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Fictional Influences On Ufology

"In the middle of the night she woke up dreaming of huge white heads like turnips, that came trailing after her, at the end of interminable necks, and with vast black eyes."

-- HG Wells, The Invisible Man, circa 1897



A portrait of an otherworldly being, drawn by Aleister Crowley, circa 1918:

link to image
 
Yes; Herbert George really had a lot to do with this obsession with big headed aliens. He described just one such in the First Men in the Moon, a very popular book; Wells was the Michael Crichton of his day, but good.
The idea behind the big headed alien was that a large headed creature with atrophied body would be the ultimate end result of human evolution; and of course extraterrestrial evolution would parallel our own, or so it appeared to the early SF writers.

(H.P. Lovecraft on the other hand rejected the idea of humanoid aliens, and his writing is all the more impressive for that).
 
Jerry_B (continued from post: 25-10-2006 13:52 Thread:"What UFOs got to do with US security?"/forum "Conspiracy")
"But perhaps it could be said that at least such things got people discussing that psycho-social option, which is an interesting annex to ufology. Or would you rather people didn't?"

Yes, study of psycho-social influences on both sides are necessary. But to shift from such research to the affirmation that the whole phenomenon is psycho-social is only pseudo-intellectual fallacy masquerading as science. Everybody agrees that pro-ETH side is full of charlatans. But it is not so easy to say that PSH field is too. And yes VALLEE is worried that his sincere concerns gave birth to such pseudo-scientific crap. To give an example, I'll take the CE3 at Cussac, where two children saw a bright sphere with a number of flying black "goblins". There were a number of physical effects, including conjunctivitis. There was a good corroboration by other sources. The gendarms were of the opinion that an anomaly occured. So, the case seemed solid. But some debunkers tried to say that the children had seen crows! I don't think that what they witnessed was true extraterrestrials. But I find even an analysis at face value more plausible than such psycho-social nonsense (that's what I cause always prefering any explanation-as weird as it is- to the ETH).

Jacques VALLEE was misquoted. He lobbied for a study of UFO influence on society, as it could manipulate collective beliefs. And to study cultural backgrounds, to see how the UFO phenomenon could use it in order to achieve this manipulation, masquerading as various cultural aspects. I came close to his views. He distanced from naive nuts-and-boltists, but never took this as a pretext to fancy any of the nonsense dispensed by psycho-social debunkers; he fluctuated between parapsychological explanations and ETH/UTH. But his recommendations met little success. Recently, other ufologists have too often divided sharply between two ennemy sides, sterilizing any debate in a manichean fashion. Though it is certainly easier to find supporters of more mixed approachs or alternative hypothesis on the Fortean Times forum.

There is sometimes confusion relating to the delimitations of psycho-social and parapsychological (or paraphysical) theories. The two are often seen as different, but they frequently overlapped, their meanings differed relating to decades and countries. I found a useful summary on UFO updates, 12-11-1997:
http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/upd ... 011.shtml/
 
I think you're underestimating the impact of the Arnold sighting. Remember, Arnold didn't actually see saucers - but he was misreported as having seen saucers. Then suddenly people were seeing saucers all over the shop. Why? If Arnold's 'boomerangs' were the real thing, why weren't people seeing boomerangs? Where did all the boomerangs go? On the other hand, if you're going to rule the Arnold sighting out of the equation, then you still have to explain why fleets of flying saucers should choose to visit us the very moment after the press accidentally invented the phrase "flying saucer".
Click to expand...
How Arnold's enigmatic observation of unidentifiable objects
gave rise to 'flying saucers' is a fascinating story.

Although I researched this in great detail a few years ago, I
didn't then have time to reveal all of my findings; I might
now be able to in the near future.

A 'flying saucers' depiction essentially originated because
the inaugural 25 June, 1947 'Associated Press' newswire, from
Pendleton, misconstrued Arnold's bizarre simile of how the
objects flew, "like a saucer would it you skipped it across
the water".

Local reporter Bill Baguette has been cited as first using the
phrase 'flying saucers', a claim which in later years he
refuted and indeed the newswire only described, "saucer-like
objects".

