Reality Checking—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, November 2016
UFOs, Aliens, and “Ghostly Analogies”
by: Brent Raynes
There is a thread of observation within ufology [one that is certainly not too popular within the “nuts and bolts” ET mainstream] that compares UFO contactee/abductee encounters to apparitional manifestations, on a par with ghostly phenomena. British author Antony Milne noted how a variety of “ghostly analogies” could be drawn from “the apparitional nature of UFOs, similar to ghosts that walk through walls, or the way people can be levitated at seances, and the way UFOs materialize from nowhere.”
“UFO sightings seem too often to be similar to the mind-created worlds that shamans encounter during their journeys through the subtler dimensions,” Milne also added in his book, Fireballs, Skyquakes and Hums (2011). Certainly the “Oz Effect,” noted by British ufologist Jenny Randles some years ago, which I've referred to in previous columns, would fit into that category quite nicely as well.
Michael Grosso, Ph.D., in his book, Experiencing the Next World Now (2004), a book that primarily explored the evidence for an afterlife, noted how UFOs and their occupants, a subject that he had delved into quite extensively, were “maddeningly elusive and surreal” in a way wherein their manifestations compared more with the “antics of ghosts than machines from outer space,” mentioning frequently reported case details like telepathy, levitation, apports, teleportation, and odd light and heat phenomena.
“In 1942, a brilliant parapsychologist named G. N. M. Tyrrell presented his superb study of apparitions and cited 19 point in his effort to define the 'perfect apparition,'” John Keel, author of the famous The Mothman Prophecies, wrote me back on January 24, 1971. “His study was actually very relevent to the UFO phenomenon and many UFO cases meet the criteria he established.” Not long after receiving that letter, I located a copy of Tyrrell's book, Apparitions: The classic study of ESP and ghostly appearances (a paperback edition, 1969), in a bookstore during a visit to New York City.
Although I had started out in the UFO field back early in 1967 thinking that the extraterrestrial “nuts and bolts” explanation was the most logical and obvious, it wasn't long before I began to question what I had initially perceived as so obvious, thanks to Keel and a few other notable and outstanding pioneering authors and researchers.
French born astrophysicist Dr. Jacques Vallee, in his book Dimensions (1988), describes how the thorny aspect of ufonauts as apparitions cannot be dismissed, even though “nuts and bolts” ufologists have long strived to neglect or outright ignore such evidence, and to make his point delved into case after case from all over the world wherein well-observed “aliens” and UFOs, often in multiple observer situations, suddenly and inexplicably vanished before the eyes of credible and bewildered eyewitnesses.
I was just reading the other day an account of someone who claimed that a “small spacecraft” had flown into his bedroom through a wall and how a “very small alien” jumped out and allegedly implanted something in one of this experiencer's arms, after which the little fella jumped back into the craft and exited the opposite bedroom wall. Reports of aliens passing through solid walls (at least solid to us), as though they were ghosts, are a dime a dozen in ufology. Should “nuts and bolts” ufologists continue to conservatively look the other way when such accounts come under their scrutiny, or should they study the accounts a little more closely and thoughtfully just in case some may be more than lucid dreams, hallucinations, or hoaxes? Although the author mentioned very advanced technology likely behind such manifestations, reflecting his bias perhaps, could John Keel have been right decades ago when he noted that ufology should be a branch of parapsychology? Is the UFO contact experience a hugely misunderstood paranormal phenomenon? Or could such experiences be what the late Dr. Carl Jung called psychoid; things that existed somewhere on the border between real and unreal, transcending both psychological and physical reality, also called “quasipsychic.” There is the evolving field of quantum physics which may help us to address a great many unanswered questions about ourselves, our universe, the paranormal, and an enormous number of etceteras in what we loosely call and define “reality.”
While my own statistical survey work with UFO contact experiencers confirms to me the apparitional, “ghostly analogies” side of this data, the comprehensive survey work being undertaken by Dr. Edgar Mitchell's Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial Encounters (FREE) establishes this correlation quite persuasively with one of the largest known pools of such data compiled to date (and it's still an ongoing survey that is branching out internationally). Consider these responses from what has been described as Phase 2 of this survey program:
1. Have you seen what can be described as a ghost or spirit?
75.61 percent (995 out of 1,316) responded with yes.
2. Have you ever met a deceased person and conversed with him or her?
47.55 percent (611 out of 1,285) responded with yes.
3. Have you seen what can be described as an elf or a fairy?
26.02 percent (332 out of 1,276) responded with yes.
