The UFO Community Experiences, Activities, and Agendas
Eyes Only: A Selection of Leading Living UFOlogists (Part 3)
Rudolph “Rudy” Schild (b. 1940)
Harvard astrophysicist and researcher who directs the 1.5-meter-telescope program at the Harvard-Smithsonian Cambridge Observatories. The author and co-author of nearly three hundred peer-reviewed scientific papers, Schild is founding editor-in-chief (2009) of the peer-reviewed Journal of Cosmology. He is well known for his investigations into the quantum hologram theory of physics; the ancient, natural “seeding” of Earth that allowed the planet to develop life (the panspermia theory); and so-called super-planets— giant bodies that, in Schild’s view, are caught in supernovas and other cosmic collisions, becoming the progenitors of smaller planets. Earth, Schild ventures, may have spun off from a sundered super-planet.
Besides his credentials, Schild has popular appeal because of his confident manner, his marriage to mezzo-soprano Jane Struss, and his collection of vintage automobiles and motorcycles. UFOlogists are attracted by his innovative (and controversial) thoughts about the magnetic properties of black holes, and possible creation of wormholes that might provide “shortcuts” suited to interstellar travel. (For more on Dr. Schild’s theory, see chapter three.) Notable book: The Discovery of Alien Extraterrestrial Life: Our Cosmic Ancestry & the Origins of Life (editor/contributor, with Richard Hoover, Chandra Wickramasinghe, and R. Joseph).
John F. Schuessler: Retired director of general services for Boeing, this American aerospace engineer is a founding member of MUFON (established 1969). From 2000 to 2006, Schuessler served as that organization’s international director. In 1976, he founded Project VISIT (Vehicle Internal Systems Investigative Team), to bring aerospace and other technical expertise to studies of Unidentified Space Vehicles (USVs).
Schuessler is, to date, the best and most sympathetic chronicler of the so-called Cash-Landrum UFO incident of 1980, in which two Texas women and a boy witnessed more than twenty military helicopters struggle to intercept a UFO.
(For more, see chapter fifteen.) Schuessler related the story with care, establishing himself as a thorough, knowledgeable, and principled investigator.
He won the admiration of the three principals, not least because he listened carefully to the adult witnesses, whose accounts were dismissed by some because they were “unreliable women.” Recalling Schuessler more than twenty years after the fact, Colby Landrum said, “[H]e was on top of things. I mean he was a wonderful man.” Notable books: The Cash-Landrum UFO Incident; A Catalog of UFO-Related Human Physiological Effects.
Robert Sheaffer (b. 1949)
American author and magazine journalist who co- founded (with Philip Klass and James Oberg) the UFO subcommittee of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
Sheaffer’s take on UFOs is culture based, with a nod to folklore and myth— communal elements deeply ingrained in people’s minds and expressed, over centuries, as different things: fairies, ghosts, mythic heroes, and, according to Sheaffer, UFOs. (Carl Jung had a similar idea.) In a 2012 interview, Sheaffer implied that unidentified flying objects are just one part of an imaginative human tapestry, saying that “UFOs have evolved into this enormous richness as asocial phenomenon.” UFO accounts involving professional pilots are particularly intriguing to Sheaffer, who declares pilots unreliable witnesses. Why? Because, he says, they are (and are obligated to be) caught up in the exigencies of the moment (I can’t crash into that object) rather than in cool analysis (I wonder what that object is?). Sheaffer has debunked, to his own satisfaction, absorbing accounts from professional civil and military pilots, as well as other military personnel.
Sheaffer’s criticism of militant feminism, and his unwillingness to acknowledge human-generated climate change, make him controversial in an arena larger than the world of UFOs.
Notable books: The UFO Verdict: Examining the Evidence; UFO Sightings: The Evidence.