It may not even have been Baguette who wrote the newswire, my
research identified another equally likely candidate; Nolan
Skiff, editor from the 'East Oregonian'. The full story and
supporting documentary evidence are more complex.


I also unearthed a copy of what I discovered to perhaps be the
seminal media use of the inevitable terminology 'flying
saucers'.

_Quoting that same AP newswire_, the newspaper's own headline
evolves Arnold's 'saucer-like objects' to become "Flying
Saucers".

I had obtained the editor's permission to publish their
historical document and again, might now have time to revisit
this.


Pivotal is that subsequent to Arnold's story reaching the
media, masses of people then reported seeing 'flying saucers',
or 'flying disks'.

There were related front page news items for days afterwards,
amidst media hysteria which incorporated fears the Russians
had a new secret weapon.


By the time of his 1950 self-published booklet, 'The Flying
Saucer as I saw It', Arnold was an avid Fortean, quotes
Charles Fort therein and also highlights numerous Fortean
related newspaper articles.

Whether he was similarly inclined beforehand would certainly
be interesting to know.


Arnold confirmed that the object depicted on the cover of his
1952 book, 'The Coming of the Saucers' was essentially what he
recalled seeing:

http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o240 ... ETCH_4.jpg

One affirmation is a 1977 local newspaper interview with
Arnold, reporting that his wife, Doris, "was wearing a
necklace with a miniature of the crescent-shaped saucer. The
necklace was made in 1948, a year after Arnold's sighting".


Substantially lesser known is a sketch which I presume to be
Arnold's:

http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o240 ... ETCH_0.jpg

This was something of a Fortean discovery and featured in a
German produced video, 'The UFO Phenomenon' [or similar
title], I merely bought out of curiosity from a second-hand
video/DVD shop in a small Scottish town.

The image is shown as background to an evident radio interview
with Arnold, seemingly some years later.

Although the sketch and details of that broadcast were alerted
to UFO historians, the origins of both remained unidentified
[still to my knowledge] and I've never seen the drawing
elsewhere.

One significant reason for surmising this was sketched by
Arnold is that he included a similar outline - amongst others
showing a sequence depicting how the objects appeared to alter
shape - in a 'rediscovered' illustration, featured on the
March/April 1995 cover of 'International UFO Reporter'.


Bottom line; although pictorial representations of 'flying
saucers' had an antecedent, Arnold's misapprehended account
became the fundamental genesis of 'flying saucers'. As you
indicate, all that consequently became interrelated could
hardly have a more specious foundation.

As foremost 'ETH' proponent, Brad Sparks, conceded during
public correspondence:

"I am nevertheless bothered by the fact that no one else
in the 1947 flap ever saw objects shaped like Arnold's,
with only one possible exception (a suspected hoax
apparently)".
 
There are photos which can't be easily explained, like at Mc Minville...
Click to expand...

Joel Carpenter produced an exceptional analysis of why the
Trent photographs can be explained as a hoax and even
identified the hoax object as probably a car/truck's rear-view
mirror [hence also the object's top 'appendage' and reflective
nature of its underside].

Although Joel's own related web-site is no longer where it was
[not sure if it's online elsewhere as I haven't spoken with
him for quite some time], the key remnants of his premise can
still be seen here:

http://www.nicap.dabsol.co.uk/trentphoto.htm
 
I am aware of the circumstances behind the birth of the expression flying saucer. I thought I had made it clear, maybe I should have been more precise. The point was that there were flying disks before, and the sociological influence of the wave was rather limited. Interest dropped quickly after 10th July and mediatic coverage declined sharply, due to the Roswell case. It was usually assumed that it had put an end to the controversy. In September, it was all but forgotten, except as a joke. People saw it as a fugitive fashion. Flying saucers (or disks, there was a competition in the first years) were seen by most people as balloons or planes. At the time, weather balloons were still more or less exotic for part of the public, adding credibility to the explanation. Many people surrounding White Sands Proving Grounds reported balloons as saucers, because they thought it meant that. Those cases have been explained. There was no mass hysteria relating to Soviet weapon, although both fear of such hysteria and foreign weapons were present within the military. Only 1% in the Gallup poll answered that they believed saucers had a Soviet origin. And the ETH was marginal at the time, excepted at Fortean circles and readers of "Amazing stories". The cultural background equating flying saucer with e.t. craft did not exist.

