Friday, March 6, 2015

Dr. Edgar Mitchell: Memories of Roswell

What's in a word?

Dr. Edgar Mitchell on Aliens and their Spacecraft.

An important distinction from a flying saucer scientist

Stanton Friedman uses the term flying saucer to indicate “intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft.” He says,
A truly enormous amount of material has been written about flying saucers. Some people don’t even want me to use the term, but I use it to make an important distinctionFlying saucers are, by definition, unidentified flying objects, but very few unidentified flying objects are flying saucers. - Flying Saucers and Science

1947 artist's conception of a flying saucer.

But flying saucer did not always have that meaning. It was only after Donald Keyhoe’s article and book, Flying Saucers are Real, and the science fiction movies of the 1950s, did the term come to be understood as spacecraft. It was for that reason, unidentified flying objects or UFOs was used by the Air Force to avoid the automatic association with alien craft (but that term, too became associated with spaceships).

In 1947, when a newspaper said “flying saucer,” it was putting a label on a mystery. Spaceship from other planets was mentioned by a few, but mostly in jest, as Men from Mars were familiar to people from Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers comic strips. At that time, many thought the flying saucer answer was atmospheric anomalies or secret military planes either of US or Soviet origin. It is only from our perspective, that yesterday’s headlines mentioning Flying saucers seem to be saying extraterrestrial spacecraft.

Telephone or Chinese Whispers is a game where people pass a whispered phrase around a circle to see how the story changes. It’s a good example of just how stories transmute even when there’s no intent to exaggerate or fabricate. Translation of a story from one language to another can unintentionally distort details  but a just having it paraphrased within the same language is enough to do the same thing, especially when it’s done from memory many years later.


A Newspaper Witness from Roswell?




From Edgar Mitchell’s introduction to the 2009 edition of Witness to Roswell:
“I was ready to begin my senior year in high school in the summer of 1947 when the Roswell Daily Record on July 8 proclaimed the recovery of a crashed alien spacecraft on a ranch northwest of Roswell.
The Roswell Daily Record from July 8, 1947, makes no such claims. The headline states
"RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region"
It does not characterize the object as a spacecraft, alien or otherwise.

On July 25, 2008, Edgar Mitchell appeared on BlogTalkRadio’s ShapeShifting, hosted by Lisa Bonnice. 
"Well, that the crash of an alien spacecraft in the Roswell area was a real event and much of the lore, I can't say all of the lore, but much of the fact that dead bodies were recovered and live ones were recovered, that they were not of this world, was the story. And of course it was reported in the Roswell Daily Record one day and promptly denied the next day and a cover story of a weather balloon, and that was pure nonsense. That was a cover-up.  (Quoted at http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2008/07/edgar-mitchell-and-roswell.html)

In this clip we see him claim that he heard stories about the Roswell alien bodies, but admits it wasn’t until after 1980, when the first Roswell UFO book was released.
Mitchell interview posted by German UFO site.

In this clip from "Roswell Slides" promoter, Jaimie Maussan, Mitchell claims that the newspaper published stories about a Roswell crash of an alien spacecraft and bodies were recovered. As seen earlier, the story was only about a “flying saucer.” 
“I read it in the newspaper. On one day- on the day it reached the newspaper, it was that an alien spacecraft has crashed and bodies recovered and the next day, thanks to the Air Force and the military, they hushed it up and said, no, it was a weather balloon.”

BeWitness video with Edgar Mitchell

Edgar Mitchell lived at Roswell at the time, but had no direct experience with the alleged UFO events. All of his information on the events come from the stories of others.  Combining his memory of the newspaper coverage with the modern definition of flying saucer, when he relates his experience, even though he is sincere, he is in error. 

Monday, February 16, 2015

Book Coverage of the Cash-Landrum UFO Case



The Cash-Landrum case has been discussed in a great many UFO books, but most often as just a brief summary with no independent investigation or analysis. The majority merely repeat material from the John Schuessler reports. Below, we’ll list some of the works that do better, along with volumes notable for other reasons. 


