Scpetics dont have a leg to stand on

Gee this is sounding a lot like the current 911 debate...

But to interject here, I believed in ufo's before I saw them because I developed an interest and did a lot of research and since the beginning of this study I have seen at least one good sighting and four other sightings of lesser merit.

Did I see what I saw because I was a believer? I don't know but it probably made me take notice of what I did see and realize it for what it was... something out of the ordinary. That is why I always watch sky now at any opportunity for what I may see. I watch for chemtrails etc and anything else of note.

My mind is open to the weird reality around me so that I won't miss what others would second guess or turn away from or even deny that they saw or experienced.

Originally posted by V Kaminski
Hi Schaden what is your explanation for Bentwaters/Rendlesham? Light house? Natural phenom?

Although I doubt it, one possible explaination could be psychotronic weapons systems testing. Although that wouldnt count for physical trace evidence said to be present at the scene. Could have been planted? Maybe...who's to say for sure.

I myself look ay BW/W as one of the best cases out there.

I take the witnesses accounts at face value.
(just to recap their observations)

A metallic triangular shaped craft, with no discernable engines or front/back, on 3 legs with strange lights and markings....
Hovers around through the trees silently....
Floats a few hundred feet up into the air and accelerates out of sight in the the blink of an eye....

The next night,

A red light dripping something described as molten metal....
Gives off sparks and breaks up into 5 separate objects and disappears....
3 bright lights seen overhead flashing various red, green, blue colors, performing rapid maneuvers with sharp angular movements....
Thin beams of white light streaming down from above on the witnesses....
The same white lights observed shining down into the underground nuclear weapons storage facility....

These are highly credible witnesses, charged with guarding and if necessary, deploying nuclear weapons. Col Halt and maybe some of the others would have been in the PRP (personnel reliability program)
There is official documentation of what they saw.
At least half a dozen witnesses.
An audio recording was made during some of the events.
Both the US/British govt refuse to talk about the matter.
I understand some even higher ranking general officers have discussed the event with Georgina Bruni. I need to read "You can't tell the people".

I believe Occam's Razor applies.
Some type of alien spaceship/probe(s) were scouting the base.


"I have no doubt that something landed at this U.S. Air Force base and I have no doubt that it has got the people concerned in to a considerable state. The Ministry of Defense has doggedly stuck to it's normal line, that nothing of defense interest took place. Either large numbers of people , including the commanding general at Bentwaters, were hallucinating, and for an American Air Force nuclear base , this is extremely dangerous - or what they say did happen." - Admiral Lord Hill-Norton , former chief of the British Defense Staff

[edit on 13-4-2006 by Schaden]

Battle of LA:
Go to the SkyLighters website to see what a real, unretouched photo of a searchlight from WWII looks like.

Check out the shot of searchlights hitting the cloud bank: it looks like (*gasp*) a flying saucer!



[edit on 13-4-2006 by rand]

This is one of those threads titled to cause a stir.

The reason there are less credible cases now is because the Cold War has ended. There is nothing wrong with bringing up old cases but I believe more people have settled in that the best UFO years are well behind us. Classic UFO discs of the 1940-70's are dead just in time for the portable digital age. I have a camera with me at all times now. Guess I'm too late.

Since the early 1990's we've had a slew of Hoaxers, Hucksters, and Charletans littering the UFO/Alien landscape. The UFO community at large needs to be more objective and learn not to embrace every cheesy image and postage stamp sized video. The UFO/Alien Cult does more damage than good.

Originally posted by rand
Battle of LA:
Go to the SkyLighters website to see what a real, unretouched photo of a searchlight from WWII looks like.

Check out the shot of searchlights hitting the cloud bank: it looks like (*gasp*) a flying saucer!

