Freakin' in the Fun House - Part 1

Back in the mid-1990s, I was (briefly) the exclusive European correspondent for a news story about the capture of an extraterritorial alien. More precisely, I had (very briefly) the inside track for interviews with various people who claimed to have been directly and/or indirectly connected with a videotape purportedly smuggled out of the alleged Area 51.

And if you think I just used a lot of qualifiers, just wait till you hear the rest of the story. All names have been dropped to protect both the guilty and the chumps.

At the time, I had been writing free lance film articles for a British science fiction magazine. Technicality, I was considered a foreign correspondent, even though my old trench coat was the only British item involved in the job. Everything else was an easy telecommunicate from Ohio (though keeping up with the time differential was often a bear).

At the time, the editor for the magazine's American office was routinely in contact with a woman who was the agent for an actor who had a major recurring role on a popular science fiction series (a lot of this story does indeed have a friend-of-a-friend quality). Their relationship was just chatty enough that the agent felt comfortable asking the editor for help with a problem. The agent had just agreed to help coordinate PR for the impending release of an odd videotape and did we know anyone who knew anything about UFOs?

I got nominated primarily because no one else wanted to deal with the issue. I had a passing interest in the subject but was way out of date with the information. However, the magazine was preparing for the premiere of the series Dark Skies and I was already having to do some basic research....So I accepted the nomination.

Besides, I figured that it would be good for laughs. Kind of like a carny show.

Admittedly, one of the first problems was the provenance of the video. The story was that the provider of the tape had worked at Area 51 (a claim never substantiated) who had smuggled the tape (by means never described) out of the Dreamland facility. For security reasons, the man was only known to the people preparing the tape's release by a code name and even the code name was not to be provided to me or any other member of the press.

When the agent told me all of this, I took a guess and asked her if the code name was Victor. There was a moment's silence on the phone.

"How did you know that?"

"Just an educated hunch."

Victor had been the name of a captured alien in the John Lear hoax a few years earlier. I was wondering if there might have been a connection.

At the time I only had a passing familiarity with the John Lear/Bill Cooper material, but everything was already feeling like some sort of half baked cross between that warped tale and the alien autopsy hoax a few years earlier on Fox.

Which was OK. I was definitely looking for a side show and I was pretty convinced that I just found the way to the freaks tent....

TO BE CONTINUED

Search For the Great Flying Whatsit

I saw my first flying triangle as a child. Actually, it has been my only flying triangle. I'm not even sure what I really saw. It was less a sighting and seemed more like a perceptual glitch.

This was back in the mid-1960s (probably 1964) and a wave of UFO sightings had been taking place around the country. This was back in the days when newspapers and TV stations actually reported such sightings and the news accounts were extremely inspiring to youthful imaginations. So a group of us kids in my neighborhood spent a perfectly lovely summer afternoon enjoying fresh air (we still had that back in those days too) and scanning the sky for anything that we thought was moving.

That is when I spotted a solid black triangle shape moving like a silent silhouette against the pristine blue of the day. Though it seemed to have been high up in the sky, I distinctly saw what appeared to have a single bright red light at its center. The vision lasted barely 5 seconds and then it vanished just as quickly as it had appeared. It was the first time I truly appreciated the phase “out of the blue.”

At the time, I thought maybe I had something in my eye because the whole experience certainly didn't seem exactly real. Likewise, I undoubtedly had my mind focused on seeing a UFO, and obviously my imagination did not want to be disappointed. But oddly enough, I was looking for those saucer-shaped thingies that I was use to seeing in the movies. I had never heard of flying triangles. Somehow it didn't make sense and I wouldn't know anything about this form until many years later (not until the early 1980s).

So what did I see? If I were a debunker, I could comfortably write the whole thing off as a combination of too much television and too little lemonade. What else do you expect from a bunch of dumb kids on a hot summer day who probably should be doing something more with their time than wasting it on a wild goose chase into phony land. Besides, we were kids, so our opinions don't count and it is just anecdotal data anyway, so go blow junior.

On the other hand, I know that I actually did see it. It wasn't that hot of a day. I like to think of myself as being reasonably intelligent. There really wasn't anything in my eye and I knew that at the time. Besides, I wasn't alone. Two of the other kids saw it as well.

But since it wasn't saucer shaped, we couldn't be sure what it was and were mainly left scratching our heads. It simply wasn't the shape we were seeking and it is often amazing the ease with which we forget something that doesn't fit our expectations.

EVP

What exactly is a EVP? The mystery of Electronic Voice Phenomena has long flown under the paranormal radar. Yet it does exist, which is something I can state from first hand experience.

I wish it didn't. For whatever reason, it is a phenomena that genuine spooks me. I think I was exposed to an episode of the old Twilight Zone at too impressible of an age (it was the one concerning phone calls from the dead). The thought gives me the willies and I often think twice before picking up the phone.

For those unfamiliar with EVP, they are voices (and other sounds of unknown origins) picked up on tape equipment or other forms of audio amplifiers. Sometimes they appear to be the voices of the dead and increasingly ghost hunters have used recorders as a mean of attempting to communicate with the great beyond. Other times they appear to be any number of other forms of disembodied voices, with one web site purporting to have recordings of angels singing (though one of the tapes sound more like Alvin and the Chipmunks played backwards).

Though not widely discussed, the phenomena is well known among recording engineers. Since all sort of radio waves create various forms of interference, it is usually a safe bet that the noise in the background of the tape has more to do with a local radio station rather than another dimension. But every so often, something strange occurs that is not easily explainable.

My own most impressive experience took place when I was once setting up the A/V system in an auditorium for a lecture one night. It was early and only I and the photographer were in the auditorium at the time. The event was a special presentation for a museum and it was a "high pressure" evening and everything was expected (actually, ordered was more the word) to go without a hitch.

The photographer was unloading his equipment at the back of the auditorium while I was just start to set up the PA system. Suddenly, a voice came full blast over the PA speakers, calling the photographer's name. The voice bore an uncanny resemblance to the director of the institution, who at the time was having dinner with selected guests at a restaurant on the other side of town. The director was infamous for his highly neurtic behavior patterns and extremely rough shod handling of employees. So I wasn't surprised to find that the photographer had broken out sweat.

I told the guy not to worry, that it was just a freak coincident caused by the PA system and radio interference. I didn't bother to tell him that the system wasn't on at the time and that there was no way this could have happened. I had a strange feeling that he didn't need to hear the truth at the moment.

Sometimes you just let sleeping dogs lie.