By Charles Lear
Throughout the 20th century it was believed by most researchers that UFOs were physical craft driven by extraterrestrials, ghosts were the spirits of dead people and Bigfoot was a large hominid as yet unclassified by primatologists. In the later part of that era, John Keel, author of “The Mothman Prophecies”, began to consider that all of these might come from a single cause and he began looking for a unifying theory. Now, in the 21st century, more and more researchers are beginning to think this way and some have focused on what have been called “paranormal hotspots” where there is a concentration of reports with many different varieties of strange activity. Investigators have included the father and son team of Paul and Ben Eno looking at areas of New England and Pennsylvania, a team from Robert Bigelow’s organization, the National Institute for Discovery Science (using our tax dollars under a contract with the D.O.D.), working for an extended period of time at an area in Utah known as “Skinwalker Ranch” and Ted Phillips looking at an area he calls, “Marley Woods.”
John Keel was a freelance journalist in 1966 and was on assignment for Playboy magazine to “get to the bottom of the UFO mystery” when he happened upon a report on the wire services (while looking into a story of a winged cat named Thomas in Beckley, WV) describing a sighting by two couples in Point Pleasant, West Virginia of a large, winged creature that had a man’s body and glowing red eyes. When he went to investigate, he found that there were also many sightings of UFOs in the area. While interviewing witnesses, he took the unusual approach of asking them to tell him about any odd occurrences in their lives and found that many had experienced poltergeists, strange phone calls with mechanical voices, electrical interference, animal mutilations and disappearances, and contact with strange beings who claimed to be from other planets. He heard some really strange stories from credible people and flying machines with people from other planets didn’t seem to be the answer. As he thought about what he was being told and what he’d witnessed himself, he came to believe that all of these experiences were generated by some sort of intelligence that coexists with us. He called this intelligence, “ultraterrestrial”, a term he borrowed from his friend, Ivan Sanderson, a biologist who also coined the term, “cryptozoology.”
Other prominent UFO researchers such as Jaques Vallée and J. Allen Hynek began to have ideas that were similar to Keel’s and, in 1969 Vallée published a book, “Passport to Magonia” in which he compared modern day UFO reports to tales from folklore involving fairies and the like. Vallée stated in his book that it was the practice of science-based investigators to reject stories that had outrageous elements to them that didn’t fit in with the idea of visitors from space. After examining many such cases he offered the speculation (among others) that “some superior intelligence has been projecting into our environment (chosen for reasons best known to that intelligence) various artificial objects whose creation is a pure form of art.” He went on to caution that speculation as to the source and purpose of the UFO phenomenon could go on indefinitely and offered three propositions: that the action of a superior intelligence would appear absurd to an inferior intelligence, that any theory of the universe needs to take into account our ignorance of the nature of time, and that the UFO mystery contains all the elements of myth (that could be used for political or sociological ends) and a link between “the contents of the reports” and human technological progress.
At the time, the ideas of Vallée and Keel were rejected by many UFO researchers and most, like Stanton Friedman, stuck to the idea that we were dealing with physical craft piloted by extraterrestrials. As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, however, it has become commonplace to hear researchers refer to these ideas as they step beyond their areas of specialization and acknowledge concurrences of what had traditionally been viewed as separate phenomena. In the early 1970’s, Pennsylvania based researcher, Stan Gordon, found that UFO and Bigfoot sightings often occurred in the same areas. At the time, Bigfoot researchers didn’t want to hear about UFOs and UFO researchers didn’t want to hear about Bigfoot. As Gordon was open to investigating all reports involving strange encounters, he would ask UFO witnesses if they’d had Bigfoot encounters and vice versa. Gordon eventually not only sensed that there was a link between UFOs and Bigfoot, but has expressed the view that Bigfoot might not be a physical being with an earthly origin. Kathleen Marden, niece of Betty Hill and currently the Mutual UFO Network’s Director of Abduction Research, has reported that not only her family, but families of others who have had contact with non-human entities have had poltergeist experiences. Concentrated areas where all sorts of paranormal activity have been reported have offered researchers an opportunity to further explore what is now called the “Ultraterrestrial Theory.”
The Skinwalker Ranch investigation by NIDS was written about in a 2005 book titled, “Hunt For The Skinwalker” by NIDS team member, Colm A. Kelleher, Ph.D., and reporter, George Knapp of KLAS-TV. This case involved UFOs, poltergeist activity, dark humanoid figures, disembodied voices speaking foreign languages, cryptid canines, fear inducing orbs and animal mutilations. According to Knapp, some reports, such as a sighting by Native American police officers of cigarette smoking dogs in trench coats, were so absurd that he and Kelleher considered leaving them out. Knapp’s involvement with the investigation as a reporter (he admittedly did not experience anything strange himself) left him with ideas that were similar to Keel’s and Vallée’s. In a 2008 MUFON lecture he posited that perhaps there was some intelligence behind the phenomena that was trying to lead us “toward an understanding of a bigger, more mysterious world.”
Paul and Ben Eno have stories from their investigations that also involve a variety of activity concentrated in small areas. Paul Eno has been investigating all sorts of paranormal activity since the early 1970’s and his son, Ben, joined him at the age of thirteen and continues to work with him. They both claim to have been first-hand witnesses to UFOs, Bigfoot, and poltergeist activity in the flap areas and Paul has developed theories (he himself calls them wacky) involving parasitic beings that feed on fear and multiple universes bleeding into each other. Paul also has seen evidence of a military presence at some areas. He feels they are there because, as he has said repeatedly, “wouldn’t you love to be able to weaponize the paranormal”, which is interesting in light of the revelation of the D.O.D. involvement at Skinwalker.
Ted Phillips, for almost all of his history as a UFO investigator, was solidly in the “nuts and bolts” camp. His very first case was the April 24, 1964 landing case in Socorro, New Mexico (he traveled on his own from Missouri as an independent investigator), which J. Allen Hynek was also investigating as a consultant for the Air Force’s Project Blue Book. They met four years later, worked on cases together as part of Hynek’s “invisible college” (an informal group of researchers which included Jaques Vallée) and became great friends. Hynek suggested that Phillips should specialize in a particular aspect of investigation and Phillips zeroed in on physical trace research. His criteria for a really good case included multiple witnesses seeing an object actually landing, or nearly landing, and creating a disturbance that would leave a mark behind when it left. With these restrictions, Phillips has collected almost 4000 cases from 92 countries. For many years he, like many researchers, was comfortable with the idea that he was seeing evidence left behind by metal craft weighing as much as eight tons, according to landing site compression tests, that were built somewhere other than Earth and flown here. Phillips has stated, however, that Hynek, as early as 1968, felt that the answer to the mystery was far more complicated than that and perhaps too complicated for us to hope to understand. In 1998, Phillips got a call from property owners, in an area he refuses to disclose, who reported unusual lights and one said he had video footage of them. Phillips went to the area, which he refers to as “Marley Woods,” and after repeated visits, had his first sighting (the first he’d had in his history as a researcher) of five lights. He went on to devote many years to investigation of the site, experienced phenomena that he compared to Skinwalker Ranch and personally talked with Robert Bigelow for seven hours and compared notes. The experiences at Marley Woods led Phillips to feel that Hynek had been right and he now considers the idea of multidimensional beings a possibility.
It’s easy to feel nostalgic for the good old days of flying saucers and little people in space suits flying them. It’s certainly a simpler explanation to the UFO mystery than multidimensional travelers with the ability to warp our perceptions. Keel felt the phenomenon often reflected the expectations of the experiencer so perhaps as we become more complicated it does too.