Alien Intrusion Read online

  If it’s not true, she’s also making history with one of the biggest hoaxes in history, so in both ways it’s wonderful. Because thanks to what she is doing now, the whole world knows about the Raelian movement. I am very happy with that.[5]

  It was estimated that the Raelian sect received over $500 million worth of media coverage around the world. Rael adds, “This event saved me 20 years of work.”[6]

  And as we shall see, we now live in an age where, more than ever before, UFO/extraterrestrial beliefs are no longer the specialty of science fiction writers. They have become mainstream.

  The events of 1938 all occurred before the advent of modern special effects and technology that nowadays blend science fiction imagery into reality. These have given a major impetus to the modern upsurge of belief in UFOs and extraterrestrial life. The most popular entertainment genre in the world today is science fiction. It has become a modern obsession, and as Dorothy Thompson already noted, the media can influence the mindset of the masses and at the same time cater to the hunger for such wizardry.

  All this may seem to dismiss the whole “alien phenomenon” as the over-active imagination of science fiction buffs and money-seeking, religious UFO “nut cases.” But although the influence of science fiction is clear, it is not the sole reason for increased belief in alien visitations. There are millions of people who, like me, love science fiction. Many of its devotees have vastly different world views — some believe in UFOs and some don’t.

  But the UFO interest does appear to be satisfying more than just idle curiosity for the mysterious, or hunger for intrigue. There are deeper philosophical questions, like the meaning of our existence, for which most people want answers. And although most don’t realize it, their interest is born out of a religious need or desire. In the German magazine Focus, sociologist Gerald Eberlein is quoted as saying:

  … research has shown that people who are not affiliated with any church, but who claim they are religious are particularly susceptible to the possible existence of extraterrestrials. For them, UFOlogy [the study of UFOs] is a substitute religion.[7]

  This religious longing also suggests one reason that the modern UFO movement is entwined with traditional religious beliefs and, as we shall see, particularly Christianity and the Bible. Ronald Story put forward this cogent reason for the rapid acceptance of UFO beliefs: people have always been influenced by authority figures, he says; in earlier times the clergy’s opinions held sway, influencing the way in which people sought to satisfy their spiritual needs. He writes:

  Unlike earlier times, today we look to science for answers for most of our questions about life in the universe. The world has become more materialistic than spiritualistic, and so our spiritual needs go largely unmet.[8]

  Are we really alone? What is the meaning of our existence? Can ET help us? We shall attempt to answer these questions in this book as we examine the best evidence at our disposal.

  Let the fun begin!

  Not many years ago, to claim you had seen a UFO would have caused your friends to look at you strangely. Now, almost every day, somewhere in the world there are reports of UFOs. The majority, it is claimed, can be explained away as merely natural phenomena (swamp gas, the planet Venus, etc.). However, there is a stubborn residue of cases (usually between 2 and 5 percent) that are not easily explained. It should be pointed out that the lack of a natural explanation does not mean that one may not eventually arise, if we had access to all of the facts. And just because the sightings cannot be explained as naturally occurring phenomena, it does not necessarily follow that they are of alien spaceships.

  Nonetheless, people seem eager to believe that aliens exist, despite the lack of hard evidence and the huge number of proven frauds and hoaxes. Numerous polls (Gallup, Roper, PBS/Nova) claim, for example, that up to 20 million Americans have seen a UFO. And shockingly, over 4 million even claim to have been physically abducted by aliens (we will discuss the evidence for these claims later, as with all the other questions raised in the early chapters of this book). But as we shall see, there are bizarre aspects to many such “alien encounter” experiences, which defy naturalistic explanations. Much serious scientific research has been undertaken to explain this phenomenon.

  Can such a large percentage of the population all be given to flights of fancy or be delusional? Most of us would tend to think, “There are too many reports for something not to be going on,” and that it’s a case of “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” A closer look will reveal that there is indeed something going on.

  Back in 1947, a Gallup poll suggested that the majority of Americans did not think UFOs were alien craft. William Alnor, in his book UFOs in the New Age, quotes research that suggested most people thought “… they were illusions, hoaxes, secret weapons, or phenomena that could not be explained.”[9]

  That was also the year that, in the opinion of skeptics and UFOlogists alike, the modern UFO era began. People’s perceptions were altered by a rash of sightings that ignited modern UFOlogy.

