The Possibility of Alien Life Forms and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: Group Witnesses and Alien Encounters
It is necessary to examine the following cases of adult groups around the world witnessing “alien aircrafts” because such accounts lead to the dichotomy of whether witnesses are lying about their “experience.” While psychological factors can account for an individual adult’s paranormal experience, it is unlikely, if not impossible, for a group of adults to experience the same exceedingly wild “alien encounter” phenomenon simultaneously (Mcnally & Clancy 2005; Wolchover, 2011).
In other words, adult groups are either fabricating stories or sharing their experiences. Nevertheless, any group of adults can easily lie, and claims or reports from adults will be less reliable than those from young children. If, however, enough evidence can be presented to support the group’s account, their cases may be worth examining. The following events all satisfy at least several of the following criteria.
- There were third-party groups other than the encounter group that testified.
- Witnesses passed the polygraph test and their stories were extensively examined for consistency.
- Investigations reported traces of physical evidence.
- The witnesses did not profit from the event.
- The case was taken very seriously by the investigators or the government.
The Pascagoula Incident
The Pascagoula Incident is an alleged alien encounter published and revisited by various media outlets and news agencies such as the Associated Press, Hattiesburg American, Tampa Bay Times, United Press International, and The Washington Post (Brockell, 2019; CBS, 2019; Nelson, 2018; Amy, 2013; AP, 1973a, 1973b; UPI, 1973). On the evening of October 11, 1973, 42-year-old Charles Hickson and 19-year-old Calvin Parker Jr. were fishing near the west bank of the Pascagoula River. They noticed a blue light reflecting on the water and saw an oval-shaped object unlike any aircraft that they had ever seen.
After a blinding light, strange creatures allegedly appeared, took them aboard the object, examined them, and eventually released them. “They were frantic. They told authorities they had just been abducted by aliens. Each had a puncture wound in one arm,” writes The Washington Post. The officers at the sheriff’s department thought that they were either lying or drunk, and deputies secretly taped them. Jackson County Sheriff’s Captain Glen Ryder says, “We did everything we knew to try to break their stories.” He continued, “If they were lying to me, they should be in Hollywood” (Brockell, 2019).
Ryder notes that there were several related sightings of unexplainable lights during and before the night of the incident. The two men would pass sobriety tests and polygraph tests. Subsequently, Calvin Parker Jr. avoided media attention for decades, and neither became rich from the story. While it is difficult to conclude that their experiences were genuine, there were several third-party witnesses to corroborate the strange sighting (Watkins, 2018). Mike Cataldo, a former petty officer of the Navy in Rotonda West, Florida, reported that he saw “a very strange object on the horizon” late that afternoon when he was driving on U.S. 90 between Pascagoula and Ocean Springs. Many other witnesses that came forward were interviewed by The Clarion Ledger and WLOX television station (Keeton, 2019; Broom, 2019)
The Kentucky Women Incident
WLEX-TV, Lexington’s first television station, and the Lexington Herald- Leader revisited an alleged alien encounter case involving three women: Mona Stafford, Louise Smith, and Elaine Thomas (LEX18 News, 2011; Copley, 2012). The case was previously explored in several local papers such as the Chicago Tribune, the Kentucky Advocate, and The Advocate-Messenger (Mabley, 1977; Brown, 1997; Edwards, 1997). On January 6, 1976, three women were driving a car on Route 78 after celebrating one of the women’s birthdays at Redwoods Restaurant near Stanford.
Between Stanford and Hustonville, the women allegedly saw a domed shaped object emitting blue light, and their car began to malfunction as the glowing object approached. The three women experienced memory loss, inflammation, and burning sensations when they reached Hustonville. Noting that it took more than two hours to arrive at their destination, which normally should have only taken 30 minutes, the women reached out to the police. Their claims were held up by polygraph tests administered individually by the Lexington Police Department. Aside from amnesia, the three women also suffered swollen eyes, headaches, anxiety, and red welts on the backs of their necks (Edwards, 1997).
Therapy sessions involving hypnosis revealed that the women were taken aboard metallic, disk-shaped aircraft and examined by “aliens.” While their claims pertaining to this “alien encounter” cannot be verified, the women did not cash in from their stories (Brown, 1997). Two of the three women were, in fact, grandmothers, and they were all respected members of the local community (Edwards 1997). Independent witnesses also gave credence to their claims. On the same day, Donna Coffrey and her family reported seeing a “small object with blue lights” (Brown, 1997). In 2011, Mona Stafford, the only woman currently alive out of the three women, decided to speak out and was interviewed on WLEX-TV (LEX18 News, 2011)
The A70 Incident
Reported in The Scotsman, a daily morning newspaper published in Edinburgh, and The Herald, the longest-running national newspaper in the world, the A70 incident is one of the most well-known documented UFO cases in Scotland (The Newsroom, 2012; Swarbrick, 2018).2 On August 27, 1992, Garry Wood and Colin Wright were on their way to deliver a satellite TV system to the village of Tarbrax when the alleged “alien encounter” occurred. While driving, they noticed a disc-shaped object hovering over the A70 road.
Hoping to get away from the object, Wood put his foot down on the accelerator. Wood and Wright were temporarily enveloped in a black void when a mist emitted from the object allegedly reached the car. When they regained control of the car, they realized that they were late to drop off a satellite TV system at their destination. Similar to the Kentucky Women case, it took about two hours to arrive at Tarbrax when the trip would normally have taken about 30 minutes (The Scotsman, 2019).
