rigorousintuition.ca

At its peak, the study had 46 scientists working at the Nevada facility, writing reports and analyzing data that came in from the military. Rapid response teams were dispatched to the scene of UFO events.

In 2008, James Carrion, Jan Harzan, Chuck Modlin and John Schuessler met with Robert Bigelow and his team to seek ways to establish cooperation between the organizations. Later, Carrion negotiated a contract with Bigelow Aerospace that allowed MUFON to organize a funded rapid-response effort that could put investigators in the field on high value UFO cases within 24-hours. It also gave Bigelow Aerospace access to the MUFON Case Management System.

“Bigelow received his initial federal UFO funds in late 2008, and the one obvious (in hindsight) use of them was (ironically) the contract he signed with MUFON in February, 2009 to fund their “STAR Team Rapid Response UFO Investigation Unit.”

The STAR Team Impact Project (SIP) was a MUFON program funded in part by Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) where MUFON was subcontracted to provide information from the CMS data base (website) and witness reports related to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) directly to BAASS.

MUFON had a contract with BAASS (per the terms of the contract agreement) MUFON provided data from sighting reports that were submitted to MUFON CMS website in exchange for BAASS paying funds directly to MUFON each month. This Contract was sometimes referred to as a Purchase Agreement (purchase of information) and the project was referred to as the SIP Project (STAR Team Impact Project).

Part of this money was used to directly fund the STAR TEAM, which consisted of paid investigators who would be deployed to investigate the most compelling cases and a dispatch operation that would work continuous shifts to monitor the activity of the cases coming into the CMS website.

Unfortunately, Bigelow’s deal with MUFON quickly turned sour. According to Richard Lang, who was the manager of the STAR Team, the deal soon got tangled up in financial controversy and audits, and was terminated in January, 2010. He says that MUFON only received about $324,000 total from Bigelow, a small fraction of the money Bigelow received from the federal government.

So far as I am aware (and I talk to a lot of MUFON people), none of them were aware that Bigelow was in essence passing federal funding onto them. In fact, I am sure that some of them will be upset that Bigelow was, in essence, making them unknowingly participate in a federally-funded investigation.
Data on the Federal Elections Committee website shows that Bigelow was a campaign contributor to Harry Reid.”

“Even though this was a secure program,we wanted to make sure people couldn’t complain about it that it was some sweetheart deal. No, it was put out to bid,” Reid says.

The contract was posted for months. The winning bid came from Las Vegas space entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, a billionaire who had funded his own UFO studies for years. Bigelow built secure facilities inside his aerospace company.

“[Bigelow] doesn’t need more money,” he explains. “He’s a very likeable guy, but he’s been convinced all along that we’re being ‘visited.’ And it doesn’t mean [aliens are visiting us] just because a person of note thinks it’s true. The thing that’s a little disturbing about this is that it seems a lot of the money for this study went to Bob Bigelow. I think that if you really wanted to investigate this stuff, the thing to do is to give this to scientists or experts in the field that don’t have a dog in the fight.”

"There are no alloys that are sitting in some warehouse that we cannot figure out what they are. In fact, it's pretty simple, and any reasonably good metallurgical grad student can do it for you," he said.

Nyman said that if metals did fall from some mysterious aircraft, some forensics experiments would quickly answer a lot of questions about that aircraft.

Susan Lepselter, professor of anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington and author of "The Resonance Of Unseen Things: Poetics, Power, Captivity And UFOs In The American Uncanny."

Wombaticus Rex » Wed Dec 20, 2017 8:57 am wrote:

“If the aliens were actually visiting us since 1947, when they made that navigation error in New Mexico, you’d have really good evidence,” Shostak says. “It wouldn’t all be in the hands of the government — and not just the government, our government. If the aliens had bothered to visit any other countries, wouldn’t they have evidence? I find it hard to believe that everybody’s covering it up.

“The bottom line is somebody spent 20 million dollars of your tax dollars to look into this and they didn’t come up with anything.”

Man, it's so weird how these guys can't update their scripts and don't notice when their mouthpeice is malfunctioning in public.

The bottom line is, UFOlogy just entered a whole new phase because after decades of flat cover-up denials, now it's suddenly official AF/DOD policy to confirm UAP is both real and the subject of ongoing study, since it remains legitimately unexplained.

Oh, and the fucking New York Times just ran video of an encounter.

No big deal, though! Just roll out Michael Shermer and Stephen Pinker, you won't even have to wake them up at this point. Everything is normal and SETI is a smart idea. Thanks, Seth!

Luther Blissett » 23 Dec 2017 18:06 wrote:While this tentatively and tangentially lends some credibility to the original Sherman Ranch stories, I have to wonder what exactly was going on there. As much as I'd love to believe it all, all those details that still remain stuck in my memory (giant black wolf inside the house, disembodied Russian-sounding voices hovering 10 feet off the ground, a fucking dinosaur, a perfect shallow circle carved into ice without an axis point, a sasquatch portal, etc), in practical terms I really can't. Was that story pushed out on rense (before Bigelow's involvement as far as we know) for some purpose of disinformation? Was Bigelow involved from the start? It's a strange form of myth-building, and wouldn't it have the opposite-of-desired effect?

... my friend who did her anthropology dissertation on UFOs/Abduction Narratives, was included alongside Leslie Kean and Elizondo by Boston radio WBUR

A Secret Pentagon UFO Program Searches For The Unexplained
http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2017/12/19/do-aliens-exist
https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/tr ... 300264.mp3

Elvis » 23 Dec 2017 18:51 wrote:NPR's weekly show "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" just spent a few solid minutes of air time ridiculing UFOs, including the inevitable "anal probe" joke. Robust audience laughter. I guess that shit never gets old? The subject came up regarding the US military's recent admission they've been tracking some UAP.

