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What Happened To All The Sightings & Abductions?

A certain fraction of sightings have been caused by advanced and specialised planes such as the Valkyrie, A12, U2 and the various stealth fighters and bombers. More recently there have been sightings sparked off by UAV drones, which can look very strange indeed.

I doubt that these misidentifications have been very great in number, but they may explain some of the strangest sightings.
 
Analis said:
It is true that reports of seemingly genuine bigfoot sightings have become sparse. As had sea serpent sightings. Apparently for no other reason that the true number of sightings had actually decreased.

The same could be said of most spectacular fortean. Like poltergeists, or falls of fish and other out-place objects or animals. It seems that these phenomena are incompatible with the development and generalization of instantaneous communication.
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I recall a report in FT a few years ago, that ghost sightings in places formerly known for frequent sightings had dropped off dramatically. Interference from mobile phones was suspected to be a cause.

Not being a scientist, I can't say how, but it could be that electronic communication devices have a more dulling effect on our perceptions that we realize. Or perhaps it's simply that with so much self-absorption in social media, no one is paying much attention these days.
 
bunnymousekitt said:
Analis said:
It is true that reports of seemingly genuine bigfoot sightings have become sparse. As had sea serpent sightings. Apparently for no other reason that the true number of sightings had actually decreased.

The same could be said of most spectacular fortean. Like poltergeists, or falls of fish and other out-place objects or animals. It seems that these phenomena are incompatible with the development and generalization of instantaneous communication.
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I recall a report in FT a few years ago, that ghost sightings in places formerly known for frequent sightings had dropped off dramatically. Interference from mobile phones was suspected to be a cause.

Not being a scientist, I can't say how, but it could be that electronic communication devices have a more dulling effect on our perceptions that we realize. Or perhaps it's simply that with so much self-absorption in social media, no one is paying much attention these days.
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If there has been a general decline since ancient times, could they just be more distributed among a larger world population? Haunted sites notwithstanding.
 
I don't think so. I'd say that the greater population the more likelihood of being observed.

Of course there's a far higher than average chance I've completely failed to grasp the point.
 
oldrover said:
I don't think so. I'd say that the greater population the more likelihood of being observed.

Of course there's a far higher than average chance I've completely failed to grasp the point.
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I don't know. It does seem as though it would be proportional or accumulate in the case of "ghosts" eh? I think less distracted attention can help to those to manifest. Everyone has ADD these days with all of their freaking gizmos. :cry:
 
Are we really sure UFO sightings are on the decline. I cant check my facts or really click on links right now. because this mobile phone is fighting me but I thought 2011 was ghe biggest sighting wave of all time. Give n that we are only 2-3 years off from that, I'd say we are in an era of monster ufo sightings. But another variable at play is people coming to terms more easily with the phenomena, taking it as a spiritual or personal experience, and reporting less often. I've had 3 vivid, non-lights in the sky at a distance sightings and have only reported 1 to mufon.

Another factor is people taking the sightings less seriously on ths whole because they've become so comminplace. i give up on this phone. :D
 
I don't think they're on the decline either. I'd love it if a Phoenix Lights type of sighting or a Chicago O'Hare type of sighting happened, but lasted a lot longer; THAT would shred folks' paradigms nicely. :twisted:
 
I'd suggest that there are probably as many UFO/entity encounters as there have ever been. They just aren't as prominent as they used to be.

Why? Partly because aliens were so overexposed in the late 80's to early 90's that they've become as unfashionable as the Rubik's Cube or MC Hammer.

But also for the same reason that no-one sells millions of albums anymore. If a modern day Dark Side of the Moon or Smile was released today, probably a few thousand people would actually fork over real money for it, and the rest of us would just listen to it for free on Youtube/Spotify/Whatever...

In the past, books by the likes of Jenny Randles, or Whitley Streiber, or John Keel, or whoever, sold like hotcakes because they were our only conduit to the world of High Strangeness.

But nowadays, you can get more High Strangeness than you can possibly deal with in a lifetime just by browsing a few forums or conspiracy podcasts. Which means that it's no longer financially viable for professional authors to write and promote books about the subject. Which in turn means that the subject receives less and less mainstream attention.

