Jun 28 2007
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The UFO “Repeaters” Phenomenon
Photo by Paul Trent - May 8, 1950, McMinnville, Oregon
Venerated UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek used to say that if a UFO case involved a witness who had experienced multiple sightings, this disparaged their credibility. What Hynek (and most other UFO researchers) didn’t want was ammunition for fundamentalist skeptics who associated “repeaters” with wide-eyed publicity-seeking wackos. Unfortunately, this overlooks some important facts and famous, well-supported cases.
Perhaps the most discussed (at least in the hardcore UFO field) is the Mc Minnville case of 1950. When it was discovered that the Trents had seen UFOs on at least two other occasions, some Ufologists became worried and the fundamentalist skeptics howled. Mrs. Trent said that she felt that they were fortunate to have a camera handy when a saucer appeared near their home. It also came to light that others in the area had also seen strange things flying about over McMinnville for months, but had not discussed this with outsiders. It was a classic “flap” situation.
Another famous case with “repeater” status was the Pascagoula event of October, 1973. One of the witnesses/ abductees, Charles Hickson described two other close encounter events that happened to him in the years following his harrowing night. One was witnessed along with other members of his family on a lonely stretch of road in rural Mississippi.
Many would be surprised to learn that Maurice Masse, who encountered small beings in a lavender field in Valensole, France in June of 1965 saw UFOs on multiple occasions. The sightings affected him such that some might be moved to categorize Monsieur Masse as a contactee. Investigators Aime Michel and Charles Bowen interviewed Masse in 1967. Tellingly, he said, “I know when they are about. On several occasions, something in me has told me ‘they aren’t far off,’ and then I actually have either seen something in the sky, or I have learned afterward from the newspapers that something had happened…that has happened to me several times.” Bowen went on to comment “What seems essential to him [Masse] is the mental relationship existing between these beings and men. But in him this realtionship is felt, rather like a religious concept.”
Bowen also remarked that Masse’s original encounter was in an open area that allowed the UFO occupants to see anyone who might approach and take evasive action very quickly, but that Masse was able to approach the beings to within a few meters before he was apparently paralyzed by some sort of device that one of the beings pointed at him. Bowen hypothesized that the event was premeditated by the ufonauts, as some sort of “theater” for the benefit of Masse. This certainly adds a surprising twist to the story, and to our view of the the phenomenon.
Perhaps what occasionally happens is that people are “marked” or affected in some way that attracts the phenomenon, or makes them more sensitive to it than others. In the case of contactees, the mere act of talking about UFO occupants and the subject in general, in a spiritual way, may have a similar effect. As I have mentioned before, some contactees may have had an initial sighting, which in their minds made it OK to make things up later. Perhaps some of them didn’t make up as much as we have thought. Some people by design, or accident, seem to turn into “strange attractors.”
Well-known abductee Travis Walton has to my knowledge not claimed any more weird episodes other than his 1975 encounter, strangely enough.
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June 28th, 2007 at 1:48 am
The classic Hynek UFO statement for me was “violation of logic is not proof.” I won’t go on one of my Pythagorean tirades but Hynek pretty much summed up the situation.
June 28th, 2007 at 11:31 am
Good post Greg. I’m a “repeater” myself–
and have always been anxious about that fact: does that make me less “credible” or more so? Or does it make a difference at all? It does make me think very, very carefully on what I’ve seen (I’ve since determined,for example, that many things were mundane, satelittles, etc.) but that still leaves me (and a handful of others close to me) with truly unexplained sightings. Throw in missing time episodes and some other life long weirdness, and you get classic weird UFO whatever, lol.
Dr. David Jacobs said at the McMinnville UFO fest that there isn’t any randomness to seemingly random, multiple or repeat sightings. I don’t know what to think o that, maybe, maybe not. But it’s interesting.
June 28th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
Drew,
Hynek was tired of people in the UFO community going from A to B to…Q. This still goes on, of course. He was looking for respectability, which eluded him in his lifetime, and the study of UFOs still hasn’t reached that point. Until the majority of the loudest researchers is quieted down, it never will.
June 28th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Regan,
Personally, I prefer to take each person individually. When they start talking about their personal relationship with beings from Zeta Reticuli, how the world will end in 2012 and how I HAVE to believe them, I shut down. There may be something there, but there is just too much noise present to be able to get to the core of the experience, if any.
From my point of view, Jacobs often does that A to B to Q thing I mentioned in the comment above. If he’s right, he’s going to have a hell of a time convincing anyone who can help his cause outside of the research community.
June 28th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Greg, I admire Jacobs for his dedication and tenacity, but I don’t agree with his take on the whole thing at all. I do think his comment on “repeat” witnesses is interesting.
