Prepare for Disclosure. Prepare for War.

I hosted a roundtable this past April that consisted of four of some of the most recognizable personalities in UFO research. For the second time I had the pleasure of speaking with disclosure activist Stephen Bassett. More often than not, my thoughts on disclosure have been somewhat polarized. I believe whole-heartedly in letting the public decide for themselves what they should believe and how they should interpret the beliefs of others. It is this free will that defines our desire to be individuals and is part of the essence of being human. I agree that “national security” has been more of a security blanket used as a catch-all for anything that falls outside of the realm of definable and controllable phenomena. So do I agree with the idea that disclosure is needed? Yes, and I also agree that it is our right as Americans and citizens of the world to demand it. Do I think the world is ready for it? No. No, I do not, and this is where I will diverge from the research of many of my peers in saying that I have enormous faith in humanity, yet no faith in humanity’s ability to organize and implement governing systems, and this is where we constantly fall apart.

Disclosure represents many things, but at its core it is about the dissemination of truth. Truth is the seminal double-edged sword. The sigh of relief that accompanies truth is wrought with barbs that often tear, mangle and incapacitate in its release. With disclosure comes truth and I think the brand of truth that many UFOlogists seek often strips the emotion from the experience and looks at validation and confirmation, but not necessarily closure, and I’m talking about the kind of closure that comes from finally coming to terms with trauma. Trauma is a rarely used word in UFO culture. We are all prone to throw around terms like “advanced propulsion”  and “aerial maneuvers” but trauma is a bird of a different feather. If I were inclined to use trauma in reference to the UFO phenomena, and more importantly the ET “problem” I might say. “ the way in which the subject was taken from their home, subjected to multiple tests that were both intrusive physically and of a sexual nature left the victim in a state of shock that led to long term psychiatric issues stemming from the initial trauma”. I think that could be an accurate way to use the word effectively. It might also be the same phrasing used in a police report to describe an assault, a rape, or a kidnapping. It is, however, a phrase you would also expect to hear in an account of an alien abduction, and it is the abduction phenomena that raises not only some serious questions for me about disclosure, but some very serious concerns as well.

How do you try another planet for their crimes? The legal issues alone surrounding disclosure are near insurmountable. Are we expected to wipe the slate clean once the smoke of cloak and dagger has dissipated? What about the victims of abductions that have lost their family, friends, jobs and their credibility over what they have experienced? Is it going to be easy for them to see a race absolved of guilt, while they are expected to still seek closure on their own as victims unavenged? Will there be any recompense for the lost time, the lost dollars on therapy, the lost sanity of the “experiencers” once the veil of conspiracy has lifted. Further more, who does take responsibility?

It is responsibility that possibly troubles me the most. How will the world’s governments look in the eyes of their people, regardless of how they try to spin it? What will their angle be or, more importantly, is there one that at all? To admit that they were unaware of the phenomena to a point or even unable to adequately control it points toward negligence worthy of a global outcry. If they admit involvement, they become the very enemies of the people they were sworn to protect. If the problem is so far out of their control they are admitting that their protection is, at best, a smokescreen; another lie to placate a public whose interests they haven’t fully served.

Let’s take the former and the implications that the situation is unable to be controlled by our world’s governments. If this is the case, we need to look not only at the criminal activities of the guilty party (Plaedians, greys, Taliban, etc) but the crimes against humanity that they are also responsible for:

1. Violation of Restricted Air Space – If disclosure reveals that craft have been coming and going at their leisure, that means our national security has been violated innumerable times.

2. Abduction, Restraint and Torture of Private Citizens – The abduction phenomena,       complex and sometimes terrifying in all of its David Lynchesque facets, represents an intrusion and torture on a level reminiscent of waterboarding.

3. Animal Cruelty and Terrorism -  Cattle mutilations represent a level of detached indifference that startles and horrifies those who witness the end result. The tendency to leave the carcass could be seen as psychological intimidation as well (think this is a reach? If they really wanted to be discrete, I’m sure they could find a better disposal method rather than just throwing it out their car window into the ditch)

So what does all of this mean? What is means to me is that a party or parties hitherto unidentified have been committing acts of tyranny, violence and psychological intimidation worthy of a declaration of war. Once the parties responsible have been identified (in this case through disclosure) how are we to deal with them in a manner that holds them responsible for what they have done? How would we be able to combat their technologies to even hold them accountable?

