• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Credibility In Ufology: Fact Or Fiction?

Jayceedove said:
Part 3....

There is a small postscript.

Both Gordon Sumner (Sting) and I were born in October 1951. We also both started out training as teachers.

Like him I have written some song lyrics - though not professionally. When I was in my teens I wrote lyrics for a couple of songs with my brother who was in a band in North West England. This was before I wrote anything professionally.

The group were popular in the region and did lots of work and almost turned pro. In fact my cousin went on to success in Australia where 50 years later he still lives. My brother chose to stay in the UK and marry at 19. He has never regretted it.

I had not thought about this for years until I was taken on a surprise trip to Liverpool. We actually went on a boat that was in the movie Ferry Cross The Mersey including Gerry Marsden singing - the man who was later my boss at Radio City.

In Liverpool I discovered that my brothers group for whom I had written my only ever song lyrics had been commemorated alongside the Beatles and Gerry and the Pacemakers at the Cavern being one of the groups that had performed there in that era.

This is just around the corner from where those events involving me and the Sting lyrics had occurred at Radio City 34 years ago.
Click to expand...
wow just wow, and yeah that is an paranormal experience right there!
its interesting how synchronicities a lot of times involve strange unfamiliar words becoming very talked about out of nowhere
another interesting guy that knows a lot about this subject is christopher knowles, though he is a bit crazy
his site is this one: https://secretsun.blogspot.com
 
Jayceedove said:
Obviously he couldn't. He will have written and recorded that song before the event happened as well.

Synchronicity is basically coincidence into which you read meaning and significance rather than just chance afterwards.

Sometimes they are just chance. But look weird.

The events are the props and the meaning (or any reality of synchronicity) is in the consciousness of the experiencer.

Often it is hard to tell if meaning applies or is just perceived wrongly.

Huge coincidences do sometimes happen.

The Anthony Hopkins story is another example.

He is asked to appear as lead in the movie of the novel The Girl from Petrovka. He tries to find the book to read the story but all bookshops he chooses to visit don't have one.

He goes home and at Leicester Square underground he finds a copy discarded on a bench. It has notes scrawled all over it but he takes it and takes the part.

A year or so later whilst filming on set the author bemoans losing his personal copy somewhere in London because he annotated it with notes that would help the filming.

It was of course the book the star of his film had discovered.

Just a fluke of chance?

Or were people shuffled like chess pieces to do things that resulted in the meaning later imparted onto the chain of events.
Click to expand...
i also remenber seeing another story where an woman when trying to find an book from her childhood, buys an copy of it and finds that its the exactly one she owned!
pretty creepy i must say
 
Thanks to everyone for the replies and things to follow up.

Of course, with any coincidence we have to recall that most events that happen often enough will happen in a way that seems meaningful to somebody by sheer chance at some point. Even extraordinary ones.

When you deal a well shuffled pack of cards to four people it is very, very unlikely you will deal a complete suit to one person - let alone all four full suits to one each of the players.

But as millions of hands of cards are played globally it will happen by chance every so often. That one event looks extraordinary to the people it happens to but only because it stands out from the many millions of random variations that have occurred and not noticed at all by countless people.

As an illustration the second incident when I was working at Radio City. I lost my show when Brian Ford, the DJ, moved to Scotland to work for the BBC. Before it happened I heard rumours around the office he might be going so I went to ask our boss if it were true and was told that as far as he knew it wasn't.

I left the studio and almost fell over a Liverpool Echo ad hoarding in the street with the headline 'Ford's Boss Denies Rumours'.

This was an exact reflection of what had just happened, but, of course, was not about it. The story was about the local Ford car plant and rumours of redundancy.

This was a pure coincidence that I would not even have spotted if it had happened the following week not that day.

The meaningfulness here was imparted by me and likely was not synchronicity as such.

So you have to be careful identifying meaning when there may be none outside of your own mind.
 
There are seven billion people on Earth; this means that coincidences that appear to have odds of millions-to one against (or even billions-to-one against) happen every day. The field of Fortean studies includes lots and lots of occurences which can only be explained by incredibly rare coincidences - but rare coincidences occur frequently on our crowded planet.
 
