Aerial Anomalies - Articles - Zimbio

UFOs Will Crash, Part III

Sun, 11 Jun 2007 21:38:43 GMT

posted by MikeSmith

The view is of a rolling desert plain—shabby with yellow grass and sagebrush and radiant beneath a purple, cloudless sky. Through this sky, a white, oval-shaped object plummets diagonally toward the ground, flashing and glowing, careening toward the earth at an estimated speed of 200 to 300 miles per hour.

Subtly, suddenly, the angle of the object’s descent seems to change, as if trying to save itself from crashing, but the ground rises to meet it, and the object bounces, skips left across the desert, passes a rank of wooden poles, and ultimately hits the ground again, this time exploding in a shower of fiery debris. As if expecting it, a video camera captures the entire event, a camera that seems to have been placed on a tripod ahead of time and that appears to be manned by someone able to watch the event without surprise—panning smoothly to the left along the course of the crashing object and carefully framing its every motion.

Since then, this footage has swept across the Internet, and the majority of people familiar with the video now believe it to have been filmed somewhere around southern New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range, sometime in 1996 or early 1997—and many of those believe it to be the first recorded footage of an extraterrestrial UFO crash.

For the last two columns—columns that can be read by clicking here and here, respectively—"My Strange New Mexico" has been working to find some answers about this footage, and in the last installment learned that perhaps one of the first people to show this video to the public was a well-known UFO researcher named Ted Loman—an eye patch-wearing television host who his friend Peter Gersten claimed may have manufactured the video as a visual aid for a documentary. At the time, Loman was unavailable for comment, but an online video clip showed him presenting the footage after saying that he had gotten the clip from controversial Mexican UFOlogist Jaime Maussan.

Just this week, “My Strange New Mexico” finally spoke with Loman, from Loman’s home in northern Idaho.

“Peter G. is a close friend, and not knowing where I got the infamous lead-in video thought I had [created it using] computer graphics,” Loman said. “Not true. At first I thought it was a flying saucer…but now I think it isn’t of a UFO—it’s a missile being tested.”

Loman elaborated on this view by citing the very orderly and non-spontaneous manner in which this footage seems to have been recorded.

“It was almost as if it was staged,” Loman said. “Someone had to know where to put the camera at the right time…. But I don’t even care if it was a missile. It looked provocative.”

Loman recalls that the copy of the video that he first saw almost ten years ago seemed to have been a copy of a copy of a copy of something that had originally been shot on film.

“I got it from Jaime [Maussan] in the late-1990s,” Loman said. “I don’t even remember where he said he got it from. He was kind of secretive about where he got it—very hush-hush.”

More than one UFO website has stated that this video was shown at the 1997 Australian International UFO Symposium. Sheryl Gottschall, a noted Australian UFOlogist, has confirmed that yes, the film was shown there, and Glennys MacKay—well-known as a psychic and a healer, and the organizer of that symposium—said that the film was submitted to them from author Jonathan Eisen of Auckland, New Zealand. She also recalled hearing that the footage was shot not in New Mexico, but at Pine Gap—or, as it’s more formally known, Joint Defense Facility Pine Gap—a central Australia satellite tracking facility.

Photos of the desert land around Pine Gap do look similar to the terrain of southern New Mexico, and the facility seems to be as shrouded in lore and conspiracy as is America’s own Area 51. Fringe researchers John Lear and William Cooper claim that Pine Gap is home to a race of humanoid dinosaurs that evolved in secret alongside of humanity, and wrote that these “neo-saurs” work on experiments in tunnels up to five miles below Pine Gap; Lear and Cooper also suggest that these saurian creatures are working with the U.S. Government in the top-secret underground base rumored to be beneath Dulce, New Mexico, in the northern part of the state. The most interesting aspect of this footage possibly coming from Pine Gap, however, is the following information by a researcher named Jimmy Guieu: “Several times, locals have seen white disks about thirty feet in diameter in the process of being unloaded from large U.S. cargo planes at the airports serving Pine Gap”—white disks perhaps like the one in the video....

