Belgian UFO wave – 1989-1992 – Part 5

This post is the last of this series on the Belgian UFO wave of 1989-1992. As announced before, the Model of Pragmatic Information (MPI) developed by the parapsychologist Walter von Lucadou will be used again to assess if the general unfolding of the UFO wave occurred in ways similar to a RSPK (Recurrent Spontaneous PsychoKinesis) event (aka poltergeist).

As discussed several times on this blog, a number of UFO researchers, like John Keel, who went beyond the simplistic “nuts-and-bolts” approach to the phenomenon, compared it to some sort of large scale poltergeist, or grand scale haunting of the skies. The case for studying the UFO phenomenon as a paranormal event is substantive, and has also been presented extensively on this blog.

The Model of Pragmatic Information

The MPI is based on the modern physics concept of non-locality, where at the quantum level particles seem to share common information without any observable mechanism to explain how such sharing occur. This is particularly notable through a photon splitter experiment. Out of this general notion of information that can be shared non-locally (i.e. without direct and observable cause and effect), Walter von Lucadou (who is also a physicist) proposed that the central notion of “psi” in parapsychology can be explained by non-locality (von Lucadou, 1995).

This applies not only to the acquisition of information through non-normal means (usually referred to as Extra-Sensorial Perception, or ESP), but also to “mind-over-matter” (usually referred to as Psycho-Kinesis, or PK). For modern physicists, matter is more than mass and energy, it is also information (such as speed, direction, relative position, internal organization, etc.). Seen from this angle, psi is therefore information in the mind of someone that is becoming shared non-locally about knowledge (ESP), or about matter (PK). Yet, this non-local sharing of information can only occur if there is enough indeterminacy in the system at hand for a psi event to occur (von Lucadou & Zahradnik, 2004).

This would explain why most psi events seem to be linked to deep unconscious processes where there is a lot of symbolic flux and possibilities, if compared to the conscious mind. More a system is consciously observe, the less indeterminacy it has, and therefore the less likelihood that a psi effect would occur. This would explain two well-known issues in parapsychology. First, spontaneous psi events tend to be much more ostensible (or big) than the one planned and strictly observed through parapsychology lab testing. The second is the well-known declining effect seen is parapsychology lab testing, where the first few attempts tend to vary more from statistical probabilities (as the experimenter does not know what to expect), but the more testing there is the more it becomes closer to statistical averages because what is expected is know and actively looked for (von Lucadou, Römer, & Walach, 2007).

 

It is in this context that von Lucadou developed a psycho-social model of RSPK, as other people around the event are also influencing it as they observe it. The model to study RSPKs has four phases:

(a)    Surprise. Typically, there is an individual who is living significant emotional turmoil (oftentimes a teenager, but not always), but because of some social dynamics cannot express it. The use psi, by banging walls, moving objects, etc., becomes an alternate way to communicate about their psychological turmoil. That person is called the “focus person” because the psi events are focussed around him or her. Yet, the people surrounding the focus person are also playing a role by their surprise, and by starting to think that the explanation is to be attributed to some sort of malevolent non-human entity (demon, evil spirit, ghost, etc.), rather than to the focus person. In doing so, these people called the “environment” maintain indeterminacy in the system by avoiding to observe the real system at play.

(b)   Displacement. After sometime, the events become known and other people join in. They are typically believers in the existence of non-human entities, such as psychics, self-declared parapsychologists, etc. These newcomers are called the “naive observers,” because of their belief that non-human entities are responsible for the phenomenon. The naïve observers redirect the search for the problem source away from the actual source (the focus person and his/her distress) hence there is a displacement of attention. This allows the indeterminacy to be maintained, so that the psi phenomenon can continue but usually in a different manner, as the message from the focus person seeks to be understood by the environment.

(c)    Decline. After more time elapsing, other people join in, but with a much more critical view of the events. They start to assess more carefully what is going on, asking more thorough questions about what is going on, introduce even measuring instruments, and at times can make a connection between the events (which usually have a symbolic meaning) and the unhappiness of the focus person. These people are called the “critical observers”. Given that they pay a much closer look to the systems at hand, they reduce the indeterminacy and by doing so the intensity of the phenomenon drops sharply.

(d)   Suppression. At the end, society through the authorities (police, social services, municipal works, etc.) get involved because of the disturbances. They usually declare the phenomenon a hoax though the media, often by accusing the focus person and his/her environment of being responsible for all this. By having the authorities focussing intensely on the phenomenon, no indeterminacy is left, and there is no more psi effect occurring.

The Belgian UFO wave as a large scale RSPK

Surprise

Like for most RSPKs studied by von Lucadou, the Belgian UFO wave started gently leading to surprising event. As discussed in the previous post, late September 1989 would probably be a meaningful start date for the wave. The SOBEPS, when the wave became public, were at first a bit worried that the September public announcement of a UFO landing in the USSR would create a climate of ridicule affecting them. What is clear, however, is that the symbolism of triangular objects in the sky of Belgium was slowly rising from September. There is little doubt that the first night of massive observations (29 November 1989) came as a surprise to everyone. The SOPBEPS only realized that something was going after receiving many calls from witnesses. Those calls, however, came a few days after the events, and were sustained in part by the televised interview of the two Eupen police officers, and especially the wide press coverage of 1 December 1989. In other words, many witnesses realized that what they saw was a much bigger “event” than they thought, and it was at that point that they decided to report their experience to the SOBEPS. Hence, the surprise period could be defined as being from late September to about 1 December 1989.

The surprise was not only a matter of witnessing a large event, but also according to SOBEPS, most witnesses of the night of 29 November did not know what to make of all this. Some speculated that it could be extra-terrestrial visitations, but without pursuing this interpretation further. All those witnesses, from the point of view of the MPI, constituted the environment of the event, the ones who were surprised; the ones who started to think about the extra-terrestrial explanation (i.e. non-human entities being responsible for the disturbance). Like in other UFO wave cases analyzed through the lenses of the MPI, who is the focus person remains unclear at this time.