[edit on 13-4-2006 by rand]

You seem to have not read anything regarding the Battle of LA (West Coast Air Raid.) The spotlights the "skylighters" use are either white, yellow-white, or yellow. The object that was sighted was a pale orange. Secondly, while the radar in 1942 was very primitive and false echos could be caused by weather conditions it is nearly an astronomical impossibility that such weather conditions could persist as the cloud traveled for ~120 miles. The required density of a cloud to deflect anti-aircraft artillery is unexplainable using water vapor as the main ingredient of the cloud. Even if water vapor could become that dense the cloud would quickly release as much water as possible to stay aloft and there was absolutely no rain. Without raining their must have been some method for the cloud to stay aloft so one must introduce propulsion, methane, or extremely hot air -- methane isn't light enough to carry a ~200 ft. cloud of dense water vapor. The amount of methane that would be required to lift such a cloud as it traveled for ~120 miles would be enough to cause the actual spotlights used to illuminate the clouds to float in the sky! Obviously the methane explanation is preposterous. The amount of hot air that would be required to lift an object that long could only be explained by volcanic activity below the Earth's crust that is spontaneously released. This explanation may actually be theoretically possible. The massive volcanic activity would cause the Earth's crust to split like what has been observed on the sea floor of the Bermuda Triangle though. Accordingly, there must have been a massive earthquake to correspond with such a splitting of the Earth's crust. Such a splitting of the Earth's crust would also displace so much water off the coast of California it would cause incredibly large tidal waves that would come crashing down on the coast of Japan and other countries in that region. The hot air that would be released would quickly cause the cloud to expand and become less dense so even if these things occured the deflected artillery cannot be painted into the picture. No such splitting of the Earth's crust ever occurred anyways. The only explanation, therefore, would be propulsion. But why and how, I must ask, would a cloud of water vapor have a propulsion system?

Your explanation requires the "skylighters" to be pranksters (an orange film must've been placed over the spotlights) responsible for 6 deaths in the area--three from artillery shells and three from heart attacks, the thousands of witnesses never seen spotlights used to illuminate clouds before and their average IQ was so low they wouldn't realize it the first time they seen it, the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade had never seen spotlights hit a cloud before, the Brigade did not notice the "skylighters" were pulling a prank by making the beams of light a pale orange, the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade must have also had a combined IQ lower than a fruit fly, the cloud was dense enough to bounce back radar beams consecutively for several hours as it traveled for ~120 miles or the radar equipment completely failed during the time of the event but no problem was ever found since that time, the cloud was so dense it could deflect artillery that would destroy any of the modern metal airplanes and did destroy several homes, and the cloud had some kind of propulsion system to keep it aloft. Do you want to throw in swamp gas and Venus into your explanation?

The object must've been incredibly dense and durable to deflect such artillery. Accordingly, a method of propulsion must've been used to keep such a dense, and accordingly heavy, object in the air. The object is clearly an artificial structure. Whether it is aliens or a top secret military aircraft can be debated ad infinitum but the cloud explanation clearly does not hold water (or should I say "too much water"?)

Originally posted by rand
Battle of LA:


Check out the shot of searchlights hitting the cloud bank: it looks like (*gasp*) a flying saucer!



[edit on 13-4-2006 by rand]

Here is a photo analysis of the pictures taken of the battle. You can see that it's not just a light show. And why would the military fire projectiles at a cloud if there was no possible threat.

I think this is the type of arguement that Helium was talking about.

Originally posted by megamanXplosion
The object must've been incredibly dense and durable to deflect such artillery.

The object was obviously a....skeptic

Originally posted by helium3
After reading several of the major UFO cases:

The 1942 'Battle of Los Angeles
Betty and Barney Hill Abduction Case
Travis Walton Abduction Case
The Shag Harbour Incident

(Just to name a few)

how can one refute presents of alien/UFO?

Well, let's see.

The 1942 "Battle of Los Angeles," which was so nicely parodied in the movie "1941," was a simple misidentification of an army dirigible in Long Beach, followed by people firing at a lenticular cloud coming off the Hollywood Hills. All-in-all, a bunch of nervous, trigger-happy goofballs firing at clouds. Proof? Show me any tiny little speck of "alien" debris recovered as a result.

Betty and Barney Hill? Psychological nonsense, one of the first instances of bad hypnotic regression and memory seeding. Again, not a speck of physical evidence.

