Let me start off this post by saying things are going to get weird. If you can’t handle discussions of the paranormal, mysticism, or general high weirdness, just pass this post on by. Also, if you can’t handle that sort of weirdness, what are you doing even knowing about me?

I originally wanted to write this blog post in May, as a tribute to the passing of my favorite ufologist, Stanton Friedman. The date of his passing came and went, and I shelved this idea until I saw today was World UFO Day. Stanton was not only my favorite ufologist, I think he was one of the best in the field. He was responsible for the re-discovery of the Roswell incident, and without that, I think ufology would be decades behind where it is now. He was a former nuclear physicist who went at UFO’s (and UFO researchers) with the hard, cold eye of a man used to science, and had no patience for people who were into things like past lives and channeling. And he was the only UFO researcher to win a bet with James Randi and Skeptic magazine. Stanton was also responsible for restoring my faith in the UFO community, and the paranormal community in general. But let us go back to the beginning.

Growing up, I was a sheltered, sickly kid. I had comics, TV, library books and very few friends. I had a love early on for the program “In Search Of”. It was one of the few programs my folks would allow me to watch that was designed for kids. It was probably a bad idea, since it put some crazy ass ideas in my head (I worried about killer bees for a decade). At the library, the books of Daniel Cohen about UFOs, Bigfoot and other cryptids filled my head.

And then, when I was eight, came Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I didn’t get to see it, but it brought an explosion of UFO magazines to the local stores. I devoured these. I found out about Project Blue Book, Allen J. Hynek, and got freaked out about a movie called Hangar 18, about the supposed UFO hidden at Wright-Patterson air base.  All of this would likely have faded away, like many of my youthful pursuits, like disco and parachute pants. But then I saw one.

 I didn’t have many friends growing up, and when we moved to a small town called Antioch, IL, I lost all of them. I was too poor for the rich kids, and too clueless for the poor heshers.  But one night, I was out running around with some neighborhood kids, and one of them pointed at the sky and said, “What the fuck is that?”

It looked like a balloon, with a red light stuck in the middle. It moved around the sky in circles, I’d thought it was a laser at first, but the light shone that there was a craft of some sort behind it. It was doing maneuvers I’ve never seen any plane do, before or since. Then it stopped dead in the sky, cycled through five colors, moved in four diagonal directions, then took off.

None of us who were there spoke of it, ever. I tried bringing it up at the bus stop the next day, and got my ass handed to me for it. I’ve checked UFO reporting group records from around that time, and several people reporting seeing similar objects, but it was an isolated incident.

I’ve wondered ever since that night, what I saw. I wonder if it was a drone of some sort, or a test flight of something. But the beating left me with no desire to discuss it further. Like much of my childhood, I shut it away and locked the door.

Let’s move forward a decade, give or take a year.  I’m a teenage nihilist, soured or society and humanity in general. I’ve discovered the high weirdness of Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus trilogy, the Church of the SubGenius, and Discordianism. “Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke” becomes my mantra. I immerse myself in a world of conspiracy theories, mysticism, and alternative spirituality.

During this time, my stance on UFO’s is that it’s folks on hallucinogenic, or with mental issues. The burgeoning New Age movement falls apart against the bulwark of my youthful cynicism. This lasts even through discovering Art Bell, my late-night hero. He’s way too nice to some of these people, in my opinion at that time.

In 1996, I’m living in Mankato, Minnesota. I’m engaged to a woman who I generally refuse to discuss unless I’ve had at least three shots.  We’re bored one night, when she mentions that a guy is giving a lecture on UFOs at Mankato State, the local college. I agree to go, figuring it’ll be good for a few laughs afterwards with the fiancé.

Giving the lecture is Stanton Friedman. And he blows the top of my head off. He’s rational, erudite, and outlines a logical and rational response to the UFO phenomenon. It’s the first time I hear about Roswell, and Area 51. His speech makes me think, and when I find out he’s signing his books at the Barnes and Noble the next day, I go.

He was even more impressive up close and personal. He was kind, rational, and answered many questions. He turned me on to using a scientific, non-mystical response to the phenomenon, and I devour his books(I personally recommend his book Flying Saucers and Science, and defy you to read it and refute his arguments) and immerse myself in the world of ufology. A world that has been exploding since a show that went on the air a couple years prior, named the X-Files.

