FORTEAN TIMES UNCONVENTION 1997

Left to right: Philip Klass (CSICOP), Patrick Huyghe (THE ANOMALIST), Jim Moseley (SAUCER SMEAR), the host Ian Simmons (FORTEAN TIMES), Dennis Stacy (MUFON UFO JOURNAL/ THE ANOMALIST) and British ufologist Jenny Randles. Between Klass and Huyghe sits Budd Hopkins' replacement the alien head created by the mysterious Morgana Productions who claimed it was the model used for the Roswell/Santilli Autopsy film and when this was convincingly proved to be incorrect it was a delivered by a motorcycle courier to the offices of FORTEAN TIMES.

Each participant is invited to say what they think the significance of fifty years of UFO's has been and what we have learnt.

Jenny Randles says that we have learnt what UFO's are not. Preconceptions had to be un-learnt, being things that were indoctrinated into the meaning of "UFO". Gradually we have been able to see the subject more clearly. Above all, UFO's are an enigma. Randles hopes we can get more of the desire to understand rather than more of the desire to perpetuate the mystery.

Dennis Stacy says that after editing the book UFO'S 1947-1997 with Hilary Evans [This book is presented by FORTEAN TIMES, published by John Brown Publishing Ltd, London, 1997, ISBN 1-870870-999] it became obvious that there is still a lot left to be learnt from the past, from the early fifties to mid sixties especially. The early UFO reports did not start out with any extraterrestrial (ET) association. Generally UFO's were assumed to be advanced terrestrial technology, the most likely candidate being the Soviet Union and it was not until the early fifties that the question of "Do you believe in ET life?", or words to that effect, even showed up in opinion polls on UFO's. There was no layer of preconception or interpretation on top of the early cases. These cases are harder to investigate because they are long gone and any evidence associated with them is long gone but you can get a bare bones representation of what people claim to have been seeing at that time without the present overlay of the UFO myth. This myth is spreading throughout culture and there is no sign of the use of this myth stopping.

Jim Moseley says that in 1953 he became intellectually curious about UFO's and was going to co-author a book on them and took a trip around the United States talking to a number of people and thought that if he had an open mind and reasonable intelligence he would expect to reach a conclusion in six months! The following year he started SAUCER TIMES which is now called SAUCER SMEAR. As the years went by he realised it wasn't going to be that easy! It is a complicated subject. Moseley went off on a few tangents. He thought UFO's were from another planet and then that they were manufactured by the American government or the Russians but certainly not from another planet. Later he "got hooked on Mars" because of the photos of "canals" on Mars that he thought showed obviously some kind of civilization and this turned out to be nonsense, "the camera can be fooled as easily as the eye," and as time went on he adopted what he now calls the Four D. or Three-and-a-half D. Theory. Moseley says that there has been some progress in the field. In the last few years, less than five, he thinks we are getting somewhere. "We have killed Roswell and we are in the process of killing MJ-12." These two myths have been devastated by Robert Todd and other little known people who took the time and trouble to go to the government archives, find the right documents and publish them and it is not what most people in the field want to hear but is in Moseley's opinion the truth.

Patrick Huyghe would love UFO's and aliens to be real. Are they real? He does not know. He thinks that there is as good a shot at finding something real in the alien/UFO mystery as there is in trying to capture radio signals from aliens somewhere in the universe. We have a minute mystery that has lasted fifty years. He does not see a solution any time soon. He points out, however, that the UFO/saucer mystery is separate from the alien mystery and he would agree with Jenny Randles who has said before that "UFO's are not one thing, UFO's are many things."

Huyghe then reads out the statement of Budd Hopkins, who has refused to appear on the panel.

"Many years ago I resolved never to appear on a TV programme or radio or conference panel with Philip Klass due to my objections to his behaviour to those who report in UFO abduction experiences. Mister Klass is aware of my policy but perhaps the organisers of this conference were not. I regret that I cannot appear on Sunday's abduction panel [sic] and hope that this will not cause inconveniences to those who attend it. I am grateful for the kindness with which the conference organisers have treated me and the strong support for my work demonstrated by so many in the UK. Signed, Budd Hopkins."

There are a few boos from the crowd. Ian Simmons says "We were reassured by his publishers that there would be no problem."

Philip Klass finds it ironic. He was thinking of rebutting/debunking Hopkins' Linda Cortile case. Then he heard that Hopkins' book about the case, WITNESSED, was going to be published in the UK and thought it would be in bad taste to criticise the case at this conference. Shortly after that Klass was advised that Hopkins would be at the UnConvention and on the panel so he decided he would definitely not criticise. "You see what I get in return," he says. He agrees with Hopkins that it is the most impressive of all abduction cases. He believes it to be a hoax but Klass does not believe that Hopkins is the hoaxer. He believes him to be the victim.

Klass says that we are hear to celebrate "so to speak" the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of UFO's by Kenneth Arnold. He asks: what were the Arnold UFO's. He shows us slides of what he thinks those Arnold UFO's might have been. These slides have to do with a UFO case in which in daylight, near St Louis, an American Airlines plane had a near collision with a "squadron" of unidentified craft. The American Airlines plane contacted the St Louis tower. A United Airlines plane eight miles behind heard this radio message and said "They just whizzed by us," and a military aircraft behind them said they executed a sharp climbing manoeuvre to avoid collision. A senior air traffic controller was in the cockpit of the American Airlines plane and he drew sketches of the mysterious craft which he saw as hydroplane shaped. One hundred and fifty miles north of St Louis a news photographer took a photo of these objects. The photo reveals a meteor fireball on an unusual horizontal trajectory. Entering the atmosphere at high speed it ionises the air leaving a luminous tail. So ionised air was what made the objects look like metallic craft reflecting sunlight. Jenny Randles knows of a similar case in Britain. This is the January 1995 sighting by the British Airways flight coming in to Manchester Airport. Ufologists have been saying that meteors never fly horizontally and Randles has been accused of encouraging pilots not to come forward. This, she says, goes to the heart of the UFO phenomena. Investigators must get to the heart of UFO cases and if there is a potential rational explanation for a sighting they cannot withhold that simply because it might upset people. And anyone reporting a sighting should not be upset but should be interested in what actually happened.