Travis Walton. Somebody spikes this guy's coffee with '___' or peyote as a joke, and suddenly he's abducted by aliens. More bad hyponotic regression. And after 3 days, or whatever it was, he couldn't find time to stick an alien ashtray into his pocket? You see a pattern developing here?

Shag Harbor Incident. MAYBE something fell in the water. Bright lights? A meteor, maybe? All we have are a lot of garbled reports, with a lot of "off the record" junk thrown on top of it. But let's be fair and take a good look at the physical evidence... oops! Looks like there ain't none.

People are very suggestible and easily get confused. They make up things in their head. And I have a little rule of thumb I use before I call anything "alien." It's the careful, scientific analysis of some physical object by a variety of labs that shows technology or manufacturing available nowhere on Earth. Otherwise, how do I know it's just not our own military goofing around, conducting odd experiments, trying to keep things secret?

Hey, I'd LOVE to go ahead and just accept that these are all instances of contact with ET intelligences. I WANT it to be true. But until the instance satisfies all of my requirements for proof, I won't buy it. I don't want to look like an idiot. I don't want to believe, I want to KNOW.

I freely admit to being somewhat skeptical about most, not all, of the UFO reports. Many can be, and have been, explained as being misinterpreted common objects. Even trained observers can be fooled under the right conditions.

However, having said the above, I will also add that evidence denying the existence of extraterrestial visitations are not always entirely disuasive.

I make no claims to anything even resembling expertise in this matter. It just seems to me that there is no way we are being visited by this many aliens. 'course I could be wrong, and Earth is a major galactic tourist attraction, which would explain all the sightings.

Originally posted by seagull
However, having said the above, I will also add that evidence denying the existence of extraterrestial visitations are not always entirely disuasive.

I think the most compelling evidence is also the least exciting. It's the sheer volume of sightings in all conditions, by all kinds of people, all over the world. No individual sighting or case contains all of the necessary evidence for conclusive proof. Individual anecdotes and descriptions are basically worthless. But after a while it becomes very difficult to dismiss every single sighting, photography, radar trace, etc., without getting cut by that opposite edge of Occam's Razor. Not EVERYBODY who has had some kind of odd UFO experience can be that mistaken, or hoaxers, or mentally nuts. It's possible, but it becomes highly improbable.

Which makes (of all nutty, unproven things) TIME TRAVEL the most compelling explanation. It's so highly improbable that so many people can have so many experiences, and still come up basically empty for undeniable proof, that the only thing that starts to make sense is that every time somebody has the opportunity to prove it all true - with photos, and meetings, and materials and technology, and the whole nine yards - somebody goes back in time before it hits the media and removes the convincing evidence. Removes the final, incontrovertible link. And the only folks who would know exactly what that link was would be people who have already seen what the link is, in the future, after it hit the media.

It would go like this. Some guy has an encounter, shoots an alien with his hunting rifle or something. The proof of aliens hits the news, there's a big hoopla, everybody goes wild. Eventually, the events surrounding the disclosure become historical fact. Then the aliens (or time travelers, same thing) who know exactly what to remove, just go back in time and abduct the guy before he shoots the alien, take the evidence, put something else mundane in its place like a deer or something, and generally clean it up so that the event never happens.

Otherwise, you're stuck with the statistical problem of tens of thousands of reports and encounters from very reliable people ALL being wrong, hoaxes, or mental problems. After a while, it just doesn't make sense that all these people could be wrong.

However... that being said... there's no evidence of any manipulation of events by time travelers, either. And there wouldn't be, would there?

I admit to being skeptical by nature but certainly not stupid enough to believe we are the most intelligent life form in the universe. I just recently began my curious journey because of circumstanial evidence that my father has played a part in research on ET/Alien technology. The more I read, the more I become convinced that we have been visited. I'm not sure I buy into the bizarre stories I've read on ATS, but I do believe "they" exist. Let's face it, we are either an ant farm or one heck of a zoo for more intelligent life forms.

One of the reasons I registered for this site was my interest in ufo's. Are they real? Have we been visited.

