UFO witnesses to be on TV

Stephenville native Ricky Sorrells and other witnesses who claim they saw a UFO in January will be guests on Larry King Live today.

The show, which airs daily on cable news channel CNN at 8 p.m., will also feature three hunters from the History Channel show, "UFO Hunters."

Sewell and several other Stephenville natives claim they saw a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast near Stephenville in January.

Radar spotted UFOs near Crawford in January, group says

By Matt Frazier

mfrazier@star-telegram.com

A national group that studies unidentified flying objects has issued a report that says Federal Aviation Administration radar appears to confirm the presence of unidentified aircrafts over the Stephenville/Dublin area, with at least one apparently headed toward President Bush’s Crawford Ranch on the January night when dozens of witnesses reported UFOs.

The Mutual UFO Network report says radar indicates that several aircraft were found Jan. 8 in the same compass direction and time frame as cited by the witnesses, but were not military and did not have transponder, which relay information about the craft to radar operators.

The 77-page report released on the MUFON Web site (www.mufon.com) late Thursday night. The organization gathered data for its radar report by filing 10 Freedom of Information requests to the FAA, National Weather Service, all nearby military bases, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Services and the 21st and 30th Air Force Wing Commands.

FAA spokesman Roland Herwig said he was not familiar with the radar data and could not immeditely comment on the report.

According to the report, one Crawford-bound craft was tracked by radar for more than an hour. Witnesses said they saw two large glowing amber lights similar in size and color to the lights on the back of a school bus.

The object seemed to be stationary or moving speeds of less than 60 mph most of the time, but at one point it accelerated to 532 miles per hour in 30 seconds, according to the report. But it did not seem to reach the property.

“The object was traveling to the southeast on a direct course towards the Crawford Ranch, also known as President Bush’s western White House,” the report sates. “The last time the object was seen on radar at 8 p.m., it was continuing on a direct path to Crawford Ranch and was only 10 miles away. During the entire episode of over an hour, there is no indication that any of the military jets reacted to this unknown craft.”

Dozens of people around Dublin and Stephenville — about 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth — say they saw flying objects on or around Jan. 8 that they could not identify and that did not move like conventional aircraft. Some of the witnesses said the objects were being accompanied or followed by military aircraft.

Descriptions vary. Some told of objects up to a mile long and hundreds of yards high. Others reported seeing two to eight lights that flew in formation, changed color and shined with intensity greater than a welding flame.

These sightings gained national and international attention because of the number and credibility of witnesses, including a county constable and a pilot. Many of the witnesses are familiar with aircraft because the military has a flight practice zone that ends just south of the sighting area.

The radar report seems to back witnesses stories, including that of constable Lee Roy Gaitan, who said he saw an unknown object south of his home about four miles southwest of Dublin. He described it as two amber lights that were initially stationary that changed into about 10 white lights that departed at a high rate of speed.

“Radar detects an object at 7:20 p.m. only 2.8 miles south southwest of the constable’s home and traveling in a southeastern direction,” the report states. “This matches very well with the time and direction of the constable’s sighting. At 7:36 p.m. radar shows the object suddenly veering to the north at 1,900 miles per hour and then returning a minute later to continue on its southeastern course.”

The authors of the report said they reached conclusions:

nThere was definitely a real and physical object that appeared and was witnessed.

nThe military did not act overtly to the presence of these objects.

nMilitary air traffic was unusually heavy and twice veered into civilian airspace.

The Mutual UFO Network is a nationwide organization that studies unidentified flying objects. Its Texas chapter took statements from about 50 witnesses Jan. 19 and interviewed at least 70 more, gathering descriptions, sketches, pictures and videos.

The report is online at www.mufon.com.

MATT FRAZIER, 817-685-3854

Stephenville UFO report out

The world waited for Mutual UFO Network's (MUFON) official report on the Stephenville unidentified flying objects report.

And waited. And waited.

That was cool. That meant a lot of work was going on and State Director Ken Cherry and Chief Investigator Steve Hudgeons were pouring through hundreds of eyewitness accounts, plotting on maps, coordinating radar data, and organizing field investigators.

Finally, the report was forthcoming in the May edition of the MUFON Journal. Eagerly, those of the UFO community as well as those not so familiar began scouring the document.

For what?

To find out, the Stephenville investigation was the largest sighting the Texas group had ever handled. And it showed. Crowds flooded the January Dublin meeting, more than willing to share their experiences of the unusual event.