Age of the UFO Peter Brookesmith editor (1984)
This book is an essential for the case. It collects three 1982-3 magazine articles written for the UK magazine, The Unexplained Mysteries of Mind, Space and Time by John F. Schuessler and features his color photographs of the scene and the witnesses. There's information in these articles not appearing anywhere else including Schuessler's later book. The color photographs alone make this worth having, but the case details and variations of  witnesses and testimony make it a must for students of the case.

Clear Intent: The Government Coverup of the UFO Experience by Lawrence Fawcett, ‎Barry J. Greenwood (1984) 
(Reprinted as UFO Cover-Up: What the Government Won't Say) 
Fawcett and Greenwood's chief interest in the case comes from the involvement of "mystery helicopters" that were so often associated with cattle mutilation lore. A historically important book, and the first one to discuss the C-L case.

Above Top Secret by Timothy Good (1987)
Good's book (and some of his later ones) tie the C-L case into 90s conspiracy lore, repeating some of the material that was presented in the TV special UFO Cover-Up? Live.

The UFO Phenomenon, Time-Life Books (1987)
Very brief coverage of the C-L case. This one is chiefly worth mentioning due to artwork featured in the two-page spread, and for the extensive newspapers advertising that spotlighted the case.


The Spectrum of UFO Research, J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, Mimi Hynek, ed. (1988)
John Schuessler's first lecture on the Cash-Landrum case from Sept. 1981 is presented, and it serves as as an excellent introduction to the case, telling the story of the events, and discussing the early months of the investigation. The narrative of the encounter is followed by speculation about the injuries and their source. Includes photographs, the Q & A session that followed Schuessler's lecture, and his 1988 update on the case.



The UFO Encyclopedia: UFOs in the 1980s by Jerome Clark, (1990)

Clark's entry on the case is a good summary of John Schuessler's early material on the case, chiefly his report presented at the 1981 CUFOS conference.


 by Larry Warren and Peter Robbins (1997)
This book only mentions the case in passing: "
The Cash-Landrum UFO incident occurred in Texas within twelve hours of the third night's incident at RAF Bentwaters. Two women — Vicky Cash and Betty Landrum — and Betty's grandson, Colby, saw a huge, toplike UFO..."
This (now-discredited) book
gives us a brief detour from Rendlesham to Huffman Texas. Since the events happened so close in time together, they’re frequently mentioned in the same breath, but there's no valuable similarity or tangible connection between them.

In 1997, Physicist Peter A. Sturrock of Stanford University directed an independent scientific review of UFO cases conducted by an international panel of scientists. Three of “the usual suspects” participated, Hal Puthoff, John Schuessler, and Jacques Vallee. Sturrock published a paper on it in 1998: “Physical Evidence Related to UFO Reports: The Proceedings of a Workshop Held at the Pocantico Conference Center, Tarrytown, New York, September 29 – October 4, 1997.” The Cash-Landrum case was presented in “Physiological Effects on Witnesses,” later presented as chapter 15 (pp. 100-104.) of Peter Sturrock’s 1999 book on the study, The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence.



The Cash-Landrum UFO Incident by John F. Schuessler (1998)
This book was self-published by the investigator and had a relatively small pressing, and is now out of print. The most valuable thing it offers are reproductions of case documents, witness testimony and photographs. It would be great to see this released as an ebook where the photographs could be seen at a higher resolution and in color. While book is imperfect, and far from objective, bit it’s an important resource.



Project Moon Dust by Kevin D. Randle (1998)
In chapter 11, Randle has a rare skeptical analysis, a 
ten page section titled, "December 29, 1980: The Cash-Landrum UFO Encounter." Kevin Randle is a retired Lieutenant Colonel, and his service and his experience as a helicopter pilot helps provide an understanding of the alleged military involvement in this case. More coverage on this book at: Kevin Randle on Cash-Landrum: A Military Perspective


Pentagon Aliens aka Space Aliens from the Pentagon by William Lyne (1999)
Lyne's is an odd one, and is included for his brief interview with Vickie Landrum. There are some odd and interesting case details mentioned in the book, ones that can't be verified - or trusted.