Back in the early 50's, George Adamski's claims of encountering Flying Saucer Men from Venus were so outlandish that they excited world wide press coverage. A modern day Adamski would be lucky to attract a few dozen visitors to his blog. Such is life...
 
graylien said:
I'd suggest that there are probably as many UFO/entity encounters as there have ever been. They just aren't as prominent as they used to be.
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UFO and entity encounters, probably. But encounters of entities with UFOs, the classic sightings of entities exiting or coming into a craft or standing near one of them, or CE3s as they have become known, seem to have become really uncommon.
I have looked at the link to Albert's Rosales' site given by Human84. His lists are a worthy source of encounters. For the years 2010-14, I have checked the first 100 of them. There are a few abductions/contacts, and a case involving an entity seen trough the window of a flying object, which qualifies as a CE3, another one describing human shaped bird-like figures flying on round disk-shaped platforms, which might be considered as a CE3. But other cases belong to his categories C (one or maybe two of them), D and E, tallying with Vallée's AN3, plus a number of stranger experiences.

So, the nature of encounters seems to have changed radically. AN3s have always been present, even at the height of the era of CE3s, but now they seem to have become the norm.
 
Analis said:
UFO and entity encounters, probably. But encounters of entities with UFOs, the classic sightings of entities exiting or coming into a craft or standing near one of them, or CE3s as they have become known, seem to have become really uncommon.
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Maybe the alien entities have become more careful, or don't get out much?
 
Mythopoeika said:
Analis said:
UFO and entity encounters, probably. But encounters of entities with UFOs, the classic sightings of entities exiting or coming into a craft or standing near one of them, or CE3s as they have become known, seem to have become really uncommon.
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Maybe the alien entities have become more careful, or don't get out much?
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I suppose they could be finishing up whatever reason they have for abduction. Experiments ending, genetic material collected, etc.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Maybe the alien entities have become more careful, or don't get out much?
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No one gets out much any more. That's why all the pubs are closing. And if people don't go out they won't see UFOs. Simple.
 
I have nursed a theory for some time - it's not original - that while there is something that causes sightings, the way we perceive sightings is affected by the Zeitgeist. UFO's in the 1890's were thought usually to be airships, for example. Ghosts become fairies become gnomes become 'the little people'.

With the huge output of sci-fi from the 40's to the 80's, then would there not be a mindset that was more inclined to perceive a vision of a humanoid as an alien than a ghost or an elf? Also, I'm by no means sure that electronic media stimulates the mind in the same way as the written word, which relies much more on the use of imagination which could then be overlaid on a 'sighting'.

The current mood would seem to lead more towards vampires, zombies and 'angels' than UFO's.

Just a thought!
 
Yeah, but while you hear about witnesses seeing angels, as far as I know hardly anybody reports vampires or zombies. If any at all, in the case of zombies. However, more material criminals - possible murderers or sex attackers - have a very healthy second life in stories (real or imagined) going about these days, and there's no shortage of them in popular fiction. Maybe superheroes will be next (with actual superpowers).
 
Perhaps nobody reports seeing vampires or zombies because there are no survivors :)
 
Human_84 said:
For those people unfamiliar with Albert Rosales' work on organizing and classifying humanoid sightings (often UFO encounters and abductions) you should check this out. Loads and loads of reported activity!

2010-2014 encounters PDF file (283 pages): http://www.ufoinfo.com/humanoid/humanoid-2010.pdf
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This was a fascinating read.

I have to amit that I browsed the UK encounters only, but even so, it disproves the claims that humanoids are no longer seen. Although I have to say my favourite was a 2010 sighting of a 'Spring Heeled Jack' in Surrey with multiple witnesses.

Although I am a dedicated subscriber, I have to say that FT is very negative towards UFOs in general, and certainly haven't reported the many cases in this database. Why not..?

I also believe that there is a perception issue at play here: if you became interested in UFOs in, say, 1995, then the first thing you do is search out the past 60 years worth of sightings. Once you have worked through this huge number of sightings, encounters etc you then sit back and wait for something new to happen. The reality, however, is that there are only a handful of solid cases per year, so it's easy to perceive that nothing much is happening.

