The UFO Community Experiences, Activities, and Agendas
Eyes Only: A Selection of Leading Living UFOlogists (Part 2)
Linda Moulton Howe (b. 1942)
Researcher, archivist, and filmmaker known for A Strange Harvest, a 1980 documentary about cattle mutilations and their link to UFOs. A Peabody-winning television writer and producer, Howe unwittingly set into motion a great deal of fevered extrapolation based on a belief that the mutilations are part of a larger, more sinister alien effort involving the forced mating of alien males and human females, human-alien hybrids, facilitated organ growth, and organ harvesting. Howe is a frequent “talking head” commentator seen in television episodes and documentaries devoted to ancient aliens, Bigfoot, the Roswell cover-up, and another of her favorite subjects (and a favorite of hoaxers, as well), crop circles.
Notable books: Alien Harvest: Further Evidence Linking Animal Mutilations and Human Abductions to Alien Life Forms; Glimpses of Other Realities, Vols. 1 and 2; Mysterious Lights and Crop Circles.
David M. Jacobs (b. circa 1943)
Retired Temple University professor whose concentration on 20th-century American history and culture led him into UFOlogy. Jacobs lectures frequently, maintaining a high profile in UFOlogy circles. He has particular interest in alien abductions, and confidence that memory regression via hypnosis brings reliable accounts from abductees. (Jacobs has regressed some 150 abductees, at no charge, since 1986.) Jacobs warns that abduction is a key component of an alien scheme to infiltrate Earth with human-alien hybrids. His belief in hybrids, because it invokes issues beyond the realm of known science, cannot be argued against persuasively.
However, Jacobs’s surety about the usefulness of memory regression via hypnosis has brought considerable criticism levied by astrobiologists and cognitive psychologists.
In a break from his practice of in-person hypnotic memory regressions, Jacobs regressed a female abductee (who calls herself Emma Woods) by telephone during 2004–07. The relationship degenerated after about a year, and Jacobs claims that Woods instigated a campaign of threats and other harassment against him; Woods retorts that during phone sessions Jacobs “planted suggestions” (Woods’s words) that she had Multiple Personality Disorder. At this writing, the argument goes on in the respective Web sites of Jacobs and Woods, and in numberless UFO forums.
Jacobs is presently director of the International Center for Abduction Research.
Notable books: The UFO Controversy in America (a consumer version of Jacobs’s PhD dissertation); The Threat: Revealing the Secret Alien Agenda; UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge; Walking Among Us: The Alien Plan to Control Humanity.
Kal K. Korff (b. 1962)
American paranormal researcher and UFO debunker, variously based in the USA, the Czech Republic, and India, and more noted for his claims about himself than for his investigative work. Korff has devoted considerable energy to debunking the Billy Meier UFO case (see chapter fifteen) and the Roswell crash and subsequent alien autopsy film—and greater effort to a ceaseless enumeration of his credentials: counterterrorism agent, undercover operative, security analyst, colonel with the Israeli Secret Service, consultant to the CIA, consultant to the FBI, widely read journalist, JFK-assassination expert, consultant to the O. J. Simpson civil trial plaintiffs, think-tank chief, husband to an Indian princess, and more. Korff has had difficulty providing documentation, witnesses, or other proofs of his personal claims.
A familiar “talking head” and panel guest on CNN and other outlets during much of the 1990s, Korff took a hit from a highly critical 1994 San Jose Mercury News feature, and severely damaged himself in 1997 by falsely claiming that radio host Art Bell objected to the plans of three Bell-affiliate stations to schedule Korff on shows other than Bell’s. Because Korff’s claim involved Bell’s alleged threat to yank his show from those stations, Bell insisted that Korff apologize, via live telephone, on Coast to Coast AM. Korff did so, and posted a printed apology on his Web site.
YouTube partially revived Korff’s flagging career and provided an easy platform for him to carry on with his claims and activities. But his detractors, too, are on the Web and campaign against him there, with gleeful vigor that frequently shades into the vituperative.