I've noted elsewhere (this thread?) a comedian on that same NPR show interrupting Bill Clinton just as Clinton was about to reveal something about his UFO inquiries while president; he had just said "Well, they [intelligence agencies] don't always tell you everything..." when the idiot panelist cut him off with a lame aliens joke.

More recently we have pop-punk singer turned UFO disclosure spokesperson Tom DeLonge claiming contact with military sources feeding him information verifying a wide variety of UFO myths. However, thanks to the WikiLeaks release of John Podesta’s emails, we have record of DeLonge perhaps giving us a truer hint at what his military mentors are really after. DeLonge says in an email to Podesta, "This project is about changing the cynical views of youth towards government."

DeLonge, Thomas. (2016, February). "Fwd: Interesting news." WikiLeaks - The Podesta Emails.

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/33552

Jerky » Mon Dec 25, 2017 10:11 am wrote:The Skinwalker Ranch stuff has the distinct ring of small town tall tale BULLSHIT to me.

The recently released videos are also a big "meh". People in the media freaking out of the lack of people freaking out over these recent 'revelations' obviously underestimate how much salt people take when they ingest anything related to Bigelow these days. People aren't freaking out because they haven't been given any reason to freak out.

J

This video shows the weird object as seen from a U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet’s ATFLIR (Advanced Targeting Forward Looking Infrared) pod. What is it? Any idea?

The New York Times has released a video that shows a close encounter between an F/A-18F Super Hornet out of USS Nimitz and one of these UFOs back in 2004.

Back in 2007, a user (cometa2) of the popular Above Top Secret (ATS) forum posted an alleged official CVW-11 Event Summary of a close encounter occurred on Nov. 14, 2004. Back then, when the encounter had not been confirmed yet, many users questioned the authenticity of both the event log and the footage allegedly filmed during the UFO intercept. More than 10 years later, with an officially released video of the encounter, it’s worth having a look at that unverified event log again: although we can’t say for sure whether it is genuine or not, it is at least “realistic” and provides some interesting details and narrative consistent with the real carrier ops. Moreover, the summary says that the callsign of the aircraft involved in the encounter is Fast Eagle: this callsign is used by the VFA-41 Black Aces – incidentally the very same squadron of David Fravor, formed Co of VFA-41, the pilot who recalled the encounter to NYT.

Anyway, here’s an excerpt:

FAST EAGLES 110/100 UPON TAKE OFF WERE VECTORED BY PRINCETON AND BANGER (1410L) TO INTERCEPT UNID CONTACT AT 160@40NM (N3050.8 W11746.9) (NIMITZ N3129.3 W11752.. PRINCETON INFORMED FAST EAGLES THAT THE CONTACT WAS MOVING AT 100 KTS @ 25KFT ASL.

FAST EAGLES (110/100) COULD NOT FIND UNID AIRBORNE CONTACT AT LOCATION GIVEN BY PRINCETON. WHILE SEARCHING FOR UNID AIR CONTACT, FAST EAGLES SPOTTED LARGE UNID OBJECT IN WATER AT 1430L. PILOTS SAW STEAM/ SMOKE/CHURNING AROUND OBJECT. PILOT DESCRIBES OBJECT INITIALLY AS RESEMBLING A DOWNED AIRLINER, ALSO STATED THAT IT WAS MUCH LARGER THAN A SUBMARINE.

WHILE DESCENDING FROM 24K FT TO GAIN A BETTER VIEW OF THE UNID CONTACT IN THE WATER, FAST EAGLE 110 SIGHTED AN AIRBORNE CONTACT WHICH APPEARED TO BE CAPSULE SHAPED (WINGLESS, MOBILE, WHITE, OBLONG PILL SHAPED, 25-30 FEET IN LENGTH, NO VISIBLE MARKINGS AND NO GLASS) 5NM WEST FROM POSITION OF UNID OBJECT IN WATER.

CAPSULE (ALT 4K FT AT COURSE 300) PASSED UNDER FAST EAGLE 110 (ALT 16KFT). FAST EAGLE 110 BEGAN TURN TO ACQUIRE CAPSULE. WHILE 110 WAS DESCENDING AND TURNING, CAPSULE BEGAN CLIMBING AND TURNED INSIDE OF FAST EAGLE’S TURN RADIUS. PILOT ESTIMATED THAT CAPSULE ACHIEVED 600-700 KTS. FAST EAGLE 110 COULD NOT KEEP UP WITH THE RATE OF TURN AND THE GAIN OF ALTITUDE BY THE CAPSULE. 110 LOST VISUAL ID OF CAPSULE IN HAZE.

LAST VISUAL CONTACT HAD CAPSULE AT 14KFT HEADING DUE EAST.

NEITHER FAST EAGLES 110 OR 100 COULD ACHIEVE RADAR LOCK OR ANY OTHER MEANS OF POSITIVE ID. FAST EAGLE 100 WAS FLYING HIGH COVER AND SAW THE ENGAGEMENT BY FAST EAGLE 110. FAST EAGLE 100 CONFIRMS 110 VISUAL ID; 100 LOST CONTACT IN HAZE AS WELL.

CPA OF ACFT 110 FROM CONTACT 4000-5000 FT.

Frequent Flyers? Those aliens do get around.
By Zack Van Eyck Deseret News staff writer

For species that supposedly don't exist, aliens sure do get around.

