Why do people lie about aliens? An in-depth look at why we can discredit near all stories

originally posted by: VictorVonDoom
a reply to: SuspiciousTom

Here is one of my favorite cases:

www.ufocasebook.com...

When you look at the video, look at the drawings, and read the testimony, there are only two possibilities: either all these people got together, shot up their house, dragged the police back to their house in middle of the night, and told the same lie, or they saw what they say they saw. There is no mis-identification, no mass hallucination, it's either true or it's a lie. Which begs the question, why would these people lie? Old school Christian family, no drinking, didn't even have running water. You had parents, children, and grandparents all telling the same story. They didn't make a dime on this. So why lie?

As to the robot probe thing, well, that makes good sense. But you assume that the robots would be in a form we would recognize as robots. Instead of sending little crawly mechanical things like we do now, suppose they have the genetic know-how to custom design biological entities to act as probes instead? You want to explore cave networks? How about a genetically engineered bat? Instead of sending a deep sea probe to examine a trench, how about a deep sea fish? You want to explore space? How about a biological construct able to survive a variety of environments, extended space travel, and the ability to make decisions to carry out the mission?

How long would it be before we are able to customize humans to better adapt to places like Mars while it's being terraformed? 100 years? 500? 1000?

Just a tick on a cosmological watch.

Why is it *always* that these "best" UFO cases have crap for evidence? I ask that as an honest question. If the ETH were true, and has been happening for at least the past 60 years, we'd have some hard evidence by now (unless the government is hiding it from us - yes, I know, I know). One theory that has been proposed for the above case is that the family was perhaps drinking and saw eagle owls, and that the ufo can be explained by meteors in the area. That theory doesn't seem to totally fit their story, but it sounds at least as, if not more, plausible than alien creatures, doesn't it? I can even find a hoax more plausible than aliens. The fact that they're a good Christian family means nothing - heck, how many times have you heard "he was the nicest boy" when talking about a serial killer? Point being, perception doesn't always fit reality. I find the ETH both fascinating and incredibly frustrating at the same time - I'm a skeptic, so I need hard evidence before I'll believe a bunch of stories. Still have yet to see any.

As to OP - the average Joe doesn't lie, they just don't know any better to discern what they're seeing vs folklore and media/social influence. If you have media and a vocal community telling you there might just be aliens buzzing all around us, people will leap to that when they see something they can't immediately explain. As to the elite members of said community (eg Dr Stephen Greer, the Project Camelot folks, etc, etc), the only conclusion I can come to is that they do indeed lie - and it's for the same reason that most other folks lie or scam - money.

originally posted by: SuspiciousTom
It's a clear fact that there are quiet a few people who lie in regards to aliens and will go extreme distances to try and prove the gibberish that they say.

You're surely not the first person, during 70 years of consistent UFO reports, to suggest that most of those reports are simply lies perpetrated by attention seekers. With that idea in mind...

1) Do you have any data relating to your claim that we can probably distrust "nearly all" UFO witness accounts?

2) Are you aware of the conclusions of those who actually already studied this very issue, decades and decades ago? Because the most reputable researchers -- in fact most all researchers, on either side of the issue -- have found that outright lying and the quest for notereity are a motivating factor in only a very small percentage of UFO reports. And those reports and "witnesses" are typically identified and filtered out pretty quickly.

3) How does your theory account for the surprisingly large percentage of UFO witnesses who insist on maintaining anonymity?

Don't get me wrong here, because I'm all for speculation. It's one of the reasons websites like this. But we do -- all of us, on both sides -- need to be careful not to confuse speculation with fact. And I think it's safe to say that your idea is highly speculative. It seems to have somel significant hurdles to overcome before it can be seriously (re)considered.

a reply to: ColeYounger

Well that's the most definitive proof I've seen....a person's blog. Wow

originally posted by: JackHill

originally posted by: Harte

originally posted by: VictorVonDoom
a reply to: SuspiciousTom

Here is one of my favorite cases:

www.ufocasebook.com...

Yes, not all stories are lies.

Some are simply mistakes:
link

Harte

You're correct, but citing CSICOP? I sincerely laugh everytime I read the classic cases, like the Pascagoula incident.

Take a look what they claim over the famous secret recording made by the police:

Interestingly, when the two men were left alone in a room at the sheriff’s office, where they were secretly tape recorded (Clark 1998, 716), they did not make incriminating statements as they might have if perpetrating a hoax but acted more like people comparing notes to see if they were in agreement with each other.