Displacement

Starting on 2 December 1989, the SOBEPS becomes actively involved in the events. From the point of view of the MPI, they collectively constitute the naïve observers because, in spite of their rigor and sober approach, they remained committed to prove the Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis (ETH), i.e. ultimately assigning the origin of the phenomenon to non-human entities. New observations are recorded but at a much lower rate from none to half a dozen per day, until the next large observation day of 11 December 1989 with 24 observations. There are intense discussions in the press, especially during the period of 12 to 18 December 1989 (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 118-122). On 18 December, the SOBEPS gives a first press conference, well attended by journalist (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 123). It is really at this point that the notion of a wave of triangular UFOs is shaped in social representations.

The SOBEPS gave a description of the more common elements emerging from the witnesses report. However, as discussed before the triangular shape was common to just about half of the observations. By doing so, the SOBEPS, consciously or not, gave the impression that there were stronger commonalities between the observations that there actually were. In turn, this creates a notion that a “nuts-and-bolts” ET spaceship visitation could be more plausible. The notion of ET visitations is present also in the public realm but the press remains for the most part relatively objective. That press conference was in many ways a form of displacement as the ET visitation hypothesis becomes more prevalent.

What is particularly interesting with the Belgian UFO wave was that another social dynamics emerged during the displacement phase. Also on 2 December 1989, the Authorities (both the police and the military) started their own investigation, away from the public spotlight (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 73). On 6 December, the police approached the SOBEPS in order to collaborate with them on the UFO sightings (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 79). If one reads carefully the SOBEPS book, however, it became apparent that the main objective of the police was to “get ride” of all the UFO-related work, as they were submerged with calls and reports. This attitude is certainly comprehensible, as the police have limited resources, and dealing with crime remains its institutional priority, not UFOs. On 9 December 1989, the press reports that the Belgian military investigates the UFO wave (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 78). On 15 December, the military gives an interview in the press confirming what was reported about their investigation a week before (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 122). On the 18 December SOBEPS press conference, the Belgian military has representatives in support of the SOBEPS and 21 December, the Minister of Defense confirms that they cannot explain what is going on (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 125-126). Then in January 1990, the SOBEPS is invited to visit the Glons radar station (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 143); by the end of February 1990 an official letter of collaboration the SOBEPS is drafted by the military (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 144-145).

This set the context for the further involvement of both the military and the SOBEPS in the aftermath of the March 30-31 UFO. This led, ultimately to the public release in June 1990 of the report about the chase. By then, however, the military would continue to collaborate with the SOBEPS, but at a much lower level. In many instances, as a personal commitment of DeBrouwer who became a two-star Air Force general. The investigation of the March UFO chase led the Belgian military to come to the same conclusion that all other armed forces who investigated UFO before: there are things in the sky that we cannot explain, but they do not seem to be a threat and we do not have the resources or the mandate to investigate them further (De Brouwer, 1991: 490-491). Interestingly, by June the decline in observations becomes much more marked until the one-day spike of March 1991, and the one of July 1992.

The active involvement of the authorities, including providing public support to the SOBEPS by being present at their 18 December press conference, constitutes a change in pattern if compared with “traditional” RSPKs. In the MPI, the authorities usually try to quell any rumors of unexplainable phenomena. But in the case of the Belgian UFO wave, the response was the opposite. This is very much comparable to what was found in the MPI analysis of the Zeitoun Marian apparitions. When the authorities are supporting the naïve observers, then phenomenon does not decline sharply.

Decline (?)

The decline phase could be assessed as starting in June 1990, where there are few observations on average until the spike of March 1991. However, there were “critical observers” involved early on. The first sceptic attack in the Belgian press occurred on 8 December 1989 (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 77), and the next day (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 113).  On 11 December 1989, the hypothesis that a F-117 could be the culprit is discussed in the press, and other sceptical hypotheses about AWACS are presented over the following days (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 114-115).

As a curious coincidence, on 19 December the US invaded Panama, and the F-117 is for the first time publically acknowledged as being part of a real military operation. This will provide a lot of fuel for the F-117 hypothesis, as the plane’s shape and stealth ability became much more present in social representations. The critical observers will use extensively the F-117 in their counter-analysis of the Belgian UFO wave. In January 1990, the French popular science magazine Science & Vie, started what the SOBEPS called a “crusade” against the Belgian UFO wave reports (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 140). In May 1990, there are more sceptic attacks in the press (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 219).

In spite of the somewhat active presence of critical observers, it appears clear that they could not match the legitimacy that the military authorities gave to the SOBEPS by collaborating with them. Hence, the decline phase occurred but not so much because of the action of the critical observers, as much as the loss of interest by the authorities in June.

As noted by von Lucadou in his research on RSPKs, during the Decline phase the phenomenon may try a last ditch effort to get the message across. From that point of view, the two last spikes of observations in March 1991 and possibly July 1992 could constitute such last effort.

Suppression (not)

The wave was “officially” considered finished after the March 1991 spike of observations in the first SOBEPS book (published in 1991). The spike of July 1992 was added as an important event in the second book (published in 1994). Where does it end is a matter of interpretation, but definitely the wave ended. There was no cover-up per say, in the sense that the authorities did not intervene to quell the rumors about UFOs. Once more, a parallel can be established with the Zeitoun case study, where with the support of the authorities, an anomaly tends to die out of a loss of interest rather than by closing the indeterminacy by using the prestige of the authorities to focus on a particular explanation that excludes the possibility of a paranormal event.