I too have a big problem with witnesses who insist they have the truth, and they know what they know because the aliens told them so. No doubt something told them so, but what, and why, etc. — is the question.
As to my own experiences; some days I just say “oh hell, I don’t know! ” And I don’t. Except that, it’s something. Sorry, started to ramble there.
June 29th, 2007 at 4:26 am
Greg, even random events can happen twice to an individual. Throw in the fact that belief and experience might influence reality and repeat events might not really be rare (only rarely admitted).
June 29th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Nice post, very informative. My question is–do any of these people, “repeaters” (or just anyone who has had an encounter), do they all have something in common? Anything? I mean, is there any evidence that points to a reason the phenomena likes them so much? (If “likes” is the right term.) And is anyone looking into that?
~Y
June 29th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
m4ever,
Maybe if they happen twice or more, they’re not “random.” Let’s take things a step further. William Burroughs said something I always liked: “There is no such thing as coincidence.” What I take that to mean is the ultimate arbiter of what is “real” is the mind/ consciousness.
This is the same idea as “the observer affects the observed, and vice-versa.” At some point, we have to admit that the world is in our heads and not on artificial maps of reality that we have created.
So, in other words, I agree with you!
June 29th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
Yards,
Perhaps these people are preselected by some cosmic order of which we know little. I don’t know if anyone has looked into this. Of course, the fundamentalist skpetics would say that these are “fantasy-prone personalities,” which puts them in a convenient box to be ignored, but tells us nothing.
June 30th, 2007 at 10:11 am
I’m a “repeater”, but it’s by my choice rather than randomness. I’ve seen UFOs a number of times, but only because I was actively taking the time to look for them with binoculars and camera in hand. I don’t think it had anything to do with them choosing me to save the planet or to teach me the mysteries of the universe–in fact I doubt they even noticed me and certainly didn’t try to interact with me.
While some individuals have credential issues due to questionable mental status, intentions, or strange luck, there are some who have have had multiple sightings due to taking the time to actively look for UFOs in areas where they have repeatedly been reported by others. Some areas appear to have much more UFO traffic than others (which always makes me question whether these are simply man-made devices rather than from another source).
Good post!
June 30th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
OK Greg that makes sense with Hynek. But Vallee seemed to have a different take on Hynek especially after Vallee discovered that Bluebook appeared to be a cover-up for a CIA black-ops.
This research on alien abduction that you and Nick are doing reminds me too much of the self-help movement. It seems Bud Hopkins and John Mack helped promote people to have abduction as a charismatic identity movement. Some might even argue that the obesity epidemic is a similar expression of repressed anger at the extreme inequity of wealth in the U.S. At least people can flaunt something that can not be “proved” despite everyone’s attempt to try.
Slavoj Zizek understands this dynamic but he’s one of those trendy pomo radical Leftist Hegelian-Lacanian psychopolitical cultural analysts. He eschews the paranormal yet he embraces McDonald’s as some sort of existential post-apocalyptic fantasy.
Anyway I did a dialectial reversal on Hynek with the idea that violation of logic is proof because, as per Harry M. Collin’s “Lead to Gold” article — proof is dependent on technological context while logic is more powerful. For example Kurt Godel “proved” time-travel through logic alone — stating that people who time-travel would not want to change their future. This is in Rudy Rucker’s book “Infinity and the Mind.” Godel states: “That’s the power of logic.”
Logic and proof both operate by desire, defined by music ratios! But there can be no proof for an open system of asymmetric resonance which is inherently not contained by logic. UFOs violate logic and that’s why there real — because there can never be no proof.
http://tricksterbook.com understands this — parapsychologist George P. Hansen. Still I admire you and Nick doing a self-help mop-up job for Jacobs, Mack and Hopkins.
June 30th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
I just finished a piece for the Binnall of America site that’s related to this. (it’ll be up Monday) My husband has had a life long history of UFO stuff, like me, — before we ever met each other. And of course it continued after we met. So maybe there’s something there too; people with these experiences subconsciously gravitate towards each other? I guess there’s something to the idea we help create what we see/experience, etc. that gets into kind of New Age, mystical areas that the nuts and bolts researchers find frusrating. And I don’t blame them.
It’s all very interesting,as well as confusing!
July 1st, 2007 at 8:23 am
Perhaps having a life-changing anomalous experience (real or imagined) makes you more apt to interpret things in that vein.
July 1st, 2007 at 7:21 pm
I don’t think that having more than one sighting should automatically diminish one’s credibility.
It’s the people who claim along the lines that “all you have to do is look up” that set off red flags. I get the sense that people who see things all the time and claim that we can to just have a really low threshold for determining genuine anomolous phenomemon.