September 1992 ...

Stand By for Alabama Neptune Column! STAND BY!

Are UFO believers "crazy"? One of the typical charges leveled against those who profess a belief that the UFO situation is real, or worth investigation, or who make claims of paranormal experiences or "evidence", is that said person suffers from mental abberations ranging from a "fantasy prone personality" to "temporal lobe epilepsy" to "paranoid schizophrenia with delusions of grandeur". Skeptics, or "debunkers" as they are known in the UFO community, are often quick to point to psychological explanations, rather than leave their academic armchairs and actually conduct investigations into what those who have taken the time to seriously research realize may become the most important issue of the twenty-first century.

The history of UFO's in the public mind has certainly had its share of "kooks". In the mid-forties Ray Palmer, the publisher of the science fiction pulp magazine "Amazing Stories", printed stories from a man named Richard Shaver exposing hitherto secret revelations of a vast underground advanced civilization, the remnant of ancient colonists from another world who fled the destructive effects of our sun's rays. Those left behind degenerated into demonic figures Shaver dubbed "Deros", who used telepathy rays to control the minds of surface humans for their own twisted amusement, and were responsible for the appearance of what would later be dubbed UFO's.

The aforementioned magazine's circulation soared in response. Interestingly, many readers came forward to claim that Shaver was correct, that they too had experienced bizarre encounters with "Deros", and their "good guy" counterparts the "Teros".

Psychoanalysis pioneer and controversial scientist Wilhelm Reich has often been accused of various mental illnesses later in his life. Claiming to have discovered "Orgone Life Energy", he was imprisoned as a medical quack by the U.S. FDA for distributing a simple box he claimed accumulated "orgone". He also invented a device he called a "cloudbuster", which directed orgone in the atmosphere to control the weather. During an expedition to Arizona to prove to the government that orgone was real, by using the cloudbuster to bring rain to the desert, he claimed to have used his device to disrupt UFO craft he observed hovering over his test area.

There are abundant examples of disturbed-seeming behavior in UFO history. The names Albert Bender, Howard Menger, George Adamski and Sammy Scrimbird are familiar to many UFO buffs. Even today, social and psychological confusion seems to go hand in hand with prolonged involvement with the UFO scene. Recent channeled "Hatonn" predictions falsely warning about Earth travelling through a "photon ring" that would cause mass blindness are a current example of the delusion and manipulation that are still rampant, amid sincere efforts to understand this vital situation.

What is going on here? What is it about UFO's that has such a powerful, even damaging, effect on the human mind? And why are even psychiatrists who are not "believers" beginning to take the trauma associated with the abduction experience seriously? The answer to these questions could be deeply disturbing! Proceed with caution!