The eye of the beholder
JENNY RANDLES suggests that “seeing” a UFO is about being in the wrong place at the right time
Have you ever seen a UFO? If not, why not – especially if you are interested in these things? That is a question you may never have asked yourself, but I think that you should. It might help us understand what lies behind this baffling phenomenon, because it goes to the heart of what seeing a UFO really means.
My inspiration for this question was the ufologist who first got me interested in the potential relationship between UFOs and science, Jacques Vallée. In one of his many telling insights on the subject, Vallée noted: “Just because a message comes from Heaven doesn’t mean it isn’t stupid.”
A strange thought; but it’s undeniable that we have tended to ‘deify’ the big cases of the UFO mystery and those witnesses who describe the most profound experiences of the phenomenon. Yet they are but a fraction of overall cases. If you ignore 99 per cent of the data, then most scientists will rightly suspect that you are finding what you want to find and not necessarily revealing what is actually there. Remember that UFOs only exist because people see them and then think them to be extraordinary. Without perception there is no phenomenon. They exist because we say so. We are architects of our own mystery.
This leads to another question: are we observing what is there, or creating what we see from something else that we choose to perceive as extraordinary? I recall one journalist who was interviewing me and wanted to share his own ‘close encounter’. He was driving on the M6 motorway near Wigan. It was rush hour, and the highway was packed. He saw three white lights in a triangular pattern and watched them briefly cross his path; he was amazed. He had just become a UFO witness, and the event imprinted itself as a memory he was eager to share. Countless people join the millions-strong ranks of witnesses daily via similar incidents. There is no question that this event became imprinted on his mind for one reason: he interpreted it as a UFO, as they were in the news and he had no other obvious life experience to provide a match or an explanation. Yet hundreds of drivers on the same road that day went by, seemingly not observing this same event; or, more correctly, if they did observe it, they did not interpret it in the same way as did this sincerely puzzled observer.
Anyone who has investigated UFOs will be running through possible solutions as to the cause of this ‘unidentified’ (note: not ‘unidentifiable’) object. A major sighting some years later had a similar cause, so I think I know what this ‘UFO’ was. Maybe others saw it on that road but had seen something like it before; or they knew that aircraft lights can, at a chance moment in time, align to create a visual illusion.
Think ‘plane’, and the case fizzles out as you seek answers, not puzzles. Think ‘UFO’, and your mind sets off in a very different direction. Many close encounters come into being in this manner. It is nobody’s fault – just our love of mysteries and the desire to solve them. “UFO” is a much more interesting outcome than “plane”, so it is no surprise more are tempted on that path than not.
Another day, and in this instance the witness who contacted me was a highly skilled engineer working for the MoD at a base in Hampshire. On 8 June 1982 he had followed his passion for motorbikes to the Isle of Man, where the world-famous TT
Races are held each Summer. Observing from Mooragh Park in Ramsey on a lovely sunny day, he spotted a ring-shaped object that slowly drifted by as the crowd focused on other things closer to Earth. He photographed it as it flew away – proof that it was real. To him, it was a baffling event – over in moments – and a classic daylight encounter. I did not witness this event but by chance was elsewhere on the island that day as my partner Paul was a big motorbike fan and we were taking a holiday. The photograph of the UFO was analysed by experts. The object it showed, though faint and small against the sky, was genuine. We estimated it to be an annular object about 30ft (9m) wide. Yet many in the crowd either had not seen it or – perhaps crucially – had not seen it as a UFO. There is a big difference.
This might still be an unsolved case were it not for the fact that around that time Paul and I were nearby and recalled the lovely, hot weather that day as a Pitt Special light aircraft did an aerial display that looped the loop and created a small smoke ring in the sky. Conditions were such that this was very stable and drifted away over the island. It was easy to check where it might have headed. The witness saw this ring, but not the plane that had caused it, which was elsewhere. It was pure chance that I could supply the missing part of the puzzle – otherwise, this UFO would still be a UFO.
Just how many times must this happen?
A UFO is real in the eye of the beholder; it’s not their fault they usually lack sufficient data to resolve it. But that does not mean it cannot be resolved. UFOs are a product of being in the right place at the right time; or, indeed, the wrong place – the place where you do not have the missing piece that solves the puzzle.
One final example is my own close encounter in Spring 1978. It was twilight, and Paul and I were walking the dog on Chat Moss, a huge peat bog next to where I then lived in Irlam. Then I saw a UFO; or, or to be accurate, a glowing orange ball of light drifting silently and slowly over the moss. Seconds later, it blinked out and vanished. Being interested in UFOs I kept watching the sky – and that’s the only reason I saw what happened next. Had I only viewed the first part, it would have remained a UFO report. Three days later I opened the door and found a journalist from the Warrington Guardian wanting to interview me about the UFO I’d seen. I had told nobody about it, as I knew it was not a UFO (the reporter didn’t know I was a ufologist). A neighbour had seen Paul and I on the Moss watching the event; she had stood in awe in her garden, watching only the first part – the drifting and vanishing ball of light – before hurrying indoors. She had told the press and directed them to me as a “back-up witness”.
Intriguingly, she had perceived not a blob of orange light but a dome-like ‘saucer’ that sped away; now the paper was planning a feature on the Irlam ‘spaceship’. But Paul and I had stayed for the sequel, after the orange blob ‘blinked out’ (not sped away). We then saw red and green navigation lights in the same spot, which climbed up and headed southwards and became audible as a helicopter that was heading back to base. Investigation revealed it was crop spraying at dusk using a searchlight beam turned orange by the air over the moss. It finished its job, switched off the light and returned to base. The end. Or the beginning…
Two entirely different perceptions of the same event, one creating a lifelong memory of a UFO, the other an interesting anecdote that I would have forgotten by now but for my interest in the UFO mystery. UFOs are literally out there every day. If you are observant you will see them. But the real question is how many of them are actually unidentifiable rather than simply unidentified?