Ufology today: all fringe and no middle

PETER BROOKESMITH surveys the latest fads and flaps from the world of ufological research

I mentioned in the last column “the odder edges of ufology”, but suddenly the summer silly season is upon us, and I find myself wondering if ufology isn’t all odd edges, inlets, harbours, bays and eddies, with no real mainstream at all. More like a kind of lake – or even swamp. Certain cynics of my acquaintance will of course ask why it took me so long. Let me elucidate.

Mainstream ufology has always revolved around large and dramatic cases: Thomas Mantell, Adamski & Co, UMMO, Betty and Barney Hill, Gulf Breeze, Roswell, Rendlesham, Cash-Landrum, the Phoenix Lights, Linda Napolitano alias Cortile, and so on. All manner of battles have raged over them, although anyone lacking an axe to grind could see from the get-go that there were huge holes in any argument that they were inexplicable, let alone evidence for ET wanting to signal us rather than just to phone home. While ‘alien abductions’ seem to have faded away as a central focus of ufological attention, Roswell and Rendlesham rumble on. The trouble from the proponents’ point of view is both continue to fall apart, if in different ways.

Take the latest on Rendlesham, for a start. One of the outliers in this case has been Larry Warren, who was supposedly out in the forest on one of the nights in question but apparently wasn’t, and then told horrific stories of being drugged and interrogated by AFOSI agents afterwards. With Peter Robbins as co-author he published Left at East Gate (1997), which regaled us all with his tale. Robbins has now announced that he believes Warren was more than somewhat economical with the truth in putting their book together, and wishes to put some distance between them. Nick Pope (remember him?) has backed Robbins’s claims on his Facebook page; Warren has attacked Pope in a YouTube rant (“I’ll still be standing tall when you go cock-a-doodle-do”). Meanwhile Messrs Halt, Burroughs and Pendleton have their different, but keenly evolving, different takes on the Rendlesham Incident.

Roswell ‘explanations’ likewise persist in evolving, as myths and legends do. Now we have Dr Irena Scott announcing a new book, UFOs Today: 70 Years of Lies, Misinformation and Government Cover-up, from Flying Disk Press, “which covers new witnesses to the Roswell crash and bodies, and much additional smoking gun information.” This had better be good. We shall see. Meanwhile,

Major Friend thinks Roswell was an accident involving an unarmed nuclear device

one-time head of Blue Book Major Robert J Friend has announced that he thinks ‘Roswell’ was an accident involving an unarmed nuclear device. It’s interesting that latter-day Roswell ‘revelations’ increasingly call on mundane if outlandish notions to solve the supposed mystery while adding much garam masala to the mix, so those in the cheap seats all go “Phwooar!” and those in boxes cry “Wooo!”.

And then there is the Mutual UFO Network, a kind of mystery unto itself. MUFON was established by the late Walt Andrus and others as a breakaway from the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), in 1969. It currently claims about 3,000 members which, in a current US population of some 325 million, doesn’t quite make it as a mass movement (the American Communist Party boasts about the same membership). MUFON is a tax exempt, non-profit organisation, a category gained by stating its aims as “scientific education” and being devoted to the “scientific investigation” of UFOs. Its 2017 Symposium (www.mufonsymposium.com) includes speakers claiming to offer evidence of, among other things, blue avians (what are they? Surely not deceased Norwegian parrots?), a hollow Earth (presumably ours: my Lord Clancarty, where are you now?), Mars jumpers (made from Martian sheep wool? What?), Barack Obama: Teen Space Soldier (yes, really; see

FT286:21, 351:48-51), draconian reptilians and shapeshifters, intergalactic space war, underwater UFO bases, Nazi bases in Antarctica, Nazi flying saucers (old and shrivelled chestnuts both), stargates, the galactic alliance, galactic diplomacy, the Illuminati conspiracy (what is older than an old chestnut?), the Kennedy assassination UFO conspiracy (I do wish people would just accept that Elvis Presley hid in a manhole, popped up and blew the guy away because he was jealous of JFK’s relationship with Marilyn Monroe), Pleiadians (them again), the Nordic extraterrestrial alliance (oh aye), the government mind control programme, the “real” USS Enterprise starship, fluxliner flying saucers (solder on?), and so forth. The symposium’s title is “The Case for a Secret Space Program”, which is ambiguous at best – any nation that can will have one of those, and precious little it will have to do with conspiring with the Galactic overlords.

There was a time when MUFON symposia featured the best and brightest of American ufologists with some incisive things to say, within their own frame of reference. In those days, there was a ‘mainstream’ ufology, and it knew what the lunatic fringe was. Alas no longer, it seems. This stuff has no more to do with “scientific investigation” than my cat Esme Weatherwax has to do with breeding racing snails. The fringe is in the middle.