Exactly, as I said. Meaning is in the mind of the beholder. Though this does not necessarily imply there never is any.

Your subconscious is paying attention to things that form a pattern and might not just be doing so because they do.

It might be that it is using synchronicity to prompt and send a message that you will notice.

I started to realise this when I first saw how your dreams engage in puns. I had no idea your sleeping mind could be so devious until I shared an odd dream with a psychologist and she explained it that way.

I had dreamt of being caught in a flood and escaping by jumping on a passing grand piano that conveniently floated by.

The psychologists asked me to name a shipping company and as soon as I blurted out P & O I knew where she was going! My dream had done the same and created an image I would pay attention to via a kind of pun on the name.

Though psychologists can also sometimes be like synchronicity researchers and find meaning when none is there.
 
Jayceedove said:
Though psychologists can also sometimes be like synchronicity researchers and find meaning when none is there.
Click to expand...
...which is why proper psychologists use carefully designed experiments with randomisation of everything and also use control conditions...and reasonable statistical significance tests, although no experiment means jack, unless it's been replicated at least once.
 
Is it true that only 1% of ufo have never been identified and most have been miss identified aircraft but I still think that that USA and UK governments are covering stuff up.
 
Last edited:
Megadeth1977 said:
Is it true that only 1% of ufo have never been identified and most have been ...
Click to expand...

The proportion / percentage varies with source, etc.. To further complicate the presentation of such stats, there's the issue of whether 'unidentified' means:

- no reasonable explanation was found, versus ...
- there is no reasonable explanation save for something uncanny

... which, of course, is a matter of 'spin' that's all too often left ambiguous.

The figures I've seen cited over the decades tend to run in the range of 5 - 7%, as I recall.

For example, this is from the USAF Face Sheet on Project Blue Book:

From 1947 to 1969, the Air Force investigated Unidentified Flying Objects under Project Blue Book. The project, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, was terminated Dec. 17, 1969. Of a total of 12,618 sightings reported to Project Blue Book, 701 remained "unidentified." ...
Click to expand...

SOURCE: https://web.archive.org/web/20030624053806/http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=188

These figures result in a 5.56% 'unidentified' rate.
 
I always go with 95% becoming IFOs after due diligence. That has been my experience consistently over 40 years of investigation.

Which does not mean the 5% are UFOs, just unexplained. Some of those will unquestionably be resolvable with the right piece of fortune or time.

Several long puzzling cases prove this - such as the Peter Day daylight cine film from the Oxfordshire/Bucks border.

This had much effort to investigate and was a case we spent a lot of time on at BUFORA. I published a special report into it for them (Fire in the Sky).

Much effort had gone into trying to solve that case over the years. Horizon tackled it. Science writer Adrian Berry said it was a meteor (but it wasn't). Nick Pope said it was ball lightning in one of his books - though this was another thing we knew it wasn't as I tried to tell him.

We had actually had an in camera case conference at the Kodak London HQ where atmospheric physicists and ball lightning experts from UK universities came to review the footage hoping it was exactly that and they eliminated the option with regret. They wanted such evidence badly.

An MoD expert even came along and proposed a new secret lighting system on a helicopter as an option. We checked it out and it wasn't that either.

Would likely still be unsolved today had not the report into a USAF F-111 jet crash some miles away and time later (so not instantly connected) not been released after some years. The delay was partly because the pilot ejection method used that day was somewhat secret.

Turned out to be a ball of burning aviation fuel trapped in the slipstream which the pilot created trying to burn off fuel before seeing the outcome, stopping the procedure and flying in long circuits for some time to burn off fuel more safely before the fault got worse forcing the ejection.

The cameraman never accepted the answer but this has to be the cause and it took many years and good fortune to resolve what looked like a baffling case into which much sensible effort had gone.

There are going to be other cases in that 5% in a similar vein, we just do not know how many.
 
Jayceedove said:
I always go with 95% becoming IFOs after due diligence. That has been my experience consistently over 40 years of investigation.

Which does not mean the 5% are UFOs, just unexplained. Some of those will unquestionably be resolvable with the right piece of fortune or time.

