- 3 weeks ago
THE CASE OF THE UFO'S.
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00:17This work is controversial and still disputed by many scientists, but if Brady and Persinger
00:23are right, it might explain the sort of thing that is alleged to have happened in this northern
00:27Arizona forest. It was near dusk on November 5, 1975. A truckload of forestry workers were
00:35making their way home when they saw something strange to one side of the road. They stopped,
00:41and one of them, Travis Walton, got out to take a closer look. As he got nearer, something
00:49happened that made his companions panic. It was hovering up here, just below the tops
00:59of the trees, and it was about 20, 25 feet in diameter. What he saw was a bright object
01:06hovering in midair. When I got up about here, I crouched down behind
01:15a log, and I could hear a sound coming from it. It was kind of a very strange mechanical
01:20sound, and I was kind of wrestling with the idea of being so close to this. I'd expected
01:25it to take off, you know. In running up here, I figured this was my last chance to see this
01:32thing up close, but I decided I'd better get the hell out of there, and as I raised up and
01:39turned to go, I felt this numbing shock and blacked out. The guys in the truck said they
01:45saw this brilliant beam come out of the bottom of the crowd and hit me in the head and the
01:50chest and knocked me flying through the air. When his companions returned to the scene,
01:56they found no sign of Travis. He maintains that he blacked out and came to inside a strange
02:02room. I didn't regain consciousness very quickly. I was very groggy and in a lot of pain, but
02:09when I could finally focus my eyes, I saw these creatures standing over me, which just flipped
02:14me out immediately. I was pretty hysterical. I was screaming all kinds of things at them,
02:18and they started towards me, and I grabbed a thing off of the table there and lashed out
02:24at them, and they stopped. They just kind of put their hands up like that at me, and then
02:30they just turned around and left the room, and I was afraid they'd come back, so I was
02:38going to try to find a way out of there. I guess I kind of assumed I was still, or
02:43that
02:43the craft was still here in the woods, but I went looking for a way out. I went into another
02:51room, and as I was looking for a way out, another being came in, and this was a very human
02:59appearing
02:59person. He led me out of this craft, which appeared to be parked inside of a larger building
03:07or a larger craft. He just took me right out of there, down a hallway to a room where there
03:14were some other people who looked like him. They put this mask over my face. It was kind
03:19of like an oxygen mask thing. There was no hose connected to it. They put it over my face,
03:24and that was the last thing I knew. I just blacked out.
03:27Travis Walton says that the incident ended four days later, when he found himself lying at the
03:32side of a road not far away. One explanation for what happened may lie in the working of
03:37the human brain, according to Dr. Persinger.
03:40Now, the area we're interested in is right through here, right below this particular fissure,
03:45and this is called the temporal lobe, and to appreciate the structures we're really interested
03:51in, we'd have to cut the brain this way, transversely or coronally. Now, this particular part of the
03:58brain is one of the most electrically unstable regions throughout the entire area. If one
04:04stimulates this region right here, which is the hippocampal region, and including the amygdaloid
04:09area, one can get all types of experiences, such as the release of dreamlike experiences into the
04:16waking state, a modification of memory, even partial amnesia, and a confabulation, that is,
04:23the filling in of that amnesia or that blank space with fantasy. And that fantasy is a function
04:29of what the person believes or has been taught or has experienced. One of the most interesting
04:35aspects of stimulating this part of the brain is the meaningfulness of it. There's a cosmic
04:39experience type of effect by stimulating this part of the brain. In fact, it is very similar
04:44to a type of religious experience.
04:46Dr. Persinger feels that what happened at Fatima in Portugal in the early years of this century
04:51history can be explained in this way.
04:54Dr. Several thousands of people saw a luminous display. They thought it was the sun because
04:59they had no other word for it. They called it the sun, but it was below the clouds. Estimated
05:0430,000 people saw that event. Those that were closest to it had the richest imagery and experience.
05:11Those that were far away only saw the ball of light. Those that were very close and of one
05:17religious persuasion saw Joseph or whatever. Those that were of another religious persuasion
05:22thought they saw Christ. The camera only saw a ball of light.
05:27Dr. Persinger believes that a similar luminous display had an effect on Travis Walton.