So they purposedly ignore the fact that WE can also HEAR, and what WE hear is two men who are STILL in shock. Of course they're comparing notes, but NO to reinforce the other's version, they're just trying to get ANY sense of an experience that obviously is way beyond they can handle.

Who said it was a hoax? Not me. Not Csicop.

originally posted by: JackHill
Regarding on how they can 'explain' the experience, they say:
the two men, who might have been drinking before the incident (as Hickson admitted he was after), might have dozed off. Hickson could then have entered a hypnagogic (“waking dream”) state, a trancelike condition between waking and sleeping in which some people experience hallucinations, often with bizarre imagery, including strange beings (aliens, ghosts, etc.). This state may be accompanied by what is called “sleep paralysis” (the body’s inability to move due to still being in the sleep mode). In fact, Hickson not only reported the bizarre imagery but also said that the aliens “paralyzed” him before carrying him aboard the UFO in what sounds like a hypnagogic fantasy.

Link?

The only article at Csicop is the one I linked.

originally posted by: JackHill
I invite all of you to read the witnesses testimony, and with a hand on your heart, sincerely, tell me that you believe the above explanation. CSICOP is mocking on the people. They honestly believe we're stupid. They're as bad as the very hoaxers.

You'll need to blame somebody else for this, because Csicop unequivocally stated that the "flying saucer" sighting was NOT the result of drinking, and that an investigation showed only a few beer cans in the trash from that night.

The idea of alcohol involvement comes from an incredulous on-the-scene law enforcement officer's statements from the time.

People make mistakes. It's obvious when you look at the large differences in the "witnesses" descriptions from the people that were there that night (only two of which actually went outside to look.)

Regarding lying, you can read about subsequent lies that were told about the incident (by UFO genre authors) at Skeptoid

EDITED TO ADD:
VonDoom said:

either all these people got together, shot up their house,

From the Skeptoid link:

It turns out that police found only a single hole in one screen, consistent with a .22 bullet (Lucky Sutton had a shotgun, and Billy Ray Taylor had a .22 target pistol). There were plenty of neighbors within earshot during the event, and the only neighbor who reported hearing any shots fired heard only a grand total of four, which he mistook for firecrackers and ignored.

"Shot up the house," eh?

As we can all see, people lie about sightings.

Harte

originally posted by: ColeYounger

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance
Ok, I'll bite. What "obvious evidence"?

Check THIS out. It's most interesting.

The evidence is overwhelming that Planet Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft. In other words, SOME UFOs are alien spacecraft. Most are not.

You reference:
www.stantonfriedman.com - THE UFO CHALLENGE (December 1997 by Stanton T. Friedman)...

Even though I do not think this shows "obvious evidence," I do like this portion of his rant:

I have noted four major reasons why the big names in science and journalism haven’t jumped on the pro-UFO bandwagon:
(....)
3. Ego. If aliens were visiting Earth, they would call a press conference or ask to talk to the National Academy of Sciences. They haven’t, so aliens must not be visiting. Flying saucers finish the job Copernicus started in taking man out of the middle of the universe. Priests fought Copernicus’s ideas. Today guys in lab coats, rather than priestly robes, fight alien visitations.
(....)

Why do I find this interesting? Because.... Seti, of all places:
archive.seti.org - How Our View of Ourselves Affects Our Beliefs About E.T. (Jan. 24, 2002 by Douglas Vakoch)...

A search for signals from extraterrestrials will probably be successful if it lasts long enough. And humans are the most important species on Earth.

Do you agree or disagree with the above two statements?

In an earlier article in this series, we saw how anthropocentrism and beliefs in life beyond Earth can be measured by getting responses to a few, well-chosen statements -- like the two sentences that start this article. And once we can accurately measure peoples attitudes -- like how anthropocentric (human-centered) people are and how strongly they believe in the possibility of life beyond Earth -- its a short step to looking for relationships between these sorts of attitudes.

Drawing on the responses to our Internet survey, and analyzing these data with some basic statistics, we learn that there is in fact a significant correlation, or pattern, between these two attitudes. Specifically, the more anthropocentric a person is, the less likely they are to believe that life exists beyond Earth.

Please note this regards belief, not evidence. It shows a prejudice or bias in people to believe for/against life elsewhere.

originally posted by: ColeYounger

Check THIS out. It's most interesting.

The evidence is overwhelming that Planet Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft. In other words, SOME UFOs are alien spacecraft. Most are not.