Declassified government files reveal that Garry Wood contacted the police, a doctor, a university, and a psychologist to seek an explanation. Several months later, the two men went through hypnotic regression, and therapy sessions revealed that the “aliens” had abducted, examined, and communicated with them (McCue, 2018). Garry Wood went on to pass a polygraph test organized by the BBC, and the pair defended their claims (Farrimond, 2018). Rather than being regarded as Hollywood fiction, the 1992 case was serious enough to be investigated by the Ministry of Defense (Urquhart, 2012).
The Varginha Incident
This “alien encounter” occurred in Varginha, Minas Gerais, Brazil. The events were reported by the Grupo Record, the third-largest media company in Brazil; Empresa Brasil de Comunicação, a public broadcasting company in Brazil; and Grupo Globo, the largest mass media group of Latin America (Globo.tv, 1996; Moffett, 1996; Silva & Melo, 2016; Pedrosa, 2016; Augusto, 2019; G1, 2017). On the afternoon of January 20, 1996, a red-eyed “alien creature” was allegedly seen by three women aged 14 to 21: sisters Liliane and Valquíria Fátima Silva, and their friend Kátia Andrade Xavier. The sisters and Kátia immediately fled and told Silva’s mother that they had seen the “devil.” The mother and the girls returned to the area where they supposedly saw the creature. The older woman noticed a strong odor of ammonia, a dog sniffing the location of the encounter, and a mark on the floor.
Prior to this encounter, Oralina and Eurico de Freitas, owners of a farm in the city, claimed to have seen a UFO hovering over their cattle and heading toward the Fernão Dias highway. On January 13, 1996, Pilot Carlos de Souza reported seeing an object that passed by Fernão Dias. In 2010, an official inquiry led by the Brazilian military authorities, however, concluded that witnesses had actually come across a mentally unstable homeless hobo nicknamed “Mudinho” covered in mud (Pedrosa, 2016). He remains a part of their neighborhood in Varginha, and the girls, who know him, have always denied this conclusion.
Regardless, the lives of these women were all negatively impacted by this alleged event. One pregnant woman separated from her husband, and another dropped out of school. In 2012, the case was revisited by National Geographic, and the three witnesses were interviewed (National Geographic, 2012)
The Kelly Cahill Incident
The alleged “alien encounter” in Australia was reported by The Sydney Morning Herald, the oldest newspaper in Australia; the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia’s national broadcaster; and News.com.au, Australia’s most popular news website (Brown 2016; Miletic, 2016; Lambert, 2016). On August 8, 1993, a couple from Melbourne witnessed an object with orange lights floating over Belgrave-Hallam Road as they were driving through the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria. Kelly Cahill (pseudonym) and her husband stated that the object accelerated like nothing that they had ever seen, and a blinding light appeared in front of the road. Like a “cut to scene,” the couple suddenly felt confused and sluggish.
The disoriented couple realized an hour and a half had been lost when they returned home. The time loss was identical to that of the Kentucky Women Incident and the A70 Incident (Cahill, 1996). In this specific case, however, there were three independent groups of witnesses in three separate cars. Kelly Cahill later recalled details of the night, such as getting out of her car to inspect the light in the middle of the road. She also reported “aliens” emerging beneath the lights and approaching them. Multiple witnesses in the other two cars described the same experience, illustrated images similar to the sketches of Ms. Cahill, and recalled being taken on board “some kind of object” (Lambert, 2016). Kelly Cahill and two other female witnesses also reported similar markings on their bodies near their navel
Miscellaneous Cases
There are many notable UFO encounters around the world involving single witnesses, including the 1964 Lonnie Zamora incident, the 1965 Valensole UFO Encounter, the 1967 Falcon Lake incident, the 1980 Rosedale Case, and the 1981 Trans-en-Provence Case. The 1964 Lonnie Zamora incident involving a New Mexico police officer was listed as “the best-documented case on record” in Studies in Intelligence (CIA, 2016). This particular case persuaded Dr. J. Allen Hynek to seriously consider the possibility of “alien ships” (Hynek, 1977).
Dr. Hynek was a professor of astrophysics who served as a scientific advisor to an Air Force project that assessed UFO reports; he had originally explained UFO phenomena as “swamp gas” to Congressman Gerald Ford (Fordlibrarymuseum, 1966). Furthermore, the 1965 Valensole encounter in France left physical evidence, as nothing grew for two years in the location of the encounter (Hars, 2015; Quilici- Orlandi, 2019). The 1967 Falcon Lake incident in Canada left the witness with unexplainable burns in a grid-like pattern, and a radioactive piece of metal was recovered (Bernhardt, 2017).
The 1980 Rosedale encounter in Australia left a circular brown mark with a diameter of approximately 30 feet and emptied a 10,000-gallon water tank. In addition, it was impossible to move livestock into the paddock where the mark was (Cavanagh, 2015; Gippsland Times, 1980). In the 1981 Trans-en-Provence case, a follow-up investigation by the French government ruled out the possibility of military activity or an aircraft (Wilson, 2001; New Scientist, 2007). While the specific details of these sightings were reported by single witnesses, additional independent witnesses reported the alleged objects, particularly in the Lonnie Zamora and Rosedale cases.
While such single witness cases are well-documented and not considered simple hoaxes, these incidents were all omitted from the current research; this article deemed that any incidents involving single witnesses were too weak to effectively dismiss skeptics’ possible arguments against such single witnesses.
Understandably, there will always be skeptics aiming to disprove every UFO case and exclude the possibility of “alien” visitors due to numerous infamous hoaxes. While their approach may help filter out such hoaxes, their methods carry the predetermined assumption that all “alien” visitations are 100% fake.