Death by UFO!

Death by UFO!

At least 41 Americans have died since 1962 because of UFOs.

If only a US President would whisper the word ‘disclosure’ we’d be frolicking around in a vegetarian world of free energy and all the hugs we could handle. No more work! Life would be all Star Trek-tastic as the wise and spiritually-advanced alien saviours gave us free taxi rides around the galaxy and beyond.

Sounds like fun, huh? It also sounds a little like the conditional religious promises of paradise being just around the corner.

It’s around this area of ufology where we see a nexus of belief systems, hucksterism and human weaknesses that can lead to mental illness and death. Like a threadbare vest, some people find their attachment to reality being teased and plucked apart as they struggle to add improbable stories to their existence. In many cases, should they look, they’d see snake-oil salesmen at the ends of their tethers pulling away at the strands of their sanity...

Exopolitics, New Age marketeers, Greer and the UFOtainment industry will happily confirm their beliefs for a buck or two. ♪ ♫ ♩‘You’ve got to pick a pocket or two…’ ♪ ♫ ♩ ♬

A belief in anything shouldn’t be a problem for the individual or society. Perhaps it’s the degree of belief that is more important than the actual belief? We could say a KFC meal isn’t a bad thing, but eating one every day might become unhealthy. Believing that UFOs are ET visitors is no more damaging or consequential than believing in one of the multitudes of religious or political belief-systems. At least, it makes sense that moderate belief is harmless and unavoidable.

If we’re honest, deep down, many men and women believe they’re great lovers, undiscovered sporting heroes and amazing singers. Within all of us are the shadows of beliefs that make us who we are.

Taken too far, some UFO beliefs can lead the way to insanity and even death.

In 1982, poor Laverne Landis drove herself and her husband to starvation and death on the strength of her belief that they’d be spirited away by those friendly aliens.



Her husband must have had faith in her channeling skills to put his life in her hands and her claimed visitors. Rather than get a second opinion from someone in the medical field, he took her at her word and tragedy was the price. Her mind must have been saturated in the mythology of ufology and New Age optimism.

A case like this isn’t without a precedent and neither was it the last one. Back in 1954, our channeling friends from Outer Space were at it again in the guise of ‘Dorothy Martin’ and her advisors from Planet Clarion. This time, the message content was the familiar, ‘You’re all going to die!’ Like Landis’ husband, Martin’s beliefs snared a Michigan State Professor, Dr Laughead, who was left disgraced and unemployed when their apocalyptic claims failed to arrive and the world didn’t end.

"there will be much loss of life, practically all of it, in 1955.... It is an actual fact that the world is in a mess. But the Supreme Being is going to clean house by sinking all of the land masses as we know them now and raising the land masses from under the sea."

Dorothy Martin - The woman who predicted the end of the world



Laughead was dismissed for ‘disturbing the student body’ and Martin carried on passing messages and became centre-point of a small cult. Neither of them thought to themselves, ‘Hmmmm. Now perhaps these voices aren’t actually friendly space visitors? Maybe they’re something else? Maybe, just maybe, they’re a symptom of mental illness?’ Instead, Laughead wishy-washed about the failed appearance of the Clarionites being down to their ‘testing’ how folk would react. She, on the other hand, carried on with the madness.

The "scientists," having invented something analogous to atom bombs—in those days, the name was "alcetopes"—threatened to destroy the hosts of Light and, through their fumbling cleverness, succeeded in blowing to pieces the planet Car. The disappearance of Car, as an integrated mass, produced enormous disturbances in the balance of the omniverse ("all universes") and nearly caused complete chaos. Meanwhile, the forces of Light had retreated to other planets, such as Clarion, Uranus, and Cerus, where they regrouped and considered their next strategy. Lucifer led his troops, their minds now obliterated of cosmic knowledge, to earth.

Apocalypse Park

This all seems kind of familiar…hmmm. Where have we seen this stuff before? Was Martin channeling Blossom Goodchild or is Blossom Goodchild channeling her?! Failed prophecies: Check! Forces of Light: Check!

It’s tempting to opt for ridicule and laugh knowingly at those who subscribe to these self-described messengers of Light. Goodchild has dozens of followers despite being so entirely, conclusively wrong (mass alien visitation and rapture-style event in 2008) that it’s impossible to overlook for most of us. Martin’s failures likewise didn’t stop her attraction to those who shared her dreams. In fact, her determined BS indirectly led to the creation of the term *cognitive dissonance.* This concept tries to explain how we can entertain completely conflicting ideas by deluding ourselves and avoiding anything that makes us focus on the sheer bloody silliness of our beliefs.