As in the case of the 1952 UFO wave over Washington D.C., the focus person that would provide the psi force for the events is not obvious. Yet, by using a similar approach to the study of the 1952 wave, it is possible to propose a group of focus persons that could be at the centre of the wave. In this case, there was a social tension that appeared quite evidently, although it is not often noted by ufologists. The “intense” period of the wave, from November 1989 to late spring of 1990, is also exactly the period of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communist dictatorships in most of the Warsaw Pact countries, as noted in a previous post. It was the effective end of the Cold War. Yet, again and again, a more localized look provides some more interesting insights.

Most of the UFO sightings are geographically centered on NATO installations: the Glons radar station (near Liège) that was then one of the nerve centres of the AWACS surveillance system (and visited by the SOBEPS); Mons where the NATO military headquarters are located (SHAPE); the zone between Mons and Brussels (where the NATO political headquarter is situated) was the location of the March 1990 UFO chase.   As well, many of the triangular objects observed in the sky of Belgium are very much reminiscent of the well-known NATO tri-dimensional dark metal sculpture of its logo at the entrance of the Brussels headquarters.  If NATO can be credited for its bloodless victory at the end of the Cold War, it also lost its raison d’être, which is struggling to re-establish ever since. 

 

References

Bougard, Michel and Lucien Clerebaut. (1991). "Chronique d'une vague". In SOBEPS, Vague d'OVNI sur la Belgique: Un dossier exceptionnel. Bruxelles: SOBEPS, pp. 51-296.

Walter von Lucadou. “The Model of Pragmatic Information (MPI)”. European Journal of Parapsychology 11 (1995): 58-75.

Walter von Lucadou, H. Römer, and H. Walach, “Synchronistic phenomena as entanglement correlations in generalized quantum theory”. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 14(4) (2007): 50-74.

Walter von Lucadou and F. Zahradnik. “Predictions of the Model of Pragmatic Information about RSPK”. Proceedings of the Parapsychological Association Convention 2004, available online at http://archived.parapsych.org/papers/09.pdf.

 

 

 

 

Belgian UFO wave 1989-1992 – Part 3

The 30-31 March 1990 UFO chase

One of the most publicized aspects of the Belgian UFO wave was the 30-31 March 1990 F-16 chase of an unknown radar return. This event constituted an important part of the Belgian wave, as it provided an array of good quality data from multiple credible sources about what was going on in the sky. Furthermore, this led to further cooperation between the Belgian military and the SOBEPS civilian UFO organization. Also, the personal involvement of the military in charge, the then Colonel De Brouwer (who became Major General a few years later) continued through a friendly collaboration with the SOBEPS for a number years afterward. But most importantly, it was further confirmation that whatever was happening, it could not be explained away, and thus re-confirmed the anomalistic nature of the phenomenon.

To understand better the context of that night of March 1990, a general overview of the UFO chase is presented. It is followed by a first assessment of the Belgian UFO wave based on the available data, including the observation spikes previously presented. But first, here is the general chronology of events from the SOBEPS book, in the chapter written by Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991 (with page numbers in parentheses):

On 30 March, around 2300, the Belgian police was called by an off-duty police officer, who observed with his wife and another couple UFOs in formation seen in the night sky in the area general area of Wavre. It was, once again, the “unplanely” appearance and behavior that caught their attention. The objects were described as moving in an unpredictable way, with lights appearing and disappearing, and changing color to include white, blue, red, and green. The witness then called the Beauvechain military base and at that point the lights became slower, and maybe stationary, and turned into a red color. The witness was told to contact Glons NATO radar station instead, as Beauvechain was on minimum manning because it was the weekend, which he did (p. 180). Wavre is about midway between Brussels and Namur, while Glons is about 15 km north of Liege (see map).

At 2305, the Belgian military, in turn, called the police to get confirmation that the call received from the witness was indeed corroborated by the police itself (p. 226). This procedure was established in the weeks prior to the events, given the costs involved in sending airplanes investigating any unknown.

At around 2315, two police officers arrived and met the witnesses. These officers were not only able to confirm the first observation by seeing the lights in the sky, but they also saw two more UFOs with white lights disposed in a triangular formation. Then, an aircraft passed above the UFOs and its lights moved away from each other and turned red. Once the aircraft passed, the lights took back their original formation and color (p. 181). Around the same time, the Glons NATO radar station had a first return with an unknown (p. 226).

At 2325, the police asked other units by radio if they could confirm the observations too, and two other teams (with two and three officers, respectively) corroborated the first observations by visual observations (p. 182-184). The military was then informed by the police that they had more than one visual confirmations, with a total of eight police officers (one off-duty) and three civilians from three different locations.

At 2349, a second ground radar station further west had also a return from an unknown, at Semmerzake (p. 226). Semmerzake is just south of Ghent (please see map).

At 2356, the Belgian military decides that it had enough evidence to warrant further investigation, and two F-16 fighter jets were ordered to scramble and identify the unknown (p. 226). At 0005 (31 March), the two F-16 fighter jets took off (p. 226).

 

From 0007 to 0054, 9 interceptions in total were attempted by the F-16. There were three brief combat radar locks-on from the F-16, which in each case caused a swift change of behavior from the UFO. No visual contact was ever made by the pilots (p. 226). The police on the ground, however, was in constant communication with the Glons radar station to provide them with visual descriptions of what they were seeing during the chase.

• At 0013, the first combat radar lock-on occurred, but in 3 seconds the object went from 150 to 970 knots (280 km/h to 1890 km/h) and dropped from 9000 to 5000 feet. A few seconds later it returned to 11000 feet and quickly to down to ground level (p. 227).

• At 0030, there is the second lock-on for 6 seconds; the combat radar system very briefly showed a jamming signal on the in-flight screen (p. 227). At the same time, police officers and witnesses on the ground saw the lights of the F-16 turning around in the sky, while most of the UFO lights went off (p. 227).

• At 0037, the last lock-on happened, lasting only a few seconds (p. 227).