Jonathan Eisen, who submitted the video to the Australian symposium, is the editor of UNCENSORED magazine, a New Zealand-based publication that specializes in obscure news and theories that the mainstream media usually won’t cover. Eisen recalled showing the video as part of the International UFO Symposium, in March of 1997, in Auckland, New Zealand; later in 1997 he took the video to Brisbane, Australia, for the UFO symposium there, and as a result of his efforts it was later shown on television in Australia, New Zealand, and England.

A friend of Eisen’s, Antony “Ant” Davison, was working at the time as a Graphic Workstation Administrator for TVNZ, New Zealand’s public broadcasting network, and took the time in early-1997 to have the footage fully analyzed. Davison even used his technical know-how to adapt the film into 3-D.

“I first ‘image-steadied’ the footage so the UFO was always center of screen, and doubled the duration so I had frames consisting of one field only,” Davison said. “Then I took two frames (maybe one or two frames apart) and interlaced them, thus creating a video of stereoscopic images. The video was noisy VHS, but when converted to stereoscopic movie, it is quite clear the UFO is spinning around and around on its own axis (not a cruise missile), clips the ground along a small portion of its circumference, and dust clouds appeared to travel towards the direction of the camera, then it recovers, until it crashes again and explodes.”

Additional analysis done on the video by CSETI, the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence, revealed that, “We determined that it was an experimental, classified craft being tested, most likely by the U.S. Department of Defense.”

Davison also added that his analysis showed that the footage had not had any computer-generated images added to it, except for at the footage’s very beginning, which featured a sort of fade-in from a completely white screen and which he discovered had originally been added for “Third Millenium,” a Spanish-language TV show hosted by Mexican journalist Jaime Maussan.

Maussan! Again!

“I received the ‘crash’ video from Jaime [Maussan] upon his arrival in New Zealand…,” Jonathan Eisen said. “[Maussan] said at the time that it arrived anonymously at his desk in Mexico City, and never found out who did it.”

And then there is Monte Marlin. Marlin represents White Sands Missile Range’s Public Affairs Office, and in a recent e-mail wrote, “Our optics branch identifies [this video] as an infrared shot of a Navy missile test."

"Here at White Sands Missile Range, our primary job is to conduct tests of weapons systems under development and collect the data from these tests, including high-speed and infrared optics. To those not in our business, some of this footage might be misconstrued.”

Added Marlin: “ I do not have any specific information on this test or its date. I am fairly confident that it is from White Sands.”

White Sands Missile Range is enormous—almost 3,200 square miles—approximately three times larger than the state of Rhode Island. Just about anyone having anything to do with national defense has tested weapons and aircraft there—the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, even NASA—as have certain foreign goverments allied with our own. This desert range is so vast and has hosted tests for so long, through such a list of agencies, with such secrecy, that finding the precise location of our video’s alleged test would be very difficult, if not almost impossible.

“Optics (video and still) imagery is taken for many tests,” Marlin wrote. “It's one of the best forms of data. In most cases, video is not released—it is intended for test purposes. It helps us evaluate what worked or what did not work during the test. Sometimes, depending upon the program, short clips will be made releasable to be used in Department of Defense videos or for news media use.”

It seems to be very possible that this video does show a White Sands test, especially since Marlin has been able to account for and explain many of the details in this video—details such as the wooden utility poles that the object passes as it crashes.

“There are many, many launch areas and instrumentation sites on this enormous missile range,” wrote Marlin. “It is not uncommon to see poles in video footage. The poles may carry cabling related to the test or some poles have markings so that when we look at the footage, we can measure time/space distance.”

If this video does show some sort of test, as may be the case, there are still many mysteries that surround it. For example, what exactly is being tested here? If the weapon or craft in question does rotate like a sort of giant Frisbee, as Antony Davison’s analysis suggests it might, then what kind of missile could that be? Is the technology shown here merely classified stuff from the minds of earthly engineers, or could it maybe have come from somewhere else? We are, after all, living in a state in which many people claim that much of our modern technology has developed from the analysis of a crashed alien spacecraft. The main question still unanswered though is where did Jaime Maussan get this tape? And if someone really did leave it on his desk, who?