TL;DR - crazy stuff is still happening :)
 
Agreed, WeirdExeter!
The "Case Closed" attitude that crept into the FT magazine was the main reason I stopped subscribing after many years of being dedicated to it, sending in clippings, letters etc
Strange Things ARE still happening and being seen (including exiting UFO activity) but they don't suit the current editorial standpoint
This FT Forum is more open minded and more in keeping with the true Fortean tradition, though you can tell by some of the posts that some posters come with their preconceptions based on skeptically biased articles regularly published in the FT magazine
 
As far as UFOs go, I think Jenny Randles provides a nice counterpoint to the scepticism of Clarke and Roberts. Some magazines wouldn't publish contradictory articles at all.
 
dannycheveaux1 said:
Agreed, WeirdExeter!
The "Case Closed" attitude that crept into the FT magazine was the main reason I stopped subscribing after many years of being dedicated to it, sending in clippings, letters etc
Strange Things ARE still happening and being seen (including exiting UFO activity) but they don't suit the current editorial standpoint
This FT Forum is more open minded and more in keeping with the true Fortean tradition, though you can tell by some of the posts that some posters come with their preconceptions based on skeptically biased articles regularly published in the FT magazine
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Seconded. I have a great deal of respect for Jenny Randles, but she does seem to get drowned out nowadays.

I'm very much a follower of Nick Redfern, especially his Cannock Chase era. He proved that if you get involved in an area and appeal for witneesses then people will come forward with all manner of paranormal encounters. Lee Brickley also did a worthy follow up to Nick's work.

I am not an unquestioning believer in the ETH hypothesis, but people - every day people - are seeing very strange things. I wish FT would commission researchers to get out there and find answers, instead of allowing desk-bound skeptics to dismiss them out of hand.
 
Cochise said:
I have nursed a theory for some time - it's not original - that while there is something that causes sightings, the way we perceive sightings is affected by the Zeitgeist. UFO's in the 1890's were thought usually to be airships, for example. Ghosts become fairies become gnomes become 'the little people'.

With the huge output of sci-fi from the 40's to the 80's, then would there not be a mindset that was more inclined to perceive a vision of a humanoid as an alien than a ghost or an elf?
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I believe that it was more a mater of to report and to interpret. In FT 306, S.D. Tucker stated that faerie was a word used to encompass all matter of paranormal phenomena, notably entities that were as diverse as they are today, and poltergeist manifestations. For religion inclined people, demonic sometimes fitted the same purpose. Similarly, I believe that extraterrestrial or alien had become a catch-all word for sightings of unusual entities in the second half of the 20th century, whether they were seen in conjunction with a craft-like object or not, and how diverse they looked like. At the time, people were relunctant to use the notions of fairies, demonic or ghostly. The paradox is that now that CE3s have become rare, such denominations are coming back.

gncxx said:
Yeah, but while you hear about witnesses seeing angels, as far as I know hardly anybody reports vampires or zombies. If any at all, in the case of zombies.
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That's the same problem we are always left with, the disconnection between sightings and popular culture. This statement notably does not fit with any kind of explanations locating an origin of manifestations in the human mind, not only psychosocial explanations, it also seems to rule out parapsychological/paraphysical explanations, like the notion that apparitions are some kind of tulpas generated by the collective unconscious.
 
Heck, I noticed CE3Ks seemed to be fading in favor of abductions in the early eighties. I never knew what to make of abductions (though I don't want to call the witnesses/victims liars). At least no one had to be hypnotized to recall a CE3K.

A thing that bothers me is the attempt to make all UFO occupants sound like Grays (with a few Reptoids and Nordics thrown in). The entities mentioned in decades of CE3K reports form a vast and bizarre array. I've seen artwork and comic book stories trying to depict encounters of the past (the Kelly/Hopkinsville goblins, for example) as encounters with Grays.

Now that I've been reviewing some old UFO books, I notice quite a few reports that seemed to have little to do with UFOs. Leonard Stringfield's Situation Red: The UFO Siege carries stories of a "satyr", a "werewolf", and other odd things with nary a UFO in sight.

Now that I have Close Encounter at Kelly and Others of 1955, it's interesting to read that the only witness in the Hopkinsville case to see a "flying saucer" was Billy Ray Taylor -- and that the rest of the family involved didn't think very highly of him or his powers of observation.