This is a question that will haunt mankind for all time, or until it happens.

Check out this interview with Carl Sagan.

NOVA Online/Kidnapped by UFOs/Carl Sagan

Originally posted by Eyesofbear
I admit to being skeptical by nature but certainly not stupid enough to believe we are the most intelligent life form in the universe.

I just don't know. Again, there's absolutely zero incontrovertible proof of life anywhere but on good ol' Terra Firma. Seeing as how most of the universe is extremely hostile to our kind of life - cosmic background radiation alone kept everything good and dead for a long, long time - I don't find it hard to imagine that we could be the lucky coin flip that lands on its edge, rather than heads or tails.

That being said, we also have an extremely limited perception of the universe and existence, limted because of the way we evolved to perceive space and time and reality. "Aliens," on the other hand, whether they come from different planets, or different times or universes or perceptual schemes, or even from the processes of our own minds, may not be quite as limited, moving in and through different dimensions might be as normal as gravity to them.

So again, if we're moving beyond the usual paradigms and the popular notion of bug-eyed monsters who fly here from another planet in metallic flying saucers, and try to imagine the most ALIEN thing that doesn't even work within our own notions of space and time and causality and life... then I still don't know.

It's all a real puzzler.


[edit on 13-4-2006 by Enkidu]

I located another interview with Carl Sagan. Very interesting.

Cosmic Search Vol. 1, No. 2 - The Quest for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

www.bigear.org...

Anyone care to discuss this interview?

Enkidu

Well said in both posts this page.

The major ufo cases, especially The 1942 'Battle of Los Angeles, nice work.

The second post yeah your right so much reported and claimed no physical evidence. MMM.

I like the time travel hypothesis.

I want proof, real proof. Not some dodgey eye witness accounts laced with a tot of hysteria.

Eye witnesses are not that reliable, you only have to look at the variance in perpretators discriptions after crimes.
Photo fit type reproductions are usually the result of an amalgum of all available witnesses, in the hope that the result looks like the perp.

People are not insulated from others after events and therefore social interaction fills in any "gaps" in any individuals perceptions. Even without this effect you cant be too sure. However most times its all we got in a court of law!!

My point of reference is an event over 25 years ago. After an evening out my chums and I were walking back through a cemetry and stopped to get a feel for the place. Most present were convinced they saw something moving on a grave. I saw an object but did not see it moving. I went to investigate and there was nothing there. It was a shadow from a streetlight in my opinion. If I had not investigated it would have been recounted as a ghost alien or something, no doubt.
However it did not end there. While sitting around discussing the event there was a sound of a twig or something breaking. We all looked around in the direction of the sound. I saw nothing. The rest said things like "What the F### is that." and ran. I went forward but could see nothing. My pals by now had reached the boundary wall and were scaling it with athletism they had not demonstrated before. When I reached them asking what they saw they were physically pushing and kicking a disabled friend of ours over this wall as he was unable to scale it himself.

I said about being rational and going back to have another look, as I saw nothing. I was told to "f### off" We got back to my home, which was nearer. On arrival I get them to draw and write what they saw. There was a variance in their drawings and descriptions....one description said "I looked around and saw a devil in disguise..".

That they thought they saw something I have no doubt. But did they physically?? I saw nothing.

So regarding eye witnesses. Was there an actual physical event that I did not perceive? Were my companions dillusional, with a mass hysteria brought on by....well who knows? Assuming that there was an event and I missed it. The variance in their descriptions was obvious. A photo fit guy..or gal.. would have averaged out a biped, that was brown/dark red and had horns or some bizzare head gear.

What evidence would I find acceptable? I dont know. Photographs are frequently manipulated and are subjective..as the recent seagull UFO debate has shown.

Rendlesham seems to have been an event of some sorts but I am open minded as to what.

I would like to know if there is intelligent life out there somewhere...be nice to find it on Earth first though

Originally posted by lost_shaman

Originally posted by edwardteach
hmmmm...I live in la, or oc I should say, yet I've never heard of that "battle". Seems like if it did happen it would be pretty well known. Just my two cents

They have an Annual Re-enactment every year, in which there is a Blimp substituted for the UFO!