UFOs, Angels and Stories of Faith and Courage by Edward Wesley Graves (2000)
Graves’ book is noteworthy in that it's the only one to depict the witnesses on the cover. Shortly after Betty Cash's death, he contacted Vickie Landrum  and spoke to her family, who believed the UFO was an "atomic plane."


The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence by Peter a. Sturrock (2000)
This is a frustrating one, as it summarizes Schuessler's presentation of the case to the Sturrock panel, yet doesn't actually present it. A bit like somebody reciting what was in yesterday's newspaper, and it leaves you with the feeling you are missing something.



The UFO Evidence: A Thirty-Year Report by Richard H. Hall (2001)

Hall does an excellent job of summarizing the case as known without sensationalizing it or playing it for emotion. I liked it well enough, I've used it as the official BBL summary of the case, as The UFO Story.



Hunt for the Skinwalker
by Colm A. Kelleher and George Knapp (2005)
This book just gives a recap of the C-L case from previous sources as an example of human effects from unexplained encounters to bolster the Skinwalker story. No new information.



Project Beta 
by Greg Bishop (2005)
Bishops book is very interesting. There's a C-L connection to the Paul Bennewitz saga, but it's uncertain if it was just speculation by Bennewitz, or if it was the result of manipulation by Richard Doty and Bill Moore. Bennewitz thought the C-L UFO was a joint US-alien venture, part of the lore that became Dulce and the dark UFO mythology. The C-L coverage is very short, and unfortunately, does some harm by repeating some untrue rumors and speculation as if they were facts.
More on Doty-style Cash-Landrum info, trying to tie things to the Bennewitz backdrop.
Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion by Paul LaViolette (2008)
"Evidence that the Air Force was test-flying an antigravity craft surfaced on the night of December 29, 1980. Betty Cash, age fifty-one  her friend Vickie Landrum, age fifty-seven, and Vickie's seven-year-old …"
LaViolette's book is a mentioned just as example of the case being used as means to further someone's agenda or prop up a conspiracy theory.


UFOs and the National Security State: The Cover-Up Exposed, 1973-1991 by Richard Dolan (2009)

"While, across the ocean, the Rendlesham Forest was the scene of dramatic UFO activity, Betty Cash,Vickie Landrum,and Vickie's grandson Colby Landrum were driving in the State of Texas, on the Cleveland Huffman Road on the way to the town…" There’s nothing original in Dolan's coverage. His depiction of the events is used to illustrate his conspiracy theory premise of colossal sinister UFO cover-up.



Texas UFO Tales: From Denison 1878 to Stephenville 2008
by Mike Cox and Renee Roderick (2010)
Texas UFO Tales was a pleasant surprise. A lot of regional UFO books are cranked out quickly, and that may have been the intent here, but someone goofed up and got a good researcher. The coverage of the C_L case is very good and you'll only find some of the data by digging as deeply yourself. It's the only book to date to include the testimony from the Bergstrom AFB interviews with the witnesses.



UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities by John B. Alexander (2011)
“Cash-Landrum... is a very solid case, in which the observations and facts just don't make sense or support any prosaic hypothesis." Alexander's coverage of the case is brief, but well worth reading as he participated in the DAIG's investigation of the case led by George Sarran. Alexander's conclusions on the case are among the most interesting, that the events were real, but perhaps not the kind of real we are used to! 



Confessions of a Professional Smart-Ass
  by John Kelso (2013) "John Kelso has been writing a humor column for the Austin American-Statesman for more than thirty years...”This book features a four page section on the author's memories of covering the Cash-Landrum sighting for the paper. His piece was one of the few articles to approach the case with skepticism. UFO mavens would be better off reading his original article (which I may be able to reprint someday). The book is just a short recap of the case with some Kelso flavor, and leaves out the interesting details in his article. About all the only thing new here is his negative impressions of the town of Dayton. While he cracks wise in his memoirs, he admits he didn't know just what to make of the story.


Forbidden Science - Volume III by Jacques Vallee (2016)
Vallee's journals for the years 1980 - 1989 contain several mentions of the Cash-Landrum case, usually second-hand information with a mixture of fact and speculation. However, the discussion was with people such as Dr. Kit Green and Dr. Richard Nimetzow, so gossip at an elite level of ufology.
 