I am still an advocate of disclosure, however. The truth, no matter how painful or difficult is still the truth. I think it is just going to be a bittersweet truth that could very possibly blow forth the winds of war.

Are We Truly Prepared for Contact: What District 9 Represents

This summer's alien offering, District 9, might have a little more gore and gristle than the typical Independence Day "time to meet the aliens" contact outing, but it also has a message that resonates on a deeper level: if contact is imminent and we are faced with the interstellar pot-luck that contact could imply, are we ready?

The film, which carries a very strong socio-political message about mankind's inability to tolerate and co-exist with the different factions and races within itself, raises a few strong questions that seem to go largely unasked in UFOlogical circles. One of these questions is very simple. Have we celebrated and glamorized the idea of contact to fantastic heights that will undermine the very event itself? What if we aren't looking at Adamski's and Meijer's visitor's. What if we aren't face with the Nordic visages of the Plaeidians? What if, in fact, OUR visitors appear grotesque and not humanoid at all? We as humans seem to have a hard enough time dealing with different colors, even deformities, but what about an extending pair of mandibles or a prehensile tail that can decapitate with the same lethal force as a grizzly bear? What if on top of their appearance they were more agile, stronger, faster, and prone to the same aggressive outbursts that we ourselves are privy too? Some race is bound to circumvent their own extinction sooner or later none the wiser?

Let's suppose that for one moment there is the possibility that they don't come bearing gifts. What if instead of handing out a Sear's Roebuck catalog of new technology and extending the olive branch, solving our problems, they need OUR help. Then we are faced with a slightly new Malthusian argument. What if they are seeking refuge or even sanctuary? What if we are looking at a planet-wide exodus where their surviving numbers increase our own by 20%? 40%? Our scientific pursuits aren't always altruistic. What if we had to divert our research to sustaining a population that explodes instantaneously?

I think a film like District 9 is meant to entertain the audience with sometimes a heavy handed undercurrent of introspection. It uses aliens, explosions and the fantastic, allowing us to look at our own prejudices through the shimmery veil of Hollywood. My final question, and one that might seem as heavy handed as the politic laden District 9, is this: Has the UFO community spun a veil of it's own, leaving us as unprepared and as prone to mistakes as the very real kind of antagonists that make District's conflict not only a plausible one, but perhaps a disappointingly prophetic one?

Interstellar Kid Gloves: A Child Abduction Observation

This month marks a year that I have been broadcasting my weekly show on the paranormal. No, this isn’t a shameless plug, and I am guilty of it enough to know when I’m actually NOT doing it. Having the show has afforded me the opportunity to meet many interesting and many opinionated people. It has also helped to lay a baseline of similarities in experiences that I have shared with some of my guests. One guest in particular happened to be Paul Shroeder, a self-proclaimed abductee. Paul’s case, like most abductees starts out weird and graduates to a level of high strangeness that a lot of abductees share that makes their experiences not only hard to categorize even in the paranormal, but often the subject of ridicule in a field that usually frowns upon narrow mindedness.

I rarely relate my own experiences because I have tried to take the focus off of myself not only in interviews with my guests, but because I feel as though I’m on a different journey of discovery right now. I, however, cannot deny when an experience related to me shares some of the same qualities as my own. Like many abductees, Paul Schroeder’s experiences in adulthood have triggered memories reaching back into his childhood. Not unlike Paul, I myself have a childhood memory that has troubled me far into the current stages of my life.

I was raised in a rural part of Illinois, just far enough south of Chicago to practically feel as though we existed in an entirely different country. My father worked third shift as an electrician at a local automotive factory and, like most men his age in that part of the country, basically worked all of the time. We had a single level ranch home at the edge of town at the end of a dead end street. Bordered on one side by the small rural town that served as our community, two cornfields and an old abandoned elementary school fenced us in on the others.

The old school was a magnet to many of the kids living on the three or four blocks surrounding the old edifice. The building itself was off limits, but the old playground was for the most part intact, and inviting to those kids whose parents couldn’t police them enough to keep them off of the property, My parents figured I was close enough to come calling with a skinned knee and let my sister (five years my senior) and I play there almost everyday. Eventually the bond between my sister and myself would wane as boys started to take interest in her and I suddenly became the annoying little. Suffice it to see that playground became more of a gathering place for her and her friends to socialize and less of a place where I would have had the social opportunity of the more often used and approved park on the other side of town. It was close however and close meant more play time and less time to-and-from.

