1 Oct 1996
Your comments on alien abductions are entirely convincing, and they
remind me of an amusing incident. Some years ago I helped a friend of
mine who worked as a comedy writer and performer develop a comedy sketch
based on this theme. In this sketch a man recalls having been driving
home late one night and being stopped by a space ship with flashing red
and blue lights and an unearthly wailing sound which lands in front of
him. He is taken inside the space ship, which is occupied by humanoids
in blue space suits, and forced to undergo various medical experiments,
including giving blood and air samples through a mouth-tube. He is then
flown back to the aliens' home planet, where he is questioned by one of
their government officials and is then locked in a cell with some other
abductees from earth. He next remembers being flown back to his home and
wakes up feeling terribly sick as a result of the rapid space travel and
drugs administered by the aliens.
Thank you for a very interesting web site.
Robert Darby
Canberra, Australia
2 Apr 1996
I have read your position on alien abductions. Your skepticism is healthy, but you ignore much of the information.
I find it hard not to.
Strieber, whom I will admit is a little disturbed, has not had experiences solo. His wife, child, and friends have been exposed.
You know what they say: the family that is abducted together stays together!
(I'd be disturbed too if I had his contacts.)
I think that is a safe bet.
If you have read Bud Hopkins Intruders, then you will see that landing traces also exist. Hopkins and the physicians working with him have MRI documentation of implants.
Hopkins does not appear to me to be much of a reliable source. I think he would trust you if you told him you travel to Mars every night and that's where you learned the value of brushing your teeth.
Current thought suggests the beings are interdimentional rather than ET.
--Sandi
I'm sure this makes a big difference even though I have no clue as to what an "interdimentional" being is. (Do you mean "innerdementional"?)
After reviewing the UFO section, I have to say, those who don't believe in UFO's, don't know reality. I work for the Air Force as a civilian and have seen tapes of a foreign F-16, locking and tracking an object and observing the object's speed, heading and altitude changes that was defying the known laws of physics, and verified by eyewitness and ground-based radars at the time.
reply: I don't doubt that pilots have tried to track down meteors, disintegrating satellites, lights from various sources, reflections on their windows, and other phantoms, and that they have claimed that what they saw "defied the known laws of physics." These testimonials hardly count as scientific evidence that anything really "defied the known laws of physics." They count only as pilots seeing things they could not identify and which baffled the hell out them.
The Air Force has lost men and equipment chasing after these unknown objects because they were over-stressing their aircraft trying to keep up with what they were tracking.
reply: I don't doubt that. But my conclusion would be more along the lines of wasting taxpayer dollars on phantom chases than on evidence we've been contacted by aliens.
I know that most sightings are honest misidentifications. In fact, one of our KC-10 tanker aircraft was doing touch and go landings at a local airport in Northern California--Redding-- last January and was mistaken for a UFO. At night, with all of its specialized lights on, it looks like a "Flying Christmas Tree." It was very easy to view it as a UFO, however, you can't dismissed the lockups and tracking on APG-63 and APG-70 radars of military aircraft on objects that are being observed by others in a different location. I am sure that many of the sightings in Southern California, was the result of military aircraft and to what many believe is, "Aurora." I can't comment on Aurora, but I want to let you know that there are objects out there and they don't belong to us.
reply: That's true. Some of it belongs to Nature. Some of the junk that's been sent to space and which occasionally falls back to earth, richoceting off the atmosphere and being illuminated as it burns up, has been put there by the Russians, the French, the Indians, etc. Just because the junk doesn't belong to us doesn't mean it belongs to aliens from another galaxy.
The Governemt already knows that but feels that its citizens are not ready. It is probably due to the fact of what happened when "War of the Worlds" was broadcasted over the airwaves. Remember the widespread panic? Anyway, I thought you would like to know that about UFO's.
reply: How can you trust your government to be so caring? Your government would as soon send you to hell as protect you from aliens. You would know this if you were not a civilian working for the Air Force, but were a member of the military.
I can't comment on what is flying over the skies of the world for
security reasons, but I can say this, there are objects
flying that would boogle your mind. Some of these operate
on a propulsion systems unknown to you but I will give you
a hint about one of them that is not classified by nickname
only. Nicknamed: 'Pulser.' That's all I can say about it.
--Aubrey Matthews
reply: That there are objects flying that would "boogle" my mind does not surprise me; nor does the fact there are propulsion systems unknown to me. But if anyone ever asks me about Pulser, I'll refer them to you.
I have often wondered what travel pamphlets alien's use when deciding to "visit" the Earth. After all if we are to assume that the speed of light (real light that is, not a spacecraft capable of warp 8) is the propogation rate of electromagnetic energy, then organized radiometric energy eminating from the earth has yet to reach even the closest stars. Any visual light waves containing perhaps images of prehistoric creatures are still meandering their way through our own galaxy. What inspiration then exists for others to pack up the kids and head for the garden spot of the galaxy. I might understand when others begin receiving Tesla's first sparks or perhaps it will be episodes of "I Love Lucy" that will inspire intergalactic explorers to venture into the "final frontier". If the travelers continue to monitor the broadcasts enroute however, they may think that we posses awesome defenses in the form of the star ship "Enterprise" and turn back. In fact they might have already done so if their monitoring equipment picks up Oprah or Sally ! What will they think of Tanya Harding for God's sake. Where is Zeno when you need him.
As an aside, I wonder if residents of other planets tell
stories of being
abducted by earthlings? Keep up the good work,
Best regards,
--Steve Marsh
I visisted this 'Skeptics Dictionary' site so I could receive a little more insight into how the 'other side' views the ideas of extraterrestrials and UFO's, as I believe that they are not one in the same or from the same. I myself am a personal believer after reading hundreds of accounts and such. What is interesting is that you don't attempt to discredit or disprove so many of the PROVEN UFO's (not in the sense of ET's mind you). Even if you were to take into account that at least 2% of all UFO sightings are real than you have thousands of sightings that you can not disprove or discredit the witnesses.
