Software Tools for the UFO Field Investigator

A Field Investigator cannot function without a computer. In the field a smart phone has become almost as indispensable. These devices are expensive enough by themselves but when you look at the prices of some of the programs or apps you need the cost can seem a little steep. Fortunately there is a lot of software out there that's highly useful and either free or dirt cheap that's available for any device.

No PC or Mac can be without a high functioning word processor. Ideally you need a complete office suite that also has a database, a spreadsheet, and a slideshow presentation program. The first choice for most people is Microsoft Office, but it's expensive. The alternative is Open Office by Apache. This is a full office suite with all of these features and all of the capabilities of the Microsoft suite. I've been doing all of my writing on Open Office Writer for years. My wife keeps track of our household budget on Calc, and if you have ever seen me give a presentation at a meeting I was using Open Office Impress for the slideshow. In addition there is Draw and Database. If there's something that Micro Office has that Open Office hasn't, I can't find it. This complete suite is free. Just go to the website and download it.

Open Office is an open source program. Before downloading it, you might want to thoroughly read the official web site to find the answers to any questions you might have.

https://www.openoffice.org/

In UFO investigation a planetarium program is essential. Your case might be solved if you can identify a satellite, planet or comet that was in that area of the sky when the sighting occurred. As an amateur astronomer I've had several such programs over the years to find and identify stars and galaxies, and the price of some of them set me back a bit. Stellarium however is free. This is a richly detailed night sky observers sky chart and catalog that can show you any astronomical event at any time in history. If you have a computer driven telescope it will aim it for you. It will identify any star. (You didn't think I memorized all those stars, did you?)

This program is so highly regarded that MUFON has a link to it on the main MUFON website. Like Open Office, it's entirely free. I can't say “free” enough here.

Stellarium is also available for Android and Apple smart phones. However for this there is a charge. It's under three bucks. Look for it on the Play Store or the App Store. The handheld version allows you to point your phone at the part of the sky where your object in question is and identify with its star chart all the stars, planets, and satellites in that spot. And you can take it with you. Not only is this program portable, it's on a device you're going to take with you anyway. You'll never forget it! This is a big download. Be sure there's room on your phone.

http://www.stellarium.org/

Another source of information on satellite activity is the venerable Heavens Above. This is a web page that offers information on the locations and times that most man-made orbiting objects can be seen. There is also a free app for Android but if you have Stellarium running you may feel that this one is redundant.

http://www.heavens-above.com/

Google Earth is as useful on the ground as Stellarium is in the sky. It will allow you to aerially observe the terrain involved with your case, give you exact latitude and longitude of your sighting, required in a CMS report, and allow you to plot your cases on a map. A ground level view is now included. It allows you to spot structures and places of interest that might have a bearing on your case an determine their precise location. For example, I've had several cases in the Fountain Square area of Indianapolis. It's important to note in each case that the Indianapolis Downtown Heliport is only 1.06 miles NNW of this neighborhood. After a mile, most helicopters are just gaining altitude.

And if you want to check out Area 51 on Google Earth search for “Groom Lake.”

Google Earth is available free for PC, Mac, Linux, Android, and I-Phone.

https://www.google.com/earth/

Strictly for phones is a tool kit called Multi Measures. Every smart phone has an accelerometer, a GPS receiver, a magnetometer, a barometer, a thermometer, a pedometer, a gyroscope, a light sensor, a microphone, and a proximity sensor, Some high end phones have radiation detectors and heart rate monitors. Multi Measures doesn't access all of these devices, but it uses quite a few and translates the results into several useful tools. This free app includes a decibel meter, a magnetometer, a compass, a protractor, a ruler, a level (two kinds), a seismometer, a timer, a metronome, and a stopwatch. The magnetometer or teslameter can be useful on a site. UFO activity has often left magnetic disturbances behind. With this your phone can measure magnetic fields in Micro Teslas or Mili Gauss.

Another app, Metal Detector, is a dedicated Teslameter and measures only in micro Teslas.

Either of these apps is useful for the initial assessment of a scene. If unusual magnetic fields are detected, an actual magnetic field meter should be used to conduct a survey. Stuart has purchased two of these devises for use by Field Investigators. He has one and I have the other. Just let us know if you need one.

Periodic Droid is a detailed information source about the Periodic Table of the Elements. I would have given a tooth for this in school. Almost anything you need to know about any element is here.