Here's a pic from the re-enactment taken 2 years ago.

Well you sure proved me wrong, good job, I guess I will have to go see that.

Enkidu, well put. The dirigible expanation really makes sense, as well as the other explanations for other events.

Although I am skeptical on the whole alien thing, it really does seem like this whole earth thing is just a class experiment for some life form somewhere else in the universe. Or maybe it's liike a reality show. Its starting to make sense now...

Originally posted by Allah the moon god
I would like to know if there is intelligent life out there somewhere...be nice to find it on Earth first though

Yeah, there are a lot of folks who would like to know that, although there's no shortage of very intelligent people on this planet, and those intelligent people generally just get beaten up, shot at, bombs dropped on them, etc.

What most people really want is an intelligent alien species that is smart, but not too smart, that also believes in Jesus. Somebody not just to compare notes with, but to agree with them and give them stuff like a trip to another fun planet, or immortality, or some other cool thing.

Won't those people be disappointed when they meet the overly-smart, lazy aliens who don't want to be friends, don't believe in any kind of God, and won't even give them a real laser gun to play with?

Originally posted by Enkidu

Originally posted by Allah the moon god
I would like to know if there is intelligent life out there somewhere...be nice to find it on Earth first though

Yeah, there are a lot of folks who would like to know that, although there's no shortage of very intelligent people on this planet, and those intelligent people generally just get beaten up, shot at, bombs dropped on them, etc.

What most people really want is an intelligent alien species that is smart, but not too smart, that also believes in Jesus. Somebody not just to compare notes with, but to agree with them and give them stuff like a trip to another fun planet, or immortality, or some other cool thing.

Won't those people be disappointed when they meet the overly-smart, lazy aliens who don't want to be friends, don't believe in any kind of God, and won't even give them a real laser gun to play with?

Good post! I couldn't agree more.

I would also like to add that one of the reasons that sceptics do not believe these stories is because these stories are old and the possibility that they are made up is high.

Another reason is that it would be highly impossible that species from outter space that have the technology for interstellar travel are so dumb as to be caught in a fight with primitive WWII weapons; or to get shot down by the primitive fighter jets of the previous decades.

Yet another reason is that if there were spacecraft out there, they would have been spotted already. In this day and age, there are a lot of people looking at the sky.

I have tried to examine every UFO picture/video available, but I have find none that is not explainable either as a physical phenomenon or some human fx. A disturbing fact of the videos/pictures is that UFOs get more sophisticated as years pass. In the 50s we had very simple dump-looking UFO disks; the most recent pictures show highly advanced circular craft. I guess the level of fx has been raised.

As for stories mentioned by someone without any other evidence, all I have to say is "hearsay".

Originally posted by Enkidu


That being said, we also have an extremely limited perception of the universe and existence, limted because of the way we evolved to perceive space and time and reality. "Aliens," on the other hand, whether they come from different planets, or different times or universes or perceptual schemes, or even from the processes of our own minds, may not be quite as limited, moving in and through different dimensions might be as normal as gravity to them.
[edit on 13-4-2006 by Enkidu]

Right.
I believe even the most pessimistic numbers in the Drake equation yield at least a half dozen advanced civilizations (that is to say equal or ahead of humanity) in our galaxy alone. Imagine what humans will accomplish 500 or even 1000 years in the future.

The median is something like hundreds of thousands. I think interstellar super-luminal travel is happening in at least some places in the Universe.
Maybe not between the voids, but certainly within the Local Group somewhere.

I think the enormous size of the Universe makes it certain.
The Milky Way alone contains 100 billion stars. There are at least 100 billion galaxies. If you get into string theory and theoretical physics, there might be 100 billion universes !

I don't believe 99% of the stories, sightings and "abductions" to be real, but due to the byzantine secrecy and hostile suppression from the govt and MSM, I'm forced to contemplate what they are hiding.

Alien UFOs have visited the Earth, some elements of the govt military-industrial complex is aware and suppress the information.