In 1962, Gloria Lee starved herself to death on the expectation that her friendly alien had given her the teachings to save the world. She took her notes to Washington DC and couldn't believe they weren't interested in the preachings of a voice in her head. On hunger strike, she lasted 66 days. Her death wasn't beyond exploitation so before you know it, someone was 'channeling' her too. Her conviction of belief, like Landis', was strong enough to starve for.

Well, so far we’ve touched on how some people can be gluttons for outlandish beliefs and others might just be mentally ill in a high-functioning way. Having internal conversations with purported messengers from Clarion is just fine. Driving out into nowhere to meet them is going too far.

Back in the 90s, an established UFO cult used a similar idea to poor Laverne and held the belief that the world’s end was ‘nigh’ and only a few would be ‘saved’ by the loveable space-visitors. Sounds kind of religious again doesn’t it? Check out this face and ask yourself, ‘Would I like to spend the night in the same building as him – unarmed?’

This guy had a religious background and was doing okay in life until he began hearing voices and checked his ass into a psychiatric hospital in the early ‘70s. Like Mr Landis and Doc Laughead, he met a woman who pin-balled his life on a collision-course with insanity and tragedy. Her name was Bonnie Nettles and she convinced him the voices were in fact aliens…peaceful, huggable, taxi-round-the-galaxy aliens.

In essence, it was madness squared. In psychology a folie à deux..

Back in the late 90s, we had a comet called Hale-Bopp in our skies and some of us are old enough to remember seeing it. Well, a ‘perfect storm’ of paranormal insanity, hoaxery and belief-systems came to be focused on this passing comet. Coast to Coast promoted the claims of an amateur astronomer that it had an object in its wake. Before you could say ‘hysteria’ the non-existent object had been transmogrified into an alien spaceship bearing the message, once more, ‘You’re all going to die!’ An opportunistic character called Courtney Brown claimed to have ‘remote viewed’ an ‘artificial object’ behind Hale-Bopp (using a hoaxed image) and this was also promoted by Coast to Coast.

Marshall Applewhite developed the Heaven's Gate community.



Applewhite, by now, was clutching the tattered remnants of his sanity against an increasingly cold wind. Reality was merely a preference – a flavour to be chosen. His voices warned that the world would be destroyed (‘you’re all going to die’), but *some* would be saved. Only by consciously giving up their lives would the passing aliens be able fit them aboard their spaceship.

You see, it wasn’t enough that these alleged aliens were about to destroy all life on planet Earth. Not quite anyway. They needed the *Chosen* to offer their bodies in a suicide pact too.

The fates of Applewhite and 39 others were sealed. Their bodies were discovered by the authorities lying peacefully in bunks. Each wore black clothes, new Nikes and had a $5 bill and 3 quarters in their pockets. They wore armbands with the legend – ‘Hale-Bopp Away Team.’ Apparently their belief-system included wearing clothes as their souls beamed aboard the alien ship.

The Hale-Bopp comet exited the stage and continues to orbit our system in ever-increasing circles. No secondary object was ever observed despite damn near every type of telescope watching it for years.

Last year, Courtney Brown was schlepping the ‘you’re going to die’ BS to leverage property sales of expensive houses in Central America. Apparently, he’s remote viewed (channelled?) the end of the world for 2012, but it’ll be a little less ‘endy’ in South America. What a class act, huh?

None of these victims of channelled messages, mysterious voices and hoaxers were able to question the logic of their beliefs. They tended to have very literal religious upbringings that left them with a sense of reality as substantial and tough as old lace curtains. The idea of friendly aliens controlling things from other worlds was entirely believable for them. They felt this reality wasn’t as *real* as the alternatives of their own creation. When conjuring up the idea that aliens were standing by whilst the Earth was destroyed, they didn’t question *how* or *why* or even *what* gave these voices the right to do or say anything?

They didn’t even ask what would cause some ‘alien saviour’ in space to come and talk to them out of all the other billions on the planet? Neither did their followers or their believers.

Typically the claims of these ‘voices’ signify nothing but the shallow nonsense of spiritual literature. Nickel and dime spiritualism and New Age nonsense. It’s all dire-warnings and conditional promises of light-bringers. They bring nothing the human mind hasn’t created before and not even beyond the imaginings of children. In many ways they reflect the incredibly limited understanding of those who believe the messages. Life is utterly complex and yet it’s reduced to dull platitudes and promises of higher vibrations.

Whatever the source of the ‘voices,’ the result is frequently negative. Reality is plucked away and unravelled as the victim/believer overturns consensus reality and exchanges it for a handful of threads that are invisible to anyone but other sufferers. I choose the word ‘sufferer’ deliberately.

