The UFOs on Wednesdays Thing

[lopaka]

If This Is Wednesday, It Must Be a Venusian- Title of a chapter in John Keel's The Mothman Prophecies (at least my edition), which itself is a take-off on the utterly forgettable late-60's flick If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium.

In it Keel cites his own research consisting of 700 UFO reports in 1966-67, a Dr. David Saunders of Colorado University---"several thousand sightings" and Saunders, Ballester-Orlando and Bonabot---700 sightings in 1950 in the US, Spain and Belgium. He then concludes that there is a periodicity to UFO sightings that clusters on Wednesdays.

Keel's veracity has certainly been called into question before, but at least in this case he made an attempt to provide some supporting statistical data that others have collected to support his claim.

I do not keep up with the UFO literature at all, essentially. Anybody know if this or any other patterns/cycles regarding correlating certain days of the week , months, moon phases, etc. with UFO reports has been (re)produced in research since then? Or refuted, for that matter?

If a pattern does seem to exist, any credible (well, reasonably ) theories out there as to why it might be so?

 

[Min Bannister]

Thats interesting, I've not heard that before. I'd always thought that most UFOs were seen on Friday and Saturday nights (for obvious reasons). Though I don't know where I got that from.

I think I might have an old copy of UFO mag that has these kind of statistics in. I will dig it out.

 

[Philo_T]

I may have heard of this via Keel, but I thought that this was the result of statistical research done by Jacques Vallee and/or Alan Hyneck (sp?!!).

I seem to recall a chapter about this research in "Forbidden Science". Vallee talks about how he/they had the temerity to actually apply the scientific method to studying ufo reports, and lo, produced a new insight into the phenomena.

 

[Anonymous]

Hmm, I read a fictional book years ago about a UFO landing. It was named UFO´s Are Coming Wednesday. I don´t think the author had chosen wednesday for any particular reason though, it was just a kind of prophezised landing.

 

[naitaka]

I recall that someone, possibly Keel, observed that lot of sightings occur on the 24th of the month. For example Kenneth Arnold's sighting was on June 24, 1947.

 

[Polterdog]

In it Keel cites his own research consisting of 700 UFO reports in 1966-67, a Dr. David Saunders of Colorado University---"several thousand sightings" and Saunders, Ballester-Orlando and Bonabot---700 sightings in 1950 in the US, Spain and Belgium. He then concludes that there is a periodicity to UFO sightings that clusters on Wednesdays.

In Ted Holiday's The Dragon and the Disc, he relates UFOs to the Eye of Odin (read: Wotan) whose name, of course, has become associated with "hump day", that is to say, Wednesday.

Odin, of course, was a god with one eye -- his missing eye, it was anciently believed, sped about the sky keeping a watch on the earth. That the classic disc-shaped UFO has a dome that resembles an eye-like structure, Holiday feels, is no mistake.

It's a compelling idea and one that Holiday takes even further -- associating the major aspects of Norse mythology with UFO worship. Holiday, of course, does a more thorough and in-depth job than I'm doing here of relating all of this but, if you want to understand why UFOs seem to occur on this one day of the week seemingly more than any other, there are probably worse places to start.

Polterdog.

 

[Anonymous]

Odin´s eye should be speeding around? I haven´t heard that one before. From what I know Odin sacrificed the eye so he could drink from a well of wisdom. But he did have two ravens, which flew around the world and were his eyes and ears.

 

[Polterdog]

Odin´s eye should be speeding around? I haven´t heard that one before. From what I know Odin sacrificed the eye so he could drink from a well of wisdom. But he did have two ravens, which flew around the world and were his eyes and ears.

Merrick,

To be quite honest, I hadn't heard of it either. He refers to the Grimmismal, Voluspa, and other more obscure Scandinavian sources to draw his references from. Since I'm not familiar with these materials, I can neither confirm nor deny. But he definitely seems to be making a distinction between Odin's wandering eye and Huginn (thought) and Munin (memory), Odin's two pet ravens.

Incidentally, I should point out, Holiday isn't making the connection between Odin's lost eye and UFOs appearing on Wednesday -- I am. He does, however, link the UFO phenomena with Norse religion -- it's too complicated to go into here -- and I'm taking it that one step further: suggesting, perhaps, that, in terms of psycho-social phenomena, there may be some link between the concept of a floating "Odin Eye" (a. k. a. UFOs) and their appearance in greater numbers on the day of the week named after the same god.