• Between 0045 and 0100, the fighter jets still tried several interceptions again, but to no avail (pp. 227-228).

• At 0102, the F-16 fighter jets returned to their base (p. 228).

• At 0106, the police informed the military that a similar observation was made at Joidoigne (p. 228). Joidoigne is about 20 km east of Wavre (see map).

• At 0130, witnesses (including police officers) reported that the last lights in the sky were gone (p. 186).

• Beyond the police officers and the civilian witnesses already noted, at least 7 other reports confirmed the observations of the night (pp. 197-190).

After these events, the Belgian military launched an investigation to understand what happened. This led to the drafting of the Lambrechts Report (from the name of the author, a Major in the Belgian military), and an English version is available here. The Belgian military could not find an explanation to what happened. In June of the same year, the Report was publically released and the Belgian military made all their data available for further analysis by SOBEPS and whoever is interested in studying them.[1]

Human and human-made sensing

The Belgian UFO wave, like any such wave, was made of many events that bring a wide array of data that are baffling. The reports from the observation spike days brought a multitude of data that cannot be easily collated into a coherent picture. There were many different shapes observed, different light arrangements and colors, sometime with noise other times without, etc. The UFO chase ended up raising more questions than producing answers. So, is there any pattern that emerged from these strange events?

One pattern emerging from all this is that what the human senses were able to capture and what the human-made sensors recorded is divergent. The Lambrechts Report underlined two particularly interesting aspects of the UFO chase. One is that “Though speeds greater than the sound barrier have been measured several times, not any bang has been noticed. Here also, no explanation can be given”[2], and “Though the different ground witnesses have effectively pointed out eight points in the sky, the radars have registered only one contact at the same time. The points have been seen at a distance one from another sufficient for them to be distinguished by the radars also. No plausible explanation can be put forward”[3].

On the 30-31 March UFO chase, the SOBEPS did some analysis of its own, and a few interesting points emerged there too. The Glons radar station had an unidentified between about 2315 and 0020, and it was moving from East to West in a relatively straight line at an average speed of 41 km/h, between Brussels and Mons. The Semmerzake radar station confirmed these tracking from Glons (Meessen, 1991b: 364-365). The Belgian military officer in charge of the UFO investigation, De Brouwer, wrote in the SOBEPS book that in spite of having a lock-on on their combat radars, the F-16 avionics did not provide a location for what the radars were sensing, as it should normally do, raising the question as whether the jets were chasing electromagnetic perturbations. Yet, in light of the numerous eye witnesses’ reports, it appeared to him that the F-16s were indeed chasing something real (De Brouwer, 1991: 489). 

Hence, we had a situation where:

1.       The ground witnesses and fighter pilots were dealing with several objects with fast and unpredictable behaviors, while ground radars had a return from something moving slow and in relatively straight line.

2.       The fighter pilots did not see anything visually, and their on board equipment were showing something that produced a return (which guided their pursuit) and yet without identifying any actual physical location for it.

3.       The witnesses noted that the phenomenon continued after the jets were gone around Joidoigne, which is further east of the UFO chase events while the UFO was tracked as moving west towards the French border.

4.       The discrepancy between the ground radar stations and the human witnesses actually happened before. On 21 December 1989, the Belgian Ministry of Defense released a public statement that the visual observations reported to the police did not correlate with radar tracking, and F-16 patrolled the areas in question and had no contact with unknown objects, (the Ministry of Defense confirmed that there were no AWACS, US stealth aircrafts, or military drone in the areas where reporting was coming from (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 126)).

The photographic evidence was overall quite similar in terms of what the human eye could see and what was captured by cameras. Many witnesses thought they had a good shot at what they were seeing, and yet the picture never turned out with anything more than vague lights in the sky. Here are some of the comments from the various witnesses who took pictures: the picture taken were incorrectly developed afterward (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 94); the Camcorder inexplicably did not filmed while the witness thought he was filming (Ibid, 98); the pictures taken showed nothing that could be seen after being developed (Ibid., 99); the film showed an indistinct white light, like a distress flare (Ibid., 98); an imprecise picture was taken, but one could see anything he wanted into it (Ibid., 106).

One of the most interesting photographic events of the wave happened at Trooz, near Liege, on 11 December 1989 (second spike of observations) to a family (three adults and the two teenage kids) who saw a white and powerful but strange light at around 1745. After watching it for several minutes, two of the adults decided to drive to get a closer look. They watched it for another 15 minutes from a high point. Then, they decided to go back home. But the lights came back, and they could see a powerful “search light” in front of an object with two with lights at the extremities showing a triangular shaped object, with a row of red lights at the back. The object was by then right above the house, at an estimated altitude of 50 meters. One of the adults took three pictures of the object before it quickly moved away.  And yet, once the film was developed it was showing only a white vapor on one picture, a trace of something on the second one, and nothing on the third one (Ibid., 84-85)!

These numerous discrepancies between what the human senses could capture and what human-made devices could record, led many pseudo-sceptics quickly to conclude that all this was simply mass delusion, and wishful thinking. And as usual, the pseudo-sceptics did not bother trying to explain how several minutes of up close observations from many witnesses, from different locations, oftentimes not knowing each other could have produced a “mass delusion” (let alone detailed military investigations on the UFO chase). Once more, the anomaly remains an anomal

 

Yet, these events remain a full-fledge anomaly, however, only if one key implicit assumption is maintained, namely that reality exists only in one unified strata. Science has long proven that this assumption is actually wrong. For instance, the human eye can only see the visible spectrum of light but this does not prevent other forms of light to exist in the ultra-violent and infrared spectrum, each requiring its own specialized piece of equipment to detect. At the more complex level, one can think of the completely different stratum of molecular biology, bio-chemistry, physiology, living being behaviors, and ecology as representing as many different layers of a same reality that cannot be reduced to one another. Multiple layers of reality co-exist and they require their own sensing and analysis to detect and understand.

