An Over-the-Top Blog About UFOs, the Paranormal, and the Collective Psyche
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Why UFOs Don’t Exist (In An Objective Sense)
by Dennis Stamey
Part III.
They Are Sometimes Relative to a Particular Culture
Each culture has its own breed of ghoulies and ghosties, strange beings that are unique to the region. Most though are nothing but folklore. The Chupacabra or “the goat-sucker” is indigenous to Latin America, a vile monster that supposedly attacks and drinks the blood of livestock. Yowies, hairy creatures between 7 and 12 feet tall, are alleged to live in the Australian Outback, a beast that the aborigines say is “a spirit that roams over the earth at night.” In the Philippines, the shape-shifting aswang is a creature variously portrayed as a witch, ghoul, or vampire which can take the form of dogs, cats, and pigs (the aswang, by the way, is still feared in that country and I’ve met people who have had scary encounters believe it or not).
We could probably classify visions of Mary, the mother of Jesus, a phenomenon known as Marian apparitions, as something idiomatic to staunchly Catholic countries. On the night of February 1, 1948, “a strange meteor” descended upon the farm of the Belanger family who lived near the small village of St. Sylvestre in Quebec. Five days later, one of the Belanger children. 10-year-old Andre claimed that two of his sisters who had died years before materialized at the foot of his bed each holding the hand of the Virgin Mary. Soon the other three children reported seeing the same vision. The Church investigated the claims but eventually declared that the children’s visions involved nothing more than “superstitious practices.”
In the hamlet of Medjugorje located in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina Virgin Mary supposedly to a 16-year-old boy named Mirjana Dragicevic and his friend Ivanka Ivankovic, 17, on June 24, 1981, while they were walking near a hilltop called Podprado After that, they and four other young friends of theirs, in ages ranging from 10 to 17, began to have frequent visions of Mary, often daily. This group of seers was made up of four girls and two boys. By March of 1986, the apparition had appeared to them nearly 2000 times.
An American newspaper publisher and columnist, Wayne Weible, became quite interested in the Medjugorje reports and traveled there and interviewed many of the participants (we’re referencing Brent Rayne’s newsletter Anomaly #16). He also had a weird experience of his own. “What I saw and what I felt is not easily put into words,” he wrote. “It will be difficult for others to accept it or believe it. Yet, I was there and I know what I saw and what I felt. I saw the sun dance and move and whirl and pale so that I could look directly at it with the naked eye. That is impossible, but I saw it. It was the same sun you and I see every day.
“I also saw a huge, 14 ton cement cross mounted high on a mountain that stands behind the church at Medjugorje totally disappear on a cloudless, bright morning. This same cross was observed by me early in the black of morning to glow and shine as though it was covered with lights. That also is impossible. There is no electricity on that mountain, but I saw it. There was more, but the point is, there is no explanation for these phenomena. They usually occur at the time the Blessed Virgin is appearing to the children. Some see them. Some do not. Others saw them at times when I did not.”
According to Scott Corrales in his article “Angels or Aliens?” published in FATE magazine for December 1996) one of the six of the Medjugorje children, Vicka Ivankovic, observed a white ball of light on the rocky hillside where the apparition of the Virgin Mary had once appeared. Scott wrote: “Vicka reported this detail of her sighting to her sister, who remarked simply: ‘That was a flying saucer.’”
A well-known researcher named Max Edwards of Victoria, British Columbia, a linguist, concert pianist, a composer, and a man deeply interested in UFOs (he used to contribute scholarly material to England’s acclaimed Flying Saucer Review, and up until his passing Brent Rayne’s Alternate Perceptions) wrote Raynes in 1996 how years earlier a professor he knew from the University of Victoria went on a vacation to see relatives in the Medjugorje area. He explained in a letter to Brent Raynes: “I requested him kindly to bring me back the fullest possible information on Medjugorje – without mentioning UFOs to him. When he returned, I asked him what he had found out; and he replied: ‘I am confused, because all I could find out, is that all around that village, in the fields, there are countless circles of burnt grass, and UFOs have been landing there in numbers.’ I thanked him, and told him that he had completely confirmed my suspicions!”