Huyghe points out that Arnold saw nine objects and it would be very rare for daylight fireballs to break into nine objects. Furthermore, Arnold saw crescent shaped objects. It was a newspaper that called them "flying saucers."

Klass says that in the St Louis case the drawings were hydroplane shaped and the co-pilot who first saw them concurred with this description. If we did not have the photo we would think that they would not be a fireball, which they were.

Duncan Lunan is in the audience. He has a theory on the Arnold case which he gave in a lecture in Norwich. Flying Wing military prototypes were being tested by the US military in the 1940's and one looked like the model made of the Arnold sighting, in particular the tail end of the fuselage was identical. Arnold saw them wobbling in flight which Flying Wings were notorious for. However, the military had scrapped all the five Flying Wing prototypes they had built before the Arnold sighting happened. If there were still nine around on 24th June 1947, there is "something we're not being told." Huyghe points out that prototypes in test flight are not flown in formation. Firstly because they're unstable craft and secondly because they are precious.

Paul Devereux is in the audience and he says there is a consistency with the Arnold sighting and a fireball phenomenon because the sightings started with a big flash of light which lit up his cockpit. Devereux also speculates that it could be a geological phenomenon, "earth lights" being his area of speciality.

Jenny Randles leaves at this point to catch her train.

Someone in the audience says we are not any further than we were fifty years ago and asks if the whole thing is not a "ghastly mistake."

Moseley says we have killed off some of the devils we have conjured up and that there has been some progress. The phenomenon has been obscured by hoaxes, greed and mistakes. If we are patient, we could get somewhere in the end.

Ian Simmons says that even if there is nothing to UFO's, they say a lot about us and how we think.

Huyghe says that someone is seeing something. Not every case is a hoax.

Klass refers to Alan Hendry's book THE UFO HANDBOOK. Hendry worked for J. Allen Hynek's CUFOS. Ninety-two per cent of Hendry's 1305 cases had prosaic explanations. What about the eight per cent? Well, he could only spend one hour on each case! Anyway, the unidentified ones had no unique characteristics...

Stacy asks Klass if he supports the CETI program. He says yes. Stacy asks him why. The reason Klass gives is that it is exciting.

The panel is asked what keeps them involved in ufology.

Stacy gives two reasons. One is that ordinary people will nonchalantly give him their stories of flying discs The second reason is that UFO's are the most widely recorded paranormal phenomenon. They are in our mythology now.

What keeps Moseley interested is that there may be an accurate case.

Huyghe's interest is kept by the low profile smaller cases, which involve one to one contact between the investigator and the witness.

Klass says that after the Condon Report in 1969 the media lost interest in the UFO movement. Klass got out of the business and the Air Force closed Bluebook. With the media's resurgence of interest and the rise of the "pro-UFO" researchers, Klass was the only skeptic because the Air Force was no longer involved. He is "trapped."

Someone in the audience says that flying objects involve separate phenomenon. Is this because of human deception and confusion? Why are people now seeing triangles when they used to see saucers, and Arnold saw crescents? Klass jokes: would you expect Mercedes-Benz to be making the same model of car as they did forty years ago?

Moseley is asked about his earlier statement about Roswell. "Roswell and MJ-12 are both dead," he says. "I am going, however, to the Roswell Festival, which is the first week of July and which for me is the fiftieth anniversary of nothing! And I still, with my SAUCER SMEAR attitude, will have a wonderful time, will enjoy it more because it is the fiftieth anniversary of a balloon! If you really worry about a balloon for fifty years... But they're having the Roswell Symphony Orchestra, they're going to have a rock concert: I like the way it was phrased 'No more than 150,000 people will be allowed to attend.' Roswell has a population of about 45,000. I foresee riots! I see doom ahead, or conversely, financial doom for the organisers of this thing. It could go either way but it's going to be an awful lot of fun and if any of you have the time and money to cross the pond, by God you should be there!"

Someone in the audience says that UFO's are big business now, it is not a joke anymore. Those involved are no longer considered "kooks."

Moseley says that very few writers have made a lot of money but "there's more to Philip [Klass]'s story than what he stated... I don't think it's the twenty cents an hour that's luring him on. I think there's an ego thing for many of us. Some of us have that problem more than others! But all of us have that problem to one degree or another and it's fun to sit up here on a panel and be noticed, you know!"

Klass says that the people who made the early UFO reports were not called kooks or nuts, in fact they convinced the Air Force. There was a theory at the time in intelligence circles that the Russians were flying Flying Wings made by the captured Horton brothers.

Someone from the audience asks why there are secret documents on UFO's, even to this day.

Klass says that during the cold war many UFO documents were classified because the US had craft to secretly eavesdrop on the Russians.

Because Klass knows nothing about British intelligence documents, Duncan Lunan speaks again, to explain why there are documents concerning UFO's classified. Off the record British intelligence told him that all the successfully identified cases are classified as unidentified unless they can reveal what they were without giving away how they found out. This was especially true during the Cold War when they didn't want the Russians to know how successful they were at spotting them in British airspace. Allegedly if one took away all the secretly identified cases away from the unidentified cases, there is almost nothing left...

The panel discussion ends at this point.

UnConvention '97 reviews

- feedback and comments

- discuss with other blather readers