Several long puzzling cases prove this - such as the Peter Day daylight cine film from the Oxfordshire/Bucks border.

This had much effort to investigate and was a case we spent a lot of time on at BUFORA. I published a special report into it for them (Fire in the Sky).

Much effort had gone into trying to solve that case over the years. Horizon tackled it. Science writer Adrian Berry said it was a meteor (but it wasn't). Nick Pope said it was ball lightning in one of his books - though this was another thing we knew it wasn't as I tried to tell him.

We had actually had an in camera case conference at the Kodak London HQ where atmospheric physicists and ball lightning experts from UK universities came to review the footage hoping it was exactly that and they eliminated the option with regret. They wanted such evidence badly.

An MoD expert even came along and proposed a new secret lighting system on a helicopter as an option. We checked it out and it wasn't that either.

Would likely still be unsolved today had not the report into a USAF F-111 jet crash some miles away and time later (so not instantly connected) not been released after some years. The delay was partly because the pilot ejection method used that day was somewhat secret.

Turned out to be a ball of burning aviation fuel trapped in the slipstream which the pilot created trying to burn off fuel before seeing the outcome, stopping the procedure and flying in long circuits for some time to burn off fuel more safely before the fault got worse forcing the ejection.

The cameraman never accepted the answer but this has to be the cause and it took many years and good fortune to resolve what looked like a baffling case into which much sensible effort had gone.

There are going to be other cases in that 5% in a similar vein, we just do not know how many.
Click to expand...
you mean the thing here:
?
 
Not sure. Sorry I don't have the time right now to look at all the cases on that 50 minute film.

It is 8 mm cine film of an orange ball of fire moving across the sky taken by Peter Day on the Oxfordshire/Bucks border near Long Crendon. Several witnesses at the primary school saw it too.

11 January 1973.
 
Jayceedove said:
Not sure. Sorry I don't have the time right now to look at all the cases on that 50 minute film.

It is 8 mm cine film of an orange ball of fire moving across the sky taken by Peter Day on the Oxfordshire/Bucks border near Long Crendon. Several witnesses at the primary school saw it too.

11 January 1973.
Click to expand...
oh its the 30:58 one then
 
Jayceedove said:
Not sure. Sorry I don't have the time right now to look at all the cases on that 50 minute film.

It is 8 mm cine film of an orange ball of fire moving across the sky taken by Peter Day on the Oxfordshire/Bucks border near Long Crendon. Several witnesses at the primary school saw it too.

11 January 1973.
Click to expand...
hmm there are some errors in michael hesemann's (the maker of that compilation) information then, he names the guy peter dale and claims its happened in 11 january 1972!
 
humanoidlord said:
hmm there are some errors in michael hesemann's (the maker of that compilation) information then, he names the guy peter dale and claims its happened in 11 january 1972!
Click to expand...

Yes, it was 1973 and Peter Day was absolutely his name. I met him many times.

Peter Warrington and I got interested in this case very early as we worked with Horizon when they made one of the first TV documentaries to feature it. After that we spent time trying to get a proper analysis from Kodak and visited their lab in Hemel Hempstead. They were very helpful to us on this and other cases in the 70s and 80s that were filmed on Kodak stock. Indeed their interest predated this as they did work on the 'Cumberland Spaceman' photo of Jim Templeton a decade before the Peter Day film and before I got involved in UFOs.

Peter and I were only talking about this case the other day as we covered it in our first book together (and my first book) - UFOs: A British Viewpoint in 1979. We took it very seriously and there is a still from it on the cover of my third book - UFO Reality (1983).

Allen Hynek was personally very interested in this case and visited the scene during a UK trip in 1983 and asked me to continue investigation, which I did. Hence the BUFORA case history - Fire in the Sky - that I produced. Planned as the first in a series of such case histories it has nothing to do with the Travis Walton movie of that title which came several years later. It ended up as BUFORAs only one as I quit BUFORA soon after as they got embroiled in the alien autopsy film nonsense.

