I want to share an amusing and unusual story.  It's been almost a year now but I still think about it, now and then.

The night before I presented at the 2009 Chicago Ghost Conference, I was hanging out at a local hotel with my wife and a couple of friends when we decided to do a beer run.

We had to drive around a bit in an unfamiliar neighborhood to locate a party store but eventually found one, just at closing time.

Inside the store's cooler, I spotted a solitary six pack of "UFO Beer."  I'd never even of heard of this brand before, and instantly knew it was a must-have selection (even though the box had obviously been collecting some dust).

Upon bringing it back and pulling out the first beer, I noticed a key laying under the bottle.  I pulled it out and saw that it was a house key.  Then, upon pulling out a second bottle, I noticed a second key, which was a building key.  An added curiousity was that the cardboard case was sealed solid at the base, meaning that whomever put these keys there must have taken the time to lift the bottles out before carefully placing each key directly under a bottle.  In other words, this was no accident.

A thought struck that maybe we should take the keys back to the store.  A few things stopped us from heading back out:  the place was already closed, we hadn't paid much attention to where we had driven to get to the store and weren't sure we could even find our way back (we actually needed GPS to find the hotel after leaving the store), there was no receipt, and we paid cash (so, no way to trace our purchase).  Hmmm.

I eventually called the Harpoon Brewing Company, who makes the beer, to see if anyone had maybe lost some keys or, better yet, see if I'd maybe won some kind of contest (what the heck).  Nope.

Why were these keys in that particular six-pack?

If someone had stashed the keys there for a particular party to find, why put them someplace where a stranger might instead pick them up.  No one else could've even gotten the keys that particular night as the store was closing.  And, if the person at the register knew about the keys, I think he certainly would've tried to get them from us before we left.

Perhaps there's some drama here that will remain a mystery forever...maybe a little gray guy had to call a locksmith that night to get into his house and the hangar where he parks his flying saucer...or, most likely, someone said, "let's put these keys in this six-pack of UFO beer to make someone always wonder WTF." 

Cheers.

A friend of mine, Jon Nowinski of the Smoking Gun Research Agency recently asked my opinion of the classic movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

I did enjoy the film.  It had great special effects and engaging over-the-top story.  Not too authentic but good sci-fi.

While the film brings welcome awareness of dramatic UFO sightings into public view, the alien scenes especially are too dissimilar to actual entity encounters reported by real experiencers to consider the movie any more real than any other drive-in style science fiction where the aliens come to Earth.

Looking back, I didn't see the movie until several years into my childhood encounter experiences but also, importantly, before my association of my encounters with UFOs themselves (which would come six years after my seeing the film).  The movie, while being entertaining like Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark, didn't resonate with my own experiences and I didn't even see a link between what the movie portrayed and what was happening to me at the time.

Physically, the aliens in the film, while perhaps somewhat similar in build to the visitors whom I've encountered, lack the gray skin-tone and large black eyes (especially the eyes) that I know so well.  The eyes make all the difference.

Spielberg got the look correct for his 2002 abduction-themed SCI-FI Channel mini-series Taken, however.  Incidentally, without this program, The Abduction Diaries, the documentary in which I appeared intended as a lead-in the Taken series, might never have aired.  I cannot testify to the authenticity of Taken as, perhaps oddly, I have yet to watch it (though I have seen pics of the aliens).

So, excluding investigative television programming on UFOs and abduction, is it better to have semi-authentic science fiction about these topics to keep them in the public eye or would it better not to blur the lines at all, even though these topics otherwise receive relatively little media attention?  I don't know.

Even films based on real stories can often be hollywood-ized into too much fiction-per-fact, two big examples are "Communion" and "Fire in the Sky."  Shame on whomever was responsible for these travesties (excuse the pun).

Best film on abduction based on a true story is The UFO Incident based on the Betty and Barney Hill story.  Nothing else comes close.

Otherwise, overtly fictional films respectful to UFO themes like Close Encounters may just the next best thing to land in theaters.

It's been a pretty good last couple of months for me.  I was named May's MUFON Volunteer of the Month, Michigan MUFON (of which I am State Director) took top-ranking in the U.S. for MUFON UFO investigation for June, I got a nice promotion at work, and most importantly, I am now a first-time parent as my wife gave birth to our baby girl on May 23.