The conclusions are based on opinions, speculations and interpretations so I find that hard to suggest scientific evidence...

originally posted by: NuNu12
Are you kidding, who wants to be called crazy all of their life just so they can feel special.

A good number of people...

I can't say it has hurt Travis Walton who was at the McMenamins UFO Festival, he was basically a rock star...

Also there, and have garnered a good life style off of UFOs was Stanton Friedman, Kathleen Marden and Grant Cameron.

originally posted by: redtic

Why is it *always* that these "best" UFO cases have crap for evidence? I ask that as an honest question. If the ETH were true, and has been happening for at least the past 60 years, we'd have some hard evidence by now (unless the government is hiding it from us - yes, I know, I know). One theory that has been proposed for the above case is that the family was perhaps drinking and saw eagle owls, and that the ufo can be explained by meteors in the area. That theory doesn't seem to totally fit their story, but it sounds at least as, if not more, plausible than alien creatures, doesn't it? I can even find a hoax more plausible than aliens. The fact that they're a good Christian family means nothing - heck, how many times have you heard "he was the nicest boy" when talking about a serial killer? Point being, perception doesn't always fit reality. I find the ETH both fascinating and incredibly frustrating at the same time - I'm a skeptic, so I need hard evidence before I'll believe a bunch of stories. Still have yet to see any.

Depends on what you consider "crap for evidence." I like this story because it is pure witness testimony. Maybe there were meteors in the area, not important one way or the other. Now the grandmother says she wouldn't allow drinking in the house, or in front of children. Maybe she lied about that, for some reason. But even if everyone in the house, including the children, were drunk on their butts and under the influence of some hallucinogenic, how are they going to have the same hallucination? Complete with the same sounds? If they were hallucinating that badly, how did they manage to pack everyone up and drive to the police station on a dark night? Wouldn't the police have noticed that they were intoxicated or under the influence of something?

As the skeptics like to say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. If someone is going to claim that these people didn't see what they say they saw, give us something that fits what they say. Owls and monkeys don't fit the witness testimony at all. Mass hallucinations wouldn't explain how everyone gives the same details.

If someone is going to say they lied, give a reasonable explanation as to why they would get together and work out this elaborate lie with such detail. Why make up the lie about the sound of the gunshots hitting the creatures? Why pick that particular sound effect? What did any member of that family have to gain by concocting this story?

If you like, you can just ignore any possibility that this is extra-terrestrial related. If this story is just a lie, explain why they lied. If they actually saw something, explain what could they could have seen.

It helps if you've watched the video in the link I provided. It has interviews with some of the people who were there.

originally posted by: jonnywhite

Drawing on the responses to our Internet survey, and analyzing these data with some basic statistics, we learn that there is in fact a significant correlation, or pattern, between these two attitudes. Specifically, the more anthropocentric a person is, the less likely they are to believe that life exists beyond Earth.

Please note this regards belief, not evidence. It shows a prejudice or bias in people to believe for/against life elsewhere.

To think that life doesn't exist beyond earth is rather ignorant to say the lease. Life is a natural process in the universe and we are proof of that.

To also suggest that generic_001 life in the universe also means aliens visitation on earth is a rather far reaching conclusion too. We can say life in general, but when we put discriminators on what that life will be like (such as intelligent, build capable, space faring capable etc) that is where we go off on the deep end of reason due to the greatly reduced chances for all that to happen and succeed, and then find us.

originally posted by: TeaAndStrumpets

originally posted by: SuspiciousTom
It's a clear fact that there are quiet a few people who lie in regards to aliens and will go extreme distances to try and prove the gibberish that they say.

You're surely not the first person, during 70 years of consistent UFO reports, to suggest that most of those reports are simply lies perpetrated by attention seekers. With that idea in mind...

1) Do you have any data relating to your claim that we can probably distrust "nearly all" UFO witness accounts?

2) Are you aware of the conclusions of those who actually already studied this very issue, decades and decades ago? Because the most reputable researchers -- in fact most all researchers, on either side of the issue -- have found that outright lying and the quest for notereity are a motivating factor in only a very small percentage of UFO reports. And those reports and "witnesses" are typically identified and filtered out pretty quickly.

3) How does your theory account for the surprisingly large percentage of UFO witnesses who insist on maintaining anonymity?

Don't get me wrong here, because I'm all for speculation. It's one of the reasons websites like this. But we do -- all of us, on both sides -- need to be careful not to confuse speculation with fact. And I think it's safe to say that your idea is highly speculative. It seems to have somel significant hurdles to overcome before it can be seriously (re)considered.