Notable books: Spaceships of the Pleiades; The Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don’t Want You to Know.
Barbara Lamb
Abduction researcher and psychotherapist who has performed, by her count, more than eighteen hundred hypnotic regressions on more than eight hundred UFO abductees. Memories recovered with Lamb’s intervention suggest that multiple alien species campaign to have forced sex with human women and men. According to Lamb, three alien types dominate: reptilians, mantids, and grays. Their goal is to create hybrids that will integrate with the human genome, and perpetuate traits of the respective races. Lamb has cited the angular features of some fashion models as identifiers of hybrid status—though UFO blogger, and informed skeptic, Robert Sheaffer has noted, dryly, that “anorexia and heroin might produce the same effect.” Lamb has a seat on the board of the Academy of Clinical Close Encounter Therapists. Crop circles account for Lamb’s other main area of research; enthusiasts flock to her annual tours across the British countryside.
Notable books: Alien Experiences (with Nadine Lalich); Crop Circles Revealed: Language of the Light Circles (with Judith Moore).
Michael Lindemann (b. 1949)
Educator, hypnotherapist, and social analyst trained in psychology and political science. Lindemann’s professional interest in UFOs dates to about 1990, when he became intrigued by the possible connection between them and covert weapons development—specifically, the ways in which American public funds are secretly funneled to the development and maintenance of secret weapons bases. He founded CNI News (to disseminate UFO information), the Global Situation Report (global politics and futurism), and a Web-based body, the Institute for the Study of Non-human Intelligence (ISCNI). As “Michael Paul,” Lindemann writes futurist novels that he issues under his Chancellor Publishing imprint.
With his wife, Deborah Lindemann, Michael Lindemann operates the Lindemann Professional Group, which utilizes hypnosis to treat anxiety, general fears and phobias, smoking, and excess weight.
Notable book: UFOs and the Alien Presence: Six Viewpoints.
Bruce Maccabee (b. 1942)
Active in NICAP and, later, MUFON, Maccabee is a physicist who worked at the Naval Ordnance Library from 1972 to 2008, developing defense-oriented laser technology. He has done extensive research into the 1947 Roswell case, and hundreds of UFO sightings that occurred in the ten years following. He is a founding member of the Fund for UFO Research.
Maccabee’s 2000 article “Prosaic Explanations: The Failure of UFO Skepticism” (Infinite Energy magazine) has been a rallying point for many UFOlogists.
Notable books: The FBI-CIA-UFO Connection: The Hidden UFO Activities of USA Intelligence Agencies (with Stanton Friedman); If UFOs Are Real (with Larry Koss).
Jim Marrs (b. 1943)
High-profile American UFOlogist, JFK-assassination conspiracy theorist, and author with professional experience as a journalist.
Marrs blends his UFO studies with his thoughts about a variety of invisible conspiracies involving the military-industrial complex, the “New World Order,” Freemasons, the Trilateral Commission, “zombie banks,” and others. He brings a conspiracy mindset even to the ancient astronaut theory, postulating that humans sprang from “space-faring overlords” that traveled here from the planet Nibiru; today, Marrs suggests, Nibiruians secretly control a small but hugely influential cadre of people around the globe, at the highest levels of power.
To his credit as a professional writer, Marrs has turned himself into a brand: HarperCollins, a major publisher, issues his books, and on some covers his name dominates the tops of the jackets, above the titles. To the publishing establishment, Jim Marrs is money in the bank.
Notable books about UFOs: Alien Agenda: Investigating the Alien Presence Among Us; Our Occulted History: Do the Global Elite Conceal Ancient Aliens?
Greg Meholic
Experienced in practical applications of aerodynamics and aerospace technology, this American project engineer with California-based Aerospace Corporation brings knowledge of propulsion systems to extensive professional activity in space-travel issues of interest to the federal government.