The best place to read the full story of how the case was solved is in the book - The UFOs That Never Were - London House (2000). If you can find a rare copy of this volume that nobody read co authored by Andy Roberts, Dave Clarke and myself and one of the last UFO books I was involved in writing before my 15 year hiatus as a full time carer.

My chapter 'A perfect case?' relates the story across pages 52 - 75. Showing the twists and turns that led to the solution via many dead ends.

The book was intended as a help to investigators by being entirely about solved cases. But nobody was interested in that so it bombed.

The other case in the video linked above and just before that you were confused over is the ATV Enstone film taken by a TV crew. I have met those involved and investigated that film too (again BBCs Horizon first put Peter Warrington and I onto it).

Just as with Peter Day, whom I could never persuade as to what he had filmed, though it is inarguable really, the ATV cameraman would not accept my conclusion on that daylight footage he took either.

But that one is another F-111 dumping fuel and flying at exactly the height where vapour trail formation was possible. It was also flying in a large circle that was creating apparent speeding up and slowing down motions.

Again 100% these two cases are both solved but still get used over and over as UFOs on TV.
 
I've got The UFOs That Never Were; it is one of my favourite books.(Which may come as no surprise to some people on this forum).
 
eburacum said:
I've got The UFOs That Never Were; it is one of my favourite books.(Which may come as no surprise to some people on this forum).
Click to expand...

Thank you I am pleased somebody liked it.

It came about in a curious way. I was trying to persuade a UK publisher to take on the concept under this title. I sent synopses out but none of the publishers I approached believed that anyone would be interested in a book about solved cases.

After getting frustrated trying to explain why it mattered to three or four companies by chance I mentioned to to Andy and Dave who said they were thinking of a similar project themselves.

Though they hated my title. I forget what their suggestion was. But London House went with mine anyhow.

We decided that maybe there was a better chance if we combined our efforts - so we did. It was still a tough sell and the book made peanuts - probably a few hundred pounds each if I recall and never sold any other rights anywhere at all.

The only other book of mine out of 50 for which that is true was The Pennine UFO Mystery.

Even what was a pretty dire book (though my favourite ever title and the book that I loved researching the most as I got to visit the sets of many favourite TV shows in the UK, US and Australia) sold other rights. That was Phantoms of the Soap Operas.

So the ones that turned down The UFOs that Never Were proved correct in a commercial sense. Though not right in a sense of how important solved cases are to UFO investigation.

If you do not understand the how and why of the large majority being resolvable in various different ways then you stand no chance of understanding the ones that remain unresolved or can have confidence in the how or why that these should be considered unresolvable.

Very few UFO enthusiasts get that, sadly.
 
Last edited:
Jayceedove said:
If you do not understand the how and why of the large majority being resolvable in various different ways then you stand no chance of understanding the ones that remain unresolved or can have confidence in the how or why that these should be considered unresolvable.
Click to expand...
^I like that ^ :hoff:
 
Jayceedove said:
Yes, it was 1973 and Peter Day was absolutely his name. I met him many times.

Peter Warrington and I got interested in this case very early as we worked with Horizon when they made one of the first TV documentaries to feature it. After that we spent time trying to get a proper analysis from Kodak and visited their lab in Hemel Hempstead. They were very helpful to us on this and other cases in the 70s and 80s that were filmed on Kodak stock. Indeed their interest predated this as they did work on the 'Cumberland Spaceman' photo of Jim Templeton a decade before the Peter Day film and before I got involved in UFOs.

Peter and I were only talking about this case the other day as we covered it in our first book together (and my first book) - UFOs: A British Viewpoint in 1979. We took it very seriously and there is a still from it on the cover of my third book - UFO Reality (1983).

Allen Hynek was personally very interested in this case and visited the scene during a UK trip in 1983 and asked me to continue investigation, which I did. Hence the BUFORA case history - Fire in the Sky - that I produced. Planned as the first in a series of such case histories it has nothing to do with the Travis Walton movie of that title which came several years later. It ended up as BUFORAs only one as I quit BUFORA soon after as they got embroiled in the alien autopsy film nonsense.

