UFOs: Phenomenon or Phenomena? The Distortion Theory

Copyright 2017, InterAmerica, Inc.

Dominick and others have looked at Jose Caravaca’s "Distortion Theory" and have tried to pigeon-hole the theory, but they miss the point.

Señor Caravaca’s theoretical hypothesis applies to those UFO events that we call “encounters” where beings (humanoids) interact with those allegedly observing them.

Those kinds of UFO events make up for a sparse reportage (nowadays) but were a significant batch in the 1950s forward to more recent times.

Jose’s explanation is unique and applies to that specific range of UFO reports.

But what about all the other kinds of UFO sightings and reports: cigar shaped things flying in the sky, or lights that maneuver or flicker, and apparent metallic-like craft that make up a wider category in the UFO literature?

This goes to the heart of the UFO/UAP dichotomy where Unidentified Aerial Phenomena replaces the UFO sobriquet.

UAP encompasses more correctly the observation of weird things seen in the sky, but the epithet UAP doesn’t ingrain itself within the UFO encounter events, those that Jose’s theory addresses.

Jerome (Jerry) Clark, in the UFO Update era always got livid when someone used the word phenomena for flying saucers or UFOs, Mr. Clark insisting, vehemently, that UFOs were a categorical phenomenon, not a multi-layered phenomena.

(I don’t know what his current view is. He, like encounter cases, has become sparse.)

But for all practical and common sense reasons, UFOs consist of a bundle of phenomena, one of which could be (but is unlikely as I see it) ET spacecraft.

There are lights, there are “objects,” there are round things and cigar-shaped things, egg-shaped craft (that sometimes land), and there are those events where a UFO debarks creatures or beings who interact with some select human beings.

Those encounter events are what Jose Caravaca is dealing with, and I think he opens the door to a discussion or discussions about whether such events are neurological, as I believe them to be, or psychical, as I think he believes.

They might even be a mixture of both: phenomena, not a phenomenon.

RR

The Devil is in the UFO Details

Copyright 2017 InterAmerica, Inc.

A visitor here recently bemoaned my inclusion of magazines like that pictured, writing to the affect that such magazines sensationalized UFO stories, which they did, and thus have no real import when it comes to a serious study of the topic.

I agree to some extent but inside some of the UFO magazines were articles by reputable writers, many with ufological bona fides.

For instance in the issue shown here, UFO Report for Spring 1975, are pieces by Kevin Randle, Timothy Green Beckley, Brinsley Le Poer Trench, Jerome Clark, Lucius Farish, George Fawcett, Charles Bowen, Joseph Goodavage, and (iffy?) Wendelle Stevens, among a few un-notables.

I have hundreds of these kinds of magazines, each containing, at least, a UFO snippet worthy of remembrance and maybe scrutiny.

In the issue pictured, my pal Kevin has two articles: The UFO Kidnapping That Challenged Science [Page 14 ff.] and Mysterious Clues Left Behind by Flying Saucers [Page 36 ff.]

I’m not going to quote extensively from either article. (Lame or non-existent commentary doesn’t invite me to expend the typing energy.)

But I will note that in Kevin’s pieces the witnesses are farmers, a truck driver, and a prospector, providing support for my view that UFOs are usually reported by members of the lower economic class.

And in each article are details that make a reader (me) think that the persons recounting their UFO stories seem to have gathered information from previous, well-publicized UFO reports or sightings, such as the Betty/Barney Hill “abduction” which one of Kevin’s witnesses, a farmer, used to describe his kidnappers: 

"… the occupants [were] about four feet tall” wearing “those one piece suits. And their eyes look funny, they bend around the sides of their heads.” [Mysterious Clues … Page 37]

Another, the truck driver, resorted to the Adamski/Angelucci descriptives of the UFO occupants:

“There were three of them, two were male and one was obviously female. They were humanoid with long blond hair and elongated eyes. They were wearing one-piece, silver flying suits with high boots, gloves that extended up their arms, and no belts, weapons, or helmets.” [The UFO Kidnapping … Page 15]

(Kevin acknowledges the similarities to those previous, well-known UFO tales.)

And there was one bit of UFO minutia that caught my attention, near the end of Kevin’s UFO Kidnapping piece, on Page 54:

One of APRO’s investigators, Liria Jauregui, uncovered a tid-bit that others had overlooked.

The truck driver, Dionisio Lianca, said “The UFO crew had examined everything [he] had with him that night [of his kidnapping] and they returned it, with one exception – they kept his lighter.”

Kevin notes “Villas-Boas [sic], 16 years before said that the creatures in [his] UFO examined all his belongings and returned them all – except his lighter.” [ibid]

Now that kind of detail is intriguing.

I know quite a bit about the Vilas Boas case, and the lighter mention was not a part of what I’ve read (or recall).

For someone, like Kevin’s truck driver, to pick up on such a minute item in the Vilas Boas account is extraordinary. And to use that in the latter stages of a hoax, is even more extraordinary, Ms. Jauregui hearing it for the first time, several weeks after truck driver Lianca first recounted his experience.

And who would input such a mundane, seemingly insignificant detail in a sensational UFO account, Vilas Boas or Dionisio Lianca?

It intrigues.

That’s the kind of thing that one finds in those older articles, and to dismiss them, out of hand, especially when they come from UFO writers and investigators with cachet, is arrogantly stupid.

More to come….

RR