The UFO phenomenon is not distinct, in other words, it can’t be categorized as something all into itself. After all, UFOs don’t really exist. None of this weirdness…be it Bigfoot, Dogman, a Skinwalker, a shadow person, or a green hobgoblin…does. None of it. It is amorphous, able to manifest as a strange light one night, and then a week or two later a Bigfoot creature, a huge black cat, a ghost, or an indescribable cryptid. Even the Blessed Virgin Mary.
As veteran paranormal investigator and writer Stan Gordon once stated in an interview: “Since the 1960s, I’ve been investigating multitudes of cases what are called mini UFOs. And these are so intriguing because they are not high in the sky. These objects are low on the ground, they’ve gotten very close to human observers. I mean, within inches to feet of people. The smallest ones are a few inches in diameter, larger than a firefly, but like overgrown fireflies, some people describe it, but commonly are generally spherical objects, but not always spherical. They’re about one to two feet in diameter. Sometimes they’re solid metallic looking. In other cases, there are spheres of various types of luminous colors that are transparent. And I’ve had incidents where these things again, approach people very closely, they’ve come very close to people’s homes. I’ve had reports for years of these things, hovering and actually touching the windows of people’s homes and gliding across the windows that are houses. We’ve had reports over the years of these things, pacing vehicles on highways, in some cases, entering vehicles and entering homes through open windows and gliding around and going back out and going right through the walls. And this has been going on for years and years. But what makes it very intriguing is over the years in some of the locations where you have a history of this phenomenon going similar to the Skinwalker Ranch And then there’s cases like that for years here in Pennsylvania, other locations, and they’re all over the country now from what I’ve been hearing from other investigators, similar things have been shown up for years. Whatever the phenomena are, these small spheres of light commonly occur in the vicinity of where sometimes Bigfoot is showing up or another phenomenon.”
A lot of what forms from what we could only describe as some sort of ectoplasm (although the “ectoplasm” produced by so-called mediums is usually nothing more than tissue paper) or kundalini energy (the “life-force of the universe” known to Eastern mystics and also popularized in the Star Wars sagas) are shaped, as we’ve already mentioned, not only by the intellectual climate of the times or the mindset of the viewer but also by the cultural beliefs of the area in question. These balls of light or orbs mentioned by Gordon might be this ectoplasm, force, or whatever you wish to name it in its primal state. Be aware that we talking about manifestations that are projected into the everyday world of the five senses and can even assume physicality. There are manifestations can also, as we’ve mentioned in earlier articles, that form along the periphery of our consciousness, an encounter that is strictly personal, such as ghosts, alien abductions, fairy folk, or the experiences of the old-school contactees.
We are not dealing with aliens, angels or demons, multi-dimensional beings, hominids or other animals yet to be classified, experimental mutations that escaped from a government lab, or any of that other silly rubbish. We are dealing with shadows. To help create or sustain these creations, the Trickster probably needs a power source. As Stan Gordon explains: “One of the patterns I saw years ago, and it’s still ongoing in these areas, and other areas as well, is that many low-level close range UFO sightings, and many encounters with cryptids, Bigfoot, thunderbirds, black panthers, and a whole menagerie of other really weird creature cases.” He added that UFOs and creatures “commonly occur in the vicinity of high energy sources. So you have a lot of cases around power plants, high tension power lines, radio and broadcast communication towers, railroad tracks, gas lines, gas wells, goes on, and on and on. I have no doubt there’s an energy connection to the phenomena.”
But belief can also be a powerful fuel used by the Trickster. While conducting his Ph.D. research in a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory between 1996 and 1999, Eirik Saethre discovered that the Walpiri people were quite familiar with UFOs and saw them frequently (see his article “Close Encounters: UFO Beliefs in a Remote Aboriginal Community,” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Vol. 13, No. 4, December 2007). The UFOs were mainly there to procure water from the desert so they claimed. The Walpiri firmly believed that these objects were of extraterrestrial origin and even abducted people, but never an Aborigine. White people or the kardiya were their main victims. The Walpiri also never reported seeing the humanoid occupants. What’s fascinating is that alien abductions seem to have cultural boundaries, most cases taking place in North and South America and in Britain, places where stories about UFOs are the most popular. Rarely are there examples in Africa and Asia.
Water was and still is essential to this nomadic tribe who used to wander the Tanami Desert hunting for game, their movements determined by water sources. As settlers came into the country, the supply of water grew precarious and they were forced into settlements.