Fact, Fiction, and Flying Saucers: The Truth Behind the Misinformation, Distortion, and Derision by Debunkers, Government Agencies, and Conspiracy Conmen by Stanton Friedman & Kathleen Marden (2016)
Chapter 8 spotlights the Cash-Landrum UFO case, but it’s there mostly as part of an attack the character of the late Phil Klass. If you crawl the footnotes, you’ll find a few references to Blue Blurry Lines, cited as a source. 


UFOs, Chemtrails, and Aliens: What Science Says, by Donald R. Prothero, Timothy D. Callahan (2017)
In the 5-page section, "Radiation Sickness, Melting Vinyl, and Scorched Asphalt: The Cash–Landrum Incident”(pp. 104 - 108), the authors discuss the case and come to a skeptical conclusion, based chiefly on the 1981 interview of the witnesses at Bergstrom AFB, Brad Sparks’ analysis of the reported injuries, and Robert Sheaffer’s article “Between a Beer Joint and Some Kind of Highway Sign” which in turn was based on the BBL report disclosing the unpublished case documents held by the Texas Department of Health. The authors conclude that “as a source of physical evidence, that Cash-Landrum incident is inconsequential." 

. . .

There will be revisions from time to time, to add other titles and to comment on why they are worthy of inclusion. 



Monday, January 26, 2015

If you haven't read it, it's STILL news!


UFO News, Again!

I’m sure you saw it splashed over the news, the Air Force recently declassified and released Project Blue Book UFO files, and that for the first time ever, they are available for viewing on the Internet.


All the news that's fit to copy and paste.
This just in...


The files were released long, long, ago.
Here’s a news clipping from The Dispatch (Lexington KY)  Nov. 5, 1974 (UPI):

But they didn't languish in that Air force black vault forever. Die-hard UFO researchers worked with the files on microfilm, but a decade ago, they were presented digitally on your friendly neighborhood Internet. 

Here’s the UFO UpDates notice about the files going online from 2005:
Blue Book Archive Announcement


That site is still alive and well.

In 2007, Ancestry.com's site devoted to military records, Fold3 presented scans of the Project Blue Book files. 
Fold3: Project Blue Book - UFO Investigations

Maybe it's just a remake 

How does the media get things so wrong? Part of it is that there’s a rush to report (or recirculate), and little fact checking is done. That, and some of the reporters were born yesterday. Sometimes, things like this happen; the media suddenly notices something and falls all over it to become an overnight success after 20 years. 

It can happen when an unknown book gets chosen by Oprah, or for a movie adaptation. Sometimes it comes on their radar when a box office bust of a film becomes a hit on video. Worse, sometime they mine a classic and issue a remake for a new generation.


Less than 15 pieces of flare.

Even in the UFO topic, some things become news, over and over. Like the FBI’s memo on the Aztec hoaxed flying saucer crash. In its latest exhumation, it was passed off as proof of Roswell.  


Like Dracula, it won't stay down.

Is this just bad reporting, or a case of them using anything and everything shiny that catches the notice of their open minds? I'd like to blame the Twitter age of news media, but this kind of thing is not new itself. There’s one that goes back to the coming of the flying saucers.

Good Evening, Mr. and Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea



We forget the incredible influence radio once had. Radio commentators such as Walter Winchell (and Frank Edwards) had their finger on America’s pulse sometimes reporting the news, other times making it. They also did a lot to introduce and propel the UFO story. Winchell’s show was printed as a newspaper column, and in this story from the July 7, 1947 San Jose News, he said, “The mystery of the ‘Flying Saucers’ is not new.” Then goes on to cite a recent book by R. DeWitt Miller, Forgotten Mysteries.
San Jose News July 7, 1947



R. DeWitt Miller’s book was chiefly a collection of articles on phenomenon from Coronet magazine, and one chapter focused on strange aerial objects. It enjoyed the flying saucer spotlight, but only for about a day. Someone finally noticed that he cited Charles Fort as his inspiration.




Miller noted that there had been speculation "That conscious beings from other worlds have actually reached this earth and navigated our skies in space ships." That speculation was chiefly from Charles Fort, who had collected accounts of strange flying things and speculated that they were interplanetary. 