“A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking,” wrote twentieth-century humorist Arthur McBride Bloch, and at this point, “My Strange New Mexico” feels it can safely conclude the following: this video shows an intriguing test of something being tested at White Sands, something classifed, something most people probably won’t know about for another decade, if ever. The film was most likely made as part of an official test but was then discovered and promoted—perhaps without fully disclosing everything known about it—as the crash of an extraterrestrial craft. Much of this promotion was done by Jaime Maussan—who obtained the footage from someone, somehow, sometime around early 1997—and who saw to it that the footage was seen around the world, even—according to Joseph Capp, a "UFO witnesses advocate"—selling it at conferences on DVD.

Maussan himself has remained unavailable for comment on this subject, as has his assistant Daniel Muñoz, despite countless attempts to contact them both. No matter what they might have to say on this topic though, it's most likely that far too much contradictory information will remain for us to draw any easy conclusions on this mysterious video—and maybe that’s all right.

Maybe the mystery is more interesting than the truth. Maybe we should just enjoy this video for all the possibilities it implies—like the possibility of other inhabited worlds and of their very worst drivers coming to visit.

Maybe. Maybe...but Mr. Maussan: we’d still like to talk with you.

***

Be sure to check out Issue 16 of Five Magazine, for a full-page article on “My Strange New Mexico.”

And, have a say regarding future topics of "My Strange New Mexico" by taking the one-question poll posted right here.

UFOs Will Crash, Part II

Wed, 10 May 2007 20:43:19 GMT

posted by MikeSmith

Last week, in “My Strange New Mexico,” we examined a mysterious film that some believe shows the crash of a UFO in the desert of south-central New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range, in 1997. The film depicts a white, football-shaped craft as it plummets from the sky, skips violently across the ground, and explodes. (Click the highlighted link above to read the previous installment of this story.)

Over fifteen or so noiseless seconds, this intriguing footage plays out with no commentary, no captions, and no known filmmaker willing to take credit for it. Where it really came from, who shot it, or even when it was first viewed, remains uncertain.

In the last few days, after the column about this unusual film appeared in print and online, a number of interesting e-mails have arrived at the top-secret “My Strange New Mexico” lair, printed and delivered, of course, by a trained staff of flightless five-foot-tall owls.

One such letter, from someone calling himself Light Eye, read simply, “This video was made by Ted Loman. It’s not a UFO crash.”

Another—by Peter Gersten, former Director of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS)—said, “Ted Loman produced the video on UFO crashes and created the opening scene of the skipping UFO.”

Ted Loman is a well-known UFO researcher. In 1973, Loman became convinced he needed to travel to a certain mountain in Baja, Mexico, where aliens were going to land, pick him up, and take him back to his home planet. His family forced him to go to a psychiatrist instead, and for the most part he filed the incident away in his mind for around seventeen years. Then, in 1989, he suffered a severe injury while melting silver in a laboratory—an injury that cost him his sight in his left eye, forced him to don a pirate-style eye patch, and gave his father the opportunity to read to him about UFOs and their supposed role in the universe. In 1991, Loman began hosting and producing a weekly cable access show in Tucson, Arizona, UFOAZ Talks, a live one-hour show that examined the reported presence of UFOs in the West.

In 1997, the show changed its name to Off the Record, and broadened its focus to include alternative medicine and ancient mysteries. Also in 1997, Loman interviewed a group known as “Total Overcomers, One Step Beyond Human”—or, as the world would soon come to know them, the Heaven’s Gate cult. When thirty-eight members of that cult committed mass suicide sometime later, believing their souls would soon be ascending into space to join Jesus Christ on a spaceship hidden behind the then-visible Comet Hale-Bopp, Loman and his footage of the cult became much in demand, appearing on shows ranging from Geraldo! to Larry King Live. In 1997, the show—by then widely syndicated—changed its name to Off the Record, and in 2002, Off the Record went off the air. Loman moved to northern Idaho, and there he finished work on a documentary about UFO crashes entitled It Fell From the Sky. The footage of the White Sands appeared as the opening scene of that hard-to-find 2000 documentary.