UFO Tracker is similar to the map database at MUFON.com. It's free. It gives you fast information on the very latest reports. It's also huge. You have to have 8 gigabytes available on your phone just to install it.

The MUFON App is something I didn't find very useful. It is simply access to the MUFON web site. The problem is that it isn't phone friendly so its very hard to use. When this is fixed, it should be terrific.

Most phones come with a navigation app. Mine came with two. The one provided by my carrier had a subscription charge. Google Maps is just as good and, guess what, it's free! If you don't have it, it can be downloaded.

The last two things I recommend for smart phone use, if you don't have them already, is a good weather alert app and a virus protection app. Storm Shield is one of several good weather information and alert apps. Most TV stations offer a good free weather app that will give you a forecast and warn you of dangerous weather in your area wherever you travel to using your GPS. Protection for your phone from viruses is also important. Not that I'm paranoid or anything but there are bad guys out there. AVG is a quality antivirus app (It's good for computers too). The basic version is free. The Pro version is about $10 a year for Android. All of these are available free on the Play Store.

A good tool kit keeps you prepared for anything. But why buy what you need when you don't have to?

A Few Cases

Since I've been very interested in the nuts and bolts aspect of UFO investigation I haven't written in these pages very much about actual UFO sightings and experiences that I have investigated. To date I have completed 152 cases. More are pending. Some of those were identified as misinterpreted natural phenomena, man made objects and a few outright hoaxes, but a significant amount remain unknown.

The majority of these are simple flybys, sightings designated as FB1 on the Vallee scale. Someone looked up and saw something strange flying by. That's all. Objects sighted like this include glowing orbs, Saucer shapes, triangles and boomerang shapes. Often only a light is seen. The object did not land or interact with anything. There is no trace evidence. I can interview the witness but usually there is only one. After the interview I'm done. If the sighting can't be immediately identified as known object I'm left with “Insufficient Information” or “Unknown” as a conclusion.

Some of these are striking.

• In the Fountain Square area of Indianapolis a professional musician was sitting in his backyard about nine o clock on a summer night. He regularly did this on good nights with his wife while they smoked and looked for meteors. She was looking away when he saw a multicolored disk fly purposely from north to south. It was gone in two seconds, just long enough for him to get a good look. While not a witness his wife is an excellent artist and drew a picture from is description.
  
• While on duty, an Indianapolis Police officer watched several orange glowing spheres fly across the northern section of the city. The description he gave fit the profile of the glowing orb or OBOLs (Orange Balls of Light) that have been reported so often across the United States. The next night a woman reported an identical sighting near the Castleton Area.
• While flying from El Paso, Texas to Columbus, Indiana a pilot had a near collision with a UFO over Indiana. This occurred in 1974 and wasn't reported till much later. He was flying a Cessna Centurion and was in contact with Indianapolis Center when he saw the light in front of him. He provided this statement.

“We watched this oncoming light for what seemed like 5 or 10 minutes. Of course

we had no idea of its distance from us-there are no benchmarks up there to gauge distance, and at night time you might see a light many, many miles away. Soon I could tell it was getting much closer and I turned on my landing lights in the nose of the aircraft, in addition to my wingtip navigation lights as a precaution. The light just kept coming at our altitude and I was getting tense. In a moment it was close in front of us and I banked my plane sharply in a steep right turn and bank to get away.

“The very moment I did this, the object with its light, in the flash of a moment, abruptly reversed direction by rapidly climbing and proceeding more than 90 degrees to the right of its former course. Picture the bottom half of the letter “Z”. That was it’s trajectory. All of this happened in a split second and I observed what I thought was the tail of this object climbing in the darkness at incredible speed, with 2 less bright lights, which quickly disappeared from our view. Given our right turn position and the speed which this object displayed, I cannot describe it further, it just could not be made out in the darkness, and what seemed a split second. It was a frightening event.”

Sometimes the investigation leads off into strange directions.

• On March 29, 2014 at 10 about 10 PM a mother and her two daughters were driving west on I 70. They had just left the city and were approaching the Indianapolis international Airport which was on their right when all three observed an object in the sky that did not resemble in any way an airplane. The three women were adamant that they were very familiar with the configuration and light arrangement of commercial aircraft and other types of aircraft. They had driven in this area several times before. The object they saw did not resemble anything that any had ever seen in their lives. The object was described consistently by all three as a triangular shaped or V-shaped object with a single light at the apex of the V. The object was moving extremely slowly. It was moving so slowly that the mother was uncertain how it could remain in the air if it was an aircraft of conventional nature. All three observed the object for several minutes until they lost sight of it while driving. They did not stop.

