surface at that time? Would kites have deceived the observer? Coincidentally, a television
program titled Legends of the Superheroes was produced that same year featuring Batman and
Robin. Could this have been a joke by the teacher on that occasion?
* Hynek:
Strangeness: 5/10 (shape, apparent size, volume, quietness, the
short motion amplitude of 10 seconds is astonishing).
Probability: 3/10 (the maximum for a single reliable observer).
A site visit, and meeting with the observer was held.
Second Example
When a UFO observer contacts the news media directly, there are often two common ways in
which the information is processed. First, with reputable, so-called “serious” medium and editing
process, the processing is usually a devaluation in keeping with the mainstream thinking that
holds the UFO observer up to public scrutiny. By contrast, with a lighter or simply mercantile
media, the presentation is often treated sensationally. How valuable is a particular case? The
purpose here is not to present this case in detail, but rather to briefly examine the application of
the Randles and Warrington technique.
Randles and Warrington Investigation Levels:
“Level A:
A report which has received on-site investigation by experienced investigators.
“Level B:
An interview with the witness or witnesses was conducted by investigators but
without any follow-up investigations into the case.
“Level C:
The witness has only completed a standard UFO report form of some type. No
interviews have been conducted.
“Level D:
The report consists solely of some form of written communication from the
witness.
“Level E:
The report is based on information received second hand (such as a newspaper
account). There has been no follow-up investigation at all.”11
Second Case: Sensationalism
The late journalist André Rufiange wrote the following sidebar in the Journal de Montréal on
February 9, 1975:
10 CASUFO© case number 1612.
11 Randles & Warrington (1979, p. 167)
658
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Figure 2, Rufiange box
Several questions arise for lack of information. Was the photograph taken through a home
window or a windshield? Were the movements of objects seen by the eye rapid or slow? What
were the angle of elevation, apparent size, and possible distance? Is this a color photograph?
Could it possibly be a snowflake bursting into water droplets on the glass surface of the camera
lens, which would explain the blurring of the focus? Has the photograph been reframed? In the
caption below the photograph, why does Rufiange write “objects”? Why would he write, “The
mystery continues”—which one? With its attention-grabbing title, the text certainly serves to sell
the newspaper. For this case,12 it is possible to assign the following values:
* Randles and Warrington: Level E
* Hynek:
Strangeness: 1/10
Probability: 2/10 (possible visual + photograph)
Third Example
This story is much more difficult to explain. The purpose here is not to present the case in detail
but to briefly report on the application of Vallee’s technique.
12 CASUFO© case number 404.
659
Vi. Metrics and Scaling
The Value of the Case Using Vallee’s SVP Reliability Scale13
Table 1: SVP ratings
S (reliability of the
source)
V (whether or not7 a
site visit took place)
P (probability of natural
explanations)
0
Unknown source, or an
unreliable source.
No site visit, or the answer is
unknown.
Data are consistent with one or more
natural causes.
1
A source of unknown
reliability.
Visit by a casual person
unfamiliar with such phenomena.
Natural explanation requires only slight
alteration of the data.
2
Credible source, secondhand.
Visit by a person(s) familiar with
a range of phenomena.
Natural explanation would demand
gross alteration of one parameter.
3
Credible source, firsthand.
Visit by a reliable investigator
with some experience.
Natural explanation demands gross
alteration of several parameters.
First-hand personal
interview with the witness,
by a source of proven
reliability.
Visit by a skilled analyst.
No natural explanation is possible,
given the evidence.
4
The Third Case: “[...] those flat animals on the ocean floor.”
This interesting sighting occurred on November 12, 1978, 14 from 7:30 to 8:40 p.m.: A family of
three is driving home to Sorel after having dinner in Drummondville. The return trip takes them
through Pierreville, Yamaska, and Sainte-Victoire. It is in the northern road of Yamaska that the
mother (36 years old), father (45 years old), and the son (10 years old) observe a UFO located
near a tree that they are approaching. It is a white, triangular object, which appears transparent
and luminous like a diamond. Probably by inattention, the observers lose sight of the luminous
source, and when the car reaches the area close to the tree the object is no longer there. It seems
possible that the light was initially much further away from the tree than the three observers
believed.
At the end of the road, the light source becomes visible once again, seemingly motionless over
the Yamaska River, but suddenly it fades away on the spot. None of them are overly concerned,
until they arrive in St. Louis road near Sainte-Victoire, where the young boy observes the
triangle of light much closer than the previous two sightings and at a significantly lower altitude.
The boy then proceeds to use 20X50 binoculars. The mother asks her husband to stop the car.
When they stop, the luminous triangle is located on their left, motionless at an altitude of 70 to
100 meters. Suddenly, the triangular object emits a type of lightning downwards, like a white
neon light that does not reach the ground. The lightning appears as a curtain of light that is
narrower than the triangle, precisely outlined, and descends from the object at about 3 or 4
meters from the ground. The curtain of light appears for approximately ten seconds while an
electric crackling sound emanates from it. A moment later, the triangle, located 30 meters away,
is slowly approaching. During this approach, the curtain of light slowly fades away independent
of the triangle emitting it. To their astonishment, the triangular object instantaneously moves
while appearing to dematerialize and materialize. It is observed in one place, but in a fraction of
13 Vallee (1991, pp. 309-311), Isaac Koi English version: https://www.isaackoi.com/best-ufo-cases/21-quantitativecriteria-vallees-svp-ratings.html
14 CASUFO© case number 1705 ; Blaquiere and Leduc (1980).
660
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
a second it suddenly appears at distance of about 2 kilometers away. The boy exclaims, “Mom,
there are two of them!”
Figure 3: Reconstitution by Marc Leduc
The family resumes their journey while watching the UFO as much as possible. They look out
the window to observe the UFO approaching their vehicle. After approximately 8 minutes, the
triangle takes on the appearance of three headlights, while advancing slowly towards the car in a
zigzag fashion. At this moment it is perhaps 20 meters from the car, which is stopped again. The
object changes its course without modifying its speed, which is less than that of a person
walking. At this time, the mother is persuaded that the object is not of terrestrial origin while the
object is no longer a triangle with rounded corners, but tilts and takes on the appearance of a
metallic mass similar to a hat. In the meantime, and in spite of their great agitation, the observers
step out of the car. The husband is standing near the door on the driver’s side, while the mother is
walking in an area on the passenger side, and the boy is the farthest away from the car. The UFO
has on its bottom a rectangular box measuring 1meter long and 30 centimeters wide. This box is
pierced with round, red, phosphorescent openings. The mother particularly recalls this exact
moment when the UFO is approximately 10 meters overhead to affirm that the object could not
be an airplane or a helicopter of any sort. During these moments of extreme tension—and to their
amazement—all three individuals hear a noise similar to that of a jet plane passing at very high
661
Vi. Metrics and Scaling
altitude. The father states, “This is a jet.” The young boy immediately replies, “No, this is a
boomerang.” The mother remains silent—to her this would be referred to as a flying saucer. The
object remains motionless, although the observers are unable to be precise regarding the elapsed
time at that moment. The object then moves away slowly the same as it had when it approached.
After a moment, the witnesses no longer observe the object, though they can still hear it in the
clear, cold night. The three people then discuss the experience with great agitation for 5 or 6
minutes, while the father later explained to investigators that he wanted to calm the emotions of
his wife and son by trying to persuade them that it was only an airplane.
Next, the husband and son got into the car first. As the mother grasps the car door handle, she
suddenly observed the UFO moving slowly in a perpendicular position towards the car. For a
moment she is intrigued by a small headlight on the left side of the object, which is hovering
majestically at an approximate altitude of 10 meters. The scale of the object is estimated to be
larger than the car at roughly 7 or 8 meters. Two nozzles release a cloud above the car. The
mother is astonished but not afraid. The object turns a little to the right. It makes a sort of leap so
that the mother observes the top headlight, in the center, and what appears to be a cabin with
what she interprets as vertical bars. From a side view during a movement the cabin is clearly
striated, though she does not see anyone in the cabin. The metallic mass of the object appears to
be gray aluminum. The object loses altitude as it moves away and lowers to 3-4 meters from the
ground. It does not land, though the astonished mother expects this conclusion. It resumes
altitude while moving away towards the horizon, flashing red. From a certain angle, the object is
shaped like a hat with raised edges and at the front there are two small headlights, one on each
side. The witnesses resume driving in the direction of a trailer where an uncle is living in SainteVictoire. At the entrance to the road that leads to the uncle’s property they notice a small
luminous red ball floating around the trailer. They leave the place in a hurry and drive straight
home.
There is an airport for small airplanes at Sainte-Victoire, but the witnesses vigorously deny the
possibility of a small airplane. Later, the mother describes the object by comparison to a stingray,
“those animals that are flat like birds on the bottom of the ocean.” Afterwards, the mother and
her son are experiencing regular nightmares related to this experience and the boy has occasional
nosebleeds. A spot appears on the mother’s left thigh in the shape of the UFO, however,
investigators are unable to verify this though a physician is consulted. Afterwards, the mother
begin reading numerous books on the subject of UFOs.
In this case, the following values can be assigned:
* Vallee’s SVP Reliability Scale: S: 4, V: 1 (there was no reconstitution at the various locations),
P: 4.
* Hynek’s criteria:
Strangeness of at least 6/10: The movements, stops, and moves were
clever. Sound effects, light effects, transformations, and the emanation
of steam added to the strangeness. The quietness even with the
proximity is inexplicable.
Probability of at least 5/10: The duration and short distance associated
with the estimated actual size of the UFO adds reliability to the
observers’ description. All three were interviewed and similarities
662
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
emerged as well as differences in the versions. The account, by letter,
was written shortly after the event. The observers were interviewed
several months later. There is little variation between the interview
responses and the content of the letter received earlier. The witnesses
are very convincing in their testimony. The story coheres.
* Randles and Warrington: Level A.