Michael Shermer (b. 1954)
American science writer, academic, UFO skeptic, outspoken atheist, and retired professional bicycle racer. Shermer holds a master’s degree in experimental psychology and a doctorate in the history of science. In 1992, he founded the Skeptics Society, a nonprofit that investigates controversial science and pseudoscience, and advocates critical and scientific thinking. The group’s membership roll approaches sixty thousand. The organization publishes Skeptic magazine; every issue includes a bound-in supplement for youngsters, Junior Skeptic.
Shermer has written with great lucidity about what he calls “patternicity,” an outgrowth of evolution-driven association learning, by which our brains are predisposed to “connect the dots and create meaning out of the patterns that we think we see in nature.” This is why, as Shermer explains, people see the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich; why UFOlogists see a face in a Martian boulder; and why paranormal investigators hear voices of the dead in electronic babble issuing from a radio.
Notable books: Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Bogus Notions of Our Time; The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies—How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths.
Seth Shostak (b. 1943): American astrophysicist and astronomer who is senior astronomer at SETI Institute, which trolls for extraterrestrial intelligence by receiving and analyzing radio signals from space. (SETI is not designed to send messages, a decision with which Shostak disagrees.) Thus far, the signal chatter analyzed by SETI algorithms and software has been explainable. No aliens— though UFOlogist Steven Greer gets Shostak’s dander up by insisting that SETI has indeed made contact.
Shostak has been intrigued by a relatively recent phenomenon: eleven fast radio bursts (FRBs) picked up in the southern sky by an Australian radio telescope since 2007. The power of the signals suggests a potent natural cause, such as the collision of stars. But some astronomers claim to have discovered a mathematical identifier shared by all eleven—an unlikely situation in nature. So are these FRBs the work of a far-distant alien intelligence? Shostak urges caution before declaring alien contact. Still, he is confident that SETI will locate intelligent alien life by 2040.
Notable books: Sharing the Universe: Perspectives on Extraterrestrial Life; Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
Derrel Sims (b. 1948)
American UFOlogist, hypnotherapist, and self- proclaimed “world’s leading expert on alien abductions.” A colorful figure in a cowboy hat and black leather duster, Sims reports that he is himself an abductee.
He says that one in four people have been or will be abducted by aliens, and can expect to come away from the encounter with an implanted device. The assertion
is tailor-made for getting attention, and indeed, Sims has found a TV audience as star of a jumpily photographed Discovery Science series called Uncovering Aliens.
Sims’s resumé notes activity as a private investigator, process server, commercial real estate analyst, martial arts instructor, insurance liquidator, graphologist, self-published author, military police officer, and Vietnam-era CIA covert operative.
Notable book: Alien Hunter: Evidence and Truth About Alien Implants (with Patricia Gray).
Brad Sparks (b. circa 1955)
American UFOlogist, document-release activist, and co-founder of BlueBookArchive.org. Sparks established the archive after cataloguing some fifteen hundred unexplained UFO accounts recorded in Project Blue Book documents of the 1950s and ’60s. At this writing, more than fifty-six- thousand document pages are online. Sparks also is a co-founder of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (established 1977), and a leading expert on the Scientific Advisory Panel on UFOs (the so-called Robertson Panel of 1953; see chapter nine).
Skeptical of standard conclusions offered about Roswell, Sparks insists that any UFO claim or other paranormal event be supported with documentation.
R. Leo Sprinkle (b. 1930)
Retired University of Wyoming professor of psychology and guidance education, with practical experience in hypnotic regression. Although Sprinkle accepts the “spacecraft hypothesis” of UFOs, he did not begin his professional life as a believer. But in 1949, when he (and a companion) witnessed a UFO Sprinkle could not explain, his attitude changed from, as he put it, “‘scoffer’ to that of ‘skeptic.’” A second encounter, in 1965, turned the skeptical Sprinkle into an “unwilling believer.” Sprinkle has studied thousands of UFO accounts, and interviewed hundreds of witnesses and contactees. His use of hypnotherapy has allowed him to discern a link between contactees, reincarnation, and past lives.