Eight MUFON investigators answered the call for volunteers to interview witnesses. With all of the media attention, the job must have seemed overwhelming.

We find out Texas has had more than 550 sightings from 1947 to Nov. 1, 2007. The author of the article said that information was for perspective, but it seemed more like filler. Especially because the title of the article leads the reader to believe he or she will find out more about Erath County sightings. The title is "Stephenville: Report of Cluster of UFO Sightings in Erath County, Texas, Nov. 2007 to Feb. 2008."

Steve Allen is the pilot who first brought the sightings to the attention of the world. He and three friends saw something so unbelievably large and absolutely silent Jan. 8 they didn't feel it should remain between friends. And, when a few minutes later the object appeared for the second time, apparently being chased by F-16 jets, it made the sighting all the more interesting. Allen is mentioned, but the report does not recognize if his sighting was identified or is to remain unidentified. And, what about those jets? Did they show up on radar? Is there anything new in this report regarding Allen's sighting that wasn't already known?

A map is included with Allen's location in Selden along with the time (6:15 p.m.) Allen claimed he saw something a mile long and a half-mile wide. There are other anonymous witnesses plotted on the map at other locations from Stephenville to Dublin but no mention of sighting times. There are arrows, which show directions of something traveling along the path of the witnesses. But, where are numbers like altitude and speed? Why isn't there any information in the report to explain how the researchers knew the path this object took?

The report says many of the sightings have been identified, including one video presented by an unknown witness that resembled a black snake "being blown across the sky." MUFON identified this object as a "military sleeve." Where's the data? Meanwhile, it's mostly recognized that UFO sightings are eventually identified. James Fox, UFO filmmaker, believes as many as 95 percent are identified and he has been known to say it's the other 5 percent we should be worried about.

What the report does not say is which cases were not identified or give any exact numbers.

Cherry has been quoted as saying most of the people in Erath County saw planets, stars or clouds. Maybe, but where's the data? What planets and stars did they see? It would seem easy for an untrained observer to make that mistake.

The Doppler radar information provided by William Puckett for the official report was interesting. Puckett apparently found an object that piqued his interest at 6:34 p.m. Jan. 8. It was something that was not using a transponder and something that did not show 10 minutes before or 10 minutes after this time period.

Puckett is quoted as saying, "I found a fast moving target moving on an eastward vector of about 700 mph. This was clearly not a passenger jet. It could have been a military jet or an unknown object. The object was not transponding."

Puckett goes on to state weather conditions for the area Jan. 8.

Well, we all knew there were jets in the area. Even Maj. Karl Lewis with the Naval Air Base finally admitted there were 10 from his base alone on the evening in question after first denying there were any.

The report also mentions three area law enforcement officers and their accounts on Jan. 8, but mistakenly calls them "constables." A recent phone call to one of the officers confirmed that none of the three ever made an official report to MUFON investigators. Nor does the report state how the information or the computer drawings was obtained.

Bruce Maccabee, Ph.D., a ufologist studying the field for years was provided with a copy of David Coran's video. Coran is a Stephenville resident and first showed his film to Steve Allen. Allen gave Coran some money and Coran told him to use the film as he pleased, according to Allen.

Then Ken Cherry arranged a meeting between Coran and UFO Hunters of the History Channel to purchase the video. Maccabee is the organization's state director for Maryland. Without the original film or camera or being able to look through that camera at the precise time and place the film was taken, Maccabee determined that Coran was viewing an out-of-focus star. It's an analysis that many in the UFO community agree with.

A conclusion, Allen says, he will never believe. Allen said the tape he has shows trees and rooftops clearly in focus while the "star" is putting on a light show.

Thanks, Steve Allen, for giving us all courage; courage to report, courage to write, and courage to look deeply into the unknown.

In Ken Cherry's short article for the Journal, he says, "No doubt, this report will not satisfy the skeptics or true believers."

No doubt, he's right.

-- Angelia Joiner is a former Stephenville Empire-Tribune reporter who covered the UFO sighting extensively.

Strange lights over Texas

Courtney Perry / For The Times

Stephenville is the largest town in Erath County, Texas, where cows tend to outnumber people. But the town became famous after scores of people reported seeing UFOs earlier this year.

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UFO sightings in the town of Stephenville set off a furor of theories, media coverage, even T-shirts. But was there an explanation?

By Denise Gellene, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
10:28 PM PDT, June 13, 2008

STEPHENVILLE, TEXAS -- Constable Lee Roy Gaitan saw the brilliant red orbs hovering in the sky and hollered for his family to come out.