Sampling Design and Comparison Groups
A technique for assessing the reliability of information in a story can be considered as an ordinal
scale that relates stories to each other without quantifying their respective distances. It may serve
as a sampling modality and enable the development of groups of several sighting stories of
varying values. Consider Hynek’s criteria, in which it is possible to place UFO stories on two
scales of value and even to determine whether the stories reach a critical threshold, perhaps a
value of 3/10 or 5/10, depending on the needs of the sample of stories and comparison groups.
This introduces the Selective Appraisal Rating (SAR)15 of the observation stories constructed with
Hynek’s criteria. In Table 2, above, the criteria of strangeness (S) and probability (P) are used, in
addition to the 3/10 threshold and 5/10 threshold. This yields samples of stories of varying
quality. The A- and B-rated stories can be compared to the C-rated stories to answer questions
about the UFO phenomenon. If there is an unexplainable phenomenon that stands out from the
misunderstandings it could emerge using these comparisons. The SAR can take the form of a
graphic synthesis as in Table 3.
Table 2. The Selective Appraisal Rating (SAR) of UFO stories
Rating P
SAR
Hynek
E
Hynek
Sample values for ratings A, B, C, D, and E
A
>5
>5
The stories rated A represent the true sample
in CASUFO©.16
B
>3
>3
The stories rated B are a sample that is not fully explained
in CASUFO©.
C
>3
< than 3
D
<3
>3
The stories rated D are uncommon rumors in CASUFO©, whose probability
(credibility, reliability) is too low.
E
<3
<3
The stories rated E are a sample that is no more uncommon than reliable
The lack of information is almost complete.
Although reliable, a story rated C represents a misunderstanding, an
explainable case, or a falsity.
This is a control group in CASUFO©.
15 Leduc, (2021). Cote Sélective d’Appréciation (CSA) des Signalements Ovniens.
16 Bank of 3,000 stories, including a useful selection of 1,500, each encoded in more than eighty fields.
663
Vi. Metrics and Scaling
The C-rated stories (i.e., with P greater than or equal to 3/10 but with E smaller than 3/10) are in
principle reliable but explained. They constitute a sort of control group. Thus, the C sample used
in a comparison, analysis, or experiment should not be a catch-all. To do this, the C-rated
narratives are given categories that reflect decisions: CA, Air Transport; CB, Celestial Noise;
CC, Climatic Origin; CE, Effect or Trace alone; CF, Animal or Fauna; CG, Geomagnetism;
CH, Human Activity; CI, AstronomIcal (including satellites); CJ, Judgment Error; CK,
Underground fire; CM, Marine Vehicle; CP, Perception Error; CR, Rumor; CS, Solar Origin;
CT, Terrestrial Transport; CY, ParapsYchology. These categories come from explanations that
have been attributed to UFO stories. Thus, category CI corresponds to misunderstandings with
astronomical objects. Over time, more information can be found, and it is not surprising that
sighting accounts with A and B ratings are downgraded to C.
Comparison Groups and Time Series
In time series, researchers generally do not compare groups of UFO stories of different values;
see Sturrock,17 Poher,18 Ribera,19 Poher-Vallee,20 and similar. Valuable accounts are often simply
amalgamated and integrated into a whole. For example, the notion of a UFO wave appears in
1973, as well as the notion of a “flap” for shorter episodes of time. The same is true for the
twenty-first and twenty-second hours of the day when UFOs are apparently more frequent. It
appears mistaken that the characteristics of the temporal distributions are the result of UFO
activity.
Temporal distributions are possible for groups of different SAR values. This paper illustrates two
of them: the distribution by daytime (Eastern Standard Time, EST) in Quebec, and the
distribution by day of the week.21
As a result, are the A-rated stories different from B- and C-rated stories in these distributions?
Are the time distributions the result of UFO activity, and should we not support this idea with
quality stories?
Please refer to Table 4 and Table 5.
The three contingency tests (chi-square) A/B, B/C and A/C are significant for both graphs. They
suggest that the high and low strangeness cases are interrelated. This could mean that the curves
depend on the observers and not the UFOs, or it could mean that there are no strange phenomena
at all. Do we see UFOs because everyone is talking about them, or do we talk about UFOs
because we see them? Are UFOs waiting for the observers’ free time to show themselves or are
they there all the time? Would they be undetectable phenomena using these statistics?
17 Sturrock (2004).
18 Poher (1976).
19 Ribera (1959).
20 Poher-Vallee (1975).
21 For distributions by month and year, refer to Leduc, (2019), Vague d’Ovnis, une notion impressionniste?
664
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Table 3. Selective Appraisal Rating chart scale
Some researchers have questioned the relevance of establishing statistics to describe the UFO
phenomenon: Fernandez,22 among others. Hall,23 has attempted to explain the curves by
correlating them with other phenomena, such as solar activity or with terrestrial magnetic
activities of various origins. Fernandez,24 meanwhile, raises the concept of indistinguishability
to the effect that the levels of strangeness of the UFO cases are not distinguishable from those of
the IFO cases.
In any case, it is not surprising that the contingency tests (chi-square) presented here suggest that
the best samples of sighting reports still contain explainable cases. This may call into question
techniques for assessing reliability and strangeness. Secondly, all temporal distributions may be
related to human activity. Indeed, with respect to time of day, the accounts correspond to the free
times of the observers for all SAR values. It is the same for the day of the week, in which the
accounts correspond to the free days of the observers for all the values of SAR. This is equally
true for the months of the year and for the years themselves according to the activity of ufologists
22 Fernandez (2014).
23 Hall (1999).
24 Fernandez (2014).
665
Vi. Metrics and Scaling
and the media activity.25 On the other hand, one could also say that one must obviously be
outside to observe UFOs.
Table 4, distribution by daytime
25 Leduc, (2019), Vague d’Ovnis, une notion impressionniste?
666
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Table 5. Distribution of observations by day of the week.
To paraphrase Hendry, who expressed himself on the entirety of UFO statistics for the United
States of America:
[…] The deeper question to be asked about the significance of statistics applied to the UFO
phenomenon is: do UFO statistics represent a valid pursuit for more knowledge about this
elusive phenomenon, or do they merely reflect frustration that none of the individual
reports are capable of standing on their own two feet? Are UFO statistics a bold first
step… or a desperate last resort.
His commentary refers to information quality assessment techniques such as those compared in
this article.
667
Vi. Metrics and Scaling
Conclusion
In the absence of the ability to reproduce a mysterious and unexplained UFO sighting, a
judgment and criteria must be applied to the reliability of a story without fully explaining the
case. Relevant techniques are available and contribute to the reasonable judgment of the
information of a story. Three simple techniques have been compared and proven to be
complementary. In addition, they enable the development of comparison groups of stories. When
these groups are subjected to a test, such as comparing their temporal distributions, no significant
difference appear. In this instance, the reliable and less reliable stories are distributed in the same
way in time and are indistinguishable. Regardless of its nature, does the unidentified
phenomenon really occur in the physical environment of the observers with its own free will,
agenda, schedule, and calendar, or would it occur in the free time of the people in connection
with their psyche, concerns, and culture?
Acknowledgments: Thanks are due to the following people who provided critical reading. V.J.
Ballester-Olmos, Richard Gagnon, Richard Tortorella, Claude Turcotte, Yann Vadnais, Jean
Vézina, and Jean-Marc Wattecamps.
Bibliography
Ballester-Olmos, V.J. “UFO Waves: An International Bibliography” (GEIPAN website).
https://www.cnesgeipan.fr/sites/default/files/UFO_Waves.__An_International_Bibliography__November_
_1___2015.pdf
Ballester-Olmos, V. J. and Guasp, M. Los OVNIs y la Ciencia. Plaza & Janés, S. A., Barcelona
(Spain), 1981, 1989, pp. 117-135.
https://rr0.org/science/crypto/ufo/enquete/methode/Ballester-Guasp.html
Blaquière, Philippe and Leduc, Marc. “Une Sorte de Raie,” UFO-Québec, double issue 21-22,
1980, p. 11.
Fernandez, Gilles. “De l’Indiscernabilité du Niveau d’Étrangeté des Cas OVNI et de Celui des
Cas OVI.” http://skepticversustheflyingsaucers.blogspot.com/2014/05
GEPAN. Note Technique N° 4 – Recherche Statistique d’une Typologie des Descriptions de
Phénomènes Aéerospatiaux Non Identifiés. GEPAN-CNES, Toulouse (France), 1981.
http://www.ldi5.com/ovni/sepra/nt4.php
_____. Note technique N° 13 – Recherche Statistique d'une Typologie Identifiée/Non Identifiée.
GEPAN-CNES, Toulouse (France), 1982.
http://marcogee.free.fr/pdf/nt13.pdf , (section 3)
Groff, Terry. “Ballester-Guasp Evaluation of Completed Reports.”
http://web.archive.org/web/20050205000326/http://terrygroff.com/ufotools/eval/eval_calc.html
_____. On-line Javascript calculator based on the Ballester-Guasp evaluation system as the
official report evaluator of the MUFON’s Case Management System (CMS).
http://web.archive.org/web/20050205000326/http:/terrygroff.com/ufotools/eval/eval_calc
.html#calc
Hall, Richard. “Signals, Noise, and UFO Waves,” The International UFO Reporter, CUFOS,
Winter 1999. http://www.nicap.org/articles/UFOWaves_hall.pdf
Hendry, Allan. “Tools: Statistics,” in The UFO Handbook, Doubleday (New York), 1979, p.
269.
Hynek, Allen. The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry. Henry Regnery Company (Chicago),
1972, p. 24.
668
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Koi, Isaac, “Best UFO Cases/ PART 21: Quantitative criteria: Vallee’s SVP ratings.”
https://www.isaackoi.com/best-ufo-cases/21-quantitative-criteria-vallees-svp-ratings.html
Leduc, Marc. Cote Sélective d’Appréciation (CSA) des Signalements Ovniens, CASUFO©,
Editions Garpan (Québec), 2021.
https://www.academia.edu/42787892/Cote_s%C3%A9lective_d_appr%C3%A9ciation_C
SA_des_signalements_ovniens
_____. Typologie des Facéties, une Grille de Lecture des Récits Ovniens, CASUFO©, Editions
Garpan (Québec), 2019.