I think again my words might be taken a bit too literally, but I get what you're saying. What is meant is, "Why do people assume UFOs aren't of this world and every experience they encounter is also not of this world."

And as for #3 question you asked, we've reached a point where people believe they are informed on the matter and need to spread awareness. Many people believe there's something "up".

As for #1 I can never discredit a UFO witness but one that speaks to it being operated by ETs, then without their proof of that then it's a matter of "God exists, no he doesn't".

But this is in regards to the people who go to the extreme. For instance take crop circles, these are works of art.


That definitely created believers out of some, and they'd probably donate to the cause of getting incontact with these 'beings'. If you believe in something enough then your mind will eventually play tricks on you.

And upon further reasoning it has lead me to believe that the more seasoned UFOlogists try to push as much content as they can to get a bigger budget in the search for it, I want us to encounter it and as such I guess spreading awareness would be the best way to raise significant funds.

originally posted by: Harte

It turns out that police found only a single hole in one screen, consistent with a .22 bullet (Lucky Sutton had a shotgun, and Billy Ray Taylor had a .22 target pistol). There were plenty of neighbors within earshot during the event, and the only neighbor who reported hearing any shots fired heard only a grand total of four, which he mistook for firecrackers and ignored.

"Shot up the house," eh?

As we can all see, people lie about sightings.

Harte

If you watch the video at the bottom of the link I gave, you'll see that there was more holes than just the shot in the screen. That video has interviews with some of the people that were there as well as some of the police who came to the house.

It's interesting to note, though, that the hole in the screen had kind of a square-ish shape. Some thought the hole might have been cut rather than shot through.

a reply to: Blaine91555

I would tend to agree here about the abduction experience. I have always considered the possibility that the increased use of technology and wireless communication could (plausibly) have some unknown and unstudied long=term affect on our human brain. As such, it could be affecting our ability to perceive reality in different ways, one of which is the abduction experience.

originally posted by: VictorVonDoom
If you watch the video at the bottom of the link I gave, you'll see that there was more holes than just the shot in the screen. That video has interviews with some of the people that were there as well as some of the police who came to the house.

What you have is testimony coming decades later.

The finding about one bullet hole comes from the actual police reports from the time.

Harte

Indulge me, this might be a stupid thought but I own a fish. And this fish is stupid as stupid gets. It will eat till it explodes if i dont monitor it. It will fight needlessly against other fish put in its tank. Its a basic nuisance to itself.

But i like my fish. I protect it even though its dumb and has no idea what's going on. He is all bulging eyes. I imagine him looking out his plexiglass confines at a world he cant fit in his head; shadows shapes movement everything way beyond any means of comprehension.

I have named my fish but i imagine my fish couldnt name me. Not with anything specific. I am too big to identify or put into perspective. I dont fit into his scope. I am just a blur; a change of light as I walk past.

These lights these orbs these foo fighters in the sky... Is it possible earth is kind of an aquarium and we dont know we're the fish? Maybe the millions of ufo sightings are just something way bigger walking by mankind's aquarium walls?

My point being this could all be way stranger than mass self-delusion or black projects or aliens.

originally posted by: VictorVonDoom
Depends on what you consider "crap for evidence." I like this story because it is pure witness testimony. Maybe there were meteors in the area, not important one way or the other. Now the grandmother says she wouldn't allow drinking in the house, or in front of children. Maybe she lied about that, for some reason. But even if everyone in the house, including the children, were drunk on their butts and under the influence of some hallucinogenic, how are they going to have the same hallucination? Complete with the same sounds? If they were hallucinating that badly, how did they manage to pack everyone up and drive to the police station on a dark night? Wouldn't the police have noticed that they were intoxicated or under the influence of something?

As the skeptics like to say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. If someone is going to claim that these people didn't see what they say they saw, give us something that fits what they say. Owls and monkeys don't fit the witness testimony at all. Mass hallucinations wouldn't explain how everyone gives the same details.

But an alien does fit with their account? Based on what? What movies have told you aliens look like? Or what thousands of others have "witnessed" based on what movies/media have told them aliens look like? A terrestrial explanation is *always* going to be the best explanation simply because of what I'm arguing - there's never been anything besides circumstantial evidence that points to aliens being a plausible explanation. Yes, I'm saying it - until there is that one case that blows everything else out of the water with concrete evidence, every case that's been reported should be considered either a misinterpretation of data or a hoax UNTIL evidence is put forth that proves otherwise. So, should we not investigate sightings? Absolutely not - if true, this would be one of the most historic scientific findings of all time, but so far, that's just not the case.