And all this wonderful stuff has made me quite busy, day and night.

I'm certainly not alone in how the modern lifestyle of multi-tasking work, family, and a good deal more leaves little margin for focusing on additional unscheduled situations in one's life.  Among these items in the unplanned column may just be dealing with ongoing "alien" abductions, out-of body experiences, and/or living in a haunted house.

I really believe that the degree of worldwide paranormal activity is much higher than is generally made public because many people who experience it don't have time to properly reflect upon and accommodate high-strangeness events that could never fit neatly into their daily lives.

Take a consciously remembered abduction event occurring in the life of someone who "doesn't have time" for unwanted and inexplicable phenomena like this.  Why would she even want to tell anyone if she thinks she'll have to allow it to be part of her public identity and be branded as an experiencer when she can't even begin to explain or associate with what happened.

So, instead, what does happen after time is that memories of these events can fade away to the extent that the experiencer first first questions whether they really happened, then, maybe the memories are pretty much forgotten.  And we unfortunately lose another piece of the puzzle.

Paranormal phenomena is pretty deeply imbedded into my life and identity so, on a personal level, even with my busy life, I will continue to focus upon and share my experiences as best I can.  I'm hoping for a day when the stigma of casually sharing these things in mixed company dissipates enough so that everyone who experiences high-strangeness can easily talk about it without the concern of being considered unusual themselves simply because something unusual happened to them...the added burden of this additional (and most often unwanted) public identity can become quite time-consuming.

The mystery of moldavite keeps on trucking in my life.  As documented in my book, I've had a personal history of moldavite that I've owned mysteriously disappearing on me...only to find out that the same has happened to everyone I know who has also owned one of these translucent green stones.

A few weeks ago, while I was shopping for baby items at Babies R' Us (for my daughter who is due to be born any day now!), I noticed a piece of moldavite hanging from a chain around the neck of a salesperson who was assisting me.  When I told him I admired his necklace he replied that it was actually his wife's, adding that the two of them bought matching moldavite charm necklaces about a year-and-a-half ago, but that his had strangely disappeared on him several months back.  He said he knew exactly where it should have been but that it had vanished from his possession.

Now, it can't be the case that moldavite disappears from the hands of every single person who purchases it...however, oddly enough, I have yet to see evidence to the contrary.  So, I am deeply curious...

I am asking anyone who reads this who has ever owned a piece (or peices) of moldavite to please let me know if you've ever had any interesting experiences with it...whether it be a mysterious disappearance...or whether (mysterious to me at this point) you've been able to hold on to it...or anything else that seems unusual.  Thank you in advance for sharing your stories.

And, of course, if you're not familiar with the issues that I and others have had holding on to this little green rock from outer space, please pick up a copy of my book, today.

Note to self: check back with the guy from Babies R' Us sometime to see if he can hold on to that second moldavite necklace!

My wife and I are expecting our new baby daughter, any day now, and we decided to watch an episode of PBS' "Frontline," last night, called "The Vaccine War" about the medical community pushing an ever-greater degree of childhood vaccinations versus parents who believe that their children don't need and shouldn't have most to all of these.

What struck us most about this program was a surprise to both of us...the many startling parallels between this and mainstream television UFO specials.

In "The Vaccine War," there were medical professionals who said there was no scientific link between vaccinations and issues such as autism.  On the other side of this were many parents who said that after their babies received a vaccination (particularly the MMR vaccination against mumps, measles, and rubella), the children displayed a sudden and dramatic lapse into autism.

In UFO specials, there are scientists (chiefly astronomers) who say there is no scientific evidence that intelligent life from elsewhere is visiting our world.  On the other side of this are many individuals who describe encounters with anomalous flying objects and sometimes non-human entities at close range.

In these television productions, the deck then becomes stacked toward the doctors/scientists ("experts") through a focused selection of individuals on both sides of the issue followed-up by careful editing.  The process is basically: find the most confident experts and the quirkiest witnesses.  Then edit the interviews with each so that all experts appear cogent and unified and all witnesses appear misguided and a little unusual.  Add in at least one hoaxed event on the witness ledger to suggest that unethical things sometimes happen on that "team"...and voila.  Argument "won."

