UFO reports: Can they be trusted?

Copyright 2018, InterAmerica, Inc.

In pressing UFO buffs to use original, pristine UFO reports to find the truth (reality) of an alleged UFO account (sighting/event), I’m relying on a view from Jacques Derrida in his small work, Literature in Secret [University of Chicago Press, 1995/2008].

(Derrida’s derision of writing doesn’t apply, it seems to me, to reproductions of speech as is the case for reports about events.)

When a person (or persons) see what they think is a UFO or strange thing in the sky, they report it or tell someone (a friend, a journalist/reporter, et al.)

Their account, while caveated by memory glitches, even immediately after their sighting or encounter, has to be viewed as an authentic rendering, unless they are establishing a hoax.

That is, a UFO sighting, and the reporting of it, should be examined as a veracity. And if examined later, as many UFO reports are, context and convention should prevail in the understanding of the report. [Derrida, Page 157]

Interpretative renderings by later readers (UFO investigators, opinionizers, et al.) should be ignored, eschewed. It’s the original account that matters.

In reading the many fascinating UFO/humanoid encounters in the Albert Rosales series, one has to mentally emend some of the accretions added by those who’ve accumulated or gathered the tales being recounted.

But even then, one isn’t sure what the original story presented, as the persons – many reputable UFO writers (Jerome Clark, Loren Coleman, Brad Steiger) – who provided the accounts to Mr. Rosales often inserted exclamatory phrases (suddenly is a favorite) and who knows what other interpretive suggestions.

One should see the original account, if it is available, as is the case with the 1964 Socorro sighting by witness, Police Officer Lonnie Zamora, whose report is provided in several sources, unencumbered by secondary accretions.

From the Zamora account one can determine many things that actually occurred, or seemed to, without the bias or interference of persons with axes to grind or beliefs that intrude.

The original, iconic Kenneth Arnold account of his 1947 “flying saucer” visualizations is another example of a report wherein lies some clues to what was allegedly seen or experienced, this before Ray Palmer and the press got hold of it.

So, if it’s at all possible, UFO enthusiasts should try to get hold of first account sightings or reports to see (read) what was actually experienced by the witness(es).

Anything after that is hearsay.

RR