Like many other UFOlogists with relevant educational backgrounds, Sprinkle is an advocate of codified, structured UFO investigation; he has urged the establishment of an international and/or national study center, “for continuous formal investigation of the physical, biological, psycho-social, and spiritual implications of UFO phenomena.” Ideally, such a center would harness the expertise of people trained in astronomy, medicine, military affairs, law, politics, theology, mathematics, and other disciplines.
Notable book: Soul Samples: Personal Explorations in Reincarnation and UFO Experiences.
Peter Sturrock (b. 1924)
Retired Stanford professor of physics and applied physics who has high-level associations with the American Astronomical Society, the Society for Scientific Exploration, and the Royal Astronomical Society. Sturrock is British, and earned his doctorate at Cambridge University.
During World War II he worked on the development of radar. He subsequently participated in British atomic energy research, and began his teaching career at Stanford after coming to that school to do microwave research. Today, he heads the Sturrock Solar Research Group at Stanford, where he and international collaborators explore solar neutrino flux, and muon and electron neutrinos.
The beauty of Sturrock’s presence in the UFO community is that he is neither believer nor non-believer; he functions as a scientist. His group’s 1998 report did not satisfy every UFO enthusiast: the scientists concluded, in fact, that “there was no convincing evidence pointing to . . . the involvement of extraterrestrial intelligence.” A few mainstream critics pointed out that the study’s funding came from the Society for Scientific Exploration, an organization with a propensity to give credibility to a variety of paranormal claims.
Notable books: The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence; A Tale of Two Sciences: Memoirs of a Dissident Scientist.
Michael Swords (b. circa 1941)
Retired natural science professor (Western Michigan University) and editor of The Journal of UFO Studies (with Robert Powell). Swords writes and speaks persuasively about U.S. government response to UFOs in the immediate postwar years, when Washington’s interest in “national security” withered into carelessness and disinterest, allowing government UFO research to fall into an intellectual desert, where it become isolated and trivialized. This, Swords believes, suggests a great opportunity squandered.
In 2014, Swords precipitated a minor ruckus when he posted to his blog, The Biggest Study, a 1977 letter written by famed UFO abductee Betty Hill to UFO and hypno-regression researcher Ted Bloecher. In it, Betty Hill expressed great doubt about the application and value of hypnotic regression. Swords absorbed some angry criticism. The negative response seems unwarranted because Swords added very little comment to the letter, noting mainly that he had previously questioned the motives and techniques of untrained “abusers” of hypnotic technique.
Notable book: UFOs and Government: A Historical Inquiry.
Jacques Vallée (b. 1939)
French computer scientist, high-tech-sector investor and venture capitalist, and leading UFO researcher-author. Vallée distinguished himself while an associate of J. Allen Hynek, codifying alien-encounter types that expanded on Hynek’s famed “close encounters” register. In the 1960s, working with his wife, Janine, Vallée built the first UFO database. He holds degrees in mathematics, astrophysics (master’s degree), and computer science (PhD). He has worked as an astronomer for NASA at MacDonald Observatory in Austin, Texas.
Vallée’s scholarly interest in folklore encourages him to regard the familiar “extraterrestrial hypothesis” (ETH) as just one aspect of a larger tapestry of paranormal phenomena that includes physical evidence of elevated levels of consciousness, as well as demons, angels, and visitors from other dimensions.
Religion (particularly apparitions that may actually have been UFOs) and cults also capture Vallée’s attention. Alternatively, he suggests that UFOs may be natural phenomena, or even artificial—and if the latter, they could be manifestations of a higher consciousness that may or may not be extraterrestrial.
All of this indicates the wide framing of Vallée’s thoughts—a desirable quality that nevertheless causes upset in ET-only segments of the UFO community.
Some who are wedded to the ETH object because Vallée’s ideas suggest an inbred human predilection to “see” things and interpret them falsely, or to otherwise react in ways that reveal the limits of perception when weighed against long-standing cultural landmarks. Vallée responds that much of the cultural “weight” of the UFO-ET link comes from a self-perpetuating idea rooted only partly in empirical reality: because ET enthusiasts receive attention and approval for their claims, subsequent witnesses are encouraged to “see” and report things that are similar and even, essentially, identical. When popular culture picks up certain UFO-related tropes—the big-head alien is one— witnesses and purported witnesses “know” what to see and report.
