Tag: Jacques Vallée

Analysis & Implications Posted on

2015: The Magonia Problem

by David Halperin One day not long after the year 800, Agobard, archbishop of Lyon, found himself in exactly the right place to stop a lynching. Lucky thing for three men and one woman, who were said to have fallen from ships that sailed through the sky. Vis-à-vis the aerial ships, Agobard was what we’d now call a “debunker.” If he were alive today, he’d probably be in CSICOP. Or maybe not: the foundation of his skepticism was that the popular beliefs he devoted himself to debunking were contrary to Holy Scripture. But let Agobard tell the story: But we have seen and heard of many people overcome with so much foolishness, made crazy by so much stupidity, that they believe and say that […] Read More

Physical Evidence Posted on

2015: When Rod Serling and Jacques Vallee Made a UFO Film

I’d like to start today by briefly noting that there is a new interview with longtime fringe figure John Anthony West, 82, in New Dawn magazine. In it, West goes through his usual litany of fringe claims and his worship of occultist R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz and self-actualization mystic George Gurdjieff, but what is interesting is that both he and the interviewer all but concede that their interest in the ancient past and esoteric wisdom has less to do with finding the truth about prehistoric and early historic belief systems and more to do with their conviction that “Darwinism” is wrong, that capitalists and scientists are stripping life of its spiritual meaning, and that the wealthy elite is making life difficult for the […] Read More

William Cooper Exhibit Posted on

1995: William Cooper Exhibit

(Excerpted from a slightly different version of a chapter in Kooks: A Guide to the Outer Limits of Human Belief) “If the evidence doesn’t seem to fit a particular conspiracy theory, just create a bigger conspiracy theory.” — Robert D. Hicks, In Pursuit of Satan “I am still searching for the truth. I firmly believe that this book is closer to the truth than anything ever previously written.” —William Cooper, Behold a Pale Horse Conspiracy theories are like black holes; they explain everything, sucking in facts the way black holes suck in the matter. And, like black holes, each conspiracy theory is a portal to another universe that paradoxically resides within our own. Everything you’ve ever known or experienced, no matter how “meaningless,” once […] Read More

Govt. & Scientific UFO Studies Posted on

How to Build a Flying Saucer After So Many Amateurs Have Failed

An essay in Speculative Engineering by T. B. Pawlicki At the end of the nineteenth century, the most distinguished scientists and engineers declared that no known combination of materials and locomotion could be assembled into a practical flying machine. Fifty years later another generation of distinguished scientists and engineers declared that it was technologically infeasible for a rocket ship to reach the moon. Nevertheless, men were getting off the ground and out into space even while these words were uttered. In the last half of the twentieth century, when technology is advancing faster than reports can reach the public, it is fashionable to hold the pronouncements of yesterday’s experts to ridicule. But there is something anomalous about the consistency with which eminent authorities fail to recognize technological advances […] Read More

Project Bluebook Posted on

1992: A missing Pentacle

The so-called “Pentacle Memorandum” convinced UFO researcher Jacques Vallee that the US government had been toying with the official UFO investigations and that these were a front for something else… if not something more sinister. Philip Coppens Jacques Vallee & Allen Hynek In Forbidden Science (1992), Jacques Vallee, who was the inspiration for one of the main characters in Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, reports how in 1967 he found Allen Hynek’s UFO files to be in serious disarray. On Sunday, June 18, 1967, Vallee tried to restore some order in the files and “found a letter which is especially remarkable because of the new light it throws on the key period of the Robertson Panel and of Report #14”. This was the […] Read More

Dr. J. Allen Hynek Posted on

The Hynek Classification System

Witnesses to UFOs report many different shapes and sizes. From discs to cigars to triangles and almost anything you could imagine. Despite the varied shapes and sizes, researchers have tried to organize these sightings into neat little boxes. In reality, this can’t be done. However, there have been two systems developed which are as close as we can get to categorizing sighting reports. One is the Jacques Vallee system, which is quite extensive. The other is the Dr. J. Allen Hynek system, which is by far the most widely used, and from which the term, “close encounters” was coined. According to Dr. Hynek: This is the traditional method of describing an event as a distant or close encounter of the first, second, or third […] Read More

Analysis & Implications Posted on

Jacques Vallee Discusses UFO Control System

Dr. Jacques Vallee, a French-American computer specialist with a background in astrophysics, once served as a consultant to NASA’s Mars Map project. Jacques Vallee is one of ufology’s major figures – and also its most original thinker. Vallee, who holds a master’s degree in astrophysics and a Ph.D. in computer science from Northwestern University, was an early scientific proponent of the theory that UFOs are extraterrestrial spaceships. His first book, Anatomy of a Phenomenon (Henry Regnery, 1965), argued eloquently that “through UFO activity … the contours of an amazingly complex intelligent life beyond the earth can already be discerned.” In Challenge to Science – The UFO Enigma (Regnery, 1966) he and Janine Vallee (who is a psychologist by training, with a master’s degree from […] Read More

Jacques Vallee Interview Posted on

Heretic Among Heretics: Jacques Vallee Interview

Conspire.com PART 1 Jacques Vallee hesitated before agreeing to be interviewed about the subject for which he’s most famous: UFOs. It’s not that he’s reluctant to discuss the topic or tussle with the skeptics. After all, he’s written close to a dozen books on UFOs, several of them best-sellers, analyzing a notoriously ethereal subject as a hard-headed physical scientist, folklorist, and sociologist. He believes there is more than enough solid evidence to make a compelling case for the existence of UFOs, and he doesn’t shy away from honest debate. It’s the hard-core believers who give Vallee pause. Anyone who has observed the semi-academic cockpit known as “UFOlogy” knows that close encounters of the UFO expert kind shed little light and much heat, dogma and […] Read More