Don't quite know where I'm going with this -- maybe I'm saying that the books and magazines of the past were bulked up with reports of everything from weird dwarves seen beside a highway to Flight Nineteen and other disappearances -- non-UFO stories that made the number of UFO reports seem even larger than it was.
 
That's a darn good point, almost everything weird was fair game for the UFO books of my youth (and before). It was a veritable kaleidoscope of strange accounts. The Pascagoula aliens were grey, but they sure weren't Greys.
 
amarok2005 said:
Now that I have Close Encounter at Kelly and Others of 1955, it's interesting to read that the only witness in the Hopkinsville case to see a "flying saucer" was Billy Ray Taylor -- and that the rest of the family involved didn't think very highly of him or his powers of observation.
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That's a fine point. Kelly Hopkinsville siege would be labelled category C under Rosales' classification, entities seen in the vicinity of a UFO.
This case is often referred to as the goblins of Hopkinsville, usually not to be taken literrally. But in a different context, they would have truly been considered as faerie/goblins.
 
It's fascinating to notice how unimaginable it is nowadays that someone would make a career out of UFO's and that he should be taken seriously (Hynek, Klass). And that abductees should be taken seriously. The whole media landscape has changed. Indeed, the Zeitgeist has changed. There should be some sociological studies about this somewhere. Does anyone know some?
 
uair01 said:
It's fascinating to notice how unimaginable it is nowadays that someone would make a career out of UFO's and that he should be taken seriously (Hynek, Klass). And that abductees should be taken seriously. The whole media landscape has changed. Indeed, the Zeitgeist has changed. There should be some sociological studies about this somewhere. Does anyone know some?
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No, but I'm pretty sure they'd be very, very boring! ;)
 
uair01 said:
It's fascinating to notice how unimaginable it is nowadays that someone would make a career out of UFO's and that he should be taken seriously (Hynek, Klass). And that abductees should be taken seriously. The whole media landscape has changed. Indeed, the Zeitgeist has changed. There should be some sociological studies about this somewhere. Does anyone know some?
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Indeed. I've been meaning to say something like this for a while now.

There seems to be a widespread attitude that everything is done and dusted and that questions of the past are no longer relevant and have been fully decided. I find it a strange attitude but nevertheless it does seem widespread.

Paradoxically, Youtube is full of purported UFO sightings but clearly many of them are obvious CGI (albeit increasing high quality!). Perhaps this ubiquity of very high quality CGI is part of what causes many people to say: "Oh, the mystery is over: It's all been decided hasn't it?".

But there are other causes too as I see it. Two of them leap to mind.

First is the resolution of millennial fears: There was no world war in 1999, disasters did not happen, and latterly the world did not come to an end in 2012[1]. The fear (no matter how slight it might have been in most people's minds) is gone and now people can become blasé about it. E.g. "Oh, it's all done and dusted isn't it... it's all been decided, there never was a mystery, etc.". I realise here that I am conflating wider Fortean issues with UFO-related issues but I think that they merge into a single group of 'mysteriousness' in people's minds. Additionally, a younger generation is beginning to find its voice, a generation which was never so concerned with last century's UFO (and other Fortean) issues. To this generation, all these issues are well... so last century.

The second reason is what seems to me to be an increasing reliance amongst many people on 'big providers'. What I mean by 'big providers' here are large organisations both public sector and private that people increasingly choose to rely on. This can be exhibited both in terms of greater reliance on the state and on greater reliance on private service providers of all sorts[2]. (The growth of and massively increasing popularity of cloud providers on the Internet is one particular manifestation of this trait). The point being that this mental state of reliance on a 'big other' (not simply a nanny state but a nanny economy, if you will) bleeds over into a kind of implicit acceptance of the 'big other's' world view, an acceptance of the status quo. E.g. The mental model of "Don't question it, there is officially no mystery so it's all sorted out, isn't it."



Footnotes:-
1: That said, I wonder if future generations might well look back at the period of 1999-2001 to the 2010s and say: "That's when it all began".

2: This too is paradoxical: Even as people realise ever more than before that both governments and large corporations are untrustworthy and often unreliable they also seem to be bent on putting more and trust and reliance into such organisations. Paradoxical but that's what is happening.
 
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