To say that the X-Files changed the UFO research community is like saying that Protestantism changed Christianity. People came out of the woodwork to discuss the phenomenon, and to make money off it.  Chris Carter had based the series off a book called Behold a Pale Horse, by a guy named William Cooper.

That book is arguably the most popular conspiracy theory book ever published, next to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And like that book, it’s pure garbage and poison. I used to be amazed at its popularity, especially among minorities. Rappers would quote from it in lyrics. This, despite containing a copy of the Protocols (the notorious ant-Semitic text that Hitler used to justify the Holocaust) as an appendix, up until this year. The new publisher of it would apparently like you to forget the two were related.

That book, and the X-Files, divided the UFO community. It was very popular among those who were more paranoid and favored a darker strain of thought about UFOs. The number of US militias who favored that book always amazed me. The New Age, “fluffy bunny” side of the community soon found themselves out of favor. It was less Urantia, more Whitely Strieber, less Robert Anton Wilson, more David Icke and his lizard royal family.

UFOs were now big business. The government tried to dismiss Roswell and failed spectacularly. Area 51 became a tourist trap. And the folks hawking high colonics a few years before now sold fake devices to help you attract UFO’s.

After a few years, I became disenchanted with the UFO community. It, and the conspiracy field in general took a hard-right turn after 9/11. Alex Jones, who used to have rational arguments, became the Fox News of conspiracy theorists. Where before 9/11 it seemed like we were on our way to government disclosure, afterwards many of the UFO community smelled the money in paranoia and went after it.

I still kept tabs on the conspiracy and UFO community. Art Bell got forced off the air three times, and I hated his replacement. If I thought Art was occasionally too soft on his guests, he was a rusty saw compared to George Noory who used Art’s fame to shill products and every bullshit idea that became popular.

But several things brought me back to ufology. First off, in a Wired magazine article, I discovered the Georgia Guidestone, a hidden gem of conspiracy theory.  Go look them up, it’s as strange a story as you’ll get in this country. After discovering them, the wife and I talked about going to see them, on our way out to New Mexico to visit my daughter and grandkids.

I call that trip the Great Conspiracy Theory road trip. Not only did we go visit the Guidestones, we stopped at Dealey Plaza, site, of the JFK assassination. And as the crowning conspiracy moment, we went to the Roswell UFO Festival.

It was there that I ran into Stanton again. He remembered our meeting in Mankato, since so few people showed up to the signing. Stanton gave a talk that afternoon about UFO investigation processes and ripped a few things in ufology a new one. It was sublime and hilarious.

And now, here we are in 2019. If we didn’t have Trump and global warming to contend with, UFO’s would be on the front page. Tom Delonge of the band Blink-182 has gotten people in the US government to disclose that they’ve been investigating UFO’s again. People are coming forward again. I can even do six degrees of separation with him, since I know the person, he co-writes his fiction books on the matter, AJ Hartley. FYI pick up all those books, fiction and non-fiction. Peter Levenda, a serious researcher, has done an amazing job (with Tom) of changing the way people ought to think about UFO’s.

Where do I stand on the matter today? I think the US government knows much more than it’s telling. I think this has been proven time and time again. People say the government can’t keep secrets that long, but I tell those people to go look up Project Paperclip and MK-Ultra, then get back to me. I think the phenomenon probably has multiple explanations. I think the idea that the craft are extra-dimensional explains some of them. I think advanced government craft explains several other ones. I also think there’s a distinct possibility that some of the craft are extraterrestrial in nature, but whether they’re aliens, or remnants of an advanced human civilization, hasn’t been determined.

What I reject is aspects of the phenomenon that have no scientific basis. If someone comes at me with aliens channeling into their body, I walk away. I reject much of the contactee community, especially since it’s been revealed that the phenomenon can be produced in the brain with magnetic waves. But I’m also open to the idea that much of the phenomenon may be our brain’s reaction to seeing the inconceivable.

Happy World UFO Day, people of Earth. I hope that one day we’re ready to really explore the phenomenon as a culture and mature adults. That the disinformation engineers and governments will peel back the layers of secrecy and share what they know. But until then, I’ll keep watching the skies.