The internet transmits these shabby realities like an itchy virus and the infected then turn in amongst themselves. Turning away from consensus reality, they discuss the ‘secret signals’ being received from other dimensions. Clock displays, media messages and other stimuli become confirmation of their perceived reality.

There should come a point when, and where, the person asks can they trust their own judgement (sanity) and, if so, can they trust the ‘voices?’ Others should ask if the person claiming to ‘channel’ is a fraud or mentally balanced? For the rest of us, when folk on the internet promote channelers, lightbringers and that kind of stuff, we should be aware they have a bad track record. In fact, their record is essentially one of 100% failure. The world is still here and either they, or their sources, are lying.

As you read this, a a gentleman is currently planning to end his life in the certainty of belief that he’ll pass through a ‘cosmic portal’ and enter a higher vibrational dimension. His belief-systems have been generated by UFO, New Age and 2012 literature – all the apocalyptic warnings and ‘secret signals’ from the cosmos have combined into another ’perfect storm’ that will see him take a ‘leap of faith’ at 11:11 on the Winter Solstice of 2012. To anyone but him, it seems clear that his perception of reality has been skewed by over-exposure to the subject-matter and we can only hope he fails to achieve his goal.

As Bill Hicks said, if you think you can fly, start from the side-walk and not from the rooftops.





Ultimately, these deaths have been avoidable and unnecessary. They are cautionary beacons as we stray from the path and enter the shadow-lands of the unknown. As we take these steps away from consensus reality, it's important that the thread that leads us back to normality isn't unravelling behind us.

reply to post by Kandinsky




That first headline gave me a good laugh.

Uh, i think you forgot Capt Mantel, And the crew of the F 94 night fighter capt Moncla, and his back seater whom i dont know.....
other military aircraft have also gone down in UFO circumstances as well as the Fredrich Valentich dissapearance out of Australia en route to King island......
Hundreds more may also have been be taken out of the skies by these very real machines......specially in the late 40s and early fifties......airliners even.....
Sure people are nuts, its a fact of life, but they would be nutty over some other subject should UFOs have never existed.....dont you think?

reply to post by stirling
Yeah, I know and I could've added Kinross and Valentich too.

I wasn't really aiming at genuine UFOs, but more the belief-systems that go with the subject and the phenomena. There's a history here that is dark and unhealthy and we all go exploring it at our own peril!

I travel the 'blogosphere' and there's plenty of evidence that some folk lose their way in this field.

reply to post by Kandinsky


There seems to be always someone somewhere waiting to call you over and
explain how life really is. The world isn't a fluffy-cloud, peace-brother kind of place
and yet, that's what we crave.
And so, they come out of the woodwork with promises and shiny baubles.

We really don't know enough about the UFO phenomena to 'nail it down' to
a formula. Maybe they are 70's-style pastel-robed goody-goodies, maybe they're
Reptilians that lose their disguise when interviewed on TV or maybe they're just
our guys filling our heads with a fairytale -so that their clandestine activities can
pass without serious scrutiny.

It will always surprise me how much people want an answer from the heavens!

The most telling experience in my life came about the night I saw one of these I had until then only read about. Just the sight of it changed my whole perspective in life. It didn't beam any message to my brain or land and take me anywhere. There have been no subsequent events like that in my life and although I returned to the spot several nights running in the hopes of seeing it again I have no lasting extremist or OCD problems associated with having seen one. I would like to be able to say that I have a "belief system" associated with it but how can I? The only belief I have is that I saw something I can't explain.

I had to go on living because "they" didn't provide me with any thing other than a "glimpse".

But what a glimpse...

Oh my "god" THANK YOU!!!

I got up this morning, saw this thread title. I clicked it, preparing to see someone being killed by a "ufo"...

I got something way better, a taste of old ATS!!!

THANK YOU!!!

I really wish I had some more to add, but unfortunatly I do not. I just hope this thread doesn't die, it has been a while since I had such a great read. (Did I mention thank you?)

--Hold on, I'm getting a message from Clarion:

"$49.95 a night and free WiFi"
(WOW!!!)

reply to post by intrptr


Sadly, I have seen odd-things in the sky, but never that undeniable orb that
made me a convert... I wait and I watch, but no cupie-doll yet!

How did you see the world after this glimpse? Is it different from before your
experience?

reply to post by Kandinsky


Hello Kandinsky,

very interesting topic.
Personally I don't think that Ufology is the culprit here, but a certain mental condition that makes some people obsessive.

reply to post by Kandinsky


Thank you Kadinsky!