 

 

Based on the large amount of evidence collected through the Belgian UFO wave, it is reasonable to say that “something” happened. Yet, that “something” had both a physical dimension that could be recorded by cameras and radars, and another dimension that could be captured by the human mind. The recordings from cameras and radars were analyzed extensively by the SOBEPS, the Belgian military and others, and the main conclusions are that it was something real but ephemeral, elusive, and possibly not even physically “hard” (De Brouwer, 1991: 489). Yet, what the human mind captured during the Belgian wave was described at length but it remains relatively under-studied. It is where an analysis from the perspective of parapsychology and parasociology might actually shed some light on what happened.

Notes

[1] Interestingly, the SOBEPS leadership visited the Glons radar station at the invitation of the Belgian military on 22 January 1990 (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 143).

[2] From the English translation of the report found at http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc408.htm

[3] Idem.

 

References

Bougard, Michel and Lucien Clerebaut. (1991). "Chronique d'une vague". In SOBEPS, Vague d'OVNI sur la Belgique: Un dossier exceptionnel. Bruxelles: SOBEPS, pp. 51-296.

De Brouwer, Wilfried. (1991). " Postface".  In SOBEPS, Vague d'OVNI sur la Belgique: Un dossier exceptionnel. Bruxelles: SOBEPS., pp. 483-492.

Meessen, Auguste. (1991b). "La détection radar". In SOBEPS, Vague d'OVNI sur la Belgique: Un dossier exceptionnel. Bruxelles: SOBEPS., pp. 351-396.

Fringe•ology – Book review

This post is another review of a relatively new book, written by journalist Steve Volk on the paranormal and his experience of it. The full notice is:

Volk, Steve. ( 2011). Fringe·ology: How I tried to explain away the unexplainable – and couldn’t. New York: HarperOne, 321 p.  ISBN: 978-0-06-185771-3

The majority of people who became interested in the paranormal may have started out of curiosity, but in the end, most of them are consciously, or not, engaging in some sort of spiritual quest. They try to make sense of themselves, others, their lives, the world, and their place in the world. This book is very much a reflection of this common path, but contrary to many books on the same topic it is very informative and well-balanced. I certainly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a sound and fair introduction to the paranormal.

A middle-of-the-road approach

Steve Volk’s book covers a number of topics related to the paranormal such as near-death experience, psi and remote viewing, consciousness and alternate perceptions of reality, UFOs, ghosts, prayer and meditation, and lucid dreaming. The main thread in the book is Volk’s quest for better understanding the paranormal, and particularly his own experience of living in a house “with a ghost”. The book is written for the larger public, where there are many personal descriptions of his encounters, discussions and interviews with key researchers in the broader field of the paranormal. Yet, along those descriptions, Volk introduces the reader to the main issues and challenges linked to a particular aspect of the paranormal, in a plain but informed language. Furthermore, the book has also at the end a list of sources for each chapter, with many of the key texts on the topic, showing that he did his homework.

The main message of the book is that when it comes to understanding the paranormal, a middle-of-the-road approach is the only one that is really helpful. In numerous occasions, Volk presents the views of the “extremists”, namely the reductionists and materialists’ view where there is nothing paranormal and the New Age view where anything is accepted uncritically as paranormal. Both ways lead to dead-ends. The reductionists miss important and well-documented evidence, and more importantly miss how relevant the paranormal might be in the life of many people. The New Agers, on the other hand, will construct views of life and the world that have little connections to reality, and where scammers of all shapes and colors can exploit people without any shame.

It is also interesting to read that the paranormal can be presented as something helpful and useful, not just a mere curiosity. People who experience near-death experience are oftentimes transformed for the rest of their life; people who practice meditation and prayer do find improvement in their life; lucid dreaming can indeed help people with serious psychological wounds such as PTSD, etc. Yet, Volk remains in the middle-of-the-road with these issues too. Maybe it is purely psychosomatic, maybe there is something else, but there is no way to know for sure. In such a situation where something does work but it is not understood, all we can do is to keep an open mind and try to understand. As Volk wrote, he wishes that the war between the “extremists” be over, so that we can study the paranormal free of the belief systems of both the debunkers and the New Agers, and yet in a way that is rigorous. I certainly share the same wish.

The UFO chapter

The chapter on UFOs is, unfortunately, weaker that the other ones. It is based essentially on Volk’s research and interviews with people involved in the Stephenville UFO incidents of 2008. Although the description of the events is informative and balanced, the main thrust is not really about UFOs, but about how a community came to interpret an unusual event as being either truly extraordinary or a misunderstanding. Volk shows well how the believers, the MUFON investigators and the debunking journalists, polarized the situation in a way where a middle-of-the-road approach could not really emerged. In the end, an informal truce was declared within Stephenville where people are “allowed” to accept either interpretation. This chapter certainly illustrates that paranormal events are also social constructions, and whether something is “declared” paranormal or prosaic is more dependent on social dynamics than on the actual evidence. The same analysis could have been done on a famous haunting story, which would be more in line with the other chapters of the book. So the UFO chapter, although not bad, is bit off topic.

Conclusion

The book concludes, in essence, that the paranormal is indeed a fringe aspect of reality, difficult to measure (most often not even measurable) but “real” enough to not go away. People can make the paranormal whatever they want because there are no ways to determine for sure what it is all about. In other words, it is a liminal phenomenon, stuck in between reality and fiction. If people can make the paranormal what they want, then why not making it into something useful, helpful and meaningful (without having to pay tons of money to a “guru” or a scammer to know how you should go about it). This is common sense, but when it comes to the paranormal, words of common sense need to be repeated often and loudly.

