REVIEW ARTICLE Ufology: What Have We Learned? - Society for ...

M. D. Swords
Fig. 22. Jennie Randles, often regarded as the UK's finest UFO researcher. (MUFON)
intensity (strangeness) in these cases: some seem like briefly entering an
abnormal zone and passing out; some seem like there is briefly an overlay of two
nearly-but-not-quite-identical realities, which then disjunct, and the percipient is
back walking or driving along their normal way; and some seem like (briefly)
the whole normal environment has faded away. One might object that all this is
"mental." If so, it is often multiwitnessed "mental" while driving a car (safely)
down the highway. It is also rather concretely-detailed, like the house or store or
railroad track that was, and now isn't, there. I would happily hand it over to Bob
Jahn and Dean Radin, but there are too many UFOs simultaneously flying about.
As Ed Ruppelt said in 1952, "Why don't the d things swim, so we could give
them to the Navy?"
The OZ Factor, that feeling that one has passed through a boundary layer into
some manipulated zone which includes mainly elements of our normal world but
other abnormal elements as well, could be a key to understanding much of the
highest strangeness involved with this phenomenon, if we could get a better
handle on it. Assuming that we don't, I cannot see a better candidate for that sort
of spatial manipulation and reality-overlay game-playing than the ETH. But,
I welcome your polite dissent.
Objection Type #6. These sorts of encounters have been going on for
millennia. They have been part of our culture and our planet's history for a very
long time.
To that I would respectfully respond: who says? I have read a very large
amount of "ancient astronaut" type material and find it extremely unconvincinglo3.
Biblical references (Ezekiel, Star of Bethlehem, Jacob's Ladder,
et al.) are huge deductive leaps, as well as Vimanas, the Quetzalcoatl Legend,
and Triptolemus. I have conversed many times with the awesomely well-read