05:31Dr. The Travis Walton case supports the model extraordinarily well. He is basically a almost
05:38six-foot conductor, semiconductor that walked very close to the tremendous luminous display,
05:43tremendous potential there. The discharge occurred between him and the part of his body that
05:50was closest to the ball, which was his head and his chest. The ensuing events seemed to
05:55indicate a case of partial amnesia and of consequent confabulation. In other words, the amnesia
06:01of those three or four days were filled in with fantasy. But the point is, since the part
06:06of the brain that is involved with memory and experience was modified by this severe shock,
06:12he would not necessarily be lying. He may actually believe that that's what happened to him.
06:17Others wanted to be sure. The National Enquirer has long had an interest in UFOs and in selling
06:24newspapers. They asked Walton to take a lie detector test and called in the services of Jack McCarthy.
06:29I received a call at my home asking me to come to the Sheraton Hotel in Scottsdale and not to
06:39tell anybody
06:39where I was going, period. Well naturally I told my wife and picked up my portable equipment and left for
06:49the hotel.
06:51A lie detector is used to reveal whether a person is telling the truth
06:55by measuring pulse rate, respiration and blood pressure. Some experts, however, doubt its reliability.
07:05But after two hours of questioning and recording the reactions, McCarthy thought he had the answer.
07:10When I completed my examinations, after reading my charts, I rendered the opinion to the reporters from the National Enquirer
07:19that the charts were deceptive and that in my opinion he was attempting to perpetrate a UFO hoax.
07:27Well, the lid blew off the room. I thought his brother Dwayne was going to throw me off the balcony.
07:35He was raging like a bull, saying that no way that his brother would lie. And his charts were very,
07:41very clear, obviously deceptive.
07:46And prior to the examination, the reporters from the National Enquirer, I forgot to mention this,
07:52asked me if I would have any objection ahead of time to having pictures taken on my charts, the equipment
07:59and myself following the examination.
08:01I said, no, no problem. Well, after I rendered my opinion, the pictures were completely forgotten.
08:08They had no more interest in pictures. But what they did do, they went into an adjoining room
08:11and drew up a little form for me to sign, asked me to sign it, to the effect that I
08:18wouldn't reveal where I had been that day,
08:20that I would say nothing about this examination, and so forth and so on.
08:26Travis Walton argues that he failed the test because he was excessively nervous as a result of his recent
08:31close encounter with aliens. Despite his claim of being overly nervous, his reactions on the chart
08:40are in self a disclaimer to that contention. He was not overly nervous. His reactions were normal.
08:46They were very deceptive. And in my opinion, he was lying and did not take any UFO trip.
08:55So McCarthy felt the entire experience was a hoax. Travis Walton was given another test sometime later,
09:02which he did pass, although the procedure used has been criticized. Despite the controversy,
09:07the National Enquirer gave the forestry workers the UFO Encounter of the Year Award,
09:12with checks amounting to a total of $5,000.
09:17We've just heard from Wellington Radar that we've got an object about a mile behind us, and it's following us.
09:23Of course, we can't see it. Let's hope they're friendly.
09:29Two to three years later, on New Year's Day 1978, television news broadcasts throughout the world carried
09:35what is perhaps the most widely publicized UFO sighting of all time. They're still there.
09:41You can see the one to the right of us is still reasonably bright.
09:47These pictures of the UFO were shot in New Zealand by a film crew that happened to be aboard a
09:51plane in the area.
09:55It's really getting a bit frightening up here. There's a whole formation of unidentified flying objects
10:03behind us. We'll just have to wait to see what happens.
10:11This is how the news reported it, but it might be worthwhile to take a closer look at what actually
10:16happened that night. The film was shot from this, an Argosy freighter. We asked the pilot, Captain Bill
10:24Startup, to take us through part of what happened that night, flying the same route.
10:32The Argosy had already made one trip earlier. It had flown from Wellington in the North Island,
10:37down the coast to Christchurch.
10:44It was on the return trip heading north that the most dramatic sightings were made.
10:48They started shortly after take-off.
10:55Now we just, we just come out, climbed out, and we're through 50 hundred feet nearly,
11:00and we spot this big bright light on the horizon over there. And it's just like the moon, full moon
11:06coming up. I turned the aircraft radar on, and there, um, see, right about 20 miles away was
11:13just an image. Um, it's certainly far brighter than any boat we ever came across. So we continued to
11:20climb out, and it held the position relative to us the whole way, um, just constant, as though in fact
11:26you were closing on a boat. But it was a big image, and, uh, we just continued to watch it.