_____. Typologie des Scénarios Invariants, une Grille de Lecture des Récits Ovniens,
CASUFO©, Editions Garpan (Québec), 2020.
https://www.academia.edu/44772869/Typologie_des_sc%C3%A9narios_invariants_une_
grille_de_lecture_des_r%C3%A9cits_ovniens
_____. Vague d’Ovnis, une Notion Impressionniste? CASUFO©, Editions Garpan (Québec),
2019.
https://www.academia.edu/38464728/Vague_d_ovnis_une_notion_impressionniste_
_____. Approche Heuristique d’un Mythe Moderne, CASUFO©, Editions Garpan (Québec),
2021.
MUFON France, “Expertise et Classification d’un Phénomène: Support de Cours n°5
Concernant la Phase Finale de l’Enquête qui Conduit à la Classification d’un
Phénomène,” 2014
http://f3.quomodo.com/0A9828DA/uploads/54/Support%20cours%205_Expertise%20et
%20classification.pdf
Poher, Claude. “Etude Statistique des Rapports d’Observations du Phénomène O.V.N.I.,”
GEIPAN-CNES, Toulouse (France), 1971-1976, p. 85. https://vdocuments.site/statpoher-71.html
Poher, Claude, and Vallee, Jacques. “Basic Patterns in UFO Observations,” in 13th Annual
Convention of the AIAA on Aerospace Sciences, AIAA (Pasadena, California), 20-22
January 1975.
Randles, Jenny and Warrington, Peter. UFOs: A British Viewpoint. Robert Hale Ltd. (London),
1979, p. 167.
https://www.amazon.fr/UFOs-British-Viewpoint-Jenny-Randles/dp/0709174667
Randles, Jenny. UFO Reality: A Critical Look at the Physical Evidence. Robert Hale Ltd.
(London), 1983, p. 54.
Ribera, Antonio. “UFO Waves Follow a Certain Pattern,” Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 5, No. 3,
May-June 1959, pp. 12-14.
Sturrock, P.A. “Time-series Analysis of a Catalog of UFO Events: Evidence of a Local Sidereal
Time Modulation,” Journal of Scientific Exploration, 2004, Vol. 18, Bo. 3, pp. 399-419.
Vallee, Jacques. Confrontation: Un Scientifique à la Recherche du Contact avec un Autre
Monde. Robert Laffont (Paris), Les énigmes de l’univers, 1991, pp. 309-311. (U.S.
edition: Confrontations: A Scientist's Search for Alien Contact. New York: Ballantine
Books, 1990.)
(All web articles here and in the footnotes were accessed on April 20, 2022.)
669
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
VII
EPISTEMOLOGICAL ISSUES
671
Introduction
672
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
On the Fallacy of the Residue
Félix Ares de Blas
Abstract: It is common for many (not all) so-called ufologists to admit that 95% or more of the
cases of alleged UFOs have been explained, but that there is a residue whose explanation is that
they are manned alien spacecraft. I wrote and spoke about this in the late 1980s.1 A critic would
say that in all sciences there are residues and that it is these cases that make them evolve. Now,
many years later, I understand that the reason for that criticism is that I may have explained myself
wrongly. Today I am going to try to explain better. To do this, the first thing I have to do is
differentiate between false residuals and true residuals.
Keywords: Scientific ufology, Residues, Witness interviews, Interference of amateur ufologists,
Interference of media ufologists, Need for positive definition of UFO, Methodological problems
of ufology, Stereotypes and perceptions, False memories, UFOs as a new religion
Fake Residues
Let’s do the following mental exercise. Let’s imagine an observational proto-science in which one
tries to determine whether a fact is of type A or not. Right now, we don’t care what that “A” is. An
example might be trying to determine from the fossil record at a particular site whether there were
only cold-blooded dinosaurs there or whether there were also warm-blooded dinosaurs, which are
much less abundant in this paleontological excavation. Suppose 95% of the observations are
extremely clear: they are cold-blooded; but that 5% are doubtful ones. Within our mental exercise,
we are going to assume that, in the doubtful cases of the exhaustive investigation of the fossils, to
reach a conclusion takes two years. And we will also assume that in all cases the end result will be
that they are cold-blooded. There is a time interval of two years, in which there are a few
unexplained cases, which we will call residual.
The existence of that residue means absolutely nothing. It does not mean that there are 5% cases
of warm-blooded dinosaurs. It means that we don’t know the answer yet.
Let’s talk now about UFOs and more specifically about UFO observations in Spain. Let’s say that
we have a corpus of several thousand observations. Let’s say that the ufologists, little by little,
have been explaining the cases and that only 5% remain unexplained. But a curious phenomenon
occurs as time goes by, some of the unexplained become explained. Actually, none of the classic
cases—for which we have enough data to be able to carry out an investigation—remains
unexplained. But it has taken a long time to find a solution. During that time, many more cases
have appeared, of which 95% are clearly identified objects and 5% are unidentified.2 Or rather,
unidentified for the moment.
1
Ares, “La Falacia del Residuo,” pp. 46-48. Ares, “Magos Ovnis y Creencias,” pp. 29-66. Ballester-Olmos, “Apuntes
sobre la Cosa Ufológica,” online link.
2
In this sense, I would like to point out that none of the UFO cases that gave rise to ufology in the United States—
and in the world—have withstood critical analysis. There has been an enormous amount of literature on this; in my
opinion, the work of Martin Kottmeyer has driven the last nail in the coffin of classic U.S. UFOs.
673
VII. Epistemological Issues
Therefore, the fact that in an observational proto-science (ufology) there is a 5% “residue” means
very little. It means that the proto-science is not yet mature, and little more. Relying on that to
prove certain hypotheses is what I call the fallacy of the residue.
True Residues
Critics have pointed out that it is precisely the anomalies (the residues) that make science advance.3
It is obvious that in all sciences there are residues and that these can be the origin of extremely
interesting new theories. To give just three examples: The retrograde motion of Mars was a
“residue” very poorly explained by geocentric theory, but it was perfectly explained by the
heliocentric model.4 This “residue” served to clearly establish heliocentrism. Mercury’s perihelion
precession was an anomaly (let’s call it a “residue”) that Newtonian physics did not explain, but
that the General Theory of Relativity did. The “ultraviolet catastrophe” was an anomaly that did
not correspond to classical physics and gave rise to quantum mechanics, and so on.
In the development of science, anomalies are very important. I am absolutely aware of that, but all
anomalies in science have very clear characteristics:
FIRST: for something to be defined as abnormal we must know what is normal. Normal must be
clearly defined and in such a way that any researcher knows whether or not in the face of a certain
fact (or story) it belongs to the category of normal. That requires a positive definition. The negative
definition usually given to UFOs does not work, because it is negative:5 Unidentified.
SECOND: any study that is done must be repeatable. If someone does a study that cannot be
replicated by groups of independent researchers (in this text I have used “laboratory” as a
synonym), it can hardly be considered science. That was, for example, the case of Lysenkoism,
and of the purported discovery of N-rays. To be repeatable, once again, it is essential that the
definition be positive.
THIRD: when establishing an explanatory hypothesis for the anomaly, it must be falsifiable in
Popper’s sense.6
FOURTH: Among various explanatory hypotheses, you must choose—or at least give special
attention to—the one that introduces the least strange elements.7 It is perhaps good to note that
although Occam’s razor is not strictly a necessity of science, but it has contributed enormously to
3
Fuentes, “Sobre La Falacia del Residuo,” online link.
To explain it, an enormous complexity of circles, epicycles, efferents, and equants had to be introduced. In the end,
what they were doing was getting the equation of the ellipse by adding several sinusoids, equivalent to a Fourier
analysis, which had not yet been discovered.
5
Why this is so, is extremely simple. Suppose that the identifiers form a set of classes of objects (or stories). The
complementary set has infinite classes and therefore almost anything can belong to it. Obviously, nothing can act as
a screening filter, much less make all researchers agree, which impedes repeatability of studies.
6
Although I have used Popper’s concept of falsification, there is little doubt that the need for falsification arises from
the earliest versions of the scientific method. For example, it is clearly shown in the six steps that Francis Bacon
requires of the method: Observation, Induction, [provisional] hypothesis, proving hypotheses by experimentation,
demonstration or refutation (antithesis), and thesis or scientific theory. Implicit in the demonstration or refutation is a
need for refutability.
7
Occam’s razor: Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate (Plurality should not be postulated unnecessarily).
4
674
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
its evolution.8 An example of the application of Occam’s razor is the difference between the
epicycles theory (which was falsifiable) and the Copernican theory (which was also
falsifiable). The theory of Copernicus needed far fewer postulates than that of the epicycles. A not
always obvious fact is that Occam’s razor applies to falsifiable theories. When Copernicus
released his theory, it was less accurate than Tycho Brahe’s epicycles, which were tremendously
complex. But Copernicus/Kepler was simpler: more elegant. Both were predictive, so that a failure
in the prediction would be proof that it was not working correctly. Both theories were falsifiable. It
would take a long time to digress between predictability and falsifiability. Both are related. Let’s
just keep in mind that if a hypothesis is predictive, it can be falsified. If it is not, it is more difficult
to prove its falsifiability.
Let’s get to the topic of UFO sightings. There are a number of them that cannot be explained at
any given time. They will be explained eventually, but by then new cases will have emerged, some
of which will not have been explained yet. And many ufologists hold on to these still unexplained
cases to save their preferred hypothesis.