It's probably an airplane, said his wife, Wendy, who didn't budge from the couch. Only 8-year-old Ryan went to the front yard.

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  Photos: Lights in the sky over Texas

That's a UFO, the boy said.

Gaitan, a stocky, 44-year-old lawman who has spent 16 years patrolling the Texas scrubland, faced a bit of a dilemma. With an election coming up, he could tell the world of this incredible sight -- and look like an idiot -- or keep his mouth shut.

"People would say, 'Hey, this guy is nuts. He's crazy,' " said Gaitan of his sighting Jan. 8.

In the morning, there were no unusual police reports, leaving him to wonder whether anyone else had seen the lights. But the next day, the Stephenville Empire-Tribune came out with a front-page story: "Possible UFO Sighting -- Four area residents witness mysterious objects."

Soon, scores more said they had seen the same thing. Stephenville, a ranch town 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth, became home to the biggest mass UFO sighting since the 1997 Phoenix Lights, in which thousands of people, including then-Gov. Fife Symington, reported seeing a boomerang-shaped formation in the sky.

With so many reports from so many people pouring in, there was no easy way to dismiss it all as a hoax. A town that had called itself "The Cowboy Capital of the World" now found itself riding an emotional bronco. Things changed.

The night sky above Stephenville is a jet black canvas that seems the perfect backdrop for the sharp white specks of stars and any imaginings of strange glowing lights.

Stephenville, the largest town in Erath County, is in the heart of Texas dairy country, which means lots of open land and few towns to interrupt the flow of grazing.

Cows easily outnumber the 34,000 humans in the county and, in honor of the dairy industry, there is a Holstein statue nicknamed Moo-la in Stephenville's town square.

After football season ends in the winter, life slows. The green fields turn a dreary brown, punctuated by leafless oaks that reach into the endless Texas sky.

It was a cool, clear January night when Steve Allen, 50, and a group of friends were warming themselves around a fire of brush and debris in nearby Selden, just south of Stephenville.

They first saw a set of brilliant white lights heading from the east that looked like they were at the corners of something a mile long and a half-mile wide. The lights were quicker and quieter than anything Allen had ever seen.

"They came within a mile of us," said Allen, the owner of L&S Enterprises and Texas Freight, a local trucking company. "It flipped us all out."

The lights headed toward Stephenville, where they came to a stop. They reconfigured to form an arch "shaped like the top of a football," Allen said, and realigned into two vertical lines of randomly flashing lights. Then the object burst into a dirty white flame.

"It looked like something firing up, like a blowtorch," Allen said. "It simply vanished."

Ten minutes later, the group saw the lights coming from the opposite direction. Trailing them closely, Allen was certain, were two military jets, followed by two massive red orbs.

Allen, who as a licensed pilot was comfortable judging distance, said the lights were 3,000 feet above the ground.

When the light show was over, he went home and told his wife, who urged him to keep the encounter to himself.

Allen spent a sleepless night, enthralled by what he had seen. In the morning, he contacted the Empire-Tribune.

His call went to education reporter Angelia Joiner. She knew nothing about UFOs, but Allen sounded like a sensible man.

• 
  Photos: Lights in the sky over Texas

"He was a pilot and seemed very intelligent," said Joiner, a 47-year-old former schoolteacher who had been a reporter for 18 months. Allen's friends confirmed the account, convincing Joiner the sighting was real.

Still, it was a strange story and Joiner's bosses were concerned. Managing Editor Sara Vanden Berge said she was so anxious that she cried the next morning when she saw "UFO" in the headline. Everyone is laughing at us, she thought.

That was before the television crews started showing up. First came the local reporters, then people from "Good Morning America," NPR and CNN.

"Do you believe alien beings are out there?" CNN's Larry King asked, looking into the camera. "Do you believe they've come to Earth?"

A Japanese film crew showed up and theorized that the UFO was related to the local dairy farms, Allen said. Aliens like milk, they told him.

The town was swept into a UFO maelstrom. People sported aluminum foil alien hats at Stephenville High School basketball games. Men with belt buckles big as fists were wearing "Alien Capital of the World" T-shirts rushed into production by a local company.

The high school science club decided to capitalize on the events by selling its own T-shirts that said: "Erath County -- the New Roswell," referring to the UFO mecca in New Mexico. The shirts carried a picture of a cow being beamed up to a spaceship with the caption: "They came for the milk."

The school netted $7,000 for college scholarships. "Money just fell out of the sky," Principal Travis Stillwell said.