In addition to research, Meholic teaches a graduate-level propulsion systems course at Loyola Marymount University.
Meholic’s everyday work on gas turbines and other existing technology, though rife with possibility, is relatively straightforward. His curiosity, however, has led him to maintain another, separate line of research into faster-than-light theory based in particle physics (the study of the fundamental, subatomic particles that combine to create matter and radiation). Meholic’s informed speculation on nuclear and antimatter ramjets suggests that the stars may one day be within our grasp.
Royce Myers
American editor and founder of UFOwatchdog.com, a useful Web site devoted to rational study of UFOs, UFOlogists, and UFO claims. Trained in criminal justice, Myers has no patience with hoaxers, whom he views primarily as charlatans that are “UFO people” only secondarily. He is curious about the motivations of hoaxers, and the material and emotional needs such people wish to fulfill. Myers is famously skeptical about the Roswell alien autopsy film, and the Project SERPO conspiracy (see chapter eleven).
Perhaps the most notable of Myers’s targets is Sean David Morton, an unaccredited PhD (therapeutic counseling) who calls himself “America’s Psychic,” and who objected to Myers’s investigation of his claims about associations with NASA astronauts, his psychic powers, and insider knowledge of extraterrestrials. Morton sued Myers and ufowatchdog.com (he lost his case in 2003), only to be sued himself by the SEC in 2010 for multimillion-dollar investment fraud. In 2013, a U.S. district judge ordered Morton to pay $11.5 million to the SEC; and Morton’s wife, a relief defendant, to pay more than $570,000.
So successful is Myers in his determination to expose and explain hoaxers that some in the UFO community brand him a pawn of Washington, paid to debunk the UFOs that the government wishes to obscure.
James “Jim” E. Oberg (b. 1944)
Retired NASA engineer who devoted years to the space shuttle project, and to an understanding of the strengths and limitations of the Russian space program. Oberg is a founding fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI); he does not automatically dismiss UFO reports from credible witnesses, but is impatient with accounts that amount to what he refers to as “space folklore.” Unlike some other UFOlogists, Oberg is not infatuated with UFO reports made by experienced professional pilots. This stance is mildly controversial, as it seems to discount the extensive training and flight time of such pilots.
In a 1979 article for New Scientist magazine, Oberg lamented that some in the UFO community ignore “data verification, theory testing, and the burden of proof.” Though a portion of today’s UFO community finds Oberg nettlesome, he remains a constructive voice of reason and care.
Notable books: UFOs and Outer Space Mysteries: A Sympathetic Skeptic’s Report; Space Power Theory; Red Star in Orbit.
Nick Pope (b. 1965)
British journalist, former Ministry of Defence employee, and onetime researcher with Britain’s UFO Project who gained notoriety in 2012 when he predicted imminent alien invasion of Earth. News stories quoted Pope: “The [British] government . . . has planned for the worst-case scenario: alien attack and alien invasion. Space shuttles, lasers, and directed-energy weapons are all committed via the Alien Invasion War Plan to defense [sic] against any alien ships in orbit.” When eyebrows were raised in government and elsewhere, Pope clarified, saying that he was describing a new video game he had helped develop.
When declassified Ministry of Defence UFO files began to be released in 2008, Pope developed a high-profile feud with David Clarke, an academic and British UFO Research Association member who was official consultant to the UK National Archives, and who helped shepherd more than fifty thousand pages of documents into the public eye. Pope claims that many documents were not declassified and released; Clarke begs to differ.
Notable books: Open Skies, Closed Minds: Official Reactions to the UFO Phenomenon; Encounter in Rendlesham Forest: The Inside Story of the World’s Best-Documented UFO Incident.
Harold Puthoff (b. 1936)
Graduate-degree electrical engineer with professional experience in fiber optics, microwaves, opto-electronic computers, and laser physics. He has worked for Sperry, General Electric, and the National Security Agency. Since the 1970s, Puthoff has studied alternative fuel sources and zero- point energy (the study of electromagnetic interactions, and the energy left after all other energy is removed from a system).