Extraterrestrial beings and the aircraft they purportedly fly have become an indelible part of American and world culture. You can't watch TV for long anymore without seeing some reference to aliens. It's as if they've hired a slick public relations firm to maximize their exposure.

Even Hollywood has a new fixation with ETs. The much-awaited "Independence Day," expected to be this summer's blockbuster, is unleashing an alien invasion of earth at a theater near you this week.

Of course, everyone knows that humans are the only intelligent life in the universe, UFOs don't exist, all crop circles are faked by two English blokes, cattle mutilations are carried out by laser-wielding coyotes and bigfoot will have a sizable bill to pay if he ever returns that rental costume.

Well, not everyone.

"My personal opinion, not speaking for Hansen Planetarium or Salt Lake County, is that the universe is teeming with life," said Patrick Wiggins, a spokesman for the planetarium.

"There are more stars in the sky than there are grains of sand on planet earth. The notion that anybody would say that out of that incredible number of stars there is only one planet that has life on it, that's ludicrous. That's egocentric to the max."

Terry and Gwen Sherman wish some of that teeming intergalactic life would find somewhere else to hang out.

For more than a year now the Shermans' 480-acre ranch just south of Fort Duchesne in Uintah County has been a hotbed for UFOs and bizarre paranormal activity -- weirdness that even the Shermans, who've witnessed the strange happenings with their own eyes and video camera, have trouble accepting as reality.

"For a long time we wondered what we were seeing, if it was something to do with a top-secret project," said Terry Sherman, who reluctantly agreed to speak publicly about the activity for the first time. "I don't know really what to think about it."

The Shermans, their teenage son and 10-year-old daughter have seen three specific types of UFOs repeatedly during the past 15 months -- a small boxlike craft with a white light, a 40- foot-long object and a huge ship the size of several football fields. They've seen one craft emit a wavy red ray or light beam as it flies along. They've seen other airborne lights, some of which have emerged from orange, circular doorways that seem to appear in midair. They've videotaped two of the sightings.

Mystery circles

They once discovered three circles of flattened grass, each about 8 feet across, in a triangular pattern about 30 feet from each other. In a nearby pasture, other strange soil impressions have been found -- circles about 3 feet wide and a foot or two deep with the dirt in the center perfectly flattened.

One of the flying lights followed Gwen's car on her way home from work one night. And while out in one of the fields with the family dogs, Terry heard male voices speaking an unfamiliar language. The voices seemed to be about 25 feet above him, but Terry couldn't see a thing. The dogs were frantic. They barked and growled before running off to the ranch house, Terry said.

The Shermans have linked the sightings with the death or disappearance of seven of their cows. Four have disappeared without a trace. Three others have been found dead and partially mutilated.

"We've seen (the UFOs) enough and we know pretty much what the craft look like, and I think it's definitely associated with the cattle mutilations -- when we see the crafts and then the cattle, we have problems," Sherman said.

"You talk to a lot of people around here that at one time or another have seen something they can't explain. There's been a lot of cattle mutilations, and a lot of them weren't reported. Several (ranchers) told me that when they had a (mutilation), they called the authorities and the authorities couldn't do anything, so it was just a waste of time and effort."
Indeed, the records clerk for the Uintah County Sheriff's Department said her department has not received reports of UFOs or cattle mutilations in recent memory. Sheriff Ralph Stansfield in nearby Duchesne County said he is unaware of any UFOs or mutilations being reported in the past 18 months.

Although the Shermans haven't told officials about the cattle mutilations or UFO activity, they have confided in Joseph "Junior" Hicks, a retired junior high school teacher from Roosevelt who has investigated more than 400 UFO sightings in the Uintah Basin since the early 1950s.

Reports of UFOs during that time have numbered in the thousands, according to Hicks, and some have been associated with cattle mutilations. Over the years, Hicks said, at least a half-dozen eyewitnesses have told him they saw living beings in the windows or portholes of UFOs.

To Hicks, the Shermans' sightings are extraordinary for their number, duration and quality. But what they've witnessed is hardly unusual for the Uintah Basin, he said.

"I'd estimate over 10 percent of the population of the Uintah Basin has seen something," Hicks said. "I think what's happening is we are being visited from beings from another world or some other place. I think primarily it's research and exploration."

Sightings abound

Utah's UFO activity isn't limited to the Uintah Basin.

Controversial film footage of flying discs was taken by a Navy warrant officer near Tremonton in 1952. A "fireball" that raced above Salt Lake City's skies and drew considerable attention in the Nephi area in 1962 is considered suspicious by some UFO investigators.

Pat Roach, a Lehi woman working for Geneva Steel at the time, attracted national attention when she went public with her account of an alien abduction she said occurred in 1973.

Bill Lyons, a Mutual UFO Network investigator in Iron County, is intrigued by a February 1993 incident in which a man and woman saw a dozen UFOs near Hurricane, including an egg-shaped craft with telephone pole-size landing gear and a large hot dog-shaped craft. After the sightings, the couple surveyed the ground nearby and found a trail of small three-toed footprints in the snow. Other markings indicated a tail might have been dragging behind whatever made the prints.

"The thing that struck me about this sighting was its depth and the copious amounts of information," Lyons said. "There was just so much detail to it."

The woman, who lives in Kanab, confirmed the sighting in an interview with the Deseret News but did not want her name published.

Ryan Layton, a Davis County resident, has interviewed more than two dozen Utahns who claim to have seen UFOs. He knows of an Emery County couple whose 16-year-old daughter believes she has been abducted repeatedly by an alien with red glowing eyes.

