Friday, April 24, 2009

The organic UFO wave

In the last two years, there is an interesting trend emerging in UFO reports: UFOs appear to have an “organic” shape. There are only a few reports I could find so far. These reports are presented below, quoted from sources accessible on the Internet. It is difficult to know if there are other similar reports outside the Internet, but there is enough of them to see the emergence of a trend, as the phenomenological similarities between these reports are striking. From a parasociological standpoint, this new material represents useful empirical evidence, even though the reports are very short and clearly investigated from an ETH perspective.

Jellyfishes, squids, and amoebas

The first report that I am aware of dates back to July 2003, where a man reported seeing two “jellyfish” shaped UFOs over the skies of Northamptonshire in the United Kingdom. This was reported in the Internet version of the local newspaper. Nothing particular came out of it.

Then, in November 2007, in Kent (again in the United Kingdom), several witnesses saw three objects having the shape of a jellyfish. The ufological website ufoinfo.com has a short report on this sighting. Although this sighting was recorded into an ufological website, ufologists did not appear to have pay much attention to it.

In January 2008, in the now famous Stephenville, Texas, a witness saw something looking like a jellyfish. This was recorded as part of the Stephenville UFO wave, but beyond that it does not appear that it attracted any special attention.

In October 2008, near the town of Empire in Ohio, a truck driver saw a very large UFO that he qualified of “organic”:

"When I saw it, I was trying to take everything in and that's immediately what I thought when I saw it – that it was organic. That's the feeling that I got. I didn't think it could be anything else. It just came across as something organic."

A few days later, in the town of Midvale, Ohio, another witness had a very similar sighting that was qualified this time as looking like a giant amoeba. The conjunction of these two sightings attracted the attention of a few ufologists, particularly Steve Hammons who reported on them on the Internet.

Once again in the United Kingdom, an octopus-shaped UFO was sighted in Lincolnshire in January 2009. According to the witness, the sighting started with a ball of light:

“John Harrison, a resident of nearby Saltfleetby, said he looked out of his window on Saturday night to see “a massive ball of light,” and “tentacles going right down to the ground” over the site. “It was huge” he said “At first I thought it must have been a hole where the moon was shining through but then I saw the tentacles – it looked just like an octopus.”

This story acquired some momentum in the British and American press as the UFO was at first blamed for destroying a windmill turbine. However, it appears that if the witnesses saw the UFO in the same vicinity of the windmill turbine, they never saw the UFO touching the windmill turbine. This time, the organic UFOs “insisted” enough to be noticed.

Steve Hammons wrote another interesting article where he is asking if indeed there is a new trend emerging in the ufological scene, in a web article posted in February 2009.

Parasociological look at the organic trend

The limited interest shown so far by the ETH ufologists on this issue is not at all surprising. These UFOs sightings are challenging directly the technicist “nuts-and-bolts” fundamental assumption of ETH ufology. The mutation from flying saucers to other shapes, particularly the triangular one, could be accommodated by ETH ufologists, as we are still dealing with what appears to be manufactured crafts. But jellyfishes! This is more akin to crypto-exo-zoology! From a purely sociological perspective, it will be interesting to see how long they will continue to ignore them, and then how the ETH ufologists will integrate these sightings into their narrative (while protecting the “nuts-and-bolt” core storyline).

There is another sighting that needs to be mentioned here because it is likely to be ignored by ufologists, as it is most likely a fake. An octopus-shaped UFO was observed and filmed in Brazil in April 2009 . The fake nature of this sighting should not lead us to ignore it, quite to the contrary.

From a parasociological standpoint, this is significant because a fake is used to imitate the new trend in UFO shapes. As Batcheldor (1984) and other parapsychologists have found, real psi effects are oftentimes accompanied with trickery, to unconsciously boost the belief in their reality so that the phenomena can continue to occur. This is a common practice among shamans (Heath 2004), and a key feature of the Trickster archetypical dimension of the paranormal, brilliantly described by Hansen (2001). It is not to say that the individuals who orchestrated the fake were consciously thinking along those lines. Instead, one should see this event as an illustration of the collective unconscious in action (i.e. taking a sociological standpoint rather than a psychological one). The fact that someone, somewhere, felt compelled to use new shared knowledge about UFO and to make it into a fake sighting, highlights that such shared knowledge resonates at an unconscious level too. The verification of this hypothesis can be done by the emergence elsewhere of other fakes taking the biological form of the new trend (which will truly make these sighting as social facts, as defined by the founder of sociology Émile Durkheim).

This new trend is also fascinating because it represents a gradual shift from the “nuts-and-bolt” UFOs, rather than a radical mutation. If we are to follow Méheust’s (1978) approach to the UFO phenomenon, then we should look in the recent past to see if the biological trend in the Sci Fi literature was significant. There is an interesting blog on this issue, which considers that “Science fiction isn't just about rocket ships and ray guns. Many science fiction books, movies and TV shows are based on the biological sciences. This blog discusses cloning, genetic engineering, mutant monsters, longevity treatments and all the other biology behind the fiction.”

One can also think of Canadian David Cronenberg’s films on the theme of horror-biological sci fi that he produced since the early 1970s. As well, there has been a number of books published on this issue, like Leonard Issacs’ Darwin to double helix : the biological theme in science fiction, published in 1977 (London: Butterworths). Clearly, this is not a new issue, but how significant it is?

This is quite difficult to assess. Certainly, environmental issues are more prominent now than before, mostly because governments and large enterprises have now officially espoused the “green turn” in most Western countries. Is the “greening” of UFOs, by way of biological shapes, a sign of time? Are we entering a liminal zone where great advances in genetic engineering are now clearly on sight, but not yet a reality? And that the worries about their danger had time to “cook” since the early 1970s, thus translating into a hybrid high tech-organic shape, for which organic UFOs represent an ideal compromise? These are interesting questions and hypotheses to explore, but a more solid methodological framework to explore them is required.