While with the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), Puthoff and fellow physicist Russell Targ coined the term “remote viewing” to describe a non-objective form of extrasensory perception that the SRI explored for possible intelligence- gathering applications.
In the mid-1980s, Puthoff established a business, EarthTech International, and an academic research organization, the Institute for Advanced Study in Austin (Texas). Never an active UFOlogist, Puthoff nevertheless stimulates UFO researchers who are aware of his work in theoretical physics, and his suggestion that interstellar travel may be feasible.
Puthoff joined the Church of Scientology in the 1960s and remained until the 1970s.
Notable book: Fundamentals of Quantum Electronics (with Richard H. Pantell).
Scott and Susan Ramsey
North Carolina-based researchers best known for their investigation of the generally discredited 1948 UFO crash at Hart Canyon, near Aztec, New Mexico. (For more on Aztec, see chapter fifteen.) The Ramseys claim that sixteen diminutive aliens perished in the crash, and that the U.S. government took pains to cover up the incident. A plaque installed at the site by the Ramseys describes the craft as having been one hundred feet in diameter and eighteen feet high. Leading UFOlogist Stanton Friedman has praised the Ramseys for their persistent and dedicated research.
Notable book: The Aztec Incident: Recovery at Hart Canyon.
Kevin Randle (b. 1949)
Prolific American military historian and novelist with a degree in journalism and advanced degrees in psychology and military studies.
Combat experience in Vietnam and Iraq gave Randle the “nuts and bolts” outlook that typified first-generation UFO researchers. Although mildly skeptical of abduction accounts, Randle gives credence to the basics of the famed Roswell, New Mexico, crash—asserting that something that was not a weather balloon crashed there, and that subsequent investigations have been bollixed and purposely hindered by the U.S. government.
An association with a researcher-writer named Donald Schmitt during a Roswell book project damaged Randle’s credibility in 1995, when investigation by the U.S. Air Force and others discovered that Schmitt had not been truthful about his education and other credentials. (For more, see chapter eight.) Schmitt eventually admitted his deceptions, via open letter. Randle’s Roswell Revisited (2007) displays no patience for spurious Roswell “evidence,” which encompasses faked memoranda and other documents, unproved claims of Roswell crash-debris metal that is not of this Earth, and the faked Roswell alien autopsy film.
Notable books: UFO Crash at Roswell (with Donald R. Schmitt); Roswell Revisited; The Roswell Encyclopedia; Case MJ-12: The True Story Behind the Government’s UFO Conspiracies; The Abduction Enigma (with William P. Cone and Russ Estes); Reflections of a UFO Investigator.
Jenny Randles (b. 1951)
British researcher, author, and lecturer associated with the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA), and author of dozens of widely read books about UFOs, and many aspects of the paranormal, including time travel, life after death, and spontaneous human combustion. She claims to have had fifteen UFO sightings since childhood, adding that she has been unable to satisfactorily explain only two. Randles’s academic training is in geology and media communications.
Since the millennium, Randles has grown less interested in UFOs as conveyors of alien beings and more intrigued with the energy fields UFOs may generate.
She has noted the diminishment of “standard” alien reports since the 1990s and the dramatic increase since that time of abduction accounts. (Randles has, in fact, worked to ban hypnotic regression, a tool often employed to coax possibly spurious memories from abductees.) Her observation suggests that ET accounts simply change with fashion and may never have represented reality. Indeed, some in the UFO community were startled by Randles’s 2013 article for Fortean Times, in which she noted the continually “frustrating” search for intelligent extraterrestrials, and wondered whether such creatures—at least insofar as they might visit Earth—are “a space age equivalent of the dragons and the fairies.” Randles believes that intelligent extraterrestrials exist, but that they are likely to be discovered by scientists rather than UFOlogists.