Loman is currently on vacation in Mexico, and unavailable for comment, but Peter Gersten—who served with Loman on CAUS’s board of directors—said, “The only thing that isn’t real about [It Fell From the Sky] is that opening scene. That is not real. …I don’t remember if it was actually CGI or some sort of computer enhancement.”

In an undated online clip from UFO Connections, a Sacramento, California cable access show, Loman played the video of the crash as if it were something new, claiming he didn’t know when it was made and saying the footage had not been professionally analyzed.

Of the film, he said, “That came to me through Jaime Maussan. Right. And, uh, uh, I don’t know where Jaime got it. Well, I just don’t know where—it’s best to say I don’t know where Jaime got this. But, I, uh, I believe it to be at White Sands. But I cannot, and I will not, confirm or deny that it is, uh, I’ll leave it up to the viewers to, to, see it and watch it, and decide for themselves.”

This was followed by a cryptic and somewhat evasive exchange between Loman and Cynthia Siegel, the show’s host.

Siegel: “But if you thought it was a complete piece of junk you would not have brought it to the show.”

Loman: “It’s not…whatever it is, it’s fascinating.”

Siegel: “It is fascinating. The question is whether it’s actually a UFO.”

Loman: “No, I never raised that question.”

Siegel: “No?”

“I can tell you that [Loman] would not have made the film up as a visual aid for the show,” Jilaen Sherwood, an artist who has worked with Loman, said. “I do know Ted very well and if he mentioned on the show that he got this footage from Jaime, then he probably did.”

This, unfortunately, hardly improves the film’s credibility. Jaime Maussan is a popular Mexican television host, the self-proclaimed “Mike Wallace of Mexico,” with a reputation as an overeager and perhaps recklessly naive promoter of notorious UFO hoaxes. Many of the videos featured on his website are the sort of alleged UFO footage that almost anyone with a trash can lid and a camcorder could film, though others remain intriguing. He has promoted a joke filmed by the Sci-Fi Channel as an actual sighting, promoted the idea of Comet Hale-Bopp hiding giant UFOs intent on evacuating the planet, repeatedly cited nonexistent evidence for numerous cases, and, for what it's worth, has been included in UFOWatchdog.com’s UFO Hall of Shame.

The film of the White Sands crash evidently came from either Maussan—the man who has inspired such online headlines as “Jaime Maussan: Damaging Serious UFOlogy One Hoax at a Time”—or it was made by Ted Loman for his documentary.

The absolute truth still remains to be learned, but—unless Loman tries and succeeds at a little interstellar hitchhiking while in Mexico—the truth will come out eventually, and the record will at last be set straight.

***

It seems Ted Loman did not make this video after all. Check out "UFOs Will Crash, Part III" for more information, just by clicking right here.

Do Hoaxers See UFOs?

Mon, 16 Jan 2007 20:51:00 GMT

posted by rifraft
Do Hoaxers See UFOs By Joseph Capp “no fancy stuff just me” UFO Media Matters deals with the witnesses who have experienced UFOs and related phenomenon. Many in the UFO community hate what hoaxers do. I agree they cloud the issues and even have hampered any real scientific approach. One of the most despised groups, of course, is the “Crop Circle Makers”. These people go out in the field and

PowerPoint To The People: UFO Are Real!

Fri, 10 Feb 2007 19:07:00 GMT

posted by rifraft
Has this scientist proved UFOs exist? *The Scientist: Bruce Cornet PH. D.(Paleontology/Paleobiology)former Deputy Administrator of the National Institute of Discovery Science, a rigorously scientific study group. *The Field Research: Between 1992 and 1997 Bruce Cornet scientifically studied and documented Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) near Pine Bush, NY. Cornet documented the phenomenon

Welcome to our blog about Aerial Anomalies

Thu, 30 Jun 2006 23:43:13 GMT

posted by The_Zimbio_Team
This is our group blog, which is unique because any Zimbio member can post an entry to it. Some members blog about recent news and trends related to the portal topic, others recount relevant personal stories. You can also comment on and rate existing blog entries, to voice your opinion and to help the community identify which members and entries on the portal are must-reads. Got an interesting idea or story to share with other members of this portal? Well, then put on your journalist's cap and add your own blog entry!