Sensing a historic moment for the town, the Literary Lion bookstore invited customers to jot down their accounts for future generations. Owner Sarah Canady put out salsa and chips for the crowd.

The reports attracted the attention of the Mutual UFO Network, a group that investigates UFO sightings. People who had never talked about UFOs suddenly came forward with tales going back years.

Meeting at the Rotary Club in nearby Dublin, the group collected dozens of reports, including one from Kay Harris, a former factory worker who handed out photocopies of a map charting the route of a flying disc that passed over her home in 1995. She said she had pulled out a handgun but held her fire. "I was not about to start War of the Worlds," Harris said.

Gaitan watched the furor unfold. He had initially been hesitant to mention the event but now couldn't stop talking about it. Media calls came from all over the world, and by mid-February he had logged more than 100 interviews.

His instinct as a lawman was to stick to the facts, so he avoided leaping to conclusions about the lights. Still, he couldn't dismiss a nagging thought at the back of his mind. How could we be alone in a universe so big, he wondered.

"It would be like having a 20- to 30-acre lake and being the only creature in it," he said.

In the midst of the frenzy, his 15-year-old daughter, Katie, came home from school one day and flatly told him that UFOs weren't real. Her school friends didn't believe in them either, she said.

He found himself explaining that "UFO" didn't necessarily mean flying saucers and little green men. It just meant no one knew what the lights were.

Gaitan asked Katie if anyone at school was teasing her because he was on television talking about UFOs, and to his relief, she said no.

Joiner was swamped by calls about strange objects in the sky. Even though she was supposed to be covering the schools, she couldn't help pursuing the UFO story.

"As much as I would have liked to cut it off, I couldn't," she said. "I didn't want to abandon the witnesses."

A logical explanation for the lights was the military; a portion of Erath County falls under a fly zone used in training exercises. When Joiner checked, however, the 301st Fighter Wing stationed near Fort Worth said no aircraft had been near Stephenville when the lights were first observed Jan. 8.

There was no solid way to refute the UFO claims, so theories abounded. The UFO needed power, one story went, so it was headed to a nearby nuclear plant. Another explanation had the UFO looking for President Bush at his Crawford ranch, about an hour's drive from Stephenville.

In the deeply religious community, some believed the lights could be a sign from God. A Bible study group at the Bread of Life Ministries discussed the events at one meeting, and Sandra Evans, 59, said she thought maybe they were guardian angels sent to Earth.

Her husband, Keith, 60, pastor of the church, wasn't sure. "Could be the military," he said. "Could be the end of times."

James Huse, 53, thought that whatever the lights were, they had brought him unexpected good luck. People suddenly repaid him money, legal problems with his father's estate resolved and an old girlfriend called him out of the blue.

"It's kind of a crazy thing -- it's almost like a blessing," said Huse, a retired telephone equipment installer.

Allen felt that he had witnessed something transcendent and was driven to understand what it all meant.

He flew his Cessna over Erath County's countryside, scouring the land for any sign of an alien spaceship. For three afternoons, he surveyed hundreds of square miles but found nothing.

Two weeks after the sighting, a break came in the case. Correcting its earlier statement, the Air Force said 10 F-16s were on a training mission over Erath County when the lights were initially spotted.

The town splintered into believers and skeptics. To some, the lights were becoming a joke.

"It's ridiculous," said Pam Kinsel, a member of the Stephenville High School science club. "It makes us look like a bunch of retarded hicks."

"Yeah," sighed her friend Morgan Lanier. "Inbred."

Joiner doubted the weird pattern of lights reported by Allen and others could be explained by military aircraft. Allen wasn't buying it either. "Our military wishes it had what we saw," he said.

Gaitan reasoned from the presence of the F-16s that he probably had seen a military experiment the Air Force couldn't fully disclose. "We're in the middle of a war right now," he said.

Gaitan nonetheless found himself repeatedly scanning the sky for another glimpse of the lights. One February morning at dawn, while driving the highway west of Stephenville, Gaitan spotted a mysterious ball of light shining through a field of leafless trees. He pulled over and aimed his police camera in its direction.

Gaitan radioed one of his buddies, Sgt. Jim Clifton of the Erath County Sheriff's Department, to take a look. "In my 35 years of law enforcement, I have never seen anything like it," Clifton said.

Less than 24 hours later, Gaitan was at home in Dublin when he spotted a strange pattern of red, green and white lights. He was off-duty, so he and his wife chased the lights in their car, recording images as they followed them into the countryside.

