A Skeptic at the 2012 International UFO Congress - Part 5 of 5.

On Friday evening I watched The Montauk Chronicles, a documentary on supposed sinister paranormal experiments carried out on innocent boys by the U.S. military at Montauk, Long Island, NY. (See p. 124-126 of my book Pyschic Vibrations). Supposedly tens of thousands of young boys, if not hundreds of thousands, were taken off the streets, imprisoned, tortured and molested, all for the purpose of unleashing hidden paranormal powers. The project ended when one of the youngsters was able to manifest a Big Scary Monster that ran amuck attacking people. By some accounts, the monster still runs amuck at night, when the moon is full and the fog sits upon the moor - wooo. The movie is quite well made. I met the writer and director, Christopher P. Garetano, who seems like a nice fellow but apparently lacks the gene for critical thinking. He cannot decide whether this huge, bloated, absurd tale is true or not. Good Lord!

David Sereda and Stan Romanek test that the laws of electromagnetism are still working

The Saturday sessions began with Ben Hansen, host of the SyFy channel's Fact or Faked, on the Interplay of Media, Technology, Hollywood, and Validating Evidence of ET Contact.  He raised the question of how to tell, given all this technology, which photos and videos are genuine, and which faked. Technology, he said, is our best friend, but also our worst enemy. It seemed to be more "enemy" that morning as many of his video excerpts were unable to be played. The genre of "found footage," he said is now so popular that if real footage of ETs is ever found, it might not be believed. He decried the "wolves" who damage the credibility of UFO research by making sensational claims for their own fun and profit. Unfortunately, he did not name any names.

Whitley and Anne Strieber

When I first saw the celebrated mega-best selling author Whitley Strieber and his wife Anne seated on a panel, I remarked to myself how their demeanor reminded me of the couple in the famous painting American Gothic. I had not seen Anne before; however I had written up an account of Strieber's very odd behavior during my previous Close Encounter with the Great Confabulator. For his talk, Strieber promised he would be Solving the Communion Enigma, but somehow never quite did. He did promote his website The Unknown Country, especially the paid subscribers' pages. Anne read some letters they had received, telling of peoples' highly-emotional experiences with "the visitors." In mankind's struggle for political and personal freedom, he said, we CE-ers are on the cutting edge.However, it is common for CE people to have a "tragic background." A wave of "strange sounds" around the world, mentioned earlier by Maussan, were discussed.

I got out of my seat to get photos of the speakers, without flash so as not to disturb the video being made. I was looking at the photos as I returned to my seat. The fellow next to me asked "were there any orbs above them?" No, not this time. Streiber returned to the theme of contact with the dead that he first began to promote in his book The Key (see my Review, "He Sees Dead People," in the Skeptical Inquirer, July/August, 2011). Dead people, he says, dress in a brown monk's cowl, "Jesuit clothing." Some of the visitors think it is possible for mankind ro Evolve, while others apparently are not so optimistic. That is why the visitors are so cautious and stealthy. Afterward, mankind will be changed completely, and come face-to-face with the dead. Strieber still says he does not know exactly who "the visitors" are, but he knows that The Dead play a large role.

Whitley Strieber signing autographs

General Ricardo Bermudez spoke about Chile's Official UFO Agency. I didn't hear much of his talk. He was having serious Audio-Visual problems. He spoke about UFO reports that were being received in Chile.

Next the celebrated Steven Greer of CSETI (not to be confused with real SETI) spoke on Contact: Countdown to Transformation to his largely-credulous and adoring crowd. "Disclosure has already happened," said Greer unexpectedly, borrowing a line from John Alexander, who Greer normally disagrees with about everything. Greer didn't explain that remark. Greer showed a photo of Bijou, an ambassador from the Andromeda Galaxy whose acquaintance was made in one of CSETI's desert Skywatches at Joshua Tree, CA. Bijou has now become like a sort of pet alien for Greer, often playing peek-a-boo when it's least expected. It takes a great deal of imagination to see Bijou in the original photo at left, even after they have helpfully cut away his outline (right) - more imagination than I have, I'm afraid. Greer also has equally-fuzzy photos of blips that he says are alien spaceships, many of them only partially materialized in our dimension.  Every time they go out, says Greer, they spot UFOs. Every time. This confirms my suspicion that no matter what light they see in the sky, they think it's a UFO.