I think this is where I probably explained myself badly in my late 1980s articles and lectures. To
understand these, you have to place yourself in that time and see what the ufologists of the
moment were saying and doing. A lot of them did what I explained above. Although all the cases
prior to that moment in time had been explained, there was always an unexplained residue in the
new ones. When I spoke of “the fallacy of the residue” I was referring to those “residues” that are
different over time, those that have not yet been explained. “The old ones have been explained,
but the new ones have not.” That was the fallacy I wanted to point out. Although all cases are
explainable, there is a delay between their appearance and their explanation, and there is always a
set of unexplained cases. And that is the fallacy—it is possible that they will be explained in the
future, but for the moment they are not explained. But since they do not meet any of
the four requirements that a true residue must meet, that “no explanation” means absolutely
nothing; rather: they mean very little.
I have also been criticized that I was making an illogical leap between the 5% of the unexplained
and the fallacy of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. It should be noted that for those residues,
regardless of whether they are 5% or 90%, there was nothing that forced us to think about
extraterrestrial ships.9 They were simply events for which we had no explanation. Most of those
ufologists said that no-explanation implies an extraterrestrial origin. Today, I think it is clear to
all serious ufologists that unexplained means unexplained, not extraterrestrial.
To be crystal clear, I want to stress the point that experiments (or observations) on residuals must
be repeatable. The retrograde movement of Mars, the precession of the perihelion of Mercury or
8
Occam’s razor is not always applicable. There are even problems in defining what is the simplest hypothesis (for
example, A. Ferrero).
9
Perhaps it is good to talk about Occam’s razor here again: between the extraterrestrial hypotheses and other
hypotheses we must keep the simplest one. What is simpler, in a concrete case, a possible mundane explanation,
although not verified to be plausible, or an extraterrestrial explanation that implies ships coming from space with
humanoid beings ...? I want to believe that the solution is not simple. If the mundane hypothesis is terribly twisted, it
is possible that the alien is simpler and therefore eligible for Occam’s razor, but it has to be seen case by case. I want
to emphasize that I do not reject the extraterrestrial hypothesis simply because of Occam’s razor. Occam’s razor is a
guide, not a rule. We should not forget that there are many discussions about what “simple” means in Occam’s razor.
675
VII. Epistemological Issues
the catastrophe of the ultraviolet could be verified by all. In that sense they were repeatable
facts. For something to become a “residue” it must be an anomaly within a hypothesis. If there is
no hypothesis, it is difficult to speak of normality or anomalies.
The retrograde motion of Mars was an anomaly in the geocentric system, which was a very wellstated and well-mathematized theory. The perihelion precession of Mercury was an anomaly in
Newtonian theory, equally precisely described and mathematized. The ultraviolet catastrophe was
an anomaly in the classical theory of electromagnetism, again perfectly stated and mathematized.
But on the subject of UFOs, when the word “anomaly” is mentioned, it is done without referring
to any specific theory. If there is no theory, there can hardly be an anomaly. And here I have no
choice but to insist on the idea that “theory” in the scientific sense has a very different meaning
than it does in popular language. A scientific theory is the highest status that a scientific idea can
have. It is something perfectly verified hundreds or thousands of times.
UFOs Speak of Observations
Observations, that is, stories, can become repeatable, but this requires a theory and a
methodology. In some cases, this is what sociologists do, for example. But I must insist that they
have methodologies that have proven to be effective. What is the theory of ufologists? What is the
tested and contrasted methodology?
On the subject of UFO sightings, we find unique accounts, for which we do not have a
methodology to do experiments/studies that are replicable. Among other reasons, this is
because there is no positive definition of a UFO. Therefore, including a case on the unidentified
list, or not including it, is up to the researchers’ taste or beliefs. There is no unique way to do it. As
it is not unique, it is not repeatable. That lack of positive definition makes repetition
impossible. But, although that is a tremendous problem, it is not the only problem. There are many
more. One of them is the same as that found in all the sciences that are based on testimonies:
criminologists, judges, policemen, etc. The testimonials are very fragile. The memory of the
witnesses is very imprecise and, what is worse, it is highly plastic, malleable, and influenced by
myths and beliefs. Criminologists, sociologists, psychologists, and others have established
rigorous ways to obtain a testimony with the smallest number of possible deformations, and, even
so, in experiment after experiment, it is shown that it is extremely difficult to know what is real in
what a witness says.10 This happens with well-trained experts in laboratory-verified and proven
interview techniques. In addition, it is done with well-known everyday subjects; for example, in a
car accident, which car hit which, what color the vehicle or the traffic light were. When it comes
to an unusual event, testimonials get worse and stereotypes become more important. You see
virgins or witches when you believe in virgins or witches, you see channels on Mars if you think
it is an inhabited planet, N-rays if you believe in them, or UFOs when you believe in extraterrestrial
ships that visit us.11
10
Errors are never zero.
Buckhout, “Eyewitness Testimony,” pp. 23-39. Wixted and Mickes, “Eyewitness Memory Is a Lot More Reliable
Than You Think,” online link. Ibabe, “Influencia de los Estereotipos sobre Delincuentes en la Identificación de
Personas,” pp. 99-110. Otten, Seth and Y. Pinto, “A Social Bayesian Brain: How Social Knowledge Can Shape Visual
Perception,” pp. 69-77. McLeod, “Visual Perception Theory,” online link. Fineman, “Sightings: UFOs and Visual
Perception,” online link.
11
676
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Let’s go for a moment to the testimony of someone who has seen a UFO. The ufologists who are
going to interrogate him usually have no training in interviewing techniques, and what is worse,
many of them have preconceptions of what a UFO is. Elizabeth Loftus showed that inserting false
memories into testimonies was extremely easy.12 Prompting an answer, through the way the
question is asked, is very common. So, from what I am told that the witness has said, how much
is real and how much is induced by the ufologist? What is worse, once the false memory has been
introduced, the witness believes that the false is the real. Therefore, if a well-trained ufologist
comes after an untrained ufologist, the witness will tell the fallacies that have gotten into his mind
from the first interview.13 (And no, I’m not fantasizing—in the United States many parents have
been convicted because the interviewer on duty introduced the memory of false rapes into their
children.14) Many works show that if hypnosis is used to stimulate memory, the situation is even
worse: in a state of hypnosis one is more prone to lie and to please the interviewer, saying what
the interviewer wants to hear. This poses a terrible methodological problem. For example, if we
elaborate a statistical method to analyze the testimonies, and they coincide with the stereotypes,
there is no way (at least I do not know of any, although I can imagine that some methods of
covariance may work) to know if it is due to what the witness witnessed or what has been
introduced as a false memory by the ufologists.
Another extremely important issue is that the hypothesis that is made to explain the testimonies
(not facts) must be falsifiable. The extraterrestrial hypothesis, as it is usually presented, is not. It
is an all-powerful hypothesis, that in the same way explains something, its opposite, and everything
in between. The extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFOs is equivalent to the gods hypothesis for
geology. Why are there marine fossils on the summit of Everest?15 Answer: because the gods made
it like that. Why, if we go back in the fossil record, do we see the way in which organisms are
progressively changing?16 Why do sedimentary rocks speak of an age of the Earth much higher
than what the Bible says? Because the gods made the world like this. The gods hypothesis is not
falsifiable. The extraterrestrial hypothesis (as it is conceived), is not either. Sure, you can make a
falsifiable alien hypothesis, but I don’t know of any. Non-falsifiability is a clear sign that something is just a belief.17
Finally, I would like to comment on one last detail. Back in the day, David G. López and I directed
a research group at the University of Madrid (Complutense University and Polytechnic
University), trying to come up with a positive definition of a UFO, so that repeatable studies could
12
“Elizabeth Loftus,” Wikipedia, online link.
I remember the Gallarta UFO landing case in Vizcaya, Spain, where we were the second group of people to arrive
at the site, alerted by my excellent friend Jesús Martínez Villaro. Imagine our surprise when the witness told us that
he had seen “a type II warship,” as the previous “ufologist” who had spoken to him had told him. Let me omit the
name of the so-called “ufologist.” In such a situation, how could his testimony help us?
14
Navas-Camejo and Neira-Galvis, “Falsas Memorias y Testimonio: entre la Ciencia y la Ley,” online link.
15
Tristan, “Fósiles Marinos en la Cima del Everest,” online link. Allen, “How Did Sea Fossils Get to the Top of Mount
Everest?” Khot, “Why Are There Fish Fossils High Up In The Himalayas?”, online link.
16
Darwin’s natural selection has sometimes been accused of not being falsifiable, for not being predictive. These
criticisms are out of date today, but I think it is interesting to note that the prediction can not only be towards the
future, it can also be towards the past: retro-falsification. Natural selection allows us to “predict” that, in the long run,
older fossils are typically simpler than more modern ones. A true UFO hypothesis would not necessarily have to be
predictive; it could be retro-falsifiable.
17
I have tried to do it, but have not succeeded. Maybe others will.
13
677
VII. Epistemological Issues
be carried out.18 With that definition in hand, we established a series of computerized filters to
differentiate UFOs from non-UFOs. No matter how badly it was done, it was a REPEATABLE
method, so that other researchers could reach the same conclusions, or else refute them and
improve the methodology. It was a methodology in its early stages, with many errors, but
it was a simple principle that was never continued.
One interesting thing about that study is that non-UFOs and UFOs showed the same statistical
parameters. That is, the residue (UFOs) showed the same characteristics as the non-UFOs. Hence,
thinking that the residue was something different—in our study—was a fallacy. The fallacy of the
residue.