"I know they're out there," Layton said.

Businessman Paul Pedersen agreed to speak publicly for the first time about an event he says occurred in 1964. As Pedersen was leaving a neighbor's Emigration Canyon home early one morning, he noticed a huge oval-shaped craft in the sky above him.

"It drifted over and down and then hovered above the driveway," Pedersen said. "As it stood still, people inside came to the portholes and looked out at me. That kind of unnerved me because it was so dark I knew I couldn't be seen by human eyes. . . . They looked just like people. They were silhouetted against this green light in the background."
Pedersen then received a telepathic message from the beings. They asked if he'd like to come with them.

"It was one individual's voice," he said. "I didn't say anything but answered by thinking. My thought was that I can't leave, I have a wife and two children who depend on me. Their response was, 'That's OK,' and the craft just hovered up above the trees and went over the mountain behind me."

Ray Kelsey of West Valley City says he was working in a Wyoming oil field in the 1970s when he and 250 others saw a UFO above an oil rig. The rig later exploded. Kelsey said superiors told the workers not to report the incident.

"They were taking something out of the ground, oil or something black, but it wasn't a solid stream. It was particles -- like a beam," Kelsey said. "The ship itself had different colored lights and was transparent."

Local filmmaker Trent Harris, who is sponsoring a UFO film festival late next month in Bicknell, heard similar stories recently while filming in Zion National Park.

"You can't throw a rock in southern Utah without hitting somebody who's been abducted," Harris said.

No hard evidence

Hard evidence to support such claims is sorely lacking, however, and eyewitness accounts just can't be trusted, according to Barry Karr. He is the executive director of the New York-based Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, which publishes "Skeptical Inquirer" magazine.

"There is no good, physical evidence that we are being visited by beings from other planets," Karr said in a telephone interview. "There's no question that people see things in the sky that they can't identify, but that just means at the moment those things are unidentified."

Karr said many CSICOP members are open to the idea that intelligent life may exist elsewhere. They just don't believe that life is now visiting Earth.

"We don't know exactly what they saw," Karr said when told about what the Shermans say they've seen. "You can't take eyewitness testimony for it. I have people who have told me elaborate stories about what they've seen and you do some research and it turns out to be a blimp. I think it's very unlikely that what they're seeing is from another planet."
UFO paradise

The Shermans' ranch would be paradise if they were UFO researchers, but strange lights in the sky weren't what what the couple was looking for when they bought the ranch two years ago. They wanted a quiet place where they could get away from it all. Gwen, a Uintah Basin native, and Terry, who moved here from Arizona when he was 17, had no idea what they were in for.

The ranch sat idle for seven years after the previous owners passed away, and it took awhile for the Shermans to remodel the old house and move in. Before they took up residence, Terry noticed one of the strange circular depressions in the pasture west of the house. He assumed someone had removed a tree.

In April of 1995, the family got a taste of what was to come. Terry stepped out of the house to check on a cow that was calving in the field south of the house when he noticed lights in the field. He assumed they belonged to recreation vehicles, maybe kids from a neighboring farm riding four-wheelers.

That didn't make a lot of sense, though. The ranch is isolated, three miles from the main road, and access is cut off by a creek and a huge rock ridge.

"It went clear down here and just above where this cow's mutilated," Sherman said, pointing to where that first UFO was seen. "It went over some poplar trees there that are probably 40 to 50 feet tall. That's the first time we realized it wasn't an RV."

Gwen didn't see the object that time but had a sighting of her own later.

"It looked like headlights, but they were a little ways away from the craft and there was a red glowing thing, about an 18-inch circle," she said. "It just lit the whole side of the mountain up like broad daylight."

In the months to follow, the Shermans saw myriad lights and flying objects, including more than a dozen on one evening. Sightings generally occur during a new moon and often when the sky is overcast or stormy. Their most recent encounter took place in May during a thunderstorm.

Terry and his son believe they may have communicated with one of the craft. As they traveled west on the ranch road one evening, they saw a lighted object duck behind the rock ridge as if to avoid them. Moments later they managed to sneak up on the object. Before it could hide again, they stood and waved their arms at it. The light flashed on and off three times, as if signaling them, and then disappeared.

Cattle mutilations

Soon after sightings began, the Shermans found one of their cows dead in a field. It had a peculiar hole in the center of its left eyeball but was otherwise untouched with no trace of blood. There was no evidence of predators, footprints or tire tracks. A strange, chemical-like odor was present.

Later, another dead cow was found with a similar hole in its left eye and a 6-inch hole, only about an inch deep, carved out of its rectum. The same chemical smell was noticeable.

Cattle mutilations have been reported across the United States since the 1960s, particularly in Western states. In "classic" mutilation cases, the anus is cored out and the cow's udders and genitalia are removed, all with laser-like precision and no visible sign of blood. The Shermans, who keep close watch on their cattle, believe they may have interrupted the mutilators before they were able to finish.

Then cows began disappearing altogether.

"We about rode the saddle horses to death looking for cattle until we realized" they were vanishing, Terry said.

One appeared to be lifted from the snow where it stood. The Shermans saw the cow's hoofprints lead into the field, but the prints stopped at the edge of the field near some trees. The area where the cow apparently took its last steps was surrounded by a circle of broken twigs and branches. Above, Terry noticed the tops of the trees appeared to have been cut off.

"If it's snow, it's hard for a 1,200- or 1,400-pound animal to just walk off without leaving tracks or to stop and walk backwards completely and never miss their tracks," Terry said. "It was just gone. It was very bizarre."