In the case of both vaccinations and UFO encounters, the witnesses are admittedly clearly not "experts" in any official capacity, they just know something happened that shouldn't have happened by the current rules of everything.  And, so, the split is indeed "experts" versus the "confused."  However, confused doesn't mean wrong.  Something happened...the witnesses just don't know what exactly and science hasn't identified what is going on yet either, unfortunately.  And, until that happens, the public questioning doesn't look like it will stop anytime soon.

So, concluding my thoughts on last night's TV show...

While it may be very possible that a child should receive every shot the medical community suggests, television programming like this has an all-too familiar smear presentation in the eyes of someone from the UFO field, making such a tightly controlled message appear very suspect.

Today, March 31st, is my birthday.  Happy Birthday me (yeah).

Eleven days ago, March 20, was apparently another auspicious day...one that I didn't see coming..."Alien Abduction Day."  My good friend from AAER (abduct.com) notified me that Fox News was promoting the day in the same tongue-in-cheek manner as one recognizes "Talk Like A Pirate Day" (Sept. 19).  The original source that they cite for recognizing this holiday comes from an alien abduction fun festival held in Toronto in 2008.  Fox generated so much buzz for the "holiday" that the AAER website, linked in Fox's online articles about the event, got a 12,000 visitor bump that day.

My opinion is that, although Fox may have been looking for a bit of levity in its news,  this is actually great opportunity to promote awareness of the abduction phenomenon next year.  Show the serious side.  Get a "fair and balanced" look at the phenomenon, to use their own language.

I'm putting on my calendar to remind my colleagues to be proactive in contacting Fox and other news outlets next March.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some cake and ice cream that requires my immediate attention.

The investigations of UFOs, ghosts, bigfoot (as well as other cryptids), and crop circles tend to be handled by investigators who focus exclusively on one of these phenomena...but what happens when these anomalies start to appear in conjunction?

Perhaps unknown to many people, over the years, there has been a notable number of witnesses who have reported seeing bigfoot creatures and UFOs together.  Perhaps stranger still are cases like the gentleman in Exmouth, England, who recently saw what appeared to be a classic ghost form approaching him from out of a UFO.

It is reassuring that phenomena reports are handled by investigators with a strong handle on their usually mutually exclusive areas of expertise but compartmentalization can lead to the potential for missed data (for example, a dedicated UFO investigator glosses over a witnesses' admission that the area of the sighting is a hotbed of bigfoot activity - a potentially meaningful "coincidence").  On the other hand, for those investigators who claim they're prepared to tackle a broad scope of phenomenon, the label of jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none comes to mind.

I believe that the key to the issue of how to best gather and review evidence in situations of phenomena overlap is proper networking amongst specialists.

The Michigan Chapter of the Mutual UFO Network, with whom I have been affiliated for the last seventeen years, has begun successfully sharing in it's investigation efforts with various established and dedicated local ghost hunting groups and bigfoot investigators.  And, following our state's lead of working closely with Independent Crop Circle Research Association, MUFON International has just officially declared an open partnership with the ICCRA, rather than trying to tackle crop circles internally.  Kudos to MUFON International's leadership for this wise move and a big thank you on behalf of MUFON to the ICCRA for working with us.

Also, let me step on my soap box for a second and say additionally to the many smaller groups out there that, as romantic as it is to run your own few-member investigative outfit, merging with like-minded larger groups yields huge benefits in shared resources and, the bigger your group, the better your odds at broadly sharing your hard-won compelling data with the ever-curious general public.

Phenomena investigators, please reach out to one another for the benefit of everyone.

Occasionally, I am notified, either directly or indirectly, of television projects that wish to feature abductees and am faced with the question of whether or not I would like to "audition" for them.

I have, over the years, taken part in some of these and have been satisfied with the results for the most part as I've been careful to select the ones that permitted me to share what I felt comfortable sharing without any harsh character judgment.

In particular, when a production team indicates at the onset of a project that it is going to include possible alternative explanations to an abductee's claims in an effort to be fair and unbiased, I shudder.

If we were talking about a UFO sighting at a distance, then to offer up a menu of possible prosaic explanations, if done sensibly and respectfully, is fine.  But when the witness claims to have been taken onboard an alien craft and examined, the only alternative explanations are to question that person's honesty or mental health.  Would you feel comfortable with a production crew's efforts at being unbiased if they did this to you?