Too often are people too readily accepting of the same old regurgitated nonsense perpetuated by psychological susceptibility to wishful thinking and believing others who happen to talk a kind of talk as well as making promises they 'like',

The end of the world is Nigh!
The end of the world has been nigh for one reason or another in every single generation of man since the dawn of man.
It's like mankind is programmed to expect and even on some level crave an apocalypse.
The only 'ends' we seem to see, however, are those brought about by the evils of mankind itself, or some localized natural disaster that while seeming formidable and significant locally, is of no huge significance globally.

I'm suprised some of the more prevalent ATS member purveyors of light entity crystal vibrational beings of pineal gland benevolence haven't popped in here yet to protest with hugs, and 2 dozen unrelated videos about angels, and bible quotes, channeled messages, and the sort.
Ah. perhaps soon.

reply to post by Druscilla


For many, being alone in this vast universe is something that makes them
cling to any flotsam that floats by, and it seems the 'whackier -the better!

Now, send me some money and I'll get you a good seat on the next passing
spaceship!

Above is said in jest, but as we have seen... I'm not too-far from the truth.

reply to post by A boy in a dress
It's not often I see you in this section so I'm glad the thread caught your eye. Yeah, we do seem to have a habit of looking to the heavens for answers. In a cultural sense, it's the action of looking away from our real problems and looking for solutions from that which might not be real - escapism!

reply to post by intrptr
Sounds interesting. In many ways, the cases I've related didn't have an awful lot to do with UFOs in the sense that none of the dead saw any of them.

Their beliefs were based on the channeled messages which claimed to come from folk amongst the stars. Whether these messages were hoaxed or created by their subconscious is impossible to know as long as they never confess or trip up. When they *do* trip up (failed prophecies etc), they always deflect enquiry and offer new reasons.

Of course, it's also impossible to know if such messages come from somewhere else entirely. Part of my argument is that, whatever the source, they have been consistently inaccurate, wrong and negative.

I've seen a couple of genuine UFOs (in company) and they haven't changed my life at all. What they have done is allow me a margin of understanding when I read other reports. When others argue that *all* sightings are misperceptions and hoaxes...I know this isn't entirely true.

reply to post by adigregorio
No...thank you.

As soon as I posted it, I thought, 'This'll never be read...tl/dr. What a waste of time writing it.' So it's good to see some people have read *and* enjoyed it.

I wonder what UFOs might have had to do with the demise of Secretary James Forrestal and of Dr. James McDonald.

reply to post by Druscilla
There's no doubt at all that some members are part of the problems mentioned in the OP. In fact, one or two crossed my mind as I wrote it and recognised their references to 'school' and superior beings on higher densities.

I think I'd prefer my saviours to stand in front and be honest. Terrorising messages of extinction...or else...are unsophisticated for such allegedly superior beings. Bad behaviour patterns have rarely been cured by the threat, 'You will die!' We could ask the tobacco industry...

And when they make a date, it's considered rude to break it.

reply to post by Kandinsky


Cheers.
Yeah, I agree that we do tend to yearn 'above' when our lifestyles wobble slightly
and tucked-up in our beds, we yearn for something -or someone to come down
and change everything for the better.

The days of Betty and Barney Hill, the strange 'Thing' of Warminster and Billy
Meier's dangling craft will always make me wonder if it is nuts-and-bolts visits
or as another said, a thought-process problem.

reply to post by A boy in a dress
Well there's no saying it can't be both? People misidentify and lie to their heart's content every day of the week. This doesn't mean that some of them don't also have experiences that fall *outside* of our expectations.

These subjects require a least some tolerance for ambiguity and the extremists of all sides don't have the capacity to understand that.

reply to post by Kandinsky


Sorry for the delay.
I agree, just when we think we've got a handle on this thing called
life, a curve-ball is thrown and we feel we're back to square-one.
Half a century of being here and I can testify to that!!

When an experience is related and the witness does attempt to
provide an explanation or reveals the way they saw the event, then I
don't have a problem with that.
It's how we're built, we need our 'Logic-ciruits' to tell us we're okay.

It's when the witness begins the 'Oh... and I'm involved in a BIG way
and the Space-people promised to come back... to me especially'
Then I roll my eyes and sigh.

Originally posted by Kandinsky
reply to post by stirling

 

Yeah, I know and I could've added Kinross and Valentich too.

I wasn't really aiming at genuine UFOs, but more the belief-systems that go with the subject and the phenomena. There's a history here that is dark and unhealthy and we all go exploring it at our own peril!

I travel the 'blogosphere' and there's plenty of evidence that some folk lose their way in this field.

Here is a very interesting account of a man from Vancouver Island who's disappearance was linked to his obsession with UFOs.

Granger Taylor's disappearance