I digitally recorded interviews with all three. Since the two daughters were minors I obtained a parental consent form from the mother to allow this interview. All three stories were remarkably consistent. The three women describe the observation only and did not give any indication that there was any abduction or missing time involved. All three were remarkably shaken by the event.

The object was described as a V-shaped object of immense size. The primary body of the object was essentially lost in overcast and the witnesses were all barely able to make out its shape. The object had a single light at the apex of the V. The apex of the V was pointing south. The object was slightly illuminated either by the light at its apex or the large amount of lights from the airport. It appeared to be flying very low and appeared to be very large described as the size of a large airliner.

That night the wind was northwest at 15 miles an hour. Skies were overcast with a ceiling of only 2600 feet. This is remarkably low. Only very low flying or in this the vicinity landing and taking off aircraft would be visible from the ground.

This section of I 70 is immediately adjacent to the southern end of Indianapolis international Airport. This is one of the busiest and largest airports of the nation. It is a central hub for many airlines including FedEx which operates, after dark, a consistent train of jumbo jets in and out of the airport. At any given time between the hours of 9 PM and 8 AM five or six FedEx jumbo jets will be in landing or takeoff patterns. Radar infromation is unavailable. There is a complete lack of cooperation by the radar operators at Indianapolis international Airport with any UFO investigation.

A few days after receiving this report I drove with my wife down I 70 taking the route past the airport that was taken by the three witnesses. We were specifically looking for any man-made structure stationary or otherwise that might account for the siting. We observe nothing of that nature whatever. There is no structures along this route that would account for the object is described by the witnesses.

After interviewing the mother about this particular incident she volunteered that she had a previous possible experience involving UFOs. As a child she had written a short story titled The Spaceship in My Backyard. It described herself as a child witnessing a space ship landing and meeting the occupants. She provide a copy of this story but with respect for her copyright I will not present it here. For reasons that the mother does not appear to quite understand this story had a significant impact on her and was very important in her young life. It was important enough that she felt she had to bring it to my attention. It is not clear and will not be clear without further investigation whether this is simply a science fiction story written by a young child or whether it represents extraterrestrial contact and a suppressed memory. I discussed the concept of hypnotic regression with her and she seemed open to the idea. So far this has not occurred.

A Problem with Expert Advise

A couple of weeks ago I attended an interesting UFO symposium at the Kokomo Indiana south library. Indiana MUFON State Director Stuart Hill and I were speakers. Also present was former Indiana MUFON Chief Investigator Glen Means who spoke extensively about the Kokomo Boom of April 16, 2008. Glen was one of the first FIs on the scene. The boom is still a topic of great interest in the area and several people in the audience reported hearing it.

Now let me state right now I am NOT going to offer here a definitive or any other kind of explanation as to what happened that night. But there is a point or two...

Glen's talk was about his own investigation of the event. He rushed to the area from his home in Peru as soon as he heard about it. His police scanner was on the entire time. Glen quoted a dispatcher as saying “We're on the phone with a meteorologist and he says it was a meteor.” Everybody chuckles. A meteorologist is an expert on weather not meteors and why would they call a weatherman anyway when they should have called an astronomer or something. Maybe something funny is going on.

Maybe.

Or maybe they called exactly the right person.

A meteorologist is someone who studies and is expert on anything that is in the atmosphere or falls from the sky, like for example meteors. The things he studies include electrometeors, lightning, and hydrometeors, rain, snow, and hail. He also studies lithometeors which is any solid matter falling or carried through the sky. This included dust picked up by the wind, sandstorms, and space born rocks.

Someone who studies only meteors and meteoriticist es is called a meteoriticist.

So who are you going to call? It's eleven o clock at night and everyone is excited and wants answers NOW. Do you have the number of your local meteoriticist in your pocket? Do you even know what a meteoriticist is? Have you ever heard of one? On the other hand the guy on the local TV station is expert in atmospheric phenomena and he always tells you when to look for the Persied Meteor Shower. Where's the phone?