If someone is going to say they lied, give a reasonable explanation as to why they would get together and work out this elaborate lie with such detail. Why make up the lie about the sound of the gunshots hitting the creatures? Why pick that particular sound effect? What did any member of that family have to gain by concocting this story?

I don't know - maybe they were caught up in the alien media hype of the 1950s and thought it would be fun. I have no idea - anything is possible, from it being an actual alien to it being an elaborate hoax, both seem almost as far fetched, but there's no evidence either way.

If you like, you can just ignore any possibility that this is extra-terrestrial related. If this story is just a lie, explain why they lied. If they actually saw something, explain what could they could have seen.

It helps if you've watched the video in the link I provided. It has interviews with some of the people who were there.

If it was an alien, explain why there was no evidence of anything unearthly found (et blood, flesh, etc), evidence of a landed craft, etc, etc. I have no idea why they would lie, just as you have no idea if they were telling the truth.

I'll watch the video and report back.

Simply there are too many possibilities, to assume sightings aren't of this world, especially with so much word of secret projects. As well as the matter of being so very visible in their crafts, making something appear transparent isn't hard. We can do it here are you suggesting these aliens have inferior technology to us? It's just a matter of refraction to reflect what's seen, should be child's play to how advanced they'd be.

You assume they even care if we see them. A lot of your post is assumptions on the what an alien might do, think, feel.. they are alien for a reason. And I imagine their thought process and reasoning would be just as alien to us as their appearance. But consider things like: the Phoenix lights, the Tehran sighting in 1972, the more recent sightings in Texas. Those are not black projects. The Air Force does not routinely fly their top secret stuff over major cities. They are a bit strict about that sort of thing. That's usually the last bastion of defense for a UFO debunker - "Hmm.. can't think of anything it can be. Ok.. black project!"

Abductions - An altered state of mind could easily be the cause of this. Many people will see a red ball and if they tell themselves enough the ball is blue, they will believe in that the ball is blue. The mind is a powerful thing and some dreams feel fairly real.

As a UFO believer who thinks a small fraction of actual sightings are legitimate (and remember.. it only takes 1 true sighting to prove their existence), I've always felt that abductions were even less frequent. But now I can't say for certain. You can't explain away all abduction stories with bad dreams. Here is a brief story of what happened to me a couple of weeks or so ago, and makes me wonder. Saturday night, bed at 11. Woke up at 9 am. Alarm set for 7 am, neither my wife or myself heard any of the 3 alarms I set. Felt like I had gotten 2 hours sleep, felt so tired and out of it. Then while feeding the cats directly after I got it, I noticed these marks on my leg. A bit wider and bit longer than my own fingers (by about an inch and a half longer), these were indents. Four long ones, and one divot looking one behind my knee. It started fading after an hour, and disappeared completely in 3 hours. Wasn't my blankets wrapped around my leg, and I have no idea what could cause this sort of thing, along with feeling of exhaustion and not hearing alarms.



Abduction? Well, wouldn't jump to that conclusion either - that's why I posted in the grey forum. But don't assume people "lie" or jump to conclusions or invent crap in their head. Sometimes like this thing on my leg, it's just confusing, not normal, and people just want answers. Posting pictures on a medical board, no one could figure out what it might be. Certainly not saying I was abducted, but I hope you can see where people get the ideas, and don't just dismiss those people as lunatics.

Contact - This isn't smart. You would never see an intelligent species walk up to an unknown specie and assume it's a safe thing to just contact it without fear, avoid and observe, bait and trap, test to see if friendly, encounter trust issues, feed until you are seen as master, continue to have trust issues. And that's the reality of us, you cannot assume that they would do it any differently, because ourselves being the only intelligent beings you know, do it this way. We surely have had people walk up to wild animals and get massacred, meet natural selection.

Keep in mind the first real consistent sightings occurred shortly after (and near) the first nuclear test. There have been sightings and even affected nuclear missile bases in regards to UFOs. I think they are here for other reasons, mostly monitoring, but I doubt they fear us. And you say people get attacked by wild animals.. but we still have thousands of scientists who routinely risk danger to themselves to study dangerous creatures. And even take the time.. 10s of thousands of hours, inspecting and monitoring the lowest of life forms. There are probably plenty of valid reasons why we would be visited. Among them could be that our planet type is fairly rare.. and therefor a beacon for study.