Fort died in 1932, and had little to do with the Fortean Society, which Tiffany Thayer created in his honor. Thayer kept the torch burning by publishing the Fortean Society’s Doubt magazine.


Snazzy modern edition
It wasn't long before Walter Winchell was quoting R. DeWitt Miller but we know he could have done better than that. As it turned out an Associated Press reporter made the discovery in Chicago's Newberry Library. There the reporter claimed to have discovered a "rare unknown” book, the scarlet colored volume titled The Book of the Damned.
 Thayer howled with laughter when he read about the “great discovery.” Awhile after this "discovery” the news agencies tracked Thayer and the Forteans to their lair to ask: "Who was this guy Fort?" And: "Can we quote such and such?" This was the high- point of the whole history of the Fortean Society and it was sad Fort himself was not alive to take a well-earned bow.  (From UFOs: A History Vol. 1: 1947 by Loren Gross)

Fort provided the backstory!
Major Donald Keyhoe used the Fort foundation to build his article and later book, Flying Saucers are Real, and thereafter, every so often a reporter would “discover” Charles Fort and report that 
“The flying saucer story, you know, is by no means a new one.”

Anyway, the news has a long history of getting things jumbled, even when they are really trying. Sometimes it's corrected, but those notices reach far fewer eyeballs. What's news, will yet be news again... someday.

World's oldest newspaper
If you haven't read it, it's STILL news!





Sunday, January 4, 2015

Science Fiction and UFOs: Buck Rogers

The relationship of Science Fiction to UFOs is a complex one. Debunkers are too quick to blame fantasy for influencing Flying Saucer reports, and proponents are too quick too deny it. Old time SF fans wanted nothing of flying saucers, and FS fans felt the same way about SF. 

There's a relationship, to be sure, with ideas form one camp influencing the other. Sadly, most of the discussions of this tend to be heavily biased. The UFO/Science Fiction topic needs further examination.

Buck Rogers

Science fiction, at its best, is examining how new ideas and inventions affect mankind. In effect, it's shining a flashlight into our future. 

If Science Fiction has a name, it's Buck Rogers!

Many people around the world were introduced to science fiction in the form of an enormously popular newspaper comic strip that began in 1929. Science fiction writer, Philip Nowlan teamed up with artist Dick Calkins to create Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. It literally defined science fiction. There was a shorthand term for advanced technology, and it was "Buck Rogers." 

C.R. Smith
C.R. Smith, president of American Airlines:
“When we endeavor to envision the future of aviation, we come to the conclusion that Jules Verne was a conservative man and that Buck Rogers more closely approximates the role of a realist. Some of the potential developments in aviation are so far reaching that they might easily amaze and confuse the hero of the Sunday supplement.”
(American Aviation magazine, 1941.)

 A letter to Astounding Science Fiction 

Spaceship by Paul Orban
Astounding Science Fiction Dec. 1948 

In the February 1949 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, editor John W. Campell printed a letter from an avid fan, W. H. Entrekin Jr. It serves as good examination of the intersection of UFO and science fiction ideas at the time.  The latter half of the letter deals strictly with comment on earlier magazine stories, but I've included it for the sake of completeness. (Note: STF stands for Scientifiction, an elegant and archaic term for science fiction.)

Dear John,

At last technological development has caught up with the science- fiction artists and illustrators. I am not referring to anything else but Paul Orban's' spaceships. Note illos for “The Rull,” et cetera. 


 illustrated by Paul Orban

Also the filler cut of the multi-windowed ship you use frequently. The only sad thing about this development is that evidence lends support to the extra-mundane origin theories of Charles Fort and other dubious adherents, among them members of our own genre of stf authors—needless to say, with the recent crop of wacky theories.

First came the “flying saucers”, or “disks”. Perhaps Phil Nowlan and Dick Calkins could be credited with the idea and cartooned version of the flying disk much, much earlier in the Buck Rogers strip. 
Dick Calkins art from Buck Rogers
Well, Kenneth Arnold of Boise brought science-fiction up-to-date with the first observation of the flying disks. And finally, stf has been caught up with in the form of Orban's ubiquitous, eternal spaceship. 

