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T. PAUL, Minnesota—Beings from pushing me into strange territory on a train existence of these things," he recalls. "Over ipectable of such organizations.
another planet visit Earth in space- of thought I w ould never have anticipated the years, 1 started talking to pi lots predomi- "It all sounds scry interesting when you're
cralt far more advanced than any- Official government explanations sud- nantly, as Witnesses, and I had to admit to first exposed to it." Dickinson cautions me.
thing we have, observe us and zoom denly seem thin and wobbly, and I am expe- myself that I w as w rong. There is, in fact, a "I thought at one point that this actually held
back to outer space so last that we riencing a nagging sensation thai mmiedUng very important, genuine phenomenon here the possibility ol telling us something about
Harthlings get but a fleeting glance. is going on. that deserves the involvement of multidisci- extraterrestrial life However, the deeper I
I could be dealing with the biggest story in * * * plinary sciences — engineering, physics got into it. the more I realized there are dead
human history — or I could be the victim ot This conference is as good as it gets in the and so forth " ends everywhere
sci-li fantasies run amok. world of UFO prtnif evaluation. Among the It's hard to know how lo react to this mild- "We've had 50 years of this." Dickinson
I've come to St. Paul, home of three brew - worst is the ESP Psychic Expo, which took mannered NASA scientist expounding on says, "and there's not one single, solid piece
eries and the longest stretch of residential place a month ago at the International Cen- Hying saucers in the night sky. Reserving ofevidence. Ii you ask the ufologists, they' 11
Victorian archilcelurc remaining in the tre near the Toronto airport, w here a panel of judgment. 1 buy his book and move on. give you a whole list ol them, but they are all
U.S.. chasing a boyhood fascination and a UFO "abductees" and experts traded im- The next presenter, broadcast technician equivocal."
journalistic curiosity. possible talcs, and psychics and clairvoy- and videotape analyst Jeffrej Sainio, pep- Conference organizer Hansen admits
Here at the reasonably dignified Radisson ants told wild stories of being contacted bv pers his talk with one-liners — some UFO there's no one discovery rhat proses extra-
Hotel, the Science And Politics Of UFO Re- aliens every night. researchers actually base a sense of hu- terrestrial craft exist. - You have to look al
search Sy mposium is challenging my no- The rather staid gathering here in St. Paul, mour, Sainiodraws upon his skills as a video the whole broad range ol es idence and see
lion that the UFO subculture is little more co-sponsored by UFO Magazine and the analyst to expose most of the objects in his what kind of picture emerges," he says.
than a dense fog of fiercely competing be- Science Museum of Minnesota, is. on the video samples as either the planet Venus, "Yes, you can pick any one witness or pho-
liefs, tin verifiable Claims, paranoid ra\ ings, other hand, a surprisingly serious, almost meteorological phenomena or hoaxes. He tograph apart, but when you look at the
hoaxes and mass In stena. academic affair, reflecting a field growing even uses his cat in one s ideo to simulate the whole picture, the evidence all points in the
Investigators at this gathering — many of in respectability. Speakers with PhDs de- movement of a tiny UFO with a string same direction."
them scientists and NASA types — want to liver talks on everything from analysis of But mixed in his little video clip show are A stalemate, I think to myself. Hard to
bring UFO explorations out of the bizarre photographic evidence and the scientific a handful of shots that he can't decipher, in- pros e or disprove. What else is new?
underworld of cults and into the realm of the context of abductions to UFO research in cluding a spectacular display of orange
rational and measurable world. Theirs is a Ihe Soviet Union. lights filmed over a lake near Berlin, simul- S h o c k i n g discovery
world of grainy photographs and the frantic taneously witnessed by hundredsol onlook-
search for that one irrefutable piece of hard Growing respectability Then I discover something that shocks me.
ers. This most intriguing bit of evidence I hap-
c\idence. The Iwo-day event is the brainchild of It's one of half a do/en tapes he's received pen upon in St. Paul isn't part of an] presen
Separating the hocum from the hard data Terry Hansen, editor of two computer pub- and analyzed in great detail, maddeningly
is getting ever more challenging. latum or any of my inters icw s It comes in-
lications in Seattle. The clean-cut science inexplicable footage that he saysdefiescon- stead from a videotape I buy containing
In late August, to one of the network's big-
journalist distinguishes this event from ventional interpretation There is. I've dis- footage shot by a camera aboard the space
gest viewershipsever. Fox TV aired a lu//s many other such gatherings. covered, a mountain of truly anomalous yet shuttle Discovery on September 15. 1991.