The last of the three dead cows was found in January in a clump of trees at the edge of the same field. The cow, which had been seen alive by the Shermans' son just five minutes earlier, had a 6-inch wide, 18-inch deep hole cored out of its rectum and extending into the body cavity. There was no blood on the cow or the snow, and the same chemical odor was apparent. There was a circle of twigs around the fallen cow and the tops of the trees appeared severed.

Karr is skeptical. He believes the conclusions of a 1980 New Mexico study by retired FBI agent Ken Rommel Jr., who decided mutilations there were the work of toxic plants and predatory animals. Rommel's findings are rejected by many New Mexico ranchers, some of whom have lost cows to the phenomenon in the 1990s.

Hard to deal with

The cattle deaths and disappearances have been troubling, both psychologically and financially. Even while the Shermans wonder if they can believe what they're seeing, their bank account has taken a hit. The mutilators didn't take just any cows, they took the best ones, Terry said.

"I've got a neighbor over here who's reluctant to talk but he told me they've had trouble since he was a small kid and he's probably 55," Terry said. "He told me, 'People will think you're crazy but you're not. If you are, then we both have the same problem.' "

Leland Mecham, who lives in nearby Neola, knows the Shermans are not insane. He had two prolonged observations of UFOs, one in the mid-1960s and another a decade later. The second craft he saw was gigantic and had rays of colored light shooting out from its underbelly. After it scanned the landscape, it elevated, streaked across the sky and was gone in an instant, Mecham said.

"There's no way it was swamp gas or balloons like everybody tries to pass it off," Mecham said. "I was probably as skeptical as any man alive, but when I saw these, in my opinion, they had to be operated by somebody. It couldn't be any other way. And I don't think there's anything we've got that could move that quick."
The Shermans may never know the cause or reason for what they've experienced, but they know one thing -- they just want it to stop.

JUST WHEN WE THOUGHT things couldn't' get any weirder, they did. In June of 1996, I received a call from Deseret News reporter Zack Van Eyck in Salt Lake City regarding some strange occurrences on a ranch in the Uintah Basin.   Between June and October, Van Eyck wrote a series of of related newspaper articles dealing with, among other things, the plight of a ranching family besieged by mysterious forces which mutilated their cattle. I contacted the Shermans to determine if Van Eycks reporting had been essentially correct.

THE RANCH FROM HELL
       
  Terry Sherman calmly told me their story. In the summer of 1994, Terry (a rancher and cattle breeder.) and his wife Gwen (employed for 20 years at the local bank,) had found their dream ranch. The 480 acre spread was a remote little paradise. It would be a fine place, they thought, to raise their teen-age son and 9-year-old daughter. They were puzzled why such a prime piece had been sitting vacant for seven years. The land bordered the Uintah and Ouray Ute Indian Reservation and was protected by a long red rock ridge.
  The first signs that something was "different' about the place were the large, circular impressions which the Shermans kept finding in their pastures. One configuration formed a 30 foot triangle.  Other circles were found measuring roughly three feet wide and one to two feet deep. The soil inside the holes was firmly impacted. About this time, Terry began having trouble with his prize breeding herd of cattle. Cows were dying under unexplained circumstances.
   In April of 1995. the weirdness dramatically escalated. While checking his cattle one evening, Terry saw a silent glowing object pass over a 50 foot tall stand of poplar trees that fringed one of their fields. A few days later, Gwen saw another unexplained flying object: It looked like head lights but they were a little ways away from the craft, it just lit the whole side of the mountain up like it was broad daylight.' Terry started examining his odd  cattle deaths more closely. The first cow found dead (shortly after a UFO sighting) showed only a hole in the center of its left eyeball. Predators had not touched the carcass and Sherman noted a chemical smell in the vicinity. A short time later, a second cow was found dead with the same hole in the left eyeball. With both these animals, Terry had taken a wire and inserted it into the hole to gauge its depth. In both cases ''the wire slipped in easily to the center of the brain.
   Also during this time, some of the Shermans cows started disappearing. As Terry said: "We contacted everyone around. We looked everywhere. they just "vanished."
   In one instance. Terry followed the tracks of a cow in fresh snow. The tracks 'just stopped' under some trees at the edge of a field. The area around the animal's last steps was surrounded by a circle of fresh twigs and branches which Terry could see had come from the trees above.
   During the next few months, the Shermans observed a variety of "craft" and the mutilation activity continued. The most spectacular aerial phenomenon they observed was described by Terry: "We would see these 100 foot circular openings appear in the air, It was like four orange colored doorways wood sort of spiral open. Looking through a high powered scope, the Shermans watched as smaller craft would emerge from the hovering portals. fly around the property and then reenter the doorways. The Shermans described the "stealthy smaller craft" as being about 60 by 40 feet and "squarish with short wings." The smaller craft looked like "they were flying a grid." They also appeared to emit "spikes of light which hit the ground." The Shermans thought this to be some sort of navigational system.
    In a rare occurrence. the Shermans son found a mutilated cow within five minutes of its death. The young man had seen the "gentle" Angus eating peacefully and returned moments later to find it dead. The cow's rectum had been ''cored out'' with a 6 inch wide hole that was 8 inches deep.
   During that summer, Terry, his son and his nephew had heard unintelligible voices while standing in a nearby pasture. The sound, which they first assumed to be the echoes of a CB radio, seemed to emanate out of the air directly above them. A they listened more closely, they could distinctly hear two voices speaking in an unknown language. which Terry described as "choppy' anti halting like a cross between Russian and Native American." One voice had a deep resonant tone and the other was higher pitched. Terry yelled into the air: "We can hear you!" The voices stopped momentarily and the deeper voice broke into a low rumbling laugh. The "conversation" then went on as before.
    By' the fall, events seemed to be moving toward a climax. Seeing "the lights" in a field one night. Gwen grabbed her binoculars. Focusing in, she was shocked to see a "square lighted structure." sitting on the ground. Before the light blinked out. Gwen caught a glimpse of "a large, heavy set individual" seated in the object. A short time later, the craft appeared again. This time both she and Terry' watched through a 60 power spotting scope. They could see a figure standing next to the object - Terry described the "person" as being "over seven feet tall and decked out in a totally black uniform and very huge." The Shermans noted that the being appeared to have "a visor or something shiny on its face" because of the way the light glinted from its head area.
       
