A Skeptic at the 2012 International UFO Congress - Part 4

Written after the Friday sessions:

The Friday sessions began with Rosemary Ellen Guiley - ETs, Shadow People, and Djinn. Of those three types, Shadow People are seen the most. They are shadowy forms and often move in and out of children's closets (see Monsters, Inc. ). Stan Romanek has them in his home. They are allied with the Djinn, who are fighting ETs when they're not stopped up in bottles or lamps. The Djinn are seeking hybrids who have staying power in our dimension. Unfortunately, all three groups harass whoever investigates them. If you haven't already had enough of this twaddle, Guiley's website is www.djinnuniverse.com .

Bryce Zabel - Life After Contact. Bryce is the producer of the UFO conspiracy-oriented TV series Dark Skies. Contradicting those who say that government agents are promoting alien-themed shows as part of some "disclosure" project, he says Hollywood loves aliens because they sell tickets.

Zabel says that future calendars will be labeled "A. D.", meaning "After Disclosure," because the inevitable disclosure of the alien presence will have world-changing consequences. He compared the disclosure movement to the civil rights movement, and urged UFOlogists to avoid highly-controversial and sensational claims that will alienate people from the main cause, which is disclosure. Zabel is obviously a very intelligent man, and an excellent speaker, although in my view he suffers from insufficient skepticism of verbas.  He says that After Disclosure, there will be hoarding and panic buying, civil unrest, Congressional hearings, lawsuits, etc., as people seek damages from all the government deception. If such a conspiracy exists, and if it ends, then Zabel's scenario is probably farily accurate. But that assumes a whole lot. Zabel should talk to John Alexander, who strongly believes in ET UFOs, but believes there is absolutely no government conspiracy.

Randall Nickerson - Researching the Ariel School incident. This refers to an incident occurring in Africa on Sept. 16, 1994. In Zimbabwe 62 children ages 6-12, both black and white, claim to have seen a landed UFO with "strange beings" during morning recess. Unfortunately while all of the children apparently saw it, no adult did. Nickerson and the late Dr. John Mack went there to investigate the incident, which was actually a very brave thing to do, as travel to that area is quite dangerous. Some of the children got 'images' of man's destruction of the environment, saying this must end. Nickerson's talk was self-absorbed and introspective, and frankly boring. It took him 30 minutes to get to the UFO part of the story. I don't know why those children are telling that story, and I agree that episodes such as this ought to be studied by psychologists. Perhaps somebody hoaxed the children? However, there is ample historical precedent for episodes of what appear to be mass-delusion: Father Gill's 1959 UFO sighting, day-care molestation stories, and historical episodes of witchcraft mania.  In the final analysis there is no evidence that anything actually happened, just the stories told by the children.

Stan and Lisa Romanek

Stan and Lisa Romanek (substituting for Bruce Maccabee): Stan is the guy who became famous when he posted to YouTube a video of an alien peeping in his window. Soon others were posting alien Peeping Tom videos of their own, many of them better than Romanek's. He told about how he started to have sightings of UFOs a few years back, and soon they were following him around. Before long, big-headed aliens are playing peek-a-boo in the windows of his home. Then the ETs were replaced by as many as nine alien hybrid little girls, who intrude upon his telephone calls, and also play now-you-see-me-now-you-don't. One of them is Lisa's daughter from a previous UFO abduction. Stan gets a few not-quite-clear photos of strange-looking little girls, whose images probably have been Photoshopped to give them ET features.

Stan injured himself falling off a ladder, and was going to get corrective surgery. However, before the operation he was abducted by ETs, and his injury was miraculously healed, to the astonishment of his doctor. Before finishing his talk, he mentioned in passing that someone had anonymously mailed him actual photos of the true Roswell crash debris, and he flashed them tantalizingly on the screen. Stan Romanek is a one-man paranormal factory, and I suspect these wild claims will just keep piling up for many years.

Afterward while Romanek was at his table in the vendors' room (he and his wife now have three books of wild UFO claims), I introduced myself to him, and gave him my "Bad UFOs" card. I asked him why the aliens were following him around. We chatted very briefly when somebody (probably his wife) must have whispered, "don't talk to that guy." Suddenly it was, "I can't talk to you. You just bad-mouth people. Go away." I attempted to get a photo of him and his wife (others were doing so), but he turned his face away from me (how I regret not getting that image of Romanek avoiding the camera!). He said he'd have his lawyer sue me if I took a photo; I replied that was ridiculous, since he was a public figure in a public forum. So much for "UFO research!"

It's true: the Sun will be "aligned" with the Pleiades during the Annular Eclipse of May 20, 2012. So what?

Jaime Maussan, Imminent Contact. Mexico's main UFO man gave his usual wild and implausible talk. He showed a photo of what might be a baby alien, or else a baby Chupacabra. Fleets of UFOs, he said, were watching the recent Tsunami in Japan. The annular solar eclipse (when the moon passes directly across the sun, but appears too small to cover it completely, living a bright ring around the moon's rim) that will occur on May 20, 2012 (and is visible from the southwestern U.S.) will occur with the Sun aligned with the Pleiades. Actually, that part is true. The Sun "aligns" with the Pleiades (M45) every year around May 20. So what? "Alignments" mean nothing, astronomically speaking, but they can be very pretty.

Maussan showed the famous "spiral UFOs" that were failed Russian rocket launches. He insisted that he and his colleagues did a "complete investigation" of them, and found they were authentic. The Jerusalem UFO video(s) are also completely authentic. A new wrinkle at this conference: Maussan and a few other speakers talked about "mystery sounds," usually hums, being heard at various locations around the world. Sounding like a low, distant trumpet (like in the movie Red State), these have been said by some to be Gabriel's trumpet. Or else created by UFOs.

One vendor doing a great business was A&S, "Alien and Scalpel Research," promising "scientific analysis of alien implants and UFO crash debris." I do not know how much they are charging to "scan" a person for alien implants, but I heard complaints from those who signed up about the long wait. One woman described to me her experience with A&S: they took her into the little tent at right, and "scanned" her several times with different electronic instruments. They found three implants. They also told her that she was an alien hybrid, but also had 'angelic" DNA as well. I am truly amazed at what science can learn these days. I invited her to post her experience on this Blog.