Overall, it is a well-written and well-research book on some aspects of the paranormal. It is written in a way that will please most readers, and keep them interested through the 321 pages. The author’s resolute stand for a middle-of-the-road approach is refreshing and much needed.  I would not be surprise if this book is transformed into a television documentary about a journalist’s quest to understand the paranormal.

Back to the basics: parasociology and parapsychology

Jacques Vallée has long been complaining that he was the only not knowing what is behind the UFO phenomenon. The good news is that is not the only one. Indeed, the UFO phenomenon is a mystery, and in spite of the best attempts of many people, it still remains a mystery.

The real issue, in my opinion, is that the empirical inductive approach towards the UFO phenomenon has reached its course. Observations of the physical aspects of the phenomenon (shape, color, speed, etc.) have not yield any new significant knowledge since the 1970s. I think that the craze during the 1980s and 1990s about Roswell and governmental conspiracies was in part propelled by the fact inductive approaches were not fruitful anymore. The conspiracy approach, a variation of the ETH, was a hypothesis that generated new questions, and encouraged people to seek new types of data (especially classified government documents). Unfortunately for the proponents of the conspiracy hypothesis, it also reached its course as no new knowledge of substance was generated.

Similarly, the observation of paranormal effects in UFO events, explored by people like Vallée, Keel, Randles, Mack, and others also reached its course by the year 2000 (altered state of consciousness, poltergeist events, telepathy, premonition, vision, etc.). The ground-up approach of taking witnesses’ testimony and trying to find out pattern has yielded as much as it could. To keep approaching the phenomenon with the same set of questions and data will, invariably, lead to the same unsatisfying answers. 

To have different questions, leading to analyze a different set of data, and look at older data from a different angle, requires sound new hypotheses. Hypotheses are not things that someone would take out of a hat. They require to be fully justified based on existing knowledge, on rational analysis, and their fundamental assumptions laid open for transparent scientific debate.  

Trying to prove a hypothesis is not equivalent knowing what the phenomenon is, but one has to be careful to not fall into the trap of projecting results where there are no results. It is why any new hypothesis has to be fully explained and justified in a transparent way. Deviations from the original intent can be identified immediately.  

Parasociology and sociology 

Émile Durkheim, the founder of modern sociology, is well-known for defining the discipline as being a "science of institutions", and about "their genesis and their functioning”, in his classical book The Rules of Sociological Method (1895). He further defined institutions as "collective ways of action and thinking" that exist on their own right, outside the individuals, and which have a coercive influence over individuals' consciousness, acting from the outside in.

From this classical definition, it is clear that the "paranormal" can be considered as a social institution. It is made of collective beliefs and practices which tend to impose themselves on individual consciousnesses. In the case of UFOs, for instance, the belief in ET and governmental conspiracies has shaped the field. It is very hard to have a sound discussion about UFOs without having believers telling you how wrong one can be if he or she does not share those beliefs. They can even become aggressive at times. In other instances, this can lead to bizarre and yet very dangerous cults, as Jacques Vallée showed many years ago in Messengers of Deception.  

The few sociologists who studied the paranormal, borrowing a lot from the social study of religion, focused on those shared collective beliefs and ways of acting, and in essence considered the paranormal as another social institution (but a close cousin to religion). 

The parasociological approach, on the other hand, is not about looking at a particular social institution, like the various sociologies that emerged over time (sociology of the family, of religion, of gender, of organization, of economic structures, of labor, etc.). Its basic premise is that there is something akin to “social psi” having an influence on societies, which can affect any “collective ways of action and thinking” (i.e. any institution). Hence, the main focus of parasociology is to develop both methodologies to assess the presence of such “social psi”, and a consistent and grounded conceptual framework to generate testable hypotheses. The UFO phenomenon has been selected as a particular empirical object to develop the methodologies and conceptual framework for reasons already explained before. A useful way to extract some of the key assumptions behind the parasociological approach to UFOs is by comparing it with some of the assumptions of parapsychology.

The limits of parapsychology as a model for parasociology 

The general concept of psi has been developed by researchers in parapsychology, and therefore parasociology has to rely substantively on parapsychology. But it is important to underline that there are limits to such reliance. Andrew Nichols provides an interesting discussion on what is parapsychology, and this can be used to contrast it with parasociology.

1. Parapsychology is concerned with individual experiences that are considered as paranormal by both the experiencer and society.  

Parasociology is not particularly concerned with individual experiences, but it is rather interested by events that are socially observed and considered as paranormal. Of course, it is individuals who perceived paranormal events, but the social reception and the context allowing such events to occur are situated beyond the individual. I understand that this view maybe disconcerting for those who do not have training in social sciences, because it is not intuitive. But science is about going beyond the surface of things. 

2. “Parapsychology asserts that such experiences are not, in and of themselves, indicative of psychopathology.” 

Parasociology, also, does not consider that a society experiencing paranormal events is a necessary sign of collective delusion, although social delusion can accompany paranormal events. Furthermore, if social psi might be the outcome of social tensions, it does not have to be the case all the time. I look at the UFO phenomenon metaphorically as a grand scale poltergeist (RSPK), which implies that some sort of tensions would be the main driver. A wider array of possibilities needs to be investigated, such as a “dialogue” between the social unconscious and the collective consciousness that takes a paranormal form on some occasions (like an objectified social dream). 

3. “Parapsychology asserts that paranormal-type experiences are often a source of personal transformation or healing to the individual” 

Parasociology, in theory, is open to the notion that paranormal events can change societies, especially in creating or reshaping religion as a social institution. However, this has not been the present focus of parasociology as it is seeking to establish, first, the possibility of “social psi”. Furthermore, the parallels between individual transformation and social transformation are dubious, especially in the context of large and complex societies. The UFO phenomenon certainly participated in the enlargement of the paranormal institution in Western countries, but did it really transform societies? Not really, as we are still dealing with something quite marginal, socially speaking. Yet, the notion of possible social impact on a particular sub-group should be integrated into parasociology in the future. 