Wendy, 37, who doubted the first sighting, was now convinced the lights were from a technologically superior ship from outer space.

"Who is to say they are not going to invade?" she said.

As winter turned to spring, and the brown fields became green again, the inconclusiveness of the cosmic news began to fade into the daily grind of terrestrial events. The town started looking forward to graduation at the high school, and the first awarding of college scholarships funded by T-shirt sales.

Joiner, frustrated with juggling her duties as an education writer, quit the paper and signed on as a special correspondent for the Jerry Pippin radio show, which regularly reports on unexplained phenomena. In April, she gave a talk at the National Press Club in Washington about covering the Stephenville lights.

It's become her life. "I am looking at the sky more. Friends and neighbors are looking at the sky more," said Joiner, who has never seen the lights herself. "Is it coming back?"

Allen became friends with Joiner, and when she left the paper he and another witness came up with the idea of a website to keep the story alive and possibly make some money from the sale of T-shirts and videos of subsequent sightings. They also recruited Gaitan, since he was one of the main witnesses.

Despite his skepticism, Gaitan agreed to join. He contributed some photos to the site, but recently said he wouldn't be shooting any new ones.

Weary of the tumult, he hardly searches the sky anymore.

denise.gellene@latimes.com

MUFON SAYS NOTHING EXCITING HAPPENED IN ERATH COUNTY, TEXAS, AND THOSE GLYPTHS IN THE SKY WERE JUST A STAR

June 11, 2008 at 09:39:23

by Bill Knell Page 1 of 1 page(s)

http://www.opednews.com

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It seems that Ken Cherry, Texas State Director for Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), simply cannot say that anything really strange happened in Stephenville, Dublin or Erath County, Texas. The preliminary report which he helped to prepare says there is no conclusive proof that what folks in those areas say was a UFO. The report also indicates that the video of all those glyphs in the sky was probably just a star.

I recall when the Stephenville, Texas, story first broke on the national news here in the USA. Cherry appeared on Fox News and said that he planned to get some people down to Stephenville on the weekend or whenever they could get there. He pointed out that MUFON investigators are all volunteers and that he is a business owner himself. Well, I think that Ken should stick to his business and leave UFO research to those who have the time and expertise to examine the greater body of evidence surrounding what really happened in Erath County.

The Stephenville, Dublin and Erath County UFO encounters are not just about one sighting. They involve multiple sightings, credible witnesses, photographic and video evidence, a government cover-up, harassment of witnesses and other events involving high strangeness. To focus in on one sighting and pretend that all the available evidence doesn’t point to a series of unexplained events is irresponsible and a game that I would expect skeptics, not credible UFO investigators, to play.

Skeptics prove that if you want to explain away anything, it can be done. They begin their investigations by trying to debunk a paranormal or supernatural event, instead of objectively examining it. The flaw in that formula is that debunking doesn’t allow for the thoughtful consideration of evidence. It limit’s the investigator’s ability to consider the big picture and other circumstances that may be related to any given case. Skepticism is the easy road. Objectivity is hard.

Apart from coming to some very suspicious conclusions based on the available evidence, there is another consideration that causes me to question the reliability of the suppositions in the MUFON report. MUFON has a long and well deserved reputation of trying to please skeptics. They practically made a superstar out of Phil Klass. Anyone that’s been researching UFOs for more than a few years knows that you will never succeed in keeping the true believers or skeptics happy. It’s impossible to avoid running afoul of their narrow viewpoints.

MUFON is also known as a group that doesn’t work and play well with others. I seriously doubt that the investigators that prepared this report took the time to speak with people that didn’t come to them. MUFON has never learned that an investigation means more than just examining the information contained in sighting reports. You have to get out there and speak with other credible reporters and researchers that are on the scene. They may have important information about the events you are investigating. If you don’t, your report isn’t complete and can easily mislead the public about the facts and circumstances of any given UFO event.

I want to be fair and remind readers that MUFON is a grass roots organization and, arguably, the oldest UFO investigative and research group in existence. I know for a fact that many of their local chapters are made up of people who are sincere, dedicated and fair. You cannot judge the entire organization by what any one member or group of members may do. However, I think that the conclusions in the report on Stephenville are reprehensible and exhibit and amazing lack of investigative skill.