The best place to read the full story of how the case was solved is in the book - The UFOs That Never Were - London House (2000). If you can find a rare copy of this volume that nobody read co authored by Andy Roberts, Dave Clarke and myself and one of the last UFO books I was involved in writing before my 15 year hiatus as a full time carer.

My chapter 'A perfect case?' relates the story across pages 52 - 75. Showing the twists and turns that led to the solution via many dead ends.

The book was intended as a help to investigators by being entirely about solved cases. But nobody was interested in that so it bombed.

The other case in the video linked above and just before that you were confused over is the ATV Enstone film taken by a TV crew. I have met those involved and investigated that film too (again BBCs Horizon first put Peter Warrington and I onto it).

Just as with Peter Day, whom I could never persuade as to what he had filmed, though it is inarguable really, the ATV cameraman would not accept my conclusion on that daylight footage he took either.

But that one is another F-111 dumping fuel and flying at exactly the height where vapour trail formation was possible. It was also flying in a large circle that was creating apparent speeding up and slowing down motions.

Again 100% these two cases are both solved but still get used over and over as UFOs on TV.
Click to expand...
oh yes there was an thread on the enstone case in ats, some british guy posted it for examination by the menbers, i said it right away: plane
though i am surprised it was an fuel dump and not an normal comercial plane, as i thought
 
Jayceedove said:
Thank you I am pleased somebody liked it.

It came about in a curious way. I was trying to persuade a UK publisher to take on the concept under this title. I sent synopses out but none of the publishers I approached believed that anyone would be interested in a book about solved cases.

After getting frustrated trying to explain why it mattered to three or four companies by chance I mentioned to to Andy and Dave who said they were thinking of a similar project themselves.

Though they hated my title. I forget what their suggestion was. But London House went with mine anyhow.

We decided that maybe there was a better chance if we combined our efforts - so we did. It was still a tough sell and the book made peanuts - probably a few hundred pounds each if I recall and never sold any other rights anywhere at all.

The only other book of mine out of 50 for which that is true was The Pennine UFO Mystery.

Even what was a pretty dire book (though my favourite ever title and the book that I loved researching the most as I got to visit the sets of many favourite TV shows in the UK, US and Australia) sold other rights. That was Phantoms of the Soap Operas.

So the ones that turned down The UFOs that Never Were proved correct in a commercial sense. Though not right in a sense of how important solved cases are to UFO investigation.

If you do not understand the how and why of the large majority being resolvable in various different ways then you stand no chance of understanding the ones that remain unresolved or can have confidence in the how or why that these should be considered unresolvable.

Very few UFO enthusiasts get that, sadly.
Click to expand...
the funny thing is that ufo debunking is becoming an bussiness now with stuff like this:
https://twitter.com/ufoofinterest
https://twitter.com/UFOTheater
 
humanoidlord said:
oh yes there was an thread on the enstone case in ats, some british guy posted it for examination by the menbers, i said it right away: plane
though i am surprised it was an fuel dump and not an normal comercial plane, as i thought
Click to expand...
wow just wow, i just had an synchronicity happen to me!
i was in an completely ramdom site wich isnt about ufos (http://www.cracked.com if you are wondering) when guess what!
i saw an ad about an article of solved misteries, with the solway firth spaceman as it thumbnail!
what the christ
now i am scared...
 
humanoidlord said:
wow just wow, i just had an synchronicity happen to me!
i was in an completely ramdom site wich isnt about ufos (http://www.cracked.com if you are wondering) when guess what!
i saw an ad about an article of solved misteries, with the solway firth spaceman as it thumbnail!
what the christ
now i am scared...
Click to expand...

As the Solway Firth spaceman was a normal woman, I don't think you need to be scared.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
If you are interested in the subject and have searched for that mystery or related ones, then you are being tracked* and fed advertising to match your profile.

*not by aliens! :atom:
Click to expand...
i dony know that was pretty bizzare and something i never expected to see
 
Kingsize Wombat said:
Expect to see a lot more of it. The more time you spend online, the more Google knows about you, and the more ads targeted at your interests you will see.
Click to expand...
true
also sorry for not answering earlier
i have accounts in multiple forums, and i am more active in the more populated or in the case of alienexpanse.com more full of interesting posts
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top