  In June of that year, Seattle businessman Kenneth Arnold was piloting his private plane over the Cascade Mountains, Washington, when he saw something unusual. The next day, the East Oregonian (Oregon) newspaper reportedly carried this story:

  He said he sighted nine saucer-like aircraft flying in formation at 3 p.m. yesterday, extremely bright — as if they were nickel plated — and flying at an immense rate of speed. He estimated they were at an altitude between 9,500 and 10,000 feet and clocked them from Mt. Rainier to Mt. Adams, arriving at the amazing speed of about 1,200 miles an hour. “It seemed impossible,” he said, “but there it is — I must believe my eyes.”[10]

  Kenneth Arnold

  He described the craft as “saucer-like” because he claimed that they moved like “saucers that skipped across the water,” giving rise to the term “flying saucers.” This captured the public imagination. By the end of 1947, more than 850 sightings were reported in the media. Can we explain this surge as people now scanning the skies in anticipation of a sighting, or was there a genuine escalation in UFO activity? Approximately 150 of these sightings later made their way into the files of the U.S. military’s infamous Project Blue Book.[11] This was also the year of the legendary “Roswell incident,” when an alleged alien craft crash-landed in New Mexico and the U.S. Air Force supposedly retrieved alien bodies from the wreckage (this incident is discussed in depth later in this book). Shortly after this rash of sightings, the U.S. government responded by assembling an investigation team to uncover the truth about UFOs. Originally designed to appease the public’s increasing fascination, the official investigations into the UFO phenomenon, code named Projects Sign and Grudge, and subsequently Project Blue Book, ran for over 20 years. (Project Blue Book ended in 1969, with a report card proclaiming, “There is nothing to declare.”)

  Some “high fliers” get “visited”

  If the majority didn’t “believe” at the beginning of 1947, the situation is vastly different today. Some outspoken and very high-profile people claim to have had a UFO experience. (The expression UFO, technically meaning an “unidentified flying object,” has become a more generic term to describe the entire modern phenomenon incorporating UFOs, extraterrestrial visitations, abductions, etc.) Those who have experienced a UFO consistently report believing that aliens must be visiting us from another world or even another dimension. In other words, though they may have been tentative about the possibility of UFOs before the incident (as opposed to UFO skeptics who say it cannot happen), they often become convinced that it is definitely happening. Rather than believing there might still be a rational explanation for the UFO, the person generally finds the event so real that it transforms their perception of the world they are living in. For most people, it becomes a profound, reality-altering experience.

  Opinion polls which imply high numbers of sightings and visitations only serve to reinforce the “aliens are visiting us” notion. Way out claims make news, which in turn encou
rages more believers, who in turn now look for experiences. The prevalence of these reports encourages rumors of conspiracies and cover-ups by governments, the argument being, “It’s happened to so many people — the government must know something!” A 1996 Gallup poll claimed that over 70 percent of the population believed that the government knew more about UFOs than it was letting on. This is a very popular theme in movies such as Independence Day and the Men in Black series.

  For example, the international news service CNN claimed that a former aide of former U.S. President Bill Clinton was petitioning the current U.S. government to declassify its secret records about UFOs and other related incidents. The one-time aide, John Podesta, said that the information would:

  … provide scientists with data that will assist in determining the real nature of this phenomenon.[12]

  CNN went on to say:

  Despite earning little credence, cases of strange aerial phenomena that defy explanation abound — whether witnessed by thousands of Arizona residents, commercial airline pilots, or a U.S. president.[13]

  The U.S. president to whom they were referring was none other than Jimmy Carter. He became the world’s highest-profile UFO believer when in 1976, during a presidential election campaign, he publicly spoke about his own UFO experiences that occurred back in 1969. He was reported as saying:

  It was the darndest thing I’ve ever seen. It was big, it changed colors, and it was about the size of the moon. We watched it for ten minutes, but none of us could figure out what it was. One thing’s for sure, I’ll never make fun of people who say they’ve seen unidentified flying objects in the sky. If I become president, I’ll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists. I am convinced that UFOs exist because I’ve seen one… .[14]

  Note how his experience changed him. He became a vocal advocate of solving the mystery — it was a real and mysterious event for him. Should people have been concerned, though? A potential future president of the most powerful nation on Earth believes that there is “more than meets the eye” with regard to UFOs. Moreover, he was subtly implying that the government of the day is keeping secret its information regarding UFOs. Did such a wacky statement jeopardize his presidential election chances? Apparently not — he was subsequently elected. This demonstrates how widespread such beliefs had become. His statement was no longer regarded as extreme. By now, most people believed that there was a mystery to be solved, and many believed that he was going to solve it for them. His credibility over the years has not diminished as a result, either. He has been a nominee for the prestigious international Nobel Peace Prize on several occasions, and won the award in 2002 due to his “statesmanship” in world affairs.

  President Jimmy Carter

  So what information did Carter manage to unearth for the general public during his term? None, it would appear, because he did not raise the matter again in public. But a failure to uncover evidence only seems to foster the appetite of UFO enthusiasts. Many believe that Carter simply succumbed to internal pressures and became complicit in UFO cover-ups, or that he was kept from the truth by the same government agencies that allegedly “hid the truth on Blue Book.”