My bedroom was less of a sanctuary than the old playground and I can remember the uneasiness I often felt alone in that room. I was an extremely difficult child to get out of my parents’ bedroom and often suffered bad dreams and night terrors that would land me back in the comfort of their bed, much to their chagrin, I’m sure. I had a closet that always felt particularly suspicious in its ominous and most sinister presence and a window that felt equally malevolent to me. It is the memory of that window, moreso than the closet that serves as muse and monster to me now.

I was no more than seven when my own stranger came calling. My favorite book was an illustrated number called “Grandpa’s Ghost Stories” In retrospect, this might be one of the earliest memories of my fascination with the bizarre. Of course, I can still only speculate if it is cause or effect. I would often have my mother read this book to me and the protagonist’s journey through the spirit world somehow excited my curiosity the way baseball cards did other children. It would not be phantoms that would hijack my fears and feed on my terror, but something else entirely.

I had no reason to wake up from my sleep and look out that window. There was no noise, no light, no reason. I just did. What I saw wouldn’t occupy even a margin note in “Grandpa’s Ghost Stories”. Children typically don’t scare other children unless they’re the school bully or have an illness that isn’t understood by the child brain. Children playing by themselves rarely scare other children at all. Instead, their lack of social brand is often viewed as an opportunity to meet another child or claim a little stake on valuable playground property.

The child that I saw playing outside of my home when I was seven, quite simply shouldn’t have been there. Not alone. Not in the middle of the night. Not looking at me, looking at him. There shouldn’t have been that much light around him. In fact, I couldn’t remember seeing exactly where the light was coming from, it was just there showing me what my eyes couldn’t in the blackness outside my window. As curious as kids are , that curiosity knows little loyalty and jumps from one thing to the next like a lonely fall wind. This child was fixated on me and when he smiled I remembered the animatronic Teddy Ruxpin that my family had purchased for me for X-Mas. It could open its mouth and even tell me a story, but it could never quite match its inflection with its robotic maw. It was a device used to mimic a very human and very simple emotion. It was supposed to endear the toy to the child and become its best friend. That’s easy for a stuffed teddy bear to do with children. They usually don’t even have to talk.

I was glad that this Teddy Ruxpin, standing spotlighted outside of my childhood home had not tried to talk. I think the awkwardness of it might have been too much even for my “Grandpa’s Ghost Stories” kid-brain to wrap itself around. As it stood, I do remember being very confused as if someone had pulled a quarter out from behind my ear; knowing that someone had just played a trick on you that had nothing to do with magic, yet still not knowing how they did it. One thought still permeates the fog between then and now: This is a kid that really isn’t a kid. I felt like I was somehow looking at an adult that had managed to disguise itself as a potential playmate. It had all the coverings of another seven year old, but its motives were far older.

This is where my memory ends and I have no idea where it comes from, or if the event itself escalated at that point in time. I only have assumptions, and they are quite varied.
So as I was listening to Paul Schroeder tell me about his experience as a child, I felt that same recognition that as different as these experiences might be in context, there are similarities that although offer little in the way of answers, might at least give clues to motive in method and process.

The abduction experience among children has some defining characteristics similar amongst experiencers. While most scenarios in the adult years are often frightening and nightmarish, the approach to children seem to be different, if not somewhat, still awkward. Children seem to be drawn into the experience, being allowed to slightly acclimate themselves to the dream like quality of the event, often looking out of a window or down a flight of stairs. Adults on the other hand, are definitely thrust into the “kid gloves are off” arena of experience. This raises a lot of questions.

I find it hard to believe that the differences here are based on any sensitivity on part of the entities. I have come to suspect that although these powerful forces are capable of emotion, it is usually of ill temperance. What then would be the provocation to adjust the methods that, albeit take no account of the subject’s well being, seem to be an across the board used routine for the adults of our species? Maybe we’ve been approaching this from the wrong direction. Maybe it’s not a misplaced politeness on the part of our invasive little visitors, but a much warranted apprehension.

What if the process of child abduction and the way it tends to vary from adult abduction is not so much preferential as precautionary? This certainly separates the sentiment from the sentient with our hosts, but it definitely follows in line with their cold and pragmatic behaviors. Again, this might not be leading us to any new answers, but it might start us on the road to asking the right questions.