BLUE BALLS ATTACK:   DOGS TURNED TO BUTTER
       
   Another eerie phenomena soon began to plague the Shermans. The family started noticing "glowing blue balls' moving around the property. The balls gave off a "crackling sound," seemed intelligently controlled and could either hover or move "unbelievably fast." One evening, the  Shermans watched as a blue ball approached one of their horses. The light hovered within a foot of the horse's face, spooking it mightily. From a distance of ten feet, Gwen shined a flashlight on the blue globe and it retreated. It then approached Terry as if "inspecting" him. Terry described it as "a glass ball about the size of a baseball," which appeared to contain "two blue fluids which intermingled with each other. As Terry told me with a slight tremble in his voice: "That was the scaredest I've ever been in my life."
   Later that evening. the dreaded blue ball returned, this time it hovered in the face of a cow. Again the globe retreated and the Sherman's three dogs, after some coaxing, took off chasing it in snarling hot pursuit.
  Gwen and Terry watched as the dogs followed the glowing globe into a wooded area. They lost sight of the ball and then heard a piercing yelp'. The three dogs did not return. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, the Shermans decided to wait until morning to investigate.
  The next day. Gwen and Terry found three burned circles in the woods. In the center of each circle, they discovered a greasy blob of what looked to be "shortening or butter." The trees above the burned rings also had a "Scorched" appearance. According to Terry, the grass eventually grew back, but the tree limbs died.
   The butterized dogs were the final straw for Gwen and Terry. "We just couldn't go on without our dogs."  Terry said. Feeling that they could no longer guarantee the safety of their children, they decided to call it quits. They would of put the place up for sale and leave the hellish ranch.
   As Terry later said, "There were some really odd things about the place we noticed when we moved in. We should have known, something was wrong."
  The ranch's previous owners, who had no children, had lived there since the 193O's. Mr. Meyer had died 15 years previously and Mrs. Meyer lived there by herself for 7 more years before she died. When the Shermans moved in, they had noticed heavy dog chains bolted by each of the four exterior doors. The Shermans assumed the couple had a dog which they moved from chain to chain to keep it out of the sun. Terry inquired about the dog from a previous ranch hand. No, he was told, the Meyers had "Four huge ferocious dogs" which they kept chained by each of the doors.
    In a scenario straight out of a Stephen King novel, the Shermans noticed another peculiar feature of the old place. The inside of every door in the house was outfitted with a heavy dead bolt. At the center of the house was a hallway area with its access doors bolted. In the hallway was a closet with a dead bolt, on the inside of the closet door.
   After their decision to sell out. Terry had fallen into a conversation with a group of Ute Indians who worked at the local water department. The Indians told Terry that they had formed a pool to take bets on how long the Shermans would last on the ranch. The longest guess was a year and a half. The Shermans lasted two years.
   A local Indian shaman friend of Terry's told him that there were tribal songs about the "spirits and spooks" of the ranch area "going back ten generations." The shaman said the area was considered "unholy ground" and was "on the path of the skinwalkers."
    Among the stream of curiosity-seekers to the ranch in the Sherman's final days was a man who identified himself as a "Naval Intelligence Officer" from North Carolina.
   The "polite" Navy man sympathized with their situation and had a great interest in reviewing their photos and videos.
   Another man, who wasn't' so polite, lurked around the property in a white four-wheel-drive vehicle. Terry noticed that it had different plates every time he saw it. After an angry confrontation, Terry took the man's photo. Doing a little detective work of his own, he determined that the man was an agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations out of Hill AFB.
   The Shermans spent their last day on ranch rounding up cattle. By late evening they were "bone-tired," They locked all the doors and saw their children to bed. Gwen and Terry took hot showers and then fell into a deep sleep. The next morning they awoke to find their bedding covered with blood. They both had a one eighth inch deep "scoop mark" in the same place on their right thumbs. The ranch from hell had managed to tick them one last time.
   Selling the ranch had posed a dilemma for the Shermans. "We didn't' want to put anyone at risk." Terry said. At the suggestion of several different researchers, the Shermans were put in touch with Las Vegas millionaire  Robert Bigelow, who in recent years had invested substantial amounts of money in UFO related research. In September. 1996 the deal was finalized. Bigelow bought the ranch for less than the Shermans paid for it.  Terry also sold Bigelow "a select herd of cattle" and was hired on as an "overseer" for the operation. As part of the deal, the Shermans signed a non disclosure agreement which barred them from making any further statements about the ranch or their experiences. Meanwhile, the Sherman family had re-located to a ranch 20 miles away.
   According to Zack Van Eyck, Bigelow and his recently formed group, the National Institute for Discovery Science (N.I.D.S.) have turned the ranch into a paranormal laboratory. "Keep Out" signs were posted, The ranch was fenced and gates were locked. Bigelow's workers erected an observation tower and a pair of scientists and a veterinarian were moved in.
  Twelve hundred letters were sent to local ranchers asking for their cooperation in reporting missing or mutilated animals.
  As Zack Van Eyck noted in one of his articles, some researchers were claiming that "Bigelow and N.I.D.S are a front for C.I.A. activities. "These conspiracy minded theories were fueled by the addition of retired Army Colonel John Alexander to the N.I.D,S staff.  Alexander had recently left his position as director of non- lethal weapons testing at Los Alamos National to join forces with Bigelow. As Wired magazine reported in 1995, Alexander had "a resume lifted from the X-Files."
  The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in 1994 said: "Alexander would make a splendid character in a science fiction novel."
  Although Bigelow and Alexander will not discuss the doings on the ranch, in recent weeks the locals have noted some unusual helicopter activity over the site.
  On one occasion two "black military helicopters" scanned the property at ten feet off the ground. At another time, a group of five "military helicopters" did  "multiple sweeps'' at a higher altitude. At one point a large red "construction type" helicopter scoped the area dangling a twelve foot long "black cylinder" beneath it.
   Meanwhile, down at the the water department, the local Utes are starting another betting pool on Bigelow's venture. As one of them said: "They're dealing with something they can't even dream about."

