May 1993 ...

Heeeeeere's Alabama ..... !!!!!!

The hit movie "Fire In the Sky", based on the astonishing story of abductee Travis Walton, has triggered YET ANOTHER WAVE of public interest in the mysterious "UFO" problem which has puzzled mankind for over forty years. Once again, we are treated to the sight of a parade of believers, debunkers, and even legitimate experts, moving across our television screens, speaking past each other about the reality or unreality of UNKNOWN AERIAL CRAFT and SHOCKING ABDUCTION SITUATIONS.

How are average persons, seated in front of their television sets, supposed to judge the relative merits of these arguments, and gauge the believability of the so-called evidence either way? What criteria should one who has not spent years in the UFO field use to determine whether or not we are being visited by beings of SEEMINGLY UNSTOPPABLE SUPERIORITY engaged in NIGHTMARISH MIND-DISRUPTING ACTIVITIES that could change our understanding of the universe we live in forever?

The Travis Walton story is certainly a compelling one. A group of young men on a logging expedition have their lives turned upside down when one of them is swept away by an UNKNOWN FORCE. They are accused of having done away with Travis Walton, who shows up five days later, telling a fantastic tale of being held captive by alien beings, examined, and even taken to a strange military base where ALIENS AND HUMANS INTERMINGLED.

All of the men have taken repeated polygraph tests indicating that they believe what they are saying. Polygraph experts claim that it's almost IMPOSSIBLE for them to ALL BE LYING. They have stuck by their story all these years, with remarkable consistency.

Is it good for UFO research to have these public discussions of abduction and related phenomena? On the one hand, victims of these traumatic experiences can be comforted knowing THEY ARE NOT ALONE, that there are others who have been levitated into futuristic spacecraft and had their persons violated in unspeakable ways, and then had their memories wiped out.

And on the other hand, the information pool serious researchers use to determine the veracity of these bizarre claims is CONTAMINATED each time one of these incidents is publicized via the media. How many reports were there of abduction and medical examination by large-eyed aliens before the well-known BETTY AND BARNEY HILL CASE in 1961 was given wide exposure via books and a subsequent TV movie? Now, reports similar to these are ALL THE PUBLIC HEARS ABOUT!

When will there be a movie made of the Cash-Landrum incident, where two women were seriously burned by an OUT-OF-CONTROL UFO being escorted by a squadron of UNMARKED HELICOPTERS? When will John A. Keel's "The MOTHMAN PROPHECIES" be turned into a mini-series? When will "Unsolved Mysteries" explain why a man named Simonton was given an ORDINARY BUCKWHEAT PANCAKE by aliens as "proof"?