What is a "real" ufo sighting? One for which there is no ready naturalistic explanation? If so, then what you have is 2% of these sightings are unexplained. That does not imply that they are best explained by assuming they are space ships from alien civilizations. A more reasonable explanation is that they are natural phenomena.
From what I've read in this skeptics dictionary in relation to ETs and UFOs it is clear to me that you have not done any research WHATSOEVER into believing them. You tend to discredit no matter what. I personally don't believe everything I've read about UFOs, some things just seem TOO farfetched to be believed.
If by research, you mean spending years trying to prove Roswell is a government conspiracy, or personally interviewing every person who has claimed to have been abducted by aliens, then you are right. I do not take such people seriously. I consider them to be in error or to be frauds. Until one of them brings back a souvenir, I'll let others waste their time investigating these sightings.
In conclusion here I would just like to say you better update your 'dictionary' to include many things in relation to UFOs such as MIBs.
If I don't, what happens to me? Am I abducted and
surgically altered?
--Fred Peterson
'Absence of Proof is not Proof of Absence'
-- Ian Malcolm, "The Lost World" by Michael Crichton
No. And absence of proof is not proof, either.
To whom it may concern, I skimmed through "alien abductions". This subject or rather the proponents of alien abduction never cease to amaze me. To think that we humans, citizens of a single planet called Earth are so facinating to any advanced race from where ever is proposterous.
It may be preposterous to you and me, but not to Fred and his comrades.
If one considers the remote possibilites of "advanced"
life
in our galaxy, coupled with the odds of any such race
visting our planet more than once in a million years, it is
clear that these abductions are bunk. I feel sorry for the
people who feel compelled to make up this nonsense. I
despise the jackals and con artists labling themselves
as "experts" wasting time and resources that could better
be spent in a thousand endeavors much more rewarding to
all of us. But I guess chasing government conspiracy
theories, publishing pseudo-science rags and bilking lonely
people out of their money is more exiting than feeding
the hungry, helping the homeless or visiting an elderly
shutin. If the subject of our vast universe facinates one,
write Congress and request that more funds be spent
on NASA studying real mysteries of the cosmos.
Just my two cents. Excuse me now, there are two large
headed beings at my window who wish to take me out for
a beer and and study my old football injury.
--John McGarry
What a great resource.
I have a comment about aliens. In May of 1992 I was in
San Jose, Costa Rica. there had just been a rash of UFO
sightings in the previous months. There was an article
in the Sunday paper, recounting sightings, history of
UFOs etc., the usual stuff. There were two pictures, artists
renderings of aliens as described by people who claimed to
have seen them. The composite of an alien as described
by North Americans looked remarkably like E.T. The composite
as described by witnesses in Latin America looked amazingly
like the traditional image of an angel. Most North Americans
know from the media what aliens are supposed to look like.
In Latin America, where the Catholic church is still very strong
people have a different expectation.
--Bill Sawyers
Of course accounts of UFOs and abductions are "unreasonable". The very notion is unreasonable.
But this does not negate the possibility, no matter how great or small, that these events actually occur.
Certainly, at the least, we can agree that a documented "phenomena" of reports from seemingly "normal"
people continues to occur. Wether these reports are based upon reality,or the human frailty of the psyche
remains to be seen. I maintain an open mind.
Steve Murillo
So do I.
21 Jun 1996
hello! i must admit i've been a fan of the skeptic's
dictionary for quite some time, and until the present i haven't
written to express my gratitude for such a resource! i have
considered myself of a very skeptical nature for many years now,
and enjoy looking over the entries in the skeptic's dictionary
often. you have amassed a huge amount of information and brilliant
opinions about a variety of pseudoscience, delusion and general crap
that tends to pervade the teeming masses of 'believers' these days.
thanks for all the information and entertainment along the way!
reply: thanks. flattery will get you anywhere you want to go. btw are you related to e.e.cummings?
but i've rambled enough. how about comments on a specific area? aliens, alien abductions, etc.
this area fascinates me immensely! i love to watch programs about or read about supposed alien visitations, roswell, et cetera. as a scientist, the prospect of other life than that which we know here on earth is an intriguing one. however, the thing that amuses/annoys me the most about 'alien encounters' are some of the more popular skeptical issues brought against them: why do all these aliens look identical? is there only one or two buzzing around scaring the pants off of people? (see 'the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy' for further info on this!) of course there must be some explanation for this
... my personal favorite that i cling to is the likelihood of alien life to be a humanoid biped are astronomically low. if you give any credence to a field like xenobiology, you realize people have postulated the probability of alien life being of certain types (this is covered in 'the andromeda strain' too, i believe). given the immense amount of disadvantages to our humanoid architecture (inability to move very quickly, precarious head positioning - injury is just too easy, our extreme upright posture makes attack much easier, the issue of balance, etc.) the odds of an alien species resembling us at all is fairly poor. thus, i and most people of a scientific education seem to feel, it is much more likely that we would encounter a smaller, maybe even single cell-type organism, or maybe an aggregate of such things. when one considers the evolution of our own species, the contributions and role that bacteria play is impossible to ignore. of course, if you believe in panspermia, and the seeding of the universe with the same genetic material, i guess aliens would resemble us in some ways, though different in others due to divergent evolution, different evolutionary/environmental pressures, etc. - but i certainly do not accept this theory.
i'll stop here, i don't want to start with all
my other theories/reasonings, this has become quite a tome already!
--jason affourtit