According to the Pew Research Center, a survey of Americans in 2009 revealed that 18% reported that they had seen or been in the presence of a ghost. In 2007, a Pew survey revealed that about 20% believed that they'd had an encounter with an angel or a devil. As I and the FREE survey had found, UFO contact experiencers seem to have a significantly elevated profile for ghostly and spirit, or apparitional encounters if one prefers, from the general population.
“I see spirits of deceased and can sometimes communicate,” a female UFO experiencer (whose family has described quite a few UFO/alien experiences to me as well) who lives in Las Vegas shared with me. “Communication with the deceased has allowed me to help others.” When I recently asked a 36-year-old male experiencer here in Tennessee who described to me having experiences with the “grays” since age 13, the answer was not surprising: “I have seen spirits, especially a little girl. She seems to go with me everywhere I move to. I have heard her crying recently and my daughter has heard her too.”
“Years and years of them from early childhood to present,” alien experiencer Bret Oldham replied to my ghost question. “I feel my energy has been altered because of my experiences and is now vibrating at a faster rate; one that is closer to the spirit world. I feel the spirits sense that and seek me out for help knowing that I can feel them, hear them, and sometimes see them.” Working closely with Bret for four years he even showed me the ropes as to how one could acquire EVP (electronic voice phenomena) results and several times, working together and independently, got a male sounding voice saying “John Keel” (which we had asked for Keel). I emailed Dan Drasin, who had accompanied Keel to Point Pleasant, West Virginia, back in 1967 and in recent years produced a documentary entitled Calling Earth, which was about ITC/EVP research and phenomena around the world, and shared with him some of our audio files. He seemed genuinely impressed. “Very cool,” he wrote back. “In the second EVP, it sounds as if there's a truncated 'John K...' toward the end, as well.” Nancy du Tertre, a former securities litigration attorney and the author of How to Talk to an Alien, gave some of these Keel recordings a listen as well, and though she admitted that she was not necessarily “gifted with auditory interpretations,” there was one where “John Keel is very clear to me. Fascinating.” She added it was “Class A” quality.
“I have seen ghosts and I have ESP,” another contactee/housewife in East Tennessee told me. “Shadows, figures walking in my house, cold spots, strange whispers, knocks that my whole family heard. I have been told people have seen me at two different places at the same time. I can't explain this.”
After a close encounter with a dark gray domed 40-45 foot diameter disk back in July 1967 in Mayport, Florida, Ramona Clark described to me how within 4 days her home erupted with poltergiest activity. There were knocking sounds, footsteps, odors, and a male voice, from time to time, calling her name. In the weeks and months that followed the mother and her teenaged son (who also witnessed the UFO) began to awaken around 3 a.m., immobilized by tingling paralysis, seeing small glowing bluish and golden balls of light and humanoid beings in their bedrooms.
The parapsychologists usually don't want to have anything to do with ufology's “alien” data, and often vice versa, while the cryptozoologists don't generally want to touch the paranormal and UFO “alien” aspects, and so around and around it all goes. Thus these people become specialists who selectively examine only evidence that seemingly applies to the surface appearances of their own particlar field of choice; their preconceived representation of their particular subject. Meanwhile, founding members of FREE, like the late Dr. Edgar Mitchell and Harvard astrophysicist Dr. Rudy Schild have hammered away at a thing called Quantum Hologram Theory (QHT) to explain many anomalies that seem associated with the UFO contact phenomena. Check out my interview in this issue with Rey Hernandez, A FREE co-founder, for his own deep thoughts and insights on this concept and how his own personal contact experiences led him to meeting Doctors Mitchell and Schild and coming to gravitate toward their conclusions. When it comes to UFOs and the paranormal, Dr. Schild has been quoting saying: “The key point is that Quantum Hologram formulation sensibly explains all of the modern miracles.” A few decades back, Keel compared ufology to an “infant pseudoscience,” and as we approach 2017 we will soon be celebrating [if that's what you wanna call it] ufology's 70th anniversary. Sadly, ufology doesn't need the CIA, NSA, Air Force, MIB, or anyone else to hinder its progress. It seems to be mired up and sinking in psychological quicksand of its own creation. Its fearless leaders are too often self-styled egocentric “experts” who strive to maintain an outdated series of subjective ideas and concepts, peddling them as obvious and factual, when in reality there exists no real and hard proof of any genuine scientific substance. Ufology for most is more of a belief system, a religion, than a true science-based discipline where you follow the evidence trail rather than preferred and untested beliefs, concepts and theories.
I always liked this title from one of John Keel's chapters in his book UFOs: Operations Trojan Horse, which was entitled: To Hell with the Answer! What's the Question?