Another issue to keep an eye on is whether the close encounter narrative will also mutate, as discussed in a previous post. Will the “aliens” coming from the organic UFOs be different from the “nuts-and-bolts” aliens? Historically, UFO sightings have preceded reports of close encounters by a few years. This appears logical as people and ETH ufologists’ unconscious need some time to process the information at a deep mystical level. For that to happen, however, I think that a full-fledge organic UFO wave (i.e. many sightings over a limited geographical area over a few days or weeks, duly reported and ridiculed by the mainstream press) will be first required to get the ETH ufologists engaged in “nurturing” this aspect of the phenomenon.

Copyright © 2009 Eric Ouellet

7 comments:

Lawrence said...

What a wonderful blog, a super-intelligent scholarly blog on ufology and its sociological and paraphysical dynamics - free of ET true believer mythology - this is a rare thing indeed! Like a breath of fresh air. This is simply one of the most important blogs out there relating to ufology and related.

I have been too busy trying to play catch up with so much from (the saner side of) ufology from the 80s and 90s that I had no real idea what is going on in the twenty first century. Just assumed more of the same, hadn't thought it had evolved considerably, so this stuff about 'organic' UFOs is really interesting. Of course we should expect the phenomena to continue to evolve, but we always only know in hindsight how and in what way! As to the why of it (and that's assuming these organic UFO forms become more widespread), perhaps its just the phenomenon playing with us, stretching our expectations and society's limited view of what we think they are and/or can be. In hindsight perhaps organic forms are to be expected since UFOs are inextricably tied up (although of course we don't really know how) with who we are, and thus with our world as a whole ie nature. In other words the 'organic' forms of UFOs is (for lack of a better word) "closer" to their true nature than their appearance as spaceships, since UFOs whatever they are, are it would seem an integral part of Nature itself. Admittedly this is just sketchy speculation.

As to how the ET crowd will fit this into their worldview - well they will continue to bend the facts to fit their Area 51 pickled aliens at Wright-Patterson AFB blather no matter what. Since the ETH is essentially unfalsifiable here are my suggestions to the ET Roswell acolytes on how to fit 'organic' UFOs into your worldview -
1 Ignore what people actually say they saw and just change jellyfish shaped and other 'organic' UFOs into a fifth-generation Vulcan mothership with eight outboard hyperdrive engines. This is the safest bet since primary facts are of little use to the ETHers anyhow, and they constantly just modify and censor the data to fit their 'aliens from whatever galaxy are visiting us' beliefs anyway. In other words, the ET crowd should just continue to do what they always have done, play fast and loose with the facts.
2 Because of their advanced technology ETers can project a hologramattic 'camouflage' over their spaceships so people are fooled as to the true 'spaceship' shape of their vehicle. Fooled thus by the beautiful 'natural' and 'organic' appearances of the starships from Orion, and thus thinking we have nothing to fear, it is easier for ET to catch us unawares and abduct our daughters for alien hybrid embryo experimentation. The nefarious schemes of the Begulisian aliens from Orion star system 35672zxc/4 know no ingenious limits!
3 This is actually a secret covert government experiment in psychological warfare, made use of from alien technology of course. By broadcasting organic UFO shapes into our skies with laser projectors, they are hypnotising us into zombified unquestioning 'jellyfish', who will do whatever the government and corporations want us to do without question. It is a form of subliminal brainwashing orchestrated by govt agents and the CIA. You have been warned!

Eric Ouellet said...

Thank you for your comments.

I think you are absolutely right about the ETH ufology trying to link all this to the Roswell/Majestic hysteria, as it became the last refuge of 60 years of vain search for physical evidence.

Best Regards,

Eric

Glenda said...

When I clicked on the link to veiw the April Brazilian account the video has been removed.... Not that I could see the entire image anyway, old pc but usually I can bring up an image... entire video gone.... Any other links?

Eric Ouellet said...

Hello Glenda,

Thanks for the info. I found it at this website:

http://weeklyworldnews.com/alien-alert/7737/octopus-ufo-in-brazil/

Best

Eric

Glenda said...

Thanks a bunch.. Glenda....

Lawrence said...

a very very recent 'Jellyfish' UFO sighting! And look at the heading title of the article as well!

http://www.sundaymercury.net/news/midlands-news/2009/05/09/jellyfish-style-ufo-s-spotted-in-lichfield-staffordshire-66331-23584284/

from the link:

------------------------------

Did you spot anything mysterious in the Lichfield and Burntwod night skies last week?

A formation of seven ‘craft’ were spotted flying over Burntwood at 9.40pm. A group of six adults and a small child watched in amazement as the bright lights passed overhead in the direction of Lichfield.

Stunned 62-year-old Michael Bardsley, from Trevithick Close, said he had just returned from a night out (and had not been drinking). He was getting out of his car on the drive with four family members when his wife spotted a bright light in the sky and said: “Look at that plane.”

“That’s not a plane,” he replied.

There were seven of the craft about 100 metres apart at plane height, coming from the direction of Chase Terrace, Michael said.

He said the underside of the UFOs were like the underbelly of a jellyfish in appearance. “I’ve seen films with jellyfish in the water,” Michael said. “The UFOs were really round underneath with something in the middle.”

-----------------

read the rest at the link.

Eric Ouellet said...

Lawrence,

Thank you for the info.

It is interesting to note that these "organic" sightings, at least for now, are essentially occuring in the UK and the US. This points, once again, towards a culturally-specific component of the phenomenon.