I am aware of CARPENTER's thesis about Mc Minville photos. But other reviewers, as Bruce MACABEE, have shown a number of flaws in his argumentation. I didn't write that the Trent photos are unexplainable, only that they're not easy to dismiss. Discussion can go at circles eternally on this issue. The grain surrounding the saucer suggests that it was at a great distance, and the Trents probably did not have the skill to perpetrate such a fraud. But there could have been nebulosity at this place, giving a false sense of remoteness; and they could have been helped by someone else. It is usually very difficult to conclude about a photo.

An ironic aspect: proponents of an e.t. craft at Roswell are side-on-side with debunkers relating to the issue of the saucer imagery in July 1947. Because they need it to ascertain that the military at Roswell AAF base, while talking of a flying disk, were describing an alien craft - this is crucial for their demonstration. But there is no reason to think that's what they had in mind, this imagery simply did not exist. "Flying saucer" meant what was discussed in the papers. This could have been an experimental balloon, for example.
 
Jerry_B (continued from '5 arguments against the ETH and a rebuttal' - posted 10-11-2006 19:01; I think that this thread is better suited to this discussion) :"No, I'm not assuming an hallucination = perception with no object. I'm saying that between the perception and the point of evaluation there are various other processes involved to do within the psychology of the percipient. This then frames how they evaluate and describe what they think they've seen. As I said, I don't mean that people are mad, etc. either."

Perception with no object is the definition of hallucination. The point that something could have been spotted first and heavily distorted is not important. If someone, instead of seeing what is actually there, perceives something completely different, it is a perception of something nonexistant i.e. it is a perception with no object/an hallucination. And if ha or she has such a distorted perception of reality, that means he or she suffers from a condition. We have no motive to assert that someone competent seeing a flying disk or a Bigfoot in plain sight, with no light trick, suffering of no delusion, no mental illness, not being under the influence of drugs etc... doesn't see something existant. Donald SLAYTON did not imagine his sighting. Not being able to explain a testimony within the borders of established knowledge is no reason to ignore all laws of human psychology and sociology. If the humand mind was so flexible and unreliable to ramble in any condition anywhere, we would have been aware of it a long time ago. It would cause no problem to science, and there would be applications of this truth in many different fields. Any theories with no application outside the field of ufology and related ocurences has a scientific value equal to zero.

One of the manipulations used by PSHers is to say that witnesses do not suffer from delusion and hallucination, while describing precisely that: delusion and hallucinations. This is a trick to muddy waters, to try to avoid the psychological objections, as specialists know that it doesn't work that way.

I must go, I have to attend a conference relating to the wave of deluded people believing they were abducted by bloodthirsty Al Qaeda terrorists during sleep paralysis, which plagues the USA from 11 September 2001. What? You never heard of it? But PSH had predicted it...
 
Analis,
I agree with your position and said so in the other thread.

I must go, I have to attend a conference relating to the wave of deluded people believing they were abducted by bloodthirsty Al Qaeda terrorists during sleep paralysis, which plagues the USA from 11 September 2001. What? You never heard of it? But PSH had predicted it...
Click to expand...

Are you serious..?
:?
 
No, of course - although it was intended to state a valid point. I have always been baffled by this fact: to some, it is self-evident that many people are under the influence of a handful of obscure movies from the 50s. While some much more real and widespread collective fears product no effect. The fear of being abducted by aliens is far from being on a par with the fear of islamist terrorism. If only ten percent of what psychosociologists said of the way alien abductions arise, for example, were true, there should be many more manifestations of similar psychosocial mechanisms. The PSH hypothesis is unable to predict. And a theory which makes no correct predictions is, in my eyes, a failed theory. At least, that's what scientific methodology says. And not to follow it in this case only because we're dealing with UFOs (i.e., because skeptics are disturbed by other hypothesies) is not a legitimate motive. As long as psychosocial theories proponents will be unable to come with valid explanations, I will see no reason to take them into consideration.
 
Indeed, if pyschosocial mechanisms for these hallucinations or 'terrors' is a valid explanation then why don't we have all manner of different ones from other causes? Why is it primarily the alien abduction syndrome?