  This is a popular theme in UFOlogy, and was used to great effect in the blockbuster film Independence Day. In this movie, Earth was undergoing a global invasion from hostile aliens. After a presidential aide admitted that the president had not been told anything about previous alien visitations (such things were on a need-to-know basis), the president demanded the full story and was subsequently flown to a top-secret base known as Area 51, 90 miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada. This military establishment had supposedly been conducting investigations and experiments on the alien craft and corpses that were recovered from the infamous Roswell crash of 1947 (as we shall discuss later, there really was an incident at Roswell).

  Carter’s UFO claims caused alarm among Christians of the day, too, because their traditional world view was under siege. If Carter (who claimed to be a “born-again” Christian) believed that the UFO he saw was piloted by aliens, then such comments appeared to contradict the view of many fundamentalist Christians who believe that the Bible does not allow for the creation of ETs on other planets. Many Christians view the Bible as the inerrant revelation of a Creator God. Some UFO buffs, atheists, and others claim that the Bible is “past its shelf life” because “aliens are real.” Others even claim that the Bible is, in fact, a record of alien visitations to the earth. Whatever the view, the Bible seems to play an important part in UFO beliefs, and, as we shall see, it is often alluded to by our alleged extraterrestrial visitors. Fascinating! Did Carter abandon his belief in the Bible as a result of the sighting, or had he now accepted that UFOs had to fit into the Bible somewhere?

  The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH)

  Today, a new, “modern” religion has grown around UFO beliefs. There are literally hundreds of UFO organizations and, collectively, tens of thousands of books, websites, and movies that have dealt with the subject. There are also thousands of individuals (contactees) and religious cults who claim to be regularly visited by, or are receiving messages from, friendly aliens. UFOlogist J. Richard Greenwell describes this as follows:

  The most popular and appealing notion about UFOs is the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH),[15] the idea that intelligent beings from other planets are visiting Earth. To some it is more than a hypothesis and can best be described as a belief.[16]

  A very common thread wound through such beliefs is that our ET “space brothers” are more highly evolved, both physically and spiritually, than human beings, and that they are here to “help us” and oversee our own “evolution.” This claim is a quantum leap from merely seeing unexplainable lights in the sky. Countless people have been led to reject conventional spiritual beliefs or at least reinterpret them (like Carter, perhaps) in light of the “weight of UFO evidence.” One of the most famous UFO researchers of all time, Jacques Vallée, wrote that society itself is being transformed by these beliefs:

  Belief in the reality of UFOs is spreading rapidly at all levels of society throughout the world. Books and periodicals appear at an ever-increasing rate. Documentaries and major films are being made now by young people of the UFO generation (young men and women who were born just after World War II and who grew up with flying saucer stories) who have moved into influential positions in the media… . Many of the themes of yesterday’s counter-culture can be traced back to the “messages from space” coming from UFO contactees of the forties and fifties.[17]

  Vallée wrote these words back in 1979, two years after Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind blazed across our movie screens, catapulting the UFO phenomenon to even greater heights, and on a scale that shows no sign of abating.

  An astronaut speaks out

  Skeptics often comment that the majority of UFO sightings are reported by amateurs — i.e., laypeople who wouldn’t know a weather balloon from a satellite. This may be true, but it cannot account for sightings by people who should know. Take, for example, former U.S. Air Force pilot and NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) astronaut Gordon Cooper, who was reported to have seen a UFO during a space flight. This incident occurred in 1963. America’s NBC News reported that, during his final orbit of the earth on his Mercury mission, he saw a greenish-glowing object ahead of his capsule, approaching him. It is claimed that when he reported the incident, the tracking station at Muchea, just north of Perth, Western Australia, also confirmed the sighting on their radar. Much has been made of this incident, and UFOlogists are keen to seize upon the report as “proof” by an independent, unbiased, and reliable witness (due to his profile and military standing). It is easy to find dozens of websites supporting this claim (see later chapters for a deeper look at Cooper’s UFO).

  The reality is, though, that Cooper was not really unbiased by that time; he was already a believer in the ETH. In subsequent interviews, he claimed that
he first saw UFOs in the early 1950s, and that he even saw one land at Edwards Air Force Base in 1957.[18] This prebelief seems to be a common factor with many people who claim to have seen a UFO or who have had an abduction experience. Whatever really occurred during that famous Mercury space flight, there is no doubt that Cooper was by that time an avid UFOlogist. He even addressed the United Nations (U.N.) on the subject. In July 1978, ETH enthusiast and then prime minister of Grenada, Sir Eric Gairy, was petitioning the U.N. to create a special group for the purpose of investigating UFOs. He believed that America was keeping quiet despite knowing the “truth” about them. Gordon Cooper supported this idea, and during a lengthy speech, he was quoted as saying: