More UFOlogy in a pond

Posted on February 20, 2012 by

Sightings of an underwater ‘saucer’ that resembles the legendary Loch Ness Monster are creating waves in the Lake District. It’s not the first time that a mysterious creature – dubbed ‘Bownessie’ – has been sighted in the waters of Windermere. As is also the case in UFOlogy, there are reports from ‘credible witnesses’ and even photographic evidence that some believe provide evidence that such creatures could exist.

A BBC news story includes both types of narrative, followed by the appearance of a skeptical scientist, Dr Ian Winfield, who has studied the lake for the past 20 years. He says the only living creatures in the lake that could have been seen are pike, salmon and otters. These are, of course, the equivalent of the balloons, stars and aircraft that frequently lead to UFO reports.

Which brings to mind a response that Lord Mountbatten once received when he asked the MoD’s Chief Scientist, Solly Zuckerman, if the government should investigate flying saucers. Lord Zuckerman was a naturalist and former president of the Royal Zoological Society. His response was to draw a comparison with the Loch Ness Monster.

Lord Solly Zuckerman, a skeptic on UFOs, crop circles and flying saucers (Credit: hominides.com)

“Here we have a submarine ‘saucer’ which has been seen by many people but which, so far, has never been seen when somebody goes to look for it,” he wrote.

“If all the resources of modern science [that have been deployed] at Loch Ness failed to provide any indication of the beast, we still won’t know there is no monster, although the likelihood is that most sensible people will take the view that the whole story is a myth.

“But those people who wish to go on believing in Loch Ness Monsters [and Bownessies - DC] will be able to do so on no more solid a foundation than disbelief in modern methods of observation. So it is with ‘flying saucers’.”

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Worryingly big sea monsters

Posted on February 12, 2012 by

Last week it was UFOlogy in a Field. This week it’s UFOlogy in a pond.

No, I’m not talking about the ‘submarine saucer’ (Nessie), but a subject I’ve mentioned elsewhere in my blog on ‘Sea Monster Files.‘   Two years ago one S. Darby, who described himself as a marine biologist, made a Freedom of Information request to the MoD that asked if there were ‘any abnormally large or dangerous sea monsters hundreds of metres under the sea that haven’t been revealed to the public.’

Naturally, he was concerned that if such information was held by the Royal Navy it should be released as ‘our lives could be at risk.’

Sketch of sea serpent spotted by the crew of HMS Daedalus in the South Atlantic, August 1949

In their 2010 response, the Navy denied it was hiding any secret evidence of sea monsters or unidentified submarine objects (USOs). Any ‘unusual sightings’, it explained, would be recorded in the logs of submarines and surface ships but these could not be unearthed without a costly search of hundreds of paper files.

After a short flurry of Press interest, Mr Darby disappeared back into the subterranean depths.  At the time I wondered if he really was a marine biologist. Could he be a vexatious leg (or flipper)-puller of the type who want to know if Liverpool has an emergency plan to deal with ‘alien invasion’ (Liverpool Echo, August 2011)?

But this week Mr Darby was back, posting on the What Do They Know? website that aggregates information gathered by those who make FOI requests. In his follow-up request Mr Darby asked:

‘Following the recent discovery of a ‘supergiant crustacean‘, reaching a staggering 34cm in length and found 7 km under the ocean, my concerns have been reinvigorated. Hence I again pose the question, are there any abormally large or dangerous sea monsters in the deep sea?’

The swift reply from the Navy Command says ‘MoD invites people to report sightings of marine mammals (which could include unusual sightings), via the Marine Mammal reporting form on the UK Hydrographic Office website.’   In other words, there’s a form for everything! Much like MoD used to invite people to report sightings of ‘flying saucers’ by filling in a form helpfully provided by its ‘UFO desk.’  A word of warning to the Hydrographic Office: The UFO desk was closed in 2009 after a tabloid silly season campaign persuaded some readers that formations of Chinese lanterns in the night sky were an ‘alien invasion fleet’ that required urgent MoD action.

Who knows, maybe there are ‘worryingly big sea monsters’ that pose a menace to marine biologists.

But I suspect this story should be placed in the same category as the one about ‘alien big cats’ on the loose in the British countryside, or frozen alien cadavers hidden away in a remote air force hangar in New Mexico.  All sound like contemporary legends to me.

Worryingly big sea monsters?:  UFOlogy in a Pond.

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UFOlogy in a Field

Posted on February 3, 2012 by

Scientific tests have ruled out the possibility that big cats were responsible for the deaths of two roe deers whose remains were found in Gloucestershire.

What’s that got to do with UFOs?  Well apart from the fact that some ‘independent thinkers’ blame such mysterious deaths on ET, UFOlogy and big cat-ology shares quite a lot of common ground.

Reduced to its basic constituents, what we have are a large number of ‘credible witnesses’ who claim to have seen extraordinary things (a leopard or black panther, presumably wearing thermals, on the loose in rural Gloucestershire).

As is the case with UFOlogists, those who believe that ABCs (alien big cats) exist point to so-called ‘physical evidence’ (animal carcasses, footprints, etc) as proof. When such ‘evidence’ is discovered it leads to great excitement. Journalists spread the story, bringing others out of the woodwork who have seen big cats, so the mystery increases.

But then results from DNA tests on the carcasses of two roe deers, commissioned by the National Trust, come back negative. The tests found evidence of foxes, but no trace of anything on vacation from the Serengeti. How many times have we been presented with dodgy UFO photos and ‘evidence’ (such as the notorious wind-farm propeller struck by an ET craft), that dissolves when placed under critical scrutiny.

Remains of one roe deer found in Gloucestershire (credit: Daily Telegraph)

UFOs and big cat-logy has another similarity. The Government (in the form of Natural England) says there aren’t any big cats, despite mountains of ‘eyewitness’ evidence to the contrary. And there’s even a faction within the big cat fraternity who believe the government secretly know that big cats exist but are covering up the truth because they don’t want people to panic.

Sounds familiar?  UFOlogy in a field.

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New for 2012!

Posted on December 30, 2011 by

I’m bringing in 2012 with two new books and the cover story in Fortean Times in what should prove to be an interesting year.

If the doomsayers are correct we should expect the coming year to bring (in no particular order) ‘the end of the Mayan calendar’, shifts in the Earth’s magnetic pole, Eurogeddon and an alien invasion at the opening of the Olympics.

But while you prepare for Armageddon check out the lead story in Fortean Times 284, published on 5 January, for some light relief. In my feature ‘Scared to Death’ I investigate a fatal encounter with a ghost in 19th century Sheffield and look at other Victorian examples of alleged ‘death by supernatural causes’.  In the same issue Andy Roberts and I unearth a new case from the UFO archives in which a Yorkshire police officer was visited by the mysterious ‘Men in Black’.

Also new for 2012 are two chapters in a ‘history of Media-Driven Panics and Hoaxes’ published in the USA by McFarland & Co. That’s the subtitle of The Martians Have Landed! the latest from the sceptical pen of Robert Bartholomew and Ben Radford. This book features case studies of three dozen media-driven scares from the 17th to the 21stcentury, including some notorious hoaxes perpetrated by newspapers, radio, TV and via cyberspace.  There are historical examples such as the Orson Welles Martian broadcast and accounts of more recent Satanic cult scares and Pokemon panics. The book highlights the serious impact sensational media coverage of hoaxes and false belief-legends can have on our lives.

The Martians Have Landed! - by Robert Bartholomew and Ben Radford, published on 30 December

My contribution to the book concentrates on media-driven urban legends, including miraculous photographs of Jesus and the infamous ‘curse of the crying boy’ painting, spawned by News International’s tabloid The Sun in 1985. Co-author Bartholomew taught sociology at universities in Australia and is a former journalist, while Ben Radford is deputy editor of The Skeptical Inquirer and a prolific author of numerous articles on a variety of topics including urban legends, critical thinking and media literacy.

2012 will also see the publication of a new edition of my book The UFO Files – The Inside Story of Real Life Sightings. Published in the summer of 2012 by Bloomsbury, who acquired The National Archives list last year, the expanded version will mark the release of the last remaining MoD UFO files. The book first appeared at the beginning of the disclosure programme four years ago and the second edition will update the story and include much new material.  Watch this space for more details.

Since I began work as consultant to The National Archives UFO project in 2008 media coverage of the ongoing file releases has reached an estimated print/online readership of 25 million people across the world. If those figures were not amazing enough, the TNA’s UFO website has now been visited over three million times by curious people from 160 different countries (source: TNA).

Public interest in ‘Britain’s X-Files’ appears to be undiminished and during the coming year it may yet break more records. In the meantime, look out for me discussing the UFO files on the BBC TV programmes Stargazing Live (presented by Professor Brian Cox and Dara O’Briain) and The One Show in January.

Ignore the doomsayers and have a happy new year!

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Roswell? It’s all balloony, says RAF

Posted on December 14, 2011 by

RAF's Cosford's Cold War display, featuring the 'Roswell incident'

First the White House formally denied it was hiding any secret evidence of visits from extra-terrestrials.

Now it seems the Royal Air Force has made it known that one of UFOlogy’s key legends – that a flying saucer crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 – was a Cold War military experiment after all.

This revelation came not from a Top Secret document, but in an educational display at the RAF’s Cold War museum at RAF Cosford, near Wolverhampton.

On a recent visit to the museum, which features all three of Britain’s surviving V-bomber force, I came across a familiar photograph on a display covering aerial espionage during the early part of the Cold War.

It was taken at Fort Worth, Texas, on 8 July 1947 and shows Major Jesse Marcel holding pieces of debris recovered from a ranch in the New Mexico desert. This was less than 24 hours after the Army Air Force announced it had recovered the wreckage of a “crashed flying saucer”, a statement quickly retracted and replaced with the cover story that it was a weather balloon.

The RAF caption agrees with the USAF conclusion that the wreckage was from a balloon after all, but not an ordinary balloon:

“This was an unsuccessful experiment to use balloons carrying instruments to detect Soviet nuclear tests which led to claims of a spaceship having been found.”

It is evident the British military played a role in these and later ‘experiments’ as the display also features images of the giant helium-filled balloons used for more extensive espionage operations targeting Soviet facilities during the 1950s.

The joint USAF/RAF Project Moby Dick employed balloons as tall as a 20-storey building, carrying gondolas packed with photographic equipment. The cameras took one photograph every six minutes in strips 65 km wide by 3100 km long. This operation, like that which led to the Roswell incident, was classified.

Moby Dick was abandoned in 1957 without significant success; by that point balloons had been replaced by Black Project aircraft such as the Lockheed U2.

Such is the level of distrust attached to all official statements on the subject of UFOs and Roswell that the RAF’s conclusion will be treated as just another example of the cosmic Watergate to conceal ‘the truth.’

In November the US Government responded to online petitions calling on the Obama administration to disclose evidence of “an extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.”  As neither the US government or the scientific community has any such evidence, whatever it said was unlikely to make any impression upon the faith of those who wish to believe otherwise. Or, in the words of a British MoD official who briefed on a similar campaign in 1958:

“As it is not possible to release official information about something which does not exist, it is difficult to satisfy those with preconceived ideas to the contrary.” (TNA DEFE 31/118).

One final irony is that RAF Cosford itself now has a secure place in the UFO mythology, thanks to a classic “sighting” of lights in the sky made by military personnel at the base in the early hours of  31 March 1993. The “Cosford incident” now rivals the Roswell incident in the lists of classic UFO cases cited by some as the best evidence of ET visitations, in the UK at least.

As with Roswell, there is a perfectly good explanation for the lights seen from RAF Cosford – and once again, the Russians are in the frame. They were caused by the burning rocket body of a Russian Cosmos satellite that re-entered Earth’s atmosphere over the British Isles at the precise date and time as the “UFO sighting.”

But, to recycle a favourite phrase coined by a believer in UFOs: “you can’t tell the people.”

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Scared to Death

Posted on October 27, 2011 by

The Fortean Times Unconvention 2011 – billed as the world’s weirdest weekend – returns to London in November.

I’m on the bill for both days (12 and 13 November): on the Saturday I will be speaking about my research into a case of alleged ‘death by supernatural causes’: the death from fright of Sheffield woman Hannah Rallison in 1855, the result – so it was claimed at her inquest – of a close encounter with a ghostly woman in white.

An early image of Spring-heeled Jack, the Terror of London, published in 1838. Jack has been blamed for a number of deaths from 'fright' (Credit: Mike Dash)

The fatal experience will form the centre of my new book project on Victorian ghost stories, appropriately titled Scared To Death. On the Sunday, I’ll be sharing the stage with long-time sidekick Andy Roberts for a talk on cursed stones. This will examine cases where people have linked hauntings and other supernatural experiences with cult stone artefacts such as Celtic stone heads and other stone objects, such as the Hexham Heads and the Tigh nam Bodach shrine in Scotland.