4. Parapsychology accepts that “transpersonal consciousness incorporates other individuals, living and deceased, as well as objects and/or locations which are meaningful to the individual. This transpersonal stratum of consciousness is the source of genuine paranormal experiences, whether experienced consciously or subliminally”. 

Parasociology, as a sociological endeavor, does not see the world as an aggregation of individuals, as psychology and parapsychology tend to do. The social unconscious and the collective consciousness have dynamics of their own that cannot be reduced to individual experiences, be it transpersonal or not. However, parasociology assumes that social psi emanates from the social unconscious and that it can emerge, at times, into the collective consciousness. This view is profoundly modern and sociological in nature, as it assumes that the social realm determines the social. The main addition to this view from parasociology is that not all the social realm is observable by using the traditional methodologies of the social sciences. In other words, if the UFO phenomenon is an expression of the social unconscious, then there is no need to seek an extra-social explanation for it (like the ETs, the Gods, etc).   

5. “Parapsychology asserts that the prudent use of certain techniques (e.g. trance induction, automatisms) may facilitate access to the transpersonal unconscious”. 

Parasociology assumes that there are social conditions more favorable to the emergence of social psi effects, but such conditions remain to be researched. Furthermore, given the very significant logistical and ethical challenges linked to societal experiments, parasociology does not rely on experimental approaches, and has to rely on spontaneous and historical cases.  

6. “Parapsychology assumes no stance on the question of physical measurement or recording of paranormal phenomena. There is no conclusive evidence that physical measures or recording techniques (photography, audio-recording, etc.) are capable of detecting paranormal energies or entities.” 

Parasociology does not pay much attention to the physical dimension of paranormal events, although the presence of physical anomalies is considered as a useful indicator. As well, social synchronicities, which would be considered as a form of social psi, do not necessarily require any physical anomaly to be present. There are many UFO observations that are ignored by ufologists because they turned out to be caused by conventional objects, yet when one looks more carefully, these observations can be synchronistic to either paranormal events or other “genuine” UFO observations. Hence, the parasociological approach rejects the primacy of the physical UFO reality to study the phenomenon. A much wider net needs to be cast to get useful data. 

7. “Parapsychology is a scientific approach [...] However, humanistic parapsychology also incorporates psychological/spiritual development...” 

Parasociology does not espouse any “New Age” beliefs, nor does it accept teleological assumptions about “growth of humanity”. Parasociology remains centered on the original intent of sociology to understand the genesis and functioning of social institution, irrespective of the values one may project into them.  

8. “The task of parapsychology is threefold. [...] parapsychologist seeks to determine whether this assertion is factual, or if the experience is subjective in nature. Next, the parapsychologist analyzes the gathered material, seeking meaningful patterns relating the event to the percipient=s personal history, mythological concepts, etc. Finally, the parapsychologist offers counseling and advice to the percipient [...]” 

The first two tasks of parasociology are similar: (1) asserting the factual or subjective nature of a paranormal event, (2) in light of what is meaningful in a given society. However, parasociology unlike psychology, does not have a clinical aim to offer counseling. A parasociological explanation, assuming that it would be accepted by the larger society may play a role in diffusing a difficult social situation (like a state of panic). But the skeptics are already playing that role. The main difference of a parasociological approach would be a more sensitive and sensible way to diffuse social tensions emerging out of a paranormal event. Yet, given that the “voice of reason” is usually ignored in most fights between skeptics and believers (especially prevalent in the UFO world), any social role for parasociology remains essentially theoretical at this point.

9. “Parapsychological Counseling is client-centered and non-directive, i.e., paranormal experiences should be studied within the cultural and social context in which they occur.” 

Any equivalent for parasociology would be to offer advice to governmental agencies about the relativistic nature of paranormal events; leaving decision-makers determine what would be the best course of action. It was more or less the position taken by Hynek, and in some of the early assessments of the UFO phenomenon (like the 1948 Lipp Report). Here too, such potential for parasociology remains essentially theoretical. 

10. “Parapsychology supports no specific religious interpretation of paranormal experiences, and makes no assertions with regard to the question of conscious survival after death, nor does it assert the literal existence of an objective “spirit world” or of non-corporeal entities, extra-terrestrial beings, etc.”

Actually, here I disagree with Andrew Nichols. What distinguishes parapsychology from the older psychical sciences is the rejection of non-human entities to explain paranormal events. 

Parasociology, as discussed before takes the same approach as parapsychology, and for the same reasons. Involving non-human entities in the explanation prevents any possibility of a scientific approach. Given that non-human entities can call the shots at will, then there is no possibility of establishing patterns as one would do in natural sciences; and given that they are not human, we cannot make any hypothesis based on our common humanity as one would do in social sciences. Non-human entities, as a conceptual notion, lead to a scientific dead end by definition. The parasociological approach remains part of the overall project of the modern scientific institution.

Reading Notes – Holographic Paradigm

This post is renewing with presenting my reading notes about books or articles that might be useful to the advancement of the parasociological hypothesis. These reading notes are, once again, about an older book but still part of many contemporary debates: the holographic “revolution”. The book is an edited collection that re-groups the key texts (mostly from the philosophy journal ReVision) from the early discussions about the holographic universe.

In the 1970s, two scientists developed separately the idea that the universe might be a hologram. The first one is the neurologist Karl Pribram, who discovered that the brain is organized in a non-linear way when it comes to storing information. His research, in many ways, fuelled the idea of virtual database that is now a current way of storing information in computer programming. What it means is that brain cells are not only carrying information, but also contain information about how information storing is actually structured. To take a simple example, if one finds a datum he/she may also find elements or traces of its “address”, and thus it gives him/her an idea about the size and how many dimension the entire information has. For instance, “x4x, xxx, 9x9” does not tell us where the datum fits exactly, but it can tell us that it is a three-dimension construct and each dimension has up to one thousand possible spots. Holograms that we can see in movie theatres are constructed that way. Not only there are elements of images, but each element has a “tag” so that the full image can be re-constructed to become meaningful. Hence, the “tag” itself carries also precious information about information structuring.