11:31It was just a
11:32fascinating bright light at that stage. They maintained the northerly course, filming the strange light
11:38intermittently, until eventually curiosity got the better of them, and they decided to take a closer
11:43look. We were 35 miles out now, and the light had come right close to us. So, and repeatedly passed
11:51the underneath. So I decided we'd have a look at it. Here, they diverted to the right of their planned
11:57course, and obtained most of the really striking pictures later shown on the news. The UFOs began
12:04dancing around the aircraft just three minutes after take-off from Christchurch. At one time,
12:09there were as many as six. Radar in the aircraft and on the ground confirmed the unidentified flying
12:15objects about 10 miles from the plane. Using a slow-motion freeze-frame technique, the incredibly
12:23clear contours of the huge craft can be seen. The cameraman and reporter reckoned it was at least
12:29a hundred feet long. There is clearly a dome on top of the saucer's shape, and through the camera lens,
12:36streams of lights could be seen whirling round the object. Part of the drama of those pictures seems
12:43to be the result of the cameraman changing the focus of the image, making it over-large and mysterious
12:49in appearance. But what about the rapid whirling movements of the UFO?
12:58The film shot on the plane that night has now been analyzed by an American scientist,
13:03Bruce McAbee. An optical physicist and a believer in UFOs, here he is determining the original brightness
13:10of the light. The frame's convoluted loop, recorded in a twentieth of a second, is believed by some to be
13:20proof of the extraordinary maneuverability of the alien spaceship. But now, even Bruce McAbee accepts this
13:27is unlikely. Well, the shape of this loop, in my interpretation, is that the camera was bumped.
13:34The alternative suggestions is that there were normal vibrations going on and somehow the camera stopped
13:42running for one frame. And, of course, the third alternative is that the object itself made some
13:49sort of a high-speed motion. But I tend towards the bumping theory myself.
13:55But McAbee does feel that other movements of the light show that it is under intelligent control.
14:00That rolling and turning, again, is not a natural occurrence of any known thing. Certainly isn't an
14:06airport beacon or whatever that would have been on the ground and in some fixed position. So I would say
14:12that there are indications of intelligence. But where that intelligence came from, how it got there,
14:19there's no direct indication of that. Others are equally convinced that the flashing lights are
14:26navigation beacons and that the rapid movement is the effect of vibration and bumping on a handheld camera.
14:33In the same way that these airport lights roll and turn.
14:45It is suggested, however, that the out of focus light seen earlier was something else.
14:51One of these, a lone Japanese squid boat.
14:58Each summer, a huge fleet of them regularly fish the New Zealand waters.
15:04It's a huge amount of light.
15:04As they work through the night, they are festooned with powerful lights.
15:11McAbee accepts that the light intensity is about right for a squid boat approximately 10 miles away.
15:18But he thinks it was moving too fast for a sea vessel and is puzzled as to why there is
15:23no apparent
15:23reflection of a light in the water. The skeptics argue that other sightings from that night were the
15:29results of the combination of exceptional visibility and bright lights on the nearby shore. But Captain
15:34Startup disagrees.
15:36We're 25 miles out of Wellington and we've been watching these lights for some time on and off
15:42on or off. And they appeared out just near the center of the nose of the airplane. And we could
15:48see the
15:48Kaikoura Township lights very clearly. And these were above them. You can see along that coastline,
15:54at night, the trains and the cars and all that sort of thing. They were quite different. They were out
16:00to the right. And these were off the coast and above the township of Kaikoura.
16:06So were the strange lights seen that night terrestrial or extraterrestrial? Atmospheric
16:12physicist Bill Ireland. I think he saw the lights of Christchurch. Now the airplane was around about
16:19here at the time and Christchurch was down there. It was a very clear night so it could have been
16:27quite
16:27easy for them to see the lights from this position right away back up here. The lights were doing some
16:33peculiar things. And I think this was because the air was very clear. This led them to believe that
16:38they were seeing UFOs. Bill Ireland conducted an investigation into the sightings and feels that
16:44they saw nothing extraordinary that night. I think they saw things which can be quite easily explained
16:51such as city lights or squid boats or lighthouses. I would point out that I could find no example which
17:05they gave which could not be explained this way. UFO believers however are convinced there is
17:12significance in the apparent connection or tie-up between the local radar reports and the sightings
17:17made by the crew aboard the plane. I'm now looking over towards the right of the aircraft and we
17:24have an object confirmed by Wellington Radar. It's been following us for quite a while. It's about four
17:30miles away and it looks like a very faint star but then it emits a very bright white and green
17:37light.