It might be something to consider.

S'all I'm saying.

Polterdog.

 

[Philo_T]

Could this be the sort of thing I was futilely trying to explain here?

I guess what I was basically trying to get at is the possibility that metaphorical relatiionships, which we normally consider to be human mental constructs, could possibly be playing a real role in what we consider to be 'reality'.

In this case, the Wednesday->Odin->Odin's eye->UFO links.

I'm doing a very good job explaining my thought here.

 

[Polterdog]

I guess what I was basically trying to get at is the possibility that metaphorical relatiionships, which we normally consider to be human mental constructs, could possibly be playing a real role in what we consider to be 'reality'.

In this case, the Wednesday->Odin->Odin's eye->UFO links.

I'm doing a very good job explaining my thought here.

No, Philo, I got it. And I think we may be on the same page. AJ Bell explored such ideas of "inter-connectedness" in the regular Lexilinks column that he wrote for this magazine, way back when. They're quite fun, and fascinating to read, should you ever get the chance.

Taking the idea a bit further, such relationships as the ones we're talking about here, could also be suggestive of a local (or deterministic) universe at play. Looked at in this way, if the universe is a pre-determined system then, perhaps, there are some very real, objective, relationships out there (i. e. the whole Wednesday/UFO thing) that occur as often as they do because they are, for lack of a better phrase, "built into the system". They can't help but occur because they're an intrinsic part of the foundation of reality -- as silly as that may seem.

Of course, on the other hand, it could also very well be the mental construct that you mention or, even more strangely, that as we begin to discern certain patterns of reality, so the reality changes to match our perceptions -- a kind of 'quantum reality' in which the observer affects the results of the experimentation. It would be interesting to see if, in other places that don't have a day of the week devoted to Odin, whether the frequency of UFO reports peaks towards the middle of the week or not. I think the results would be most telling.

Polterdog.

 

[DanTheGPI]

I remember seeing these statistics in the Jacques Vallee book Messengers of Deception.

 

[Polterdog]

I remember seeing these statistics in the Jacques Vallee book Messengers of Deception.

Dan,

Do you happen to remember if the statistics were the same, from one country to another? Or did they differ? I don't have any of Vallee's materials to hand to check myself, but it would be interesting to see the numbers.

Polterdog.

 

[Min Bannister]

Well, I've completely failed to find this list of Statistics I thought was in UFO mag. But they may got them from that book in the first place.

Interesting theory about Odin. Polterdog. Good stuff.

 

[DanTheGPI]

I was wrong about the name of the book it's Revelations: Alien Contact And Human Deception. The statistics aren't broken up by country, they are broken up by day of the week, time of day and type of encounter, some of the figures are taken from work by J. Randles. I can get a scan of the relevant pages from the book and send them to you if you like. Some of what you are saying would seem to tie in with Valee's earlier work on alien encounters and fairy sightings.

 

[Polterdog]

I was wrong about the name of the book it's Revelations: Alien Contact And Human Deception. The statistics aren't broken up by country, they are broken up by day of the week, time of day and type of encounter, some of the figures are taken from work by J. Randles. I can get a scan of the relevant pages from the book and send them to you if you like.

It's really not necessary, but thanks, though. What I'm primarily interested in is the 'other country' statistics which, I think, is the lynch pin on which this theory hinges. I have the sneaky suspicion that it doesn't make a difference, one way or the other (after all, one could argue that ancient Egypt had its Eye of Horus too -- which is another 'god eye'/UFO symbol that could be shoe-horned into this theory) but it might be culturally interesting, in terms of pyscho-social analysis, all the same.

Some of what you are saying would seem to tie in with Valee's earlier work on alien encounters and fairy sightings.

Yes, the good old Golden Chain (the idea that all paranormal matters can be linked together, in one way or another). Holiday actually makes nice work of connecting UFOs to Lake Monsters to, if you can believe it, Apparitions and Norse mythology(!) in his The Dragon and the Disc, which is why I promoted him at the beginning of this thread as having the inside track on why UFOs might appear on Wednesday. If you haven't read it, I really suggest giving this book a look. It really makes for fascinating reading and is in the same Vallee/Keel/Harpur tradition of trying to get an understanding of one paranormal event through thorough field research and ending up putting them all (or nearly all) of them together in order to rationalize what they see going on around them.

Really, a forgotten classic.

Polterdog.