The second scientist is David Bohm, a theoretical physicist, who explained the paradoxes of non-locality in quantum physics by showing mathematically the possibility of a 5th dimension. This additional dimension is more than just one more layer to the matrix of reality. Like in the case of the brain, objects and other realities of our ordinary 4 dimensional world also carry information about how information is structured in the higher degree matrix with 5 dimensions. In both cases, by sampling enough brain cells or objects, one can gather some useful information about how these fit in the greater scheme of thing. This is the holographic paradigm: any reality is contingent to a higher degree of information organization. This notion, without surprise, has also attracted the attention of those mystically minded, as it implies that there is a higher realm of reality “managing” reality at a lower level. The full notice is:

Wilber, Ken (Ed.). (1985). The Holographic Paradigm: Exploring the leading edge of science. Boston: Shambala.

The Holographic Paradigm and social sciences

The book provides input from various people (including one social scientist) but without making any references to the knowledge produced by the social sciences. Once more we have a “leading edge science” book where psychology, physics and philosophy are used to support the argument for a new look at the world, but without using sociology and its sister sciences. It is very regrettable because the holographic paradigm has been part of the social sciences since day one, although described under a different vocabulary. People are not just people. They belong to higher orders of information structuring by their gender, ethnic origin, language, social class, level of education, etc. This is so obvious to any social scientist that one is wondering where the big fuss is.

For instance, qualitative social scientists, and for that matter any good management consultant, know that you do not need to interview everyone in a community or an organization to get a good understanding of what is going on. Only a few well selected people usually will do. Why? Because people also carry information about how life is structured in a community or organization (who is the boss, who holds the power, the key histories or narratives one needs to know to be part of the group, what’s in and what’s out, etc, etc , etc). Human communities are holographic. Sociologists know quite well that the social realm is a higher degree of structuring information that can be accessed by sampling enough individual about it. The Holographic Paradigm is actually old news for the social scientists. Maybe that’s why they were ignored, as they would remove the “edge” to the news. To be fair, however, there was a “fad” in the 1980s and 1990s in the social sciences about studying the social realm through the vocabulary of the holographic paradigm. For what I can assess, this has not gain much traction, probably because, in the end, it is old wine in a new bottle.

The Holographic Paradigm and parapsychology

In the book, there is, unfortunately, only one and very short text from Stanley Krippner dealing directly with the impact of the Holographic Paradigm on parapsychology. It would have been good to get a more extensive reaction from Krippner and the parapsychological community. In any event, the notion that the universe is holographic is certainly a useful one for parapsychologists. This notion is very much in tune with the Jungian concept of “Absolute Knowledge” and the Laszlo’s notion of Akashic field, speculating that knowledge exists in other forms, free of time and physical constraints, which can be access through ESP. Similarly, the introduction of a notion of higher order of information structuring can help to explain various time paradoxes found in parapsychological experiments, especially for retro-psychokinesis. But as parapsychology depends very much on positivist recognition from the institutional scientific community, the holographic paradigm remains very difficult to verify empirically. If it is possible to make a sound argument about the holographic nature of the brain, quantum physics, and the social realm that does not mean that the rest of the universe is holographic. That is where parapsychology stands on this issue for the time being; an interesting but hard to test idea.

The Holographic Paradigm and parasociology

Parasociology, as an attempt to fuse parapsychology and sociology together, is in mixed position with regards to the Holographic Paradigm. Societies can be easily described as hologram, as discussed above, but to really use the holographic approach to its fullest extent, one has to stipulate some sort of meta-social hologram. According to the theory, this meta-social hologram would be one degree (or dimension) higher in terms of abstraction, away from the empirically observable social realm, that describes another level of information structuring. To me, this sounds very much as a re-description of the notion of social unconscious. The main difference, however, would be that by borrowing from parapsychology the social unconscious would become information also freed (or at least partially freed) from time and geographical constraints. This is an interesting idea, but yet again this not that new. The parasociological notion of social unconscious is partly built on Jung’s concept of collective unconscious, which is explicitly described by Jung as timeless and unconcerned with geography. All in all, it is still old wine in a new bottle. Furthermore, the possibility of empirical verification is not improved by using the holographic approach. Ultimately, the holographic paradigm adds weight to the possibility that such an approach may explain many aspects of reality because it is found in different realms (biology, physics, social sciences), but it is still quite far from becoming a theory of everything.

Concluding remarks

Brain cells, and photons going through a splitter, are relatively simple carriers of information, and using a holographic approach to reconstruct how they fit in a larger scheme is certainly an effective approach. But what about complex datum, like a single human being, who has so many possible “tags” to so many possible larger psycho-social constructs? This is simply not very effective, and ultimately (strangely) it is a very reductionist approach – something the Holographic Paradigm claims to steer away from.

From a parasociological perspective, UFO events are like any other human events: they are composite events. The symbolic, psychical, emotional, social and physical forces at play to create such events are difficult to distinguish from each other. Furthermore, it may not be useful to distinguish them in a detailed way because we may loose from sight the “tag” that links qualitatively different realities together (e.g., the social unconscious and balls of light). Holographic thinking, in the end, is very much an expression of mathematical thinking where everything can be reduced to numbers (qualitative unification). Unfortunately, reality cannot be unified this way as qualitatively different realities cannot be subsumed into each other. All those who tried such qualitative unification have failed, and the Holographic Paradigm is very likely to face the same end if it does not steer away from mathematical thinking.

Eric Ouellet © 2010