As far as 'ufo sightings' and encounters with 'beings', I suspect that the answer for most events is not aliens from space but something else entirely ,but I do believe that this something has a real physical presence at times in our reality.
 
dr_wu said:
Indeed, if pyschosocial mechanisms for these hallucinations or 'terrors' is a valid explanation then why don't we have all manner of different ones from other causes? Why is it primarily the alien abduction syndrome?
Click to expand...

There's Night Hags, Incubi, Succubi, Fairies of various types, Demons, Hooded Figures, some current, some out of fashion....
 
Yes - there are quite a few variations. The only pattern to it is what the victim feels and fears, often as not - the sypmtoms, as it were. But people have claimed to have seen all sorts of entities within the wider remit of 'night terrors'. There are even few from more milder forms of paralysis, IIRC. The greys are just one part of this pantheon, as is their type of 'abduction'. They've tended to have hogged the limelght for a while now, which makes it seem as if they're the dominant factor.
 
Analis said:
We have no motive to assert that someone competent seeing a flying disk or a Bigfoot in plain sight, with no light trick, suffering of no delusion, no mental illness, not being under the influence of drugs etc... doesn't see something existant. Donald SLAYTON did not imagine his sighting. Not being able to explain a testimony within the borders of established knowledge is no reason to ignore all laws of human psychology and sociology. If the humand mind was so flexible and unreliable to ramble in any condition anywhere, we would have been aware of it a long time ago.
Click to expand...

This despite the fact that it doesn't take an awful lot to confuse the human eye enough into getting the brain thinking it's seeing something it's not. You seem to be ignoring a long history of magic and illusion, for example. It also doesn't take much for any of us to misidentify mundane things and have our minds do a double-take trying to evaluate what we think we see, compared to what our minds normally consider mundane. None of this has to involve any sort of mental or neurological problems or illnesses.
 
Jerry_B: "This despite the fact that it doesn't take a lot to confuse the human eye enough into getting the brain thinking it's seeing something it's not."
May be you're speaking of misidentification? But people misidentifying a mundane happening report correctly in the vast majority of instances. If there are discrepancies, they're usually minor, or caused by unusual circumstances. There is a world between what psychology of perception learns us and what you suppose. And I know of no example of what you say commonly happens to perfectly sane people. If it were true, we could never trust any testimony in any matter (and this has nothing to do with the extraordinary side).

Timble2: "There's Night Hags, Incubi, Succubi, Fairies of various types, Demons, Hooded Figures, some current, some out of fashion..."
Yes, more than one type of being, as with encounters "in the wild". But there too, there are only a limited numbers of entities. With one widely dominant, and frequent overlapping. Dwarf-like entities are by far the most widespread creatures reported in such instances. Or supposed ones - knowing if they're actually sleep paralysis is another matter entirely. I read testimonies by abducted people who experimented SP too, they were adamant about the sharp distinction between the two. But back to SP. 'Demons' are an interesting feature, as belief in them is widespread, maybe more than that in aliens (at least in some regions - non western countries put aside). As they're not always so easy to distinguish, sometimes it's probably a matter of interpretation. But in any case, harassment by demons is not prominent among fundamentalist regions in the USA too. That's not a question of knowing if they're reported via the cultural prism or not, as they're rarely reported as demons at all. Surprising, because I see no reason why the christian fundamentalists would not advertise them. Their usual behaviour argues against that. They're quite vocal about such issues. And, by the way, in the Biblical Belt it is possible that demonic/angelic explanation of UFOs is the dominant one (for once, I'll agree with David CLARKE). But it doesn't seem that there is any significant difference in the way UFOs and related phenomena are spotted in this region and elsewhere. The problem is still the same: PSH can't explain why the strongest cultural impetus don't affect the production of such episodes. We should expect it to have more than a passing effect on dreams, hypnopompic states or delusions, after all.