by David Perkins
Spirit Magazine Vol 10 # 1 1997

THE SUPERIOR TECHNOLOGY
(from Searching For the String - Selected Writings of John A. Keel, 2014)

A “superior intelligence with an advanced technology” is busy keeping a benevolent watch over us, or so we have been told by assorted “authorities” for years. Actually, the marvelous “spaceships” built by that “superior technology” seem to be made from spit and bailing wire. Let’s take a look at the record.

Since 1897, there have been scores of reports in which the witnesses claimed to have observed the UFO pilots busily making repairs on their craft. The damned things are always breaking down. In case after case, we have been told how the ufonauts climbed out of their machines to examine the undercarriage or to hammer away, twist bolts, and perform various “handyman” repairs. (It is only a matter of time before one of the “spacemen” pulls out a roll of duct tape!)

The modern stories range from Signor Monguzzi’s controversial 1952 account to Eddie Laxton’s encounter on an early morning in March 1966. In both of these reports, a human-sized ufonaut dismounted to inspect the underside of his “superior technology” vehicle with some kind of flashlight.

There have been so many of these “repair” incidents that they constitute a pattern in themselves. It seems that the same action is carried out, over and over again, in different places, and in front of different witnesses. In addition, we have endless accounts of wobbling UFOs going out of control and even exploding. Charles Fort cited several examples. There were crashes and “repairs” in the Scandinavian flap of 1934. The things blew up repeatedly, all over Europe, during 1946. The first major UFO sighting of 1947, the weird Maury Island case, involved a donut-shaped object “in trouble.”

Not only are the objects unstable and jerry-built, but they are constantly falling apart. Again and again, they have left debris behind after landing. Usually this debris was in the form of an oil-like composition, made up of silicon and alumina. All of these wretched things have leaky hydraulic systems! They also manage to dump small pieces of aluminum and magnesium all over the landscape. Pieces always seem to be falling off them while in flight.

A year ago, during a visit to New York’s Kennedy Airport, I purposefully visited the runway maintenance crew. I wanted to find out just how much oil and metal junk was collected from the runways of one of the busiest airports in the world. I was told that it was rare for a piece of metal to turn up on the runways. Occasionally, a small part such as a bolt would drop off of a small private plane. But if even a fuel-tank cover fell off a big airliner, we would have a major disaster on our hands (if not from the spill, then when that piece of metal was sucked into another jet’s intake). Infrequently, a hydraulic line will rupture and spew oil out. The plane is quickly grounded for repairs, and the oil slick is cleaned up.

Conclusion: our clumsy, crude, inferior flying machines are far more efficient and reliable than the wonderful “spaceships” of the flying saucer “people.”

If you want to speculate, you can find a number of explanations for these “repair reports.” This is a good way to make their descent and landing seem logical to the observer. In other words, the repairs are staged for the benefit of the witnesses. Or, the objects only land on our planet when they are in trouble. Or, a “space war” is going on, as some ufologists have suggested, and these accidents and UFO disasters are a result of the secret battle taking place in our sky.

One of the most intriguing “repair” stories I have seen comes from Seattle, Washington, in the summer of 1965. The witness awoke around 3 a.m. to see a small, football-shaped object fly into her window. She suffered akinesia (paralysis), and was unable to move or scream as tripod legs extended from the object, and it landed neatly on her bedroom floor. Half-a-dozen tiny people climbed out and went to work making repairs on their craft. When they finished the job, they hopped back in and flew off into the night.

This story is interesting for several reasons. I have been told of many “mini-people” encounters in the course of my investigations, but they are so seemingly absurd that none have been published. It is important that the witnesses nearly always suffer paralysis during these sightings. This same phenomenon is found in the many psychic accounts of “bedroom visitants.” Parapsychologists have long speculated that the entities somehow manage to materialize by utilizing some form of energy radiating from the percipient. The more intelligent contactees speak of this as an “energy exchange.” It is so common that I have labeled it “kinetic vampirism” – feasting upon the motivating energy of the percipient, thus inducing temporary paralysis.

The young lady in Washington thought she was awake and was actually seeing the “mini-people.” Perhaps she was experiencing some form of hallucination. If you examine the vast “fairy,” “elf,” and “leprechaun” lore, you will find many incidents comparable to those in the UFO frame of reference. Kinetic vampirism has not really been discussed in the readily available UFO literature, but I have come across many reports.

