Even for UFO believers, reports of crashed ships takes the whole phenomenon too far . . . until investigator Stanton Friedman heard these words: “The person you really ought to talk to is Jesse Marcel. He handled pieces of one of those things.” Marcel is the USAAF Major who accompanied rancher Mac Brazel out to the crash site in July 1947.

Just for the sake of entertainment alone, Roswell: The UFO Uncover-Up is an enjoyable film. And, it’s a history lesson, because the story of a mysterious crash near Roswell, New Mexico made headlines “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region” Tuesday July 8, 1947, only to undergo an extensive cover-up that never accounts for the facts.

LARRY KING: “Tonight, have UFOs shut down our government’s defense systems? There is evidence that something caused missiles to malfunction during test launches. Former Air Force officers tell their incredible story . . .”

Guests of the December 31, 2008 “Debate Over Existence of UFOs” on CNN Larry King Live include former captain Bob Salas, former officer Bob Jamison, former lieutenant, Dr. Bob Jacobs, and UFO investigator Robert Hastings. The officers give firsthand testimony that extraterrestrial vehicles can enter our nation’s airspace at any time, out fly the most advanced military aircraft, and disable mechanical systems, including weapons.

It’s an interesting debate, and the guests are all named Bob.

The Evidence of Spacecraft Beyond the Reach of Humanity

On October 4th, the History channel aired the latest James Fox film on UFOs, “I Know What I Saw”. Clearly, James Fox believes in the existence of extraterrestrial vehicles. He concedes that most UFO sightings are explainable, and then he proceeds to investigate cases from around the world that present the best evidence of mysterious, structured craft flying over Earth.

If you only see UFOs in popular culture, it is easy to situate alien pilots alongside Dracula, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster. A few strange tales and fuzzy photographs are summarily explained, until one considers the observations of rational people. Thousands of people, including an Arizona governor and a member of the Phoenix city council, witnessed a massive ship glide over Phoenix on March 13, 1997. Civilian, government, and military witnesses relate their experience on camera.

A collective hallucination?

A product of the mythical imagination?

The UFO phenomenon is real, regardless of how you interpret it.

My character had an experience with extraterrestrial Beings, and I have never even seen a UFO. Save the unlikely event of being floated aboard a spaceship in the middle of the night, I would need to do some research. You could say I lack imagination, or I experienced writer’s block the day I left my desk in Miller library. I typed a keyword in the library computer: Jacques Vallee, and made my way to the stacks. On the shelf near Vallee’s, Anatomy of a Phenomenon, I found a title that conjured the subject: Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: A Reporter’s Notebook on Alien Abduction, UFOs, and the Conference at M.I.T.

The author, C. D. B. Bryan, reports on a 1992 abduction study conference at the Massachusetts Institute Of Technology that brings together investigators, therapists, and abductees. Bryan’s clean prose and compelling voice captured me, but I was on board for the descriptions of “spindly-limbed, 3-and-a-half to 4-and-a-half foot tall telepathic gray creatures with outsized foreheads dominated by huge, compelling, tear-shaped black eyes.” For my purposes as a storyteller, it just kept getting better. There may be as many as four types of aliens: Small Greys, Tall Greys, Nordics, and Reptilians.

Bryan notes the abductees’ descriptions of what they saw and experienced aboard the alien spacecraft. Individuals from across the country, from every possible background – most with no previous interest in UFOs – each tell unique tales that share similar characteristics. People see bright lights, sometimes an entity, and they are floated through walls into an alien craft where they undergo medical exams, and often the harvesting of sperm or ovum. Abductees report this to be terrifying. They are generally paralyzed except for their eyes. The alien beings communicate telepathically and soothe the abductee of their fears. After the most commonly reported experience of a medical exam, the abductees variously experience a tour of the ship or some encounter with other Beings they describe as hybrids, the result of genetic crossbreeding.

Abductees find themselves back in the location where they were abducted with no conscious recall of the event, a feeling of missing time, and even strange physical scars. Sometimes, they are returned in a slightly different location, say in the yard instead of in bed. Nosebleeds are another symptom of abduction. Over time, the repressed images surface. The individual may recall a dental-like tool being shoved in their left nostril. They become distressed by bizarre dreams of being aboard an alien spaceship. They recall events that are too vivid to be dreams, and yet so disrupting to their concept of reality, that they are much easier to handle as mere dreams.

C. D. B. Bryan places the existence of a profound mystery in the reader’s imagination. The accounts of the M.I.T. conference and the follow-up interviews with the participants bring a new perspective to the search for life in the universe: the possibility that Beings of advanced civilizations with superior technology have mastered travel across star systems, or maybe in-and-out of dimensions of other space. Significantly, Bryan recounts the challenges that rational people have when they experience otherworldly phenomenon. What if the stories the abductees tell are manifestations of the collective unconscious? Rather than coming to conclusions, Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind opens the mind to new ideas about what it means to be a sentient being in the universe.