Using Residues to Do Science
To conclude, I would like to say that when the residual (no matter how small) is obtained from
repeatable observations (which requires a positive definition), that have been obtained from
interviewers trained in interrogation techniques, who have been the first to arrive, we will have to
consider them worthy of being called an anomaly. It is not to be ruled out that someone invents a
new methodology, which, after demonstrating its effectiveness after repeated use in several
laboratories, produces true residues. Real residues, not fallacies. Actually, I have argued many
times that diamonds can be found in garbage. UFO tales are essentially rubbish. According to
classical wisdom, the computer-related saying “garbage in, garbage out” would leave us with no
chance of finding any diamonds.19 I am one of those who thinks that “enter garbage, process
properly, = get diamonds.” The problem is finding the right way to process it.20 I was extremely
lucky to participate in a NASA deep space project. Back then I had to sign a confidentiality
agreement to be able to access the data. I have subsequently seen it published, so I believe that
now the agreement is no longer applicable. When I discovered the trick to obtain images of Mars
that were emitted by a very weak source, I was stunned. It was extremely simple. And it was
exactly what I just said: input garbage, intelligently treated, gives precious Mars images.21
Once we have the real diamonds (the residue that is obtained from the garbage), to explain them
we will have to develop hypotheses that are falsifiable and among all the hypotheses we will
choose one according to Occam’s razor.
Therefore, my idea of the fallacy of the residue was not that 5% or 2% do not matter, but because
the residue is badly obtained, it really was because the “residue” was not a residue. If, with the
appropriate methodologies, residuals of 0.1% are obtained, or even of 0.000000001%, they will
be something extremely interesting and worth studying. Let’s not forget that I said with
18
López and Ropero, “Seminario sobre Aplicación de la Informática al Estudio del Fenómeno OVNI.”
Hillson, “Los Entresijos del Manejo de Riesgo,” online link.
20
That, of course, is not a question of a more clever [Mensa member] or famous researcher telling me “this is residue,”
“this other is not.” There must be a methodology, duly verified by several “laboratories,” that allows me to know that
we are facing a real anomaly.
21
I will not go into details in order not to expand this paper too much.
19
678
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
appropriate and duly verified methodologies. The other things that many ufologists call “residues”
are simply the beliefs of a group of individuals.22 Nothing more and nothing less.23
I am sure that back then I explained myself badly. The problem is not that the residuals are few or
many, the problem is how to define residual. If a residual is not uniquely defined (which requires
a positive definition), whatever we get will be a fallacy.
In the extraterrestrial hypothesis, the problem, contrary to what some have said about me, does not
lie in the word “extraterrestrial,” it lies in the word “hypothesis.” Hypothesis is a polysemic word
that does not mean the same in science as in common language. Hypothesis in scientific language
is something that is not proven, but could be and, of course, that inevitably includes that it is
falsifiable and “Occam-able.” With the extraterrestrial hypothesis, the very serious problem is that
it is not a hypothesis. The alien aspect does not matter.24 Just as the unscientific nature of the
extraterrestrial hypothesis does not derive from the term “extraterrestrial” but rather from the fact
that it is not really a hypothesis, since it is not falsifiable, in the residue fallacy, the problem is that
the so-called residues (anomalies) really are not such. You cannot use the term “residues” for what
are just unfounded beliefs.
Bibliography
Allen, Jen (2018). “How Did Sea Fossils Get to the Top of Mount Everest?” The little science
blog, April, 23, 2018.
Ares de Blas, Félix (1986). “La Falacia del Residuo,” Cuadernos de Ufología, I, No. 13-14, pp.
46-48.
______. (1989). “Magos, Ovnis y Creencias,” Aula de Cultura de El Correo Español-El Pueblo
Vasco, Tomo VIII, José Manuel Azcona and Elena Mariezcurrena (eds.). November 1989,
pp. 29-66.
Ballester-Olmos, V.J. (2019). “Apuntes sobre la Cosa Ufológica,” UFO FOTOCAT, July 1, 2019.
http://fotocat.blogspot.com/2019_07_01_archive.html#es
Buckhout, Robert. “Eyewitness Testimony,” Scientific American, December 1974, Vol. 231, No
6, pp. 23-39. ISSN: 0036-8733 (Although it is a popular paper, it was very important, as it
was the seed for many subsequent investigations. Even in articles from 2021 this work is
mentioned as very important in this field.)
Ferrero, A. (May 30, 2017). “Maneggiare con Cura: Il Rasoio di Ockham,” CICAP.
https://www.cicap.org/n/articolo.php?id=278423
22
Which, incidentally, is extremely interesting, since they demonstrate how a religion (non-falsifiable belief) is created
in our time. I am not only referring to clearly religious movements, such as those described in the book UFO Religions (edited by
Partridge), like the Aetherius Society, I AM, Heaven’s Gate, Urantia or Raëlism, I also include movements whose mythical
component is less evident. I mean that the belief that we are visited by beings from other planets has infiltrated our
society, with almost no evidence. The study of how an idea with such weak evidence has infiltrated and germinated
between different cultures almost all over the world, becoming almost a universal myth, is of great interest to
understand other social phenomena of our time.
23
I say “nothing less” because their beliefs are very interesting for the study of many sociological aspects: for example,
how a myth and a religion are born, grown and consolidated. I mean all kinds of myths, beliefs that are not based on
evidence, as well as all populist politicians, or “witch doctors” of all kinds that swarm through social networks.
24
Let’s understand each other, it is not relevant to the subject of this work. I would love that aliens existed and traveled
between the stars, and it would be fantastic to travel between galaxies through wormholes, or Star Trek hyperspace,
but my desires have little to do with reality, with Occam’s razor, or with something that can be demonstrated.
679
VII. Epistemological Issues
Fineman, M. B. (July 1998). “Sightings: UFOs and Visual Perception,” The New England
Skeptical Society Blog.
https://theness.com/index.php/sightings-ufos-and-visual-perception/ (This essay is very
interesting because of the bibliography it provides regarding UFO sightings.)
Fuentes, Mauricio (2012). “Sobre la Falacia del Residuo,” Mysteryplanet.com.ar.
https://mysteryplanet.com.ar/site/sobre-la-falacia-del-residuo/
Hillson, David (2004). “Los Entresijos del Manejo de Riesgo,” Risk Doctor Briefing Note.
http://pmigps.com/not_ago.htm
Ibabe, Izaskun (December 2000). “Influencia de los Estereotipos sobre Delincuentes en la
Identificación de Personas,” Eguzkilore, No. 14, pp. 99-110. Donosti-San Sebastián, Spain.
https://www.ehu.eus/documents/1736829/2174322/05+Ibabe.pdf
Khot, Mishana (2018), “ Why Are There Fish Fossils High Up In The Himalayas?”
https://weather.com/en-IN/india/news/news/2018-06-29-fish-fossil-himalayas
Le Corbeau que Croit (January 18, 2019). #1 Le Rasoir d’Ockham.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZc5s6Iukbo
Elizabeth Loftus, in Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Loftus
López, David G., M. Ropero González, et al (1972). “Seminario sobre Aplicación de la
Informática al Estudio del Fenómeno OVNI,” Boletín Centro de Cálculo de la Universidad
de Madrid, No. 0. https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/BCCU/article/view/50100/46568
Lysenkoism, in Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
McLeod, S. A. (2018). “Visual Perception Theory. Simply Psychology.”
https://www.simplypsychology.org/perception-theories.html
Milhaud (September. 28, 2010). “Los Rayos N, la Radiación que Nunca Existió,” In Recuerdos
de Pandora. Apartado Física. https://recuerdosdepandora.com/ciencia/fisica/eldescubrimiento-de-los-rayos-n-la-radiacion-que-nunca-existio/
Navas-Camejo, S. D., and F. R. Neira-Galvis (2019). “Falsas Memorias y Testimonio: Entre la
Ciencia y la Ley,” Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia, Arauca, Colombia.
https://repository.ucc.edu.co/bitstream/20.500.12494/15678/4/2019_falsas_memorias.pdf
Otten, M., A.K. Seth, and Y. Pinto. “A Social Bayesian Brain: How Social Knowledge Can Shape
Visual Perception,” Brain and Cognition, Volume 112, March 2017, pp. 69-77.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2016.05.002
Partridge, C. H. (ed.) (2003). UFO Religions. London and New York. Routledge. ISBN
0415263247
Karl Popper, in Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper
Tristan, R.M. (May 16, 2011). “Fósiles Marinos en la Cima del Everest,” El Mundo (Madrid), May
16, 2011. https://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2011/05/13/ciencia/1305289053.html
Wixted, John and Mickes, Laura. “Eyewitness Memory Is a Lot More Reliable Than You Think,”
Scientific American online, June 13, 2017.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eyewitness-memory-is-a-lot-more-reliablethan-you-think/
[All online links accessed on March 4, 2022].
680
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Scientific Case Studies: Research Guidelines for Dealing with the Lack of
Reliability of UFO/UAP Testimonies
Leonardo B. Martins
Abstract: This chapter discusses essential scientific research guidelines for dealing with the
challenges posed by the study of UFO/UAP cases. Among the questions that will be addressed
are: How to give scientific validity to the study of events that have already occurred and that
cannot be reproduced under controlled circumstances? How can such a study be distinguished
from the pseudoscientific detective-like efforts so common in ufology? What philosophical,
theoretical, and methodological foundations are essential? This chapter is aimed especially at
fellow scientists who suspect that there is no basis for scientifically oriented UAP case studies,
and also at non-scientific investigators who need to understand why their efforts are often
considered pseudoscientific by academics.
Keywords: Case study, Testimony, Research guidelines, Science, Pseudoscience
Introduction
In all times and cultures, people report seeing exceptional things in the sky (Jung, 1958/1997).
Centuries and millennia have witnessed stories of extraordinary winged beings, chariots of fire
and balls of light crossing the sky, divine signs among the clouds, and so on. Modern narratives
about Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) – sometimes labeled with the more permissive term
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) – came to compose this mosaic from the 1940s onwards,
and soon included claims of contact with alien creatures, abductions, conspiracies, etc.
(Lepselter, 2005; Santos, 2015).
These many facets of the UAP have varied in every respect throughout history, including
described features, suggested explanations, evidence related to the occurrences, witnesses’
motivations, and implications for everyday life and culture. But at least one aspect remains
essential and the foundation of the others: the human element. It is always people seeing,
hearing, describing, narrating, recording, interpreting. Even in the minority of cases where there
is evidence of another kind (e.g., radar echoes), the human element is still inescapably
fundamental to analyzing and interpreting that evidence, connecting the dots, constructing
narratives, considering hypotheses, etc. In itself this is not good or bad; it is just inevitable.
