Reality Checking—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, November 2025
by: Brent Raynes
Well, in the last Reality Checking I strived to take the UFO-PSI syndrome in a possible direction that might help to open the door for consideration of how the human psyche might in some ways interface with high strange UFO related events. Journalist John Keel a good half century ago had suggested that ufology might have served better as a branch of parapsychology. In numerous close-encounter reports, with mysterious flying objects, beings, or both, a slew of anomalous sounding psychical, physical, and/or visionary experiences become intermixed with what otherwise might have been the UFO mainstreams preferred classical physical encounter. But separating the signal from the noise, the proverbial wheat from the chaff could have been the wrong decision, no matter how well intentioned.
Now we can attempt to return to those bygone days, and some do, and certainly some never left, but it would be a waste of time to ignore and push aside the curious and potentially unique and significant findings noted in thousands of case histories worldwide wherein the testimony of UFO witnesses have repeatedly included bizarre psychical events [i.e., poltergeist activity, strange balls of light in and around witnesses homes, as well as paraphysical humanoid beings that can move through solid walls, various acquired psychic abilities like premotions, and much more; things that many “ufologists” neglect, preferring that such damned things be handed off to ghost hunters, parapsychologists, cryptozoologists, and others.
It has taken the mainstream decades to get where we are today and had we better discerned the early cases going all the way back to Kenneth Arnold (1) we could well have more correctly identified related components of the situation rather than attempting to pigeonhole or shelve them into separate disciplines and categories instead of where they belonged. As it is, there’s considerable internal resistance within this field to break free of the strictly physical “nuts and bolts” dynamics and extraterrestrial belief narratives that have a serious tendency, like a psychological kneejerk reflex, with a dash of cognitive dissonance, that lead us down preconceived pathways that only allow for a certain limited range of data to fit within our preconceived acceptances, our established frames of reference. Anything that doesn’t conform to the accepted narratives and rules established early on either gets thrown out or dismissed as belonging to another field or discipline. “Sorry Sir, I’m only after the UFO information. That other stuff you’re describing should be brought to the attention of a psychic researcher, and that Bigfoot looking thing that walked across your backyard a week later, that’s just a coincidence, and you might consider contacting one of those cryptozoologist folks, like maybe that Loren Coleman up in Maine?”
The best approach, the most sensible objective, should be to follow the evidence, as it is, and determine its potential implications and meanings. We’ve already invested 78 years in UFO study since 1947, the beginning of the so-called “flying saucer era,” and where has it taken us? The grand prize answer, the long sought after solid proof, and the ultimate solution to this enigma continues to elude us. Hope against hope we expected better a long time ago. After all, we live in the modern age of science and advanced technology and understanding superior to our forefathers, right? Doubtless, as Keel expressed it in The Eighth Tower (1975), it sometimes feels like we’re chasing after chimeras, like the fairies, ghosts, and fire-breathing dragons that our ancestors felt haunted them going back to their ancient times. Our modern efforts at resolving these things doesn’t seem to be going much better. A good many “ufologists” are counting on prying loose military and government secrets regarding supposed crashed saucers, pickled alien bodies, and other suppressed evidence they’ve presumably hidden from the public.
As TV’s Dr. Phil often asks, “How’s that working for you?” Obviously, thus far, not so well. Our military, the intelligence community, cannot be counted on for always being forthright with us. Whatever the merit of data that’s gathered by them, its routine to classify things over which uncertainty may hover, and things that may seem really anomalous they may provide a cover story, and any classified projects they may be working on that cover story might even be a fabricated UFO tale to mislead the UFO community, like with the Paul Bennewitz case (2) or maybe even the infamous Maury Island caper (3).
Dr. Jacques Vallee, way back in 1969 gave us Passport to Magonia to further show the curious parallels between the little people, the fairies and all, and religious miracles (like Fatima, Portugal in 1917), to our modern UFO chimeral displays.
Recently, in The Daily Grail, Vallee’s recent remarks on ufology received a great deal of circulation (including by me on Facebook), where he was quoted:
“I’m very concerned about what’s happening now, where…all the ufologists have stopped going in the field to talk to farmers. Instead, they get on the internet, and they want to talk about a general or lieutenant-colonel who has an idea about UFOs.”
“…In one of the Sol conferences with Dr Nolan I showed a curve that had two bumps: there’s a small bump, which is military reports of pilots – you know the Nimitz, that kind of thing. And then a huge hill, which has all the normal reports from normal people in the field. We underestimate the size of that hill, because only 1 out of 10 for example is ever reported.”
“So, it’s extremely rich, you don’t need a security clearance to approach these people, and if you’re lucky they’ll give you a cup of coffee. So that’s what I want to go back to.” Sounds reasonable to me. How about all of you?
References:
1. https://apmagazine.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2401
2. https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?qs=UT&pq=Paul+Bennewitz&sk=CSYN1AS1UT4&sc=10-14&q=paul+bennewitz+story&cvid=c96af8481f6e4a4985fe8c9d33a48dd3&gs_lcrp=EgRlZGdlKgYIBRAAGEAyBggAEEUYOTIGCAEQABhAMgYIAhAAGEAyBggDEAAYQDIGCAQQABhAMgYIBRAAGEAyBggGEAAYQDIGCAcQABhAMgYICBAAGEDSAQkxNjkxOWowajSoAgiwAgE&PC=HCTS&ru=%2fsearch%3fqs%3dUT%26pq%3dPaul%2bBennewitz%26sk%3dCSYN1AS1UT4%26sc%3d10-14%26q%3dpaul%2bbennewitz%2bstory%26cvid%3dc96af8481f6e4a4985fe8c9d33a48dd3%26gs_lcrp%3dEgRlZGdlKgYIBRAAGEAyBggAEEUYOTIGCAEQABhAMgYIAhAAGEAyBggDEAAYQDIGCAQQABhAMgYIBRAAGEAyBggGEAAYQDIGCAcQABhAMgYICBAAGEDSAQkxNjkxOWowajSoAgiwAgE%26FORM%3dANAB01%26PC%3dHCTS&mmscn=vwrc&mid=9CFCB332650F29536DEB9CFCB332650F29536DEB&FORM=WRVORC&ntb=1&msockid=67c0b5ecb51a11f085a871ea2835dae1
3. https://apmagazine.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2409&Itemid=53