All of this started with Aristotle who wrote his treatise, "Meteorologica” , on climate and weather. This great work covered all knowledge on the subject of the day including the related subjects of geology, astronomy and oceanography. It was all lumped together and didn't get sorted out for centuries. The very existence of rocks that fall from the sky was still a matter of debate in the eighteenth century. Many scientists just couldn't grasp the idea that rocks could travel through space like planets do. Those who insisted that rocks do fall from the sky called them “meteors”, the Greek word for anything suspended or falling through the sky.

So just maybe the meteorologist gave the police a good and informed answer. Not necessarily the right answer, he wasn't there, but a meteor remains one possibility of what caused the boom that night..

Speed Limit Violation

UFO Skeptics will sight one fact time after time in their continuous denial of UFOs: The speed of light.  Einstein's Laws of Relativity states that nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light.  Since light takes years to thousands of years to cross significant portions of our galaxy they reason that interstellar travel is impossible.  And they are right, up to a point. 

Skeptics ignore the fact that in nature something has historically traveled many times faster than light.  This sudden astonishing burst of speed occurred just after the Big Bang.  The universe expanded so fast that areas of the universe (all of them) lost contact with all other areas and never regained it. To state this another way, beyond the limits of our perception, beyond the most distant object seen by Hubble and other telescopes, beyond the distance that any photon has traveled to or from Earth since the Big Bang lies uncounted other areas just as vast as the one I just suggested that have never seen each other since no photon has had time to travel far enough.
 -Yet all of these places were in the same place during the Big Bang. They just flew apart Really, REALLY, REALLY fast.

How can this happen?  If we can't violate the Speed of Light how can nature?  The important thing to remember here is that nothing within the universe can or ever has traveled faster than light.  The thing that traveled, or rather expanded, faster than light was the universe itself.  Einstein's Laws only state that nothing within the universe may travel faster than light.   THE UNIVERSE  can do anything it wants.

This opens up some new areas of research.  Can we go outside of space-time (the universe) and bypass its laws?  Can we wrap a portion of space-time around a ship like the new Space  Warp Drive Theory suggests?  Can we fold Space-time?

None of these things will happen anytime soon but a civilization a few hundred or a few thousand years more advanced than ours might have one of these capabilities.

(This is described much better in Brian Greene's book: The Hidden Reality; Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos)

More Drone Problems

I think a large percentage of  UFO reports to MUFON in the last two years are actually drones. The quadracopter and hexicopter styles have become more and more popular.  Now the hobbyists are deliberately making their toys look like UFOs. A 'how to' video can be found on You Tube by searching "AR Drone 2.0 How to Install LED UFO Light Kit". Drones, like any aircraft, should have red and green navigation lights, however the lights on many can change color and brightness and pulse in any pattern. While the FFA is expected to release regulations on drones soon they haven't yet and when that happens they will be ignored. 

To complicate matters further drone fight clubs have become popular. (Search You tube for "Drone Fight Clubs") Hobbyists will design and build their own drones and engage in drone to drone aerial combat. They use 3D printers to make their own spare parts. Add some pretty LED lights and a night fight becomes reports of UFOs in dogfights.

Cases

There is been a lot of UFO activity in Indiana and the last two or three years. Many new cases are being reported some of them that occurred recently in some of them of past historical encounters. We the Indiana field investigators are trying valiantly to get these cases cleared out. Unfortunately with a very unusual nature of our investigations is not possible to find adequate explanations in every case. But then it is the case conclusion "unknown" that makes this kind of investigation so very interesting.

Over the last few months fireballs been reported separately over Brownsburg Indiana, Valparaiso, Indiana, and North Manchester Indiana. Triangle shaped craft have been reported over Remington, Mount Vernon, and St. Joseph. Sphere shaped objects have been reported over Bremen, St. Joseph, Indianapolis, and Hamilton Indiana.

My own investigations included cases such as a number of spheres or sphere like objects sighted on July 5, 2013 over Avon Indianaand a similar wave over the same town within 1 mile of the previously mentioned sighting precisely one year before. There were sightings of triangular illuminated objects similar description to the Phoenix lights over Fortville Indiana and within two days of that sighting another on I 70 at the south end of Indianapolis international Airport that was seen by three female family members in the same car. Other cases that I am working on include a sphere over Indianapolis on May 2014, lights over Marion on April 2014, a triangle over Indianapolis on March 2014, a disc over Indianapolis on November 2013, a cylindrical is shaped object over Mooresville Indiana, January 2013, and a triangle over Coatesville in May 2013. There are in fact a lot more open cases. Some of these, at least reportedly, involve possible abductions.