This is why, over the last few decades, other researchers and I have argued that the properly
scientific study of the UAP must begin with the human element. One of my interests is UAP
testimonials, which are the mainstay of the genre’s literature, from enthusiastic UFO publications
to released or leaked military or intelligence documents.
Any subjective phenomenon – as reports inescapably are – that achieves a certain impact on
people’s lives and culture becomes interesting for scientific study. This is the case of reports
about UAP and alien beings. Although several civil and military initiatives to study these claims
have been built on other principles and/or motivations throughout the 20th and 21st centuries,
sciences such as psychology, neurosciences, and anthropology, then became interested – albeit
timidly – in these phenomena. These studies, including some of mine, are usually devoted to the
681
VII. Epistemological Issues
psychological profile of people who report alien abductions, the collective imaginary about
extraterrestrials, statistics about the episodes, among other related topics. That is, the usual focus
is not isolated cases, but episodes, witnesses and believers as a group: their patterns, motivations,
personality traits, values, imaginary, cultural/historical context, meanings attributed to
experiences, etc. Such studies are fundamental for a broad understanding of these phenomena,
including the testimonies, as they depend on psychological, cultural, historical, and even
biological dimensions of belief, perception, imaginary, mental health, etc. But it is not the
intention of this chapter to summarize such studies. Other chapters in this book will address
them, such as the one by my colleague Dr. Christopher French.
This chapter is dedicated to a point normally neglected in properly scientific studies (those
submitted for the broad evaluation of scientific peers and published in academic journals),
namely, the study of UAP reports, with the purpose of understanding in more depth specific
cases and their nature, especially the most intriguing ones. This chapter will seek to establish
some basic guidelines that support and encourage the scientifically oriented study of these
episodes.
Questions that need to be answered prior to the study of any specific UAP case are: How to give
scientific validity to the study of events that have already occurred and that cannot be reproduced
under controlled conditions? How can such a study be distinguished from unscientific (and often
pseudoscientific) detective-like attempts common in ufology? It is argued here that the answers
come from the combination of several dimensions of the scientific enterprise, such as
philosophical foundations and methodological and theoretical aspects that are discussed in this
chapter and eventually in other parts of this book.
The Scientific Language
A fundamental aspect of the scientific endeavor is that – contrary to what many seem to believe
– the addition of specific scientific elements is not enough for a research to become a science.
Half science is not good science: the presence of unscientific or pseudoscientific elements is
enough to tarnish a particular study or an entire research field, even if scientific elements are also
present. Exemplifying this principle within the UAP field, even if one performs competent
technical analysis of a photograph or a sample of barley from a crop circle, this is by no means
sufficient to say that the research is scientific. In order for good scientificity to be lost, it is
sufficient to violate any of the following principles or others not mentioned in this chapter due to
lack of space. Depending on the severity of the violation of these principles, a research can
become bad science, non-science or – more commonly – pseudoscience. A good starting point
regarding such principles is the basic definitions to be used in case studies.
One of the foundations of scientific research is plain and precise language, with as little
ambiguity and veiled assumptions as possible. Thus, the study of UAP reports needs to assume
definitions that are essential, transparent, and without inappropriate assumptions. Given the
above-mentioned importance of the human element in the UAP case studies, the main terms that
we have to define precisely are allegation, experience, and belief.
682
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Allegation
In this context, allegation and its synonyms (e.g., report, testimony) refer to the discourse used
by witnesses to narrate and describe what they would have experienced (that is, what they would
have seen, felt, heard, etc.). It is with this raw material that we researchers work in the first place.
Allegations are known in science in general as “anecdotal evidence,” a particularly weak type of
evidence, as people can allege anything without us usually being able to verify the accuracy of
the narrative, the subtle and even unconscious motivations of the witnesses, etc. This does not
mean that allegations should automatically be dismissed. Allegations can be the starting point of
a scientifically oriented investigation, but never the ending point. The central character of the
reports in the study of UAP cases occurs through a process similar to the montage of a puzzle, in
which certain pieces – in this case, the allegations – guide and facilitate the fitting of the others.
Although the allegations do not constitute a probative element in themselves, they guide the
understanding of the role of the other elements, distinctly favoring the different hypotheses and
their respective evidence. This holds true even when the alleged witnesses are lying or distorting
events, because inconsistencies can appear when we try to put the pieces together according to
the reports.
Among UFO enthusiasts, there is a common belief that reports coming from people who “would
have no reason to lie,” or who are “serious and responsible people,” or who are “highly trained,”
such as pilots, astronauts, or air traffic controllers, are reliable. From a strictly scientific point of
view, such a belief is fundamentally naïve. Even presumably honest, responsible, and welltrained witnesses are, primarily, human. This means that they bring a series of characteristics and
biases that training or assumed morality can, at most, mitigate, but never erase. These
characteristics include perception, expectation, belief and memory biases, inadvertently assumed
cultural influences, etc. This made it possible – to recall the example of a case that I investigated
and which I will narrate below – for an experienced pilot to mistake something extremely prosaic
for an extraterrestrial spacecraft. Even everyday honest people can invent, distort, or believe
stories for a variety of reasons, many of which are unconscious. One of the most common
involuntary impulses, for example, is to distort reality to fit a person’s beliefs, expectations, or
desires. Surprisingly, this effect can be even stronger among more capable people, as they will be
able to use their knowledge and intelligence to, in an unconsciously biased way, collect evidence
and construct complex justifications to confirm their unrealistic beliefs (Kahan et al., 2017).
Therefore, a priori beliefs about extraterrestrial visitations – or that there is a banal explanation
for every UAP – can bias both reports (as we will see in the pilot case below) and investigations
and ponderings, as occurs when highly trained scientists and technicians make pseudoscientific
claims about the theme. We will come back to beliefs later on.
To lessen the impact of these biases, a path to conclusions is needed that is external to common
sense and personal beliefs. This is one of the reasons why the need for a full scientific method
for UAP studies is defended here, as science has developed a huge set of resources precisely to
prevent or reduce such biases, some of which will be presented in this chapter.
Another common and mistaken assumption is that multiple reports automatically validate each
other due to the (presumed) similarities and the (presumed) lack of contact between witnesses.
Although multiple testimonies can have more weight than one alone and can offer
683
VII. Epistemological Issues
complementary angles on an event, the convergences between reports can also result from
numerous other factors, including cultural influence and biases of the human species, such as our
tendency to see patterns and similarities where none exist. A quite common – but by no means
unique – example is the phenomenon of sleep paralysis, which can provoke extremely realistic
hallucinations with recurrent contours in anyone, even in the details (Adler, 2011), resulting in
several realistic-but-not-real alien abductions. Another interesting example, without wishing to
exhaust the subject, is the immense cultural influence caused by the journalistic
misunderstanding about the “flying saucers” – which had no saucer shape – allegedly seen by
Kenneth Arnold in 1947. With the rapid popularization of the term, there were even those who
reported seeing something like flying vinyl discs, black, small, and with a hole in the middle
(Santos, 2015). As a story spreads and is shaped in everyday conversations, more convergences
can occur and become more accurate without witnesses having direct contact. They just need to
be immersed in the same culture to reproduce some patterns in their reports (Martins, 2019).
The coincidence between reports, in addition to not automatically validating them, can also hide
their divergences. Given the well-known human tendency to look for and identify patterns in the
environment, even when those patterns are not real (Foster & Kokko, 2009), we are prone to
focus on similarities and apparent connections between cases and ignore or underestimate
differences. Thus, apparently coincidental reports may not ultimately be so.
Another compromising implication of the human search for patterns and associations is the
common mistake among some UFO enthusiasts to consider a complete set of information to be
true once part of the information has been verified to be true. I call this process “reliability
generalization.” A common example of this is when a witness makes stunning revelations about
some conspiracy or UFO case, then investigators confirm the verifiable part of the information
(e.g., personal credentials, biography) and come to trust the story. This is an error because true
and false information can coexist in the same report, and is even an efficient disinformation
strategy. As a famous saying goes, “the best way to hide a lie is between two truths.”
Experience
In addition to allegation/report/testimony, another important term to distinguish is experience.
Experiences are subjective events, as they take place within people and are interpreted by them.
A UAP is not an experience until someone sees it, creates an internal representation of it, tries to
make sense of it, etc.
The accounts in the UAP literature are verbal expressions of (presumably) UAP experiences, not
the experiences themselves. The person would have experienced something and then
communicated it to others. Differentiating between allegations and experiences is fundamental,
as the process of communicating experiences promptly causes changes, since experiences, as
they are intrinsically subjective and unique, have incommunicable dimensions. This “translation”
of internal experience into communication is so complex that there are even entire areas of
research in psychology and other sciences about it.
A good report is, at best, a reasonable approximation to experience. Furthermore, the experience
of hearing or reading an account is also (inevitably) subjective. Each person apprehends a
narrative in a way. The same account may seem, to different people, real or fantasy, exaggerated
684
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
or modest, an honest mistake or an immoral fraud. Only the original witness has access to the
experience, and even then, not full access, as much of the experience has unconscious
dimensions (Callegaro, 2011).
On the other hand, there are many cases of deliberate fraud, where the UAP report has nothing to
do with a UAP experience. Exemplifying with a case I discovered some time ago, a man – let us
call him WJ – walked home late at night and disappeared. The family was alarmed and called the
police, all that drama. Some days later, WJ reappeared. He was confused, weak and dehydrated.