black-and-white 16mm film purporting to "Alot of the UFO conferences are oriented so far incondusise evidence. Largely ig-
show an autopsy of a small, apparently fe- Originally beamed live from the shuttle
toward true believers, or people who arc nored by North American media, it includes over a NASA pay-TV channel, il was re-
male extraterrestrial with a disproportion- pretty much convinced there is a phenome- thousands of sightings of bizarre ob|ects in corded by Maryland resident Don Ratsch.
aids oversized head and large black ey es non there." Hansen acknowledges. "We're the skies, reported around the world lor dec- who just happened to have his VCR rolling
The alien was said to have been captured trying to look al more basic issues What ades, in many cases by highly credible wit- at the time.
ncsscs — including police, mili-
The footage he captured depicts a series of
tary and civilian pilots, astrono-
strange "events" recorded during that par-
mers and meteorologists.
ticular mission, know n as STS-4X,
found these by reading through Most ot the controversj has oentted
m foreign new spaper clippings, data- around an approximately 15-second se-
bases on the Internet and U.S. gov- quence dubbed Fvent Number 2 The cam-
ernment reports While mosi sight- era shows a dark planet positioned in Ihe
ings can be easily explained as low er two-thirds of the screen. Above this,
natural or man-made objects, misi- dark space is punctuated by a lew stars, and
dentilied lor one reason or another, several glowing objects float along just
a small percentage remain unex- above the Earth's horizon.
plained. A small, bright, star-like object suddenly
Alien autopsy, lad or liction? These often exhibit striking con- appears just under the visible line of the ho-
sistencies — identically shaped rizon and quickly Iras els right to left follow -
near the lown of Rosw ell in New Mexico in kind of data is available? How can it be ana- craft that appear to exhibit intelligent con-
1*M7 and is the latest instalment of ufo- lyzed? What arc Ihe problems scientists lace trol by evading chase, jamming pursuing ing the curve of the Earth. There follow s a
logy's most enduring legend — the wide- in the real world in doing this type of re- brietnashof light emanating Irom the left ot
crafts' weapons and communications con- the frame. The trav eh ng object makes a sud-
spread belief that the U S. governmenl re- search, not only in the methodological or trol w ith some kind of electromagnetic in-
trieved a crashed spacecraft, complete with technical sense, but also in the political den sharp, right-hand turn, picking up ve-
terference, and eluding other planes to locity and seemingly speeding off into the
alien occupants sense of how you get money to do certain avoid collision. Judging from the overall
While critical UFO investigators think Ihe types of research?" darkness of space There are other hosermg
pattern, the incidents appear heavily light objects in the frame — some appearing
film is a fraud, they have amassed their own The first presenter is Richard Haines, a re- skewed toward sensitive nuclear weapons
compelling fragments of evidence abt»ut ex- tired scientist who worked from 1964 to installations ami tVCK uiamum mines. to pulse in a regular fashion — also speed-
traterrestrial visitors —and I am hereto sur- ing off alter the Hash
I9KK at NASA's Ames Research Centre, "There are some great stories." agrees Ter- A split second later, a thin w bite streak —
vey the goods. Something about this where he did extensive research on rendez- ence Dickinson, one of Canada's leading as- resembling a projectile ol some sort —
group's dedication lo standards of prwf is vous and docking for the U S Gemini space tronomers, reached at his home in Ottawa. zooms upward from the direction ol the
Colman Jones was honoured by the Ca program. Dickinson was heavily involved in UFO re- Earth s surface, whizzing past where the
nadian Science Writers' Association for I ask the distinguished-looking Haines search in the 1970s, when he served as a bright object had beenjust before making its
his CSC Radio program on measuringabout his initial attitude toward UFOs consultant lor the J. Allen Hynek Centre lor sharp turn. A second streak follows, nar-
distance in outer space. "I started out as a skeptic to disprove the UFO Studies in Chicago, one of the more re- rowly missing another object

A w a y f r o m t h e d i n o f t a b l o i d T V , s e r i o u s s c i e n

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