17:38We can now see the lights of Christchurch in front of us and we've just been informed by Christchurch
17:43radar that there are six unidentified objects coming straight towards us. Nobody can actually recall
17:51making that last statement. Nevertheless any radar echo which had a corresponding light seen at the
17:56same location is particularly interesting. Bruce Maccabee maintains there were at least five such tie-ups
18:03and there's no doubt they tried to find them that night. At one point Wellington Radar saw a blip
18:09closing fast on the Argosy and called Captain Starter. And then he indicated that the image
18:16on the radar screen on the aircraft would virtually merge together. Then he said they were behind us
18:23by a couple of miles so at that stage both of us having looked around and about 55 miles out
18:30of Christchurch
18:31we started to go into the turn. It was a full 360 degree turn. They were looking for a light.
18:43Anything
18:44that could account for the radar blip. It was the second orbit that night in which they had looked for
18:49a cause of the radar echoes from something nearby. The first time they had seen nothing. It was causing some
18:57concern to me because we had no control over it at all. So we continued down in constant altitude.
19:07Again a little bit more than curiosity I think this time when I really reflect back on it. We did
19:12the
19:12orbit and there was no sign of what it was. Strangely as we went round Wellington who could still reach
19:19us
19:20had the two images. Went round. Nothing. Surprising. It was not surprising to the investigating scientist who
19:29claims much to the annoyance of the believers that there were no radar visual tie-ups that were close
19:34enough to be convincing. But there's no denying that the radar controller saw something which they
19:39regarded as unusual. John Cordy was not on duty the night of the filming but he has seen this sort
19:45of
19:45UFO echo before. They had exactly the same appearance as an aircraft echo. Now I don't personally think they
19:57were solid garbage but that sense was there. They could have been and certainly there was nothing in
20:05the echoes response on the screen that would lead you to it to think it was a rain shower or
20:10something
20:11like this which you can tell. Now it's interesting I think in that connection to point out that the
20:17function of an air traffic controller is to maintain safe separation between an airplane and another
20:25aircraft and yet the Wellington radar traffic controller did not bother even to call Captain Startup's
20:36plane and say I have unknown targets in your vicinity. He did not do that until Captain Startup
20:44called and said I've got a TV camera crew on board. Do you have any interesting blips for me? And
20:51then the
20:51traffic controller said oh yes I have one I think 10 miles ahead or five miles to your left or
20:59six miles to the right and so on.
21:00And the interesting thing is that if Captain Startup at that point really thought that there was some
21:08unknown aircraft in his vicinity or directly ahead of him he would certainly have said to the controller
21:15please vector me out of the way. If this is a craft, if you don't know its identity, if it's
21:23not operating under
21:24your control, vector me around it because I don't want to run the risk of a collision. Yet Captain Startup
21:32didn't ask for such directions nor did the traffic controller volunteer them. And so based on that
21:39I think each of them knew that these were simply atmospheric angels or anomalous blips.
21:47We have to be rather careful when we do pass odd messages to aircraft because you mustn't distract
21:55the pilot from his primary duty which is flying the airplane safely. And Jeff may have felt that
22:01Captain Startup had enough on his plate with flying the airplane, trying to look out the window,
22:06talk to the cameraman without being distracted by calls from air traffic. If nobody believed they
22:12were really solid objects, the question remains what caused them? The weather, according to Bill Ireland.
22:20During the New Zealand summers extreme atmospheric conditions can arise. Hot dry winds can cross over
22:27cold moist winds in such a way that at the interface between the two a violent turbulence occurs.
22:34But to the naked eye there is nothing to be seen.
22:39The Rocky Mountains of Colorado. As the air from those snowy peaks rolls across the prairies,
22:45it passes over a very sensitive radar. It belongs to the government's environmental research laboratory.