On October 11 at 1 PM Indiana MUFON will be hosting a meeting that is open to the public at the public library in Greencastle Indiana. Detailed information on this meeting can be found that the MUFON Indiana website. I will be speaking on some of the cases listed here as well as a number of others that I have been investigating. Among the other speakers present will be Stewart Hill are state director.

Regression Session Failure

I haven't been blogging here for some time because I've been quite busy with investigations and other MUFON business. Approximately once every year Indiana MUFON tries to do a hypnotic regression event involving as many UFO experiencers who may be abductees as possible. This year I was directly involved in get this years session in operation. Unfortunately it did not work, and a great deal of time and effort done by our state director Stuart Hill and to a lesser degree myself has been wasted.

There are quite a number of important issues involved in using hypnotic regression to recover lost or hidden memories of a UFO related event. If any of these factors come into play they could taint or invalidate any evidence recovered using hypnosis. Far from our favorite form of investigation, hypnosis is rather on the bottom of the list of evidence sought by MUFON investigators. Its primary advantage is that it is evidence where other evidence is unobtainable. The stories and information obtained with hypnotic regression are susceptible to suggestion, subconscious fears, underlying psychiatric disorders which may present themselves as delusions that are perceived as reality, and on some occasions the strong desire of the subject consciously or unconsciously to please the investigators. Any of these can cause a confabulation to be presented during the session instead of a real memory.

The biggest obstacle however is anxiety on the part of the subject. It is widely believed that hypnosis can bring forth memories that have been long submerged. These can be terrifying images or experiences that the subject may not be ready to face. Therefore the most difficult issue is getting the subject to voluntarily present themselves at the session.

Another obstacle is the widely held belief that it is impossible to present or maintain a false story during the hypnotic state. An alleged witness who is in fact perpetrating a hoax will want to avoid any hypnotic regression for fear of being discovered.

This year after lining up all subjects for hypnotic regression and obtaining our certified hypnotherapist, all the subjects backed out and the session had to be canceled.

Hypnotic regression ranks last in the hierarchy of evidence for UFOs behind trace evidence, photographic evidence, and eye witness testimony. It does however offer some major advantages. It can fill in blanks in the story of a witness, and offer therapeutic relief for the extreme anxiety that often plagues the witness. This year MUFON Indiana lost an opportunity to fill in some of the blanks in our investigations and perhaps offer some needed assistance to UFO witnesses who may or may not be abductees. This is been to us a great disappointment.

Indiana MUFON conducts hypnotic regression sessions in full compliance with the guidelines presented to us by the MUFON international leadership. These guidelines state that the actual hypnotic session must be conducted by a certified hypnotherapist. This essentially defines the hypnotic session as a medical procedure. In addition to the confidential nature of almost all investigations and the promise of MUFON to maintain the confidentiality of any UFO witness who wishes to remain anonymous, hypnotic regression sessions also fall under the HIPPA law. Detailed information on this very important law can be found at this website. http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/

This law protects your privacy during any medical procedure. Unauthorized release of such information can in fact cause great harm. Let me offer this hypothetical example. Nurse "Betsy" works on a medical floor of a major hospital. Congressman "X" has just been admitted to her floor. He is there with a mild cardiac complaint. Nurse "Betsy" is a member of a major political party and strongly believes in the platforms in the policies of that party. Congressman "X" is a major player in the party on the other side of the aisle. He has recently announced his candidacy for the presidency. The policies and platforms that he believes in are in direct opposition to those held important by nurse "Betsy". While studying the medical record of Congressman "X" Nurse "Betsy" discovers that in the past the Congressman has been prescribed antipsychotic drugs and undergone electroshock therapy. Nurse "Betsy" now wonders if she might be doing a public service by leaking this information about the Congressman's background. If she were to do this she would not only be violating the confidentiality of her patient but she could also face several years in a federal prison for violating a federal law. And consider the other harm done to the Congressman. There is a huge amount of prejudice involving the kind of therapies the Congressman reportedly had. In fact the Congressman might be more sane and capable then Nurse "Betsy".

Information obtained during a hypnotic regression session or any other medical procedure whatever is restricted specifically to the medical caregivers directly involved in the patient's care and to those whom the patient has designated to receive this information.