Some of the explanations that the Texas MUFON investigators managed to cook up to explain the Erath County sighting and video include a military target sleeve, sensitivity of cameras, lights from other sources, sun dogs, lens flares and bad film. These brilliant deductions were announced on May 18, 2008 at a public library meeting (I hope it was held in the FICTION area). Is it any wonder that at least one Texas newspaper likened the MUFON investigation team to the Scooby Doo Gang? Enough said. For more, visit http://newsletter.ufoguy.com

Jet hits UFO

http://livenews.com.au/Articles/2008/06/11/Fighter_plane_struck_by_UFO_in_Romania

Fighter plane struck by U.F.O in Romania

Jesse Perez

11/06/2008 4:14:00 PM.

Defence chiefs in Romania are investigating claims that one of their MIG 21 fighter planes was struck by an Unidentified Flying Object.

The claims came from a leaked report revealed that the cockpit of the jet was shattered in the collision.

Romanian defence ministry officials have ruled out a collision with "normal" objects such as birds and meteorites.

In the report, Chief investigator Commander Nicolae Grigorie said: 'We can definitely say what this thing was not, but we cannot say what it was.'

The incident was recorded on an in-flight camera as the plane was flying above Transylvania.

Pilot Marin Mitrica was injured slightly but managed to land the plane after the blow.

The collision is still a mystery to defence chiefs, and the investigation has been passed on to the Security Committee of European Air Forces.

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http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=71334

06/11/2008 08:02 AM ID: 71334
UFO Collides With Fighter Jet Over Transylvania
	Transylvania: A leaked report has revealed that a Romanian MIG-21 was hit by a number of unidentified flying objects. The pilot was able to land the plane despite the impact shattering the cockpit and causing him minor injuries. The inflight camera was able to capture the incident. Officials from the Romanian Ministry of Defence have indicated that it was not a birdstrike, meteorite, or ice. "We can definitely say what this thing was not, but we cannot say what it was," said Chief investigator Commander Nicolae Grigorie. The incident has been referred to the Security Committee of European Air Forces for further scrutiny.

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http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s3i36733

Romanian MIG 21 mid-air UFO collision was Scareforce One blue ice

Written by queen mudder

Story written: 10 June 2008

The President's plane was considerably lighter after the incident

Central Europe - (ET Mess): Diplomatc relations between the US and Romania have hit rock bottom after it emerged that an apparent UFO mid-air collision with a MIG 21 fighter jet was nothing more than half a tonne of well-aimed blue ice from George W Bush's Airforce One global runabout.

Bush was enroute to Slovenia for a Non-Aligned Crack Barons convention when the incident occurred.

His plane was buzzed by Romanian fighter jets after straying into Transylvanian sovereign airspace during an electrical storm.

"We thought he might be on a secret trip to his fatherland," Transylvanian air accident chief investigator Commander Nicolae Grigorie explained today, "and had skipped formalities such as an entry visa and landing taxes."

The Airforce One pilot reacted quickly, immediately retalliating by climbing high above the Russian-made MIG and opening up the sluices just after the President had had his usual post-prandial dump.

Shocked Romanian defence chiefs said the action constituted an act of whore and immediately filed a complaint with the UN Security Council.

An official report says the MIG's cockpit was shattered and the hapless pilot had to bail out at 33,000 feet, his near-useless parachute clogged up with shards of frozen semi-digested chili remains.

Condoleezza Rice is a militant vegan.

New Alien Video Shines (Photoshopped) Light on UFO Hoaxers

The latest alleged close encounter is of a new kind: Paranormal researchers, NASA geeks and even skeptical magicians all agree that the invasion of extraterrestrial evidence has gone over the edge with digital manipulation. Why that's not good for skeptics or believers—and why you've been watching a fake of a fake for almost a week.

Bryan Bonner's mock video used DIY digital effects and a store-bought costume to show how easy it would be for Stan Romanek to fake his evidence of alien life. The fake, pictured at left, was released the day before a news conference when an actual still from Romanek's footage was released (right), though bloggers have picked up the Bonner footage as the "real" thing. (Stills via the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society and the Rocky Mountain News)

By Erik Sofge

Published on: June 3, 2008

If real life were anything like a sci-fi movie, Stan Romanek might just hold the future of mankind in his hands. Judging from his own (now very public) accounts, Romanek has had a staggering amount of contact with extraterrestrials. He has photographed a so-called flying orb emblazoned with what appears to be a face. He has met aliens in person, and drawn sketches of their vast eyes and swollen craniums. And late last week, Romanek stirred up a Web frenzy by showing a room full of reporters in Denver a brief clip of what he says is an alien peering into his window.

Clearly, this is no coincidence.

