Monday, August 11, 2014

The End of UFOs

As the news of the day pulsed along the once seemingly unthinkable
pathways of the information industry — boots on the ground in Gaza,
slide show updates on Mila Kunis’s pregnancy — adherents ofan
earlier future gathered at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Cherry Hill, New
Jersey. The occasion was the annual conference of the Mutual
Unidentified Flying Objects Network, which, in accordance with this
year’s theme, “UFOs and the Media,” was focused not on the ephemera of
the news cycle but rather on the eternalities of what several in
attendance called “the biggest single story in history,” i.e., the
existence of extraterrestrial life on Earth and the cover-up of that
presence by the United States government, the corporate structure, and
their oblivious and/or sold-out lackeys in the mainstream press.

Not that the old was out of place in this crowd. MUFON has been
around for 45 years and the average age of those who ponied up $239 for
the conference was way past that. Many of the presenters, most of them
long-established figures on the scene (Stanton Friedman, the 79-year-old
widely acknowledged dean of the field, had to cancel owing to a mild
heart attack) were equally venerable, as were most of the subjects they
discussed. Much talk focused on the genre’s greatest hits: the Betty and
Barney Hill abduction account (1961), the Lonnie Zamora/Socorro, New
Mexico sighting (1973), the Rendlesham Forest incident in the U.K.
(1980), and, of course, Roswell, circa 1947.

It made you wonder where, short of a landing on the White House lawn,
ufology could possibly go from here. Case in point was the presentation
of Steven Bassett, this year’s winner of the “Excellence in Ufology”
award (MUFON executive director Jan Harzan called it “the biggie’). The
first registered Washington lobbyist advocating the position that
humanity is not alone in the universe, Bassett organized last year’s
“Citizen’s Hearing” which enlisted several ex-congress people including
former Alaska Governor Mike Gravel to hear testimony on what is now
being called “exopolitics” so as to avoid being saddled by the ufology
brand. People like astronautEdgar Mitchell, who walked on the
moon, made the case for extraterrestrial visitation. The hope is that
the mock hearings would lead to the real thing, which, Bassett was
certain would “blow the lid off the Truth Embargo on the alien question
that has existed since Roswell.”

None of this, however, was a reason to close the books on flying
saucers. This would be impossible, since if you happened to have laid
eyes on something you sincerely believed to be a UFO, it tends to stick.
I will never be free of that cold winter’s night in 1989 when, along
with my wife, I saw a saucer-shaped object fly down the East River and
soar beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. The way the craft seemed to
coquettishly blink its lights as if to say, "even here, I appear, and
then disappear" told me, that against all rationality, this particular
interface with the ineffable was meant for me.These are the things you talk about with people like H. Dyke N. Spear
at UFO conferences. As George Knapp said, the subject matter does “tend
to attract those whose elevator does not got all the way to top,” but
you’ll never see Dyke Spear in a tinfoil hat. Past 80, he remained a man
of the world, still practicing divorce law in West Hartford,
Connecticut. Once he represented the famous featherweight boxing
champion Willie Pep. “It was like Willie’s fifth divorce,” Spear
related. “He said, relax, this is an easy case. Just give her five rooms
of furniture and a fur coat. That’s what they always get.” Asked
whether he took any abuse from friends and family about attending UFO
conferences, Dyke laughed. “What are they going to tell me, I don’t know
what I know?”

Fernando Garces-Soto, a wry, 60-ish Colombian-born music producer
from Miami and fellow witness, was taking it more personally. “I’m
spending a $1,000 to come to this. That’s a lot of money for the same
old stories. This rehash, and more rehash. Probably next year I’ll spend
another $1,000. What choice do I have?” Fernando exclaimed, finding the
existential humor of the situation. “I’m obsessed,” he sighed. “I’m all
messed up.”