In regards to your "Visiting Earth" segment, you jump to an awful lot of conclusions to try and prove a point. You don't know they would send a probe first, or that they have already done so. Or that many of the smaller UFOs are actually that.. probes. Sightings of UFOs like the one in Alaska that kept running a beam of light over the ground.. sort of sounds like a probe to me. You talk about how advanced they are and how they could easily become invisible to us.. but then go on to assume their highly advanced ways would not protect them against our common illnesses. We being incredibly non-evolved still, can do amazing things in medicine now.. you don't think they can eliminate or protect themselves from just about any illness? I sort of think they could.

Energy could be a minor inconvenience in the future for us. You like many people, make assumptions based on what us.. humans... know now. You have no idea how scarce or free energy will be in 10s of thousands of years. Energy sources might be as common as sand.

As far as your question about intelligence, it just makes sense there are much smarter species out there. We are young as planets go. There are systems further in that are much, MUCH older than ours. Giving other species a huge head start. Considering (rounding up) that the universe is around 15 billions years old.. and our own solar system, just 5 billion.. it stands to reason that there are vastly superior species out there, compared to our own.

I respect your viewpoint, although I don't agree with it. I feel there are plenty of very solid sightings, that imo, would not be black projects. People are often mistaken, sure. And you can't assume every dot in the sky is an alien checking us out. But I'd like to see you personally or people with your viewpoint, successfully tackle the more common and solid sightings like the ones I mentioned, without the fallback of "black project!" The sighings with actual merit routinely get ignored by debunkers.

originally posted by: Aliensun
a reply to: SuspiciousTom

A classic case of denial done to the nth degree. It appears almost daily on ATS in some form of presentation or another. The flaw here and usually elsewhere in these single-minded attempts to deny the whole of UFOs is that the presenter takes one aspect, denial, and runs it into the ground with a self-styled list of reasoning, logic, and for why the phenomena is not self-evident despite the fact that that is exactly the case. They forget one important, logical fact: you can't prove a negative. Not only that, but they attempt to make the case by completely ignoring countless accounts that exactly do the opposite. If people didn't see and equipment didn't record UFOs of one kind or another, there would be no reason to deny the phenomena. So they admit that something is showing itself to us, but in the same breath denying that it exists as it displays itself to be exactly what...it isn't.

Mostly, only two types of people deny UFOs today, a few vocal skeptics that use wholesale denial as a base for their argument and official government policies which by a lack of due diligence by science keeps the topic remain under the table for various reasons.

Well said.
That's exactly how this thread comes off as.

originally posted by: TrueMessiah

originally posted by: Aliensun
a reply to: SuspiciousTom

A classic case of denial done to the nth degree. It appears almost daily on ATS in some form of presentation or another. The flaw here and usually elsewhere in these single-minded attempts to deny the whole of UFOs is that the presenter takes one aspect, denial, and runs it into the ground with a self-styled list of reasoning, logic, and for why the phenomena is not self-evident despite the fact that that is exactly the case. They forget one important, logical fact: you can't prove a negative. Not only that, but they attempt to make the case by completely ignoring countless accounts that exactly do the opposite. If people didn't see and equipment didn't record UFOs of one kind or another, there would be no reason to deny the phenomena. So they admit that something is showing itself to us, but in the same breath denying that it exists as it displays itself to be exactly what...it isn't.

Mostly, only two types of people deny UFOs today, a few vocal skeptics that use wholesale denial as a base for their argument and official government policies which by a lack of due diligence by science keeps the topic remain under the table for various reasons.

Well said.

That's exactly how this thread comes off as.

Not really, though I suppose it might, if you don't like people poking holes in quasi-religious belief.

originally posted by: Harte

What you have is testimony coming decades later.

The finding about one bullet hole comes from the actual police reports from the time.

Harte

Testimony coming decades later, and a police report from an inspection done in the middle of the night on an old house in the woods with no electricity. It's possible the police could have missed some, or not recognized the damage as bullet holes, or simply had no way of determining when the damage was done. In any case, it doesn't really matter.

The core issue is to explain the story itself. Let's throw out any ET related explanation. That leaves three possibilities that I can think of. It was all a lie, it was a mass hallucination, or it was a mass mis-identification. If anyone can think of another explanation, please chime in. It should be a simple matter to say that one of those is the most likely explanation, but none of those explanations seem to dovetail with the story.

Heres a hint dudes some people are telling the truth.