Many of the legions of UFO believers and spotters—whether driven by publicity, paranoia or hope—have taken a single suspicious photo. Some have reported an abduction or two. But for one man to have such a voluminous (and diverse) history of close encounters with nonhuman intelligence, you'd think Romanek had been chosen as Earth's unlikely ambassador to the stars. That, or he's coming out with a movie.

In what amounts to a bizarre new kind of viral marketing, the footage screened on Friday—to be included in an upcoming documentary about Romanek's experiences—is also part of a ballot initiative to create a commission that would formalize contact with aliens. The man heading that effort, 54-year-old Jeff Peckman, has a curious political track record running parallel to his extraterrestrial PR. In 2003, he campaigned for an initiative to reduce Denver's collective stress levels, using such measures as group meditation and the playing of sitar music in public buildings. But Peckman's efforts to promote Romanek's footage have been considerably more successful, garnering national headlines and an appearance on Larry King Live. And the hyperbole is frustrating the already combative cult of UFO followers, skeptics and believers alike.

"We saw this guy trying to pass off things that looked paranormal as something related to aliens," says Bryan Bonner, head of the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society, which has been recreating Romanek's photos and videos for several years—to disprove him. That's because the same type of evidence once used by paranormal scientists to indicate the presence of ghosts is now being doctored by amateurs as proof of alien life.

Neither Romanek nor Peckman responded to requests for comment for this article, but their new footage—for now reduced to a single night-vision still image they've made public—and the ensuing fakes, headlines and hysteria have shed light on what researchers monitoring the field say is an increasing trend of hoax hype in a digital age.

The Watchdogs of Photoshopped Fame

Bonner and his team of investigators, who specialize in reports of haunted houses, actually saw the video months ago, when he says it was making the rounds in the UFO community as Peckman was garnering interest for a 4000-signature ballot initiative to start an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission in Denver. "It sparked our interest, but he seemed like another nut off the street," Bonner remembered. "Then he says he has evidence."

Bonner assumed that the Romanek footage was that so-called evidence, and with Peckman's press conference preview on Thursday confirming this, Bonner's team put together a mock video of its own that night. To counter claims that it would have taken thousands of dollars for Romanek to create a convincing, blinking prosthetic creature, the investigators from Rocky Mountain Paranormal rented a dummy alien from a costume shop, then spliced together quick-and-dirty special effects to make its giant eyes appear to blink.

In a strange twist, Bonner's mock video has been embedded on various blogs and linked on forums, mistaken for the actual Romanek footage. But that's an increasingly common mistake when so much can be made to look real with even an amateur's desktop software. "The problem with any data—I don't care if it's a video, a photo, electromagnetic readings—it can be faked," Bonner says. "And because of the digital age, it can be faked easily."

One film, released in 1995 to some notoriety in the geekosphere, purported to show a military autopsy performed on an alien. More than a decade later, the filmmaker changed his story, claiming that the video recreated footage he had seen, which had degraded before he was able to gather the necessary funds to buy it. And a few months ago, an anonymous source released footage of another alien autopsy, although the corpse in question is a rubbery, toylike thing, roughly the size of a baby chimpanzee. No explanation has been provided for where the video came from, why the alien is so small, or why there's such an obvious edit before the creature's entrails are removed (they also change color). "Any evidence is only as good as the reputation of the group that gave it to you," says Bonner.

By that measure, Stan Romanek is a problematic source. The evidence he has presented since his first reported contact in late 2000 is full of red flags. One photo posted on Romanek's Web site shows what he interprets to be a UFO covered in bubblelike pods. The next UFO he encountered had a classic flying-saucer profile. Another one appears as a sphere with barely visible facial features. According to Bonner, Romanek has also tried to talk with aliens using the classic paranormal "Frank's Box" gadget, which is generally a modified car radio that picks up random snippets of speech from AM stations—often for attempted communication with the dead. Even less consistent are Romanek's personal encounters, which include mysterious wounds that glowed under a black light, a chair that spun on its own, and an ominous black silhouette moving through his home.

At Friday's news conference, according to a video on the Denver Post's Web site, Peckman deflected those inconsistencies by citing public sentiment—a majority of Americans do believe extraterrestrials exist—and saying the new footage would help push awareness for his alien oversight board in the local November election. "There's already quite a bit of information out there—there's momentum, there's support, and I believe it will pass," Peckman said. "I don't think it would pass today, because there's been too much denial of information, too much misinformation."