Saethre learned that other Aboriginal settlements in the Northern Territory never reported UFOs, the phenomenon was apparently confined to this one settlement. The residents would see these objects while driving to town or to a neighboring community, visiting an outstation, playing cards, hunting, camping in the bush, or attending a ceremony. Both men and women aged between 12 and 51 years old reported sighting UFOs and only half of the witnesses were alone at the time. Three individuals claimed to have seen UFOs on more than once. Saethre determined that all of the sightings occurred within five years. Nevertheless encounters with UFOs were never referred to as a recent phenomenon. One local named Richard averred that the aliens had been coming to this region of the Tanami “for a long time.” However, most of the residents with whom Saethre spoke never referred to UFOs as either a recent or ancient occurrence, making it impossible to accurately establish when community residents first began to have encounters with these “aliens. The witnesses’ descriptions of the UFOs were similar to most television and film portrayals of flying saucers, shows, and movies they had access to that being large, disc-shaped, brightly lit objects that fly with great speed through the sky.
Most of the sightings lasted only seconds and involved nothing more than somebody seeing a UFO darting overhead. In a few instances, however, people would report seeing a UFO that was motionless. A resident known as James said that after driving over the crest of a hill, he noticed a UFO lying stationary on the ground. A few seconds later, the object hurriedly rose into the sky and disappeared. A woman named Rachel recounted how she observed a UFO hovering off the side of the road while driving to an outstation with five other people After a few moments, it also rapidly took off.
The Aboriginal residents asserted that these aliens were also removing large quantities of water from rivers, rock pools, and, in some instances, rain clouds. Of eighteen witnesses Saethre interviewed, six claimed that water sources were depleted after a UFO had ben seen in the area. In one instance, a local called Geoffrey recounted how several months earlier he had seen a UFO fly near a rock pool, only to discover the next day that the pool was dry. Geoffrey concluded that the UFO had taken the water. None of the six witnesses expressed annoyance at the UFOs sucking up water and neither did they accuse the aliens of taking a resource to which they were not entitled nor express a desire to stop or alter UFO activities in the desert. At the same time, none of them actually witnessed or even knew anyone who witnessed a flying saucer physically transferring water onboard. Their claims were all circumstantial. But the residents of the settlement did allude to the fact that UFOs were more prevalent areas where there were springs, underground soaks, creeks, and water holes and during the wet season.
So why would aliens be interested in procuring water? Some of the Wallpiri thought that the aliens needed it to run their spaceships. All this conjecture seems to hark back to the belief in the mythical warnayarra, giant multi-colored snakes that are often referred to as rainbow serpents (these serpents are known by other names depending on the location and they are a common theme in the art and religion of the Aborigines). These rainbow serpents inhabited water sources including rain clouds. They were active during the wet season but as the rains stopped, the warnayarra burrowed underground, only to reemerge when the water returned. They also had a habit of taking water with them. Saethre relates that when a group of men were discussing why a creek had suddenly lost most of its water despite good rains, one of them, a fellow called John, said that the warnayarra had moved underground, taking the water with it. Another, Michael, disagreed, saying that the aliens were responsible and pointing out that a UFO had been sighted over the community the night before.
John explained to Saethre that the warnayarra could either peaceful or dangerous depending on their disposition. Their mood also depended on where you were from. They could recognize individuals as “belonging’ in the area of land in which they reside and injuring those people who were identified as strangers. This sort of correlates with the locals’ belief that the aliens abducted mostly the kardiya.
So how can we interpret this UFO activity over an Aboriginal settlement? Saethre suggests that Walpiri’s UFO narrative combines TV and movies about aliens and the “local cosmology” (the water-gulping warnayarra). Many in the settlement were unemployed and watched TV for extended periods. Shows such as The X-Files and Stargate were popular, while the Star Trek movies and Independence Day were viewed repeatedly.
Whether creeks and water holes were mysteriously drying up is another question. Maybe they were or maybe it was just someone’s imagination. But if it were true, that would certainly add a new dimension to the mystery. It seems that just as UFOs were replacing the Virgin Mary in Medjugorje they were also replacing deities once worshipped and feared in the far-flung Outback, even taking on the same attributes.
Trickster 
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