Greer says there's an alien hiding out in this photo

Voila! It's Bijou, Greer's alien familiar

Greer claims that electro-gravitic devices were built by as long ago as the 1950s. Alien technology, he says, offers us free energy so that we won't need oil or coal any more. However, this is being opposed by the greedy oil companies, and the military-industrial complex. Greer said that he was offered a bribe of $2 BILLION by the conspirators to stop investigating UFOs, which he bravely and selflessly declined. (Me, I'd sell out for a mere two million, but then I don't make as much money as doctors do). He said the only reason the conspirators had not yet killed him is because he is too well-known. He accused the conspirators of "murder" in the cancer death of his friend Sheri Adamiak, and in the non-fatal cancers of other researchers, including his own. Apparently they have some sort of 'cancer ray' that they use against UFOlogists who get too close to the truth. Which brings us to this Rambo guy that I saw with Greer Friday night when Greer first arrived. He was dressed in black combat fatigues, and appeared to be wearing a bullet-proof vest. I thought this was odd, but I didn't pay much attention to him. Arizona is a state where people carry around guns the way people in other states carry umbrellas, although there are "no weapons" signs posted all around the facility. I heard later that Greer has taken to traveling with bodyguards, undoubtedly for the theatrical effect. Rambo, however, was not to be seen on Saturday when Greer spoke, and especially when he went into the hallway to sign autographs, which is when Greer would need protection the most. I heard an unconfirmed rumor that Rambo may have gotten himself into trouble bringing guns onto the Indian Reservation. For whatever reason, Rambo wasn't there, leaving poor Steven Greer defenseless. I am happy to report that Greer survived his stint at the UFO Congress.

Steven Greer is embraced by one of his many admiring fans. But where is Rambo?

Colin Andrews, the world authority on Crop Circles, spoke on that subject.He said that it really doesn't matter which of the crop circles are man-made, and which are real. (I'm still trying to wrap my head around that!). There are profound changes coming, as a "switch" will be thrown on December 21, changing, well, something really important.

As is well-known in UFOlogy, in the 1990s Laurence Rockefeller donated a significant sum for the study of UFOs. Less well-known is that he also donated money to fund a two-year study of Crop Circles,  and that Colin Andrews was chief investigator. Rockefeller's people said they wanted the  "best assessment" possible. They had enough money to buy the newest equipment, and even use helicopters. When it was completed, the conclusion was that 80% of the Circles were made by people, but 20% were unexplained. This conclusion was very controversial in UFO and Crop Circle circles; many people thought of it as a "debunking" study, and turned against poor Colin.

I first met Andrews two days earlier, when I was returning to my seat after my mini-confrontation with Steve Pierce and Travis Walton during the Q&A. He stopped me, introduced himself, and asked me for my card. I guess he wanted to find out what this was all about! I replied that I knew who he was, and we agreed to meet later and chat. When we did, I pointed out that some of the statements he'd made earlier about 2012 "alignments" were rather confused. I was surprised to see that he was trying to figure this out by himself using planetarium software, but not really understanding the parameters his maps were so broad as to be very confusing. I told him I'd written quite a lot on those "alignments," and I sent him by email the links to the three Blog entries I did a year ago about that (http://badufos.blogspot.com/2011/02/2012-peter-gerstens-leap-of-faith.html and the two following it), for which he thanked me.

At that point I had to get back home so I could go to see the final performance at the San Diego Opera of Jake Heggie's west coast premiere opera Moby Dick., which was amazing.