In the meantime, diary columnist Colin Drury has published a pre-Halloween interview with me in my old paper, The Sheffield Star, on my research into the Rallison story. You can follow the link here or read on:

“There are few people more sceptical of the paranormal than media personnel, although they know it will always make a good story,” claims spookologist Andy Owens in his new book, Yorkshire Stories of the Paranormal. And he’s absolutely right…for while The Diary has never yet been told a ghost stories he believes, it’s certainly always worth hearing them, if only for a giggle. It is thus, in that spirit – and to celebrate Fright Night on Sunday and Halloween on Monday – here presented are a trio of South Yorkshire’s most intriguing tales of the unexplained…

Scared to Death on Campo Lane…The background:

There are certain irrefutable facts about the death of Sheffield Mormon Hannah Rallison in Campo Lane, in 1855. She collapsed in front of several people after entering a cellar said to be haunted. She claimed, as she drifted in and out of consciousness, she had seen a ghost. And experts at an inquest could not find a rational explanation for the healthy 48-year-old’s sudden demise.

“This is one of the most fascinating mysteries I’ve come across,” says David Clarke, former Star journalist, author and all-round expert in the unexplained. “What’s intriguing is that, unlike many of these stories, it is all document in newspaper reports and the inquest – but still no one really knows what happened.”

What we do know is that the Campo Lane cellar – below the home of fellow Mormon John Favell – was said to be haunted after John himself claimed he spotted an old woman there. As neighbours gathered to investigate on February 24, Hannah temporarily entered the cellar alone. There, in front of several witnesses, she was seized by terror, shrieked she had seen a ghost and collapsed. She died in her South Street home the next day.

“This was all recorded as fact,” says David, who has researched the incident for an up coming book on Victorian mysteries. “It fascinated so many people it actually ended up being reported in several national newspapers at the time.”

Research by David shows that within a couple of weeks The Sheffield Independent claimed to have found an explanation. “We have been informed,” it said, “that some of the alleged appearances resulted from the operations of a magic lantern by the occupiers of adjacent premises, who knew that Favell and his family were Mormonites, and determined to have a lark at their expense.”

David asks anyone with possible information about Hannah Rallison or the Favells to email furnival.news@googlemail.co.uk

The up-coming book mentioned by Colin is my book project Scared To Death: Victorian Ghost Stories from Yorkshire. The book will include the fruits of 20 years research into the folklore of the county and primary accounts of hauntings sourced from 19th century newspapers.

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Watch Out – there’s a flying pig about!

Posted on September 28, 2011 by

Pink Floyd’s giant inflatable flying pig has appeared once again above the London skyline to celebrate the reissue of the band’s back catalogue including the classic album The Dark Side of the Moon.

Pigs on the Wing (credit: Sky News)

The 30 foot long porker is a replica of the original stage prop that featured on the sleeve of the iconic Animals album, floating above the towers of the Battersea Power Station.  The pig was constructed in Germany by the same company that made the Zeppelins. When it was launched in December 1976 a hired marksman was on hand, armed with a rifle loaded with dum-dum bullets. But as the band and assembled photographers watched in horror, one of the guiding lines broke and the pig floated off into the sky.

This triggered off one of the strangest UFO flaps on record, courtesy of a band who cut their teeth in London’s underground UFO club during the sixties. The first sighting came from a pilot who reported having spotted a flying pig on landing at Heathrow airport. According to some reports, he was given a breath test before his sighting was taken seriously. Minutes later the pig was spotted by a police helicopter which followed it to 5,000 feet above the capital.  People in Croydon and Brixton were also watching a strange object in the sky and called the MoD to file UFO reports.

The Civil Aviation Authority put out an alert to all pilots that “a 40 foot long, pink flying pig” was on the loose over the city and it was last seen on radar near Chatham in Kent at a height of 18,000 feet, heading east towards Germany (was it a homing pig?).

Hidden within the thousands of UFO files collected by the Ministry of Defence and held by The National Archives in Kew is one curious folder titled “UFOs – 3 December 1976: Watch Out, there’s a flying pig about.”

But this UFO quickly became an Identified Flying Object. The pig came to earth in a field at Chatham in Kent and the rest is history. Pigs might fly….

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