The Gadget-Built Currency of Conspiracy

In the sprawling community of hardcore extraterrestrial believers, footage like Romanek's is not only rare, but widely derided. Clark McClelland, a former Spacecraft Control Operator at NASA who claims to have seen extraterrestrials firsthand, called the Denver footage "a pathetic disclosure."

The central currency of this subculture is evidence of "orbs," unexplained glowing balls that appear only in photographs. James Randi, a professional magician and legendary skeptic, whose foundation is still offering $1 million for verifiable proof of the paranormal, receives a handful of orb photographs each week. "Most of the photos aren't fakes," he says. "These are just people who don't know how to operate a camera." The orbs themselves are not only easily explained, but even more easily replicated. "The majority are dust motes that are brightly lit. With an infrared camera they show up particularly well," Randi says. Even with a standard camera, spotters can create their own suspicious balls of light with a particulate that's close to the lens and properly illuminated by the flash.

Lens flare can also be easily misinterpreted for the presence of an orb, particularly when the apparent object winds up with something that could be described as a face. Laying aside the ridiculous engineering implications of a head-shaped spacecraft, there's nothing new—or mysterious—about seeing faces where they shouldn't be. "It's a condition we all have, called pareidolia," says Bonner. "It served an evolutionary purpose. When we were out in the bushes, trying to fend for ourselves, it meant we didn't get eaten by the big fuzzy thing trying to kill us before we killed it. We still have those instincts, but we don't know how to interpret it. So we look at clouds, or orbs, and we still see faces."

When they aren't deliberate hoaxes, the oddly shaped spacecraft that populate so many UFO shots are often just misinterpretations of digital artifacts. Tweaking an image in a program like Photoshop can only exacerbate things, as an object is either intentionally or accidentally crafted into a more intricate vessel—deeper shadows, a more metallic sheen, even a more distinct face. All of which can be—and has been—debunked or recreated by photographers and video experts.

But in both Bonner and Randi's experience, explanations and counter-evidence tend to fall on deaf ears. "They need what we call a ‘woo-woo solution,'" Randi says. "They resist all attempts to rationalize. They see the thing demonstrated for them, replicated for them, and they'll just shake their heads and smile—and walk away."

Angelia Joiner and The Stephenville Lights – and Alfred Webre - Wednesday June 4 - on the Richard Syrett Show

Toronto, ON, Canada June 2, 2008 – Angelia Joiner former staff writer for the Stephenville Empire Tribune will join host Richard Syrett and co-host Victor Viggiani this Wednesday June 4 on News Talk 1010 CFRB AM Toronto from 11:00 pm to midnight EST to discuss the Stephenville Lights UFO phenomenon.

Angelia uncovered what is today considered by many one of the most puzzling UFO events in North American history. Her eye witness interviews include pilots, police officers and local citizens, each of whom attest to having seen massive, solid rectangular unidentified craft hundreds of metres in length – moving silently 270 metres above them.

Angelia Joiner tells her story about how a small town in Texas in January of 2008 became a world focal point as their newspaper – The Stephenville Empire Tribune – first covered the story, creating international repercussions, and then shortly thereafter ceasing all coverage. Ms. Joiner's less than ceremonious departure from the Stephenville Empire Tribune portrays how, and possibly why mainstream journalists are pressured to play-down UFO events of high significance.

Rivaled only by the stunning Phoenix Lights of 1997 as brought to us by Dr. Lynne Kitei in an earlier interview on the Richard Syrett Show, the Stephenville Lights phenomenon enters the litany of UFO sightings receiving a "no comment" from our government and military officials.

Journalists world-wide are invited to call-in to speak with Ms. Joiner.

Other coverage of this event: http://www.reporternews.com/news/2008/feb/29/unwelcome-visits/

At midnight EST Richard and Victor will speak with Alfred Webre about the United Nations Decade of Contact Petition. The petition seeks 10,000 names to present to the UN a viable agenda of disclosure.

Currently at over 6700 names, the petition supports the disclosure of ET contact issues, public funding of ET research and a ban on weaponry in space.

While interviewing Alfred Webre – guests may call-in and speak with him and, all listeners are encouraged to go to the site to add their names to this historic appeal.

To review the petition go to:
http://www.exopolitics.com/

All of this on News Talk 1010 CFRB Toronto AM radio.

Listen Live on the net at: www.cfrb.com

To speak with Richard, Victor and their guests call: Toll Free 1.800.561.CFRB – Local 416.872.1010 – or - Cell *TALK

Any journalist or editor wishing to speak with either guest confidentially is asked to use the contact information below.