In a frightened way, he reported being captured by occupants of a spacecraft that landed in front
of him that night. He repeated his story over and over again to family, friends, and onlookers,
with emotion and precision in the details. Only decades later, he confessed that he created the
whole story to hide that he had spent those days in a brothel. So, we should not automatically
assume that people have actually experienced what they say they have experienced, even when
they appear sincere, seem to have nothing to gain, and tell their story repeatedly with meticulous
precision. In fact, memory is dynamic, undergoing natural changes over time (Bosi, 2003). So, a
very consistent story over time can simply be a well-rehearsed story.
Belief
In addition to allegation and experience, the third fundamental concept that should underpin the
scientifically oriented study of UAP cases is – as suggested earlier – belief. Naïvely, many UFO
enthusiasts believe that testimonies narrate facts, something that would be distinct from
interpretations and beliefs. Since the late 19th century, psychology and related sciences have
been researching how beliefs affect perception, attention, memory, narratives, etc. Today we
know that perceiving and interpreting reality are processes that occur together. Going back to
what was said earlier, even when we try to be objective and honest, we make certain
assumptions, guided by expectations, memories, cultural learning, which underlie often-assumed
belief systems without our conscious awareness (Callegaro, 2011; Dela-Coleta & Dela-Coleta,
2006).
Among the countless examples, one night I was woken up by a phone call. In an urgent tone, my
interlocutor said that a giant UFO was, at that exact moment, hovering over my neighborhood. I
dressed in the first outfit I could find, grabbed the camera, and went out into the street. More
people were gathering there to look at the gigantic flying triangle that hovered a few hundred
meters above our heads. It had lights at two of the three vertices, which flickered with some
regularity. Among the excited witnesses was a retired pilot who excitedly flashed simple
messages in Morse code with a powerful flashlight he carried. “They answer! Look at that!” He
then flashed a “hello.” The lights flashed back, and he yelled “See? They exactly flashed ‘hello’
back!” After a few minutes, the UFO suddenly began to move away, until it disappeared over the
horizon. Over the course of the next day, I went through every house in the neighborhood asking
people what they had seen, what it was like, etc. Although I also saw it, I wanted to compare the
different perceptions and interpretations. But there was one house, only one, whose residents
refused to talk to me, pretending to be absent. At my insistence, a sullen woman opened the door,
and as soon as I began to explain the reason for my visit, she screamed for her teenage son. With
his head down, he came and confessed to having faked the UFO using a five-foot-long (1.5 m)
kite, hovering approximately ninety feet (27 m) high. But the widespread expectation that it was
an extraordinary phenomenon caused all of us – myself included – to perceive and describe the
685
VII. Epistemological Issues
UFO as much larger and at a much greater height against the black sky. The boy showed me
where the kite was tied and the broken string that caused it to finally drift away and get lost. He
had already started the construction of a new UFO-kite, motivated by the success of the previous
night. The lights at the vertices of the kite were small LED bulbs, which flashed randomly – and
did not convey any messages in Morse code.
This case explicitly exemplifies something that occurs in every UAP case (regardless of its
ultimate nature), but which is usually less obvious to the naïve investigator: even basic aspects
such as perception, memory, and basic narrative are influenced by expectations, beliefs,
motivations, etc. This potentially includes skeptics as well, who may perceive and interpret in a
conservatively biased way some eventually exceptional UAP.
All this does not mean that any effort for less biased reports is sterile. The point is that any
scientifically oriented study of UAP experiences and narratives must seek to map the witnesses’
implicit beliefs and assumptions. An additional caution here is that many witnesses say they
were skeptical before the experience, which is not necessarily true for at least two reasons: (1)
often, saying that they were previously skeptical is just a strategy to give additional credibility to
the account; (2) beliefs have unconscious components, so many people have implicit beliefs that
are distinct or even contrary to their explicit conscious beliefs (Callegaro, 2011).
Unfortunately, however, a brief examination of UFO literature – including military and
intelligence documents – is enough to uncover a counterproductive terminological inaccuracy
that needs to be fixed immediately. Allegations, experiences, and beliefs intermingle in
sometimes explicit and sometimes subtle ways, leading researchers and enthusiasts to wrongly
assume, for example, that narrated history is experienced history, that the witness’s convinced
belief about the extraterrestrial or meteorological origin of a UAP means that it is the correct
explanation for the experience, and that the terms and estimates from the witnesses are objective.
The Construction of Knowledge
Science, as a way of knowledge, and its particular ramifications have both general and specific
philosophical bases. This is due to the inescapably indemonstrable character, in strictly empirical
terms, of necessary starting points for the scientific endeavor, such as the human possibility of
understanding the universe, the reliability of measurements of phenomena, and many other
topics. The existence of a specific field within philosophy to debate these issues – the philosophy
of science – does not allow us to forget its complexity and importance.
For the scientific study of UAP cases under solid philosophical foundations, one of the central
questions concerns the type of reasoning that would support the efforts. The three essential types
of reasoning are: (1) deduction, in which general principles support conclusions about specific
cases; (2) induction, in which particular cases make it possible to formulate general conclusions;
(3) and abduction, by which particular elements and knowledge are configured for the emergence
of plausible explanations for particular cases (Peirce, 1974).
Philosophy and theology are famous for using deductive reasoning, as when general assumptions
(e.g., divine infallibility) are used to support particular conclusions (e.g., a particular holy book is
infallible). Science is best known for its relationship to inductive reasoning, so the accumulation
686
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
of findings from particular studies allows for a general conclusion accepted by the scientific
community. On the other hand, abductive reasoning is important for activities or domains in
which the gathering of elements or clues is necessary for the construction of reasonable
hypotheses about some phenomenon or event. The classic example of abductive reasoning is the
detective. As we can see in the imaginative and surprising conclusions of Sherlock Holmes,
abductive conclusions emerge from a sudden understanding of a specific reality that takes –
abducts, in this sense – the thinker. Despite these specificities, the three ways of reasoning are
important and can interact dynamically.
Abductive reasoning does not guarantee truths or certainties – although the thinker may be taken
by a greater sense of clarity – but a greater plausibility of a given explanation in relation to others
– although it may still be wrong. That is because there are several possible ways to put the pieces
together, there might be some crucial information missing, etc.
Abductive reasoning is also important in scientific daily life, which is easier to perceive in the
construction of hypotheses and in case studies. Such a form of reasoning can play a key role in
the study of UAP cases, with the aim of discovering, as a detective would do, more plausible
explanations for the mystery represented by particular occurrences.
A relevant academic precedent for the study of UAP experiences that brings us closer to
detective work is History. As a field of knowledge, History makes a similar investigative
exercise, using historical documents and other records as clues to be organized towards a
reasonable conclusion about a particular, unique historical fact that will not be repeated.
Ginzburg (1991, p. 169), discussing the construction of knowledge in History, summarizes that
“when the causes are not reproducible, all that remains is to infer them from the effects” (free
translation). In a complementary way, given the natural human limitations for the construction of
knowledge about past irrecoverable events, “if reality is opaque, there are privileged zones –
signs, indications – that allow it to be deciphered” (Ginzburg, 1991, p. 177, free translation).
The research of UAP cases intends something similar, in the sense of combining elements (clues,
indications, evidence) to formulate one or more reasonable conclusions about an episode that
will not happen again. It is true that episodes of a similar nature can occur again, but the
particular case occurs only once, which has served as a reason for some scientists to resist the
properly scientific and widely accepted study of these episodes.
Indiciary Paradigm
The epistemology of history can provide some elements to face this apparent problem, as it also
has to deal with past and unique events through clues and evidence. Ginzburg (1991, p. 145)
compares the historian precisely with the figure of Sherlock Holmes in what is called the
indiciary paradigm. In this method, the collection and interpretation of evidence – with special
attention to subtle evidence – builds a response to a given event. Plausible conclusions derived
from the gathering of clues lead to one or more narratives about the past (e.g., in the case of the
detective and the historian), the present (e.g., in the case of medical diagnosis) and the future
(e.g., in the case of medical prognoses and the divinatory arts) (Ginzburg, 1991). Even
psychoanalysis (bringing us even closer to the subjective element) recognized, in the figure of its
687
VII. Epistemological Issues
creator, its direct relationship with the indiciary paradigm of the art historian (Ginzburg, 1991).
In this regard, Freud (1914/2011, p 2854) wrote that:
Long before I had any opportunity of hearing about psycho-analysis, I learnt that a Russian artconnoisseur, Ivan Lermolieff, had caused a revolution in the art galleries of Europe by questioning
the authorship of many pictures [...]. He achieved this by insisting that attention should be diverted
from the general impression and main features of a picture, and by laying stress on the significance
of minor details, of things like the drawing of fingernails, of the lobe of an ear, of halos and such
unconsidered trifles which the copyist neglects to imitate and yet which every artist executes in his
own characteristic way. [...]. It seems to me that his method of inquiry is closely related to the
technique of psycho-analysis. It, too, is accustomed to divine secret and concealed things from
despised or unnoticed features, from the rubbish-heap, as it were, of our observations.
The investigation of UAP testimonies finds, therefore, in psychoanalysis – even if it is not a
psychoanalytic investigation – one more element: the notion that not only is the work of
unveiling the reality of a particular case like detective work, but also that aspects not deliberately
controlled can be decisive in the elaboration of more plausible explanations. In other words, it is
an “interpretative method centered on residuals, on marginal data, considered revealing” of a
distant reality (Ginzburg, 1991, p. 149, free translation).
This does not mean that the central aspects should be ignored or underestimated. Going back to
the art historian, we will not even need to pay attention to fingernails and earlobes if the painting
obviously differs from the original. But, in several cases that interest us here, it was precisely
unsuspected details that shed light on the investigated phenomenon, because, if the most obvious
or salient elements commonly already allow the recognition of natural or artificial phenomena
already known by science, the most challenging UAP cases already passed that point, and the
investigation must proceed through the subtle details. The genius of Sherlock Holmes begins,
precisely, in the accurate perception of subtleties that others ignored or underestimated.