22:51And looking directly upwards there's apparently nothing to be seen except very high clouds.
22:57But the radar tells another story. The display is traced out by a pen recorder and the interesting
23:04feature is that wavy line. Dr. Russell Chadwick. What we see here is undulating return is in the
23:13optically clear atmosphere. If you went up there you wouldn't see anything. There's nothing there
23:18except turbulence and water vapor. In other words, the radar can see things that we can't see with the
23:26human eye. On airport radar with its much degraded resolution would see these as being amorphous blogs that
23:37would tend to move and undulate on the screen. Maybe one moment they might be mistaken for an aircraft.
23:45It would simply be a dot on their display. The next moment it might be something entirely different.
23:50I think that it's highly likely that people have mistaken these types of returns for UFOs.
23:58It is still debatable as to whether Wellington radar would have the power to see clear air
24:03turbulence at the range suggested. But two days after the film sightings, a Royal New Zealand Air
24:09Force Orion took off to investigate another set of strange blips. As usual, the echoes did not persist for
24:15long. But guided by the radar controllers, the Orion found in some instances a boat, and in other cases,
24:22turbulence where the blip had been. It's impossible to prove conclusively what the New Zealand UFOs were.
24:30But like most UFO sightings, part of its interest lies in what it reveals about ourselves. Some people,
24:36when confronted with unfamiliar lights in the sky, like this, feel the need to find an unusual explanation.
24:43For them, science has taken much of the mystery out of life. And by concluding that the answer can be
24:49found
24:49in beings from other worlds, they return an element of mystery to our own world.
24:55It's a bit like a religion to them. They're sort of fed up with science and the people who tell
25:03them that
25:03we can explain everything. They've taken all the mystery out of their lives. And to some people,
25:08it's really necessary to have feelings that there are perhaps extraterrestrial beings and so on.
25:15With the huge expanses of space and time, many people, including scientists, feel that it is highly
25:21possible that other intelligent life does exist in this universe. But the odds that these beings would have
25:27visited Earth are quite unlikely. So why do we have so many reports of UFOs?
25:34The idea that they might visit here, that they might be able to solve all of the problems, war, disease,
25:43economic problems, is really sort of the adult equivalent of Santa Claus, who brings
25:50good things for good little girls and boys. So in my opinion, the belief in UFOs will persist as long
25:59as
25:59there are people on this Earth. But it is a myth. Given that so many sightings are the result of
26:07over
26:07eager imaginations, false perceptions, or outright hoaxes, why does someone as experienced as Alan Hendry go on?
26:14For those rare few sightings, perhaps one percent of all the reports I've had a chance to deal with,
26:21where I feel that the item is unidentified, not just because of conditions of distance or darkness,
26:27but because of the the true descriptions and features which we confidently feel were described
26:33accurately to us, that the organization at least is valuable for documenting that material, even for
26:40posterity, if that's where true understanding of the UFO phenomenon has to come from.
26:46Some sightings of UFOs are difficult to explain. But by dismissing all UFOs as having known causes,
26:54scientists may be missing out on discoveries of importance in the world around us.
27:00The easiest explanation for UFO reports is that they are based upon explainable,
27:05prosaic, sometimes very rare, and sometimes very coincidental occurrences. But they are still
27:10understandable in terms of what we know about the world. The pity is that there could indeed be
27:15something extraordinary masquerading behind UFO reports. Now when I say extraordinary, I mean
27:20something perhaps of genuine interest to science, such as these earthquake lights or ball lightning or
27:25perhaps some kind of insect manifestations. And the pity is that such perhaps genuinely interesting
27:30phenomena are being glossed over and camouflaged by popular misperceptions about UFOs. I'd like to see
27:39better research and better standards to see if there is indeed a residue inside these sightings. One,
27:44I cannot prove that there is not. All we're saying as skeptics is that the theories of extraordinary
27:50phenomena are not themselves proved. UFOs do exist. But before we can begin to explain the few incidents that
27:58remain truly unidentified, we need to better understand the nature of the scientific process and the needs
28:04of the human mind. It is only then that we will be able to discover whether the key to UFOs
28:11lies high
28:12above in the heavens or right here on our own mysterious planet, Earth.
28:21So,
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