More generally, is sleep paralysis a case closed, with nothing mysterious? The reviewer of Susan CLANCY's book (in Fortean Times 203) talked of his own SP episode, when his pet was hissing at the place where he had seen something. I watched this documentary about nocturnal panic. There was this case where harassing ghostlike entities were spotted by other witnesses and briefly filmed. And this occurence where a scientist was investigating an especially violent case of sleep terror. He acknowledged that he couldn't explain it. His instruments showed him that the percipient was fully awake. Hypnagogic and hypnopompic states are convenient explanations, used to provide a kind of 'reasonnable doubt' when dealing with anomalous phenomena. But they could be states allowing a wider perception too. If a witness claims he has seen the ghost of a woman in a given room, just before sleeping, maybe it's a hypnagogic hallucination. But if two, three, four or more persons claim to have the same vision of the same woman in the same room in the same conditions, well much probably it's something else. But something more easily perceived while on the verge of sleeping. It might tell us many things of fortean phenomena. That it helps to perceive more easily bedroom intruders, for example.
 
Analis said:
May be you're speaking of misidentification? But people misidentifying a mundane happening report correctly in the vast majority of instances. If there are discrepancies, they're usually minor, or caused by unusual circumstances.
Click to expand...

Misidentification can be one factor. What someone claims to have seen may be the cause for some UFO reports, even from professional witnesses (i.e. pilots).

There is a world between what psychology of perception learns us and what you suppose. And I know of no example of what you say commonly happens to perfectly sane people. If it were true, we could never trust any testimony in any matter (and this has nothing to do with the extraordinary side).
Click to expand...

I don't think there's all that much difference - the mind is still being forced to make evaluations about something which it perceives via the eye. If it cannot get any sort of closure on identifying and rationlising something, the event remains a possible anomoly to the mind of the percipient, even though the actual source for the event is mundane. This doesn't have to involve any problems with a person's sanity.
 
Analis said:
The problem is still the same: PSH can't explain why the strongest cultural impetus don't affect the production of such episodes. We should expect it to have more than a passing effect on dreams, hypnopompic states or delusions, after all.
Click to expand...

Which impetus do you mean?
 
It is puzzling that the 'strongest cultural impetus' does not manifest itself in sleep paralysis incidents; we don't very often get people complaining of phantom terrorists, burglars and illegal immigrants in the bedroom.

But that appears to be the case; I have experienced a sleep paralysis epidode myself, and yes, it was a grey alien which appeared in the corner of my room, not Osama Bin-Laden or Jade Goody. Does that imply that the alien was real? Not in the slightest.
But some strange filtering of the imagination seems to be going on; sleep paralysis seems to produce a strangely limited number of archetypical images, not an entirely random range of disturbing images.
 
Perhaps it's because figures from normality, i.e. OBL, are more easy to absorb psychologically? It's a 'known', whereas in terms of human psychology we seems to be more unsettled by what we'd perhaps label as 'unknown'. Then again, this wouldn't explain incubi and sucubi - unless they imply some sort of psychosexual imagery that greys etc. don't cover in our mental pantheon.
 
Jerry_B: "I don't think there's all that much difference - the mind is still being forced to make evaluations."

There's still a long way from this to the emergence of a total delusion. Back to SLAYTON's sighting, he first believed he was spotting a weather balloon, nothing else. He didn't expect an alien vessel or anything out of the ordinary, nothing that could shape his perception in something else entirely. If it were true that total misperception happened out of nowhere, I repeat that this scenario would reflect in other fields too. Legal matters were of a precious help to psychology, they're a goldmine of informations in human behaviour, notably under expectations. But they show nothing like that. Sure, witnesses sometimes misinterpret, but don't produce such deluded versions. Except maybe in delimitated instances, when they're under extreme panic for example. And even then, it can be reconstructed from their original perception, they don't see grey aliens or hordes of hooded figures assaulting them.

