Terence Hines - Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

Can any nonextraordinary occurrence account for these simultaneous visual and radar reports? Klass (1981) demonstrates that the visual reports were due to a meteor and associated fireball “with a long, luminous tail of electrified air, followed by a smaller flaming fragment, also with a long tail, flying in trail behind” (p. 315). The fireball was moving from east to west and was the source of a large number of reports from all over the Iowa-Illinois-Missouri area. Thus, the actual object was more than one hundred miles north of the reporting aircraft. Yet pilots in all three aircraft mistakenly perceived the object as extremely near—in two cases only hundreds of feet away.

But what about the radar report of two unidentified targets? Amusingly, it turns out that the targets were two of the aircraft that reported the UFOs in the first place. In 1969 airport radar did not automatically identify planes that appeared on the screen. The operator had to place a written note next to the screen identifying each “blip.” Aircraft that were passing over rather than landing at a particular airport were not honored with such a written identification. None of the three aircraft that reported the UFOs was landing at St. Louis. Thus, when the first aircraft reported seeing the UFOs, the tower at St. Louis correctly reported that there were two “unidentified” targets in the area. There were—the two other aircraft that, moments later, also reported the UFOs. Modern airport radars now automatically identify all aircraft in their area by picking up a special signal from each aircraft’s transponder. Klass (1984–85) has noted that, as radars have become more sophisticated at correctly identifying aircraft and filtering out sources of error, the number of radar UFO reports has dropped almost to zero. Of course, if UFOs were real, one would expect the increased sophistication and sensitivity of modern radar to increase the number of UFOs seen on radar. By the 1990s the continued advances in radar technology had reduced the number of UFOs seen on radar esentially to zero. This at the same time that, as will be seen in the next chapter, UFOs were claimed to be swooping down left and right and kidnapping people.

A most frightening CE I took place on April 17, 1966. Two policemen chased a UFO at high speed for about sixty-five miles from eastern Ohio into western Pennsylvania, between 5 A.M. and 6 A.M. (Sheaffer 1981, chap. 19). This case is a classic demonstration of how a commonplace object, such as Venus in the dawn sky, can be misidentified as a UFO and endowed with the ability to move under intelligent control, creating the belief on the part of trained observers that they are witnessing something outside the realm of normal explanation. The most astonishing thing about this UFO, from the police officers’ point of view, was that it appeared to be “teasing” them. When they first saw the object, it was stationary in the sky. When they got into their cruiser and slowly moved toward it, it slowly moved away. When they increased their speed, the UFO increased its speed. When they slowed down, it slowed down, always keeping a constant distance from them. This is exactly the type of behavior that can convince UFO witnesses that the object is “under intelligent control”—it seems to be pacing them and responding to their own movements in a purposeful manner. This type of behavior is also characteristic of celestial bodies. The moon, for example, seems to pace a car as the car drives along a road at night. This happens because the moon is so far away that the movement of the car produces no change in the perceived position of the moon. It is obvious to adult observers that the moon is not really following the car, although children are often fooled by this illusion. The situation is much the same for an object such as the planet Venus. Venus is much too far away to change its position perceptibly as an automobile moves. However, Venus lacks the obvious visual features that make the moon so easy to identify. Venus is little more than a very bright, steady light in the sky. Further, the lack of visual features on Venus—such as the patterns of craters that exist on the moon—means an observer has no way to correctly judge the size of the object. Such size judgments are especially difficult at dawn when the stars are no longer visible. Venus may then be the only object visible in the sky. This situation provides none of the usual cues that permit the brain to calculate how large and how far away an object is. The object could be something the size of an aircraft less than a mile away, or it could be something very large, but much farther away. When the apparent motion of the object following the car is added, the illusion that it is an object the size of an aircraft and that it is deliberately “following” the observer is frequently very powerful.

This is exactly what happened in the case of the two policemen. During the entire hour-long chase, although the officers’ attention was riveted to the sky and the UFO they were chasing, they never once saw Venus. Further, the position of the UFO that they reported is the same as the position Venus occupied that morning. As dawn came on, Venus rose higher in the sky, and the UFO was reported to do the same. Finally, as the sun brightened, Venus faded from view—as did the UFO. A few moments later, the UFO was reported to reappear, but to have dropped about ten degrees in altitude. It then rose slowly. Sheaffer (1981) identifies this second object as a research balloon because the object’s behavior as reported by the officers is just what one would expect of such a balloon.

As the chase progressed, a second police car joined. Now, if two police cars really were chasing a large UFO only hundreds of feet above the road, one might reasonably expect that other independent witnesses would have seen the same object. In fact, the chase was twice slowed by early morning traffic. Yet none of the hundreds of people who saw the speeding police cars reported seeing the UFO they were chasing.

Although it might initially seem ridiculous to claim that an object like Venus could be mistaken for a large spacecraft that chased an automobile, this case clearly shows that such gross misidentification is possible. It also shows that people can and will attribute apparent movement to “intelligent control” when no such control exists.

Hendry (1979) has provided even more examples of the unreliability of witnesses’ reports—witnesses who are sane, sober individuals who have no reason to lie about what they saw—or, to be more precise, what they think they saw. Another source of false, but very impressive, UFO reports is advertising aircraft. These are small, usually single-engine, aircraft that carry beneath them an array of small lights that can spell out an advertising message. For obvious reasons, these aircraft fly only after dusk and at night. If one sees such an aircraft from any vantage point other than directly underneath, it may be very difficult to read the message. On a dark night it may be almost impossible to see the aircraft itself. One is left with an ambiguous visual stimulus—a bunch of disembodied lights in the sky—that is virtually guaranteed to result in UFO reports. Shown in figure 12 are drawings made by people who reported seeing UFOs. All these UFOs have been positively identified as advertising aircraft, yet look at the additions the witnesses have made to the known stimulus of a more or less random set of lights in the sky. All the objects are more or less saucer-shaped, all have some sort of windows, many have some sort of device on top (propellers in one case!). In all cases the perception is vastly more elaborate and detailed than was the actual stimulus. Again, it must be emphasized that these witnesses were not consciously “making up” their reports. Rather, the knowledge they had about what a UFO, or “flying saucer,” ought to look like greatly influenced the way their brains interpreted the ambiguous stimulus of lights seen in the night sky.