Vis-à-vis her energy-field notion, Randles posits that discrete UFOs generate a “sphere of influence,” a physical force that may explain differences in multiple- eyewitness UFO accounts: witnesses located a farther physical distance from a UFO might experience a lesser level of what Randles calls “distortion,” while people situated closer appear to be more prone to internalized buzzing, humming, and other physical effects. This suggests to Randles that many, and perhaps most, UFOs are physical phenomena, possibly atmospheric in nature.
Notable books: The Truth Behind Men in Black: Government Agents or Visitors from Beyond; UFO Retrievals: The Recovery of Alien Spacecraft; UFOs and How to See Them.
Nick Redfern (b. 1964)
Leading British UFOlogist and prolific freelance writer who campaigns for release of classified British UFO documents. As a result of Redfern’s efforts, thousands of pages of previously classified British documents have been released.
One Redfern book, Three Men Seeking Monsters, diverges from UFOlogy to look at pursuits of werewolves, apemen, water serpents, giant cats, and “ghostly devil dogs.” Other books by Redfern examine Bigfoot, Chupacabra, demons and fallen angels, NASA’s Moon-landing “hoax,” and the purported link between RH-negative blood and alien ancestors. This activity would seem to mark Redfern as a facile commercial writer rather than a serious scholar.
Notable books: Close Encounters of the Fatal Kind: Suspicious Deaths, Mysterious Murders, and Bizarre Disappearances in UFO History; Body Snatchers in the Desert: The Horrible Truth at the Heart of the Roswell Story; Men in Black: Personal Stories & Eerie Adventures.
Mark Rodeghier (b. 1953)
American astrophysicist with a PhD in sociology, and a commitment to well-grounded scientific research. He became president and scientific director of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies in 1986, concurrent with his software and consulting duties with Chicago-based SPSS Inc., a statistical analysis firm that is now part of IBM’s Business Analytics Portfolio.
In interviews and elsewhere, Rodeghier has explained that UFO research has been slow to provide concrete results not because the subject is frivolous, but because of a lack of the kinds of resources that fund and otherwise support standard scientific research. Without the ability to conduct what Rodeghier calls “real-time research,” UFO investigators must rely on eyewitness reports—and those, while often credible, are not “scientific.” According to Rodeghier, UFOlogy will not gain mainstream approval until it attracts funding and many more legitimate scientists.
He remains hopeful. In 2008, he told interviewer Jason Plautz, “If I meet someone whose mind is open, even just a crack, I can sit and talk to them. I just try to present the best cases. In the end, they always say, ‘Okay, I see at least why you’re studying this. There might really be something there.’” Notable book: UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference.
Michael Salla
Australian academic (PhD in government affairs), and a proponent of exopolitics, the study of political policy relevant to human interaction with extraterrestrials. Salla interprets biblical references to demigods as evidence of human-alien hybrids, and identifies the Flood as the event needed to rid Earth of unrepentant fallen angels. Salla maintains that sixteen alien races are now involved in Earthly affairs, some independently, others in collusion with Earth governments.
President Eisenhower, Salla reports, met with extraterrestrials during the Cold War. Space probes launched later by the U.S. and other nations discovered livable atmospheres on Mars, Venus, and Earth’s Moon—information that has been kept from the public. Like many UFOlogists, Salla takes particular interest in Nikola Tesla, suggesting that the brilliant scientist-inventor was “a Venusian baby” given to an Earth family to be raised as a human.
Notable books: Exposing U.S. Government Policies on Extraterrestrial Life: The Challenge of Exopolitics; Kennedy’s Last Stand: Eisenhower, UFOs, MJ-12 & JFK’s Assassination.
Eyes Only: A Selection of Leading Living UFOlogists (Part 1)
https://scienceandspace.com/ufos/eyes-only-a-selection-of-leading-living-ufologists-part-3/