For instance, on a warm June evening in 1962, Gregory Sciotti, then 18, woke up around 11:30 p.m. with the feeling that there was a prowler in the house. He was alone in his home near Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania; his mother worked on the nightshift in a nearby factory.

“There was a light in the room,” Mr. Sciotti wrote to me in 1967. “I quickly tried to get up and found it impossible to move. I tried to turn my head to see where the light was coming from. This I also found impossible. It seems as though the only control I had was over my eyelids. The feeling I had was something like when you’re very tired – just too tired to move. Then I heard something on the steps just outside the door – something like a heavy breathing sound. I heard it moving around. I tried to scream to find out if I was dreaming, but I couldn’t do anything but move my eyelids. Then the ‘light’ went out. It was like I had been pushing on something heavy, and it suddenly moved.”

He ran down the stairs, badly frightened, grabbed a rifle, and loaded it, and called for his dog, Teddy, who he knew was somewhere in the house. But Teddy was gone. He searched the grounds around the house with a flashlight. He had another dog that was kept in the yard. That animal was also gone.

The next night, he continued, he was sitting in his car in the driveway, talking with a girlfriend, when a strange object rose up from the woods behind the house. Four windows were visible on a dark, oval shape as it passed between the moon and the young couple. It was not an airplane, he declared, and no trace was ever found of the missing dogs.

In psychic literature, tales of nocturnal akinesia are almost unlimited. For example, in his book, The Edge of the Unknown (1930), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (author of the Sherlock Holmes series) tells how it happened to him. He was, he said, “acutely awake, but utterly unable to move” as he heard someone walk over to him and whisper: “Doyle, I come to tell you that I am sorry.” After a moment, his paralysis left him, and he turned to stare into the empty darkness.

Young Sciotti’s alleged experience falls into this uneasy category. He was immobilized while his two dogs were removed forever. The next night, he saw a UFO.

When we were able to examine the experiences of UFO percipients in greater depth, we may find that akinesis is not an effect of a UFO apparition but is, instead, a contributing cause. The “mini-people” in that Seattle bedroom may have materialized by utilizing energy from the witness herself. The “little men” of M. Masse’s lavender patch may have “used” him in somewhat the same way.

The “fairies” of Ireland paralyzed the folk, and they distorted reality in all kinds of “magical” ways. Whole villages have been involved in celebrated, well-documented “fairy” incidents. The “trolls” of Scandinavia and the “elves” of Germany’s Black Forest may have been part of the same package, along with the “Stick Indians” and the legendary “Trickster” of the Southwest Pueblo culture. From time to time, our planet is overrun with these characters. They are not from outer space, but from some fantastic world beyond the range of our limited senses.

This means that many of our coveted UFO sightings are, in fact, merely induced hallucinations and distortions of reality. That “superior technology” may be a fantasy, and those endless “repairs” are merely part of the game that is being played on us.

Another part of the game involves artifacts. The “fairy” lore is filled with anecdotes about people who tried to capture “fairies” or proof of their existence, only to suffer in the end. In UFO lore, we have many game-like repetitions of the artifact factor. Antonio Villas Boas tried unsuccessfully to steal an instrument from the “spaceship.” Betty Hill was given a book, briefly, but the “Captain” took it away from her again. Carroll Wayne Watts in Texas tried to swipe an instrument in the same manner as Villas Boas, but it was taken away from him, too. There are many lesser-known cases. A Long Island contactee whose story lurks in my files, far too sensational to be published, tried to steal an object while aboard a saucer, only to have it taken away from him at the last minute. This was in early 1967, before either the Hill story or Villas Boas case were well known to American ufologists.

So we have defined two of their games: the “repair” tactic and the “stolen artifact” gambit. Perhaps many of the “water” incidents we hear about also belong in this category. After all, fairies were often found by streams, pailing water. In April 1897, several contacts took place near wells and streams where the ufonauts were “replenishing” their water supplies. Why would they land on inhabited farms and draw water when they could have done it completely unnoticed along isolated streams and lakes? Need we spell out the answer? They wanted to be observed.

Why do they land on highways to inspect their landing gear? Why not land, instead, on remote hilltops and deserts? It is possible that they chose to land on that Italian mountain in 1952 because they saw Signor Monguzzi flourishing his Kodak.

Their broken-down “spaceships” will undoubtedly continue to land in front of isolated witnesses while “repairs” are effected. They will pose for more photographs and we, of course, will decide that the photographers are hoaxers and money-grabbing publicity seekers. We have been crying for “evidence” for over two decades, yet we have rejected nearly all the evidence they have handed to us on a silver platter. George Adamski and Carroll Watts took photos that were just “too good to be true.” Therefore, they were obviously trying to “trick” us. Aluminum, magnesium, and silicon have turned up at UFO sites by the pound, but no self-respecting “superior technology” would use such ordinary materials, according to the “scientific” ET buffs.

It is my contention that a good part of all this has been planned and skillfully executed, not by random practical jokers, but by the UFO source itself. The problem has been our methods for evaluating these events.

If we wish hard enough and long enough, one of these things is really apt to land on the White House lawn. While the president and his staff watch, a little man, three feet high, will climb out with a flashlight and a monkey wrench, and go to work on the landing gear. A fleet of Jeeps and tanks will surround the area. Newsmen’s cameras will be confiscated and the object will melt away. Then an army general will hold a press conference and announce that the whole thing was just a publicity stunt for a new science-fiction movie.

There is no other way to play the “game.” It is a helluva lot easier to denounce the phenomenon than to try to explain it.