First, folks should stay far away from a TV camera unless they're certain they've encountered something anomalous.  For example, if a person has vague dreams of seeing gray aliens or wakes up paralyzed in bed with a sense of presence in the room, and this is the foundation that leads him or her to question whether he or she is an abductee, this individual should first seek someone to discuss this with whom he or she trusts.  Explore it.  Seek further proof.  Be certain.  Because citing dreams and sleep-paralysis as evidence is a house of cards to shows like this.

However , on the other hand, if a person is certain that they've encountered something anomalous, what "expert" is going to have any credibility, whatsoever, to say otherwise...but they will.

I suppose an ideal episode of this type of program would be the abductee tells his or her story and the show follows up with an admission that the account is too iron-clad to challenge.  Don't count on it.  They'll find something, even if its absurd and inane, as fodder to challenge the abductee. 

And those in the viewing audience who already doubt the reality of the abduction phenomenon will buy the alternate explanations, as silly as they may sound, rather than accept as remotely possible that there just might be higher intelligences than our own in our planet-filled universe and perhaps some of these beings have already found us.

For years, I'd been anxious for "big science" to sink their teeth into the abduction phenomenon but, lately, what's been going on in the name of science scares me.

In particular, the scientific debate over whether climate change is occurring and, if it is, whether it is man-made has been taken over by political interests who have been spinning the data before, during, and after it gets released to the public.

I'm so confused by the conflicting information that I'm hearing that I'm not sure if there's any pure and unspoiled, non-partisan data coming from anywhere, anymore, on the subject.

My personal opinion on the subject (for what it's worth) is that whether or not climate-change is occurring, less emissions from local factories means a cleaner neighborhood sky for me and less garbage means fewer landfills.  Whatever sensible steps can best be made toward these ends I'd guess is a shared preference by pretty much everyone on behalf of their local neighborhoods.  But, I digress...

If a scientific topic, such as climate-change, has become a political football, could abduction research actually fall prey to politics, as well?

Well, for starters, if "big science" actually starts to review the phenomenon and they rightfully become convinced there's something going on worth serious further attention, things might get pretty interesting, fast...

Imagine those on the political left saying that government needs to expand exponentially at tax-payer expense to prepare an exo-political ambassador program and manage citizen solidarity behind the government's efforts at extraterrestrial outreach.

Imagine those on the political right saying that the visitors don't respect Christian values and/or the military needs to upgrade and expand to meet the threat of possible alien invasion.

Afternoon talk radio would suddenly become a pretty surreal affair.

Politics in science has actually been around pretty much forever.  Just ask Galileo, I guess.  I really hope that, at some point, though, a purely scientific perspective can find a place at the table of cultural discourse. 

A subject as immense and mysterious as alien visitation to our world needs as many objective scientists willing to study with an open-mind and share honest facts as we can muster.

 

Some wonder if the hypnagogic (sleep onset) or hypnapompic (waking) states, where the mind is flitting between wakefulness and dreaming while the body is still in its natural state of sleep paralysis, is responsible for claims of the abduction phenomenon.

First, as many encounters don't happen in bed or any sort of sleep scenario, please scratch that naive belief as the final answer to the mystery.

Okay, how about hypnogogia being responsible for SOME claims?

For some admitted abductees who have had only hypnagogic/hypnapompic dreams and don't understand these states or the depth of the experiencer phenomenon...maybe.  If someone has had the experience of waking up, unable to move, and sensing some sort of shadowy unseen menace in their bedroom, it may just be a dream projection unto his or her groggy reality.  And maybe claiming to be an abductee is jumping the gun a bit under these limited circumstances. 

If there is more to one's experience, however, and there certainly can be, that's the game changer.

I have had hypnagogia experiences myself and didn't really go into them in my book of my personal experiences because they didn't compare to the high strangeness of demonstrably physical entity encounters or out-of-body episodes.  Hypnagogic/hypnapompic states are indeed uneasy moments, I know, but comparatively timid when compared to complex abduction events or OBEs.

On that note, Susan Clancy of Harvard University, author of the book "Abducted: How People Come to Think they Were Kidnapped By Aliens" recently made an interesting claim on an ABC television news program.  She stated that, as she'd encountered hypagogia herself, she understood first-hand what it is abductees are claiming they encounter.  To a real abductee, this is akin to saying "I played paintball last weekend with my buddies...now I know what those soldiers in Afghanistan go through."