Vallée insists that UFOlogy must cultivate credible researchers. He also is vehement in his opposition to hypnotic regression, feeling that the therapists “are creating abductees under hypnosis.” [emphasis added] As one might expect, his opinion puts Vallée at odds with a segment of the abduction sub-community.
Vallée inspired the ET-skeptical French scientist played by Francois Truffaut in Steven Spielberg’s 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Notable books: Anatomy of a Phenomenon: Unidentified Objects in Space—a Scientific Appraisal; Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers; Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults; Wonders in the Sky: Unexplained Aerial Objects from Antiquity to Modern Times (with Chris Aubeck); Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact.
Jean-Jacques Velasco (b. 1946)
French optics expert long involved with the state-run National French Center for Space Studies (CNES), and a key player in sober, government-sponsored investigation of UFOs. As early as 1977, when he joined the new group GEPAN (Group Study of Unidentified Air Phenomena, a subgroup of CNES), Velasco studied the optics at play in specific UFO sightings, and then designed an instrument that reconstituted the optic stimuli experienced by the witnesses—in effect, an early form of virtual reality. He finds particular value in credible witness accounts that can be mated to radar records, which is the case in about 20 percent of reports made by pilots. Velasco also studies physical traces left by UFOs: marked or otherwise disturbed earth; burns and other changes to trees and ground cover; and anomalous trace metals.
Leadership of GEPAN fell to Velasco in 1983, by which time the French government was already pushing for budget reductions. In 1988, GEPAN was superseded by another French project, SEPRA (Rare Aerospace Phenomena Study Department). SEPRA operated under the aegis of the CNES, only to be terminated in 2004. But the French government reactivated SEPRA in 2005, dissolving GEPAN and replacing that body with a new CNES subgroup, GEIPAN (Unidentified Aerospace Phenomenon Research and Information Group), headed by Jacques Patenet. Velasco shifted to the CNES and later retired.
Notable book: Disorders in the Sky: UFO Evidence Provided by Radar.
Fabio Pedro Alles Zerpa (b. 1928)
Uruguay-born Argentinean stage, film, radio, and television actor, radio host, researcher, and entrepreneur. Zerpa is a colorful, confident figure whose interest in UFOs is one part of his broader preoccupation with the paranormal; he has lectured and written not only on unidentified flying objects but on Nostradamus, past-lives theory, government conspiracies, and hollow-Earth theory. Zerpa contends that pre-Columbian art reflects UFO activity in Latin America. He claims educations in psychology, anthropology, sociology, and parapsychology.
Zerpa saw his first UFO (which he describes as “an extraterrestrial ship”) in 1959 while aboard an Argentinean Air Force plane above Morón, Argentina, a dozen miles west of Buenos Aires. Nine years later, Zerpa organized the first Argentinean conference on extraterrestrial life, at the University of Buenos Aires.
Since the late 1980s, Zerpa has operated the Fabio Zerpa Foundation, providing “experiential workshops” in self-awareness, dream interpretation, past lives, and general paranormal studies. Zerpa also offers personal counseling that utilizes what he calls Quantum Sophrology, to help clients concentrate, overcome fears, and balance their physical, mental, and spiritual lives. (Sophrology is the study of relaxed, focused consciousness and the mind’s influence on physical health.) Zerpa’s Web site identifies him as “Prof. Zerpa.” The foundation has an offshoot created by Zerpa in 1990, the Argentine Center for the Study of Anomalous Phenomena (CAEFA). Local UFOlogists wishing to conduct field research must, according to Zerpa, join CAEFA.
Notable book: UFOs and Underground Cities.
Eyes Only: A Selection of Leading Living UFOlogists (Part 1)
https://scienceandspace.com/ufos/eyes-only-a-selection-of-leading-living-ufologists-part-2/