The cultural impetus tends to follow the dominant social trend. In the 50s it was fear of the damned commies. Now it would rather be islamist terrorists, or immigrants. But it has never been e.t.s. At the time of the "X-Files", they stirred a lot of discussions. But never caused any kind of mass hysteria.
I had read a description of hypnopompic hallucinations. They were quite diverse, from visions of pursuits by unknown people or cowboys(!) to wide displays of coloured rays, as well of more mundane sightings of people assembled. As with any other kind of dream or hallucination, they sometimes reflect worriens of the percipient. It indicates that each people has a different filter, depending on his or her own set of concerns, mundane or not. Figures from normality play a crucial role in the emergence of various visions. Eburacum, I can't speak for yourself. You're probably interested in ufology, and have this idea of the Grey in mind, even if you don't believe in it in a literal sense. You're probably not prone to terrorist paranoia, and not easily deluded. I had an episode of SP too. As I was aware of its significance, I was not afraid. But I had a vague feeling of a presence, with no precise location. I'm sure that if I had wished it, I could have 'called' the image of a Grey. We were both influenced by our background. If each person comes with a different filter, it would mean that at the level of a whole society, we have many different filters. Many people would come with no interest (or very remote) in aliens, but are profoundly worried by terrorists. Or by the last horror movie they saw. And many abductions do not take place while the abducted is asleep or in his bedroom.

Indeed, general studies of hallucinations show that the UFO imagery is not privileged. There was this discussion related to DMT. But descriptions similar to alien abductions consisted only of a small fraction of the whole visions. There were too dragons or talking insects right from "Alice in the Wonderland", for example. I remember too what a former participant to the Death Valley cross race said. He and other competitors began to be delirious at the end of the race. They had a wide range of hallucinations, including flying saucers, yes. But too rockets, cactus changing into planes or missiles (!), a range of giant arthropods, notably scorpions, right out from 50s movies, and other things. And the famous experiments by Alvin LAWSON relating to alien abductions were a proof of the possibility of confabulation. But it is interesting to see that they figured a variety of non-humanoid monsters from science-fiction, the figures seen in ufology consisting of only 16% of the sample. In true abductions, monsters figure in less than 10% of the cases. It was true at the end of the 70s, when the study was conducted, and remains true.
 
On that page is a discussion of Frank Drake's investigation into the unreliability of witnesses; numerous studies have demonstrated that witness testimony is extraordinarily unreliable, so I think Rudiak is on a loser there.
Then Rudiak brings up the question of meteoric sounds; these are an intriguing subject, truly fit for a Fortean topic.
But even recent studies by Keay and others have failed to either prove the reality of the phenomenon or provide a feasible mechanism; at the end of the day it may well be that a psychological explanation for these sounds is the most accurate solution after all.
 
eburacum said:
It is puzzling that the 'strongest cultural impetus' does not manifest itself in sleep paralysis incidents; we don't very often get people complaining of phantom terrorists, burglars and illegal immigrants in the bedroom.

But that appears to be the case; I have experienced a sleep paralysis epidode myself, and yes, it was a grey alien which appeared in the corner of my room, not Osama Bin-Laden or Jade Goody. Does that imply that the alien was real? Not in the slightest.
But some strange filtering of the imagination seems to be going on; sleep paralysis seems to produce a strangely limited number of archetypical images, not an entirely random range of disturbing images.
Click to expand...


But why a 'grey alien'? How exactly is that an archetypal image? From where in human symbolism does that figure arise ? Is it a modern version of a fairy and a purely modern archetype?
It was not one of Jung's archetypes if I recall correctly and he examined all or most of the familiar ones.
I'm not convinced we are dealing with sleep paralysis leading to archetypal images in these cases of 'alien abduction'.
I also think the DMT experiences and those mentioned by others like Pinchbeck and Hancock lately have a definite connection.
 
the work of martin s kottermeyer and the spanish ufologist jose caravaca, are the best venues in such research
martin thinks that UFOs have a purely psychosocial origin, while caravaca thinks we are dealing with a keelian mind parasite
 
humanoidlord said:
its still a bit laconic theory, just like ETH
Click to expand...
In what specific way is it 'laconic'?
I think an excellent case could be made for the psycho-social theory that can cover almost all aspects of the enigma (some trace cases are more problematic ).....the ETH maybe not for reasons I have mentioned here before. IMHO...none of the 'theories' (hypothesis would be better here) can fulfill all the various aspects of the enigma. There are probably multiple explanations needed to cover all the bases.
 
dr wu said:
There are probably multiple explanations needed to cover all the bases.
Click to expand...

Yes. My only firmly held opinion is that our current category is too broad. Although how we start to differentiate and refine.... :dunno:
 
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