If this misguided belief helps Clancy sleep better at night, good for her, however, for those who choose to wake-up and smell the coffee...

Not all reported abduction events are the same.

The Halloween Season is now the busiest time of the year for me.  It's that brief month when people who pretty much never think about UFOs are open to the topic and public libraries and local radio shows actually seek out UFO presenters.  Nevermind the fact that the UFOs steadily show up year-round with no regards to whether it's Halloween, or Valentine's Day, or baseball season.

Michigan MUFON has had over 200 UFO sightings directly reported to us, so far, this year (already beating out the total of 184 for 2008 and 76 for 2007!).  This is just the MICHIGAN sightings!

If you think that this is a lot of UFO sightings, consider this on top of that...first, a person has to see a UFO...then she has to want to tell someone...then, she has to want to share the sighting outside her circle of family and friends...then, she has to decide to report the UFO to some kind of investigative agency...then, she has to find MUFON and decide this is a group that she wants to tell...then she has to actually take the time to type out the report and submit it at our mufon.com website.  

How many people who see anamolous objects in the sky don't actually make it to that last step?  200 reports (in one state in one year) is clearly just a fraction of what's going on in our skies.

I've had folks ask me questions like what time of year are the most UFOs seen or where are the current UFO hotspots?  UFOs are seen everywhere and all the time.  If there are more people concentrated in an area like a city, you'll get more sightings reported because there are more potential witnesses.  If there are people living spread apart in rural areas, you'll get more sightings reported because there is less light pollution and no line-of-sight obstructions from big buildings.

It's admittedly kind of odd that attention to this widespread ongoing phenomenon gets casually relegated to a few weeks of the year as it is a critical scientific issue that affects our whole world in the deepest way.  As an analogy, what if everyone only thought about pollution problems and the climate change debate on Earth Day, regardless of persistent issues throughout the year?

At the moment, it's a bit of an uphill battle, but, I'll keep plugging along, trying to get the word out to keep paying attention to the never-ending UFO sightings.

So, big thanks to everyone who let me speak at their conferences, and libraries, and on their radio shows this busy month of October!  You've exhausted me in the most gratifying way.

People who know that I've had strange things happen to me have been approaching me for years and asking me to tell them about it.

I'm always open to do so, however, there are some inherent issues with this:

One is that most of what I've encountered is so unusual that it doesn't lend itself to quick snippets.  The encounters need to be laid out patiently for the listener to properly digest them.

The other biggie is that so much has happened to me that it takes me about six hours nowadays to tell it all.

The solution to this seemed simple...at first.  Write a book.  However, what takes a hefty six hours to tell takes approximately forever to write when one already has a busy ongoing schedule.

While I originally had the idea to write the book during the mid-90's, I put it off for years as I was intimidated by the prospect of so many additional obligated hours.  And I wanted to tackle such a personal endeavor with devotion rather than a feeling that it was simply work that needed to be completed.

In 2003, on the heels of my appearance in the SCI-FI Network documentary "Abduction Diaries" I realized I was ready to begin the project...almost.  There was still that hesitation of laying out my life for complete strangers to read.

Then, at the 2003 MUFON Symposium, held that year in Dearborn, Michigan, I was manning a vendor's table for my friends Landi Mellas and David Caywood, who were selling their book "The Other Sky" when fellow MUFON member David Twichell (who had by then written his first book "The UFO-Jesus Connection") asked me when I was going to write my own book.  I replied I was waiting for a sign.  The instant I said that, the lights in the room switched off for a few seconds.  When they came back on, Twichell said, "Well, what are you waiting for?" and walked off.

So, I began in earnest and got a healthy start on it until I took up the role as Michigan MUFON's State Director in early 2004.  That and other life items quickly filled my plate and shelved the project.

It wasn't until early 2009, five years later, that I picked it back up and began again.  I knew, though, that if I intended to put the whole story into one book, I may encounter other unforeseen roadblocks and never finish.  My solution was to break the material up into three sections of my life episodically: youth, young adulthood, and the rest of the story (to date).

"Experiencer: Raised in Two Worlds" is the first installment of this project.  It is story of growing up as an experiencer and covers the decades of the 1970's and 1980's.  My strange life story.  Please let me know what you think of it.