The medical semiotic model, in turn, which involves both observation and classification of clues,
is related to the indiciary paradigm as well as to other diverse fields of knowledge, in all times of
humanity, including hunting (in which clues left by animals are interpreted and followed),
“psychic” readings (in which the querent provides countless clues to a sagacious and intuitive
observer), a good part of the human sciences (in which social and individual realities seek to be
understood through their punctual manifestations), and semiotics itself. Regarding such different
applications of the indiciary paradigm, Ginzburg (1991, p. 156) points out that “these are, in fact,
eminently qualitative disciplines, which have as their object individual cases, situations and
documents, as individuals, and precisely because of this they reach results that have an
inescapable margin of chance” (free translation).
That said, in history, in psychoanalysis (and in clinical psychology in general), in hunting, and in
detective investigation, the interpretive element is fundamental to connect the dots and bring out
a plausible conclusion: the historical sources, the patient’s behaviors and speeches, the depth and
size of the footprints, from all these things there emerges a narrative that gives coherent meaning
to the whole, proposing causes for the observed effects, etc. (Ginzburg, 1991). The coherent and
plausible narrative, which gives meaning to the set of clues, is the end product of the indiciary
paradigm. This is what is intended with the scientifically oriented study of a UAP event.
688
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
Different interpretations lead to different results. In this way, the same evidence can lead to
different and competing interpretations, which become the focus of much of the specialized
debates in history. What is advocated for the study of UAP cases, therefore, is that different
interpretations of the evidence be listed and analyzed, with the aim of pointing out the different
degrees of plausibility and probability of each one, in addition to its power to give meaning to
the set of clues and evidence. The conclusion sought in the case study, therefore, is not the
punctual affirmation of an ultimate reality without competitors, but the establishment of a
hierarchy of explanatory and respectively evidenced possibilities.
Usually, rudimentary forms of this procedure are carried out by ufologists and UAP enthusiasts.
However, the deviation from scientificity occurs in several moments of this endeavor, as
discussed in different moments of this chapter. One of the most common deviations from
scientificity in ufological investigations is precisely due to the insufficient observation of the
criterion of parsimony.
Parsimony, Causality, Possibility, and Probability
A central criterion for weighing the different hypotheses and theories that organize the evidence
must be the principle of parsimony, also known as the principle of economy of hypotheses and as
Occam’s Razor. According to this principle, initially suggested by the Franciscan monk and
philosopher William of Occam (1288–1347), if there are two or more suitable and possible
competing explanations for something, one should opt for the simpler one, understanding
“simpler” as referring to the one that contains fewer elements and/or elements about which there
is already consolidated prior knowledge (Pecker, 2004). The principle of parsimony is so
fundamental to the construction of scientific hypotheses and theories for two basic reasons:
(1) Simpler hypotheses about everyday phenomena are more likely to occur than their more
complex counterparts, given that the arrangement of less numerous and/or known to exist
variables and processes is more likely than the arrangement of more numerous variables and
processes, even more so when there is no certainty about its existence. That is, the more
independent assumptions that are necessary as prerequisites for a given explanation, the greater
the probability that at least one of these prerequisites is false, even leading to less accurate
predictions (Forster & Sober, 1994).
(2) Considering the pragmatic dimension, simpler hypotheses are more easily investigated and,
eventually, subject to corroboration or refutation, which legitimizes the investigation of less
parsimonious hypotheses only if and when the simpler ones are discarded by the initial
investigative enterprise. Thus, simpler hypotheses are not necessarily adequate in a given case.
But, as much for their probability as for their pragmatic character of investigation, they must
demarcate the starting point of the investigation. In the event that the investigation has already
reached its limit of feasibility, the simplest remaining hypothesis should prevail, discarding
unnecessarily complex hypotheses until any new evidence emerges.
As an illuminating example taken from cases I investigated, a young Brazilian woman reported
being visited in her bedroom by aliens, while her boyfriend was lying in a deep sleep. Unable to
move and call for help, she was reportedly levitated by a light through the ceiling, having been
689
VII. Epistemological Issues
transported to a spacecraft and confined, in her terms, in a sort of “glass coffin.” Through the lid
of the “coffin,” a kind of tube descended and connected to her navel, blowing air and inflating
her belly until it gradually acquired the suggestive appearance of advanced gestation. That is
when the aliens would have delivered a human-alien hybrid fetus and returned the young woman
to her bed.
Despite the multiple explanatory possibilities for the case, supported by various possible belief
systems, sleep paralysis emerged as a simpler hypothesis because it appeals to such a
phenomenon known to science – to the detriment of the controversial existence of alien
abductions – and which requires fewer variables, as a relatively common sleep disorder
characterized by punctual brain processes – to the detriment of aliens who should be able to
come to Earth, take an interest in human reproduction, develop a scientifically complex body of
knowledge about hybridization between humans and their own species, produce virtually
instantaneous full-term pregnancies, etc.
If the most complex hypothesis (i.e., the young woman was actually kidnapped by aliens)
constituted a starting point, the investigation could be extended indefinitely, due to the difficulty
or eventual impossibility of demonstrating the eventual presence and intervention of such
technologically much more advanced aliens, able to use that advantage to hide themselves. On
the contrary, by starting the investigation with the simplest hypothesis, it was not only possible
to find evidence of sleep paralysis in the case and throughout the life of the young woman, but it
was also discovered that the air tube and instantaneous pregnancy (not common in the UFO
literature) coincide entirely with a striking scene from the famous television series The X-Files,
which the young woman had avidly watched as a child.
Important at this point are the conceptual distinctions between possibility, probability, and
certainty. Enthusiasts’ unscientific investigations tend to seek certainty, which can be seen in
their usually bold and confident statements about the nature of the UFO phenomenon. However,
their bolder propositions, which usually appeal to aliens, are at best unparsimonious possibilities,
as they usually do not sufficiently consider the simplest hypotheses.
Popper (1959) points out that science does not seek certainty, given human fallibility and the
intrinsic methodological limitations of science (and of any form of knowledge), but the reduction
of uncertainty, of the margin of error inherent in knowledge. Uncertainty, therefore, always
remains at some level, motivating intellectual humility and the search for new knowledge
(Clegg, 2010). Thus, it is axiomatic that the ultimate objective of the study of UAP cases (as in
science in general) is not the certainty of what happened, but the construction of possible and
plausible theories, progressively less uncertain, that organize the evidence in the most coherent
and likely way. Thus, in the end, there may be more than one explanatory theory for the same set
of evidence, each accompanied by a certain probabilistic weight and degree of uncertainty, even
if this is qualitatively established.
Still about the limits of the indiciary paradigm, since it is usually not possible to measure the
phenomenon directly, because what happened is already over, it is possible to measure its effects
on the environment and culture. The modern historian makes a similar attempt; for him it does
not matter if the thing happened in a certain way, but what can be said from the physical, social,
690
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony
and historical impacts left by that event. So contemporary historical studies tend to be carried out
on the assumption of an insurmountable otherness: although current historians often cannot state
the precise facts (to take an extreme example, if the witches of centuries ago really practiced
some supernatural form of witchcraft), they can write about what happened from the perspective
of the people of the historical period in question, as this had effects on the environment
(continuing in the same example, people of past centuries actually believed that witches
performed supernatural feats). The same can be said of any form of environment, including
alleged landing marks, radar echoes, and photographs.
It is worth remembering that this relationship of the contemporary historian with his/her
conclusions is dependent on the nature of the historical elements: if there is only (or
predominantly) cultural/subjective evidence of historical events, the conclusions cannot go
beyond the sphere of uses and meanings that people attributed to the event in their own historical
period. Claims about concrete occurrences depend on the available evidence. In the case of the
UAP, there is a similar dependence on the nature of the evidence in each case. These can also
allow conclusions about its nature, as when it involves additional elements to the meanings
attributed by those involved, such as laboratory tests, filming, radar records, etc. But we have to
consider that much of what we can achieve in UAP case studies is subjective, with little or no
possible statement about what would have happened “objectively.”
As for the hunter, the physician, and the detective, it is axiomatic for the UAP researcher that the
case evidence has causes and/or related phenomena. That is, even though the initial elements of
this chain of events are initially or ultimately unknown, footprints presuppose animals that have
previously left them, symptoms come from diseases, murders require killers, and UAP
experiences involve known or unknown phenomena. In this sense, Ginzburg (1991) points out
that the deciphering of evidence intends to “infer the causes from the effects” (p. 153). The same
goes for the UAP. In the eventuality of acausal phenomena, in which the psychological literature
finds an example in Jung’s controversial synchronicity (1928/1983), one could precisely evoke
the notion of associated phenomena, which could be described or narrated without the
determination of a causality. Considering the aforementioned principle of parsimony, this would
be the last case. At first, we looked for causality since this is a simpler and more familiar form of
relationship between the phenomena in nature.
General principles of puzzle-solving are extremely helpful in putting together a particular puzzle.
General theories and taxonomies of the effects linked to UAP experiences – derived, precisely,
from the cumulative study of cases of the same category – can play a crucial role in the
conclusion of a particular case. Returning to the previous example, the discrepancy between the
patterns of alien abduction reports and the aforementioned narrative of the young woman played
a role in the construction of the hypothesis regarding the television series The X-Files.
Replicability
Replicability is especially important for science as it allows different researchers to evaluate the
same data, hypotheses, and theories, reduce personal biases, smooth the edges, and reduce the
margin of uncertainty about conclusions. Replication can occur, in the study of UAP cases, in at
least two ways: (1) different scientists analyzing the same data set about a case, and (2) research
of different cases leading to conclusions that can be compared in search of patterns.
691
VII. Epistemological Issues
On the first one, the replication of a particular case study demands something uncommon among
UFO enthusiasts: the sharing of the original data. Many ufologists think of the cases they
investigated as “their cases,” in a jealous posture. As an extreme example of something that
occurs to varying degrees on a daily basis, I have heard of at least one veteran ufologist asking to
be buried with his case files so no
VICENTE-JUAN BALLESTER OLMOS