In Harold’s story, a ship piloted by Beings of unknown origin arrives on earth with a solution to the insurmountable problems facing humanity. So I figure, okay . . . aliens. But this storyline actually has some resonance in Western culture. There’s often a moment pictured in religious texts where God returns to correct the wrongs of humanity and establish Heaven on Earth. Here is an amazing science fact: Sir Issac Newton calculated the date 2060 as the year Christ would return, or variously, as when the world ends. The father of modern science was also a religious man.

Using his extraordinary powers of calculation, Newton tried to extract scientific information from the Bible. Though the political climate in the 17th century required decorum around all matters pertaining to the Bible, Newton held the heretical belief that the Christ could not be equal to God. Newton’s universe required a creator beyond and more powerful than anything known to man. The Trinity was poppycock, a doctrine without reason. Anyway, Newton risked his tenure at Cambridge in applying reason to the Bible.

Aliens? Yes. What about the aliens? Let’s risk a bit of scientific heresy and research the extraterrestrial hypothesis. If I am going to write a story that deals with aliens, I must understand my subject – as much as it can be known to humans anyway. To begin, I performed my obligatory Google search and found a primer on the subject, a documentary by James Fox called, Out of the Blue. This film turned my complacent view of aliens on its head. It’s not just a pop culture phenomenon?

I spend hours upon hours pouring through books on mysticism. I enjoy a good mystery. So after years of reading books, why haven’t I ever enjoyed the literature on UFOs? The answer is simple self-respect. The UFO literature is entirely discredited. Powell’s Books, the largest bookstore in the world, stores these books alongside Speculative Histories of Atlantis. A sticker on the shelf declares the warning to customers: this section under surveillance of security cameras. There is a virtual force field of paranoia surrounding the shelf. You feel irrational just browsing the section. What’s more, you feel that it’s dangerous to read books penned by crazies. Ah, at last, I’ve found my people. . . . Some serious mystery! But, can I endure this? Can I survive it?

The last time I devoured the works of a legitimate madman, six years of spellbound fascination ended with a sleepless night reading his wife’s expose and crying in the shower the next morning. Talk about self-respect. I had been betrayed. Carlos Castaneda had lied. I was utterly bereft. I wanted to believe there were sorcerers from ancient Mexico who taught a young university student how to travel in other dimensions. I didn’t want my hero to be just another manipulative authority figure. I took this betrayal personally: the authority figure I chose to believe was a madman. What about the last six years I held to his claims of another reality, and tried to reach it?

My foray into the new age began with a will to believe. I wanted Don Juan to be real. Unfortunately, Castaneda’s journey teaches us something all too human about human nature. His books are about power. The story of Castaneda’s real life concludes the tale upon a dark note: the abuse of power. He became a tyrannical cult leader at the end of his life. But really, no investigation of power is complete without a good look at its ability to corrupt an individual.

I wanted to escape the deception and violence humanity employs in the maintenance of power, only to find myself devoured by the tyranny of one man’s imagination. (I concede that Journey to Ixltan, Tales of Power, The Second Ring of Power, The Eagle’s Gift, The Fire From Within, ah the list goes on . . . these are all good reads. This is more fantasy and science fiction than you could ever hope to find in the actual fantasy and sci-fi section of the library. And the novels are best read in combination with the books written by his wives. Yes, there were more than one – even though Castaneda claimed to be celibate. The most notable is Amy Wallace’s book, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, My Life With Carlos Castaneda.)

Okay, so this is just to explain. . . . When I started to investigate UFOs, aliens, and government cover-ups, I was not to be duped. The UFO literature is not my first exposure to humans spinning tales of great mysteries. But what I found after just a few days of research was more than I could account to fantasy. I emailed Harold with links to the videos. I figured any alien story could only benefit from this. This material was rich!

But what to start with? There is just so much good stuff. . . . ah hell, I figure a statement by former, Canadian Minister of Defense, Paul Hellyer, videotapped at a press conference saying that extraterrestrial vehicles are a documented fact. That’s a good a start.

Here is Harold’s response:

This is interesting. I have met Rep. Kucinich on several (non-UFO related) occasions and he believes that UFO’s exist. Like Paul Hellyer, he is completely opposed to the weaponization of space.

I believe that there are flying objects which are unidentified. I have trouble believing that these objects are advanced ships inhabited by extra terrestrials.

My theories: they are probably military aircraft from our own time or from the far future.

In my opinion, if our current rate of technological progress continues, future humans could evolve to have larger heads and smaller bodies.

Alternatively, a time travel journey may require a specific type of trans-human created to handle the effects of the trip.

These theories seem more probable to me than extraterrestrial visitation.

*

We all have a legitimate desire to understand the nature of reality. That’s science; but as I have discovered, science has a political cast. My sudden appointment to help Harold write science fiction led me to phenomenon beyond the accepted boundary of scientific inquiry. No worries. This was something of a reappointment – accustomed to the strangest stuff out there, I have finally found a subject that exceeds everything I have so far encountered, both in it’s power to intrigue and to scare the daylights out of me.