On Saturday, July 24th, two EAL pilots, Captain Clarence Chiles and Co-pilot John Whitted, on the Houston-to-Atlanta-to-Boston flight, at 2:45 am.(CST), in their DC-3, reported a wingless aircraft that passed them at tremendous speed. They were flying at five thousand feet in the regulation CAA designated airway when they spotted the aircraft, it being almost in their line of flight, headed in the opposite direction, towards Mobile and New Orleans. The DC-3 was about twenty miles southwest of Montgomery, Alabama. 
Dick Calkins art from Buck Rogers

Captain Chiles related: “I hate to say this, but it looked just like a Buck Rogers rocket ship. If I see anything else like this, I think I’ll have to quit flying. We were flying along on the regular airway when we saw ahead and slightly above and to our right what appeared to be a tremendous jet of flame. It flashed down and we veered to the left and it veered to its left, and passed us about seven hundred feet to our right and about seven hundred feet above us. Then as if the pilot wanted to avoid us, it pulled up with a tremendous burst of flame out of its rear and zoomed up into the clouds. Its prop-wash or jet-wash or rocket-wash, take your pick, rocked our DC-3." The pilots describe the ship as about one hundred feet in length, and about four times the circumference of a B-29 fuselage. It had no wings. 

A twenty-five-to-fifty foot red flame was shooting from the rear, and there was a blue, fluorescent glow under the whole length of the fuselage. Captain Chiles further related, “It had two rows of square windows, apparently from an upper and lower deck, and the interior was brilliantly lighted. We saw no occupants. I’d say it was going between five hundred and seven hundred miles an hour." 


The following Sunday morning the story appeared in various Georgia papers, the Atlanta Constitution carrying sketches of the ship by both men. The singularly remarkable thing about the incident, is that the sketches were remarkably similar to Orban's ships.

Well, these things happen every day so to speak. The alarming fact is that no matter what the theory that explains the phenomenon, as infinite numbers of theories do as long as it is a workable theory, the PHENOMENON STILL REMAINS
Whitted, Chiles and their sketches of the UFO

I guess I’ll have to go back through Charles Fort again.


UFORTology's father


(The rest of the letter is about the Aug. 1948 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.)



 As for the contents of the August issue. The cover takes my breath. Canedo is too, too utterly para- or hyper-symbolic. And no story titles to mar the front either. I guess yon J have finally decided that ASF sells itself on its own merits rather than having to resort to standard pulp tactics. Psycho-dynamics applied to the masses. 
Your editorial — simply superb!

Let’s have one tying in Non-Newtonian system of action-by-contact, and the standing confused controversies over quantum mechanics giving us readers the low-down latest discovered subatomic particles and and their relation to our present systems, with probable effect on classical set-up. Oh well, such an evaluation would be quite a thesis for a graduate work much less asking it for the price of two-bits.

Oh yes— the stories. “The Monster” takes first place with the tag van Vogt placed well before the denouement — "This race has discovered the secrets of its nervous system." "Time Trap" grabbed second, I like Harness' new words - Hardtimes (sterechronia).
"Dreadful Sanctuary” has to show. I just couldn't resist his description of the rockets' lifting for their maiden voyage. Thank you Eric and John. After all,  everyone didn't get to see the lift of a Vr-2 at White Sands. Or maybe I'm just a dreamy-eyed fool. (I'll bet I have company on this one.) 

“Smaller Than You Think" was fourth, with "Dawn of Nothing" hitting fifth. Quite an issue. The liquor ads have been bounced and the fans are now happy with the new program of the Fan-ad. 

When do we get some of the unwritten Future History series or does Bob like three to five cents a word better than honor and tradition? However, ya’ gotta eat!

To A. E. van Vogt— "Let's have in Asimov-type yarn concerning corruption of the Galaxy with the unique system of Null-A." 
Time for a Kuttner serial. 

(Address) Unknown. Unknown. UNKNOWN.—W. H. Entrekin Jr., Americus, Georgia


- - - 

A bonus Buck Rogers tidbit from the files of Project Sign, a note about Kenneth Arnold.