UFOs and the “criminal” element

I keep being struck by how many shady people have UFO experiences, not that “good people” don’t have UFO experiences but it’s the somewhat compromised among us who have the really spectacular experiences.

I could name those in the current UFO community who fit the bill, but let me stick with those whom one can find in UFO lore (or related areas).

The Elizabethan polymath John Dee, who consorted with actual criminal types, had a plethora of UFO-like experiences, one recounted in David Richie’s litany of UFO sightings and events [UFO: The Definitive Guide to Unidentified Flying Objects and related Phenomena, MJF Books, NY, 1994, Page 63]:

Dee along with Edward Kelly, a thief, were visiting a vineyard and came upon what they thought was a gardener, the “gardener” turning out to be an entity, moving about in a small “fiery cloud” taking Dee and Kelly to a furnace from which the entity produced several books (which Dee used, apparently, for his occult studies and activity that kept him in good stead with England’s Queen Elizabeth I).

This event in the late 1500s mimics the later experience of Joseph Smith who recovered, allegedly, from an angel (Moroni) a book of “golden plates” that became the Mormon Holy Book.

As early as the 18th century, people like Emanuel Swedenborg were claiming to be in psychic contact with inhabitants of other planets. 1758 saw the publication of Concerning Earths in the Solar System, in which Swedenborg detailed his alleged journeys to the inhabited planets. [Wikipedia]

But in a more recent era we have Albert Bender, the progenitor of the Men in Black idea, promoted by Gray Barker, Bender’s experiences also with a religious/occult patina. [op. cit., Page 27 ff.]

Bender saw and entered flying saucers he declared and once met a handsome [sic], nine-foot-tall humanoid.

And we have Adamski, of course, and other contactees (Daniel Fry, Truman Bethurum, Orfeo Angelucci, Howard Menger, Billy Meier, et al. (which you can find detailed material about in Nick Redfern’s book, Contactees.)

Of course, one will tap such men, as those above, particularly, as con men, and they were…which is my point, even if their experiences were actual. (I kid)

Some of the UFO accounts, as many of you know, have elements of what some call demonology, and religious trappings always intrude, allegorically or overtly.

The mythical or Biblical accounts of seeming UFO or entity encounters obviously have religious overtones, and those recounting such things are usually (always?) encased in somewhat compromising endeavors or lives (the Hebrew prophets among them).

What compels such people to see UFOs or recount UFO events?

Do malevolent forces accrue to them or do they provoke their “experiences” in a need to prevaricate (because they are deranged or neurologically imbalanced)?

Who can say? All we have are “remarkable” stories, often stranger than fiction.

(By the way, in the current and recent UFO communities reside persons, unnamed here, who are just as wayward or ethically challenged as those noted above. But they are usually kept in check by skeptics, not debunkers who are as equally demented as UFO believers. UFOs bring out the worst in people, usually and often.)

RR